Recommendation to adopt a motion approving the Financial Policies as recommended by the Budget Oversight Committee on August 14, 2018.  (A-10)
Motion carries unanimously. To 1.10. Report from Financial Management Recommendation to adopt a motion approving the financial policies as recommended by the Budget Oversight Committee. These are the financial policies. One I need a great emotion and a second. And a slight friendly to that. Was. In light of the projected fiscal year 20 shortfall and the fiscal policies proposed by the U.S. have staff bring back a list of positions that were general fund enhancements recommended for structural funding within the last five years. To the B or C. Could there's a motion or a second with that with that addition that's on Richardson. Is there any changes in the financial policy from last year to this year? Mr. MODICA Yes, there are changes. We can go through those if you'd like to. Okay. Why don't we go ahead? We'll go out and go through those. Mr. GROSS. Thank you. There are two financial policies that have been changed. One is the financial policy number 17, which is on grants. This was an item that was reviewed last year but was not adopted. Basically, the change to summarize it is to let council know staff has a responsibility under this policy to let the City Council know about the funding in continuing or discontinuing of programs what the plan is when a grant becomes in front of them. And secondly, if that plan changes after a grant is awarded that we have to let council know in the next budget cycle. So it's more disclosure on grants. There is a second policy change on fiscal policy, which is number 12. This change doesn't even change the short statement for the policy. It actually remains the same. It's it's in some respects some more minor change. But it isn't it is a change essentially for the fiscal impact. The fiscal impact is now required for all fiscal impact statements coming before council, including on city manager departments or elected officials. And effectively, it requires fiscal impact to be reviewed by the financial management department. Unless that is inconvenient. If it is inconvenient, then it simply needs to make a statement that it wasn't allowed in terms of time to have a financial management review. Those are the. Changes. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. GROSS. Councilor Pearce. Thank you and thank you for reading. I did have a question on the grants. Does that include whenever the grants that are available that we might decline? I know that there are some departments that they feel like there are grants out there that we haven't applied for, that we've declined. Does this allow for that transparency? It does not specifically address that. I know there's probably a lot of grants that we don't apply for. I guess I would ask that within this financial policy that if there is grants that we were denied for, that maybe those at the end of the year or two from four on, what we could have done to make ourselves more, you know, acceptable to receive those grants. I think if it's acceptable, we would take that as a just an administrative suggestion to come back to you at the end of this year. And then at some future point, if the PSC wants to formalize that in, the financial policy could maybe be the next version. Great. I think that's a great start for that conversation. Thank you. I'm actually slightly uncomfortable with making that change at this time. I know this is a policy we've debated for two years. The number of grants that we choose not to apply for is in the hundreds. What we don't apply for. Right? I get that. However, a lot of them are based on the potential for likelihood of funding. And so what I wouldn't want to happen is for staff to not want to apply, to not appear on the list. So if it's okay, I'd like for Bossy to have a staff report on that. And if we feel that the financial policy needs to be amended again, we could do that at that time. But the D.O.C. has spent literally multiple meetings on this financial policy and in talking with staff on their recommendations. Okay. We haven't had those conversations here. Agree. So that's the first time that I've heard that it's been this two year conversation. But what I'm trying to get at is if we if there are grants that we apply for and we do not get understanding what it is, why we're not getting them, so that if there's something that we can help change or have an eye on to say, well, if we only apply for this money or if we put seed money here, then we would get that grant. So having something on the administrative side, I'm fine with the whole thing at all. Fabianski appreciates your comments and we'll take it under consideration. Thank you. But I'm not open. I'm not ready to take a friendly on that yet just because of the multitude of grants that my department I know I'm not trying to not just have the chair of the EEOC. I don't feel that every single policy has to come to a full council. I feel that the the main bulk of the debate really has to happen because this policy we recommended two years ago. So so let me. Okay, so one, I do have a comment on this, but Mr. City Attorney, I know you're chiming. I did not hear a friendly in there. I think she had asked for a staff report back at their Mr. GROSS recommended a staff report back at the end of the year to give information and then you could consider discuss it at the next block. So I don't think there's a friendly to your motion. Right then that my. Motion doesn't include a staff report and I'm not planning to add one. But you could always ask for information without a friendly to your motion. You could ask for a staff report. It's not a friendly. I think I think I think what I'm interpreting is that Councilman Pearce is asking for staff information to give us more information about our grant process and what grants we what how we can do better as a request of staff for information for the council. So that's the way I interpreted that. And then obviously if there's there needs to be further adjustment to the financial policies, of course, those will continue. To be. Requesting changes to the. Right. But if there was, those would go to the court. And just for the council, I would like to point out that when ever the granting opportunity offers the opportunity to give us guidance on what we could do better, staff always take that call. So we often set up calls with the granting agency, and if they're willing to do it, go through our application and tell us, hey , you got knocked down for this. You did really well on that. And we welcome those opportunities. And my concern as a person who manages millions of dollars of grants for a living is disclosing the weaknesses in our application in a public way gives other people were competing against a leg up an advantage in their next year's proposal for the same funds that we're fighting for. So if you'd like to talk about, I think that's a valid response. Yeah, there's a huge there's a huge like data gathering related to being competitive in grants. And so I would just say that if you'd like to talk with staff about that, I think that that's great. I just don't I guess I just don't understand that we as a council ask for staff reports at the dais that we could just talk to staff. And so if it's out the that you're having a conversation about our policy and it makes sense to me that we all have this discussion versus in a small group. So I understand that, that we're kind of on our on our train and we're moving forward with our budget recommendations. Some of these we have not had a lot of discussions about as a whole body, and I think it's okay to slow down and have that conversation. So your response about being competitive and what process that is a valid response. So I just ask that as we continue to go through the next to them that I appreciate you and appreciate your validation. Thank you. So we have a motion on the floor and we have a request for an administrative update from staff. So, look, I know that we will get that update. And so Councilman Richardson and I will go to a vote. Sure. So about the report that comes back, I know there was a lot of conversation in the past about when we are offered a grant and don't accept it. And I know we had a conversation about disclosing when that does happen. Do we have that policy on hand right now or can that be included in that report? Right. So, for example, years ago when California Endowment offered the money for the I think it was the health element or whatever it was, and we didn't accept it. And the council found out later. I know we addressed that back then, but is that a current practice? So I think something like that happens very infrequently. We look for grants wherever we can. We try to get money. There are some grants that depending on the bells and whistles and hooks, they really aren't a good fit for us. So staff look at each one of those. We have departments lead that and those come to the city manager's office to make sure that we're not over obligating ourselves. And so we go through that. We don't have a specific policy. It's more of a does this make sense for us to apply for it? But if we ever do, is something that the Council has directed us to do and staff are purposely not doing it. That's where we have to have a conversation. I just like when we don't accept one movie, one in a grant, or I've been offered a grant and don't accept it. That's well understood when we apply and then later we say we're not going to accept. Yeah, we can. Certainly those are where we should certainly be informing you when that happens. You ask the question, why would I want to. Keep thinking we do have a motion and a second to approve the grant process. Know what we're talking about. School policy policies. Let's just. Provide a map. Of the whole. School and the financial policy, whatever we're doing. 1.10 is the recommendation to approve the financial policies as recommended by the PSC. Most motion case unanimously.