Recommendation to conduct a Budget Hearing to receive and discuss an Overview of the Proposed Fiscal Year 2015 Budget for Parks, Recreation and Marine, Library Services, and Code Enforcement.
Thank you. Members. Here this report from the city manager with the recommendation to conduct a budget hearing to receive and discuss an overview of the. Proposed fiscal. Year 2014 budget. Thank you. Mr. West. You want me to you want me to get started? The return of you coming to go and start. So what? I know that the Council and the public have had a chance to review the budget as presented by the city manager. It's a it's a budget that, in my opinion, has been well, well thought out. And a lot of the the the top management team, the financing put a lot of work into. I'm going to start by going through my recommendations as mayor for the 20,000 for the 2015 FBI budget. As part of that. And when I go to this presentation, it's one that I made earlier. And in fact, a few of the council members were here earlier. From there, Mr. West will take it over and walk us through the budget itself and there'll be opportunities for any questions as well as public comment towards the end. So you should all have the recommendations in front of you that have being passed out and we're going to go out and go through those. I want to just start off by saying what I said this morning is that we have over the last few years gone through a very difficult financial time in the city. It's been a really in large part to a lot of the work and the returning council members that have been here that have been able to get the get the budget back into a strong position, we've been able to eliminate a lot of that structural deficit. We've been able to go and work with our city employees to reform our public pension system. So we're in a position today where we have a small surplus, and I think rightly so. Management has proposed that surplus move forward so we can look forward, look for savings in the future. I want to reiterate some key messages that Mayor Foster left on the way out. I think it's important that moving forward, we continue our partnership with all of our employee groups. The only way we solve our future budget challenges is by working with our employee groups, by working with management to ensure that we are providing the best possible service to our employees, while also looking at the financial future of the city. So that that is going to continue. And the budget message reflects that, although the items that Mayor Foster suggested are items that like in any case, in any budget cycle, will always be on the table and we'll review those thoroughly. I also, as part of the budget message, I want to reiterate my support for benchmarking oil at $70 a barrel as we know oil. Is still a pretty volatile commodity. And I think we've learned our lessons from the past and the fluctuation of the oil price certainly caused the city some financial strain. But but more importantly, the way we value oil also has a direct relationship to our bond rating and our credit rating. And our bond rating is incredibly important for the city. And so keeping that responsible level of the $70 a barrel is something that I continue to support. And as part of this message moving forward, however, it made some additional budget recommendations. Most are budget neutral. And in fact, it's really about restructuring the way we we do business and engineering a lot of what the council incoming council has been talking about for the last few months. The first proposal is to continue to strengthen our reserves. The manager's budget allocates 3.1 million of F 15 surplus into the CalPERS stabilization fund. And as we know, that's going to help us smooth out our deficit challenges in the future. I propose, in addition to that, we take two mil, 2 million, up to 2 million of any FY14 surplus, and we will have a surplus like we do most years and also put that into the CalPERS stabilization fund. By doing that, we are ensuring that we're taking care of our future challenges today rather than pushing them forward, and that will allow future years to have it really be in a more stronger position when it comes financially. So one is to strengthen those those CalPERS Stabilization Reserve by an additional 2 million, up to 2 million, depending on what we have. The second thing is I'm proposing that we look at restructuring the way we organize economic development. And this is something that I heard also pretty loud and clearly from almost all of the council members that the new council that's here is their interest in returning and having an economic development department within the city of Long Beach. And so I'm proposing and reorganizing. We currently have already in place an economic development and property manager within the city manager's office. What this will do is part of the budget is also bring over seven staff from the asset management division of our public works to to form the new the new department, which will be economic and property development. There is no additional cost. We're essentially bringing staff members from different parts of the city together to restart this department for Long Beach. One key component of this is the new department will work directly with city council offices and business improvement districts to create synergy among the initiatives. And I think it's important that the Council have a point person in this office, as well as a director of this department that is willing to work directly with council offices as they do business recruitment and work with the community and the business improvement district. So that's the second part of my proposal. The third is to. Restructure. Our technology services department. We have a great group in technology services that do a lot of a lot of fantastic work and have implemented a lot of changes over the last few years. But I like to restructure and rename the department, the Technology and Innovation Department. And in doing so, not only will I would like to instruct the manager to look at the department for ways of really bringing innovation into the department, partnering with the university, partnering with the community college, and looking at ways that we can take our government into the 21st century. I'm a firm believer that innovative technology with open government, with making our services more accessible, we can create a stronger city, one that works for people, that creates efficiency, but also supports the men and women that are working there currently. And so that also is no addition. No, there's no cost to the general fund, but it will really shift a little bit of the focus, and that department will become a real center for innovation. The next proposal is, again, something I heard from a lot of the current council. During the recession. We lost a historic preservation officer who essentially, as we know, we have 17 designated historic districts throughout the city of Long Beach. They're in every part of the city. They're incredibly important. And we have lost the the person, the position that essentially helped facilitate historic preservation with the city. And while we've done some great work, part of my budget recommendations is to reclassify a planner three position that's already in the proposed budget and designate them as the role of historic preservation planner. To serve all these historic districts and to have one highly dedicated staff planner be able to help manage all the really great needs that our historic districts have. And so this is something that, again, I heard from the community, I heard from council members, and I think it's important to move forward on next is additional support for libraries and the arts, our libraries and the way and the type. Some materials they have are changing. I've asked that we added this an additional $200,000 of one time funds to increase the materials budget for the library. I included in that would be also a focus on digital books and digital media as the types of use is changing. We're getting more interest in ebooks and media and so we're this will also help the library adapt and add to some of those needs that they need. We've also asked that we'd give an additional 50,000 to the Arts Council. This is a request that they made. In fact, I think they probably sent letters to to all of us up here to allow them to do some new marketing and to look for other private funds to match those dollars. The 250,000 total for libraries and the arts. I'm recommending that we take out of a a line item for each VAC systems. In talking to the manager. The we aren't yet ready to replace those systems and so we have some time to replace a couple of those HVAC systems. And so we're able to use this money and still have no issues and then come back later this year or next year and replace those, those systems that we need that need replacing. And then the last two items I know that over the last few years, we have had, particularly last year, a discussion here at the council about privatizing our street sweeping. And the manager went out and did a study and looked at efficiencies in the street sweeping operation. My recommendation is that we that we table and shelve the street sweeping contracting our proposal and that we instead look to our street sweepers and our program that we have currently and ask them to look for efficiencies and ask them to look at ways of strengthening our street sweeping function. It's my belief that just because something is less expensive doesn't mean it's better. And this is a way of looking at our street sweepers that we currently have and allowing them to bring some solutions to the table as far as street sweeping is concerned. As part of that, we're asking to look to for to look to reduce the four hour window to 2 hours, particularly in parking impacted neighborhoods for the community and other efficiencies that are available. And finally, I want to just a few things about affordable housing. As we know, the game has changed when it comes to funding for affordable housing because of the elimination of redevelopment. And there's a bunch of things happening currently in the legislature when it comes to funding affordable housing. The current budget has presented a is pretty tight as we know, but we need to start having a discussion about how we do affordable housing moving forward. And so what I propose in the budget is a way of starting that discussion. We've had a housing trust fund for many years. As we know. We expect to get back about 24.7 $25 million from the state over the next few years for affordable housing. As part of this proposal is to take that 25 million and put it into the housing trust fund so that we can then begin to look at ways of actually building and working on our affordable housing challenge. But in addition to that, as part of the budget message, I'm asking ways of reaching out to the community and housing advocates to see how can we strengthen the housing trust fund now that it will actually have money for the first time since it was created and also look at ways of other funds as we come down the pipeline and as is available in the future and in future budgets, how we how we end up funding affordable housing is a discussion that we need to have throughout this budget process. So I know that was a little lengthy, but I wanted to make sure I got through all those recommendations. Those are as presented. And I'm hearing this over to the city manager. Thank you, Mayor Garcia. Thank you. Councilmembers. I do want to highlight that we prefer to take the capital improvement budget at the conclusion of this. So we have discussion first and then get into the capital improvement because it's so separate from our operating budget. So I have the pleasure of introducing our fiscal year 14 budget to the community. And let's just highlight some of the things that have happened. Our Mayor and his city council have steered Long Beach through the Great Recession. This council has made difficult cuts and balanced past budgets. We've cut $134 million out of the general fund and 714 positions. Over the last eight years. We've invested in maintenance, efficiency and effectiveness. We've established and we followed those established financial policies. We've also used 14 temporary surplus fiscal year, 14 temporary surplus dollars to reduce or eliminate deficits as we proceed into the future. We've also addressed pensions. Our pension reform in conjunction with our employees saves almost $250 million over ten years. We also want to point out that the CalPERS board actions will ensure that this plan is funded over 30 years. You'll see later in this budget this is going to be a very, very difficult time for Long Beach. It is extremely necessary so we can pay down that unfunded liability with the help of peers. We've also created a CalPERS stabilization fund. This will help protect against service reductions due to fluctuating CalPERS investments and earnings. There's also been many operational and efficiency improvements recently. We've reduced the general fund management team by 28%. We've eliminated hundreds of vehicles from the city fleet. We've consolidated clerical staffing. We've streamlined permit fees and consolidated inspection services. We've even eliminated two entire departments, and we're implementing a more efficient ambulance service as we speak. We've also implemented what we call Long Beach Cops. This leverages technology to fight crime. This is under the leadership of Chief Jim McDonald and provides a camera system that is in our emergency operations center that oversees much of our 52 square miles to fight crime. We've also reduced skill and stand by pace throughout all of our nine employee organizations. We're also in the process of implementing new systems that will take us into the 21st century. We've introduced a brand new parking citation system which will improve improved collection rates. I want to make it clear that this system is not about issuing more tickets. It's about going after scofflaws who have not paid their tickets. We're in the process of implementing a brand new business license system, which will make it easier for the public and our business folk to get business licenses and improve the way that they do business. We've also implemented a brand new utility billing system that's been very, very successful throughout the community. And finally, one of the things that this city council has talked about for the past four years, we've implemented a brand new financial and our system, which is underway. We funded that. That's going to take another year and a half or two to put online. But it's a huge undertaking and will take us into the 21st century with technology and computer efforts. We wanted to focus a little bit about the fiscal year 14 accomplishments that have happened just recently and throughout the past few years. We are experiencing a 41 year low in violent crime throughout our community. Chief McDonnell tells us we're continuing to see violent crime drop even this year. We're also seeing major projects completed or underway. These include the brand new Molina health care buildings, a Fortune 500 company expanding their on Pine and Seventh Street, bringing over 1000 well-paid jobs to North Pine. Mercedes-Benz is building a brand new facility there at the old 717 site, and Douglas and Canaan, and they're in the middle of that construction period. And that will be a game changer for us. If anyone's driven by Douglas Park, which is north of the airport at the old Boeing property, this is becoming a grand slam home run, run for us. It's rivaling the Irvine spectrum property in Irvine as an industrial and office facility. More and more buildings are going up every month. It's just fantastic. The park continues to be a great partner and leader in all of our economic activities with the Middle Harbor as well as the bridge. Numerous restaurants have opened up in the past year. We're getting to be quite the location for this. We've got Chia Nina. We've got the Socialist Retro Row Bobo's on Pine, James Republic, the Federal Bar. And more and more restaurants are expanding and relocating like E.J. Malloy's and Hamburger Mary's. The Pike retail component is ready to take off. We hope within the next year the park is moving to be a quality outlet facility there and adjacent to the convention center. And it's anchored by the Restoration Hardware Outlet Store, which we're told is the most successful restoration hardware outlet store in the United States. We continue to get awards for things like the downtown plan and our mobility element. We just learned recently, while we knew we had a county award in the mobility element, the state of California has issued us their chief award for that. Our Parks and Recreation Department continues to win awards, getting a golden medal for the best Parks and Recreation Department in the entire United States this year. When we had to close the old Thelma pool, the city council acted so quickly. We had a brand new temporary pool open within just a ten month period, which was unheard of. After many years, the City Council adopted a new billboard ordinance, and this will go a long way in reducing illegal or grandfathered billboards on our corridors throughout our city. And finally, through the City Council's efforts and their own council committees, we are now receiving A and B grades for water quality. And all of our bodies of waters were once we just got D's and F's. So let's get into the budget. Our first core is to preserve services police, fire, public works, libraries, parks and all major services are preserved in this proposed budget. We're using proportionate share again, and that keeps budgets aligned with council priorities and incentivizes departments to be efficient. So you can see about 50% of our general fund goes to our police department. Approximately 19 or 20% goes to fire. And then the rest is divided among various various sources. Our focus continues to be on public safety. 70% of our general fund budget is devoted to public safety. We continue to have police and fire academies funded for this current year going forward. We're also adding police officers for Long Beach Transit and firefighters at the port. This budget also includes $2.2 million for enhanced overtime for gang prevention and other efforts and our Long Beach Police Department. We are also investing in police technology and also adding a brand new police station at East Station there at Willow and Lakewood Boulevard. And that should break ground shortly at the old Schroeder Hall and get our men and women out of that old, decrepit East police station there at the traffic circle. We're also using GMT money, state revenues for for new fire engines. I have to point out, if you look in the budget, we have five engines. But the council recently allocated some of the money for one of the engines to sidewalks for infrastructure. So they'll go to four. We also are going to fund our prior year commitments in the past when we would build a park. Sometimes we wouldn't provide parks and rec the money to maintain that park, and they would have to just divide up their expenditures to do that. This year, we're changing that. We're providing Parks Rec and Marine $287,000 for park maintenance and new parks like the expanded Shattuck Field. We're also adding $109,000 for a position to oversee things that are important to the Council for their policies. Language Access Plan, Violence Prevention Plan, Long Beach Grip and the Human Dignity Program will also provide $49,000 for a position to help improve our homeless services. As we prepare for the future, we also have some one time dollars available, about $11 million. And here's how we plan to spend that. Basically, we're investing in future efficiency improvements. We're investing in $2.45 million for park irrigation upgrades and water needs, as well as $1.37 million for artificial turf version. So we'll get a fourth artificial turf soccer field to match the three that were funded last year. This alone will save millions of gallons of water every year for Parks Rec and Marine. We're also setting aside $800,000 to purchase and install smart parking meters in Belmont Shore in the downtown, as well as $1.3 million in state air quality funds for fuel efficient vehicles and anti idling technology, which will save lots of fuel for us. We're also having a huge focus on critical infrastructure while the budget has $4.9 million in our residential street program. We're adding $1 million of one time dollars to match this. While our normal budget in the capital budget has $3 million for sidewalks, we're recommending another million dollars or one times to match that. We're also setting aside $2.1 million to guarantee that the library looks like I'm going to have them close the inner thing as we're testing out these new curtains here because it's a little sunny. So this won't close the whole thing. But it's just the. Actually, there's a there's an inner one, I think, from what they told me earlier. All right. There we go. Now it's so dark. Thank you. I was on the $2.1 million to make the North Library. All I can be are. But our bids came in for the North Library on target, and we're in great shape. But we want to guarantee that we can do the offsite and put all the fixtures and equipment in the new North Library that will get started shortly, as well as $400,000 for other critical equipment. We've done a lot of efficiencies and reorganizations. Our Long Beach Police Department is reorganizing to add 18 sworn police officers to the front line in police services to meet the needs out there on the streets. Development Services is restructuring their permit. Counter Public Works is reviewing project management and organization structures. Our health department is increasing grant funded positions to maximize money. Our Parks and Recreation Marine is reorganizing the Animal Care Bureau for more efficiency and oversight. We continue to fund our future commitments. The Council authorized or recommended 5% of non-recurring revenue for unfunded liabilities, and that is in here. And we're also recommending to transfer $3.1 million of temporary surplus to the CalPERS stabilization fund, which will protect us in the future from market fluctuations. There are challenges coming. City revenues are not sufficient to sustain service increases. We know that fiscal year 15 and fiscal year 16 are transition years. We know that expenses have been and are likely to continue to outpace revenues. Revenues excluding one time events have declined in the last five years. There's been negative basic growth. Our key personnel expenses category has increased an average between one and 7% over the last five years. So as we look for fiscal year 15 and fiscal year 16, it looks like we are going to have two years of what we call budget peace. But here's where I get to my winter is coming. Slide. Here's the CalPERS rate increases that is going to take care of our unfunded liabilities. As you can see, 15 in the blue area is the $41 million that we pay annually to pers. PERS is going to increase to smooth out the unfunded liabilities. And as people are living longer, they have to put more money into that as well. So in 17, we're going to see what we're predicting as a $13 million deficit in 18. We're looking at a $20 million deficit, and these are cumulative. In 1926, 20, a $33 million deficit, and in 21, a $35.6 million deficit. Now, after 21, we'll see that start to decline slightly, but 21 will be our big year. But again, winter is coming. We have other challenges. We have expiring employee agreements that we'll be taking up shortly. Our employee benefit costs continue to outpace inflation. We have unfunded liabilities, as we saw on Cal's a CalPERS pension that's going to be taken care of through the CalPERS payments. But we still have unfunded liabilities and sick leave, retiree health care subsidies and workers comp. Mr. West I also want to just make sure that that we know that, because I think it's an important point. If you look at that CalPERS chart on page 15 that Mr. West just went through. It's important to note that the the deficit that we're going to accrue is in direct relation, has a direct relationship to our payment that's going out to CalPERS. And so what we're essentially doing over the next few years is we're paying off what we really should have been paying off many, many years ago. So it isn't it's a deficit that we are that's been created because of our increased payment into the system. So the payment into the system is a really good thing because we need to obviously deal with our with our liabilities. So as you look at at those at those deficits in the future, those deficits, while certainly are are painful, and they will be over the next few years as they smooth out. We're going to be doing great damage to that to that pot of money that we owe. And so that is the really positive thing out of this, is that we're actually taking care of those payments through this new model with the staff level in the finance department. Couldn't agree more. As you pointed out earlier, it's going to be difficult, but very, very necessary. So we totally agree. We know that we're facing a $2 million. We're facing a deficit of $2.5 million in 16 and 8.5 and 17. This proposed budget applies $3.1 million of our fiscal year temporary surplus to help solve 16 and 17. So if we carry that surplus forward, we look for a zero deficit in 15. A zero deficit and 16. And a reduced deficit in 17. So the plan for success is to maintain our current services through proportionate share. This budget doesn't decrease any services. There are no new services without offsetting reductions. The police and fire academies provide for new police officers and firefighters. The budget continues to develop efficiencies and explore cost reductions. Are one time expenditures focus on reducing operating car calls costs. We're adding to our CalPERS stabilization fund and carry over temporary surplus moneys to address future deficits. And there's an additional funding for unfunded liabilities for the 5% council policy. This maintains a strong city services for our very diverse and vibrant community. It continues investment in city infrastructure. It maintains fiscal discipline and continues to develop efficiencies and explore cost reductions. We continue to maximize existing revenue and continue to look for new revenues and maintain our Long Beach fiscal health. So here's the budget timeline. Here's how we got to today. Beginning in March, the budget outlook was presented to the city council. On March 12th, we had instructions to the to the departments. In July, we started to submit all of the proposed budget to the mayor. July 3rd, July 9th, Mayor Foster submitted the proposed budget to the city council. And tonight we have Mayor Garcia submitting his recommendations on the budget. Let's take a quick peek at the budget timeline, and this is where we'll need input from. The City Council. While all of August will be devoted to community budget meetings, whether they're at in different districts or they're at various organizations, the mayor requests them during August. We're also expecting to have budget oversight committees with the new Budget Oversight Committee. So the next council, the next council meeting, we will have a budget hearing. We'll have budget hearings and all of our council meetings until we adopt the budget. So the next one we're recommending to begin with our public safety continuum. August 5th, we will start with public safety related items like code enforcement, parks and Rec, Marine and Library. On August 12th, we'll see public safety items like police and fire to continue that public safety continuum. August 19th will recommend public works, harbor and water. September 2nd, we stand prepared to have other departments as well, and that's the first opportunity for the council to adopt anything. And if you have any recommendations or requests for us, we certainly could alter these upcoming public hearings. And we could also add second meetings, of course, like one at 4:00 or 5:00 in another, one at a time certain at 7:00. So before I conclude, I do want to thank our department heads have worked so hard to put this budget and others together. I want to thank our finance director, John GROSS, the budget manager, Lia Erickson, Joe Martin, Tom Modica, Jeff Hall. And I mostly want to thank Suzanne Frick, who is going through her seventh and last budget with us. Her 250th city council meeting and next Friday will be her last day before she heads up to Idaho. So thank you very much. And we'd be happy to respond to any questions. But again, Mr. West, did you want to perhaps go through a capital improvement budget now and then? Any questions? We'd prefer to say that because it's so different than the average. Absolutely. Well, at this time, are there any questions from any council members REC and Councilmember O'Donnell? Just quick question with regard to the. I believe is $24 million cited coming back to the city had to do with redevelopment? Was that a $24 million figure? Yes. Some time ago, the state this goes into the the education augmentation fund. So we paid that once sometime ago. And then the state asked the agency to pay more money and a supplemental education reimbursement. It's called the CRF. So the agency to pay that needed to borrow the money from our low mod 20% housing fund. So we did that. And now as money is coming back to the city in the demise of the agency, that money has to come back and be paid to our 20% set aside fund. So that's something we knew is happening and it's coming back to repay the loan to the state of California for from our Longmont set aside fund. That that is you answer my question which is that money is locally dedicated. Typically dedicated to affordable low very and low affordable housing. It can't go to moderate our workforce. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Councilmember Andrews. Yes. I mean, you know, Pat, I'd like to ask a question. You know, on Slide ten, what projects are going to be covered with the park irrigation upgrade and the. Artificial turf. The new irrigation system will cover Hartwell Park that's been identified as the one needing the most work and then the artificial turf field. We were hoping to get ADM Kid Park last year, but we just couldn't get the funds. So this will ramp up. ADM Kid Park for us. Thank you. Councilmember Gringo. On page 18, you have the police and fire academies to provide the new police officers, firefighters. Do you have an estimate as to what we're looking at for new hires? I'm I'm going to turn that over to John. The the both the fire and police academies will be based on attrition, and we'll be making those decisions later. We think the fire academy will be pretty close to the maximum size we can handle. Cotton blossom. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Mr. City Manager, let me first of all commend you and the entire city staff, the administrative staff, for putting together this this, I think, very responsible budget thus far. I'm certainly looking forward to haggling over it a bit with my council colleagues. I support the the prefunding strategy to deal with the unfunded liabilities. I think that's very responsible. But I did have a couple of questions. I mean, I have a few questions, and I'll most of them will probably be answered as we would deal with department specific budgets in the weeks to come. But there was a couple of things that jumped out to me. On the $2.2 million in enhanced overtime for gang prevention and other efforts. Do you can you elaborate a little bit on that. Those dollars, that $2.2 million, this will go for overtime activities in the police department. We usually provide this every year out of the one times. This will be strictly under the the the observation of Chief McDonald and his team on where to put those dollars. In the past they've heard a lot of talk from the Council on the Community about frontline gangs teams and that's what they're preparing to use that for. But as I said, this will be at the discretion of the chief of police. Okay. Thank you. And then regarding from funds for prior year commitments, the 280,000 $87,000 for park maintenance for new and expanded parks. Is this for park maintenance? These one time one time maintenance? This is this is excuse me, councilmember and mayor. This is structural money that will go to pay to and to take care of the extra added open space that we've put in, say, to the field. This will guarantee that we structurally can maintain the airfield and water it and any of the new parks that we've expanded or added. Do we have any other parks that we would apply this money to? Yes, absolutely. Okay. And then the the the 1.3 million for artificial turf conversion, that only one soccer field. Yes, that's one soccer field. It's much more expensive than we thought it was going to be. Okay. And where exactly is that? That will go to Admiral Kidd Park. And that was a park that was on the list last year. But we can only do three instead of four. So we're keeping our commitment to get to Admiral Kidd Park. Thank you. Thank you. Vice Mayor Lowenthal. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I also wanted to ask a few questions and and my compliments to the city management staff as well for the start. I am not aware you may have shown this on a slide, but do you have a schedule for the department specific presentations you did? Yes, we did. And again, we're looking for input on that. These are just our recommendations. So August 5th, public safety items like code enforcement, parks and Rec, Marine and Library, August 12th. Public safety items. Police and fire and the 19th. Public Works Harbor and Water. But as I said, we're looking for input and direction from the council. And in terms of how much time we have allocated historically, I don't think we've spent a lot of time necessarily to go over area by area, for instance, public safety for violent crime statistics. And so what I think we'll find from our individual council areas or neighborhood associations, I see one of mine in the audience right now that while citywide we have a 41 year low for violent crimes, we're going to hear hotspots. We're going to talk about hotspots. I have one of my commanders here as well. And so in the allocation of the $2.2 million for enhanced overtime for gang prevention and other efforts, as it's stated, can we anticipate more detail from the chief of police as to how that would be allocated? Not necessarily calling out particular areas and tipping off exactly where our focus would be, but to provide some assurance to neighborhoods that are really struggling, that aren't quite feeling this prosperity of the 41 year all time low. Councilmember Vice Mayor Yes, we certainly we want to see that. And I think I feel much better having the chief of police respond to those than myself. But will that be an instruction to your department head to do that? Absolutely, yes. That I wasn't clear about my question, but that's what I was looking for. And then on page nine for homeless services, the halftime position. I think the question was asked, but more specifically, would it be to improve the services in the field or administrative services or at the multi-purpose or multi-service center? I'm going to turn that over to Leah or John. Specifically, it's in the home, is in the center. However, the administrative duties that it performs will free up the equivalent of time in the field. So people who are currently now in the field and doing administrative duties can spend more time in the field. So do we have a situation where the folks that are in the field spend a considerable amount of administrative time? That is correct. Okay. And all right. So we should see a like for like our for our replacement of that. So ostensibly, that could translate to halftime in the field. Okay. And then page ten, we have the park irrigation upgrades. I know Long Beach Water and I and others have been working for a long time to get our irrigation systems upgraded so that we aren't manually hand cranking certain medians. Is this the type of upgrades that we're talking about so that we will be on a central command center type operation? Absolutely. This will be 21st century irrigation systems. And then when Parks and Rec Marine presents, Mr. Chapman can go into his other things that you've been working on with you for the past couple of years with MWD and our water department. Okay. And finally, for now, just a compliment to the $800,000 to purchase the smart meters. Those of us who have 100% parking impacted neighborhoods have been working on this for quite some time. I want to recognize Dave Roseman, whom I don't know if he's in the audience, but he made a trip all the way to the other end of the coast to Santa monica and and learn about how parking meters have increased revenues to about $100,000 a month in Santa monica, just by installing the sensors and the smart meters. So I want to thank the staff for making that field trip and doing their research. Thank you. Thank you. Got some advice? Special thanks to the city staff for preparing this budget for us. I did have a question about the one time revenues here, the $11.7 million. It appears from looking at this list that there is no discretionary money set aside in there for the districts to use on their needs in their community. Is that correct? Yes, correct. Having said that, I also note from the mayor's proposal that at least one of these anticipated costs is not quite ready for the expense, and that would be the emergency communications. Is that correct? Councilmember, in looking at this, is the $400,000 that is set aside for operational needs. These are for some versus HPC systems, systems in some of our facilities. As you know, we've put together we started this budget about four months ago and putting it together and we put in the systems and as we got closer and closer to having public works, somebody analyzing them, we have some of the systems that actually do have some useful life on them. So this would come out of the VA system, HVAC system centers, so. That 300,000 is going to be allocated and is ready to be spent. The yes. Is there any other expenditure that's identified here that is maybe not ripe? For for us to spend money on quite yet. No, I haven't. I couldn't say yes to that. But again, all of this budget is at the discretion of the city council. Thank you. I'm going to also, just in addition to Councilmember Price, the one one of the one time discretionary that's in there that was the city manager proposal was to on top of what we're putting in for infrastructure and capital improvements. I believe he also put maybe I think it was 2 million additional to that capital improvement. So it's at the discretion of the council if that in the past has been used to infrastructure in the past. Former councilors have also used that for projects within districts, smaller infrastructure projects for park projects as well. Mr.. We may ask for clarification of Councilmember Price's question on the H. Vasey upgrade. So under your recommendations, your set of recommendations, I believe the fifth one was for Library and Arts Council, and it was a redirect of an HPC system funding that wasn't quite ready. And I think that's what I understood some. Mr. West that to 50 from HPC that is different is that different from the 300 that's on page seven of the community booklet. For Emergency Communications and HPC upgrade. We'd be able to handle most of the stuff in the EOC system, but was also allocated. Some of the money was allocated for other field HVAC systems. So that aren't ready at this time. That are not ready. Yes. But the rest of the money is going to be allocated. Definitely. So what you've identified here is ready to go? Yes. Thank you. Consumer prices driven into questions or no? Thank you. Thank you, Chancellor Richardson. Thank you. So I want to begin by acknowledging this budget. I so you just referred to it as as a couple of years of budget piece. As chief of staff, I guess I was in a place of budget war. There's what Council Member Neal dealt with. So I'm happy this is our first budget. So good. Good work. A couple of things. I just want to note some steps in the right direction, but a few things I have some questions on. I think the the funding of the language access position is definitely most certainly a step in the right direction. I think the commitment that's being proposed to the North Library to make that project whole, that is certainly a step in the right direction. It's a long story there. But the fact that, you know, due to state action and loss of redevelopment and so on and so forth, many very important projects that we'd like to fund and we've taken steps in that direction. We haven't been able to see them to completion, so I'm happy that we can finally do that. So thanks. Thanks. On that, I think the the fact that the health department is increasing grant funded positions, I think that's that's that's a step in the right direction. I think the budget stabilization fund is a huge step in the right direction. However, I want some clarity on that. So is this 3.1 million, which is the one time that we didn't spend last year? Is that money? So we've got that that we're going to place into this budget stabilization fund. Is this the first allocation to the budget stabilization fund? I'm going to give that to Lia. Councilmember Richardson. So the there's 3.4 or 5 million from the 514 adopted budget that will be deposited in the stabilization fund at the end of this year. And then in the 15 proposed budget, there's an additional 3.1 million in the temporary surplus from 15 that would be deposited into the stabilization fund. And then based on Mayor Garcia's recommendations in the year end of 14, an additional 2 million, if realized, would be also deposited into the stabilization fund. So all told, totaled it would be about eight and a half million. So I certainly support the budget stabilization fund. I think it makes a lot of sense if we want to continue to have budget peace. But at the same time, I'd like for us to plan how large we want this fund to be so that we can make plans to allocate one times strategically. So they're not competing with other priorities, like the North Branch Library, like the one time funds. Councilmember Price mentioned, like the Highland Park Community Center that we took steps to fund in the last budget, we funded $3 million. But in this budget, as you can see, there's there's nothing allocated there. And in one budget we're making in one fell swoop, we're going to make an appropriation to two sounds like eight and a half million dollars to one fund. So I think that I absolutely agree that this is a step in the right direction. But we need to make sure that we make sense on how we do it and build that fund so that we're not damaging other projects that, like the library, haven't seen the complete funding to see to completion. Secondly, I don't know if this is the appropriate place to talk about this stuff, but I just want to acknowledge the mayor on some of the things in his recommendations. I thought they were they were pretty awesome. Just to name a couple of them. I talked about the stabilization fund. I think the the the Economic Development Property Property Development Bureau or the department. It's a great idea. It can add some. We struggled the last few years to build the uptown bid. And I see these folks here. We'll talk to them later. But we struggled the last few years to see that. And the fact that we'll have a department is focused on helping to support that, I think is really telling our businesses and and all of our sort of economic development partners that we're struggling since the last redevelopment, that we're going to be a partner with them. It's not just council officers and chiefs of staff figuring it out on their own. So thank you for that. The fact that you're investing in libraries, I think is a great step. I'm going to support that. I think the most impressive thing is, is asking that the council and city manager remove street sweeping. I think that's a great gesture to our city employees, especially considering that we're going to have to go into bargaining with them very soon. So it's a good step in the right direction. So I did want to acknowledge that I don't know if the timing was appropriate, but since I got to make them and talk about it lastly. It's always. Appropriate. It's all good. It's all good. Lastly, Councilmember Price, that I'd love to talk with you about how I've seen how the council in the past is unrestricted, some of the sidewalk and the street dollars too. So council members have more discretion on how that spent as long as it's maintained an infrastructure, just like the mayor and the vice mayor mentioned. So I'd love to talk with you offline or maybe in public. I guess that's how it works. Works now. I love to explore heading in that direction because we've done creative things in North Long Beach with that funding to improve our infrastructure. Thank you. Councilmember O'Donnell. Councilman Gonzales. Thank you. City management staff. This is, you know, really great. I appreciate it. And it hits on all of the first District kind of issues. Homelessness, of course, parking. So thank you. I did have a question, though, on on page 12. It just said briefly about restructuring the permitting counter for improve customer service. Were there any details that we can include in that? But Councilwoman Gonzales, by what they're going to be doing is converting some positions to two and I won't forget the title, but two professional level positions so that they're able to to provide better service. And then there is an actual addition of four positions at the permit counter. And those will be offset though by, by cuts elsewhere in the department to be FTE neutral. So it will be basically additional staffing and a professional level position. And I'll look up the title and get back to you in a second. Thank you. Any additional questions? Council Member No, no, thank you. Oh. See that there's those are all the council questions. What I'm going to do, Mr. West, is have you do Skype and then we'll open it up for public comment. Thank you. Mayor Councilmembers I'm going to turn it over to our public works director, our morning who's going to walk us through the our capital project. We're going to look at some of the projects that have just been completed. We're going to look at the projects that the council has already approved but have not yet broken grounds. You'll see those on a bullet list. And then we're going to look at the projects that are in the fiscal year 15 budget that the council needs to approve. Your basic duty tonight for this is to out to review it and give us direction. But obviously it needs to go to the planning commission and the commission needs to find it in conformance with the general plan, and then it will come back to the Council for adoption. So with that, I think our is ready. Mr. Russell, is there a handout for the council on this or no? Here they come. Honorable Mayor and the members of City Council. Thank you for this opportunity to present the City of Long Beach as a 514 Capital Improvement Program's accomplishments. Approve projects already in progress and 515. Proposed Capital Improvements. Budget. Before presenting the 515, I'd like to provide a short review of our efforts in FBI 14 in the Marines, beaches and waterways. We have completed the construction of the Belmont temporary pool that opened in December of 2013. Rehab, location and renovation of nine different beach restrooms from eighth place all the way to 62nd place. Restroom locations are eighth place. Cherry Beach. Coronado Junipero Bay Shore, North Bay Shore, South Grenada, Mothers Beach and 62nd place. The same fund. We had continued with a rehab of four beach parking lots, which were Mother's Beach, Claremont, 54th Street and Laverne and the Streets Section F y 14 Funds.