Budget Workshop for Fiscal Years 2017-18 and 2018-19 to Provide Direction on Funding Requests for Budget Adoption on June 6, 2017. (Finance 2410)
Budget workshop for fiscal year 20 1718 and 2018 19 to provide direction on funding requests for budget adoption on June six, 2017. Thank you. Madam Mayor. Question a member matter. Public speakers want to speak to a certain item in the budget. How is that going to be managed? Because the time to speak is before and after. And there's no. Oh, they can speak on the item. But again, how is that? Can we manage? Are we going to go through a block? What's, what's let's. Just have this broken up into sections and there can be question and answer from the council after each section. And we can open up to public comment if there is public comment on that particular section. When we get to the departments at the end, I think ideally we would like to go through there is eight departments that have requests, not all 15. And so if we go through those eight requests at the end, we have them all together. So the public and the council can look at the the holistic list of requests. And I think that would be the ideal time for the Council to ask questions about that and the public to comment on it. Thank you. All right. Okay. I'm going to start this off first by just giving a little bit more overview of what we talked about. We're going to start out by talking about the big picture. The revenues are historic trends. Look at the five year projection. And if you look at our two year budget, because this is the start of the two year budget, and the reason we're having this workshop tonight is because the council asked for more direct input into what the departments are asking for. And if you look at just the two years, we are fine. Yeah, what we want to do is to give a five year projection and especially with CalPERS and changing assumptions in the future, what happens in year three and five is much more dramatic than is what is happening in year two and three. And so we want the council to look more at the long term. We have invited a consultant to give us more detailed information about CalPERS because it's affecting every city in California. So the decisions you make tonight or today or next year might be fine in the short term, but we want you to also look at it in the long term and what we have. So they will talk about the purse and the steps taken to date. And then we will go into the departments that I talked about earlier. And we also want to talk about two different revenue sources. One is one term revenues, and that's basically our fund balance above 25%, which is the council policy. And then also we want to get council direction to staff and we will bring this back hopefully June six, depending on what the input is today. Or Council adoption. So our overall vision goes back to not only what the Council did at the prior to goal setting. There was a quality of life survey that was done last year and we have our budget challenge that is online right now. And amazingly or not amazingly, all three of those inputs are very consistent. They all say we want a stable, financially sustainable budget into the future. That on all three of those is one of the top priorities. We also want to make sure that we have public safety. Public safety has ranked really high. We homelessness has ranked very high. We have a well-maintained community. So public works and maintenance has been strong. And all three of those areas, housing has been critical as a need to provide a variety of housing needs. And especially looking at the homeless issue in Alameda. All three of those inputs have ranked that very high. The budget challenge has also talked about the importance of historic structures and preserving those. And it did also in the Quality of Life survey. So we're going to go through some of that tonight. And I also want to thank all the department heads and staff and the consultants for putting this together. We don't expect to have a vote specifically, but more general direction tonight. Any questions from council at this point? And so I'll turn it over to our finance director, Elena Eder. Good evening. I'll consider that being evening. We're going to need to talk on the mike loud. Good evening. Elena, dear finance director. And I'm going to go over quite a few slides that are more financial in nature. And of course, we're going to start out with the citywide proposed expenditures. So just as a reminder, all of these numbers are. In draft form at this point. So we're continuing to refine them. So you will see potential when we bring it back in June six or June 20th depends on the timing. They may change a little bit, but likely not significantly. To show this particular presentation is a pie chart. The three top departments are police and fire and public works, which may kind of pose a question why is public works there? And the reason is that includes all of the capital projects that the department is doing. So all the spending on the capital and as you can see, it actually makes public works be one of the larger departments. Okay. Before you move on, doesn't does public works use general fund moneys or do we keep those money separate? It's a combination of various funding sources, which includes general fund in this particular presentation. This is a citywide expenditure regardless of what fund is. Okay. Are you're going to break it out at some point? Just general fund moneys? Yes. Sorry. And then just to bring that up, also in 1819 fiscal year, generally, the spread of expenditures between departments is very similar. So we didn't presented in this particular slide, but they're very similar. So moving on to a Zoom meeting really on a general fund, this particular graph really represents a historical trend as well as five years look forward on revenues and expenditures and primarily where we've been and what it looks like where we're going. Again, with just a reminder that a lot of the graphs you will see particular in the general fund, all the requests that were submitted by the departments are not included in this graphs. So should those be approved? These definitely graphs and the numbers will change. So before looking forward, we're going to look at the current year, even though we are not done with the year. And again, these numbers are not final. They haven't one. We haven't finished the year or two. They still need to be audited and confirmed. So at this point in time, generally, it's very similar to what you have seen at the mid-year mid-year update. However, at the time, the expenditures weren't looked at as closely just because the departments haven't really had an opportunity to do so. So this time around, what you do see is as departments were preparing for the next two year budgets, they also were looking at the current their current year expenditures within General Fund. And we're currently projecting that we will be under budget by about 2.7 million. So. As we usually look at general fund, we'll look at both sides, the revenues and expenditures. So in this particular chart obviously represents various revenue sources of the city. One of the bigger ones is a property tax. But I wanted to point out also the second largest source that we have is a sales tax. And normally that particular source is quite volatile, particularly if the economy is not as great. However, Alameda made really good progress in building up the base for its sales tax revenue, particularly after the autos left the city. And so the base sales tax base actually went up higher. And because because of that and business to business sales, the revenue is somewhat stable. So it's not fluctuates as much. It does fluctuate, but not so much. I also wanted to let you know that we've looked at various sources and evaluated the revenues in various ways, which included use of our consultants, whether it was a deal for sales tax and property tax. We also looked at the data provided by the county county assessor and obviously some of the things that are now set, such as the transfer tax from AMP that's been approved and update on the utility that happened. So to zoom in on a couple of different revenue sources, particularly property tax, as I've mentioned, this is the top revenue source for the city and represents 31%. This really represents a trend where the property tax been since 2006 in this case and where it's going. It actually is fairly stable revenue source. Even though we had the recession, as you can see, the property taxes decrease, but they didn't decrease as much or certainly it didn't decrease as much as some of the communities within California. Another revenue source that has been a. Congress. The topic of a conversation and also concern from the council members is transfer tax. And I'd like to focus on this particular one a little bit. And what we try to do is really present even greater trend for this particular source going back all the way to 2003 and see where we have been, how we budgeted for it versus what the actual revenue has been. I did not include the dollars just because it would be so busy on the graph, but hopefully you can actually see that by looking at the axis on the side. So what you see in here is the budget versus the actual. And we do understand that traditionally the concern was why are we under budgeting? And a couple of items that came up for the requests were always to exclude one time revenues. And because transfer tax is volatile, we don't know what might come in at what period of time. As so we try to exclude potential large one time revenues from property, from transfer tax when we do the budget. So as an example, in the current year 2017, so far through March, the revenues were received. We've had four transactions that occurred that were over $100,000 and actually those four transactions amounted to about $850,000. Whether they're going to occur again or not, we don't know. But those are potential fluctuations that we try to expect. Before you move on. Sorry. What year did it go up was 28. The transfer tax? Yes, it was increased in 2008. So I'd also like to point out on this graph, if you look at the year 2007 through 2009. Those are the years that we actually budgeted more and received less. And I think that is based on our. Our tendency to be conservative in our budgeting. So every other year we've actually budgeted less and received more. And so we've had this at the end of the year, a budget surplus as a result of. The property transfer tax primarily. And so it's a policy question from the council. We're trying to close the gap every year to be a little more accurate. But because it's so volatile, it's very hard to do. And it really depends so much on a few transactions of large properties. Especially commercial. Properties. And I think it would be also kind of important to note, as you can see in some cases, our property transfer tax revenues went down or were as low as $3 million. Even if we don't take the lowest one and would take somewhere in the range of 5 million and what we currently receive was nine. So if we're really over project, we may potentially have a significant drop in revenues. Okay. And you look at 26 to 7. Why would we budget so much more? That jump is more than double. Because we were reflecting a large increase of actuals in 2006. We usually look back at the actuals of the previous year and we were conservative. We e we. Budgeted less than we received the previous year, but. It dropped much farther than anticipated. So you just look back one year. When you're doing your budgeting, well. It looks like it. And that if you follow your dream. Yes. Yes. I remember. Just a follow up. Thank you. On the mayor's question, I mean, how relevant are those pre measure P or whatever it was increases? I mean, you say it was as low as 3,000,023 or 24. But I mean, is that really relevant considering our rate was so low compared to the way it is now? Well, as we can see, it actually did go up and could be at the same time because it was around 2008 that that particular change happened. That could have been one of the reasons why the budget was maybe higher. It could also be because, you know, maybe it has been under budget traditionally. I can't say I wasn't here, but maybe was. Staff's a reflection of trying to be more realistic. And so they also budgeted a little higher. But the flipside of it is that if you're budget hire and you expect that money to come in and they don't, what do you do then? The other thing, madam, if I may, one of the things that we're looking at is the volume of sales as opposed to actual value because of exactly what you're saying council member about in 2008, the actual number is going up because of the the ballot measure. So we're actually looking at the volume of sales and seeing if we can trend the volume as opposed to the actual dollar amount. So do you have a chart for that? We're working on it. Got it. Well, we have it before. Wendy anticipate we'll have that. We'll have that before the sixth. Member matters for the 1718 through 22 rejections. Do they take into account? Do they anticipate, say, day and other developments along? The Northern waterfront. Not a one time large transfer. And we actually tried to figure out what would be a transfer tax when the original transfer happens to the developer. And the dollar amount actually didn't come to that high of a number. So potentially the transfer tax is going to be higher once the developer builds the homes and sells. When they sell it to somebody, there's a transfer tax. This doesn't we don't you didn't factor that into this. No, thank you, Erica. I'm writing one last question. So on the 2017 number, is that to date. Though, that's a projection through the end of rejection. So that's not the actual. Okay. No, thanks. Okay. Before we move on. So we're going to be using these numbers then to come up with our budget. We're going to assume and we're looking at expenditures, we're going to be assuming that this is income. Right. That's one of the revenue numbers. Okay. So then I'm going to ask you, so you have a steady increase. Do you ever have a correction? I don't see you know, if you look at the other right, it goes up and down. You just have it going up. Correct. So the assumption is it's going to go with a assessed value increase. So you're correct, there's no necessarily prediction that it's going to be a recessionary period. So I don't necessarily have that in my crystal ball. I think the other thing is we do mid-cycle adjustments and midyear adjustments. So if we see that what's coming in during the year is less than we were anticipating significantly then we will adjust that revenue in midyear. We'll come back and say, you know, this is way off the mark, it's not coming in the way it is , particularly if there is the beginning of an economic downturn. So we will make those tweaks mid-cycle or mid-year. Thank you. Okay. The other item, obviously a through number of last few years, we've tried to spend down our available balance in 2015. But since then, because revenue has been coming in a little higher as well as we didn't necessarily spend everything we've budgeted for, we have accumulated available fund balance that is greater than the policy and the current policy . City Council policies 20%. However, it was increased by an additional five and so it's at 25 currently. And at this point, again, draft numbers, but we calculate about $10 million to 10.8 over the 25% of available balance that is available. Again, these are one time funds, meaning they don't necessarily just come in every year. It's an accumulation over a number of years. And so the best way in the best policy to spend this type of funds are on non-recurring type of expenditures or one time expenditures. So moving on to expenditures. And one of the things, obviously, it's the biggest the biggest one for us is labor. And this particular represents the assumptions that really relate to labor costs. We will talk later in greater detail about PERS, but we have included the assumptions for CalPERS. Again, it is the current rates that have been provided so far by CalPERS to the city includes their smoothing. However, the recent change that happened with their discount rate is not necessarily been calculated yet. They were expected to provide those to us sometime during the mid-summer to early fall. Once we get those, we will see how close we got. But they've given estimates a range. How much will the rates change? So we've tried to incorporate it, but again, it may be adjusted. The other assumptions we included are the increases in health premiums 3% in each year. We used to have a greater increases built into the budget before and in the past few years they haven't come in as high. So we're trying to be a little more realistic in that sense. So 3%. Again for both the active employees health as well as the OPEB premiums. The other items. Yes. Member Ashcraft. Thank you. So speaking of increases in health care funds and I know you don't have a crystal ball, but we have been operating up until now under the Affordable Care Act out of Washington, D.C. There's certainly talk about doing away with it, changing it. What what, if any, impact do. Does the uncertainty at the federal level. That certainly impacts the state have on these numbers and your projections? Right now, they're not necessarily built in. It's one of the risks that is out there in terms of us putting together a budget. So should those come up? We would certainly be addressing them as they occur. Okay. Thanks. So other items. Just one more point of those are all contracts. And so we would have a year for the current contract to in order to respond if it changed. So it won't happen overnight. That and then we'll go back to the mid-cycle. Thank you. Yeah. And before we move on, on the prior page, you talked about excess fund balance. You have over 25%, if I'm reading it correctly, is that 10.8 million? But the policy was 20%. Write the overridden policy or the one that we always talk about is 20%. However, back in either 2014 or 15, through a suggestion from staff that dollar or that percentage was increased to 25%, but it's not actually set into a policy was a temporarily increase and it's just stayed at 25% still. So the number if we just add the 20%, that's excess. You know it it's not on this. I would calculated but. Yeah. 5% and 90. Yeah. He had another three. 3 to 4 million. Another 3 to 4 million. Okay, great. Thanks. Just as a quick one. So what has been also incorporated are all the ammo used per ammo you provisions. However, miscellaneous bargaining groups ammo use are ending in 2018 and so potential changes that could be negotiated. We don't know what they may be, but they may also affect the budget. Vice Mayor Are we at all. Participating or following in relative to the health care increases, the public hearings that have been occurring regarding insurance companies and insurance rates? Even having them in the state building in San Francisco, they had one in February. Did we participate in. That at all? No, not that I'm aware of. But there's there is conversations and webinars all over for finance directors and H.R. about those changes. Okay. I mean, this was specific to there was. Legislation. That was passed last year having to do with more transparency surrounding our insurance rates here in California. And the rising. Cost of premiums. Right. So I think if we could at least I don't know if we've considered it or looked at the reports that have come out from those hearings. Aptly. Well, it's in our predictions. I mean, just. I personally have not. Our rates actually are set by CalPERS. So it's not something the city can choose unless we choose to get out of CalPERS on the health insurance side. Right. And that definitely would be part of negotiations before that can happen. So. And it's very expensive. Yes. Well, you have to move everybody out. But my question has to. Do, I mean, because PERS is also participating in these hearings relative to what's going on with the premium rate. So. Those are the 3%. Their prediction then in terms of the increases? No, we actually used our actuary predictions or not predictions, their assumptions that they used when they produced actuarial valuations for our OPEB costs. Mm hmm. So we use those. So here's a chart by department strictly for general fund that breaks down the costs of each department. And again, that same thing. It's very similar for the 1819 fiscal year. So we didn't present it, but it's generally the same. And here is the five year. Chart. Again, this is drafted numbers. We continue to refine them. They also do not include any of the requests, additional requests that you will hear later from the departments. This slide obviously does not show a really good, great picture going forward, but this also assumes we are at the status quo and nothing changes. So one of the things that we do is we generally present a balanced budget when we bring it to council for adoption. And what that assumes is that staff is not necessarily going to do absolutely nothing and leave it as is. But that kind of shows at this point, if we do nothing, this is what happens. City manager. So this is the end of this section. If the council has additional questions or wants public comment. And then I'd like to introduce our two consultants after that. All right. Any council questions on this section? Any public comment on this section? Okay. I do have a question back on page 11, you have assumes no inflation increases. Or non personnel that scouts for each of these years when you move forward. Can you? She's asking about the last bullet point on page 11 says assumes no inflation increases. That correct me right. And it says in all years but years, is it just 17, 18 or is it through this 21, 22 year, five year forecast? Is it so it is assuming no inflation increases for the five year forecast. For the five year end. What generally happens is we don't assume an automatic increase. So for services and supplies generally, those are not as much obviously as Labor. So we don't just automatically say departments this year you're going to get two or 5% increase. We request them to hold the line and manage within what they have or what has council already approved is when certain contracts are brought to you for approval. They are already have built in adjustments going forward in each year. So those are included. No, this is vendor contracts. All right. Correct. So those do already have built in. In some cases. Yes. And those are generally already approved by council. So those do assume increases, but there's no automatic increase for cost of living. Okay. So then do we know, like what percentage of our supplies in those types of expenses are not covered by contracts that have the built in? I would have to go probably through each department and get every department to review that. Okay. So we. Don't have the detail of. That idea, but the dollar amount is overall just so we can see, in fact. So it's not built into that, but it's not built into. So about 76% or so of general fund expenditures are labor. So everything else is going to be transfers out and vendor contracts or services. And some of those contracts do in fact already have a built in, but some replies don't. I don't know the percentages that are most of our supplies. Covered by these contracts are few of our suppliers covered by these contracts. We have and I. Wouldn't be able to answer that question right now. All right. Thank you. Okay. So for the next section, what we wanted to do this year was to do quite a deep dove into the CalPERS. There's been a lot going on at the state level and throughout the whole state on CalPERS and OPEB. And we've hired an H, a advisors. So we have a principal here, Craig Hill and Mike Meyer, who is Vice President, and they are going to go through this next section and answer questions that are that every city right now is struggling with. And they've specifically looked at our data and our CalPERS data. Good evening, Mayor Spencer, and honorable council members. My name is Mike Meyer. I'm here tonight with my partner, Craig Hill, and we're excited to be working with the city on its upcoming budget. Before I get into, we have prepared about seven or eight slides on CalPERS and pension costs. But to address Mayor Spencer, your question on the transfer tax, we are actually doing a deep dove on that as well with city staff and looking through a couple decades worth of numbers with the county. And so we're a bit dependent on them to send us information, but we are looking at various factors that we can use to help it get more comfortable in predicting that number moving forward. So we will be bringing something back shortly. And then you are aware there was an increase in the tax of what we charged at 2008? It went up. The voters vote approved an increase in the transfer tax percentage. Yeah. All right. Thanks. As I mentioned, we are here to talk about CalPERS and the city's pension plans. I'll give you a brief update on cost trends over the last 10 to 15 years and talk about a few recent assumption changes that are going to be impacting the city in a big way. And we've taken those assumptions and done some projections to look at costs over the next 20 to 30 years. And so moving on to Slide 15. As you're aware, the city does have two plans, the first being the safety plan, which covers all police and fire employees and all non safety employees are covered by the miscellaneous plan . The city makes payments on both of these plans each year to CalPERS. And there's two components of this annual cost, the first being the normal cost, which is the annual cost for current employees. And then there's what's known as the unfunded accrued liability or. And this essentially is the difference between how much the city actually has versus what it should have. And so this gap or shortfall is it's not repaid all at once, but it's amortized over a 20 to 30 year range with the city making principal and interest payments each year just like any piece of debt. I do want to note that the uel balance does fluctuate each year depending on actual investment performance by CalPERS as well as any changes they make to assumptions such as their investment, target rate, mortality rates or any benefit changes to the plan. So this it is kind of a moving target, but we do have very up to date info in these slides. And before you move on, when you say how much we should have, but does that actually mean what we know. Or. To be 100% funded? 100% funded? Yeah. What happens is if CalPERS doesn't meet its investment targets, then you are lower than 100% funded in the plan and you are on the hook for making that up to CalPERS. Okay. So I actually like that language like with a footnote or something, what we should have because. Right to clarify that language that you just used. Okay. The concept of the UAE is relatively new. Back in the 1990s, CalPERS was earning above 10%, and I don't believe there was many cities across the state with a jewel. This is a recent phenomena, and it's due to the fact that CalPERS has been earning less than 6% on average over the last decade, which is well short of their investment targets. So their investment target prior to O3 was eight and a quarter, which they had to reduce to seven and three quarters in a three. They reduced it again in 2013 to 750 and they are going to be phasing in a three year reduction to 7%. And so those those are the two big factors that combined will impact a city's unfunded liability. So actual performance as well as changing the assumptions. And so in terms of what that has done to the cities, Jewel, just in the last ten years, the miscellaneous plan has grown from 17 million to 63 million, and the safety plan has essentially tripled from 50 million to about 150 million. And this those numbers are based on the CalPERS valuation reports that were published this past fall, and that totals 215 million total for the city member. Thank you. So two quick questions. So do we know from that 17 what the percent was? I mean, did it go from. Oh percent funded of the plan. I mean, we. Have the 0304 numbers, but so last decade would be what? 070708 that 17 million, I'm guessing, is for the miscellaneous. It's in the mid-nineties. And then on the safety plan, probably high 80%. But I could. I could it might be helpful to have that in the future. And then what is the best practice? I mean, is it 100% funded? 115 80? I mean, what's the number that. Well, ideally, you'd like to be at 100%. That caliber sends you a bill each year in the cities paying that full bill every year. So they're making 100% of the annual required contribution. This number is really outside of the city's control because it's purely dependent on investment performance. And so to get that percentage higher, you would have to pay more than they're asking you to pay, essentially. And so there are some slides moving forward about what the city's already done because it has set aside extra money already back in 2015 for OPEB and person. And that's really the main option that main tool cities across the state are using if they are in that position to use excess reserves. But you're going to share like the different options. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So I'll hold those questions till then. Thank you. Member Ashcroft I have a question. So I assume you work with different cities around the state on these issues? That's correct. So where does Alameda fall in terms of the the percent percentage funded we have of our two funds? This is a common theme across the state. So as we'll get into the percentage that we're expecting the up to to grow even from this 215 million, I'd say is slightly below the average I've been seeing. But that our percentage funded is slightly below what you see. It's I'd say it's slightly above above, but but in general, this is this is where most cities are are at. Yeah. Thanks. And I think the as we'll get into that since this is part of the budget workshop, you know, it's it's almost easier to look at these cost in total dollars and also what those dollars are becoming as part of the budget. Because as as we'll see in the future slides, next year's total costs are a little above 18 million. And in just five years those will be that'll be about 30 million. So it's quite an increase. Slide 17. This chart shows the annual cost that the city has made to purchase each year for both the normal cost as well as the payments to amortize. As well as the cost to amortized the fuel which are shown in the gray top bars at the normal cost being shown in the purple. And so, you know, the big takeaway here is that normal cost is the city has really done a good job at managing these costs. It's it's it's been steady at around about the 6 million mark. This is it proactive reform manageable hires. It's really the fuel that is the uncontrollable factor and has risen. Significantly over the last 14 years. And so overall, you can see back in oh four, the city was paying 6 million to PERS and next fiscal year 1718 , we estimate that that payment will be between 18 and 19 million. So that payment has tripled over the last 14 years. Moving on to Slide 18. There have been two recent developments. One actually piece of news that was released. A second actual change to CalPERS assumptions. Last year's returns were very poor. They were barely over, barely positive, to 3.6%. The second factor that's going to be impacting costs moving forward is, as I mentioned, Purves is reducing their discount rate assumption to 7%. And so these are factors that have not yet been incorporated into CalPERS reports that's going to be released this summer. But we have we have our own models and we have projected that the combined impact of these two changes are going to drive up the UAA from 215 to 290 million over the next few years. And all of that really comes to this Slide 19 and this bar chart, which is an attempt to project out estimated costs for the next 30 years. And so these costs are based on this is the combined normal cost as well as this new 290 million uel that. We just discussed on the prior slide. And just to point out with what each color represents, the bottom portion is the city's normal cost in dark purple. And you can see in light purple, there's a slight increase to the normal cost from this new discount rate reduction. Directly above that in blue. In the light blue is the miscellaneous plan payments, and in dark blue is the safety plan payments. And these are these are based on last year's CalPERS valuation report. And so the two colors at the top are really to demonstrate the impact of these two recent developments. So in green, you have the impact from last year's poor returns and. I should note that those are spread out over 30 years. As you can see, the yellow bars is the impact from the discount rate reduction. And CalPERS is going to be amortizing that over a shorter period, 20 year period, which puts a little bit more pressure on on cities. Mm hmm. In terms of overall cost, you could see that the 18 and a half million for next year is quickly growing to about 32 million by 2022. And then we estimate that that number will be 40 million in 2030. So essentially doubling more than doubling over the next 13 years. Hmm. The next two slides are. Basically these same costs shown as a percentage of payroll going back five years and also projecting forward five years. And so this first chart on Slide 20 is for the safety plan. You could see that the employees are picking up 15% and the city is shown in blue, picking up the employer rate. And you could see that the overall rate is going from 63% next fiscal year to above 90% over the next five years. And then on the miscellaneous plan, you can see that the total percentage cost as a percentage of payroll is going from 30 to 48% over the five year period. And to to to finish up. You know, the city has, as I mentioned earlier, taken some proactive steps to address these costs through pension reform, which was to increase the employee share of costs to 15%. There was also the Peprah Reform Act of 2013, which will ensure that new hires are also paying their fair share and increasing that employee share of cost. In 2015, the city did set aside 6 million after four years and half for OPEB costs. And those are going to be if they're not already, I think I believe they're in a Section 115 trust, which is a separate retirement vehicle that's solely dedicated to funding OPEB and PERS liabilities. In terms of. Brody. I'm sorry. So, can staff confirm? What where is that? 6 million. We still have it. It's. It's it's sitting in a restricted. But is it in a fund that's actually earning income. Or is it just sitting there? We have it. Hours later. Because it's been about a. Year in life. Right. That in life. For two years. I think we. As part of it in our pooled investment. So we're just waiting after this discussion and discussing with the council to determine, you know, what are we going to do with that 6 million? Okay. I mean. Just. We just as you recall, we just set up that 115 trust. Yeah, I remember. But I think on the OPEB, we've actually earned a substantial amount of money in one year. And, you know, it's a little unfortunate that, you know. Oh, that amount that amount that we were contractually obliged to deposit absolutely has been deposited. That was 5 million might be put into the trust. That wasn't my point. My point was we put 5 million there and I think it's grown to, what, six? And we've had we said six aside that, you know, maybe could have grown a little bit more if we had done something earlier. And, you know, I mean, I guess it's water over the bridge now. We're moving as fast as we can. Nice if we can make that decision. That's part of the $6 million that is actually currently sitting set aside as a reserve balance in general fund. One of the things that we tried to determine on our end internally is what is the best way to set the funds aside? And we are actually working with the consultant to figure out is it best to put it more in OPEB, more in pension side? Is there a combination of of some sort or is there a hybrid where maybe some of the money needs to be sent directly to CalPERS? And that's part of the decision that we end evaluation we're making. You're going to go over these now with us, right? Not at this. Time. Oh, okay. So I guess maybe the bottom line is at what point are we going to actually start earning and investment income on the $6 million? Because we haven't really. No, not yet. So at what point. Here was a question. So after this. Has been over a year, if I remember correctly. And I guess that's what's frustrating that, you know, we could have been earning. A great assessment in come on. This that. You know, based on your performance on the OPM one, you know, could be quite substantial. I guess more of a complaint, but it'd be nice to know what the answer is on the. Well and what we're planning on after this June six budget adoption and H. A we'll come back with an analysis of whether it's best to put I mean, we're assuming that there is going to be more than to a total of 6 million based on the council direction tonight. And so we'll have additional funds and we want to do an analysis of whether it's more cost effective to put that in the Section 115 trust or to give that to PERS to directly lower our unfunded liability. Member Ashcraft. Sorry. I'm sorry. So, you know, and to that point, I mean, the governors may revise kind of had a similar thing where he put away $6 billion and he has the same rat in the snake picture in his that we have. And then over 20 years, you know, that's estimated to save 11 billion. So I think the sooner we can get this money invested and start earning income on it, whichever option we choose, I just think it's best. So, I mean, this is really a lot higher priority to me than a lot of the other stuff we talk about. Remember Ashcroft? Well, I was just going to ask, so what will we how will we be making that decision? Because that was a question that came up in my mind of, you know, what? What is the better option to invest? But what will you what will you be taking into consideration and in making that recommendation? That's a great question. So the the the two main options that are shown on this slide are really to take excess reserves and to either fund more into the Section 115 trust, which is a separate vehicle that will grow over time. You have flexibility to use those funds in any year to make payments on your OPEB liability purse. Or you can just let it grow over time and perhaps it'll, you know, at a later date will be in an amount great enough to it fully extinguish or useful in theory. Or you can give the money to pers directly. You'll see a direct reduction in the fuel as well as the payments associated with that component of the fuel. So mechanically they're a bit different. We've gone through this analysis in other cities and it's a it's its own work three hour workshop. And so I think the goal here tonight was to show big picture eye level numbers and why why they're changing. Obviously, any analysis really boils down to how much money are we talking about, setting aside, what years does the city need to see savings? And so that's some of the analysis that we'll be doing, as well as just talking about benefits and risks of both of these options and whether doing one makes sense versus the other or perhaps some sort of hybrid approach, which is what we've we've seen all of it before. And and is it is it an election you make each year? You did mention a hybrid approach. So so that that could be an option. But I think right now we're talking about one time funds, excess monies. This sounds like a discussion for another time. So but but it is I mean, because we're paying debt service right now on the right, the balance. And so but you that's what the analysis. Will. Include. And in in concept, while they are mechanically a little different, it's similar objectives. It's to earn more money over the long haul, which will hopefully make a bigger dent in these liabilities than if the money was in something else, earning less than 2% think. And then. So that's this section. And so we can have the council ask questions and provide feedback in section and open it up to public comment. Member mARASHI I think the two things that I take away from this is we need a sense of urgency on it. So that discussion for another time should be another time soon. And to Councilmember Otis point, let's get the $6 million and whatever contributions that might come out of this budget deliberation. Into a. Investment return bearing account. Quickly. I completely agree. Completely agree. And I just commend the city manager for bringing in the consultants because I think that's extremely important. We all know how dire a circumstance this is that we're facing on into the future, but I think we can use some good direction to help us address it most effectively. Thank you all. I swear. How much will the. Actuarial report weigh into the recommendation that you're going to give? I don't think too much. CalPERS is actually over the last year or two, but for the first time, actually a little bit more transparent about what's coming down the road in the past. It's one report. Unless you really want to enter some modeling of things, it's all you really see is what am I paying next year, maybe two years out in terms of a percentage rate, they've sent out a five or six year forecast. And so we are using something a little separate, but we are comparing that and we're pretty much right on. So we feel comfortable that the next report is going to be similar to what we're projecting. Okay. My second question is, I mean, especially with the direct pay down that that really is impacted by how much money we're looking to put in at a given time, correct? I mean. Yeah, that money is if you decide to give CalPERS the money, it's it's it's gone, right. I have a question if you want to go back to that page, 1962 of 62 pages. Okay. This is each year how much the city would accumulate on a yearly basis. This is what the cost will be for person payments. On a yearly basis. Yearly basis. Okay. So then is there a way to have some kind of chart or do we have something like that that shows year after year, depending upon how much we are action that we pay? Out accumulates over time. Are you suggesting we're going to be writing and doing the 40 million or. But. And, you know, so so the top point of this is approximately 40 million. That's right. Okay. So if if there was nothing done today and CalPERS met all its assumptions moving forward at 7% growth each year in the year 2031, this would be your payment to CalPERS, which is the combined normal cost. And you how is your question related to. So if we don't have 40 million, like what happens? I mean, I would actually expect a chart that does this at some point. Just instead of like this is going pretty much straight across small increases. Yeah. I mean. They would they would have to continue to earn very, very poor returns for it to be, I think, steeper than this. But as I mentioned earlier in that. Presentation. This will fluctuate each year based on actual performance, but the general shape of this is not going to change. A whole lot. But this is each year. Okay. So what happens if the city doesn't have that much money each year to pay it? We as we accumulate over time. That's that's a good question. If you don't have the annual 100% of your annual requirement and to be quite honest, I haven't run into that situation, but I can find out. And one of the the Section 115 trust of putting money into that is a way to in times when we couldn't make it, you could use that 115 trust to pay. That's correct. And that portion in the U. A L continues to grow. That's correct. And flexibility and. Flexibility, I would say, is one of the biggest benefits of the Section 115 in a year, when you might not have the money in the general fund just to make your annual payment, you can withdraw funds out of the Section 115 to make that payment. Okay. But we're talking about a doubling over the next decade, year after year. So right now, we may be able to come up with a 17 five. But then the city is going to be obligated to pay the. 40 million year after year. The high. Right. Yes. So. So if you look at the amount of money we have in our. You know, left over in our reserves. Okay. We could do that maybe one year. But where does this difference come year after year? Right. And that's part of why we were saying we could meet the budget in the two years. But what is most concerning is year three and beyond when all of these. Unfunded liability grows and our annual amount triples. Okay. But you're saying you haven't run into it because guess I mean, when I look at this is because you're not at that point where it's doubling right year after year. And that's what that's our focus, every city in California. So I appreciate that. But I'm looking for the chart that actually shows that issue. That's so I appreciate you said okay you have run into it because look at the numbers the difference between 17 five and 44 multiple years. And if you look at how much we have in reserves. I think I see where you're going with this. And I could create another chart. I think you have a significant. You're talking about human to human have. Absolutely. Based on this year's was the cumulative impact. Right. Because we have reserves that will be exhausted. You're one. You're too. Okay. What about the rest? I mean, when I look at this, I see a I'm actually seeing a chart missing. It is actually devastating. And you can correct me if I'm wrong. I don't know where they are. The reserves will be exhausted in year one or year two. And you have a chart that goes on for year after year after year that not only goes on and on and on, but it increases from 17.5 to it looks like 40. And I don't see that chart. And I think that is a significant problem because if you use our so I guess the chart I'm looking for, we'll have our current. Revenues. One chart, current revenues. It's going to have that line, right. And then it's going to show. Paying this off year after year. Where is that money coming from? And that's what the chart I need to see, because you're going to have your gap and it's going to be dramatic. And that's not here. So, I mean, I don't I don't think that you have a chart that projects the crisis that is a serious problem. That's missing. So we need to see that. I'd like that when you come. And it comes back. And feel free to go up to 2048. Because I'd like to actually be very clear why I continually vote no. Go ahead. So can we project revenues out to 2048? You can use whatever number you want. I mean, it. Doesn't make sense that the current the current revenue is going to stay the same for the next. It's not going to double 30 years. I don't know what the answer is. That's what I'm asking. And I think some of the answer might even be at the state level that the state is struggling with this as well, and so are all the cities. And it is going to have to get into the details of CalPERS and look at CalPERS directly, because it is it could bankrupt a number of cities in California. Madam Mayor, I think could is a is a kind word. It will, because if you look, all you have to do is look at the other charts that have been presented and draw the line. And that's their job they should be visiting. If you look at the charts that we've been presented, and I think the utility of of what the mayor's talking about is that next time you come back and we talk about what to how to address this, because we're not going to be able to address this tonight. We have to go through the budget. We have to see what's been project, what's been requested in the budget. And we have to see what the revenue projections look like as well as what the expenditures are. But a dynamic chart, because you can do that in a dynamic presentation that says, okay, plug in $3 million set aside each year, see what that does to this line. And also the line that the mayor is looking at is when do we run out of money? And then right in the gap. And. Out here. And I think putting something together like that would be far more useful when we have the amount of money that we can we can use based on our fund balance in the next few years trying to address it. And and honestly and I appreciate that at some point we're going to have to think about the how. But I'm really more focused right now on at least let's have the honest conversation with the honest projections as best you can come up with over time. So at least we see your estimates of what these numbers are in the gap number Ashcraft and then Vice Mayor. Thank you. So on page 13, we have the general fund budget overview. And I mean, we saw it in a pie chart on page 12, then we see it in line line items, columns going from the fiscal year 1718 to 21, 22. Is there a reason we don't project out beyond five years in a in a forecast. I'm going to defer to Lena. There's a few reasons. So generally we could build a model that's going to look into ten, 20, 30 years. And some few cities do that. The issue becomes, though, it's very difficult to really predict revenues generally beyond three years, really. And five years is kind of like the max. After that, the revenues really don't necessarily make much of a sense. So the farther you go out, the correct. The more reliability. Exactly. Okay. Correct. So I understand what the mayor the point she's raising. I think it's very valid. But I also think that we I would like us to go out as far as we can. And I want our assumptions to be as conservative as possible, because I would rather think that we are bringing in less revenue and in our expenses are higher than and then be surprised the other way. But at the same time, I want a measure of reliability to. So thank you for that question for that. And I just want to remind on this particular slide. When we were talking about it, the idea was here is this is if we do absolutely nothing and the goal is that we are going to do something and it's not going to happen. We are presenting this to you today so that you do have an idea of what the future looks like and what we may have to deal with. Thanks. Vice Mayor. Actually, Elena, I have a sorry. Since you're up here. Of course. So, with regards to this slide, the within the estimates relative to the revenue, however, estimates lined up. I mean, I think it's good to have the perspective forecast, but I also think it's helpful to be looking at this side by side with what our previous forecasts have been for the previous five years and where they actually lined up. Right, because we were somewhat conservative in our estimates. So how far off the mark were we in terms of the previous five years? But also, I mean, I was at a different presentation in a in another municipality recently and their forecasting showed somewhat of a market stabilization. So they saw huge or relatively significant growth in their revenues in the end of this year, the year prior, like the past three years. And then they're predicting more of a stabilization in terms of their their market to maybe, you know, their estimates are 3 to 4% revenue increase may be over the next couple of years. And then outside of that, they're they're less certain, but they're seeing more kind of a stabilization as opposed to that kind of significant growth. Is that the same sort of trend that you're seeing here or you're forecasting? Yes. And we've as I mentioned, we've talked to our consultants as well on things like sales tax. So they're predicting it or their prediction is that it's stabilizing and it's going to grow as much. Right. In terms of property tax, what would be helpful to us? Obviously, our base on the property taxes are fairly solid and fairly high values. What assessor has seen so far is regular, perhaps 2% growth unless we have new developments or new homes that come in. So that obviously is going to increase it and show greater growth. So it really depends what may happen. And again, those are dependent on what the economy is. Going to do as well. Right. Okay. But I just want to add, remember, there is the chart where I brought up, we don't have a downward cycle shown. We just show a stabilization or small growth. We don't anticipate this in these over a downward cycle, which we all know is not reality. So and then my other question is, and I know that the state has done modeling relative to different, you know, different scenarios with different set asides and what they do. And I think for me, what I'm what I'm looking for is I'd like to see, you know, those longer models knowing that the, you know, the accuracy of . Them. Might fall off. The further out we go. But I would really like to, at least from my perspective, focus on the next 2 to 3 years and really see the different options relative to the models, especially when we're looking at a two year budget, what the impact of a decision in the two year budget could look like relative to the modeling that that's being put forward. That was discussed by the mayor. Member Ashcraft. Thank you. Ms.. Adair, when you mentioned sales tax, and if I recall correctly, it's something like 10% of our general fund revenue. So I understand that we've seen steady business to business sales tax with some of the new businesses we've attracted to Alameda. But I keep hearing in the news that brick and mortar retail is dropping off, that consumers buying habits are changing. So are we factoring that into because people just aren't shopping in stores as much even for things like groceries? Not that you pay a lot of sales tax on groceries, but it's just so easy. I think they say clicks rather than bricks is what is driving the retail market these days. So how are we factoring that in? So. The clicks actually work really well in Alameda County, and we do receive a significant amount of revenues from people buying whatever they purchase online. And it's a quite a high percentage of our sales tax quarterly that we do receive. And and if the city voters wanted to do a local sales tax, that would be significantly more to get all the, you know, other sales tax that, you know, by people who purchase in Alameda. Our local residents especially vehicles and boats and. I don't think we sell vehicles in Alameda anymore, do we? But the way. They use it, it's it actually it is determined not by. Where you. Go, but where the registration is. Only on a local tax and not on the Bradley Burns. Okay. That is something. So we at the end of this section. Yes. And so if we can. Just my comments. But I think we had a public comments also on the section. Yes. But we have a of. All right, gentlemen, for you both speaking just one of you, whose did you want to speak together? How do you want to do this? All right. I think we have. One more seven Kennedy. I'm sorry. I might have one more. Thanks. Well. Actually, actually. I was going to wait till the end, but most of my comments are related to this issue. As you can probably imagine. So I figure I'll jump up now. Also, hopefully, maybe too you're asking some great questions on it. If there's anything I can do to help clarify it too. I think Lena and staff have done a wonderful job with that, but I've spent a inordinate amount of time with. It a little louder. Yeah. Absolutely. So soft. Spoken. Sorry. It's people are watching at home. They want to hear. Yeah, don't be so shy and retiring. I'll try. Now. He's our auditor. No, I'm. Sorry I messed up, Treasurer. Sorry. I'm going to blame the auditor. If you. Gotta see him side by side to tell you we're. Interchangeable. He's the CPA. I'm the planner. But I wanted to comment about this. But first I did want to acknowledge staff. And also this council and past councils the past couple of years have worked out very well. That's undeniable. We're in a great position where we can have an even have this kind of a conversation about being able to maybe pre-fund some of this or prepare ourselves for what's coming. And I think it's great through a combination of conservative budgeting where the economy recovered faster than we thought. Some good luck with some one time things that came in and and some smart decisions. We're in a spot where we can do some positive things. Also wanted to commend staff on allocating such a good chunk of time towards an issue. That's not a lot of fun. This deserves the attention it's getting, and I appreciate that they're spending the time to educate everybody, including the public, about what this looks like, because as you all, I think, have been commenting the last couple of minutes, this is a ginormous issue and it's important for everybody to understand the dynamics that are at work. This is something that the auditor and I spent a ton of time on. We've spoken up here many times. We did a report on this ten years ago, the Fiscal Sustainability Committee report, which projected out a lot of these things. A lot of this now we're starting to see come true. Unfortunately, you're starting to actually see the impact of it, which doesn't make anybody happy. The scary thing in my mind with this is unlike some of the other liabilities that we've talked about and we highlighted in that report, like deferred maintenance, you know, fixing streets and sidewalks or even for that matter, putting aside money towards retiree medical, a program which was started in 1992 or three, but up until recently hadn't really been funded. This is a bill that we don't have the discretion of whether or not we want to pay it in that current year when CalPERS sends us the bill. We pretty much have to pay it. So we might decide, you know, the budget's tight. Let's not fix as many streets this year or let's not put aside money for OPEB. But when it comes to this, it's going to it's going to basically hit us and we're not going be able to to defer that. And that worries me because that's a different dynamic than what we've seen with some of these obligations in the past. And as was so eloquently, as the word pointed out tonight, it hits us like a tidal wave. It doesn't hit us in this budget cycle, but it certainly does in the next one. And again, I think it's great that staff is is looking beyond just this budget to talk about that because it's going to be pretty dramatic to the to the mayor's point, some of your points. It absolutely continues what you see as a five year projection. I've spent a lot of times with time, with projections when we built our model. And also look at this. I think the projections at staff houses are good. And I don't think going out beyond five years is hugely constructive. But I think the stories told right there in the first five years, and if you want to take it out of sixth year, assuming you do nothing but save that money that we have as excess right now in the sixth year, that general fund balance basically goes to zero. So I don't know if we need to carry it out a lot further, but certainly the problem continues out a lot further. Based on all of that. I would tell you that I think there was there was some talk last time I was here last month about is the city a business? And I think clearly the city's not a for profit business. But I would say absolutely we have to run the city like a business. And in that regard, the people entrust you and us as elected officials to make sure that we deliver a good product, that we deliver it at a good price to them, and that we are very conscious about the fiscal stability of the city. And I think you all are very much in tune with that. So I think we do have a business mentality here, and I think it really needs to be on high alert here for this next cycle in terms of how do you address this? Again, I think it's a bill that's pretty much immovable. So it's not an option of, well, can we wait and pay this down the road or when we have one time money? Again, this is going to be there with the one time money we have now. I think it's pretty clear the prudent thing is to try to set aside as much of that as possible, to prepare us for what we know is coming, to make sure that we make decisions between now and then that don't exacerbate the problem. That we're very cautious about any spending. Otherwise, as you saw from that slide with the five year projection, we're looking at pretty material cuts every year, which are disruptive to our workforce, disruptive to our people. And to some degree, I think can be mitigated. What I would prefer not to see what I think maybe isn't the best policy is to spend a lot of that money or to to to exacerbate the problem, to have hope as a business plan. I had. One of the first things I learned in business is hope is not a business plan. And to hope that maybe something's going to fall from the sky or the feds are going to do something or or something magical will happen to help us out. Boy, I hope as much as anybody that that happens, but I don't think that's a business plan. I also am not a big fan of the idea of of not doing what we can today and then asking the people to deal with it via any kind of a tax. I think we have the ability to deal with this to some degree right here now and to not do that and then ask hardworking Albertans who are already facing high rents and high cost of living to pony up more dough to deal with this, I think, is also a difficult thing to do. So I think there's a great opportunity for us to get a little bit ahead of the curve. Your questions about if we put this money aside, what is it do are very valid and I and I as much as anybody would like to see those projections, but in my mind, there's no question that we need to prepare as much as possible for something that we're just not going to be able to dodge. And this, again, unlike street fixing streets or something like that, is really an immovable object. My biggest concern and the reason for 20 years, 17 years I've been treasurer and been talking about this stuff is. I live in Alameda. I have a business in Alameda. My son's graduating high school in Alameda. My teacher my wife is a teacher in Alameda. He retired a few years ago. I don't want to see alameda have to make decisions for economic reasons. I don't want to see us have to think about selling or swapping land or building homes simply to balance the budget. I don't want us to have to compromise our quality of life because the economics force us to do that. And as these things start to grow and as those numbers start to go up, if we're not prepared for it, we might find ourselves in a position where we do things that maybe aren't the kind of things that we would prefer to have to do. But we don't have a choice as we have to balance the budget. And I think the citizens appreciate that, that you individually all live in Alameda. You appreciate that being prepared for this lessens the chances that we have to make decisions that maybe aren't entirely what we would prefer to do, but are a matter of necessity rather than a matter of desire. And that's why I've been talking about this for so long. And I think it's very important at this juncture also to think about that, because three years from now, we're going to have some very difficult conditions to deal with. So with that, if there's anything else I can help you out with, I'm happy to. Again, I think Steph's giving you a really good look at this, and I'll offer up to you individually, too. I know many of you taking me up on my time. I'm happy to talk with you individually, if there's anything I can help you out on this. But I think you're in very good hands with the presentation you've seen tonight in terms of the information, the quality information. So thank you. Thank you. Kevin Curry, did you want to speak? Thanks. Mayor Council staff. I also wanted to thank Elena and all the department heads and the staff for putting this presentation together. And in particular, I think it's great that the fellows from NH Advisors for their expertize to really, you know, provide a little bit more guidance in this area. As the Treasurer said, you know, we've talked about this for a very, very long period of time and we were on a committee that basically predicted this was going to happen. And I'm glad now there's some. Uh, if I had some other outside guys and, you know, they're involved with it. But the bottom line is, as the city manager put it, when you get out a few more years, when it's a $10 million deficit, you know, it gets worse. The next column over that's not there becomes worse and it becomes worse. And as the Treasurer mentioned. You have to pay it. So? So, I mean, for everybody, we're citizens here. We love aluminum for everybody that's at home. What does that mean? You have to pay it? Well, it means you have to really pay it. So all the other great services that we're used to having as citizens of Alameda. They have to start getting cut because there's not the money to provide all of these, you know, the dollars to provide all these services. And if on the page on page number 12, there is a there's a nice diagram that shows what the. With the other two apartments other than fire and police, what they get, it's what their expenditures are. It's $22.9 million. Elena did a really great presentation. I don't know, maybe six weeks ago. And one of the slides in there, which I think is a really great slide, it says estimated prices increase. The public safety per se increase or the dollar amount projected for 2223 is $23 million. So the projected increase, which I have a feeling is going to be pretty doggone accurate, is what we pay now for all of the departments now. So in 22, 23, how do the other departments get money? How do they get it? So I mean, there's there's you guys have, you know, you guys got a really hard job. You know, you guys didn't start the ball rolling, but now the ball's kind of in your court. And there was another slide that was up here on 23. I believe it said me find 23 because I think it's important. Alameda Response Only Critical Hires Using General Fund dollars. There is your opportunity to at least put a little bit of a dent in this. Going forward. There's going to be departments asking for money. There's been an apartment that asked for money three weeks ago. That's something that you can do right now and be aware of the nice presentation. Where we. Saw from the other fellows about when you pay money for somebody, what the percentage costs of the benefits are. This is the snowball effect that I believe has happened over this period of time. And so you guys have all the figures. You guys are smart people. You guys got to make the tough decision. But sometimes it's some real smart person in this room once said, sometimes you have to know when to say no. And so good luck. I'm going to live here forever. I know you guys love Alameda. Please do the best you can and keep Alameda as great as it is. Thank you. Hey, if we're. If that was the last speaker, we can continue. So we obviously didn't. We should spend time on that slide that Kevin Kennedy. Just Kevin pretty high chart. No, no, no. Not the famous page 23. Yes, that's where we're headed. Okay. Perfect. So we didn't want to sugarcoat this because this is like the most critical issue that is going to face Alameda and it's going to face every city in California. And we as we have made strides in the past to help address that. But it's getting critical and it's going to get more critical as CalPERS can change their assumptions in one year, that will have a dramatic effect and double what we owe in our unfunded liability. So Almeida's response just from a short term response is we need to, as we have all said and we said at the beginning, our number one responsibility, our fiduciary responsibility is to have fiscal sustainable, structurally balanced budget to our best possible ability. And that could mean and it's our recommendation that we look only at critical hires using general funds. Special funds are easier for us to justify because it is not our general fund dollars. Those are tend to be outside funds like the sewer funds or the gas tax that are actually increasing. But we have to really look critically at general fund any use of general fund dollars. Our use of one time funds for one time effort. And what we mean by that is that every one time fund should have a efficiency in the future. So efficiencies, hopefully three years and beyond, so we can start being more cost effective in the future. And then focus on reducing our expenses over the next two years. What we said is we're going to bring h a back. Immediately after this budget is adopted so we can start doing options for the Council consideration and spend the next two years as our number one focus of how are we going to address this going forward? One. Thing I'd like to have the council look at is a policy that does something along the lines of every time we have a budget surplus, X percent, 50% goes automatically into either whatever you decide, the Section 115 Trust or CalPERS or a combination. But it goes to addressing this issue directly. So we're going to be seeing a chart that has our contracts that carry out that we've already committed to. Our country have current contracts that are multiyear contracts. Yes. And that goes to your question earlier. But those are contracts that this council can look at as they come up. And we can also those are less important, from my perspective, than this big looming unfunded liability for pensions and OPEB. Okay. But the. But. But that is the result of contracts that we currently have. Oh, you mean labor contract, correct? Yes. I thought you meant contracts that we were talking about. So. So do we. Okay. So when you look at our contracts, people that work at our library, for instance, do we have a long term contract with them? Are we committed to having so many librarians, people that work at the library? They have a multiyear contract with them. So you're talking about our future contract negotiation for current? No. No. Currently, do we currently have a long term contract? Which departments do we have long term contracts with? All our contracts with all our employees are long term. Isn't it? By bargaining unit more than. Short miscellaneous contracts are up in December 2018 on the safety ones our 2021. Okay. So are we going to have some kind of chart that shows things like that that we are already committed to? Yeah. And I think if you look back at that chart that we showed tonight, that also includes our. Our pension and liability and benefits going forward for the next 30 years. Projections that are obviously based on our. Current contracts, the. Five year the five year forecast includes all of the contract obligations that we have. Okay. So I like a chart that actually calls out the different departments and contracts that we currently have so we can see what we're committed to and what we aren't. Because at some point, if I heard or. Public speakers correctly, we may very well have to cut what we can cut and some things we won't be able to cut. So we need to be prepared to know where our cuts, where the some choices will be made for us because we won't be able we will already be contractually committed to those. On in the second bullet down from in addition to looking at our pension and designated reserves, we have a bullet in there for future contract negotiations. The bullet above that also looks at our excess dollars for we have one closed pension fund that we are reducing over time. And so another policy choice this council can make is to those savings or it's about 2 million annually, could be also put into resolving this problem on an annual basis. Okay. But that's not the problem. The problem is. Although that what we're trying to do is help close the gap, whether it's 2 million at a time or 5 million at a time, it's something that we should have counsel look at. But the increase in the fuel goes up from 17.5 to 40 million per year. So you can talk about 2 million. That's not the numbers. That's not close to the numbers. So we I do want to have a chart that has all of our contracts long term that we're already committed to. So then we can see really what the problem is. Or bring back a chart that has our pension and benefit costs going forward with under reflecting our current contracts. No, no, that's not the question. That's not the ask. We currently have contracts that we have are committed to. Yes. That I'd like to see a chart of those. Because what I think is that anything that we don't have a contract for. We're going to be cutting. Mayor. QUESTION Yes. MEMBER Ashcroft. So, Miss, come back, if you could talk to us a little bit about these, the closed pension dollars that could be directed to fund our pension obligations. Can we give a little explanation of what that means and how we could do it? Certainly. Yes, I think so. But it's very quiet. So when the council approved on the same night, actually the. The 115 Trust for OPEB and Pension at that same time were presented funding policy for the pension and OPEB. One of the items that is in the policy is to use any excess dollars in the closed pension plans and contribute those funds into the trust. So Council already taking that action and determined that yes, you are willing to do that. And as part of the budget that we're going to be presenting to you, we incorporate that access. In essence, you froze the dollar amount contribution. So from. From. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to cut you off so you can tell us how much we've put in from these. So it's about $2 million a year that we've contributed, and it's about because we have passing of certain retirees or their dependents. So we have about difference. Um, currently about, I believe, 400,000 that has been accumulated over a period of few years that would go in as a contribution. It would be a one time. So on the ongoing basis, that amount may not be as high, but that's going to be part of the one time original contribution in. And so as the benefit payments and those close plants reduce, we will continue keeping that dollar amount contribution from general fund the same and that greater delta is going to continue going into a pension component to. Redirect it to 115 or whatever it is. Correct. Okay. So, I mean, my feeling is there is no one magic bullet, but I'll take any money that we can get to help pay down that liability. And if I can just stay on the mike for a minute. So I know I've talked to our city manager about a couple months back. I represent Alameda on the League of California Cities East Bay Division, and we had an entire evening that was dedicated to the OPEB and CalPERS liabilities. And, and I know I can't remember which city, though, because one of the speakers was a city manager from Concord. Concord. Again, they have a policy in Concord. I believe that the council adopted that. It sounded quite attractive that whenever there's one time many I want to say it's 50% of it automatically goes to paying down that debt, whatever it is. I think she said the other half goes into infrastructure now. You know, we might decide that maybe a little percentage could go for something on a one time basis, but I think it is going to take that kind of discipline and just, you know, programing in like an automatic deduction from your paycheck every pay period that just goes straight to to savings and you never see it. I would you know, I hope that we can come to that some up to adopt a policy like that when when the decision time comes. Member matter. So just to follow up the comments on the closed pension dollar excess, we put the policy in place when we set up the trust. Has there been any set aside from that close pension to between then and now? And it's kind of waiting to be a deposit or it's an automatic, it automatically goes. So we just signed all the paperwork for the trust. So once the accounts are set up, the goal is to actually move the funds over. But again. When would that be? I can ask trust pars when the accounts are going to be done, but as soon as they are available, we can do that. That was approved by council on March 21st. So in a month, three months. Six months should be probably sufficient. Thank you. That. But it will be automatic. We won't have to have a council action to say, Oh, we should do this. It's done. No. Because you already have a policy in place. Thank you. And they discussed the pie chart that had the 23 million, or is that what that number was? Other than our public safety that we currently spend on everything else. Um. I think it was page 13 or something like that. 17. Let me see. They pitched 12. So the total money, money from general fund that is not spent on public safety, do you have that total dollar amount? Well, I'm going to use Kevin and say it's 22.9 million. 22 point what was it? Point nine. 3 million. So let's say 23 million. Okay. And then I want to jump to the other chart that has the purrs you will increase on an annual basis. There it is, page 19. Okay. See on page at your 2018, these numbers are. 17.5. But before you know it. Let's just jump to 2030. What is it, 20, 22? 23. You go from 17. 227 to 37. On an annual basis. The amount of the hour nonpublic safety costs were 23 million per year. So I don't quite understand how we're going to be able to have anything other than public safety and still not have enough money to pay for the fuel. So the impact wouldn't on the general fund specifically, even though it's going to be high in probably the most, it's not the entire amount that shown on this graph. This graph representing A represents the entire city. So. We would have to extrapolate the component that relates to general fund provided safety is general fund. So primarily, I would say 100% of it, we can assume by portion of it would not necessarily only come from general fund, it would come also from other funds in the city. But yes, you're correct, those payments are accelerating. And I can say that even CalPERS representatives say that the biggest impact or full impact of this change in the discount rate would not be necessarily felt within the next two years. It's 5 to 7 years. Right? You can see it. You can see the jump. Okay. So if you're if you're only looking. So our budget actually is not that large. Right. We're 80 million or whatever it is. So if you jump to the 23 million, I mean, this increase. With our current expend our current expenses, not even anticipating any increase on an annual basis. I don't think you have to project out that many years and not have funding for those things if you want to go back to the pie chart. What are the things that are in that pie that we're not going to have money for? And that's assuming you take a library. Recreation and parks, all these other things. Right. And assuming that's where you take it from. As opposed to our. You can take it from any place on that pie chart. Okay. So I don't know if you all can hear it. Do you want to sit. Speaking to the mic clearly? Well, I mean, you're making the assumption that you're going to take it all from other. Other weaknesses. Right. You have the entire. Hi. To to look at. That's right. Okay. So I was we have long term contracts, right. That we have a commitment through 2022. Is that what you said earlier on our public safety contracts, 20 2021, 2021. So at least we know. And we have going to. Right. Yeah. And we have. Yes. So that was why I was talking about having a clear chart of what contracts we currently have, how far they go, because you're going to see we have a long term commitment on the public safety contract through 2021, apparently. Right. And then when you go back and forth, 2021, it's already starting to climb. So you might be able to extrapolate just based on our current contracts. Right. And I think but I think also the discussion of right now, you're looking at expenditures. You're not looking at revenues. You're not looking at your increases in revenues. You're not looking at the things that we can be doing between now and then. So I think the point that the city manager made on this is I mean, it's not to try and be alarmist, but to be aware of it and. And I think staff is mate has made a commitment that we're going to be working towards solutions. If you look at 2021 and I don't want to be alarmist, I actually want to be real, though. If you look at 2021, you're got you jumped from 17.5 to 27.5 for this projection. That's not alarmist. These are real numbers that we apparently paid consultants to come here and show us. So I think it's important we do look at these charts. So if you look out through the 2021, you see a jump of around 10 million per year. Of of expenses that we have to write a check for. So, so and then in regards to our revenues during that time, we did not see that climb. But you're right. Based upon if you look at based upon the projections that staff presented with which. Assumes we will never have a downward correction, that we're going to have a steady increase. Yeah, that was just on the transfer tax. But but these are things that we are committed to having to pay even during a correction year. That's correct. So but again, I just want to remind everybody that the chart that chart CalPERS chart you're looking at is the entire city. So what? And we're only referring in this case to general fund. General Fund is not going to be paying for benefits or increase in benefits that are associated with staff that are being paid out of restricted funds. Okay. Do you want to come back with a chart that speaks to that, separate that clearly what the city's recommendation is? We could do our best to extrapolate. Remember, I never remember how the. Revenues that fund those other funds don't climb at the rate of. I'm trying to. Say. So I think I think it's real. We we get it. And having been here during the downturn and having to having to reduce staff, because that's how you people get laid off. That's how you balance the budget. So that's that's the that's the real part of it was when you need to make that payment, as the Treasurer said, that payment is not an option, it has to be paid. But what's different is the significance of these numbers. Okay. And that's why we have our work cut out for us on the next step. So I'd like to get to the next step, to the real numbers, and let's continue. It's the. Answer. Okay. And then so we've already talked about this one. We're looking at how do we protect our quality of life, how do we look at technology infrastructure to reduce expenses in the future, increase our efficiencies? How do we also look at creating a. Vibrant community. Maintaining what we have in our aging infrastructure and protecting the environment. Next. And so when we go back to the beginning of the funds, the one time funds that are currently available over the 25% that we are looking at as a conservative amount that we should keep in the reserve. If you recall, it was 10.875 million. What we're going to be asking the council for is direction on some of these one time council efforts for funds. And it goes to what we put in there was our total unfunded liability for years as 163 million. And that is based on and this goes back to Councilmember Otis question is what do we consider best practice? Cities typically consider 80% as a best practice for unfunded liability, because I think, as our consultant said, this is a snapshot. And so depending on the rate of return of CalPERS, it can go up and down dramatically. We also want direction and want to look at additional funding for OPEB, other post-employment benefits trust, and that currently is a need of $90 million. And then also from a community perspective and we had we have the results of our budget challenge that I mentioned earlier. We have it's been up, I think, a week, and we have 1100 responses so far. And there are a lot of strong support for all of our. Values, including investment in the historic civic core. And then we also have the purchase of up remnant parcels that go from Tilden way through Jean Sweeney open space, their narrow property that from the railroad that we could look at purchasing. And this is a relatively small amount of funds to enhance and make turn parkland back to the community. And in particular, it looks at some parcels at Jean Sweeney Open Space Reserve. Can you explain that number? GRANT Plus 800,003. Million. It's quite a delta. Yeah. It's there's a, a grant that we got for children way. And then the other is based on appraisals that are done and we've done our appraisal and now you yuppie is doing their appraisal and it's somewhere in. Union with the Union Pacific Railroad because this is old railroad right away. Right? Right. Right. So that is going to be coming back to council as soon as we hear back from Union Pacific. Thank you. And then we also have guns. And going forward, looking at ongoing funds and as the council has said previously, we do budget conservatively. We are trying to look long term and be conservative in our ongoing funds. We do have some recent additions compared to our last two year budget. One is the Fire Prevention Bureau with three new staff that was adopted in April. The Friends of the Animal Alameda Animal Shelter is anticipated to come at the next council meeting for council consideration. And at $804,000, we ask a. Question on that. Yes. But that's not an incremental increase. There's some that we give already, right? Yes. On the animal shelter, it's a. Good point we give about it increases with cost of living. But right now it's about 358,000. So we subtract that out. So the incremental. As. 400 415. And the first one doesn't reflect the income that is going to be generated has partially offset it. You write, these are not net but gross. There's infrastructure investment of we had a city facilities report and again this is. There funds that if we don't invest in the community, this unfunded maintenance will increase. Those maintenance costs will increase over time. So we're looking at things that are supposed to be prudent in the long run. The Homeless Assistance Program. If you look at the cost of one homeless person from a social services and fire response and police response time, it can be very costly rather than providing direct service to housing those individuals. If you look at it from a financial point of view, it's this is legitimate funding to spend. It is also a high priority both in the community and on the council. The Alameda Police Department is receiving or could receive a grant for approximately half this amount. They have received the grant and they are willing to contribute it to this project. And so the net on this is 61,000. And that is for. We'll talk later on in the program more specifically about that. And then there was a request for a housing trust fund. Which could be in the neighborhood of what we're paying for the rent stabilization program, which is one about 1.3 million. Annually. So this next section is we're going to ask, I mentioned at the very beginning that there were eight department requests and all of these requests are looked at from a long term perspective. There were. Several requests that I just want to highlight that did not come in from six different departments. So the city attorney's office and the city clerk's office did not have any funding requests outside of what they got previously, so no additional requests. Finance and H.R. also are not asking for any additional funds this year, although there is a technology ask that directly assists and improves the efficiency in finance in h.r. Base for use is not asking for any additional funds and AMP is not it either? We had a public speaker four back on page 25. Donna Lieberman or maybe what we could do if if the speaker. What I'd like to do is to go through have all the departments go through. And look. At them holistically. So you're not saying yes to one without looking at what the next request is? I just want to let her speak. We won't we're not making any direction right now. But then she can speak and not be here for the next how many hours? Okay. Yeah. I have to the light so I won't be able to see you. Thank you for this opportunity. I'm here as the president of the Downtown Business Association and specifically to talk about what is the fate and future of the Carnegie Library. The Carnegie the outside is stunning. The inside is awesome. That word, you know, is overused but doesn't really describe this incredible building. This building is about history, it's about art, it's about architecture. And it's about a rare and unique experience. You only have to walk into. The door to feel that it's a very special building and art and architecture have a tremendous effect on our everyday lives. Resilient communities need. Access to. Good quality physical infrastructure. Where people can bond and connect places that enhance. Our opportunities for social interaction and enhancing our quality of life. There is no getting around the impact of the design and architecture of this building. Being able to give us that specific opportunity by not just saving it but by inviting us in. Why is this important. To let me just downtown. So if this. Gem of a rare. Space is current is. Completely or even partially. Used as a public space for art. For the Alameda Museum, treasures for pinball machines. The fact is. That it invites us in and inside to be odd, wooed, educated and inspired. Almeida's downtown needs to always. Position itself as a. Resilient community to avoid economic decline. Our downtown has a challenge in order to. Maintain its viable and vital future, and some of that is in. Why do people want to come to our downtown? Why do our why is our community going to want to come there in the future? And why are people from off island going to come here? Especially when the base starts to build up and offers retail and restaurants and recreation, and so do all those other four or five projects on the. Waterfront offering the same things. So why come downtown? I believe the people will come and they'll continue. To come if we. Add value to the. Community by the decisions we're making now to make sure that we are resilient in our downtown, how do we accomplish is improving the downtown's competitive edge, making it a. Destination. And certainly the Carnegie would contribute. To this embracing the arts and culture and the creativity not only of our heritage, but of our local community. By celebrating it in this building, by attracting new and visiting populations. Giving them more reasons to come, play, stay and spend. Their money in great places, hopefully helping our budget out. Drawing the attention to. Customers away from that one dimensional shopping experience that they're used to having before to a trip that's more valuable and culturally anchored. Downtowns across the country are. Being revitalized because our society is seeking something. New. They're seeking community. Places of authentic. I almost. Had it. 3 minutes. Sorry. Places of authentic experiences no longer homogenized shopping and. Buying, but authentic experiences offering. Uniqueness. A sense of place. A place of belonging. So how can our. Alameda Downtowns continue to promote. Attract anchor this sense of wanting to be here? If we cannot. Elevate our offerings, our values and our uniqueness. Invite us in. Invite us into the Carnegie, this cultural destination. Make it a place of work and experience a legacy decision. To honor its cultural value to our community now and in the future. Andrew. Andrew Carnegie is quoted to have lived by this. All is well since all grows better. So let's grow better. Invite us in. And as one of our speakers said. Tonight, keep Alameda. As great as it is. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Do we have any other public speakers besides. All right, so the Archers are here. Did you want to speak at this point or did you want. It's another ten pages. The presentation before we get to Richmond Park. Your choice. You could speak now or do you want to wait? You want us to jump to rec and park? We take that department out of order. Maybe. What would you like to do? If you want. But. And Norma's eating her time, too, Lil. So he'll have 6 minutes. Thank you. You're welcome, Mr. Arness. We have to be up for 630 tomorrow for the golf for the children at the golf course. So we're happy to be here this evening. They always say. The best laid plans of mice and men are due to come true today. So I'm going to try to take my time in the time of my wife. To address two things. One will be a verbal presentation. And a second one will be a thing that happened today to me, which I think you're going to be interested in. And you will hear later from our Director of Recreation and Parks regarding our request. What I plan to do during my verbal communication is basically this. Probably outside the three arches, my left, which is he and Frank and Trish, who know Alameda very well. Alameda is a third city in L.A. in California to be recognized as a recreation commission beside Los Angeles, number one, San Francisco to Alameda, number three. 1907. That was done. Over the years, the city of Alameda is known for its recreational attitude in all aspects, from water to land in terms of James and the estuary in the bay. They have been recognized by the California Parks and Recreation Society. In the early sixties as one of five top recreation cities in California. Now that is no mean feat. That is in a tribute to the people that laid the foundation for you today. And here is what I'm trying to say. Parks and Recreation are a vital part of this community. Nothing. Nothing means more to me than the Parks and Recreation. I love all the other department fire, police, public works, you name it, and they will tell you I've supported them. However, there's a definite flaw here that's evolving, that has evolved. And I hope that you up there will finally take the time and horsepower to change it. 72% of your budget goes to police, fire and public works. A piddly 5% go to recreation of parks. That is what you call taking it to the lowest level. The City Council in the past 15 to 20 years have cared less about recreation and parks and to prove the point, they wanted to sell the golf course. As you well know, the par three. And until I put on measure and 92, they wanted to sell off ten acres of the South Court of the Jack Clark. And what happens when you get the money, you spend it. After that's gone, you have nothing. But she'll always have a part. You go to San Diego, you got Balboa Park, you go to San Francisco, Golden Gate. You go to New York. You have Central. You go to many places to New Orleans, which are rife with parks and playgrounds. So what I'm going to do now in terms of telling you what has happened in the past. We're very proud of that history. I'm going to have passed out. Q Which will be a visual? Just play, and I'd like you to follow me in it and I'll take up most of my time at that. So with the help of my wife here, she's going to give these out, I think. No, I'll take it. This is the mayor of Spencer and to Frank and. Please follow me in the presentation. And you will see all the history done by the very capable Woody Meyer. I do not know how many of you have read this book or have even seen it. It has a wonderful history of the city, of the parks. It tells you where the parks were. It tells you about the homes that were built on it. It tells you about the history of the Neptune beaches and parks. Mastic Senior Center and Alameda in general. It is a most informative recreation book. Yeah, it's been posted by any city in the state of California. Page by page. Park by park, trim center, waterways, golf courses, you name it. I can see you are very enthralled with him. Thank you. You should be. Haven't been a recreation leader in the city of Oakland across the bay which couldn't hold a candle to us. Anyhow, said that in this booklet I'm going to have you refer to Page. 55. Page 55. In there, you'll see parks and facilities. Oh, that's my 3 minutes. Now it's up to my wife, and she'll certainly assist me by being quiet like she always does. Oh. That's already made it just. What I'm showing you here is this. These are actual facts. From 1995 till the president, we have taken on 11 new park areas. In here. We have had not added one person. On a path to maintenance. In almost 20 years, we have not hire a park person. That is death to all part. You cannot buy a home and maintain it with a nice lawn and flowers and new roof unless you put money aside to take care of it. Why people do this. Something I can't understand. I would like some of you to do what I have done for 20 years. This is a fact known. The last 20 years, I have put in personally between 501000 hours a year volunteering at our parks, painting bleachers, cleaning toilets, restrooms, playing slide, tightening bowls, you name it. Not only tens of thousands of people come to these parks a year. I'm talking hundreds of thousands go by any park in the morning and see the mothers congregate there with their children, getting ready for a lunch and breakfast. And her husband. Why should people having picnics? Why should people just laying down sleeping? Watch Washington and Lincoln Park on the weekends where there are sports programing. Hundreds of thousands of people. You don't get it. And I want to reiterate. Alameda is known for its recreation and parks. And I quote this to be a fact. Whenever surveys were taken by the late David Kauffman as the Elevator Times Star, they'd have a survey done about every five years. Recreation and parks were always number one by the people. Always, without a doubt. If you pick up a paper on a weekend, it looked at home for sale. Look at them. What? What do they say? They don't say located near a fire house, police station, whatever they say. Located near a nice park. Located near a school. This is what you represent. You represent the people. You represent people that use our facility every day. So I am here tonight. And I have to tell you, I'm getting near the end of my talk. I understand. Yeah. I was up there like you for 11 years. People would come before you with a wish list, like a kid in a candy store. I'll take one of those. I'll take one of these. Give me this. Give me that. I did it for 11 years in a castle. Yeah. When I came on the council, we were at a deficit after Prop 13. And when I left with Bill Norton, we had a 25 to $30 million reserve because we watched what we were doing and we budget it properly. So we're asking you to look at some of the requests in here by other departments, which if I was up there, I would certainly question. But I'm not going to because they have their own reasons. But. The park workers. I do not know if you'd understand if. You just aren't. For example, let's say each one of you assigned to Linkin Park, you don't do Linkin Park. You might do it in the morning. Get in your car and go do Woodstock. The next day you're Linkin Park. You go out there, Godfrey, you jump around. You jump around like a fly on a window. They don't keep you in one place. And so therefore, the park is not getting the attention. And if there's one thing you love to hear, it's people say nice things. Now, in closing. You are going to be opening up the gene sweetie part. You will all be there that day with a shovel in your hand and you're going to be busting buttons all over your chest. How proud you are. But unless you find the damn thing properly, it's going to look like the railroad tracks they are today. Lousy. So unless you have a commitment to take on the additional 35 acres that the city will take on to this coming year, not only with the Gene Sweeney Park, unless you are willing and able to take this on, then don't fund the park. Just leave it later. But I don't think that you're intent. I think that this council is a very visible and viable council and will certainly hold true to our commitment. You ran with that on your platforms. Every one of you. You said Jeff, you said that. Stick to it. Let's not be a term what we call a cheap. I'm trying to think of the right word. It's not nefarious, but it certainly amounts to a show that a mayor, member of the city council staff, I respect all of you at all times. You have a tough decision to make. And if you think the decisions are tough now, you wait on two years. When you see that first pension come in, you're really going to be upstream. Thank you so much. I always feel so welcome here. You are all very good, decent people. I know you mean well. Oh, by the way, I forgot that this was a caveat. Today's Chronicle. Peter today. That's when I started to say my talk. San Francisco, number one in the nation. For Parks. And if they have a park within walking distance of 10 minutes. Did you read that? Well, let me give you something else. Our city fathers planned it. You could take a circle, stick it in any park in Alameda. Frank Franklin, the park. Draw a one mile circle. You'll hit Washington. You think in Washington you'll hit Longfellow. Stick it in Longfellow, you'll hit Woodstock. Every park is within one mile of a veteran or citizen of the city. One mile. Godfrey Kellman Harrington on Bay Farm Island, it's in here today. And I would just like to turn it to page three. And then did Laura get the bell ready in the lower right hand corner, it says. It speaks volumes about this city's commitment to open space. Lower right hand column. And finally, they end up saying these parks are not just nice amenities. They are very important for the public and environmental health that make for a better and strong community. Don't let it get past you. Readers, I'll be looking for you to the dedication of this park and others. I'm counting on you. I'd have a real look at his budget. There are some frills in here, but. That's up to me. Thank you so much. On behalf of my wife, Shay. Thank you, dear. And for everything. Thanks. Enormous. Okay. I'm sure. The kids. Of when my kids went to school, they. They're grown young. Men now or an older man now. And they still. Remember their times at the park. They still come up to Lill and say, Gee, the parks are just. Our our childhood. Was the best. And so think about that. Thank you very. Much for your time. Have a wonderful evening. And we're actually going to take a five minute recess. Thank you. This came. We're on a roll here. We're almost done. Okay. Thank you very much, Mr. Potter. Okay. Well, I'm glad that we took a break, because I was wondering how I. Was going to follow Lill. So it was good that we did this. And, um. Do you have a present for us? Well, the one thing I can say, that's good. I think about our department, which is community development. And I'm Debbie Potter, the director is that we are almost exclusively a non general fund funded department. So I'm going to talk broadly. Jill mentioned that the departments that are before you this evening are departments that have requests to be made for for the upcoming budget cycle. So we are requesting 2.75 fte eas non general fund funded coming from our building and planning fund. And the first is that we are requesting a one new building inspector. We have seen over the last two years a 40% increase in building permit valuation and a 17% increase in the number of inspections over the last two years. And we expect that trend to continue. And our goal with the new inspectors to move from 2 to 3 day response time to a same day response on inspections is our goal with our new inspector. We are also requesting one new permit, TEC three, which is a permit check for planning who would help out at the permit center, which is open from 730 to 334 days a week and is going to the new permit. Tech for planning will help us re to redeploy our planner ones and planner tools so that we can get to work on a number of the referrals that the Council has directed our way. Things like bird safe buildings. Heritage oaks. Some of the other projects that we think we can really focus our attention on if we have a permit. Tech Who is. I'm relieving some of the workload for our planner, ones and twos. And then lastly, the 0.75 is an i.t systems analyst. And we do everything our whole planning process which is also connected to AMP and fire police, public works, SLA. We have not been able to keep up with all of the upgrades and emerging technologies. We've just been so busy and we are committed to trying to go green and move to electronic plan check, which we think will save personally a couple of thousand or at least a couple hundred trees a year if you saw the rolls of plans that come in. So electronic plan check is huge for us. We want to improve our permit tracking more online permits, mobile inspections. But without the IT support, we really can't get there. And that position is is one FTE, 75% of which would be paid from from building and planning. And then 0.25 of that position would be paid from the general fund. And Carolyn Hogg, the IT director, is going to talk about that. But the 0.25 would go for citywide technology work, lots of laser fish and GIS work. That really needs to be done. And then the the last thing when it comes to staffing is that we're requesting a reassignment of an existing general fund funded position from 50% to 100% time on SSA Hrb and the Collaborative for Youth Families excuse me, and children. And really we with the referrals that have been coming from council regarding the homeless, you know, the importance to be tackling the homeless policy for the city, the immigration services and policy and some of the other service requests that have been coming in. We do need the redeployment of of that position. As I mentioned, we are almost exclusively non general fund funded. This is a list of all the various revenue sources that fund our department. Our projection is a $7.3 million budget that goes up to a little over 8 million next year and then up to 8.2 million in 1819 . And that really reflects the increased staffing positions that that's being requested. And then just over half of our budget is spent on staff and then services and supplies is the other big 35% or so, which is our consultant contracts, our facade program, the marketing materials that we put together to fund economic development, those kinds of things. And I did go over our new request. I talked about our staffing, and then with staff comes the need to provide the inspector with a car and reconfigure the office. And we have a carryover request for a project that we didn't get to this year, but we plan to do next year. And then I just wanted to point out the public art, which is a general fund transfer. The upcoming public art ordinance is going to clarify that we want all the money that's collected coming into the art fund to go for actual public art so that the general fund would then cover the cost of administering the public art . That is the request, and that's an ongoing $10,000 a year to do the work to administer the public art fund. So that's a quick overview of the Community Development Department. And now I'm going to pass it over to Doug Long, the chief who's going to talk about the fire department. Thanks. But even in chief. Even Madame Mayor. Council Member. City Staff. The Gong Fire Chief. Okay. I'll start off with revenue for the fire department. So. Most of everything that we have is comes from the general fund. But. We gain revenues through our ambulance transports, our GMT fund reimbursements and our inspection fees. We get general fund support for our personnel costs and we receive funding through the SAFER Grant to fund. Six of our firefighters at this time. That grant is scheduled to run out in January of 2018. However, because we don't have all those positions filled, we've lost people in academies. If our extension to the grant is granted through FEMA, our funds for those firefighters will extend out to approximately January of 2019. So we can we can extend those funds out. Without without the extension. We're looking at about. $956,000 in overtime, which would cover that that year of of 1819 if the grant is extended. We are looking at about $398,000 in overtime that will be needed for five months and that will be a maximum amount based on sick leave usage and vacation leaves. We have our community paramedic and program, which is completely grant funded at this time. It goes until November of 17. At that time, if there is additional funding through Alameda County or Alameda Health Systems, who is funding it currently will continue with the pilot program. Our expectation is, is that program will be continued for another year as a pilot. We also receive funding for our CERT program, which is of Citizen Emergency Response Team. That is Alameda County Grant. We also receive. Funding for our senior safety program and. The $12,000 is for personnel costs, an additional $20,000, which we don't actually receive, or modifications for senior safety, which are grab rails and things like that. That's funded through the housing authority and a community development block grant. Before you move on, I want to ask on the ground, is there a commitment from the county to pay that for those years that you have here? Is that each year that they evaluate. Continually rolls over and we generally actually receive more than that. And I do highly recommend the program to anyone for you. You sign up, you take all these classes, and then we have a disaster. We will be calling you to step up. Our expenditures. Most of our expenditures are for personnel costs. We also have funding for our services and supplies. Capital outlay. In 1617, we purchased a ventilation prop for practicing ventilation drills. That was EMT funds. And the remainder is for the funding for the Fire Prevention Bureau. Also have debt service for our for also funding I bank loan for our new fire station EOC an internal loan for vehicles. The Fire Department's request going forward to continue to provide the service that we do for the citizens of Alameda. We have some vehicle requests. We have an aging fleet. First requests, which would come from the general fund, is for $922,000. And that would replace the existing engine three. It would move down to a reserve status. And the oldest engine that we have would be retired, which is 26 years old and nine years past its maximum life for our fleet manager with the city. A second request is for replacing an ambulance. It is currently 21 years old, which is 13 years beyond its maximum life. And. Not replacing these vehicles will continue to have high maintenance cost or the inability to actually put these vehicles in service. We're finding that they're so old, it's actually hard to find parts when they do break down. Our third request, which will be for from General Fund for a division chief, which would start in the second year of the budget 1819, which would be a division chief slash fire marshal to oversee the new Fire Prevention Bureau and the and disaster preparedness with the construction of the Emergency Operations Center. Continuing and scheduling. Training. Resiliency for the city. There is a lot of interaction with outside agencies to develop a plan and coordinate. The needs of the city. Before you move on. On the not on the engine. That's 26 years old. Do you look at mileage on. Those are just years. We look at mileage and years. Per fleet services manager. We should have our our. Engine companies front line for 12 years and then in a reserve status for five years. But means they are the backup. And when the front line vehicle goes in for a service or is damaged or needs repairs or for whatever reason that reserve is is able to move up. Our reserves are also used for recall personnel when we have large events and we need additional staffing and additional units put into service are recalled personnel, staff, those reserve rigs. Okay. So I'm like. Sorry. I'm sorry. On the engine. I just want to before you move on, you. Got to the criteria is total life is 17 years or 85,000 miles. Okay. So then at some point, can you share how many thousands of miles are on this that that kind of information, not just the years. It is part of the some friends or whatever. Yeah. I mean, how many miles. Is. Good practice or whatever and how many miles are on these? I don't have the miles for the reserve engine, which is a 1991. Your engine is 26 years old, which is nine years beyond its maximum life. The Pierce Engine and existing Engine three is a 2007. It has 56,000 miles on it. We'd like to get that into its reserve status so that it still has remaining life in it as a reserve unit. This Engine three was scheduled to be replaced in the last two year budget. We were asked to bump it to this budget so that we would spread out our vehicle purchases so that they wouldn't all be due at one time because they are costly and. You know, maintaining the service and staying on the schedule will keep us from having these large costs for maintenance. I was asked by Councilmember Ashcroft when I came back for an additional $879,000 for outside vehicle repairs. What we can do to eliminate that happening in the future. And it's it's staying on schedule with with the maintenance and replacing them when they need to be replaced. Remember Ashcroft. So I'm speaking of vehicles, and I should probably know this, but last month, the council approved the personnel for the Fire Prevention Bureau. I think it was three positions, and we also approved the purchase of a couple of vehicles for the inspectors. And those are just like cars. They're not emergency vehicles, is that correct? They are emergency vehicles. What we do is we we purchase the same vehicle at the authorization recommendation of the fleet manager so that they are all the same. That standardizes the fleet and without them being. Position specific. We can move them throughout the fire department. As far as mileage and age so that we get the full life out of them, so that if they're a vehicle that's starting to rack up some miles, we can transfer that vehicle to a person who. Doesn't doesn't rack up as many miles so that we get the full life out of the vehicles. Okay. And I actually was thinking in terms of of pools, because I think it was Miss Potter in the Community Development Department. There's a couple of vehicles I think budgeted for or being requested for those inspectors. And so I you know, I realize we'd be crossing lines, but does the city do we do any sort of a vehicle pool where there's you know, if you need a car, you check and see the availability or you schedule it ahead of time. And so that's something I'd like to be considered and maybe hear more information coming back. And the other thing is, I think we all need to be mindful of environmental impacts of our our transport and and especially when we're talking about building inspections. Those are short run trips. Those are hard on engines, too. It's you know. And that's part of the emergency, right. Vehicle purchases. It's my understanding that they have larger rotors for the brakes. They just they just tend to last longer. We have the week manager here. And so the whole details of I. Mean, I try to stay at a 30,000 foot level at this point, but I'd like us to consider emission free vehicles and smaller vehicles. And if, you know, if it doesn't have to do double and triple duty, it could we could we save some money and replacement costs over time? And we when we get to public works, there's a good story there about their request for pool vehicles because they use a lot of pool vehicles. It really depends on the job. And if you're an inspector, it's a very different kind of need for a vehicle than if you're someone who goes out sporadically. But Public Works has decided to do electric vehicles, and so they are postponing their requests for vehicles to year number two and doing electric vehicle. Plug in areas in year one. That sounds very enticing. I look forward to hearing more about that when they do their presentation. Okay. Thank you. For matter. I see. I'm Chief. If you don't get the division chief, what is it that is happening today that you won't be able to do? We're getting ready to build out a fire prevention bureau as we're starting to get into the nuts and bolts of what that looks like. What we're seeing is we have the what we like to call boots on the ground, the people that are going to be out doing the work. What we are falling short on is the person who is going to coordinate that work and write the policy or that work through the analysis of the city. As far as where are our hazards, what kind of a plan and program do we need in place? So if you don't take the city, this person, what would you do? It'll it'll be a shared responsibility. My concern is, as we start looking at what a fire marshal does, having that fragmented. I understand. What will you do if you don't get the person? It is. It's a shared responsibility right now and will continue to be shared. If that person is not, it will be shared. What I'm looking at now is, is if we have some overtime savings in this year for the first month. Of the Fire Prevention Bureau in this fiscal year. I would I would move somebody into their full time to try to get at least an existing person, an existing person. So there'll be no new purge burden that comes with. No, no. But they'd be coming from someplace and without funding at the beginning of the next fiscal year, they would go back. And if the, the, the no request was without the request budget gets approved. Are there going to be any services that you're currently doing that are going to not be done like fire prevention? Because the city council I've seen a couple of presentations now where it says the city council restored the Fire Prevention Bureau. The city council doesn't. Remove the Fire Prevention Bureau. It doesn't restore it. The fire department and the city manager do that. We just approve the head count. And I that's a very important point for the public to understand. And that's why I'm asking the question is. In the Corps Fire Services. Ah. If we approve a budget that does not have your request in it for personnel, what is. What is going to be what service is going to be cut today, if any, or we're going to just continue with the service that we have. You will you will have the service that you have for emergency response. Okay. We will not build a robust fire prevention bureau. We have people to get out and do the inspections and someone that's going to train to do the plan checks. But what we're going to fall short on is somebody that's going to coordinate. All of that work going forward. I think we'll have a lot of things that fall through the cracks as far as trying to stay up on adopting current fire codes, knowing what directives are coming down from the the state fire marshal. Having somebody in meetings with city staff to to go over plans for whether it's Alameda Point or the Northern waterfront. I would hate to have something in those in those plans in development get missed because we don't have a fire marshal to attend and have input on on those meetings. But we do have a fire marshal now. Right. So I would assume that city management would try and work that and then come to council if. Something is falling behind, like the inspections that fell behind. You wouldn't let that happen again, right? Right. And then this request, just to highlight it is for 18, 19, not four, 17, 18. So the request is for next. Question is still the same. And with the plant. Yes, but what the plan is, is there is five division chiefs right now. What we're looking at going forward, if is one of those is funded. Right. Funded. Grant funded and we anticipate that grant ending. And so that's why this 306 would replace that position if that position goes away because of lack of grant funds. And that's the safer for grant that no, that is the community medicine. Right. And that's what the second year is. And community peer medicine is to me is not a core fire. A fire. Suppression. Mission. And one of the things that comes to my mind is that we got this grant. We have our most expensive employee is a fully trained, fully sworn firefighter doing something that an hour in that's less cost could be doing and it's away from the mission. Meanwhile, the mission says we have fire prevention and we do inspections and there have to be done by sworn firefighters. So here we are doing community para medicine and ignoring a corps. Fire Department mission of doing fire prevention. And that's the that's the comments that I've heard. That's the logic that when I look at at that balance, it it was maybe a nice idea to backfill the budget, but. We're two in 28% of the inspections, and you don't have a fire prevention bureau and you're doing that now. So I the ghost ship pushed us to that. But. Right. That's that's the that's the thing. I'm kind of that's the challenge I'm laying to. Management Council doesn't isn't supposed to come up with the answers. Management is supposed to do so. That's that's my comment on this. So with the with the community peer medicine grant, that is strictly for community paramedics. And we can't use those people for anything else. So it's it's not costing the the city anything to have those people in place. What it's enabling us to do is we have always had a division chief over our EMS division that handles all of our EMS related issues, that is front running and maintaining our ambulance transport system, maintaining all the certifications for all the paramedics and EMT and continuing education in the fire department. We've had the luxury and he is still overseeing EMS. We've had the luxury of having the community peer medicine grant or pilot program pay for that division chief for the last three years. But that grant ends at the end of 17 in November. So at that point and when we're asking for this position. If we do not have a division chief to oversee the EMS division, then there will be devastating effects because we'll only have one chief beside myself in the office handling all of operations on one side and all of the support services on the other side. So. There would there would be a major effect if this is not funded. Thank you. Sit here. Chief, you you mentioned that there are extremely high vehicle maintenance costs. And if you could just kind of cover or just give us a ballpark of what those those are relative to the vehicles you're asking to replace. If you have. That number or estimate. You know, off the top of my head, we just we just spent $45,000 on a engine rebuild. I know that we have a fire truck in the shop right now that needs a new transmission. That's $15,000. There are large. Hydraulic pistons that raise and lower the. The ladders we've had to replace those very expensive but. When you get to that point, I had to make the decision to go ahead and replace the transmission on this older 1995 truck, because two years ago, we replaced the engine in it. Mm hmm. So. Not taking care of it and getting more life out of it now with a new motor in it. Right. It doesn't make sense. But we're going to get to the point now where we have these very old fire engines. We're going to start running into exactly the same thing. Mm. Thank you. And Brody. I just want to make sure I'm clear on the division, chief. So it's no increase in headcount, so you're not asking for an additional body. You're just asking for a budget line item transfer. And the person will still be there doing the same duties. But now the funding source has to change. It's funded through the through the county right now. Right. So, yes, it will need to be funded by the city. But you're not we're not asking to increase the headcount and add anybody. We're just we're not adding a FTE or another employee. We're just paying for one that we've already paid for and some other. We need that. Position this year and next year. Yes. So I think. And so when you have a situation like that, when you bring in grant money and you hire someone is and this is from the county. Then when the grant ends and normally does the department, does the city pick up that or does that position end? It depends what the position is. As far as community medicine goes. The expectation is, is that when. This grant runs out that there may be a mechanism put in place to continue the program once it's adopted as part of their normal scope of practice. Whether Medicare starts putting funds toward it because at this point, because it's just a pilot program, there are no funding mechanisms permanently in place will continue. Regarding this division chief, the 306,000, that's something from the county, right. Is that for the paramedic here, medicine program. Is he is funded through the community paramedic program right now. Okay. We're anticipating that funding is going to end November. Yes, in November. Okay. Member Ashcraft. Thank you. Thank you. So, Chief Plant, can you tell us it's been about a month since the council approved your request, at least part of your request for three new staff for the Fire Prevention Bureau. Can you tell us what you've done with those folks since that time? Well, since we've gotten authorization to do that, we have scheduled our interviews for people who would like to be in the Fire Prevention Bureau. We have several of those complete. The rest get completed next week. They are scheduled to go into the office on the 30th as their positions aren't funded with the city until the 28th of May. We have acquired a space at City Hall West directly across from the EMS division and. Public Works has put in the the electrical outlets that we need. We have ordered cubicle office spaces which will be delivered on the 25th and installed along with the other office furniture. The vehicles are on order. And we're coming up with a plan for distribution of the inspections themselves as to who's going to get them done, what the responsibility will be. So. So you started interviewing personnel who who are interested in these positions? The the assistant chief, whatever that position was one of. The top assistant fire marshal. It's a classified that is that position known who will fill it or not yet? I'm still interviewing. You're still interviewing. Okay. So when do you anticipate having finished all your interviews and having made a decision decisions? By the end of next week. Okay. So my final interviews are on the 23rd. I'll know after. That. And the funding doesn't actually come through until the 28th. The 28th. So because that 3000 plus list of uninspected buildings just, you know, hangs over me like a cloud. Have we have we made some progress whittling that number down or is it as high as it was last time I looked at the numbers. The the commercial inspections remain higher. We're we're getting more of the residential inspections done. A lot of what staff has been doing since the prevention bureau was authorized is taking that whole list of inspections and coordinating by date range when they were last inspected. So that we will start with the oldest and work through that first push back ones that have been done more recently so that your concerns will be met. As far as the ones we haven't been in the longest amount of time, but it's a matter of breaking down all of all of the inspections because basically when the Fire Prevention Bureau closed in 2009, all the inspections, all the commercial inspections that were passed down. From the inspectors in the office were passed down to suppressions. We need to pull all those out. And reassign them and then reassign all the residential inspections so that they're more evenly spread so that we get them all done. And so you'll get the funding on the 28th of this month. And then I think you told us earlier I had another meeting that there would still need to be some training. So when do we anticipate having those boots on the ground actually going out and doing the inspections. Starting the 28th? They're going to get a refresher class on the SLA program, which is how we track all the inspections. They'll get the class of that day. They will get a class from internal people that used to be in the Fire Prevention Bureau on getting the inspections done in these commercial buildings. Any of the little extra things that they're not used to doing on the on the suppression side of things. And then we'll watch for the classes to become available. They'll still be able to go out and do inspections. But as inspector classes and plant checking classes come up, we'll be sending them to those classes. Okay. But as of the 29th, we should see more inspections taking place. Yes, on the on the 30th. All right. Thank you. Also in regards to the fire engines or trucks, I'm going to ask, do we keep track of where those vehicles are driven such that are they only driven to emergencies? Or is there any reason why we would see a fire engine or a truck, for instance, at Safeway? Because I'm thinking if these have such high mileage, do we monitor to make sure that they're only used for emergencies as opposed to another vehicle like a passenger car? No, because when they get to work at 8:00 in the morning and get assigned to their fire engine or fire truck or ambulance, they are assigned to that as a company, as a crew for the whole 24 hour shift. Everywhere they go, they're on call. They're ready to go. So whether they're out inspecting or whether they're at a class training, whether they're out in the public at a community event, they remain a crew on, that is a fire apparatus so that if a car comes in, they can go. It's a it's a common question in the community why we are at the store with a fire truck and it's. Grocery shopping or because. Because what? We eat, we live there for basically 48 hours. And they have to take a fire engine that when we have this kind of mileage issue, they can't just take a regular. Car. It will if they take the car, then they're not in service as a fire engine. Okay. Well, say free deliveries now as they're possible. Maybe we'll look into something like that, because you're telling me I mean, you're telling us that we have, you know, a 26 year old engine and yet so. So I think we have to be mindful of when we use these vehicles because we have to pay for them. And honestly, I don't understand why in the world we would need to have a crew go grocery shopping with a fire engine when we have to figure out a way to keep the mileage low, because we can't replace these vehicles. We can't replace everything. Right. We saw the earlier just so I appreciate the comment in regards to Safeway delivers, but I think any time we have these vehicles out grocery shopping and getting coffee. It's hard for me to tell our public that, okay, we have to pay for that. And that's that doesn't really seem like the highest and best use of taxpayer dollars. And I think it's going to be hard for anyone to be able to justify that because we don't have unlimited funds. So I'd appreciate it if you all can figure out a way to have groceries delivered, get a coffeemaker if you need to have coffee, but you're on. This is taxpayer dollars and we cannot afford to replace engines. We don't have that kind of money. If it's being used to and from an emergency or a training, that's one thing. But other than that, I mean, honestly. Grocery shopping. No hanging out at Pete's. No, no, I don't want I don't think it's appropriate. And I think it's very hard for you to sit up here when you have genuine concerns to have to rationalize something like that. Yeah, I just I just would like to just clarify that when they go to the grocery store, it's generally part of their their day, whether they're coming back from a class, whether they're out doing something else, it's just looped in as part of their day. I actually you may disagree with me, but I like my people to be out in the community and accessible. I would rather have them sit down and have their coffee break. But the fire engine, that's my issue. Well, it's another vehicle. They're connected. They're connected to their fire engine. And if they're not there, they're not available for an emergency. And I think the chief is responding from an operations point of view and from your request. Question is also about the vehicle efficiency. And when we were looking at all the vehicles, there's a formula that our fleet manager looks on and it's number of years, age of the vehicle, life expectancy of the vehicle and vehicles miles traveled . And in most cases, because Alameda is an island and relatively small, we hit the criteria of age before we hit the criteria of miles. And as the chief said, this fire engine is 26 years old. It's nine years past what the criteria is or when we should replace that vehicle. So I appreciate that. And but I was here for the earlier part of the presentation. $23 million a year gaps plus as the years pass we are looking at that was we we saw that pie chart. Those are the other departments in the city. Right. So so I appreciate that you may really appreciate having your crew out and about being visible. I also want to be able to have parks. I want to be able to have our public works. Are our streets maintained? We're going to be making some very tough decisions. And it's going to be impossible for me to sit up here and rationalize, okay, all I'm going to be not funding a park so that our officers are not our officers. Our fire can hang out with their crew, grocery shopping. And we have to be able to hear ourselves what we're saying, because we saw the chart year after year, $23 million we don't have. It will be painful. Personally, I think we need to start thinking how can we save money now? Because the cumulative effect will be very painful. So I'm just suggesting if there's a way to do it, put in fewer miles on these vehicles. I would appreciate it. Member Ashcraft. Thank you. And you know, I think we all may have a little different perspective on this. We do have some very alarming numbers, indebtedness looming before us. I think we have to be careful not to fall into the trap of symbolism that may feel good but not really make much of a difference. We do need to do some cutting and some more, you know, funding are these trust funds. But I mean, I'm the city manager says they're reaching their age before they hit the mileage numbers. And even if we said drive them until they're 30 years old, I don't I don't think I mean, I do understand that a fire crew can get called to an emergency from wherever they are and then they drop everything. And so, you know, well, and but again, we all have different perspectives and we're all going to vote and make these decisions. So I would just come at it a little differently. I want to look at at real substantial savings. And we'll be talking to your department about that. I'm okay with those trucks at the grocery store for now, given the other numbers that the fleet manager has provided. So that's my $0.02. It's going to take more than $0.02 to get. And when we get to the end of this presentation, you'll be able to look and compare recreation and parks and all these requests all together. Maybe with that I can call up. All right. Is that. I'm through with my presentation. Any further questions? Anyone know on the fire engines what the miles per gallon is? If they're very. Smart, maybe you could come back with that number. I can. I can find. Out. That'd be great. Thanks. Okay. And so next up is our chief of police a for Larry. Good evening, mayor. Council members. Paul Hillary, chief of police. Good evening, chief. Good evening. I will try to be brief. The police department budget over the next few years, the only increases that you will see are the projected rate contract raises over the next few years. The department is always funded at about 90 or 93% of it personnel costs and only about six or 7% of non personnel costs. So those are the only really significant changes that you'll see throughout the projections. That sounds great. Thank you. Pretty quick. My only request and this is this is out of an abundance of I don't like to always use the word transparency, but I don't want to surprise you or anyone else. I'm anticipating that at some point during the next two years that I would be presenting a staff report and asking for your permission and authorization to get fixed license plate readers at the bridges, in the tunnels, in and out of town. I am conscious that that is a larger policy discussion with lots of other issues. As you know, we had the we have the mobile cars that have them. There's four and. Like I said, this is a discussion. That would have to be had at a later date. What I'm the reason why I'm bringing it up tonight is that. It's going to cost about $500,000 if we did it. So whether you choose to set that aside for now or and say, okay, we'll wait and hear your presentation, or if you'd rather I bring it to you as a mid-year adjustment item, I'm happy to do that. But I didn't want to surprise you at any point during the two years and have you say, Well, why didn't I come? We're hearing about this for the first time. I thought we already had them. We do. On cars. Not fixed. But. They're on for four separate patrol cars. All right. Member Ashcraft and the member. Thank you. So I had to mark this as one to ask you about. So what's the problem we're trying to solve here? Well, the problem. I'll give you a really quick anecdotal one. You were all here two weeks ago, last council meeting, when Monique Williams came up and spoke very eloquently about the murder of her son at the bowling alley back around Thanksgiving. And she had some questions at that time, which I've since answered for the council and for her regarding her perception that that we had cameras on certain intersections or in the area, and we don't. And so I'm I can't sit here and look you straight in the eye and tell you that I would have been able we would have been able to solve that murder with a license plate reader with a fixed license plate reader. But I will tell you, with 100% confidence that we would be much further along in the investigation because we know what car the shooter was in. What we don't know is the license plate number. And and if in if we had had that information available to us, for example, going over the bridge or after one of the the the tube that night, we would have been able to narrow it down and probably would have found that car. BIDEN Months ago. So that's my anecdotal. What are we trying to solve here? You want to do that? Yeah. And as I recall, you wrote a very eloquent letter to the mother that, you know, you copied as on and but you also mentioned that if you had cooperation from the witnesses there. Absolutely, you. Would you would have the information. Absolutely. So. Yeah, that's true. And I'm not I don't mean to suggest member Ashcroft that that it's solely because of the camera. I'm just saying that was a big that would have been a big piece for us. Having the cooperation of the people who were there and witnessed it would have been also equally as important. But before that incident happened and it's been a couple of months now before that, what is I mean, is it because you're getting such impressive results from your mobile cameras or you feel that we're we're missing something? I mean, we're still a fairly low crime rate city, right? Because we have that excellent police department. Go ahead and Jill in there. Thank you. So that's true. Our crime rate has generally remained flat or has even gone down in some areas, even though some surrounding communities have seen an uptick. We certainly have seen that more in property crimes. We've only always been fairly fortunate. The last incident that I described decide to not have a high violent crime rate, which I think we're all thrilled with, but we do have a fair amount of property crime, stolen cars and car break ins and burglaries and things of that nature. So. License plate readers are helpful. It's not a secret. I said it in the presentation several years ago and our data has backed it up that we only get about 1% of all the scans turn into anything that leads to an arrest. So there are people on one side of the coin who will say that's a lot of money to spend for 1% return. And then I've argued, but if we solve a murder or find a missing child, or in one case we saved a woman who was trying to commit suicide. I told you all several months back during one of the audit reports, I mean, then it's worth its weight in gold. So it's part of the balancing act. That was the mobile camera, though. That was a mobile camera. Trying to fix camera wouldn't have saved her. Well. What happened in that case was we didn't know where her car was, but we had the license plate from the family. So we ran it. We just manually entered it into the system and it told us, Oh, you just scanned it at that intersection 45 minutes ago. And so we found her that way. So you're right. But you're right. The that was the mobile. Okay. Well, thank. You. I think from a budget standpoint, my question to the city managers, this is in the with department requests, correct? Yes. But we actually don't expect the council to make a decision on this. But the placeholder of half a million dollars. Yes. Is in the with the request. So rather than having the discussion of whether we should or not, the question is, should we put a half a million dollars aside or not? Right. That's the. Okay, so. I think. That's it. Just be aware of it and then make the decision when it comes before the council. And I'm happy to bring it to you in that fashion. I just didn't want you to be surprised to help you solve your crime. The crime thinks now, but I think to know that there's a half million dollars sitting out there that may be needed. That's all right. A system. That's my point. I need to know. I swear. So I think it's. A bigger policy discussion that definitely warrants its own, you know, being agenda ized and having that discussion separately. But. This is you have this just is one time costs. Is this the equipment? Is there going to be any sort of operational costs? Like are there licensing? You know, you know, there's technology licensing fees involved? Is there support ongoing? Are there going to be ongoing costs relative to that? The there might be there will be some ongoing costs for data retention if depending on what we do with that, if we keep it for a couple of days or for six months like we do on the current, that that could be an ongoing cost. But the one time the one time would be what you're looking at on the slide is the 500,000, which is the the cameras in the installation and the power to to keep it running. Okay. And we're ready. The ongoing can be absorbed in your operating. In the operational budget. It wouldn't be an additional. Okay. Thank you. And Brody agree that this is a larger policy discussion we have to have later. But I do want to chime in a little bit, since I know everyone else has had a few minutes to talk about it. You know, I actually have another example that, you know, when I lived on Bay Farm, there was a rash of burglaries in our neighborhood. And, you know, we were like the 10th or 11th or 12th. And then there was another, you know, dozen or so that happened afterwards. And it it took maybe another year and a half or two before they found the person who did that. And the person lived in a different city. So if. You, as the police chief for the department, were able to find that vehicle after the first or second or third one. You know, that would have solved or that would've prevented a lot of different property crimes. You know, that that would have prevented my kids coming home from high school to a bashed in front door. You know, because somebody from out of town was not able to be tracked. So, I mean, there are really legitimate law enforcement, crime solving aspects to this that do impact everyone's everyday life. And when you come back, you know, you'll have to bring a policy like you did the first time that that balances those. So that's kind of my $0.02 on that. And think you might. Well, first I want to ask, so this would be at all the places that you leave town or enter town? Is it both? Yes. And entering and exit. So it would be all the bridges, the four bridges, the Webster and the Posey tubes and the Ron Klain Parkway, because you can get to Bay Farm Island without going over a bridge. And do little or whatever that is that comes in there, too. Well, that would be covered at the bridge. Okay. That'd be covered at the bridge. But but you can get from the Oakland Airport onto Bay Farm Island by at Ron Coulon Parkway. Okay. Well, personally, I am looking forward to seeing your presentation on that. Yeah, I probably will support that. That's it. All right. Next up is recreation and parks director. I'd be really hurt. If. We heard. You had that. Next line for you to be assassinated. Good evening, Mayor and Council. My name's Amy Wooldridge, Recreation and Parks Director. So I want to give you a brief outline of the recreation parks budgets. Park maintenance itself is primarily funded by the general fund. There is also where you see the maintenance assessment that's Bayport Park and Marina Cove Parks. And so those the maintenance of those are funded by those particular assessment districts. For recreation programing, we have a special revenue fund that's the recreation fund, and all revenue comes into that fund as well as expenditures out. The general fund does contribute to the recreation fund and really the basis behind that has always been to fund the aspects of programs that serve recreation, programs that serve at risk, and low income populations such as Mastic Senior Center, such as our Free Parks and Playgrounds program, that's at five sites throughout the city where kids can come for absolutely no cost. It's kind of unheard of in my industry at this point. And so we should be very proud that we're still offering that Free Park Baseball, that kind of thing, and making parks and recreation accessible to everybody. We also have the maintenance senior center fundraising program, and that's our bingo programs and our thrift shop and as well as an annual donation campaign that we do. And so that fundraising program is managed by our Mastic Senior Center Advisory Board, and they volunteer and put all the effort into the fundraising, and then they distribute the funds, which helps fund some programing and also mostly funds capital improvement projects at the senior center. And then the golf fund revenues come from our revenues, our leases with or lease with Greenway Gulf for Operation and Maintenance, as well as our concession agreement, which comes on the course for food and beverage. That's the revenue. The expenditures for the Gulf Fund is things like our stormwater assessment, Harbor Bay assessment and those types of expenditures. Member Ashcraft answered a question, and this will do so in the golf fund. Why the jump in fiscal year 1718 and the dips down in. So let's see, 1617, you're projecting 360,000 and 407,017 18 then it goes down to 389. Can you explain that? The good question, the jump is because the Greenway Golf there at the start of year five, which was September 1st, 2016, their revenue went up from a bit low base amount of 75,000 a year to a 5% or minimum 300,000. So that's where the jump came in. And that was a part of this fiscal year and then a full year next fiscal year. It went down and then it goes down a bit in 1819 because conversely, Jim's on the course when their event center opens, then they get two years of waves rent, and so it then dips down for two years and that's anticipated to be open by the end of this year. Regarding new requests. As you've heard, we have as you know, we have 35 acres of new parkland coming online this this two year budget cycle. And so we are requesting to park maintenance positions to help us maintain those parks. And and those parks have been in design and planning for the last four or five years. And every time I presented to them in the community or to council, I tried very hard to make that awareness out there that maintenance would also follow once we open these parks. So but we're also trying to do it very conscientious early in that we're requesting two full time positions. We are conversely, we are actually working really hard to reduce our water maintenance or our water costs or utility costs. And so where you see the implement irrigation efficiencies, these new positions will be we'll be hiring an irrigation specialist that will be able to create significant new water efficiencies. So we actually kept our water budget flat from this fiscal year and didn't add anything, which means we'll add all 14 acres of brand new active park space, not including what's not built yet, but that will be irrigated and absorbing a 10% each year. Eastbay Mud increase. But we're not adding additional cost for either of those. We're absorbing that cost because we feel confident enough that with a new irrigation specialist we can create those water efficiencies and it's good for the environment. In addition, we are creating a reorganization of our Park Maintenance Division through attrition. So as people retire and leave, we are essentially right now we have a very flat division where we have a park manager and we have a lot of folks out in the field, the park maintenance workers. And we want to create a more robust division so that there's more efficiency, so that there's more of a breadth of skill set. And and as well, people can grow. They can come in as lower level gardeners work their way up to a maintenance one and then a maintenance two and a four person and such. So it really creates opportunities for staff advancement and also for creating a much broader skill set which serves our parks better. So with that, we have two retirements, that one that just happened and one that's as of tomorrow. And with with each of those, we're reclassifying that maintenance one position down to a gardener position. Each time we do that we save $25,000. So that 50,000 between the $115,000 savings for water and the $50,000 annual savings for those reclassifications. Really it's a it's a net general fund expense for part maintenance of about $61,000 a year with these new positions. Just briefly about the Mastic fundraising and the Adam Street Fund. I've mentioned to you at the Mastic fundraising is the Adam Street Fund. What that is, is that's a leg, what we call a legacy fund. So when people pass away and they write mastic senior center into their wills. We have two different funds that those go into and those are designated per legally per their wills to be used for mastic senior center. And so we use those for improvements at the senior center in Nebraska. Thank you. Is Adam Street the name of a person? It's the name of a street. Yeah. So. So how did it get to be the Adams chief and. Someone a long time ago named it that hasn't been renamed since. It was, but it was part of a bequest. It was a bequest where someone requested their home on Adams Street and then it was sold. And those funds went into this? Yes. So it wasn't Mr. Street, right? No. Sorry. Ms.. Okay. Thank you. Vice Mayor. So you. Reference that the net expense for. The two positions. At the bottom. But so the positions are being reclassified after retirements. What what are the reclassifications that are occurring? Both positions are currently a park maintenance one, and they're being reclassified to a lower classification to gardener positions after retirements. Okay. Thank you. Just a few more points I wanted to make about our Parks division. They're incredibly hard working group of people with these new parks, Astro Park and Jean Sweeney, Open Space Park. We're adding 14 acres of new actively program that's phase one of estuary and across our nature trail. And the next phase, the eastern phase of Sweeney Park. But we still have to maintain 21 the additional 21 acres of open parkland. It still needs to be mown and taken care of and trees maintained, trash maintained. So we are increasing our park acreage by 18% and we're only asking for a 12 and a half percent increase of our park maintenance budget. And also just want to point out that we you know, we talk all the talk I talk all the time with other directors. And and so we actually went out and did a survey of how much other cities, our nearby cities, whether it's San Remo. And we looked at Dublin, which San Leandro and how much they maintain how many acres per full time staff person. And so with that, we realized that we actually maintain about twice as many acres per full time staff person. So really they're doing twice the work. And and that was five cities that we surveyed. Some of them only maintained four acres per full time staff, and we're doing 16. So we're really trying to be as efficient as possible with the staff that we have out there. Before we move on. I appreciate where you have your net general fund expense, right? You did some net. And when this comes back, if there's a way to show net on some of these positions because there's other times that this has already come up tonight where you have your gross that showing up here. But there's actually a net because of whatever reasons. I think when it comes back and we're looking at numbers of what we're going to fund or not, we need to be you can include the gross but include the net because that's the change from year to year for us. Thank you. Thank you. So the last two points I want to make is, is it was mentioned before by a little earner, Eric, but we since 1995, we did have 12 full time staff. We today still have 12 full time staff. And we've taken on 43 acres of new parkland since then, not including what we're about to take on. So at some point, we need to catch up and make sure that they don't fall into disrepair moving forward. And lastly, just to clarify for Estuary Park, any time we have and for our fields in general, any revenue that we have coming in from our fields for renting those fields, that stays in the recreation, it comes into the recreation fund and that's expended our parks maintenance it out of the recreation fund. So specific field and equipment and supplies for estuary park in our other fields do come out of the recreation fund, not a park maintenance fund . So with that, I'm happy to answer any questions. Okay. Next step is fucking life. Appreciate it. Go, warriors. Good evening, mayor and members of the council. I'm Jane Sawyer, library director. As you can see from this slide, the library has revenues from our library fund, which is the property tax assessment, the general fund transfer, and our adult literacy program, which includes donations and grants from the state. Half of our budget is spent on personnel, as you've heard most of the other departments. That's the bulk of the expenditures. And then supply services. One time expenses with capital outlay and our cost allocation. We? What we're asking for in the new budget year is I know you've all received requests, as I've heard, the public also ask if we could restore hours at our neighborhood libraries. So we're proposing giving a day back to both the Bay Farm Island Library and the West End Library, because the last time we reduced our budget, we took a day away. So we're going to give those same days back, and that will be an ongoing, ongoing expense out of the library fund. Then we're asking for one time expenditures to upgrade our technology. In 1718, we expect to replace and upgrade the computer lab because the computers in there are ten years old. And then in the second year, we're looking to replace pieces of equipment at the public staff stations, things like barcode readers and computer monitors, possibly printers in the public areas, small pieces of equipment like that. And that concludes my request. Any questions? I have a question. The extra day per branch. How many hours is that per day that you would be restoring? We're going to be we're going to be restoring one day each. So seven and a half hours. The branches will be open five days a week. Currently, they're open for. They'll still be closed on Fridays and Sundays. But they farm will get their Wednesday back. Weston will get their Tuesday back. After that. Our community will love that. Thank you. And not general fund. And not general fund dollars. Now you can all. Clap with me. Okay. Not general fund dollars. Yes. We're very generous to have property tax increased a little. And Mr. Psaki, I know you're giving it maybe a little bit of revenue, because I read recently about the amnesty program on library funds, but it's it's pretty cool. Do you want to just briefly lay it out? Yes. Part of our summer reading program this year is our food four fines. So we are waiving overdue fines, not lost book fees or anything like that. New library cards, just overdue fines. If you bring in nonperishable food, it'll go to the Alameda Food Bank. We did this two years ago as part of our summer reading program, and it was very popular. And you filled a lot of barrels with. We filled a lot of barrels. And according to the food bank, it was the second largest collection of food. Next to the scouts scouting for food in November. And since we're doing this in the summer, it really balances. They're receiving donations at a good time of year where they tend to run a little bit short. So we'll be doing this for the month of June and I think July. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you for asking. Thank you very much. Great presentation. Thank you. And the next is the city manager's office. And we are 100% general fund supported. Next. No, I don't know. It's hard to go after library. And our request is this is actually not a request for a new position, but it's a request for funding. When I first got here, there had been a long history there. We went back as far as we could and there have always been two assistant city managers. And when I first got here, I thought that sounded like a lot. And now that I've been here a year, it sounds like not enough. So that's what this is, is to find this position, to respond to a lot of special projects that come up on a daily basis. And, you know, some examples are the humor that we did initially, the utility, the Utility Modernization Act. We've just had a long effort with fours. The friends of the Alameda Animal Shelter, a lot of. On special projects come up that are not anticipated. So that's what this would be. So when you say you went back multiple years, how far back did you go where? We've always had two assistant city managers. 20. There's. So that was when when this started 20 years ago, is when we started having our back. And that's how far back we looked. Mm hmm. That's how far back our records we could look at our records. So that we have. Okay. So did we have other staff members that worked in the city manager's office? Yes. But our. Position. In this last year is we hired a public information officer. And so we've we've had that additional. So are you proposing to get rid of the public information officer? This is and to fill the public information officer position was added about a year and a half ago. It was funded and filled about a year ago, a little more than a year ago. And this position during that time period was left vacant. And so this is. Fill that in. It's a legit question. All right. Madam Chair. A member matter. SC In the slide you reference that refer increasing numbers of referrals. As. As one of the duties of the manager's office that this position may support. One of the things in listening to Mr. Potter's presentation. The slides on there are very descriptive of what that department does as far as inspections and plan checks and all the planning functions. And I understand most of that money revenue comes from the fees for permits and plans and applications. So they're doing the applicant business, the business of the applicants moving applications through. And these are the way I look at the referrals. Most of the referrals that take the most time that haven't been done are planning related. And that's the people's business because they lay down the the track or the ordinances or the policies that applicants are supposed to file. Is there any possibility or or thought to having this position or some sort of funding from this position? Do the people's business in planning so that instead of it being something, well, we'll hire a planned check or three to help free up time for someone to work on these ordinance updates that we have, someone who's always working on ordinance updates so that the people's business can be carried on. And then applications follow the new ordinances because there's a whole package of those ordinances that are all environmental. So you look at straws, you look at birds, you look at trees, you look at light, those are are all. And then there are some that are you know, the applications are rolling through for big projects on the northern waterfront and we still don't have a inclusionary housing update. We all approve that. So it's no longer a referral. It's a direction. We know we still don't have the Amex zoning guidance that to be put in an ordinance and. You know, all of these are in M zone. So the applications, because they've paid their money, they're getting front line service in the people's businesses sitting in the back when we get to it. So, yes, you know, I think that if they have to stop and let the ordinances catch up or we need to catch the ordinances up to the projects that are rolling through. And we can do that. And we can also fill this position with someone with expertize in that or someone who will work. Like I think the city manager's office does have to be flexible and work with the Department of Expertize and assist and pursue and make it happen. And like. As warm and wet and worked for amp or. And months or a long six months. I don't know. A long time. So that could be something that we do depending on what the referral is. That is high. Priority. We have four big giant projects rolling through Italian ship ways, Alameda Marina and snow terminals. They all have the opportunity to give us more affordable housing. An ordinance hasn't caught up with it and we have to also shape so that we get some real commercial and the Amex the mix of that and those are waiting. So we either have to stop the train and let the ordinances catch up or run up and catch up with the train. Ashcroft. Well, I mean, as I said, the city manager overseeing all departments in the city, that office is in a good position to know where the extra staffing and effort needs to be. And I, I have been impressed with the breadth of issues that we've had come at us. I don't think any of us at least I didn't anticipate quite how extensive the rental ordinance issues would be. And that certainly cut across a number of departments city attorney, community development. But the city managers, too, and who knew the animal shelter would, you know, involve quite such protracted, seemingly endless negotiations. It's done now. Knock on wood. But I anyway, I, I think that, you know, to be a well-managed city, I'm not going to do too much micromanaging. But I do think we, we expect a lot of our city staff and and we should listen when they say they need some extra help. But Vice Mayor, we'll hear more. Sorry. Vice Mayor. When was the last time we had two assistant city managers and. A city manager. And a city manager go. So we had three. Positions last. Year. Okay. And my other question is, have we. Is there a cost savings relative to. You know, are there are there things that we're putting out where we're having, say, a consultant or somebody outside working on certain things that is going to then be covered by this position? Haven't actually used consultants to fill in for projects. So we basically had our. Current. Staff pick up the work. Yes. Thank you. Okay. So I'm just going to add the 280,000 for that position. I would really appreciate if you could come up with another way to do it. That is, I want to say less than half of that. We're asking all of our departments. We have added the pillow since I've been there. We didn't used to have that. We are going to have to pick and choose. And and I can't I can't support that many. But I'm going to call chiefs. 280,000 is a heck of a lot of money, and I'd actually rather spend that on some of the equipment or other things that we need rather than adding a position at a salary that high. I don't think it's appropriate to ask for such a position given the financial report we just saw. That's high, and I've already talked to other departments. I'm expecting them to come back, really trying to figure out how how can we do a good job long term and add in a position at that pay. I don't think we can afford it. This is the problem. We really are going to have that huge gap. That is a high level position. If we need someone to help, then I think it has to be a lower level pay and we have out of the pie out of that same department. So if we think we need a pill. Okay, well, then I think we have to save money on someone else. And Sarah Henry is very competent. I'm not sure what all she does, but no 280,000 high level position. I'm not going to be able to support that. And I'm asking every department figure out how we do it for less. And this is my opinion. We don't have the money. Any other comments? 320,000, apparently. Okay. Well, sorry. My apologies. 320, not 280. That's. No, I can't do it. No, let's keep going. Okay. So that's a good segway into it. Caroline Hogg. Our technology director, who is going to talk about capital. Good evening, Mayor. Council Members. Carolyn Hogg, information technology director. Our department is newly created this budget cycle and we're no longer part of the general fund. We are now an internal service fund, which means art. We are funded by departmental charges. And in the past, those charges used to go the general fund and now they're being siloed. So what that really means. Is it means that our charges that we came up with the cost allocation method, it was based on a percentage of number of PCs fees and number of network accounts. And it was a. Revenue stream used to I guess is used to go in the general fund and then this is all part of the general fund and now it's all being separated. Well, it depends on which department is. If it's a general funded department, then yes. But if it's a department like community development or base re-use, it is not general fund dollars. Okay. But what was your first sentence when you started this. That we. Had changed? You're now we were in the general fund and now we are on a separate fund called an internal service fund. Okay. So if you're in a separate fund, that must be your revenue and expenses are coming out of that separate fund. Yes. Okay. And then before, though, they must have run through General. That was what I was saying. Thank you. But. But the general fund does get charged. The police department, which or the fire department which is general fund pays into this fund. So it does correct the general fund. Right now, they're doing a different industry and. It's. It's funny funny money. But no that's where the fund by the color of the. That's the color of the pie. Yeah. Okay. It's still a large chunk still. Comes out of the general fire. Another. Yes. So I'll cut that. Good job down. But I bet there's more to your report, isn't it? Yes. Yes. So the city has done a great job upgrading technology for public facing needs for for public transparency and services over the years. And we implemented a secret fix. Public Works has a new system for work orders and asset tracking. So we've done a good job there and we haven't done the same kind of upgrades internally, though. Historically, technology has been underfunded and a lot of cuts were made to technology until the last budget cycle when Liane King made a great presentation and really showed. I talked about what the significant impacts are to the city when we don't invest in internal technology needed to support our city services. So in 2016, we hired a technical consultant to come in and assist us in developing our 3 to 5 year strategic master plan for technology. They met and had interviews with every department, and from those interviews they determined that there were a lot of end of deferred needs affecting our internal inefficiencies. So basically the next five cross-departmental requests all came from those interviews and that process. And the recommendation was mainly to modernize some very old legacy systems. The first one is the Enterprise Resource Planning ERP system. It's a it's a complete H.R. financial system replacement that automates, you know, significantly outdated and inefficient internal manual systems that support all departments. And as an example, in H.R., this is our H.R. system, and they still use a card check system. And so they have to have a typewriter. And every personnel action that happens, they hired eight. If you get a raise, if you get a step increase, gets manually type typed in this. And so not only in H.R. that this is their system but rec and park, they all also follow the same system. And and really where the inefficiency is, is when we had an across the board one time salary increase, all every employee's record had to be pulled in, manually calculated what the increase was and then type typed on to this. I was going to type it in to show you an actual example. I don't have a manual typewriter at home. So the other thing I wanted to share with you is this is actually my timesheet. Every employee hand writes out their times that they work and then at the end of the to pay period, it goes to somebody else to to check it on paper. All FMLA is done manually. Benefits, appraisals, lead management, training, certifications are all tracked manually and then typed up on here. And so in order for a city to effectively manage like overtime or pay differentials, it's very cumbersome and almost impossible to get an accurate accounting for that. The financial system, which is basically the brains of city operations and controls our budget process and forecasting and all the good information here. It's a very, very old system. In fact, it's actually being sunset and they're not putting any more money into the development of the financial side. Performance is low. Key reports can't be created out of the our system. So Finance and other departments rely on comprehensive spreadsheets to get our accounting system. The other issue with that is there's no integration with our old system into other systems. So there's a lot of double entry which can cause errors in our accounting. So it's a very complicated cross departmental system that we're all using and actually most cities transferred from this type of process 20 years ago. So the timing is right. By implementing an efficient H.R. financial system that will actually free up some staff time by having to manually have everybody's hands touch these cards to, you know, be better able to support the community in other ways. But most importantly, our public expects strong levels of fiscal management responsibility. And in order to meet our high standards, all city departments need to be able to better manage their budgets in their labor force and workforce. And this will actually, by moving with a new ERP system, will maximize taxpayers dollars. The next top priorities that came out of our prioritization workshop is actually looking into records management review project. So it's an electronic document management system because in the city various documents and images are filed in different areas and they're not interconnected. And so when we have to do searches on like a major project, we don't even know what system to go look at to get a comprehensive overview of of the project. So this came out from the interviews. The other request is to actually invest in a citywide large document sharing system because each department has a need to upload and share, collaborate with very large documents. So they've taken it upon themselves to get personal Dropbox accounts. And with the security issues that we have, we want to get away from those kinds of needs, but have more of a citywide system. And then this. We want to develop an actual GIS Geospatial Roadmap for data integration. Many departments throughout the city use GIS data layers, and that ranges from being able to identify light poles and utility poles and tax assessed tax parcels addresses. But we have various systems in the city and they're also not integrated. So when one department updates their GIS data, they have to actually email that new data to the other department and then they have to upload it. So without integration and without any kind of standards that have actually been set up, somebody some system could put in the address for eighth Street using an eight with a T h and then the other system is T. And so those addresses will not connect. So this, this request is to actually develop a GIS road map. And then, as Debbie Porter mentioned, we are wanting to focus on a GIS position. I'll get to that next. And then we also want to look into smart infrastructure. And as Amy Wooldridge, director of Rec and Parks mentioned, they want to get into a smarter irrigation project. So that's implementing remote facility lighting and irrigation management. This will help field staff in park and Rec. Instead of having to go to every facility or baseball park and turn on the lights manually or go out and irrigate, this remote control system will be able to do that from an office at the other. Side before you move on. I just want to clarify. So in order to do the irrigation for Park and Rec, we need this. We need some kind of infrastructure. So whether it's air fiber or some kind of connect, connection, irrigation. We need this. For the smart. Yeah, for the smart infrastructure. Save the money on irrigation that we were talking about of these connected MBS warmer dam. Could you come up and let me confirm this because I'm afraid we're blurring these things very well. But here she go. No worries. The savings I was I was referencing will happen regardless. We would get even additional savings if we were able to have a smart infrastructure system like this for for irrigation, because it can go off the weather satellites and then it actually, if it's raining, just. Kept sprinklers separate. That would. Be in addition to our additional. Savings. All right. Thank you. But it's basically moving our city smarter forward using technology. That's the next page I'm concerned about. So enhancing the traffic management system we had, we recently installed Horizon for traffic signals management and we have some traffic cameras to help manage traffic, but we want to expand like real time monitoring of traffic data so we can improve the overall traffic management. And this can actually branch out into our neighboring regions so that we have more of a traffic management to get on and off the island. Are there grants for any of this to pay for these systems? So we will there could be. And especially if you go into something like that on a regional collaboration basis, then the grant opportunities are better. And then the last one is the shared service agreement for centralized network separation. What that means is right now AMP manages the city's network as well as AMP's network, and AMP has to operate under very strict utility regulations that sometimes holds the city's goals back because the city doesn't necessarily have to operate under those same strict regulations like a utility departments do. So, for instance, we haven't been able to move forward with city Wi-Fi or remote access because of the security issues that that AMP is concerned about. So this would actually segment the city's administrative network from AMP and it would be managed separately. Recently you received a memo from the Friends of Alameda Free Library strongly urging your support for some kind of wireless solution out at Alameda Point. They have a very successful semiannual book sale, and right now they can only get cash because the cell cellular phone signals are very, very weak there and there's no wireless. So people like to go to events like that and use your credit cards or debit cards. And right now, there's no mechanism for that. So they're seeing that that's actually affecting potential sales. So this is not only a high priority for internal needs, but also for our community. Remote access. That was probably the first request when I walked through the doors a year and a half ago was especially the executive level, wanted to be able to get to their desktop files and applications without having to actually sit behind your desk here in the city. So this will allow for that kind of remote access availability. And then the last part of the shared service agreement. So basically what this is, is contracting with a like a network company to be able to manage our network. This would also include some of our support for our technical staff, because right now it's not uncommon for they're very dedicated and I can't thank them enough. But it's not unusual for them to work seven days a week or on their vacation because things happen that are unplanned and people know how to reach them. And so this will help balance work life by we have a very small staff compared to even compared to our neighboring cities. So this will help address that. So next slide. Like I mentioned, these are cost estimates that we got from our technology consultants in their ballpark, but they've been doing this for a while, so they're pretty accurate. Now, remember, this is these are just budget requests and we would not be, you know, purchasing or procuring any of this without coming back to council and actually making the case by case basis for this and in proceeding with your approval. But the our financial system is estimated to be at one time in FY 18 for 1.5 million. And then the other strategic plan recommendations, which is the electronic document management system, the GIS road mapping governance, the smart infrastructure and the shared service agreement is also estimated at 1.5 million. The citywide Wi-Fi projects is one time 200,017 and 18 because it requires hardware and software to manage it and security appliances. And then 100,018 19. And then Debbie mentioned about the need to have a technical systems analyst to help with their SLA enhancements with EA plan check. So this position is 75% funded by community development, but it's actually in the I.T. budget and 25% would allow us to begin working on that, the GIS governance and road map to standardize the data layers and work with every department. And then lastly, the office assistant, because we are a new department, we don't have any administrative staff to help manage our our budget and do the purchasing and payments of procurements, personal related issues. And we want to do a citywide software contract management because a lot of common software systems contracts are managed by individual departments, manage our helpdesk ticket management system and other various management tasks. Okay. Who wants to go first? And where matter. S.E.. I know these dollars are big. They're one time expenses, but we're writing. Cards out with a typewriter. And this would be actually these. I think this slide needs some more work because there needs some projected nets on this, because there's an expense, but there's a net savings that can be projected and some of the savings could be reduced numbers of persons that are needed to do the manual activities that electronic system would do. We're so far behind that. At some point we're going to have to cross this bridge because we can't keep. Just from a fiduciary standpoint using typewriters on a on a on a cardboard form. Member already. I'll echo my colleague's comments, but just add a little bit of concern. And like two lives ago, I used to do this type of work and these budgets can spiral out of control. So I hope that when we go forward with this, if we do that, we keep a really tight rein on on this budget and be really accurate. I mean, we've had some inaccurate IT budget projecting lately, but I, I know that there's a lot of scope creep with especially these enterprise type systems. So let's just try to, you know, get us the best deal we can if we decide to go forward with that. Vice Mayor So one question is just what are the projections in terms of the one time expenditures for the IT equipment? Is that based off of. Like estimates. That you've received or from? Do you have potential, you know, companies that you have in mind in terms of working with relative to those sorts of systems? These are up to date estimates that we receive from our technical consultant to do this daily. And so they've kept up on what the costs are in the industry today. Okay. And then my other question is, you know, for some of these things, like the citywide Wi-Fi projects and things like that, are those going to be helpful, do you think, relative to some of our economic development plans? Are we is there kind of a strategy in terms of where those are going to be implemented? Actually, there is so what I've been hearing is there's a great need to have better Wi-Fi options out at Alameda Point. Right now, there's just you can either be hard wired with fiber, which is very lengthy and takes months and months to to get that and is expensive. So there's another wireless vendor out there. But what I've been hearing is that's not satisfactory to the people who are actually there now. We met with. The mayor and I met with a new organization that wants to locate out here on Alameda. So we're actually going to be doing a trial at the club to test out their product. But it's air fiber. So that's that could be a really good draw for economic development. Thank you. Remember Ashcroft. Thank you for that presentation, Miss Ho, even though you kind of terrified me with some of the information. So these numbers are a bit large. On the other hand, we have done without an IT department. Last time we did this, we clamored for needing one, so I guess we had to assume it was going to cost something . I have a couple questions. One is that can some of this be triaged, if you will? And I mean, maybe insofar as you have put some of it in the fiscal year 1819 column, you're doing that. And then. Um. But I agree with, with councilmember matter, S.E., that we need to catch up to the 21st century. Notwithstanding the recommendations of your consultant about systems and items to purchase, will you do some sort of a cost comparison or, you know, look to see just to make sure your you really are getting the best price. So a couple of things. Now that we have cloud opportunities today, a lot of them cities migrated about end of nineties could because they were getting ready for Y2K and we didn't do that here. But now other cities are getting ready to refresh and to go to the next generation. So there's a lot of cloud based opportunities which actually brings the costs down that we would evaluate, evaluate. But I'm also working in the region to see if we can go together because a lot of other cities around us are in the same boat as we are. So if we could do like a regional purchase and then negotiate better pricing, that's what we're going to be looking into. That sounds great. Please do. Okay. Those are my questions and comment. Okay. So when I look at this, no can do. No, this is a problem. This is 3 million plus in 1819. If I'd like to see the net, if there's going to be personnel savings, if there's going to be personal savings, then I don't know why you're asking for an office assistant, but no, I'm not going to be able to support three. What is it, three? Almost three and a half million dollars. I don't think it's appropriate. I appreciate your saving your own cards, but some people I think, you know, let's go back and review the beginning of this presentation. The money's just not there. It's just not there unless this is really going to result in savings. If you get grant money, personal saving something, otherwise it's the wrong direction. So I appreciate that member. Already had one more quick question. So. This idea of doing some infrastructure at Alameda Point, I mean. We're spending general fund money for some type of Wi-Fi infrastructure. I mean. No. Yes. How's that going to work because I thought this is capture at the point. General fund. Cafe by base reuse. But I mean, you're talking about like a wi fi. Oh, at the club. Yeah. And then later expanding it so we can. So credit. Cards. So what? Sorry. So look into the minutia on this. But this one just outside. We're not going to be purchasing the wi fi for the the companies out on Alameda Point. We're going to be testing their solution. And then if the other companies want to buy it to get it themselves, that would be their opportunity. It's still it is still kind of an infrastructure. I think he was trying to. Yeah. Yeah. We owned the club. So that's the. The only place where we're going to have these folks take credit cards with the wife. I mean, nowhere else. I don't know why the Alameda Library picked that location for their book sales, but that was that was stuff. It's not. No, it's just city buildings. Yeah. Right now City Hall has wi fi, but no other city buildings have it. But the point is that there might be another funding source for baseline backbone infrastructure. An Alameda point would be Alameda. So I say. Well, look at. My rash, Captain. So I'm not sure if I'm the only council member I'm not aware of whatever it is the experiment you're doing at the club and the vendor, can you can you enlighten the. Person. About that? So if you wanted to take your laptop to the club, you wouldn't be able to connect to the Internet or any application. And so when people rent out that building from the city. I understand the issue. Who is it you and the mayor met with? Oh, it was common networks. Common networks is a new. Yeah, it's a separate company. And their wireless solution, they're very similar to. Yeah. I can't remember what's out there on the Point Unwired. If you've heard of Unwired, but there have very competitive pricing and actual better upload and download speeds. So that's what the individual companies are asking for. So that's an opportunity for them to, you know, do a business arrangement with them. We were just going to test their product on the club to see if it meets our city needs. Well, you know, I think it's something that's of interest to the rest of the council. So thank you for sharing that. All right. Thank you very much. Okay. And our second to the last I'm just going to fly through because our last department is public works. But in between we have a non-departmental, which doesn't actually and I've mentioned this earlier, the request on the next slide is for our homeless assistance program. And so this is transitional housing in between being homeless and providing services. This would be a joint effort from a funding point of view with Alameda Police Department grant and approximately half of it coming from the general fund. And we've been talking to Operation Dignity, but there we're going to continue to look at it. So we just want a amount of funds in there so we can do this additional service to to basically take people out of homelessness so they can focus on getting housing long term. You just clarify, it says the grant. Our police department got that grant for this purpose. Yes. That means yes. It's a thank you. Purpose. That's the kind of funding I'm looking for. Funding streams. Grant free money's good. We received a one time allotment of money. It's not going to be this last year. It was actually written into the governor's state budget. There were it was a restricted grant. There were other things that we could have used it for. But given what we're dealing with at Sweeny Park and elsewhere in town, I decided to throw it all that way. But this is just a one time thing. It's not going to come back next year. It's from the Board of State and Community Corrections. It released the money. Right. Thank you very much. You appreciate. It. Sure. Next up. Public Works Director Garland. Madam Mayor, members of the City Council. I'm Liam Garland with Public Works. I'm going to provide a brief overview of the public works budget, some of the investments we're requesting through the next two years, and then an overview of the capital budget. Before I start, I do want to let you all know that Little Richard did text me to say that he also supports these assets. Yes, we all believe. That we needed taxes. We got that. Yes. He's active on taxes. This lady must go ahead. You may continue. So I'd like to skip to the requests and then I'm happy to. Reverse page and skip right over it. Because we do have a hard stop. Okay. We have a councilmember that's leaving at ten. And we'd like to hear their comments. I will move fast. Oh. So first, let's start with the three general fund requests. The top request is around urgent city building repairs. You may remember. Oh, we were in front of the council talking about the third party run facility condition assessment, which said that we had at about $12 million in urgent repairs that need to be made on our city buildings. We're requesting about a million per year to help us make a bigger dent in this backlog of repairs. So these are going to help replace three rooms long term deferred maintenance at six parks, buildings, City Hall, West Oak Club and the vets building. If this request is declined, will essentially be backing off the needed repairs in the Oak Clubs, the Oak Club and the vets building. So that's where the the approximate $2 million is mostly going to be invested in, if you grant this. Okay. How much could you refresh my memory if this is this the one third of the projects that were not funded when I asked you, okay, you have two thirds of projects that have been funded. You have one third that hasn't. These are all separate projects. So these are we did an in-depth facility condition, condition assessment of every city building. We essentially prioritize those repairs that we want to get done right away because there are either health or safety or for other urgent reasons need to be done. And we're targeting those repairs first. Okay. So are we going to get to the one third of the projects that needed to be funded that do you remember you were advancing money essentially for some other issue? I believe it might have been fire. That was related to the EOC fire station three. Right. And you said you have two thirds of the projects funded. So we didn't have to worry about those. But you had a third, you had it. And I asked, where's that money going to come from? And you said, You don't know yet. So is this are we going to see those projects in this report? Oh, a couple, yes. So some of the the the money you're referring to related to budget savings from projects that had been completed in the past, but we're still sitting on the books. Then there were some projects that where were programed but no longer relevant, so we didn't want to push forward. And then there was a small subset of projects around our I think it was around a roof that we weren't going to replace when we knew a skylight or reverse, that we were going to replace a skylight. If we know in a couple of years we're going to come in and replace a roof. All right. Oh, the next investment we're requesting is around our sidewalks. You know, from the last capital budget that we had, over $10 million backlog in sidewalk repairs. We've managed to bring that down to about $9.3 million. And we're seeking another contribution from the general fund of about 500,000 per year. This would continue a commitment from the general fund for sidewalk repairs and our current budget. It's about 250,000 per year. Without that, additional contribution will do two less miles of sidewalk repairs over the next two years. The Third General Fund ask is related to streetlights. We're going to add a new maintenance and operation program for streetlights. This is in part a result of the passage of the Utility Modernization Act. AMP is transferring over money into the general fund, of which 900,000 is to cover the Street Lights program. So this represents about 600,000 for maintenance and operations. The other 300,000 is going to a capital project which will help us develop the long term ten, 15, 20 year plan for replacement of those assets. Vice mayor, the member. So are these. Positions transferring over from AMP and if so, why? The said it's related to the Uma, but no explained. The current plan is not to transition. The positions over what's budgeted is to have a maintenance worker and as you'll see in a moment, a half time administrative support person to help public works be able to adequately maintain and operate these streetlights. Who we have. Before. Did public works do that? Who does that now? The streetlight maintenance was done by alameda municipal power and i think our h.r. Director is going to push me out of the way. No, i'm not going to push you. And we are. Nobody's pushing anybody. We are still working with AMP and IBEW, the Labor Unit, to determine exactly how this work is going to be performed because we have some meet and confer obligations. So one certainly one of the options is that it would be a maintenance worker who would do the non electrical connectivity work. AMP would maintain an IBEW, the electric can connectivity work. So I guess my question is, are we increasing the cost of this program by transferring it over or is it net neutral? What's the in terms of the overall cost of running the maintenance program? I you know, I we should probably get that for you, but based on the positions, I would not see a net cost increase. Okay. But I would want to clarify that. Okay. And I guess. Remember. My question. Similar to that, I mean, if this meeting confer fails, I mean, then what happens? Because it sounds like there are some positions that. What we've done. I'm thinking of eliminating it amp. We what we've done is we the way the budget is built, however it comes out, we're going to be okay. We haven't done anything with eliminating the position at AMP, although it is vacant at this point. So as we work through that process will resolve how we're going to do the work. But the ideal would be to transfer just the maintenance work from AMP to public works. And if if you don't reach that agreement, then are we just going to impose our will on them or how is that going to work? And that would be an organizational decision. Right now, we're still talking and hoping to be able to resolve it. So what does that mean, that the council would have to weigh in or it would just be done at the staff level? Typically. I mean, obviously, if you had wanted to weigh in, we would certainly give you that opportunity and check back in with you. We're hoping, you know, certainly not to have to impose. And so we're still talking and providing them with all the information that they're requesting. I mean, I would like to have that come back to us, even if it's at an impasse. Okay. We will do that. Vice Mayor And then member matter, S.E.. So you said that the position is currently not filled. So if there's a. Streetlight. Issue right now, who. Fixes it? Well, we have somebody who was doing the work, and I actually would have to look at our AMP General Manager for that question. So this is a group effort. Good evening. Nick Operacoes, general manager at AMP. We do have a person who was occupying that position, the Street Light Maintenance Technician. We opened up what we had another open position which we encouraged them to apply, operate under the assumption that this would transition over to public works. They successfully got that position. They've moved into that position. But for the interim, until we make the transition, they are actually performing that function and they will continue to do so until we sort out some of the things that were talked about tonight. I remember Matt addressing. Should this come back to the council. I also would like to have. The City attorney. Look at what's being proposed and what lies within the duties of the city manager as far as running the management of the city and what lies in the duties of the council as far as approving budget and or providing direction to the city manager? My question is going to be does the revenue stream currently. This has been happening to AMP it sounds like. So they must be paying for it somehow. So when the work comes now out in maintenance and operations program to the general fund, does the revenue stream follow that job to the general fund? So as as part of the UMA, there was a transfer approved of approximately $900,000. So that revenue has been transferred over to the general fund. And as Liam spoke about earlier, that 600,000, it's part of that 900,000 and then there's an additional 300,000. My understanding is going into capital reserve. So then when this is presented, can this show net somehow as long as that 900,000 is not already being used for something else? It doesn't just show 600,000. Thank you. Yeah. And over 300 are going to go to just projects or. To a capital project related to the streetlights. So the first thing we want to do is get a really accurate assessment of the condition of the streetlights and then come up with a 10 to 20 year replacement plan. And that 300,000 is just sitting in a dedicated streetlight fund, not being touched for anything else in the interim. You got it. Thank you. Up next, there is some more minor personnel adjustments we're making off of the general fund. So these are non general fund dollars. We're looking for some additional administrative support, especially around our special districts. Our revenue and responsibilities around special districts have increased significantly over the past few years. Likewise, in sewer and urban runoff, we see a real need with our pump stations to have a four person who really is a master of those electrical components. And then finally, if you look down at the sewer fund, we're looking at eight vehicle replacements. The average age of these vehicles is over 20 years old. And if you look over to the right, these one time requests probably look pretty significant given it's only eight vehicles. But one of those vehicles is one of these large vac on these big trucks you see with the vacuum attached to it, which is almost itself a $375,000 vehicle. Oh, I should note here to answer an earlier question, we do have pool cars for sure. And one of the things you don't see on this slide, but you will on a subsequent slide is Public Works is requesting to replace some vehicles through the vehicle replacement fund. It's called the Equipment Replacement Fund. So essentially that's where public works and other departments have squirreled away money to make these very replacements. And they're we're pretty confident we can get six hybrid and or electric vehicles as pool cars over the next two years. Want to quickly go through the. I'm sorry if you could go back. Okay. So on the eight vehicle replacements average 21 years old, can you bring the mileage on those things? You know, so we have more information than the sidewalks. It's currently 250,000 a year and then you're you're estimating 500,000 a year. All right. Is it for the same length of repairs or why the double? This enables us to do more work. So the doubling is more just an assessment of, hey, we've got this backlog. We're looking for as many resources, i.e., money as we can get to try to cut down on that backlog. So has the price per mile increased or that's the same? You're doing double. You're doing twice as many miles with the 500,000. Oh, no. I mean, prices are going up. As you know, construction costs are going up around the Bay Area. We're seeing that start to come through on our bid results. But this is not specifically to account for those cost increases. This is just to suggest, hey, if we want to reduce this backlog, which is something we hear about all the time from the public, this is a good way of reducing that backlog. Am I making sense or. No, not the question was a little simpler. And Brody, I mean it. I'm sorry. I don't mean to step in your toes, but a250 we are getting x miles, and at 500 we are getting y miles. What is the X in the Y? I think without I think that's kind of what the mayor was asking. Yes. So at had $1,000,000, you can get two miles of repairs done. And so and then it was at one mile for. So we're just going from 1 to 2. Isn't that kind of what you were. Yeah. So the price. Per. Okay. So it's not an increased price per mile. It's just that you're doing more. Yeah. I'm sorry if I'm not doing a good job, but clearly I'm not. This is a part of a sidewalk project that comes from other funding sources as well. I'm just talking about the general fund contribution to that project. Should the council award or adopt a budget with these numbers? It would be approximately a $1.5 million per year that we're spending on sidewalk repairs. This is just the general fund portion which I'm recommending move from what in the past two years has been at 250,000 per year, up to 500,000 per year. So this is what the city's cost is. It's not like sometimes, you know. People have to pay for different things. This is the net. General fund versus a special or. Just if you get other moneys to offset any of this? Oh. No. These this is. This is essentially all costs. Not about revenue. Okay. Member matter. I think. Mr. Garland, you said that if we don't. Honor. This request will do two less miles of sidewalk over these two years. Right. Yup. So it's either we do what we do and keep doing what we're doing, or we get two extra miles a year by allocating this money. Thank you. Yes. Mayor member Ashcroft. And just for clarification, I asked Mr. Rodham so that million if we were to spend a million, 1.5 million, the million is coming from the gas tax, is that correct? The balance is mostly from gas and I think a bit of construction improvement tax as well. Okay. And and then, you know, something to always way is that we do pay out some money in settlements for people who slip and fall and trip on our sidewalks. And, you know, some of them are in pretty scary conditions. So, um, thank you. Um, I, and I do want to commend public works because, you know, we just came through a very rainy season. We had some high winds and yet I don't think we had major incidents that weren't addressed immediately, like streets flooding or and even that night, the 20 some trees came down. I just this is part of what makes a city safe. And there's all different kinds of. I'd like to remind the council that there has been extensive sewer work this past year. And thanks to Aaron Smith. Yeah. In the audience. Are there new positions you're asking for to is this the end of the request? That is the end of the requests. I will run through the capital budget in less than a few minutes. I just want to hit up here just how busy your city departments are. If you look at capital expenditures over the past ten years. We are running last year and this year at 2 to 3 times what those historic levels are. That impacts finance in terms of accounts payable. It impacts APD with a couple of significant parks projects, the transportation planning unit, and also in our engineering division, which is only added one full time staff member over the past five years . So a lot of activity and not a lot of people wouldn't be a capital budget update without talking about pavement here. You can see that our current pavement condition index, remember this is the Metropolitan Transportation Commission's assessment is about 74. This number ticks up and down depending on when you run it. That's really good news over the when we were in these seats two years ago or most of us, we were at 67, which is at the upper end range of. We're now solidly into the good range in terms of our pavement condition, which is a big step forward compared to Alameda in 2009. We're at 62. So the low end affair and this compares really favorably to our neighbors, Oakland, Berkeley and San Leandro as well. I'll turn to our urban forest. Our capital budget will again propose to Maine to trim more than 7000 street trees. Just want to note that our street trees are really hard at work, even if it seems like they're not. They are sequestering over 9000 tons of of pollutants. They are also taking millions of gallons of stormwater and they're essentially relieving the load from our storm drains through themselves, essentially. And they're adding to our home values by over $60 million. These trees are hard at work. I want to. The second to last point I'm going to make tonight is our most significant challenge moving forward is around stormwater infrastructure. And this stormwater fee that we've talked about on several occasions is being flat. Since 2004, we've got up to $45 million in repairs that are needed for our stormwater infrastructure. Yet if we look forward to the third year out, so the first non budgeted year we might be facing operations cuts. So a stormwater fund's got a capital component and an operations component. There will not be a possibility of funding a capital component without some change and will even face operations cuts in fiscal year 1920. However, the State Senate Bill 231 has passed out of the Senate. It's sitting in the Assembly would essentially allow us to adjust rates on storm and stormwater just like we do on sewer, which is less costly. And you can essentially do the rate setting in one fell swoop, swoop for the next five years. So I'm hoping to share good news in the next couple of months that that if adopt or passed by the assembly, adopted by the governor were really get us into a different place here in the city of Alameda . We're not the only city facing this crunch. Lots of us are. Finally, this is sort of a this is almost all good news, but just a bit of a challenge for us over the next two years. If you look at this is a map of all of our our capital projects for the next two years. But the most significant part I want to highlight here is $42 million in one time transportation grants. You've probably heard a little bit about these. Kudos to Jennifer Odd, her transportation planning unit, chapter Public Works and some of our engineers who supported that grant making effort and a lot of other folks throughout the city. However, there's a challenge built in there, which is that is a lot of money for us to be able to execute on, and much of that work happens in year three. So it's a lot of design and planning work in advance of the construction work in year three. And with that, I'll close and answer any questions you may have. Member Matter Can. You give us a brief update on any budget impacts of the consent decree for our sewer system replacement? So far, none. And I'm going to turn to Aaron Smith just to confirm about. As long as we have none. Okay. And there's no request related to it. No budget request relating to it. Yes. No. Thank you. You do the shout out for plowshares. Okay. The shout out for plowshares, where essentially we are able to source a lot of our local new trees through plowshares, which obviously has a lots of benefits to the participants within their programs and as job training as well. As a 90% of our new tree planting. Thank you. Good evening again, Madam Mayor. Council members. Nancy Bronstein, human resources manager. I think I went. You speak. Up. Yeah. You got to. Pick up a little. Nap, so I have to move my slide. Back then. Yes. There you go. This this slide just shows is the summary of the new positions that are being requested tonight. I did want to point out that there are different funds for funding these positions. Additionally, in addition to the new positions that you're seeing here, we are currently reviewing the classifications of several positions to make sure that those positions are correctly classified or different classification would be a better fit for the job duties if we have those recommendations ready to go prior to June six, we do plan to include them in the budget. If not, then we may bring them in a separate agenda item. Those there won't be any financial request associated with those. Any cost is built into the budget. It should be very limited. So it would just be position requested that you may see in addition to these. And are there any questions on question number matter? On the city manager position. I know the position is authorize. Was it funded in the previous budget and money not spent or. I didn't get a chance to look at that. The position was funded. However, we did take vacancy savings from the position almost 100%. But it was in the it was in the previous two years. It was in the budget and then at mid mid-cycle we took it out. We took it out. Okay. So this would be re and re adding it back for this budget if you did that. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions? Oh, okay. So when I look at these, I think that sometimes these were not the net costs. Some departments were saving money from some of other things so that they were going to be able to come up with these to pay for these somehow. I think that was primarily parks. Right? So I think that that should be noted when this comes back to us. Any time there is either grant money or some savings of shifting funds. There's not all a new ask like that noted for each of these. And and what we said at the beginning of this work budget work session is this is a raw budget that council asked for more input rather than having us bring a budget that is all wrapped together in a bow. And so what we'd appreciate tonight if the council has direction on these positions to let us know and then we will put those numbers in, they'll still be flexible enough that you can make changes on the six. But if we if we hear nothing from the council, then staff will look at these and put in our estimate or what you will consider on June six, which is actually means that the budget goes out next week. All right. A member matters. And if you want to make any comments first where you go. Yes. In looking at these, I think the. Once that I see is indispensable. Are the parks budget additional persons and the information technology of. I think those general fund contributions, I think are are. Absolutely. Essential to moving us forward, especially with the additional load in both of those departments. And I think even that investment with. The $3 million council member Otis comments on scope creep and considered. I think those are things that have to be that we have to do those things as far as the city manager's position. You know, I. I, I don't know the best way to do it, but I stated what I wanted is as far as what to be done. But how to do it. I'm. I'll leave that that is on management to do that. And I think the same with the fire department. And the thing that still sticks with me a little bit is that this person is replacing a person who was dedicated by Grant to doing very restrictive duties, and they're not going to be doing those duties or you know, I don't know what that is, but it sounded like we could. We could get along without it. Just by shared load. So. Again, that's a management issue. I'm not inclined to support that. And I think from the library it is coming from the library fund and the I 100% support the extra days being added back to the branches. We've put a lot of money in the taxpayers to tax themselves, to keep the libraries open and to support the branches. And we need to honor that. So we're just doing the new positions now, and. That's what I was going to do. Okay. So whatever your plan is, it's fine with me. So when it comes back, I mean, I could add these true. But it would be great if we could just see like the different fund sub totals as the general fund is the number that, you know, I'm kind of focusing on. I guess I have a question of staff because back on page 23 of the presentation, we said that our response was commitment to fiscal responsibility, only critical hires using general fund dollars. So of these I mean, do you consider them all critical hires under that criteria? I mean, I remember when we had the referrals, we had to sit there and think, well, we may have projected this idea and brought it forward, but, you know, is it critical as an employer or is it urgent is an important. So I'm going to ask you the same question. I mean, of these I mean, do they all fit that criteria that that you said we should be judging these by? And I don't know. I don't care who answers it, but. They have different levels of importance in what we can look at. And when we bring this back on June six, after we get some feeling from the council, we would bring back what? I think are the most critical and how we can make it done. We have to have a balanced budget and so we will put positions in and take them out and so we can figure out how to balance the budget. Because that would be my criteria in evaluating these is is it a critical hire that we're using general fund money for? So if you tell me that is and there's I'll be supportive of it. And there's four general fund positions. Right? But one of them really isn't a new one. It's just the money's coming from a different source. So we're really adding three people but four positions. Remember Ashcroft, I. Think the vice mayor. Was you know. He was ready. I'm I'm also interested in in getting a better analysis of what's. What are what are the critical positions and even outside of the general fund ones, especially because some of the other positions do receive. You know, when we were talking about it, the money is coming essentially from the general fund and then being moved into that account . So I think I would like to know and get that analysis. I'd also like to understand better, you know, some of these positions that are being put forward. I think the only one that really talked about relative to our counsel referrals, what, you know, what would actually be worked on. So there is a. Workload that's outstanding, basically, that are directives of council. And so. Which which. Positions actually fall. In line with covering existing council directives. So where is there an existing need based off of the directives that council has already given? And we can look at that through our referral list and some of the other things that we've done. So I would I would like to understand that to a certain extent. I know that Debbie Potter briefly talked about it relative to the permit position and the inspector position. And, you know, based off of working on some of the council referrals relative to things that were coming down the pipeline and the ordinances that that we've given direction on. So to the extent that that can be done. Right. And where where is the existing workload that's going to be covered by these positions? I would also like to understand that. And that was the permit tech right. Positions to free up some of those staff. Right. Combined with assistance. Right. But there's also, if you think back to the Community Development Department request, there was also the building inspector of trying trying to be more customer service oriented. Right. Which brings in revenue. As well. Mm hmm. Development is on track faster, write a happier community as well as well. And I think that goes back to the the earlier input from the mayor about understanding where certain things are going to be, what's the net cost like if there is going to be potential revenue generated or . Grants that could. Cover certain things? I think noting that helps us out in terms of understanding whether or not we're actually going to be able to. Balance the budget based off of different estimates. I remember Astra. Thank you. So this isn't easy. Nothing we do lately is easy. I even though it's not in this upcoming fiscal year, the fire department division chief request gives me pause. But we'll have time to see how this the the work rolls out. Now that we've got three positions funded or about to be funded for the Fire Prevention Bureau. And I'll just say I have concerns about adding this position. From where I sit today. The the recreation and parks positions. I. I'm I'm fine with that. I. We are adding more, more parks. And as Amy and Lily noted, we we have kept the number the same, and yet we're taking out a lot more. I would be just because we've got to whittle this budget down. I look at everything very closely, those first two positions, the combination building inspector and the permit tag. While I like happy customers, I mean, there was a reason some years ago we went from a five day workweek to a four day workweek because it resulted in budget savings. And what I would like, though, if it could be done fairly readily, is. A sense of so for this position or these two positions, what kind of revenue would they be bringing into the cities? So maybe the I mean, if you know it now or when we come back, so maybe that, you know, it's the net. So we're spending this, but we can assume, you know, that now, Miss Bronstein, or. What I'm wondering is the revenue paying for the positions. So essentially it's the revenue pays for these positions, right. So no general fund, it would be right. I get that it's in a general fund expenditure base, but beyond. Yeah, okay. Okay. Um, and. The Assistant City Manager position. I, I do understand that we throw a lot at that office. I. I always like us to be able to do more with less. We have a proposition, a lovely person. Is there any way that that position could be expanded to pick up some of the workload you're looking to address with this with this assistant city manager? Just, you know, trying to think. Creatively, but. These are these are ongoing costs. And on the I mean, those are some big numbers. What I would also like to take a look at is. We need both the systems, the systems and as I get a little more readily but the office assistant, is that something that can be picked up somewhere else? So I'm just, you know, maybe compressing positions. Public works. I am their workhorses and I'm not going to I, I won't I don't have any suggestions or reservations about those two listed positions. So I'm, I'm looking at everything even though they're, it's not all from the general fund, but it is, of course, the general fund. We need to get it under control. Okay. Those are my thoughts. Thank you. Okay. So I pretty much will just echo my counterparts up here. One question I had was. Does this include the benefits when you're saying, you know, you're covering this is at the salary plus benefits, everything just so there's no no touching of the general funding we know that are being covered. Okay. So then I too will be looking for the know the net. So that makes a lot of these make more sense then I think it's very important to be transparent and show all that. So the net I need to see, I appreciate, you know, everybody's common in regards to urgent and important. Can we stagger all of that better analysis? I'm not going to be excited. About adding a. Chief $360,000. I'm also concerned about the assistant city manager at another. Oh, yeah. $300,000. I can't go there personally. I think we're going to have to tighten our belts there and the salary, if in fact, because in the past, when we did have two assistant city managers, we didn't have a pillow. And I don't know what her salary is and benefits and all that, but that is another person working in the city manager's office. So I think we need to take that into consideration. But at the end of the day, I'm very happy that we have to be able to balance our budget because that does force us to make these tough decisions. And I appreciate everyone's presence here at taking all the questions. Yeah. And I want to do a shout out to our police department because no new positions. Thank you, Chief. That's good. All right. Well, and there's a couple of remaining slides, but it depends on whether the council wants to provide input on them. The next one is vehicle replacement requests and then department requests that went beyond personnel. Oh. Like on. Member matters. First. Thank you. You know, the vehicles are the vehicles. And I think of the irony. I support the comment about a pull a pull vehicle that's available. I understand that the fire crews go with their vehicles so that when that radio squawks, they have to run. So. I think that's I'll leave it to management to figure out the best way to get the most life out of the vehicles with those constraints. And the only other thing I would ask to look into, especially if some of the newer electric cars are being looked at, is that we don't have to buy them because the technology move so fast and they're very expensive to maintain in the out years. So especially when the battery packs have to be replaced. So please do some studies. We don't need to own things. And no thank you. And the only other thing, I just want to retreat just one quick second back to that, because Ms.. Potter mentioned that the permit techs and the INS inspectors are being and the planning people are being paid for out of fees. That's the reason I brought up having a general fund planner type, because the fees are the top priority. They have to serve the customer and there's nobody serving the the city as the customer. So all these ordinances that are city. Benefits that talk about the building and the maintaining of the city, I believe need to have somebody who works for this, works for the city, not for the applicant. So does that translate to another general funded position? I think we get it out of that. I'm not going to tell you how to do this, but the assistant city manager is the pot of gold to use that out of that. Let's go next. Nairobi. I'm going next, so I'm sorry. Can I clarify one thing? So for the permit fees we collect as a portion of the permit fee, the community planning fund. So actually what we do take in, we do collect money that can be used for the kinds of ordinances and other kinds of work that you're talking. Well, as long as it will be used and we get those things in sync with the projects, because the projects are rolling along, they get first start, stop ship waste, got first, you know, just fine. And these things are still waiting. I just want you to know, too, that we are planning to bring the M zoning referral on June 6th. So that's the plan for now. So that's. Thank you. That's coming. Yeah, it's that's the plan. I'll just say that's the plan. We'll see how the agenda goes. But we do have it's really more a staff in capacity. The funding is there and it's just the the staffing capacity. And we have the ability to fund that kind of work without tapping the general fund, and we're prepared to do that with the recommendation of the permit. I'm just saying that SHIPWAY has got time because they pay an application fee, they got them in the queue and we have to do it. And zoning and inclusionary housing that we could get are not in the case. It's actually the permit, the state permit streamlining law that requires us to when permits come in. So. Well, that's why that's. Why I'm making a big deal out of it. Yes, absolutely. So I just want to clarify that we can do that kind of work with the non general fund funded money and we do collect a portion of the fees paid goes for community planning efforts for the initiatives that you're talking about and can we can do that. So quick question. Is this our last item for feedback? No, but I think general feedback would be. I just wanted to make. Sure that any. One time would be the one time. All of his feedback. Before and just mentioned. The library. Because I'm going to be going to be leaving shortly. Yes. Thank you. I really appreciate this. My niece appreciates it. I think based on the front, the the forward slide and the forward slide, I think has been has permeated. This is the the PERS curve that has $45 million at the at the apex of it. I'm going to be looking first to put one time money into that. That's where I'm looking first. And I think we have to. I will. You know, I think when we all get in the mix and I look at the minutes of this meeting, here are the people's input of I think the the technology upgrades are and the the outside general fund funded requests that none of these requests have a purse charge attached to them. They don't carry a purse burden. So if the fund has the money, we spend it. If. We have to put general fund money to it. I think that's where we have to balance off against. Funding the retirement and the other post-employment benefit burden that is is not going to go away. And to the mayor's point is, we don't want to be shutting parts of the city down to try and backfill that. So we have to act now. Any other comments before you leave? Know that I have an amazing trip. Thank you. I much appreciate it. All right. Thank you, Madam Mayor. And have a safe trip. So. What I kind of didn't see on that. Can you go back to not that one. The one after that. One more. That one. So again, there's all these large numbers. No. And then. See, I didn't. No, not this one. This is the ongoing the one time money. And I didn't see a total, you know, by again, I could add this up, but it kind of seems like it's hidden. It should just pop out because I don't know if it's like $10 Million or whatever it is. So I agree with my colleague about I think one time money should be put away into these pension trust funds, whatever it is that we decide to do. But, you know, to the extent you do have general fund one time requests that again, meet your criteria, use of one time funds for one time efforts with long term efficiencies. You know, I'd like to have that the kind of the gauge that when you do come back, you know, I'm not saying I like to look at this holistically. So, you know, I could pick and choose one or the other and I'm not going to do that. I'm going to trust you to bring back a budget. One time funds that that meets that criteria 59. So. But also. We. Okay. So that but there's no total on here. I mean, I could add it up, but. I agree. We should have. 1.2. 1.7. You know, 3.2. So in another, you know, 5 million, 6 million the next year. I mean, that way we can see because what is our our number that we have is a 10 million. So is it 10 million then? We want to do 5 million here, 5 million here or 3 million here or 7 million here. So let's see what that number is. I think it was ten. Maybe it's something different and then kind of come up with the different projections. I mean, I don't have a problem with any of these individually, so I'm not going to, you know, pick and choose. But I'm trusting you to come back with with a list that balances the need to start funding this trust and that these one time efforts on long term efficiencies. Amber Ashcraft. When we come back on the sixth, I'd like the council to consider a policy for officially what we will do with one time many. So it's it's just there and easy to do. And I think I'm hearing some direction I would like to consider. I would like to suggest that we consider an allocation of 50% of any one time money that comes in goes to the trust. And and then we can have discussion of where the other 50% would go. But I think it's the kind of discipline that the kinds of numbers we saw require. In other comments. I've commented enough. All right, Vice Mayor. I think, you know, in a lot of ways, the the liabilities, what they are, they're our responsibility and their responsibility, their vested interests that that exists that we have to that we have to meet. We don't really have a choice in that nothing comes. We don't if we don't take care of that, we're going to have bigger problems. So I don't know that 50% is necessarily enough. I think sometimes we might need to dig dig a little deeper. I'm fine. I'm fine with setting a baseline. But I also think that when we when we're looking forward at what's coming, I think especially from the outset, in the beginning, being as, you know, prudent as possible, I think early on is going to be helpful. And I you know, I think. Ultimately it is a policy decision. But at the end of the day, when we're when we know that those are. Important things that we need to have set asides to have them just be left is kind of TBD. And I know it's a policy decision, but it you know it. It's going to be the largest expenditure, I think, based off of what I'm hearing from my colleagues and my own preference. So in terms of one time requests. I do think that the i.t. There is an efficiency need relative to the i.t expenditures. So I'm more inclined to look at something like that. And I think also with some of our. Some of our. You know, the building maintenance issues. I don't know if there's if there's a plan in terms of getting other funds to help us with those sorts of things. Or what's possible relative or what our plans are for the buildings in question. That's something that I would like more information on, because I think it's one thing if we're we're making an expenditure to put off additional costs later, later on. But if we don't have a plan for what's going to be, you know, what the usage is, I think we're. We're not best served by by making those sorts of expenditures without that information. I also think that, you know, with the fire, fire engine, ambulance, things like that, where there's expenditures that are being made relative to the maintenance we really need, what have we spent specifically on those vehicles that are that we're trying to replace? Like what? What is going to be the ongoing cost if it's not that? And so having those vehicle specific nets would be helpful and looking at them not just for this year but the year prior as well. Right. Since it's a two year budget, what have we spent in the last two years relative to the vehicles that we're trying to replace in terms of the the vehicle, the vehicles for the other usages? I think, you know, pool vehicles are great. I think looking at the, you know, wherever we can reduce other expenditures, if we can look at electric so that we're not using so we can reduce other expenses, I think that'd be great. But I'm I'm also a. Little bit concerned about the upkeep of those vehicles and if the upkeep of those vehicles is going to be more expensive and that sort of thing. And what sorts of, you know, what are we looking at relative to that? If there's if there's costs that could. Pop up that we're not budgeting. For. So I think if we can have that information along with the totals and and have the breakdown relative. To the general fund. Everything that's outside of the general fund, if we've got the money there, I don't really have a problem with those expenditures. Member Ashcroft. And just for clarification on the building repairs, and this was before the vice mayor's time on the council, public works actually did a very extensive survey of all of our city owned buildings, and they did essentially a triage list. There's photos and it was it was pretty alarming. So I think they have, in essence, their marching orders about where in what order they're doing those repairs. Right. And I and I understand that. And I and I am aware of that. I think my question is really, you know, what is our plan? I think we also want to know because we're going to have questions, why are you fixing up these buildings? Do we have a plan for what their usage is? And I think if we can at least spend a little time talking about. That so that it's not just. Which I mean, I get the triage portion, but I think the. Inevitable second question is. You're working on Carnegie. What are what are our plans for Carnegie? So if we have plans and if there's you know, if we're going to be renting it out or using it for different functions, could we use. Those funds. Potentially to offset general funds. Or expenditures, or are those going to cover other things relative to the building moving forward that need to happen? And so may. I? Yeah. Thank you. So when I when I see the, the, the Oh. Club on the list and it's a roof I think was the, was the item. And I understand you need to replace new roofs. The building is really in such deplorable state. That condition that. It just. I mean. Maybe that's what we just need to do to be able to keep using it, because I know it does bring in some revenue, but it's I mean, the restrooms, the kitchen and many of the public spaces, it's. It's deplorable. So I but again, we'll just, you know, keep that on the radar. And separate from this budget, we can bring just the item of buildings back to council to talk about a long term plan and and include the auto club and Carnegie and any other buildings on the list. And we can we can certainly maybe have placeholders for these these particular capital expenditures without deciding to actually spend the money until we have a clear sense of. Right. And and why. And and that's the idea behind a CFP, is it it does allocate or estimate amounts for projects and does a plan for when we think it will be done. But if it's a capital project, construction project, it comes to council for approval as well. And if there's a design, it would go through the process to any process. So, yes, you'll see that, too. Okay. Thank you. And we're going to. Have one quick clarification. Thank you, Madam Mayor. So on this idea that we would. Do 50% of one time money to this trust. I mean, how are we defining one time money? Because, for example, transfer tax is technically one time money, but we build that into our budget. At some level, right? I think we're defining as surplus surplus 25%. The previous year. Okay. So I just want to be clear that we and. Surplus is funds that we receive over 25% reserve. Okay. I'm good with that. Okay. Um, so I wanted to thank you everyone for being here. Council staff. I don't think there's any members of the public hanging out with us. That's quite a few nights in a row. Okay. When I look at this, I agree with the comments in regards to. Um. Okay. Analyzing the automobile issues. What's the analysis? Are we spending more maintaining? You know, there's got to be some ways that you actually figure out when is the right time to buy versus just keep maintaining my mileage. I'd like to see on any of the vehicles, not just the years. I do want to make sure we're just using best use of our vehicles. Um, in regards to the, my priorities when I look at this thing, the building maintenance, the roof. So I think that million dollars, I think if we're going to have the buildings, we're going to have to fix the roofs. So if if we don't want to I mean, I'm happy to sit down. We can do the analysis. But if we're keeping those buildings, we need the roofs. So the the homeless assistance the net dollar amount on this because this is actually it doesn't take into consideration the grant that the police got for. So I want to see net dollars. It's 61,000 is the net. Right. So on the summary here that I had this for, I'm not going to page 60 has the 125 there. 125 but in the note 61,000. On the pitch. I'm looking at the homeless. I think that's good. OC The purchase of the Union Pacific Remnant parcels, I'd actually like information on that. I think that that is a long term investment for our community that we are trying, trying to figure out how to use bicycle and better access. So for me that is could very well be a worthy way to spend money in regards to the long term of our community, the historic buildings. I agree with vice mayor in regards to, um, you know, what are we doing with these buildings as much as we might like them, there's a lot of we have a lot of older buildings. We can't maintain them all. Not with this budget is a priority unless we have a plan for them. The $83 million, I think that's just we don't have that kind of money or have to figure out a plan. Um. The camera readers. I think that's very important. I think that that's. Good use of modern technology and we have problems. And if you can do with technology, let's figure out a way to do that. So that and that's just turning 50,000 each year. That's much more, you know, to me, that's a good use of the money. Office reconfiguration city manager. I don't even know what that is. That's another hundred thousand dollars if it's connected to another city man. Assistant City Manager I'm probably not interested. But oh, and then in regards to the pension liability, setting aside money for that. That's not my top priority because I don't think we have a long term plan if we're not ready to get serious and have a serious discussion about how we actually accumulate those costs. I don't think it's the best use of using one time money for the city, and I would prefer using it for roofs and other things. And when we're ready to sit down and have a serious discussion about how this stuff gets accumulated, then start investing the people's money. Otherwise, all we're doing is we're going on. We are continuing a course that cannot be sustained and is not sustainable. So for me, not a priority until we have that serious conversation. All right. That being said, everyone, have a good evening. And this meeting is adjourned 5 minutes after ten.