[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Wow. [Music] [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. N. [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Number [Music] [Music] [Music] n hey. [Music] Hey [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Wonder. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] I'd rather try and accomplish something great and failed than try to accomplish nothing and succeed. [Music] [Music] [Music] I'd rather try and accomplish something great and fail than try to accomplish nothing. I'll back all night. [Music] You must try and accomplish something great. Then try to accomplish something and fully succeed. I'll stand here all night and fully succeed. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Hey. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Hey. Hey. Hey. [Music] [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Hey, Heat. [Music] [Music] [Music] Hey, hey, Heat. [Music] Hey Heat. [Music] Hey, [Music] hey hey. [Music] Hey. [Music] Hey. Hey. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] Hey, [Music] hey hey. [Music] [Music] Welcome to the Bakersfield City Council meeting. This television broadcast is brought to you by the local cable companies, the county of Kerna, and the city of Bakersfield. You can watch the rebroadcast of this meeting Saturday at 700 p.m., Sunday at 10:00 a.m., and the following Wednesday at 7 p.m. You can download the agenda for this meeting at www.bakersfield city. us. Preciding over this evening's meeting, the honorable Mayor Karen K. Go. Good evening. It's my pleasure to call to order the 5:15 regular city council meeting of June 25th, 2025. Madame clerk, please call the role. Mayor Go here. Vice Mayor Core here. Council member Arius here. Council member Gonzalez here. Council member Weir here. Council member Smith, I'm here. Council member Kman here. Council member Basher here. Thank you. Thank you all for being here and participating in the civic process. I think we have some students from Bakersville College. and wave at us. Oh, a number. Welcome, Renegades. It's always good to have you here. We have the pleasure tonight of having Pastor Antonio Alfred, who's the pastor of St. John Missionary Baptist Church, to offer the invocation. St. John's, we just thank you uh more than 80 years serving our community and I know that you continue to emphasize grow, love, outreach, and win in your GLOW program, offering supportive services and wonderful fellowship. and thank you for your counseling services also that you provide. Following the invocation, Simmer Singh, who's going to be a junior at Stockdale High, will lead us in the pledge. Simmer is u a finalist in the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair. Now listen to the topic. leveraging natural language processing techniques and birectional encoder representations from transformers for detecting bias and toxicity in journalism. Get it? Uh congratulations on that. She's the founder and CEO of Girls Got STEM that brings awareness about uh gender issues in STEM field. She's a summer student researcher for bio for engineering biomemed systems at Brown University. She's the lead organizer at Blue Zones cooking and a 4.0 GPA honor student. She also is in varsity golf. And so we are just delighted to have such strength of students and representation in our community. Would you all please stand? Pastor, let us bow. Father, we thank you for allowing us to have this time in these chambers. We invoke your presence now as the mayor, city council, and all these that have gathered here go through the agenda. May it be done decently and orderly. May you be pleased. May you lead God and direct us. We ask your blessings over this meeting and the entire city of Bakersfield. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. Amen. Simmer. Salute. Pledge. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Simmer, do you want to introduce your family? You're welcome to do so. You all may be seated. So, today I'm here with my family. Um, Dr. Dang and my mother Dr. Chhattada and my younger sister Mayor. Welcome and congratulations. We are very proud of you. Here are a few guidelines to help our meeting run smoothly. We request that you turn off your phones. Please be courteous in the use of cameras and videos for safety reasons and as a courtesy to others. No signs are allowed in the council chamber or in the lobby. Applause is allowed during the presentations portion of the meeting, but not during other portions of the meeting. Everyone in attendance is expected to adhere to the rules of decorum established by resolution of the city council. Failure to abide by the city's rules of decorum, including any disruptive behavior that interferes with our ability to have an orderly and efficient meeting prevents the city council from conducting the business of the city. Consider this a first warning to everyone in attendance that conduct that disrupts this meeting may result in expulsion and or the chambers being cleared. Behavior that disrupts a meeting includes repetitive statements, shouting, hate speech, interrupting staff or presenters during the meeting and speaking out of turn outbursts from the audience. Madame clerk, next item, please. Presentations. Item 4 A. Proclamation to Keith Powell, recreation supervisor. Keith Howell, park superintendent, and Darren Budac, director of recreation and parks department for the city of Bakersfield, declaring July 2025 as National Recreation and Parks Month in Bakersfield. Coming up here, recreation and parks team. Quality parks and recreation are cited as one of the top three reasons that businesses relocate right here in our community. And imagine no safe spaces for your families or for our youth to connect with nature. Our wonderful recreation and parks department provides spaces for all those wonderful gatherings. 65 public parks, four public pools, 10 spray parks, two sports complexes, two skate parks, multiple pickle ball and volleyball courts, and one large amphitheater. We are just so glad to be able to have them here from our team here today. Oh, there you are. Uh our director, and it's my honor to issue this proclamation. Whereas recreation programs and parks are essential to communities across America, including the city of Bakersfield. And whereas parks and recreation are fundamental in establishing and maintaining our community's quality of life while contributing to the economic and environmental well-being of the community. And whereas recreation is invaluable to residents in providing positive alternatives for children and youth, especially during non-school hours. and where's parks and green spaces remove pollution from the air, lower city temperatures, and aid in capturing and storing water. Now, therefore, I Karen KGO, mayor of the city of Bakersville, do hereby proclaim July 2025 as recreation and parks month in our city and urge all residents to enjoy the social, physical, mental, and environmental benefits derived from our city's parks, streetscapes, and programs. It's my honor to be able to present this to Darren Budak who is our director and if you'd like to introduce your team and offer some remarks. Yeah, Darren. So, I'll let Keith start. This is Keith Pal. He is our recreation supervisor down at MFA. Thank you, Darren. Uh first I want to say thank you for the uh proclamation and we appreciate all the support from the city uh the city council and all the community and all the things that you guys do to make our parks fun, safe, and happy. Thank you. And then secondly, we have Keith How as it says it's parks and recreation. So I wanted to make sure both sides of the house are represented. So Keith How. So, first thing I want to just say is I am so honored to work for the best department with City of Belleville. So, and also just let you know that all the men and women that work for our department that we're not able to do all what we can and get things accomplished so the citizens of the city of Belleville could experience the, you know, the beauty of life and with all their families. So, I just want to give a shout out to them and just also with the council just thank you. We've made a lot of progress the past couple years. Yeah. So on behalf of the entire department, it's been an exciting couple of years with PSVs and we've done a lot with the council and stuff. We're looking forward for the next couple of years. Um July in particular is a big month for us. It's a it's a very important month in our department because it's our most active time of the year as as you can see on the things that we're doing from bill band concerts to movies in the parks to the spray parks. It's it's go go go for us. And so it's a very special time and being able to get up here and bring recognition to parks and recreation. Um again, thank you to mayor and city council. [Applause] Madam clerk, next item, please. Public statements. Thank you. In keeping with council's resolution, public statements are received at different times depending on the item, I will call on the city clerk to call for public statements. If you wish to make a public statement, please fill out a public speaker card and place it in the tray next to the speaker's podium. We ask that you mark whether you're here to speak on an item listed on today's agenda or in a matter not on the agenda. Speakers who do not identify a specific agenda item will be presumed speakers for the non-aggenda public statements. If you're here to speak on an item not listed on the meeting agenda, you'll be called first to speak. Statements are given a two-minute time limit per speaker, 20 minutes total for all non-aggenda item public statements. If you're here to speak on an item listed on the agenda, I'll call for you at the appropriate time. If public statements become disruptive and I have to clear the chambers to regain order of the meeting, you'll be called in one at a time to provide your public statement when your item is called. Madam clerk, do we have any public speakers? Oh, I skipped a whole portion. No, I didn't. Uh, Madam Clerk, do we have any Sorry, public speakers regarding items not listed on the agenda. Mayor Go, we have received 15 speaker cards for items not on the agenda. Not on the agenda. We have a lot of speakers. So, I am going to just encourage you to be succinct and the clerk will call you up and just make sure that you adjust your microphone uh to your speaking level. Madam clerk, the first speaker is Lissa Mitchell Reed. Good evening. My name is Lissa Mitchell Reid and I'm the founder and CEO of In the Black Business Services. Thanks to city funding and support, I've been able to grow my business from a onewoman operation into a thriving firm that now serves small businesses and real estate investors across the county. I mean across the country. That funding helped me invest in team members, access to training, and move towards purchasing my very first commercial building right here in downtown Bakersfield. But beyond the dollars, the mentorship and technical assistance I've received through city supported programs have been critical. It's one thing to have a vision, but having the guidance and resources to bring that vision to life takes it to a whole another level. I now pay it forward by working with dozens of entrepreneurs in this city, many of whom are just getting started and navigating their way out of generational poverty. I'm able to educate these entrepreneurs and help them understand their finances, staying compliant in building sustainable businesses because of the assistance that I've had through the city. Continued support through grants, mentorship, and education doesn't just help businesses. It changes lives and communities. Please keep investing in us. We're not just building businesses, we're building Bakersfield's future. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Mitchell Reed. Uh just a reminder to our audience, I know you're enthusiastic, but we don't allow uh applause during this portion of the meeting, but thank you. Uh, next speaker, please. Savannah Powell Fry. Welcome. Please introduce yourself. Good evening, Mayor Go, my council member, Larry Coleman, and all of his city council and staff. My name is Savannah Fry. I am 10 years old and I attend Old River Elementary School. I am the owner of Lollipop, a brand that inspires girls ages 3 to 12 to use their imagination and believe in the world of possibilities. I started my business in 2019 and with funding from the city of Bakersfield and the BC Launchpad and investments from the community members like Michael Bowers, Morgan Clayton and Heidi Foresight, I have been able to ship over 200 birthday boxes to little girls throughout the United States. We would have been we would have sent boxes to Canada, but the custom fees were too high. My business received funding under the city of Bakersville grant program for small businesses through the launchpad and because of the grant I was able to publish a book with my birthday parents and also attend the Las Vegas Licensing Expo as in vendor. This expo is the largest expo for the licensing industry. Because of my attendance there, I was able to find a manufacturer for my products and able to meet Jana Markle, senior vice president of Grand Central. She has connected me to Claire's retail store for product placement. Without the support of the city of Bakersfield, this connection would have never been possible. As a kid business, I hope that the city council will continue to support small businesses like mine so that we can serve our community and grow and provide more jobs for people here in Bakersville. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Miss Pow Fry. And congratulations on your business. Next speaker, please Powell. Welcome. Please introduce yourself. Thank you. Good evening, Mayor Go, council members and city staff. My name is Tama Powell, and I'd like to begin by thanking you for your continued support of small businesses. As a former president of the Kern County Black Chamber of Commerce, a professional expert with the Bakersville College Launchpad with T. Isconin and a small business owner myself, I've seen firsthand how the right funding and mentorship can completely shift a business's financial position and growth. Small businesses are an economic backbone, and when we succeed, the city sees the return through jobs, taxes, and vibrant neighborhoods. But the reality for many of startup businesses and small businesses right now is this. We're covering payroll, basic operational costs, and attempting to fuel growth using highinterest credit cards and high interest loans. We're making it work, but it's not sustainable and it's not smart business. City funding has provided and would continue to provide breathing room for these businesses so they can not only reduce debt, but smartly reinvest in growth and actually build something scalable. It could be funding toward the purchase of needed equipment that would increase operational efficiency efficiencies or even funding towards the down payment on the purchase of a new commercial space for business expansion. These small businesses have the potential to be employers, taxpayers, and significant contributors to our local economy. But without access to capital, mentorship, and technical assistance, um possibly in the form of creating a b a basic business plan with a well- thoughtout financial projections, many of them are stuck in survival mode. So, I just want to end again thanking you for your continued support and ask that you consider your impact on small businesses when you adopt the budget. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Pal. Next speaker, please. Natasha Johnson. Welcome. Please introduce yourself. Um, thank you, honorable Mayor Go and city council members. Good evening. My name is Natisha Johnson and I proudly serve as the executive director of entrepreneurship and workforce development for Bakersville College Launchpad. Since 2019, Launchpad has been committed to creating a connected ecosystem of resources and support to help local entrepreneurs start, grow, and sustain their businesses. In 2023, the Launchpad implemented the city of Bakersfield entrepreneurship grant program in response to the economic impact of CO 19. This program has provided critical technical assistance and funding opportunities to small businesses at every stage of their journey. In 2024, we were awarded additional funding to continue this great work. Since then, we have proudly served over 1,200 small businesses, awarded over 160 businesses, supported over 400 startups with less than two years in operation, and contributed to the creation of more than 350 quality jobs. In total, we have distributed over $1.3 million in grants directly reinvesting into our local economy. Today, I stand before you alongside many small business owners here in attendance to urge you to continue to support this vital work. This evening, you will hear from local small businesses who have greatly benefit from your benefited from your support. We are incredibly grateful for to council member Andre Gonzalez, city manager Christian Kle, Jenny Byer, Cecilia Grego, and the city economics development team for their commitment in supporting small businesses. Supporting small businesses in Bakersville isn't just about economics. It's about preserving the heart and the soul of our city. These entrepreneurs create jobs, drive innovation, and reflect the unique character of our neighborhoods. when we support them, we invest in a stronger and a more resilient Bakersfield for everyone. Thank you for your support and your time. I do have some um data here for you. Thank you, Miss Johnson. Madam Clerk, next speaker, please. Zach Griffin. Welcome. Please introduce yourself. Good evening, Council Member Go. Excuse me, Mayor Go and council members, staff, constituents. I am Zachary Griffin. I am here representing Kern's cycling coalition as well as I by Kern and Kern Active Transportation. I'm a local special education teacher and um it's been my summer vacation, so I apologize. Last month, there was a uh newspaper article in regards to a grand jury report that was issued from our grand jury, and it was in regards to whether or not we're addressing um using our bike lanes and our active transportation uh infrastructure correctly. What I noted about the particular plan was, and maybe I'm just kind of messed up, my sister happens to be a doctor of marine biology, and she has about six papers out that have to be peer-reviewed before they make it to publication. And I was kind of amazed at the grand jury report because it seemed to be lacking in a lot of connectivity. Uh they pointed out reductions in fatalities, therefore driving uh the question of why I put money down for infrastructure. I think what they negated is that if we isolate just the cyclist, yeah, we've had a reduction of cycling behaviors or incidents or fatalities. However, when you put a bike lane in and extend a bump out for a crosswalk, you're not just affecting a cyclist. You're affecting active transportation users such as walkers. And many of us know on this board that pedestrian fatalities have been in the nature of 5055 per year. And I'm I know I got a limited amount of time here. Um but you know, just getting at a cost of what a human life is is about $7.5 million according to FEMA. And Kern County really suffers from a a lethargic issue. We have about $108 million per year that we spend on obesity and obesity related deaths. So getting our constituents out of their cars, moving and getting happier and healthier because we know that happier, healthier people are more productive and they start wonderful businesses like we just got to hear. So with that, I want to thank the staff. I want to thank this board for continuing to progress active transportation in Kern County. Thank you guys. Thank you, Mr. Griffin. Next speaker, please. Amato Versteggy, welcome. Please introduce yourself. Hello everyone. Good evening. My name is Amadoi. Um, and I'm here to let you guys know how uh the city funding has helped uh my business growth. Uh, city funding has allowed me to purchase necessary equipment to support my business quick growth. Without the city support, I wouldn't have to incur in credit card debt, which is something as a small business owner I wanted to avoid. Uh the continued support through programs like mentorships, grants, and technical assistant is essential. It is essential because hundreds of businesses start every year. But unfortunately, not everyone survive. With the city's continued support and mentorship to small businesses, you are helping you're helping increase the success rate for local businesses which helps our our local economy. Thank you so much. Good night. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Derek Erin. Thank you all for moving this along. I know we have a lot of speakers who have requested to speak tonight. So, thank you for being so efficient in your comments. Welcome. Please introduce yourself. Can you raise the mic, too, please? Hi, good evening. My name is Derek Aaron. I'm the owner of Foxdale Lounge. I just want to say thank you guys for your continued support in the grants that you guys do offer for downtown businesses and it has showed large growth over the past 5 years and I hope to see that continue as the years go. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Aaron. Next speaker, please. Tracy and Nicholas Spencer. Tracy and Nicholas Spencer. Thank you. Uh, good afternoon, council members. My name is Tracy Spencer and this is my son, Nicholas Spencer. I'm here on behalf of Parkwood Apartments, St. Frank St. Clair. Um, I've spoken to you before the last time I was here. It's regarding the party hall that is across the street from my apartment complex. Um, basically they have a party hall over there. I don't think that they are supposed to have the party hall. Um, they party way into the night between 12 and 2:00 a.m. in the morning. Um, I've sent the police over there. Uh they do not seem to be able to provide a cabaret license to the police when they do go over there. Um the owner is not doing anything to provide any kind of license to the police. Um he's just being very unruly putting uh things on my Google uh reviews. Um I'm putting together a petition to close his business down, try to do something. uh you gave code enforcement uh some information to get a hold of me. Frank Torres, I heard from him one time and nothing else after that. Um the people at Parkwood, they do have a right a fair housing act right um to the enjoyment of their homes and get rest themselves. Um, and it's not fair to them to have to do this, you know, go through this, you know, certainly every day and then on the weekends to be bashed with party mishaps. Uh, this last weekend he had a party of over 100 motorcycles and it took the Bakersville police, you know, six to eight cars to have to shut them down. Um, and it was all in the parking lot. Loud music. It was very unruly. um just going in and out of the parking lot is just unfair to everybody and I I can't get any help here. So, I'm asking if somebody could help me out with this. Thank you, Miss Spencer. City Manager Kle, would we be able to have staff follow up? Okay. Yeah. Thank you, Mary. I'll take the opportunity just to share. This issue was brought to our attention about a month ago and we've done a number of um sets of research about what has been the history at this site and location. We've initiated code enforcement and and also police department review. Um these processes do take a little bit of time to fully hold accountable folks who may not be um acting under the conditions that have been established for them. But what we can do as staff is provide a followup of what we've been doing in the last few weeks to be responsive to this request and it is in the works. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Kle. Thank you, Miss Spencer and Mr. Spencer. Okay. Can I provide this to you? Sure. You can just leave it right there and we'll uh make sure that he gets it. Thank you. And you'll have somebody follow up with me, ma'am. Yeah. Um city manager's office will. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. And we have more speakers than we have time for. So I'm just going to take um the speakers that have already submitted their requests. Next speaker, please. Maria Polite. Before you start, I just want to make sure that those of you who have already submitted speaker cards but didn't write an item, if you're here to comment on the budget, that item will be addressed and we'll take public speakers during that portion of the meeting, which is later in the meeting. So, if you're specifically talking about the budget, uh I think a couple of you there are going to talk about the budget. We'll move you to that part of the meeting. Uh welcome. Well, thank you. Please introduce yourself. My name is Maria Polite and I'm here uh to talk about the issue of trees. I have here um an a dialogue that was um written after we had a chance to speak with the uh Kentucky director of the article I presented to you on February 25th, I think it was. And so I have these and for staff, first of all, I just wanted to remind you that I had been here earlier and um passed out an article from the Nature Conservancy magazine, issue one of 2025. Since then, I've been lucky enough to participate in the Zoom uh which is addressed in this article that uh my friend Eddie was able to put together. I'm here as a person who grew up in South Florida where trees grew everywhere you turned around and you climbed trees and read magazines and just grew up that way. But how lucky I am to live in East Bakersfield, which is blessed with so many trees. I was driving down California Avenue this past week and on the south side of California, this is past Bakersfield High, were homes with trees, but on the right side was a whole long stretch of empty land that could hold trees. And in the article that you received, what and I thought, well, why don't we plant trees there? It's next to the railroad line. maybe they could help and maybe they would like the the publicity from for making the community greener, but really importantly just as well is healthier. And what I want to remind you is that they have found that inflammation in us creates a fertile ground for heart attacks and strokes. And one of the things that they learned in Louisville in this five-year study was that planting trees reduces inflammation in the people there. And so your time is up. Would you bring your comments to a close? You just have another sentence or two. If you could as a legacy for all of us, help us get more trees. I know you haven't stopped. I hear you're working on it and you're counting trees, but plant more trees. I really we need it. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Next speaker, please an Lau welcome. Yeah. So, good afternoon everyone. So, my name is Antela. I'm a professor at CSUB in the department of biology and I'm also here to talk about trees and I brought some copies. So Bakersfield has developed a tree plan and I'm happy to declare that the tree advisory group that Darren Budok and his team is here today is working really well. So we had three meetings and I have to say I enjoy working with Darren and his team and all the other community members that have uh started working on a tree plan discuss certain issues. We want to have a tree policy that expands upon the trees that the city owns. So we want to educate the public because many people have in their gardens majestic trees and they might not take care of them properly. So there's a lot of benefit with having trees with Mr. Griffin from special ed mentioned it that uh being in nature is healthy. And I also have what I distributed here scientific evidence. There are several review papers published in um peer-reviewed journals of credibility that prove beyond doubt that a green city promotes mental health and also physical health. So if the city wants to apply for grants to support these efforts with tree planting and everything, these revenues would be good to include in grant applications. Um and then I have this just to show you. This is from the um climate report that Noah just released last year. Um the days in red, the the bars in red are the days that exceed 100 degrees over time. So you see in 2024 last year we had and I have the number somewhere 61 days that were above 100 uh degrees which is prognosed to increase in the future. So we have to do something. So working with the trees is one thing that is going well but other things have to do have to be done to curb the urban heat island effect. Thank you M. Next speaker please. Sharon Briel. Welcome. Please introduce yourself. Hi, I'm Sharon Briel and I'm a 24 year resident of Ward 5 and a longtime advocate for urban tree preservation. I'm here today to express my deep concerns about the loss of three liquid amber and two Valley oak trees located on Scarlet Oak Boulevard. And this is only a small sample of the problem that's systemic in Bakersfield. These trees were each approximately 40 years old and died due to overpriming and inadequate drought protection. These trees were not just ornamental. They were a living infrastructure providing critical services. How do we quantify the loss of these trees? It's estimated that they were worth 60 to $100,000 in loss value using a tree appraisal uh standards. They may have provided over a,000 pounds of CO2 re removed annually. They provided shade um that lowers uh housing air conditioning costs. and of course the habitat for the animals. My concern is that the street is hotter, drier, dustier, and noisier. People like me who are over 70 and little children are more vulnerable to heat related um risks. Um and walking is very popular along this street and our property values go down because frankly it's just not very pretty to look at a bunch of dead trees. Um, I'd really like to see these trees replaced, but you can't replace 40 years. Um, I'm glad to say that our um, parks department is starting a process of doing an an inventory of our trees, which is critical to making sure that we're growing and not losing trees. And this recovery process needs to involve all the citizens, especially those areas that have less trees. Letting 40-year-old trees die is not good stewardship. It's shortsighted. I urge you to act now. Not just a referral to staff with clear public facing forest reinfrit. Sorry. Thank you, Mer. Byebye. Thank you for your comments, madam clerk. Next speaker, please. And we have a couple. Eddie Lane, welcome. Please introduce yourself. I'm Eddie Lane. I'm with the Sierra Club. I've been here longer than four of you have been alive. Um I'm going to pass this one out for primarily for councelor Corman who brought up the issue of number of trees and parks. And uh I'll just say we have I think it was about 16 months ago that uh we brought before the council some of the uh inappropriate tree removal uh down at Truxton Lakes and Council Member Smith was with us down there. I am pleased to and you probably already know but uh in the last few months uh we've had um 200 trees planted around Truxton Lakes and that's real progress. So, it's important we continue to and we are we're working really quite closely with with uh Mr. Budac, I usually call him Darren, and his staff, but um it's really important we keep the momentum going. You know, we've got a start, but we've got a long ways to go. Maybe we're on the 10 yard line. I don't know, but we've got a we got a good start. Anyway, uh Councilman Corman, keep this. This is an example from Louisville. We I don't think we want to have um a park that doesn't allow volleyball and soccer in in Bakersfield, but even even in even the parks are wellmaintained need more trees. Thank you for this opportunity. Thank you, Mr. Lane. We have run out of time, but I'm going to give time for the three speakers who have turned in their cards already, and I'll just ask you to be efficient in your speaking. Uh, next speaker, please, Karen Erso. [Music] Welcome. Please introduce yourself. Thank you, Mayor Go, city council, and city staff. I'm Karen Erso. I'm a registered nurse and I've lived in Bakersfield for almost 25 years. I've worked in public health and in community health nursing. I'm also going to speak about trees, but in relation to the unborn child and the pregnant mother. I've always known that pregnancy increases the risk of heat stress. But what I didn't know until recently when I listened to a nursing webinar is that it impacts the unborn child. I always thought that baby is insulated um in the womb and it is. But when our bodies overheat, blood is shunted from the core to the surface to cool the body. Thus, we flush and have some sweating. And when that happens, oxygen is taken away from the blood flow to the placenta. And that baby is oxygen deprived. And studies have shown they're at risk of preterm birth, of small birth weight, and even of still birth. for um every day that a pregnant person is exposed to extreme heat, the rate of hospitalization increases by 5% in the second trimester and 3% in the third trimester. So this reminds me of a woman who was living in Southeast Bakersfield and I did a home visit to her. She had a high-risisk pregnancy and she had a child in kindergarten and one in third grade. She had to walk to school with them four times a day round trip. I told her that's eight miles. That's a long way for you to walk. Because she lived 0.9 miles from the school, no busing. And she said it's fine the walking, but the problem is there is no shade between my house and the school and I get overheated. I sweat. I get dizzy. I can't drink water. And I fear I won't be getting home safely with my children. And she was right. She could have had heat stroke and left three children without their mother. So I wonder what we can do to improve this situation. Well, we know planting fast growing shade trees can provide shade for people who are living in areas where there is not enough shade along the streets that they walk. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. So next speaker, please. Leticia Dvilla, welcome. Please introduce yourself. Good evening, mayor and council members. My name is Lisa Dabula and I'm co-owner of Central Valley Legal Document Assistance here in Bakersfield. Uh, small businesses make up over 99% of Kern County's economy. Um, we're the ones who keep the city running and we're also the ones most impacted when funding is taken away. Um, the grant we received helped, but it wasn't just the money, it was the mentorship. Um, we're here not just to support our families, but to support others. We reinvest. We create jobs. We help people access services they couldn't otherwise afford. We are trying to do right by this community. Please don't just check a box and walk away. Be be accountable. Don't let this be a oneanddone effort. We deserve consistent long-term support, not just handouts, but handson help that builds something real. Cutting this funding cuts into everything small business stands for. And it sends a message that the people trying to build a better life don't matter. We're asking you, stand with us. Help us grow. Help us stay. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. My name is Glenda Braun. Good evening, mayor and council members. My name is Glenda Braun and I'm a legal document assistant. Uh Latisia and I have a business together uh here in downtown. Um we are a woman-owned business serving families throughout Bakersfield. We represent 99 We represent the 99% small businesses that form the backbone in Kern County's economy. We are not just a business owners. We are neighbors, employers, and contributors to the community's success. Thanks to the city's economic development programs, we were able to take important classes at the local college at no cost. Classes I would have not had access to or the time otherwise. These opportunities equipped me with the skills and knowledge that helped us expand bilingual services and hire more local businesses to support our growth. This kind of support goes beyond funding. It's essential education and mentorship that turns potential into progress. Cutting these funds just isn't a budget decision. It's a setback for small business owners like me who are working very hard every day to serve this community and create local jobs. One-time grants don't build lasting success. We need sustained investment and ongoing programs that empower us to keep going and giving back. We've proven the impact these resources can have. Now, we ask for your continued partnership and commitment to the small businesses that make this city thrive. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Baron. Thank you, Miss Davila. And to all of you small business owners, thank you so much. You are the ones who keep our economy going and we appreciate your service and your investment in our community. Vice Mayor, thank you, Mayor. Um, I wanted to thank everyone that came to speak about the progress being made with uh the the Rexen Park Department and our tree advisory committee. Um, as well as our her urban heat island effect uh committee. I it it's true that when um the referral and recommendation was made that came out of your um advocacy that it was not only the trees we work on, but how do we reduce the temperature overall in the city? And we look at cities that do such a great example of this uh from the cities that experience extreme heat to the cities that experience extreme cold. But since we're in the summer and it's pretty warm outside, I think this topic takes uh some immediate precedence. Um and there are some realistic things that one, planting a tree can reduce the temperature right under that tree up to 15 degrees in any neighborhood. Um Silver Spring, Maryland. You know, there's so many examples. you've you've listed Louisville. Cities have done this well and I know that this committee uh will have a plan to to look at that for our city of Bakersfield so that we can enjoy the outside um year round. So, I just wanted to thank you all for coming back today to remind us that good work is happening. But more work is uh is on the way as we reduce the heat island effect in um in Bakersfield. Council member Basher Tosh and I were just talking about how sometimes it feels like the heat coming down is just as hot as the heat rising from the sidewalk. That's exactly the heat island effect. So, um, thank you for your work. Uh, we appreciate it and thank you for sharing with the residents of Baker the progress being made. Thank you, Vice Mayor. We'll now move to the public statements listed on the agenda. If you're here to speak on items listed under consent calendar item seven, your time to speak is now. Each speaker will be given a two-minute time limit and each agenda item is list limited to 20 minutes total. The consent calendar as a whole constitutes one agenda item. If you're here to speak on deferred business item 11A, now is not the time to speak. That's regarding the budget. You'll be given an opportunity to speak when that item is called later in the meeting. Madame Clerk, do we have any public speakers regarding items listed under consent calendar item seven? Margo, we have received two speaker cards for items on the agenda. Thank you. And would you go ahead and call those speakers, please? The first speaker is Zach Griffin, followed by Troy High Totower. And before you start, Mr. Griffin, we'll just give our guests a time to uh to leave the chambers. Yes, ma'am. We want to make sure we can hear you. I'm pretty loud. Welcome. Thank you again. Thank you, Mayor Go, council members, staff, constituents. Uh, so I was actually wanting to I you're I'm always amazed at how many thousands of papers are in your documents. Uh, and so you guys obviously do a lot of work just getting ready for these meetings. As I was going through, I had noticed uh 7G7, uh, which was a I happened to ride 7G7, which was a class one bike path. It's in uh, uh, Ken Wear's uh, supervis excuse me, council member Wear's ward. And so I was I actually am in in con I'm in congruence with or I I would recommend the purchase of set gate. What I was struggling with is that the wording from the uh assessment I believe in the assessment report. Is that correct, Mr. Meyer? That there's an assessment report. So, it states in here and we're using funding that says we are connecting from using the dump road from Fairfax to Paladino. That is not correct. It is not contiguous. There is a gap that has disappeared as a result of us allowing people to illegally ride motorcycles on the top of Ward 3's area that is above the Hart Park area of which I've come before this board for many years to discuss. This has been an ongoing issue since CO began. Uh I've been riding my bike out there since 1979 and I have to say that you know on a larger issue it's more cumbersome getting there. However, I love what you guys have done on the dump road, but as you crest over the dump road and you proceed towards Paladino, it is gone. It is gutted. So, the idea I wrote it on my road bike. I'm a professional mountain biker. You know, I made it through. But to ask an eight or an 80-year-old to make that and to also say that we have done it, it could be legally binding. So, that said, I would encourage maybe us to relook at the area, see what we can do to get that on the dock so that somebody doesn't say, "Hey, you're not you said you're using this to connect an area that is not connected." and I would hate to see us get stepped back for trying to do the right thing. Anyway, thank you very much. If there's any questions, feel free to reach out. Thank you, Mr. Griffin. Next speaker, please. Troy High Tower. Welcome. Please introduce yourself. Um, good evening, mayor, council members, staff. My name is Troy Hightowwer. I'm a local economic community development consultant here in town and I'd like to make comments on consent agenda item 7G8 implementation of the transport transformative climate communities funding. As some of you may know, this is a project I've been involved with in support for a number of years. Uh both council member Aras and Gonzalez have been good champions for this project. So my my question and the comment I raised is on the administr the staff report for this item has a table that lists the projects expected to be appropriated from the state. So we're at the point of implementing the project and I think it's important that it's clear what we get from the state and what it's used for. However, the table lists not all of the projects. This project has about 10 or 12 projects, but the appropriation is in two parts. 17 million, which there's a table that lists the projects that's for and the amounts, but then there's another 3.6 million that has no such description of what it's used for or what projects. So my question is or recommendation is for staff to present a more detailed list that shows what's being authorized from the draw down from the state, what projects they are and the budget amounts because this is a big project from the time of the award back in December 2023. The projects have changed, the budgets have changed, which is understandable, but I think it should be clear what it is now. We're actually as we're drawing down the funds from the state. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. High Totower. I've received a form from Council Member Smith uh asking to recuse himself. Council member Smith, would you make your announcement on that recusal, please? Yes, I will. Yes, I will abstain from item 7D on the consent agenda. I will vote on everything else on the consent agenda. U part of my family is part of the project. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Smith. Uh any other colleagues? I haven't received any requests for recusal or for items to be pulled. Uh Council Member Arius. Thank you, Mayor. I do not wish to pull any items, but if I could just ask that staff please respond to uh Mr. High Tower's question um by way of email or in writing so that we can get a good recap of what the progress is on TCC. It's certainly been a number of months since I've been engaged. Um so I think it'd be great to uh get a quick update on that progress. Yeah, thank you, Council Member Ry, Mayor and Council. We're happy to do that. Um the amount that was listed in the administrative report is all the amounts that are within the economic and community development department. Those $3.6 million referenced our public works projects which are in the original agreement, but we can clarify that and provide a status update. Thank you. If there are no other other items that need to be pulled for separate consideration, Vice Mayor, will you make a motion, please? Motion to approve the consent calendar with Council Member Bob Smith. Um abstaining from item 78. Thank you. You have a motion. Please cast your votes. The motion is approved with council member Weir voting no. Thank you. And I am going to um make a little change right here. I failed to present uh a certificate earlier during the presentations portion. So I'm just going to ask Simmer to come back up. I know that Danielle gave you the certificate, but I want to just do an official presentation, please. Simmer, we are just so proud of you and uh in celebration of your being named the 2025 finalist in the behavioral and social sciences category for the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair. This is presented in recognition of your award-winning project leveraging natural language processing techniques and birectional encoder representations from transformers for detecting bias and toxicity in journalism. And in recognition of your leadership and dedicated efforts to pursue excellence, congratulations on your achievement. We are so proud of you, Simmer. Right over here. This is a big deal. This is an international competition with students from all over the world. Give it up for Madam Clerk. Next item, please. Item 11A, fiscal year 202526, city budget resolution approving and adopting the operating and capital improvement budgets. Resolution establishing the appropriations limit. Resolution approving and adopting the master fee schedule. A staff memorandum was received transmitting correspondence. Thank you. Please note, if you're here to speak on deferred business item 11A, the city clerk will call for public statements after staff's presentation. Each speaker will be limited to two minutes and there will be a 20 minute time limit for the report item. City manager Clay. Yeah. Thank you, Mayor and Council. I have a brief uh presentation to share with you just providing an overview of our budget. uh this uh presentation um reflects uh a highle summary of the content but I would just to put things into context first. uh at your last meeting we held a public hearing. That public hear the purpose of that public hearing is to uh listen to community feedback related to this topic but it's actually tonight with the resolutions that were read by the city clerk is where the council adopts the the budget along with you know several of the other supporting documents like our fee schedules and salary schedules and so forth. This is the culmination though of many months of uh workshops and conversations. We start the budget process uh typically in the fall uh through some of our internal projections. We work on it as staff and through the early part of the year and then we work through uh the public safety vital services tax in particular has uh several sessions with our oversight committee. That typically happens in April and then your council held two uh fairly lengthy workshops related to the budget during May. We had a budget report at the end of May um to uh highlight the uh proposed uh recommended budget. Um and that's where we presented the what we call the budget book or the the the much more lengthy document that has uh lots of uh pages uh to that. Um and uh just this uh past week we did post um to our web page it excuse me it was included in the agenda packet for the June 11th meeting this long budget book but then we also posted it to our front page on our website to make sure that it was available for the community u to see u what would be um presented for adoption tonight. Uh, also before I begin my presentation, just want to reflect that there were some questions at the last uh, council meeting and uh, referrals by council and we prepared a memorandum uh, for your review related specifically to public safety and police costs and those increases and uh, that is um, uh, available uh, for additional um, review. Uh but just wanted to say highlight quickly that uh police budgets like actually almost all of our departmental budgets were up this year compared to last year because of principally inflationary drivers. We've seen our uh insurance costs, our workers compensation costs, our equipment costs, our um utility costs have all increased. And we knew about some costs that were going to be increasing in our personnel uh line items because of um our uh uh memorandums of understanding with our labor partners and and how compensation we had. We have not increased uh staffing uh or programs in the police department. And with with only uh two very small exceptions, we did not make any additions in this year's budget to any departments yet. We saw budgets go up principally because of those inflationary drivers. There's only one or two departments that actually saw a reduction. That's because we had significant operating reductions in those budgets. Uh with that, um uh if do we have the presentation ready? Not quite. Okay. Just give us a moment. I apologize. What I'll highlight from this uh presentation as it's um coming up is that uh the highlights uh I can speak to um then we'll we'll have them briefly on the screen for the benefit of the public who may be watching. But this year we have a balanced budget. Um we have aligned this budget with city council's strategic goals. It does reflect our current economic conditions. We've had to make some important reductions u because we've seen uh these increases in costs. Also we had excuse me a uh some uh rebalancing or or resetting of our Thank you. We've seen a slight reset to our sales tax baseline because of um some remittance errors. Um it's important to note and I'm now on bullet four on the left of this slide that uh we've focused on maintaining our essential services. Um but unfortunately again revenue growth has really lagged um um behind those inflationary um impacts and so we've had to make some of those operational reductions and we've had fewer capital projects in this budget than before. We continue to use fairly conservative revenue estimates. We think that's the safe play and the safe bet. We have reserves set aside. We have not touched our um reserves and we have also made significant contingencies in this budget in the event that economic conditions are any worse uh than we have projected. Um when I noted some of those reductions, it's a total of $6 million in operating reductions to balance the budget. And as you know, we have implemented a hiring freeze all vacant positions, which right now we have about 150 vacant positions. there will be um uh frozen for this first quarter of the fiscal year so that we can ensure that we're generating enough savings to um be protected against again economic change as well as work towards some longer term restructuring that we anticipate. But again, the good news is uh that we have a balanced budget that allows us to continue to um make progress in the most important uh priorities identified by the city council. U during this next year, we'll have to make some of those structural long-term adjustments, but again, I think through some efficiencies and prioritization, we'll be able to do the most important work and identify those things that um can adjust. It's important to note that public safety remains our top priority. Uh homelessness is also um we would consider in that safety and resilience. And then uh we've got a lot of infrastructure projects scheduled uh for our capital uh pro improvement program as we continue to catch up on some of those important road improvements in particular as well as uh some uh important um maintenance to our city facilities and city assets so that we don't build up too much deferred maintenance. Um we have uh some projects that are in our urban core as that was one of the priorities established by city council. we're able to fund those and we'll take a midyear look at some of our capital projects, both those that we set as contingency as well as if uh there's opportunities to do other capital projects when that time comes. Um the public safety vital services tax uh continues to uh allow us to offer um improved services than we've had historically. Those essential services remain uh fully funded. Um, we continue to focus on being able to recruit and retain quality employees. Um, and uh, again, we continue to take a conservative approach to budgeting. With that, this is an overview of the total uh, citywide budget. There's a a small comparison there. You'll note that um, there's a fairly significant uh, variance between last year's budget and this current proposed budget. That's largely because our capital improvement program is smaller because we completed some very large infrastructure projects. Otherwise, uh the budget is um looks fairly uh similar uh to last year. This just gives a sense of our revenues of where all of our revenues come from. Largest portions of course are our taxes and assessments and then charges for service. um in particular because we also have included our enterprise funds in this chart. As far as our expenditures, again, this is a breakdown that just gives a sense of operating versus capital. You'll note again that that um notable reduction in capital and um you'll note that uh the inflationary impacts in those operating expenses are visible uh through this slide as well. And then this just gives a better sense by department uh where our funding is. And I won't linger here too long because we have this graph that just gives a sense of where we're allocating our resources again consistent and aligned with city council priorities. And I would submit also those priorities that we've heard from our community. With that overarching summary, I just uh would uh close by saying um that uh we are committed to uh the values that we've established in collaborating and showing accountability, being resourceful, having excellent customer service and being good stewards uh and that Bakersfield cares to our community. And we look forward to making good things happen with these appropriations in the coming year. Thank you, Mr. Kle. And now, city clerk. Would you please call for the public speakers? The first speaker is Janette Bon. Just a reminder to all of you, please adjust the microphone to your level. We're eager to hear what you have to say. Welcome. Please introduce yourself. Good evening, Mayor Goen, council members and staff. My name is Janette Bon and as a businesswoman and um senior citizen, I have concerns about enough fire and police protection and Bakersfield and I don't want those services cut due to there is a large population of seniors here in the valley. And so I'm excited about the budget as it now stands, the fact that you are priorit prioritizing core services, and the fact that it's vital that we feel safe in our community here in Bakersfield, and that we have an understanding that we can be secure, we can be safe because our police and fire are not cut in this issue. And you're doing as much as you can to conservatively look at these issues and look at the monies that are spent. And so I want to thank you for that. I also think of the security and safety of children as they go to the parks, as they go to school, how important it is to have these fire and police services for them so that they do feel secure um in this great golden empire. And I do think it's important that a community that grows needs to have vital services that encourage freedom and the caring heart that we have here in Bakersfield. It's one of the reasons I moved here four years ago. And so we're excited that you are maintaining this existing budget and that you are ensuring a sense of safety, a sense of confidence, and a sense of stability. So I want to thank you for that and for those that are in business and those that are seniors of taking that into consideration. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Miss Bon. Madam Clerk, next speaker, please. And colleagues, I I see that our screens are being reset, so I think we just need a moment there. Uh, next speaker, please. Linda Willis, welcome. Please introduce yourself. Good evening. My name is Linda Willis and I would like to speak in support of the proposed budget for 202526. I believe it addresses the needs and well-being of the community and its residents. The proposed budget offers the best use of taxpayer dollars. It allocates vital resources for the safety and security of neighborhoods, businesses, and common public areas. Investing in the city in this way creates a stronger, safer, and more livable city. It is without question that the funding of police and fire departments must come first before any other expense categories. The police and fire departments protect lives and property. The next category of importance for funding is the city's infrastructure. Residents and visitors rely on well-maintained roads, bridges, connectors, and thorough affairs, as well as sanitation services and sewers. These investments are critical for daily life and attracting future growth. The current proposed budget takes a responsible and balanced approach to managing city resources and addressing the highest and best use of local taxpayer dollars. It provides a balanced budget in light of California's increasing cost of living and unaffordability and misuse of the state's funds as well as loss of revenue and residents. Bakersfield remains an area of California that thoughtfully spends tax dollars while adjusting for the higher costs of doing business in the state. Please vote yes on the passage of the presented budget. Thank you, Miss Willis. Next speaker, please. Dave Damowski. Welcome. Please introduce yourself. Good evening, Mayor Go and council members. Dave Demahowski representing the Homebuilders Association of Kern County. uh at your April 23rd meeting, we expressed some concerns about a number of doubledigit uh increases in uh fees relating to uh planning and land development uh procedures. uh since that time had an opportunity to meet with your staff on a couple of occasions and they shared their calculations and assumptions and uh I think we uh appreciate that opportunity to review the uh calculations but we're also very appreciative of uh the commitment of the city to uh do some organizational changes with public works and development services that should help the process really the excuse me The two things the city can do to help fix the housing crisis that are within your control is to speed up the process and to limit fees and exactions. So, I'll I'll conclude with that and also uh mention that uh we reiterated our support for your draft housing album. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Mr. Deahi. Next speaker, please. Rosa Lopez. Welcome. Please introduce yourself. Yes. Good evening. My name is Rosa and I'm a resident of war 2. And I know that you will be voting on to the city budget tonight. So I don't think that most of what you heard earlier starting this meeting um and at the public hearing a few weeks ago will influence your decision. But I want to urge you to truly listen to the voices of the people who have elected you and are asking that you adopt a bud a budget that prioritizes a root cause of social challenges like homelessness, poverty, and mental health. I also want you to um reimagine how we've approached this budget process and invite the people in this process and vote because a true people's budget must include the people's voices. Um tonight's vote is not the end of this important community item. It's time that we work as a community and you work with our community to prioritize a budget that is rooted in equity, compassion, and true public safety. I'm asking you to reject the proposed budget. Um, a budget that continues to diso disproportionately invest in policing and the criminalization of our communities under a disguise of public safety. We need real and lasting solutions. Year after year, you all turn to the police or we turn to the police to solve our deeply rooted social issues. And we know it's not working. I will not necessarily repeat the data that we've shared in the past, but our general funds, almost half of it goes to policing, far more than any other department that directly address the cause of mental health, poverty, and houselessness. We've allowed policing to become our default response to every crisis. And we've said this in every meeting. We call on the police because when we don't have when we don't know who else to call or what services are available to really assist families who are are suffering. So I urge you to please reconsider um and truly listen and we cannot no long we can no longer just say that public safety means more uh police with guns. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Lopez. Next speaker, please. Harvine Core. Good evening. Welcome. Please introduce yourself. Hi, good evening. My name is Harvine Core and I speak to you all tonight to not only as a lifelong resident of Bakersfield, but as a proud product of East Side Bakersfield. Growing up, I often heard my peers speaking negatively about our hometown, Bakersfield's ghetto. The only thing to do in Bakersfield is smoke, drink, and eat. Well, while I never fully believed that, I'll admit I internalized a lot of that and I went to college, got out of town the second I could. I went to you, I graduated from UC Irvine, and I considered staying there because a lot of people, my peers don't want to come back here and I had fallen into that, too. But it was none other than Vice Mayor Gor who encouraged me to utilize all the knowledge and education that I had obtained at that university and bring it right back here reinvesting into our communities that have poured so much into us. I went to Highland High School. I went to Chipman Junior High, Thorner Elementary. These are this is my community. This is my home. And so despite me wanting to stay in Southern California, I was reminded that okay, if I am aware and educated on policy, infrastructure politics social science, I had a duty to bring it home. And so I did. I worked as a community organizer and I've been advocating for equitable rights here for all constituents across Bakersfield. So with that, I know and I understand that many will detest Bakersfield or try to, for a lack of better words, hate on us. However, I would always and still continue to come to our defense. So it's not just a dusty pit stop off of the 99. We are so much more than that. We are a robust community that is continuously growing. But when I see that 44% of our city budget is allocated to the police, it makes me wonder where our priorities are. So I urge you all to reject this proposal and hope that we can come to a more equitable where we can actually have parks and schools that are well funded, taken care of, and not a threat to children and the schools are educated or well funded as well and the students have resources because I love Bakersfield. I want it to be better, but the state average is 20% for most cities, not 44, 20%. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Core. Next speaker, please. Samuel Batista. Welcome. Please introduce yourself. Good evening. Good evening. Hi, my name is Samuel Bautista and um today's meeting um I heard a lot of great things um and witnessed a lot of u great people um growing and getting their businesses together and asking you know not to um cut funding on things like that and I think that that's really important. I also heard some um arguments about um how great this budget is um for um putting that money into policing and um into the law enforcement. And I think that everybody has a really good point um because a lot of those things really are needed. We need community, we need businesses growing, we need um policing to um keep us all safe. But the only problem is is that um it we're not looking at the um social issues that are happening and how we can truly get to the root of curing those social ills. Um I think that the um budgeting um should go more towards programs um that will will actually in return cut crime where we won't need as much police. If we're only giving um 4% to growth and um economics, then we're not really growing. I mean, 4% that's we're not going to grow very far with that. If we put more money into the economics and the development, then we can um put more we will be able to grow bigger, our budgets will grow bigger, there'll be more money to um pass around and we'll be a better Bakersfield. Not that we're not great already. We are, but we can be better. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Bartista. Next speaker, please. Valerie Pinto. Welcome. Please introduce yourself. All righty. Good afternoon. Good evening, everybody. Uh, my name is Valerie. I'm um part of Ward One. I'm also a delegate for 8035. I just want to give a big shout out to Samir Singh first and foremost. That's a really big accomplishment. So, if you're still in here, congrats. Um, we want to see many more Samir Sings, right? We want to see Baker still be known as that hidden gem. I know Harine went to UC Irvine. I went to UCLA and I'm just I'm sure um, you know, Miss Singh is going to go far in her academic journey and I want to see more youth go far in their journey, right? they come back as Harvey and as myself did and you know we make Bakers sold better. So we have to, you know, we have to look past the revenue, the budgets of right now and look towards the future, right? Investing into the future. And so I just want to give a big shout out to all the folks who have met with me and um the coalition that I'm a part of, the criminal justice coalition. Um and so I won't call you guys out, but you know who you are. Um thank you so much. And I also want to give a big thank you to Christian Kle. Um I met up with Robert today. Great guy. Um, and he told us about all the improvements that are coming up. Um, so much transparency is being brought up and it's something that's so refreshing. Um, and I'm just I really want to take this time. I already know which way the vote's going to go, so I'm not even going to go there. But I do want to make it very clear, right, that um, a lot of folks they've brought up so many great ideas, right? More environmental benefits, um, you know, healthcare. I I mean, you hear everything, right? And so I know that there are certain cuts that are going to have to be made, but it's up to you guys, right? It's up to all of you together. I know um you know I'm part of W one, but I deeply care for W one as I do with W 6 5 4 3 2 1 um because this is Baker, so this is home for, you know, my siblings and the clients that I work with at um parallegal firm that I work with. And so I think when it comes to things like this with budget, we should not look at this as a partisan thing, but a nonpartisan um you know item. And so I just really invite all of you to meet one-on-one with all with the Criminal Justice Coalition. And thank you so much for your time. I know my time's up. Thank you, Miss Mto. Madam Clerk, next speaker, please. Sandra C. Welcome. Please introduce yourself. Good evening. My name is Sandra Castanon. I'm an ADOM delegate for district 35. I wanted to express my opposition to the proposed city budget which allocates 44% to the police department. I've spoken with community members across our city who share the same concerns. We want our taxpayer dollars to reflect our actual needs. Needs like affordable housing, public transportation, recreational programs, and improved infrastructure. If the conversation is truly about crime and safety, increasing BPD's budget is not the solution. A larger police presence does not address the root causes of crime, nor does it make residents feel safe. What does work? Investment in our communities. Recreational facilities, art programs, and youth sports have proven to reduce crime by offering positive and meaningful outlets and opportunities, especially for young people. We deserve a budget that invests in people, not just policing. Please vote no on the budget. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Caston. Next speaker, please. Mary Madlin. Hello, Mary Madlin. Uh, I have a company here in town and I I I was a little the comments that were just made are a little concerning to me. I had a brother number one that was mentally ill. Um, and here's my, you know, number one, the way some of this major in has been spent with the hunter police that we're supposed to get. And then even with attrition, I mean, it's difficult to keep up. But what I've seen um just being on the major in committee and the people that were on it who would listen and change their mind about you know coming in solid on a vote they were going to you know totally go partisan or whatever it's wonderful but my brother was mentally ill and what I see have seen is with our homeless problem which a lot of the major in money should go towards with the police and training um give them more money and the and the fire department and you know the small business that's affected by homeless you know the windows and things like that. Um you know tax dollars almost doubled with what we started with and um kind of the the highlights of that bill because I didn't read the whole thing. I just voted on it. Um or certainly not what was represented. And that's, you know, contention with a lot of people. Well, you should have read the rest of it. Well, I don't think I didn't. Um and then also with um the city st, you know, the cost of increasing staff in any department. I just went through a thing at my company where I brought someone in. We went from 115 to 73. I think we're doing a better job, more efficient. Believe me, I did I I did not believe it, but I'm much better because of it. But it's not bringing in someone who's involved in urban planning or different issues, you know, look at it as a business and make your cuts. And it it's just amazing to see what happened in my company and I see it every day. Those people all found jobs. Uh I'm pretty add so I'm liable to be in Christmas and Thanksgiving at the same time. Miss Madlin, your time is up. If you want to bring your comments to a close, please. Thank you guys. Thank you, Miss Madlin. Madam Clerk, next speaker. We have three speakers who would like to speak still and uh this will we'll finish up with these three speakers, please. Mr. Lane. Eddie Lane. Welcome, Ed. Eddie Lane. I'm not representing the Sierra Club. Uh, I just want to make a comment because I'm I'm good friends with some people on the on the committee here who who Rosa Lopez is working with. Process is important and it's important that as you move ahead, I'm thinking next year to be have really open-ended process. have a lot of dialogue with all sectors of the community so that all voices get heard. That's all I want to say. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Lane. Next speaker, please. Anna Huerta. Welcome. Please introduce yourself. Hello. My name is Anna Werta. A N A H U E R T A. Good evening, council members. Um, I'm here as a lifelong resident of Bakersfield. I was born and raised here. This is my home and I'm proud of it. Um, but we can do better. Um, when I was growing up, there really was nothing to do but get into trouble. Um, and I see a lot of that continuing forward in our communities with the lack of um, recreational centers as was shared. you know, a lack of green spaces. Our parks are improperly funded. The we want to enjoy those green spaces and be outside in lowincome communities, and it's hard because they're trashed and the bathrooms are dirty, right? I want I have a dog. I don't have kids. I have a dog. I want better dog parks. I want to be able to walk my dog downtown. All the trees were removed. Why? It's hot, right? We have um a homeless population that is being obscenely policed and it's not solving anything. It's not getting to the root cause. We need additional resources for mental health treatment, inpatient treatment, affordable housing. All of these things can address the root causes and create a better, shinier, glittery, right, more friendly Bakersfield that we're proud of and want to enjoy. And so I urge you today to vote no on the budget. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Huerta. Next speaker, please. Robert Hooks. Welcome. Please introduce yourself. Oh, hi. I'm Robert Hooks. Um, so I was here for the last meeting and and heard all the comments and uh it pretty much appears that you guys really didn't change anything and it's a little bit disheartening and I saw a nice presentation that says you guys are going to prioritize homelessness yet look like your economic and community development budget was reduced by $5 million. Now, no one's asking to um defund the police or be soft on crime, right? It's really where you going to find the money. Uh, and you guys can be creative and and do better like Anna just said. Um, it's not likely that you guys are going to change anything tonight from anything comments that are said even though I don't support the budget that you guys have put together. But I think really what um that gentleman was just saying is probably what we need to do is uh be more transparent earlier. I heard you guys say that you guys started this process in the fall and I personally was just hearing about things in the last few weeks or so. Uh there are some creative solutions, right, that can solve some of these problems a lot better. Uh you guys have, excuse me, openings in the police department and other positions where you guys say 150. Um apparently we're doing an okay job without those um people. So maybe that money could be used somewhere else. Uh I know in corporate America, you use it or you lose it, right? And it's unheard of to have open positions out there lingering for long periods of time. So uh I don't support not reallocating funds. Um I don't support you guys not listening. Uh but let's try to do better next year. Thank you, Mr. Hooks. And I believe that's the final speaker for this section. To all of you who spoke, thank you so much for your engagement in the civic process and we just uh invite you to continue speaking during public comment uh throughout the year. And now I'll go to my colleagues for comment and action. Madame clerk, do we have the speaker requests up? Council member Gonzalez. Thank you, Mayor. Um, first and foremost, I want to thank um, Miss Valerie Pinto and Miss Tiffany James, who is also here uh, for spending an hour and a half with me uh, this afternoon. Uh, myself and Robert, our budget officer. Uh, we were able to go into detail with uh, some particular questions and concerns and delve into the budget and also talk about the process. And, uh, I just really appreciate uh, your commitment and the time that you spent today. I know you're very busy and it takes a lot to take time out of work and other things to uh come down to city hall and but it but it was very productive and I think that um it speaks to what was commented just a moment ago by Mr. Lane and some things that I shared at the last council meeting that uh it is worth us improving our budget process where we build in lots of time and opportunities for community members to come to uh this council and for us to go to them uh to go to various different neighborhoods and hear from the community directly and also have these conversations about several things that are of concern for the community and also some of the things that we're actually Um, and so, um, I'm going to make a referral tonight, doubling down on the referral I made last, uh, last council meeting that we continue to pursue, uh, a more inclusive budgeting process and schedule in the upcoming in the next fiscal year and also as we look at the midyear. There is another uh, question uh, because um, the last speaker uh, I want to just gently challenge your notion that we didn't hear you. We I I do hear you. I know many of the colleagues up here, we do hear you and we hear many of the advocates and we've been working really hard to try to figure out ways in which we can respond to the the concerns in a real way in this budget. And part of it is that um we're going to adopt a budget tonight, but it's not completely done. Uh we have a midyear uh session where we will consider the budget revisions. uh we will look at in January how we're actually performing in terms of revenue. Uh a lot of these uh things in the budget are simple projections. We don't know what the economy has in store for us. Uh we will have a better understanding of how we're doing with with regard to sales tax uh in January. And so we want to give ourselves some room and opportunity to um to uh take the time to see where we are financially uh before we make uh additional line items and move forward. And so that's where the midyear process is really important. In fact, we have a number of contingency items on the agenda on the budget tonight um that are sort of in obeyance until we know uh how well we're doing uh financially. And Mr. Clay, can you describe to us what we've done there? And and I think it's really important for the community to understand how we're thinking about the budget in this um very difficult uh economic uh future that we're about to experience. Yeah. Thank you, Council Member Gonzalez, Mayor and Council. Uh we've done this over a couple of budget cycles now at this point, but we identified uh several capital improvement projects that don't have to happen in the first half of the year. In fact, technically don't have to happen even in this coming fiscal year. Uh whereas there were some projects we identified that were very important to move forward with. Um, and those projects will get evaluated at midyear after we've had two quarters that we've been able to see how our revenues are tracking. Uh, whether we've achieved some of our savings goals because our budget does include a goal to achieve additional $4 million in savings through the hiring freeze. And that will allow us to um either move forward with those projects if the funding is available or that we could postpone those projects. We've actually done that. Uh two years ago, we postponed several CIP projects because our revenue projections started to show that a slight decline despite having pretty conservative revenue projections and we didn't move forward with those projects and and that um balanced our budget and actually you know created some savings going into the the coming budget cycle. In addition to that, uh would just point out uh quickly that your city council has set aside uh what we consider um rainy day reserves and we're one of the few large cities in California who meets the two-month uh working cash reserve as recommended by the government finance officers association. And so we have those reserves in place. And then your council also uh identified what we've called this year as a capital improvement project reserve. We have um $2.5 million. It's actually a little more than $2.5 million. made one small adjustment there and I'm not recalling the precise number, but it's close to $3 million that is not allocated to a specific CIP project that allows us that if we have a road project, important road project or a road repair that was unbudgeted, uh allows us the ability to move forward and and make that fix or that repair with this CIP reserve that we'll also evaluate, you know, at midyear. Okay. Um, one of the comments that we heard uh during our public hearing was with um was in regard to the uh affordable housing trust fund and uh we have seen a reduction in the number of dollars we're allocating in this upcoming fiscal year for the affordable housing trust fund. This is a project that I've been very excited about when we first um started it um after the passage of measure N. it has helped us produce hundreds of uh affordable housing units. Um and you know lots of folks uh rightfully so brought up the issue of getting to the root cause of homelessness and fundamentally it's about housing and uh by producing more affordable units uh we're able to get to that root cause and um uh and so I'm I'm proud of the trust fund and what we've been able to do. It is a concern to see the reduction. And so what I'd like to do tonight is make a referral as we consider the midyear budget u for staff to come back to council with a report and a plan on how to best set ourselves up to get uh those matching dollars available from the state of California for the for the affordable housing trust fund and to come back with a a a proposed appropriation so that we can maximize that match. Uh and hopefully we can do that sooner than later. Um and and really get that uh fund uh much more healthy and plump uh so that we can continue to build more affordable housing units. But thank you all so much for being part of this process and and spending your time and u looking forward to working with you as we look towards midyear in the next fiscal year. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you, mayor. Um, I just also wanted to thank everyone from the community for being here to speak and frankly for holding us accountable and uh for bringing your voices here. I liked what um one of our community members shared that we're not going to we're not going to grow very far from that. And I really liked um your phrasing of that because it's true. where we invest our money speaks to the priorities of this council as well as our city. And um to Eddie Lane's point, process is important. Process is everything. Process is the discipline. And uh just as we did at our last city council meeting, which was our first budget presentation, um I made the suggestion that we move our budget workshops to the libraries that we support alongside with the county. um that is a significant and important investment that the city made um in our local library systems. So my ask today is that um also city manager Clyde, could you share with us when the midyear budget is when that process begins and when we adopt a mid-year budget by? Yeah, I think you vice mayor. We typically we call it midyear but it's not right at the six-month mark because that happens to land right in the holidays. So typically we we start those conversations in January and so then by the council meetings in February we make any adjustments to the midyear. Okay. So can you name months so that we can share that with the public as to when Yeah. Again in in we don't typically do um midyear conversations prior to the end of the calendar year. So it's in January we'll have deliberation and then in February we'll take action. Okay. So, I'd like for us to have uh community meetings about our budgeting process both at the mid-year budget as well as for our next fiscal year budget, but for those to take place in the community so that we can give those presentations to the community and welcome them into that conversation um and so that we can also hear feedback at both budgeting times. Um, and for our fiscal year budget uh meetings that will happen next year, they start in the fall. Are we going to have I know we've had conversations within with different folks within our budget department that we're going to be um are we going to be beginning earlier? Are we changing the timeline with how we approach the next fiscal year budget? Yeah, thanks Vice Mayor. So, uh, mayor and council, we typically start with, uh, this is getting, you know, a little bit into some of the the technical pieces, but our salary projections, uh, take quite a long time. Um, but there are things that we can forecast. Um, and we also have what we call our internal service funds. That's how we pay for our technology um equipment rates, our vehicle equipment rates, u our insurance, our our um um other risk funds, workers compensation is what I was I was trying to remember. So, we typically do those in the fall and um that's not something that we've historically, you know, had a lot of engagement around because it's kind of a baseline. And then as we look at the operating, that's really where the rubber meets the road. Um that's typically started in January internally of each year. And then by March, we're able to start having some of those conversations with city council. And then April typically is with our oversight committee. And then through March, April, May, those are the most engaging times that we typically have. We are trying to start uh some of our process a little bit earlier this fall, but I would uh respectfully recommend that it's that's probably still even too early to start an engagement process because we don't have enough to share yet with community of where we're at. But I think as we get into the the new calendar year, that's really the time where we're starting, you know, I think we focus a little bit on midyear first and then as we get through midyear, that's the right time to start doing some of these. And I and I if I could just I would recommend we probably consider think of them as maybe town halls at the ward level. I'm not necessarily suggesting that we have um full council meetings out in our wards, but allow ward council members to hold these community engagement opportunities to share budget information and to hear from the community. I think that's something we can facilitate as staff readily in the wards with the ward council members to gather that feedback. Uh and then I would also suggest that um as we do our uh strategic planning exercises typically in each spring as a council those are good times to be informed with both basics around the budget and then some of the community feedback that comes around the budget. So I would suggest in that March April time frame and those are good months when we're still well ahead of final decisions on the budget to be able to do some of that engagement. Thank you. So I I think that's a great suggestion as well, having ward level budget workshops where we're putting postits on the wall and we're having a collective conversation as to what community city council members can bring forward as like the district level priorities um and where we can actually move forward. So March, April, May. So kind of in the springtime, we'll remind everyone again that this will be the time to engage. I do like this new structuring where we can be in the community talking about something as important as the city budget with with constituents. Um, and we'll be sure to remind you and send out reminders via social media and and build that in as well. Um, but I I agree. I think we have we can do better as well. You know, there this was a um a uniquely tough budget year for all cities all around for the state. Um, we're feeling it on the national level as well. some of our neighboring cities um are in a deficit uh for the most part and so uh to be in a balanced budget now is um is something that is worth noting. Um but there is more room to grow. You know we haven't built a new fire department station in 15 years. Our call volume has doubled for our fire department in that much time if not more. And in 15 years, um, Bakersfield's population has also grown tremendously. In, uh, 2010, the last time a station was built, our population was closer to 350,000. Today, in 2025, our population nears um 400,000 and over. 419 419,000. Thank you, mayor. Um, and it was probably lower than that in 2010 as well. Um but we can do better to keep our communities safer in different ways and these ideas have you know m must be adopted included and and they come from the community. We can keep our community safer in different ways as well. Um, for example, crime prevention through environmental design or CPTED, which um, this isn't just happening in progressive cities or in just the big metropolitans like Seattle and Boston. This is happening in Youngstown, Ohio, where vacant lots were turned into green spaces and they were able to radically reduce the percentage of crimes. It's happening in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where just street lighting was added in uh particular parts of a neighborhood and that reduced 53% of crime in that targeted area. It's happening in Fairfield, California. Um, and we just we have to be better um as well locally and we can we can be better and I'm hopeful that the midyear as well as with the next fiscal round we can and with strong community advocates um whether it's working on how our residents are healthy. Um I appreciate the um the woman who came who was a medical provider and talked about uh you know the inh home visits she did as a care provider for a pregnant woman who shared that shade is what was keeping her from being able to walk her children to school and stay healthy. Um not necessarily the walking and those things fundamentally change the quality of life for residents here in in our city. Um, so I am committed to making sure that we find ways to incorporate your your all's feedback from heat island effect to new and and innovative ways in reducing crime and safe and promoting safety within our neighborhoods um to building out parks. Trust me, the it hits close to home. There's a park that has been waiting 18 years to be built in my ward and and we're finally getting to it. um but in phases because they are very expensive to build. Um so I appreciate our departments that provided more transparency and more to come and your feedback is what allows for us to build new systems. Um so I just thank you for participating. Thank you vice mayor. Council member Basher, I would I I don't really like our budget to be honest. Not for any of the reasons that have been mentioned this evening. I support uh our fire department and police department and their budget. I think that something has changed in Bakersfield over the last decade and that we've become a government, a city government that is trying to be a jack of all trades instead of mastering the basic levels of infrastructure that our city survives off of. Taxpayers deserve to have a city that they can conduct and do business well with. and we've been slightly conservative with our budget and we say that it's balanced based on projections of revenues, but being the guy that sends the tax uh checks to the city revenues, I can tell you that it is going to be much bleeer than what has been proposed. And business will businesses are down and it's going to I mean, I wish I could fix it. I wish I could say I had a remedy. Um, but there's a lot of variables that are attributing to the loss of income across the board. And I don't think that we've been conservative enough. I think that we need to get back to focusing on essential business or essential services as a community. And I think that over the last decade, we've made this this correlation with the the city or the city budget and we're confusing it with nonprofits and how nonprofits, you know, uh act in our community. And I think a lot of the concerns that people are passionate about um would be would be and should be tackled from the nonprofit standpoints. We have hundreds of temples and churches and mosques and organizations in our town that probably have millions of dollars in savings accounts that should go toward these things that need our city needs and people find passion about. But we see streets falling apart. We see walls falling apart. We talk about water. We talk about sewage. We talk about safety. I mean, as a business owner on the council, I would I would say that, you know, the number one reason someone would open up a business in an area is if they thought they could a make money in that area and and b not waste a lot of money fixing up and dealing with public safety uh for crime, homelessness, vandalism, stuff that business owners deal with every month in our community and are tired of because we're wasting a lot of money fixing things that we shouldn't have to fix. And so I think it's very important to to to note that the non-discretionary increases are going to come continue to rise. The inflation is going to continue to rise and uh using reserves or fund balances to to balance our budget isn't in my opinion as a businessman uh a true balanced budget. I think we're setting ourselves up for a very bleak future. I mean, reading, you know, the article about LA yesterday and them having to probably cut 600 jobs in their city because their budget is out of whack. And I'm just like, we can learn so much from history. Look at where we are now. And 20 years ago, do we deal with the same problems now that we did 20 years ago? Have things changed, gotten worse or better? What changed? Did did federal or state institutions close down and now crime is rampant because there's no accountability? Well, I mean the we can get emotional and put our feelings into this or we can just look at facts and numbers and say we have to make a better decision for people that pay taxes in our community. And I don't think this bis this budget delivers uh what our taxpayers are entitled to a a clean, well put together and focused city where they can continue to invest in our community. I'd love to see philanthropy increase. Uh, I've been talking about that since I've been elected, but most philanthropists have kind of uh gone away from supporting things and now are supporting things like cleaning up and holding individuals accountable and resourcing millions of dollars. And I I don't I don't like how I don't I don't like our budget. I don't think it's conservative enough. Uh I don't think that we've made the necessary cuts. We've frozen positions. those positions are going to be active at some point in time, which is going to lead to our non-discretionary increases increasing even more uh once they are active and live. And we're going to continue to try and be a jack of all trades while the city just implodes on itself. Our budget implodes on itself. The infrastructure doesn't get addressed or handled. Um I I I like I mean there's facts and there's feelings and I'd like to focus on the facts and I think that we have gotten away from that. And uh I think that at some point in time we have to um before it's too late, before we have uh some some financial crisis uh that we're in the face with. I I'd rather respond um before it's a a huge issue instead of being backed into a corner and having to make some some knee-jerk reactions because we didn't plan accordingly for our future, for our kids' future uh for their kids' future as a city. Um, and that's all I have to say about that. Thank you, Council Member Basher. Council member Arus. Thank you, Mayor. Um, a few points and comments that I want to make tonight. Um, I want to acknowledge the fact, and I think Council Member uh, Gonzalez was the first one to bring it up. Um, which was that we need to take a look at cities throughout the rest of the state of California right now in this current economic uh, crisis. Um the city of Los Angeles is hundreds of millions of dollars um in a deficit, a fiscal deficit. The same thing with the city of San Francisco, uh the city of San Diego, the city of Sacramento, and so many others. And while those cities are facing those structural uh economic challenges, we are right here on the verge of passing a healthy budget um that does not make any cuts or impacts uh to staff and personnel. it does not tap into our current fiscal um reserves um and really prepares for a sustainable future for the city of Bakersfield. Um and I think that that's an important um uh part uh that we must acknowledge that it is our fiscal responsibility to make sure that u there is a way for us to see another day here in the city of Bakersfield. And so I think that the the cuts that we are making and the the hiring freezes uh that we are making are preemptive and proactive to ensure that in the future in mid year in the next fiscal year uh that we can make significant investments uh once again into not just the bare bones minimum uh but to actually get ahead once again on some of the deferred maintenance um in our parks. Uh we have nine undeveloped parks in the city of Bakersfield. Uh we have a huge need for additional police and fire stations throughout the entire city of Bakersfield. U p primarily in South Bakersfield. Um we have a number of roads uh that we need to catch up on uh deferred maintenance with and so many other uh infrastructure needs. Um but I think now is a good inflection point for us uh to take uh this moment very seriously and save where we can uh and while also preparing ourselves for the future. Um a a couple of additional thoughts. I agree with my colleagues that um we absolutely need to do a better job on um creating an open and transparent budgeting process. Um and I'll I'll admit um some level of frustration that um even the first year that I came on the council that there were um cries out um here in these chambers calling for an open and uh transparent budgeting process. And I think that uh we've gotten perhaps uh distracted or bogged down with other uh needs and and um uh projects. Uh but I appreciate the city manager's commitment to uh making good on that promise and creating a uh easy to follow transparent budgeting process where community uh is not only involved and engaged but really educated on some of the challenges uh that we're facing as a city and really educated on where the funding is coming from and how the funding is spent. Uh so I appreciate that commitment. Um the the second thing that I really want to talk about is how how do we define public safety as a community, right? What h what does that look like? Right? I is it just the number of police officers on the streets? Um is it just you know the the number of you know violent crimes that are committed on the streets or is it like one of our um uh citizens who came um at to last meeting who talked about you know the lack of violence and h how do we measure that in our community or is it the health of our families the health of our residents and uh their ability to live safe lives and healthy lives and go on to graduate from you know UC Irvine and UCLA and come back and invest in their community. Um, and I think that that's an important um, conversation that we need to have as as a as a city um, as a as a community because I I don't think that our current definition is working. Um, that that's my honest opinion. Um, I don't think that it's just uh the number of police officers that are on our streets and the number of crimes that they're able to respond to. I also don't think it's uh the number of uh guns that we're able to remove from homes in our community. I think it's so much more than that. Um and I think that we really need to reflect more on that and and broaden the scope of how we define public safety here in our community. Um I I think of uh a number of investments that we've made over the years. Uh that includes, you know, behavioral health clinicians and our 911 dispatch um that we continue to um you know, see make huge progress um uh in our community in keeping folks who are in a mental health crisis safe uh by not having them um be met with, you know, an individual with a gun from BPD, but rather someone uh who is trained and specializes in being able to deal with those crises. Um I I think of you know some of our park rangers. Um there was early conversations about uh equipping our park rangers with uh weapons and firearms and that that has not come to fruition and I'm so grateful uh because instead of you know you know brandishing a weapon uh they deescalate with their words and their care and their love for community and our parks. Um, you know, I think of, uh, you know, the investments that we've made in our libraries and the thousands, the tens of thousands of families who now are able to enjoy, uh, you know, reading with their parents and their loved ones in those public spaces and, um, you know, our investments in our parks. Um, there there's such a laundry list. Um, but when I think about public safety, I think about that and I think that it's time that we really broaden that scope, broaden that definition so that we can better understand and evaluate just how safe our community is here in the city of Bakersfield. With that, um, I'll just echo my colleagues uh, sentiment that we we really do need to do better. Um, I think this this budget um is really about making sure that we're committing to committing real dollars to the needs of the current day and the present day. Um, unfortunately, we wish that there was more that we could do to catch up on a lot of the deferred maintenance um that we have been working through that has built up over several decades, frankly, and is going to continue to take time for us to chip away at. Um but I look forward to the midyear and into the next fiscal year as we take some of these uh fiscally responsible cuts um that we engage community, we listen to each other and really figure out how we can do not just more intervention, not just more enforcement, but really um dig deep and do a lot more prevention work uh to create a more safer public. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Arius. Council member Coleman. Thank you, mayor. So, uh, for me, I've been on the council for six months now, and, uh, it's been a kind of a learning experience, uh, learning how this budget works and how the city works. And, um, one of my frustrations has been, uh, how slow the government works. And I want I want to kind of make a point that we have to learn government has to learn to move at the speed of life and uh that requires us not to delay planning for sustainability. Uh we had a conversation in a previous council meeting um uh regarding PSVS and uh uh council member Gonzalez uh very eloquently laid out you know the things that PS we they've done with PSVS dollars that improved uh public safety and that's all fine but the question becomes whether that's that's going to be sustainable. able in the future and um I think we owe it to the residents and to the employees of the city uh to ensure that the organization is positioned for the future and that's uh to be structurally sound serviceoriented oriented and adaptable and u I I think we really need to work on that that element of those three things. This is my first city budget and I had I had some experience with budgets prior to coming here and I'm glad I did because it would have really been an uphill battle. But u I really had to do some additional studying to really understand the budget and the structure and that kind of thing. So, I wanted to share uh a couple of my likes and dislikes with the budget budgeting process and and how we came out. U in terms of likes, I I like how much the city does and uh you know, the more you get into it, the more you find out. Uh, I just learned, well, I guess I knew it, but it kind of got driven home yesterday at a committee meeting, you know, that the city uh spends almost $4 million a year goes picking up stuff people dump on the streets. And we have a whole uh group of people that that's what their job is. And uh that's not all city employee. It's using some vendors and that kind of thing. But my point was that there's so much the city does. Uh I I liked how available the staff was to answer questions and uh how they how they understand the budget in great detail and so they're not just throwing something out there that they haven't uh lived with for a while. And I did like the department budget presentations. Uh, I liked hearing from the department heads about how they're uh how they see things for next year. Uh, what I didn't like is, and this may be because I was a new council member, uh, but I didn't like how late the council was to see the budget. Uh, you know, it was well into the spring before we really had an opportunity, at least I had an opportunity to have any input to it. There's a lot of going on what staff was doing, but uh my involvement was very limited until then. Um and and my other comment, what I didn't like was the rigidity of the budget. It seemed so fixed by time that it was presented to us. This is the budget. There it is. and you there was there was input but it didn't seem that much changed as a result of the input and I'd like to uh be more engaged the next time to try to influence that and the last part was the lack of constructive public input u you know we didn't get the uh the public input uh that we maybe could have uh during those budget presentations u but I'm I'm kind of thinking that that public input needs to be before the budget presentations by the department heads so that it reflects uh the things that the people have uh have talked about and and we're not going to be able to do everything for everybody. I get that, but um I'm I'm wondering if that shouldn't be flipped over. So So here, where do I stand on this? I think it's important to remember that the budget is first and foremost um a forecasting tool. It's not uh it's not a financial document, you know, where we're committed to things. It's a it's no there's no financial commitment associated with it. It's just a forecasting tool. and and but I think that what this forecasting tool is saying is that there's a storm coming that that we need to listen to. I think it's essential that we begin to position the city for long-term fiscal stability. And um I I do I intend to support this budget tonight, but um and that's mainly because we have some charter requirements to pass a budget. Um refusing to adopt this budget would be counterproductive uh and disruptive to essential city services and we don't have an alternate budget to adopt. So uh we're kind of in a pickle on that. Uh, however, adopting this budget without some corrective action going forward, I think would be irresponsible and miss an opportunity to address emergency emerging concerns. Uh, Council Member Basher kind of pointed out some of those things that, you know, sales and businesses are down and we might not see the money that we think we're going to have. And so I think we need to uh look harder. You know, we say the budget is balanced and and council member Aras touted that. You know, we're one of the few cities that could say that, but the budget uh depends materially on the use of fund balance uh to close that operating gap. And this is an acceptable accounting principle uh for emergencies and shortterm uh budget shortfalls, but the city has been doing this as far back as I could find. They've been carrying this over and it's not a good uh accounting practice. Um, you know, we've talked recently about uh maybe having to do some bonds or something to be able to uh do some of our infrastructure uh projects and with carrying over these fund balances is going to uh be a little bit of a black eye when those underwriters look at uh what kind of rates we get and how credible we are. And so I think it's important that we start addressing that. Many of our contracts have cost of living uh uh accelerators built into them. A lot of our labor agreements have uh accelerators that they get so much more uh but our revenues don't necessarily grow correspondingly. And so we really need to uh be more careful. Revenues have been relatively flat for the last few years while our expenses have grown and uh uh and they continue to grow. And I guess the point to everybody is there is no extra money. And at some point, we're going to have to make some hard choices about what's important and what we're going to what we're going to continue to pay for. Um, and what is needed is clear operational and fiscal discipline. We're going to have to really get to to those issues. We can't keep spend keep outspending our revenues. We just can't. Um, so I I I don't know. I I struggle with this because I was I was recommended that I make some of this as a referral, but I and this is not an offense to the city manager, but you know, I hear so many referrals sent and you know, there's a scramble to write stuff down over on that side of the room. And but yet I I I see so much so little of it come back, you know, in actual real things. And so I was I'm struggling with whether some of this stuff should be a referral or uh uh a motion when we go to approve uh or go to vote on the budget. Uh but you know, my my recommendation is that the city uh and I don't know if I should just make this referral now uh uh or we can have some more discussion about it, but for me, what I'd like to see us do is this staff come back um within the next 30 days or so with a concrete plan uh on how to phase out our reliance on fund balance for structural balance or fund balance for structural balance over the next three years. It it's not possible for us to cut out $46 million out of our budget to eliminate now. That's not practical. But we have to stop that reliance on it. We also have to stop our reliance on fund transfers and vacancies. Uh this one-time vacancies and fund transfers. This is well recognized in the accounting industry as a warning sign for cities uh that face fiscal instability and we need to really focus on those things. We need to develop a policy for for council discussion on how to utilize fund balance uh in the future and I'd like to see that relatively shortly. But one of the things that I I wanted to make sure that we do is that not wait till midyear to know how we're doing that we have some kind of report by the you know the first quarter to show how we're doing compared to our budget and uh you know where we're short where we might have some uh areas that we're uh flush And then I'd like to see a councilled uh operational review of all departments and units with staff support and input to identify some of these opportunities that we could have to shift some of our activities into self-supporting enterprises. uh uh activities or services that can be responsibly eliminated or transferred to local vendors or uh somehow otherwise done. Uh look for opportunities to increase revenues in align with community priorities and the staffing adjustments or consolidations that improve those efficiencies. And and when I say staff involvement, I'm talking about, you know, worker level staff involvement because the people that know best what is we're doing u and what can be done better are the people that are out there doing it. And so I I'd like that to be part of the staff thing. And then the the the last item would has to do with balance transfers and transfers and that's a very complicated thing and it's not real clear and I'd like to have u some comprehensible reconciliation. I know that uh the finance department sent me you know their transfer but I like to have a little bit more detail to that but also with an education component. So the council can really understand that and under understand the use of that. U so I don't know. Uh I guess I just said all that. So I guess that's a referral. So uh I can give you the written text if you like. Uh but I I would like to see some response to that. So I think that's all I really have to say. Okay, I could keep talking in circles, but u I'm probably going to support this budget, but I don't love this budget and I I think we need to get to work on uh fixing the budget and gaining that financial stability. So, that will be the end of my comments. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council Member Coleman. For us to have the sound of something better that we all want for ourselves, for our families, and for our community, we do have to have that operational and fiscal discipline and seek how we can better increase our revenues. Uh, thank you all for your participation here tonight and we receive your input. Vice Mayor, motion, please. Motion to adopt the fiscal year 2025206 city budget. Mr. Mayor, could you also please include all of the um resolutions within the agenda? The resolution for the appropriations as well as the um resolution adopting the master fee schedule. Yes. Um which Okay. Motion to approve the fiscal year 2025 2026 city budget including the resolution approving and adopting the operating and capital improvement budgets for the city of Bakersfield for fiscal year 2526. The resolution establishing the city of Bakersfield appropriations limit for fiscal year 2526 and the resolution approving and adopting the master fee schedule for the city of Bakersfield for the fiscal year 2025 2026. Thank you, Vice Mayor. You have a motion, please. like to amend that motion, please. Um, council member Coleman. Thank you, mayor. Um, I just like to amend that to delay uh CIPs till midyear. Council member, if I may just clarify, are you suggesting all capital improvement projects or the contingent capital improvement projects? I'm suggesting that all CIP be delayed till midyear till we know we have the money. Um just procedurally mayor as you know um council member Kman with that amendment that has to be approved by the vice mayor. If it's not approved by the vice mayor then we'll take if you want to make another motion you can make a separate motion. If the mayor accepts it, so be it. If the mayor doesn't accept it, then we could have two motions on the table. Two motions. Uh she'd like two motions. So we'll do two motions. Two motions. And so, Council Member Coleman, uh, we'll take the second motion first. If you could restate so we're clear what your motion is. My motion is to delay all CIP until midyear. So, you have a motion. Uh, and Council Member Smith, would you like to comment? Council member Smith. Thank you. I I am not in favor of delaying all CIP projects until mid year. We we talked about fixing fire station. We we've got a a number of things that we have on there that we realistically have money for and and to blanket postpone that and not keep the city moving with what we believe we can keep moving. I am not for I, you know, since I got the speaker here, uh, the city is doing great things. Crime is down, traffic fatalities are down. We've got real progress on homelessness. BLNC is is serving people and and lives have been changed. We've made substantial improvements on the parks. As you mentioned, the trash in the streets have been cleaned up. The city is doing great work and will continue to do great work and the sky is always falling. Four years ago when when interest rates started going up, Bruce Freeman sat right there and said, you know, we're we're headed for a big recession and didn't happen. Yes, there are financial problems and yes, we make adjustments for them. Um, with the best information that we have and so I'm I'm for the budget as presented. Thank you. Okay. So, you don't want to make any sense? So, we are now going to vote on Council Member Coleman's motion. Uh oh. Council member Gonzalez, I'm having problems right now with technology. I don't see the screen. Okay. Yeah, go ahead and cancel everything. We'll start again. Um, so the first motion we take is the last motion made. So, Council Member Coleman's motion is before us right now. I too am opposed to um that motion. We have a number of CIP projects that are grant-f funded by the state and by the federal government. Uh we have obligations to see those projects come to fruition. Uh to make a blanket statement that we want to pause all CIPs uh at the last moment. Um I don't think is responsible move for this council and so I I cannot support that uh motion tonight. And I do want to concur with uh council member Smith. He makes a great point. We have been making progress in this city. It it you know the point in time came out uh last week and it shows that in Metro Bakersfield the number of unsheltered people on our streets has dropped by 10 and a half%. There are more people who in Metro Bakersfield who are in shelters now than who are unsheltered, who are on the street. That's a step forward. And that's because of our investments. That's because of this city's investment in things like the Brundes Lane Navigation Center, which is uh a shelter for 300 individuals. Uh they are close to actually permanent housing up to almost 500 people. So, there's lots of progress being made uh in this city. Um, and I think that we need to kind of after this budget is adopted, go back and review all of the things that we're doing uh throughout the city and and and and revisit the metrics because uh I think all of us as a community need to be reminded of the investments that we're making and the gains that we're making. And uh yes, we have more work to do. Yes, we're not perfect. Um um but we will continue to work hard and we have to have this can do spirit as a city. Um that's what Bakersfield was built on and uh and I reject the skies falling. We know that harder times are coming ahead, but we will get through them and we will be a stronger city and a better city longer term because we have smart people at city hall. We have uh smart people on this DAS and we're going to get through it. But I have to reject your motion, Council Member Cohen. Is everybody a able to see their screens at this point? Uh for voting, go ahead and Yeah. So, we're voting right now on Council Member Coleman's motion. We always take the second motion first. So, his motion it Do you want to restate it, council member? No, they cleared it because there was some confusion there. We had My motion Yeah. My motion was to defer all CIP till mid year. Okay, you have a motion. Please cast your vote. The motion fails with Vice Mayor Core, Council members Arus, Gonzalez, Smith, and Basherest voting no. Thank you. And so now we will vote on count on vice mayor's motion which is what she read earlier and that includes the resolutions. You have a motion. Please cast your votes. The motion is approved with council members weir and basherash voting no. Thank you. And now next item please. Council and mayor statements. Thank you. Council member Gonzalez, is that a new sign in that's left? Okay. Colleagues, do any of you wish to speak? Uh, council member Basher, I would like to make a referral uh back to staff that we could revisit our EOA and adjust the policy that surrounds it, how it's done in our city. I'm still currently waiting on information that I requested for this uh two months ago in regards to the total spent in each of the districts and how much is allocated to that. Um I got a map of the districts and some of the information, but I'd like to set up a a an opportunity for us to revisit that and make some changes that would benefit our entire community and all the taxpayers. Thank you, Council Member Arus. Thank you, mayor. Um, I apologize. I did not have this pulled up, but I just wanted to um respond to a constituent inquiry. Uh, Miss Delgado's in the crowd tonight, and so I just wanted to be responsive to a comment that you made at the last meeting. Um, I've received additional uh calls for service. um just behind uh the property at 3502 Hail Street uh area code 92307. Uh the the challenge with the legal dumping is far beyond what um Lauren's teams at Open Door Network can handle. Um, it is going to require a a large dedicated effort and team uh from city staff and potentially additional partners uh to go back there and clean up um the existing illegal dumping. Um, but I I'm hoping that we can uh leverage the existing resources that we have on staff to be able to clean it up, but also potentially take a look at, you know, some of the um, you know, technology that we've invested in uh, with BPD to really catch these bad actors uh, while they're in the act of of dumping illegally. It's uh, just detrimental to our community. Unfortunately, Southeast Bakersfield is is um, I I feel is the number one for a lot of these challenges. And so, um, I just want to, uh, make that referral tonight. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Arius. Is there anyone else who would like to speak? Seeing none, our meeting stands adjourned at 7:37. Thank you all for participating. [Music]