Heat. Heat. >> [music] [music] [music] [music] >> Number one. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. N. Hey, hey, hey. Heat. Hey. Hey. >> [music] >> Oo. [music] Ooh. >> [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] >> I'd rather try and accomplish [music] something great and fail than try to accomplish nothing and fully succeed. Pass back to you all night. [music] >> [music] >> I'd rather try and accomplish something great than try to accomplish nothing and slowly succeed. I'll back all night. [music] You got to find a complete ingredient and fully exceed all night when you [music] have sleep and fully succeed. [music] [music] Heat. [music] Heat. >> [music] [music] >> Hey, [music] hey, hey. >> [music] [music] [music] >> No action. Good afternoon. [music] It's my pleasure to call to order the 12:00 department head budget presentation meeting of May 4th, 2026. Madame Clerk, please call the role. >> Mayor Go, >> here. >> Vice Mayor Core. Council member Aas. Council member Gonzalez, >> I'm here. >> Council member Weir, >> Council Member Smith, >> I'm here. >> Council member Coleman >> here. and council member Basher. >> Thank you and keeping welcome to all of you. Thank you for engaging with us today. In keeping with council's resolution, the public statements portion is divided into two periods. There's a period for items listed on the meeting agenda and items not on the agenda. Statements for items listed on this afternoon's agenda are given a two-minute time limit, 20 minutes total per agenda item. Statements regarding items not listed on the agenda are also given a two-minute time limit, 20 minutes total. If you have written comments that are longer than your verbal statement, give them to the clerk who will give copies to the council. If you're here to make a public statement, please fill out a public speaker card and give your completed card to the clerk. We ask that you mark whether you're here to speak on an item listed on this afternoon'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 portion. Those speakers will be called during the non-aggenda portion 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. Madam clerk, do we have any public speakers regarding items not listed on the agenda? >> Mayor Go, we have not received any speaker cards regarding items not listed on today's agenda, nor have we received speaker cards for items listed on the agenda. >> Thank you. Next item, please. Reports item 3 a fiscal year 2026 27 department budget presentation budget workshop number one budget workshop number one Mr. Kle >> mayor go honorable mayor and councel this is one of two workshops that we will have the second one will be held on May 18th and I would note before we jump into our first department presentation that we will have some wrap-up content at May 18th that summarizes the budget in whole. We're not starting off with that summary of budget and whole. We're going to jump right into our department presentations. Uh but at your May 18th, you'll see what our numbers are for the capital improvement program, the total general fund numbers at your last workshop, you saw um some uh preliminary numbers for the general fund. Uh and uh also in the memo for public safety, public safety vital services tax, you saw some preliminary numbers uh for that specific portion of the general fund. We'll have a summary of all of that on May 18th um prior to, you know, the the more in-depth budget >> [clears throat] >> um considerations and vote for June. But for today's meeting, we're going to walk through first our general government. Um then we're going to have our city attorney's office finance um present their budgets, recreation and parks, and then police and fire before we even get all the way to uh those departments. Uh each department has been asked to follow a similar template that we've used the last couple of years. Um an interesting uh slight exception, the police department recently presented a very lengthy public safety update. And so the police department presentation is just a little bit shorter because we're not going to repeat the same content that was presented at um your last city council meeting. So uh with that preface, I'll just jump into general government as uh we term it. Uh there are several uh portions of um the city manager's office um and legislative budgets that you know we cover collectively in and what we call this general government portion. And so um this will be the first department that we'll go through. And again, you'll see how that template plays out throughout uh uh the other departments as well. >> Great. And you're going to be setting the tone and showing us that we don't have to have every word read to us. Absolutely. >> Okay, that's great. >> Absolutely. Uh and I was actually going to jump right to now again these numbers do reflect the budget reductions that you saw in your workshop in March. And uh so on the personnel services line there um there's a slight increase. We know we were going to have some increases due to uh different factors uh that the cost of living adjustments, the increases for health uh costs and for insurance costs. Um those play out into all the personnel line items of all the departments. Uh but because we also saw the 5% reduction that went into the budget and you'll see that in the next slide um a very u modest overall increase in those personnel services. Operations has a much larger increase and that's because we took on the operating costs of the economic development function. And so the economic development function has uh about $1.5 million of operating contract support uh dollars. And so that's why you see um that that large increase in operations there. It's interesting to note actually and we'll see it a little bit more on the next slide as well. U the city manager's office uh took on uh one position that had pri previously been in in risk and the three positions from the economic um uh and community development department. And still our personnel line item was only modestly increased because we made other reductions in personnel before uh taking on those additional positions. Uh and you'll just note below uh in the funding sources that that larger piece uh of the operating costs is reflected in the general fund public safety vital services uh tax line item. Uh that $ 1.9 million is representative of those uh economic development uh operating dollars that we principally use for contracting for the the tools and resources and and incentives to do economic development. That's the those are the biggest changes for the city manager's office budget. Just as a high level reflection again, I've already talked about um economic development moving. We also had some positions in community vitality that were associated in the city manager's office. As we've as that program has evolved organically, it makes the most sense for those individuals to be within the purview of the police department for being able to access confidential information that's in CAD and and other um reporting systems. And so we've we'd been moving in that direction, but but formalized the shift of those community vitality operations over to the police department. And then just as a note, uh we've been preparing for uh and we'll continue to move forward with some notable uh changes to how we manage parking. Um and uh we'll be kicking off a pilot for that program in this coming year. I would just note that in this last year, we've spent a lot of effort on the cohort 5 grant award for Calvip. That's good news. That's um going to help us continue to move forward with that program. We've been working very hard uh out of our office on a federal ADA requirement to update accessibility as well as uh we've been continuing to push forward with um some specific annexations as well as preparing for larger scale annexations. We actually are in the process of the legal descriptions of several um large um annexation requests and and the early stages of um setting um the pieces in place that we can submit those applications through LAFCO. Uh here just again a reflection of um the personnel changes as noted. uh we uh eliminated an assistant city manager. Uh we moved some of the community vitality staff and again took on the economic development and that one position from risk for the city clerk's office. Uh you'll note that there was again a slight increase there in personnel services. That doesn't mean there were any increases in the personnel but just um those uh cost line items that are not in control for the clerk's office. But clerks did identify other um operating reductions uh that could be handled uh for overall reduction in those operating costs. We appreciate uh looking hard. It's a very small budget and a tight budget, but um Julie and her team found some ways to achieve some savings there for all of us. Um we again are treating the the ultimately the hiring freeze and eliminations for all of general government as a whole. And so with a very small department for example in in clerks and risk um that their 5% reductions were achieved uh in combination with all of the the different units of the city manager's offices. So their personnel count um does not have any changes. Um and again we we saw uh the personnel costs go up uh due to some of the other um health cost increases and the cost of living adjustment. Um this uh past year uh we've had a lot going on. Um we actually had two different pieces for um filing requirements and you'll note that in the second and the fourth bullet that we had uh an enhancement to net file as well as there's new expanded ethics and uh fiscal financial training requirements that the clerks has helped to facilitate for us. Uh we've also been able to continue to expand the use of escribe to more of our uh board's commissions committees and then uh we had a great teen government day this past year that had a little bit of a a reimagining and and helped us to uh keep that engagement strong for our risk division. Uh on the personnel side that top line reflects that one shift of that one position over to the city manager's office. On the operating side, you'll see a notable increase there, and we'll cover that on these upcoming slides. But, um, in the risk space, we just continue to see increases that are hard for us to negotiate any better. Um, and they're not really, you know, within our control. In fact, I'll just shift over to the next slide and apologize for uh the size on that script. Uh, but a lot to cover there. and that um we um had some specific uh operational needs in our uh fire department. But then and that's a a small uh impact but much bigger impact you see there is the workers compensation program saw a 15% increase. Um a lot of that is our insurance premiums. Uh medical costs have seen inflation. We continue to see um you know workplace injuries. We've implemented um uh tracking systems and early warning detection systems. Uh but we're continuing to see, you know, heavy experience there. Um and then um our third party administration fees are up, but the bigger pieces really are um the insurance premiums and and the state fees for self- insurance. on the next section over for liability also up 10%. And we're seeing that those insurance premiums continue to go up uh at escalated rates um that haven't been seen in many years. It's probably been three decades since we've seen uh things go up at the same level. And in large part that is the lack of tort caps or tort and the need for tort reform at the state level. Um, and it continues to to be a pressure on not just local government agencies, but you many of our private entities as well. And that's why it's been reflected in our legislative platform as an important priority. And then fortunately, our our um property insurance um slightly down. Those uh sometimes go up and down in market cycles. I wouldn't read too much into that. Um um but uh we're you know thankful that we've seen some some favorable pricing there in this last year. Our visit Bakersville budget is uh fairly steady. Um the personnel services changes are reflective again of some of the same other increases. The one other piece is that we actually and and as a reminder, the visit Bakersfield is funded out of our transient occupancy tax. Um it's still part of the general fund, but but it's um all of the the budgeted funds come from toot, you know, for visit Bakersfield. there was one portion of one of our staff members that that could be charged at tot that was not and so we added that in as well as the other you know regular [clears throat] increases are causing that slight increase there in the personal services line but then we were able to also identify some offsets and some shifts that helped us uh to get some operating savings without major changes in the programs that we provide uh for the benefit of the community and for the benefit of tourism Um and so would just want to note some of those different pieces. Uh many of the events that we've been successful on in the past, we've continued to be able to have those uh similar events take place here, multiple successful uh sporting events. Uh we also uh were able to get a couple of new events and so we're excited about those uh and want to continue to see that moving forward. Um, and then in addition to the events specifically, the combination of our communications and marketing with visit Bakersfield we feel is providing good dividends that we've added some new um tools. We have a new u community events calendar. We've uh have the new Bakersfield historic trail and we had a lot of success with some of our other trails or walks and so we added the historic trail. Um, we've got uh improved um noticing and signage in our local airport. Um, as well as a driving tour that folks can also take of Bakersfield. Um, in this coming year, we expect to continue to increase the social media presence. We've got a new app that's going to help us get a lot more exposure there. And then we're going to continue again many of these same events and and we're uh thinking through ways that we can um expand out and and get even some more of those larger events. Um and we're looking forward to the expansion of Mason Marin. That's going to put us on the map for much larger tournaments um in the next couple of years. With that, I'll be happy to answer any questions on general government. >> Thank you, Mr. Kle. Colleagues, do you have any questions? Council member Gonzalez. >> Thank you, Mayor. Uh, thank you, Mr. Kle, for your presentation today. Um, I wanted to jump right into the topic of, uh, risk management. Um, so we have a workers compensation increase of 15%, $3.1 million. Liability insurance has increased by 10%, $1.4 million. That's a $4.6 million increase year-over-year. So, the same delivery of services as this current year for next year, and yet all of our expenses have grown just by the insurance costs by $4.6 million. >> That is correct. [clears throat] >> Couple questions there. Um, one is we've talked about costbased accounting uh for a while and I know the city manager's office is moving in that direction. as it stands today, do we, and I know it sounds odd to members of the public, but does does the city charge the department for these insurance related costs based on employee counts or type of work or however you may uh do that, but does are are departments charged? >> Yeah, good question, Council Member R. I'll ask um Miss Gina Cvy to come up and help add in uh detail where I'm lacking in that detail. But it's interesting you point out the cost allocation plan is an area that we do need to move towards. Fortunately, in the area of risk and insurance, we are charging out to the departments. And so when we do a cost allocation plan, that won't I guess sort of solve that challenge because we already are making allocations to the departments. But Gina, do you want to go a little more into detail about how we do that? Miss Kovy. >> Um, that's correct. Uh, Gina Kovi, risk manager. Uh, Council Member Gonzalez, yes, we do um allocation method for all of our programs. The risk department acts almost like a insurance uh provider. So, we allocate costs out a little bit differently um by payroll for workers comp and severity of claims uh status. And then for liability, we do it by um severity of of claims and lawsuits. >> Okay, great. Um and I also want to mention that the you know this is not unique from my understanding not unique to Bakersfield, right? The increases in workers compensation or liability increases. >> Correct. That's correct. We're seeing it across all public entities. Um, that's why it's important, especially on the liability side, to really be pushing for those tort caps to try and control some of those costs for some of that litigation we're seeing across the state. And what are those um actions uh steps we might be able take to take as a council or city management department heads might be able to take to help reduce those cost over time >> reduce exposure um and perhaps in turn reducing the uh premiums. >> Great question. So we are trying to work at thinking outside the box. So, um just for uh litigation, we have and I know our city attorney will talk about some of the lawsuits we have, but motor vehicle accidents is something we've really seen that um we can work on. So, we're working on bringing in uh driving simulators to really further push our employees into um more uh remediation training and training on the onset of coming into the organization. On the uh workers comp side, we're doing audits. We're meeting with um our largest departments all the time once a month for um our Bakersfield Police Department to make sure they understand and stay on top of what those work rellated injuries look like and how we can impact them in real time. >> Great. Thank you so much. >> Thank you. >> Council member, you mentioned that other cities are experiencing the same issues and indeed they are. Big city mayors is very concerned about the tort issues and so we have taken that on as a cause. Thank you, Miss Kovi and Miss Janeiro, for providing information that's needed for that. I know Cal City's also uh is experienced uh taking on that challenge. Council member Smith, please. And just for the record, uh city clerk, Council Member Basher entered at 12:08. >> Thank you, Mayor. Just a [clears throat] couple questions. Uh, first the economic development operations were really kind of getting rid of a department but not getting rid of it and moving it. If you could kind of explain that in more detail and then also the parking, you use the term enterprise, the city parking enterprise. What's really happening in the future with parking? >> Great questions, council member. So, uh, first on economic and community development, again, as a combined department, um, that was created, um, uh, 40 years ago, uh, as we move forward, we're going to continue to do the work of economic development. And, and in fact, I would suggest that's one of the most important, uh, things that we can do to grow our revenue base and grow our tax base, you know, for the community is to continue to help create more quality jobs in this community. And so rather than um having those two functions combined, you know, community development is now going to be part of development services. We have a small team, three member team for economic development. They'll be reporting to Gary Hen, assistant city manager in the city manager's office. And um the that's actually, you know, the the unit that was working specifically on economic development in the community and economic development department was about that same size. Uh but also we're taking the dollars that were available for our economic development strategic plan and our small business assistance um and also keeping those dollars intact. Um, and we're we've already been in the process of creating several other uh relationships with regional entities u in Bakersfield and Kerna uh like chamber KC B3K as well as also having some standalone contracts of the city. You'll remember for example we did um when we did the mega site contracts some of the work was specific to that mega site location uniquely but then some of the work that they did was to help us identify what are some of the things we just need to do to market better as a as a city and other locations that might also be for industrial or logistics. And so you'll be seeing in in coming months uh contracts that we've actually been working on for, you know, several months now. Um that would help give us more tools to continue to uh market the Bakersfield as a whole, but then also specifically target um site readiness of sites for some of our industry clusters. And so um the the work of economic development absolutely is going to continue. Um but we're creating this ecosystem that uh is a mix of some uh contracts uh with regional partners, specific contracts with uh private entities that are in support and giving us the tools that we need rather than let's say necessarily build a bigger team of city employees, but have folks deliver those services to us on contract, but also still have that small core team that's really hyperfocused on job generation. So that's the economic development portion. Um I forgot your second >> parking enterprise. >> Parking. Yes. Thank you. So uh parking enterprise and and I'm glad you used the word enterprise because um I was maybe getting a little ahead of myself that we haven't formalized the parking uh revenues and expenses as a separate enterprise yet. But that is our intent in this coming year. Right now it's actually um uh we do collect revenues into the general fund but we actually pay more in operating costs out of the general fund than revenues that we bring in. Not a huge amount but we are subsidizing the parking uh functions in downtown um each year. Uh, and the intent is to separate those out to take another look at what do we charge but also make it easier to park and then also easier to charge by the use of technology. And we're going to start at the 18th and I garage and then some street level parking in the adjacent areas. Um, we don't want anybody to get too um uh ahead of us on what that might look like because we still need to go out to the businesses in the downtown area and have some of those conversations about what that could and should look like. And so we're anticipating doing that community outreach uh actually just in in coming months. We're having some meetings with downtown business association and other businesses in the downtown area. But the plan is to then start uh using our surface lots more um intentionally that the city does own some surface lots downtown. We own the garage um if we move forward with acquisition of u the Truxton towers that would give us more inventory to then also manage in this parking enterprise. But it's been demonstrated in many communities that parking can pay for itself and and even be a revenue generator. We're not doing it to try and make a lot of money, but we think if it generates enough revenue that it can allow us the the ability to build more parking to meet the demands where there are demands and some places there there are more and there and some places there's probably sufficient. But, uh, having an enterprise that focuses on that, uses these newer technology tools to help us determine what are market rates, where is their demand or need. Um, we're excited to to start using those tools now through we actually got a grant to to start off this pilot program for the parking enterprise. um and uh not only uh eliminate a small subsidy that comes from the general fund, but also just manage it much more intentionally to the benefit from a an amenity standpoint for the downtown area. >> Great. Thank you. >> Thank you, Council Member Smith. Others don't see any other requests. So, we'll go on to our next one, >> which is our city attorney's office. Welcome, welcome. Good afternoon. Uh, I am Virginia Janeiro, your city attorney, and I will be giving the fiscal year 2627 budget for the city attorney's office. So, I start out with this slide every year and I do it uh really as a reminder for our listening audience to see that the city council has two employees. You have the city manager through contract and you have your city attorney through contract. And as you can see by this chart, uh you now have a third um employee and that is the chief assistant city attorney who has not yet been hired. but I am hopeful will be hired here uh by the beginning of this upcoming fiscal year. And so we've put that box on the slide in two places. One as a it's reporting directly to the city council because that will be a contract position. That chief assistant will not be part of any um bargaining unit. Um and then we also put it in a grade out version underneath the city attorney because they will be um loosely directed uh under me until until I leave. So, it's a transitional position again for those in the listening audience um reporting to the council but uh loosely directed under the city attorney. This is the slide that the city manager indicated that the budget team is asking all departments and divisions to put before you. Um I have put it up in the front. It's also a duplicate. I've put it at the back and I just want to explain a little bit. [clears throat] Um in that uh lower right hand corner you can see that our budget has increased by 9.6%. Uh even though the city manager and the finance director have asked everyone to take a 5% cut, I'm going to explain uh so that you understand why that really um would be incredibly difficult if not impossible for our office to do that with such a small size. Meaning that as city manager Kle indicated with some of the other small departments, even if we were to stay absolutely the same and not change anything, uh with the generous cost of living that the council recently authorized and the increase in operational costs, insurance, etc., uh it would still increase by 9.6%. Having said that, there are 13 positions um within uh our compliment, within the city attorney's compliment. You can see those there in a linear format. I think what's critical to look at is the chief assistant city attorney is not yet funded. The assistant city attorney is not yet funded. There are two deputy city attorneys that are not yet funded. Um, one of them is um, excuse me, of the two deputy city attorneys, uh, both are funded. Um, one of them, however, some of that money is going to be used for the salary for the chief assistant city attorney. So again, you can already see that that's not going to be enough. So the 9.6% is is a very conservative number. Uh we are actively recruiting for that remaining deputy city attorney. And then there are five staff members. When you look at it in the more traditional organizational chart format, that's what you that's what you see. Um again, the chief assistant I've placed in yellow because part of that salary will be coming from the UN from the uh funded deputy city attorney position. The assistant city attorney is in red because it is unfunded. You may recall that that position was unfunded but left in the compliment last year when I indicated that my retirement was imminent. Um I felt and I believe the council also agreed that it would be better for the incoming city attorney to decide what to do with that assistant city attorney. I would tell you that you you need you need four and you need four attorneys um in addition to the city attorney. Whether that's one assistant city attorney and three deputies or four deputies, that's for the next person to decide. But right now, that assistant city attorney is unfunded. You have two currently um within the city attorney's office. And the other uh deputy city attorney, although he is in my office and he is in the compliment for the city attorney's office, he is paid from the water department, which is an enterprise fund. So again, the 9.6% is a number that um again is a little on the low side. We do have five staff members and I can tell you I think it's one of the best staffs uh that the city attorney's office has ever had. So we rely heavily on outside counsel and that's going to become pretty apparent here uh shortly. Uh this slide again a very common slide. You can see when you compare our office to the other top 10 cities uh in California and some of our sister cities. Uh we are down to four. Uh that would be myself and that would be the three deputies within um within the office right now. Again, one of them primarily exclusive to water. Uh I oftentimes come before you and I say that we're lean and mean. Uh but we are down to the bone. In fact, I would tell you that we're into the bone now. I mean, we're we're minus an appendage. I'm not I'm not sure you could go I'm not sure you could go any any less than what we've had. And that is why we rely heavily on outside counsel. uh you know that you are under contract with Clifford and Brown through 2030 under contract with Martrosion and Cohen through 2030. Uh we do have a yearly contract with Dwayne Morris to deal with our water issues. I believe that one will be coming a new contract will be coming forward uh for your consideration before the end of this budget year. And now what we're seeing though is we're seeing additional contracts with other outside councils. So, we do have one with Dwayne Morris in addition to the water to help us with the general plan. And we're using other outside counsel to help us in areas that frankly um we used to handle in and we used to handle in house. We're dealing with outside counsel now for short-term rentals um for SQUA, for the Mills Act, for Prop 218, for eminent domain, um for some of our economic and community development issues such as the land trust, and for labor. And so I think again when you when you go into the next fiscal year and you are with your next city attorney, that's one of the bigger issues I think this council is going to have to have a discussion with, right? It's a balancing act. How much do you really handle inhouse with your with your deputies and how much do you do you utilize and rely on outside counsel? There are pros and cons to each approach. Uh but that's probably something that um you're going to be hearing a little bit more of as the as the year progresses. Again, we are very fortunate to have um our contracts with outside counsel, particularly that of Clifford and Brown and Marty Roian and Cohen. I mean, just take a look at this chart. It kind of goes hand inand to what Gina Kovi just mentioned to you. Incoming lawsuits alone, these are just incoming. You look at 2021, there was about 20. It's doubled uh in in five, four or five years. And remember, when you have the 42 in this year, the others don't go away. I mean, you're handling the 42 as well as all of the others that have happened in the preceding year. And we are doing an excellent job of disposing of cases, but it is very much within the standard practice of the industry to have a case that goes uh anywhere between three and five years. So, we're handling all of the red and all of the blue uh that you can that you can see on there. Little bit of a pie chart here to show you what we're dealing with. Um again, when you look at single category lawsuits. By far the largest is motor vehicle. Um and the next largest single category I I would say to you is slip and falls. Uh miscellaneous contains a lot of other items. Some of those items too are items in which we the city of Bakersfield are the plaintiff. So I would say to you we really want to concentrate on those items in red and those items in green. And I think again, Council Member Gonzalez asked an appropriate valid question is so, you know, what do we really do to to cut that cut that pie in half? Uh, you cut that pie in half and you've got a different story in front of you. Despite that, again, our outside council in terms of litigation has done a tremendous job. Uh, we they have closed six cases, four with no money. State, they've closed 25, 13 without any monies. But um I wish I could stand up here and tell you it's been a it's it's been a great year, but it's been a brutal year. You all know it's been a brutal year. Um we've had three cases that we've had to settle for over a million dollars. Two of them were over $15 million. Um and yes, insurance paid for those cases. Um but what you don't see on the chart and what I can't explain to you, not because I I I'm unable to explain to you, but it's an unknown, which is it's disappointing. And we don't know when we pay that kind of money what that secondary um collateral impact is going to be. Are you going to have the same insurance rates uh from here on out? What are those premiums? You already heard Gina and the city manager tell you that the premiums have skyrocketed. Well, it's probably no no doubt it's because of the number of motor vehicle cases, the number of trip and falls, and the fact that we had to settle um two cases well over $15 million. and there wasn't much of a defense. So, that's not something that I relish coming up here and telling you, but it's the truth. Department highlights, uh, you're looking at 184 active litigation matters that our office handles right now. That is by far the most, uh, that the city attorney's office has ever handled, um, in the history of the city of Bakersfield. Um, yes, we are handling some of them in-house, but the weight of those 184 litigation matters. Uh, that has an impact internally to our office. Even though we rely heavily on outside counsel, uh, we are handling some of our own in-house that we realize have nothing to do with the city of Bakersfield. I cannot tell you how many times we have been sued for accidents uh, because of GET bus, even though we have absolutely nothing to do with GET bus. We get lawsuits from uh attorneys in LA that think that the city of Lancaster is somehow associated with the city of Bakersfield. Those types of cases my deputies and myself we handle. But that weight of the 184 and that weight of nothing is an accident anymore. It's always a lottery ticket is impacting your city attorney's office. That's more monitoring that we need to do. That's more invoices, cost invoices that we need to process. uh that means there's more work for finance department to do because again there's more paperwork associated with that. Um and again at the bottom line I get back to that balancing act but that means there's more work for the deputies to do with litigation than with your municipal issues which I would tell you from my perspective in being your city attorney that's where your priority is that's where it should be. uh but it's those municipal issues uh that we are struggling uh frankly to keep up with because of the weight of those uh litigated matters. So again uh the slide is there u I think you'll have a better feel now for that slide. I'm not sure again I know that that increase of 9.6 is accurate but I think it should be a much higher number. And when you look at the changes between uh last year and and coming up again that chief assistant city attorney really needs to be funded, I understand that one of the funded deputy city attorney salaries will be going to that, but that simply is not enough. That needs to be increased. Um, the unfunded assistant city attorney position eventually is going to come back to you and I would suggest probably needs to be funded. And we are actively recruiting not only for the chief assistant city attorney, but we are actively recruiting for that one remaining vacant uh deputy city attorney 2 position. Uh so with that, um we're going to try to continue that litigation posture as as much as possible. Um maintain those municipal services where necessary. We will continue to use outside counsel um handle what we can inhouse and continue to recruit for that vacant DCA position. >> Thank you. >> Thank you, Mr. Janeiro. Thank you for a very clear report and it's always reassuring to know that you have a city attorney and a team that is doing everything possible uh with such outstanding success. You can't control the things that you can't control, but you've been del been able to deliver with outstanding success. So, thank you so much. Questions from the council. Council member Gonzalez. >> Thank you, Mayor. Uh, thank you, Mr. Naro, for your presentation, and I concur with the mayor. I think you've been um your department has been very effective in uh protecting the city, and I thank you for that. You're >> welcome. Um I I did want to touch on a point that you made just a moment ago because I I do uh understand and am sensitive to the burdens uh of the department as it relates to the number of incoming cases. Um I I am also mindful though that there are opportunities for us through your department uh to help us move the city as a whole forward. Um, number one is um the short-term vacation rental uh ordinance uh that we see that in full effect so that we can increase the the uh uh toot uh that that the city currently receives. I think that's one key area and then also um the area of receiverhip uh because I think that uh that strategy has been proven very successful uh and it's very strategic in that uh we're able to get a handle on some of these properties with property owners who are unresponsive and allows us to you know address the property but also in turn help upgrade the the neighborhood um and reduces longer term reduces es the number of calls for service uh among police and fire and flood ministries and other agencies that may may respond code enforcement obviously. Um and I think overall could help us alleviate some of that pressure for other departments in the city overall. Um my question is where are we with receiverhip? Do do we have uh any active cases and how can we expand that? Uh I am concerned with some of the uh code enforcement actions that currently are pending and has required us to uh take action to uh remediate some sites and as a result we're putting leans on properties. But those are real dollars that are coming from our general fund today in order for us to clean up properties that the city doesn't even own. Uh I think it seems unfair to the people of Bakersfield that we're having to take responsibility uh for these properties that are owned by private property owners. And I my point is that the receiverhip program I feel like is a much more assertive approach and can help prevent some of those expenditures but also helps get to the heart of some of these issues that are facing uh our community and certainly in war and some of the more historic neighborhoods. Mayor, Council Member Gonzalez. Uh, with regard to the short-term rentals, my understanding is is that staff is coming back to you. If it's not the May 13th meeting, it will be this the second meeting in May. Um, with regard for the with regard to the receiverhip, um, couldn't agree with you more. Um, and it would be I would love, right, to have that deputy city attorney that I could just say, you know, the old Mark Salvagio, go be a rat on a Cheeto. Um, and [laughter] and do that, right? because I think that's what having the the deputy city attorneys give you. It gives you the ability to do that and let them uh let their creativity run wild and and do that. Um the receiverhip program has been a success. I believe that deputy city attorney Ashley Zbrrono has worked with uh Phil Burns and the two that have been filed have have um uh have produced positive results for the city of Bakersfield. It's my understanding that we do not have any right now. When I say in the queue, I mean at uh that have been filed with court. We have been working with the receiver Mark Adams to see if he'll take some of those additional properties on. Um but again, you know, there's there's there's pros and cons with that, how much equity is in the property, etc. And that's where it really gets to the, you know, to those creative ideas. But, um that is a that is a priority in my office. Yes. >> Great. Thank you so much. >> Thank you, Council Member Coleman. Thank you, mayor. Um, Mr. Nero, thank you very much for your presentation and I really appreciate you showing that comparison to uh staffing what other communities are doing. That really helps keep things in perspective. Um, I'm real supportive of the outside counsel thing and it's very easy to measure how well outside counsel is doing in the liability and the criminal kinds of cases because it's win or lose and we can tell. But I I'm more concerned about what we're doing to make sure that we're getting our money's worth for the ones that are not in those kind of situations like the ones that are consulting on water issues and general plan issues and other things. Can you speak a little bit about that? >> Sure. Uh, Mayor, Council Member Kleman, um, at this point there isn't a metric system really, as as you point out, to determine how how well they're doing, win or lose. I will tell you that um, how I typically do it and how I look at those outside council firms is I deal with the department heads. So, if it's a labor issue, I'm dealing with HR. Um, if it's with the general plan, I'm I'm working with with Phil. And I reach out to those department heads and say, "Look, what is your relationship with outside council? Are they coming to the city of Bakers Bakersfield? Do you have a relationship with them, a personal relationship with them that you would or did with a a deputy city attorney in my in my office?" And then ultimately the buck stops with me, right? And so when the issues finally get up to my level, um I have to make that determination whether outside counsel is being more conservative than I would necessarily be because that that is one in my opinion of the disadvantages of relying on outside counsel. They provide you with the most conservative conservative advice that they can and that generally doesn't accomplish what the city council wants to do. So, um it's that level of of just having multiple eyes on the topic and um a personal relationship and and if the topic ends up if the council passes that short-term rental agreement and you're happy with it, then hey, that's that's a plus for outside counsel. If you're not happy with it for what whatever reason, then we need to re-evaluate. >> Okay. And thank you very much and and thank you for all your department is doing. I have no further questions. Thank you, Council Member Coleman. I don't see any other requests for this. So, thank you very much. >> Thank you. >> And now moving on to finance department. Oh, I see you're trying to set the example with an decrease in budget. >> Welcome. >> Thank you, mayor. Good afternoon, mayor, council members. I'm taking the cue from what you hinted at. I'm trying to be as brief as possible. As you can see, four slides. Hopefully that's as brief as I can. Win for us. So, appreciate appreciate the opportunity to present [clears throat] the proposed budget for the finance department for the upcoming fiscal year. As you saw, as was mentioned earlier, this is the standard presentation. We're just showing every department. And this is our budget for next fiscal year. Uh compared to last, we anticipate or are proposing a budget of $5.5 million uh broken down between those funding sources. As we talked about, every department was requested to reduce budget personnel budget specifically in the general fund by 5%. We were able to do that. What you do see is the general fund did increase though specifically because of two areas. Obviously, we had cost of living increases, but in addition to that, you'll see a reduction in the trip funds. What's happening there is the distribution of our staff has actually been increased to the general fund because that work from our staff has been reduced. So we're shifted some of those costs from trip to the uh general fund. So that al off offsetted some of the decreases that we saw from the the staffing reductions. In addition to that, we did have a reduction in capital cost specifically related to our purchasing department. That $30,000 reduction. We have the responsibility of purchasing copers for all the departments and that has been a significant reduction in the need for those. So, we're continuing to reduce that number and this year it's a $30,000 reduction for copier replacements for the upcoming fiscal year. So, what you see here is about a half% reduction from prior year in the general fund as a whole. All right. So, as we see these we we uh took to heart the need to reduce budget. So, we have no new proposals for the department, no specific growth. we we were actually able to reduce the budget by actually 6%. We met the 5% goal uh reducing two positions which I'll touch on in the next slide. In addition to that, we are moving forward with as we move into next fiscal year, our plans are we have no major CIP projects moving forward and we will continue to move forward with the ERP implementation. So, we've stood up and pretty much stabilized our ERP for the financials. We've helped stabilize the permitting system and now we're moving forward with the HCM or the payroll system up in the upcoming fiscal year that is planned to be completed by the March of the 2020 27. So next fiscal year. In addition to that, we will move forward with the utility billing system. We also hope to complete that implementation by the end of this calendar year. So here you see our compliment. As you see here in 2526, we had an increase of five individuals. That was because we shifted the budget office and the ERP team. Five individuals moved to the finance department. This year, we reduced by that number by two uh amounting to about a $280,000 reduction in the general fund budget. a B business analyst uh related to our ERP team and we reduced the TRA one treasury account specialist related to uh the the work we do downstairs in the first floor of city hall north again resulting in a current complement of 35 individuals. So that is the budget. I'm going before I move on I want do you have any questions specifically related to finance budget? >> Don't see any any requests. >> Okay. So we're going to move on to the next slide related to Kalpers. It was requested by council about a month and a half ago to go through the Kalpers contributions. And what we're showing here is based on the most recent actuarial reports uh from Kalpers and where we see our contributions and our costs for Kalpers going in the next well number of years 25 years. So, uh, what you see here is over the next 5 years, we expect our cost to go up by $14 million in total, peaking in 203031 at $98 million. From that point down, I we've shown this slide before. Just I'm sorry, I'll back up a little bit. The the two amounts [snorts] of costs related to our Kalpers are our unfunded actuarial determined liability, which is red, and then our normal cost, which is based on our current complement, which is blue. So what you see is by 2045 if Kalpers earns at what they're expected to earn our unfunded liability be reduced to zero and our cost would go by about down by 47% from that peak in 2031. One of the things that we want to talk about though again that's the expectation we understand we've talked about this before Kalpers is supposed to earn 6.8% 8% on its investments and they've actually done pretty well. Last three years they earned 9% last year 11% and then based on their current performance this year they're expected to earn 12%. So they are meeting their requirements and so based on that performance we don't expect over the next two years we don't expect that peak to go up because they've been meeting their required uh earnings and that's that discount rate as it's called. I did want to touch on one thing though as we move forward into the next fiscal year. There are there are certain challenges to this. We've we've relied on that peak of 20 at 2031 of of pension costs. If you're not aware, Assembly Bill 1383 is currently been passed by the Assembly and is in the Senate. And what that does is it reverses the the public employee pension reform act of 2013 for public uh safety employees. In essence, it reduces it increases I should say the cost by reducing the years the the the peak year it goes from you can retire at 55 instead of 57 at the peak amount of 3% versus 2.7%. So they are reversing some of the PEPA benefits and that if if it if it passes that peak in 2031 will likely go away. So, I just wanted to highlight that it is a challenge that we foresee. Uh, again, the legislature has to officially approve it. It passed one of the houses and it is currently in front of the Senate for potential approval. So, I wanted to talk about this. We've again shown this slide. We've said we we're we have a light at the end of the tunnel, but that light may dim if the legislature continues in its current uh path. So, that is my presentation. If you have any questions, I'm open for those. >> Thank you, Mr. McKean. questions. >> Council member Smith. >> Thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to follow up. There's been conversations in the past about the annual audits and the single audit and just, >> you know, are are we getting there or where where are we at? >> Yeah, we've talked about this at budget finance as I still call it. Um so we did we were able to reach out uh we have a completed the the the late year 2024 uh was was completed and submitted but the single audit is still being worked on by staff and uh specifically our auditor um I don't want one of the we in your upcoming council meeting you will note that we are switching auditors we have a new audit firm that is moving forward next year for so they will be taking over for the 25 fiscal year and 26. We have plans with them. We've worked with them on on a really a an a really a good timeline of what we can do to catch up. So, we have in essence we're going to combine our processes for 25 and 26 for things like the interim work so they can all be done and expedite that process. We anticipate that the 25 fiscal year audit can be done by the fall. So, October is is is the plan that I see. They actually said potentially September, but I I want to have a reasonable expectations. So 2025, we will should the 2025 fiscal year audit should be done by October and then we anticipate that we will be caught up for 26. So the 26 audit should be done based on our current schedule by December, January. That's the the the normal timeline. And we based on our conversations, we feel that we can catch up by 26 for the 26-year audit, which ends this fiscal uh June 30th of this year. We should be able to get back on track and actually complete that audit by the end of this calendar year. >> And we'll keep on track. >> Thank you for that response. Uh Randy, could you also just uh highlight for council's benefit because I don't think we've done that in a public setting the fix to the reporting for capital assets that was needed in this last year that we now able to get all the information out of the system that the delay on the ERB. >> Sure. Uh that that is the reason for the delay in 2024. uh we talked about in budget and finance the the resulting delay the additional delay resulting from 2024 was caused by the ERP implementation. So what happened was we had anticipated that our fixed asset module would be in place in the new Oracle system and what happened is it delay the system didn't properly convert all our assets. So we went back and forth with our impleer for about 3 to 4 months trying to get it right and ultimately I I basically said we need to just get this done. So we we had built a workaround to complete that audit and complete that fixed asset information. So that added delays because we had anticipated that fixed asset information to be properly put into the ind individual fiscal year for 2024 and it was not done and it created significant delays just waiting on that implementation to be complete which wasn't. It is complete now. >> Thank you. Look forward to being caught up. So do I. [laughter] >> Thank you council member Smith. Anyone else? Thank you Mr. McKean. And now we move on to recreation and parks. Well, today we had people from the state and another group actually here talking about how we can get more funding for parks and I saw some of your representatives out there uh this morning at that meeting. Thank you. >> Absolutely. And that's going to be a big part of our budget moving forward, mayor. So, um good afternoon, mayor, council members. uh Darren Budc, recreation and parks director. As as requested, I will move through these very quickly. Um >> and fortunately or maybe unfortunately, some of the items that were discussed earlier when it comes to the the rates and stuff compound on my budget in particular, um we have a very large budget when it comes to personnel and stuff. So, so these cost when it comes to fleet cost, uh workman's comps cost, um all all those things that are somewhat out of our control really hit our budget hard. One thing I do want to point out here is you'll notice on our first line item under personnel services, it shows a moderate increase and that's even with us meeting the city manager's direction of reducing our budget um our staffing personnel and I'll get into that in a little bit later. But the two big driving forces in in our increase, you can see at 6.36% is our our capital outlay, our projects, and then also our operations cost. And so, and as you can see, and it states here, you know, as already has been labored many, many times already is these costs are being driven by things that I would say are outside of the department's control. um your fleet cost, your your technical services and all those things. Um we get we get told what those costs will be and then we have to implement them into our budget. I can tell you my staff and my department did a great job in providing a flat budget but when you put these costs in there then you see these costs. Um on the capital side you can see we proposed 10 projects. We brought 10 projects forward and working with city manager's office. Three of them are currently on the recommended list and then another seven are up for council's consideration and happy to ask answer any questions about those at the end. And then moving on, our department um as you can see topped out at 202 full-time employees. That's a very large department. Takes a lot of staff to do the work that's going on out there in our parks and streetscapes. Um and in following direction, we did um reduce our full-time compliment and we we took a serious look at it and we we went from the top down. We looked at our upper level supervisory positions all the way down to our entry level. One key thing I do want to point out is in this um well, there's a mistake there. My fault. Uh we had a reduction of six positions. We have five general fund positions and one PSVS position um as as as outlined there. Worth noting is that this is all happening in a time that this department is growing um each and every year. Uh we we acquire anywhere from 5 to 10 new acres of streetscapes every single year because of new development and and city of Bakersville is very developer friendly and we encourage that. But we every single one of those streetscapes we get those we have to maintain them. And that's happened every single year for the last several years. So while we've maintained 202 our acreage over the last 3 to four years has increased anywhere from I'll say 20 to 35 acres in streetscapes. Now this does not include the new parks. Lenel Brahma that was opened up a year and a half ago. Mason Marin we just talked about um we have three new parks um that are in design right now. Anton Giovani Hershel Moore and um uh Alandre Park. So those are all parks that are going to come online in some phase in the next two to three years. So I think that's that's going to be a challenge moving forward as as as you see our acreage is increasing and um staffing is reducing. So it's a it's going to have a compounding effect on our level of service moving forward. But as in in as we always do in parks and recreation, I do want to celebrate the wins we've had in the last last year. Um, my staff has done a phenomenal job in being stewards of the money that we are we are provided to do these projects. And you can see just in some of these pictures, uh, this is Centennial Park rehab. Uh, taking it from an unusable condition to a a state-of-the-art pickle ball and tennis court facility. So, uh, some others, another great win through one of the grants, as you were talking about, mayor, was one of these arts in parks that we did over there at Saunders and, um, took a what was a very attractive wall for graffiti at one point and turned it into an art for for the city and the residents, and it's been very well received. Uh, and last but or latest, but um this is the this one's been a long time coming. Jastro Park Stage has been on on on the plans for several years because of various requirements with historic and funding and stuff. We finally pulled it together. Thank you to the city council, Councilman Gonzalez, for pushing so hard on that. And look at it now. It's it's it's been restored. It's being used. I know we've already had multiple concerts out there and it's been a great success for that um for that park and in reinviting the community and getting getting those positive activities back in the area. And then this one was a unique opportunity for us to um collaborate with the with the BLNC down there. When they first opened that facility, they had a lot of open space and encouraging people to go out and use the space. But what as we found out very quickly, as we know in in recreation and parks, you know, that's that's nice in the spring and summer, but when or in the fall, when summer hits, these outside areas need shade. So, we were able to partner with them and get in there and provide it these shade structures over these areas which allow them to be used year round. I I could keep going. Jefferson Park, uh, total remodel. Well, actually replaced the entire bathroom there, made it ADA compliant. Um, just a a great improvement up there. And then Stern Park was a unique one where we actually went in and this is uh first time in a very long time where we put in a new restroom facility into a park that did not have one, but because of uh the use and a local group, the the Sternw Walking Group, it was a it was sought after. It's been on a on a plan for several years and we were able to finally pull it together and it it was very wellreceived. And then just some ADA accomplishments we've done through excuse me throughout the year as you can see throughout our parks. So with that, I'm happy to answer any questions. >> Thank you, Mr. Budach. And then just speaking of ADA and special needs, I have received so many positive compliments about Wilson Park and the fencing that goes around that area now that provides families with children who are autistic and with special needs the safety, the security in a really beautiful setting. So, thank you to your entire team. This came about when I got an email and the person said to me, "I didn't think you'd ever do anything about it, but sent it on to you all and you all did something very very wonderful and the community is extremely grateful for that. So, thank you. I I was able to note that this morning in the presentation with u the state office." >> Thank you. >> Thank you very much. And now on to Council Member Gonzalez. >> Thank you, Mayor. Uh thank you, Mr. Buddha, for your presentation and thank you to your department for all the wonderful work you guys do day in and day out for our city. parks really make our city a community. Uh that's that's what really brings people together, these public spaces, and we're seeing it time and time again. And I I appreciate Jastro Park Improvement. That was a that was a long time coming. Uh you know, decades of disrepair and and it looks beautiful. We just had a concert there. Actually, three concerts over the last three Sundays in April after Easter. And last one we had over 500 people at Jasto Park on a Sunday afternoon. people picnicking, people on what looked like first dates, people at barbecues, and it was just wonderful to see all the families use utilizing the park and uh and being very positive. And you know, I believe, you know, parks actually do contribute to public safety because, uh, not only does it allow for more people to come into spaces that are large and, you know, fill in with positive activity, but, uh, it also gives youth an opportunity to engage in positive ways, get their, you know, energy out. And also, um, you know, there's a lot of there's a lot lot to be said about, um, you know, the effects on mental health, the positive effects that green spaces provide. So, uh, I want to thank you for for your work. Um, just one anecdote. Uh, at Lowel Park, uh, there was a, uh, softball field. Uh, there was I felt underutilized for quite some time. Um, and we were able to convert that into a soccer field. And, uh, I was getting a little concerned because I hadn't seen anybody really use it. But this last weekend as I was uh going by uh I noticed uh kids actually playing soccer in the park and that really warmed my heart because that is exactly what we're trying to do. Get more people to utilize our spaces in better ways. So I want to want to thank you again. Couple questions. Uh under personnel services, what percentage of the personnel uh service expenditures are are the park rangers? >> A percentage of our >> Yeah. Do we know what the cost is for park rangers annually? >> I don't have the the cost breakout percentage-wise. >> Okay. I'm wondering if as we prepare the final budget, if we can differentiate the personnel costs related to park rangers um from all other personnel costs in in the budget >> specific to this department, I assume. >> Correct. >> Yes, we can do that. >> Yeah. All right. And then as I look at the requested items, recommended projects, I noticed that uh the park amenities and renovation improvements, the pari account, we're recommending staff is recommending half a million dollars. Um, and then as we look at the projects to consider, um, I imagine these are projects pending any type of budget opportunity or opportunities in the discretionary fund. Mr. Kle, how how would we decide if we should fund some of these projects? We we we're experiencing a flat budget this year. >> Yeah, indeed. So as I noted earlier today on your May 18th we will tee up a summary of what is available for capital projects. Um uh we will also list out what are the recommended and the optional projects and then it will come to council could provide you know some direction even at that time on May 18th or uh following your budget you know public hearing in June you could provide direction about which of those projects to include or I would recommend to the council we don't have to do the optional projects we can also decide to wait and forego those projects and wait to future years and bank some additional onetime monies just as savings. That's another option. Um but those decisions will come May 18th and and in the June budget adoption. >> Okay, great. So are the pari expenditures are those in response to um you know destruction of of uh park equipment or or things that we have to repair or are those enhanced features that we're installing? It >> it's a mix. I'll let Mr. Budak outline that. >> Yeah. So, as a matter of fact, um I can say the two projects that was brought up by by the Mary and yourself were both done out of the pari. The the soccer field at LOL was part of the pari money. We used that and then the the the pilot project for the autism fence at Wilson Park was done out of that pari. But to answer your question, yes, it it is a mix. Um sometimes we will get um big vandalism done to a park where they'll go in uh off top of my head where they'll strip the copper out of our our security lighting and stuff. We'll go back and we'll use parry or we'll also use it in addition to when we're doing some of these other playground rehabs. We will come in there and um supplement maybe add some additional sidewalk to um some amenities and or shade. So it it is a mix. >> Got it. And I'm I'm headed somewhere with these questions. So, okay. >> Uh, what percentage of the paria account is used to address vandalism issues? >> I can't give you an exact percentage, but I would say probably uh at least a third of it. >> Okay. So, $150,000 perhaps in this $500,000 allocation is used just to respond to vandalism. >> I would that would be fair. >> Okay. What what I'd like us to consider if possible with with staff uh analyzing this request uh is that we reduce the par amount this upcoming year. Uh but we actually create some uh room for one of the uh items for council to consider related to the park security cameras. um so that we can perhaps prevent some of this vandalism in the future uh and perhaps overall reduce the um expenses related to vandalism uh in some of our parks. >> Okay. Thank you. >> And now Council Member Smith. >> Thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to say to the the Wilson Park I've gotten feedback on also and the the ability for schools and parks to start to work together is is a great opportunity and just the history of of the frustration of people saying, "Hey, you know, that school's empty all the time or that park, you know, work together." So that that's great to start that and to move forward in different areas. Uh I also like to bring up Riverwalk Park. Some years ago I said I can wait on that and it turned out being I don't know felt like five years instead of uh one year. So [laughter] uh great to see that work being done and and look forward to it being finished on the funding sources. I don't see a separate for the maintenance district funds. Are those just included in general fund or where's that? >> Yeah, they're included in our overall budget. But you've got general you've got funding sources and different sources. So which which source are they actually in >> just under the general fund tab? >> Okay. >> And then we've had a lot of community input on the tree planting urban canopy and I see you show that and also the input on trimming trees less. Are we cutting our trimming tree budget or or where are we at on that? >> No, we are not cutting our tree. We have an annual contract in our operating for tree trimming and we're not reducing reducing that now. We're trying to reallocate and come up with a a trimming cycle that will help reduce that. This was our first year working with TAG and we're we're evaluating with the what I'll say the new the new standard of our trimming during certain times of the year. So this was our first year, but we're hopeful that we will be able to reduce that that cycle in the coming years in different locations on different species throughout the city. >> So it but the the recommendation was that we we trimmed them too often, not just the time of year. I mean, it was it was both. So you know, instead of every year, every two years, whatever it was, every five years. So we're still studying that or where we at on that? >> Yeah, we're just in the first year looking at that. We started that process um I'll say in August of last year when we got outside of the the nesting season. And so we looked at that and we're going to um through our annual contractor and then our our tree division. We are hopefully we'll have a recommendation um early next year to say, "Okay, here's the new cycle. We're going to be on a 2-year in this area with these trees." depending on maturity and location, types of trees, streets, scapes versus um uh parks, you know, there's a lot of different things elements that go into that. But yeah, our goal is to to reduce it, but in this current budget year, we did not cuz we didn't know where we were going to be at. >> Okay. >> We were hopeful with the the tree inventory we're going to get to that someday. >> Great. Thank you. >> Thank you, Council Member Smith. I don't see any other requests, so thank you, Mr. Budach. And now we'll move on to the police department. And colleagues, we do not have a PowerPoint print out on this in case you're looking for it. Well, welcome, Chief Stratton. We can say Chief. >> Oh, thank you. >> Let's ask him some very hard questions for his first one. I get any grace to blame Chief Terry for things for a little bit. I'm hoping. But thank you for the opportunity to be here uh today and discuss the proposed budget for uh fiscal year 26 and 27. while she's working on bringing up the presentation. I can as we were sitting here uh thankfully we have Aryiam who's uh crunching extra numbers and and uh so we we updated the presentation while we were while we were seated. Um but in in taking a look at what we were working to do this year, um we worked on making sure that we had still three core priorities that we wanted to ensure that we were able to preserve essential uh public safety operations that provide for the immediate protection uh of life, property, and community safety. We wanted to ensure that we were sustaining proactive and evidence-based crime prevention strategies and sound management practices to ensure that accountability and measurable public safety outcomes. And we were wanting to identify reductions in lower impact or non-core functions while seeking to minimize the adverse effects on vital services and community trust. So it was actually a really good exercise for us to be able to look at where we could find efficiencies and where we might be able to ensure that we were um being as as efficient and as effective as we could be um and that we're being good stewards of taxpayer dollars. we were able to identify some areas for some reductions and we were able to to make um significant amount of reductions in personnel um in looking at some of our our personnel reductions. We looked at areas where we could um reclassify positions, areas where we could uh we weren't utilizing positions uh like we'd like. we see some some potential for technology coming in the next few years which will allow us to make some um some additional realize some additional efficiencies. Uh we were able to look at where we could reduce um some of our our overtime and call back uh and in trying to to be more efficient with um our overtime budget. We were able to make some cuts in some outside services as well as some equipment. Um we were able to expand our school resource officer program which will um offset uh some funds that some salaries that are being paid by the school districts. Um and then we're looking at the expansion of our red flex program to uh ensure traffic safety. We think that has the potential to um to to offset some of our our financial costs as well. Even with making all those those cuts and trying to project out what we believe some of the growth can be um we were able to to make a 5% what we thought was a 5% reduction in some of those areas. It still results in approximately 2.39% increase in overall expenditure. In breaking those down in two separate areas, uh the first is in salaries and benefits. Even though we're able to to make as many of the the cuts and the efficiencies as as I previously described with increases in medical insurance and workers compensation as well as with PERS contributions, we're still seeing um an an increase of approximately 2.78%. And then we saw a 1.05% increase in our operating expenses um as it relates to some of our service rates for for vehicles and and technologies. again arriving at an overall increase of 2.39%. Um to our to our budget. Um we think that you know just looking ahead over the next couple years as we've been able to implement our uh real-time information center and just getting that started. We anticipate that there will be growth there as we look at you know drone as a first responder and things like that over the next couple years and and where a lot of agencies are are are going and where we think technology is taking us. We do think that there's an opportunity for additional effic um efficiencies and and looking for additional savings moving forward and and as I start to kind of wrap my my arms around the the department a little bit more and from the handoff with Chief Terry, um I'm interested in seeing where some of those other efficiencies uh may lie. So that is uh the presentation that that we have here and happy to do the very best that I can to to answer any questions you may have. >> Thank you, Chief. That was the shortest presentation ever, [laughter] I think. >> I think so. >> Uh, colleagues, any questions? >> Council member Coleman. >> Thank you, Mayor. Well, Chief, congratulations your selection and appointment as chief. And >> uh I I I think the city is going to be great with you in charge. >> Um, >> thank you, sir. Try not to let you down. I I wanted to uh a ask you about where you are in terms of the what compared to your full compliment. Where are you at with staffing? >> Yeah, I don't know off the exact top of my head, you know, where, you know, our our compliment coming in this year is 512. I want to say we're probably close to about 470. We have 35 that were in the academy right now. And those are those count towards our overall compliment even though they're not realized actual officers on the street. So, um we always have a little bit of a gap there. Um but I would want to say we're probably close to 94 95% staffed. Um over the last uh couple weeks we have had, you know, we're we're in a constant state of of you know, of attrition. Every year I've got, you know, 14 years worth of data. It says we lose somewhere between 25 and 30 people a year um just for a variety of different reasons. And that's right about where where um we're trending towards towards this year as well. So I don't have the exact number off my head, but I want to say we're in that 460 to 470 range, something something like that. This last academy that graduated, I believe in December, they're on field training. They should be coming off of field training here in the next week or two. And so that's going to, you know, be able to to increase the number of officers on the street by number 20 or 25. the academy that we just started in March, they won't graduate until October. By the time they get off field training, it'll be the early part of 2027 before they're really able to to be handling calls for service and and being able to help. So, we'll have a little bit of a of a gap in in that time frame, but um but we're doing okay. >> So, what are your priorities for the coming year as far as enforcement? Uh >> yeah, I think priorities. >> Yeah, they they'll be very similar to where where we are and what we've been doing. You know, want to just be as as open as we can and and as flexible as we can to handling problems and things as they as they come up and they arise. It's great to have some some plans and some ideas, but things can change operationally depending on on the issues that arise. So, I want to just continue to to do very best that we can to solve problems and looking at long-term chronic problems that we're having there. how we how can we build um relationships and partnerships within our community to try to solve those those long-term chronic problems that um that are arising. I want to continue to focus on our gun violence reduction strategy. Um and as we've focused on that gun violence reduction strategy, I see that that model works. Um so we're um been able to to use some of the the Calvip grant funds that have come up to be able to study intimate partner violence. been um doing some studies over the last couple years and working with um you know with with Stanford as well as some other groups to be able to look at are there other things that we can do and look at not necessarily as a predictor of violence but look at some of our our past for intimate partner violence and seeing if we can bring some some overall reductions um in in that area been partnering with um the open door network to take a look at some of those areas too and I think that there's there's a real potential that we might be able to to bring some reductions in in in partner violence. I want to continue to look at roadway safety and ensuring that our that our roads are safe. I'm excited about um the expansion of the of the red flex uh program. I think that has the potential to continue to to calm some of our um of our roadways. Um there's some uh additional areas as it relates to traffic. There's some interesting technology that's out there that um we're looking at through like the international associations, the chief of police. I don't know that California law has caught up with it is going to allow for some of the AI based traffic cameras and and things. Um, but it'll be interesting to see, you know, where where the the the laws go with that in the next couple years as as technology develops. But I think our our real-time information center will have um the ability to help us maybe with some some of the traffic calming stuff as well. So, that's absolutely something I want to continue to focus on as um as we get closer up to compliment and as the school resource officer program has shown to be effective. Um we have more school districts that are um that are that are coming online. I I like the idea behind that too. I think it provides for a safe and a and a and a secure school environment and and the chance that that the unthinkable could happen. Um, but it also pre creates an opportunity for for positive working relationships and and mentorship with with kids. And so I like to to see that that potential growth as well. So those are some of the the things that are that are on the forefront of my mind. But ensuring that we're that we have strong patrol staffing, that we're responsive to be able to to meet the immediate needs of of any corner of the city uh of Bakersfield is is going to continue to be a priority for our department. >> Thank you. You mentioned um the school resource officer and that reminded me I wanted to thank you for the work Captain Kroger's done to respond to uh demands in the Harris Road area after the last accident. Uh he he's mobilized some officers that do a little bit maximum enforcement kind of things on Harris Road and also is working with the resource officer from the schools there. Apparently, they share them now u to try to make sure that they're deployed in the areas they need to be during the school in and out time. So, I want to thank you for let allowing him to do that and give him the resources he needs. And just on that on that note, yes. So, uh Captain Kirker is the captain over our traffic over many things, but traffic is one of the the areas there. And we do have officers in that area, I believe, is the Panama Buenavista School District. And we've been able to grow within the Panama Buesta School District. That partnership that we've had with that district has been exceptional. Um, and they've um I believe we're we're at two, if not three officers that they're um that that they're funding. And so being able to to share them amongst the the school districts has been very very helpful. So hope to continue to see growth. But um a big big partnership with Panama Buista and they've been fantastic partners. >> One last question. U one of the complaints I get a lot is the people that are panhandling and the median of the streets uh all over town and and I go to a lot of communities in California and I don't see that everywhere [clears throat] >> and I was wondering if you could talk about that a little bit about what might be able to be done about that. Yeah, there's has been a variety of different enforcement options and things that we've looked at um for um for quite some time. We've spoken with the the the traffic judge as well to gain an understanding about them and we have different medians that that um are positioned differently within our city. And I'll have to get myself completely refreshed back up with it. But I recall that in certain areas where there's a narrow median and the first one that comes to mind is at California and Oak. If you can envision the median there at California and Oak and that median is very narrow. The traffic judge um told us that how they see it as that median is almost extending upward and and and upward into the sky. And so in a median like that, they see that a person is is potentially in danger, could be impeding traffic. Um, and though that's that's a median that they agree would be enforcable. In some of the other medians where there's more area and there's more space um there, they don't see that as necessarily being a median that is as enforcable. So it's not really a black and white enforcement um issue. It does require a little bit of critical thinking and some focus for for our officers, but there is absolute enforcement that that can be done. Um there there are citations that can be issued. It's not uh an arrestable offense. It's not a bookable offense, but there are citations uh that can be issued. And and I think, you know, there's a variety of different opinions about the overall effectiveness of whether a person that's issued a traffic citation is going to show up to court and pay a traffic citation or not. So, um, there there are steps that can be taken. I don't know the overall uh long-term effectiveness of it, but it's absolutely things that we can continue to to explore and and and work towards and have a a proactive stance towards. >> Thank you, Chief. I have no further questions. >> Thank you, Council Member Coleman. Just following up on that same line of questioning about the medians. You mentioned the traffic court judge. >> Yes. >> Is that the local one? I know that Mayor Dyer in Fresno has talked about not have not allowing anyone on the medians and they go after them right away. So, it is it a local interpretation? >> Uh, no. I believe it's the vehicle code and I think that vehicle code is a statewide vehicle code. Um, again, I I don't know necessarily what the medians are looking like in Fresno as opposed to what they look like here, but um, you know, our court's interpretation is that they're they it does vary depending on how the the the layout of that that median looks. And so, it's something I can I can um delve a little deeper into and and make sure I'm a little more firm on my understanding on and something I'm happy to be able to to bring back and speak about. >> Thank you, Chief. I get many queries about that issue. Council member Smith. >> Thank you, Mayor. Uh, just a couple things. Uh, appreciate your focus on traffic calming and doing what we can. We we continue to lose too many lives on the streets of Bakersfield. Uh, there are cities that that I think the state is having to pilot speed cameras. >> U, so that'd be nice if if the state would move forward. That's kind of what I was referring to when I talked about some of the the laws haven't really caught up with some of the emerging technology that's out there. But I would anticipate that in the next couple years as as that technology becomes um a little more prevalent. It would almost be a very similar principle to we have with red flex cameras, but there's some technology that's being piloted as it relates to stop sign enforcement, as it relates to crosswalk in um infringement and general speed cameras and things like that. Again, it's not not something that the the um state has, but there's there's other states that are doing it. The technology is is certainly out there. So, I think that that's an in and something that will be coming towards our state in the next few years. >> Right. I appreciate that. And the number of red light citations that we give a year is astronomical. Can't believe it. and >> and and I I I anticipate you're going to see an explosion of it this next year. We're essentially doubling the amount of cameras that we have within our city. And it's probably still not not probably, it's still not enough. And so, we're looking at a phased in approach. Let's put in this next phase and see where where it takes us. Um but I would anticipate that there's still going to be additional um room. There's there's room for additional growth in that regard. and we're trying to take a look at where the collisions are occurring and where these intersections are occurring. Um, and can we make them safer? Interestingly enough, that sometimes red light cameras increase the number of collisions, but generally they're they're rearend collisions that are not they're not fatal. [clears throat] They're being big reductions in those broadside head-on collisions, which are the things that bring fatalities, but um you do see people slamming on the brakes and slowing down and so you get some an increase in some of the rear end collisions. Those cause me less concern. Obviously, we're really trying to save lives and so if we can bring a reduction in those broadside and head-on collisions, that's where a big portion where our effort lies. >> Appreciate that attitude. U I think that's all I had. Thank you. >> Yes, sir. >> Thank you, Council Member Coleman. Council member Gonzalez. >> Thank you, Mayor. Um just wanted to dovetail off this. First and foremost, congratulations, Chief, and uh excited to see you at the helm. >> Um and looking forward to working with you. Um on uh Council Member Smith's um point, uh the red light cameras I feel are effective. There's there's so many times where I'm at a red light and I as a rule wait like 3 seconds before I proceed to enter the intersection upon a green because >> I don't know how many times now there's been a car that's been, you know, running that red and would have, you know, t-boned me. And so every time I'm in Uber or Lift, I always gently remind the driver, hey, just be sure to take a few seconds, >> take an extra couple seconds. when you're out out and about because I want to try to help encourage people to be a defensive driver. That's right. Um and so I I really appreciate that. But but also, you know, the um traffic enforcement, the motor cycles that we've deployed, I think has been really effective and agreed. >> You may not be prepared to today, but I would love to see over a longer period of time uh what the trends are as a result of those investments. >> Sure. Um, and I think that that'll help us kind of paint a bigger picture of what we can do moving forward and how how this council might be more strategic uh moving forward. The the other thing that that comes to mind is that um you know when in 2018 we were discussing PSVS and uh we we did a lot of analysis um of other jurisdictions and what the uh police compliments uh look like in comparable cities and we we we often looked at um you know a number of officers per capita u because we recognize that some communities are much larger, some smaller u but that that's really um eye opening for you for for many of us uh and really helpful for the community to kind of understand what we're what what we have and how we compare. Um, I'm wondering if if in the future, I know there's a lot of demands on your time as you've entered this position, but in the future if we might be able to um analyze that um comparison as a council um and and help guide some of our future decisions related to the budget. >> Yes. And and something I've done kind of informally on my own. I've looked at the top 20 cities and reached out to those police chiefs to get what their compliment is and look at some of those things. We are definitely much we're on the leaner end. You look at a city like Oakland, which is smaller than us geographically, which only has maybe 6 or 10,000 more people and has, you know, 300 more police officers. The city of of Fresno has almost double the complement of police officers that we have. And I don't know that they're double the size of our of our city. Um, in some of these areas, we are covering more areas geographically. Um, our city is continuing to grow. And we do believe that our our police force is lean. We believe we have the tools and the resources that we need to be able to respond to our city, but it does it it means that we're able to to spend less time focused in on certain areas and and you're you're constantly just trying trying to get to something respon bring some some calm to it, restore it to its homeostasis, and then and then be able to get on. And so I do believe that um that that our compliment at at some point when we can get to that that growth within our city and whenever we can get to a spot where we're being good stewards economically that that we can move towards a more structured growth. But um I I do believe that that that would be in order. >> Homeostasis. That's the first time I've heard that in the council chambers. That's great. I love that word. Um, but I appreciate you and also just want to say >> thank you to the impact team and for all of the work that those they do fantastic folks do every single day. I I I work with them I feel like daily and that includes the weekends and they're just completely responsive and um it's very much appreciated in W 2 and all the um business owners and homeowners uh who rely on in the impact team to resolve many of the issues uh that we're facing. So, thank you so much to that. >> Well, thank you for saying that. I I really appreciate the impact team, too. But I'd be remiss if I didn't give a lot of credit to the entire community vitality program and there's people from across the entire city that are all working towards that and really been proud over the last couple years um that that the city has been able to take a more holistic and and comprehensive approach at kind of looking at the just the entire, you know, city ecosystem and how we're able to to operate and move within there. So, I think it's um it's a really great program. I'm hopeful that we're able to to see some some improvement as far as long-term effectiveness goes, but being able to get to there and be able to to get to an initial response. I'm very very pleased with where that's at. >> Thank you. And now, Vice Mayor, thank you, Mayor. Hi, Chief Stratton. >> Hi, good morning. Good morning. >> Um, one, welcome and congratulations on your first budget workshop just right into the deep end. >> [laughter] >> So, um, you get to say that your first day starts with a budget hearing. That's right. So, >> like every police officer's dream. >> Yes. Exactly. I'm sure this is exactly how you dreamt it up. >> That's what I've always wanted to be. [laughter] >> Um, well, I wanted to uh join in on just sharing that even before today, you've always had a traffic calming oriented approach to how we make our streets safer. And just on the heels of the accident that happened in W 7, um you know, us folks, Council Member Smith, Council Member Coleman, Council Member Basher Tash have really been putting our heads together as to how we um come up with solutions that aren't just uh incident based and responsive. and in our conversations with the neighbors in and around the area and uh looking to get the school district involved in the conversation. Um, one of course accountability being with us um, residents and constituents and everyday citizens who are on the roads, but also how do we as a city ensure that we meet our end of the responsibility with one how we design our streets and then two how we enforce um, and it kind of being, you know, at least what I shared with neighbors is, you know, it's not just a um, one-sizefits-all. It is a two things can be true at the same time while also uh needing like a multi-pronged approach as to how we truly make streets safer. And I feel in this moment that Harris road example and a very tragic example can be utilized for us at the city to design um design a system of not only response but also prevention and that being you know police department as well as public works you know sitting at the table together and and that being kind of the system of how we operate of it is the design of the road while also knowing that you all are already doing targeted enforcement in these high-risisk corridors. And um I think while the neighbors were not surprised by, you know, how many accidents happen on on that corridor, you know, for some of us a a Harris road might not be the first street that comes to mind. It might be a Panama lane or White Lane. Um so just some initial thoughts but also if within a budget hearing like today um we can also as a city start thinking through what is a system of whether it's shared resources, shared dollars across two departments or maybe you're already thinking of some like cross collaboration. Um, just wanted to put that out there and and knowing that you have you do your own research on your own and have shared different ideas in the past, especially um, in places like W 7 where cycle cyclist accidents and pedestrian accidents have been, you know, one of the reasons why I've called you many times and you've been incredibly helpful with that and in coming up with ideas. Um, just wanted to use this as an opportunity to brainstorm and kind of see uh, if you had ideas as well. >> Love it. Thank you. Well, first of all, I'd like to thank the council because um you may not know it, but you each of you has have shaped and challenged my own thought process as it relates to traffic. I have a very operational based background in gangs and SWAT and homicide. I didn't work traffic coming up, so it's not something that I have this firsthand close, uh understanding of. And so, um, in working with you over the last couple years, each of you have talked about traffic safety and and the technology that's coming with with cars and vehicles. and I've thought through that and and you've talked to me about um you know just speeds and narrowing roads and a variety of different things and so in some of the the my own research and things that I've done I've really kind of distilled down our approach to kind of the our three E you know we're look at our education environment and enforcement and often times the police department is really only u enforcementbased and and that's really where my head has been limited to quite frankly but as you know we've looked at the gun violence reduction strategy and figuring out how can we look at things from a more systemsbased approach It's something that I'm very interested in. So, I don't stand here before you today and have the answers to it, but uh collaboration is something I'm absolutely dedicated to and I know that um there's a variety of different big brains that I'd like to be able to tap into and some best practices from across the country and things that we can try to implement here. We're totally open to those things because our end state is what we are holding tight to and our end state is to bring a reduction in in fatalities and making sure that year-over-year we're bringing reductions. And to that note, we have in the last couple years we are seeing reductions I want more um and I want more reductions. We're not going to take our our foot off the gas. We're going to continue pushing towards that. Um but it is absolutely something we're open to. We want to continue to to look at what what enforcement and what um education can look like and we're open to ideas. So if you all have ideas of ways of things that you think the police department can be doing, we're we're open to to any and all of those things to try to bring some some reductions. But you're right, Harris Road is not something that would have come to my mind. I would have told you Panama Lane and I think the data would support that. I have told you white lane and I think the data would have supported that as well. Um and that's what led us to some of the locations as it relates to our red flex cameras and where we're putting cameras um as well to try to bring some of those reductions. But it just shows that these things can happen can happen anywhere. Um I do think that um you know some of the the street racing and things like that it it's it's very transient in nature and not transient in this sense that where we talk about like you know transients and homelessness but it it's it really moves around. We are seeing areas out of out of Mesa Marin and just and kind of you're going to see it on on some of the the outer portions of town, but something like this it's it's becomes pretty central and you look geographically now and Harris Road is kind of central to to to our our map in our area. So, um open to to ways that we can do. We want to be be, you know, reflexive, responsive, and and the ability to be able to to move around to be as effective as we can. >> Thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Chief, often times when there are accidents, the public calls for stop lightss instead, street lights in stop lightss instead of stop signs. Can you comment a little bit about the effect what the data says about those? I heard some conversation I think in the police department about the efficacy of stop signs. >> Yeah. >> As compared with stop lights. >> Interesting. I I I don't have any of that information. I don't know it off the top of my head. Um totally open to those. And again, that's something that um I need to to get more educated on myself is is quite frankly from an enforcement standpoint, it's like, okay, there's a stop sign and here's the code when you run a stop sign and here's the vehicle code for that. And when you run a stop light, here's the vehicle code for that. And when you run a stop light, if there's a traffic camera, here's the vehicle code for that. And that's really been very reactive and enforcement based throughout the entirety of my career on it. It's really only been the last year or so, last year or two of working with you all as become a focus of the council. It's becoming more of a focus of of my own to be able to look at some of those things. So, I definitely think it's it's worth it's worth looking at. And, you know, we work really closely with uh with traffic engineering within the city and so we rely on them for their expertise too as to what the standards are. And I I don't know what they are as to when a stop sign is put up versus when a stop uh stop light is put up. Um, but these are conversations as we're having closer partnerships with the schools and the school districts are asking questions about um about what can be put up and when speed bumps can be put up. And I've got uh several different um always stop and talk with uh with crossing guards and stop and just chat with them and they have some amazing horror stories about the the things that they see every day. And so, um, you know, we want to make sure that we're trying to do the very best that we can to prioritize school district enforcement and working with the with the Kern High School District to see if they're able to maximize enforcement in some of their their areas, their their schools as well. And so, um, all all definite options for for trying to bring some improvement and ensure that that we're safe everywhere, but certainly some of the school zones would be some of the highest priorities for for me and just in my heart and, you know, in the morning and in the afternoons, ensuring that that our children are able to get to and from school in a safe manner and and I do think that high visibility trafficbased enforcement is going to be a component of that. >> Thank you, Chief. If I understood the conversation correctly, stop signs might even be more effective in certain situations because everybody has to come to a stop. So, I was just curious about that. But thank you so much for your presentation. I don't see any other requests to speak. So, thank you for that. And now we move on to our last presentation of this session and that would be fire. [snorts] Chiefs, thank you so much for their successful fire department open house. It seemed like the public was very engaged. I heard a lot of appreciation expressed by families who were there. They really seemed to enjoy that and a good turnout even earlier in the day maybe than in past years. >> Yeah, it was it was actually a great turnout. Uh wonderful Saturday. Um couple hours well spent. Uh we're guessing anywhere between five and 800. It's hard to to count, but uh we're incredible opportunity to demonstrate what our department does. Our partners with PD and parks with their ranger program were there. Uh we had Cal Water, PG& so a little bit of everything there. And uh everybody got an opportunity to come out and enjoy a great day. um go through a couple water events, see us repel and tear up a car and learn about the fire service. We we love talking about the fire service, so it was great for us. Uh so, honorable mayor, council members, thank you very much for this opportunity to present our proposed uh 2627 budget. Uh I always like to start off our presentations with our mission statement. The mission of the Bakersfield Fire Department is to protect, engage, and inspire a safe community through all hazard response, community risk reduction while delivering legendary customer service. That's something we really take to heart. Something that's really important to us. I'd like to give you just a quick update on uh your Bakersfield Fire Department. Um you have a very capable Bakersfield Fire Department. Over the past 10 or 15 years, our call volume has doubled. Uh and in that 10 or 15 years, our department capabilities have expanded. Uh we now have a tape type one hazmat uh hazmat rescue team. We also have a regional USAR urban search and rescue task force. Uh that was the one that uh deployed to the Palisades fire uh a year and a half or so ago. Uh we have a swiftwater rescue team, a state certified swiftwater rescue team which uh responds uh all throughout uh the western United States. Um last year we responded nearly 50,000 incidents. And I would like to point out something. Nearly 2700 of those were advanced life uh support. So our paramedic services, which is an incredible uh accomplishment for us. Uh as you know, we do provide a paramedic level of care. Uh we respond to uh many fires outside of Bakersfield supporting uh both uh our surrounding states and our our surrounding communities. I think uh last year or the year before we actually uh a couple of our members went up to Alaska and then of course we have our prevention and inspection services. Some of the accomplishments for this last year uh one that uh I really like and you guys have received a copy of it is our annual report which really talks about um our last year and um uh some of our accomplishments in the year last year and then how we're moving forward. uh departmentwide infrastructure uh improvements. Um uh of course we had our this is really speaking to our last open house uh a year or so ago uh but we did just have our open house uh on Sunday or on Saturday and then responding to multiple fires. We've also deployed our uh paramedic bike team and UTV team throughout uh Bakersfield. I think probably our most recent deployment is the Bakersfield Marathon where they were actually put into use a couple times. As we know, some of those Marathon routes are a little harder to get our large fire engines or our rescues into. So, the bike uh and UTVs make a lot of sense in those. So, our goals, um we have many goals. These are just a couple of them. uh funding opportunities uh whether it be grant or uh revenue generation through cost recovery fees uh continued enhancement uh through developing a new EOP and expanding or improving upon our services to handle a largecale uh mass disaster event which we hope we never have to use but your Bakersfield firefighters are are prepared for that. uh Bakersfield Fire Department social media sites. We realize that um a lot of people use social media out there and it's a good way to get our story out there and a good way to inform the community. And then of course upgrading our uh updating our Kern County AP plan. That's something that we're in the process of doing right now. That is critical for some of our FEMA funding. Um and then uh implementing our depart uh departmentwide dashboard which will be both an internal and external facing dashboard for our community to actually look into. Now to actually get into the budget um like all the other departments this budget is reflective of our budget cuts and we have seen a 9.23% increase in overall budget. uh like I uh just said, this is reflective of uh the cuts that we have had and I'll talk specifically about that uh coming in uh in the next couple slides. Uh our primary drivers for the increase are our colas, our salaries and benefits uh departmental CIP request. Uh and then our internal rates and uh we've heard um the echoing of those internal rates insurance fleet um CS uh those drivers uh that are one of those things that uh are hard to control uh but uh are a necessary cost. >> [clears throat] >> So budget reduction impacts these are the impacts that uh the department is going to actualize come July 1st with these u proposed budget cuts. Uh the first one is we're going to remove one rescue uh from service. Uh it's actually going to be rescue 2 out of station two. Uh that's going to result in a reduction of three captains and three firefighters. Uh those positions will be eliminated and they'll go away. Uh we will also eliminate one deputy chief uh position and we will uh restaff the additional two rescues through attrition to two firefighters as opposed to a captain and a firefighter. So they'll go from a captain and a firefighter to two firefighters. Uh we will also carry four firefighter and four engineer vacancies throughout the fiscal year which will result in uh salary savings of essentially the salary and benefits minus the um time and half for overtime. We do have some capital improvement request. Um as you guys have seen as council has seen uh there are two different uh kind of categories for a capital improvement request. The first one is our recommended projects. Uh the first one is a is an NFPA and OSHA compliant turnout replacement. Uh recently, matter of fact, as as late as soon as April last month, OSHA has adopted NFP1850 and 1851, which is going to require an advanced testing on our turnouts. And we actually have started a very minimal amount of that testing, and we anticipate a large replacement in our turnouts. Um uh HVAC systems for station 5, 6, and 13. And then our body armor is uh going to be expired here soon uh and replacing that for all of our uh firefighters in the field. And then the products uh projects for consideration floor rehab at fire station 67 and 11, which essentially is is removing the tile um and um pulling up all the glue and just taking it down to polishing the concrete. Uh we found in our past couple stations concrete is [snorts] uh easy to maintain and it never goes bad. So and then a new parking area for fire station 3. Uh next year uh we will actually celebrate our 150th anniversary for the Bakersfield Fire Department. As you guys can see from the uh pictures there. Now none of our stations are 150 years old, but we do have some old stations that uh do need some uh uh TLC. Uh, station one right there is actually built in 1939. And I believe that pumper you see there is 1800s. Uh, so with that, um, I'd be happy to answer any questions. >> Thank you, Chief. Council member Gonzalez. >> Thank you, Mayor. Chief, thank you so much for the presentation. Again, thank you for all the work that you do every day and all of the department. I I appreciate I appreciate I think we all very much appreciate the fire department um and all of the firefighters who get out there every day. Um calls have increased. That's a trend that continues over the last what since I've been on the city council >> forever. Yes. >> Um what are your some of your busiest uh stations? Yeah, you know, this this downtown corridor is is some of our busier stations. Station one, station two, station six, station 7 are probably our four busiest stations. Um, and the calls, the call types range anywhere from EMS calls to fire calls. I would say we probably have most of our fires in our downtown corridor within station two, station one, station six. >> Okay. And um one of the proposed budget reductions is to remove a rescue and it's a rescue to out of station two. >> Correct. >> What types of calls does a rescue respond to? >> Yeah. Uh the rescue concept is is actually a great concept. Uh uh these were uh brought around uh after PSVS was approved. And essentially what they are is a twoerson a firefighter and a captain uh pickup truck and they respond to the first medical aid call that is in that station. And the whole idea behind it was we analyzed uh the station the call volume the station had and then the concurrent calls. And that's that's really the important thing is is looking at the concurrent calls and um the idea is we wanted to make um our response time as short as possible. Uh so we deployed rescues to initially station two and station six and then station one and they would respond to the initial medical aid call leaving that engine available for potentially that next fire or rescue call or even that next medical medical aid call. Okay. So, if we remove Rescue 2 out of station two, one of the busiest stations in the entire city, what happens? Who who then responds? We we then require an engine to respond. >> Certainly. Yeah. And it it does have some operational impacts for sure. Um in fiscal year 24-25 we had just around 700 um concurrent calls in station 2's area. Uh last year um rescue 2 run ran nearly 3,100 uh incidents and those are both medical aid and fires mainly medical aids. Um so what will happen is on those concurrent calls um we're going to see increased response times. Uh, and what's going to happen will will be engine two will respond to the first medical aid and then the next call that comes in for that area whether it's a fire, a vehicle accident, a pedestrian or a medical aid call, uh, an apparatus from outside of that first in, commonly station one, station 4, station 6, engine 41, uh, will be responding into that area and, uh, servicing that call. So there is a longer response time when it comes to uh not having rescue 2 there. >> It sounds like this not only will impact uh the area surrounding station 2, but will have implications for the the city >> potentially. Um, you know, when we have another resource responding into another first in, um, if we get a call on that first end, you know, the resource for that first in that's already responded to another first in has to have another apparatus respond from another area into that into that area. Once a Bakersfield Fire Department apparatus has committed to a call, uh, we don't stop and change our priority to to another incident. So, uh, it's not something where, say we have a a call that engine 4 is responding into station 2's area and they get another call in their their first end. They don't stop responding to station two and go back to their first end. They keep responding to station two and another apparatus or another resource is responded into the station 4's area. So, yeah, it it it definitely could create increased response times. And these positions are actually filled positions. Is it it isn't the scenario where you know in many other cases throughout the city and other departments where when we actually remove positions they're they're vacant. These are actually filled positions today. Is that correct? >> They are. Uh rescue 2 is staffed today and it is running incidents today. Uh I will say that uh those positions uh if rescue 2 does get eliminated will will be eliminated through attrition. So there won't be anybody laid off but it is a resource right now that is uh >> utilized >> utilized right now and responding to incidents today. >> Okay. I appreciate that so much. I I just want to voice my concerns, colleagues, of of this proc particular uh recommendation and this potential cut uh and the impacts that it has to public safety uh amongst our community. Um I for one will not be supporting this particular reduction and cannot support a budget that includes this uh reduction um given the impacts to uh those in our community who desperately need it. Given the fact uh that increases uh for calls for service uh are being experienced year after year and given the you know the innovation really uh of these rescues uh and the fact that we're able to respond much more swiftly much more nimly uh to some of these uh life ordeath situations that our community members face. Um I I I think it is uh important for us to maintain uh the same level of service and to figure out ways in which we can make that happen and to maintain these services. And so um I'm going to make a referral that we look towards other uh options in terms of budget reductions but we but we not uh include this uh reduction in the upcoming budget. Thank you chief. Appreciate it. >> You're welcome. >> Thank you chief. Vice Mayo. >> Hi, Chief. Thank you so much for the presentation. So nice to see you this afternoon. Uh my question is actually for our city manager. What is the status on our fire master plan? >> Thank you, Vice Mayor. I'm actually turn back to Chief Albertson to give us an update on uh where the firefighters association is at on that. >> Yeah, thank you. I can provide an update on that. We've actually uh been in contact with them. They required some additional information. our GIS department has delivered that to them and we should see some results here soon probably within the next month or two. >> Okay, >> is what we were told. I will say we were told that about 3 months ago. Uh but we have been in contact with them and they are uh for lack of better terms crunching the data. >> Okay. Yeah. I I think it's been over a year since we first since I first made that referral and um I it's unfortunate that it takes so long and it is something that is so urgent um given uh that fires don't wait and we uh could really use that data to be able to make some informed decisions so that we don't have to make unfortunate cuts um to any department but particularly your department that is uh responding to such urgent and um dire needs in our community. Um so I still very much look forward to that plan coming back and hoping that it shows that as call times increase um we need more substations, we need to be developing more infrastructure as our city grows, especially as our city grows south. Um, I was just at Mountain View Elementary School at their opening and they're south of Taft Highway and their only building south of Taft Highway and uh I was sharing with them how we often I often have conversations with um the fire department about master planning and um how schools kind of are dictating, you know, where our community is moving. Um and so you know in the same similar spirit uh I I hope that it reflects exactly what we need and so we can make really pointed uh decisions related to our budget. Um I had a question about the paramedic level of care. You had shared 2700 advanced life support paramedic responses. Um and that is extremely high. Is is there like a comparison of has that that also increases as a data point or is that pretty consistent with what you >> I would say it it has increased but it necessarily hasn't increased because there's more ALS calls but because we have more paramedics out in the field. >> Okay. >> Um we run roughly uh respond roughly to 37,000 EMS calls a year. Uh in the past we haven't had paramedics and over the past years we have slowly developed a paramedic program. We currently have four resources running uh ALS calls uh rescue one, engine 15, engine 4 and engine 13. Engine 13 is uh there at Panama and Stein. Um so uh that is something that uh myself and uh our chief staff are constantly looking to see where we can expand those services. Uh couple of the places that we have expanded those services is with our bike team and UTV team like I talked about earlier where we where we respond to large events, we staff the marathon, we staff big concerts. Uh we also have SWAT paramedics now. >> In the past, um when PD had a SWAT call, they would uh ask for an engine to come respond. And as uh you may or may not know, uh SWAT call outs are usually lengthy callouts. and that engine resource was committed to that call out for that long time that period of time which was sometimes significant. So now we have actually developed a SWAT paramedic program where uh we have specially trained paramedics uh that integrate in with the SWAT team and now when they get a call out our SWAT paramedic handles the EMS portion of it and now we do not respond an engine or an apparatus to that uh which is which has been great. So, we constantly look to see where we can expand our advanced level uh care resources. >> Okay, that's kind of where my question was as well. Do does our department do other departments kind of separate out like the paramedic responses versus fires, physical fires? Um and how um how that kind of looks at city similar to ours. >> Yeah. Um I will say not every other department um does the swap paramedic. um uh program like we do, but a lot of them do like a UTV or bike team. Um a lot of other departments provide advanced level uh uh care like uh um our paramedics do. Uh we see it here in Kern County with their medic squads. um they don't necessarily uh provide do the same platform that we do, but much like LA County, um LA city, things like that, other departments like that, we we mirror uh kind of how our program uh performs off of theirs. And then the specialized programs um are one of those things that we've really kind of adapted to. We've seen a need there with the marathons. We've seen a need there with the large events. Um the Christmas parade was a great one. Um and as we saw a couple years ago, it was it was a huge huge benefit that and the fact that the incident happened right in front of a fire station uh definitely helped. Uh but uh we've seen the need for that and that's something that uh us as well as BPD have been able to address those. >> Thank you, Chief. Chief, what percentage of the total 50,000 incidents are non fire related? You mentioned 37,000 EMS, that's about 74% of the total. >> Roughly 90% are non-fire related. There's about 10% of them there, maybe a little bit over, maybe even into the 11 or 12% that are fire related, um, which is higher than, um, a lot of other communities. Uh, Bakersfield is a very active community when it comes into when we're talking fires. Uh, we run anywhere between 5 to 6,000 fires a year. Um, not all of those are structure fires. Roughly, uh, a,000 to,00 of those are structure fires. Um, I am a board member for Cow Chiefs and California Training Officers Association. Um, and I network with other departments on a regular basis. and most of them don't see the activity that we see. Um, so um, yeah, it's we're we're definitely a very active department when it comes to fires. >> Thank you, Council Member Smith. >> Thank you, Mayor. I was just wondering how it has worked out. We talked for years about uh, reimbursement from insurance companies and and where we're at on that. >> We we are actively collecting reimbursement for insurance companies, mainly our vehicle accidents. Uh we were doing it for structure fires for a little bit, then we stopped and we just restarted again. Uh we are receiving some reimbursement. It's not a lot. Um it's anywhere between uh 7 to 11,000 a month. Uh but we currently are looking at a cost recovery platform for uh what's called first responder fees. And essentially what we're looking at is doing some cost recovery through insurance companies once again uh for our medical calls. Um, as uh I just stated, we run around 36,000 to 37,000 medical calls every year. Uh, that could have a significant impact on revenue generation. And I hate to use the word revenue, it's more of a cost recovery generation. >> Um, and uh, we are in the process of doing a study uh, to determine what that fee is going to be. And then uh hopefully here in the next 3 or 4 months we'll bring uh that study and that recommendation to council uh for your approval and we'll implement that. >> So so which calls are we? >> So currently we are collecting for uh vehicle accidents structure fires if we get a large rescue um recent a while back we had a trench rescue. They're kind of lengthy. We'll do the cost recovery for that. But some of the things that uh are required for this is they have to have insurance. Um one of the agreements that we uh had with you the council is that we were not going to direct bill um our community members. Right >> now uh you could potentially see where community members community members could get a bill, but it's because insurance has already reimbursed them for that amount on the structure fires and then they just need to remit that to the recovery company. But it's not it's not additional money out of their pocket. >> But you're looking to look at the EMS also. >> Yeah, we're in the process of doing that right now. Um the study is going to start here soon. We're just gathering some information together to send it off to a company called DTA. They're going to establish uh we wanted to make sure that we had a fair equitable rate as far as the cost recovery component, >> right? Um, and uh, we should have that here soon and we'll be bringing it to council hopefully here in the next three or four months. >> Okay, great. Thank you very much. >> Thank you, Chief. I don't see any other requests to speak. Coun, uh, city manager Kle, would you like to offer some closing comments? >> Just really briefly, Mayor and Council, again, we'll be back here on May 18th. We'll have the remainder of the departments and then also again a summary of where we're at with general fund and capital improvement uh budget and we'll we'll we'll see us back at that time. >> Thank you. Colleagues, do you have any other questions? Seeing none, we stand adjourned at 2:14. >> Sorry. Oh, this is big. Uh vice mayor >> motion to receive and file. >> Motion. Okay. Hey, please cast your votes. I know. I saw I had that right there. It's like remember to do that. You get a vote. >> And just motion is approved with council members Aas, Gonzalez, and Basher absent. And we're >> and we're sorry, mayor. >> Thank you. And so now we stand a journ at 2:15. Do you feel