e [Music] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Music] e [Music] is n [Music] good afternoon it's my pleasure to call to order the 12 pm department head budget presentation meeting of May 20th 2024 Madame clerk please call the role mayor go here vice mayor Gonzalez council member Adas council member Weir council member Smith I am here council member Freeman council member gray here and council member core thank you in keeping with the council's new resolution public statements are now received at different times depending on the item so I'll call on the city clerk to call for public statements at the appropriate time so please listen carefully for the correct time to speak if you wish to make a public statement please fill out a speaker card and place it on the tray in the counter next to the speaker Podium we ask that you mark whether you're here to speak on an item listed on today's agenda or an matter not on the agenda speakers who do not identify a specific agenda item will be presumed speakers for the non-agenda public statements if you're here to speak on an item not listed on the meeting agenda you will be called first to speak statements are given a two-minute time limit per speaker 20 minutes total for all non-agenda item public statements if you're here to speak on an item listed on the agenda I will call for you at the appropriate time so please listen carefully public statements become disruptive and I have to clear the chambers to regain order of the meeting you will be called in one at a time to provide your public statement when your item is called 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 the meeting May result in expulsion and or the chambers being cleared behavior that disrupts the meeting includes repetitive statements shouting interrupting staff or presenters during the meeting speaking out of turn outbursts from the audience Madam clerk do we have any public speakers regarding items not listed on the agenda America we've received two public speaker cards for items not listed on today's agenda the the first public speaker is Linda mul followed by Wendell Wesley Jr Miss mul just come right here to the middle and lower the mic please do you need any assistance I'm fine thank you Miss welcome would you lower the mic a little please thank you welcome and please introduce yourself my name is Linda mole and I'm here to talk about the Injustice of eviction for seniors um I was evicted from my apartment because I live on a fixed income and I was recently involved in a motor vehicle accident in October of last year which totally destroyed my vehicle and as a result of that accident I received a complicated tear to my pancreas I was a nurse for 35 years and my gastroenterologist is Dr Neil Bogle and I have been going to him religiously and he said said that he had never seen a person with a complicated tear to their pancreas I have had to pay as much as $45 one way to go to the emergency room the ER and wherever to seek treatment for this as a result of that I have been unable to pay my rent and I was evicted from the clemmer and clemmer apartment at 4820 Columbus Street Apartment J I was not told when I rented this apartment that it was not on the bus line they failed to tell me that it was not on and I did not have a car at my disposal because of the accident I just wanted to be able to say that something should be miss Ma I'm so sorry about your accident and uh Mr C is it okay if I just asked Anthony to take some contact information let's try to get you connected with some Services Mr Valdez can you just help Miss uh Maul and we'll just try to take some information so we can get her services and I'm so sorry to hear about your accident thank you thank you next speaker please hi Council City management my name is Wendell Wesley Jr and um these type of things are happening far too often and a lot of times when they do find some temporary housing it's shared I've recently learned that some of these temporary housing that they have to pay for out their social security a lot of these temporary housing do not have a nutritional meal on their menu and this is what we're giving our seniors we're having them paid upwards of almost $900 to share a room sometimes with more than one person with not even a nutritional meal and if they try to go to one of the other places that has maybe a more quality meal for their diabetes or wherever else medically they're going through they have no way of getting there this is not how we should be treating our seniors we can do better we need to do better you know housing is not affordable it's pushing more and more people out into the street so I know that our city is working hard to put together some things that Community Land Trust but I want to say that we really need to sit together at the table because what is being called Low Income right now really isn't low income enough if you're on Section 8 you're going to be fine but if you're not on Section 8 it's too high and even with rent control when it passes if it's 10% or 3% you're only going to be one to two or maybe three rent increases from being pushed out into the street so we need to make sure this is part of a nonprofit so that they can keep it truly low affordable thank you thank you Mr whesley Madame clerk any other speakers on non-agenda items America we've received no other speaker cards on on agenda items we've received two speaker cards on agenda items I only have one do you have another and go ahead and call wend Wesley Jr followed by Sandra Placencia okay um thank you uh again uh the eviction prevention program is very vital to our community and any Community for that matters um there are landlords are not being honorable and that's a shame but that's the world we live in so we need accountability we need to make sure that that is heavily regulated so that landlords are not wrongfully pushing people out into the streets so um we came to the city council a little over a year ago you guys did agree you granted us $350,000 thank you for that however these people are going to need an attorney that's going to cost a minimum of $2 million okay so we're here again asking for the $2 million and to also implement this program because you know every moment we wait to implement this program and get the funding we need to protect people um more and more people getting out on the street which is equaling more and more crime which is equaling more and more mental illness and we don't even have enough mental illness facilities and from what I've seen a lot of these shelters out there some of them will create some mental illness because these people that are in the shelter some of them need to be in a mental health facilities and people are being assaulted seniors are being assaulted in these um shelters and it's really not safe for them it's not even safe for a young person so we need to Define you know who is going to be in the shelter who is going to be in the mental health facility and we need to make sure that we get all that right thank you thank you Mr Wesley and Miss Placencia do you prefer to speak now or after staff's presentation on the budget item item any speak you're welcome too please introduce yourself yes thank you uh my name is Sandra Placencia and I'm a current policy Advocate with Leadership Council um Leadership Council and our partner organizations and community members stand before you to ask that the city allocate $2 million for measure n for the eviction prevention pilot program we urge the city to fund a comprehensive program that will provide effective community outreach and education on tenant rights provide legal guidance to prevent landlord in tenant issues from reaching the eviction process and attorney representation in court as the city determines funding sources and amounts for every Department today we ask the city council to amend recommendations to be reflective and inclusive of funding the eviction prevention program the city has the responsibility to ensure that any funds from psvs are spent advancing the 13 priorities approved by taxpayers in November of 2018 the EP is an eligible use of funds under measure n as it will advance for of the main priorities and support Council goals to reduce homelessness we reiterate that multiple cities throughout the US have implemented various versions of their own eviction prevention program Stout a consultant agency has done numerous amounts of research and cost benefit analysis on rights to counsel eviction programs their cost benefit analysis cover a wide range of jurisdictions including urban and rural um jurisdictions within the country and based on their data the return on investment on a right to counsel program rages from $3 to $12 none of their cost benefit analysis have led to a loss of funds therefore we can confidently state that every dollar the city invests into the EP will have a positive impact on the city's physical stability and in turn help proactively curb homelessness we uplift councilwoman Carr's statement from the last city council meeting that while it's incred incredibly important to invest in affordable housing we also need Immediate Solutions to the housing crisis since funding was originally allocated for this program over 2,500 families have had evictions filed against the m Court this does not represent folks that were asked to leave units or self- evicted without going through the process in fact according to the Bakersfield California's research on unlawful detainers only 1.6 1.6% of defendants had an attorney in comparison to 72% of plant who had an attorney in every single case the landlord has won their case it is incredibly vital for the city to proactively combat the homelessness crisis your time is up can you bring your comments to a close please so um just wanted to say that the city has the money you have the community support but we're asking you to bring this home and implement the program as soon as possible thank you thank you madam clerk any other speakers regarding the agenda item may go we have not received any additional speaker cards thank you next item please reports item 3A fiscal year 2024 25 Department budget presentations budget Workshop number one thank you Mr C thanks mayor and Council a few comments before I jump into the first presentation uh for uh the benefit of the viewing public uh the these uh workshops are being streamed uh online on our agenda management system as well as on YouTube um as well as on kov for that matter it's being broadcast and then these workshops will be available to the community and to council members um through uh those same resources our agenda management web page page as well as um our um our YouTube page uh so that folks can uh catch up on these workshops um as uh their time permits also uh we have uh created um a little bit of a different um streamlined approach to making these presentations this year we hope that it helps present the information in a way um that highlights the most important points for Council uh we recognize that there's lots of really good work that's happening in the city um but we're going to try and um report out on all of those accomplishments in our work sessions around the city council goals and um this while we tie our budget of course to the city council goals uh this Workshop is really going to be focused on um the budget uh itself more so than accomplishments although we'll have a few highlights um uh throughout um we're going to run through uh the Departments uh each one at a time if there are questions at after each department we would uh welcome Council questions comments at that time but uh there will be some summary slides at the very end that uh put things into more of a holistic context because again this is just each department um as they come uh and so know that we'll try and uh we have some slides that are with the intent at the end to summarize the key information for Council uh this is not a voting action item this is just our workshops to get the information in front of council we'll be bringing forward uh the first reading of the budget at our first meeting in June uh with a final adoption our second meeting in June uh and I would also note that uh the information related to Public Safety vital Services tax went to the oversight committee uh for that tax um and council did receive in memo format that same information that was presented to the psvs oversight committee uh and there have been some high level um Revenue projection shared with Council but this is the first time that that council is getting this level of detail at the department level so we'll run through um each department and uh again as noted we tried to streamline and so some of these will move fairly quickly uh again just trying to highlight the key items so this is City manager's office budget this is just the city manager's office you know staff and budget um uh this is not the Citywide numbers uh you'll note some fairly large variances on both sides of this budget and that's because we had moved staff out of Economic and Community Development into the city manager's office around homelessness to really um provide a high level of prioritization uh we created a community Vitality group and so uh during that same time frame and as we continue to evaluate uh the work of economic Community Development what they do around housing and affordable housing and homelessness uh we're moving the three individuals who are part of the contract management function around um uh homelessness back into economic and Community Development Community Vitality will stay in the city manager Office we'll focus on the impacts of homelessness as well as homeless strategy but the three staff that are serving our contract management functions around homelessness are going back into economic and Community Development uh as well as um the dollar that are related to the contract management for Brundage Lane navigation Center those will be housed in economic and Community Development you see a slight uptick in some of our Capital dollars that's just with some of our calip staff and Community Vitality staff there's um a large percent increase but fairly small dollars because a small budget uh to just um make some office spaces available for uh those staff quite advancing Julie if you could help me there thank you um I already noted the probably most significant change budget-wise is that first piece there in the move of Economic and Community Development uh staff back into their Department uh but also doing a slight restructuring where I'm taking two assistant well one one assistant to the city manager and one highlevel analyst position in the city manager's office and transitioning those to a third assistant city manager no overall increase in uh FTE or full-time employee count or budget uh but it's just an organizational restructuring uh that's happening there that's revenue and position neutral uh the reasoning for this is that as we've been able to stand up new programs thankfully around things like um our grants and our uh performance Audits and our legislative advocacy as well as Community vitality and Calvin uh wanting to um create capacity for that span of control at the executive level and so really it's it's a trade of uh uh two uh positions for um the uh one new assistant city manager at the same time we're taking a manager position that existed prior in um Community uh excuse me in in visit Bakersfield and we're creating what I'm calling an Enterprise project manager the response Poss ility of that position is going to be to um track highlevel priority projects as well as um train and increase the project management skills across the organization uh we have good folks doing good work but I've noted that we can get tighter in our overall project management and and creating this uh highle manager to work with departments and making sure we're uh driving the work of the city effectively in good project management um skills and practices is going to be one of those roles and then um I'll I'll not a little bit more on the next slide one other um uh change uh in in Personnel um several departments will probably make note of this but this is our first year that we are uh in our new Erp with these budget numbers and so it's a big deal that we're we've kicked off our Erp and we're working in that system and that the general ledger and all the budget information is found there and again and this last year um probably most notably uh specific to the city manager Office have created that Community Vitality Operation Center where we're taking um requests for service related to homeless encampments and coordinating that that response U across all City units if you could thanks JY uh the the couple other items um Beyond those that I mentioned earlier uh we have created what we're calling a community relations team this was our Pio and we had one Communications coordinator we had two positions last year that were moved out of Technology Services into the city manager's office and we've created a manager over um community relations and our visit Bakersville and help teams um and other communication staff are now part of that unit and then also as we're moving forward with Erp we're noting um and that there are needs to support the Erp um system Beyond just our initial go live over the next couple of years as we continue to implement and potentially Beyond and so these are resources that are coming from the Erp project this is not a new general fund position but instead this is coming uh from Erp project dollars to help us continue to implement uh the Erp modules and and make those final adjustments and configurations that are needed over the next um few years and I already noted the other two um comments uh about the more executive restructuring in the city manager's office next slide please thank you city clerk's office and risk are part of city manager office so I'll go over those fairly quickly um you'll note here um uh some slight reduction in operations and capital outlay that's related uh largely to um software uh implementation and software subscriptions we also had a slight decrease in some tuition reimbursement cost on the operation side on the the Personnel Services side you'll see most departments because of our continued commitment to class and comp you're probably going to see around a 10% plus or minus increase in Personnel cost between Calpers and and benefits and uh colas um smaller Department here and so slightly higher percentage increase in Personnel Services that's just because there's a number of uh younger staff that are seeing step increases and we have one position overfill but uh you'll see on the next slide that there are no um substantive Personnel changes to the clerk's office in fact if we go to the next slide uh so there are seven staff in the clerk's office that's been constant for a number of years uh again uh we had that slight reduction in those operational costs and uh we have uh one position is also underfilled at this time um that were um holding there for succession planning um opportunities in the clerk's office notable things from this last year we did launch our new agenda management software um that was a big accomplishment and uh we're in fairly smooth sailing there and so that's a sign that our Erp will get to the same place just like we did with our escribe um upcoming we are doing our every other year update to our conflict of interest code that will be a notable lift and then of course the municipal um uh elections we did the primary uh this year and and we'll have a fairly big lift this fall coming up as well for risk management uh you'll note um that uh there are some operational increases there I'll show you a slide in just a moment that I think Paints the picture a little bit better um but we continue to see challenges to our liability and risk environment if you go to the next slide uh of course um as we continue to add more staff as we add more assets properties and more programs that also means there's an increase in workers compensation other liability costs at the same time um just overall premiums are increasing significantly uh throughout uh the market um this is true in private markets uh as well as uh public sector markets and um uh the The Fairly uh litigious uh um environment in California uh just continues uh to drive these costs up significantly um we're doing everything that we can to be creative and thoughtful in this process we're looking at some alternative um equipment and as well as sort of wearable Technologies to reduce our um workers comp claims we we take a hard look at where we get most of our claims and we think about are there ways to prevent and offset um we're also working um risk has been assigned along with technology services to implement an emergency Mass notification system that's the uh buttons that that haven't been working that council's aware of that we're trying to fix those buttons throughout the city as well as have the ability to communicate quickly to all of our staff and again we're continuing to um look at all of our safety programs to find ways to just get better and and uh reduce the amount of claims and just create a safe culture here at the city this is the slide that I was mentioning earlier um you'll note the yellow are our actuals um and then we have uh our um budgeted uh uh rates and the the departmental rates you'll see that trend line continues to go up there's some some a little bit of good news in our actuals for 2023 that we saw uh a little bit of a downtick there in 2022 we're trying again to manage but if you'll note obviously we had very high actuals in Prior years and we do have to make those up over time just through our rates and we do anticipate again with just um so many challenges out there that we're not going to continue to see our actuals reduce and so um we're needing to budget more and more uh towards risk and liability those are some of our biggest cost drivers actually throughout the city are our risk and and uh liability rates with that I'm going to pause and see if there are any questions again specific just to the city manager's office risk and clerk's office um if not we can move into some of our other internal service departments colleagues are there any questions I don't see any at this point any requests to speak I don't see any so let's move on we're going to move right into technology services and we'll have to help Advance your slides for a few minutes too Greg goodno mayor councilor present the proposed fiscal 2025 budget for the technology Services Department our proposed budget is slightly over $20 million which indicates a $2.2 million increase over the previous year 1.8 million of that increase is within the equipment funds operational accounts thank you Adam uh the remaining is spread between general service uh general fund and psvs funds mostly around personnel and insurance and liability costs increases regarding uh Capital outlay we have deferred any new capital Improvement projects until mid year where we will reassess for capacity however we do have one project tentatively scheduled uh to replace cameras at the Amtrak station that is pend Kern cob TDA funding Advance the slide please Julie does working uh returning to operational costs uh one contributing factor to the increase in that cost area is that more and more of our applications are transitioning to cloud-based Services um with that there are a number of uh benefits with that model such as increased resiliency and less Hardware dependence it does impact our operational costs though um Additionally the amount of tech we use throughout the city expands yearly making it difficult to keep Pace as such we continue to review our processes to ensure that they are as efficient as possible we also continue to partner with external resources thank you Adam um such as Moss Adams and infotech research group and sharing in our successes in addition to the highlights before you we have completed 23 projects this far uh this year to date that is a 53% increase in closure rates over last year also we are on track to provide over 20,000 hours of help desk or uh service desk requests calls this year in reviewing Staffing a few years ago we implemented our field assigned staff program where a TS staff member is assigned to and stationed within a department focusing on spefic specific technical needs due to the success of having a TS analyst within Fleet Services the public works department transferred a vacant position to technology services to be reclassified to assist them with increased GIS needs and finally two additional reclassifications are proposed for fiscal year 2025 the first is the reclassification of an analyst within our GIS team to an engineer to provide a higher level of technical oversight to that team the second is a reclass to an administrative analyst within our business unit to focus on the and developing the pro and processing the many agreements that flow through TS each year um please note that uh some of these budget uh some of these items may not be in the budget totals uh reflected on the first slide and with that that concludes my presentation I'm happy to answer any questions thank you Mr peros Mr peros Moss Adams had highlighted technology as being uh an area of high risk when they did their survey what areas have you addressed to um take care of their highest concerns oh excellent question thank you mayor yes uh first and foremost we actually created a security team that focuses on um cyber security uh whereas before that was more ad hoc shared amongst uh TS staff so we have a uh security manager that has a team of four that just focus on security also over the years we've added uh additional security features uh to our Network and our services um just last year we added a AI functionality to our Network system so now that uh in addition to when staff is here monitoring the network so forth after hours we're alerted to any sort of abnormalities and the system itself addresses those and shuts down any Bad actors that may be entering our Network um in addition to that we've also addressed a number of other concerns that they brought out from their audit um we have uh put some procedures in place where we're more timely in replacing outdated equipment throughout the organization as well as putting proper procedures and Personnel in places that are needed thank you vit mayor thank you mayor uh thank you so much for your presentation um a couple questions for you number one uh you mentioned uh as one of the department highlights in the presentation the regional radio system that has been brought to the implementation phase can you describe for the council the where we are in that implementation phase of course vice mayor uh where we are are we were working we're working again closely with the county and Motorola uh on the detailed design of the overall system um that once that is finalized then we will start ordering equipment um for the larger the system as a whole that will go through testing and then start installing uh we are also in the process of um doing a site assessment for each of the sites looking at what remediations may need to take effect of course our sites are 20 to 30 years old uh standards have changed in that time so uh we're assessing those uh costs right now um in the meantime why this work is being developed uh we know we have some critical needs in our Public Safety department so we have front loaded and ordered um subscriber units for fire and uh PD early on we've received some of those units already and we're working on a larger order to be shipped out later this year in timeline for full implementation full implementation we are shooting within the next three maybe four years three or four years correct um um and initially we had hoped that it would be 2 to 3 years um given that there was some delays in equipment being ordered and um we're expecting some delays in shelters that were are needed that timeline may be increased that's why I present that timeline currently as possibly three but no more than four years uh anticipated though we're hoping that it'll be shorter and vice May if I could also jump in I think Greg's U being I think diplomatic to not trying and get ahead of me but I've shared with a couple of you as we've checked in and and um very willing to share uh openly with you that we're concerned about the timeline that we have noted in our partnership with uh our third party U um vendor or technical expert who still on this project with us who helped us through the whole request for qualifications request for proposals process uh the city and the county and our and our third party um technical adviser we're pushing on Motorola because we've started to see some of these delays we've started to see some of these slips and and this is a heads up to the council that this is high on my radar as a potential Challenge and issue um and again uh we feel like the the the value of doing a regional project continues to outweigh some of the complications of dealing on a much bigger project meaning you know you working jointly with the county uh does have its complications cuz we're somewhat reliant on their time line to build some of the regional infrastructure uh but we do think that of course the benefits um outway you know some of those challenges but also we've seen some delays on the vendor side so we're pushing hard on the vendor we're watching and working closely with the county as well but this is you I would I would say implementation has gone from green to yellow and we're doing everything we can to make sure it doesn't go from yellow to Red if that sort of metaphor makes sense really appreciate that and appreciate the work to prioritize this issue it's a bit ironic to me that you know key infrastructure to support Emergency Services is being delayed uh and so it seems like um this ought to remain a priority of the council and of course the city management and staff so I appreciate that um please do come back with uh regular updates for the council so that we can uh stay on top of this of course thank you one other question you mentioned your uh technical support which is fantastic what was it 20,000 20 20,000 hours so it that um comment actually provoked a question in my mind H how do you measure success is it you know additional hours provided or fewer hours provided in the future that is a good question and and one that's kind of difficult to answer I I would say um success is if depending on the request type if it's a trouble ticket of course the less is is a better option uh that means that uh our equipment is lasting longer and that we're addressing needs quicker uh uh a lot of our requests are also for additional equipment uh additional software things of that nature that aren't always large enough to qualify as a project um so that that's a good portion of our request too in that regard that shows the health of the city and its advancement in the using technology uh on a greater scale uh so again it's a little bit difficult question to answer uh I presented that 20,000 hours just as a a a generic metric um but I can tell you to kind of put some quality to that that um for each type of ticket that we address whether it's for additional services or trouble we have slas associated with it our goal is to meet 75% of those uh slas we are currently trending at about 80% so we're doing well in that regard so we're meeting the city's needs addressing these concerns and so forth so I think that's a positive um uh factor in that regard but um quite frankly you know technology is On The Rise um all departments are now really starting to get into it I think we're just now seeing um the initial advancement of Technology use throughout the city which excites me but also at the same time I think about wow how am I going to manage all that so um we're working great with the Departments uh they're being very inclusive um where as I mentioned before uh a couple years ago I I noticed that some departments need a greater level of support so I've worked with those departments and either through funding or transfers of um vacant positions we've hired technical staff that report to technology Services receive our training receive our education have access to our resources and they're stationed within the department to address their needs okay thank you I'll close with this you know one of our Council goals is to be uh efficient and Innovative as a government and um I really believe that that is more critical now than ever before and you know it's very clear the world is changing around us and it's changing exponentially and government ought to adapt at that same rate as much as we can and so that requires us to be very Innovative and try new things and take risks at times um and also uh Implement new technology even when it's scary and even when uh sometimes it may feel a little uncomfortable and so I want to thank you for all the work that you and your department is doing first and foremost and then second I have a request and that is to help us at the dis think through what are those appropriate measurements that we can utilize to really uh Benchmark our progress uh to becoming uh more uh innovative and effective over time you know how how should we be thinking about um our Innovation and and our Effectiveness in City Hall and how what we're doing and where we need to uh be strategic about employing new dollars or resources or attention uh so that we can uh continue to make advances so I'd ask that for you uh to help us out and to think through that and perhaps in the future we can dedicate some more time in a workshop uh toward that end councilman member Freeman okay okay thank you uh thank you I wondered if you can provide a little more clarity in in the breakdown of the the large increase in cost in operations which in your discuss it didn't sound like we added I couldn't tell if we added anybody from your discussion we didn't see a new work chart so obviously there's some other things in there and the previous year we went up by about a million and a half now we're going up by about a million eight so this department I notice there's a few others like this that have these very large increases every year and others just hardly do so um can you tell us and maybe as other presenters come up where they have the very large increases last year this year it seems like we don't want to see another 2 million next year kind of what's what's driving these big increases is it people is it class in comp is it the you know we know everybody got about a 5% rise but that doesn't explain 25% increase operation is kind of a general term so can you explain that a little more well uh specifically in this regard that 1.8 million is within our equipment can you speak a little closer mic oh Excuse me yes that 1.8 million is within our equipment fund essentially uh we charge departments for our services that funds the equipment fund for uh replacement of equipment ongoing uh software maintenance and things of that nature um so what you're seeing is is almost twofold one there is an increase in cost for software uh Co software cost is becoming more expensive um we have this trend now where um before you would go out and buy a piece of software you'd buy your Microsoft operating system cost $100 you install it you run it for five years then you want to buy the new one you go out to you're a local store you buy $120 copy so these things are you know a lot of times we have been used to those being classified as capital expenses if we're purch these so are we are these um I mean they're purchases of thing they're not they're not people cost they actually you're having to buy software and why don't we put that in capital outlines yeah if I could take that one Greg you know the the nature of how software companies are working in moving now is that you rarely buy a piece of software and then you just sort of own that license now for say three or five years and you can decapitalize that over time the industry has moved now to subscription services so largely we have to just pay an annual cost for that type of service there's a few exceptions out there but typically as we do our cost benefit analysis to buy a software for let's say 3 to 5 years as a singular Capital project we don't get the same level of Maintenance as we do on the subscription services and so we end up paying more as we go in and ask them to do updates and and increases and so these are becoming more of operating costs because it's an annual subscription to that software okay but is should we expect this to keep going up at a couple of million a year I mean it just getting worse and worse you know it's a great question comment about efficiency seems like we have brilliant new systems and every time we have a new brilliant software or AI everything cost more it never gets more efficient it gets less efficient from a dollar standpoint so I just wonder is this something we will continue to see the growth of this yeah Capital should go down but Capital goes up and the everything keeps going up yeah great question council member Freeman I think in some ways you know the capital keeps going up just because of the the cost of of you know construction doing business but your question about will this number continue to go up I would say yes but not quite as much as it has been there's a couple reasons for that one we've added quite a few staff over the last four budget Cycles you'll see through the rest of the presentations today we're adding very few staff this year I don't expect to add many more staff in future years because we're kind of at our cap and you know where we could grow the organization through the psvs monies some of these equipment increases are because we've still been getting all of the equipment for the these newer teams and so I I see a ramping down of new equipment at the same time uh on the software side we've seen a lot of new software costs because we've been more than a decade behind frankly in our business solutions that are these are software products and so we've been catching up we've been spending a lot more and seeing big increases in those software costs we still have a few fairly big projects after Erp but none that big and we'll again we'll start to see a ramping down of how many big new projects we take on but I expect that it will continue to grow um because uh again technology and software is a big area where we're going to see growth but I think that we'll see a Slowdown in in how much that growth is one last thought is one of the offsets for you know this new software we're paying more for the software uh and yet you know we're not necessarily reducing let's say staff because we're s able to automate things but what is happening is we're not needing additional staff for sure and we actually have been in some instances been able to say Hey you know we could probably do uh the same level of of work um and so we we don't need to see those uh increases in staff or we can reallocate staff to other assignments and other projects um it's unlikely that I'll come back and say we're recommending you know major reductions in staff but because we have these smart New Technology Solutions it's allowing us to to um repurpose some of the work of staff and more importantly I think not increase other Staffing because we're able to automate um and get to just more work overall okay well I hope we I mean all of us we'll see that in the future it isn't just your department it's that we actually the concept was we with all of our better software we'd need fewer people not we need more people and more expensive software but the reality seems to need not just here but everywhere well we need more people and we need more s the cost just keeps spiring up we never see the efficiencies in the bottom line so we need to kind of watch that and as we make the presentations maybe you have to get us by next time a crib sheet you give us but if we're going to put operations and include personnel and it's a grab bag of all these costs it would be helpful if each time we present how many people were added so we know no we didn't add any people so we know how much was just raises how much was this reclassification we just went through which is not every year and you say well hey 10% was class and comp 5% this and the rest cuz I and the rest was software but when we lump it all together like this if it isn't really broken out where we could see it which would be helpful maybe on some of the future presentations we can actually see well this is the Personnel cost and here just so we understand better U rather than just well it's up and we I can't really um I can't make heads or tails without you know I don't want to have to ask a hundred questions each time rather not bother you with those if it was explained in the way it was broken out to us so it would save a lot of time and increase our understanding so I'll leave it at that but it's it's we sort of need a little more of that detail if operations is our big department we just throw everything in it than you know how much was and sometimes it's just inflation you can say hey inflation of I didn't buy any more Capital Equipment but all this the new tractors cost 20% more or 50% more we we all need to understand that um I mean so we so we don't pound on you on the wrong things you know we really need to understand where what's going on out there the challenges you're facing okay thank you thank you I don't see any other requests to speak so thank you Mr pavos and our next group is human resources thought I'd get a little more support from my uh audience but maybe not we'll see how this goes uh good afternoon Christy tinter Human Resources Director and presenting the proposed fiscal year 2425 budget uh as you will see from our first slide we are probably one that Council Freeman is saying is more of the status quo uh keeping it uh consistent from prior years but we are looking at a $3.1 million proposed budget request that overall is about a 3 and 1/2% change we'll talk through some of those differences but overall roughly a $260,000 increase between personnel and operating costs and as a reminder our uh department is providing all people Services predominately on recruitment retention uh Labor Relations training and development Employee Engagement benefit Administration so we'll talk through what a few of those operating changes look like but again moving from one year to the next roughly a $25,000 operating budget change can someone Advance my slide thank you to highlight changes again very minimal we were able to maintain or have minimal changes to operating costs when you think about human resources one of our primary functions is recruitment those recruitment have Associated costs for training and and onboarding examinations uh pre-employment processes so when we talk about expenses when we hear proposals from my counterparts they're asking for new staff or changes in staff those have Associated costs so really our budget only reflects changes in those accounts we saw the L uh largest increase 12% in the salary and benefits as you'll hear from again my counterparts and city managers office those reflect having see 13 of our 17 staff or less than two years new to our department very new and in our step program so they have uh proposed salary increases in addition to any Citywide increases or unit increases and then our benefit costs with our Calpers we've had a lot of Conversation Over the years about that Trend uh represent the total cost to our salary and benefits package we also incurred a larger than usual technology rental rates perhaps we just touched upon that but HR has been looking at opportunities to stream line and automate programs uh some of you may be familiar or had new training this year through neogov that is a system that we utilize a public sector program that is broadly used for recruitment everyone applies that's how we get people in the door they apply through neogov trying to integrate more of those processes to automate and get rid of paper but with that the purchases uh last year we had our Capital purchase uh outlay proposed and now we're seeing the rental rates come in for you using that software and having that software maintained so again operating cost to support core HR Services throughout the city uh at times it feels like we were just here talking about what the year would bring and looking back now it's hard to categorize in just a few bullet points all the progress and the efforts that we've put into play but I've highlighted four where I believe our uh most significant focus and time allocation and results uh has been derived and first we'll talk about our class and comp initiative so when I came last year we were in a time where we were finishing up labor relations and to enter into three-year term agreements with everyone and it was something to be celebrated but we also were discussing the opportunity to look at more classifications to drive Recruitment and Retention efforts through a compensation study at that time we had done a number of reopener classifications uh looking at salaries of about 12 classes and upwards of almost 300 employees and we're really pleased with those efforts we've now extended that we've uh been able to impact another 16 classifications roughly 260 employees and are at the tail end of closing up some of those final adjustments where are we seeing the return um we're we're starting to see it come in definitely uh one example I can give is at one point prior to our cost of living increases through our Labor Relations process and the class en comp we had upwards of 14 vacancies uh for a very extended time period in our Fleet division obviously you can understand the impact that would have to to many departments not having those Services readily available but we are down to I believe our last one oh got a three sorry three still great progress we're down to our last three vacancies and again we're seeing that as we're making changes to the structure uh We've also seen advances in our technology services so we're down to just a couple three three is the golden number today three in technology Services where again we were in the double digits in vacancies so we're seeing Returns on that and seeing progress that relates to services and service hours that are being provided we also updated over 26 job descriptions um in a meaningful way to modernize them because we want to attract that talent in so making progress moving forward from class en comp we're moving into recruitment activity year-to date we've hired 280 employees 88 of those were temps uh that's 10 over last year year to date our vacancy rate has uh definitely shifted throughout this fiscal year we've averaged about 190 as of today with 11 new hires going through orientation at this moment we are down to 161 vacancies and so again making Pro progress at one point during the fiscal year we had as many as 220 vacancies a low of 152 so again holding steady and continuing to make progress as well as in our um efforts to recruit and retain qualified police officer applicants so making a lot of progress with recruitment activity Oracle we've already heard about our Erp from our city manager but uh there is an HCM human Capital management process that or component of that system of which our staff has been heavily involved in with uh payroll in the finance department uh we kicked that off in January of 22 with the design elements of just what do we need the system to do and how do our current systems work to in order effective payroll and HR processing and at this time we have roughly seven individuals each week myself included they're engaged anywhere from 5 to 10 hours of development time so we're definitely moving into testing seeing progress getting excited to launch this system and are getting closer and closer to the finish line and hope to have a really robust tool that will give us more analytics more people opportunities and continue to automate and make uh employment easier for our uh Team the last thing I'll touch upon is labor relations again we built out those labor terms of three years we've been successful we've started uh joint Labor Management sessions with our SEIU labor Partners I feel that we have an excellent relationship established with both our fire and police who are both um complete with class and comp at this point for their represented and police Command Staff and we continue to have uh supervisory and management Better Together calls to just talk about General themes and topics within our organization that are important to be effective and um good stewards of our services lastly I'll touch upon the Department of Justice the Bakersville Police Department uh is under a stipulated entered into a stipulated agreement uh there's a component of human resources and so again things that HR maybe didn't anticipate when they came into these programs but we have contributed and partnered in developing policy documenting practices and meeting with the facilitators Genson Hughes on a regular basis to talk about how we can support and close out items on that I'm very excited to move uh one of my items to full effective compliance and that's another check mark that we can put in the box and allocate our resources somewhere else so uh highlights from our department but I could sing the Praises of the team uh for many many slides but in the sake of our time today we'll move on to our Personnel changes which are none none um small But Mighty 17 the last three budget Cycles we've come in and not asked for additional staff uh maintaining we're in a growth period again over well over half of the staff are less than two years so there's a lot of information exchange and knowledge building uh but with that I would share that last year some of the data points that we showed of our comparator agencies and also some of the more um reputable HR uh knowledge think tanks Sherm society for human resources typically would recommend a 1 to 100 ratio for an HR a centralized HR function with the level of programs we have 1 to 150 they can vary so again as we encroach and pass that 2,000 Mark 205 uh approved employees at this time we're definitely a little on the lean side with 17 full-time staff to support the programs that we have but a lot of great uh dedication and excitement and enthusiasm for what we do so it keeps us moving forward uh that concludes so 3 and a half% increase no Personnel changes predominantly to salary and benefits very slight to operation to support the current initiatives and with that I'll close for any questions that you may have thank you Miss tenter I don't see any requests to speak okay uh vice mayor now you have questions too late you're too slow too slow I got but not F my butt yeah I appreciate it actually I just wanted to um pay you a compliment and you and your team and all the work that you've done has been tremendous and you know as we uh ramped up and invested um with psvs over the years um it was a heavy lift for your department and you know getting those job descriptions ready starting those recruitment activities organizing those efforts working with all these various departments it's a huge lift and I think uh many times gets uh underappreciated and understated especially at this dis uh but there's a lot of work done and we appreciate you I I for one very much appreciate you and your department um we know that people are our greatest strength the greatest asset that's not just a cliche I mean there's many of us on this dice who really believe that and um it's your department that really is that touch point right that that first Contact on behalf of the city uh for our people and I want to thank you for um really taking these efforts very serious and the Recruitment and Retention efforts the hiring process making sure we find the right people to bring into the city but then also while they're here making sure that they're um uh treated well and and respected and that we create that environment that makes people want to stay in working for Bakersfield and so uh kudos to you and to your team of course to the city manager thank you for all the effort and the work that you do day in and day out um I do have a question about the gain regarding police officers but I'll wait for the uh presentation with police council member Smith thank you mayor I also appreciate the work that you've done over the years and I always like to follow up at this time about your wellness program and how you're feeling about it uh as robust as you would like or we're not quite there yet I did anticipate that uh council member Smith and I uh was going to choose my words carefully but in all honesty with the other priorities at this time it has not been top level I think that our benefits team has done some outstanding work so we've been really trying to uh Implement our virgin Pulse app has a lot of walking initiatives reminders Health aspects uh having a diverse work in Workforce as we do it's really difficult as I believe uh some of us have discussed in the past of finding a one siiz fits-all and so really encouraging different departments where they see Wellness so we have monthly trainings from our EAP talk about Wellness opportunities whether it comes from you know Financial savings to actual physical fitness to just work life balance uh we provide those opportunities to plant those seeds and continue a theme of Wellness in terms of activities we have had some really fun you know walk Walking competitions where everyone's putting in their steps uh not at the level that I would like to see for an organization of our size and so we are at this time assessing how perhaps can we envelop blue zones more and use some of those resources so we've been having some meetings and and going out so again hoping to move through the Erp and some of the doj aspects and then really um make changes great to where we've been so definitely tracking data planning the seeds moving it Forward um and also our our support and collaboration with the Bakersville Police Department and their Wellness initiative so but opportunities definitely definitely opportunities I'll challenge you to keep working hard on it then I feel it I do thank you council member Gray well being a small business owner and knowing how painful it is to hire new people I have to be impressed by the fact that more than half of your staff are less than two years with you so I just want to commend you for being able to pull that one off and the team that you put together it takes a lot of hard work to get to get a team that is cohesive and have the same goals in mind and fortunately I have that now but it's taken years to get there and um yeah and uh so anyway I'm just real proud of your team that they've come in and been able because you got a lot of work going on and to Christy I always appreciate your positive and bubbly and enthusiastic presentation so thank you thank you thank you very much thank you Miss Tiner and now Finance please turn good afternoon mayor council my name is Randy McKagan Finance director for the city I thought the City attorney was up next but that was relaxing because she's usually like 20 minutes but anyways so it's my pleasure to be able to present the finance department budget for the upcoming fiscal year I wanted to start off by just is focusing on oh does this not work me just press the uh okay I'm going to focus on our our mission statement uh first off um because uh AR I I rewrote this I re worked it when I uh became Finance director had the opportunity to be Advanced into it and it really does focus in on both the council goal as was previously mentioned about an Innovative and efficient government and also related to our new um guiding principles stewardship so as a department we really focus on this idea of being efficient and also being good stewards not just of our financial resources but actually as stewards of the trust we we deal with a lot of outside entities related to purchasing we deal with a lot of customers uh related to Services we're providing we deal with a lot of internal customers uh we we provide services and we want to be stewards of that trust not only to the community but also to the individual departments and the representatives behind me to provide the services they need to help them meet their goals and so that mission statement really expands both or connects back to the city council goals and uh our guiding principles so to meet th that mission statement we have a budget proposed of $4.8 million uh as you'll see in the top section that is the breakdown of our budget by function Personnel operations and capital outlay and then how those that operation is funded based on the various funding streams that we actually have uh within the city that fund the finance department so as you see we have a 10 point uh basically a 10% increase proposed for the upcoming fiscal year uh the primary increase is Personnel we'll talk about that in a bit and then we have a slight increase about a little less than 6% for operations wanted to highlight that operation increase specifically related to it's a 50 million 50 $50,000 increase the primary driver of that increase is actually seen in that off- street parking that 30 m $30,000 increase related to off street operations City the finance department operates the 18th and ey parking structure we're seeing significant increases related to security operations of that equipment and maintenance of that equipment so that's the largest driver of that $50,000 increase is that $30,000 you'll see in operation increases for the uh off street parking um and the parking facility on 18th and I I'm going to talk a little bit more next next slide please talk a little bit more about the incre inrees uh as we saw the 10% increase majority in salaries and benefits uh so as other departments will have said and will continue to say the largest increase in salaries and benefits relate to step increases relate to cost of living increases and relate to purs all of those Drive our increases and are a significant driver ongoing significant driver over the next couple of years uh to meet the needs and and and meet the needs of our our Personnel here so that's the biggest driver of the 10% increase we also had some internal increases related to rates specifically from technology Services property and liability insurance costs increased so that's that difference between the 30,000 that I just talked about is $220,000 and that's driven primarily by rate increases otherwise the city operations are flat um we do not have any other new proposals no new changes no new projects no new um um plans uh know no new CIP but we are continuing to work on our Erp project or an enterprise resource planning project we already talked about it city manager HR did but I'm going to go ahead and continue with that theme uh so we are we went live with our financial piece about two months ago and we continue to perfect that process and we have three more uh modules we're moving forward with HCM was mentioned previously for HR and payroll we have a Community Development module uh related to permits uh business licenses code Code Enforcement and then we have a utility billing service that will we go be going live related primarily through Wastewater and solid waste uh Billings those are all moving forward at different phases and different time frames as I said we did the financial piece we're perfecting those that process the HR HCM piece is expected to go live I would say in the summerish uh same with the uh Utility Billing late summer early fall and by next month we anticipate that the Community Development module should go live uh sometime in late June uh to get again meet our goals we are not no new proposals so therefore new Inc new increases in staff or Personnel CH costs so we have 32 employees in our complement we will remain at 32 there's no need to increase our compliment uh and you'll see the breakdown of that complement of 32 employees between our four divisions admin treasury accounting and uh purchasing there but again no new changes there so I wanted to go into another more Global broad scope Beyond Finance just to kind of touch on our fin Financial City Financial reserves 20 in 2022 this Council approved our city Reserve policy broking breaking out our reserves into three such funds or sections our rainy day Reserve our facility replacement reserve and the pension rate stabilization trust so those three funding uh funds are are established and we have certain goals in each one of those and as you'll see the rainy day Reserve is supposed to if you recall is supposed to cover two months of operating budget uh the projected balance needed to meet that two uh month uh Reserve is by the end of this year is $58.5 million we're we're we're going to talk about that uh when we established this trust we kind of these these Reserve policy we wanted to come up with a way to basically an analyze so we have budgeted uh proposed um additions to that trust I'm sorry to that Reserve uh but we still need to meet that 58 we we're going to still need to have some action before the end of this fiscal year to meet the 58.5 so that is something to be put on your radar it's currently going to be about 56 uh and a half million dollars by the end of the fiscal year so we need to to maintain that uh Council approved rate we need to look at potential increases in this upcoming in this current fiscal year our facility Reserve we have not added additional contributions we're steady at about 5 million we have that goal but we need to have available funds to to get to that $10 million so we we're we're going to be watching for available funds as we move forward in the upcoming fiscal year and then that pension rate stabilization we added $4 million uh a little over a year ago and we are currently at $4.4 million we have a budgeted increase of $1.3 million at the end of this year we will contribute that it's based on the interest savings and pensions and then we also have another 1 and A5 million budget Ed in 2425 to add to that pension rate stabilization uh beyond that um I available for questions thank you Mr McKean council member Smith thank you mayor uh you brought up the parking garage and I've mentioned this a few times and so I'm gonna beat this horse I guess one more time uh if we want to consider the parking garage an asset then it seems to me we we should look look at what we're really getting from it and as my understanding is we park a lot of City cars there and we do not charge for it and so we look at it and we call it a liability when really we're not crediting the asset that it is by providing that parking so I would hope that we look at that closer thank you we can definitely do that vice mayor thank you mayor um just to Echo that sentiment um member Smith makes a good point in that there are a number of City vehicles um that are parked at the parking structure and we ought to um charge those departments similar to how we uh charge uh technology services for example to various different departments maintenance of vehicles um I don't think we're suggesting charging employees for employees parking at the structure which I think is an important difference uh we're we're we're at least I would suggest that we we charge those departments and not city employees because I do understand there are a number of employees who are parking as well um first and foremost congratulations on all the work done thus far on the Erp system this again is something that's really underated and under appreciated in our community but is fundamental to city government and to providing basic services to city government talk about efficiencies and advancements completely long overdue uh but so thankful that because of psvs we are able to invest in this way and certainly with your leadership and so many folks within the city were able to really uh work on this piece um it's like you know trying to function at City Hall and while building a new complete City Hall uh at the same time and um I I really appreciate it and I know I try to communicate to the public really the gravity of of this transition and what it means for the city so thank you and thank you you think your team as well oh absolutely and I would it's not just Finance I I would want to emphasize I mean HR just mentioned it they're they're putting a lot of work into it to a lot of other City departments so it's not just Finance but it is a big lift it's almost like another job in a lot of ways and some for some people so very excited about the um pension rate stabilization funding I I'm I'm really uh proud of our work here and how um Innovative we have become at saving dollars U by making advance payments uh for uh our Cowper annual payment as opposed to what we used to do we used to make a monthly payment and then pay interest on that now we make a one-time payment at the beginning of the year save $1.2 million use that savings to go into our state uh pension uh stabilization fund I mean it's genius thank you so much for all the work there super excited about it um now I have a question um we talked about in your presentation um questions related to facility replacement Reserve I want to be clear this is uh regarding City buildings cting facilities correct that is correct if it really is a reserve in case of an emergency that major uh repair is needed on a facility AC units those types of things right okay so we we don't consider under facilities uh our streets Bridges City infrastructure actually it can be drawn upon in those cases it it just depends on it so it we have I have seen it done in infrastructure related items as well okay yes so that's good to know so as we continue to build out you know City continues to grow and expand we're we're building New Roads new Bridges new infrastructure are where do we analyze the future cost of Road replacement or infrastructure replacement of course the maintenance costs over time where does that show up on our assets and liabilities sure um I believe with specifically with infrastructure Public Works is really analyzing the the whether and when in those repairs are needed so it's part of their CIP program as opposed to this Reserve policy or this Reserve fund uh those that Pol that process of it analyzing when things need to get serviced what repairs are due is really done as part of the CIP program over 5 10 years uh this specific Reserve is really not meant to cover that it's really when something out of the ordinary occurs we have to pull from from that specific pot of money and if I may add vice mayor just a few thoughts uh to your um question we do have our our payment condition uh index that helps us measure in one way um but I I think the reality is is we don't really have a full you know asset liability um sort of um you know depreciation list for all of our city street infrastructure we don't have that um right now public works is building a tool in our GIS system that can allow us to identify sidewalks street lights and the like because we don't also I couldn't tell you today how many miles of sidewalk are we missing in the city but we're starting to build that out um I think we can make some reasonable estimates on what would it cost us to um increase our pavement condition score by a certain amount um we've done that type of homework but admittedly I don't think we have sort of an asset list of you know when we think we're going to need every road to be repaired so so Mr mckean's correct we look at that over about a 5year period and we say based on our payment condition index and some more uh specific looks at our arterials and collectors what are the streets that in a 5-year time frame we think need to repair the most that's really the approach we've been taking up to this point and then lastly I would also just add that um we are looking at um some of our um other you know Street infrastructure uh from uh a standpoint of you know complete streets and looking at where we need to do build out of uh complete streets that have um uh KW sidewalk again Street trees median full medians and you know uh also bicycle uh pedestrian infrastructure mapping that out through our safe routes and so we have identified several areas through our safe routes to schools um exercise on a map as well where those gaps are and it's telling us a lot about where we have some of those big gaps but I couldn't give you a number of here's you know what it would take to take you know all our roads you know uh up to um you know fully repaired and that's that but that is a good exercise we want to head in that direction but we're not there today okay I really appreciate that and the reason why is because I am reading all these stories about other cities that are in very tough Financial situations this next fiscal year and it's uh you know one of the driving forces is all of this deferred maintenance all of these real issues that they uh need to uh address within their local communities and if you look at where we were pre-measure n i mean in the in the uh presentation to all of our community stakeholders we outlined some of those stressors the fact that we had grown significantly uh in land size and we had additional parks and additional roads and vehicle you know all of these different things that had contributed to a lot of the stress on our financial health and so as we look towards our future um I I don't want Baker still to find itself in the same situation in 5 10 years from now and so the more that we can do this analysis today uh the better off I think we are um so I appreciate all the effort there um appreciate you thinking about that one Council M gray thank you Mr mck for your presentation in a couple of weeks ago I thanked you personally for your conservative approach and it is I'm very I'm very happy to hear and and um I totally agree with my colleague C vice mayor Gonzalez that we need to be thinking ahead and you're doing that you and our city staff and city manager are not allowing our city to go into a place of debt and just you know dis um despair so I really appreciate your approach thank um with uh the cost continually going up every year benefits inflation um this rainy day fund has got to be protected with your life and it's not only has to be protected but it has to grow because things are going the costs are going to continue to go up so I'm curious as I know what our our Target is 58.5 million but where are we presently in that uh by the end of the current uh fiscal year we expect to be about 56.5 so we'll need an additional allocation uh to get to the 58.5 so we're only two two million away from it very good that's excellent news um go talking about streets it just jogged my memory so I'm just going bringing this up real quick on my way here today I noticed that on Oak Street south of California the median is about 1 to 2 in tall now where all the other medians are you know 6 in or so so and of course there's somebody standing there with a sign on right in the middle of the road with really no median protecting him at all so if you could I'm going to make mention of that today maybe that's something we can look into I appreciate it thank you counc member Smith thank you mayor I just wanted to follow up on the infrastructure comments also and maybe it's for public works but I know with the water department you know we we look at r raised the rates substantially because of our deferred maintenance and and I think we've also done the same thing with sewer and I'm not sure that our sewer Enterprises has looked at that I know when we looked at our downtown sewer system there was substantial improvements and I'm not sure that we've really addressed how we're going to improve those at this point and I think that that should happen yeah real quickly Council M Smith on that last Point well let me stop and say on on your general point about just infrastructure across the board yes we need to be planning and thinking ahead on the downtown sewer uh we had a series of what I would um characterize as smaller Investments meaning you know U half a million a million dollars that we built into the rates to do the manhole upgrades in downtown um and a couple of the other aspects from the the downtown storm sewer study we've also used some of those arpa dollars to do some of those more surface level you know sewer improvements and a couple of big storm water improvements in downtown but then the bigger improvements were further in North downtown and we still need to create those PSAs in future uh budget years but it's a good reminder we need to get at that sooner than later because we you know there's likely to see development start to occur in some of those areas and so need to you know create those formations of those um uh basically service districts uh but we um we just haven't you know that that timeline on those was assumed to be a sort of 5 10 years out from the study but um we're getting close to 5 years on the study thank you thank you Mr McKean and next will be City attorney and then we'll take a brief break after that oh no but there's it didn't come through but uh council member Freeman I guess or you canceled it if you hit it twice I had a uh I had a few uh first I will I got to congratulate you I look at you you've had the same number in your department similar to Personnel to Christies for four or five years I don't know how you do it that's that's just amazing management because City's grown it it means you're handling more work efficiently uh that's kind of a beautiful chart to see that so uh congratulations I we do appreciate that um another question I had is if if you have it today it's down it's a little it's a little mention at the bottom one of your slides is that managing the pension and we talked about cash flows and the biggest uh item I think in our cash flow is the payment of our pension obligations and there's the current pension obligation which I think we try to have at least the the mount whe now current and pay that but we have a massive acred liability of all the years we didn't pay and I wondered if you still have that slide or if that that says oh you us have this slide that are we we estimate over the years you know it's 430 million a day but it's going to in 15 years start to curve down um can you at least tell us how much is that deferred liability which everybody that's just a bill we can't pay it's when our taxes came due we just didn't pay them when our pension bill came to us we said we have no money for 20 years in a row we have no money so we just didn't pay it and Cal tur brilliantly said okay we'll loan you they start loan with the money to pay the interest on it we're exactly like the federal government exactly building this massive deficit and no one talks about it but it is all of our people's pensions and they Depend and the payment goes up every single year the extra payment is 20 million and then next year it's 25 the next year that's the extra on top of paying the current so I think when we talk about Budget Finance we need at least bring some of this mention it uh that we have to be aware of it because it's a primary obligation we have and kind of how is that going when's it going to start moving down again sure thank you council member for be happy to discuss this so uh we actually presented our pension basically projections to budget and finance a couple months ago um but I if if we can do the same uh in a council Workshop if if we if you'd like but um we do have continual increases the unfunded liability uh it expect expected to go up about5 to $6 million until 2030 so uh and then we in theory we begin to see a ramping down of that payment and eventually getting it paid off by 2045 I believe but we have a we have that chart it's a it's basically projects it out just how much is the uh payment of we'll call it not the basic pension the just the negative am the part we're paying for the Deferred liability the extra we pay every year what's that this year yeah I'm I don't want to give you the wrong number I know that we're we're paying about about 35 $40 million a year this year but then it'll go up to that about 60 that's the Deferred part to pay no that's the total contri so I I I would have to give you the split I don't want to give you the wrong number on the split between the what what called the the the the unfunded liability portion and and the current portion so I I I don't want to give you the wrong numbers but it does we can definitely give you and I could send it separately if you'd like of of the breakdown between maybe you could just give us the presentation you did to the budget just a quick be nice to how much is the Deferred portion that we're amortising over I don't know 25 years yeah just so we know and that's the part that goes up each year correct it it goes up usually usually when Calpers doesn't perform as they intend to on their Investments yes which pay off the the the 400 whatever million bill we have to pay that off we have to increase it every single year don't we that is correct because they only advertise they would like it paid off yeah so would we so okay and then one other followup because two of our Council people mentioned it um we have Enterprise funds for many a number I think of our infrastructure type things so the money will be there which is a great concept I wish um you know in in an A in Home Association you have to you know there's reserve and you have to show you have to pay every month to replace that street the money has to be there for the everything in street lights everything that you know it's private inside there has to be paid including the street the repavement the re everything and City's get in trouble because we don't have a similar mechanism and I was just wondering if both as we move forward to Future approved projects I guess this is the question for city manager C can we change that so that number one for at least future projects that every twice a year or every month whatever you have an assessment not just for they have to pay for the Landscaping out in front we're assessing them for that so that Rick's department has the money can we do it for and I don't know if street lights are included in that but can we not do it for at least the the city streets that we've taken over so that someday you know when we have to replace them we have a fund um is that against the law to do something like that is there any way a council could vote for at least the future subdivisions we approve to do something like that mayor vice mayor uh council member Freeman I'd need to chat with you a little bit more in depth about what you're looking for but right off the bat um I think you have a prop 218 issue because even on a future one that hadn't been created yet you still have a prop 218 issue and they have to sign a ballot and and what goes into that but it's still covered under prop 218 well I'd be interested in at least hearing the explanation because my next question is even if it took a public vote is there any way for all the ones that are in existence now could you form that kind of call it Enterprise fund because I don't have a better description um if people voted on it and said yeah we we have 140 square miles of city in all these streets and no way to fund them and we don't know so I mean it's pretty serious problem that other cities run into is there you know how how could you do it I guess is my question even if it took public votes how could one do that so that you were just properly budgeting for your city's infrastructure that's that's my question want to defer to the city man yeah I think my recommendation that that is a a a good topic but probably a a length or what an in-depth topic that we take that to committee mayor thank you mayor I just wanted to follow up on a comment that council member Freeman had made regarding the unfunded liability it wanted to gain some clarity for the benefit of the council and also the public and that the unfunded liability um growth uh is not merely a function of the money that we did not uh pay into it's also a function of um well the performance of kpers yeah uh primarily also the um U the various different U studies related to you know the the future uh health of the fund uh longevity rates and all of that and so there are times where cities actually pay off their unfunded liability where it's zerar only to find that unfunded liability grow in subsequent years so can you help us that is correct um I didn't want to get into the because I thought I could be helpful with the actual presentation but the the amount that we pay every year includes the current cost of what our benefits were earned earning so that is paid we do not defer or or hold off any we have to pay calipers that so that unfunded liability portion is actually a a result of either changes in the plan that caliper has initiated or the lack of Returns on their investment so it's not the city holding back funds it is basically after the fact we are told we owe an additional amount because they didn't earn enough or they change the plans and change the distributions and that type of thing so we're not holding it up we're just getting the bill after the fact and then we're paying that every year it is actually our bill absolutely but we don't we're not told we are owed that amount until they prefer they give the actuarials to us and they say okay this year your unfunded liability has now increased by Le thr a couple million dollars that's basically the process thank you Mr McKagan Mr McKagan I've been in DC and Sacramento a number of times this last month with my fellow Mayors and they many of them ask me how large a deficit do you have they're bemoaning their own deficits and because of your prudent management we're able to say we don't have one so thank you to you and your team thank you very much thank you very much Mr Nero and then we'll take a quick break after that I know she'll be very efficient in her presentation thank you mayor uh Julie I think you're going to run my slides right [Music] good afternoon mayor vice mayor members of the council Jenny Janeiro your City attorney I will be presenting for you this afternoon the 2024 2025 proposed budget for the city attorney's office as you can see uh last year our adopted budget was a little over 2.5 million uh this year it has uh gone up a little bit up to 330,000 and if you flip to the next slide uh you will see that the major component of the increase is the $263,000 in salary and benefits uh but the smaller component the $67,500 figure really is an increase on two line items within our budget one of them is an increase in the uh expense that we use for litigating non tort items those are for experts and the other is the line item that has to deal with non tort cost and so again the non- tort items would be the litigation matters that concern personnel and unfortunately we are handling a very high number of personnel lawsuits the highest in my career here with the city and the other non- tort matters would be breach of contract cases and again that's primarily associated with the trip projects on the right side of that slide you can see some of our departmental highlights for the past fiscal year as a city manager indicated uh we are in a very active litigation uh portion of our history we are currently as I sit here today man managing 89 active litigation cases um having said that I think on the on the positive side is seven of those State matters um were actually handled in-house with our current Deputy City attorneys and they were all settled uh and disposed of without any settlement monies being paid we also disposed of 32 litigation matters using our outside Council entities you know that that is Marty Roan and Cohen for primarily our police uh litigation matters and Cliff and brown for the non-p police matters I don't think I'll ever sit up here and say this again but they actually uh disposed and resolv 32 of those matters most of them with zero monies being paid the maximum amount the maximum amount was $225,000 you will not see that again uh and finally I think uh really the the the most the major accomplishment in the municipal Arena was that last bullet where our office provided the legal guidance and uh I think Mr rednick I know Mr rednick completed some of those initial steps uh that were essential to establishing the Bakersville Community Land Trust which I know has been a um a goal of the the council and of the vice mayor for some time and when you uh go to the last slide really um again our our compliment has remained the same you see there's 11 uh 11 positions the one that has remained vacant for quite some time is the assistant City attorney position uh we did hire one Deputy City attorney it's uh although Mr colum is in our uh compliment uh his entire salary is dedicated and coming from the water department as he is primarily a uh water litigation uh issues attorney but other than that uh there have not been any Personnel changes and I don't foresee any uh with additions or subtractions in the immediate future and with that I am open to your questions thank you colleagues are there any questions I don't I don't see any questions uh Mr J thank you so much it's amazing to be able to see uh these types these types of results they're very rare and we are fortunate to have you and your team thank you let's take a break um 10 minutes and we'll be back at 150 [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] just felt like doing it uh would somebody close the back door please and then let's uh gather back [Music] and our Recreation and Parks director will be entertaining us with recreational jokes so we're ready to start [Music] now Mr Freeman we are we're starting right now all right go ahead okay good afternoon uh for the record Rick Anthony director of Recreation and Parks uh before I get started I certainly want to acknowledge just a great team effort from Recreation and Parks uh and acknowledge our assistant director Darren budak our fiscal and admin Service Officer Rajan mystery Keith how Park superintend and Fidel Gonzalez Park construction and facility planner uh through my three years here I continue to be impressed with the dedication and commitment of those individuals and certainly a department our size and as diverse as we are uh we would not be able to accomplish the things we do without a great leadership in place uh my budget today uh presenting is uh $42.5 million which represents about a 8% % increase and very similar to uh my other colleagues a lot of those increases are related to salary projections uh utility and uh risk and Fleet rates increasing there's a little bit of uh additions in our capital outlay and that is a result of some of our projects shifting from psvs as well as adding a few more capital projects which we'll highlight a little bit later again uh you can see some of the increases uh to our budget uh if I can really just skip to a lot of our highlights we have done a very significant job in kind of spreading a lot of our improvements uh across the city and mainly a result of that is from our Pari account which is Park amenities renovation and improvements I do want to thank thank the council and city manager for supporting that project a few years ago it really has uh been a game Cher and Citywide in every Ward you can see uh some of the improvements that we've been able to do in the park and we also will highlight uh some of those with a few pictures later on today uh we continue to uh seek funds and grants for MLK project as we move through uh conceptual to designs uh we have a grant that we reach recently submitted with the federal government that we're hoping to land uh we'll know more about that uh and sometime in November as well as highlighting a lot of the other work uh that we're doing to include our our drought tolerant our turf replacement program where we're putting drought tolerant plants in a lot of our medians hopefully some of you have seen those results really a great benefit of that is not only is it reducing a lot of our maintenance uh on our street skates but also saving us a tremendous amount of water in doing so our Personnel changes uh no Personnel changes uh really want to talk a little bit about the way our department has kind of restructured and we've taken a lot of our unskilled labor vacancies and converting them into areas of need uh both in our maintenance department as well as our Storm Team team which actually resulted in a a decrease of one position this year uh what's unique about our department obviously is every year we're adding Street Scapes we're adding acreages and this year we will be adding uh a total of 10 acres in new streetscapes 5 Acres uh on bike path maintenance 5 acres for Lenell Brahma as well as the potential to add N9 to 10 acres at Mason Moren sometime to fall when that is complete so again just a lot of work that we're we're doing uh by keeping our our our maintenance staff and our Personnel staff equal we know that when you do the the math that just doesn't equate um but we are having conversations not only with the city manager but with HR to talk about expanding a little more into our contract services so we don't have to continue to have uh ongoing costs with Personnel uh and you'll hear um certainly hear a little bit more of that as we continue on before we get to questions just wanted to highlight uh some of our accomplishments mainly those from Pari and as you can see this gives us the ability to make you know a lot of varied changes and improvements in many of our parks and these are some of the examples of things that we have already done mostly a lot of that uh investment is in shade uh both we're shading playgrounds and benches as well as rest areas on the bike trail speaking a little bit about playground equipment uh we recently had a love your Park campaign in partnership with the blue zones and we're able to retrofit some of our older Parks uh with exercise equipment uh it was receiv quite well from the community and we plan to continue that effort uh in this next budget uh a few of our large accomplishments uh in partnership with uh ecd we were able to open Sunset Mayflower Park a small uh Urban pocket park on the east side of Bakersfield I don't have pictures for all of the things that we've done but we're also we were successful with completing five new football fields at the Bakersfield Sports Village for Golden Empire football as well as currently working on a a complex at asro to complete the pickle ball courts um and so those things will be will be done very shortly in this year as well as lenel Brahma we're making a lot of progress there and and we're hoping that Park will be ready to open before summer hits uh again I already talked a little bit these are some pictures of our turf replacement project which has uh been very successful and we're actually improving that uh moving on we've met with a few Community groups and talked about uh their thoughts about how the progress that we've made and how we may continue to enhance especially with some of our developers that are doing some work in the nearby areas with that said happy to answer any questions thank you Mr Anthony and thank you also for your Partnerships with Community groups I know yesterday you were out there with the sound of Bakersville partnering with the downtown Business Association providing probably six or seven bands and a number of vendors so thank you for bringing uh engagement to downtown Bakersville council member Smith thank you mayor thank you Mr Anthony it's uh you know exciting all the stuff that's going on with parks and the changes you've made since you've came on so appreciate you very much and uh specifically you got a picture of the shade on the bike path I like that took a while to get it there thank you very much um I always like to remind that this time uh the polar ground rail fencing uh especially since we're not most that's contract I think now out there and and I'm not sure how you're keeping track of it but just to make sure that uh we keep an eye on that and keep it maintained up and and your exercise equipment uh there at era Park needs to be replaced so if you can put that on your list or if it's not already so appreciate it though lots of good things thank you thank you mayor vice mayor thank you mayor um Mr Anthony thank you uh for all of the work um thank you to your whole team incredible amount of effort um and a lot of capital projects um particularly in ward two uh that our constituents uh have benefited from and so I just want to thank your whole team for all their hard work um most notably you know the work that was done at the pocket park Sunset Mayflower pocket park Park was really exciting and I continue to receive feedback from a lot of my constituents there in um throughout the MLK Boulevard area um who loved that Park Saunders Park Lowel Park improvements um sister city garden uh the new fencing looks tremendous um so again kudos to your team uh I really appreciate it I also appreciate our quarterly check-ins where we're able to go through various different Parks clearly it's it's it's obvious you know War II has the most historic parts of town so our parks are you know many of them are 100 years old and so there's a lot of uh there's a lot of need but I look forward to a lot of the future projects in particular jastro Park stage the Band Stand getting at Bill Park and all those other other projects as well that we're we have on the pipeline so again thank you and and to the mayor's point you know thank you for all the work that you're doing with with supporting community events uh we had the East Bakersville Festival uh on Saturday at Jefferson park with Children First had over 2,000 people in attendance and utilizing that Park in a really effective way and the stage was out there and recreational parks was a great partnership great partner in that in that effort the park rangers were there the whole day it was fantastic so thank you for all the work um thank you for thanks thank you to the park rangers as well for all of their work the community really appreciates it thank you I don't see any other requests to speak thank you Mr Anthony thank you and next we'll have development services and you know as the day goes on you have to be more engaging don't feel any pressure just keep us entertained thank you mayor you're almost encouraging a lack of brevity I'm not sure what to do at this point in juncture uh thank you for the to present the development services budget for 2425 it's absolute pleasure much like other department you're seeing about a 133% rise and almost all of those costs are associated with um funds out of our control whether that's uh salary benefits technology Services Fleet soon to be parking structure um those things that um we largely don't have any control over um goal of development services department is to provide exceptional professional and Technical Services while providing exemplary customer service from application to occupancy and I think we accomplished that on a day-to-day basis let's take a little bit deeper look at the U small ass that the department is um asking for your support today um there is a request for a 40,000 5500 um educational assistance to help us with our retention um provides us more educated employees well at the same time it's giving us added value on a day-to-day basis website enhancement there's been some open dialogue over time that the cities although has made progress in its online permitting and plan check process the the development portal the development center on our website um fall short of providing tools to help the development Community to transition into an online format uh there aren't a lot of tutorials or other other guides that might help our development Community take advantage of these enhancements to our development process um I've proposed a small stien to make um targeted improvements to our website to uh make that Development Center um site work much more better than it does currently and then there is uh one request for a planning position and I'll elaborate more on that in my next slide in terms of departmental highlights um the city City's development services department has completed a lot of the precursors to a successful housing element whether that's a comprehensive update to its residential zoning or comprehensive um rezoning efforts to bring about conformance with the state's Regional Housing need allocations um and all of those should lead to uh an adoptable housing element in the very near future we have ongoing General plan efforts uh soon to be taking a workshop to the city council to talk about land use Alternatives which is a real stepping stone into the formation of your of your general plan um we continue to make updates to our electronic permitting and plan checking and we'll be launching Clarity which is the uh enhanced front end port for the user here in the very near future and um I'll talk a little bit more about the some of the some of the things that the department pardon me that the council has provided last year's budget but we did Implement a legal dumping enforcement we did um take on vacant commercial building registration programs um through our special projects team and um we'll look at some of their successes over the last year in terms of personnel there is um the 111 employees that are proposed do not include that new employee the newest employee uh Mr Jordan Walker would be in the back row is an analyst to will help the city Implement its climate resiliency planning Grant um as well as being active in seeking out additional Grant dollars that will the city will be able to Target towards um any one of a number of uh projects there are a lot of Grant dollars out there development services is anxious to to start to be more competitive in securing those breakdown of the department um Mr Walker as well as my business manager Miss ktera are part of those six individuals that um work for Development Services overall there are 31 in our building building plan check and inspections department 18 in our Planning Department 56 in our code enforcement both for a rapid response team and regular code for a total of 111 a little bit about the senior Mobility planner many cities today look at their circulation element as their Mobility element um council member Freeman has noted a concern about streets and the cost of maintaining them and that's a realistic concern streets into the future need to be more multimodal you're seeing restriping and repurposing of Street sections to better utilize that those stre corridors and to enhance the ability for multimodal Transportation around town the mobility senior planner there will be tasked with integrating themselves not just into the planning side but into the into the Public Works side in in better defining how to utilize our public rights away and developing better Mobility for our citizenry into the future um and that's a valuable position combined with um Mr Walker and his efforts on the on the um climate resiliency side it's almost like uh you're seeing the the gentle formation of a sustainability section within development services and it's something that we need to look hard at moving out into the future so what's happened here with our numbers at first when my code enforcement section delivered me uh my numbers you might note last year my favorite line was the only thing that hasn't gone down was complaints um well complaints um as long with virtually every other number here save for contacts went up why well part of that is your Investments um in the last year we expanded our rapid response teams to have a night crew um and you might note that that night crew is uh along with our our our regular day staff um has addressed 4555 encampments but note that there hasn't been additional contacts many many sections that have talked about our code enforcement response and our and our homelessness issues um including um vice mayor Gonzalez at a recent city council meeting talked about those hard-to-reach individuals and what you're seeing there is those hard-to-reach individuals that um the city touches has multiple touch points over the course of the last year um and and they've caused quite a bit of of work on the part of your rapid response teams as well as your Parks programs your your impact teams our flood Ministries teams all of the teams that are put together Park Rangers um but by and large um I see that as being really the root of that problem here our trash is up um PLS are up encampments are up contacts are stable and the board UPS that's a part of your special projects team you asked us to be more more responsive to board ups and and create strategies to address vacant properties that's what you're what you're seeing there the continuation that that team is now fully built where it wasn't before so we talked about uh 4555 en campins that oils down to uh 12 a day so um every day we go from before to after um 88 encampments a week on average this past year a little bit deeper dive into code enforcements numbers in terms of the neighborhood Vitality side of that I noted we stood up our special projects team and we're in process with six receiver ships one of those has been completed others are have been submitted and um I think the remaining three or four are have their applications ready to go um to court on those receiver ships um we got a half FTE for our wasti tire uh batement program last year from grant funding and you can see the major improvements and wasar improvements that are born out of being able to capture some some other dollars to address that issue um Council has asked for more proactive campaigns and um I think the reason why our responsiveness complaints hasn't gone up is because our proactive activities within our neighborhood code enforcement have doubled over the past year so you're seeing more stable neighborhoods as a rule let's talk a little bit about the building Division I would note that the building division's numbers at face value have gone down on the leftand side your valuations they've dropped um but if we took into the fact the state in PG altered our solar permitting processes you would find that we might be having a banner year as relates to development the building division is very busy and if you took the same permits permit numbers for those solar permits over 3900 last year you might find that we'd be having another Stellar year in the number of permits issued in the end the building divisions revenue is up is 120% of what was projected so the outlier is solar perating and um but but the building division still has remained very busy terms of develop development services planning division um there are many many long range projects that are actively being engaged in and they are large projects being addressed by uh a hardworking staff of 18 um but in the end even this department has is has 118% of of Revenue uh projected to clo out this year so they've been very busy um at the same time that said throughout every presentation I've ever made here as it relates to budget I want to end by thanking the hardworking 100 111 employees of the development services department um I couldn't be prder to serve as their director and um if you have any questions I'd be happy to answer them thank you Mr Bole council member Smith thank you mayor thank you Mr Bo lots of like you say heavy lifting stuff going on in the general plan moving uh on the number of permits I kind of for me the R1 permits are you know how how we're doing and I don't see that number we're averaging right now way we count permits has changed a little bit in terms of residential because it's by dwelling unit now not by single family residential but so far um at the at the quarter mile Mark um we we had 525 dwelling units and that would translate into 2100 units for the year so it's uh although it's an up and down uncertainty as it relates to the building industry right now the residential building industry the net SU is there some stability in terms of we look to be having at least an average year thank you I don't see any other request to speak so thank you very much thank you and we'll move on now to the next Group which is economic and Community Development he's so much taller than me okay here we'll do this thank you mayor and council members so all right here we go so the economic and Community Development Department in the now four years that we've been a department we've had quite a bit of Shifting and we're seeing shifting again this year and so we have homeless Services returning to our department which is going to um change some of our increase decrease so we are having an increase of 23% to our total expenditures with homeless Services it's not just Staffing there's a lot of grant funding that's associated with that and a lot of projects and so they are actually coming back in almost 9 million um is what they're going to bring in an increase and how we've offset that so that our increase uh is actually 5 million only $5 million there's been some changes to some programs that we do um such as we're reducing requesting a reduction to the affordable housing trust fund from 5 million to 3 million so that's a reduction of two Community revitalization is also one of them that we'll be reducing from 3 million to 2 million and then removing the downtown Redevelopment of 1.5 there's also a couple of other changes to eoa and our business assistance um that are being suggested so that's where we sit that even though we have an increase of 23% it's that division being returned and then some changes um to offset in other ways so our new proposals like I said Homeless Services there's three individuals that are in that division returning to the department there is a request for emergency shelter capacity of 1.5 million and then a 2.5 million request in arpa for the open door Network construction of 100 units we did do like I just talked about the 5 million reduction or shift of psvs projects and programs so some of the things that we're hoping to offset with the affordable housing trust fund we've always used it to leverage dollars in other ways so previously with the affordable housing trust fund we took that 5 million and leveraged it for local Housing Trust Fund dollars and received an additional 3 million this time there's a lot of conversations happening with prop one uh Behavioral Health Services would be um the beneficiary of that but how do we get more housing units through that and so we are starting to meet with them we have quite a few developments in our pipeline uh that have gone through the affordable housing trust fund NOA in years past and so we think we'll be able to leverage other dollars for the trust fund that we still continue to see the units increase in the community uh what have we accomplished I'm really proud of the accomplishments that we have we have quite a few relationships with our community members and so capk they completed their 20,000 F foot expansion of the food distribution their food bank Warehouse uh half we have utilized hap funding which so far in total has been almost $19 million and so using those hap dollars to assist in addressing homelessness we have new Partnerships with Kern Health Systems and Kern Medical to facilitate an effective homeless Service delivery system at the emergency shelter as well as with mental health services we completed 15 Community Development block grant projects and some of those include the curb gutter sidewalks we did East truen Oleander altav Vista and Benton with the helps of Public Works obviously they're actually the ones who worked on the construction of that there were two lighting projects at Holby and sunset we facilitate assistance with the Senior Center Greater bakersfi legal assistance we have a home access program which provides Ada to lowincome home home owners so that they have access to their homes we've worked on Park projects as mentioned in Mr Anthony's presentation about 800,000 some fencing for at Saunders Park we have the partnership with cap K for the F Food Bank also the Friendship House solar project phase one and then they did a sports field lighting and all of that is through cdbg Habitat for Humanity we did a Workforce Development um funding for their program and then the mission they replaced all the ovens and freezers to serve their guests and so we really try to make sure that those cdbg funds go as far as they can and it served over 60,000 low moderate income community members uh we partner with the Bakersfield Kern Regional homeless collaborative the housing authority and flood Outreach Services to administer the C californ State encampment resolution Grant and that specifically was set aside to house homeless community members that were living along State highways and the Kern River some other things our housing division with the affordable housing trust fund completed 202 uh housing units sometimes it's hard because we track this annually from January 1 to December 31st but for the budget year uh 202 units were completed there were 80 units that were rehabed for individuals we currently have under construction 251 units and then 464 units in predevelopment for fiscal year 2324 for our Economic Development Division we assisted 34 businesses with over 1.2 million in The Economic Opportunity area business Improvement and expansion grants here's just a couple photos of uh the projects that were accomplished with that they can use those funds for a variety of things it's for facade improvements it's to relocate their business into certain areas it's tenant Improvement just a variety of options that really give the most flexibility to our small businesses we also were awarded the transformative climate communities Grant in the amount of $22 million and we're looking forward to receiving our final applications so that we can get those funds encumbered and start to utilize those programs but we're working with our um projects partners and the state did award us $100,000 to keep moving with those project Partners it was a reduction in our original ask and so some of that is finding an equitable way to keep projects moving for the most benefit that we have and then for small business support there was also an entrepreneur Ur ship grant program we worked with three uh technical advisers and then provided 1.5 million two entrepreneurs in the amounts of 5 10 25 or $40,000 so far we've supported 62 businesses and you know that's not even halfway through the funding and so we do look forward to the remaining businesses that we support and then there was also a business security Improvement grant that was released um um last July the first round of funding we had for 500,000 was encumbered within the first five months there was a phase two that was released and we are now weight listing those and that funding was spent within two months and so clearly it was something that our business partners were looking for it provided cameras or Lighting in this case uh fencing to uh secure the bu business even better we called it sight hardening so with that we're not requesting any Personnel changes this year you can see like I said our uh department has seen a lot of fluctuations since it was uh established in 2020 looking at 23 for fiscal year 2425 and that jump between 23 24 is homeless Services returning to our department thank you Miss buers is that you yeah council member Smith thank you mayor I just had a question on the completed affordable housing units and the rehab units I mean you don't do construction I do not and you don't you don't fund them 100% what what exactly happens that you're talking about there so what we do annually is a NOA of our different funding resources and so the affordable housing trust fund which in the F past psvs has provided 5 million to that like I said then we went and leverage that for 3 million from local Housing Trust Fund but we also have home dollars uh other grant opportunities and so when we do that NOA people submit projects that they would like to see developed frequently we're the first dollar in and so uh for example Renaissance at Baker wanted to get tax credits you need to be able to show that you have some leverage and they have utilized our funding resources to get other tax credits one who just received their tax credit is Auburn Auburn Apartments and so those look to be going under construction it's 40 units but the city was really kind of the first dollar in and because they had that they were able to leverage other resources and so when people go for tax credits it's shown that it takes four to eight different funding sources in order to complete the project and so we are one of those resources typically we've been about 10% uh plus or minus oh we also had home ARP dollars that was one that went into the NOA and so we just do that annual gather whatever resources we can try to leverage it uh against other resources just to provide that flexibility to affordable housing developers to have some type of resource to get the tax credits the tax credit Market is getting more and more more difficult and more and more competitive because it's one of the last remaining viable resources the state this year with their budget deficit is not going to be releasing their Supernova through the Housing and Community Development which makes tax credits one of the only resources available to our developers and so this is a way to make them more competitive for their project so you actually initiate all of these and so these are projects that it's requested funding through the affordable housing trust fund NOA whether it's our psvs our uh local Housing Trust Fund there's also like permanent local housing allocation that we receive in the past we received sb2 funding so the developers apply to the NOA and we provide some kind of funding in this count of 202 units that were constructed got it thank you V mayor thank you mayor um thank you so much for your presentation and again good job to your staff and all the various fronts that you're uh uh advancing um the city's Mission um in particular I want to thank you for all the work with uh with regard to our um grants that we provide in our respective EAS so Oldtown Kern downtown Southeast Bakersfield so many businesses or local businesses and property owners have been able to benefit from these grants and really leverage that public investment uh with private dollars and Advance their their business uh in really profound ways and all of these smaller projects really have a cumulative impact in the overall well-being of of downtown and the respective neighborhoods of Oldtown Kern and Southeast bakersfi so I want to thank you for all that work and your teams work in in working with um those uh business owners in the community um I really think that the best revitalization of downtown and surrounding neighborhoods is incremental right it's continuous it's ongoing it's step by step um and it it it's steady and these eosa really allow for that private investment and ongoing revitalization where we've seen many downtowns and other cities across the country decline through the pandemic uh Bakersfield's downtown has only uh Advanced and only continues to get better and better and so just want to uh throw that out there and thank you but I do have a question you you mentioned the uh Downtown Development Fund but I didn't pick up on what the allocation was for this upcoming fiscal year I'll take that one miss buers we did not make a new allocation uh for the Downtown Development Fund this coming year um two years ago we had proposed some amounts from psvs last year we actually did it from the general fund but uh just given the fiscal challenges uh we didn't recommend another funding allocation into that fund this year uh what historically was sort of the vision and intent was to create some incentive programs uh as we looked at that and how that triggers some of the other offsets like prevailing wage we've reallocated those funds to infrastructure project projects over the over this last year and so we would we've proposed instead infrastructure projects in downtown as opposed to putting money into that fund okay um I I will advocate for us to uh keep that particular line item uh we have to be very intentional about downtown rization it just doesn't happen right we have to be focused and we have to make it a priority it in fact is a priority uh that the council has stated and you know we have to back that up with budgets and and these dollars are absolutely I believe absolutely critical and we we need to think of new ways in which um we can utilize these dollars so that we can again get us to that next increment of revitalization of downtown for example we have a number of large buildings in downtown Bakersfield that are old they're aging they have a number of deferred maintenance issues and they're underutilized they have second third four floors that are vacant completely vacant and so there really isn't a good economic or financial incentive unless there's an actual um you know push from the local government uh for property owners to actually make a significant investment and so that's one of the areas where I think this particular fund can really help us with that next iteration of downtown town revitalization get those second third fourth floors uh occupied and allow for the property owner to convert them into either uh improved office spaces or perhaps housing um many folks have talked about perhaps um adding boutique hotels within those buildings allowing for those Property Owners to be created but then also providing that uh financing that Gap financing or whatever it is incentive to help people uh make that make that work similar to how we've helped these eoa with through these EAS these smaller businesses I think it's important for us to look at these larger structures because the alternative is scary and could be Grim these properties continue to decline uh we've seen properties that are have become vacant fallen into disrepair and they become liability ities not just for the proper own but especially for the city uh to respond to all of the various different issues that occur when you have those property properties that that remain abandoned and vacant and it becomes a problem for the surrounding businesses and community so I I would really encourage us to take a second look at that particular allocation and I hope that we can find uh some creative ways in order to make that investment uh to be really focused in on downtown down and and intentional about um uh fulfilling our goal that we've established thank you council member Freeman just one question and that's could you break down for us a little more how we'll be spending the 22 million um transformative climate communities Grant and and and also how soon that money will actually get spent so that in the project that'll be going into that we might see things start to happen I would love to be able to share that with you Jason ker economic and Community Development manager has was the one that oversaw that Grant application it is a six-year time frame 5 to six year time frame to spend those funds some of the projects include the Bakersfield Senior Center adding housing units uh there's been some floods at the senior center so they'll be demolishing that creating a new Senior Center that has housing units it also includes uh some tree planting and some Street improvements along uh MLK Boulevard there's a variety of things like there's tenant protection uh component to it to ensure that people remain in their housing there is home buyer assistance that is included in that it just has a wide range of projects and I kind of wish he's probably going to start texting me because I'm sure he's watching this like you are messing up my project but uh there's about 19 projects that are included that that will be sponsored through this and we really leveraged other funds I keep talking about this leveraging and and working with our other departments we do a great job I think working with our wck and parks department for some of their programs and um so we also leverage Public Works safe routes the school um I do have a note of how much um Community revitalization we used 1.5 million to leverage for our TCC projects and then uh we had 990,000 for MLK Street Scapes and those kind of things go into this CCC Grant and these improvements to the neighborhood I think there's also um bus route conversations so that they have better access and just a wide range and I would love to be able to share that with you more completely I'll and does this does did any significant portion of this go to the MLK Park first phases or I think we were doing 30% construction documents or something or that's different yeah thank you council member um the eligibility requirements only allowed for us to include um initially uh tree plantings at the park is what was eligible we've we've made a few adjustments to that over time um but just and while I just have the mic just to round out a couple the other um types of projects there are um uh projects that will help homeowners put be able to put up Energy Efficiency um um projects like weatherization as well as solar panels out in these disadvantaged neighborhoods there's going to be dollars that go towards Workforce Development as required by the state has to be included in this grant there's going to be projects that actually go towards infrastructure you know um um and some of our matching in particular goes towards some of those infrastructure projects um as well as uh some of the other sort of neighborhood revitalization type projects so those are the the majority of those projects we also have uh funding into the senior center uh uh Remodel and affordable housing um added to it as part of this grant as well these were these were federal funds these were actually State funds they're actually State okay good we did apply using that again leverage um so the federal government did have an EPA Grant and we submitted an application for that as well to kind of enhance some of these projects we submitted an application for $20 million we'll hear if we were awarded that later this summer okay thank you but the work was pre-done so we're just going to build on it thank you Miss buers and now the Police Department please good afternoon thank you for the opportunity to uh be here and Phil in on behalf of Chief Terry I'd like to start our presentation of the proposed budget for 2425 fiscal year and starting out with our mission statement of the Bakersville Police Department partners with our community to protect the lives and property the people we serve we try to let that inform each of the things that we do and we believe that that also properly informs um what our proposed budget will be for the next year we would like to start off by talking through some uh Statistics over 2023 um and we picked some some overall highlights that I'd like to be able to discuss with you overall we saw a Citywide crime reduction of 12% um we saw a 133% decrease in property crime coupled with a 29% decrease in homicide an 8% decrease in robbery and a 10% decrease in auto theft we did see um an approximately 1% increase in rape and a 12% increase in aggravated assaults um a further uh look into the aggravated assault numbers reveals that we saw saw a pretty significant increase in domestic violence related numbers um that's something that will continue to inform our work going forward and we're looking at um at meeting with Partners including the open door Network about what we can do to try to increase our level of Effectiveness as it um as it results or as it relates to uh to domestic violence some of our performance that we'd like to be able to talk about starting off is um our response times to 911 calls when they come in the National Standard and our goal is to answer 95% of our 911 calls uh within 20 seconds we moved closer towards achieving those goals but we still fell short of the desired 95% um and uh it's it's continued area of focus for us as we move into this next year like to report out on what our response times were to Priority 1 priority 2 and priority 3 calls for service um again I'll I'll remind uh the the group and those listening that for us Priority One calls for service are um calls for service that are our highest priority um impacting uh life and death it's uh kind of a National Standard and our goal to be anywhere within uh the city's jurisdiction in under 7even minutes a very slight decrease of 1 second over this last year so we'd like to continue to push for seeing um further decreases um a priority to are impr progress crimes that could potten potentially uh lead to injury and priority three are peace disturbances crimes and where the suspect has fled so you can still see that while we brought some decreases we still have some work to do as it relates to increasing our overall um efficiency in our response times as we move into this next year's budget um you'll see that there is uh 65% increase in Personnel Services just under 177% increase um operationally and approximately 88% increase in capital outlay you can see some of the explanations on the left side of the screen there that our 6 and a half% increases are related to salaries and benefits our um almost 177% increase uh deals with some of our rates as it relates to vehicle uh rates technology rates our risk and liability rates as uh well as expenses associated with uh the animal shelter bringing an overall 85% um requested increase there are two Capital Improvement uh projects that we're uh bringing asking for consideration um one is an elevator modernization our elevators um you know are aging and built in 1975 parts are becoming a little more difficult to find um you know at various points throughout the past year one or both have been out of service and so being able to uh invest and modernize some of our elevators within our business within our building will uh is a need for our our department secondarily it's a real-time information center is our our next Capital Improvement project request uh this is something that we've been working towards for quite some time and really is a way to try to bring some synergy to some of our technological um Investments and that we've utilized over the last several years we think that um it can help increase uh the information flow and uh Aid in our our dispatch being able to gather additional information to send out to officers we think that uh it will also help As We Gather additional information in times of of Crisis Citywide that's not limited to Crime but if there are any um major issues that pop up Citywide we think it will allow us to to be able to to share resources across the entirety of the city like to bring you a snapshot of where we are personnel-wise within our sworn staff we have approximately 46 vacancies leading us approximately 91% staff and amongst our professional staff approximately 28 vacancies leaving us at approximately 88% staff for uh across the entirety of our department being approximately 90% staffed I'd like to uh take this opportunity to than and recognize um the work from human resources and I don't think any of I don't think none of this would be possible without uh their dedicated assistance um in in being able to um to help us with with closing some of our our significant hiring challenges that we've had you can see that since July of 2019 when the council began investing um even more into the hiring of of police officers that 272 police officer candidates have been hired um unfortunately we only have about 168% or 168 that have graduated um but we have been able to make some adjustments to increase the percentage of those completing theems and we've seen that increase from 65% to approximately 85% and we're hoping that that's a number that will continue to stay our average class size is approximately 21 which is still lower than uh we'd like it to be we are allowed to be to have approximately 40 in each Academy so um we're continuing to mine for applicants and uh recruit as much as we can um but we we still have some some room to go we've had eighty that have been completed um another one that will be graduating in uh July and a new Academy that will be starting in August with another one scheduled to uh begin right after that when they graduate in December another one to start in January so um we're constantly uh constantly recruiting and and trying to close that Gap we are bringing you a request for uh seven new positions this year the focus on these positions for the first one is a public affairs and Communications manager uh this is civilianized the um public information officer that we have which essentially pushes a police Sergeant back to full-time field related duties we see this uh position to um plan develop and Implement comprehensive communication strategies some of the branding and marketing strategies on behalf of the police department secondarily we'd like to add the a fiscal and administrative specialist with the um increases that we've had um within uh the department it's created an increase range of of complex business tasks and state reimbursement related audits um our internal procurement processes and our and our asset management uh we've been able to increase some of the complement within our business office and we think that uh this will help us to increase our overall budgetary efficiencies as well we're requesting the increase of a uh of a secretary as well as we enter a very critical phase of the stipulated judgment for us this is really where we're looking at the implementation phase of the training associated with our stipulated judgment and the ongoing training that occurs um keeping track of over 150 training courses is what's anticipated being put pushed through for the almost 700 staff uh that work there to meet the requirements of the Department of Justice as well as our um accreditation associated with the uh police officer standards and trainings we think that being able to have this position is something that will also take work away from police officers that are currently uh doing some of this work uh returning them to more forward- facing duties as well we're requesting the position of a fleet mechanic uh the city does not currently have a certified motorcycle mechanic on staff and as we've increased the complement of motorcycles within the police department we found that all of our service is currently being done by local vendor we transport to Harley-Davidson which is uh being accomplished at an increased cost um it creates additional insert service time related issues that it takes two police officers off the street to be able to take the motorcycle up to Harley-Davidson two off the street to go and pick them up to be able to bring them back and we think that um this is a position that will ultimately uh save money save time and make us more efficient we're requesting the addition of a police service technician to be assigned to the traffic uh division having police service technician with the ability to handle police reports um will be able to free up a a police officer that's currently handling um injury or non-injury accidents being able to have that officer go back out again to forward facing uh field related duties and um keep them with still assigned to traffic to continue to focus on uh speed reduction and fatal Collision reductions a police program coordinator is an additional position that we were requesting this is an additional position that a police officer currently a police Sergeant is doing that would return that police Sergeant to uh field related duties um this is a position that organizes plans and leads various youth programs and activities at the police activities League um it helps assist in the staff and the care and the maintenance of equipment and facilities and this position again allows a sergeant to be able to go back to forward- facing duties a crime analyst is the last position that we were requesting and is associated with the realtime information center being able to have somebody who um monitors the points of intelligence that we have in a in a real-time setting to be able to share that information push it out to to forward facing field officers will help us to utilize a variety of different databases um as well to Pro to proactively relay this viable information to to our field people which we believe will um increase our or decrease our response times increase our Effectiveness and and working to reduce crime happy to do the very best that I can to answer any of your questions I know that's a very Broad and brief overview but I'll do my best thank you I don't see any request to speak so thank you very much are you pushing your button vice mayor couple questions for you thank you chief for your presentation um 133% decrease in property crime um when we go and talk to constituents some would say um that it may not be a a decrease in actual property crime but a decrease in reporting sure how would you respond to that yeah we can only measure what's reported to us um I you know I'm getting more more comfortable I don't know how to measure it but understanding that we not only do we have to increase safety we have to increase the feeling of safety and I would tell you that most people would probably tell you that they don't feel that there is a decrease and really working at as we're getting better at looking at at our data being able to say we're showing decreases we're showing an increase in the amount of rest that are they're making but if it's not being reported you know we're we're may be unable to measure it um I'm also having a hard time with separating what some of the feelings are with some of the reality and there's a perception that tons of Windows are being broken and the data would tell you that that's that's either that's not accurate um there may be a significant number number but it's might not be to the extent of what the feeling is so it's hard to separate some of the um maybe some of the media reports some of the social media reports some of the conversations that are happening from what um some of the overall reported reality may be so um again I can't can't measure what what doesn't come in um but I do think that that property crime has been um a focus well I do think protecting life and reducing violent crime has been our absolute priority over the past several years as we're seeing some of those decreases over the last three years or so with our gun violence reduction strategy and as our staffing is increasing being able to assign more detectives increase the number of officers in Impact having dedicated officers assigned to the downtown Oldtown Kern area I I think we're making some real strides in our level of responsiveness our our ability to investigate and to to apprehend those um that are involved in property Crim so it could be a combination of of a lot of different things okay I appreciate that response thank you but it just speaks to the complexity of the of the issue yes sir um regarding response times um in years past we've seen a slide that sort of disaggregates the different response times based on zone is there an opportunity for the council to review that data as well yes I can absolutely bring it we have it um track we split split split by Zone um by the priority of of calls per Zone as well so that's additional information that we can get to you perfect thank you so much yes sir council member Smith thank you mayor I just uh thought it'd be a good time to repeat my question about the deal with the county in the jail we have all these repeat offenders that are in jail for three hours back out on the streets are we making progress there or we not thanks councilor Smith two two answers to that question uh first you didn't ask but it's an good opportunity to point out that we aren't recommending new funding towards that partnership in this budget because we have $2 million in the current fiscal year that we will recommend carrying forward to help fund that so not a new allocation but there is money there to do that the second answer is that there's been a lot of conversation the county continues to remain interested in partnering with the city but the response continues to be that they have to you know get their hiring for the regular detention Deputy spots um in place I have requested uh specifically that we work in the new fiscal year as of July 1 on anou with the county and they've communicated that they'll continue to hire up they don't expect to have enough detention deputies hired uh until probably at least the 6 month or the 12- month even Mark of next fiscal to actually staff those dedicated beds so that is the answer that I continue to get is that you know we're we're several months out from having folks hired thank you thank you Chief and next fire please good afternoon honorable mayor memb city council I appreciate the opportunity to speak before you I'll get started with our mission statement the mission of the Bakersville fire department is to protect engage and inspire a safe Community through all Hazard response and Community risk reduction while delivering legendary customer service we accomplish our mission through the outstanding efforts of the various divisions within the fire department suppression training arson fire prevention dispatch admin and maintenance one of the messages I routinely uh tell our members is there is nobody any more important than any other member in the fire department we all contribute equally to the achieving this Mission so I want to thank all the men and women of the Bakersville fire department for what they do uh to accomplish our mission the Bakersville fire department is proposing a budget of 66 m76 9,389 for fiscal year 20242 this represents a 4.28% increase over fiscal year 23 24 mainly due to salary and benefits increases as well as internal rates increases from technology Services leet Services Insurance charges and capital Improvement projects Personnel Services increased 4.89% due to increases in workers compensation uh Insurance salaries and benefits overtime and other related costs and and I'll remind uh the council that uh there's a four a 5% uh Cola coming in July which is basically attributed to that fire department experience internal rate increases to the operating budget including increases in Fleet Services technology services and a liability and property insurance decrease uh excluding inter internal costs and non-discretionary increases for utilities the fire department was able to maintain a general fund operating budget growth rate of 0% capital outlay is essentially the fund designated for large equipment purchases and capital Improvement projects I'll get which I'll get into a little bit more specifically on the next slide examining the increase in the general fund and psvs proposed budgets the increases again are in large part attributed to to Personnel cost increases and Inter increases in internal costs fire prevention and Koopa uh revenues are estimated to increase by approximately $200,000 uh should the current trends continue and this will be accomplished by placing an emphasis on inspections especially as we achieve our full complement of inspectors in the coming weeks uh budget changes uh one of the things I want to highlight is the uh overall decrease of $374,000 uh to our operating budget and this is mainly due to the liability and property insurance rate decrease that we're seeing for this fiscal year uh again psvs increase um mainly due to salary increases and internal uh rate increases uh from the capital outlay fund we're going to be looking towards a couple of expensive Capital Improvement projects uh one is for uh on the right side of the screen there one is for uh partial roof replacement at Fire Department headquarters uh to prevent future water damage during inclement weather and another is for air conditioning unit Replacements at two of our fire stations fire station 7 and Fire Station 14 the department is also proposing uh the expansion of our rescue program at fire station number one the Department's now busiest fire station uh Chief staff is constantly evaluating waiting fire department operations and the level of service that we can provide during emergencies with medical emergencies uh taking on uh over 50% of our responses annually uh the BFD is proposing adding a rescue at fire station one similar to the rescue at fire station number two and fire station number six with one exception the rescue at fire station number one will be staffed with a BFD paramedic which will increase the level of service that we can provide in the downtown and surrounding areas knowing that there is always limited funding the BFD chose to be creative and looked for innovative ways to get additional capacity from existing resources essentially the fire department will be implementing uh this paramedic Rescue Unit without adding any additional Staffing to our existing complement we will be accomplishing this by shifting uh human resources from the two light engines one at Station 8 and one at station one onto this rescue we look at our Personnel changes there will be no changes as I highlighted uh we have 231 members in our complement and for the next fiscal year we will also have 231 in our complement uh Personnel changes again we'll be Staffing that rescue at fire station number one utilizing the uh resources human resources from station one and Station 8 so that will not add to our compliment uh we'll basically be reclassifying uh those members and we're also looking at another reclass again just changing uh the responsibilities um from one admin analyst I'm sorry one admin and fiscal Services specialist to an admin analyst uh this position will assist in preparing budget documents tracking budgetary spending and coding accuracy to the various Fire Department accounts and we'll Implement uh we'll be instrumental when we Implement uh fire service fees which were approved by the city council uh just weeks ago uh this position will also be invaluable during succession planning efforts I would be remiss if I did not take this opportunity to highlight some of the great work that the men and women of the Bakersville fire department did in 2023 uh if I can show you the annual report here in my hand I think you all should have received that gave some really good highlights of the great work that the men and women of the department did in 2023 uh I also listed some there for your viewing pleasure um but I will also add that when you look at the capacity to do some of the things that we've wanted to do like this annual report uh we actually used uh the Department's uh intern or uh fellow from our fellowship program that the city supports uh to be able to accomplish this that we were not able to accomplish in years past um I will uh with that I will go ahead and close and say thank you to the city manager's office to the city council and the mayor for your continued support of the fire department and I'd like to open for any questions or comments at this time thank you Chief council member Smith thank you mayor thank you Chief I did look at the annual report and it's very nice thank you thank you and in that annual report I noticed and I'd never thought about it before after redistricting there is not a city fire station in Ward 4 and I think that we probably need to work on that uh council member I'll take that one because I can say that the fire chief is very happy to hear that uh we've been having conversations that there are according to the the fire jpa between the city and the county there is a data analysis um that is supposed to occur at a certain point if there is a greater percentage of the coverage area of a particular uh responding station that there should be consideration whether that is a city or county station we don't typically see areas unincorporate so typically that means cities come or stations come into the city based off of that analysis and so we're actually looking at three different uh topics that are I would say a high level policy issue um for fire that as it relates to our interactions with the county and that's one of them is you know to look at opening up the jpa and and looking at some of those stations that by the Numbers probably should come into the city not a small conversation to have with the county but we're teeing that up great I appreciate that and uh I didn't see this year you your number of structure fires I think it was in your report but the the percentage that were vacant structures uh uh thank you for the question council member Smith I I I don't have the percentage I'm not sure if our um ban Chief actually has that I I can definitely get that for you uh we do track the percentage of vacant building fires one of the great things I can note is the great partnership between the city attorney's office City manager's office building department and the fire department with a blighted building project right uh when we look at removing some of those opportunities from people who want to do bad and and like some of these buildings on fire uh is very important to us that this partnership exists and we get a report uh every couple of weeks on what uh phases of whether it's renovation or demolition that is occurring to somebody's buildings that are concerned to us uh so we do we do not necessarily see the a huge reduction at this time but as the as the um blighted building program gains momentum I definitely see the opportunity to show really positive numbers in that regard thank you that's also my hope I'd like to track that Trend over the years and absolutely hopefully we can show that we're making real progress there yes sir thank you council member Freeman thank you mayor thanks Chief good presentation another one of these amazing that the Personnel isn't going up so my question is is that because you don't need anymore or are you having trouble recruiting qualified Personnel that meet your standards uh not necessarily uh finding the people that meet our standards uh really when you look at the opportunity to grow uh we we're kind of handcuffed by uh the locations of the County Fire Stations so really when you're looking at expanding uh you're you're looking at Future fire stations and the Staffing that comes with it uh so with the county really surrounding the the City Fire Stations uh doesn't necessarily give us that opportunity to grow until the uh areas that are outside of their jurisdiction start uh start getting annexed and we start getting that city property out like we're like council member Smith said out in station um out in his area by Frontier High so we would look for opportunities in the future to be able to expand there um but really what we're trying to look for is improving what we have as far as programs right now and when you look at the output from our two light engines uh and you look at the output from our our current rescues uh I think one of our rescues ran uh last year about 47% more calls with one rescue that the two light engines did combined the other rescue I believe at station 6 responded to I want to say 60 60-ish per more than the two light engines combined so when we're looking at what the opportunities are on providing a level of service and in this case a higher level of service being a paramedic unit uh we're looking at re structuring some of the ways that we do business so it's really looking at improving the level of service that we have right now and we're able to accomplish that with this existing Human Resources okay well thank you you're welcome thank you Chief and I don't see any other requests so on to Water Resources thank you thank you thank you mayor vice mayor and Council for the opportunity to present the water department 2024 2025 budget in the audience to support the department today it with me is assistant Water Resource director Daniel monado water resources manager IET Rolan Ron and fiscal administrative service specialist Robert salagi along with superintendent Jason sof and and water um water attorney Deputy State Attorney to U Matt colum the Water Resources Department and the Wastewater division have many similarities including managing water supplies and operating and maintaining water facilities the Water Resources Department manages and operates the city's Kern River water supply and system and ensures that the domestic water system that delivers uh safe and clean drinking water to Residents and businesses is operated and maintained the Wastewater division receives the city's residential and Commercial sewage operates and maintains the city's Wastewater facilities and manages the city's secondary and trary Water Supplies with the sensitivity associated with water supplies the requirements to beneficially use water and the implementation of sustainable groundwater management act it is reasonable and practical to bring these two entities together under one management team through this budget process effective July 1st 2024 the Water Resources Department and the Wastewater division will become the water department with this merger efficiencies and cost savings will be achieved within the department in many areas including fiscal Administration engineering operations and maintenance example of these departmental benefits include having a single fiscal administrative Services officer over the department instead of having a Faso at Water Resources and a Faso at Wastewater having a single engineering unit that can work together share knowledge and expertise and reduce contracted engineering expenses utilizing operational staff and equipment at both facilities to support maintenance activities and reduce the need for contracted labor equipment and Equipment the creation of the water department will allow for growth training and advancement opportunities of staff between two divisions the water Department's new mission statement is shown on this slide but in it's in summary the goal is to holistically manage the city's water portfolio within the water department we will consider the beneficial uses of all water types when making short-term and long-term decisions based on needs and growth of the city of Bakersfield the chart include includes the combined expenses and revenue for water resources and Wastewater including actual costs from 2022 2023 adopted budget 2023 2024 and proposed budget for 2024 2025 the fourth column shows the changes between last year's adopted budget and this year's proposed budget the operations budget has increased however 50% of that increase is offset with the reduction of capital Improvement project budget also referred to as a CIP budget this is due to miscellaneous projects and Associated costs like service line Replacements and plant maintenance projects being allocated from CIP into operations to accurately reflect that these types of miscellaneous projects should be accounted for as annual maintenance projects the remaining increase of the operations budget will be discussed further on the next slide as far as the funding sources there is an increase to revenue across the board except for water con connection fees these fees have been reduced by over 50% 50% because the fee is based on a per acre connection which is being impacted by the increase of high density development more homes per acre results in less Revenue the city's water board has advised staff to prepare a water rate study in 2024 2025 to evaluate if the revenue collected for or water connection fees can cover the cost of growth to expand on the increase to the operations budget the department expects a significant increase of 2.6 million in expenses associated with pg& rate increase for electric electricity and gas and increases in the cost of water fuel and chemicals it should be noted that the services provided by both water resources and Wastewater are directly correlated to the city's growth over the last few years there has been a significant increase in residential and Commercial development and both sections have increased their operational capacity to meet the demands this results in the increase of electricity chemicals Etc which is a multiplier to the rate increase and an overall greater expanse than what has been seen in the past on a positive note the water department is expected savings as a result of United the uniting the engineering staff which will provide for efficiencies and reduction of expenses associated with contracted Services as far as capital Improvement projects there are several Weir projects within the river and a division of which one has already obtained grant funding and two are being evaluated by FEMA for reimbursements due to damage caused during the 2023 floods in addition domestic water will perform well rehabilitation projects and Wellhead treatment projects for posos and TCP and finally Wastewater Plant 2 and three have several replacement projects and Rehabilitation projects to address issues associated with aging infrastructure and Technology as I just mentioned due to aging infrastructure and the increased treatment demands at plant 2 and plant 3 due to Urban growth a Wastewater maintenance sorry a Wastewater maintenance superintendent position along with a senior Wastewater Plant mechanic position are needed with current available staff maintenance occurs as equipment breaks but the goal of department is to improve maintenance efficiencies by utilizing these additional staff to identify equipment problems and put together long-term maintenance plans and rep and replace equipment past its useful life before it no longer is operational the end goal is to transition from our current active maintenance practices to a proactive and pre predictive maintenance program in addition to these two new positions the department is requesting the reclassification of the Water Resources secretary 2 to administrative one with the increase in Personnel programs and projects the position is essential to maintain the effectiveness and the efficiency of the director's office the hydrographic division is growing in staff and work duties and requires the reclassification of the supervisor to a manager position this manager position is responsible to oversee the additional planning efforts for the city's water use and supplies due to changes and impacts of water operations with legal challenges and the implementation of the groundwater sustainability plan finally the last three Re classes are to reconcile the budget with the job class and duties of the currently filled positions all costs for new and reclass positions are funded by current rates and clearing accounts by uniting Water Resources Department and Wastewater division the water department will have a complement of 88 staff with this the department will Now operate in the most efficient and productive manner when holistically managing the city's water supplies and I'd be happy to answer any questions thank you council member Smith thank you well first congratulations I asked you know the city manager should have said you know here's our new utility manager so I uh doubled your work easy thank you thank you um I guess i' I've mentioned it before and I'll mention it again I just I really think there's a big opportunity to save a lot of money in both those departments with solar uh both of them are high energy users High electricity users and both of them have a lot of property and a lot of opportunity to install solar so I would hope that you are able to produce that in the future and one other comment you you've got down here water connection fee and that's where you talked about more density less but I thought that was the water availability fee and the water connection fee was actually the per unit fee no the water availability fee is the water connection fee so what is it when I pay for my meter hookup that that's your Ser yeah it's your service connection yeah it's your meter charge okay thank you council member Freeman uh well also like express my congratulations and I think it's a great consolidation I think you know working smarter and hopefully more efficiently and better communication is a great idea so um I really just had a question is maybe I missed something I I had to step out at the beginning the um the revenues and the costs aren't the same on the slide if you look at the total in any year there's a total expenditure are always different than total funding sources and I thought those were always supposed to be the same um because we're Enterprise fund because we have multiple revenues sources so we have our our water um and our sewer Enterprise funds so they tend to they don't necessarily always match so in this case because we do have the additional costs associated with the increases to um the um utilities for PG electrical we have an increase to our overall um uh budget above which our revenu is bring in in that case you draw down yes we use our fund balance um we probably ought to somewhere next time and we summarize so here's the here's the reserve fund and kind of then you'd see the whole thing balancing because I guess it's the only Department we have something like this because some years we're adding to it and some years we're subtracting and that way we're balancing okay and in our fund balance we actually have a requirement to reduce some of our fund balance within the different um within the domestic um there's a requirement to bring our fund balance down over time okay thank you thank you Miss budek and for our final presentation Public Works good after mayor good afternoon mayor city council city manager Greg strik loose Public Works director for the record I'm pleased today to present to you the fiscal year 2425 budget several members of the Public Works team are in the audience um and our mission of course is to deliver efficient responsive and cost-effective Public Works services and infrastructure that protect enhance the safety health and quality of life in Bakersfield in preparing this year's budget we started out with a spreadsheet that showed Wastewater division moving out of Public Works but we didn't adjust the the previous years so when you looked at this particular spreadsheet you would see the overall Department having a net reduction so what we wanted to do is show you the the numbers as a comparison um with Wastewater not being as part of Department in the prior year so you'd have a better comparison of what that difference is and that's this next particular spreadsheet um you'll see that the Department's request is68 m695 861 for an operating budget for next fiscal year which represents 3.36% increase um as we look at some of the highlighted areas of this particular budget you'll see that um the Professional Services represents uh cost of living and step increases for those Department employees across the the 400 uh plus Department employees you'll also notice in the funding sources down below increases in decreases um specifically the major decreases with psvs funding uh down 56% which means that we're replacing that funding with some County revenue Vue that we're receiving for particular activity within Solid Waste we'll break that down in more detail later on in the presentation um move to the next in preparing this year's budget there are some significant issues of that have I wanted to point out in terms of budget impacts uh of course one of the most notable is the transition of the Wastewater division plant maintenance portion to the Water Resources Department the public works department will still maintain the collection and conveyance system for storm water and sanitary sewer um like all other departments we're seeing Rising utility charges particularly for electricity natural gas uh Rising material cost and labor cost both in-house and out outsourced insurance rate adjustments uh the solid waste division was able to increase its rates by a cost of uh Consumer Price Index rate of about 2 .5% this past year they've also been able to add about 1,400 new accounts in solid so solid was is growing as the city grows um one really good news item is that we've been able to leverage about 93 and a half million in state federal and grant allocations for our budget particularly in the capital Improvement side um where we are the operational cost items that are within the budget uh the Department's control uh remain essentially flat with a couple of exceptions and I'll detail some of those exceptions uh some of the most notable Department highlights uh the Thomas roads Improvement program has successfully opened the Centennial Corridor we have eight complete Street Improvement projects in the works and most of those projects are funded with state federal allocations or grants uh we have multiple neighborhood traffic calming and multimodal safety projects that have been implemented Ed this year but also are planned for next year which is in line with City council's gold for safety on the transportation side and our repaving efforts continue with approximately 120 Lane miles resurfaced um this fiscal year and we're hoping to see that again next fiscal year in terms of the Personnel overview uh with Wastewater moving to the Water Resource division uh that represents 50 employees and on the bar on the right hand side that is the light shaded green bar on the top which are now within Water Resources so the public works department uh full-time employee count is 444 um going into this next fiscal year the department is requesting uh some changes in terms of personnel uh number one to reclassify a vacant admin analyst uh position to an assistant operations manager in Fleet within Fleet we're seeing um very difficult State mandates that are being imposed in terms of converting our Fleet to a zero emission Fleet uh there are significant challenges to doing that um and that's one of the main challenges the the other challenge is the incredible competition amongst the automotive industry for acquiring Vehicles we've had to become very Innovative in how we lock in the acquisition of new vehicles it's very very difficult to do that uh we're looking at this position to help us become more Innovative in that uh industry competition but also to help us get up at the Forefront um uh in terms of the zero emission vehicle U uh goal or mandate um second we're doing a series of uh reclassifications converting um a civil engineer for position that became vacant and splitting that into two positions uh within the advanced project delivery team uh reclassification of a clerk typist and uh to an admin and fiscal Services specialist reclass an engineer technician to an engineer one two um reclassifying a secretary secretary 2 these reclassifications are are really indicative of uh staff's incredible skills and abilities to actually come to the table and offer to do more seeing a situation and uh supervision asking to do more um two additional new positions in solid waste in terms of customer service uh we receive thousands and thousands of phone calls each year um ranging from billing issues to uh bulky item pickup stolen carts uh and of course 1383 Organics mandatory uh issues in terms of how we dispose of our waste so uh this request for two additional customer service reps is really an effort to increase our level of service in in response time now we H have tried other things like Outsourcing to an answering service um and for the first year it it worked okay the second year when they were up for renewal the price tripled uh because they actually found out the level of effort it took to actually take care of uh the customers and respond to these phone calls moving on to the capital Improvement program summary so looking at this year's Capital Improvement program we've achieved an 84% uh implementation rate of the 81 projects listed in this year's CIP which total $68 million in value um we've been able to um encumber funds for 84% of that and and that's only as of May 1st we have 60 more days to get to 100% uh some of those projects uh they they cross the board in terms of facilities repair Road resurfacing efforts and what I'd like to do if I could Julie if you could help me out with this on the the video we've integrated a video into this presentation if a picture is worth a thousand words we're hoping uh short video is worth a little bit more Public Works team is pleased to present this video of some of the most significant projects and services delivered the team delivering these projects and services include the most dedicated hardworking men and women in the industry I'm call larger with the advanced project delivery division our team works on complete streets traffic caling Bridges and facility Improvement projects just to name a few my name is Gavin Grimes I'm a civil engineer with the advanced project delivery Division and uh our division provides designs for traffic calming and complete street style improvements such as this speed table here at Mella away it's intended to slow traffic down and make safer Crossings for students [Music] my name is Fernando Mones I'm a civil engineer 3 with design engineering our division's responsible for putting out projects with plans and specifications for basically anything in the public rideway that can include pavement rehabs Parks pedestrian improvements traffic signals sewer and storm drain improvements just among other things hello I am Dan cestone Park and Landscape designer for the city here with uh some recent plans that our division has produced this is our Baker Ski Sports Village a representation of the concept plan and and probably less than a third of the working drawings have been produced for the park and what our division does on this park is uh has assisted in selecting the Consultants as well as done the project management and the construction overseeing along with our Construction Services Division I'm Ryan Starbuck with the traffic engineering division Traffic Engineers constantly monitor traffic conditions looking for ways to improve safety some of these ways include adding traffic signals changing the timing of existing signals and improving roadway signs and markings this also includes adding bike lanes crosswalks and traffic cing techniques to make the road safe for everyone my name is iness Latino I'm the construction supervisor for the city of Bakersfield I'm in charge of construction inspection and Survey division in construction we do everything from development to Capital Improvements we do projects such as Miss Moran any emergency project with we also do lighting projects and we do full depb reconstructions of new roadways and existing roadways with survey we take care of every monumentation here at the city of Bakersfield and also any elevations hi my name is Trish I'm a public works subdivision um I'm an engineering technician and what we do in subdivision is um issue permits to any work being done in the city right away Street permits encroachment permits Transportation permits we process all Improvement plans Street PL sewer plans grading again anything that's done in the RightWay we do easements here we process maintenance districts my name is Sean cakal I'm the general Services superintendent my division is responsible for traffic signal Street Light maintenance electrical maintenance for any City facility Parks buildings HVAC and custodial Building Maintenance and graffiti removal uh my name is Brian padock I work with the uh General Services the I'm the supervisor for the 32 erase the gedia eradication program we probably take up a about 60 to 70% of what comes in on the biger so mobile app is graffiti um so we do stay pretty busy out here um we do have outstanding probably easily over 100 tickets right now so that was a glimpse of this fiscal year and if we take a look at next fiscal year I'd like to start out with the capital Improvement program for next year's Capital Improvement program it has increased primarily due to state and federal allocations to 10 um 47 a half million do for projects let me see here we go most of those projects falling in the reliable infrastructure city council goal again 93.5 million state and federal allocations uh with grants 41.9 million is related to the trip project project at 5899 the 7th and eth movements but that doesn't uh minimize the 30 plus million do for complete streets and multimodal Facilities um in terms of some of the projects that we're looking at of course the master plan for the Animal Care shelter has its continuing work uh with a $500,000 request to to move uh facility improvements there forward um Baker complete Street Kentucky Urban greeting are two project that will be matched with uh grant funding sources and electric vehicle infrastructure one of those major challenges we've got to gear up for in terms of planning and retrofitting our our fueling stations to incorporate electric vehicle infrastructure uh in psvs funding um street light improvements our continued effort to brighten corridors for Public Safety at $250,000 we have 18th and 19th Street complete project we have significant funding already available and allocated towards that project but this is to get us over uh through the bidding process and for a complete uh funded project city-wide traffic calming allocations continue and then s sp1 which is gas tax funding uh South 8 Street and University Avenue are two of those streets that are using those that funding source looking specifically at engineering as a whole we we have multiple engineering Visions but we what we've done is Consolidated all of them uh because essentially their their functions are consistent across the board in terms of engineering on the left side you see all the accomplishments that were already uh reviewed but on the right side you see increases uh modest increases Personnel Services um most of that is related to cost of living increases and and step increases but we're also allocating a little bit more in terms of temporary pay with 145 million do Capital Improvement program it's going to be very very important to have a well-balanced team that includes in-house Staff Temporary Services temporary staff and also outsourc Services um in terms of see um operations we have a decrease in liability insurance of about $684,000 for these funds in subdivisions the most notable item here is to recognize that we will be charged with reviewing applications for High-Speed Rail design plans as they come through the door and High-Speed Rail has an agreement or is about to uh enter into an agreement with the city uh to reimburse us for those review services at and we're estimating a cost of about $300,000 to provide that additional service through the sub subdivision section uh General Services same trending in terms of Labor uh we are asking for a little bit more uh funding in terms of overtime to provide that level of service to be responsive for U vehicle crashes that occur signal timing issues um another notable item in the operations budget is the increased cost in electricity that powers our street lights at $665,000 I'm going to skip over that part streets and utilities May um on this one same with the labor Services about 9 9% increase uh somewhat related to cost of living and Medicare calps uh we are requesting a little bit of an increase in overtime and temporary help uh to help facilitate the additional effort and work uh related to our operations and in terms of uh risk and Fleet rate rates those in the operation side are increasing about $360,000 wanted to break down a little bit in terms of the resurfacing effort uh of our streets you'll see a pie chart on the left and the um primarily the funding components for resurfacing you see at least 50% the green and the orange are through gas taxes um either the sb1 tax or the general gas tax you do see the blue in the upper right hand of about $1 million which is federal reimbursement through Transportation um U laws such as uh IC te and um others that we use to resurface our national highway system roads and our state highway system roads yeah you see a utility search charge of $3 million uh the uh $2 million is an arpa allocation so we would be resurfacing within those the designated arpa Zone and then [Music] 750,000 um which is the let me see Capital outlay Fern um I did want to point out our complete Street projects do include a resurfacing effort they include a lot more storm water street lights sidewalks but they do include resurfacing as well so with the $49 million that are allocated for complete Street projects resurfacing will come from those projects as well uh Solid Waste couple of things in solid waste I mentioned the Consumer Price Index increase of about 2.7% I believe um Solid Waste landfill disposal fees have increased by% so this is reflective of that increase this is also reflective of additional revenue from the county for the illegal dumping which is helping to offset our um Clean Cities initiative as well as the pop-up drop off events and just to round out the department with Fleet um most notable here is the 10% or 11% reduction and capital outlay which means that we're just purchasing less Vehicles we we do have a backlog of vehicles that we do need to purchase again that the the market is extremely competitive in doing that we have that funding allocated already going into next fiscal year though the request is less than the previous year in terms of the allocation of those vehicles that completes my presentation and we are available for questions thank you Mr stra loose can member gay I don't know how you read my mind on that one I hadn't hit the button yet but I was going to was going to um thank you Mr stalas I appreciate that um I just have one question out of that 49 A5 million that you're planning for allocated for resurfacing and traffic calming and all that how much of that 4 995 is actually resurfacing that's a tough question to answer um most of these projects are at various stages of design um when we design those corridors uh the the entire project limits will be resurfaced from Curb to curb um and and it varies I it's hard to come up with a number right now but we could crunch the numbers and and come up with something as far as fraction of that well I would be curious of that of how much is resurfacing and how much is actually going towards traffic calming I'm seeing a lot of green paint around the city right now and and then I see this situation over on Oak Street today I think that is more important having that median so I I'd like to know what percentage of that is if there's any way to give me that number we can crunch the numbers okay thank you council member Smith thank you mayor first congratulations on you know getting rid of Wastewater I guess getting smaller department but not by much huh um it was interesting you talked about 1,400 new Solid Waste customers and and I guess that's my close to my single family number that I had asked for and I did read something the other day where Bakers is the fastest growing city over 250,000 in the nation so we we do continue to grow and your department continues to serve more our constituents so thank you um new customer service for solid waste awesome that's always been a big big problem and just recently you know somebody called me and had spent hours trying to go through the digital you know couldn't find a real person you know and I've heard that story a lot of times so thank you very much for that uh the complete streets very excited about I I don't have the numbers yet but I mean last year it looked like we did reduce fatalities and I don't know if we're on track to do that this year but we will continue to try um that's all I have thank you right mayor thank you mayor Mr Jack loose thank you very much and thank you to your team congratulations for all the great work that you've done throughout the year opening Sentinal Corridor all of these wonderful projects um that have occurred in the city um on behalf of my constituents I want to thank you for um a lot of the work related to um Street lighting improvements throughout War II in particular in Westchester with the enhanced Lighting on Cedar in a street I know we had a hiccup with cedar but we got it done and I'm looking forward to expanding uh that work in additional streets in Westchester uh over the next fiscal year um I also want to thank you for all the work related to streets repaving resurfacing and Alley repavement um this has been um one of the um the elements that I've been most proud of as I engage my constituents particularly in East Bakersfield and Southeast Bakersfield where many folks really rely on those alleys uh to get to their front door uh frankly and um and these alley repavement have made a world of difference for so many families in our community and it's sad to see that uh and to say that for decades uh they went unrepaired uh but now we're we're making good on that and um and we still have some to do um I'm hoping that we can get at it uh this upcoming year but but we're making great strides and your streets division team is excellent and so I want to commend them um for all of their hard work uh day in and day out um I represent an area that's as I mentioned and I say it a lot it's over over 100 years old uh the historic neighborhoods and so with that we have naturally um you know decaying infrastructure and it requires an investment that's intentional and focused in order for us to preserve um the quality of life within those neighborhoods and so um I want to thank you for that and focus in years past we've focused in and identified uh specific line item for w one and W two given the fact that there are um infrastructure needs that go above and beyond some of the other parts of town given just the the age of the area just want to ensure that we have that line item I didn't see it reflected in the presentation yeah thank you Council M that the same funding is there we've actually just slightly changed the label to be disadvantaged neighborhoods okay um but it is the same intent and there's actually by the way there's there's funding for Alleyway improvements in disadvantaged neighborhoods as well as just Street resurfacing priorities in neighborhoods both of those are in the budget great thank you so much and um in fact I got a I got a a text message at 6:00 a.m. this morning uh asking for sidewalk inove improvements in Westchester and I know that we had a conversation in in a few weeks ago about uh sidewalks being the uh the uh responsibility of the adjacent property owner uh per state code and I recognize that but I I do think that it is important for us particularly in the downtown core for us to have a program that enhances the sidewalks uh because we want to improve walkability for the for the core of our city and so I'd like to make that referral as we look towards the next budget and then uh council member Smith eloquently articulated uh the the point related to um Safe Streets and complete streets um I was just at a I was just at a um conference actually with strong towns and uh there I I had an opportunity to meet um the director of I'm missing her upper title but she was the transportation director on New Jersey um city and um um or Jersey City um where they've been able to effectively reduce the number of uh fatalities by pedestrians to zero uh whereas in the p in the 10 years prior to that they had over 90 um pedestrian fatalities and we can do the same thing here uh and we can do the same thing by design by designing our roadways so that they're safer and so that they're safer for all users uh for motorists or pedestrians for those who are walking for those who are bicycling I have many constituents who rely on um their own TW feet or a bicycle or um public transportation to get to and from work and school and to the market and we need to make those roadways uh far safer just so it's not just green pain on the street it's actually a safer condition for so many people to actively uh live out their lives in their own community so I want to commend you for all the efforts that you're making to make our neighborhood safer uh through traffic calming and I hope that we can double down on those efforts in the future thank council member Freeman thank you mayor uh Greg just one question last year you um sent me a it was really a matrix of the of the road Improvement scheduled in my ward Ward five a bunch of line on so I could tell what was scheduled could you send me the W Five schedule so I could look it over that's anticipated in this budget yes sir and just my observation is because we have a lot of very busy arterials from stockdell Highway Ming Avenue White Lane Panama and buav Vista and Gosford which have to be you know some of the most traveled and I'm I'm noticing that the intersections seem to be in the worst shape oh sometimes we've paved miles and miles and I know it's spotty it goes one mile good one mile bad but the intersections maybe because the amount of wear and tear they get we're going to need to pay special attention because it may be that the the lanes look pretty good till you get to the intersection and then it's just starting to waffle and crumble and I'm kind of hoping you at those especially really busy streets that you guys have zeroed in on those even if that's the only thing that's improved you know or that even needs it but those are important because I can see they're starting to crumble in a lot of places again yes and we have highlighted some of those areas where the intersections either don't line up very well or they they're see they've been subject to rutting and shoving um and the asphalt just has changed it's original but those seem to be of particular concern even though the street the street leading into the intersection may be okay but those are really busy the intersection so but anyway if you send me the matric I appreciate it thanks yes council member Smith thank you mayor I just I failed to congratulate you on the completion of the Centennial Corridor and trip and I know you know taking that over the line was difficult and do appreciate that and also the continuing efforts on the seventh and eth movements and making those happen as soon as possible appreciate itk you thank you council member Gray and did O to that I think I don't know what's wrong with my voice today I apologize um but I I would be interested in the same Matrix also for Ward six so if you could send that to me be very interested but again we appreciate you um you came in at a really busy time for the city Mr stas and you pulled it off so thank you so much you've done a great job for us got a great team yes absolutely thank you Mr Mr strike loose Mr C do you have any closing comments yes mayor and Council just a few and uh congratulations to you all on the de for surviving this um lengthy Workshop um but just a few summary slides and and as uh we tee up those summary slides I would just reflect that um I'm not necessarily teeing this information up for deep conversation right now because there's a lot of content here it's mostly so that you have in your hands a more summarized version of key information that you can use to deliberate and consider as we approach budget adoption in June so I think it will be helpful for you just to have those key pieces of information to think about you know the tough decisions that that you'll have to make as a council um also just again for the public record uh these are similar budget themes as you heard in February and you heard in March and you heard in April no major changes to that we also also shared these same themes with the oversight committee but uh this budget focuses on our essential Services uh especially with constricting resources what I mean by constricting is that uh you know revenues are slightly up not much but of course our costs are uh escalating much faster than our revenues are in the last two well the current fiscal and we anticipate an next fiscal with fairly stagnant revenues and so that just means the budget gets a little B leaner even though we're not facing shortfalls as mayor go pointed out we're not know we're not facing major deficits but it just means things are a little bit leaner we haven't made enhancements on the general fund side of things how are we balancing our budget last year we made an $8 million allocation to you know the general fund uh from psvs resources we're anticipating about $9 million uh this year I think the good news is is that's again a less of an increase than um than you know some of our other increased line items which means there is some growth in the general fund but again not um enough to um uh address all the the needs and issues there and so that is one way that we're balancing the budget uh I would reflect we're making strategic additions in the public safety vital Services tax and I'll go over those again in a moment that are the same Reflections as you saw in a in a memo in April uh when we sent that information to the the city council and to the oversight committee we're also need to finalize the spend down of arpa in this uh coming fiscal year and uh we are recommending some arpa reallocations to to offset some of our uh um inability to pursue as many projects as we'd like on the psvs side of things and I'll explain a little bit more about that in a minute and continuing to really go after those grants you saw the Grant on the federal side significant federal grants right now the feds were a little slow and getting their money Downstream than the state was and so we're still seeing large allocations available from the federal government uh but also the key theme is setting aside contingencies and being conservative in our budget approach on the projection side again this is the same information you saw before but we continue to use our long range Financial forecasting tool um we have seen again some modest increases in sales tax and property tax um and uh there are no new decisions to be made on our utility rate increases because those 5-year plans have been adopted in Prior years but we'll see some of those same increases that were previously approved by Council but continue to have very low utility costs uh comparably in the state and region and again setting aside lots of contingencies against economic downturn um this is again no surprise mostly here for the public record that we're our cost drivers are the all the items you heard Department directors talk about today so this is where I begin a summarization of the key discretionary items I would uh uh say for the council um on the psvs side this lists all of the Personnel recommendations in one slide um we limited our growth to uh uh Public Safety and resilience this is uh about the police as well as on the community Vitality side we're recommending adding two call takers uh to help respond to the requests for addressing encampments and you'll see that the new ongoing obligation is less than a million dollars there um I I did want to reflect the other Personnel um requests uh in in one summarization and I apologize actually missed the solid waste additions here here in this slide but um overall you're only seeing um in entire positions there's one for Erp one position for Erp one position for development services one large reclassification in public works and then the couple of additions for Wastewater and for solid waste so even though you saw probably lots of positions uh throughout the presentation full or large additions of positions there are very few and this is across all other funds in the in and there are actually none that are allocated directly to the general fund although the fleet the polar Works assistant operations manager does have a notable impact to the general fund as does the development services planner uh but uh we held our Personnel uh changes uh to a very minimal number of positions the last bullet point there I would just reflect really quickly is you you heard about a number of reclassifications and the majority of those reclassifications range anywhere from maybe $55,000 up to about 15 17 $20,000 small adjustments that are getting more from um the capacity of our team at very incremental costs we're trying to get more creative and more thoughtful in how do we maximize the team that we have instead of just adding a bunch of positions it's it's a little bit tighter how do we get the most from the positions that we do have and we've taken some position one position and split it into two and we took two positions and combined them into one and so we're just trying to get smart about how we're organizing and again maximizing City uh staff and that's the the bigger theme I think in this budget than the other additions because we limited it significantly going back to operating on the psvs side we are recommending $2.4 million in new oper operating costs again these aren't locked in uh the same way as uh Personnel costs might be but they are ongoing operating costs uh I would note the same time and this was in the memorandum uh related to psvs we also reduced more than $3 million in ongoing funding out of Economic and Community Development Miss buyers referenced that earlier today in her presentation but I just want to highlight that we identified $3.2 million and ongoing costs that we could reduce from certain programs that we thought could handle it without completely eradicating those programs to make space for high priority items like our challenges around homelessness and so all of this is related to Public Safety or homelessness resilience and the the top number is about uh addressing those individuals that are the most chronic um chronically homeless that in urban encampments that are um causing a lot of the drain on City staff time and also the biggest impacts to um our residents quality of life and so this intensive case management team and support to the community Vitality group is to address that small number of the most res service resistant individuals and get them into a different uh outcome the second item of course is for our emergency shelter capacity that's about expansion of brend brage Lane navigation Center and we're exploring also safe camps and and uh options like you know pallet homes and so we'll come back in July to council with recommendations for how to spend that $1.5 million but we have two or three uh projects that we're uh that we're in evaluation on right now to make recommendations for how to allocate those dollars and then lastly this is the support to that realtime information center there's a there's a capital component but then some of that software uh maintenance is an operating cost over time so that's the limit of operating on the psvs side and we offset that by uh similar reductions in other operating costs now shifting gears to onetime funds uh what you saw also in April though was a list of about $21 million in potential projects on the psvs side as we're finalizing psvs budgets um and I think in some reflection some of the large uh psvs allocations in uh prior years have been because we also had fund balance that we were able to um allocate towards psvs and we are allocating some fund balance to psvs in this coming year but we're really recommending only spending about $1 million in one-time projects in psvs and to go from a list of 21 million in potential projects to 11 is a hard process and so I'll walk through a little bit of Staff recommendation around that but in as much as it's hard for us to recommend it's even harder for Council to make those decisions and so uh in psvs onetime funds we are recommending uh again the creation of this real-time police information center funding the affordable housing trust fund that's a reduction from prior years we'd been spending $5 million a year this is a $3 million allocation for MLK Community Center we still have funding needs there and we want to be able to leverage grant opportunities and so this is creating funding for Grant match there and then um the many of the pictures that you saw today were made possible by this Perry account it's a gives Parks the ability to go in and make those quick improvements the small and medium size improve improvements and I am recommending we keep that in place because it's really where we get a lot of the work done that's responsive to community interest uh related to infr structure you'll see here these are actually lower numbers than what were presented at the April memo in many of these categories for Public Works uh don't panic yet because we think we've identified how to get more of these types of projects done through arpa funding is one of our recommendations but we want to continue to do Street lighting the uh the highway Corridor hardscaping Landscaping um there are some complete streets uh multimodal traffic calming as well as well as meeting improvements and lastly Street resurfacing we want to continue to do as much Street resurfacing as resurfacing as we can but that is the total of about $1 million in psvs onetime projects so how can we get more done uh with um arpa dollars potentially so uh there was a listing of the open door Network shelter in psvs we're recommending that that is an eligible cost item that could be funded through arpa dollars uh readily and quickly also jastro Park is one of the few neighborhood park improvements that that we recommended to the oversight committee uh it is now been um underfunded for two years in a row on the CIP and we do think that that is a high priority to get done but it can't it is in a qualified census track and we think it can move forward with that arpa funding and then lastly uh we noted that many of the areas where we're doing resurfacing and putting in Street lighting are in the qualified census tracks which are El eligible for that arpa funding so we can get a lot of that work done through these onetime monies at least in this coming budget cycle um uh to offset um the the funding in psvs where would we take some of that arpa uh funding from uh We've identified a couple of areas Within arpa that um we are not anticipating spending all of those revenues and particularly the Workforce Development and also we felt like safe routes um as we're trying to address some of the streets issues the safe routes is in a similar theme and we've identified many projects to do with the $5 million that's been there for safe routes but we think we can reallocate uh some of those dollars towards our street resurfacing in those same neighborhoods then ultimately we had identified uh resources in the disadvantaged neighborhood revitalization fund that could be used for um uh for example Open Door Network and some of the other projects that were on the prior slide again big decisions for Council to deliberate on we don't have to have that you know conversation today and I think as a full Council those will be big decisions but that is staff's recommendation for how to offset some of uh those projects that that we just don't have enough in onetime psvs Monies to go towards I failed to mention Also earlier of course we're including contingency offsets and reserves offsets uh for um the psvs budget that weren't listed in that table earlier is that we you know will be setting aside I I think it's more than $2 million uh for further um psvs Monies to go into reserves and next year's budget as well uh lastly I've highlighted here three slides that that entail the details of our Capital outlay fund this these are these are General resources that we uh put into capital projects and uh I would argue that many of the items uh on these slides are fairly routine items that we don't want to take away like our regular maintenance funds um or our regular you know sidewalk repair funds but there are some projects on here where I think it's fair for Council to be aware that um you know we have the ability to to um decide whether some of these projects are higher priority than those ones we just saw on the psvs um slides um a few moments ago and so we've been pursuing Renovations of and the City Hall South Annex that's the Public Works building that's behind this building we've been working through a series of Renovations in that building and this is a continuation of this is I think the the second or third year of a multi-year um project over there we also have monies for miscellaneous roadway improvements that gives us some flexibility to go and take care of that that project that um doesn't quite fit some of the other boxes as noted earlier we we're behind on our infrastructure to be able to uh charge electric vehicles as we're being required by the state to purchase those we need to put some resource towards that figure it out we're continuing to invest in the animal shelter about half a million dollars a year to address those uh long needed um uh uh Capital Improvements there and uh it was noted in the police department's presentation earlier today this elevator modernization that's a big replacement there a couple of other uh streets projects that are uh related to um that Grant match funding that that was referenced earlier um we have and again these are the types of projects that you should see in a typical CIP if you're not fixing your roofs then you're going to get you know more water inside buildings and you're going to have bigger repairs down the road and so as we go through the rest of this list I you know I put it the big ones first but these are the typical types of things in coming slides you should see in your CIP enhancements to sidewalks crosswalks um street lights uh Etc uh but I do want to point out a few that are unique we have our neighborhood Monument Renovations that's uh been a referral from council member Freeman about contining to get at our uh gateways and entryways and monuments and this is a second uh uh phase of contining to make those Renovations and repairs um as noted earlier the fire department is finding a way within existing Staffing to get another rescue squad but there's a need for just a vehicle there and then on this last slide um we're trying to get at uh the the walls that are throughout the city those are actually City responsibilities they're probably millions of dollars of liabilities but we're trying to put aside some money each year to help us to get at the maintenance of those walls and at some point in time we'll probably have to escalate that based on the age of that infrastructure but for now it's a start um a couple of priority projects to have at least some funding in is getting at exercise equipment and Parks uh Canal fencing uh screening and uh also trying to better secure some of our Alleyways continuing to have some one-time monies for spay and neuter uh and all told our Capital outlay fund is about $8.1 million again um based on prior years I I would have wished to put some more money into some of those categories and buckets but uh We've made reductions to balance the budget and that is kind of where we're at and So within those resources that you just just saw between Capital outlay fund psvs and arpa those are our staff's best recommendations about how to balance and make those tough calls but I think uh between now and June 12th when Council will see um the budget for the first uh review and then ultimately the adoption in June um this arms you with the information to have good uh dialogue about how to um make those priorities and and allocate those funds uh lastly just want to also thank all of the department departments but also our budget team uh for uh digging deep and putting together the budget this year our schedule was a little bit uh constricted because we were working in a new system we had to figure out some new things in the new system as well as uh not all the information was ready as early as we would have liked to have had it uh because of the new system but um we've um put together now a balanced budget of of course at any point in time there's probably some small fixes to to any budget as you ramp up um to budget adoption but because of the timing with our ARP I do expect there may be a little bit more refinements than in a typical year but um our commitment to council is to be very clear if for example we identify that there's you know a few extra $100,000 in let's say a psvs for one time will definitely uh be very clear and transparent about that to council as we continue to reconcile our old system and our new system and make sure everything's tight in there if there's any material changes we'll make those really highlighted to council um that that are any different than what we've presented to you today but overall uh We've um um prepared our our balance budget for the council and we ready to present that to you in June thank you Mr click Mo mayor uh Mr CL can we receive a document that outlines all those reoccurring items that were funded in previous years that are being reduced yes this year so that we can make those decisions uh with a clear eye thank you well thank you everyone for your participation and your hard work and with that we stand adjourned at 4:14 [Music] [Music]