City Council - Regular Meeting

98765. And one.

Welcome to the joint city council housing authority and GVMID meeting of the Brisbane City Council, 05/07/2026. We're calling this meeting to order at 06:31PM. Would you please join me in the pledge of allegiance? I pledge

allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

No council members are attending the meeting remotely tonight. So city clerk, could we have a roll call, please?

Council member Davis? Here. Council member Kern?

Here.

Council member Lance?

Here.

Council member O'Connell? Here. And mayor Mackin?

Here. Thank you. City attorney Zutler, could we please have a report out from closed sessions April 20, April 27, May 4, and May 7, please?

Sure. Good evening. Closed session was had on the items on the agenda, and no reportable action was taken.

Alright. Thank you. Before we adopt the agenda, I would just like to call attention to the fact that this is municipal clerk's week, and we have very humble municipal clerks in Brisbane. They didn't even bother to put it in our agenda. So I would like to call attention to our city clerk, Ingrid Padilla, and also deputy clerk Angel Ibarra for all the work that they do.

They do so much behind the scenes. You would not believe they keep things on schedule and running smoothly, and you would never believe the chaos that goes on the week before these meetings. And they make it look very simple, and look at how calm she looks. Oh, and also, our city attorney I would like to recognize is Samantha Zutler, and if you would please just take a stand here so they know who you are. We're very pleased to have Sam on board.

She goes by the name Sam, so I'm allowed to call her that. All right. Can I get a first and second to adopt the agenda as it stands, please?

So moved.

Second. All in favor?

Aye. Anyone

opposed? No. First item on our agenda tonight, I can see from the audience. Yeah. We have the youth advisory committee here, and I'm told we're going to have a presentation. This is your annual presentation we've been looking forward to, so you're on.

Alrighty. Good evening, everyone. I hope you guys have enjoyed your day so far, and thank you guys so much for having us. I'm Avni Rajan. I'm the current vice president on YACC, and this is my fourth or fifth year being here. So I just wanted to start talking about the LIT program. So the LIT program, it's our summer program, and we've had about 40 to 50 participants in the last couple years. But our summer program for the upcoming 2026 is currently closed. However, if you have any questions or comments, can always talk to Jeff because he manages everything. So a lot of us here on YACC have been a part of this LIT program, and we've made so many fun memories from it.

It's especially fun because a lot of us were campers at this camp, and we got to grow up with these people. And then you get to have fun with the next generation, and you get to play games with them and give them the same memories that you had. Next

slide.

One more, please. Hello, everyone. My name is Sebastian Bousquet. I'm in my fifth year serving on the YAC, and I'm in my second year as the president. Next slide, please. This year, we have 24 members ranging from seventh grade to twelfth grade. And at the beginning of the year, we got together and we want discussed an initiative that we wanted to govern our decision making and our programming over the year, and we settled on bringing diverse communities together. So as you listen to our presentation, we hope that you can see our initiative interwoven through all our events. And this year, we structured the act a little bit differently. We also had a teen action club.

This was designed for students or, excuse me, youth in Brisbane that maybe wanted to participate in, you know, a little bit of local government or wanted to volunteer or wanted to make a difference in their community, but maybe due to a time commitment, they couldn't commit to the YAC or due to the high number of applications we received this year did not make the first round of of cuts. So we I will bring up Kailea, and she will talk a little bit about her experience on TAC and how she made it up to YAC.

Sorry, can we go to the next slide please? Thank you. Hi, my name is Kaileah, and I'm in seventh grade, and I was originally in TAC, and then I transitioned into YAC earlier this year. At first, because YAC had so many applicants, I wasn't accepted, which was a little bit of a letdown. But I kept applying myself and I was committed and I kept going to all these different events, to the teen nights, always asked if I was able to help with anything, if I could do anything further in my position.

And so when a position in YAC opened up, I gladly took this spot, and I was so happy to be here. And now I am, and I'm ready to move forward. And, hopefully, I can help with more things later and in the future. Thank you.

Hi. My name is Marissa, and I'm in eighth grade.

Hi. My name is Noel Chow, and I'm also in eighth grade, and we'd like to talk a little bit about our middle school dances.

Here are some pictures from the two dances we've had so far this year. As you can see, on the left was our Halloween dance, and on the right is a Candyland dance. Middle schoolers seem to really enjoy these dances and the themes and dressing up according to them, and you can see that especially on the Halloween dance. We

welcome friends from all middle schools, and our dances offer amenities such as photo booths, guest suggested music, and sweets and treats for all to enjoy. These things have made our dances pretty popular as about 90 to a 100 people attend each dance. Personally, Marissa, our friends, and I really, really like, the photo booth and creating memories together on the dance floor.

Yak offers a great bonding experience for the community and teens to connect with one another, and it also acts as a way for people to really see their classmates outside of the school setting and to let loose.

As we continue to run these dances, we hope to take guests and your input to make our dances even better and increase diverse community engagement. Thank you.

Hello? Hello. My name is Micah McNally.

Hello. My name is Ava Larson. And one thing the youth advisory committee does is help with the derby. We arrive early on day in the park, and and we set up the hay bales for the barriers used in the race. And during the race, we wave the flags.

A new thing that we introduced at the last day in the park was the grandstand. The grandstand interviewed people of different ages to connect generations. It was very successful and it will be returning.

Every year, Brisbane announces a youth volunteer award, and this year, our YAC president Sebastian Bousquet won. So congratulations to him.

Day in the Park was very successful and an overall good time that all ages enjoyed. Yak looks forward to helping in years to come. Thank you.

Hi. My name is Lucas. I'm in eighth grade. And for this past Halloween, we helped we helped close and make sure streets were closed for during trick or treating hours.

Rory McIntosh.

Before Halloween, we had our third annual Halloween dog costume contest. This year, we had a key chain photo booth by Linked Memories and a grand prize donation from Kane's Chicken. We had lots of cool submissions such as a Star Wars family dog star wars dog family, a military dog, and a cool basketball dog. Council member Kern's family won the most creative costume with their homemade Kraft mac and cheese costume. Glorious. We also had some whipped cream pup cups for the dogs and candy for the kids.

Hi. I'm Reyna. I'm a freshman in high school. This year, we had another successful festival of lights, and we introduced something new, which was the wish tree. This is where we had people write their wishes on wooden stars, and we would hang them up on a tree. This was also a memorial tribute to Joe Riddell, so we also had people write what they missed about him.

Hi. My name is Aaron, and I'm an eighth grader. So another YAC member, Thomas, me and him were the two trees, the top right. We try to add like some festivity to the like, liveliness to the festival and we gave hot chocolate and cookies after the tree lighting ceremony.

I thought those were professionals. Yeah.

They were they were a highlight.

This is a big deal. We know who it is. Yeah. Yeah.

Alrighty. So during our time during our year in YAC, we get a couple of opportunities to actually talk to other YACs in other cities. One of these smaller events is YAC Social. This was hosted in the Burlingame Rec Center in December. We got to reflect on our past year in YAC, some of the events that we did, and also explain our goals for the upcoming year.

This And is just a good way to brainstorm with other YACs and see what they're doing in their city that we would like to include in ours. And one of the times in YAC Social, we actually talked about our event senior tech, and a lot of other YACs took that idea and kind of integrated it into their own community. So that event's always fun. Another part of Yak Social is we got to kind of brainstorm for our Yak Attack, which is the larger event where we include more Yaks and more members of each Yak attend that one. So we got to brainstorm some food, some events that we wanted, and just the overall theme of yak attack.

And in my opinion, yak attack was a very fun and successful event. This was last March, and we traveled down to Los Altos Community Center and met with a bunch of yaks from around the Bay Area. There was a lot of local politicians and policymakers in attendance. We heard about their story, their careers, and their messages to the youth. It was this was also successful for the Brisbane YAC because we delivered a presentation as well at the conference about mental health, about what mental health is, how we can bring advocacy and awareness to mental health issues, And as a symbol for that information that we shared, we led a stress ball activity so people could take it home and remember all the good information that they learned.

And last but not least, we had a rock star in our presence, Frank Kern. Councilman Frank Kern came down and delivered an awesome presentation on fee mitigation act. And despite its maybe bland name, it was highly interesting presentation. He learned about what it does, how it affects local government, how it's affecting the development of the park down near the marina. And then he led us in a very fun and engaging competition among the other yaks where we designed a park given a budget and criterion in which he judged, in which we did not win. So we can talk about that We can talk about that after. So Thank you.

Hi. My name is Annie, and I'm here to talk about teen night. So every other week, Yak hosts hangout in the Sunrise Room that invites all some of the twelfth graders, from Brisbane. These teen nights serve as third spaces for students, and they include fun games along with a lot of snacks like pizza and soda. It is a it is a place for teenagers to relax, have fun, and make friends. Recently, we've been hosting competitions with video games like Super Smash Bros. And other Nintendo games, so that has been really popular recently.

Alrighty. Next slide, please. Thank you. So a big part of our initiative is intergenerational engagement, and we do this a couple ways. The first way, like I previously stated, is our monthly senior tech timings. So we allow seniors to come and join us and bring any devices that they might have some trouble with. This can include their iPhones, their computers. I've had a senior even ask me if they can bring their microwave. And these their difficulties range. So sometimes seniors need help turning on the ringer on their phones.

Others need help taking apart their computer and completely restarting it. So we try our best to help. And if anything, we'll, like, refer them to someone that can actually help them. But yeah. And this year, we've also started our Sunrise newsletter.

This sends out every other month, and it includes word of the days, some fun interactive games, and just some updates around events around Brisbane, like events and just some things going on with businesses in Brisbane. Over spring break, some YAC members, we also joined the seniors on their lunch. We helped serve them lunch that was made by one of the seniors and it was so good. And then we just got to sit and talk with them about all sorts of things. Lastly, I spoke at the age friendly workshop in Mission Blue a couple months ago, and I just talked about all the opportunities that we have, like the senior newsletter and the monthly senior tech meetings.

This Saturday will be our third annual walk for mental health awareness. Some things we did last year was that we painted rocks, we had a water refill station, and we also did the ice bucket challenge with council member Lentz. This year, we will have more engagement through the walk and in the park after the walk. And one of our Yak members, Sumire, has designed these bookmarks for you guys that we will pass out.

Thank you.

Thank you, love it.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Nice. And

just recently, we announced an exciting partnership with the San Mateo counters San Mateo County's Futures Commission. So recently in 2024, the United Nations released a declaration on future policy, basically detailing that all future policy made around the world should be done in the interest of future generations and making sure that policy is not just thinking about the present, but the imp the lasting implications on the world and the people that will be living in the world. So San Mateo County was the first United States county to adopt this declaration and created the futures commission, which is comprised of some people working in local policy and also high school students like ourselves. And part of their initiative was collecting 10,000 youth voices around San Mateo County, asking what does your future look like? What do you want it to look like?

And how can we help support your vision of the future? So part of our role was elevating that message, and we created a video on behalf of the futures commission, just giving them advertisement for their initiative. So you can play the video if you like. They're not. Okay.

Well, that's the last one we did. And coming up on the thirtieth, we have the garden show. And then we also have a community center garden cleanup, which is to be term to be determined with the date. And for June, to celebrate pride month on the twenty fifth, we have a pride in the park event, which is also on the same day as the farmers market, and there will be a bunch of different organizations from around San Mateo County in attendance. And I believe that is all we have.

We appreciate the time that you have given us. And before we take any questions or comments or recommendations, we'd like to oh, there she is. Thanks, Sarah. She is a big part or a huge essential piece of the YAC, and we wouldn't be able to do all the all the fun and cool things that we do with the YAC without Sarah. So thank you.

Don't sit down.

Before we transition to questions, I just wanna thank all of the YAC for being courageous to come up here and speak in front of you this evening and for all their dedication throughout the year. But especially want to acknowledge two outgoing seniors that we have, Sumire, who couldn't be here tonight, and Sebastian, who has dedicated the last five years to serving on this committee and making a difference for his peers in the community. So thank you so much, Sebastian. You'll be very missed. We appreciate you.

And I'm sure they'd be happy to answer any questions that you have.

First, I wanna thank all of the the YAC and also Sebastian. You know, your leadership has really been a catalyst. I mean, we need to acknowledge that. I I don't know that this group would be where it was were it not for the vision that you had and making sure things got done and being an example to all of your peers that that we don't have to just be a group and a social group, but we can accomplish things. We can be recognized for it.

And I'm just always amazed because you're all so poised, and I could never have done that at your age ever. And I I don't know if you rehearsed all this. Everyone is it's just seamless. You are all so professional. If we ever need a theatrical coordinator, I know where to go find some people to to set it up. So I I'm just in awe, and I appreciate all that you've done. You you really have tangible benefits, and I know the seniors are really thrilled all of the work you do there. And the fact that you got a newsletter off the ground on top of that, I'm just absolutely so impressed. I I don't have enough words for it, but I I want I want you to hear from, everybody on the council. So council member Lynch, you want to start?

Thank you madam mayor and that yeah. I feel the same way. I mean, it it it is without words. You know, it's really a feeling of joy just to see the work that you do and and how much you care. It's it's impressive.

And when you see it in, you know, and and it's and it's happening in the in our community, you feel good about the future and that we are that we are in good hands. And there is this one thing I that I am super impressed about besides just, you know, you just being incredible individuals is is your work with the seniors. Know a lot of a lot of seniors feel like they're left behind and to help them and to and and and not just to help them but to you seem like you really like to engage with them and and that's that's a really good lesson for everyone, and thank you for being great role models. Very impressive.

Thank you.

Mayor Pro Tem Davis?

Just wanna, thank you all for your participation. It makes me really happy to know that there's more interest than there is even space. The Yak was around when I was your age, and it was kind of limping along then, and it completely died out for a while. And then when I was on park and rec commission, I I was like, we need to really bring this back and give our teens something to do in town because often, like, there's just not a whole lot for people of your age group. And so it really makes me excited to see that not only is it back, but it's truly better than it's ever been, and it's thriving.

And you're not just putting on dances that's part of it or doing fun things, but you're really making a big difference in your community. And that's something that we are incredibly thankful for. And truly, like, something that we brag about that our yak, can accomplish so much. And when you show up at Day in the Park, when you show up at the Festival of Lights, all of that support that you're giving is really invaluable, like our inflatable trees, truly a highlight. So just wanna thank you all for the work that that you've done.

So I noticed on the word of the day in the example was brain rot. So are you choosing words that are like current slang that maybe seniors might not be aware of? Because I think that's genius if so. Yes? Okay. Love that. So anyhow and of course, thank you, Sebastian. It's a pleasure hearing you every year give a little speech about what you guys have been doing. We'll miss you, but don't be a stranger. There's plenty of ways that you can stay engaged and apply for a park and rec commission if it interests you. So Thank you. Yeah. Thank you, everyone.

Councilmember O'Connell.

So I just wanna say how wonderful it is to see action oriented, engaged youth. It's hard enough to engage adults who might have their life already planned out, but to see young people who are taking taking an interest is just so heartening to see. And I echo what the other council members have said, but it's just very wonderful to see engaged people. And of your age, that's even better. Thank you.

Thank you.

And before I call on council member Kern, I just have to tell you I would echo your comments that he can take boring topics and make them very entertaining. His reputation precedes him.

Boring. Yeah. Oh, on that note.

Well, I I appreciate that, mayor. I just wanna say thank you guys. You should be so proud of yourselves for the heavy lift and all the work that you've put into our community. I know that everybody appreciates it. I am super energized to find out who one of the Christmas trees was because we were told we would never find that out. And so

It was a guarded secret.

It was so closely guarded. So that was amazing. So thank you for doing that. Thank you for your invitation to the Yak Attack. I literally had a blast that day. You guys really stepped up. Your park could not possibly win. It would look so rigged if I picked you. So Oh. It was a stacked deck. So I just wanna thank you. You're not only the obvious leaders of tomorrow, but you're the architects of Brisbane today. So, I appreciate you challenging the status quo and stepping up to all the challenges that this community has provided you. Your dedication has made it a great place to live. So thank you so much.

And before we go, I I will also wanna recognize Sarah and Noreen because your support of Yak is also instrumental. Without giving them that support, a lot of this wouldn't be possible. And so thank you very much for that. I'd also like to say that someday, I hope to see some of you sitting up here because I think that will happen.

Thank you very much for all the kind words personally. And as a Yak, we are we are very happy and excited that you guys are excited about us. So I'll be leaving this year, but we got we got a ton of people that

are Yeah.

Super excited to carry on the Yak. So we appreciate all your support and, like, the platform to talk about what we do. So thank you.

Thank you. Can you

take a quick group photo?

Sure.

Right.

Do have everybody

I'm behind Do not tall sit person. Down.

Whatever you do,

do sit sitting down.

I'm going to not stand behind the tall person. Right. But it is out there by

the way.

Yeah. We might need to step in front of the thing. It might be

a little awkward.

Oh, yeah. Put down the mic maybe too.

See. Do

you want

me to move this to front foot?

Yeah. There you go. Much better.

Can you

guys just do a pyramid or something? Yeah.

Squeeze it. And there

we go.

The sports team pyramid.

Squeeze one to the right.

Yeah. We go. Perfect. Perfect. Alright. Everybody

ready? Alright. 123. Alright. 123.

We'll let everybody get situated here. Thank you. You. Alright. We continue our meeting going to oral communications number one.

We welcome speakers providing public comment, but please be advised this is a limited public forum. It's important for speakers to stay on topic whether speaking to a particular agenda item or speaking during general public comment. On topic matters are those that are within the subject matter jurisdiction of the city of Brisbane. Speakers, whether during oral communications or on agenda items, will have two minutes. Following these rules helps ensure the city council can get to all the items on the agenda, including hearing public comment on the items.

If a speaker fails to follow these rules, they are disrupting the meeting and will be warned. If a speaker continues to ignore the rules or is otherwise disruptive, their opportunity to speak will be ended. They may also be precluded from speaking on any other items tonight. City clerk, do we have any member of the public wishing to make a comment on any item that is not on tonight's agenda?

No, madam mayor.

Okay. We have anyone in the audience that we're not aware of? Not. Okay. Moving on. We go to the consent calendar. Tonight, we have quite a few items, and I'm told on item number t, council member Davis must be recused. And council Zutler, would you like council member Davis to leave the room or just abstain from voting?

It's fine to just abstain from voting, and you could state your conflict.

No. Okay. My conflict is that, the organization that I work for is applying for the cosponsorship.

Alright. Thank you. So that being said, we have consent calendar items first c through s. Can I get a first and second to approve consent calendar c through s?

So moved. Second?

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Anyone opposed? No. Now we move to item t, and mayor pro tem Davis is recusing herself from the vote. Can I get a first and second to approve consent calendar item t?

So moved. Second.

All in favor? Aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? No.

Our next item on tonight's agenda is swearing in newly appointed committee members. I see some people in the audience. And I was going to read your names out. We have Jose Moreno with Complete Streets Safety Committee. Janice, I hope I say your name right, Ah Young, Complete Streets Safety Committee. Hannah Carney, Open Space and Ecology Committee, Lupita Gonzales, Idea Committee, and Cat Thomas, Public Art Advisory Committee. City clerk, could you please if everyone would come up to the front here, if the city clerk could please administer the oath of allegiance for public officers and employees.

I will now administer an oath or affirmation of allegiance for public officers and employees. Please raise your right hand and repeat after me. I state your name.

I. Ken Holloway.

Do solemnly affirm. Do solemnly affirm. That I will support and defend.

That I will support and defend.

The constitution of The United States

the constitution of The United States

and the constitution of the state of California and the constitution

of the state of California

against all enemies, foreign and domestic

against all enemies, foreign and domestic

that I will bear true faith and allegiance

that I will bear true faith and allegiance

to the constitution of The United States and the constitution of the state of California that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties upon which I'm about to enter. Congratulations.

I wanna thank you all for applying and your willingness to serve your community as you enter this chapter of public service. I can tell you that you're you're going to have some hard work, but the rewards are really very, very gratifying. And and I hope you have a wonderful journey on on this chapter of your life. We appreciate your willingness willingness to serve. Thank you.

And you don't have to stay for the rest of the meeting. You won't.

Thank you.

Congratulations. Alright.

Our next item is under new business. Item v is review and acceptance of the fiscal year twenty twenty two-twenty three audit. And I believe we have Carolina Yoon with a staff report for us.

Good evening, madam mayor, council members. We will have a presentation on the screen, so I'll wait until that's placed on your screens. Thank you for having us tonight to present the results of the audit for fiscal year ended June 3023. This was issued in December '25, and we understand this is a late report. And, we apologize for the delay, and we will express that further down in this presentation.

However, first we want to for the benefit of the public and council members want to give a overall description of the financials and the report itself, the components just to understand how it's come about. So what we refer as the ACFR, is the annual comprehensive financial report. And we compile this every year to inform the users of the the city's financial condition and performance. It provides accurate, meaningful information concerning the city's condition and performance used by public officials, investors, creditors, taxpayers, and others who use financial reports. It's the authoritative body governing this document is GASB or the Governmental Accounting Standards Board.

It's independent and authoritative body. So just so that you know, GASB has up to a 104 standards. So for twenty two years, there were only 49 and since 2006 we've been seeing regularly additional standards so that they're now up to 104 that we have to implement and make sure that the financial statements comply with all of these standards. The audits are required by law. We have to file with the state, and then they're also required for compliance with our debt our lenders and other debtors for the debt instruments that we have.

And so we file annual reports with the bond agencies and all of the financial institutions that are interested regarding our debt. Moving on to the next page. So the structure of the Act for, it's a similar format every year. So there are three sections that you'd see on the screen. The intro section introduces the reader to the report and lays a foundation to provide context to the reader.

Included are manager's letter of transmittal, which highlights the city and acts like an open house tour for the reader. It also includes cities, the city's principal officials and org chart so that the reader can understand how the business is conducted within the city. Then there's the financial section. This is what most people think of as when they're looking at financials. So but it's an audited section.

This is the only section that's truly audited upon which includes the independent auditors report and their opinion if the financials present the financial position fairly in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles or what we accountants refer to as GAAP. And so we're happy to report that ours was given a clean opinion. The core financials that most folks refer to again as the financials. Part of the financial section that is important to read are the footnotes. They offer additional detail to the summary financial reports.

And then there is also the MD and A, which is the management's discussion and analysis report, and it provides results in plain English as a narrative of the results and highlights of the financials themselves. And then finally, the last section is the statistical section, which offers multi year financial trends, debt capacity, and demographic economic information. This again adds context to the users to understand not just current results, but long term financial trends, where we've been in the hopes of that we could start predicting where we're going into the future. Now several schedules, if they do offer trend data, it's over a ten year period for comparison. Again, it's a nice way to see where the city has been and how it has evolved over ten years.

Next, so how do we read the ACFR? Again, the statements provide the numbers. The year's highlights provided through the transmittal letter and MDNA are very important for the user to read through, as it's more common and understandable to the average reader. And then, again, the statistical section and the notes are integral to the review of the ACFR. So, moving to the next slide.

From the next section, from the three sections, we're gonna do some highlights of just the financial section tonight. Next. So, for the financial results, I'm focusing on the general fund tonight, and if we recall where we were in '23 coming out of COVID with '21 and '22 was when we were budgeting our numbers for '23 but we were considering that we would have a deficit at that time. So, at the end of fiscal twenty three, we actually came out ahead of by 03/2023, zero. So the revenue exceeded our budget by 2,200,000 and the expenses actually also exceeded the budget by $82,000,000.

You may say, wait, what? How do you get an increase with expenses that large? Just want to make sure you note that the expenses in the financials include some accounting standards that we have to address, and one of the standards this year in 'twenty three was the implementation of GASB 87 that has to do with leases. And by doing that, normally we just apply for rent as an expense, but GASB 87 said, okay, we're going to take this rent lease agreement that you have and we're going to make you consider this almost you have to report the long term liability that you have with that lease, as well as looking at the property that you're leasing in as an asset, a lease asset. So one big entry of $5,500,000 are included in those expenses.

So, if you really look at what we had net of that, it was only exceeded the budget by 2,700,000. And then also, the top number of general fund increase includes net of operating transfers, and on the flip side of that expense was $5,500,000,000 below the line. In net, when you look at all of the financials, that $5,500,000,000 addition to the expenses was offset by 5,500,000,000 so it nets to the bottom. So with that, we ended up with an increase of $300,000 Moving to the next page, I just wanted to highlight some of the areas of our revenue, why we were increased by 2.2 above our budget. Property taxes went up to the tune of 624,000.

Sales tax 541,000. TOT came out better than expected by 339. And then our fees and charges increased over budget as we forecasted at the mid year by 411,000. So, those were the highlights of the reason why we did see an increase in our revenues. The next slide shows something that we've been talking to recently are the sales tax.

And if you recall twenty twenty one during COVID, we actually saw some spikes. We had not only the the benefit of the county pool increase, the real real, but then in 2122, we saw the adjustment because the real real left and there were some other decreases at that time. However, starting in the fiscal year twenty two-twenty three, you see that the sales tax was starting to trend upward. So it was very gradual, which if you recall from several meetings ago when we looked currently, sales tax trend is increasing a little more aggressively. So, that's what we wanted to highlight for the financial section.

Moving to the next section, next slide. So, in the past, I've been here for about ten years now, There is another report that is referenced in the Act for to work hand in hand, which is called the Memorandum on Internal Control. So it's a separate report that's referenced in order to, when you're reviewing the financial results, can understand the environment of how the financial reports are prepared. We're calling it the MOIC, for short. MOIC hasn't been presented at least since I've been here, publicly for at least ten years.

Therefore, I wanted to give a little background of how to read this report and what it's for. So the purpose is it describes the scope of the audit. It's very important to understand they don't look at everything every year. That's just impossible. So there is a risk assessment that takes place that has to be done at the beginning of each engagement, And MOIC describes the procedures that they've taken to perform these assessments, and what they've decided to look at, and the results of those tests.

And then, they look and see if there are any findings, then there are actionable recommendations given by the auditors. Why it matters. This is huge for the governing body, which is the city council, to understand what's going on and how the reports are being prepared. And it enhances the transparency for each of you to fully understand what's underlying the numbers, and have trust in those numbers that are presented each year. And it includes a management's response, so that you see a recommendation, but also the management has a chance to either plead their case, or at least describe what has already been implemented, or if there are anything that maybe cannot be done.

So I just want to make sure that you understand that having a finding is not a bad thing. It's very good to learn best practices, learn what new methods are, but the auditors have to do their job, and advise if there's a risk, if there's a risk out there. But sometimes, like in a city, a smaller city like ourselves, there could be comments that it's not cost effective to do something, so you have to determine how am I going to mitigate that risk. So, those are areas that would be included in these management response. So, it's important to know that.

It's not a bad thing to have a finding, and it's very important for the auditors and staff, the city, to work together to get to the best process possible. Moving on to the next slide. So, these are the focus areas. Control environment, tone at the top. This is huge.

How does the information flow? How are the policies and procedures put into place and adhered to? Again, the risk assessment, there's based off of areas, whether it's trends, or whether it's city specific trends, or if there's areas that could be a concern for a city, depending on looking at budget to actual. There are a lot of tests that are done to determine that risk assessment at the beginning of the engagement. Then then control activities are reviewed, information communication, and then the monitoring of processes and reporting.

Moving to the next area. So, the structure of the MOIC, the cover letter was the memorandum, and then it goes into each finding. And so, there's different sections. There's a schedule of material weakness, a schedule of significant deficiencies, and then the schedule of other matters, which are not only findings, but it's also an opportunity for the auditors to alert not only staff, but mainly the governing body that there are additional GASBs that are out there that the city is going to have to prepare for. And it's a way to educate the council on these matters coming down the line.

Okay, moving to the next slide. So for the fiscal year '23, I think it's very important to note that from the findings that the city the the the findings that resulted in Lamoig for the city of for this year did not change that audit opinion and I think we won't need to stress that. However, personally, me, I apologize for the delay of these financials. And I understand that it is not ideal to have this late in the game, and I understand that it's very important to have timely information on a regular basis, and for you as the governing body to make sure that you feel you're making the best decisions you have with the best information. And so, with that, we have to look at this report and understand that the staff report is very descriptive of each finding and recommendation.

We don't want these delays in reporting to be an issue, but we expecting to see these comments because we knew that there were delays in the process. Mays would not, Mays, our auditing firm, would not be doing their job if they didn't make these comments. And so we as staff, again, work with the auditors understanding that. But with that, we agreed with the recommendations that they made. We understand the importance of timely records and reporting, And the main thing is what do we do now?

And so I'm here to alert you or to inform that remedies are already, started to be put in place. We've taken steps to move us in a better position to not only catch up but also how do we prevent to be in this position going forward. As discussed in the staff report, these steps include department reorganizations, expanding assignments to staff, accessing external resources, whether that's external to our department, as well as external consultants. And then also improving the technical tools that we have, whether that's the software tools and applications. So, with that, I want to look at beyond.

The next slide. The city is in a very strong position financially. We're teed up to we've had positive results and we're in a position to continue to be strong. But I want to highlight the areas of the financials and the strategic methods that we're using. From the city's revenues, we've already started fee and tax studies to improve the revenues and find ways to expand those revenues.

We're seeing growth in sales taxes as we described before, so it puts us in a better position going forward. On the expense side, we know that we have to consider the labor negotiations that are, you know, NYUs are gonna expire in June. So those costs are coming later this year, so we have to manage that. And then also, the staff continues to do, to have efficient management of resources is our responsibility as staff. We're continually reviewing our procedures, our programs to streamline as much as possible in order to keep costs down, and to use our resources better.

On the fund balance side, we have policies in place that are strong to plan for the next day or for future years and it's up to us that we have to evaluate when we're going to, you know, if there's changes that need to be made but the city has history of maintaining strong policies because it's not scared to reserve for the future. And I think that's very important, it's something that this council should be proud of. And then finally, on the strategic side, this is primarily for the finance department. We're committed to providing consistent reporting and long term financial planning. Although we've been meeting with departments and management and providing reports, it hasn't been as consistent as it should be.

And so we're committing to do that. As soon as 24 audit report is completed, we'll be applying for the bond rating reinstatement, And then finally, we're addressing our staffing and reinforcing the assignments that we have. So with that, I just again want to thank you for your time and for this opportunity for us to at least address some of the issues that have caused delays in this reporting. And I wanted to introduce you to a consultant that we've engaged, Carol Atwood, who would like to say a few words. She's engaged to assist with the audits to complete twenty four and twenty five, and also work with me in some strategic planning in our department.

So with that, Carol.

Good evening, mayor Meckham and council members. My name is Carol Atwood. I'm a consultant with, Municipal Resource Group, otherwise known as MRG. I didn't do retirement well, so I got bored and decided to go into consulting. And I have to say I've been very busy in the finance and admin services arena, because things have changed over the years in finance.

And so in that effort of being transparent to the council, I did want to give you kind of an updated report. I've been working with your city manager and finance director for the last several months, mostly on project management and strategic planning and how can we get this backlog done so that we can get our reporting caught up and that you can have your budget and your ACFR presentations done on a timely basis, apply for awards again and get that information also out to your citizenry. I want to report that finance departments and I was over financed for over thirty years. In the past, they were the silent department that really didn't have a lot of fanfare and exposure to the public like a park and rec department or even planning and building or public works. They just kind of made sure everybody got paid on time and vendors checks were out there and and the financials were were done on time.

But I would say in the last five to ten years that has changed a lot and it's keeping me very busy in my second career here because I can't tell you how many clients I've gone into just in the past two years and have assessed you know what's the bottleneck in finance and why aren't these reports getting out on a timely basis? Why aren't the year end closes being done on a timely basis? And it boils down to three areas and Carolina kind of addressed that but it's it has to do with software conversions. The department thinks they can do it on their own. They wanna save money for the city because finance people are normally pretty frugal to our detriment.

And second is turnover. We've had a lot of retirements in the past ten years. Turnover is not an easy thing to do because sometimes you don't get noticed on it and then to do a recruitment takes four to five months to actually fill. By the time you make sure that job description is correct and you go out and recruit and you hope you have a good applicant and then you have background and everything else. So that's a definite and then as Carolina mentioned in just the GASB pronouncements I'm so glad as a CPA they only had 13 FASB at the time.

And now they have a lot of extra compliance. And just the new GASB one zero one uncompensated absences for your fiscal year twenty five coming up, that thing takes forever to compute because you have to look at trends for by employee and are they going to take sick leave even though it vests and vacation. It's not a real easy calculation anymore. So all of those mandates have added to workload. And unfortunately the bad news is Brisbane is right in there with the rest of my clients.

And you've kind of done it on supercharge mode because instead of just one computer conversion like a Tyler Munis conversion, you've had five in the last five years. And you've had major turnover or situations where employees have been out because of family medical leave. We have an aging population and a lot of people are taking care of parents these days, and then finally the mandates. So I want to tell you even though it's bad news, you're not alone in this boat and what we're trying to do is is get a lot of finance departments back up to speed and almost treat it these days like a disaster preparedness plan where you give them the tools to if they start to fall behind they know what to do to hire people to help them get over those humps or that special project. The good news, although I know it doesn't seem like it tonight because you only have your 23 audit before you, but the good news is you have a dedicated staff that is a very good team because I've watched them and they interact well with each other.

I think in the future they need to expand that with the other departments so that there's no surprises on grants or capital projects or a developer that's being a little challenging. The biggest thing that I think is going for you is your staff is owning this, and so is your city manager. And they are not putting up excuses and they are agreeing with their auditors on all of these findings and they are asking for help on how can they put in more streamlining, how can they delegate, How can they fix software that hasn't been working like your budget module, which takes forever just to get the budget to actual statements in your ACFR. It's amazingly long process. And then finally, they are making progress and I wanted to tell you that tonight.

You're not in that boat alone. Your staff is making progress. We are about ready to wrap the fiscal year 'twenty four ACFR statement and internal control statement, which will look very similar to the one you have before you tonight. So we didn't expect anything different. It'll also address the fact that you had to have a single audit this year for '24 because you had federal funding over a 750,000 threshold.

That is getting started because you you need to take the financial statement numbers and then do the the single audit numbers and make sure you're in compliance. So that's going to hold up '24 a little bit but but as far as the the actual statements and the MOIC that will probably be done in the next couple of weeks. So again, you're making progress. Staff has done a good chunk of the fiscal year twenty five audit as we speak. They have the auditors coming in for interim in the next week to week and a half to do interim audit work on '25.

And if we can get '25 behind us shortly after '24, then you're going to be in pretty good shape because then you're doing 26 on time. So I wanted to give you that information so that at least you feel like there's a light at the end of the tunnel by someone that's an outsider looking in. And then I would also like to say that we also have one of the audit partners from Mays and Associates here tonight as well. Not the partner that was on this particular audit because she's on vacation on an anniversary vacation, but Grace has come down to answer any technical questions you might have because some of the pension liability and inflows and outflows if you happen to look at this because you couldn't sleep that night, she can answer all those questions for you. So I'm gonna turn it over to Grace, and if you have any questions, I'm happy to answer those as well.

Good evening, councilman council members. I'm standing by to see if you have any questions. My name is Grace. I'm representing Mason Associate. We are the external auditor for the city or not one of the reputable municipal auditors. Thank you for joining us, and and I think that we're we'll go to some council questions but we may have questions for anyone of you three if you could stand by and and thank you also miss Atwood for joining us tonight and giving that portion explanation presentation. That's very helpful as well. Carolina, did you have more that you needed to continue first?

No, I just wanted to open it up to questions and and just you know, let let you know that Carol and Grace are available for. Okay. General questions.

So, before we get into questions, I just in seeing the presentation you had and when I see GASB now, think they should change the name to GASB because the dollar amounts that we saw, it's striking, but I I also understand GASB just keeps layering more and more requirements. So, anyway, let's start with council member, and and thank you for the presentation and all of you being here, by the way. So let's go into questions. Council member O'Connell?

I don't have any questions right now. Thank you.

Okay. Council member Kern?

I do have some questions. So thank you so much, for the detailed overview and and letting us know the state of the state where we stand on the audits. So, my question, again, the newest council member, so my first time through one of these. So the council's gonna receive this tonight. We're going to accept it, or should we accept it? Let's put it that way. Should we accept it? What happens tomorrow morning going forward? What are the next steps?

For the audit? Yep. Well, the audit is complete. As far as our recommendations, obviously, those are continuing that we keep working towards any recommendations from the Lemoic. But then we're off and running working on the next year. Which we've already we're in the middle of but continuing to complete the next fiscal year's audit.

Got it. Thank you. There's a statement in here and it's on page one forty seven of four fifteen. It says, the city of Brisbane maintained an a plus rating from Standard and Poor's at 06/30/2023. However, the bond rating was removed in late twenty twenty five due to the late submission of financial statements. Is this a true statement?

That's correct. So at the time of the fiscal year close, we still had the rating. But one of the one of the requirements of presenting an ACFR is to provide significant events subsequent to the audit date to better inform the reader of anything that's transpired since 06/30 that we are currently aware of, up to the audit date, which is, December 25.

Okay. In rereading that statement, let me rephrase my question. It says, however, the bond rating was removed in late twenty twenty five due to late submission of financial statements. Is that the only reason the bond rating was removed?

That was the the reasoning they provided during their notification.

Thank you. You guys did such a great job, teeing this up that you answered several of my questions in that. One moment. I'm normally a little more organized than this.

Do you want us to come back to you?

No. Oh, okay. I'm good. Alright. So it's it's difficult to ask questions on this because we're asking about stuff that's three years ago now. Right? We're in a completely different position, but there is some stuff that was standing out, and I just feel like I have an obligation as a my fiduciary responsibility to ask the question. Absolutely. So on page two twenty one of four fifteen, it says FEMA assistance. So in January 2023, I remember we had our, quote, unquote, I'll call it a mudslide. I don't know what else to call it in town here. It said the city received approximately 550,000, dollars as of April 2024. Is that all we're expecting from FEMA?

No. Okay. That's not all? No. So '23 and then, '24 we received more, so we're over $2,000,000 in receipts.

Okay. So that's where my question lies here. It says, we have the damage and the city received notification from FEMA that the scene will receive a grant funding to cover certain construction costs. The city received approximately $550,000 in April '24, but this audit ends in June '23. I didn't understand this sentence. The city received approximately 550,000 in the ape in April '24. That would be outside of this audit period.

Again, we're required to inform the user of anything that's transpired between 06/30 and the audit date of December 25.

Got it. Okay. Thank you. Okay. That's with that one. I have one more here. Let's see what this is. So I'm on page, 276 of 415, and it's called the City of Brisbane custodial funds combined statement of net position. And it's got a list of custodial funds, developer deposits fund, other custodial funds. I'm sure you're very familiar with the page, intimately familiar. Why does BDI nine thousand Marina Fund, why is it blank?

Let's see if I That is the latest fund for I'm sorry. You're looking at the assets?

With page two seventy seven of four fifteen.

Yeah. At the time, we I think it was we have a fund, but I don't believe it was set up, but I could follow-up on that. Yeah. Because it shouldn't everything should add up, and so since we're doing it later, it could have been set up on our system but no without activity at that time and this is for this is the newer property on Sierra Point for the hotel portion.

Got it. And then also on custodial funds and this is my final question at this time. I don't see anything from regarding the Baylands on the custodial funds. Is there a reason that that wasn't included in this reporting period?

It actually is, and it's sitting in the, developer deposits fund column.

Oh, it just doesn't say BB. Okay. Yes. Thank you so much. That's all. Thank thank you.

You're welcome. Mayor Pro Tem Davis.

So when do

we expect our bond rating to be reestablished?

So one of the requirements was not only to have fiscal twenty three completed, but also to have '24. So that's why we're working very diligently to get that completed sooner than later. So as soon as those are available, we will be applying. However long that takes, it could take, you know, we were told it could take like six to eight weeks. Some other agencies have had it sooner, but that's what they've indicated, and it's also not only dependent on us, but on their resources as well.

When do we expect to fully be caught up with all of our outstanding audits?

So with field work being done in for fiscal year twenty five to be conducted in June. Our hope is to have a report available in late July or August. For us to review and then from there depending on also the the auditors have their resources that they have to provide as well. Considering that we are not only it's not only up to us, but that's what we're shooting for.

Realistically, once close of the fiscal year, how quickly do audit do we expect audits to happen?

So even though it's June 30 is the date of the audit, you actually have until August to recognize revenues that come in regarding that year and then recognize expenses like late invoices, but for services provided. So by the time we get our information over to the auditors, it's usually like October. And because we're a smaller city, we're usually scheduled later in the year, and so most of the time the auditors are actually here in November. And so we're due to have it by the December because of the bonds and also because of Measure A and Measure W requirements.

So So it could be under normal conditions.

It could take

six It could be six months and that would be standard and poors would say that

that's Yeah.

A realistic amount of time.

Yes.

Okay. That's it. That's all my questions.

Okay. Council Member Linds.

Thank you. Yeah, thank you for the report. Obviously, we can't go back in time. We have to deal with what we're dealing with right now. Though it is of course helpful to understand how things transpired so that we don't do this again. So just to be clear, what you're presenting right now is only the fiscal year of 2223. And that all of the financial information in here is related to the that fiscal year. Correct. No other fiscal year.

Correct. Except for an area which is called the subsequent events that would talk about anything that transpired since between June and then December when the audit was finalized.

Okay, great. And then the annual comprehensive financial report, that is required by state law?

Yes.

Okay. And what happens if you don't submit that report? Is there a letter that comes from the state saying, Hey, where is it?

They keep track of who has submitted and who doesn't. We haven't received any letters from the state, but there's also a separate filing that we have to do with the state. That's the Department of Finance. We also have the annual the name escapes me, but it's basically an annual financial report that we have to file. And we file that, and then it coincides with the financials. So for 24, that has been submitted. 23 had been submitted. 24 has been submitted. With the information we had at the time. So they are aware that our financials are not final.

Okay. Alright. Yeah. Just trying to get an understanding, you know, if you don't pay your taxes

Right.

They they just don't say, hey. Uh-huh. You know, see you later. You know, I hope you pay the next time.

Mhmm.

Okay. Let's see. Okay. So the the memorandum on internal control. So the auditors issued the memorandum on internal control. That's also required to be a part of the the ACFR. So that that has to happen?

Yes, it works hand in hand. It's referenced alongside with the within the act for you'll it is referenced that for the governing body to make sure that they're aware there's a a separate report that's out there for your information to to to go through all all of the the areas required.

Okay. Alright. You know you know, one of the the things about, you know, public government is that you have to be transparent. You want to be accountable. And here we are on the dais, and we're talking about these things, and the public can read them.

So under the schedule of material weakness, so it says that, you know, you you give the reasons for the delay. And and I know that you had mentioned those those reasons in previous meeting. So, I'm just trying to understand where the communication was. I know that's part of one of your slides. It talked about improving the communication.

And so, obviously, you know, when you read this, there's a there's a lot of issues going on. The previous city manager was in charge, not the current one. So I'm curious. What was your communication with the previous city manager in regards to, hey. Here are these issues. I I need some help. What was there any of of that?

There are regular meetings that I have in my position with the city manager, and information is shared on issues happening within our department as well as with the city, obviously. At the time, having additional resources was not an option available to us, which now has changed.

Got it. Got it. Alright. Obviously, those those weren't there. The city manager and you said, hey. Yeah. There's nothing we can really do about this right now because of the circumstances.

All I could say is that obvious when things start gradual, and then things were compounded with projects and limited resources, with a small department and small city, the community sees. Those functions were working timely, and payroll, UB, those things that people are interfacing every day. Because of a small department where you have limited resources of reviews, and to maintain internal controls, which is very important. Segregation of duties is extremely important in order to have strong financials. But it's a challenge with smaller because there's less people to do those reviews and supervisory steps.

So that was the area where we didn't have as much as we needed because the same resources doing those were also part of the other projects of software implementations, and experiencing leaves themselves. So, it was a smaller group, which again, we've changed that now going forward, or Carol's here as one of the changes has been to help alleviate that level, so that it won't be an issue going forward. Okay.

So my last question is, you know, so we're putting these remedies in place. How will the council be updated with data not just hey things are moving along. Right? I mean I think that was part of the problem. I mean we as council members one of the biggest responsibility we have is the budget And it's hard for us to do our job in a responsible way if we're not seeing the data as well.

So as you're moving forward with these remedies, how you how will you inform the counsel of in details, not just in kind of gloss over, but more detailed information for us.

So as we mentioned in the slide of beyond one of the strategic commitments we have is we've already implemented a new budgeting tool to simplify and avoid some of the problems that we were having with the budget tool that didn't work and was causing issues. But also it was causing part of our financial process to stop and go for the reporting. And so our commitment is to have the financial reports, not just the investment reports, but more of the financial performance of the general fund and other major funds presented to management and therefore to the councils. My understanding that was the plan.

Okay. Thank you.

Carolina at all. You've already answered a question about S and P and bond rating. Do we not, in addition to audit being delayed, have a difficulty with GVMID?

That was a separate issue for the utility bond. So there was a concern, the reason they looked at us, it started with the concern because the utility funds were not meeting the compliance ratios. And so it started the path of them going forward. And part of the concern that they had is that in order to, through the financials, they have their own rules. They actually have a two year limit for you to provide financials.

So unfortunately, because it went beyond that, they had to pull the rating.

So will the the bond related to GVMID have to be remedied before S and P will consider looking at the rating?

My understanding is to have the rating, it it could alter what rating we receive. I see. But the financials was the the reason that was provided.

Okay. And reading about implementation software systems, and that's always very rocky any anybody who's gone through that. And the two that were noted were land permitting system and marina billing and birth management systems. I wasn't clear whether these are under the jurisdiction of the finance department or planning and marina public works. Could you clear that up for me?

So they are not under our our purviews per se Mhmm. Under our management. However, they have to be planned in coordination with our financial system. Optimal use is to fully integrate. And so when we were working with the planning team to go through the clarity, which is the land permitting system.

There are a lot of steps in place and they have to make sure that the information that the design that they have will provide the information that we need in order to provide the financial information. So the transactional data reporting payment systems that have to go through us eventually, all of that we have to coordinate with them. And so those are projects that require supervisory level and above to participate. And so same with the MOLO system for the marina, It was, again, it was a design, how to design it so that when they give us, if it's not going to be fully integrated, then the reports that are generated from the system have to provide enough information for us to use it and then do the entries that we need on our system. And then also, they we have to plan for the the payment structures and modules that they implement.

Okay. So that kind of begs the question for me that knowing we're a small city, we've had an IT consultant who noted copious amounts of software being used by different departments. And I don't know who wants to take this question on anybody that's willing. And knowing that going forward, we've made requests as a council to start looking at all the IT software applications and finding better ways, as you mentioned, to integrate them between departments. And the concern is you had to react in finance to something going on in two different departments.

How can we improve that? Because if that comes at a time, well, we're rolling this out in planning, not an issue, but you're trying to prepare for an audit. Mhmm. This is this is not an easy thing to do. And so have have we given any thought to maybe and maybe this is just citywide staff and the city manager trying to implement better coordination so that I mean, two software integrations in one period of time, that's a lot if it involves your department, and you don't have a choice.

You have to get up to speed and they're going, hey, we're we're putting this in place. You don't have a choice and you're going, wait a minute, I'm really busy over here. So any suggestions, any of you would you like to address on from your perspective how can we make that better?

Actually through the chair I could probably start that and perhaps Caroline and the team have something to share. And you know I always want to be candid about our observations related to our operations. One observation that I made relatively quickly when I first joined the organisation and I've been working with the department heads on is de siloing our departments. For too long our departments were operating effectively in many ways independently one another and not communicating with one another. So there's a lot of real opportunity to break those barriers down and some what we're doing is very simplistic sort of opportunities.

One example is the hiring management analyst Molly Brown. Molly allows the city manager's office to have someone who's has budget experience, has other experiences going between the departments and ensuring that we're having the conversations that we need to have. At the department head meetings, I changed those meetings in in order to ensure that everyone's hearing about projects as they were coming into their embryonic stage, and then I've included staff members who weren't previously part of those discussions. So I think that that's helped immensely. I think it's a structural cultural issue that that we've had for some time and and, like I've I've made the joke, you're turning the the ship in a very with one rudder, and it takes a little bit of time, but I'm proud of the work that the staff has done and have embraced a culture where we're a little less protective of our own domains and a little more interested in making sure that we're all working together in the same goal.

But that's just one a couple examples of what we're trying to do.

Thank you. That's helpful. I think one other thing just as I recall from the IT consultant is that because of years and years of different software applications, and each department has its goals. So what you're talking about breaking down the siloing, that is important. But also other departments understanding how many things feed into finance and that you may be doing manual entries that maybe shouldn't be that done that way.

And thinking about we talk about software and adding software and responding to the public wants information. And it it often makes things way more complicated and gaspy adding on. Public wants more info. We keep trying to provide it, but it comes at a cost because you have x y z size staff, and it it becomes more and more difficult because somewhere in there, things you don't just press a button. People think computers do everything, or AI is gonna just fix everything.

There there comes a point at which there's manual, there's the intelligence of the the personnel and the department having to deal with this. So I did wanna give you an opportunity to respond also about the software integration.

I do want to say that I actually am grateful that finance was involved in the design of some of these other implementations, because I've been in companies or agencies where finance comes in at the end, and by then it's too late. Then you just have to work with whatever's there. And I've also done many software implementations throughout my career. And so one of the options also is not only internal resources, but whether we need to bring in someone external to work side by side to voice the financial needs. So that could be an option as well.

So it would be like hiring someone, like a consultant too, that is familiar with either the tool or from the financial perspective, not just the land permitting side. So, and then they would work hand in hand and with us to help be our voice for the decisions that have to be made as they're finalizing the design. So, and I I do echo Jeremy in the sense where moving away from silos has definitely been a help and a step in the right direction.

Susan, Chair, another area that I think is germane to this conversation is I think this organization is exceptionally good at preparing reports or having consultants prepare reports and I think we have a room for improvement and implementation of those reports. There are a variety of reports including the IT report that we have not fully implemented for a variety of reasons partially with change in staff now that we have James Stevenson on board he can support that project. So that's another area where I think we can get bogged down at times and then we got to sort of start over especially with some of these older reports, which is unfortunate.

Any again, any changes within software applications, it's it's very easy for one department to say, this works really well for us. We wanna purchase this software. But this will then take a lot of planning to make sure it integrates really well across other departments and that's very helpful when you talk

about the department heads will tell you that I'm a bit of a stickler when it comes to requests for new software at this point. I I am simply not interested in adding software, for the sake of adding software. I'm really much more interested in seeing what we can get out of what we currently have. Do they are they compatible with one another? So I want us to always be very cautious in in knee jerking into, well, we'll just get the software to solve this problem.

And I look at it from a fiscal perspective too. You could do that two or three times and suddenly you've added a couple $100,000. We don't own anything anymore. We rent everything. So you could see over the course of just a few years, this is true in one of my in my previous experience in another community where suddenly you have a lot of software, you're spending a lot of money and it it hasn't been fully considered how it all fits together. You're just trying to solve a problem that's in front of you.

Okay. And then I have one last kind of off the wall question. And in thinking about reserves and because this audit was a year that was a difficult year in January with the storms and the mud and the rocks coming down the street and the water, and it makes me look at reserves in a new light. And also with the current policies that have come out of Washington on FEMA, and that that has me concerned. Are there cities that are implementing new approaches to reserves because of that?

New approaches or modifying?

In terms of modifying or saying these type of changes would be advisable at this time.

I could just say I know that we've already started discussing as far as you know revisiting policies that we have in place. Not necessarily resulting maybe from the particular. Areas. Carol or Grace, if you have any comments on that.

Well, and I I don't know how long our reserve policy has been in effect. So, I mean, that that's we could get into another whole discussion on that. But when you start looking at the dollar amounts and you go, maybe it's time to revisit that.

Right. And and it just because some of the some of the reserves that we had the the amounts that we had were that was the price at that time.

Yeah. Very good at the time. Could you come up here One

shoe does not fit all. You will look at 10 different agencies and find 10 different reserve policies. But I think I was reading that your last time you looked was like in 2017. So it's nice to look at those reserves at least every ten years. I would say that since your sales projections look so good for sales tax, now might be a great time to look at those reserves because you have that future potential when you're looking at a long term financial planning to actually start to to have more reserves at your disposal, the last thing you want to do is necessarily try to spend them.

So I'd say a lot of cities right now are not in that same good financial position that you are. Sales tax is not increasing and so they are worried about how are they going to pay their CalPERS and if this new legislation goes in and kind of claws back PEPRA how in the heck are they going to pay their fire and public safety CALPRs and UAL. So they're kind of in a different boat than you but I would say now is a great time to look at those reserves because if you're projecting positive cash flow at the end of the year, the big things I see is is a reserve for capital projects, a reserve for economic uncertainty. I know you have already discussed a lot of this stuff and that's good for you and you're on the right track. But it would be a good time for you guys to actually add that to your goals I think when you're looking at budget goals and say what's the threshold where once I hit a certain reserve level it automatically goes to a pot of money or I'm going to take my UAL unfunded liability for CalPERS and maybe pay it off at a faster rate than a twenty year, maybe I'm going to go to a fifteen year or even more.

You'll never pay it off because you can't control the actuarial assumptions they make and their interest earnings but you can at least start to get your funding level up better by by putting some money into that pot. So good good suggestion.

Okay. And I'd like to just give an opportunity for someone on council if you have other questions you've thought of.

I just have one quick question. On page two seventy six of four fifteen, I wanted to follow-up on council member Kern's question about the developer deposit funds. And I understand BDI is not called out in this as a separate fund. Has that been corrected as of today in our financials?

I can make the recommendation if if we need to separate those. We'll reevaluate and discuss if that's what the council wants to see it separate because they they're separate funds there.

Well, every other project is separated. This is the only one that's a blanket. And so I'm not sure if that is just would be called BDI, developer deposit fund, or if that is a multitude of different developer funds?

It's a combination of

I'm sorry, I can't hear you.

There are two components to their funds, so that's a combined

But it's all BDI? Yes.

Yes.

Okay. So it's just improperly named.

So we can make that

I just want to make sure that is corrected.

For fiscal 'twenty four.

Thank you.

Anyone else? Okay. Sounds like that's it. Thank you very much. And thank you to Grace from Mays and also to miss Atwood for joining us tonight and Carolina for the presentation. Do we have any council discussion? Madam mayor, public comment? Oh, yes. I'm sorry. Thank you. Do we have public comment?

We have a hand raised from Diana Go

ahead.

Thank you counsel for and staff for presenting this. This has been kind of an ongoing thing. We're very delinquent in this. We've got another fiscal year end coming up in six weeks, and we're still like three, four years behind. One of the things I've been monitoring is some small communities similar to ours have established a finance and audit committee. I think maybe Brisbane might want to look into that. We can keep track of this because this kind of went sideways on us, which is very unfortunate. Thank you.

Okay. Any other public comments?

No, madam mayor.

Okay. Very good. Council discussion? Anyone? Council member council member Kern, we'll start with you.

I don't have any topics for discussion at this time.

Okay. Council member O'Connell.

No comments, but I'd make a motion to accept the report.

Okay. Let's see if we have any other discussion. Council member Lentz, please.

Yeah. You know, you know, I appreciate the the recommendations that that staff has said that they will do. I think it would be helpful if the council had, you know, a little bit more details things and maybe it's, you know, on a quarterly basis or whatever is appropriate. I think we have a finance committee, maybe more meetings with them just to get a deeper dive on understanding where we are and just just the process. Right?

Because this has been a black eye for the city, and we don't wanna go there again. So just putting that out there, and I would I would also move forward with approving this.

Okay. Mayor Pro Tem Davis?

Well, I appreciate the third party input. And it's I don't know if relief is the right word, but to know that we are not your this is not isolated with just us. This is something that you're seeing across many cities. It doesn't necessarily give me comfort, but it doesn't make me feel as bad. And it it sounds like this is kind of really boiled down to the three areas highlighted and that you mentioned, and they're in the staff report.

And so I'm glad that we've gotten kinda some extra support to ensure that we're getting this completed and back on track. And so I'm looking forward to getting our audited 2023, 2024, and 2024, 2025, and then our twenty twenty five, twenty twenty six. So, anyhow, I I hope we're not in this position again, and I'm glad we're taking the steps to rectify. So

Yeah. I I would just echo the same comments, but also thank all of staff for your patience with all of our questions. And city attorney, this doesn't appear to be an action item for a vote or it we are accepting the audit. Do we need to do a vote

on this?

Yes. Okay. So that being said, accepting the fiscal year twenty two twenty three audit, can I have a first and second, please?

I already did the first.

Okay. Councilor Rolland, I'll second.

A second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? No. Okay. Okay. Thank you very much.

Next

item on our agenda is item w, receive sanitary sewer smoke testing information update. Staff report, please. Looks like Miles is coming to the podium. Good

evening, madam mayor, members of the council. Miles Misericana Public Works Director. While the slide gets slide deck gets loaded up, this will be the only time I'll blow smoke at the council meeting. So I couldn't help myself. I'm sorry.

So we're I'm here tonight to just provide a quick update on the city's upcoming sanitary sewer smoke testing. Next slide please. As we mentioned, recommendation just as just an informational item. This is a project, a program that's been funded as part of our operating budget, so there's no action requested tonight. Next slide please.

A little bit of background. The reason we do the the smoke testing and these different types of testing that we do for our sanitary sewer system is because of the aging infrastructure, and this is not uncommon. This is something that a lot many municipalities face, and the city of Brisbane and our utilities team has made this a priority, especially as it relates to our sewer system. As we're looking at additional costs and negotiations with our wastewater treatment plant provider. So that's an important part.

The other component is the aging infrastructure. We have bulk of pipes sewer system networks that are dating back to 1940s and 1980s those are the ages at that point where you really want to start looking at it. Eighty years is a great life for an asset for wastewater systems and Some of those are getting to that point. We are looking at analyzing areas of critical concern with the purpose of boosting our reliability, efficiency, and addressing areas that have the highest risk with respect to failure. And then as we do that analysis then it's the planning and investigating component which is now that we know we have an issue, where is it specifically and how do we address it?

Next slide please. A little bit of background. We did an infiltration inflow study back in 2024, and it was finalized in 2025. And what that is is we are looking at two different sources of non wastewater entering the system. Infiltration is one of them and that's groundwater seeping into our pipes or manholes and that's through failures of our system, cracks, joints, separations, things like that.

Then you have inflow and that is categorized more about, more with rainfall specifically and that's looking at storm water infiltrating, inflowing into our systems through it could be as simple as a clean out cap that's missing from your private sewer lateral or in some cases you have improper plumbing where you have a rainwater your downspouts that are tied into the sanitary sewer system rather than, your storm drain outlet. Next slide, please. So what did the study reveal? The INI study revealed that there was a noticeable amount of inflow and infiltration, and again, not surprised given the age. Although this picture looks really awful, I will say that's a true root that's in the that's in one of the main the conveyance systems.

But but these are the types of things that we find. And even though so there's two things with this this photo. Right? It's a potential blockage point if you've if you've got a lot of flow coming through. But also because it's broken into the pipe itself, when there is a rain event, water can find its way into the system pretty easily just following the tree root itself.

And so, you know, we targeted specific areas. We look at Brisbane as five distinct gravity basins and they're geographically located and we focused our study on the critical areas where we had the oldest pipe network. And again, does put strain on our overall system. It's not a capacity related issue, but it is a cost issue. Next slide please.

Again, so just a little bit more details as far as, how this affects our community and our operations. Is, with high I and I, there's potential for overflows because again, like the true you saw, there's a blockage, get flow, you get something like that starts bottling up and then you start having backups and that could be released and spilled out of the system and then there's concerns with, that release of that materials. Obviously there's a public health component to this where you could have some nuisance gases in some places with faulty plumbing as well as the overflows that could ultimately reach local water bodies. That's obviously a concern for whether it's through storm drain or making its way to, you know, the the gutter, different different types of systems. And then there's obviously the environmental impact that that causes as well, with potential, soil contamination, with pipes that have leaks that have, that remain unimproved.

And so to remedy these issues that we found in the INI study, we are looking at doing smoke testing and that really helps us really focus and identify specific locations of that infiltration and inflow. Next slide, please. My apologies. We were trying to see if we We tried to embed a video. This was a little forty five second clip, but it's not able to play.

There was no sound with it, but I will share a little bit more detail. So, what is smoke testing itself? That device you see, it's basically a little lawnmower generator and what you do is it has a seal. It comes with a seal that's the size of a manhole and what these companies do is they place it right on top of a manhole. They pop the lid, they put this device on there and then they isolate the system.

They have these, we call them balloons. They basically put different areas. They isolate the system based on the I and I study that kind of points us to where we should be doing these additional tests and then we basically watch to see where the smoke comes out. There are, it could be a cracked service lateral, it could be, somewhere within the public network, it could be coming out of a roof drain, a gutter, and that again will point to where those issues are actually coming from. And so the smoke that is utilized is a non toxic white smoke that goes through again our system.

This is one of the leading ways to identify. It seems really simple, but it is one of the fastest ways to identify major issues and there's been times where I've done this in other jurisdictions and we've seen, I've seen a variety of different ways that the smokes come out. The most common simple solution is the clean outs. A lot of times these things get kicked over, you know, they degrade over time. And it's a relatively simple fix, about 30 to $40 for a new cleanout cap.

You put that on there and that takes care of a lot of it. But again, we will do this work and it takes the guesswork out of where those problems are and you're not chasing it. I also want to mention that the smoke itself, as I mentioned, non toxic, it is a vegetable oil based smoke. It is very similar to theatrical smoke that you would find at a fog machine. So that's the kind of stuff that we're talking about.

I understand there is the concern with that, with any type of smoke and particulates, so we wanted to do a lot of outreach and we've done quite a bit. Next slide please. Here's, again, this is another graphic that just kind of shows, the potential, when when we're doing this, activity where you can kind of see the smoke coming up through cracks, know, percolating through, the street section itself, and that that's a pretty common way to find these defects. What will folks what can people expect to see when we're doing this work? It's actually a relatively quick operation.

For

the 40% of our network that we're planning to smoke test in late June, it's about a week's worth of work. So what people can expect to see out in the public right of way are field crews observing these types of activities. We'll be documenting specific situations. We might we have little landscape flags that we'll put in certain spots. The the contractor will be taking photographs and that they will compile the report for for the staff to take a closer look.

As well, you can also anticipate some traffic controls, so we would have additional signage that would be put up, alerting motorists of folks working in the in the roadway. That'll be managed by the contractor. We're gonna be ensuring safe work zones with public work staff as well on-site, especially in critical locations. One of the spots that we'll be doing is the 5 Points Intersection. So obviously there we wanna make sure that we do it in a way that it's, that the crew's safe, that people know where they're navigating as they try to traverse it while maintaining, as much traffic lanes as possible.

And then on top of that, we will, we've been doing a lot of, we will also be seeing, the signage that I mentioned, so they'll be positioned in appropriate locations for the day of activities. Next slide please. I will just briefly go over it, but this is it's really more about the map I think that's more important. The words on the left I've kind of mentioned a little bit. But on the right when you look at that map, the network of Central Brisbane, this is the area that we're really focusing on for the smoke testing as part of this current round.

The colored sections are the ones that we're going to be doing as part of this test. And again, those were based on the INI study that identified these as aging infrastructure as well as the high potential for the types of issues that smoke testing would identify. Next slide please. Outreach. This was really important for us. This is something that the city of Brisbane has not undertaken. I believe that the city tried to undertake smoke testing once upon a time about thirty years ago. There was a lot of concerns with this. I don't think there was lot of outreach at the time. So when that started moving forward, there was a little bit of pushback.

And at that time with technology, I can't say what what the specifics were but obviously we wanted to get ahead of it. So we've done quite a bit of outreach already. We've been at the farmers market. We've been tabling the farmers market with some information and sharing that what to expect when this is happening, why we're doing it. We've done a lot of outreach with our social media, The Blast, The Star, and a lot of different things to make sure that the community is aware that this is something that we're doing.

We don't want to surprise anybody. That's our goal. What we have coming up is a meeting and I apologize there was a typo on time and the staff report. We will be doing a demonstration next week on May 14 at the Brisbane Library at 05:30 to 07:30 where we will have the equipment there and show folks what it really looks like. We are also working we don't have a specific date, but we're working to, do some outreach with our senior center later in May.

And then as well as that, we've we've done some outreach with our business community and and the best we decided the best way with feedback from our city manager's office and our economic folks was to put some informational signage out along visitation in some of our business areas to give them an opportunity to understand what we're going to be doing and reach out to us if they have any questions. And then this is our flyer that we put out about a week and a half ago for folks if they want to come and get more information or join us at the library on Thursday, May 14 at 05:30. Next slide please. Okay, and then as far as next steps, so what are we going to do after this? So after they do the smoke testing we'll get a report.

Let me take a step back. As we're doing the smoke testing another component that I failed to mention was that we will also be providing direct notices to those areas that are going to be impacted by the smoke testing. We've done a lot of broad outreach but as we get closer to those specific streets we will notify folks on those blocks of the dates and times that they will be, that they could potentially see us out there. The reason is because if there's a faulty, if there is a faulty connection from a private home or business, it could, there is a possibility where, smoke could come up through a sink or through a gutter, depending on the situation. Most of the time when you see it inside the house or inside of a business from a sink or something, it's very common to happen in sinks that are unused.

I've seen it happen in garages where people have utility sinks because if you don't use it much, the P trap dries out. And as long as there's water in the P trap, usually contains the smoke from coming up through your sink. So what we have told folks is with the outreach material if that happens, one, call us, notify us, and two, usually if you just run water, that fills up the P trap and it will stop that. So again, outreach is really important for So once we go through this exercise, once we do all the smoke testing, the ultimate result would be a report that would identify specific locations and then the next step would be to identify and prioritize those areas. Some of the areas are critical and we would want to take care of depending on severity.

Some of them would be on a more long term capital planning perspective. And then if we have situations where it's a private system that has an issue, we would inform and support the residents and businesses in those situations to help them resolve those concerns and address those issues. I think that's it for me as far as the presentation. Thank you so much. Happy to answer any questions.

Thank you, Moss. It's unfortunate the company that does this doesn't refer to it as fog testing. That's that's mentioned in the staff report, and I think it helps alleviate the concerns over smoke. But thank you. Council questions? Let's start with council member Kern.

Maz, it is impossible for me to work with you and not learn something. So thank you so much for that always. So you showed a picture of a gutter that was, like, attached to, some sort of catch where where the water would be coming off of a roof, and that's not the appropriate place for that water to be going. How will you see that when you're smoke testing? So you can't possibly keep an eye on every house in the neighborhood.

So that's actually that's exactly what they're gonna be doing. That's that's that's why we isolate it and we do small sections. And so it's not that they come in one day and they set up that one day and then they run it. That one day, they're they're actually going to be hitting multiple streets.

And what

we do is we isolate each of those locations and we do block by block and with the with the intent of documenting every location that we see.

Makes sense. You mentioned the age of the pipes and you were going through the nineteen eighties. I know that construction started out on Sierra Point in, like, 1982 or so. Are you looking at the infrastructure at Sierra Point as well?

Not as part of this round. It is on our list for future rounds. What we like to do is every, maybe not every year, but every couple of years look at other locations of our system. The rationale behind where we chose to do it was because these were the highest priorities. Your point, although it is in the 1980s, the INI study did not find it at the same level of concern as Central Brisbane that we're gonna be focusing on.

Great. Thank you so much, Mas.

Okay. Council member Lentz?

Yeah. Similar questions to council member Kern. Obviously, Central Brisbane is area of concern with all the old infrastructure. But Crocker Park has been around for a while, and so have we ever done one of these tests, and are we gonna have one anytime soon?

We have not in Crocker Park, but I agree that's another location that we should be taking a closer look at. I will say that there are multiple ways. Smoke testing is one way of doing it. We have done closed circuit television, so camera ing of our systems. That is something that we've been doing ongoing.

So what we're going to do is a combination of CCTV work as well as smoke testing, and this will be a program that we're going to do long term. That was basically the I and I study. The recommendation was that we put a program together so that we take a closer look at all of our basins as we move forward. But, again, as I mentioned, we wanted to focus on the most critical first, and then moving forward, we will be looking at Sierra Point, Crocker Crocker Park, and and the other areas.

Alright. Because it seems from what you're saying is that the intrusion is mostly from trees. Correct? Or are there are there other

It's a combination. It could be a tree root. It could be, you know, an improper connection from a from a rainwater leader. It could you know, sometimes you can have an area drain where, you know, in a garage and or outside where it's kind of where where rain can get to it. A lot of times for garbage dumpsters, for example, refuse areas, that's the reason why you want to have it covered because you do want to capture some of that, you know, anything that spills out.

You don't want that going into your storm water system. But a lot of times you'll see, you know, if we have an area drain that goes into the sewer, we want to also make sure they have a roof over it so they're not just letting water run into it. So it is a combination of things. I wanted to share a couple of pictures and images of what some common themes are, but, it's to be seen what what it is. Could also be from just broken pipes even if there's no root, system intrusion. Having a cracked pipe and high groundwater table, would lead to the same.

Okay. Thanks.

Mayor Pro Tem Davis?

No questions. Thanks.

Okay. And Council Member O'Connell?

So when we're in when you're in the residential areas and you're doing this at the street, there could be a bank of houses with shared sewer lines going up the hillside or across the lawn or however you want to put it. Are we going to be seeing if there's cracks in those shared sewer lines that go between the blocks? Are they gonna be able to see stuff coming out of the woodlands?

Potentially. And that's and and that's why in those areas our utility team is working really closely with the contractor. So it's not just in the, you know, the 5 Points intersection, but also in those areas where you have, infrastructure that are between homes or in the backs of areas. We are not planning on actually going onto anybody's property. We would if we see something, we'll document it from the public right of way.

We may go and I think we've we've we've talked to our staff as well as our contractor to knock on the door if it's a resident that there's a situation in their backyard. But again, we would take those case by case basis. But the intent is to try to capture and document every area or any circumstance of of smoke that's visibly coming out of any any defect.

And so smoke that's detectable, is that going to be, you know, a certain size of leak? I mean, if it's just a tiny whisk, you're probably not gonna see it, especially if it's a windy day. And does wind have any play in this on when you can do it?

It can. No. You're no. That's that's true. I mean, the the environment could impact our ability to read some of that information, get some of that data. But I think for us, if we get some of those winces, part of it is making sure that we document as much as we can. There's also follow ups. So what I'd like to propose moving forward is that we have this on a cycle where we come back and try to look at every area every five to ten years as well as supplementing it with CCTV. It seems like a lot of cost, but overall, you know, pays for itself if we can reduce the cost of treating non wastewater.

Great. Thank you very much.

Maz, the the photographs were very interesting and also a little frightening at the same time. Just out of curiosity, so within Central Brisbane, we have a lot of very old, old pipes, sewer laterals. Would it be feasible? You showed the one photograph shows cracked pavement with smoke coming up. Could you potentially would would that make its way through dirt, through grass or vegetation?

It does. The machine has enough pressure to actually

push Yes. It Okay. So the public might just see this smoke fog coming up out of the ground. Correct.

And that's why it was really important for us to do as much outreach as we did. That's why we've chosen to go and do this community meeting next week and why we will be also following up with door hangers as we approach the date for the actual work.

Okay. And just curiosity because I know you were asked about cracks, leaks, etcetera. Do we have ground settlement issues?

Yes. I mean, I think I I would say any any jurisdiction has levels of varying ground settlement issues. For us, obviously when you get to Sierra Point and the fill, those are the areas that we see it, it's much more pronounced. But yeah, there are other issues there. If there's a settlement issue that has created a joint separation in a pipe, this would also be another way for us to identify it. Although those are usually captured really quickly with backups as well as with the closer television work that we've done. Okay. Because the camera won't go through it. These are the smoke testing kind of picks up things that is really hard to see on camera.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm asking because San Bruno Avenue with last so many years, the number of cracks and everything and the way the land is settling there, it's really pretty interesting to to see what's going on. I want always wonder what's going on underground. I'm about to find out. Does by the way, does does the San Francisco Water Department check their Hetch Hetchy mains that run underground through Brisbane? Do we know? I'm I'm not trying to put you on the spot. It just I'm glad we're doing this. I hope they do something similar because they have one decommissioned line under San Bruno as well.

Well, for their for the transmission the wastewater transmission line, they do CCTV work. That's pretty straightforward and those are pretty large pipes. They don't do that on potable water systems. This is not something that we utilize on that. Usually where you find with water systems because of the nature of that utility, would actually see higher losses for water metering. That makes

sense. Yeah. Okay. Do we have any public comments?

No, madam mayor. Not at this time.

Okay. And any council discussion? Council member Kern, mayor pro tem Davis? No? Council member O'Connell? No. Council member Linds? No? Okay. Thank you very much. Appreciate

this Thank you.

Discussion and presentation. Alright. Moving along. Item x, receive local hazard mitigation planning update. Staff report, please.

I do have a presentation if, Angel could please put it up. Thanks. I'll go ahead and start. Good evening mayor, mayor pro tem, and council members. Christina Fernandez, your assistant city manager. I'm here tonight to introduce the 2026 draft local hazard mitigation plan. As you may know, the plan is a multi jurisdictional study that identifies hazards and mitigation measures and it's led by the county. Next slide. First, a huge thanks to the planning team. This team provided data and surveys about the city and the hazards in the city from which the county and their consultants used in their formulas in order to write this plan.

Next slide. So as I mentioned earlier, the plan evaluates potential hazards and vulnerabilities in the city. It outlines, potential mitigation measures that we can take. It's a multi jurisdictional effort led by the county, and all of the 20 cities participate. And a big reason that we all agreed to participate is because then we are eligible for additional state and federal funding. It's also updated every five years. So the last time we did this was in 2021. Next slide. So just some key components of the plan. There are two volumes.

It's it's pretty it's a pretty big plan. The first volume is really it applies to the entire county, and the second volume has, every city's annex or every city specific plan, respective to their city. So that's where our focus is really on tonight is really on the the draft annex. And, let's see. The the really, meat and potatoes of this plan is the the hazard risk ranking and the mitigation actions, which will go into further detail.

Next slide. So just a little bit about the plan development. Know, staff participated in a county kickoff. They invited all the cities and special districts to participate. Staff then went to a workshop and provided data and surveys specifically about the hazards and the plans that we have existing in Brisbane.

We then provided that to the county and their consultants. They then provided us with a draft report, which we then took, and we, you know, we basically modified it and edited it to our liking. And, we're here where the star is at. We're bringing this draft report to you all for your comments. We're gonna incorporate your comments that we hear tonight, and we're going to provide that to the county, and then they will then provide that to their consultants to make those adjustments.

But I will say that it is formulaic such that a lot of the hazards that are identified are really based on formulas that were done based on the surveys that we provided. After that, they'll kick off a public engagement session for the month of May. It'll come back to you all for adoption later on in the year. I wanna say June, July, and then it will go to the board of supervisors for for their adoption publication. Next slide.

So in looking at the hazards, again, this was really something that came out of the formula. I put our top 10 hazards on that slide. The first three are our highest ranked, highest risk hazards. Urban flash flooding, heavy rainfall, earthquake, those were our top three. And that really is based on a formula of probability, extent of hazard, vulnerability, and impacts. Next slide. Implementation. So again, this is a plan that was updated. The last time it was updated was 2021. We had 18 mitigation measures.

We've added one since then, but we've also completed one. You know, those measures basically fall into these buckets, which is, planning, tactical work, collaboration, and policy. So in in planning work, the you know, examples of that could be, you know, developing post disaster recovery plans and a debris management plan. That is listed as one of our our action items. Another thing is institutionalizing, comprehensive training programs.

That's also a piece of that. And looking at tactical things that we can do as a city, looking at relocating structures that are located in high hazard areas or retrofitting them to to meet those hazards. We're also looking at backup generators or microgrids to power our our city's EOC during a disaster. Definitely something that we are looking at. Collaboration includes implementing this plan and continuing to work with our mutual aid partners.

And policy examples include strengthening our building codes to make sure that they are the latest and greatest as it relates to the IBC standards. Next slide. So what does adoption mean? It means that we're eligible for state and federal funding. We'll continue to collaborate with the county and with the 19 other cities on this plan.

We've identified local hazards and mitigation measures, which is great, and we'll integrate this plan into existing emergency planning efforts. What it doesn't mean is it doesn't mean that this does not preclude us from bringing forward new mitigation measures, so counsel's definitely welcome to provide us with any suggestions that you would like, separate and apart from this plan. We'd be more than be more than happy to take that. And it does not mean that we cannot, you know, meet emerging threats. Like, if there's a new threat or a new hazard that pops up, we can definitely deal with it when it comes our way.

Next slide. Just some next steps. We'll take your feedback and incorporate that into the draft plan. I will then provide that to the county, and they will then do some public engagement. We've already started to do some public engagement around this, so we've put it in the BLAST and we've put it in the STAR.

The county essentially was asking folks if they wanted to do, like provide like if they had a a comment or a, you know, a mitigation measure that they wanted to propose, you know, the public was welcome to provide that. So the county has all of that on their end. We'll then bring this back to council for adoption, and then the county will take this to the board of supervisors for their adoption and publication. And then staff will then begin to continue to work on this and implement, the mitigation measures. Next slide. And that's all I have. I welcome your questions. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you very much for that report. Council member O'Connell, do you have any questions?

On on page four of your report or three thirty seven of four fifteen, in the almost the last paragraph just above the table two paragraph, you talk about the Quarry Innovation Center, and it makes this project look like a done deal and the use.

Okay.

Is that something we're putting in to be proactive, at this point?

I will say that this, builds upon the 2021 plan. So some of this stuff is carryover from 2021. But that being said, we did try to update it to reflect sort of what was, you know, proposed for the future. I can definitely work to massage the language such that it doesn't appear to be such a a done deal.

Okay. Thank you. Yeah.

Mayor pro tem Davis.

No questions. Thanks, Christina.

Thank you.

Okay. Council member Lentz.

Yeah. Miss, thank you, Christina, for the great report. Appreciate it.

That's it?

That's it.

Oh, okay. Sorry.

That's okay.

Alright. Council member Kern.

Thank you, Christina. A very enjoyable report on a very unenjoyable topic, to read, but I really appreciated the way everything was weighted, sorted out, and prioritized. This is so thorough and just perfect. Your timeline is super aggressive. You have about a hundred and sixty five days, business days before the end of the year, assuming this is all due on December 31. I don't know what day in December it's due. Do you feel like you can have all this done and follow that timeline that you put up there just now, and get the federal and state approval by that date?

So this was a timeline that we were provided by by the county and their consultants.

Okay.

So I trust that they're gonna be able to get it done. Okay. That being said, I agree with you. It is pretty aggressive.

Great. Yep. Just a couple section in the report, some really quick things here. I'm on page three seventy five of four fifteen. The mitigation action is a permit permanent local fuel supply and delivery system. Do we have anything along those lines in place today?

Not that I'm aware of, and this was a mitigation measure that was carried over from 2021. Hope Moss is still here if he may if we have any plans on or if that's in the works at all in public works. Sorry,

I didn't catch that.

To establish a permanent local fuel supply and delivery system to help with first responders.

Oh, got it. Yeah. No. We're we're still, that's still under consideration. I think we have a, I think there's a capital project that was, formulated, but that'll be something we'll definitely consider as part of our upcoming CIP update.

Got it. Thank you. This one is just my sheer ignorance because I didn't understand the solution. It's on page three seventy six of four fifteen. Design and build a new ingress and egress intersection at Glen Park and Humboldt Road.

So it's my understanding that, again, this was also a mitigation measure that was carried over from 2021, and my understanding is that this was really just to provide capacity for first responders to get up there.

Change of the road. Okay. Right. And then my last one here, and this is just more of a a comment that I would like to have carried forward. This is on page, three eighty of four fifteen, regarding the San Mateo County flood and sea level rise resiliency district one shoreline strategies. I just wanna make sure that we're working so closely and we're in lockstep with San Francisco and South San Francisco regarding flooding and any measures that we put in place. Obviously, if we put up a seawall and they don't, the spillover just comes into Brisbane anyhow. And I it wasn't specifically called out here. It's pretty obvious, but it just wasn't in here. So I just wanted to call that out.

I appreciate that. I think with as we go along with other jurisdictions that are along the bay, as it relates to the RSAP and the state mandate that BCDC has put out there, I think there's gonna be a lot more collaboration and thankfully, you know, more funding for that work.

Great. Thank you. Again, fantastic report.

Thank you. Madam Mayor, I forgot one question.

Sure. Go ahead.

On on page three forty five of four fifteen, the very bottom thing is open space acquisition funding programs. Don't we have that? Don't we have the ability? Because it just asks if we have it in the general plan, and we have used money for open space acquisition. So I would assume we're still open to that.

If I may. We actually went back and forth on whether to say yes or no here just related to the Brisbane Acres program, and how to indicate that, and show that. I think where we sort of ended up was was there something a little more dedicated, like a specific pot of money, and we tend to pull those funds out of the general fund. I don't if you have anything to add.

That was my understanding as well is that we don't have a dedicated fund specifically for acquisition. That being said, I can definitely change this and include some verbiage around it.

Only because it it says capability and in black print that maybe you can read that's over the dark blue, accessible or eligible to use. Okay. And I I think that's a technicality that I think that as a mitigation measure for a hazard, we would be able to use those funds in that case. So that would just be my thought.

Okay. Great. Thank you.

I guess that was more discussion than question Thank

you, Christina. I have two questions. One, on the list of significant hazard past events, is that still able to be edited? Because I think there's a couple events that are missed that I could meet with you and then you could investigate whether they should be included on this list.

Yes. That would be fantastic. I will say because the county has such an aggressive timeline Mhmm. They wanted us to incorporate comments tonight and provide them with information tomorrow.

Want me to

call you tomorrow morning?

Yeah. That would

be great.

That would be great. Sorry about that.

And then let let's go back to if we're looking at potential hazards, did you at all consider prior to any development Baylands, just looking at it the way it is today, the potential for a problem with hazard hazardous substances in that there could be potential flooding out there in a in a large storm event. We haven't seen that. But with subsidence and groundwater incursion, that could happen, which would require potentially hazmat response. Had you considered that, you might wanna contact, I hate to say it, DTSC.

Okay. We can definitely yes, I mean, could definitely look we looked at things that were natural hazards that were due to severe weather. A lot of the hazards are due to severe weather. So if you mean as a result of severe weather or inundation of flooding, you know, we're we're basically looking at it as this is more of a a document that speaks to hazard mitigation as it relates to natural natural causes and not so much a sustainability document. Like, there's a lot around sustainability, and I can see how there's some overlap, but it really is about, you know, natural hazards.

Right.

Yeah. But happy to look more into that and, you know, add some verbiage

in there.

Okay. Yep. Thank you. That's actually all I have. City clerk, any public comments on this?

None, madam mayor.

Okay. Council discussion?

Anyone? I think we should move to approve the work plan so far.

And again, is this city attorney, is this a vote? I I think it's just accepting. It's a receipt.

Yes. Okay.

It's a great report. It is a great report. Mean, it's very thorough and just lays it out. Yeah. It covers all the bases.

Yeah. Council member Kerr.

Report accepted. Thank you.

Okay. Mayor Pro Tem. Okay. Looks like that's it. Thank you very much. And I did enjoy reading the report as well. So it it it's a it's an interesting read. Very informative. Thank you. Alright. Moving along, we have item y. This is discussed public art advisory committee membership composition and consider adopting a resolution to amend the public art implementation guidelines. Could we have a staff report, please?

Yes. Madam mayor, members of the council, good evening. As you know, the public art advisory excuse me. The Brisbane Art in Public Places program ordinance was created in 2014. Guidelines

to

that were last amended in in 2021, and, there's been a functional committee, the Public Art Advisory Committee, based off those guidelines. Recently, the city council, interviewed potential members for this body and during that discussion, the council discussed whether or not the body should be set at five members or seven and the ultimately what came out of the vote was five appointee excuse me, appointees that would meet five members of the of the committee. We have subsequently had withdrawal of one of those one of those folks to be a member of the committee. What we wanted to do tonight was to if it was the pleasure of the council to memorialize their discussion and create a body that has five two seven members, we've put in the packet a resolution that would, get us to that get us to that place. So we wanted to set up the discussion tonight for, the council to have that discussion.

Thank you very much.

Okay. Council questions. Let's start with council member Davis. I don't have any questions. Okay. Council member Lance.

Just to clarify, the only thing that we're being asked to do is to go from the structure that was in place prior, which called out for seven members, to now have a structure that is consistent with the other committees and commissions except for the planning commission, which is five to seven.

The planning commission's five, but correct.

Yes. Except for the planning commission.

Mhmm. Okay.

Correct. Thank you.

Let's see. Council member Kern?

No questions.

Council member O'Connell. No questions. Okay. I have no questions either. Do we have any public comment? I oh, I have a slip here. Michael Barnes. Come on up, Michael.

Good evening. My name is Michael Barnes. I'm a Brisbane resident. The staff report states the city council enacted the public art implementation guidelines to promote community participation. You had four public vacancies on the public art advisory committee until item u this evening.

More than four members of the public applied for these vacancies, and at least four were qualified. Three had previously served on the public arts committee, and one is the father of the 1% for arts program in Brisbane. You did not appoint him or any of the others with public arts committee experience. This seems to be working at odds to the idea that the public arts guidelines should promote community participation. I've spoken many times on the topic of the council not following your processes.

This is the third time that the public arts guidelines have been changed by the city council. You are making tonight's changes because you could not follow the eight month old revision to the guidelines that called for appointing four members of the public to the public art committee. Previously, the council abandoned the original public art guidelines due to Park and Rec Commission input. You then changed the guidelines to remove the Park and Rec Commission consultation, again removing per public participation. The public art guidelines also govern the management of public arts funds.

Since you don't follow the guidelines, I'm concerned that the public arts money may be miss misspent. Tonight, you established that you have an accounting problem. There should be a publicly accessible accounting of public arts funds online with to the penny accounting of what arts money is spent on. To assure accountability in all its forms, the city should make the public arts guidelines part of the municipal code. This would give the public arts guidelines the force of law and require you to follow your guidelines and ensure that the public arts funds are spent according to the law.

And I realized when I was watching online, I only had two minutes tonight, but if you don't indulge me for one more minute, madam mayor?

If I do that for you, I have to do that for everybody. There's no

one else here.

I I'm I'm sorry. It was already announced. Thank you.

But you can you have the power to allow me to speak.

No. And we're trying to be consistent. Thank you. Alright. Public I'm sorry. Council discussion. Wanna start? Council member Lentz?

To me, yeah, it makes sense to go five to seven, so I I'm good with that.

Okay. Councilmember O'Connell?

So I did serve on this committee, as a council representative, and I believe that the public art committee deserves to have more input than five people. I think it is something that is a very collaborative approach. When you look at a piece of art, you may be looking at it with seven points of view versus five, and I think you get more diversity by having that in the structure. We just changed these guidelines, and it was a personality conflict. And I'll be very candid about that.

This was a personality conflict that happened in this meeting, and I was appalled that this happened and that we brought up changing the structure in a meeting that that was not agendized. And I think that was wrong. I think this should be open for more public debate if we are thinking of do changing the guidelines, but I think it should remain as seven people. It's a lot of work. And this committee decides looking at specific pieces of or conceptual ideas of art.

They also then go out to the public. And then once that's been weighed, they come back and they do the technical work of the RFP and and working with the artist to come up with something that's suitable. It's a lot of work. I think it deserves more minds than five people, And I think that we should retain the seven member committee.

Okay. Council Member Kern.

Thank you for the input on that. I think that that's something really to think about. I feel that we've got our complete streets committee and our idea committee, and I don't understand why we would have a different membership, quote, unquote, bylaws by committee. I think all committees should adhere to the same, membership bylaws. So, I think I'm I'm supporting having a five to seven member range for this committee. Okay.

And mayor pro tem Davis?

Well, I think it's important to state for the record that I was not involved in the interview process for public art because I had a family member apply. So, I was not in the room for that discussion, but I know council member O'Connell asked the committee what they preferred. They prefer seven. That's what they told you. Right?

Totally correct.

So from serving on this committee since its inception, I'll say that it is every single meeting, there's an absence from somebody. In the summer, it ramps up a lot. And there is a resistance that I've noticed on the committee to serve as chair. There are several members that don't want to be in that role. So having seven members, I think, distributes the work more.

I would think that it would be very likely that you would get meetings with three people, and I don't think that having just three people weigh in on a project, you know, now that you're remove removing council members from the conversation and removing park and rec commissioners from the conversation, you're really isolating that down to just a few voices. So I just based on their feedback and understanding issues that this committee struggles with. And it's different. I mean, we wanna talk about consistency, but it's a totally different dynamic of a committee. They meet in just the conference room.

They're not televised. They don't meet here with in this format where it feels so much more formal. And maybe if it was like this, our attendance might be a little bit better, but I'm in favor of I'm in favor of keeping it at seven. I think that, you know, that's what the committee prefers. I think that's what does that committee justice.

You know, I was disappointed to see that the council preferred to not appoint anyone who applied with prior experience. I think that that was, I I think, a loss to the committee. And, again, I wasn't in the room, I didn't hear the conversation, but it was very surprising to me that that decision was made. So I think that we need to open it up for, you know, open it up for another recruitment, and I would say three three people. And, you know, it's it's likely that for several meetings, there may only be five people there.

But any less than five, it it's it's not good government, and that that's gonna happen.

If if I may, one of the other issues with the attendance is that because this committee meets on a Monday, it has a lot of problems with being over scheduled. So we've been having some meetings on Mondays. That takes we don't they can't meet on their regular day because we've taken over their date. When When there's a holiday, they can't meet. So all of a sudden, instead of the third Monday of the month, they're changing it to some rando Wednesday or Thursday or a Tuesday, and and nobody can plan their life around that.

And then people can't attend.

We leave

it at least.

Attend because they've already planned their life around having a specific meeting date, and they just get bumped. And they get bumped most of the time because of a holiday or a conflict with the room, with staff's conflict, or they get bumped because three members are on vacation that week. So and it's not I'm not calling out those members because most of these projects are not necessarily time specific on every meeting having a firm decision and a vote on things. More often than not, it's getting recommendations, input, project process, project progress reports. And, you know, because they have tried and I think very successfully with the STAIR project, worked with public works.

They've worked with other funding mechanisms to achieve a goal that is not just art but also functional, and they'd be able to co commingle those funds. But that means bringing in someone from public works to attend that meeting when they're discussing those things. And and so it increases the, complexity of a project when you're trying to utilize more than one thing. But that's that's my opinion. I'm not on that committee anymore.

And what was really upsetting to me in that discussion was the idea that anyone who has served on a committee in the in the former sense or anyone who's been on the council or married to a council or family of a council member should never serve on a committee, and I think that's wrong.

I will say to follow-up, I would say about 30% of the meetings are rescheduled from my history of being on the committee. I mean, even if somebody, like it's to the point where someone will say, oh, I can't be here next meeting. And then everyone will pull out their calendars to pick a new date. And I started saying to staff, listen. We just have to have the meetings on the date they're supposed to happen. And if people can't make it, they can't make it, and they just won't be there instead of always trying to shift because someone's gonna be gone. But it's I mean, it's a struggle. Okay.

May madam mayor.

If if I could,

please. Okay.

So I think it's always difficult when counsel does not find themselves in agreement, and people have strong emotions and strong opinions. Mayor pro tem Davis, you were not at the meeting. I was at the meeting. It was a fair vote. And when the council can't agree on something, we end up in the situation that we did with the vote.

There I I don't know how we can say this one's right, this one's wrong. We're all entitled to our opinions. And and it's not about being right, it's about what we believe is the best thing. And so there are times we're going to find we're in disagreement. As far as some of the logistics you're discussing, that's not the issue tonight.

That's something that needs to be worked out through the city manager with staff to resolve the logistics problems on meetings. And I I think speaking for everybody on the council on this, we always appreciate everyone that applies for a committee. They don't all get appointed. There are various reasons why. Committees and commissioners serve at the pleasure of the council. That's the way it's done. As in terms of how many people, I could see it going either way. We've had situations with committees and commissions where we've had someone resign. Sometimes two people resign. We don't always immediately recruit to fill.

The committees will sometimes have to operate for several months with limited number of of members. It's affected some committees more than others, but they got through it. So really what this amounts to tonight is you're being given an option of either conducting another recruitment to comply with the current guidelines or acknowledging there could be an approach, just having a range. And that way if we have difficulty in agreeing or finding candidates, that the committee could start with five and expand to seven. So that's that's pretty much how I see it, and I could see it going either way.

So council member Kern.

Yeah. My immediate thoughts are on this again. I'm just gonna restate my position for purposes of restating it. I think congruence is good government. Mhmm. And the way we're treating our other committees, we're not talking about commissions. We're talking about committees. We should have one rule across the board, period. The end. And I feel like that is the appropriate way forward. Number two, I agree with mayor Mackin. We're talking about logistics. Folks on complete streets don't take more or less vacations. They don't get more or less illnesses. They don't have fewer or more children.

They don't have different commitments. And the same thing with the idea committee. If people can't make a meeting and there's a quorum, the meeting moves forward. So I feel like congruence is our best option at this point. So thank you for allowing me to say that.

Did you say that the planning commission has is the bylaws safe five or it's five two seven? Okay. So there's not congruence already.

There is congruence because that's a commission, not a committee.

I I think of them all the same.

And also what you said that we have two choices. We can either make it five to seven or we can go out to new applications. We only have four members.

You have to.

I'm I'm stating the fact. So if if I may also, I just wanted to address that if you really look at all the bylaws, you've got a sample in here, but not all of them. If you look at all the bylaws of all the different committees and commissions, they are not the same. They were not written the same. I brought this up several years ago.

I've spoken to the city manager about it. And the reason that I was told is that the resolutions creating the committees were done by different councils over different periods of time. And, unfortunately, nobody, when they created something new, said, hey. Let's look at the previous one and see how it's done. I've also been told that there are peculiarities to different committees that warrants the fact that there are some differences, and and that's a project spoken to the city manager that it it it deserves looking at what type of similarities should be the foundation of every committee and commission, something the council could then memorialize.

But at this time, they are different. They are different. So thank you. Councilmember O'Connell.

Is that

You Oh. I'm sorry. She was first Oh,

I'm sorry.

Oh, I I think I spoke my piece. I would I would make a recommendation, but I think you wanna still take more comments.

Okay. I I have a question, madam mayor. So, Complete Streets and Safety Committee, up until the swearing in ceremony tonight, how many members did they have? I believe it was four.

Three. Maz.

Maz. Four. Four.

Okay. And then how long did they go with four members?

Since the appointment of the new Planning Commissioner. So it was about three months. Two or three months.

Okay. And then, you know, with four, I mean, obviously, it would be great if they had the full capacity, but they seem to have accomplished quite a bit with the members that they have. I mean they made the presentation. We got that really fabulous update from them. Okay, I'm just trying to kind of get an understanding here.