Audit Committee - Regular Meeting

Let's call our meeting to order, the special, meeting of the audit committee and, city staff. Can you guys do a vote call?

Committee member Moore? Present.

Vice chair Mohan? Here. Here. Committee member Lee

Okay. We only have four members now, a short one, which I hope we will be able to have that addition soon. But we've got a quorum, so well, let's get started. It's always funny to see the orders of the day, so I like commenting on them. But I don't see any that we have. So we're skipping that one and on to the approval of minutes. Have we all had a chance to read the draft? I have one change, which was to refer to the previous meeting as November, which

It's actually November 25.

Went fifth. Okay. Yeah. Whatever our date was in November is is you got Correct. Was my comment.

I guess we have a member of the public.

Yes.

Welcome.

Sorry. But members of the public sit against the long sorry. Okay.

Thank you. It's okay. Welcome.

So should we have a motion to approve the minutes as directed?

I I vote to approve the minutes.

More second?

Okay. We've got a motion. No more. We're all happy with it. So motion unanimous. Well, yeah, all in favor, aye. How can I forget to take the vote? Let's take them. All in favor

Yeah. Express

aye. Alright. We unanimously pass

the sentence.

Pardon. Do we do we need to make sure that the modification is in that? Should that does that need to be in the motion?

Yeah. It wasn't. I think I It did. Data friendly. We're we're kind of informal, so I made the motion as corrected. Motion as corrected. By our discussion. Very good.

Okay. And then second. Right. Aye.

Vice mayor? We're all in favor? Yes. Unanimously. Aye. Passed. Alright. We're just making lots of well, now we have the chance for oral communications if there are any from the public. You wanna make any?

Well Okay.

So sure. Sure. Sure. Now then we will pass on to the major topics that we have, the Baker Tilly budget format review. And we'd like to welcome Baker Tilly. You guys make some introductions, but maybe staff has some comments or something first to introduce the topic.

I can go over it briefly. So as you may be aware, our budget manager left for an opportunity Altos Hills, but there were some things we wanted to move forward with budgets and formatting things we wanted to look at. We just really heard the budget document is too big. And so that there may be good information in there, it's difficult to kind of get to it, one. And then two, we wanted to also, take an opportunity to improve the performance measures.

The performance measures were added to our budget, I wanna say, around 1415, fiscal year fifteen, sixteen. And at that point in time, we actually, got with a a group of Stanford graduate students who did this out of their one of their projects. So they helped develop the first version of performance measures, but it's been about ten years. And the department's kinda struggled. We've seen them struggle with the departments in terms of, like, why are these here? Why am I using these? And so we thought it'd be a good opportunity to take a kind of holistic look, at those measures and kind of from a third party view of our budget and our performance measure to get some feedback on the areas we might just move on. And with our budget manager being vacant, we we brought in Baker Tilly to continue that work, through the vacancy.

Very good.

And we have Steve Tolar with Baker Tilly. He'll take you through a presentation.

There you go.

Well, thank you. Again, as I said before, it's a little bit of a it's very reminiscent for me to be here all for a couple of reasons. One of which I haven't mentioned is that I cut my teeth working in local government by serving on an audit committee for the city that I lived in, Foster City at the time. Uh-oh. And so always coming to the audit committee meetings is always something that's special for me.

And, again, I'm Steve Toller. I'm director of Baker Tilly, and I've had an opportunity to meet you all and and speak with you. We were brought into, as Christine had indicated, to kinda give us a little bit of better perspective and to help in terms of addressing the the budget document and the performance measures in there and how could they be sometimes word streamline is not, you know, necessarily enjoyed or loved by by everybody. But but how do you make it so that the budget document is transparent and accessible and really allows for the agency to reflect what its strategic, you know, goals and initiatives are. So that's what we were trying to do as part of this process.

We serve local governments throughout The United States, definitely here in California, definitely within this region. Many of the agencies that you'll see on the list of agencies that we talked with, all of those have been clients of ours over the years. And so I'm very familiar with what other agencies are doing to help the community understand, how the the agency is being stewards of the funds that they have been trusted to care for, in delivering services. So that's the concept of what we were doing here. And so whoever's running the slide deck, if you go to the next slide so I'm just gonna cover some brief things.

A lot of these are highlighted in this report. I'm just gonna quickly go through it, and then we'll be able to send to any questions that you've had that you have, having had an opportunity perhaps to to review the report. But we'll talk a little bit about, you know, how do we do the work, what do we what do we see, what recommendations came from not only what we've heard, what we've seen, but also based on our experience and some of the best practices that we see working with other agencies. And then as well as this concept of performance measures, I wanna spend a little just a brief moment on strategic planning and how important that is in terms of that. Then we'll talk next steps.

So, if we go to the next slide, you know, we've already kind of talked about what the assignment was, but it was how to review and improve the budget document itself and other ways to be able to enhance performance measures, you know, ensuring that both of those align with your priorities, their highest priorities that you have, and are what what are the ways to improve the transparency and accessibility? If we go to the next slide, it really talks about, you know, how we did this. We we reviewed documents. We interviewed all of the council members as well as interviewed up to 10 staff members, 10 different interviews that we did to understand the present budget document itself. We benchmarked against some peer agencies, which we've included in the report as a reference, as well as the and, of course, including all of their documents in a report like this would make it very voluminous, so we basically referred to them.

And then, you know, did an hour analysis on, you know, the how how the budget document itself and the performance measures are aligning with the city's highest priorities and and how are the ways to improve those. Steve, are you involved

in the interviews yourself? Or

I I interviewed all of the council members, and then my team members, Chris and Pratchy is Chris Brigham and Brigham and Pratchy Patel, if I mentioned their names, they're the ones that were supporting me on this, which also had significant years of experience not only with in local government, but also in a budget perspective as well. So they came with a lot of of experience in that place. So, we go to the next slide. This really is what guided us is, you know, when you think about the topic of budget and performance measures, what what really guides a good document? What guides good performance measures?

And going from right to left, you know, how accessible is the document and being able to help the community understand the story that's being told in terms of how the city is doing, you know, financially, how is it performing, and and, you know, leading up to those performance standards, and making it so that people have the ability to to see that. Not only that, but also transparency. Transparency and and and not only decision making, but also transparency of information and making sure that information is available. Now the medium in which some of that information is available, we'll talk about here. But how do we make sure that that that there is transparency when it comes to how the city is spending its resources and and the resources that it that it relies on?

You know, engaging the community in terms of of the budget itself as well as performance. Clearly, fiscal stewardship has to be a guiding principle and anything that we're talking about in terms of of protecting the the the resources on which the the city has been charged to to deliver its services. And then also, you know, this concept of strategic alignment is so important, And the budget should speak to what the priorities are. The budget and and the performance measures should definitely be evaluating performance based on what those highest priorities are. And so we'll talk through that as we go through this and then inform some of our analysis and our, and our recommendations that we have in here.

So if we go to the next slide, you know, what did we hear in terms of the budget document? What did we see based on the work that we have done with other agencies and the peer agencies that were included in this report? The budget is Katie has it in front of her. You know, she was doing some bicep, you know, exercises there. It's it's a it's a little bit of stocking. A lot of time and effort to put together for sure. You know? It's very detailed, but, we kept on hearing that it's difficult to navigate. We heard that from staff. We heard that from from, well, it was a theme from council.

And so that's one element. The other is how well is the budget translating to what the strategic goals are of the organization? What are the priorities? I know we have some budget priorities, but I don't if the city does not have a strategic plan at the present time. A comprehensive, if you will, strategic plan. There are priorities. But how do how do we get everybody aligned? So that's the second component. Capital improvement. I mean, let's face it.

You're spending hundreds of millions of dollars on investment and capital infrastructure. And it's always it's important for any type of a budget deliberation, budget process to make sure that not only the priorities being taken care of, but the investment in those significant resources. How are they informing not only the annual budget, but looking at the long term? Because let's face it, capital infrastructure isn't just, you know, one year and then you look at it again. You have to take it in the long range.

And so, you know, at present time, the CIP has not been well integrated into the budget document itself as well as some of the budget process, if you will, in terms of informing, you know, the long range and and and the short term. And then finally, you know, how can public public engagement be improved? We saw evidence of a lot of information that's being published to the community. The question is, how do you make it so that you're able to engage the community in some of the key decisions that have to be made? And while, you know, the communications professional and local government will always say, well, how how much more do we need to communicate with people?

But, you know, there's also the concept of is is it effective? And are we engaging people in where they are? In some regards, you can't force people to wanna come in and like you all do, not only council members, but also who's you know, you know, and and the public in terms of being excited about, you know, budget and finance type stuff. It's not as interesting sometimes as some of the other topics that we deal with, but still, space it, you can't do all the other stuff without dedicating the resources necessary to get those things done. And that's where the finances come in.

Right? So we're all thinking from the page in terms of that importance. So those were some observations that we saw in the budget document. And so how did that translate then into our recommendations? Next slide.

Really, in in in in five areas. And you'll see in in throughout our report that we have, you know, total 32 different recommendations. And I'm trying to summarize them high level of what we're trying to get to. The first concept is how do we improve readability and streamline the structure, and we've made some recommendations in that area in terms of, trying to, again, make it more accessible to the community and those that would read this document to understand, oh, I get it. This is what the city is spending.

It's it's money on. But how do we also make that information still available, that may be available in either an appendix or as a separate, you know, way to be able to to get to some of that information, but that is integrated, when it comes to delivery of that information. We didn't go into a lot of detail about, you know, whether it should be all paper, whether it should be all digital. We know that a lot of people are accessing information online and digitally. And so, I think that there's an opportunity to be able to take a document not like ours, like the budget document here, and really integrate it in an online fashion, especially given the investment that you've made in tools like OpenGov to be able to get into some of the details and be able to see a lot of that information that can be done on a on on an online version of a budget that gets you hyperlinked straight into getting to see a lot of that information.

So there's opportunities there to to do that. The second area is in the area of of the department presentation. It's that's what is is creating volume that we're seeing, you know, in the document. It is typically not common for a city that is of the size of Cupertino to have the level of detail that's in there. It's not that you're not wanting to provide that information to the community to be able to get to it.

The question is, you know, how granular do you want a budget document to get to still make it accessible, to be able to tell the story about how the agency is doing financially, and what it's spending its resources on. And each to a person. I mean, there's, you know, six or eight of us in this room. We all have different levels that we expect. Right?

The question becomes, how do you make it so that it's inviting enough so that the majority of stakeholders can get to it, but also provide the information in another form or in another way so that they are still able those that are really interested in this stuff can really get into it and see a little bit more of the the detail on that. And so we have some recommendations. We'll go through those. Capital planning, the CFP has to be integrated as part of the budget document itself. It has to be an an integral part of of of the, the discussions.

And I know that you're having conversations about CFP. But when it comes to the five year plan that ends up then, you know, informing council's choices and decisions about what to invest in in for the capital infrastructure, that needs to be all integrated within one document. But public engagement, you know, is at least, we have some some thoughts in there in terms of how to engage the community a little bit more and, you know, really keep an eye towards transparency and making sure that they're getting the information that that they need to be informed about, you know, those key decisions that you're making. And then finally, to the point of making those key decisions, what is the what is the strategic priorities? Now you have a strategic priority section of the budget.

We understood that. We even said that in this report. Right? We acknowledge that, and that's great. The the question becomes, to what extent is it a comprehensive strategic plan that really speaks to all the different priorities and the key priorities that the city is is moving forward with.

And we think that there's an opportunity here, especially now that you have, you know, your council's now been seated, you you have an opportunity to be able to come together, and make some decisions about where where the the the priorities and the vision is of where Cupertino is gonna be in the future. That should then inform the budget process. So, so that's on the budget document itself. When it comes to the performance measures, four things next slide. Sorry.

That we heard there is well, few things. There seems to be question about whether what we're measuring is really what we're evaluating our performance. You know? Are we are we are we measuring things that don't matter? You know, what what is it that really matters to ensure that we're hitting our strategic objectives on?

And that was one of the things that we heard. The second was sometimes we're we're looking and we see this with agencies and Cupertino is not unique in this, is that some agencies will focus more on counting widgets rather than looking at, you know, the so what now what. Right? Okay. Great.

We processed five permits last week. Well, that's great. Are we are we are we driving what we need to in terms of the quality of life in this community, in terms of the amenities that we have? That's what the the key is there. And so while there might be a blend in some of the performance measures that you'll see in here that measure some numbers, it it always is translating back to what are the key, know, initiatives and priorities that the city has. The third is, there's this concept of, you know, how do we update them? How are we, you know, reporting on them? And there's not necessarily a standardized process by which to do that. Some departments are doing it on a per annual basis. Others are doing it on a quarterly basis.

And so is there a way to be able to to get that so that it's more of a standardized process? You know, almost think of it like a, the tote board or think of it more of, like, you know, red, yellow, and green lights, right, on a on a on a dashboard? How are we doing in these different areas and making sure that we're we're updating those? And then finally is, you know, how do we engage all staff in understanding the the importance of, you know, evaluating our performance and tracking that. This is not an exercise in trying to create more work for people to, you know, be in this accounting, what they're doing and and, you know, all that.

This is a way though to be able to like we were in school to really, you know, say, how are we doing? Are we learning? Are we learning from the work that we're doing? Are we learning about the the the the positive things that have been done? Are we learning from some of the negative things that have been happening, so that we can, you know, serve this community better?

And so that's really what we were hearing with those performance measures. And then if we go to the next slide to summarize what some of the changes were is it's important to align with those strategic priorities. We made a recommendation here of the to encourage the the city council and and staff to come together with a a comprehensive strategic plan for the organization. Outcomes, focus on outcomes rather than, you know, how busy we are. Busyness can help understand whether there are resources available to do it, but it also can be a sign that things perhaps are not as effective or efficient as they possibly could be.

Right? The question is, are we achieving the goals that we're trying to achieve as a normalization? Standardized reporting updates. I already talked about that a little bit. As well as in this accountability concept is, you know, again, this is the next phase of this is what I call the so what, now what. Okay. Great. We've we've measured these per this performance. We've seen that we're not hitting the mark, hitting the standards that have been established. Now what do we do about it?

And it's not accountability to necessarily take the ruler and put somebody over the the the the hand like we did in the grade school, But instead, it's more of how do we improve? How do we improve our performance and ensuring that we're hitting the mark in terms of what our priorities are? And so we'll go to the next slide. And I in in the the the report gave a little bit of a, you know, this colorful pyramid, if you will, in terms of building a strategic plan that really is vested based on your values, your mission as an organization, the vision of where you wanna go, and then creating those big organizational goals and strategies and priorities. And then the top of that then is is where individuals, and those could be departments or those can be individuals themselves identifying what their priorities are and ensuring that they're achieving all of those different goals that are there.

So we provided that to you as a as a, as a way to think about strategic planning, for the future. Final slide is just, you know, we're we're developing an implementation action plan that will take each of the recommendations and identify what are the tasks, activities that need to be involved to to get to there, to get it implemented, who's involved, what resources are required in terms of time. Most of them don't require dollars. And so, you know, we will identify if there are some areas there with that. But really assignment is is important priority.

Right? Assignment of who is responsible for getting us implemented and and the prioritization. Some of these are more important to do than others, but we're also taking into consideration the type. You know, the budget cycle is the budget cycle, and we gotta make sure that you have a an adopted budget for fiscal twenty six that, you know, needs to be adopted not later than June 30, hopefully. So with where we are today and the recommendations that are being made and understanding the implementation may not happen overnight is we'll provide some, like, some concepts about what can we what should be done in this budget cycle versus then what are things that can be done in planning for and preparing for the next budget cycle because it does impact the budget process that staff is already doing using in in creating budget proposals that will ultimately go to your city manager that ultimately come to the council.

So so we'll we'll be providing that implementation action plan. We expect to have that done before we I do this presentation to council, which will be the March. It was not ready for prime time today, but we will have that completed for the council to be able to review. I'm sure we'll provide it to the staff will provide it to the audit committee. So final slide, I think, is just, you know, some oops. Oh, there we go. Yeah. Well, final slide. There it is.

Well, thanks very much, Steve. That's a Yeah. Couple of topics as you break it down. Great presentation. I can't think of two more important elements within any organization, whether it's a city or a for profit organization. But what we're tasked with now is some clarifying questions. First of all, the way we organization organize ourselves, so I'm moving it up to the committee for clarifying questions. Anyone wanna pick us off? I know I've got a ton of them.

You should

Here's a question.

Keith. So the first one is with regards to recommendations to between pages 23 to 29 Mhmm. To, for example, under public works, move everything into a summary in the overview pretty much. So sustainability, resource recovery, various buildings, city hall maintenance. There's a lot. And so that

There is a lot.

So what is so when I look at public works now, I'm able to look at each facilities and get lots of information.

So if you go to the first couple pages, it actually outlines everything that's there. Mhmm. Yeah. So you can see all the divisions or what they're the the highlighted rows and the recommendations to go to everything at the division level with the program you tell me in the open up.

Mhmm. Like oh, okay. So what what's pardon. What's gonna happen to all of this information that we get now?

So the concept that this information will still exist. The question is what is the form, the format that it will be in? Is it going to be printed as part of the the budget document? We think that from our perspective and also just best practices what we're seeing is that that volume of of information belong somewhere. But it it makes it so that the general public will get mired into the details and won't be able to see the big picture of really what the community is doing what the agency is doing.

So what we recommended is that the overview, which we actually, in the narrative, we talked about that on page see, report page eighteen and nineteen about how the department sections would be reorganized and that the the the description of the department, the org structure, the personnel summary, the key priorities, and then revenue and expenditure appropriations by division or program would still be there. But what it does is that with the department narrative and the overview of the department, it talks about, you know, our department is responsible for doing all these different things, and here are the key initiatives that we're focused on and are working on, to help be able to tell that story a little bit more concisely from a budget perspective. But when it comes to then you as a council member wanting to understand what are we spending on library, what are we spending on road maintenance, that detail is gonna be available to you and provided to you. It's just it doesn't get involved it doesn't get into the the form of the the full document itself. It can be in an appendix, or it can be, leveraged through the investment that you have in OpenGov to be able to access that information.

Okay. So I'm not a fan of OpenGov, so I don't like being directed there. So that too is kind of a nonstarter. So I I'm not entirely sure that that your your answer is is letting me know about this page even if this is still going to exist, the department overview page. But it looks like these things are gonna be summarized in overview, and I could take that to mean you're going to take have some new category called miscellaneous, for lack of a better word.

Or does this mean that you're that these these are red lines, so these are new things. So environmental programs then is going to cover resource recovery Yes. CAP storm drain. I won't know what those environmental programs are. I'm gonna be given a lump sum number without knowing the detail of what's under it. If I wanna find that detail, I'm going to need to go on a complex information chase to try to hunt it down rather than having it in this book. And for people who actually have been going through the book, you're making it harder for us

Mhmm.

With this suggestion. Other part is, for instance so with with doing that and making it, like, a bigger glob of money that I'm looking at without the detail associated with it. For instance, under library services, so I in that one in particular, I had a catch on that one for the reduction in library service hours. If you now summarize that in an overview, it makes it harder to be able to see that there is

a mistake there or to question it. And Hard to see that there's a mistake?

Yes. So there was a mistake in the library services hours. We were it was about the we we we didn't have to pay for the library service hours, so the number was loaded. Then it got corrected. The county, library, JPA, funds those service hours. So that so making corrections like that get a whole lot harder if you don't actually see those numbers.

The the I think, Katie, the the question in my mind becomes, what is the information that council will need to make an informed decision about about dedicating resources, right, for various projects? And to what extent does that detailed information need to be in a published budget document? And that's kind of the the the back and forth that we go through here. Is it frankly, the budget document could be thousand pages if we included all the individual line items. Right?

Including, you know, something like that. Right? But to to what extent is the is the right blend of information that allows the budget reader to to see that versus a decision maker to make an informed decision. So there might be more details that the council could need. But what we're doing is we're trying to say from a budget document perspective and the final document itself, question is how much really detail needs to be in there?

And we have some competing issues because we're the audit committee looking at the budget document.

Yeah.

And we need to if you know, frankly, I'd like us to be able to audit some of these budget units and see if what went into them was actually accurate. And having a summation of the information Mhmm. To me makes it harder for us to do our our jobs here. K. So there's that issue, and I'll I'll let someone else ask some questions for a while. So run around.

I can make one comment to that. So the audit committee has purview under budget format. They're the audit committee not because they audit city documents, but the internal auditors and our external auditors and see audit reports from both of those, sources. So currently, within the duties and responsibilities of audit, it's maintaining those, looking at the quarterly reports in addition to budget format, just what we're discussing today.

Thank you. And that's part of the issue with our audit committee is that we the council has not given us enough authority to really be audited.

Okay. Yeah. I think it's good that we maybe go around the table for questions. Do have any that you wanna kick off?

Sure. I I think we've been so the groups of, I guess, readers of the budget document. We are talking about the public, which needs voice of user friendly document, and then we're talking about decision makers, which which need we need the the details. So so I guess the challenge for anyone who comes up with a budget format is how could we reconcile both.

Yeah.

And and long ago, maybe I talked to you, Christina. In in many jurisdictions, there is the what's this budget called? Not the final one. The recommend the recommend The proposed. The proposed budget.

Mhmm.

Post budget has all the details. And then when the approved budget, the final budget becomes a sort of abbreviated version of the proposed budget.

Mhmm.

So the final budget or the approved or the final budget.

The adopted budget, if you will. Right.

The what?

The adopted budget.

Right. The adopted budget would be more streamlined and basically would contain the decisions that the council made during the budget approval process. So if you wanted more details, you would go to the proposed budget. If you just wanted an overview or a more friendly version, you'd go to the final budget.

Mhmm. Mhmm.

I mean, that that's one.

Yeah. It's a good distinction of how you could handle getting the detail that you need to make the decision to get to the adopted budget and then a final a final document itself, which should be, yeah, a a little less voluminous, more focused on, you know, what the final amounts are. Right?

Right. And and, basically, display the the changes that have happened in the interim. Mhmm. And the changes would be decisions that were made at at the open.

Yeah. I I want one thing I wanna be very clear about is that we're not recommending that we get rid of the detailed chart of accounts, the detailed line item budget that needs to be done. That that's how the budget is created. It's created in line item level. Right?

It's gotta be done that way. Even if you go to a program based budget, it's still gotta ultimately get into how do we account for all the stuff. So all that details there. The question becomes in the the the document that that ends up being finalized, what what is what is that gonna include? And does it include, you know, line 2,100 paper clips, paper, and, you know, envelopes?

Or does it and or is it more at the higher level? And what we're trying to get at here and what our recommendation is and what we see with other agencies is when they're producing budget document, that detail is still available, but it's not a part and included in the actual document itself, in in the base document itself. Could it be as an appendix? Sure. I mean, we we did that on an agency that I worked with up on the peninsula there.

We we used to have line item detail on the budget, but it became so voluminous that, you know, council ultimately said, this is way too much information. We want it. We wanna be able to see, you know, what we're budgeting for tree maintenance versus library services versus whatever. But when we're trying to understand ultimately, you know, what is the the total amount that we're trying to, you know, provide for these types of services, it was more similar. So we got rid of the line and to put it in as an appendix that was available, but it was not part of the the the final budget document.

That's just one example. And I think you see that with some of the other agencies that we looked at their budget documents as as well and how they were doing it. That is

Let's see. Did that get your question?

That did. Can I

Yeah? Okay. Sure.

I was looking at the the different cities that you you've

done Yeah. Yeah.

Yep. And I noticed Campbell had $762.50

bucks.

And then and there were all these other cities. So what in your opinion, which one sort of stands out as as a document that meets both these Yeah.

Yeah. And, again, you know, each agency, you know, needs to make decisions about what is the level of detail that they wanna include in there. But I think what we tend to see more is that I mean, you look at, like, Menlo Park. Menlo Park's similar size, but, you know, it it's a much more high level document. Is the detail there? Yes.

Janet, you sheet of table study on the screen.

I think you can get a little bit

of time on this. It's a great comparative table. But Yeah. Following up a little bit is Sheila's question here.

Well, what is it?

Page 12. Page 13. It's it's on two pages. But, no. I think it's a great question as to what what which one is close. I'm also curious about which ones use opengovergov if any of these cities do. You you right now are saying in the report put a lot of the detail into OpenGov. And so I'm wondering if other cities have done that of these that you've worked at.

Yeah. I have to go back. I don't remember as we're sitting here.

But yeah. I'll put that up and

Share? Oh

oh, it's in the it's under the column of online interactive budget. I was concerned I'm sure that we have it there. So Menlo Park does have an open gov or equivalent. Where's Monterey Manual Park? Okay. That's on that

Yeah. Off page there.

Yeah. So Campbell and Los Altos do not.

Since it is set.

Right.

And then Milpitas and Palo Alto have also invested in an OpenGov like solution. In fact, a couple of them, I think, have OpenGov. But then Morgan Hill, San Bruno, and Sunnyvale do not.

I'm surprised Sunnyvale doesn't.

Yeah.

There's a correlation between the ones that have an online interactive versus the number of pages.

In terms

of size. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So

think that yeah. And Palo Alto is fairly large. So, I mean, we can take that in with with, you know, under

The days.

Under advisement there.

So Pardon?

I'm to the chair. Could could you explain what the online interactive budget is? Because I've looked at Morgan Hills, and I've looked at Sunnyvale's before. Mhmm. What is the difference between having it online available versus online and interactive?

So online

Park actually uses OpenGo. I just opened this up. Yeah. Share my screen, but if

So so online interactive means that you can drill down and see what's in the details. So when we're seeing employee services for public works, how is that broken out in terms of streets versus sewer versus or not sewer. Oh, yeah. Sewer. It's across different funds. And it allows you to go into your far details you want to ultimately to get down to the line item detail. That's what online interactive budget means. It's not just a PDF version of your budget document and that's it. It actually gets you into more levels of detail to be able to see all the information that you're interested. Is that what we can do now?

So I believe so. So, Steve, if you wouldn't mind us take we'll take this on a tangent. Janet, you can go to the Menlo Park interactive project just because they or if you already have it, just so you can share it there. Because there's a just kinda played with it a little bit knowing what I know, and it's exactly as he described and told me to get of it.

Or but I believe ours is interactive. If you go to OpenGov, then it becomes interactive. But if you go click on the actual budget document, it's it's it's this.

There's two so there's two versions. There's an interactive version, and, generally, there's a PDF version. For those that don't want just wanna print the whole document, print the whole document. But for others that, oh, I don't wanna print the document, but there's certain stuff I wanna be able to get additional detail on, you can do that. And so I'm thinking of, like, just somebody bring it up. I just did mental health part budget. There you go. Go to the the the original screen, Janet. I wanna go back to where it's where the budget actually starts. Yes. If you go to search Menlo Park budget, it should get you.

Here.

Also just sent you the okay. See, says in our Online. There's a PDF that you can publish.

That's a drop.

Why don't you but if you click on on the online version, You scroll down. You can still see on the front of the pages, and then it gives you you can click into different areas. So if we go into general fund revenue discussion, click on that for me, a practical example. You'll see this chart here. I can actually Janet, just click into one of the bars. I can click into one of the bars. And then this is part of what counts for more shopping. It's not as intuitive as it could be because I can was like, okay. That's not where I go. So keep scrolling down. This still gives you the summary here. If you click where it says general fund where was it? Or click into one of the numbers. It will open this up for you so you can see the detail. I'm gonna be up to one of those. And there you go.

There you go.

And then you set all of the account level detail, the department that has a project attached to it so that it has everything at a high level, and you can keep it there. Or you can go in here and drill down and you can export it if you wanna export it as well. So if you want to do some analysis. So it's kind of the if you wanna just see the high level and you're good with seeing the trends that way, if you're like, well, I wanna dig in, and I wanna understand what they're saying is causing the trend lines are happening, this allows for that.

Well, just to clarify, the Cupertino OpenGov allows that detailed drilling.

We currently have stories, so we would be able to transload it. I'm not quite sure how that would be. We have all of our data. All our financial data is there. It's getting the the wards that are not currently in. Open it up.

Pardon? So we're while it's saying that we have an online interactive budget, that's really pointing to OpenGov. We're not structured quite like Menlo Park. We have, like, the PDF version of the the big book.

Correct.

Mhmm. Also, with the hard copy budget, this these guys are all saying yes. But to me, that means that we have all these books available for anybody in the city that wants to have the big book.

Yeah. We have very limited due to budget reduction. That was one of our line items that we reduced. So we I think most of our department heads don't get one. I get one because I I physically touch the book almost on a daily basis. And if just been on calls with me on budget, I'm always pulling the book out to talk about stuff. But we only print for the council members. The city manager gets one, and then we ask the department heads if they would like a copy, and we usually leave a copy in the lobby and a copy at the library. Jenna, do you know how many we we printed tonight? 10? 10 to 11. 10 to 11 copies. Five.

Thank you, guys.

Five. Thank you.

I know I know Menlo Park and San Bruno, they also give them to the lie they give, like, five sets to the library that can be viewed there. Oh. You know? I don't know if they can check it out. But

That is the reference usually at the reference desk.

Yeah.

But an issue with that is that it keeps changing every quarter. Mhmm. You get the first one and then q one update.

Like a

snapshot of file.

Yeah. But that's with everyone.

That

If I direct people then to an online source to be able to see what the most latest version is.

Snap. It says that interact website where you do have that. It updates almost in a daily basis. So it depends on when is it the system updates that information. It pulls in not just your budget, but your actuals. So at any given time, it'll update depends on our frequency. Right? So if we set our frequency to a monthly basis, it'll update that. And then whether it be kind of aligning with our our AT batches, so it'll update those. So it it we have a little bit of flexibility. So even in between our quarterly reports, you'll be able to see more information on it for real time.

So just to summarize, we've got to this set of questions because we've been going over this very helpful, I think, local cities. And so one of my takeaways here is this online interactive budget column. It's not necessarily open good, but it seems to be related to the number of pages that we have over on the left side of the chart. Any other big high level takeaways from this chart that There's there's also a core well,

another one is their correlation about, you know, the people's perception of what the GFOA award really requires.

Okay. So

when you see those that have GFOA awards that says yes Yep. Their pages are typically a little bit larger than than others. Yeah. And yet you still have somebody like Los Altos that has, you know, has gotten the GFOA award, but their budget's a 181 pages. So, you know, the the key though is that the GFOA award, while that is great and it's a great testament to, you know, living up to, you know, finance officer standards throughout The United States in terms of a transparent, accessible budget, that shouldn't be the driving force. The driving force should be what is it that will help you, your community, understand what the key sources are that you have available and how you're spending money. That's what really should be the guide.

Yeah. Let's go over our cycle around questions here then. Thanks.

Okay. I'll so with that with that g f a GFOA award Yeah. You can still receive it and unfortunately have somebody embezzling from your city at the same time.

Oh, for sure.

It's just like that was something that that we've all had issue with. It's like, well, how do you address that, you know, that part? Just just as a statement. And I would like to understand, you you talk about the capital improvement program integration, and I'm wondering what that means still looking at that table

Yep.

To understand what it meant, like, when Palo Alto numbers for their pages, separate capital budget. I don't understand what that means. Sunnyvale has two numbers, separate projects up. I I don't know what you're telling us there.

They they publish a separate CIP that's separate from the operating budget, but is done at the same time and in conjunction with our operating budget.

So are you telling us that Palo Alto has one book that's 585 pages?

When you add the capital budget to it, it's six ninety seven.

Okay. So a 100 and some odd pages of capital. Okay.

Or I think

Palo Alto I'll have to

look at that one. I think that's it was $5.85. Trying to remember if their capital budget one itself was $6.97.

Okay. And I saw Absolutely. I saw Sunnyvale's and maybe Morgan Hills, and they had both of those booklets, and they would show both little image, and you could click on them and look

at the

pages. And as a council, we've kind of struggled with what actually counts as a capital improvement versus a program item sometimes. And I could see looking at other cities that there were some issues with with theirs and the definition, what really fits where. Sometimes that's a problem. But it looks like your suggestion is that we're we would well, what would look different if we do if we do this integration? What's different from what we're doing now?

And here's a couple of ways. Previously, prior to, I wanna say, prior to COVID, we used to print the books were companions to each other. The budget would print with the CIP. Due to staff turnover and resource issues, the CIP was delayed in being printed for a few years, and it got stopped, and it restarted. And so and we needed to print a budget. We have a requirement to print a budget. We could not wait for them to put a CIP together. And so since then, it's kinda stayed disjointed, with the public works team that does the CIP. Or we're like, do you have a book you want at the same time? And if they don't, we go, we have to move this is we give them our publishing deadline and have it.

We'll put it together. We don't wanna be publishing our budget so late. But, historically, we had. They were two separate documents, but they printed together. And the budget book had a call out to the CIP so that you knew they existed, and they would be on our website two separate documents, the budget book and the CIP. And it looks like most of the cities do that. If we were to change our format, it usually becomes, like, how when it comes to, bounding the books, there's only so much. I think we're about max capacity at the current book. So we could put them together, but they always printed together. They were two separate documents we would have printed at the same time, make available at the same time.

Did other cities through the chair have a person that's assigned to be the, like, the CIP budget master that's in charge getting that to you.

Should Generally so budget budget officers are born responsible for printing both documents, but the production is generally CIP is handled by Public Works, and finance administrative services handles the budget document, and we coordinate and print at the same time.

But I will tell you that collaboration is the best approach. And where we've seen success in terms of ensuring that good, well informed decisions are being made, not only from a capital perspective, but also an operating perspective. You know, because the whole concept about, okay, well, great. Public works is gonna be over here and they're gonna be, you know, going into their cave and and developing this, you know, this this capital improvement plan. If it's totally separated from the concept about what is it what are we investing in terms of people to maintain streets versus us?

You know, most public works aren't going to do that. But when you have a disjointed process like that, it makes it difficult. And so I agree with Christina that public works needs to be we can set that in here for Cupertino, is that public works and engineering need to be on the front end of creating that document. But ultimately, it needs to fold in and blend in well with your documents so that you, the two of you plus your three counterparts, will be able to make a a conscious informed decision and have the conversation that you need to about what we're spending our our capital resources on. And to the point that you mentioned, Kitty, about about, you know, what is the definition of a capital project?

I mean, it's something that every agency needs to wrestle with. Right? Some people will even call investment in, like, you know, these laptops a capital, you know, improvement plan. Other agencies are like, no. It's about public infrastructure, things that are outside.

Right? Once you come up with that definition and we have not viewed it as something that's operating. So, like, if for example, there's a we talked about special projects in here, you know. If there's a special project of, you know, we're going to, you know, invest in doing some I don't know what economic development or we're gonna invest in something that's more of like a an operating cost. That doesn't belong in a c I p plan from my perspective.

It needs to focus on big infrastructure related issues, frankly. And those other things, those are part of the operating budget. They may be one timers as opposed to ongoing. But those, you know, capital is capital and operating is not.

Okay. Yeah.

Yeah, Sheila, you wanna add a question in? Or

So about the capital improvement plan. Right now, we don't show it in the in the budget book at all. Yes.

So there is a very one page that outlines the new projects that are being funded. Sorry. Vice mayor, I keep looking over your book because I know

I do have it. Yeah.

I think it's I've seen I think you're writing that right section. Yeah. So you'll see it. That might be it.

Like our unfunded moves. CIP schedule?

That's it. So that's the only place we reference it. And I second on referencing its own page in the book. There's other places, financial reports, where we call out the CIP, but that's the that's the only place that exists because those are things that the the admin services team creates. And these are the new projects? Those are just the new the projects that are requesting new funding. So, generally, the budget is anything new that we're asked.

New appropriations. They may be an existing project, and it's just another layer, another phase of the project. But it's whatever the current request is for new money. We appropriated.

Because of one of the things, I think, on page 10, where you've talked about the shared themes on budget document from city council members and staff, The capital improvement projects was the one that every council as well as staff had some questions about. So in in the future document, what what how do you envision improving on what we have now?

So I I would say it'd be more on the CIP side. So the CIP needs to inform how so in CIP books, we used to have we would have, like, a project and potential, like, maintenance that we might need to consider funding over the course of the year. Talked about how it was funded, if there were transfers that had policies in it. It was a pretty robust document. A separate document from the budget.

A separate but we would always so we work together with Public Works to ensure there our numbers were matching, all their transfers, all of the financial pieces were still tying together. So I would envision that it would work a lot like it used to work in the past with just maybe some different kind of, one major difference is, whether we stay on our current software to produce the budget book or we move to OpenGup. We welcome that into that process. So we tell them, we don't want your stuff in a Word document. We want it to be part of our document. We can track where you're at. You can track where you're at. Print it out. There's a lot of good and then we could we could also monitor progress and understand, like, hey. When we're coming up on deadline, I'm not seeing that.

I could see that be an improvement. So before it was kind of we knew Public Works was working on their piece. We know they'd give us some pieces to review, and then the document would come together. So I would envision that the old process working very similar and more of putting the document together being a bit more collaborative than it had been in the past.

And for what I see with other agencies in terms of the best practice on the processes, is that, in your budget calendar, right, from the say, okay, go to adoption. In that phasing, after you've talked about what your priorities are, the the the city staff would then create the capital improvement plan, the draft of that, and have a dedicated conversation about CIP. So we see a lot of agencies just dedicating like a a study session or whatever you wanna call it. Right? To just totally focus on on capital needs, translating and understanding the impact that those needs have on, operating.

Right? Because one of the things that you need to be looking at is hey. Great. We're gonna build a new bridge. What what is the operating impact of that? Are we going to need more staff to be able to maintain that bridge? Are we going to need to spend more money? You know? So it it's it's ensuring that you're having that conversation, but being able to dedicate time to it. And then after you've provided your direction about the different projects on the sequencing and the prioritization of those, it's in informing the development of the operating budget that ultimately, as Christina indicated, is in is in this budget document here, which is saying, this is the current year's appropriations, but it's informed by the the long range by the long term.

Makes sense? And it's not that you haven't done that. It's just that the question becomes, what is the right process and what is the right sequencing to make sure that it's done and so that you can not only feel assured that you've made an informed decision, but then also you can demonstrate that to the community that we did make an informed decision based on long term.

Because internally, we have a lot of study sessions and reports about Yeah. The status of the campaign Mhmm. Projects. So that that is there.

And Yes.

So it's not like we are not in the know, but it doesn't really get included in the form. I think we're used to in the budget because it is such a significant

part of

the Yeah. We do include it. And so I think, if I'm remembering the recommendations correctly, and then correct me on this, is that, we're doing it, but we're doing it a lot later than most agencies do for the CIP, that that process generally starts a lot earlier. So a lot of times what you'll see if you've looked at our proposed budget and you look at our final, you see a huge jump, like 4 or 5,000,000, sometimes 10,000,000. Because we we so finance team, the council doesn't see the CIP until the proposed budget study session or shortly before, so it doesn't have time. I I need to print my book by May by May 1. The book. I should say my book. The book. The budget book by May 1.

If the study session was happening in April, May, forget it. But even in April, it's hard to press pump the brakes, wait for everything. Okay. Council said they were good with all of these, and it's produced turned something around in less than a couple of weeks when we're already trying to turn around a pretty a pretty large book. So I think if I remember the recommendations correctly, it's like you're doing it, but it's so late in the game. You should be doing it earlier. And then we can kinda lockstep right with everything that we're we'd be like, okay. CIB, you gotta go in marching. Try to understand what you're gonna put in the book. And then in April, when we're doing production, we can start and quote more time on one way.

Sure. We've had we've had some agenda packets that would have 2,400 pages in them, and it it it's open. And we would get it on Wednesday for a Tuesday meeting.

This is why we try to our goal is always to print the book on or before May 1 depending on when May 1 falls and not to have the budget studies that should I know this is probably still not enough time until at least two weeks later because you still have other agendas and items that you'd like to look at, but then the budget book does come out at least a couple of weeks. Like I said, I'm not saying that it's not a a light read. It's still a lot of reading. We usually have a council meeting somewhere in between when it gets actually published. But we do try to understand that, and we do try to make sure we have it available less than more than the one we keep.

So what I was sharing about the the process, you know, and then the CIP discussions happen before you even get to the proposed budget. There's like a in most cases, what I've seen, there's a draft CIP plan that has all the details about the different projects that are being discussed and proposed that is provided. That's the, that's the basis for that, study session dedicated to capital improvement projects. So that you're you're seeing the big picture and you're seeing how how staff is recommending that it be prioritized. And then the council's giving input into that so that, based on the direction that's provided, staff can then use that to inform the annual appropriation budget, the annual operating budget as we call it, right, that includes what is that first year or two years if you're doing a biennial budget.

What is what is going to be included in in that proposed budget? So it's the timing and sequencing of all this stuff. So that when you're seeing a proposed budget, you're seeing the entire the totality of what is being recommended.

So these are that final phrase seems like an under basic element that this committee probably could be the totality of what's being proposed. It seems like an element that should be in the budget process. And and it if if I'm taking what you just asked, that is what your recommendation is, right, that you include this IP simultaneously with the hold. Okay.

That's right.

That's what I thought. Let let me jump to a more in the weeds type question. We as the audit committee, as you've alluded many of us have alluded to certain tasks that we do. One of them is supervising the internal audit function, which is a a new function here in the city for, what, three or four years now, and I'm glad that it's in function. They they it seems to be working well.

I've got two part question, and it goes to maybe both the city staff and Baker Tilly in the rec recommendation. I didn't see a separate call out of the internal audit function in this workup of the budget, and it it does report in technically. It's it's, of course, a consult right now. Moss Adams is contracted to do it, but it really reports in in a hybrid fashion to city council and the audit committee. So it it goes across administrative departments and divisions.

So my two part question is is, first of all, how do you usually see that in other instances, the internal audit function as being included in the budget? Because I wanna make sure personally as an audit committee member that that function continues to be highlighted and it's important, but it doesn't report into Christina, for example. It reports in technically to city council. Yeah. But we all collaborate to come up with a work plan for it.

So the audit committee can be doing many. The audit committee can say, well, we want you internal auditors to do x y z. Sure. Which, of course, the audit committee meets as a policy making decision body typically in our current, charter. So first question you got, and then then the second one really is, I think, a nutty in the performance. Let's dive into the performance measures. There's one that I think you put the internal audit into the finance department that includes a major for example, if you look at the recommendation where is it? Sorry. On page 39? Yeah.

That's about where we are exactly. Page 50 of 59. Sorry. There it is. Yeah. This this part is if there's a Number

of high risk internal audit issues identified?

Yeah. Exactly. Then it it it goes as a a demerit in the performance of the finance department. But I wanted to clarify, my understanding is they're all also be doing operational issues, and they frequent or and they go across departments. So right now, they're looking at policies,

for

example, that are across departments. So my question is my second part of this question is, wouldn't it make more sense to put that performance indicator for internal audit demerits maybe at the city manager level rather than not only at the because I think the finance department already would get demerits by having the external auditors board. I think that's in there somewhere about having clean audit reports, for example. So maybe it'd be nice to put the internal audit as a performance measure against the city manager's category. Yeah. See, but she's really responsible for the operational of all the departments. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So two long winded two questions. You got them both.

I'll go number two and then number one. The second one you're right. We we struggled with where does this really go and what is the primary focus of the internal audit group. And I think

We we set that focus every couple you know, when there's a Yeah. Three plan down or something like that. Yeah. Gets reset periodically.

Yeah. And and and and maybe to that point, you know, or maybe instead of city manager, maybe it goes up to its own bucket.

It could. K. It's a contracted service, but it's a collaborative thing. Again, that's why it's an input from both parties. What you guys think might be the appropriate too. Where have you seen this in other cities?

And and and to the point about the internal audit function or any audit really for even if it's, you know, doing the external financial audits. Right? Right. Those typically will report ultimately to the city council through the audit committee. Right.

By nature of the beast, it's financed, but it has the, you know, the the the responsibility for contracting with them, subject to council approval, and works with them to provide the information. But, ultimately, that reporting, typically, for most agencies that I work with goes to the audit committee, then then gets referred then to the city council. They're after you've done your review, and then you've either blessed it or asked for clarifications. So that's the we we didn't include this in the report because it was somewhat out of scope in terms of that whole thing. But, you know, the question becomes, should the auction be looking at the budget? I mean, that's one thing that you could definitely use.

It's certainly not in our scope. As Christina said, it's in we look at something called the format of the budget, which sure. Yeah. Yeah. Something different than looking at what city council does. Yeah. Right. But to the extent you look at line items, that would be an example where the internal audit function could easily be assigned that if, you know, collaboration Yeah. All set that as its goal, then then that would be so do you guys have any any views on these two questions?

From my perspective, I I understand why we would have a a harder time kind of bring word, I think, for an audit. We do. Not really indicative of finance and how it it does how it operates business. It had other departments. But putting it across all departments, it's gonna be a little difficult to to kinda track it.

So I'd I'd I'd make the argument that it should probably set in finance even though we don't have complete control of it. And as far as the how you would include it in the budget, I have I I haven't seen any other budgets, how they would include a interim function and apart from it being its own, whether the the city or agency has its its its own division. And then maybe at that point, call out what it's if it's not.

Right?

But at this point, it's being contracted out. It's a bit more unique because every year, we update their scope of work. It's not like they're constantly have a routine of auditing our processes and set by the audit committee and then later approved by the audit.

Well, that's not too much different than an internal audit function in a commercial context. They get reset all the time to priorities by the board since priority. So maybe that would be the answer. I'm trying to defend it because the internal eye function got created through a lack of internal control. So we put those the the item on the table. And so it was a response to that, and now they're also an operational improvement opportunity for the city. So I I I wanted to highlight that it it's an important element, I think, and maybe the budget process needs to take it into consideration. But Yeah. Maybe we've talked enough about

agencies will actually put the budget the the budgeting the dollars for it in the city council budget.

Okay. Sure.

Just like the city council has all the different committees. Right? I mean Right. Right. Some agencies will put it in in the city council's budget because that's where the reporting is actually happening. So we should bring Smiles Audit Committee maybe, but, you know We

don't have a budget at all. All the other commissions get a little dollars, and we don't get anything. So Just so I know. Alright. More more questions from Kitty. You wanna ask some more?

Or Wanna do any public comments, or do

Well, we're still in the questions

and

answer phase, clarification, but I'm happy. Are there public comments? There are. Okay. Well, then we can always talk more when we have emotions. So why don't we invite you to be ready to make your public comment?

Come right up here, Peggy. You can

have this

Thank you.

For me.

That's all good. I think we can share this as opposed to questions. If we have time.

And we'll put the time record if I think it'll be all good.

Okay. We're ready.

Okay. My

thoughts aren't organized. I just wanted to let you know the budget document from a public standpoint, we see as a fixed point in time, and OpenGov is constantly changing. I'm not a great fan of OpenGov. The numbers don't go down. It just you get very, very high level, and that's all it makes it So that's frustrating. My concern is the fixed point time. I wanna see all the numbers match. And if you send me to a link, the number's gonna change.

The links are gonna

break. So that's my concern. The other items that I had was I agree with the the community profile part of it. The financial policies, From a a public standpoint, I would like a document that's the financial policies and maybe included as an appendix, and that gets updated separately. So, you know, it comes before the city council, they approve whatever, and then you could put the current version in.

And that way, as you go year after year, if you wanna go back to a year, you have the policies that go with that year because over time, those change. So I don't want anything changing. That's what scares me about the links. Departments, I don't want loss of information. As a public, I was appalled to see that we have an AR project that happened at McClellan. Okay. We're in a financial deficit. We need to watch our money, and all of a sudden, this project gets done that never was approved. I don't know how much it cost. I don't care.

I want the bathrooms in Quinlan cleaned instead of the teachers having to do it. And so as a public, you're looking at why do we have this? We can't do the basic stuff. And so if a budget can tease out where that extra money came from and take it away from that department or whatever it takes. And there are some other projects from a public standpoint where we see, why did they spend it on that when we need these basic things?

So

and I I understand budget doesn't count. Twenty five minutes. Carryover incumbences. I know that isn't a budget thing, but if there's some place to find out what where all the stuff that got approved that maybe we could pull out some money to give to start over again. And I think that's my time for a second. That's it.

K. Thank you, Peggy. Mhmm. What I'd like to do now is invite a motion, and then we'll discuss the motion.

So we'll have q and a.

So is there a motion to our action item is to accept and forward this report to city council? You have more questions?

Yeah. So I have a couple of things that I would wanna request modification on. So if there was to be a motion made, it would be with with statements about these potential modifications for the city council to be aware of.

I think that's a great motion myself, and and we already had one. For example, we really like I think there's a consensus of having the CIP advanced at the same time as the budget process. But do you like that motion? Yeah. I I Are you a second?

Say that again?

Yeah. Go ahead. Janet, listen, Kurt.

Yeah. So that we would ex accept the Baker Tilly budget format review update and forward it to the city council for approval with. So and we're gonna so we should have comments that are collected already. Do I have a second?

I I just

Do you have a second? Okay. Let's No.

We can comments away. Excellent. Okay. Let's discuss. So through the chair, under performance measures for economic development, I think this altered a little bit, perhaps, because a number of meetings conducted with developers and prospective businesses well, one of the things, meetings with developers is an interesting assignment for them.

I don't

see why the way you're on page.

38.

38.

That that's kind of interesting. I've things that come to mind for me and and for prospective businesses, as this for this as a measurement, you could actually you could foreseeably see, the city paying for business luncheons and giving having free food out. And Mhmm. We're meeting with lots of businesses, but what are you getting done? It could actually not provide anything that's increasing economic development.

So the question is, the performance measure, we we want it to to show something meaningful. I was thinking more in terms of business licenses, increases in business licenses and the types. I would like to know something perhaps about the vacancy of our commercial and commercial being office and retail properties across the city. Are is it improving or not? And considering, like, we we had a 1,200,000 square foot mall, and this would be kind of a metric.

We've it's gone, been wiped out since 2018 or '19. We've got nothing in its place to show. We've got no no economic development there whatsoever. But that'd be something that I would want reflected. We've got commercial properties getting leveled and replaced with with residential without any retail component. I I think those for the health of the city coffers, that those those are important. And then

I wonder just Yeah. Because you've got some more comments. I wonder how we can work this into our our motion discussion. I mean, some of these rise to the we can have consensus, and some go to They

might not.

Right. Well, they may may not be able to get get to them all in the right do the detail that's appropriate. But is there something like a give and take with the public works department where it it sounds like these are coming under that.

This was economic development. And how do you so economic development. Measure economic development?

So maybe that's the general bunch of subsets that that

Can I can I respond to that? Because we Yeah. We've been rambling around all this even as late as Friday. Right, Jonathan? About what what is what is the measure? You know, on on on one hand, I'm with you, Katie. I get it. You know? I mean, ultimately, it's about what what can we show for it. Right?

On the other hand, there as you know, with econ econ dev, there's a lot of things that are outside of your control, setting. Right? I mean, you can talk with with agencies. You can, you know, have a percentage of, you know, percentage of of meetings that actually came to fruition with project, which is actually a draft point that we have. But but there's a lot of things that are outside of the the the control.

So the question becomes, how best to measure those outcomes? I like the concept of the business licenses, you know, understanding that there's still going to be some, you know, on that. But what you could measure from that perspective, for example, would be, percentage of new business licenses based on economic development emissions. Something like that.

What about, like, tourism? Super Bowl is coming next year. Is there some metric about attracting hotel patrons for the Super Bowl.

They would. And Will that stand the test of time here in Cupertino?

No. They shouldn't have a basic tourism thing like Sure. Wineries, hotels, restaurants. We're becoming very well known for our restaurants. Is there something any metric out there to show that

Yeah. And and the question becomes what you know, thinking about it again from a priority perspective, what is it that we're really trying to not measure? What are we trying to evaluate in terms of is the city hitting the mark? What what and who are we trying? And that's why, you know, again, we we look at the the strategic planning component.

I get that there are there there are measures that you can use for each of one of those issues. The question becomes what is what is really the goal of Cupertino? What what are we trying to do as it relates to economic development business, you know, the the business environment here. And then from that, how can we then create some outcomes and standards we expect to be hit from those? So are there are there different measures?

Yes. We could we there are some different measures like you're talking about. You know, what if I was talking with, with Santa Cruz, or in some regards even Scotts Valley or Capitola, I have a different set of things from and I kinda have a development perspective because of the character and nature of who they are and that they rely significantly on travel and tourism. Here, it's it's it has not historically been that as much. Right? You know? So are there measures that could be added? Sure. Absolutely. The question is what what are we trying to do in terms of the the test of time?

Is it we're trying to attract people to come and eat here, you know, shop here. Right? And if that's the case, then we create some of those measures of, you know, number you know, percentage growth of sales tax generated by restaurants. That's one. You know, business license number of business licenses and the growth of the number of business licenses.

Can I either pose a question while Katie's Yep? Gonna have some more for you. How do other cities we've got this list of cities. Like, these performance measures are are some well, the city manager sets these two in some way or or buys into. So how do how do cities in general establish these performance indicators with input from the policy makers? So is it usually a give and take? Because I can see where these could look. Everybody's gonna have a different opinion on, you know, name two or three of these and yeah. So you could get a very long list that's now not gonna be very useful because the the poor department's got 50. So how does this work in practice for good budgeting cities?

From my experience Yeah.

What we've seen with other agencies, it stems back to the strategic plan. That was Stems back to what the key priorities are for the community and the agency. And what is the vision you're trying to accomplish, how are you getting there in terms of those, you know, strategic objectives and goals. Right? And it's from there that these performance measures come into play. But is there practically give and take? Absolutely, Viral. It's because, you know, it may sound great to do per percentage growth in sales tax revenue for restaurants. That's easy peasy because that you guys are getting reports at least on a quarterly basis, right, for for that, and we could we could track that. But, you know, there there are other measures that could be really archaic.

Like, how do we even measure this? And can we even do that? We have a few in here that were, you know, satisfaction ratings, you know, of of different things. And one of the comments that came back and this is an example of this, you know, like, one of the comments that came back from staff was like, so are you suggesting that we need to do surveys more often? And I'm like, you probably should be touching base with the community to see how you're performing, you know, on an ongoing basis. I know that there's cost in terms of, you know, doing those surveys. But, yeah, that's an embedded assumption here. And and so there's that give and take that happens with, with creating a measure that really makes sense. Okay.

I only had one more. Okay. And it's Okay. And it's the three one one, system. That sets code enforcement, And I think the members of the public would would I'd like to hear their thoughts about it because some I'll go to 311, click on the map, and I'll just go dot around and see what's going on with different complaints and how they're getting closed out because then I'll have I'll have people complain to me that their tickets gotten closed, and they didn't really have a resolution to it.

And if the metrics, you know, getting things, getting an update on the status, well, some of these updates might be. We've we've looked at it. So you need to especially particularly the the homeless ones are the trickiest, I think. Call the county. Here's the number. Well, you've addressed that ticket, and then and then there might be a closeout item. And because of the nature of the problem, the the the encampment's still there. It's kinda closed out, and and it's just kinda sitting in in limbo. So there's there's some that the public thinks that aren't getting really closed.

Yeah. We we try to

Sensibize our

responsiveness and resolution.

Yes. Okay.

How responsive is this city being in terms of complaints that are, you know, leveled through the the three one one system in this case? And that was what that measure two, I guess, really was was trying to accomplish. Right? And then that third measure was trying to accomplish resolution. But as you know, proof is in the pudding about, well, how do we defining resolution?

You know, as resolution is yeah. We acknowledge that there's well, potholes not a good good example of that. But, you know, we recognize there's a problem there, but there's nothing that we can do because of certain you know, it's not on city property. It's not, you know, whatever. And and that's where I think that some work is gonna have to be done in terms of defining then what what does resolved mean. And, you know, because, you know, one of the concepts that we saw from another city, it said resolve to the satisfaction of the of the complainant.

But but

sometimes Right. Can't get what you asked for.

May I ask, like, when I looked at the city attorney one, so this this came through to the city attorney office, or how did these get they get a write down?

We developed some draft concepts, and then believe someone from the city attorney's office was able to review.

We didn't we tested a long term as they didn't object. So we assumed

Complable deniability.

It's only so many hours in the day.

And now we're getting a new attorney. Interesting. Yeah. Okay. I I just thought I thought these were really great, by the way, all the red lines that you had in here. So I I don't know how to even capture, like, the prior suggestions to bring it to the city council, but I'm the floor is free.

Okay. We did have some general statement that captured the comment.

Let make any suggestion. So, Ken, as far as recommendations, if your comments or suggestions deviate from what is being recommended, we can call that out. Right. So, like, the CIT, it's already being recommended. If you want to call it out further than this is something that you get stronger verge, we can go to

I think we wanna do that. I'm speaking for one person here.

Yeah.

That that would wanna call that. That's a best practice that we as a committee agree with. It is my way of looking at that.

It's through the chair. I like the idea of having the details in an appendix rather than having me sorry. It's a very selfish ask. Rather than having me go to OpenGub and through that, if could if if this if all this can exist somewhere in in an appendix, I'm good with that.

Alright. Yeah. And then now we come back to the issue of wanting to make sure your voice is heard. And on the other hand, it may not be the committee's voice. I I do like the online active thing. I'm not supporting OpenGov. If that's the best choice, that's great. I have used OpenGov in prior incarnations. And like you said, it's not necessarily easy, or or I don't mean to put words in your mouth, but it does have a ton of detail, though, I discovered. And I could go into more detail than I wanted in the case that I when I did look at it a few times.

And so it does seem like a nice place to put it out there. My own opinion is rather than putting it in a a a frozen hard document, having that that level of detail in an online being updated periodically, that's a great mechanism the way I look at it. If if you could make it user friendly, maybe that's the the the what you're saying is if it if it were user friendly, it could be much better than even this hard copy stuff. That's my and, Sheila, I don't know if you have a comment on that part of this record. I

like the idea of a a frozen document.

Oh, you do? Okay.

Only because otherwise, we would be all and and we all understand the budget to be a document at a certain point.

But you can address this, I think, because you're not saying Well well Or, you know, I'm free.

One of the ways to address that I'm sorry. Mean, we one one of the ways to address that is, again, through looking at the feature set of OpenGumford and just using that as an example.

Right. The

point that you also made earlier, right, of

I have go today.

How do we make sure that we can still maintain the sanctity of what was originally approved so you still have your original budget that you can compare

Right.

As opposed to amended budget. Because for some people, they wanna see what the original plan was. Other people are like, yeah. We understood that there was a change, and we needed to add another $5,000,000 for x y z because we didn't expect that during the time that we created the budget, so they wanna see an amended budget. So people are different.

And so I think, ultimately, what you're getting at here is how can we ensure that the budget document maintains this let me use the word sanctity. Sorry. Maintains the sanctity of what was originally approved by the council, And it provides the and and provides detail, that people need to be, that that want to review it. And so there it's agnostic about whether it's OpenGov, whether it's a hard copy, whether it's, you know Right. PDF, whatever.

If I so the OpenGov does separate between adopt, which is what you do and you, which is amended, which occurs over the over the course of the next fiscal year. So you do have that distinction. There's the other bit that it gives

you action.

Right?

So you can run reports, and at any given point, you can see how the budget has increased over the course of the fiscal year. So your analysis could actually in in a bit more have a bit more depth. Right? Yeah. Certainly, if you want some of the static document, OpenGup should be able to provide some sort of report they can pull out information. OpenGod is quite different. And it's just, I guess, that the biggest challenge here is what I'm hearing is that user friendly. So maybe there's something that we can do on our end to make that bit more both the council and the public.

You said the council sorry. Vice mayor Omar go, and then I have some thoughts on, maybe how we can progress with this colleague.

Question would be if we can have the appendix as the this is what we improved, you know, in June, as static. And then is it a work program item to then be like Menlo Park and have that dynamic online, or or or is that something you're able to do already?

A little bit of time. We have access to all the pieces. We just recently went to an ultra good user group, and we're like, oh, wow. I haven't moved to this yet, but we're in the thick of budget and down a person. So we're I've already told the team it's something we should look for Yeah. For next year to try to be able to do. So what I was kinda thinking is and previously, we're do it tonight. Right? We're gonna have an agenda, but maybe at the next meeting, creating a subcommittee of audit. And then what we can do is, right, sometimes us as a finance budget folks, we're like, look. It's great. And then the layperson's like, like, no. Don't know what that is, but that wasn't what I was looking for.

They don't think like you.

They don't. I know. It's unfortunate. But I think that could bridge the gap. Right? So we have the subcommittee that we could run, but, hey. We're here's the format that we're looking at. Here's how it would function. That makes sense. And we can get the feedback that, like, not quite there yet. Maybe I wanna do these tubes so you can go back and still have some iterative processes before we get to it likely for fiscal year 2627.

Right. That's what

I told my team. I'd like to be there for 2627.

So I know people love OpenGov. I'm I

And I think we better

acknowledge that, that that that's where they like to get their information. That's great. If other people like this you know?

Yeah. And I think we haven't fully tapped into its potential, and I'm being honest here because a lot of the disconnects that I'm hearing, I think if we were more efficient or effective at using OpenGov, you could have something that says, like, oh, here's all the here's the carryover encumbrance years. Here's the budget carryovers. Here are the, the adjustments at q one. In an ideal world that we can get this set up correctly, you could click, and then it'd give you the list of carryovers and what they were in. You could click into the. Click in carryovers, see that same detail, which is what I'm hearing folks are like, the numbers are there, but how do I get to some of the detail? To me, just some of the things I'm hearing kind of folks speak of The UK. I think there's a way to do this, and OpenGov has been a fabulous partner with the city. We're like, we don't this is

what we wanna do.

Can they do it? They really help us hold our hands along it. They know their program better than we do. So I think there's a lot of opportunity, as Jonathan said, to be able to leverage OpenGov and also to use it in a way that maybe more people will like it and under understand it, that it might be beneficial kind of over the long run, making the budget document smaller, but allowing for a place where that detail can still exist.

So let me bring you back just for a moment. I'm trying to keep track so Janet can summarize what our great notion's gonna be at the. Right now, we've got the CID one that we've all got agreement on. And now maybe we maybe I don't mean to put words in our mouths, but it sounds like we've inched forward that if there was a used mechanism, whether hard copy or online, we we think that makes sense as an appendix. Is that Do fair?

I'd like to see these, since they're trying to pull all of these details into the overview page, if all of these details, since they're still gonna exist, can be an appendix Possibly.

Are you thinking of appendix similar to the that appendix?

No. It's just I'm I'm through the chair. I'm sorry. It just seemed like in this

It's the it's the divisional

the program. I'm trying

to Yeah. For, like, for public works, everything gets into the the overview. So it's you're shrinking this document, but this information still it it still exists rather than having so for for when we go to our approval that we've got an appendix that has all these things there for our June approval. And then, you know, that's a point in time it's gone, and then then you have it available online through OpenGov afterwards.

Formatting wise, there would be just strictly you know what? The the dollar amount that, there's really not much support, like, language that goes to it and says, hey. This is the salaries and benefits, this dollar amount we're, providing to this division of working down the line rather than another three rehashing that whole document that we have because I was into each of you.

So for a page that was currently, like, city hall maintenance, what would we then see for this appendix? Just like this?

That she

that portion

of the life.

Revenue and expenditure. Okay. Rather than we're not gonna see the service objectives and all this sort of stuff.

That may be consolidated the department level.

Right?

So they would kinda cover that, but it's more higher level rather than into the individual division.

Although I think some of it, we have to understand what makes more sense in the whatever software we end up using likely opened up. Right? So if they can fold all of that information, if that's something that you wanted, it could still because I think some of people people ask that they don't know. You know? Well, I wanna know, you know, where is the contract that cleans the bathrooms at Quinlan? Right? So you can easily point them, oh, that's a it's in facilities. Right? So look at Quinlan facilities to look at that. But a lot of times that, I forget what I should I have these memorized, but I don't where they talk about, like, service objectives or what they it gives the

Yeah. It's right there. Yep.

It provides the detail of what's in there, which I think is important because I think if you don't have it, it's hard to know, like, oh, I know we're spending $50,000, but what? Because this just says Quinlan facilities. Is that if that's sufficient information, you could do it that way. So I think there from my personal opinion, there's benefit to the right of what's covered in that budget. But I'd be good either way.

I think there are ways to successfully, and that's what we were trying to get at, capture what what are these, you know, key service objectives, etcetera. But clean it up so that way, if you wanna see the numbers, the numbers are summarized. Ideally, Steve's brain is that if you were looking at this as a PDF file or if you were looking this online, you'd click on that summary and it gives you this. What are talking about? It gives you this.

If it was yeah. If it was online, that sounds like a lot of work further,

you can then drill down and say, I wanna know what's going on with the employee services number that's on listed there. You click on that, then you get this.

That would be nice.

Different detailed levels. But it's cleaning up a master document so that when somebody who's not has left brained analytic excited like we are about this, they can understand the big picture about what what what the city's doing.

So I'm trying to get us to just motion ideas. So can we go through a high level you want something that that we understood. Can you guys summarize something that you're you can provide? You've got it. You've got a proposal. Why don't you stick? Maybe we don't even need to call it out, Kitty. Maybe it's just as a special item. It's one where you follow-up more on the detail of the because I'm happy the way the report is comp personally mentions there's gonna be detail made available in an appendix, basically. It says or attach.

And potentially, maybe part of it could be we wanna pilot it for the twenty sixth or for the first year. So council wants to be able to look at it. Audit committee and council wanna be able to look at it, understand what that looks and feels like before you kinda make the permanent decision. Because I hate being be like, yes. And then we get the finished product, and maybe they're you're not happy with what we ended up being able to put together within the software. So pilots can be always a fun way to

go. Yep.

Let's go test out the waters, and then we can come back and say, you know, in a year.

Yep.

Or as we've done maybe as we do through the, budget subcommittee, come back and say, you know, audits happen with what this looks like. Status happens with this looks like go to council, and they get to see it and then figure out, like, yes. I want you to move forward for all the other fiscal years this way or, you know, what? No. Maybe we want two printed documents or maybe a a different way. I I don't wanna see your thoughts on

My thought is that the the what I'm hearing you say sorry, Janet. Here it comes. Is that accepting the report and you're underscoring some issues that are important to the Go for it. We have is c I p, which is maintaining the Right. Tail the the tail availability. Right? Ensuring that the original budget, the frozen you're talking about. Right? And also, the the the the the original budget is is ensured that it's easily accessible and that we're reviewing the performance measures, in alignment with, what our strategic goals are.

That's it.

In areas like economic development or other things if you wanna call that out. I mean, that's what I'm heard I've heard you say.

What are our strategic goals?

Well Let's not go there for a while.

Maybe that's important.

What are our streets?

So, yeah, there's a

big that's important.

That discussion. Hopefully, you you took good

notes because that was a nice summary, but we can come back. How about we come back while I throw some more out on table? And we'll give Sheila a chance because we've been going around. Maybe you should have your chance before me. But, otherwise, I'm gonna jump in. Alright.

No. My one comment for now is is the performance measures. I I like the idea of it being aligned to the the strategic that our priorities don't. I mean, just just to throw out an experience that I've had with performance measures, sometimes it sort of takes over the life of a a department or employees. And and I know Sunnyvale is a classic example where people actually left the workforce because they were spending more time on performance measures or measuring their performance than their actual work.

That was that was Ted Gabler that really pushed that. Sorry.

So so

You've been together.

That the performance measures, you know, don't just not they're so cumbersome that they they're simple, easy to measure, and, again, not make sure that we're not measuring widgets as opposed to outcomes.

Right. I haven't second that. And I think we did highlight that before, but probably one thing is that and Christina, finance staff will laugh at this, but I noticed you highlighted the SANTIE charts is not being used by anybody else, and you and I are probably the only ones who can remember the real history on that. But but my my question is, and something that that may be rise to a concurrence among us, is if you look at page 28 or 29 where the Sankey document is somewhat confusing, even with explanation provided at the bottom of the chart. Not a typical chart used in local government budgets.

That part's good. But if we're just gonna reduce it into a narrative description, which is the recommendation 13, I wonder if some of the explanatory element that a budget is also trying to or communicative element of a graphical presentation in some way. So here again, everybody in this room, other than me, I know better. There there's a budget at a glance that has a a neat little graphic that says a a dollar goes where. Yeah.

So what I'm thinking, instead of the sand key charts, that's fine. We can throw those out if nobody else uses them. That's not communicating. I'll buy that as an argument. But isn't there still a role for graphical presentation to help us understand the numbers that we're looking at, and wouldn't that be appropriate here? Or is it there, and I just didn't understand it? You're but but it does say the recommendation is you're gonna replace the funds chart with a narrative description, and that's my question is, well, maybe a narrative description with a neat little chart stolen from budgeted accounts.

But yeah. That's a good point. Because when you read the paragraph, we talk about that $100 bill

Yeah. Yeah.

And how it's separated out.

Right.

But it's a term narrative description.

We Right.

We just felt that that that was a stumbling block that a lot of people had in our conversations. Like, what is this? It's it's gorgeous. Mister San or miss Sankey is very happy about that.

Well, we're a city of engineers. That was brought up by I learned a lot more about Sankey after that.

That's right.

Very very common in the we're out here in the industry, but kidding. I'm sure happy to get rid of it. That's not my point, though, is if there's still a the the driving reason for that was the gentleman knew that there was a graphical way, and and that was just not commonly used. But so so I didn't wanna throw the baby out with the bathwater for whatever it was. Okay. So Our heart was not

to just say you only use one

was used for graphics in this I in this rather than just numbers? Because I didn't see that there there's a lot of narrative replacement in the recommendation and not graphical where possible. Something like that would would not that we wanna bring Sankey into it, but she

I thought that the graphics showing the dollar bill sign and some of that also it breaks up the text, if nothing more, to make it Yeah. More friendly looking unless it's like a really dull textbook. Right. So I thought that that might be super useful. I do well, if we'll finish this particular topic, I have one more that was mentioned.

So it sounds like we may have a consensus. You like graphics too? I do. So to the extent that the city staff could figure out graphics that are appropriate, we could show we could highlight that as our city council. We're forwarding this up. Well, now we got CIP. We've got maybe this some private. And then we've got graphics, if possible, included in some of the narrative as a That's it.

Through the chair, CIP could have some graphics. Yeah. A little bit explain what is what a CIP project is, know, so

that removes the patient. So you got one more. Why don't we cover your one more what that was?

Okay. It was a suggestion about the policies and so there are some policies that were revised and and and and then how it looked is that they were revised and included, and then we approved revised versions. But I like the idea of the policies being being separated out. And if there is a red line happening that we are that it's really being, you know, pointed out to us and that we keep the So that way we know what what changes have happened. And that yeah.

So I know that some, like the investment policy, we've already revised, but there are some that if you're needing to revise it right at the the time of the budget approval, that that we that we would have a separate agenda item even to look at the red line and say, yes. We agreed this. Keep the policies perhaps as an appendix to pull them out. If that's what makes sense to you, I'd you know, just to make the book a little bit thinner.

So what I could do is separate the policy from the actual documents and have it be static as of the date policy the budget was adopted?

Well, if if you're if the if the policy is being changed, what it's it's a convenience matter, because there's a lot to look at. If the policy needs to be changed when the budget is getting adopted, I would like it to be a separate item for the council so that we're not overwhelmed with lots of numbers and policy changes, trying to think about what the implications of those changes are all kind of at once. So I'd like let's think about policies as a separate item and then, you know, red line it whatever you needed to change. Kinda like we look at the grants at a separate day, you know, before we go and punch this through. Maybe look at grants, look at

policy changes that need to happen, and then and then so we're not overwhelmed with everything. That sounds like a great idea, but it might be something that really doesn't go in our motion necessarily, but you guys communicate separately as far as city council prioritizing. When you when you review this whole thing anyways, that's a great one. I would suggest unless you wanna put it in our motion. But

Not sure quite how. But how it could be to the chair, how can we address this?

I'm understanding. We just want if there's going to be policy changes, which there aren't always. It's usually limited to the one here. With with their policy, we're switching over. But you wanna see a red line, and you wanna see a clean version. You wanna see this as a separate item, probably before proposed budget gets to you. Otherwise, you're kind of right in the middle of a tight window for proposed. We only have two council meetings to get to final.

Well, if it through the chair. If it is in the proposed and let's say it's a new policy, then the entire policy would be a red line. And in in the proposed budget, we would be flagged. We would Yeah.

We have it as a

Yes. Totally red line, brand new. And then if it was a change that was happening again, just like anything else, redline it. If it has to so if if time is not on your side, it needs to go put in a proposed budget with the with the red lines and then a little revision thing on the on

It it seems like that's a process rather than the the actual. I think certainly when we're bringing the the proposed ledger, we can do something like that because the investment policy is kind of aligned right around that same time. And so that can see that being a that why we would wanna kinda provide you that red line. But when we actually finalize this document, we could set it, and I don't think we wanna have separate red line doc policy with the budget. It would be the the then adopted and approved about that policy that time.

Can I make a suggestion? What if where we were really trying to go with this is instead of including all those policies that are in there, summarize them. You could summarize them in a table that identifies what the key issues are of what that policy does. Like, for example, the investment policy ensures that we're, you know, living up to to the the state code and will have the following issues, preservation of capital, you know, all those different components. Right?

We can't invest in things that are more than five years and primarily investing in debt securities. For more information, know, here's the link to to the thoughtful policy itself. You summarize each of those policies. And to the point about if there's a new policy or a major revision, for example, fund balance reserves. We've changed our policy from two months to four months of, you know, annual operating expenditures as a minimum reserve policy.

You would call that out in the fund in the the policy narrative discussion there. Saying a new policy or significant revision to our policies is this. Boom. And then you can and then you will know that, you know, you've looked at that as a separate item, and each of these policies would be available as an appendix really as a link or however you want to view that. Makes sense? So you're highlighting in the budget document itself, here are the policies. Here's what they entail. There's more details available to go see them, but significant changes or, or new policies are as follows with a little bit more of a discussion about.

When it comes to counsel for approval, we'll we have all of these, items a through, like, l. You know? And, so that I would assume that the policies would be one of those. Like and then the the grants are usually that's that's another one. So is that how you would envision it if it were to go like that with a table, and then we would have it as a

For anything that was changed, just to call out what was different. But if nothing was changing, right, we would say they're something normal. There's no change in spinal policies, and they can be found here. So I think what what I'm hearing is we're not doing a we do a better job of calling out when things changing so that council knows we're making updates to to policies. And then it's all like, we have to be quite attachments.

So what we try to do is have some portion of the of the staff report they called out. This exists, we can find it here, and here's what it is. But I think what I'm hearing is two prong. One is I think we're good with the idea that we can have a limited book, and so the table of contents leads you back to the policies. But as the policies are coming before counsel, you wanna see the red line and understand what what changes you're approving in that policy.

And would that be, you know, attachment k

or something? Yeah. We can add attachments.

Okay. That'll sort.

Perfect. So let me I know we're gonna lose our members here in a minute. We're we're up against the time. I'm I'm really excited to get a motion, though, that that is clean relatively. And so I'd like to throw it out.

Now that you guys are impatient, you'll agree all the more quickly, right, that maybe we could work that internal audit function into our highlighting to city council as well that the I think the your appetite was maybe show internal audit as a separate department or as a separate budgeting item. Oh, the internal audit performance measures? So internal audit gets pulled out and highlighted to city council, and city council can then decide whatever they wanna do with it, throw it or or whatever. But I do like to not have internal audit be lost in the shuffle of all the conden condensation occurring. Do you have an appetite for that in our motion, you know, for a

brief way? What is that? Are you trying to

Well, internal audit is a function that the city performs. And right now, it's not highlighted. It's probably under finances, the funds Under financials. All the contracts get under there. But maybe it's more appropriately separated. And that we could raise as a question. We could say in our highlights, should it be separately highlighted in the budget or left the way it is buried in the detail?

There is there is a plan to that that will come before the council about taking another fresh look at all the the

All the recommendations. Including checking.

Uh-huh.

So why don't you just leave it to at that? Because

Okay. Even since there's two Mhmm. Let me just reemphasize. The internal audit function works hand in hand with us as a committee, so that would make a lot of sense. I'm still trying to save the internal audit function as a as an operating entity that's not controlled by anybody except city council and. I agree with that.

So I I I'm not sure what I described comes in.

Right. I'm not sure it does either. It could very well be a consistent approach, and I'm comfortable using that approach Having expressed my let's not forget about the internal audit guys. We can't do everything and aren't expected to, but they they do provide a huge function. So let me back off of that. Or can you read off the motion then as you as you have it? Oh, this is great. Everybody are the three of us happy with this? Please read.

I don't know that I see the policy red line, the appendix idea that it would show up. There's the.

The red line, that's more of a process rather than the the actual document. Right? So you'd want to see that as we're providing to the staff the the the the staff report along with all those additional attachments. The document itself might be separate with them. Right? So Sorry. I'm assuming the document wouldn't necessarily

Would have the clean version.

The the the the red act the the the red line version of those policies.

Part of the staff as an attachment.

Yes. And that this this booklet's now gonna have a summary of the changes.

And he's got Yeah.

I don't know if if you're having a printout version, I don't know how links work, but I think you could say it's in the appendix or whatever. I don't know.

We can probably provide a hyperlink or a where they would be able to find all our policies and our finance department website located here. Please go to the finance department, and they can find it somewhere there. And It would be nicely listed, we and we can use the.

And only 10 of us have the book anyway.

So yeah. Are are you okay with that wording that that Janet's

Just look back. Right?

Put well, it says it addresses your point.

Summarize, Paul, key point of what

Separate it's the final the separate agenda item for you.

Separate agenda item for in line policies. K.

As a step report with the step report, you're okay with it being as attaching it Yeah. Yeah. To to step report?

So will that work for

Separate agenda item for new or for amended policies. Right? That's really what you're getting at. Well,

I will see the

Well, actually, you wanted we would wanna see all the policies. Right? All the policies and then

I think this is just referring to

the deliberation.

And in the book, you're gonna say, here's some of the change to x y z policy.

Maybe, Janet, the paper bullet should be the hyperlinked to policies within the budget book. And then under that, maybe it's summarized, and then kind of I mean, it's the separate.

Yeah. That's a good idea.

And graphical presentation of numbers instead of a narrative description or to support? Support. Support. Support. Support. Language. Right.

So we'll we'll bring Janet back. We'll make this nice and clean. We're we're gonna be done. Almost. Keep going, Janet.

Thank chair. Maintaining detail availability, I was hoping to have as an appendix Mhmm. For when we're approving this.

As a hyperlink or appendix. Right? As an appendix, which could be hyperlink or whatever. As an appendix, sure. I think of online as an appendix, but maybe I'm too general. That's fine with me.

K. Yeah.

You're saying for council deliberations, Kitty? Is that what you're saying?

For when we approve the budget. So we have that snapshot in time Yeah. Of these things, and you're saying that they might not look exactly as full wordy as it is right now, but we'll have the tables in here. And and if we what if we what if we go through, we do it this way, and it we're like, it's just too abbreviated. We're not happy. We we wanna go back to some more detail.

Twice it wasn't palliative. Yeah.

Alright. Pilot.

That's the pilot.

We've tried

Is that does that say that?

I think

it does. We've said wants to pilot.

Where does it say that?

I must first

First one. Yeah. Okay. Pilot's up there. Good. So let's Okay. Jump to the second to the last bullet point that Steve pointed out. We should graphical presentation of certain numbers, not everything. Well, okay. Is it

good? Yeah. Yeah.

So are we all happy with that? Yeah. Perfect. Mhmm. Alright. I like this.

Okay. So we need

the time I change that last one. It's the separate I think it should be for all policies included for all change.

That's right.

Financial policies, the separate agenda item.

Separate or separate attached

It's yeah. So it was the last visit that they that was was provided with the staff report, but it's not key part of the third quarter. Okay.

Keep them in the balance here. Yes, please.

They've been attached to

leave you. That line in there? No. Why is that gone?

Thanks. Okay. Good.

I agree, Dan.

That's the one I want. K. And we've got one more, Janet, which is the internal audit one that somehow missed its little city council will consider internal audits budget presentation in the budget. That's not quite as good as we could say it. Yeah. Okay. That's the In

the city council budget. Yeah. Is that how

we do we wanna say internal audit performance measures, or do we wanna say external audit responsibility?

Responsibility. Exactly. She's doing we've got it. The response function. Model. The functions and response. Okay. That's good. That seems like it'll give you guys a placeholder. All in favor of this motion, aye. When do

you take

a vote?

Aye.

Aye. Unanimously forward, and thank you city staff and everybody. We are by adjourned. Thanks, everyone.