Town Council - Special Meeting

Oh, it's 10 a.m., so we should, or I should, call to order the special meeting budget workshop for the town of Fairfax. We have a special town council meeting today, Thursday, April 2, 2026. I think we have a typo on the agenda. It says 2025, but it is 2026. And do we need to do a roll call? Thank you.

Go ahead.

Council Member Blash. Here. Council Member Ghirangeli.

Here.

Council Member Kohler. Here. Vice Mayor Ager.

Here.

Mayor Hellman. I'm here.

Thank you. So... I'm going to do the land acknowledgement, and then I'm going to read the protocol. Oh, can I get approval of the agenda, please? I'm making a motion. Oh, I'll second.

Council Member Blash? Yes. Council Member Hirangeli?

Yes.

Council Member Kohler?

Yes.

Vice Mayor Egger?

Aye. Mayor Hellman?

Yes. I'm going to read the land acknowledgement, the meeting protocol, and then I talk a little bit about the structure of this meeting. And then we will dive into the very hard work that staff has prepared for us.

Are we able to waive the reading of that that you just mentioned? No, no, no one's here.

Land acknowledgement. The Fairfax Town Council acknowledges that we are located on the unseated ancestral lands of the Coast Miwok people of present day Marin County. We honor with gratitude the land itself and all of its ancestors past, present and emerging. As far as meeting protocol, the mayor or presiding officer shall maintain order Council members share responsibility for modeling respectful professional conduct to effectively facilitate the meeting and encourage meaningful civic participation. All participants, including council members, staff, members of the public, and remote attendees are expected to engage respectfully. Profane language, personal attacks, discriminatory or harassing conduct are not permitted. These standards apply equally to all viewpoints and forms of participation. To ensure all voices can be heard, disruptive behavior, including shouting, repeated interruptions, or other actions that interfere with the orderly conduct of the meeting is not permitted during public comment or council deliberations. Participants are asked now, everyone in the room, please silence your electronic devices. The mayor may issue a reminder or warning to address disruptions. Disruptive behavior will result in a pause of the meeting. okay now that we're through that um so first i want to thank staff i know you've been working on this presentation for weeks and weeks heather thank you for leading uh the charge on that so if you look at um the agenda we have our regular agenda which is to conduct the workshop and all the various presentations beneath that And then we have consent. So we're going to, you know, we're here at 10 a.m. We are targeting to adjourn at two. We may run longer because we have a lot to get through. So I just want to set. I just want to. Name that. We have a lot to get through. And so in the interest of running an efficient meeting, we are going to get through all of the presentations. We're going to hold questions. So, for example, if Park and Rec is presenting, you might have a question, but you're going to write down your question. You're going to hold your question until everybody gets through because we need to get through everything. um and then it'll be the time for questions after everything because what happens is ultimately if we ask questions during a presentation many times that question will be answered if we just let them get through but out of respect for all the managers and the staff members that have worked hard today we need to get through all the presentations so we're gonna we will have a lunch break For like 15 minutes, we're going to get our food, and then we're going to work. We're going to get back to work and have a working lunch. Vice Mayor, I see you have a question.

I do. This is the purpose of this town council, understanding exactly what's going on with the whole budget.

Agreed.

And if we're not able to ask a question while the department head is presenting the proposal, are they going to be here at 2 o'clock in the afternoon? Yes. We have questions?

Yes, everyone's staying. Everyone's staying, so we're fine. Okay.

I don't think that's the purpose and intent of this council meeting today with the department heads, to wait until everything is done and then have a question.

Okay, I'm noting your dissent and we shall proceed as I shared.

I have a right to speak on any item on this agenda. You need to understand that and tell your town attorney. That's the law.

And I have a right to conduct the meeting as I see fit.

You don't have a right to stop me from asking a question on an agenda item that's on this meeting.

I'm just going to clarify that I think what the mayor is saying is that you have a right to ask the question, but the time of when you can ask it is what she's... No, you don't understand what the law is.

If there's an item on this agenda, I get to speak to it at the time it's on the agenda.

And the time for the agenda is now we are conducting the workshop. We are starting with the overview of the budget workshop, which I believe is you and Michael. That's right.

Thank you, mayor and council members, members of the public who are, um, One person, two people in the audience here in the women's club and also on the video. So I just wanted to start out by making sure we sort of level set for this meeting. This proposed draft budget reflects the long-term strategic plan directed by the council in the February strategic planning workshop. As a transparency measure, this year I asked the staff not only to prepare the um what i'm calling a budget which is the the budget which is consistent with previous years and moves the council's priorities uh forward and along but also a what i'm calling b budget which is really the worst case scenario um assuming that fairfax would need to cut 10 of expenses if there was no sales tax passed. And that also assumes that certain costs are immovable. The largest example being the Ross Valley Fire Department joint powers agreement costs, which in the past four years have experienced double digit increases in three out of the four years. I do want to thank staff for all of their work and you see them all here today. Not all of the staff of the town, but the members who have put together the budget drafting a regular budget is a difficult and time consuming task as the mayor mentioned. And this year, I also asked them to make proposals that would be very, very painful and very difficult if we were to not have that sales tax issue. And I wanted to make sure that you and the public were able to see that as a transparency measure. It's really important that you understand what service cuts, which we do not want to make and we're not planning for, but what we would have to do if that were the case. Um, I also wanted to mention that you'll see that, um, the way the room is set up is very similar to a regular council meeting, but you also have staff who unfortunately, um, are seated in a way that their back is to the audience. That's just to fit into this video format. Um, so we're all making do here. Um, and then I would, um, like to just um as the mayor mentioned ask you to hear the full presentation and jot down your questions and then hear public comment and then deliberate ask your questions that way it's just an efficient use of your time rather than asking a question that will be answered in the next slide which is um does sometimes happen I would also want to mention to you that, again, Please focus, for the community and the council, focus on the budget A. This is the one, the proposed or draft budget is what is before you today. The budget B, worst case scenario, it's not necessary or even necessarily useful at this time for us to solution against that because that is really just a transparency measure. And if we were not to have any sales tax, we would come back to you with Budget B and discuss that. And that would be months, if not years, in the future.

I do have a quick question, which is I'm not sure I understand where in the agenda there's time for public comment. Is that after we go through the budget or is there an open time before? How is that working? It's a special meeting, right?

then take the public comment and then go back to the council. Again, oftentimes questions or comments from the public are then, you know, sort of circled back through the council. So trying to just make this as efficient as possible. get everyone's questions answered. I also want to just mention that this is just the first time you're going to see this draft budget. We also will bring this back to you with your input reflected, corrections made, in uh on the april 15th meeting again uh may 6th and then um we're hoping the council will adopt the budget on the june 3rd agenda so you know four meetings on the budget uh this year and um keep in mind the town budget is a planning document it reflects your priorities in um spending and includes the department budgets, staffing allocations, and CIP, the capital improvement programs. The presentation slides have been put on the website yesterday, so people had an opportunity to see those in advance if they chose to, and members of the audience can follow along. And with that, I'll turn it over to Finance Director Michael Viverette. You will.

We agree. We agree. Thank you. There's one regular agenda item, so we agree. Go ahead.

Thank you, Heather. Thank you, council members. This year we're doing a budget workshop that's about a month earlier than we did it last year. So this is... a budget that we distributed last Friday for this meeting. The document was assembled from budget requests that were submitted by all the departments, as well as projections from outside sources. When we received the budget, management sat down with departments and trimmed about $1.2 million from the requests that were made in order to prepare a budget that is balanced and meets the desired reserve levels and preserves essential programs. These projections are not as firm as they might otherwise be because they rely on sources that may be only preliminary in their own projections. So this is budget that is work in process. We will fine tune the numbers and projections as more information becomes available. and present revised budget documents over the next few months. The next version of this draft budget with all the department narratives will be on the April 15th meeting packet and will incorporate input from this workshop. So let's begin with an overview of the budget. The biggest source of revenues for the funds is property taxes. Between property taxes and sales taxes, we have about 71% of our total budget for the year. We get our projections for property taxes from the county. They give me a monthly update on what they project is going to be the property taxes for the year. And sales taxes, we get our estimates from our sales tax consultant's company called Avenue. And they give me a quarterly update on what they project sales tax revenues to be. The biggest source of revenues for the town is the property taxes. We expect to receive $9 million this year, which is about 57% of the projected general fund sources of funds. This includes our share of the basic 1% sales tax, which is about $6.5 million, and then various other property taxes, such as the storm runoff and the pension obligation tax, which are used by the general fund. Sales taxes is the next biggest source of revenue. We have two or three main sales taxes that we get. One is the basic Bradley Burns tax, which is a 1% of the 9% that we currently have as a sales tax rate. The second is a three-quarter cent sales tax, which is Measure C, and that's a district tax, which is our second largest or second main source of sales tax revenue. And the third is Prop 172, which is a public safety sales tax that we receive. Projections for the Bradley Burns this year are actually slightly lower than what we have had in the past. And the district sales tax they've projected to be slightly higher than what we budgeted last year. And of course, this may change if the economy goes south with the recent events that we've had. And again, sales taxes in total provide about 14% of our revenues for the town. Service charges, Measure F and other taxes and fees account for about 6.5% of the revenues. Well, service charges do. Other taxes provide 16.7% of our revenues. And then finally, we have the drawdown on surplus revenues from the prior year. We're starting this year with a fairly low surplus for the calculation that we do to figure out what the reserve is. We're figuring that our beginning balance is about 26.9% compared to 25% of the required reserve of 25%. Our surplus revenues this year is 0.6% or about $13,000. Next slide. The use of funds or appropriations in this budget is about 15.8 million. The biggest use of funds is for public safety, which is about 61.6% of the budget. and police is about 5.5 million and fire is about 4.2 million of that total uh administration is about 11.8 percent of the budget this includes the town manager town clerk personnel finance, attorney, the treasurer, audit, election, and environment departments. The planning and building, which is shown as developmental services here, is about 8.4% of our total budget. Public works is about 7%. parks, facilities, recreation, community services. In total, it's about 4.8% of our budget, and the non-departmental budget is about 6.4%. Let's see, next one. By category, the appropriations for are primarily for salaries and benefits at 44%, if you add the two totals for salaries and for benefits and costs. Our contract with Ross Valley Fire is about 26.7%. Other operating expenses provide about 18%. 18.9% and then we have various other contract services which is about 9% of the budget and this includes contracts with contract services with planning, public works, parks, our attorney and certain others. Next slide. This budget for this year is a little bit different from budgets that we've had in the prior years. We've got certain other challenges that we've got with this budget. The primary one of which is preservation of our sales tax revenues. Our sales tax projections rely on the passage of the Measure J coming up. Our Bradley Burns 1% tax is projected to decrease, as I mentioned before. Our add-on district tax provides $1.1 million to the town revenues. The passage of Measure J would provide an additional $92,000 in the last quarter because this takes effect in April of 2027. We only have one quarter of effect of the passage of Measure J if that happens. It would provide 92,000 in the last quarter. The loss of the measure would reduce our revenues by about 278,000 in our 2027 budget and about 1.15 million in our fiscal 28 budget. This year's budget anticipates no additional positions or staff cuts. And this is a big year for our budget in terms of doing large projects. We have Fire Station 21 improvements, which we have 1.4 budgeted this year. We spent $200,000 in the current fiscal year, FIT26. So that's a $1.6 million project. And then we have our Park Road storm drain improvements, which are going to use about 1.8 million of federal ARPA funds, and then we have a small amount that's being added to that to make up the difference for the total contract, which is about 1.9 million. The next slide. So our appropriations this year, which is the $15.8 million of budgeted expenditures, is about a 5.5% increase over the prior fiscal year. Most of this increase is due to increases in public safety expenditures, which is up by about 9.6% in this budget. That includes increases in the fire budget of about $552,000. That's about a 15% increase. And police budget, which has about a 5.6% increase, or about $292,000. In total, all other appropriations for departments and expenditures are down $35,800 from the prior year. Next page. Thank you. So this is an overview of the general funds. We're starting the year with a general fund balance of about $3.9 million. And that is compared with a starting balance of $4.7 million last year when we started with a higher reserve. This represents a 26% reserve. 26.9% is an estimated starting value of the budget for this year. that percentage is calculated as a percentage of the total appropriations over the fund balance. So if you have a $15 million budget, then 25% reserve would represent 25% of that total expenditures that you anticipate having. The general funds in total actually represent about eight different funds, as you notice from here. We have the general fund, several reserve funds. That would be the dry period fund, the equipment replacement fund, building improvement, office equipment replacement, and our road improvement fund. There's also several revenue funds in here, one being the... retirement fund, which collects the pension obligation tax, and the other one being the building and planning fund, which is fund four, which collects the monies that we have for building permits and zoning fees, et cetera. We put that as a separate fund to be able to identify those revenues separately and be able to do things like allocate funds particular revenue items, certain road-related funds over to the Fund 9, which is the Road Improvement Fund. So in those funds, if you look at the reserve, the middle column for appropriations, you'll see a $75,000 of of expenditures anticipated in Fund 3. That's for the purchase of a new police car. And in Fund 5, we have $35,000 that is budgeted for facilities improvements. And in the Equipment Replacement Fund, which is Fund 8, no, yes, Fund 8, we have $80,000 set aside or slated for... Expenses, which includes about $50,000 for security upgrades. That would be to our computer system, etc., to keep the bad guys out. In addition, we are adding $400,000 to our road improvement fund, which will hold designated funds for related capital projects. This includes revenues for road purposes that we've received, such as road impact fees and street opening fees, but also any general fund monies that may be budgeted for road projects. This fund was created because it has the advantage of that funds that are budgeted for road purposes will remain designated, even if a project that these are designated or collected for, even though that may be a future project or a project that may be delayed, those funds will be identified and kept separately. So that brings us into the part where we get to break out in departments and talk about the elements of the general fund budget. So I'll turn this back to Heather to direct this one.

Thank you, Michael. The first department to present is the police department, and we have Lieutenant Cade here. Thank you.

Good morning, everyone. Lieutenant Cade with the Fairfax Police Department. Here to go over the draft proposed budget. If I can go to the first slide, please. The draft budget proposed reflects an increase primarily due to MOU-governed contracts with sworn and non-sworn employees. It also reflects the rise of health insurance rates, workers' comp, retirement, Medicare, and the retirement side fund, in addition to mayor membership figures for police and the Department of Public Works, which is our radio system. However, the draft budget proposed also shows a minimal operational cost increase. If I can go to the next slide, please. This slide shows what a reduction of 10% would look like for the police budget. What that would mean is it eliminates two full-time police officer positions. It would eliminate one full-time dispatcher position and eliminate one full-time police services technician position. These eliminations would make it difficult for the police department to support programs throughout the town, such as the Chamber of Commerce and other town events. such as the winter fair. There's a lot of support things that we do in terms of setup, breakdown, provide extra patrols. That would be pretty difficult to do with short staff. And it also shows a budget reduction of $547,500. We can go to the third slide, please. A 10% reduction in staffing would also impact remaining employees. There would be an increase estimated in overtime rates due to staffing reduction. An example of this would be a rise of surrounding mandatory trainings for employees. When employees are out on training, their shifts are backfilled by employees on overtime. There would also be an estimated increase in hours for part-time employees due to the short staffing. A reduction in staffing could also increase the potential for employee burnout due to the estimated increase in work hours. A reduction in staffing means an estimated increase in work hours, which could also create higher risk for on-duty injury and workers' comp claims. Short staffing also unfavorably impacts recruitment and retention for the department by accelerating employee burnout, lowering staff morale, and damaging the department brand. In summary, a reduction in staffing may increase response times for calls for service. With short staffing, all officers on duty would be required to respond for priority calls for service, leaving no available officers free to handle additional calls for service. Subsequently, additional calls for service would pend until priority calls are cleared. And that concludes our presentation for the budget. Thank you.

Thank you. The next department is planning and building and that's Jeff.

Okay, so I've kind of divided this up to kind of see the revenue staffing and tasks because they're all related. So the first revenue, the department currently operates mostly with fee revenue from when people apply for planning permits, design reviews, conditional use permits, what have you. And then that covers about 65% of the processing costs of building permits, planning permits, based on a fee study that was done a few years back. then the rest of the gap in permit processing cost is covered with the general fund. So one thing to think about on the revenue side is to potentially do another fee study to kind of bring that more into balance so that it's a philosophy thing. It's like, should the town subsidize the processing of permits for private development projects or, or should the development projects pay more of the share of the fee revenue? And there's arguments on both sides. It's like the town is requiring certain things of private developers to make sure that they're safe and they're functioning properly and work well with the community. So there is a reason to have that cost kind of shared between fee revenue and general fund, but that orange section of the bar could shrink which would provide general fund revenue for other functions, not necessarily planning, but for other town functions. The other side of the revenue is we do occasionally get grants. We're currently working with a bicycle and pedestrian master planning grant to help do that plan. And then also we've recently been collecting hotel users tax, which we – I believe we can probably increase that if we are more aggressive with short-term rental enforcement. So that's the revenue side. And then the revenue pays mostly for staffing, although there is some consultant expense with specialty services such as engineering and geotech, surveyor, that sort of thing. But primarily it funds currently five FTEs. which is a director, three planners, a building official, and an administrative assistant. We currently have one FTE vacant, so we're currently operating with four full-time equivalent positions. And so then, so with the revenue and the personnel, then we do our tasks, which is primarily our Primary legal function is permit processing. We're subject to the permit streamlining act with the state. So we're required to process permits within a certain timeframe. So that's priority. 1, the other legal requirements we have, we have to implement the required housing programs and the housing element. That's probably priority two. And then we have to do required code updates that the state has. And those have been increasing in recent years. It seems like every year we have to do an accessory dwelling unit code update. So those also come up. And then with additional resources, we try to do special projects as they come up. As I said, we're currently working on the bicycle pedestrian master plan that's funded through a grant program. And we all try to be proactive with our code enforcement as well. And there is a relationship between code enforcement and revenue. Like, for example, a short term rentals. We have a lot of short term rentals that are operating out in the community illegally right now. And so if we were to if we have more time to. we're trying to find the time to be able to kind of approach those operators and ask them to register and pay their hotel users tax, et cetera. So there is a relationship between kind of code enforcement and revenue, just to point that out. And also we can also work a little bit faster if we have additional revenue to kind of shorten the timeframe for people as long as it takes them to get permits. So if we can go to the next slide. So kind of looking at the 10% reduction, we would focus on the baseline tasks, which would be kind of the permit intake, public inquiries, building reviews, kind of the permit processing. That would be our primary requirement. We probably wouldn't be able to operate quite as quickly because we may have to stretch out the deadlines within the Permit Streamlining Act. Like just in a broad sense, we have about, Depending on the type of permit, but we have about 6 months to process a permit. We currently operate in much faster than that. Maybe in the 2 or 3 month timeframe. So we may have to kind of delay the processing of certain permits. We would still be required to do some housing program implementation and the state required code updates. So it would eliminate the possibility of doing additional tasks. And that also has. impacts on revenue. But as I mentioned before, just as using the short term rental example, if we can't do proactive code enforcement, then we may not be able to get that additional revenue. So then the revenue side goes down. So it's kind of a cyclical process where if you don't have enough staff, you can't collect the revenue. Anyway, I think that's my last slide. So pass it on.

Thank you, Jeff. The next department is climate and environment, and that's Bridget Whistler.

Hi, everyone. My name is Bridget Whitfield. I'm the climate action coordinator for the town of Fairfax. I am a shared position with San Anselmo. So I spend half my time here and half my time in San Anselmo. So I'll get to that in my presentation, but just kind of wanted to give a little overview. For my department's budget this year, we have $20,500 budgeted for program implementation. That $20,000 is a match for a $100,000 grant that we just secured this week for an HVAC unit replacement in the police department and town hall, which we are excited about. And I'm so sorry, the supplies section should only be $700. I don't need that many supplies. And for Do some subscriptions. We are a part of the Marin Climate and Energy Partnership, which is a great regional network that helps us do regional work and use each other's knowledge and understanding of our programs. And then for my salary, which is only costing or all of the. responsibilities of my position, which just costs the town my salary. I make sure that the town is in compliance with California laws on waste and fleet electrification. I make sure that we are implementing the Climate Action Plan. Like I said, I secure grant funding and work with Janabai on education and outreach, as well as leads between the Climate Action Committee and the town. Next slide, please. With this 10% reduction in the budget, we would not be able to provide that $20,000 match, so we would lose out on that $100,000 grant. We would reduce supplies and reduce some subscriptions. And if there's any reduction in salary, There would be decrease in programs. There could be noncompliance fines for the waste laws in California. If we don't comply, there can be $10,000 daily fines and delay in reaching our climate action plan goals. Next slide, please. I think that's it.

Yeah. The next department is recreation.

Sorry, Christine and Jenna, could you make sure that typo is fixed and republished to the website? Thank you.

Okay, good morning mayor and council members, Maria bear community services manager for the town of Fairfax here. So, my budget, which is 617881 and 878 goes to support the wonderful events that we offer in town. These include the Spring Egg Hunt, the Townwide Picnic, the Alice in Wonderland Teep, the Art Walk, and the Crafts Fair. This year we added the Soup Walk, which was highly successful and we plan to repeat it. Most of these events are free to the public. such as the picnic the egg hunt the art walk others such as alice in wonderland tea and the soup walk are ticketed events for which people you know purchase a ticket but they are still subsidized through the recreation program besides the events fund 617-881 goes to support the fairfax food pantry which operates out of the fairfax community church and the community garden, which is behind the library. The gardeners pay a fee for this, but the town does subsidize these wonderful programs that we're able to offer to residents. The department is able to offer free summer music concerts in Perry Park. The musicians play for free. There's no cost to the town. They do take tips, donations. And I'm happy to report that other projects which I oversee through the Parks and Recreation Commission, such as the Tot Lot, we just completed it a couple of weeks ago, thanks to the hard work of Public Works. And that's another feature that the Recreation and Community Services Department offers is overseeing playground structures. We redid the playground about six years ago. So we're able to offer these fabulous events to the community through our budget. And, um, I guess next slide please. Okay. So if there are revenue cuts, we will not be able to sustain these wonderful programs that we have in town. Namely, we would have to cut the artists and residents program, which is a total of about $13,500, 10% of our budget. Thank you. I'll turn it over to Ann Maness, my colleague here.

Thank you. Anne Maness, Community Services, Recreation and Community Services Manager. So my purview is the budget numbers are 6-2-1 for me and 6-2-2, though I also oversee and heavily involved with the Artists in Residence program. Hopefully all of you saw my impact report. I don't know, I did a video. If you have not, I encourage you to watch it. We also submit quarterly reports, so I give updates throughout the year, and that's also a good source of information of what we do. The pavilion is sort of my main hub. That area of focus, I oversee the facility rentals and partnerships up there. conduct and bring in fee-for-service classes, donation-based classes, as well as host and coordinate several different offerings, such as the Community Square Dance, Healing Arts Craft Fair, the art workshops that happen up there, the New Parents and Babies Group, and I'm also heavily involved with the Age-Friendly Fairfax Group. In the summer, I generate income and revenue putting together a variety of programs, also research and secure grants, and sort of the general facilitator of all things in the pavilion. Um, so on this slide, so if there was, if measure J was in jeopardy and we didn't receive those, those funds, um, Maria and I are both part-time. So we would have a reduction in our, um, hours, um, programs like the free age-friendly yoga and the new, uh, parents and babies group, which is free. Those would be in jeopardy. events such as the town picnic, egg hunt, as Maria mentioned, those all would be diminished. Our partnership programs, Alice in Wonderland, Soup Walk, Fairfax Art Walk, also would have to be looked at and affected. And if we had a reduction, the increase in fee for services such as the Qigong classes and our various, you know, for for tuition prices would have to increase and those would be passed on to the residents um and i think that's it for me thanks oh summer camps uh our summer camps it would be the similar situation if measure j didn't pass we would have to increase our prices and that would be passed on to the residents

Thank you. Yeah. The next department is the town clerk. Okay.

Good morning, Council. I will be sharing some information about the Town Clerk budget, which also includes elections and technology. The Town Clerk's office is staffed with two full-time employees and one appointed slash elected official, Linda Kenton, as you know. In our office, a lot of our work is determined by LEGAL AND STATUTORY DEADLINES. THAT INCLUDES ALL OF THE SUPPORT WE PROVIDE TO THE COUNCIL TO RUN COUNCIL MEETINGS, POST NOTICES, PREPARE PACKETS, POST PUBLIC HEARING NOTICES. THESE ARE ALL ATTACHED TO LEGAL DEADLINES. IN ADDITION TO THIS, JENNABAI AND MYSELF PROVIDE AN INMEASURABLE AMOUNT OF SUPPORT TO EVERY OTHER DEPARTMENT SITTING IN THIS ROOM AND NOT JUST FOR Community engagement needs and getting information out about programs or other meetings or events that are happening around town we also support the organization with Everyone's technology needs Should measure J not pass our department would eliminate one of our full-time employees and a lot of The responsibilities we take on outside of what is mandated would fall to the wayside. So there would be a significantly reduced amount of community engagement. There would be less technology support from our office because there is such a great depth and need to meet legal deadlines for preparing packets, posting notices. That's a big lift. And with only one person supporting the office, our focus would beyond mandated services only.

Thank you. The next department is Public Works. Thank you.

Hi. So the Public Works Department is made up of four different funds. It's the Public Works Administration, Street Maintenance, Park Maintenance, and Streetlights. These largely fund routine maintenance for roads, parks, trees, streetlights, and storm drains. Along with annual fees for the stormwater programs all of our permits and street sweeping and then five full-time employees Last year we were able to complete some crosswalk repainting and this year we're hoping to get some more curbs repainted around town And our total budget is about 1.4 million and So in order to reduce the public works budget by 10%, we would need to cut one maintenance worker. And this will significantly reduce the town's ability to perform routine maintenance and respond to public safety and emergencies. The biggest impacts will be on storm preparations and safety during large storm events. Typically, storm patrol is done in pairs. So if one person gets hurt, someone's there to help and call for help. Going down to a three-person crew means that someone's always going to be on their own. And while there are ways to combat this, it requires more planning and coordinating during the events. So that means less time clearing drains and culverts. The other major impact is in the areas around town that require four people for road painting and repairing potholes. Usually you have two people working and then two people doing traffic control. So if they're painting arrows on Sir Francis Drake, you need four people for that. So reducing to the three-person crew means it's no longer safe for the crew to complete this work, and we'd either need to hire a traffic control company or an outside contractor to complete these tasks. So overall, we would create a greater reliance on outside contractors. additional impacts include less vegetation trimming like clearing poison oak along school walking routes less sign repairs and replacements less facility maintenance pothole repairs graffiti removal and slower response times to citizens requests thank you and we're going to go back to michael by brett thank you heather

So I'm participant in two different budgets. We have a personnel budget and a finance budget. So that takes 10% of my time for the personnel budget and my part-time or my full-time accountant. It takes 10% of hers and a little bit of Heather's salary. And finance takes about 90%, the other 90% of my time and my full-time accountant budget. So we have basically two people that we work with in the department. Our budget this year is a 4.3% increase over the previous year, mostly because of increases in MOU agreements. The total budget for the personnel department is 155,000. If we were to cut 10% or 15,000 from that budget, we would probably be eliminating using outside services for being able to do recruitments. And other monies that we budget in there for various personnel studies would probably not be available to do that. Mostly in order to achieve a $15,000 reduction in the personnel budget, we would probably have to restructure the way that we have personnel, probably eliminate the full-time accountant position and turn that into a part-time or contract position. For the finance budget, We have a total budget of $458,000, which 4.3% increase over the previous year's budget. A 10% reduction in this budget would be about $45,000. One area of reduction that's possible is to drop our contract with Tyler for the software that we're using there that involves about $25,000, $30,000 of licensing, which includes support. Our previous accounting software was about $2,000 a year. So we could downgrade to that software. That's a possibility. But if we were to actually go through reduction of personnel and bringing on somebody part-time or contract, that would also achieve a goal of $45,000 in the finance budget. One thing I want to mention at this point. is why are we looking at a 10% reduction in these if the total reduction or total amount that the district tax or Measure C provides is 7.5%? Why are we going for 10% reductions in the departments? And the biggest reason is because we have a lot of elements of our budget, which are contract, our fire department, we can't go in and say, hey, we're going to cut your budget by 10% because this is what we're charged for that service. So we don't have that ability to go in and do that. And when we go through the different budgets that we've got that can't be touched, that leaves about 10% that we need to do for all the remaining budgets. I didn't hear that brought up as a point previously, but that's why we're looking at 10% in these budgets.

Thank you. And so I will also just mention, you know, there are certain positions that are one person. And so the only way that you, including the town manager, right, which is actually split between a few funds. So the only way you could cut that by 10% is to renegotiate the employment agreement. Michael, can you go on to special revenues?

Okay.

Okay.

The town fund structure involves about 22 different funds. These are all self-balancing funds. They have their own revenues, they have their own expenditures, and their own fund balance. And one section of these... funds, groups, is special revenues. These are revenues that we receive that are designated for specific purposes, and so we can't intermingle that with the general fund. And they may have separate requirements that go along with it. We have seven different special revenue funds. The Special Police Fund, the Fairfax Festival Fund, Measure F Municipal Services Fund. That's the special purpose tax that's collected. We have the Gas Tax Fund. and a couple of TAM funds, which are the Transportation, Measure A Transportation, and Measure A Parks funds, and finally, the Federal Stimulus Funds, which is the ARPA funds that we collected and are designating for our storm drain purposes. These funds are starting with a total fund balance of about 1.6 million, and we're using those funds this year primarily the biggest one is the ARPA funds which are being used for the Park Road storm drain project. And we split this project over two years. So I'm using half of the funds in fiscal 27 and half of the funds are being used this year because we're going to be starting the project before June. The biggest one that is of interest here is probably the gas tax fund. The gas tax fund, we get our revenues allocated to us by the state based on our population. So they collect the various gas tax funds. There's several different categories of funds which are designated for several specific purposes. And this year we're anticipating that we will receive revenues in the gas tax fund of about $441,000. we have designated that these funds, we don't spend the monies out of the gas tax fund. We transfer them over to funds that are using those funds for gas tax-related services. So within the general fund, we have street lights, we have our street department, and in capital projects, we have numerous road-related funds which are identified in the budget here. So We have our Measure F Fund. That Measure F Fund is at $210 this year per household. We have $804,000, which is designated as a revenue. That doesn't change. Well, that changes slightly year to year because that's an index that goes up by a little bit each year. And we're expecting to use or transfer funds. 800,000 of that for the purposes for which Measure F was identified. The Fairfax Festival, we're expecting that they are likely to bring in $90,000. That's always dependent on whether the weather's great and what other events are happening that day. But our budgeted total is $70,000, which is being brought in, of which they're expecting to spend about $77,000. The special police fund is an amount that we receive from the state. anticipating receiving about $230,000. That's used for police purposes. We transfer the funds that we receive over to the police department, and they use it to fund usually another officer. And we've been receiving that one for many, many years. So next slide. This is our debt service and fiduciary fund group. Within the debt service fund, we have three road funds, road Measure K funds, and a lease agreement fund. Measure K funds are just the debt service on the road bonds that were issued between 2000 and 2006. This year, we've already paid off one of those. We have expected payments on those bonds of about $400,000, and revenues we're trying to keep those revenues down so that we don't have an ending fund balance when those bonds are paid off. So, The lease agreement is the refinance of the PERS UAL or unaccrued actuarial. Anyway, it's the amount that CalPERS charges us because they were short in their expectations of how much revenues they were going to have and they transferred that liability over to the participant cities and counties and agencies. Um, so we had, uh, a $9 million, uh, UAL that we refinanced at a lower rate. The original rate was about 7.5%, which is what CalPERS was charging us on the debt. And we refinanced that into the high 3%. And that debt service is collected by this fund and charged to each of the departments based on their historical use of or charges to the UAL fund. So that's a fund that starts off with an ending fund balance, which is minimal $3,000 and ends with that same $3,000. So we're expecting that debt service will cost $764,000 this year. Then in the fiduciary fund category, we have our open space fund. Open space will start off with a fund balance of about $49,000. As is our tradition, we... budget $2,000. It usually is more than that that they collect from different fundraising activities. And if they have expenditures that are $4,000, we contribute $4,000 to cover those expenses. If the expenses are more than $4,000, we we cap it at 4,000, but we only do it up to the amount that they actually spend in that fund. So we're expecting that that fund will start off with 49,000 and end with about 51,000. Um,

Thank you, Michael. Good news. We're close to the end of the presentation. So just want to let you know, the next three slides are on capital improvement. And then there's a couple more slides. And that would be the end of our presentation. So I just want to give you a sense where we're at. And with that, I will turn it over to Kristen.

Thank you.

So for fiscal year 26-27, we're estimating about 5.1 million in CIP appropriations. About 542,000 will go to road projects. That's largely the Surrey seal project. Well, only the Surrey seal project. The fire station 21 improvements. The total project cost is about 1.6 million. We've spent about 200,000 so far. So it'll be about 1.4 million. next fiscal year uh the storm drain project on park road that's largely funded by the arpa revenues um the total project cost is 1.94 million and that's going to be spent over two fiscal years could you remind everyone what the arpa was was it 1.6 1.8 arpa was 1.8 and um

the council decided to allocate all of that towards stormwater improvements on Park Road. And then we did the bid. And in order to get the contingency, that put it at 1.9.

So roughly 100K of that project cost is...

but we're contributing. That's right. And that's not for certain that we'll have to contribute that. That's the contingency, which is a best practice. Anytime you have construction, you want to be able to give yourself room to make a reasonable change order.

Yeah. So the following projects we plan to use monies from the general fund. So that's the pavilion roof, the BPMP bridge project, that's the bridge preventive maintenance program, the Creek Road bridge project, and then the sidewalk grant program. All of those, we plan to spend about $100,000 out of the general fund. So 10% of that would be $10,000. So the recommendation would be to eliminate the sidewalk grant program. Those other projects are largely grant funded. So to delay them or remove them, we risk our grant funds.

So as an overview, the capital improvement funds, we have several up here which are no longer actively used. Only three are actually being actively used here. That's Fund 51, which is our grants project, Fund 52, which is the Storm Recovery Capital Improvement Fund, and then the which is our town capital project fund. This year, we're starting off the fund balance with about $2.5 million in the grant fund, Fund 51. in about $1.8 million in the capital improvement fund for Fund 53. Those monies represent the loan that we took last year, $1.6 million for the fire station, the transfer over of various ARPA funds to fund the projects that we've got in place here. So even though it looks like we have monies that are in the fund, those have been primarily appropriated for the projects that we've got in place here. We're expecting that we'll receive revenues of about $1 million in here. We have appropriations, as Kristen had mentioned, mention of about $5.1 million of expenditures, and we are transferring in monies from other funds, including the Fund 25, the ARPA federal stimulus funds, and various reimbursements that we expect to be getting from reimbursements on bridge projects, et cetera. So we'll end the year probably with an anticipated

fund balance of about 1.1 million dollars next slide please um so as as has been mentioned before in the um in the staff report and earlier um we are actively looking at revenue enhancement options we want to make sure that we know that costs tend to increase more sharply than revenues are increasing, in part because our most large source of funds is property tax, which is held relatively steady by California law. And then next is sales tax, which is a smaller portion and also has legal implications. limitations. So if Measure J is passed, that would increase revenues by about $370,000. Annually, once we have a full year that's for a full year of that collection, we are also planning on doing a fee study. You heard earlier from the planning and building services director Jeff by swinger that are fees for things like building permits and planning permits. only cover about 65% of the costs and, um, changing that, um, will come before council and, um, it has, you know, positive and negative impacts, right? So it can help us to, um, uh, meet the budget challenge. It can, um, make sure that private developers pay their fair share, um, But those same fees are also paid by residents who need to update their house, those kinds of things. So there'll be consideration there. Then we also do have a special tax primarily for public safety, which is Measure F. That sunsets in 2031, so we're not working on that right now, but just want to make you aware of that. And then previously, we had looked to a road bond, which would have helped us to really put a flywheel on the CIP projects. 62% of the voters voted for that, which unfortunately in California is not enough for a special tax. So that failed in 2024. And so in conclusion, next slide, please. I'll just remind us all that this workshop is really meant to get your input make any corrections that we find, bring the next version back of this budget A, which is the assume normal budget to the April 15th council meeting. And then again here, input corrections come back for May 6th. And then we're hoping to have the council adopt the budget June 3rd, and that would set us up for success starting the new fiscal year, July 1. And with that, I'll turn it back to the mayor.

Okay, I just want to thank everyone who prepared for today. And thank you to my colleagues for holding your questions. I think it took a lot of discipline. I know it did for me. So can we just take it from the top? I think that will be the best way to do that. So can you go back to the beginning, please? Starting with slide two and how we'll do this is just... We'll just go slide by slide and address what, if any, questions you have. So, Michael, this is your slide. And I'll start with Liesl. Do you have any questions on this slide?

No.

Okay. Frank?

See, the problem is this is just presented this morning. I spent all day yesterday going through this whole budget packet, highlighting, writing notes, but you're not even going through the budget today, I guess. Did I waste any time yesterday?

No, and we all did. You're not alone in going through that whole thing. The slides that were prepared today are summaries of this. So if you have questions related to this, ask them on the relevant slide. So if you have questions on police, ask it on the police slide. If you have questions on park and rec, ask it on the park and rec slide.

Yeah, this was handed out this morning. I spent a full day going through this. I've got notes on this. highlights and notes on everything.

Okay, then what I suggest is that, as always, write up your questions. That's the most respectful way of asking questions and getting informed before the meeting. And, again, you're not alone in reading the packets before the meeting. Okay, I have a question. So, Michael... The three sources of tax, Bradley Burns, our local C, which is expiring, and the Prop 172. Does the Bradley Burns or the 172 have an end date?

That is a standard distribution. There's no end date to it. We have one

one percent that we is our share of uh so they don't expire no that was my question correct okay thank you um barbara do you have any questions on this side um i just want to mention i spent all day saturday reviewing the budget and sending my questions in and actually sent those in sunday and sat down with staff yesterday to go over my questions so as the mayor said, I think all of us did this and I was able to get most of my questions answered. The question I have is one thing I'm not familiar with. So I get the Bradley Burns, which is really the state thing. And I understand ours, but what is the other sales tax?

172.

What is that? What is 172?

Prop 172 is a sales tax, which is part of the base amount that the state collects, if I understand correctly, and they allocate it to the town based on, they give it to us through the county, and then it's basically to fund safety services.

And it's 1%? What is it? I just want to make one comment. I really appreciate getting copies of the slides, but I can't really read them. They're too small, even with my glasses. So maybe it's me. But just a question. So what is the percentage that we get of that? What is that? Because we know our tax right now in Fairfax is 9%. What is the Prop 172 part of that?

Yeah. The header for this is called a half-cent sales tax. We get $117,000 that we're expecting to get this year. The sales tax that Bradley burns is a 1%, and that's about 907. So as a true percentage, it's probably about... 0.15% of the tax in relation to the other taxes we received.

Okay. Thank you so much. Okay.

I have questions. Go ahead. Thank you. I have questions and observations. This is a campaign for the sales tax meeting. That's what this sounds like. First of all, We declared a fiscal emergency and put the sales tax on. It needed 100% council cooperation, and I did cooperate to let the voters decide on the sales tax. But nobody was questioning whether or not we should renew the sales tax. It was about the idea that it was an emergency, that it was an additional... quarter percent, I guess, was asked to be on it. And so another increase in taxes. Can the sales tax go back on the November ballot?

Is this a question on slide two?

It was all about the sales tax, the 10% reduction, which the whole process is flawed. But is the quarter, is the sales tax, you said it was a fiscal emergency. Does that mean that if it doesn't pass in whenever the election is, that the money's gone or you put it back on the ballot and just keep the sales tax the way it was? You could have done that.

Mike, we talked about this when we unanimously voted. No, that's okay.

I get my turn to speak. Thank you so much, Mayor.

We can review the staff report from that meeting. It's all about the 10% that we voted in.

And I'm going to point out to the public that there's not an emergency that if something, first of all, it's probably going to get voted on. Most people will pass it. That's fine. I'm all for that. What people decide is fine. I wouldn't want to dictate that. My problem with it is calling it a fiscal emergency, calling it that. First of all, why were we in the position that it was put on at the last second that it becomes a fiscal emergency? So everything's a manipulation in the town. Started with the manager. Everything's a manipulation. It's all about now it's an emergency. This could have been thought out before and put on. other times and it still could be put on in the future and not lose any money so this whole thing is flawed and um that's what appalls me about local government all this government stuff every town does it this town's not different and i have a lot of questions about the budget but the idea is we are waiting to hear your questions Yeah, my question is, why was this not put on the ballot before? Since we're in such a fiscal dire emergency.

We are waiting for your questions.

That is the question. Okay, here's the question. It says into the stuff that we read, but by the way, I read it too, but I like to ask questions in public, not behind closed doors. It says, there's no new staff positions. Okay. What slide are you on? It says there's no, it's not a slide. I don't need to use a slide. Okay. It's a question.

I'm in this meeting and we're taking questions on slide two.

You're the mayor, but you don't get to tell me.

Okay, we're taking a break.

It was again.

Okay, moving on. We were at slide two. I think we're done there. We're still on the general fund use of funds pie chart on slide three. Does anyone have any questions on any of the slides related to the general fund appropriations, which takes you up to slide six? I'm not hearing any.

Well, is the general... A lot of the revenues put into the general fund, and we've talked in the past about setting up a fund for legal, where all of the litigation costs... At the cost of attorneys, we'd have its own fund. Rather, just the town attorney, we have the town attorney, I think it's $300,000. But we have other litigation costs, and I thought we should set up a fund so that all the litigation would be in one fund. It's... It's easier to keep track of, you know, our legal costs that way. Rather than.

Yeah, we have isolated the town attorney versus the litigation fees. And do you want to go to that slide in the deck? We can do that. But I have a question on slide four. Why is PD not on there?

The slide four is intended to be by category. So PD, rather than isolating PD, in slide three, you actually identify police as a department or a use of the funds that we've got. So slide three shows the $15.8 million as divided by departments. And slide four shows the $15.8 million as divided by type of expense.

So PD is not a department?

Well, yes, it is, and that's why it's on slide three.

But that doesn't answer my question why it's not on slide four.

Slide four is the appropriations expenditure by category. So there is a FHIR one there because it's a contract service.

PD is under salaries and other things.

Yeah. The costs that are in PD include salaries, et cetera. And so the slide four includes salaries across all departments. I think the intent of the slide is to show it by the type of expenditure rather than the department.

And fire is cheesed out because it's a contract and not like staffing personnel expenditures like the other things are.

Historically, we used to have a big contention about how much we spent on contract services. And the intent of this slide was to show that the vast majority of our contract services is for the fire department contract and that the remaining 9%, of expenditures is split across other departments for different contracts in different departments.

Yeah, I just want to note that, you know, for those of us who are actively involved with fire services and are watching closely, the cost of... managing these services, including PD, I pulled up the budget from five years ago, and FIRE, we had $2.6 million in there for FIRE, and now we're at $4.2 million. PD, we had $3.5 million, and now we're at $5.4 million. So it's just, it's not a criticism. This is But the increasing cost to provide public safety is exceeding the rate of inflation, exceeding the rate of cost of government in general. And even that is going up alongside our personal cost of living. So I just wanted to note that it's really, really steep, that increase. And that's it. That's it for me on that slide. I'm going to continue unless anyone has any other questions.

Well, I think I just want to point out, I think what the Vice Mayor was talking about, we have talked about this months ago. The way you've split out the attorney is you have the town attorney, which is pretty much Janet, and then you have a non-departmental, the special services we pay for. We had talked about Having, and we talked about doing it in this budget, being clear what all attorney stuff is, rather than trying to figure out, because non-departmental has a lot of other stuff in there. So we had talked about that, and that's why I'm bringing it up, because I think Frank brought it up. he remembers that we talked about in this budget, we would make it more clear, all the attorney stuff in sort of one.

So on slide three, are you suggesting that we have, we break out from the administration? Well, we break out legal.

I'm not sure that I'm talking about the slides itself. I'm talking about the actual budget.

Well, we have isolated it in the budget. I think he wants to see it broken out on this slide.

Well, I guess in the budget, it's in two places. It's under non-departmental for the special services, and the town attorney is a different page. And so I think what I remember talking about is having attorney services as one budget.

Oh, wait, put your, sorry. That happened. I guess I was talking to you.

No, that was me. Is that we have one page for attorney services and you have the town attorney page. and special services rather than smushed the special services into non-departmental, which has a number of other things in it. And I think...

So I think I get it. I think I'm going to try to talk for Michael here. You lose the continuity of the history, right? If you make that pivot, then where I understand it's in two different places, which are frankly not that hard to find, but... if you change the way you do it, then you lose that history. It gets very, very complicated in terms of having the year over year, like throughput. So my suggestion is extract it and have it on a slide so you can easily see legal and litigation.

Well, that's okay.

I mean, Michael, am I right that that's the concern? Unless you re-engineer the whole budget,

It would be easy for me to create a slide or an exhibit or someplace where attorney fees are identified in total and where they are in the budget as far as being in other places. either departments or other funds, because we also have attorney expenses, as an example, on Meadoway Bridge, which is in the Fund 53. Right.

So it's like all over the place, right? It's distributed. And if you take it away from where it is today, you lose money.

the history okay well what i'm suggesting maybe is that's fine is when we do the detail page of description of summary maybe that's where we and janet you might want to listen to this because this sort of pertains to you is that when we have the page on the town attorney that we also talk about other attorney services and where they're located in the budget Because I think this slide is something that we have today that's not going to live on with the budget. So a way to really show that we have attorney services in various places, but it's not all Janet Colson.

Yeah, I mean, I think my summary page, you've heard this a lot. So, you know, when we have. I mean, Frank, you want to see it on a monthly basis because you're constantly asking about it, which is fine. So I think, you know, having town attorney, litigation, and then other, which would be like the Meadoway, et cetera, right? Does that make sense? Can you just begin reporting on that?

I can do it both in the budget on the attorney page. I'll put a note down at the bottom earmarking where other attorneys expenditures for attorneys and their approximate budgeted amount. I can also do it in the finance report monthly. I'll add in a paragraph or whatever on, on attorney expenses and how much isolating it there. I don't want to change the financial statement.

That's what I'm saying. We're saying the same thing and a slide moving forward, right? Either create a slice of the pie or whatever, you know?

So just so we're clear. So, um, a pie chart that would be, um, legal services, um, one wedge is general services. One wedge is litigation and one wedge is other.

okay we got it thanks i actually i would have we have we have various departments and i would have one for legal that department could be broken down but um it's a constant issue every month people wonder how much are we spending on legal and and um Without having, we have one for police, we have one for fire, we need one for legal, not just the town attorney, but all legal costs, so that everyone can understand what it's costing the town annually. I think we're going to be over a million dollars this fiscal year for legal, and people have a right to know what that is. The reason people elected me for the town council is because they wanted me to represent them, and that's why I'm here.

Yeah, and I want to say we were all elected to the town council by people who wanted us to represent them. So I think that's a valid concern, though, about flaking out the legal because that is a question. And it's become a question because people have made a big deal out of it. But I do think that it is important to have that transparency. So thank you.

I have a comment. If a sales tax was unsuccessful at the end of June and again at the November ballot, that's when the town council would have to act on the 10% cut.

I don't see, is it Lieutenant Cade? I don't see.

I'm sorry. He had to go to a doctor's appointment. Okay. So I can put those questions.

If there are questions for him, we can wait till the end. I have a question on slide 12 for the planning. Does anyone else have any questions for Jeff on slide 12?

So I have some questions on police and we're waiting on that. Is he coming back?

He's got a doctor's appointment. He's going to come back.

He lives in Vallejo, so is his doctor appointment here?

No. We had originally thought that he would answer questions earlier in the day, so if we could receive the questions that you have, if I can answer them, I will, and if not, I will bring them back for our next session April 15th.

I have a question about the police, and I've asked this before, but I just want to understand it better. The police provide dispatch services to other towns. Why does that money, and first of all, how much do we charge for it? How much do we get? And why isn't that money put back into the police budget?

So we do charge for dispatch services to the town of Ross and to the College of Marin. And like all funds, those go into the general fund and then police services is funded by the general fund. So those are supporting police. The police services, but they're not an enterprise fund like you might imagine, for example, oftentimes you'll see sewer or solid waste. When the town if the town were to operate those themselves, you would be charging fees for those and it would be expected to be a business type self supporting. And actually, the general fund, well above the dispatch fees and other post grants that we get, the general fund subsidizes, if you will, the police department.

So can I ask a police question?

Yeah, we should capture them. I also think, is he not planning to come back? Is that the idea?

No, I'm sorry. I learned of this just now. And so, you know, obviously if someone has a doctor's appointment, I don't want them to miss that. Okay. I apologize.

Okay. So my question, and I think It is in the budget. I'm not sure exactly where that, I think it's $112,000 or something for next fiscal year for the dispatch.

The total is $162,000 from $150,000. So we've increased it by $12,000.

I knew it was something with a two at the end. Okay. And that is in the budget. I saw it, but I can't remember exactly where it was. But the question I have, Heather, if you're writing these down. So on the 10% cut, when Lieutenant Cade talked about it, he talked about two police officers cut. And so the way we now have it since we were able to fill that frozen position is we have two on every shift. If we cut, and he didn't talk about this, if we cut two police officers, what he talked about was overtime, etc. If we cut two police officers, I'd like to know what shifts are we going back to one each, because it used to be something like three to five or three to six shifts. we had only one officer on. So I think we need to know what shift we're talking about, because it's a couple of shifts that would be impacted with only one on.

You're right. So it would be a couple of shifts. And in all cases, I asked the staff to make a projection as if they would need to cut 10%. but we did not go to the next step and the next step after that, which would be opera operationalizing those changes, realizing that, um, This is the worst case scenario.

No, I get it. I don't need more explanation. I just think if we get to that point, should Measure J not pass, then I think we need to see the specifics of where that would be impacted. Because just talking about extra overtime and all that doesn't really get to that point.

Absolutely.

So we're not there yet. Do you mean if Measure J is not passed twice?

You know, I'm just saying if it doesn't pass in June, we need to, in a few months, look at doing it again. But because it didn't pass in June, then if we were able to put it on in November, there would still be a break. So it's not it's not if it were to pass in November, there would still be a break. And if you had talked about going back to the three quarter percent, there's still more cuts. So I don't think we need to discuss that right now. But I'm just saying, if we are at that point, we need to know what shifts are impacted. That's all my question is. Thank you. One thing that would have been good with this is, you know, I'm busy going through trying to find the pages. It's really kind of hard. So I think this is a great presentation, but it would be good to refer to which pages you're on because I'm flipping through trying to find the pages. And so it's hard to ask questions. Thank you.

Do you have a police question on the police? Okay. Okay. Um, So looking at the police budget, it's activity 411. The total cost for the PD, where did I see it here? $5,475,000. Good. What's interesting is the retirement. And I guess we refinanced... some unfunded liability from PERS. Is that where we put some of these buildings up for collateral with that refinance? Was it that refinance for PERS that we put some of our buildings up for collateral? That was. Okay. So in this police budget this year, we're spending $1,253,453 for retirement. So out of a $5,475,000 budget, $1.2 million is just for retirement. That's a huge hit on retirement. How did it end up so high?

The UAL is distributed 80% over to the police department because... That's the percentage that goes to safety element of the PERS retirement amounts. They are able to retire earlier in age than others, and so the cost is higher to police and safety employees than it is to miscellaneous employees. Based on PERS retirements, UAL isn't just based on current employees. In fact, within the police department, you only have one person who's a Tier 1 employee. You only have one person who's a Tier 2 employee, and all the rest are PEPRA employees. So it's not based on who you have in the office, in the positions right now. It's based historically on who is retired already and funding the retirement payments that they are getting. the element of PERS that's generated from current employees is $352,000 as compared to $900,000, which is being charged for all those who have already retired and are collecting pensions primarily.

It really distorts the cost of police services for this year.

It's identified.

Another question I have is... I don't know if we have license plate readers on patrol cars or not yet.

We do not.

We do not. Okay. So there's Motorola has a license plate reader for the police cars, police units. It's a non-flock. A lot of cities have had flock, and flock distributes that information to federal agencies, and those cities are dropping flock. But Motorola does have one. I know when the CHP came into Oakland to provide additional police services, they found a huge number of stolen cars. Because CHP has license plate readers. Stolen cars are an issue throughout Northern California, and if our police units had license plate readers with their vehicles, at least a couple of the vehicles...

Do you want them to plug in a cost for that? Is there a question there? Do you want them to put in an expense for that?

Well, if somebody was here for the police department, I could ask, but we don't have any license plate readers. Okay.

But are you asking us to maybe budget for it or think about budgeting for a license plate?

What is your question for PD? Well... We don't have LDRs.

I found out now we don't have them. I thought we might have them.

No, we don't.

If we're going to be providing police services in the 21st century, we need a license plate reader on those patrol cars.

Okay, so why don't we ask Rico to get back to us with an expense related to that? I can do that. And then during your one-on-ones with each of us prior to the next go-around, you can surmise if that's an expense we want to plug in. I can do that. OK, thank you.

Just be careful when you talk to him, because at one time he was looking at flock and I told him, no, they provide Palantir provides information to ice. And I said, please don't bring that. I wasn't familiar with this other thing, but just make it clear we're not talking about flock.

Anything else?

I have a question about police. If I could finish on the police issues. So last year we raised the utility users tax 1% and that was going to cover the cost of one officer. So if the sales tax for some reason does not pass, we paid for that one officer with utility users tax and that's still in effect.

Yes, that's correct. So each of the departments, including police, is taking funds from the general fund, which are coming in from all of those sources, UUT, small amount of post grants, other things, you know, the dispatch contract. So UUT goes into the general fund and the the council identified that they would like to increase the UUT to the maximum 5%. It had been at 4%. And Michael was able to identify that that was almost exactly the amount needed for that unfreezing of that police position. So that's the commitment that the council has made and that staff is continuing. But if you have an overall reduction in general fund, I was asking all of the department heads to project a 10% cut so that it would be transparent to everyone what might occur because of that. So it hit, it was specifically intended to, make it fair and not target one department versus another. Does that help?

I mean, would you, I don't know, would you have to cut even more positions?

Not really. But anyway, and on some police issues, for instance, on Sunday, there was a fire in San Anselmo, a single family home, and it shut down the upper Ross Valley. Traffic was impossible. It took like 45 minutes to an hour to go from Fairfax to San Rafael. I don't know how Fairfax police handles traffic control, but there was no Nixle notice yesterday. Sunday, I'm sorry, Sunday. And traffic was an absolute mess. And I saw TWO POLICE SHOOTERS DRIVING AROUND.

I HAVE ADDRESSED THIS BECAUSE IT WAS A TWO ALARM FIRE IN SAN ANSELMO AND THEY USE CENTRAL MARIN POLICE. IT WAS ON CENTRAL MARIN POLICE TO COMMUNICATE AND THEY DIDN'T AND IT'S A GAP IN MY MIND AND WE'RE GOING TO ADDRESS IT AT AN UPCOMING FIRE BOARD MEETING. So I really need us to stay on track. It's 12.15. We've got a lot to get through. So can we keep it to questions and follow-up items related to police?

Well, that's a police issue, I thought.

Yeah, and I just answered your question.

Okay, here's another example. There was the Chapman funeral at St. Rita's a month and a half ago, maybe. 400 people were there. Traffic was a mess. There were two patrol units in the area, but no one was directing traffic. So my question is, do our police officers direct traffic when there's an incident going on, or do we just let things happen? I don't know.

Is this a budget question?

Should someone who was running the funeral had contacted Fairfax Police? There were two police units at that funeral.

A fiscal budget planning session. If you have questions about...

Here's the question. If we're providing $5,475,000, I'm wondering what we're getting for that service. I know that yesterday, for instance, there was a lost dog in a Cascades and there were three police units in the Cascades looking for a lost dog. I mean... I'm not sure about our priorities here.

I have a question.

We will capture these for Rico. And I really encourage you to start meeting with staff and stop wasting our time during a fiscal planning session.

You don't understand. Go ahead, Mike.

Go ahead, Mike.

Okay, let me take a chance here. So... Exactly. So the... Well, first of all, the police are the biggest expenditure we have on our budget, I believe.

That's correct.

And I'm curious that I understand Lieutenant Cade had a doctor's appointment. And I'm almost afraid to ask, but is the chief okay? Oh, he's at Disneyland. Okay.

All right.

I don't know that. I just wondered. You know, it's a big meeting. I thought maybe... they would be here to answer questions like Frank's questions and things like that. But okay. I'm just curious as to where, you know, where staff is. That's all. Thank you.

Okay, yeah, we allow our staff to have vacations and we want them to so they don't burn out. And I hope he's having a great time in Disneyland. Okay, moving on to planning. I have a question, Jeff, about the mention of the fee study. Was there anything plugged in from an expense standpoint related to that? Is that something that we handle internally?

um or do we have to go do it to outsource that x that project mayor if i may um yeah we we did budget for the fee study and um uh that has been waiting to get implemented as we work through the other what was the amount you plugged in for that Off the top of my head, I believe it was $25,000. Okay. And then I also want to note that we assumed some revenue increases as a result of that fee study for the next fiscal year. That's very important.

And the last time we did a fee study, I think, was like six years ago. Is that right?

Maybe I should add because... nobody was here except me no i was here for the last fee study it was 2019. okay that's when i was here okay because i remember our former planning director um but i think he did it internally no no we actually used okay the same firm and i was the mayor renee was the vice mayor we met with the finance department and went over every page of it and at the time we found that our fees and it's not just planning and building it was all our fees right were quite a bit under what we should have collected. And these firms are not something you can do internally. They have to look at how much time is spent on each project and what we do. And at the time, we went through page by page and decided that we couldn't take the jump on all of those because it would be too much. And for example, we don't want to encourage people to do work without permits, which they might if it was too high. And we also progressed some over time so they would reach the amount, and some we just left at lesser amounts. So it's more than just planning and building. It was all our fees, and it is time to do it again.

So it's a comparative analysis of where we stand on all the various fees and the market against our peers or our neighbors, et cetera. No.

It's against our cost. So it's not market-based. It's against our cost.

Got it. Got it. And the last one, I believe I found it on the website. It was like November 2019 or December 2019. Okay. It's every page.

I guess I'd like to hear from, I just want to confirm that everyone thinks that's a good idea. I personally do. Yeah.

Yeah. i think it's a good idea i've actually been asked by constituents whether they're going to do it so um just because they have concern about future development so frank yep thank you lisa frank do you think it's a good idea i'm not sure about that okay mike no comment okay

I have a question for planning a building.

Yeah, I wasn't done, but, um, so I have a question related to the very controversial school street project. So. If and when that proceeds, I think they have a lot of permits, right? That's the stage it's in to start applying for permits. Is that right?

Yeah, we're waiting for them to apply for building permits.

Okay, what could you share what the costs and the revenue are are associated with that and staff time I do I'm a little worried about staff time related to that project. Going into next year.

Yeah, we would require a deposit to kind of cover our initial costs, and then they would have to, you know, pay for the plan review and the building permits.

And is all that plugged into the budget?

No, it would be more or less on a... Since it's un-in, we don't know when it's coming in. Okay.

So you're not assuming... Yeah, exactly.

The fees are all based on valuation. So... I think we would be able to collect most of the revenue for that to cover the expenses. So I don't think it would be a big hit on the budget because we would make sure that we were getting all of our expenses covered. we would be using outside consultants and that would be fully reimbursed through a deposit.

Okay, thank you. So can I just for clarification, this was something that was raised to me by a constituent who was deeply concerned about us getting a peace study done because they were concerned about not capturing maximum fees from school street laws of development. Uh, it sounds like we think we're going to recoup most of our costs as a result of our fees from that particular project.

Yeah, I believe so. And we're a little bit better in terms of fees on the building side versus the planning side. I think the planning side is a little bit more subsidized by the general fund in terms of fees.

Okay.

Go ahead.

All right, and just a note on that. Even if we did a fee study tomorrow and we raised all the fees, we couldn't subject them to that because of that freeze, right, when they... when they submitted it, they have to follow the rules at that time versus subsequent changes, I would think. But okay, the question is, you talked about short-term rentals, and we have people that we know are operating illegally and they're not paying our fees. And I realize this is a little controversial, but rather than using staff time to collect why don't we just go to collection agencies they take part of the take but that would get the message across that it's time to start paying our fees and next time we might not have to have we considered that yeah we've considered that it just takes a little bit to get to that point you have to go through kind of a

Well, first of all, we have to identify where the short-term rental is because they try to hide that. I thought we already have that with that firm that we use. Yes, we do. We do have that information. And we've sent them three letters through that system. And there's still many, many that have ignored us. And some of them can't register because they aren't. They don't live in the unit, so they're not qualified. So it's a mixture of they are told that they have to stop so we wouldn't actually be getting revenue from them. It would just be a code enforcement action just to tell them to stop operating the short-term rental. So that's kind of a money loser, I guess you'd say. And then there are a few out there that could register and then start paying TOT tax, and that's where we could collect some revenue.

I just think it's time to start doing that. Same thing with parklet fees for the ones who haven't. I think it gets the message across that we're serious. And then next year it should be easier. So the ones that shouldn't be doing short-term rentals because they don't meet the code, that's a different story. But, you know, we're spinning our wheels here. And we just did this through the fire for some older thing. And collection agencies do a lot of work to figure out if it's worth their time. And we could just funnel that over instead of spending a lot of time, you know, spinning our wheels, trying to figure out how to do it. We've sent the letters, we've given them notice enough already. Anyway, that's, I'm a hard person.

I concur.

Um, okay.

Yeah. I mean, for everybody that owes us money, frankly, and there's quite a bit, um, go ahead.

Did you have something back to school street Plaza? Um, It's been approved, right? We all know it's been approved. Is that right?

Correct.

Okay. So in the budget process, did you, I think I heard the opposite, but did you calculate how much time will be taken by the staff? Do you have any idea what? I mean, we have an idea what the project is. So do we have any anticipated revenues? Do we have any anticipated staff time? What did you calculate for that?

The vast majority of that would be on the building permit side, and it would be kind of a fully reimbursable project. through primarily through our building permit consulting firm coastland so we would collect a deposit and then we would accumulate all of the invoices from coastland and we would just simply so have that so in essence okay so it's being subbed so the work will be subbed out and reimbursed by the developer correct so the staff time is quite minimal you would say yeah i would be relatively minimal thank you

Okay, moving right along.

Excuse me, may I just say a word on the short-term rentals? There's a First District Court of Appeal decision that says if a town or city makes a request of any short-term rental operation as to how much they took in, etc., They have to. They have no authority to deny it. They have to give us those numbers. So it should be pretty simple. If we could get a list of every rental agency that's doing short-term rentals, and there's probably dozens of them, send them a standard letter asking the reporting of income on short-term rentals. And I think we could handle that process through our staff to send them a bill.

Okay, moving along. On slide 13, which you're on, I'm sorry, I should know this. The grant... Can you remind me what that grant is?

Oh, yeah, it's to complete the bicycle and pedestrian master plan.

Okay, thank you. Anybody else? Do we have any other questions for Jeff in planning?

Well, so on the planning issue, you mentioned School Street Plaza. Is there some litigation still ongoing, or has that been settled?

You know that the Tremaine case is still ongoing. It hasn't settled.

Okay. So in effect, would we be issuing a building permit if in fact there's litigation? the building inspection. So I thought I'd ask the question about the director said they're getting ready to issue a building permit. If we're under litigation, how can we issue a building permit?

Okay. We're going to try to stay on track here. All right, moving on to recreation, which I think is next. Am I right, or did I skip?

We have Bridget here for climate and environment.

Sorry, I did not at all mean to skip you, Bridget. Okay, does anyone have any questions for Bridget? Barbara, you don't? Okay, I don't. Liesl, Vice Mayor? Okay. Okay. You're off the hook, Bridget. Well done. Thank you. Moving on to recreation. I have some questions, but I'll let others start. Liesl, do you have any questions on rec? Frank?

Not yet. Well, my question is regarding the capital improvement part of their budget.

Okay, we're on recreation right now, so the special events, the community programs, et cetera. I did have a question, and can you, because it's on my budget, can you remind me what page your budget is on?

The slide eight has a detail with all the departments and what page numbers they are in, if you need to use that for reference.

I have a comment.

Go ahead.

I think the park and rec department is doing a great job and they're very sustainable. So that's my comment.

Okay. Thank you. I think they do a great job too. On page 52, I see that the salary is going up substantially. Could someone talk to me about that?

on line 411 we are going from 56 to 74. this budget includes some reallocation of people okay so ann was in part being funded by uh events we moved that portion of it over to her uh budget so she's now uh 90 percent got it funded by recreation and 10% from the summer camps.

Got it. And I see the note there. So thank you for clarifying. So the other question I have, so Most of the events are free, and they are amazing, and they are what makes Fairfax special, and I love it. So some of the programs, like we had the Soup Walk, and we had Bingo Night. How are you supporting these events, and what is the revenue share? And is that just sort of a loose agreement? Is it a formal agreement?

The events that come under Maria's pages, 617, those are primarily free. It's like the town picnic and the egg hunt and those kinds of things. The things that, um, like the soup walk is a collaboration with the chamber. So we're doing a 70, 30 split. It's a formal split.

70 to the chamber. Yes. Okay.

And, um, the same goes for any, anyone that is doing anything in the pavilion, it's a 70, 30 split. So the community square dancing, they get 70%, we get 30%. It's all, um, shared revenue. Okay. So there are things under Maria's that are not like bringing in revenue so much, but they're also super low cost. Right. Like the egg hunt is like $800 or something.

So what kind of support are you providing for those chamber led events? Um, I'm trying to understand, and we did get some information from the chamber, but it really lacked a lot of numbers and KPIs that I need to support allocating funds, frankly. So I'm trying to get that.

So for the 30%, when people come to me and I'm doing classes or events, like one off event, they get... the staff time to meet with me to organize it. They get communications time to promote it. They get staff time to implement it. And they also, like in the case of the soup walk, we paid for all of the supplies, all of the posters and the A-frames and all of that.

So was that, was that on top of the 30 then, or does that just cut, does the 30% just cover the costs of that?

It's it's no, we covered like Mina and I did a budget together. We collected all the money. We included all the expenses and then the 30, 70 split happens.

Okay. I just want to add, they also get the building rental for free. Let's say, you know, the pavilion for the Alice in Wonderland team. They don't have to pay anything to use the building, obviously. Okay.

So all of this, and I mean, I see you in the back, all of this, honestly, like all your costs, all your revenues, including fee revenues from the chamber members, like all of that is respectfully missing. And I need it again to... help the chamber, help themselves. And so I'm not able to support, I think you requested 24,000, and that's not in today's discussion, but we do have to talk about it because we have to give feedback to staff for the next round. So I think this is the time to talk about it, if I'm not mistaken, because you plugged in 5,000. Is that right?

Yeah, and I want to just jump in and say I can't support the 5,000. I think we were at 500. The other piece that wouldn't be shown in recreation is all the police overtime that we do and public works overtime to support those events. So while I get it that the chamber is very limited in funds, I don't think given our tight budget and us, I think you mentioned when you started this, you were looking for 1.2 million to cover some gaps to just get this thing done is I don't think we're in a position to start supporting the chamber with additional things. So what isn't included for all those events is, you know, I think for winter market, I was standing out there with, six or eight of our police department. Most of those were sworn police officers, some were not, and maybe one police technician. So, you know, there's a lot that we do, and I think that's a good thing to support these events for the businesses. But I'm not looking at trying to add more. I just don't think we can.

I feel a little bit differently. I just need the backup to support it. So you collected a couple of thousand dollars, I understand it, from the last two events. Is that right? Paid events.

As in recreation.

From the chamber events. Sorry, we are focusing on the chamber right now because we have to give staff direction.

So for the soup walk, yes, we collected money. Nina wrote me a check.

And so if we continue with that or if they continue with that, they could self-fund it, if you will, right? If they're asking for $5,000 and they're generating events that are rev-sharing revenue, am I tracking? Yeah.

Yeah.

Did you plug in chamber revenue for in this budget? That's what I'm.

That's a good question. I did not. Okay. So just because I see, you know, confusion and I feel it too. So I just want to ask clarifying question. When you're thinking of, for example, the soup walk being a self-supporting chamber event, are you thinking that town staff would be involved or would town staff be removed so that the chamber could run that on their own, have their own expenses and their own income?

I'm hearing that they are involved today. Yes, that's right. And I'm hearing that we are getting revenue from those events. And so I would think it makes sense to continue. They are successful events. So what I would like to see is revenue plugged in and expense plugged in. And I would like to see collaboration between staff and the chamber and for the chamber to provide the numbers that we continue to ask for. So we can do this in a sound way. Does that make sense? I'm sorry. I'm just, this has been going on for months. It feels like, and I just keep asking and so not directed at you, but am I making sense? Mike, are you in agreement that we should get, are you going to cut me off or can I speak? I'm looking at you. Okay.

I will speak on it.

Sorry. She, she wanted to say something really quickly. Go ahead.

Got cut off already.

I'm sorry, I did not mean to cut you off, but I just don't want to lose that.

I'm used to it.

I don't want to lose that last point, which is Michael Vivrett is pointing out to us that on page 55, which is general fund non-departmental, there is a line under note 822 that says Fairfax Chamber of Commerce and And that is the amount that we plan to spend. Sorry, page 52. Sorry, page 55. But I think your question, Mayor, was where do we account for the revenue that Ann has received from for this event and that would be a question michael might have to come back to us with right i mean which is not it's not in there though we know that right it's not called out specifically and i haven't quantified it but we can easily determine what it is

Yeah, I know that. My question is, it is not reflected in here, right? There's no income. There's no revenue, right? So the five isn't really five, right? I mean, it's five. It's five as an expense. But if we're getting $3,000 and there's probably going to be more, it could pay for itself is what I'm trying to get at. It could self-fund, right?

Oh, okay. I understand now. Help you. So I think, yeah, we might need to have a separate, it might not be in the budget, but some sort of separate budget for chamber interaction that includes revenue and expense.

Thank you. Go ahead, Mike.

Okay. So the same chamber we have now, I started back in 1996, and I was the first one in chamber history to identify that we needed an executive director and we hired one and we self-funded, um, we started the brew fest and we did things that would, you know, help fund that position. I also think that, um, every town realizes the importance of merchants from what I remember from this presentation, it's the second, highest revenue getter in the town next to property tax. And I think we should support the chamber. I think it's important that we support the chamber. I think that they more than pay for themselves when you bring in, when you look at the sales tax revenues. And I think that we shortchange this business community. We treat them like second-class citizens. And I I think we need to start looking at the town and say thank you to our merchants, thank you to the chamber, thank you to all the people that are here, that live in town, that work in town, that care about this town, that don't go away on weekends, that don't live elsewhere. They live right here in Fairfax, and we need to support that in a strong way. And, you know, I think it's – speaking of return on investment, that's a good one. In addition, the – I also think, and I've mentioned this to people before, that a big chance for things to bring in revenues, if they did it correctly in my estimation, would be the Fairfax Festival, which I know is in transition time. And I think that's a big area for that. But in addition to the self-funding part, it's a small town. And for the town to put some investment back into our merchants and back into our chamber is vital to the community thriving. Thank you.

So you're good with the 5K. I am.

No, I think it should be more.

What do you want it to be?

I don't know. I'd have to look at it closer.

OK, so will you meet with staff after you've looked at closer?

If you say so. OK, well, I mean, that's sure.

So how else how else will they know?

Well, I'm having a meeting right now. I just said it. I don't know the exact number.

When you decide how much you think it should be, will you communicate?

Absolutely, I will communicate that. Thank you so much.

Go ahead, Vice Mayor.

Yes, on the chamber, I'm at page 18 on the revenues business license. We estimated $125,000 for the current year. What we don't have is the estimated revenue from the entire year that we just completed. The draft is $160,000, so it's an increase of $35,000. Oh, I'm sorry, it's page 15. Page 15, it's 15, it's 15. Is it 1B? page 50 and up top, business licenses. So 2526 was $125,000. And the draft is $160,000. So it's a $35,000 increase. And I guess that's the result of going to automated business license collection. So the...

page that we're looking at here is page seven. And that's the detail. There's two exhibits. One is 1B, which shows this year's budget compared to last year's budget. And then there is page seven, which has a detail of the revenues. And that includes our revenues that we're projecting for this year. So to answer your question, Frank, the business licenses we're projecting will be about $166,000 this year against a budget of about $125,000. So we're projecting that the business license activity that we're doing this year has increased our revenue excitedly above what we had budgeted. And we're budgeting $160,000 for next year.

But that's because I thought some of this was because there were business licenses that hadn't been paid for some time and then they got all paid at once. So that's not continuing like that. But we are going to have more consistent, it seems like, collection so that that doesn't happen again where we get a lot of uncollected licenses that people have to catch up on.

Right. I haven't done an analysis of how much of the revenues that we've received is for previous years. But we scaled down our estimate this year over what we've projected based on the fact that we were collecting prior year.

And thank you. I mean, I was happy to see that you were able to increase that. So I'm not being accusative here. I'm just like, wow, OK, great. Thanks.

So when I'm looking, I see here, my eyes are crossing. I'm looking at page, I guess it's 1B on the general fund. And then page seven, there's two different sets of numbers here. So that's what makes it confusing. On page 1B, it shows 160,000 as a draft. And on page seven, it shows $566,590, or $890. Is that it, $890? Yeah, the numbers on 1B include the budget from last year, which is the middle column of exhibits, or at page seven. I'm looking at the draft.

The draft says $160,000. 160 is the amount that we are projecting for this year.

No, it's not. 160 is the amount on page seven. It shows 160 for 2627.

Oh, it is the same. It is the same. It is the same. Okay.

It's 166,894,2526.

It is the same. Okay.

Frank?

But so we have a $35,000 increase, and it seems that we have sufficient funds to reinvest with the Chamber of Commerce. as a result of the increase of business licenses, and as far as the number, should it be 500, 5,000, or 50,000? I'm not sure right now, but obviously we can subsidize the Chamber of Commerce more than 5,000.

I'd like to mention something about that as well. Not only is the business community bringing in Record for us anyway, we're a small town. Sales tax revenues, but they're also responsible for paying the property taxes downtown. They pay the high rents and whatnot, which all makes it harder for them to make ends meet. But that's the cost of doing business. But it's not just sales tax. There's property taxes that are paid by merchants as well. And I think you guys, that's like a double whammy. It's probably more than the sales tax. So you guys should be considering that as well.

To the point of clarity, not all businesses own the commercial property.

You don't have to own it to pay the property tax. You can just be renting it, and that is what pays the property tax.

You mean it's baked into the rent?

That's how it works, yes.

Okay. Well, I don't own commercial buildings like you do, so thank you.

It's not because I own a commercial building downtown. It's because I've been renting downtown, renting downtown since I was 21 years old. So go ahead and do the math. That's property taxes. Those buildings don't pay their own property tax. They collect rents, and that covers all their expenses. Um, as you can probably figure out, but since he couldn't, I will explain it to you. You pay the rent, the rents that they asked for, which covers all their expenses plus whatever else they want to get for it. That always includes the property tax and their insurances and all that stuff. So, um, yes, I've been renting in town since 1980 and, um, That's how it works. I'm surprised you don't know that.

Why don't we just wrap this up and say, Mike, Frank, get together, decide what you think is appropriate. But I also want to say, not all businesses are part of the chamber. In fact, Good Earth, I believe, is not. And they bring in the highest sales tax revenue. Yeah.

So, yeah, I mean, I think everybody needs to meet with staff and share what they think. I, you know, there is some synergy with the business license, but it's really largely the work of Janabai and Susan and Heather and others that have grown the revenue related to the business license. So I think. you know, the planning department and the clerk should enjoy the benefits of that revenue. We could certainly use the help of the chamber to support and educate on what Measure J will provide or not provide, as the case may be. But I don't want to mix apples and oranges, frankly. I think we should identify the revenue and the costs associated with the partnership and all the value that the Chamber is bringing and really isolate that. I don't think there's too much overlap with the business licenses. I don't know that there was that much energy

or support from the chamber related to that so can i just i'm just going to quickly say that i'm fine with the 5000 um i wouldn't mind seeing you know more detail about the chamber revenue and costs and how they're associated with what we the town gets um and you know i love the partnership i really have appreciated seeing like i feel like we're at a time where we really need community building And I know people are going to say that when we're looking at possible budget cuts that, you know, probably the low-hanging fruit is cutting our recreation and community events. And yet I think that, you know, we really need those to kind of keep this town cohesive. So I think we want to think about how we can support those activities. And I'm also really, you know... You don't really hope that we don't lose measure day because, you know, in the future, I would love to just see us have, like, more full time positions in recreation just to be able to carry this kind of work forward. And I know that's a little bit of a dream right now, but I have been very impressed by the synergy between the chamber and. our recreation folks and the growth in revenue and engagement that they've been able to leverage in the last year or so. I think some of you may have seen the video that Anne put out. There's just these really wonderful things happening that I think are going to cut through some of the acrimony that we've had in town. So to the extent we can invest in those, I think that we will be well served. Thank you.

Thank you so much for your positivity. I totally agree. I just want to be armed with the data that I need to support more funding. So with that, I'm okay with the 5K personally that's in there today, but I just want to see the backup numbers to substantiate the 5K or possibly more. That's where I'm at. And you're good with the 5K right now, Liesl? Okay.

I'm good with the 5K right now.

All righty. Moving on. You don't have anything else on?

You mean on the budget itself? I got a budget.

No, no, no, no. Just park and rec. Okay, so we're moving on to... Thank you, Ann. Thank you, Maria. To the town clerk, elections, technology. Are there any questions related to those slides for Christine?

Well, we have two elections this year, so the cost, I think, was it $12,000? I'm just going by memory now. Was it $12,000 for elections?

What page are elections on, please?

Page 21. Page 21.

Page 21.

Yes, to answer your question, Councilmember Ager, the regular November election typically costs the town about $12,000. That's a projection, but we'll get a more accurate number. $6,000?

$12,000? We budgeted $125,000 in the 25-26.

That was a reflection of the recall election plus the potential for an additional election plus the potential for a third election tied to the recall election. But because the recall election did not pass, we didn't need to use the funds that were

I think it was also because we didn't know at the time that the state was going to have a special election.

That's also true. When we originally got the numbers from the county to run the recall election, we were the only measure. The recall measure was the only measure on the ballot. So that just costs. And I think we've got this.

But our election wasn't much at all. Was it six thousand for the rank?

That is because, you know, it was much more than that. I can send you an invoice from the county, but it was not six thousand. It was, yeah, 18, I think.

We know. No, no, it wasn't. We, Frank, I think we've gone over this in various meetings. But, yeah, so twelve thousand is going to cover two elections this year.

One of those is in this year, Frank. So we got this year and then July, June 2nd, is the election still happening? We only have one schedule. And next year, we would have one in November.

We're looking at fiscal year, which not calendar year.

Fiscal year, 26, 27 fiscal year. There's only one election in 26. Okay, so one is going to be June of this year. Correct. Of the current year. Yeah, you're right. Only one. Right.

Exactly. Yeah.

Is that it?

On elections? Well, so we have two full-time employees. Should a portion of... the town clerk position be allocated to the town manager position since she's an assistant to the town manager?

It is.

Is it a portion of yours?

A portion of my job responsibilities, yeah, are to support the town manager's office.

But I think I understand, because I had the same question, is that on this page, which is page 20, it says there are two full-time equivalent employees in the town clerk's office, and I would have assumed that if part of one of the positions was part of the town manager's area, that that would have been in the town manager budget. It's just a statistical question. I think that's the same question that he's asking, which I...

That's not allocated currently. We have both town clerk positions in the town clerk budget.

So it's a matter of preference as far as how you want to see those costs, because all of these costs are coming from the general fund, right? So you can show it over here, you can show it over here. So if you would like, we could change that. you will probably get um comments which are which would be erroneous like why did the town manager's salary go up 50 or something like that that wouldn't be the case but what we would be doing is reallocating some of the positions that are currently both in the town clerk into the town manager. And we could easily do that. It might be cleaner. It's just a matter of preference.

Okay. I mean, I'm not particularly concerned about it. I just had, I was curious because, you know, I've had people say to me, well, you know, there's somebody assisting the town manager and then it looks like they're not. I don't know. But anyway, I'm sorry. I'm going to give it back to council member. I didn't mean to jump in there, but I had the same question. So I was just curious.

So I have a question on page 21. It's the elections. So under 842, the note deals with net file. It was $3,400, and in 2627, you have it as $200. I believe that's a typo.

It should be $2,500 for the software.

So we're going to fix that. Noted. Okay, thanks.

Thank you.

It's right here.

Oh, the $200,000 to $2,500,000?

Yeah, it's just a typo. I just thought maybe we were getting it cheap, really cheap. No.

But it affected, obviously, the subtotal and the total, right?

Yeah, but they'll correct it for the April 15th.

Okay. I just have a quick note that... you all carry quite a lot. And I just wanted to recognize you for that. And, and also noted that you didn't put the town newsletter on one of the things that you do.

I didn't see it on the slide.

And I, I, it's there. Where is it? Well, um, communications okay well i know that the town really really enjoys that i know that the subscription has really um increased year over year since i've been on the council i've been noticing it so well done on that and everything that you do but i know that the if we do not pass measure j um you will have to focus purely on compliance and that will lead to clearly um taking the fun parts out of your job. And that would concern me in terms of your happiness on the job. Anyway, moving forward. Thank you. Does anyone have any questions on public works? I do. Okay. Go ahead, Barbara.

So my question is, and this was dealing with slide 22, where you talk about potential impacts, and you talk about eliminating one to FTE and greater reliance on contractors. Okay. Public works staff, other than director, have not huge salaries and um obviously there's benefits baked in to their costs but reliance on contractors who are typically higher hourly i think should we get to this point i would not be supportive of that i think we need to look at a different way if we start relying on contractors we're probably going to end up paying more even though we're not paying for bennies And I think we ought to really look hard at we have a new person that's come on who's probably at the lowest step or pretty close to that. And so I think we need to really look at that. These folks are very critical. You know, they're kind of our silent heroes because they do so much to keep the town going. So I just it's really not a question, but I don't think that reliance on more contractors is a good idea. They have higher rates. Let's hope we're not at that point, but let's really look at, you know, if we do get to that point of reliance on staff versus contractors, because we know even with street sweeping, it's more expensive, even though that piece of equipment was CARB noncompliant, we would have been in trouble, and it didn't work very well. But I just want to really hit that home. Thank you.

I'd like to comment on the street department. I guess it's open for discussion, but to keep talking about something that hasn't happened yet, these invented 10% cuts when there's two elections coming up, one in June and one in November. So the point being is we're planning a lot for something that hasn't actually happened yet. And even if you miss it on June 2nd, you got November 2. But in the meantime, I think that the one, not the only one probably, but certainly a department that's short-staffed is Public Works. And you said they're unsung heroes. Well, for the most bang for your buck, it's important to have a good crew out there. And the things they do, that's your best return on investment there is right there. And so I would be for actually adding a position into public works so those guys can get out there and get it done. That is by far the most valuable part of our town are the guys that are on the street doing that work. Thank you.

Okay, I wanted to just add a question and maybe a comment. I mean, if I could see more people in public works, which I think is a wonderful department, I also just wish we could have another person that could actually assist Kristen because I think getting those projects managed and getting the grant funding is so vital to actually getting people out there to do the work so there can be kind of a bottleneck there um i'm also going to note that tam is changing how it's allocating the local streets and roads funds and it's not something i entirely understand but i'm wondering if we're taking into account when we look at the streets and roads budget that there will be a change from allocation in arrear to reimbursement-based funding, which they are saying is sort of meaning that we're gonna have a double allocation for fiscal year 26, 27. I'm not sure how that looks in our budget, but just wanted to put it out there that it wasn't something that I'd totally caught until last TAM meeting, that that's what they were looking at doing. So just putting it out there for further research, unless it's already been discussed.

On public works, you know, public works has been basically the stepchild of Fairfax. And the results are our roads and our curbs and our gutters and everything. They all need an awful lot of work. I guess when we get to the capital program, we can talk about some of these issues. So we're talking five full-time employees. So that's the director, the director, 3 in streets and 1 in parks. Is that how you get to 5?

Yes, we take 1 position. We actually allocated across 3 departments. We have one position which is allocated to streets and a little bit to the parks and to the rental buildings. The two new guys are both allocated to streets, and then Rudy is 100% for parks.

But is Rudy one of the five? Yes. Okay, thank you.

Moving right along. We are now on to special revenues. I actually have a question on this related to the gas tax. Michael, I've been comparing to five years ago. We had $329,000. Why is the state allocating more, particularly if EVs are going up and so forth?

I can't answer why the state is projecting that they're going to be getting more. It could be that there's more car activity even with the EVs around.

What about higher prices?

Prices has nothing to do with it. It's a gas tax per gallon. Okay. Yeah, we have about I think I was reading something that said it's about 60 cents per gallon but it doesn't have to do with number of Gas cars in the state. No there may be a small element of it that is related to Two EVs they get a charge of $100 I think for road purposes and that may be allocated through it and One of these times I'll actually show you an allocation sheet of how they take, where they get the gas tax from, et cetera. But we only get an amount that's based on population.

Okay, and so at this juncture there's no risk in the next couple of years related to this source of income based on EV volume, projected EV volume and all that?

I could see scenarios where these high gas prices could drive a lot more people over to getting EV vehicles.

Well, I know, but that's not having an impact.

Well, maybe not currently at the rate that it has been, but these are all projections before.

The Iran incident right, but it's still curious to me given the situation with this state budget that they haven't It hasn't been and I mean we know there's more EV vehicles on the road Anyway, I don't have to belabor this but I guess I would just like to know that Moving forward that this isn't gonna be a risk item if that makes sense

go ahead so since you talked about various things without a special slide you talked about in the event and it was like around slide 23 you talked about in the event that measure j doesn't pass potentially you would go back you would eliminate the accountant position elena as well as going back to the old software. Okay, so I was here when we got the software, and it cost us a lot of money and time, staff time, to put that together. The old software was frankly crummy. And so I don't, you know, again, we're not there yet. But I think if we were to be there, it would be better to look at different ways. Because to go back to the old software, first of all, you lost all the time and money you spent getting Tyler up to speed, which has really saved time and saved staff resources. And so I don't think that is, in times of emergency, a good thing to go back to because it wouldn't help us. And you'd spend more time with staff that you don't have doing it. So I guess you'd be working all the time. You wouldn't go to sleep. But I think we ought to really look hard at, should the fiscal emergency come, then I think we need to look at a more differential way of doing it rather than just saying, well, I'm going to slash this because that just would cost us a ton of money. And all the time that we put into Tyler and we just be using staff upon staff, trying to figure out how to go back. And also that was a lot of care and feeding. So just a thought. Thank you.

So Fairfax has the, the most taxes in Marin County, most individual type taxes. I didn't say it's the most tax revenue, but per on the property tax bill, there's more line item taxes than any other County, uh, other city or town in the County. And, um, since this seems to be a debate about we're going to lose this first of all the sales tax is probably going to pass it's not a high threshold and people have never not passed the sales tax so let's face it it's going to pass it's a good thing by the way when i was talking at the strategy meeting i mentioned that you know you you want to make this an emergency kind of situation and in uh ran this down through, you know, run it through people. I said, have you ever considered like getting the revenue and at the same time trimming here or there? Have you ever trimmed anything? Have we ever done that? Because that's what it's going to take really to help do more things on the roads, for instance. So that could mean that while we take in more revenue at the same time, We look at each department and we decide what can actually be cut, if anything. And that's what we should be considering. And that's what this council promised me that they would be looking at during the budget hearings at some point is like, sure, Mike, we want to get the sales tax done. That's fine. It's an emergency. It's not. And. But we're going to consider, at the same time we take in the same amount of money or more, it's always more, by the way, what areas in this town can we cut? I think I know where it is. Everyone disagrees. Not everyone, actually. Some people do agree with me. And it could be done through attrition. For instance, somebody just retired from planning department. That position does not have to be refilled. position, that money for that position, I don't know what actually total cost is with all in, but that money could be put in public works department, for instance. And those are the kinds of opportunities we need to look at. You can't just constantly raise more money. You have to look at where you can find more efficiencies. And that's the problem I have with what we do here is we want to keep raising the money, but we don't want to find efficiencies. And that's what I'd like to see happen. Thank you.

Can I just note that in this process, staff proposed what they needed, and it was $1.2 million more than what we have before us, and they sat down and already cut. So I think that people are mindful of trying to... economize and be as efficient as possible and i think fairfax has generally run pretty lean and it's part of the reason we haven't gotten a lot of work done so for instance for a while we tried to save money by having our town manager also being our dpw director and it feels like things fell through the cracks and sometimes it feels like there's things we can't get done like we can't write for grants because we don't have enough staff to write for the grants that would allow us to be more productive so i just want to keep in mind that sometimes you can trim so much that you can't actually get stuff done. And one of the things that I'm concerned about with the planning department is that we have timeline requirements about when various things have to be processed. So if we don't have enough staff to do that, then we're going to start getting, I'm going to assume, fined or another trouble for not being able to process those applications in a timely fashion. So I just want to make sure that we are, you know, not penny wise and pound foolish.

I just want to thank you, Mike, for saying that it's going to pass, and that's a good thing. Really appreciate your remarks related to Measure J. Do you have anything else, Councilmember Blash or Vice Mayor?

Where are you now? You're on.

We were on special taxes. Moving up to. Special revenues, rather, but we're moving on. Capital improvement.

Yeah, and it would be great if we could get the page number so we can all quickly turn to the part of the budget.

so question on capital i have two questions on capital improvements okay so slide 25 and 26 and the corresponding budget page is i have no idea i just um i mean the capital improvement budget it's like the overall i mean 73 maybe hold on it starts on page 78. okay so my first question is based on what you said because cutting me off i'm gonna she can't help it's all right okay so you talked about the park road project and you said over two fiscal years the arpa funds have to be spent by december 2026 how why are you can't go over two fiscal years because we're starting it this year

Yes, so the Park Road project will start towards the end of this month. Okay, all right. But then it will go into July, which is next fiscal year.

How can it? We have to spend all the ARPA funds by December 2026.

Right. So they will be finished around like July or August of 2026.

Oh, okay. All right. Thank you. I was freaking out. Okay. Another question I have is on 26, um, You talk about cutting the sidewalk grant program. So you already did. In this budget, it was $20,000, which we did. I brought that years ago. And the benefit of the sidewalk grant program is it is the responsibility of the property owners, not the town. And We've had people, as you know, you walk through town, there's a lot of crummy looking sidewalks at people's houses. I don't think we've done a great job of always advertising that we have it. You already cut it to 10,000, which I don't agree with, but I'll be patient right now because if we need more, I'm going to bring it back if I'm still sitting here. And so I don't appreciate the idea of cutting something that's a lousy $10,000. It's not very much. It's critical to our town. The pavilion roof, I have a question about, is last I knew, we had to turn that grant away because we needed more like a million people. five or something, or three million. So what are we doing on the pavilion roof that you're saying we would cut? I know we are constantly doing repairs on it, but we can't do the pavilion project. So what is it that you would cut? Why are we proposing the pavilion roof when all we're doing is repairs, not changing it? Because it was lots and lots of money.

So the pavilion project that had the large grant, that was significantly more work than just the roof.

So we had to turn the grant back.

The large grant, yes. So I am looking at changing the grant project for the pavilion kitchen electrification to go towards the roof replacement. Because the pavilion roof can no longer be repaired. We have tried, and it still leaks.

Okay, so let me just ask you then, the money that I believe we have for the pavilion kitchen is $55,000. It's not $500,000, so how can you do that roof on $55,000?

So the grant, I believe, is for $177,000. My roof replacement cost is about $250,000. The solar on top of the roof is about another $200,000 to replace. We are looking for other funding sources. We just don't have... answers yet, but the pavilion roof is, it's really in jeopardy.

I'm so sorry. Sorry. This coincides with some of the exploratory discovery related to whatever you want to call it, the microgrid, the resiliency center, the pavilion. So there are grants. There are interesting potential partnerships being explored. So it's all TBD. Appreciate the support of this council. Bridget and I know Kristen are exploring that alongside former council member Ackerman. So I think you got your question and answer.

But let me just mention one thing. Okay, so it sounds like you're looking at over $400,000. But I just want to mention something I've shared with the town manager and I think I shared with the mayor. So the CalCities lobbyists that all the cities pay for joined a group called California Public Policy or something like that. They have a group that does grant writing. Now, they charge for the grant writing. But they also have an area where they have all these grants that are available. And I think, Heather, you should share that with Kristen and Bridget because there may be opportunities to have them write a grant. It may be worth the money because a lot of grant success is knowing the people because I've done it. And I'm sure you know, too. You both know that. So anyway, check it out because it sounds like we need more and appreciate the explanation.

A question, if I may, on the roof.

Sorry, I'm so sorry.

I'm not even talking.

Trying to turn my mic on.

Does the solar array that's on the pavilion roof now have to be removed and replaced, or is it taken off and put back on the same array?

So that's something we've been evaluating. Both options are possible. However, we get a much better return on our investment if we install new solar panels on the roof.

How long have those solar panels been on? Do you know how long they've been on the roof?

I believe they were installed in 2009.

And they're recently paid off.

17 years. I have a question.

Okay. You mentioned this, but I'm going to say it again. We use consultants for just about everything in this town. Why aren't we using them or are we using them for grant writing?

Did you – oh, okay. Actually, the council and community has been – very much against using consultants, and so we have no... We use consultants for almost everything.

Why wouldn't we be using it for grant writing, which brings money into the town, and they take some sort of percentage of that money?

Turn that over to Kristen. So...

some of you know i haven't been here very long so i haven't gotten deep into the grants but like i have worked with the open space committee um and they wrote most of the grant like we worked together and they did most of the work but i you know helped submit it and review it and get it through and provide information um so we use that avenue um The other avenue I've also used is TAM, the Transportation Authority of Marin. They have funding to help us write some grants. Um, so we just submitted an application for a project. It was a very brief application, but then they're going to help us develop the full grant application and it's using their funds and they hire the consultant. Um, So we have multiple avenues.

So there's different avenues that we're using. Heather, in addition to the avenues we're currently using for grant writing, are there professional companies that help write grants, and are we using them?

Yeah, I appreciate the question. Yes, there are definitely professional companies that could help us and do help other jurisdictions write grants. I would suggest that we have a small budget allocation for grant writing support that perhaps could go into the Public Works Department for that purpose.

Are they not usually compensated by the amount of grants that they get?

No, it goes differently. They charge you a certain amount. They can't charge a percentage of the grant itself. It's just they charge for their services. But I really think that it's worth looking into that group. They have all these relationships in Sacramento. Where these are very complex and beyond our understanding, ability or time to do, let's really see if that's worthwhile.

Yeah, I agree with that.

On the capital budget, the women's club rehabilitation, what are we doing for $55,000?

I believe that's funded through Measure 8 Parks. And there's a few things that the community has been asking for with the Women's Club. One is rehab of the garden, the drought-tolerant garden at one time was sort of a demonstration area. And I think it's kind of fallen into a little bit of disrepair. So we'd like to work on that. The Measure A Committee was interested in that. And then also, as you may recall, a few years ago, we upgraded the HVAC system in this building, and it's all electric. This building is all electric now. But what we didn't do, which was recommended, but we just didn't have the money for it, was to work on the energy efficiency of this building. So all of the doors and windows are quite old, and some are... dilapidated, leaky, and the roof is uninsulated. We don't want to harm the beautiful, you know, wood ceiling. So you could look at an over roof solution, those kinds of things. And we would just get started with that $55,000, probably with doors and windows.

I also think there's some, you know, have been some fire safety issues with, I feel like for a while we had like, you know, chest high weeds out there. We have some trees that are so close to the building. They're really not really, really within zone zero, you know, trees that are growing over the roof and various types of foliage that some of which have been cut back now that would be a real hazard. So I think there's a lot of things that could be done to, And the other concern that I've had about this building is just that, you know, this is something we run out for revenue for birthday parties and all kinds of things and making it more functional and attractive will allow us to continue to get that revenue.

So on this old Julia Morgan building, the French doors, the French windows are part of the architectural scheme. Would we replace them with like, would they be dual or triple pane?

Yeah, so you bring up a great point, Frank, which is that we want to preserve the beauty of the building. And so anything that we would do for energy efficiency, we would want to do that in a way that retains its beauty and character.

Okay. Let's see what else we have.

We are still on CIP.

One more question. That Azalea Road bridge, you know what's happened, the Ross Valley Flood Control 9 has abandoned all of the bridge projects, all of them. I'll make that report in my town council report but the board has agreed with the staff to abandon all the projects and it'll be going to the board of supervisors probably end of April or in May. Do any of these projects depend on Ross Valley Flood Zone 9 funding at all?

I'll let Kristen answer that. So Azalea Bridge originally did. However, we recently applied to Caltrans to change the Azalea Bridge project. So instead of trying to replace it and raise it, We're now just looking at rehabilitating that bridge. And Caltrans has agreed that that change makes sense. And so we're working on getting the funds reauthorized and reprogrammed to change the project. Because it no longer made sense to raise the bridge. You just didn't get much benefit out of the increased flow.

Well, is that 300,000 part of that project you're talking about?

Yes, yeah, that's the estimate to keep the Azalea project moving forward, but as a rehabilitation project.

So I have a question. I'm on page 73. Just, you know, we've been working on the Meadow Way Bridge since for a very, very long time. It's been 13 years. Thanks, Frank. I'm seeing on a note or however you break these allocations out, 51.856. So like 27% of the appropriations for next year is on Meadoway. So can you just give us an update on what,

we expect next year to happen so our the goal that we're working towards is bidding the project and starting construction in the next physical year if we do meet our goals construction would start kind of towards the end of next fiscal year. Like, we're probably looking at, I think, April or May.

Okay, so the RFP for construction goes out, but the target date for that is when?

we're originally aiming saying winter of 2026 is our goal. Okay. To put it out to bed.

And then it's a 30 day or 60 day or whatever it is. We award the bed and then you, break ground, whatever you want to call it, you begin in the, you said the spring of 2027. So the end close to the end of this fiscal year that we're talking about right now. Yes. So if you're breaking ground at the end of the fiscal year, why do we have this money in there? Can we spend seven 22? So that also covers, um,

Like finishing final design, finishing the right-of-way, utility agreements. It includes all of that design work in the environmental permitting that the consultants are still working on.

So it doesn't really include the construction?

No, some of that is construction.

Some of it is. But the entire construction budget is not in that 722.

The entire construction budget would be much larger.

These are somewhat rhetorical questions, but I'm just trying to expose it for the public because it's just been drawn out for so long and that's no criticism of you or you. It's just hard to track.

Appreciate that.

I have a question. She's not done answering mine. Go ahead. So the 722 does include some construction. Yes.

About 400,000. Okay. And the total estimated construction cost right now is 6.4 million, but we are working on updating the cost estimate and that will go to Caltrans for the funds to be like reauthorized and reprogrammed before we start construction. Okay. Okay, so that might go up. Okay, thank you.

Go ahead, Mike. I have a question. This question should be a lot less money involved in talking about. Have we put up the no encampment signs up yet in the parks in appropriate areas of our town?

I have not. Not a fiscal planning question.

It is, Heather. Well, when is that? Two months, two meetings ago, we talked about it and you said it was very long, some sort of tough process to get it done.

I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to that. Go ahead. Answer Mike's question as far as when.

No, I'll ask the question. Thanks. Well, when, when will it be done and why isn't it done?

so we um we passed a um park rules um update which allowed us to have the rules in a resolution so that you you could more easily change those and that's what we were waiting for to start the design process of the uh and i'm using design it sounds like a fancy but it's really, we're trying to keep it as simple as possible and as inexpensive as possible. So we had those, we had that go to council, you approved the resolution. Then I leaned on our friends at the county parks and said, can you give me the template for your parks rules design? And here's the list of what we want on it. They sent back a, you know, they were kind enough to do that. That's something that normally we would pay a design consultant for, and we just want to be kind of in the regular and as little cost as possible. So we took that, and then we needed to do some minor updates to that back and forth, and we did that. And then I showed proof to our mayor and she had some additional comments, which were good comments. And I realized that in our resolution for park rules we had no camping we had no you know a few different things but we had not captured no fires with except for not in the barbecues that we provide and there was one other so assuming that you want those to come into that sign which is going to be you know fairly on the scheme of signs, expensive to put together because it's going to be metal. It's supposed to be long-lasting. Then what I'd like to do is bring that back, add those two things to the resolution, and then we can print those signs. And we would print those either through the county sign shop or Davis Sign. It'll cost a few thousand.

Do you need to bring something back to the council to get this done?

Well, if you want more rules than you've already allowed, then it should come back to council.

What would happen if the sales tax doesn't get passed? Would it take even longer to get this done?

I just suggest don't bring it back to the council. Just get the signs done.

I can do that.

Okay, I think we are, are you, I think we're done through CIP. Thank you, Kristen.

One more question on capital.

Okay.

I was on page 79. And under 670, it's highway bridge program. And you're going down, then there's county financing loan, nothing. Other is 500,000. Where does that 500,000 come from? On capital improvement. It's page 79. Down 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.

In the other, just to clarify, Frank, you're talking about revenue?

Oh, is that revenue? Are you talking about...

Okay. Yeah, that's the money we received from most for the rehab project on the wall property, which has not been implemented yet.

Oh, okay. So we have that money in a general fund now.

That's right.

Is there any interest?

We're holding it.

Okay.

Not in general fund. We're holding it in the CIP fund for that project.

Okay. Moving on. Revenue enhancement options. Does anybody have any questions or care to further discuss this?

I just have one comment. I know I won't be here around the time of Measure F expiring. I think we need to, who's ever here, needs to plan that sooner so we're not at the fiscal emergency period. So let's sort of plot that out of doing that well in advance. That would be great.

While we're on revenue enhancement, it talks about increased fees, requires a fee study. Are we going to be doing that for everything?

We talked about that earlier. You wouldn't comment when I asked you if you wanted to do that.

Well, now it just came up here. So I was asking a question. For instance, I was talking to Lynette Shaw, the applicant for a dispensary, and she said... She thought the fee was going to be $1,400 like it was when she applied for down on Sir Francis Drake, and now it's $2,800 on Blenis Road. So have we doubled that fee already?

I'm not specifically involved in the... fees she's been paying, but we have not doubled any fees. It may be that she's paying for different services at a different location.

Anyway, do you have a position on the fee study? Blash, myself, and Kohler are in favor of the fee study.

So the fee study is going to look at our cost... to administer the project, whatever it is. And then by law, that's all we could charge. We can't make money on the project. Yes, we haven't done it for some years. Okay, thank you. That's fine. I agree with it.

You support it? Great. Thank you. All right. Does anyone have any other questions related to this slide?

Yeah, I just have one. So in terms of road bond, like personally, I don't see any way we're going to fix the roads without it. I'm not going to scrounge around in the couch cushions and get quarters and pay for roads. When is the next time we could run a road bond?

I believe that would be 28. Okay, thank you.

All right, I think we have concluded. I'm going to take public comment. I just want to thank everyone who's prepared the slides and answered our questions and such. And I will open public comment on the regular agenda today. Folks in the room, please step forward. Hi.

Hi, this is Mina with the Fairfax Chamber of Commerce. I understand the town is preparing for the possibility that Measure J might not pass and planning for the reductions across the departments. But in times of financial pressure, protecting the activities that support the local economy and generate economic activity becomes even more important. Fairfax is somewhat unique in that we do not have large chain retailers or major commercial centers generating significant tax revenue. Our economy relies heavily on small independent businesses and the activity that brings people into town. Much of that activity is organized through the Chamber. The Chamber helps produce community events, including town events like the Egg Hunt this Sunday, Saturday, sorry, picnic, the craft fair, all without cost. We bring visitors into downtown Fairfax, support local businesses and mobilize volunteers and community resources to make many of these events possible. The chamber is already providing a significant amount of in-kind value to the town many communities across Marin County and California Chambers are recognized as partners in economic development and are supported accordingly often through funding tied to tourism economic vitality or visitor activity six out of the nine Marin communities provide some sort of municipal funding or partnership support only the smallest communities are struggling rather than competing for core services for the limited general fund dollars fairfax could consider linking economic vitality efforts to growth-based revenue sources such as tot tax which you guys have already discussed or a small portion of the sales tax a relatively small investment in economic vitality can leverage a much larger amount A volunteer effort, sponsorship, community activity, even a modest increase in downtown spending has measurable fiscal impact. The chamber multiplies town investment. I helped with the business licenses. I do a lot of communication. All those are without cost. If the chamber stops doing this work, the town will probably lose a lot more than $24,000.

Next speaker, thank you.

Todd Greenberg representing downtown Fairfax. I've got some serious concerns and I'm representing many people in Fairfax. Who are concerned about saving the town money? I'd like to suggest that you could save the town a lot of money by pulling Measure J. and by not continuing to advocate for it using public dollars. The measure was brought forth incorrectly via collective consensus show of hands at a non publicly agendized meeting, and it was agreed upon to vote unanimously at the next meeting to bring it forth. As I understand it, that's incorrect. These are alleged violations. I want to make it clear, but the record should be examined and you should think about what you're potentially costing the town of Fairfax by doing so. In addition, I have a letter that I've provided from the CDTFA, the California Department of Tax and Finance Authority. I've provided that to the clerk. I've provided it to the town attorney. And I'm unclear whether or not the submissions that I make are actually getting to town council members. And I've asked for confirmation and I haven't received that. So I'm telling you about it today. The letter from the CDTFA says there is no gap if this tax measure were run in November. So I believe that the town council has been misled by staff previously and by the mayor previously and that those votes that were made should be rendered null and void. Please pay attention to this. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other members of the public? I don't see anyone else. Are there any folks online?

We have two raised hands on Zoom. The first speaker is Jody, followed by Larry. Jody, you are unmuted. You may now unmute yourself.

Great. Thank you. Jody, go ahead.

It looks like her connection just dropped off. So we're going to move on to Larry. Larry, you are unmuted. You may now unmute yourself.

Okay. Can you hear me now?

Yes.

Okay. Thanks. I've watched a lot of the meeting and pretty interesting all the ins and outs of the budget. One of the things I wanted to bring to your attention does relate to the Fairfax Festival. I sent an email to Christine with the documentation, and maybe we can return to it at your next meeting on April 15th. But as far as I can tell, under the existing Marin Sanitary franchise agreement, there is a zero waste event fund of about $10,000 a year that's paid by Marin Sanitary. And according to the staff report, which accompanied the introduction of the franchise agreement in 2019, the suggestion was that it could be used to pay for Conservation Corps North Bay's work at the Fairfax Festival. So I've provided you guys with the documentation. The Conservation Corps North Bay is our second biggest invoice for the Fairfax Festival this year. It's about $8,800. And what I've suggested is using that fund to pay for half of CCNB's costs this year. And the other thing I wanted to point out is CCNB does, in addition to providing the service to the festival, it really is an institution that aligns with our values here in Fairfax. It provides educational and employment opportunities for the young people that staff it. So it's got kind of double benefits for the town. And thank you very much.

Next speaker. Okay, we have Jody back. Jody, we're going to try you again. You are unmuted. You may now unmute yourself.

Hi, Jody, Tim's Cascade Drive. Sorry, I lowered my hand waiting for the unmute button. You can't do that. I just learned. I just wanted to, first of all, thank all of the staff for the incredible amount of work that you put to creating produce the document and the slides and everything presented today. I also want to thank the council members. It's been a good conversation, a little hard to stay on subject sometimes on topic, but I think it was a good conversation. I want to encourage community members to support Measure J. I think that's really important. We are on a shoestring as it is, and we shouldn't threaten the stability that we have in our town. And last, I just want to mention in terms of climate and environment on behalf of the Fairfax Climate Action Committee, I want to thank Bridget. She's doing a terrific job. She supports the Climate Action Committee in the best way possible, and we really, really appreciate it. I am disappointed that there's not $5,000 in the budget this year for a potential EV e-bike show. If we need that, we've had it twice in Fairfax, twice in San Anselmo, and next year it would normally be coming back to us, to our town. Given the situation with fossil fuels and the international... uh affairs that are happening i think the uh need to encourage people and the and the response around evs and e-bikes is really important to support and it won't happen in fairfax next year the climate action committee that is not something we can take on take this take on the scope of so i encourage um council to reconsider putting the $5,000 back in there. I believe some years it's only been $2,500 that we've had to pay. It depends on what TAM or MCE or others, in what way they may support us. Thank you.

Okay. Bridget, what was that amount for the EV show?

As Jenny said, we've paid different amounts in the past few years. This year, we're paying $5,000 for Ride and Drive Clean to help support us. In the past, we've paid $2,500 because we've gotten a grant from MCE. In the past, we've not paid anything because there's been a combination of TAM and MCE funds, but those funds from TAM and MCE are not available anymore. Okay.

Okay, so if we plug it in, it would need to be for the full amount, which is five? Mm-hmm. Okay.

I just want to urge you to go back to MC and check. So our fiscal year is different. We started yesterday. I'm the executive committee chair, and we put in quite a bit of money for electrification. I'm not sure if it will work for what your interest is, but I would go back and check, Bridget.

Okay, yeah, I will go back and check. Thank you. Thank you.

Okay. Um, and can we just touch on the Fairfax festival? Can you remind me where that money is? There is the money in two places for the, um, zero waste. And then the comment that Mr. Bergman had, and then where the Fairfax festival.

Cost is? So Fairfax Festival is, we have a limited financial agents agreement with that. Is that fine yet? Yes. Okay, great. Thank you. Yes. No, thank you for all of your help in shepherding that through. So if you look at page 65 of the budget, This is how the finance director shows the money flowing in and out, to summarize. And as far as the franchise agreement with MSS, there... I understand Larry is saying that a previous town manager, he feels suggested that certain allocation from revenue to the town should go only to the Fairfax Festival. But it's my understanding that that's not part of the agreement. That's not... Franchise fees go into the general fund. And... The town, at least to my knowledge, has not provided cash to the Fairfax Festival. The town has provided very valuable OT services through the police department, through the public works department. In fact, finance helps them arrange for the insurance that they need and helps them with some accounting and funds coming in and out. Didn't he say, wasn't his comment just about a zero waste grant? Yeah, that's, so I think... A zero waste grant is no more. Okay, so it doesn't exist. We don't know. It did used to exist. It does not exist anymore. It does not exist. And we've talked about that for...

three years well that's that's what he was focusing on if it doesn't sorry that was not available he thought we were getting close to ten thousand he thought that we could pay half but since it doesn't exist i'm not sure where that information yeah okay so does doesn't exist okay no longer thank you did you want to mention anything

Michael, you were looking at me like you might have something to say.

Well, I think one of the significant things that the town contributes is the use of all the property for Pavilion and Ballpark.

Bolinas Park. Yeah.

All of that.

Yeah. Thank you.

If I may comment, as far as use of all the property, there's been a festival in Fairfax going on at least since 1960 here in town, on town property. It's been part of the community. And when the Marin IJ ran the best festival other than your own, which one won? Fairfax Festival won. So the folks in the county appreciate the Fairfax Festival. But on the issue, I don't have in front of me the The franchise agreement with Burn Sanitary, I thought there was something separate for franchise fees that they would help fund the recycling and the garbage pickup for the festival, separate from franchise fees. It's not in that contract?

I don't believe that's what he's asking for. I think he's asking for cash for the Conservation Corps, which is not the same thing as collection of garbage. They're doing things that are associated with the collection of garbage, but they're not performing the Marin Sanitary Service services.

Was that contract, it might have been early on in 2000, I mean, late 2024 that there was a renewal. Was that the one that Larry's referring to? No. The franchise agreement, was it extended or anything?

Oh, I would have been here in 2024. I'm happy to look back at the franchise agreement and, you know, communicate with the council members individually if I find something there. But that isn't the way it typically works.

I thought part of their franchise agreement was they would help contribute to the festival by doing either recycling or picking up garbage. But maybe I'm wrong.

that would be different from funding the Conservation Corps.

I have a different question pertaining to the same subject. What is that money used for, the $10,000? How does it get distributed? They say that they have a $10,000 fund for zero waste.

She said there's no more grants.

She also said she could look it up, by the way.

No, she said there was no more zero waste grants.

We need to distinguish. We're kind of like...

Right. We're guessing. So can we go back?

No, no, no, no. Mike, there's MSS. There's a zero waste grant. There's Conservation Corps. We have to be very clear about what we're talking about.

So Heather is asking for her, Heather, I should say, to go back and.

She doesn't need to go back.

She just said she was going to go back up.

He was looking at the franchise agreement. So there's Larry was asking about a zero waste grant. What Heather said is there's no more zero waste grant. He was focusing on something that used to exist, but it doesn't. As far as Frank's questions about the franchise agreement, she said she would look back at that. But it's not the zero waste grant doesn't exist.

Is there any questions about Conservation Corps? City Council Chambers, Okay, so might be helpful as a follow up for you to send just send all of us the mss agreement and the recently signed fairfax town fiscal limited fiscal agreement, just so we all we're all privy to it. City Council Chambers, i'd be happy to do that okay great. City Council Chambers, Thank you all right um. City Council Chambers, let's move on to the consent calendar. Council may approve the entire consent calendar with any one action or vote. Alternatively, items on the consent calendar may be removed by any council or staff member for a separate discussion and vote. Public comment for items on the consent calendar may happen all at once. or excuse me, happens all at once rather than after each individual item. During the public comment on consent items, speakers may comment on any item from this section on the agenda. Each speaker will have up to two minutes and may speak once. So we have an update, we're receiving an update, or excuse me, the annual progress report on the general plan and housing element for calendar year 2025.

I like to have it both, so it's a public issue.

Sounds good. Okay. Jeff, I take it you're going to be presenting?

Yes, it's a short presentation. Okay. We submitted the report on time, March 31st, so it's been submitted to HCD. Because it's primarily a numerical report and a factual report on what we've been doing in the past activities. So this is just the council's opportunity to weigh in on what's already been submitted to HCD.

Okay. I want to mention, I noticed that Council Member Egger and Gearing Galley are looking at the previous version that was, I had asked for a bigger version when it was earlier. And so what's attached, it's changed. I worked with staff quite a bit on this. updating that and making corrections so they're looking at the old version what's attached to your consent item is smaller but has updated information and it's hard to read it's a little bigger than it was last time but it's still kind of hard to read but just want to note that i just noticed that they were looking at the older version so jeff go ahead sorry for interrupting

No, I'm just, I'm available for questions. If anybody needs clarifications or has questions on it, I'm prepared to answer those.

Vice Mayor Egger, do you have questions for Jeff?

Well, I do specifically.

Yeah, go ahead.

Is he going to make a report or should I ask the questions first?

No, he's ready to take questions, right? Okay.

Yeah, the intent was this was on the consent calendar, so we weren't really prepared to do a detailed presentation.

but um i can answer any questions you may have um so i was reading that you know the the uh the two parcels on forest avenue uh that so far no one has taken either the county up or the town up on developing the properties and it was a recommendation to donate these land properties to a developer to let them build on it is that what would i did i read that correctly

Yeah, we have shown those to various developers or not developers, but organizations. We show that to Habitat for Humanity and another nonprofit house developer, which I can't remember the name of at this moment. And both of those organizations mentioned that they were be extremely to build infrastructure. Any project on just because of the steep slopes and the lack of utility access. And so they just independently suggested that you might want to consider just selling them to market rate developers for, you know, single family homes and then using that revenue to like fund like an affordable housing fund. So that was kind of the suggestion that came from them. And so that's why we included that in the, in the report. But, but no decision has been made on that yet, by the way. So.

A low-income housing provider did contact me about those two parcels, and he looked at them. He said he wouldn't touch them, and he does this for a living. He says they're almost straight up and down. There's no access, and it's impossible to build on them. But then let me take you back to how Fairfax ended up owning them. I was the one who secured those parcels on a tax sale. Assessor's office and the county were listing them for back taxes which they do every year they list parcels and since I Fairfax thought that Murntown and Country Club may one day be a recreational area, either private or public. I thought that that might be a good access off of the Forest Avenue area for folks to hike down into the Murntown and Country Club. That was number one. Number two was, since they were almost impossible to build on, open space was a good option to land. So we purchased those parcels. And I've talked to neighbors up there who said, no, Fairfax wouldn't sell those. And I said, yeah, they might sell them. So I think there's an issue there with trying to sell those parcels.

If I may just, so if the town were to consider selling any properties, those would come before the council to decide whether to put those up for sale. And as Jeff mentioned, one of the reasons you might consider that is if they were sold perhaps to the owner of town and country as an access, or perhaps to a private developer who would build single family homes, the revenue from that could be used specifically to help the, the town fund low-income or very low-income housing in a more appropriate site. So that's just, it's an option, and the council would make that decision.

I have some questions. All right, Jeff, how many, it says here multiple areas. The town reaches out to developers to offer tours of the available development sites. How many sites are – I know one site is being worked on that was approved. That's the big one, I guess. How many other sites are still available and what activity is happening with the other sites? What can we anticipate other people to come in and take advantage of these new laws?

We have not had any specific inquiries on any of the other sites. The only other one that has had... Well, there's two that have had some activity. There's the Tenolima site, and there have been... affordable housing developers that have kind of called in and inquired about that site specifically. And then the other site that we've gotten some just generic questions from real estate agents and the like is the Jehovah's Witness site.

So, okay, on the Tenalima site, what's allowed there, please?

It's in the workforce housing overlay. It's like a 20 to 30 dwelling unit per acre. So it's targeted for like 35 to 40 dwelling units. 35 to 40 dwellings.

And how high can they go? How many stories can they go to?

Well, they're limited by the zoning code to 35 feet. But then, as you know, from the other developer site with density bonus, they could exceed it. So, but 35 feet is what's in the zoning ordinance.

35 and it can cap out of what? I know exactly what he said. I just asked him what's the cap on it.

35 feet in our zoning code.

And it can't go higher than that.

Jeff, thanks.

But you need to answer with bonus density.

With bonus density, we do not control the height at all. Okay. Thank you.

Well, since we're talking about that, Lieutenant Lima, I've got a question. you know, when Diane Botcher prepared the housing element and the recommendations for ministerial approvals, they did not recognize that that's one of the, the structure that's there is one of the oldest structures at Fairfax. It was from the late 1800s. And the current owner restored that old Victorian house and did a fabulous job. So, We have one of the oldest homes in Fairfax sitting at Tenno Lima. If some housing developer wants to buy that site, can we protect that historical home in the process?

Well, there would be required a historic resource evaluation as part of the development application process.

What's that mean?