City Council - Regular Meeting

Alright. Good morning. Good morning. Get everyone in their seats. Gonna get started here very, very shortly. Let's see. Here is the last one. Alright, everybody. Welcome to this morning's, special meeting of the city council, convening at 09:09AM.

Clerk, please call the roll. Certainly. Council member Perria. Present. Council member Carbassi. Present. Council member Arias is absent. Council member Vang. Present. Council member Richardson. Present. Vice president Maxwell. Council President Esparza? Present. We have a quorum.

Great. Alright. Next, we'll have the pledge of allegiance. If everyone will please stand and if council member Richardson to please lead us in flag slip or say the pledge of allegiance. All right. We'll go to the approval of the agenda. Clerk, do we have any changes or items removed, anything of that sort?

We have no changes for the agenda. Just a couple of quick announcements. For today's meeting, have Spanish and Punjabi translation available through Wordly. Please scan the QR code to access those. And for those joining us via Zoom, we also have ASL and Hmong translations available.

Also, a separately noticed special meeting for today at 9AM or thereafter for the closed session file ID number 26Dash661 regarding consider public employee appointment government code section five four nine five seven b. Consider the appointment, employment, evaluation of performance, discipline or dismissal of a public employee, title city clerk. And that's all I have, council president.

Alright, great. Any other changes from council? I hope not or else is not going to be meeting at all. All right. I'll entertain a motion. Second. First, by Council Vice President, second by Council Merving. Any opposition to approving the agenda? Seeing none, the agenda is approved. Let's go ahead and get right into it. Where is the mayor? Where is the big man? There he is. Hey, come on down. All right. So we have one item on the open agenda today, workshop presentation of the mayor's proposed budget for this coming fiscal year '27. I'd like to welcome up the mayor.

Thank you, council president and good morning council. I'm not sure who my partner council member Arias is, but hopefully he's online or something. So yesterday I had the opportunity to be able to roll out the budget to the media and today I hope to do so in a little bit more detail and then allow for opportunity to interact. But it is my honor today to be able to present a balanced fiscal year FY or fiscal year twenty twenty seven proposed budget. As I said yesterday, this budget was built on a lot of creativity and thoughtfulness.

It does not require any layoffs in order for us to get to the point of being balanced, but it does assume attrition like we did the last couple of years of 6.18%, which is really our natural vacancy rate in the city. Although some cost cutting efficiencies were employed throughout the process, it is important to note that their essential services were not negatively impacted in any way. And I am pleased to say that based on the increase in revenues and sound financial management that we operate under here at the city, as well as a healthy reserve, We have a strong financial outlook as long as we continue to live within our means. The proposed FY twenty twenty seven budget is $2,550,000,000 which is the largest in our history. Of that, the general fund, the dollars that we generally have discretion over in this body is $541,800,000 which is 21% of the overall budget for the city.

In terms of the enterprise and internal service funds, those always make up the largest pool of our money for the city. That's $1,100,000,000 or 44% of our total monies for the city of Fresno. And special revenue make up about $889,900,000 which is those are funds including Measure C, Measure P, state funds, SB-one, etcetera. And so you can see the two largest general fund departments on your screen is the police department funded at $263,700,000 which is 48.6% of the overall general fund. And then the fire department is funded at $107,600,000 which is 19.9% of the general fund.

But collectively, they make up 68.5% of our total general fund. And rightfully so, I think we all believe that public safety is the foundation of local government and I certainly do as well. I want to show you the budgets by department. The three departments that received the highest level of special revenue with a percentage of general fund support, public works 466,400,000 Planning development, 110,700,000. Our parks department at $143,200,000 and of that $49,100,000 is new revenue from FY 2027 for Measure P and then there's $67,800,000 in rollover or carryover for Measure P into parks.

Those are monies that have already had projects identified primarily and the projects haven't been completed yet or there's a small amount of money that's not designated but can be during this process. The largest enterprise department is the Department of Public Utilities as one would expect And those are funded at $490,400,000 and that's through our water, wastewater and trash removal services. As you recall, during the mid year presentation in February to the council, we had projected that our budget shortfall in the FY '27 would be about $23,200,000 And as we all knew, and I think council president Esparza projected or predicted, that number would grow as it does every year as we go through the budget bill process. It didn't grow as much as I thought it would. It jumped up about a little over $11,000,000 and so that deficit grew to about $34,500,000 and that's where it was our starting point in terms of trying to get the budget back in balance.

There was a number of factors that drove this increase of $11,000,000 There were some critical equipment needs in the various departments that needed to be funded, lease agreements and software contracts that we already had contractual arrangements on, insufficient attrition savings in FY twenty six in certain departments that contributed to the shortfall. Some project overruns, one of them being on our City Hall Cafe, the other one on our interactive wall, no fault of anyone's, just quite frankly inflation. And decision to add an additional heart team, which is a sergeant and four officers yesterday, I said in the media at one point, sergeant and five officers, it's actually four officers. And those are the only general fund additions within the budget. So no other PCNs are being added to the budget other than those five.

There were some also some funds that had to be allocated for the public safety building fixtures and furnitures, that's both for police and for fire. Those are not bondable. Absorbing the workers' right unit, the prior two grants have been depleted. And quite honestly, I think we all hoped that those grants would materialize. They haven't yet, but they may during the course of the year just like any other date and it's no fault of anyone's.

It's just the fact that we did not have that grant materialize. Just like our SAFR grant, just like our COPS office grant, all of those things, if they're not received, they impact our general fund. The decision to increase power washing and trash removal in both the Tower District and downtown that added to the funds as well. So there were a number of budget balancing strategies that we undertook in the administration to get this back into balance. One was the adjustments in the FY 2026 carryover that saves us about $10,700,000 There was a significant denial of department requests that had come in at $7,500,000 that we were not able to fund.

Shifting the general fund expenses to grants and special revenues, we did that periodically wherever we could and that did save us $7,300,000 Sales tax adjustment and other revenue generation quite frankly, we ratcheted up our sales tax projection to 2.8% and that gave us an extra $5,900,000 And then we were able to go through and do some cleanup on all of our contracts in the various departments. And as a result of that, we were able to come up with another $1,400,000 And then lastly, this is the third year in a row that we went through a cost efficiency exercise, cost savings with each of the departments asking for them to provide us with a 5% reduction. The first year, we realized pretty significant savings, second year not as much and this year not very much at all. In fact, 1,160,000 through that exercise, but still $1,160,000 And then lastly, there are five departments in the city that are going to be able to realize additional attrition above the 6.18%, and that will save us $581,000 So with that, we were able to balance the budget. Definitely a challenge, say the least.

And especially in light of the fact that we do we no longer have American rescue funds to rely on. As you all know, those have to be expended here this year. And so we also had contractual obligations to include labor agreements that we've already agreed to as a body. And so all of those things as well as inflationary costs made it very, very difficult. On a positive note, I want to highlight this that revenues are increasing.

They're just not keeping pace with our expenditures. And so we all know that's the case even in our families today. We have revenues aren't coming in to meet the expenditures for a lot of reasons. And so as you may recall, 80% of the general fund is comprised of four revenue sources, property tax, sales tax, and then we ultimately have two others that contribute not as much obviously, but that is our business tax, business license tax as well as room tax. Proud to say that our property tax is projected to increase by 5.94% this coming year and it will go from $202,600,000 is what we had in FY 2026 and it will go to $214,600,000 so $12,000,000 more.

We've talked about the EIFD, there's $1.7 of that that's carved out for specific use. Sales tax is projected to increase by 2.8% and it will go from $148,500,000 to 152,700,000 So we have a $4,200,000 increase in revenue there. Business license tax will increase by 3.76% or at least projected and that will go from $24,400,000 in FY 2026 to 25,300,000 a $900,000 increase. And then also for room tax, we'll see a $900,000 increase there as well, which is a 6.9% increase. And that's from 15,900,000 to $16,800,000 The other 20% is made up of other revenue sources, intergovernmental fees, etcetera, as well as franchise fees.

Franchise fees are going up 5.73% as well. The one area that we're not going to ratchet up, in fact, we're going to take it down just a smidgen, And that is on our cannabis. We're going to budget at 3,300,000 Again, a slight decrease over this last year. Now I'd like to highlight some of the investments that I'm proposing in the FY 2027 budget. And I've met with each of you individually to kind of go over some of these and highlight them as best I can.

And I think the two well, 74,860,000 will be available for construction and or award in FY 'twenty seven. And this is in addition to $65,900,000 that is being utilized this year, again, for roads and sidewalks in our city. And when you look at that in total, it's about $140,000,000 that is available to fix our roads, fix our sidewalks in a relatively short period of time. I would say that's probably the most money we spent in such a short period of time in our history and certainly in decades. We have two fire drill schools that are being held, one of those being held in June, another one in August.

The cost of those two schools is $2,650,000 collectively. Some of it being funded this year, some of it being the majority of it being transferred over to next year. And that will train 40 new firefighters. Those are replacement firefighters for existing vacancies. Unfortunately, in the fire department, we saw a significant number of people retire, and those positions weren't filled immediately until we got the fire drill schools.

And I'm proud to say that we're able to do that, but that's 40 new firefighters. The eviction protection is being funded at $1,500,000 the same as last year. And that's going to come out of the this point in time, the local housing trust fund because it gives us a lot of flexibility with those dollars. We have considered HAP, the homeless housing assistance program. But quite frankly, there's a lot of paperwork involved in that and I'm not sure we want to do that as a city, but I'll leave that up to the council.

The residential infill housing program is funded at $1,000,000 and that is in addition to $865,000 that is currently in the FY twenty six budget for this and it will be carried over And those are monies as you know to promote infill housing to take care of some of the off-site improvements. And of that $1,865,000 about $1,500,000 of it is already authorized or approved by the city manager for reimbursement. 950,000 in the budget for an airport noise study. This is money from the federal government. And there's $2,300,000 in there for noise mitigation that would be passed on to residents within the council member Maxwell's district there around the airport.

Again for window replacement whatever the case is. Advanced piece is funded at $300,000 from the cannabis community benefit fund consistent with last year. Outside contracts for additional spay and neuter, we know that we've heard much about the lack of spaying and neuter. Although this last year, we collectively, there was 5,800 spay and neuters that were done of cats and dogs in our community. So it was very, very significant.

So $225,000 being funded for outside contracts, and that should take care of about 1,800 animals in our community on top of what we do internally with our own veterinary. And there is money funded for the two hundred and fiftieth celebration and there's $100,000 in there to fund various events as well as the historical society for some of the work that they're being performing as well. Specific to public safety, and I'll begin with the police department. There is a proposed funding for additional homeless assistance response team, that's one sergeant and four officers. That will bring their total compliment in the department to nine thirty five sworn, that's up from eight thirty eight sworn back in FY21 addition of 97 officers in the department.

Three officer positions are rolling off of a COPS grant, which is a federal grant. They will be rolling into the general fund at a cost of about $394,000 for FY 2027. There's equipment and furniture for the new nine eleven center, which is $109,000 that center will be completed this year. Police technology to include software renewal and maintenance contracts are funded at $360,000 Those are generally contracts that we've entered into that escalate or have an escalation clause each year. And the police department will be held to a 6.18% attrition rate.

And again, that's a natural vacancy rate for the police department in terms of when an employee retires and somebody gets hired behind them. And then we have tenant improvement costs built into the budget for the Police Administration Building. The design is being finalized now and we anticipate construction to begin in FY 'twenty seven. Switching over to the fire department, our second arm of the public safety. 2,650,000, as stated earlier, is for two drill schools for the 40 firefighters.

That will bring their total number firefighters authorized today is three seventy five. And there's 70 new firefighter positions that have been added since FY '21. Attrition for the fire department is unique. And the fact that it's only being expected or assumed at point 81%. And that is only affecting admin positions.

And the reason is is you cannot hold vacancies in the fire stations because then you have to backfill for those positions, as you know, and ultimately it's a wash between the money you save from attrition and the money you spend on overtime. 24 SAFR firefighter positions will be absorbed into the general fund at a cost of $2,970,000 in FY '27. So what that means is the SAFR grants are no longer they're depleted. All 66 firefighters that we hired through SAFR, both SAFR one and SAFR two will now be absorbed into the general fund and that's at a cost of about $11,100,000 a year. And I think we all agree that's a worthwhile investment.

Dollars 6 and 60,000 to replace firefighter safety equipment, and that's really to purchase 150 turnouts. We had originally budgeted 90 and then the fire chief came in, so we actually need 60 more. So we funded that in total $660,000.200000 dollars is being funded for minor capital improvements at many of the fire stations. Won't do all of the work, but it will get them significant improvement. 97,000 is funded for iPads, fire department's transition away from MDTs in their rigs, going to be replaced by iPads that they can take in and out.

Furniture and equipment for Fire Station twelve is budgeted. And then $21,000,000 being carried over from FY '26 to FY '27 for the regional fire training facility. Some new initiatives being funded is speed limit signs. Council President Esparza had brought this forward. Signs have been purchased in FY twenty six and it is our intent to have all of those signs put in place at the school zones in August prior to the new school year.

And so that should be accomplished. Dollars 500,000 being funded as I said for additional power washing and trash removal in both the Tower District and Downtown, which are high frequented areas. And as a special note, our trash removal services for the Tower District will be performed in house by Jim Barrows' team. And the savings from that which is about $240,000 is being transferred over to do power washing along with additional $260,000 that we added to the budget. Our cleanup crews, graffiti and freeway cleanup are fully funded.

Our freeways in partnership with Caltrans, there's $698,000 that is committed to that. That's $100,000 from Measure C, 200,000 from Caltrans, dollars 398,000 from Measure P. Dollars 5 and 50,000 is being funded to continue with Councilmember Maxwell's 1,000 Tree Initiative. And we also $553,000 is being added to this year's budget to allow us to return to the ten year tree trimming cycle. Last year we slipped as a result of inflation.

I think you all know back in FY 'twenty two, we decided to fund tree trimming proactively. We did not have any money funded at that time. We put in $2,800,000 at that time. It slipped a little bit last year, went to a twelve year cycle this year. This will bring it back to a ten year cycle.

Total cost $3,350,000 And then there is over $1,050,000,000 allocated in this year's budget to four seventy capital improvement projects in this budget. And I believe that showcases the city's unprecedented investment in building a better Fresno. And those include in terms of our park side or park improvements as well a result of not just Measure P, but also some of our American Rescue funds and other funding sources, park impact fees, The development of the Southeast Sports Complex, the first phase in Councilman Vang's district will be completed this year. And that will again have the first field in our city with synthetic turf. 4.5 acre park in Millburg and Dakota and Councilmember Perez district, Dolores Huerta Park will be completed.

10 acre park in Southwest Fresno next to our campus, that's the Les Kimber Park will be completed. The large park restroom rehabilitation project will be done, rotary ease, place structure and shade replacement completed, rotary park rehabilitation, our nine eleven center will be finished this year. The $42,000,000 senior center will break ground this coming month and the Fire Station 12 will be completed this year as well as construction beginning on regional fire training center. In terms of the council budget, I've met with each of you, we fund $300,000 per district in public works for your discretion on district projects. So a total of $2,100,000 is once again being placed into the FY '27 budget for you.

And on top of that, there's $2,100,000 of money being carried over from FY '26 to '27 for projects either yet to be completed or yet to be identified. And I know sometimes you try to pull some money together over a couple of years to do a major project and so we understand that. The council operational budgets are fully funded at $875,000 per district with an additional $50,000 allocated for the office of the President. And that will fund 53 positions throughout the council, not only the seven council districts, but we'll refer to as the 8th District as well. And that totals $6,125,000 and there is no attrition factored into the council's budgets for operations.

And in closing, as I stated, this has been a very, very challenging budget year as stated earlier in terms of the lack of American Rescue funds or outside funds help us balance the budget. Revenues are coming in strong, but unfortunately we are facing some expenditures that outpace our revenues. And I look forward to the budget hearings that will begin on June 8. And I know there'll be some budget motions made and then the final budget on this budget for FY '27, I anticipate on June 23. And you can see in this budget, even though it's tight, we are able to fund a lot of projects.

And part of that has to do with $100,000,000 paid more now initiative, has to do with Measure P, has to do with SB-one, Measure C and the like. So we've been able to fund a lot of projects in our city. And closing, I to say thank you. I want to say thank you to my team, Georgiana White, who is city manager who's not here today. She's at her daughter's graduation out of town.

My Chief of Staff, Kelly Furtado, Ruthie Quinto. The Assistant City Manager who oversees our budget process quite frankly. And we also have Nick Mesilla, our Assistant City Manager that oversees our public works projects to a large degree and keeps me well informed. TJ Miller, Assistant City Manager as well. And then Santino Denisi, our Controller, could not do it without him.

And then the special edition that we started last year was Ed Cheniere and that we moved that process, the budget office into the Controller's Office, proven to be a very, very effective move. Ed Cheniere is a rock star and we appreciate him and his budget team for all that they do in the long hours they put in. And I also want to say lastly, I want to say thank you to the department directors and the administration for their creativity, for your hard work and for your patience during this budget process. We probably had 55, 60 meetings on budget this year, more than we have in the past years, but it was much needed in order to get this budget balance. And I believe this is a budget that will allow us to carry out the vision of building a better Fresno.

With that, I'll open up to any questions you might have.

Alright. Thanks, Mayor. We have some questions from the council. We have council vice presidents punched up first followed by council member Carbassi.

Good morning, mayor. Good morning. First of all, thank you to you and your staff. I know this is probably one of, if not the hardest parts of your job, and I know that you take it extremely seriously, bringing forward a thoughtful budget. I think the process has changed over the years. I've really noticed you've really taken into account the things that the council up here wants to see in their districts incorporated into your budget, which hopefully means less amendments. You never know but it's always the hope.

That's a hope.

I appreciate this budget mayor and I appreciate all the staff that contributed the many hours into bringing this proposal to us today. I know you said a couple times during your presentation that the city doesn't have revenue problem, we have a spending problem.

We're certainly not making enough money in terms of revenue, but our revenues are coming in pretty strong. Property tax is good, business taxes are good, room taxes are good in terms of percentage of increase. I'd like to see our sales tax increase, it's projected 2.8%. I think if any area, if that was up to around 4%, 4.5 that'd be great. So that's the only area I think that we're lacking is in sales tax but our expenditures are still continuing to exceed our revenues at this point.

I know last year, Mayor, we were facing a 50 plus million dollar deficit. And this year, it is you were facing a $32000000.34.5

How

do you explain the $16,000,000 difference between last fiscal year and this year?

Well, I believe I would describe it as a structural imbalance when your expenditures are outpacing your revenues. Last year, we took some steps to reduce expenditures. This year, we've taken more steps to reduce expenditures. And it's our hope that we will get that structure back in balance over the next couple of years. I know what the five year projection looks like, and it still shows us in the red in FY 'twenty eight, 'twenty nine, 'thirty, but we are doing everything we can to reduce those numbers.

So I think it's just reducing expenditures as best we can and also utilizing or taking advantage of our special revenues and our grants making sure that they're funding many of the things that would have traditionally been hitting our general

Given those efficiencies you're building into the ongoing budgets and the fact that our revenues are not as bad as we may have thought at one point, do we expect next year's deficit to be even less

That's than this our hope and I believe that is if we can manage our budget during the course of the year in terms of our vacancy rates, our expenditures, monitoring our revenue to make sure we're only spending what we have. I do believe that we have a good potential in FY '28 to be much better off. Much of it will be determined by how much money we're able to carry over from '27 to '28.

Thank you. Earlier this year, Attorney General Rob Bonta issued a new policy banning blackjack playing across California. We know that's going to have a big financial impact on a lot of smaller California cities. How's it going to impact us here locally?

So we factored into our budget a reduction of $400,000 as a result of that potential outcome. And if it doesn't happen, if we're able to keep Blackjack at Club one, then we'll have $400,000 there, but we want to do on the side of caution and carve out $400,000 And I think also you have in D4 around Granite Park, there's a carve out there as well a certain percentage, so that's impacted as well slightly.

Yeah. There's monies that go back directly to that neighborhood they're going to be impacted. Correct. Do we know when there's going to be a potential judgment on this?

I have not heard yet. I don't think any of our folks have heard yet either. And the sooner the better.

Okay, fair enough. You mentioned $3,300,000 revenue for cannabis.

Yes.

How does that compare to previous years?

Well, I think you know since the inception of dispensaries in our city, initially we had anticipated we would have about twenty twenty one dispensaries. And we anticipated based on some other jurisdictions outside of California that we would generate about $500,000 per dispensary. So our initial thought was $10,000,000 And we realized that didn't happen. And each year, we've over projected. I think this year, we're going be projecting right on.

In fact, in FY '26, we're pretty close. But we're not seeing revenues come in from the cannabis dispensaries to the degree we thought. And I believe it's consistent in San Diego, LA and other parts of The United States as well for whatever we're receiving. Is it the illicit market where there's a lot of marijuana sales that are occurring outside of the dispensaries? Yes.

And is it because California plus local jurisdictions combined have higher taxes that cause people not to buy from the dispensaries because they can get it cheaper on the streets, illicit? I think the answer to both of those is yes. So we're trying to do our very, very best, I believe collectively with the city attorney's office and the police department to enforce laws against illicit sales of marijuana and hopefully cause people to buy at the dispensaries. But I think we're gonna be close this year.

We have 21 or 22 available permits.

Well, there's 21, but I believe 20 was the operative number that we're using right now. And I don't have

I'd also like to know how many are currently open.

Yeah, don't know what the number is right now. Do you know what we projected, Ruthie?

I believe our budget manager, Erlin, you have that information, correct?

Do you know was it? 16. Got

it. 16 are correct.

I thought it was. Didn't want to misquote it. So 16

Out of 21? Out of Edward?

Yeah.

Out of

20 or 21?

Well, initially, it was three per district. Mhmm. And then that got somehow through the process carved back to 20. And I think it was because one of the districts chose not to have three, and we couldn't add it to another district because of the ordinance. So anyway, 16 out of 20.

Do we have a plan in place to get those additional four operating in this next fiscal year or a backup plan to go back out to bid for those additional four if the current holders of those license aren't able to get their needed documentation or whatever in order to start operating sooner rather than later?

Short answer is yes. There's quite a bit to that but I don't know that there's a lot of people out there standing in line anymore to get involved in the cannabis dispensary business simply because of the process and the lack of revenue that they're generating. And the question is, are you simply taking are you sharing one big piece of the pie? Is the pie only so big and the more dispensers you have, it simply eats into that? Or do you end up creating more revenue?

I don't know the answer to that. But we are gonna certainly we have an ordinance allows for 20 or 21, 20 probably, we'll work on the other four.

Are you familiar with the allegations floating around mayor of certain operators acting illicitly by underselling their products and essentially kneecapping some of the other license holders here in town?

I have not heard that yet.

Okay. Talked to you offline about that.

Okay.

Okay. If we could talk about Measure P revenues, what are our anticipated revenues for FY '27?

So forty nine point I believe it's $49,500,000 that's coming in from Measure P.

Okay, it's quite high.

And just over $68,000,000 in carryover for twenty six to twenty seven.

And those are accounted for though, correct? With current projects that are partially funded?

Nearly all of the money is accounted for, for current projects. There may be some funding. I think I sent something the other day. There may be 700,000 available on a highest need category. And then remember out of that money we carve out probably this year would be about $6,800,000 or $6,900,000 for cultural arts and so that comes off of that

40 Appreciate that. How much did you set aside in your budget from general funds for the parks department? Not carryover, but how much was set aside in f y twenty seven?

Yeah. In terms of

General fund dollars towards Parks Department.

Total general fund is contributions a little over 17.

Okay. Thank you, mayor. I wanna move on to wage theft protection. Yeah. City attorney can correct me if I'm wrong. I think you made some comments yesterday to the media and today that we have unmaterialized grant funds.

We have what?

Unmaterialized grant funds, I believe was the phrase.

I think that means that simply that we have the the goal was like many of our grants is we, like the first year we applied for the Wage Step grant, we got it. Second year, we applied and got it. And the hope was that we would get a grant again this third year. It hasn't materialized yet, meaning that it's not that we got rejected, it just hasn't come to fruition. And that's pretty standard in a lot of the departments where sometimes you don't get the grant or sometimes you don't get the grant till mid year. No fault of anybody in the city, It's just the fact that the the grants haven't come to fruition yet. That's it.

City attorney, what's the timeline on this on us finding out whether we'll be eligible or receive those grant from the state?

It is my understanding that the state will be providing more information probably in June about for grant awards that are upcoming. As of right now, I don't believe that a grant has been released for this next fiscal

And that's a challenge. What we are funded and I shared this with you, I believe there's eight position but they're funded at 50% in hopes that we will get that grant at some point during the course of the year. And if we don't, then we'll have to revisit this at midyear. This is very consistent with a lot of the departments, whether it's parks or the police, police especially, where grants don't get it made available to like October. And yet you start your fiscal year in July, so you can't really count on them. And then if the grant does come in, then you when you do get the money, you do a an appropriations at that time.

I just want you to know some of the media yesterday construed your statements to mean that we have applied and failed to get those dollars. And I had several folks reaching out to me yesterday which I think is probably fair, you know, to characterize dollars that we haven't been able to apply for yet as unrealized. Yeah. I think it's probably not the right term. I I think we do plan on applying for those dollars and I think we have a pretty solid track record of receiving those dollars. But I get your point, but just wanna let you know what what the understanding by the public and the media was yesterday.

Yeah. I learned long ago I can't control what the media says.

Eviction protection program, we're not gonna be going with HAP, we're gonna be going with local housing trust fund dollars. And those are dollars that are essentially set aside from our property transfer tax, correct?

Yes, real estate transfer tax.

Real estate transfer tax. What special requirements would be tacked on to somebody applying for EPP if we're gonna be using those dollars?

If we were using EPP or HAP?

If we're using local housing trust funds.

There's no requirement. So local housing trust fund, somebody applies, goes through the city attorney's office, there's no criteria, there's no criteria for income levels or anything of that nature. It's my understanding if we utilize half we would have to go through the system. What's it called Kelly? Yeah, HMIS and then there's a lot of things that they have to fill out. I don't think personally, I'm not sure you want to go through that.

So safe to say there's not going to be any additional requirements for folks wanting to apply for this program?

Yes, correct. Same as same as it is now consistently. No criteria required.

Appreciate that. Thank you, Mayor. You talked a little bit about contract cleanup as part of the way you closed the deficit. Can you talk more about what that looks like?

Yeah. There were some open contracts on the books, and that means that there's money that is set aside for these contracts that are still open. They haven't been closed out yet. And and so they went through our our staff, our budget office, They went through each and every one of those contracts in every single department in the city. It could have been a contract for technology, could have been a contract for other services, professional services, whatever it was, and they were able to check with the department, are you complete?

Are you done with this contract? So what that means is there was money remaining in that allocated allocation for the contract, but it wasn't needed. So we were able to take those funds back.

Was there any contract terminations or reduction of scale in our existing contracts to meet that?

We did not have to reduce any services or not meet the scope. Simply Okay. Clean up. Sure.

In this proposed budget, how many general fund dollars are allocated towards debt service?

For debt Debt service. That would be under the capital side. 13,100,000. Thank Thank you, Ed.

Okay. Just have a couple more questions. These are more revolved around public safety. We talked about having that built in attrition rate for the police department just over 6%. How many position authorizations do we have for sworn officers currently?

If this budget goes through currently, it's $9.30. This budget would take it to $9.35.

And how many funded?

Well, all of them are funded with the exception of as part of the anticipated attrition of 6.18%, we back out in every department plus police what that equates to, the 6.18%. It's probably somewhere around for the police department somewhere around 12 million. So How many

officers is that?

In terms of what the vacancy so on on average, they lose about six officers per month. So say 72, 75 officers leave on an annual basis. It's the time it takes to fill those positions as well as dispatchers, parks rangers, all of them. And that is where we get the what's your average vacancy rate during the course of the year. Okay, we're gonna back that money out. There was a time in our city where we simply fully funded at 100% knowing there'd be vacancies. And then at some point, there'd be this A sweep of cost savings. There'd be salary savings.

Yeah.

And then we either rolled it over into the next budget or we spent that, which creates an issue. If you spend salary savings that are intended for salaries for things other than salaries.

Given the built in attrition rates and officers on long term leave, how many positions do we actually expect to be filled on regular duty in the coming fiscal year?

Probably a question that the chief will answer, but I just met with her and asked this question. We average somewhere probably around 70 officers that are on long term absence. Some of those that are on what's called forty eight fifty time off work, some of those working light duty, but they're not in the field. Right. And so about 70 in any given time.

And then in terms of vacancies, they've been unfortunately, they had got upward of about 65 ish vacancies. And now they have back to back academies with significant number of people that are going through them. So it is our hope that through the course of this next few academies that they're going to be they will never be whole and that's the purpose of the attrition, the vacancy rates. But they will be in a much healthier position.

800 sound accurate?

No. No. I would say they'll be somewhere around I'll just take the vacancy and leave out the long term absence. They're gonna be somewhere around $8.75, maybe $8.90. And then from that back out the long term assets, it could be around $8.25.

Could you do that same exercise for our firefighters as well, Mir?

For the firefighters? Last I heard, we were at about 45 firefighter vacancies. Couldn't tell you what they have on long term absence, but we had about 45 firefighters, which is why we accelerated two academies drill schools to do twenty and twenty. I'm going make sure Billy is that pretty accurate? Good, got the thumbs up.

Okay. I may think of more questions later, mayor. I'm not trying to grill you. I'm just really trying to wrap my head around this. I think it's a good budget. I really do. Yeah. I appreciate it. I don't foresee myself making as many changes as I have in previous years because I know what we're dealing with. I know we gotta live within our means and I think you've done a pretty good job of incorporating some of the ask from my office and my constituents into your proposed budget. So thank you again mayor. I may chime again in a little bit, but I'll hand it over to my colleagues at this time.

And I appreciate the one question you asked me, gave you you'd asked about Veterans Memorial, and I think I gave you the answer Yeah.

Can you

talk about that, mayor?

Yeah. We we funded you know, there was an assessment done of our Veterans Memorial. And from restrooms to our flooring to riggings to curtain to you name it. There was a lot of neglect in our in our Veterans Memorial. So we have been trying to chip away every single year at those. This year, we have funded $945,900 to do some specific work in our in in the Veterans Memorial. So every year, we would hope to do that. Now there is specific money in measure p that is allowed for for that. And so we're we're just trying to it's our facility. We're trying to make it the best that we can make it.

So and I know you inquired, and I wanted to let you know.

I appreciate that, mayor. I mean, I I really think it's a shame. I mean, I know that we have HVAC not working in a lot of the areas, predominantly the foyer Foyer. Right. Which is a large area that a lot of people meet in. But I think we're something to the tune of 10,000,000 deferred maintenance. Yes. That doesn't even include like additional upgrades we'd like to do. So I believe in the measure p language, there's only two facilities citywide that are called out by name. One of them is the Veterans Auditorium.

So Yeah. We'll wait to see what the council budget motions look like. But I think if there's any remaining dollars left in the measure p that would be suitable for the Veterans Auditorium, I'd really like to see those dollars go there this year. I think, you know, having only received one allocation over the past six years for one of two specific facilities called out by Measure P language is unacceptable, and I don't think that's anybody's fault up here. Measure P, the way it was written makes it very difficult to fund large projects with so many competing priorities.

So I would like to work with you, Mayor, and whoever else on the council if that's a possibility. I think we have a veteran up here who might be interested in that too to make those much needed investments.

Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. There's there's about seven hundred and forty nine seven hundred and forty nine thousand two hundred that's remaining Yeah. In that pot, so that'd be a council decision.

Yeah. We know that's a point of pride for a lot of folks in our community. We wanna make it whole. Thank you.

Alright. Thank you. Yeah. Council member Carbassi followed by council member Vang.

Thank you very much, council president. First off, I wanna start by welcoming back council member Richardson. I really appreciate your service to our country. Good to have you back. Now, mayor, I do wanna say, I'm gonna sound like a broken record because I think we council member Maxwell and I may probably drink from the same well this morning.

But I really do appreciate your work, the work of the administration, the work of the department heads, and your senior staff because we do this for a month, but you do this for months trying to Yeah. It's a lot of work. And we are about half the size of the county's budget. It's a massive $2,500,000,000 budget that affects a lot of people's lives. And I think what's really important is you've been able to maintain services, in the case of tree trimming, actually improve service levels back to where we want them to be.

I agree with you that it's very difficult to control the media or even expect some media, and the term media has become very loose, to tell the truth. There has been a lot of misinformation about the budget out there. I call it silly season because it's an election year.

Yep.

And I I understand how it works, but at the same time, I think when you run for a seat, it's really important you also do your best to be truthful and honest to the voters. And to say that this city is operating with a deficit is incorrect. Every year, this council and this administration, by law, passes a balanced budget. Part of being up here, half of our job as council members is budget. That means we gotta make tough decisions.

Right.

Now I know we're going to have a long debate. We're going to go back and forth, but I think that you've really done a good job of bringing us something that we can start with that is a good baseline that again maintain services and in some cases enhance services. I appreciate that. But just to be clear, we are not operating with a deficit. You've presented a balanced budget.

Correct. We started with $34,500,000 We've cut expenses, ratcheted up some sales tax revenues to where today you have a balanced $2,550,000,000 budget. Right.

And so here's the thing. So I know in the past, you have said, which is correct, we have a spending problem. I think at this point, we're past that. Now it's a revenue problem, and that's what I hope we start having a conversation about as policymakers up here. Because we live in an era where every time we wanna relocate a major tax producer or open a new business or attract businesses, we're getting sued left and right by certain groups with their own agenda.

And it makes it really difficult to create jobs. I mean, whether it's opening a new commercial center or it's a new sports complex or it's building housing. It's so hard because Fresno can't have nice things because we have a lot of haters out there, and it's really tough. Right. Even though we're asking the tough questions, every time we go negotiate a tax sharing agreement with the county and get a better deal unlike ever before, then they move the goalpost again. And I think it's important for us to be more aggressive about how we grow because you wanna call it the silent majority or the working families out there. Every time they move to Madera, every time they move to Clovis, every time they move to Sanger, all great communities, we lose all that revenue.

That's right.

They use our services, tear up our roads, and we get nothing out of it.

Exactly. And and, to your point, council member, I think last night was a good illustration that the school board vote to oppose Southeast development area. Central Unified Trustees voted on that a couple of weeks ago. And here's what they voted against. They voted against 1,547 acres of research and development land being opened up for advanced manufacturing jobs in our city.

Those are job killers. Job killers. 1,547 acres they voted against. And for the life of me, I can understand that because we have one in four people in our county that live at or below the poverty line. And we're trying to kill jobs, good paying jobs in our city? Right. That makes absolutely no sense. And so what it tells me is a bunch of uninformed people making uninformed decisions about that.

It's silly season, but the other side of that coin, what really bothers me is there's also a tremendous amount of growth poised for the West Area, neighborhoods West Of 99. Yes. So every time someone comes in because we're not gonna build the housing, the housing for the workforce, someone investor's gonna come in and build it. They also build a park. They also build out the roads. They also build out commercial so you can work, live, and play in the area following new standards. Every time someone kills development, they're also hurting the West Side too.

Yes.

So I think we need to start having conversation about how we grow and start pushing back a little bit more. So and bull all you want, but you're not creating jobs. We are. You're fucking wrong. Good luck with that. So okay. I do wanna talk about District 2 a little bit. No. Cannabis first. Sorry.

Hey, Councilor Carbassi. Whoever that was, that's your first warning.

Okay. All good. Thank you, Council President. Okay. So cannabis revenue.

Yes.

Voters have spoken. The council has spoken. It is legal in our community. I think one of the challenges has been the undercutting by the black market. Now I do I don't know if this has been made public yet. I I think maybe it has. But last week, council president Esparza and I joined the city attorney and also our senior city attorney, Erica Camarena, out at a location in Fresno where they stopped an operation of 9,000 cannabis plants that was an illegal grow. It was a very interesting operation, but the fine will be $9,000,000. Now the reason why that's a big issue I mean, assuming we can recover the 9,000,000. But the reason why this is a big issue is it undercuts the legal businesses and the jobs created by that.

It undercuts the money that those businesses pay into the benefit fund that supports important programs like Advance Peace. But it also limits the money we have for other organizations that used to get money from that fund.

Right.

So I wanna give kudos to the city attorney's office. I know our city attorney is currently on official travel representing us, but thank you for your efforts on that. That was a very big deal and keep it up. I think that's the biggest for the city of Fresno, our biggest if you wanna elaborate on that, Christina.

Yes. That that would that's the biggest cultivation that we have found at this point that we've been able to eradicate, like you said.

Yeah. And it really unsafe operation. I mean, they go into electrical panels and I'm I'm surprised there wasn't a major fire in the area and it was an area surrounded by other businesses. So good work there. District two, I want to thank you for continuing to provide investment for Pinedale Community Center. I know that you work you put that in the budget. We talked about it last year. So I don't have to make a motion.

Yes. Right.

Thank you. We've this one is for the bathrooms. I think the last couple of years, we focused more on programming, just fixing the area. Now they have requested for years to improve their bathrooms. It is the only community center I think we have North Of Bullard or I believe in is that correct? Yep. North Of North Bullard in Fresno. So we wanna make sure we take care of our folks in Pinedale. Thank you for doing that. And roads, roads, roads, my goodness.

A lot of the ongoing projects we're doing, the Fake Garden Loop, getting that in two phases completely redone and maintained. The Herndon Overpass starting this fall, that's been funded to go remove the bottleneck on Herndon from three lanes all the way through, so it's no longer three, two, three. It'll also help with a lot of the issues that businesses have complained about, about some of the unhoused population going under the railroad. And the railroads, really they're really hard to work with sometimes. We try.

But they don't always aren't as cooperative. This will help us design an overpass that is safer so no one's getting hurt. And then in partnership with your office and, of course, council member Pepreia, Shaw Avenue. It's the one thing I've always wanted to get done before my eight years are up, and it's making sure we can repave Shaw. And I think we have some good news coming up on that.

Yes. We do.

Yep. But also the last thing I wanna say is I do appreciate also the continued commitment. I think our first meeting was about this, about the San Joaquin River and opening up access. This is not just for Northwest Fresno. This is for people all over this city to from this point where we're out right here, you can drive fifteen minutes away and you're in nature. You don't even realize it. I mean, you don't even think you're in Fresno anymore. I know that there's been a big commitment to that. Yesterday at the Conservancy meeting, we were able to vote on the final allocation for to fully fund the project that we as a city are going do the project management on. And we do a great job with Yes.

So I do appreciate the commitment to breaking ground this year on that. The one thing I will be asking about later is when it comes to the fire department. I do have some questions about some of our special teams like urban search and rescue, hazmat, and other things like that. So I'll you'll be getting an RFI from me or meeting with the fire chief. You guys have always been really transparent and easy to

work with.

Right.

When do you want the RFIs? If we have request information or estimates, do you want that now?

I would say as soon as you can get the RFIs to our folks, the better. I think some have already submitted. So sooner the better, give our staff time to get that information back to you well in advance of June 8.

Okay. Thanks. Again, good work. There's a long road ahead, but we're going to work together hopefully and get this done. You're going to have a lot of questions, I'm sure. But I look forward to working together to build a balanced budget that creates more opportunity for all of our residents in this community.

Thank you.

Appreciate it, Council Member. Thank you.

Council Member Vang followed by Council Member Paria.

Thank you very much, Council President. Good morning, Mayor.

Good morning.

Good morning and thank you very much for the presentation. I want to thank you, your staff, senior staff and then your staff for putting this proposed budget together. And I also want to thank the head departments in the city and their staff putting the time, the effort and the energy into bringing a balanced budget to the council. I do not have the luxury of sitting here and have a surplus. Last year we were in the red and it looks like we are in the red again. So I'm hoping that one day if I'm lucky enough to be here for the next couple of years, we will have a surplus. And so we'll have a different conversation, but Yes,

we're not in the red this year. We are balanced.

We are balanced. Yes, are balanced. Actually, yes, that was my next comment. And let's look at the number. Last year, was $2,300,000,000 and so this year is 2,550,000,000 surplus of $250,000,000 or so.

And so we have more in terms of money this year than last year, but obviously our expenditures exceed what we can bring in. And also I want to know that tax revenues across the board has increased and thus that's adding to the $250,000,000 plus that we gained from last year. I just want to touch upon a few items and then pivot to District 5. I just wanted to make sure and make sure that the public hears this. There's not going to be a loss of public safety in terms of personnel across the board whether it's sworn police officers or non police officers, correct?

There will not be a loss of personnel throughout the city to include public safety.

So right now in terms of sworn police officers, we have budgeted for $3.35 sworn police officers for this fiscal year. Now we Actually do have

for police?

Yes, for police, just for police.

We have in the FY twenty six budget for 09/30.

09/05.

09/30 and then for the proposal will be $9.35.

Okay. In addition to that, we also have non sworn personnel working with sworn personnel. We have the number, my recollection is that somewhere above 400?

Yeah, that's the last number about 400. Okay. Okay. With dispatchers sorry, but

in the in the police department?

Yes. In the police department. I'm sorry. Yes.

Yes, mayor. It's 399.

Yes, sir. 399.

Right. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. And so to to put the the public at ease, I know that the perception is that there has been a lot of scare tactics in terms of what people call smash and grab and swoop in and etcetera.

And so when it comes to public safety that is not going to change how the city does business when it comes to public safety funding. What has been the practice last year when I came on board will continue to be the same moving forward. I also wanted to touch upon the reality with regards to the Pave More Now program that was instituted earlier this year. And to see that the real practical changes out there on people's streets, gutters, curbs and when they walk outside in areas that has not been touched for decades for the city to go in and to correct that, to re pave that, to change the gutter, the curbs, etcetera. That is starting to take place in certain sections of District 5 and I've been out there talking to those residents and finally they said that the city is paying attention to them.

And so thank you very much for your leadership in the Pave More Now program that we started a couple of months ago and that will continue to use those dollars in the foreseeable months and years. And so that is one real life changing experience that the residents in District 2 are seeing. And so thank you very much for the Pay More Now program.

And I'll add to that, that as a result of some economy of scale projects that we're doing and close proximity of projects to one another performing a lot of the concrete work and ADA issues in house outsourcing the paving, that we're able to the estimates are coming in cheaper than what we had projected. So we're going be able to do more projects than we had originally anticipated. So we'll be coming back to you folks for I think we know what those projects are, we'll be having conversations through the year.

And I'm sitting here on the dais and having discussions about policies and how to implement those policies is more theoretical. When you see the policies put into action and you can actually see with your eyes and feel it, that gives a different perspective. Same thing with the capital works project in particular, you mentioned about the 49 acre park again that is coming into a reality by the end of this year we will be opening Phase one of that three phase project. And I'm hoping that the conversation around the gymnasium with the Measure P ARPA and perhaps grants we can find to put that project into reality. And I think that is going to be the center of that 49 acre sports complex.

And so I'm hoping that the city can find means to make that gym a reality.

In order just like any of our major capital projects, in order for that GEM to be funded, I believe it would have to be through a bond. And as you know right now, Measure P, you cannot bond against. That may change in the future, but for now, you cannot.

And my last point is, I was not here in 2023 this council when we heard about the Cesar Chavez fiasco with the Cesar Chavez Boulevard and returning the original street names to Kings Canyon, Ventura, California Avenue. There are over 1,600 addresses impacted. Most of those are probably business addresses. And when budget discussion comes around beginning June 8, I plan on making a motion dollars to be determined to offset any expenses of anyone who is doing business along the Kings Canyon, Ventura, California corridor. I know that the last time when the stretch of this street was changed, the council I believe budgeted over $1,000,000 or I think $1,000,000 for any expense relating to this and very few if any just one or two took advantage of this.

400,000 wasn't it? It was 100,000 total. 1,000,000 was total for the There was a portion of that for the businesses and as you know only one business for whatever reason took advantage of it and but part of that had to do with the fact that the process was probably too onerous. So we will make sure the process is not onerous. And I do know that council member Richardson had dedicated 10,000 and council member Carbassi dedicated 10,000 out of their budgets to offset some of these costs. If there's more than that certainly we'll entertain the motion.

Right. And the outreach, I think we can do better, do outreach to the businesses that are being impacted by this name change again at nothing to their doing, but it is again it is what it is. And so when budget discussion comes around, I plan to make a motion a number to determine that's the least that the city can do to help those small business along the routes that are impacted by the name change. And so I'm looking forward to more detailed discussions as we move forward nearing June 8 and finally having a balanced budget by June 23. That's all I have, Council President.

You. Thank you, Council President.

Pardon me if I may, Council President. I just want to make sure there's clarity around the question and answer. There was $1,000,000 that was allocated to be spent, but that included everything that included all the street signs, of the work we did with Caltrans, our labor design, etcetera. Of that, the council asked that up to $200 per address E per business and or residents be reimbursed if they had any expenses. And throughout the entire process, there was one claim request to be reimbursed and that total was $77

Right, those are the facts and I believe the outreach can be better and also which department or which agency will be doing the outreach. Again, I think with the city owns a responsibility to offset as much expenses from these business owners as possible. Again reverting back to Kings Canyon Boulevard, California and Ventura. Thank you.

Council Member Raya.

All right. Thank you, Council President. Good morning, mayor.

Good morning.

You know, when it comes to increasing revenues for our city, I think one of the best strategies we have to do that is through ministerial. I know that was a bad word for the last couple of years, but we ultimately passed a ordinance, an ordinance to make it easier to build more housing in our city. And so when it comes to how do we increase jobs, how do we increase sales tax revenue, You know, I know when our previous mayoral administration, when they went through the zoning ordinance update, the general plan update, they made a lot of uses allowed by rate, but they're all still, for the most part, processed discretionary. And so I would like to if we can get a cost estimate to see what it would cost to do more ministerial, and I can meet with our planning director offline. But I would like to see more uses in our city allowed and processed ministerially.

You talked about r and d for a potential future expansion, but I would like to see what we could do today in in the current city limits that we have present day. And so I will be looking for and I'll work with our planning director on that to see what that would cost.

You will have my full support.

Thank you. For tree trimming, are we on a ten year cycle for this budget?

We will be for FY '27. We're currently on a twelve year cycle for FY '26.

Currently on a twelve year cycle?

Currently at a twelve, we'll go back to a ten.

Transitioning to a ten year.

Yes.

And what is the cost of that?

Do the $3,350,000 to do a ten year cycle and I believe we added, in order to make that happen, about five a little over $500,000.

Okay. I like the initiative to invest in the speed limit signs around schools. That's something that my office has been working on the last couple of years. And so I think if we can expand that public safety investment to other parts of our city, I think that would definitely be a worthwhile investment, especially for our kids. Does this budget include any funding set aside for nonprofits such as the Marjorie Mason Center?

The general fund does not have money set aside for specifically for that, but we do have plans to fund the Marjorie Mason Center out of our homeless housing assistance program. I've met with Phil Sky on that and we're working with Marjorie Mason for that and I don't know what that dollar amount is but we're gonna do what we can to meet the needs.

Okay. Thank you. For the tower district, trash services and pressure washing, is that to continue with an outside vendor or is that to bring it in house?

Yeah, that's a good point and good question. As you know, we were utilizing scrub can to do the trash removal. So a decision was made this year in consultation with Jim Barrows that we could do that in house and do it more frequently, the trash removal and we simply converted some positions to allow that to occur so there wasn't an increased cost. It freed up $240,000 that we then used left with scrub can who were doing the trash removal. We would leave that with scrub can, add $260,000 to that pot. So to have 500,000 for increased pressure washing downtown in the tower, primarily the tower.

Okay. I have full faith in Jim's team, Jim, so don't let me down, please.

And and you have his cell phone number if they're not if trash isn't picked up, you call Jim.

Work and personal. Okay. Let me see. For eviction protection, we're setting aside 1,500,000. Have we expended 1,500,000 thus far this fiscal year?

We are coming up right against it. As of the April for our invoices, there was about $6,068,000 remaining.

I think what was the number, Ed? You just gave it to me yesterday. Yeah. Eviction protection invoice to the state. 1.353 or something like that. Yeah. 1.353 I think is what's been invoiced.

With 1,500,000, how many families do we typically get to serve each year?

Well, know the actual numbers for this fiscal year. I apologize one moment. We have done about, I believe it's about three sixty intakes and referred about 160 of them to outside counsel. That was as of last week.

Okay, thank you city attorney. The cannabis benefit fund, how much did you say is currently in there? Or what typically gets generated each year?

We'll generate about 10%, so about 330,000 we anticipate. And $300,000 has been carved out for advanced peace.

Okay. So this current fiscal year we're setting aside that funding for advanced peace?

Yes, 300 of the $3.30.

Okay.

And then animal spay and neuter, 225,000 for outside assistance. Yes. That sound right? And then what was the number that we are dedicating for us to handle spay and neuter internally?

So it varies I can just say I would anticipate almost here but last year I believe we did 50 or this past year we did 5,800 and that was both internally and externally. Alma, I cannot remember the number you told me.

800.

2,500. How many do we anticipate internally this year? Internally about 4,000, externally another 1,800, so about 5,800 again.

And is that on par with what we typically do each year?

This last year, 5,800 is what the number was. That just so happens will probably be the same.

I do think that's the number one strategy for us to reduce our animal overpopulation. And so I may be looking to increase that either setting aside more of a piece of the pie for us to handle more internally or allowing our outside partners to take on more of that effort for us.

Let me

see. Can you remind me what the interactive wall is?

It is a it's a interactive wall on the 3rd Floor center similar to what the Hall of Fame does over at the St. Mart Center and this was Council Vice President Maxwell's initiative last year I believe it was. And some of the costs did not include engineering and the like, So that total cost is somewhere around 900,000 I believe. Yeah, about $900,000 total. I think this year we added about $1.71.

Approximately $1.71 to $1.75 to fill the gap for tariffs and so forth.

Yep.

We have right now in the Tower District, we have businesses that are taking out their own trash, the public trash cans outside. Or actually, I think Scrub Can has taken that on pro bono. Are we building in budget for them to continue dealing with our public trash cans or is that something we can take on internally as well?

Internally and that is something you feel free to speak to Jim offline, but if there is a need, I mean I would obviously love to see the business owners continue doing what they're doing their part, but whatever they aren't able to do I think we will be able to accomplish that in house. I think we're going to see I think scrub can did a great job, but I think we're going to be able to do a better job internally.

Okay. We are adding about four public trash cans to Van Ness Village. They're gonna be really nice artistic wrapped trash cans. And right now, we are working on MOUs with each respective business, but we've seen what happens when MOUs are in place and a business comes and goes and the new business that takes over does not take over the responsibilities. And so I do think it would be a benefit if we could take this service on either in house or if we could add it on to scrub pants contract. I think that would be worthwhile. And then we have labor negotiations coming up. Does this budget take that into account?

Yes. We have factored in a certain percentage increase for labor. Obviously, we won't disclose that publicly because Dean is in the room. So but it is factored in, yes. Yeah. Yeah. Now that would break the bank.

Thank you, mayor. Last question is in regards to homelessness. Does this budget maintain existing level of service? So does this factor in costs for mobile showers and warming centers, cooling centers?

Yes, so all of those are factored in within the budget. So people should not feel any reduction of services at all. In fact, there will be enhanced services in this budget for sure. But all of those things, the mobile showers, warming center, cooling center and by the way, there wasn't very much of that this last year. We contract out with a Pavarillo house to do that, there just wasn't very much, the temperatures didn't get to that level. Okay.

As far as this fiscal year goes, you know, in in past years, I've made a lot of very heavy handed motions when it comes to infrastructure projects in my district, but I don't anticipate that for the remainder of this year. My goal for the rest of my term is just to make sure that we're finishing projects that we started a number of years ago. But I I may have a motion or two in regards to setting aside some funds for some local nonprofits. Everyone's being hit right now by cuts that are trickling down from the federal level, and so people are just disproportionately hurting more than they typically do. And so I am at the at the moment meeting with a few groups, and I may have a couple motions just to see if there's anything we can do to set aside some dollars for them.

But beyond that, I just want to thank you and your team. This is a good looking budget. I think there's a few areas where we can do a little better, but overall, I think this is an incredible start.

Thank you.

All right, Mayor. So overall, first glance pretty well rounded budget It does seem to take into consideration a lot of council priorities. I see things in there where previous years we've kind of had to fight for and throw emotions out that you're smart enough to include and avoid those fights and kind of late night balancing later on. So kudos to you, kudos to the team for making an effort there for sure. And I think that'll certainly not eliminate, but certainly mitigate motions later I appreciate you explained how the deficit went up and the ways you took the measures took to balance it.

Is there any area of the budget that you feel we're going to see any major service impacts?

I don't see any service impacts at all. I do believe people are going to start to feel a better service impact on streets and sidewalks in neighborhoods. We have significant money that's $140,000,000 that's available through this year and next year for those things. So they're going to feel that, they're going to see more trees being trimmed, they're going to see more parks being developed and built. As you know it takes time to acquire land, develop a park, those are starting to come to fruition. So I think in general population, people are going to say, wow, there's an enhanced services throughout our city. And that's what we hope for.

I mean, I hope so too. As you noted, I mean, it's a record setting budget, but that doesn't mean it's going as far as it used to. And that's what I was alluding to. So I mean, that's good to hear. Guess time will tell, but I hope you're right. I hope that people don't feel like we're missing a beat. I do contend still, I know Council Member Carbassi brought it up, you kind of brought it up. I do condense still that we have we do have a revenue problem. I'm not saying that's right now us today, mean that's been created over forty, fifty years.

We have a future revenue problem for sure, we need to enhance our revenues for sure today and in the future.

Yeah, yeah. So I mean, we're doing a lot. I mean, we're doing everything we can. Just the need is sort of ever expanding within our city boundaries. So do contend that, right. I want to put that out there. I don't think we have a spending issue. I mean, if anything, we need that revenue because there continues to be need out there in every area. But again, to sort of optimizing the resources that we do have. To give a few specifics with respect to PD, I wanted to ask about the retail theft grant that we received, been a couple of years now, a year or two.

What's the status of that? How much time is left? How much money is expended? The nine thirty five that we have, how many of those positions are funded right now by the retail theft grant?

So 25 positions are funded by the retail theft. There is a portion of those 25 officers, I believe it's five officers or a sergeant and five officers that are assigned to our career criminal auto theft team also. And then the remaining 19 or 20 are assigned to the districts for retail theft. Those grants will be expended in FY 2027 totally. And so we are going to have to come up with a way to absorb those positions next fiscal year.

I just had a conversation with the Chief this week about perhaps taking a significant percentage of those and converting them into traffic officers for the city and to be able to retain them in that way. And in that fashion, not only they're gonna enhance traffic safety in our city, they'll have increased visibility of officers in our city. And as we all know, have a red light running problem and a speeding problem in Fresno to be able to address that. They'll be able to address increased DUI arrest and with that they'll be generating some revenue to pay for themselves. So maybe we're trying to lessen the impact from the general fund, but that's a plan we're planning to hit for FY 2028.

Yeah, you talking about roll offs, that's where that sort of line of conversation led me as like those guys be rolling off pretty soon. Not this fiscal year, but we're pretty much done after this fiscal year with those 25.

100% and we had 12 officers funded by COPS that rolled off as well. The difference with COPS is that those were only funded really at about 30% of the salary. So we already had 70. But with the retail organized set, those are funded 100% pretty much just like our SAFR grants are funded like at 100% minus the drill schools. So when we absorb those, it's a little bit more money that we have to come up with at once.

Sure. We don't have any kind of debt service rolling off for next fiscal year or this fiscal year?

We do have some in 2019 that's rolling off for sure. Some of that is intended to pay more now debt service, Ruthie?

That's right and we do have some smaller issuances that are rolling off in the next year and the one after that, so in '27 and '28, but the big one is in '29. The projection not just for the budget year but also for the multi year forecast that's in the front of the book does take those reduced levels into consideration.

Yeah and kind of eaten up now because of the paving we've done.

Yeah. So we had some bonding, we bonded against some assets for paid more now $100,000,000 although we haven't gone out to the bond market yet on that, we will. And then we also have some bonding that we did for the nine eleven center somewhere in the 18,000,000, 19,000,000 area. And then we have fire station twelve that was also about 18,000,000. And then we have the public safety admin building that's yet to be determined, But I would venture to say when it's all said and done, could be close to 18.

Okay. With respect to the drill schools, the fire department, 2,650,000 is that more of a one time is that just kind of increase for this particular fiscal year because of the sort of exit of a large group of firefighters all at once and we got to bring these I mean is that going to be ongoing or is that sort of more?

I don't think it's going to be ongoing. The chief can speak to it when he gets up next during the presentation, but we had kind of an aberration in terms of the number of firefighters that left us last year, higher than we've seen. And it's just because there was a I think you saw a large number of firefighters come on at one point in time, they all retired about the same time. But I think the hope is we only have to do one drill school per year, but if we need to do two we will, in this case we're doing two that's overlapping. And part of that money is also their salary, for those people that are in the academy at that time. Plus instructors, order back for instructors, all those things.

Just the way I should go out this year?

Yes.

Okay. Well, we got to do what we got to do. Thank you for the expediting the signs around our schools throughout the city. I think it's going to make a difference. It's going to save lives. I like the idea of this. It will be implemented very soon, possibly with the increased traffic unit. And I'm sure you read in the media about Councilmember Parre and I taking a look at some additional traffic safety measures potentially forthcoming. It's going be a busy six months after we get this budget done.

Yeah, I think the technology has evolved to where it's much better than it used to be obviously. I remember when we tested those red light cameras a long time ago, Gary Bredefield actually brought them forth and the technology wasn't to the degree it needed to be and then the laws changed subsequent to that. But people got very, very smart in Fresno, they drove around with their visors down and if you couldn't identify the driver you couldn't issue a citation. So it's changed now.

Yeah, well technology has changed and also state laws changed.

That's

right. The different parameters.

Timing is right.

Yeah, yeah. So I think given the issues we've had in Fresno here, especially since sort of post COVID, it's been very exacerbated. But overall, I mean, I'll save bulk of my questions for the hearings. Overall, pretty sound budget. There's always going to be the additional kind of wants from us on our end. We've got to represent our respective constituents. I know they're all your residents as well. But I'm sure that you'll see some motions coming this way from the council, but nothing personal. We're just representing our

And I want you to know, I generally don't plug in nonprofits. I generally know that council members are probably going to be interacting with nonprofits. And really the only one that we did was the historical society and that's because of the two fiftieth celebration. But that's really the the only one. And and I do want to apologize if there was any conveyance of a message yesterday that was negative on the city attorney's office. It wasn't wasn't intended to be that. I was just trying to state facts and maybe I could have stated them better. So with that, I appreciate it. I look forward to budget motions and get a final budget June 23.

Yes, sir. Budget season has now commenced. So welcome.

Okay. Welcome back, Nick. Thank you, guys, all of you.

Thank you. Alright, mayor. So you're excused Mayor, you want to stick around, we're going do public comment now. So I've got some yellow cards that are here. I'll read these off first. So if you would like to speak, I'd appreciate filling out a yellow card and dropping it in the basket or handing it to the clerk down here. But I'll call you folks up and we have three minutes here for unscheduled communication. The first card I have is for Brandy N.

First, there's a lot to review in this budget that I intend to address at the budget hearing. And I wanna thank all the departments for their hard work because I know it's a year long thing. I wanna note that I don't appreciate the disrespect to those who oppose SADA who are well informed. I want to call for the city council to allow the one time grant funding positions for the police department to lapse when the grant expires in December and instead go to our community based services. I am very glad that the EPP and Advance Peace is included as well as increases in outdoor facilities and resources and ask that EPP and Advance Peace that there would be increased funding to increase public safety and well-being.

Regarding the proposed addition to HEART team and personnel, to better serve our community, the council should remove funding from HEART police, not increase funding and should reject any additions, not just for reasonable financial reasons as we have a deficit and that money takes away from other needs you may identify. We as a city should be ashamed of what we have allowed Hart to do on our community members. Hart Police neither help our city nor our house who are not a problem or a project, but constituents. And yes, HEART team now HEART has all the other homeless services that are doing work under that name, but you still have a team that of police that go against municipal codes, goes against the work of continual care, and goes against the principles and assertion of dignity and compassion that Dyer proudly prints in his budget. When you talk about cleanup, so many of our folks have pointed out that stuff has been left behind when their stuff has been taken, trash.

Conversely, I observed this year that you have a team that goes out and cleans around the camps and people, they say that people come and join them, that is an option. Some of the stuff that is taken away can never be replaced. Someone responded to the funding thing last night by saying that her client's mother's ashes were thrown away and I've heard so many stories. Never mind the essentials like medication, ID cards, phones. If your goal is to get people off the streets, this is actually slowing down the process.

If your aim is tough luck to force people to do what they need to do, which is what I've heard from some council members, you can't bully people into housing which is what Harteeam does. But you also don't need a motive there because people want housing and homeless services have told you that. Bullying is an impediment. It's like kicking down an injured person that you're telling to try to get to a place that other people are going to. It increases safety issues.

We lost two people this week, and California homeless youth project states that as a result of camping bans and sweet unhoused people are being forced to move further away from well lit safer places by resources they need and forcing them to stay in unsafe locations that put them at risk of harm. Regarding solutions, there are many, but we need to center listening to those with electric experience. We need to ensure that women are never turned away from Arch Lee Mason Center. We need to have

Thank you, Randy. Next speaker is going to be Ariana. One word.

Okay, hello? All right. Hi, good morning, City Council. Thank you all the departments for working on this budget. There's some things I see in here that I really like, like the Southeast Fresno Sports Complex, the parks, especially the senior center. I'm really excited to see that. I'm proud to be from Fresno. I was born and raised here. What I'm not proud about is the heart team. I just don't think that that's solving the problem that we have and I'm concerned that we're not exploring the things that would address those issues and that are evidence based practices for saving money.

So I wanna give a couple examples. Sometimes there's this myth that it's too expensive to fund housing over policing but it costs at least $20,000 less per person for housing first models than this jailing model we have. Studies from the American Medical Association explored how downtown emergency services in different metropolitan areas using a housing first model helped reduced experiences of severe alcohol use and varied mental health diagnosis and this cost $2,500 less per month per person. So when we're thinking about the actual cost of the people, the services that we're providing, we're not investing in the infrastructure that's gonna resolve the problem and I hear that there's small business owners that are also saying like we need solutions that they originally wanted something and this isn't working either, they're not happy about the direction this is going. So I'm just kind of confused why we're not exploring the actual evidence based practices that show like for example, when there's more availability of permanent supportive housing as opposed to serving people while they remain unhoused, This study from 2023 specifically found that there was a 57% reduction in the cost of mental health services over a six month period partly due to a 79% drop in the cost of psychiatric hospitalization.

I've been working in mental health services for over a decade, it is really difficult. I've had clients who have attempted suicide, I have clients who have overdosed, I have had family member here in Fresno, three of my family members within a year overdosed. So this is an issue that we've been facing for a really long time and I just don't I'm so embarrassed that we're gonna have a second heart team and we don't have the actual infrastructure and resources for wraparound services to make sure that we're not just pushing people around, in our neighborhood. So I'm really hopeful that city council will be open to meeting with people who maybe have a different philosophical approach to these issues than you do but we're looking at the actual data and not just relying on like how it feels. I know it feels good for a lot of people to see cops everywhere but that is not true for every person in the city, It's not actually solving the problem.

So I really hope this budget season we could come to a place where we're redirecting our attention to actually serving the people who are hurting and not just arresting them and hoping that there's some sort of magic housing that appears for them.

Alright. Thank you. Next up is gonna be Bob McCluskey.

Hi. Thank you for the opportunity to address you. With the Fresno Community Alliance and the Fresno Homeless Union, it would be prudent to address housing and homelessness in a logistical logical fashion as the previous speaker mentioned. I just wanted to bring up one specific issue at this time. You know, I do appreciate funding and all the other departments you're funding, But again, the 48.6% of the general fund is going to the police.

I did the math. You know, need to know how much it's costing. Okay, $307,923 307,923,700 that works out to $484,919 a day, 20,205 an hour, dollars $3.36 a minute. If you look at the clearance rate for your non violent crimes are not being cleared very quickly. A lot of money is being wasted on prosecuting this no camping ordinance.

Last time I checked, there were 1,700 ordinance, by this time there's probably ordinance violations. I think there were some like 800 some arrests, 900 citations. I got that information from the police department through an information request. Out of all those cases, charges have only been filed in a 130 cases, and most are settled with plea deals. Three were lost in trials.

The HAR team has been charged in the past as being abusive. There's currently three lawsuits against HAR team members for false arrest and other charges. This ordinance has been very costly. The heart team is very ineffective. They don't interact with unhoused folks, they abuse them.

Let's face it, let's call it what it is. Some of them are getting away with it. Some of them are okay, but many of them are abusive. So given all that, you know, people have seen out there, and I appreciate the fact you're funding the mobile showers and other aspects that assist homeless people, We need to not add additional harassment, violence. This is very disruptive. All research shows this is so disruptive to on house folks. First, losing their identity papers, their medical appointments. It really creates a logjam for people.

Thank you, Bob. So next we're going to have Alfred.

Hello, Council. First off, let me just let you guys know what a breath of fresh air it is to see elected officials, in a diverse setting ethnically and gender wise. I was in front of the Board of Supervisors meeting two days ago and that was not the case. That is not a racist remark, Mr. Carbassi, so you can save your comments.

First off, we the people of Fresno would like to see the one time funded grant for the police department lapse, we could see the $1,800,000 be used in areas of the city that seriously need it. Public areas we're talking about, just many, many things. One of the things that's funny I didn't hear, the mayor talk about was a great way to save $1,600,000 which should be ending the contract with flock cameras through the City of Fresno. The flock cameras are super invasive and collect data from citizens here in The United States and we've already had this conversation, but it's a quick $1,600,000 we can save. It's your guys' jobs to be representatives of the people and by hearing them and by mocking them, saying stuff like that when they're voicing their concern, it's not professional.

And so I urge you guys to please hear the citizens, hear their cries and do your work. Thank you.

All right. Next speaker is going to be Enrique Little. Enrique?

Good morning, counsel. I'm going to keep things relatively short. I've been here before. I've spoken about the Hart team. You guys know how I feel about the Hart team.

That sentiment is echoed by a number of my fellow citizens here. We don't need a first Hart team, and we sure don't need a second Hart team, especially if you guys are gonna I know it's not your guys' decision but especially if they're gonna be filled with goons like Rocha and Khan who are on the team who regularly harass and abuse houseless people including an incident where a a houseless person's pet was put into the back of a garbage truck and that was treated very callously. As mister McCloskey cited earlier, we are paying for a 150 cops that aren't there. I feel like that is an expenditure that could easily be done away with if not or reduced. Carbassi said that Fresno can't have nice things because we have a lot of haters.

I prefer to think of it as critical thinking personally. It was said here that voting against SADA kills jobs. But you know what else kills jobs is AI data centers, which I understand that a good portion of the SATA development is going to be dedicated to. Yeah, that's I've basically want to echo everyone else's sentiments here as well as Alfred with the flock cameras. The heart team is the main thing that sticks out to me as a very big disappointment.

Like I said, we don't need the first one and we sure don't need the second one as I'm sorry I don't know your name whoever spoke first but it's been demonstrably not effective when compared to other methods and just serves to sweep things under the rug which we all know doesn't really clean anything. Thank you very much.

Alright. Next speaker is gonna be Des Martinez. And again, if you would like to speak, I'd appreciate filling out a yellow card and bringing it up to the clerk.

Fresno keeps telling taxpayers that this enforcement strategy is working. So let's actually talk about the cost. When the city responds to an encampment, they don't involve one employee. They involve multiple employees, multiple police officers, multiple code enforcement officers, multiple sanitation workers, paddy wagon, transport vehicles, booking staff, city attorneys, and court administration. After all that, many people are released within thirty minutes and eventually offered the same shelter or services that could have been offered in the first five minutes of contact.

So let's do the math. Even if we do a conservative estimate, just 3,000 per enforcement and arrest cycle, and honestly, that's probably low, the city has already admitted to arresting over 1,000 unhoused individual under these policies. That's roughly $3,000,000. $3,000,000 of taxpayers' dollars spent cycling through cycling human beings through enforcement systems instead of solving the housing shortage. $3,000,000 that could have gone towards prevention, mental healthcare, housing navigation, sanitation and infrastructure, safe parking, affordable housing development, or even extra shelter expansion.

And that doesn't even include ambulance costs, emergency room visits, medical spending, psychiatric crisis, repeat arrests, lawsuits, or even long term system stream. So the question taxpayers should be asking is this, why is Fresno funding the most expensive response possible to homelessness while claiming there isn't enough money for housing? Because the end result is supposed to be shelter placement, then why are we paying millions of dollars for handcuffs first? And the costs do not stop after the arrest, because nine times out of ten, the individual being arrested is already in physical distress, mental distress, withdrawal crisis, dehydration, or severe health decline from surviving outside. So what happens next?

Now we call an ambulance. Now we involve emergency medical services. Now involve the emergency room. Now the state funded health care systems like Medi Cal start absorbing the cost that could have been prevented from you in the first place with housing and stabilization. And while that individual sits in a hospital bed, often because they were living outside with nowhere to go, the city now has officers standing guard at the hospital for hours.

Think about that. Taxpayers are paying police officers to babysit us at the hospital beds because we didn't have nowhere to go. Now this is backwards, and this is how backwards the system is. We're using police officers as social workers, jails as triage centers, emergency rooms as shelters, and hospitals as holding cells. These are some of the most expensive systems the government operates. And after all of that spending, after all of those employees, after all of those emergency responses, the city still ends up the same question at the end of the day. Do you want shelter? So why didn't you guys ask that?

You, Des. Next, speaker is gonna be David Burchardy.

Hi. My name is David Borchardt. I'd like to thank you for the second homeless assistance program team. I think that's a very good idea. My understanding is a lot of these people, after doing ride alongs with the police force, have been seen at least three times minimum by the police and are fully aware of the 11 plus programs the city and the county offers for the services. A lot of them do not want services because they don't want rules, And having members of my own family that had problems in the past, they're now saved, through their their their, faith in Jesus Christ. They no longer have addiction problems, and they're off the streets in housing. So I think this is the best way to handle it. You're doing a great job. Thank you.

Alright. Thank you, David. I don't have any more yellow cards. Is there any additional public comments from folks who have not spoken yet? Seeing none, we're going go ahead and close the unscheduled communication. We're going to move now to adjourn this meeting, this special meeting and open up the closed session special closed session. Clerk, would you go ahead and please read that that item off?

Today in closed session, we have considered public employee appointment government section code 54957 b. Consider the appointment employment evaluation of performance, discipline, or dismissal of public employee title city clerk.

Alright. Thank you. And, we'll go ahead and take public comment on this one closed session item. If anybody in public would like to speak on the closed session, special closed session meeting item, please come forward. Seeing none, we're going to go ahead and close public comment on the closed session item, special closed meeting. We're going to adjourn open. City attorney, we don't anticipate any announcements at this point.

My

prepared comments say that we may expect to have reportable items, but

would defer I to the council on defer to you then. All right. We're going to adjourn the open session. Thank you. All right, we're wrapped up a closed session, meeting adjourned.