City Council - Regular Meeting

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All right, good morning, everyone. Welcome to the budget process for the fiscal year 27. Feels weird to say that, fiscal year 27, 2026, 2027. I'm gonna open up the meeting, the budget hearings. Clerk, would you please call the roll?

Thank you, good morning. Council Member Perea. Present. Council Member Karbasi. Council Member Arias. Vice President Maxwell. Council Member Vang.

Present.

Council Member Richardson.

Here on time.

Council President Esparza.

Present.

Five members being present, we have a quorum.

All right, fantastic. Next, I'll ask everyone, if you can, to please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. Council Member Perea, would you please lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance?

Ready, salute.

City clerk, do we have to approve the agenda up front? All right, fantastic. I'll entertain a motion for approval of today's agenda. Second. All right. Well, I'll make the motion. And Councilman Richardson, second. Is there any opposition to approving the agenda? Seeing none, that passes 6-0. All right, all right. So here's what we're going to do. We have the general fund overview. The mayor's kind of broad overview of the budget. TO BEGIN WITH, AND THEN WE HAVE FOUR DEPARTMENTS SCHEDULED FOR TODAY, GENERAL SERVICES, ISD, INFORMATION SERVICES, FINANCE DEPARTMENT, AND PARKS. SO HERE'S THE STRUCTURE FOR TODAY. WE'LL GO AHEAD AND TAKE THE MAYOR'S PRESENTATION UP FRONT. IT'S KIND OF, AGAIN, THE BROAD STROKES OF THE BUDGET AND THE GENERAL FUNDS. THEREAFTER, WE'LL DO THREE MINUTES PUBLIC COMMENT FOR FOLKS WHO WOULD LIKE TO COMMENT. in the public generally about the budget. And then what we're gonna do this budget cycle is I will provide, in addition to the required three minutes, I will do one minute per person for each individual department as well, if folks have thoughts. That'll follow the budget presentations by each department. folks will get an opportunity to speak generally to the budget here, three minutes each day, but also a minute to chime in on individual departments as well. So with that, Mayor, I'm gonna hand it on to you and you can kick it off with the general fund overview, the general overview of the budget.

Welcome. Thank you, Council President, members of the Council. I'll keep my comments brief this morning. I will have Ed Chenevert come up here shortly, and he'll get into many of the details. I've already made a presentation to you a few weeks ago, and nothing has really changed since then. We continue to be strong in terms of revenue with our property tax and sales tax to a lesser degree, as well as our room tax. We did come into the budget process with about a $34.5 million shortfall. We have taken a number of steps, as I've mentioned previously, how to bring this budget back into balance, and that has been presented to each and every one of you. We have a $2.5 billion overall budget, with the vast majority of that coming from our enterprise accounts, at about $1.1 billion. And the general fund revenue portion is at $555 million, which is the fund that we generally are concerned with. And so we have taken a number of steps. I think I told you before, this year was a little bit more challenging putting forth this budget because we did not have the American Rescue Funds to rely on. which made it much more difficult. We continue to rely on an attrition rate of 6.18% for all of our departments, with the exception of the fire department, which is not able to attain that level of attrition, as well as council. And there are five departments that are going to come in, projected to come in, above the 6.18% area. The overall appropriations by category you'll see presented to you of the $541.8 million, and employee services is the lion's share of that at 51.7%. So with that, I'm going to have Ed Chenever come up. He's going to talk about the budget in more detail, and then I'll be available for any questions you have or the staff.

Thank you. Mayor, I did want to say good morning and congratulations on your Green New Deal Award. I know you're a champion for solar, so I appreciate you supporting our progressive agenda.

And thank you to the council. $120 million savings between now and 2045, and we beat out some big cities across this nation, and we were the only one recognized as first place for that award. So thank you guys for your support on that project.

All right. Good morning, Council President, members of the City Council. I'm Edward Chenevere, the Assistant Director for Budget and Management Studies. And today begins the fiscal year 2027 budget review hearings. Those will start with my presentation of the general fund overview. Following that, each department will present their budget for review. The format of the reviews is similar to last year in that department directors will present an overview of their budget, and staff will be available to address questions from council members. Also, similar to years past, we'd like to request that if you do make a motion and it receives a second, it would be very helpful if you could provide your motions in writing by email to myself, the city clerk, and the city manager. The same applies to any requests for information. It would be super helpful if you can provide those in writing as well so that we can return a memoranda as quickly as possible addressing your questions. Council motions will be voted on Tuesday, June 16th, and the enabling documents are scheduled for adoption on Tuesday, June 23rd. With that, I'll begin my presentation of the general fund overview, starting with a discussion of the general fund's major revenue categories, followed by a discussion of the general fund budgeted expenditures by major category and department. Thank you.

Cruising too fast here, there we go.

All right, slide two shows the general fund revenues totaling $555.3 million by major category. You'll see that property tax equates to 38.3% and sales tax to 27.5% of total, making up nearly two-thirds of general fund revenues. The other categories, including business tax, room tax, charges for services, and all other revenue comprise the remaining third. The 73.5 million all other revenue category is broken out here as well, but I will cover that category in more detail on a later slide. Slide three shows the recent history and change for each revenue category, starting with FY 2025 actual receipts, followed by the FY 2026 amended budget, then the estimate for each revenue category for the FY 2026 fiscal year, and finally, the FY 2027 proposed budget and the change from that budget to that budget from the FY 2026 estimate. general fund property tax continues to grow from year to year and is estimated to grow by five point nine four percent from estimate based on an analysis of the five-year historical trend and the growth in assessed values from the city of fresno as published by the county of fresno office of the assessor recorder As noted on this slide, an annual set-aside for the Enhanced Infrastructure Financing District, or EIFD, also continues to grow. This set-aside is not included in general fund revenues since it is restricted according to the adopted EIFD documents. General fund sales tax is projected at 152.7 million, an increase of 2.8% over the FY2026 estimate of 148.5 million, which was also a meaningful improvement over FY2025's receipts of 141.6 million, demonstrating improving year-over-year sales tax growth. Both property tax and sales tax will be presented in more detail on a later slide. Business tax has continued steadily growing with the FY2027 estimate of 3.76% based on its three-year average adjusted for an anticipated benefit from an information sharing agreement with the California Department of Tax and Fee Administration. Room tax is estimated to grow at 6.09% in line with its three-year average adjusted to account for new lodging coming online. Charges for current services are estimated at $45.3 million, which is a $3.1 million decrease below the FY2026 estimate due to a comparison with FY2026's one-time fire department revenues and a technical reclassification of the budgeted revenue for public safety services provided to other city departments. Those are now classified as intra-governmental revenue. and that's primarily the park ranger program and police services provided to fax and airports. All other revenue is estimated to grow at 5% and will be discussed in more detail on the next slide. Total operating revenue then is the sum of property tax, sales tax, business tax, room tax, charges for current service, and all other revenues and is expected to grow at 3.53%. Carryover from FY2026 to FY2027 is $28.8 million, which is a decrease of 16.19% from the carryover from FY2025 to FY2026. This primarily reflects the planned spend down of general fund capital projects. As noted in the mayor's letter included with the published budget, carryover includes adjustments projected as departments finalized accounting for the end of the fiscal year and benefited from internal service fund allocation adjustments and efficiencies, the sale of Sequoia Brewing, revised estimates from our sales tax consultant, American Rescue Plan Act project savings, and a payment from the Fig Garden Fire Protection District. After accounting for carryover, total revenues for FY2027 are estimated at $555.3 million, an increase of 2.28% from FY2026. Slide 4 shows a further breakdown of the all other revenues category from the previous slide. Franchise fees are expected to grow at 5.73% over the FY2026 estimate and include fees for Comcast, AT&T, PG&E, roll-off bins, and commercial solid waste. Intergovernmental revenue includes revenue from other agencies such as contracts with schools for providing resource officers through the police department, along with SB 90, which reimburses the city for costs to comply with state mandates. Intra-governmental revenues include the city's cost allocation plan, which reimburses the general fund for citywide services provided for the benefit of departments funded from other revenue sources, such as public utility funds, transportation, public works, Measure P, etc. As I previously noted when discussing charges for services, this category increased due to a technical reclassification of the budgeted revenue for public safety services and as provided to other city departments. So this is the other side of that technical reclassification. Cannabis revenues are projected at 3.3 million based on 2.9 million in projected tax generation after the required contribution to the community benefit fund and 0.4 million in permit and renewal fees. Prop 172 sales tax allows us to receive a portion of sales tax revenue for the provision of public safety activities. The real estate transfer applies $1.10 per $1,000 to transactions when a home is being sold. The city's general fund card room projection includes an increase of 2.54% based on the most recent full year of receipts, but that's offset by a reduction of $440,000 due to the regulations issued by the California Department of Justice on April 1st. The 12% set aside of card room funds for parks was also reduced by $60,000 based on that regulation. Should that regulation not take effect, we would expect revenues for those respective funds to increase by that amount. All other revenue accounts for any items that don't fit into any of the categories above, such as refunds, donations, property loss recoveries, sales of real property, unclaimed property, and obsolete items. The category represents less than one half of 1% of the total general fund. Slide five shows sales tax over 10 years. This year, we're expecting about 152.7 million, and the estimate takes into account an updated city county tax sharing agreement approved by this council, which became effective on July 1st, 2025, which revised the city's share of sales taxes from 0.9469% to 0.95. In recent quarters, sales tax receipts have returned to stable growth, and as such, the projection reflects this improvement. The estimate is based on guidance provided by our sales tax consultant, HDL, with information available through the fourth quarter of 2025, reflecting sales tax receipts through December. HDL provides estimates on a quarterly basis, and their median estimates have been within about 4.5% of actuals, with FY2026 sales tax data published through March by the California Department of Taxes and Fee Administration within 0.2% of their fourth quarter estimate, which was used as the basis of the FY2027 budget. The sales tax share by major industry group is also shown on this slide as well, with the top three categories, business and industry, general consumer goods, and state and county pools accounting for over 56% of sales tax. Slide 6 shows the 10-year history of property tax. You'll see that it's projected at $212.9 million for FY2027, growing in line with the five-year trend. Also reiterated on this slide is the EIFD set-aside, which allocates one-third of property tax increases for properties located within the EIFD to a dedicated fund. The FY2027 set aside is estimated to be $1.7 million. Moving on to the expense side of the budget, slide seven shows a breakdown of the proposed FY2027 appropriations, totaling $541.8 million. Personnel categories include employee services at fifty one point seven percent of the budget health and welfare at six point three retirement at eight point zero repayment of the pension obligation bond at two point four and workers compensation at seven point zero Those personnel categories altogether account for seventy five percent of the total expenditure budget approximately four hundred and nine million The personnel budget includes natural attrition for general fund departments. Operations and maintenance totals 47.1 million, or 8.7% of the total budget, and minor capital totals 10.6 million, or 2.0%. With regard to those categories, each department was asked to provide a list of ideas to reduce non-personnel expenditures in FY2027, and reductions were made through the realization of efficiencies and strategic use of non-general fund resources to minimize any impact to public-facing services. Interdepartmental charges or ID charges are 73.5 million. ID charges are charges to internal service departments allocated to departments providing direct services. For example, the information services department budget is funded by allocations to the police department, public works, parks, etc. Based on the number of employees and technology used in those departments. Efforts to control internal service charges included natural attrition targets at 6.18% to align with direct service departments. And similar to last year, each internal service fund was budgeted to end the year with a $0 fund balance. Contingency of $1.6 million represents the variable personnel and operations expenditures for each council district being re-elected this year. Consistent with prior election years, those appropriations will be transferred into the respective districts at the start of the newly elected or re-elected council members term. And that's for one half of the year. Yep. That's just my hype music. Just a little. All right. Are we ready? Great. Okay, so this slide, make sure I'm on the right one here. Slide 8 shows the FY25 appropriations by departments. And this is really an introduction to the rest of the hearings, as each department will present their budget to the council over the next few days. Public safety, including police and fire, represent approximately 68.6% of the total general fund expenditure budget. And other direct service departments, including planning and development, at 6.2%. City attorney and code at 5.8%. Public works at 3.5%, parks at 3.4%, the Fresno Animal Center at 1.8%, and public utilities, the general fund portion of that, at 0.4%. The remaining general government departments, including finance, city council, mayor and city manager, and city clerk, collectively account for about 10.3% of the budget. In summary, on slide nine, the mayor's proposed FY2027 general fund revenues are $28.8 million in prior year carryover and $526.5 million in operating revenues for total general fund sources of $555.3 million. Uses of the general fund are operating expenditures at $541.8 million, transfers for debt service on existing debt obligations of $13.1 million, and net transfers between funds of $0.4 million for total general fund uses of $555.3 million. And this concludes my presentation of the mayor's proposed balanced FY2027 general fund budget. And with that, we welcome any questions that you may have.

Thank you, Edward. We'll bring it back up here. First punch up, I have Councilman Barrios.

Could you remind me, what is the anticipated sales tax growth and property tax growth in this proposed budget?

Sure. Give me one second here. Sales tax growth is 2.8%, and property tax growth is 5.94%.

How close is that to the last proposed budget, what you guys proposed, and what was the final actuals?

How close is that to last year's proposed budget from the previous year's actuals? From the actuals.

Every year you guys recommend a proposed sales tax and property tax percentage. And then we go through the year and then we get the actuals. What was the delta? What was the difference? You mean the 26?

Correct. You want to know kind of where we landed for fiscal 26? Okay.

Yeah, that's great.

I have that if you want me to answer. So what we originally proposed in FY26 was before economic incentives and sales tax, it was $144.5 million. We had two very good quarters. So when we came in at mid-year, to start the year, we had two good quarters. So when we came in at mid-year, we revised that number up to $148,451,000. So we beat the amended by about 4.26%. Excuse me, we beat the budget by 4.26% for the current year. And we have received one more quarter since then, and it's very close to what this revised estimate upward, very close.

So do you anticipate also beating the proposed percentage? Because from our perspective, right, we're adopting a proposed percentage as part of the budget. We can either go higher on that projected percentage or go lower. Higher if we have way too many budget motions that we're trying to adopt a balanced budget. Are you guys on the conservative side or on the opposite?

I'll just say that that was one of the reasons why we revised our projected 2.8% above was based on our actuals that we were coming in stronger. Initially, when we started the budget process, we were lower than that. And then we elevated that projection upward based on those actuals that we were receiving. So we feel relatively good that we're where we need to be right now. We're still above what HDL projects, but we feel very good, and Ruthie may want to comment on anything I said there that was inaccurate, but it was based on actuals that we elevated our projected PERCENTAGE INCREASE FOR FY27.

SO LAST YEAR WE WERE OFF BY, WE OVER PERFORMED BY ABOUT 4%, CORRECT?

ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT THE CURRENT YEAR, FY26?

YES.

FOR FY26 WE ESTIMATED GROWTH ORIGINALLY WITH THE ORIGINAL ADOPTED BUDGET OF 1.53 AND WE CAME IN AT 4.26 SO FAR BASED ON THE INFORMATION THAT WE HAVE AS OF NOW.

All right, thank you. I think if I recall last year, we projected that we were going to be 2.02% increase in sales tax.

Mayor, I'm maybe looking at a spreadsheet that has net of the economic incentives. Yes. So that could be where we're off just slightly.

Okay.

But the point is that for the current year, it was about a percent and a half growth over last year's estimate, but then we got better information. So for mid-year in our revisions that we're presenting to you now, we estimate that to be not 1.5 plus 4.2, but just overall 4.2 better.

What about for property tax? Same question.

I'm sorry, for property tax, same question. For property tax, we came in with the adopted budget at a 5.99% increase. And what we actually realized once we got information from the county with the rolls is that we would be at 6.16%. So that is the, so we had just, I mean, almost exactly, we're right there. Since then, since mid-year, we did have just a little bit of adjustments based on certain collections here or there. So we're back down to about 5.94% for the current year. So hovering right around 6% at all points in time.

Okay. And is that what's in the proposed budget, about 6%?

It is, yep, 5.94%. Okay.

I don't know if I missed it, but did you reference a reserve?

I did not, but I do have the reserve balance. Give me one second here.

Would that be your budget that officially presents a reserve, or what department presents a reserve?

That would be us, yeah. So the general fund reserve for FY2026 is estimated at $47.7 million. In FY2027, there's a $1.9 million increase associated with interest to the reserve to end the FY2027 budget at $49.6 million, and that represents 9.2% of total expenditures.

What's our reserve policy?

So the reserve policy is to have 10% of expenditures. Yep.

And is staff recommending additional investment to reserve to reach a 10% or just allowing the interest to incur?

So for this budget, it's just interest. And that's how it's been for the past several cycles, with the exception of last year when we did suspend the interest percentage to balance last year's budget.

On the revenue side, you mentioned other. What properties make up the proposed budget and the revenues of sales of those properties? And the other category that includes whenever we sell city real estate, what real estate did we sell in the last year that is encompassed in this category?

The only one that I know off the top of my head is the sale of the Sequoia Brewing property, but I can look into that and see if there's any other sales. What was the sales price for that again?

And I just signed the documents for the bricks property in District 1. That was the money that we previously told you was going to be used to help make the helicopter payment. And frankly, it was a lot less than what we were originally hoping for a couple years ago. But I literally just signed the closing documents last week.

What was the sale of the Sequoia building for?

Yeah, the sale of Sequoia Brewing was $931,700.

And I recall we also sold some other assets, parcels up north on Herndon, I believe, in a recent action by the council.

So he's talking about the Blosser property, Ed. The original amount came in in a previous, I believe fiscal 25 even maybe, but you're talking about the additional amount that just came in, I think about 250,000, if I remember. So that will be reflected in the fiscal 26 carryover. once we settle everything. But you're correct, you guys just approved that, I don't know, three meetings or four meetings ago.

So that's not included in this proposed budget, the revenue?

I don't think so, because I think the budget was pretty much put to bed by the time. So I think ultimately, you know, that gets reflected in the final carryover numbers.

Is the Sequoia building also in the carryover numbers? Because that was recently sold, right?

Yep, Sequoia is in the budget. Yep, that's accounted for.

How? But that sale just closed, what, a month ago?

That one, we had enough data at the time of building the budget to estimate that we would receive that payment.

So is the standard protocol that all sales of real estate assets go to this general fund?

No, generally they'll go to whichever funding source, purchase them in accordance with whatever restrictions or covenants may have been in place associated with that purchase.

So the Sequoia Brewing revenue, where did that go? That was general fund. So it's just in the black hole of the general fund? It wasn't set aside to go into the parks department or to a fund that would eventually maintain the Tower Theater?

Right, so that portion of the purchase was from the general fund, and so the sale of that asset went back to the general fund as well.

What department maintains the Tower Theater Fund?

It's included in the General City Purpose Department, and I oversee the operations there, the operator.

So the money of the sale of Sequoia didn't go back to a General City Services Fund?

I'm sorry, Miguel?

Did the proceeds of the Sequoia Brewing Building... not going to General City Fund?

General City Purpose has various operations included and some of them are General Fund. And this particular, so, yes. I mean, for instance, the annual cost that we pay the operator is General Fund is a general fund source, but it goes through General City Purpose.

I'm trying to be very clear about this, so maybe I'm just confusing everyone. The Tower Theater property, the parcel itself, included Sequoia Brewing Building. When that building was sold for nearly a million dollars, Did that money remain in the department, General City Services Department, that maintains the Tower Theater and the remaining parcel that's still city-owned? Or did the money go to General Fund for reallocation citywide?

Mayor, I can give it a shot, but if you'd like to.

So the purchase came out of General Fund, so the sale went back into General Fund. There is also revenue that comes in to the city for operations. Correct, Ruthie?

Mayor, I apologize. On this one, I will just add some clarification, which is that the purchase was a combination of Measure P and general fund dollars. We had always had the intention of subdividing out the Sequoia Brewery parcel, which we finally did, went through the process for surplus land, and then now we were able to sell it.

Yep. Here's my overarching concern. As Ruthie pointed out, when we purchased the block, we used general funds and Measure P funds. The intention was that whatever sales of those buildings that we did not retain, Miennets or Sequoia Brewery, the proceeds would remain in the department to maintain the historical asset of the Tower Theater. Right now, the Tower Theater is under the General City Purpose Fund Department. But the Tower Theater, correct me if I'm wrong, is also eligible for Measure P funds, correct? Because we purchased it with Measure P funds.

Yep, that's correct. The General Fund, or the Measure P portion that was used to purchase the Tower Theater is associated with the entertainment and community aspects that are open to the public, consistent with the Measure P ordinance.

So what is, you guys, is... what funding source would you use to make renovations and improvements and preservation to a tower theater if you use a proceeds to spread them out citywide to a general fund? It's a historical building, so there's going to need some significant maintenance over the years.

Yep, so currently, the operation of the Tower Theater, where the revenue is lower than the expenditure cost, that subsidy is currently coming from the general fund, not from Measure P. So right now the general fund is funding the majority of expenditures.

So council member, I just want to clarify. So just so we're clear, all money comes into the general fund, like property tax, sale tax, like that's the big pot. And then... OPERATING DEPARTMENTS GET ALLOCATED MONEY FROM THE GENERAL FUND AND OTHER FUNDING SOURCES. THE GENERAL CITY PURPOSE DEPARTMENT IS SORT OF A CATCH ALL DEPARTMENT FOR VARIOUS FUNDS IN THE CITY THAT THEN GET REALLOCATED. So in General City Purpose, where the Tower Theater operations operates out of, we also get the revenue from the operations of the Tower Theater from the vendor who operates it. So we get the revenue from the vendor, any of our gross profit or net profit, I should say, from the vendor goes back into operate it as well as general fund resources. If we dyed those dollars purple, they come into the general fund, and of those purple dollars go back into the general city purpose department, sure. But we... the money, everything flows into the general fund and then it gets allocated. So we have been operating the general fund. Ruthie is in charge of that and all of the resources, what we're doing right now, the fire panel improvement, security, maintenance, any of those that are our responsibility per our agreement with the vendor, anything that is a city requirement is either coming from the revenue that it generates from events or from the general fund. I don't believe we have Measure P right now being used for the Tower Theater.

And confirm for me that the Tower Theater doesn't make enough of a profit to offset all costs to maintain the Tower Theater, correct? That's why the general fund is kicking in.

That's correct. They do not.

So how much is the general fund kicking into the Tower Theater?

I need to get back to you on that. But we are, in these first few years, we have invested a significant amount in order to bring certain things up to where they needed to be. And they are doing fine. They're doing well regarding their events. They are just not making enough to be able to make those levels of investments.

The reason I'm pressing on this question is that our intention was whatever proceeds we generate from that block would remain in the Tower Theater so that we don't replicate the Veterans Auditorium across the street. that's been in disarray for more than a decade and whose deferred cost is over $10 million now. Because over the years, we never made the big investments. We're supposed to keep the proceeds in that area At least that was our intention when we acquired it, city manager.

Well, it may have been yours when you were in the mediation, agreeing to buy it, but there was never anything that said that that is what we had to do. But I'll go back and argue that there are significant general fund resources that are going to operate the Tower Theater. Whether it is those color of those dollars, the purple dollars or not, it doesn't matter. They're general fund dollars. They flow in through the general fund. They go to the department to operate the Tower Theater. That's not, we don't generally, unless it's on the enterprise side, we generally do not allow departments to quote, keep their money. We don't have departments that keep revenue that may be generated unless it's a legal requirement or an enterprise function, or it's a fee for service. That's the way we've always functioned as a city.

In my experience, when we've sold fire department assets, the revenue remains in the fire department. The revenue what? When we sell public utilities assets, the revenue remains in public utilities.

they're an enterprise as i said unless it's an enterprise department but when it's a general fund asset it comes back into the general fund let me just say that whenever uh impact fees are utilized to purchase property like belmont dewitt for police headquarters when that sells there's about 731 000 or so that goes back into the impact fee account yes

So where are we at with the sale of the remainder of the buildings on that parcel that we don't intend to keep? And where in this budget are you proposing to put the money of the proceeds?

The other parcel that was contemplated was the Mianed side. However, immediately we began discussions with them. They have no intention of purchasing that property, do not want to be a land or a real property owner there. They would very much like to continue operating. It's one of the few stores that the Milano Group still has, and they very much want to keep operating under the lease arrangements we have with them, but they do not want to buy the property.

Do you not anticipate any sale of real estate in that block in this budget year?

No, we don't.

Okay.

Thank you. My other question is the card room. I understand the question of what's allowed to take place in a card room is stuck in the courts, but we already are anticipating the reduction in revenue?

Right. So as of the time of the budget build, the regulation had been issued. So in order to make sure that we didn't appropriate funds that were at risk, we reduced the estimate by the $500,000 for 40 general funds, 60 in the parks department.

I recall a few years ago when the city made the determination on the additional tables they had to put up for sale. I think my colleague here got called the killer of a business enterprise, I think. Murder of small businesses. Something like that. Yeah. That was the most fun one. IT WAS PROPOSED TO US THAT IF THE CITY WAS TO AWARD CLUB ONE CASINO ALL THE AVAILABLE TABLES THAT WE HAD REMAINING IN THE CITY, THAT THEY WOULD BE INCREASING REVENUE BY TWO MILLION. WHERE IS THAT PROMISE AND HAVE THEY ACTIVATED THOSE TABLES?

DID YOU SAY IT WAS GOING TO INCREASE BY TWO MILLION?

IT WAS GOING TO DOUBLE THE REVENUE.

I DON'T RECALL THAT EVER BEING THE NUMBER BECAUSE THAT WOULD LITERALLY HAVE TO BE MORE THAN DOUBLING THE AMOUNT OF TABLES.

I mean, you can look at the recordings. I recall it was we're going to get a slush fund of doubling the revenue to $2 million a year.

Oh, I thought you meant an additional $2 million. Okay. Okay. I thought that's what you said. We will go back and look. I believe that they just finished the build out. So we did not budget.

How many years has it been that we awarded the tables? Oh, probably four, probably two and a half years, at least two and a half years ago. Been like five, five.

No, it's not been five.

It was a post pandemic. So it would have, it would have probably been 21. End of 21. Yeah.

August of 21. Wow.

It takes that long to do building renovations.

I don't know what to tell you other than we processed the application. They were building out the tables. They were, you know, I think they probably were waiting for the recovery from the pandemic to make sure that there was customers for the new tables. But we don't.

Do they not have a deadline on when to activate tables? Do they lose them?

I don't believe that they did. Other than whatever the, I don't think there was a deadline on the CUP or anything like that. No, I don't believe there was a deadline.

I can tell you part of what happened was at the same time, Table Mountain went through a significant renovation, enhanced their property. And the local card room play is not as much as they had anticipated.

Yeah, the market changes. I anticipate that. But there was a promise made of revenues, and we were sold on awarding and creating a monopoly of card room operator in the city with that promise, and that has not come to fruition. But you're already assuming the reduction in revenue from the card room. That's right, yep.

Well, at the time of the budget build, that's because it was the state of where the regulations were. But I know that I believe there is an injunction that has been made. And so the, you know, like I said, like what Ed said, he didn't want to overestimate and then have us have to come back and cut half a million dollars. So the current state of the litigation, I believe there's an injunction in place AGAINST THE STATE SO THAT THEY CANNOT IMPOSE THOSE REDUCTIONS. SO WE WILL LIKELY SEE, YOU KNOW, THE INCREASE ABOVE WHAT WE PUT IN THE BUDGET, CONSISTENT WITH PRIOR YEAR REVENUES.

WHAT WAS THE, WHERE DID THE 12% SET-ASIDE FOR THE CARD ROOM GO TOWARDS THE LAST COUPLE YEARS?

Are you talking about the District 4? Still in the account? Yeah, it goes into an account.

Has it not been expended?

No. Because the way that the resolution was written, there was not anything that was eligible to spend the money on.

How much money do we have in that set-aside account?

I can get that in about 60 seconds here.

Estimated at the end of FY27, $502,600.

And the resolution maintains the set aside in existence even though there hasn't been expended?

Yep.

We're building a savings.

Okay.

Those are all my questions. Thank you for your presentation, staff.

Thank you.

I don't have anyone else punched up. All right, then. So what we'll do now is we will go to... to public comments. So if anyone is here in the public who would like to speak, you'll have three minutes to comment on the budget, this presentation, anything related to the budget really. And then again, folks will have an additional one minute for each department if they would like to speak specifically to something. But for now, I'd invite the public If you want to comment on today's public comment on the budget, you have three minutes. Going once, going twice. Oh, you know, I have a yellow card here. I apologize. I have Rosalina or Giovanna. Is that both of you? Welcome. I missed that.

Good morning everyone. I'm going to be brief, but I hope you can understand me.

Yes, thank you. Yeah, they are. But I said you didn't know last that the C. O. N. S. or like you that you've been going to the street. The press. They'll at three pounds. Yeah, the Jane Adams.

And I'm here today. I live in district three. I live in the three palms area.

Is that you will be on the list that is capable for no say you didn't in las areas and this is community that is the Bacchus ingressos. Que hay entry pumps, no hace mucho una señora murió por el heat, por el calor. Se le descompuso su swamp cooler, el aire condicionado. No supo qué hora se le apagó, pero ella murió y nadie se daba cuenta hasta las tres semanas.

I am here to ask you for help, mostly to invest in our communities, in our neighborhoods. Recently, there was a woman in the park, Three Palms Park, and she died because of extreme heat. It was one of those weeks where it was a very long heat wave, and her swamp cooler, it was 108. and her swamp cooler gave out and she passed away. No one noticed. I think someone finally noticed after three weeks. So that's why I'm here asking for investment in our communities.

Yes, because we live in a trailer park and the trailers or the mobile homes are real thin wall and they get warm or hot real quick. And so another thing that we're asking is for more secure on those areas because it's a lot of construction right now for the fast trend. And then we also ask for additional streetlights and just safe routes to school, particularly going to the Jane Adams Elementary. También tenemos el problema del agua. Es una contaminación muy fuerte que hay que nos ocasiona el agua. Después de cinco años de estar ahí, nos ha empezado a salir como granitos o rash en la piel por el agua contaminada. Anda la ciudad poniendo ahorita, pero no van a cambiar los pipes, las pipas.

So we're also asking for support with our water. There is a lot of water contamination. We know that the city is currently working to fix that problem, the connecting to water, but we know that they're not going to change the pipes. And so right now we are, you know, when we use the water, we have a lot of like rashes, bumps. And so we ask that, you know, there's some investment in at least also changing the pipes.

Otra cosa también, la contaminación del aire. Ahí está muy fuerte, 724. Las personas, una vez que llegan a vivir ahí, después de los tres años, empiezan a tener el asma. Okay. no nos escuchan por favor tienen fondos para que nos ayuden pero no lo hacen me gustaría invitarlos a alguien de ustedes que quisieran comprobar y sentir lo que uno siente vivir en esas comunidades de bajos ingresos para que sientan como se siente uno o como vive

And then I also want to uplift the issue with air quality contamination. We do see that this impacts kids, particularly younger kids. We see that they develop asthma after three years of living there. We're very much impacted by that. We also see that there is a quarry nearby, and so when they whatever it is that they do, we do see that there's a pollution that comes out from there and it blows into the Jane Adams Elementary School. So we do ask that you invest in trying to prevent the air quality contamination. Also, I've been living here for 20 plus years. And so I invite you to come to my neighborhood and walk around and see what we are going through so you can better understand the needs of our communities.

Tree palms. por favor, nos ayuden con parques, porque esa area, no tenemos parque para que nuestras criaturas puedan divertirse, tengan una actividad, ¿verdad? Y no se mantengan adentro de la mobile home, viendo teléfonos, tele o algo, y no tengan ninguna actividad física. Por favor, les ayudamos. Les pedimos la ayuda a ustedes con esto. Muchísimas gracias.

And the last thing is investment in parks. We don't have a park nearby. And so, you know, that's very much needed in our community, in the Jane Addams, Three Palms area. Thank you.

Thank you. Excuse me, was that Rosalina?

That was her.

Okay. Okay.

any additional public comments on the budget generally of course yeah welcome sorry um yeah thank you all and um just a quick comment about the parks i know a lot of residents that live in villa mobile home park couldn't make it and so one of their requests is um if the unassigned funds for measure p could be invested into either um acquiring or land purposing repurposing or designing of a park in that area um that's just been a really great need in that community as you kind of heard from rosalina and then a lot of folks couldn't make it because they're at work but just wanted to make that ask thank you all right thank you all right any uh additional public comments you have three minutes on the budget

Hi, Council. My name is Arianna, and good to be here this morning. Glad that folks are talking about the general fund. I wanted to uplift the ask for more parks. I've seen this be a really important public safety measure. So I lived in Hayward for a few years, and they had a people's budget project. And in my neighborhood, everyone over the age of 10 got to vote on what that money would go to. The neighborhood I lived in got $50,000. I didn't vote because I was a new district and I wanted to respect the autonomy of people in that neighborhood. I was a new resident in that district and I wanted to respect the autonomy of people who were going to keep living there when I moved back to Fresno. And so they did two projects, a night market, and then they asked the local area Parks and Recreation District to match $15,000 for a new park. So less than a mile from where I was living and where we still own a house, there is a park. And people that live there now go for a run. We saw a huge improvement in safety because there's three schools nearby, two elementary schools and a high school. And so when I first moved in, I would see the kids there doing things that didn't feel like were gonna be safe. And in that time, I got to see a huge shift. Kids use the park, people come to clean it up, people want to keep it clean. And so I really wanna uplift like having more public spaces. I got to use the Broadway Park yesterday for the first time and it was beautiful. And also kind of thinking about practically what makes sense for our community. I saw a lot of small trees there and that area gets really hot. So my devices were overheating, you know, and that made it really difficult. So I just want to uplift the people's invitation for council to be a little bit less removed from our lived experience and, you know, accept the invitation to understand what those neighbors are experiencing with heat waves where we have both neighbors who are housed and unhoused. who are passing away from the heat wave. So we do need a lot more investment in our community. Thank you.

Thank you. Any additional public comments on the budget? Okay, seeing, now we're gonna close public comments. That'll conclude that portion for today. But again, I will provide some additional comments opportunities on each department for specific input. So that brings us to our first department. See, we're going to go with the general services department first.

Okay. Good morning, Council President Esparza and council members. I am Brian Barr, Director of General Services.

Okay.

So General Services is responsible for supporting the city's core services. This includes facility management, fleet management, purchasing, trolley service, and other administrative support functions. General Services is an internal service fund provider. Like all ISFs, our expenses are recovered from the services provided to our customers. However, the purchasing division is supported by the general fund and is offset by charges to capital improvement projects for procurement services. Our FY25, excuse me, FY27 budget totals $78 million, which is an increase of $9 million over the FY26 amended budget. I will cover the key reasons for the increases in a few minutes. No new positions are requested. However, General Services has one notable change to support the administration's goal of centralized core services. One vacant business process and system analyst will transfer from General Services into the Information Services Department. All right, we have several notable operational impacts included in the proposed budget. Number one, our new vehicle acquisition budget is $3.8 million, which includes 134 vehicles. Of the 134 acquisitions, 124 will replace vehicles or equipment that has exceeded their useful life. Number two, the budget includes an appropriation transfer from parks and public works into fleet management. In the adopted FY26 budget, the small engine landscape maintenance shop and its three employees were transferred from public works to general services. However, due to timing, the appropriations for parts and inventory cannot be transferred until FY27. Number three, the budget includes $50,000 for the replacement of controls at our liquid natural gas fueling station located at the Municipal Service Center. This fueling station is primarily used by public utilities to fuel their refuse truck fleet. Number four, the budget includes 45,000 for contract janitorial services at City Hall, specifically to increase day porter staff from one to two employees, effectively restoring City Hall janitorial service levels to pre FY25. Number five, the budget includes $29,000 in appropriations for non-permanent salaries and overtime for trolley charter and special services. There is no general fund contribution with this item as the appropriations are offset by self-generated revenue from charters. So our budget includes several notable programs and initiatives. Number one, the budget includes $462,000 to rehabilitate the sewer lift station serving City Hall. This is a private facility located in the south parking lot that has not seen a major overhaul since it was last built in the 1990s. The budget includes $200,000 to begin initial engineering and planning for the addition of EV chargers at the municipal service center as required to implement the advanced clean fleets regulation. Number three, this budget includes $120,000 to replace a 15-year-old HVAC boiler in City Hall. And number four, the budget includes $80,000 for a building assessment of City Hall by qualified engineers to forecast our capital equipment replacement needs for the next decade. In terms of the Fresno Hop operations, operations continue to grow. To highlight a few notable achievements, year-over-year passenger trips grew by 7% with more than 7,500 passenger trips in our regular service. This year we began offering charter services to private parties. In fact, we chartered our first wedding last weekend, very successful. The response has been extremely positive and we are projecting strong growth in FY27. Last year, council approved 10,000 in appropriations to fund charters requested by council districts. These appropriations were rebudgeted. Finally, I would like to thank the mayor, leadership from Georgia and the city manager's office, and most importantly, the team behind me. They are dedicated to our mission and are responsible for the heavy lifting that every department relies on. Council President, this concludes my remarks. I am available for questions.

All right. Thank you. I got Council Member Richardson punched up for you.

Good morning, Director Barr. Good morning. Did you say the $10,000 for the other services was rebudgeted? That's correct. Meaning budgeted again this year or just put back into the budget?

So you have, the council has $10,000 for charter services in the proposed budget. Okay.

I appreciate it. Looking through the budget, budget for your department looking under fleet replacement. Line item 654304, the ONS repair and maintenance, outside repair and maintenance of vehicles is expected in 2027 to almost double. Is there a reason that we're expecting that?

So you read a little faster than I can turn a page. Can you repeat the line item? Yes. This is on page 114.

If you're working out of the skinny binder, under fleet replacement, versus the girth year binder, Council President. We're looking at 2026 amended budget, 354,000, moving up to 620,000 this year. Is there a reason we expect or we're projecting that to almost double?

One second here. Oh, so that's related to the vehicle acquisitions, new vehicle acquisitions. So those are us sending out vehicles for upfit to outside vendors. So that's not related to any sort of repair or maintenance ongoing. That's related to actual new acquisitions.

Okay. All right. Equipment leases. We also found ourselves climbing by $5 million from $7 million to just over $12 million in the next portion. Can you speak to that a little bit, please?

Yes, so there were a number of acquisitions in the FY26 budget that were lease financed. Many of those payments hit this year. Our first payment hits in FY27, and that significant increase, majority of it are those acquisitions.

Does that mean that going forward we can expect, since those are on some sort of lease program, that that big jump will kind of stay consistent throughout the next few fiscal years?

As long as we keep buying vehicles and master lease schedule, that will increase.

Okay. And then finally, fleet accidents, the next section there. We had zero in the budget, 2024, 25, or 26 with the amended. And 2027, we're looking at almost 700,000. Can you just explain to the layman why that is?

Great question, Council Member. So accidents were moved to their own fund for the FY27 budget cycle to better track how we're doing on accidents citywide. Previously, that was under the fleet operations budget. Got it. Okay, that makes sense.

Moving on, I'm not going to waste time with the information systems equipment, facility repairs and replacement. I think that'll make sense as well. And that is, that should be all I had. I know you guys are doing what you can trying to fit the attrition for the city to kind of help out. I know you guys are having right around that 0.1% attrition rate. And I know it's difficult when you've got to man all the vehicles and maintain all the vehicles and acquire all the stuff and fix all the buildings and everything else. So appreciate your work. That's all I had at this time. Thank you.

Brian, sorry if I missed this, is the route still the same for Fresno Hop?

Correct.

Okay, just the same three stops? Fresno State and downtown and the Tower District. Got it. I have a request for information, just a memo detailing the trolley's charter service fees?

Sure.

Okay, thank you. We'll get that in writing as well. So I know you mentioned, I mean, we have the charters and you had a wedding last week.

How often are the charter services being utilized roughly? That's a great question. So we've been really advertising this for really the past six months, and we have completed 27 charters. We're projecting to complete 27 charters for a total of $35,000 in revenue this year. So we are set to increase that for next year significantly.

27 over six months? Yes.

Yeah. Well, it goes full year because some of them are from council and things that we haven't advertised. But we've been getting phone calls off the hook the last few months. It's been great.

Great. Okay.

It's about one a week, roughly, give or take. Is there a special rate for nonprofits or schools? So currently the rate is $188 an hour with a two-hour minimum. But if there is a benefit to downtown Fresno that is sponsored by the city, the city manager has the ability to waive that rate. That is in the Master Fee Schedule.

Okay, great. Switching gears a little bit, when's the last time that we conducted a building assessment?

For City Hall? Yeah. It's been at least 10 years. 10 years? Yeah, so it's time for us to do another one.

We just sent out a memo on that, did we not? Yeah, we talked about it with the adhesives, the train memo that just went out.

That's kind of why it's top of mind.

And it was mentioned about a building assessment in there.

Well, as part of the budget, we will be doing that. That's the plan.

Okay. Well, I think all three elevators are operational currently. Shout out to basic functionality. That's great.

Want to make sure not a reflection of these people at all. The elevator company was very difficult to deal with. So we were able to overcome that challenge.

Great, great. Off the top of your head, and I'm not sure if this was part of the memo or not. Again, this is kind of top of the mind because of the memo. What facility improvements do we anticipate as a result of an assessment?

Well, that's kind of the whole purpose of the assessment is to bring in the experts to tell us, you know, based upon the condition and age of our equipment, when can we reasonably plan to expect to replace them? As this building gets past 30 years old, we need to start getting serious about planning for those capital improvements so that way it's not an emergency expense. And that's the job of the General Services Department to do that. Sure.

Okay. All right. Fair enough. I just was curious if we had kind of top of mind.

And I also think, didn't we just approve something or we're going to be doing a chiller replacement? Yeah. Included in this budget, I believe.

We are doing rehabilitation of the sewer lift station out in the parking lot.

No, and we also have the HVAC. Oh, boiler, not chiller, boiler. Sorry, I got my systems confused.

Yes, the boiler is being replaced. One of the two boilers has been replaced.

But, you know, we have a history of not planning for repairs, and then we have, it becomes an emergency, as you can imagine, when the air conditioning goes out in this building, that becomes a very expensive item that we have to do on an emergency basis, which means that it's probably at least twice as expensive. So I think... This building has aged so well for being 30 years old. And so we really need to be paying attention to making sure that we're eyes on the ball to make sure that we're being able to keep it in as good a shape as it is moving forward. And that is certainly the purpose of the assessment.

Yeah, not say that we haven't done anything. I mean, there's certainly kind of small projects you see occur, you know, the seats here and such. I mean, but yeah, those larger ticket items, you know.

Yeah, we do, you know, the carpet, the, you know, those types of things, painting, those, the safety issues, the fluorescent stuff in the stairwells, those are the minor ticket items, but it's the big systems we really need to be paying attention. And then obviously it's also security, the security of this building as well.

Yeah, but no, no, by and large, I mean, it still feels relatively, relatively new, you know, comparatively speaking.

I think that has to do, it's the testament of the folks behind me working so hard and making sure that we can continue to operate in this building without any sort of disruption and keep it as nice as possible for as long as possible.

Yeah, it's a nice building. We have one of the nicer chambers, I think, of big cities in California. So we appreciate you all. Thank you. Council Member Arias, followed by Council Member Perea.

Thank you. Speaking of deferred maintenance, how much in this budget set aside for maintenance of the trolleys?

Maintenance of the trolleys?

I'm assuming at some point you have to put some money into those vehicles, right? I will tell you that in a second.

$45,000 is what's in the budget to maintain the trolleys.

Do you anticipate having to replace them this upcoming year?

No. No, they're still in very good shape.

Okay. I do want to give you guys kudos. When we did the trolley, I asked the mayor to please not let this become a billboard on wheels with, you know, chasing down the pennies for advertisement and making them look like an eyesore, right? One more bail bondsman advertisement down the street of downtown, and you guys have kept to that? And I'm glad that whatever advertising you guys have secured has not changed the visual aspect of the trolleys because I think we would be better off with less billboards in the city. On your budget itself, you mentioned the lift station. So for seven years, I've been asking about the lift station that there's always a crew outside probably three times a week fixing. What took us so long to actually get a replacement? And you mentioned refurbishment. Is that going to solve the three times a week crew out there having to maintain that lift station? Are we actually replacing it, or are we just doing some Band-Aid approach?

It's not a Band-Aid. It's a complete rehabilitation, new equipment, new everything.

So for half a million dollars, that solves the weekly maintenance problem?

So I wanted to clarify that it is actually more than a half a million dollars. We have funding in our budget. We actually got money last year. We went out to bid. Council actually awarded a contract, the contractor would not sign the contract and the remaining bids were twice as much. Hence why we're asking for additional funds this year. So it's actually a $1.2 million budget. It's pretty significant and it should last us for another 20 years.

What other major, you referenced the boiler. ANY OTHER MAJOR COMPONENTS OF THIS BUILDING BEING UPGRADED IN THIS FISCAL YEAR'S BUDGET?

NO, NOT IN THIS FISCAL YEAR. MY TEAM IS PRETTY MUCH ON IT AND MAKING SURE THAT WE ARE ACTIVELY, ROUTINELY MAINTAINING OUR EQUIPMENT, MAKING SURE THAT IT LASTS.

Council member, the memo that we sent out last week about the adhesives on the veneer, I mean, honestly, that is an effort to try and avoid bigger ticket repairs to this building as part of just kind of keeping it in as good a shape as possible. I know I got a little feedback about being nitpicky. There's a reason that we're nitpicky because those are the types of things that can cause damage that ends up being very, very expensive. Yeah.

The primary complaint I have received in my seven years here about this building is the constant breakdown of the lift station, which you finally addressed, and the constant breakdown of the elevators. It seems like every single day there's a broken elevator or two. What is the actual solution to that besides, you know, your guys' reference to our operators, our maintenance people, companies are not that great? Is it time for replacement? Because I recall over the last few years, we funded for replacement of those elevators. What happened there?

So council member, elevators are definitely a hot button issue for me. Those elevators have been completely remodeled and guts have been replaced to be modern. The fact that they break down is completely unacceptable and we are working on a qualified maintenance contractor to maintain those over the current vendor.

Is there, is it time for us to just bring that in house? and have an in-house maintenance person hired and a position created. Because it hasn't seemed to work out for us for a decade to keep on relying on outside companies after we've completely refurbished them.

I would like to give another elevator contractor the opportunity to be successful before we go down that road.

I don't know any building... that maintains their own elevators, that has that level of expertise. I honestly don't know of any building that internally maintains their elevators. They're kind of like, you know, they're a branded, product that are very kind of like a car where you have to get like a certain part you have to get it from them and in some instances they will only allow their people but I mean we can certainly look at it and totally get your frustration I feel like we've come a long way I think because of Brian's incessant and his team's incessant nagging on the contractors and I think we need to get a qualified vendor who can commit to being able to be responsive to our elevators. I mean, we got elevators all over the city and private and public buildings and, you know, we're looking at who are maintaining those and who are the companies that have the reputations and the staff to be able to fulfill that. But totally understand your concern. We also have been very, very frustrated and concerned as well.

Let me add, if I can, Councilmember, that in this budget, we also put in $1.5 million for two... Rehabilitate many of our elevators that we have downtown whether that is the spiral garage or the underground This may be a good time to incorporate not just all of those, but also our city hall garage to look at how we might be able to get the best bang for our buck in all of those. I don't know. I don't know enough about it, but certainly worth exploring.

The reason I asked, Mayor, is as you're aware, we're building two new parking garages. The second complaint I get about downtown as it relates to elevators is parking garage elevators are constantly down. So those might be a little more vulnerable to vandalism and things of that nature. But it seems to, what we've been doing hasn't worked all that well for us. So if it's just, are you guys going through an RFP process for a new vendor or can you bypass and go get somebody that's much better at this?

We're using a cooperative purchase.

So piggybacking on another contract, Brian? Yes, piggybacking. When is that coming to council?

Currently, we are going to hire another vendor informally under the purchasing manager's authority, and then we will be coming to council later on with a cooperative purchase piggyback after we've tested out this vendor for some time and are satisfied with them.

And is your intention to have the same vendor who does this building do the future garages?

Yes.

And the existing ones? Yes.

I want to hold one company accountable.

Okay.

And the difference, you know, the city hall elevators, I think we pretty much replaced the guts out of those city hall elevators. The downtown, as the mayor mentioned, those have suffered from barely any investment and they're ancient. And so being able to go in and commit the necessary resources to get them functioning, yeah, it's terrible for downtown. We want people to encourage people in downtown But trying to get up to the street level from parking garages has been difficult at times. So that's why the mayor committed funding in his budget to be able to go in and rehab those elevators that are in our parking garages.

Yeah, thank you. EXPERIENCE THAT EVEN HAVING A BRAND NEW REHAB ELEVATOR DOESN'T RESULT IN IT BEING OPERATIONAL. THE 131 VEHICLES, IN WHAT DEPARTMENTS, WHO'S GETTING THEM AND WHY?

So in each department's narrative, you will find a paragraph or two on their various acquisitions. We can provide a list through an RFI of all the different acquisitions. The two departments that are getting the most are public utilities and the police department.

I thought we did a massive purchase of new police vehicles a couple years ago. And we have a massive amount of police vehicles sitting in a parking lot unused. Why are we buying them more vehicles

Well, as vehicles age and are driven, they require replacement in about 10 years or 100,000 miles. And the police department's vehicles are well used.

But we basically replaced all the police fleet post-pandemic. It was a massive $10 million purchase for giving everyone a brand new vehicle. So they should not be up for replacement at this point.

We didn't replace the entire fleet. We did make a large investment. Go ahead, Mayor.

Yeah, I'll just say we replaced 50 vehicles and then we replaced another 50. And this year in our budget process, we have every department, but police in particular, bring in Obviously, with general services, they bring in all of their vehicles, what their years are, what their miles are, and we've been very careful to maximize how much they're being used. But we really are looking at when a vehicle gets 10 years old and or has 100,000 miles, which generally they do at that level, we replace them. There was a number of vehicle requests, including motorcycles, this year that were rejected, that were asked for, for the purpose of maximizing them. So we did keep a small number of vehicles, and I can't remember the number, if it was 15, I believe, something of that magnitude, in reserve for that when we anticipate a vehicle crash. crashing during the course of the year, we can then rotate that vehicle into the fleet. So you're right in the fact that we purchased a lot. Those vehicles are still in the fleet. The ones that we're replacing today are the ones outside of that, say, 100.

How big is our fleet inventory in the city?

Inventory?

Average number.

Fleet-wide is about 3,100.

Can you provide me a list of all vehicles by department, by age of vehicle, and by mileage per vehicle? I'd like to see what we're up against in terms of the full fleet management inventory.

Okay.

And then have we figured out as these 134 vehicles are being proposed, what is the plan for the vehicles that they're replacing? Are they going to be sitting in a parking lot somewhere idly, or are we disposing of them?

Aside from the mayor's comments about those 15 vehicles, Mark Patrol vehicles, the vehicles that do get replaced are sold at auction.

Immediately?

As fast as we reasonably can.

What does that reasonably look like?

90 days.

90 days from them going offline? Yes.

And the sale of those are projected revenues from those we factor in as revenues for the city. Not only the revenue from that, but any reduction in savings that we have for O&M.

And insurance and all that kind of stuff. Does the revenue remain in the police department budget?

Actually, the revenue goes into the fleet's budget, and it's held there for the department for use for whatever they see fit.

So it doesn't just go to general fund like the sale of the Sequoia Brewery building?

No, no, it does not, because it's part of the ISF.

Why is that, though? It's a general fund expenditure. Why would the revenue that it generates not just go back to a general fund?

That's not the way ISF budgets work. Every department, including enterprise, contribute to the fleet fund. And we do not do, all of the money goes back into the fleet. The fleet fund is sort of an enterprise fund. I would not call it legally an enterprise fund, but operates like an enterprise fund.

But it's based on what you buy, right? And what you spend, right?

Yeah, and do know that what we get at auction for these vehicles, I would describe as minuscule compared to the money that goes out for vehicles.

On that front, just two days ago, I was driving down Kings Canyon Boulevard and I saw a former City of Fresno Police SUV on the road. It had the emblems painted over, but it had all the police lights and everything still on there. Is there a protocol that we're supposed to follow that we remove all that exterior, I don't know, you call the mayor, the lights that you control from your mirror?

The spotlights on the side, I don't believe that they remove those, but they do remove all the emergency equipment off of that vehicle that would allow for traffic stops.

Why wouldn't they remove the spotlights? In the world of people impersonating ICE and law enforcement, why would we not remove anything that is intended for police purposes from a vehicle that's sold in auction?

Well, I would argue that a spotlight is not just intended for police purposes. The red and flashing is for emergency. That is specific to the police department.

A spotlight on the side of your... The driver's side is for what purpose? Would you find that in the general public's experience?

A lot of security companies buy those vehicles at auction, and private security companies, if they're patrolling a parking lot or whatever, use a spotlight. I actually have also picked up, we don't do it what we do for our PDs, and I know our Our farmers don't buy our vehicles at auction, but I know farmers use spotlights on their vehicles because when they're out, they're trying to look where the water is or whatever. So it isn't just for emergency. But on our auction vehicles, I think a lot get purchased by private security companies.

Because they still have a pretty good lifespan, right?

They are at the end of their life, but they're buying them for about $1,500, $2,000 max. They're beat up pretty well, and if that's what they want to do for their investment, let them do it. That's revenue for us.

And remember, a private security company does not have the same reliability requirements than a public safety vehicle, right? We're never gonna keep a public safety vehicle on the road that has mechanical issues or could be breaking down at any minute where I think some of the end of life vehicles that have well over 100,000 miles on them Um, it's not as imperative for a private company to, um, to, you know, have that reliability that we absolutely have to have for public safety.

My last question on flea, um, what is the, I'm sorry, mayor, I interrupted you.

I was just going to say, to your point, it's a very valid point. We don't want vehicles out there looking like they're police vehicles for that purpose of being mistaken. We have very strict policies in place on all vehicles in the city, any security vehicle. They can't closely resemble that of a police car. So even when private security companies have to go through the police department for an inspection and permission in terms of how their vehicles look to avoid that very thing you mentioned. Thank you.

On security, I know the city hires a security firm, correct? Correct. And in their contract, they're charging us for vehicles, I'm assuming?

Correct.

That they buy. Why can't we just provide the city vehicles that we are surplusing to the security company and reducing the amount that they're passing through to us in terms of charges? Because they too don't need to have a brand new 2027 Chevy Tahoe that we're paying the full price for in terms of a service agreement.

So any security company, including the one that we contract with, is more than welcome to bid on Citi's old fleet vehicles. It is a public auction if they choose to do so.

What precludes us from just handing over a $1,500 used police vehicle to them and asking them for reduced service fee?

I would say that they are going to charge us more because that would be an unreliable vehicle.

So, Brian, what is our requirement? Is it a charter? Is it a muni code? What is the requirement that we put our vehicles out to auction and not just give is too strong a word? I don't want to make it sound like we're just handing cars out. But, like, is it an AO? Is it a muni code?

It's a muni code. It's how much, Melissa? $500? $500? $500. Anything over $500 we have to put up for public auction.

The EV charging stations you reference here at MSC? Yes. For $200,000, would those be public charging stations or those for city employees only?

They are for the city fleet. And this is for initial design engineering, not actual hardware.

Is there any money in the budget for public charging stations?

Not in this department.

In any department? I am not aware of that. What about the vandalized and damaged existing EV stations that we have in city parking garages? What's the plan for that? Who would be responsible? Is that parking that could answer those questions?

It's the parking division, and we can make sure that they're prepared to answer that question properly. For you when they come up. I know that they are constantly repairing and just a reminder the two new parking garages That will be coming online on fulton and h street will have vehicle charging in them as well I'm looking at kelly and the mayor I believe so as part of their design Additional janitorial day porter.

What is that?

So great question. Um In FY25, as part of the budget exercise reductions, we determined that we could possibly, and we did, reduce the day porter, which is a janitorial person here on staff, the contractor that has an office down here. And they're going through, they're sanitizing things, doing the bathrooms, refilling toilet paper, doing the odds and ends during the day, multiple times during the day. And we're really... They did a good job, and they supplemented with supervisor work, but we really want a higher level here. And so this additional funds really restores it back to those levels. Now, you may not have noticed any sort of service level disruptions, especially during the day, because we tried to prioritize the second floor as much as we can. But right now, that's what we want to do.

Council Member, we have a lot of activity going on in this building, whether it just be normal operations or public meetings and getting to the points of restrooms not having supplies in them because we were only... what's the word, managing or servicing them. We had reduced that to try and find some savings. And I think sometimes that works. And then we realized we've gone a little too far. And I think we probably went a little too far, you know, going into conference rooms that had had lunch meetings that have trash cans that are overflowing with food and not, you know, needing to have... get somebody to come in and empty those. So I think that was one area we went a little too far on that we're trying to restore a little bit more service back.

That's fair. I mean, you guys are restoring some janitorial services. I appreciate that. Just my last comment on your overall budget is I appreciate the work you guys have done. I think to your point, this building has held up well. I WOULD JUST ASK YOU, AS YOU'RE CONSIDERING THE ASSESSMENT, A COUPLE OF POINTS HAVE ALWAYS COME REARISING EVERY TIME WE LOOK AT CITY HALL. ONE IS FENCING OFF THE WHOLE LAW FROM THE PUBLIC. I'M EXTREMELY OPPOSED TO THAT. THIS IS A PEOPLE'S BUILDING. THE PARKING LOTS ARE THE PARKING LOTS. We did do fencing at the minimal amount for safety reasons based on the security plan. I don't think fencing the whole parking lot is in the best interest of the public and the city. And then lastly, it's the annual, how often are we going to clean the exterior of these windows and the pigeon damage that occurs every year. So I appreciate the work you guys have done to maintain the building. I'm looking forward to the assessment and seeing what big items we can take while still doing the exterior maintenance of the building. Because as you can see from Pride flag raising, there are constant events in that front lawn. And to your guys' credit, it looks really good. The landscape is maintained well. The exterior of the building is maintained well. The interior outside of elevators are maintained very well. So kudos to all of you guys that have maintained this historic, not historic, but spaceship of a building to its original intent. Thank you all.

Thank you, Council Member. In regards to the window washing, that will occur this summer.

Councilmember Perea, followed by Councilmember Karbasi.

Good morning, Director. Can you help me understand how we're doing with meeting any state-mandated energy goals when it comes to transitioning our city fleets over to natural gas or electric?

So, we're doing, we are in compliance with the Advanced Clean Fleet Regulation by CARB. They're actually going through an amending process the regulation really in response to the federal environment. And they've dropped all of the requirements on the private sector. So really it's just state and local governments that is subject to this regulation moving forward. We do have a number of vehicles in our fleet already, again in compliance with the Advanced Clean Fleet Regulation. We're doing okay in terms of the infrastructure. We were able to deploy a number of solar-powered chargers at the Municipal Service Center and a handful of chargers here and there through the city, but we are in desperate need of a mass deployment of chargers at the Municipal Service Center, thinking long-term, 10 years. which is why we're beginning the engineering this year for that. Looking forward in terms of the regulation, CARB is changing the regulation to allow for a plug-in hybrid to comply with the zero emission requirement, which is really kind of our saving grace. That means a vehicle that can travel 800 miles and charge itself with its own gas generator, I might add, doesn't need to be plugged in. And that will be a valid... option through 2035 as proposed by CARP.

Okay. And so for this fiscal year, we have budgeted in, you said the engineering to complete which investment and where?

So we have $200,000 for initial engineering and design of chargers at the Municipal Service Center.

Okay. And then we don't know yet how much actual infrastructure will cost.

No, but it's expected to be expensive. We are pursuing grants through various partners, and we just have not been successful yet.

Okay. But as far as what we've purchased to meet the clean energy goals, we have completed that step?

Yes, yes. And that is actively done. We have 18 vehicles in the budget that are electric on the FY27 budget.

Okay. And then on the trolley service, is there any stop right now that's underperforming?

No, no. We're actually pretty happy with our service. All of them are pretty well used.

Which one is the least one used? If we're looking at least, so we have... As far as pick up and drop off?

Pick-up and drop-off would be in the Cultural Arts District right in front of Arte Americas. But that's really specific to being for ARHOP. Otherwise, there's not much activity there during regular service.

Okay. So when the council wants to sponsor the trolley service, I think we set aside $10,000. Correct. I know I used that account. Did we eat up all that $10,000 this past fiscal year?

I believe we are projecting that to be completely exhausted through, I think we have one more charter at the end of June between a couple council districts.

Okay. And then if there is a benefit, you said, to the downtown, then the city manager has the opportunity to waive the trolley fee. Is that correct?

Yes. It has to be a city-sponsored event, though.

Okay. So if a council member sponsors it and it's an event that benefits the downtown, then we can go to the city manager to request that be waived? How would we extend that same benefit to the Tower District?

The master fee schedule would have to be revised.

We would have to amend the master fee schedule.

Correct.

Okay. Okay. Thank you very much.

You're welcome.

Council Member Karbassi?

Good morning. Director, I have a couple of questions. One of them is not related to your department, but you brought up elevators. So I'm going to mention it now. We're very proud of Jachancy Park. It's a great park. But their elevator is pretty darn slow. So maybe I'll just put an RFI in and I'll email this over of why that is and if there are any upgrade opportunities for the elevator as well. I think it's just the one elevator in the building I can think of. But going back to general services. Sorry. I'll send that in. Just a basic option of why it's so slow. If it's the end of its service life or what options there are. Maybe there's a reason why it's that way. I don't know about elevators, unfortunately. Okay. So one thing about electric charging. So we have 10 electric chargers, charging stations at the Muni yard. We don't always use them constantly. Are there any public-private entities we could charge to use them so they're not sitting dormant? Maybe a potential income stream from that.

At the MSC? Mm-hmm. Well, I would say that they actually are used. We use several of the chargers that we've put in are dedicated to certain departments that have those vehicles. Others are solar powered that any other department can use that has a fleet vehicle, and those are used.

When you get a chance, I don't know if there's any data on this, can we get a report of how often they are used and what times they're dormant? I'll put another RFI for that as well.

Okay.

Okay, last thing. Our favorite subject, Riverside Golf Course. We did have a, and please correct me if my memory's a bit off, we did have an item. You guys worked really, really hard after years of not having an agreement. You negotiated a new agreement. Thank you, Cliff, and thank you, Director and Aaron Aguirre for that work. I believe we requested, Council Member Arias and I, before budget, an update on where you are, maybe a capital improvement for potentially a driving range which could bring in revenue. Where are we on that? Because I think there was a memo that was supposed to be submitted prior to budget, and we're here now. We'd like to make some decisions based on your progress. Do you want to just wait, send us a memo, or you want to give me a quick update, or what's the best way to do this?

I prefer to wait on the memo. It's something we're still actively working with Parks on. When do we expect to get a memo on that?

We're kind of in crunch time now. This week. Oh, great. Okay. Perfect. Yes. Then that's all I have. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, guys.

Council Member Vang.

Thank you very much, Council President and Director. Welcome. I want to say thank you to all the directors and their staff for their preparation of the presentations, including the THIN AND FAT BUDGET AS MY COLLEAGUES IN D6 REFER THEM TO. AND I WANT TO THANK THE ADMINISTRATION FOR THE BUDGET AS WELL. I KNOW IT'S A LENGTHY PROCESS STARTED EVEN SUMMER OF 2025 TO TODAY. SO THANK YOU VERY MUCH EVERYBODY WHO HAS A HAND IN THIS FISCAL YEAR BUDGET. Just a question on the side. I know I'm one of the newest members, if not the newest here. City Manager, the binders that we received, the line items and the bigger folder that we received, were these folders disseminated into the public, for example, public libraries, etc. ? or were they just located here at City Hall?

Know that there is one in the clerk's office, and then it's online. I don't know if it, I don't think we have a requirement to give it to the library. I don't know if somebody can help me out here. Not, I'm looking, no, I don't believe it is sent to the library. We do have it in the clerk's office, a hard copy, and then we also obviously have the entire budget online, but I don't believe that we distribute to the library.

Okay, so hard copies are only available

and a publicly posted notice.

Okay. Thank you very much for that clarification. For those members of the community who wanted to have a hard copy or read the hard copy that is available to them in the clerk's office, I just want to make a few notes that the budget is always changing. The numbers are changing. And so if you go into the clerk's office yesterday or even today, like the hard copies that we have, those numbers are different than the numbers that are presented to us today. For example, during the general fund on page 849 versus page 8 of the presentation earlier this morning, the numbers are different. So I just wanted to note that to the public, that when they come into the clerk's office, those numbers are going to be different than the numbers presented today and the rest of this week during budget hearings. And so, Director, I want to focus on your...

They're not different. If there's something specific, they're exactly the same. We made no changes from the proposed budget to what we're talking about today. So if you have a question about maybe there's a reconciled difference that has to do with the general fund numbers, we are happy to walk you through it.

I'm referring to the copies that were published, printed, and provided to councils and put it in the clerk's office. I assume the copy in the clerk's office has not been updated?

The budget book has not changed.

Correct.

Are you talking about the PowerPoint presentation?

Yes, the PowerPoint presentation earlier today and the ones in my folders.

Should not be any different.

Okay, they are different. I GUESS I SHOULD HAVE ASKED THAT QUESTION WHEN THAT WAS PRESENTED. FOR EXAMPLE, IF YOU GO BACK TO, LET'S SEE, 849, DURING THE GENERAL FUND PRESENTATION. THE HARD COPY. THE HARD COPY THAT WE RECEIVED AND I BELIEVE SHOULD BE THE SAME AS HARD COPY.

Councilmember, can you refer us to more specifics as to what you believe is different?

Yes. Okay, on page 849.

Yes, we're there.

Okay. And then the PowerPoint presentation earlier today.

Which slide number?

Number eight. Okay. Okay, if you look at the police appropriations budget in... On page 849, the number is at 47.5%.

Okay, so you're talking about the percent. The number is not changed, got it.

So we'll take a look at that. The appropriation numbers of 541.8 are still the same, but the percentage of how that is appropriate... has changed. And so if the public comes into the clerk's office today and looks at the hard copy, that hard copy does not match the presentation today.

I just want to note that to the public. Yeah, if I can clarify real quick. So the numbers in the budget book on page A49 They include the general fund transfers out as part of the overall uses of the general fund. Those are not technically appropriations, right? So the percentage of the appropriations is what we saw on the presentation. This is showing kind of the percentage of all the uses, including the transfers out of the general fund for debt service. So the percentages are a little bit different. Correct. But the underlying data is identical. So yeah, we will definitely make sure that they're more aligned in the future to clarify any questions about that. But there should be no change.

This is not a criticism of anything. I just wanted to note to the public that the binders that were given to us and made available to the public in the clerk's office, which was about a month ago, those numbers have changed.

They have not changed, Council Member.

If you were to look at the police on page 849, in terms of the percentage, it's 47.5%. I understand what you're talking about. You're talking about the total of 541.8. Yeah, so... That has not changed. That's consistent throughout.

But in terms of the department... And the 263,747, that has not changed. If you look at what the description of the slide is, it's in page 849 is uses of general fund by department. If you look at slide 8, it's appropriations by department. Those are two different things technically. So I understand... your point as far as the PowerPoints are intended to be a high level overview for the council. But the budget book, the numbers have not changed. This is just a summary level at a higher level. And we're a little bit, slide eight and page 849 are a little bit apples to oranges comparisons. but the numbers are correct in the budget, and the PowerPoint slide is correct. It's just the way, and we'll pay attention to that next year, but it's apples to oranges.

Right, so when I'm speaking from the perspective of the general public, and I have the presentation today, and I looked at page 849 versus page 8, and I look at the police category, It's 263,748,600. Again, it's 263.7 in page eight. The percentage in A49 is 47.5. The percentage in page eight is 48.7. And so if I am looking that from the public's perspective, I'm saying, oh, these are similar, if not the same. But as you said, the appropriations by department, The number is the same. But when I look at these two numbers, they're different. And so if I am members of the public, this is confusing. Yep. Am I correct on that? Or am I the newest one that I... No, no, no.

I will reply to that comment. It's very understandable why. And maybe it should have been pointed out at the beginning that we are talking about two different... It is apples to oranges, but it's very clear why somebody could get confused on this based on those percentages.

And I think, you know, if you look at the audience for the PowerPoint, while, of course, we're here in a public meeting, and this is also for the public, we look at the PowerPoints as the audience, as council members. And so, once again, we'll pay attention to that for next year, but when we're doing a PowerPoint meeting, We look at the audience being this dais. But again, understand how it can be confusing to the public. But we'll pay attention to that next year.

Let me add that the number to the police department didn't change, right? So what is being reflected here is different. This is being reflected to the $555 million versus the $541.8 million. And those two numbers are distinctly different. And maybe you can explain, I think it would help for everybody, not just you, council member, the difference between the 555 and the 541.8. I think that's where the issue is.

sorry there we go yeah the 541 that's um those are the appropriations right so those are the expenditures and you're right that this slide is a percentage of expenditures and the 555 includes the revenue transfers which are transferred out to service the city's debt And so the book on page A49 is a percentage of that total, including those transfers. And I totally see your point that that could be confusing, and we will make sure those are aligned next year. Right.

And I understand that the presentation is to the city council members, but this is a public hearing with transparency as the backdrop. We ask for public comments. We ask for the public to watch the live presentation, the meetings. And so, yes, the audience is us, but at the same time, we represent the public. And so speaking as a member of the public who represents Southeast Reston Industry 5, if I were to look at these numbers, I would say this is a little bit confusing because the numbers are consistent, but yet not consistent. And so this conversation puts light into that confusion because what I want to do is I want to place myself in the average person position. in the city of Fresno, not the person who has a degree in the business or a degree and, um, uh, you know, any, uh, any forms. And so when I look at these numbers, sometimes it is confusing to, to me. And if it's confusing to me, then it may be confusing to the average voter or the average person out there. And so I wanted to put that out there and this is a great conversation to have that. And so, uh, if there are no more comments, director, um, Can I have you come to the podium again? Thank you very much for that. Now, I want to touch upon the art hubs or the trolley. With the possibility of the entertainment zone being opened in downtown, it is likely that the number of ridership from Fresno State to downtown to the tower district may increase. Have you anticipated that in the foreseeable future in this budget, the 26-27 fiscal year budget?

So if ridership does increase, and we do hope it does because it's trending that way, we do have a stop right there at the Fulton and Inyo. People are more than welcome to ride the trolley. It's not gonna change our costs at all. It's free to ride, and we're just gonna continue to operate with just a heavier load. It'd be great.

I guess the question is if the entertainment zone is passed and we have a one year time frame to see how that entertainment zone is being received by the public. And if when it comes to ridership on the trolley, if that increases, I know the expectation is right now perhaps of 5% to 10% increase. I think that's the budget. or that's the anticipation now if the number goes up let's say if we have like a strong demand for ridership from Fresno State to downtown when this entertainment zone is implemented and comes into fruition does the trolley has the capacity to increase in terms of the number of trips Thursday night Friday night and Saturday night or it may not be able to accommodate that increase I know this is speculation depending on the number of ridership increase when the entertainment zone is implemented but does the trolley have the capacity let's say to increase the ridership to 20% as it is right now we have capacity within the vehicle to accommodate an increase in ridership there's no no concern with that and then a certain time in the future If the capacity is too overwhelmed, what are the options for the trolley ridership?

If we are too overwhelmed, that would be a fantastic problem to have. And then we'll be working with the administration on how best to adjust our service, whether it be more frequent turnover of the vehicles or additional vehicles. That would be something we'd have to evaluate at that time, but that is not in this budget.

Okay.

Another question, just a last question for me on this here.

For the FY2027 budgeted positions you have in fiscal year 2025, which is adopted, and 26, the trolley services in terms of the number of positions you have, the percentage in that, and also for fleet management in fiscal year 2025, You have 83.25 in terms of the positions. Explain to me and to people who are watching what those percentage means, what they reflect in terms of 4.2 and then 3.3 for trolley services for fiscal year 2026 and 2027.

So we have part-time employees in the trolley division, which is why you're saying a point. Our drivers are part-time, and I have a supervisor that's part-time. The difference between 4.2 and 3.3 is that about 16 months ago, we changed our service levels to go from every Thursday, Friday, Saturday nights to just Friday, Saturday nights, plus art hop Thursdays. So therefore, I had to adjust our employee levels down to what the actual service needs were.

So the .30 is the actual 30% of full-time?

Well, so we have a full-time manager, and then I have a part-time .75, I think, supervisor, and then my drivers are each .5, so I've got three drivers.

Okay. That's how we get there. Okay, that's how you get the .30. That's correct. Okay. Thank you very much for explaining that. I appreciate it, Director. You're very welcome. Thank you. That's all I have.

All right, Council, I don't have anyone else punched up. Any further comment? All right, somehow we went, I don't know, it was 90 minutes on general services. Congratulations, Brian.

A very, very important department.

Congratulations. I bet you didn't expect that when you woke up this morning, huh? All right. At this point, since we've done general services, I'll open it up for some additional public comment. If anyone from the public would like to speak with respect to general services, you'll have one minute to public comment. Any member of the public like to do public comment on general services department? Seeing none, we'll go ahead and close that. Our next department is going to be Information Services, ISD. So I'll welcome the Director up.

Morning, Council. Brian Horn, are you guys ready? Okay, thanks. Brian Horn, I am your IT director, otherwise known as a CIO. First and foremost, I'd like to thank the mayor and city manager's office and council for all the support they've given to us the last few years. You've been great. We got a lot done. I also want to thank staff. They work hard and they rise to the occasion. I mean, there's a lot of things that we are brought last minute that they pull through. So let's get to the budget. Pretty simple. There we go, got it. I just didn't have the line of sight. Okay, so budget's pretty close to last year, not too much difference. Personnel, we've got an increase, a little bit of an increase. $18,235,500, and that's mainly to contractual obligations and MOUs and whatnot. Non-personnel, we're coming in at $26,918,000. We had some increases in software maintenance. Interdepartmental charges went down a little bit, and the interdepartmental charges are where the departments come to us and say, this is the IT stuff we want to do next year, and that came down to like $1.4 million. So overall, our budget is... $46 million for the FY27 year. This includes some projects I'll go over with you later. So let's go to the personnel. Personnel is increasing. Slightly. And basically, since we're centralized, what happens is the personnel positions are created and implemented in the departments in which they're being needed. And they go into our department accounts. So we're looking at three this year. One is a business process systems analyst for GSD. One's for GIS specialist position for the police department. The last one is for the business process, a systems analyst position, transfer, it's in DPW. So three different departments asking for three different positions for a little bit of help, bringing us to about 137, so three positions. Let's go to the operational impacts. Why does the police department need another position? They need a GIS position. Why? It's because they need somebody to work with their maps and their buildings. And GIS does a lot of different things, as you know.

But they've been operating GIS for a few years, so why do they need a position now?

Well, because actually they've been borrowing staff resources from the fire department. The fire department has a GIS person that assists with assembling all of the various data sources and being able to create not just maps, but reports on how resources are. Exactly. being utilized, and the police department has never had a GIS. They have had a staff person that is in a different position that has been manually assembling data, and it just, we're way too big of an agency, and so they- And the current arrangement has been working for several years. It has not been working, is what I'm telling you.

So why is it that we're waiting now to add an additional position if it hasn't been working?

Because it went through the budget process. They put the request in. In the meantime, they're borrowing from the fire department at times, and it's gone through the budget process. That's what we require of our departments.

The need's been there for... It's been a greater need now than it has been in the past because there's been more activity and more work being done. And so we do need a position in there to help them get this done for them.

What exactly do they do with the GIS position?

So we will, I'll make sure that the police department, I mean, I think it'd be best for the chief to be able to describe unless we want to bring that up for a minute, if you don't mind.

Sure. Is that okay? And Edith?

I can wait until the police department comes. That's fine. I'm worried about Big Brother and how much tech they have and what they do with it.

Let's pick this up on questions. Sure, if you want.

Edith can describe what you need to know.

Let's get through your presentation and then we'll pick this up during the discussion portion.

And we didn't technically add... a new position. No. We didn't add a new position. We transferred a position that was a different position. We turned it into a GIS position, and all technical positions reside in ISD. I don't like having anything technical-related residing in a department because I don't think that they have the proper technical oversight when they're in a department. So there was a position, I believe it got converted into a GIS position in the department. And when it got converted to a technical position, we moved it into ISD. So the only positions that quote got added in this entire budget was the additional heart team. So this was a reclass in the police department, and then when it became a technical position, it got transferred into ISD.

Just for my clarification, so when we're talking about, because at FY26 to FY27, there's three PCNs added. So is one of those GIS or not? And is it actually a conversion or an additional?

No, so citywide, so it's within, it's moving from one department to another. So citywide, as I said, we did not add, quote, new positions except for the HEART team. So yes, the GIS was one of the three. And when departments throughout the year have positions, they move positions around within their own department, they reclass positions from one need to another. And when that happens within a department and it gets converted into a technical position, Those positions need to reside in ISD. I know, once again, it sounds like we've perhaps confused things, but when a department within its own budget starts moving things around and reclassing, and if it gets reclassed into something that is technical in nature, we do not allow it to stay in that department. We require it to be moved to ISD so that the proper oversight, technical oversight, is considered and allowed. So it operates within the department, it's sort of a dual management to where the police department will still be overseeing this person's schedule and giving them the day-to-day tasks, but when the technical aspects come into play as far as hardware, software, those types of things, that portion is overseen by ISD.

And if I could just clarify, on the department's budget for ISD, on page 126, B-126, it says a transfer in of one GIS specialist position from the police department. And then if you go to the police department on page B-175, it says transferred out one GIS specialist to ISD. So I think maybe there was a little bit of confusion, Brian, when you said it's a new position.

Yeah, I apologize for that. Thank you. I apologize for that. They are transfers.

So I apologize for hopefully council member that clarifies it's moving from one place to another within the department, but to make it no new positions in this entire department with the exception of the heart team.

Thank you for allowing me to keep the director on his toes. You did. You did that.

Appreciate that. So, uh, I'll go to the next slide. Software contractual obligations, it's nothing new. They go up every year. Biggest offenders have been like Microsoft and Salesforce and Adobe, the big guys. But across the board, 5% to 10% increases in a lot of different software. Number two, data center improvements. Now, you guys were talking earlier about cooling systems. This is a cooling system for the computer room. Our current cooling system's been in there for about,

15 years so we got a lot of good use out of it And so this is a lease cost per year, and I believe we're going five year five year lease on it We saw I just I just want to add to because sure I want to make sure there's no confusion out in the public or community That the data center that we're referring to is just basically a hub within City Hall It's a room where all of our equipment is It is not the type of data center that I have seen some written material out in the community that we are allowing all sorts of data centers, which we're not. So I just didn't want this to be misunderstood or misconstrued that we are doing a data center in Fresno. This is an internal within a location of where all of the city equipment resides.

Nor do we have any planned data centers in the city of Fresno.

Correct. Thank you, Mayor.

Yeah, no, this is City Hall Data Center. You are correct. And this is the data center that serves the city, serves the employees, and takes care of our security and our networking and whatnot.

Director, can you give us a memo of how much water and power a data center is requiring? We can. Thank you. We can. We will.

Okay, so software license...

Which is why we don't have any plans for data centers in our community. Go ahead, Brian.

No, you're fine. You're fine. Software license and management software, this has to do with audits. We've had several audits over the years, and one had to be Microsoft lately, and we actually did a pretty good job in working them down with a company that we like, and so we're going to do this with most of our software to make sure that we are doing what we're supposed to be doing as far as licensing is concerned. Cloud backup and recovery improvement. A little bit more cloud services for us. We're going to put all our email in the cloud finally. We've been hybrid before. It's time. It's way past due. The features and functions in the cloud are a lot better than on-prem, and so it's time for us to move completely, and so this will help us get there. Public safety radio, this is for a portion of the operations outside of the upgrade. I'll talk to you about the upgrade in just a little bit, outside of our big project that we're upgrading. And the internet service improvement for the PD, we just need more connectivity over there, basically. PD needs to be, we're running it, managing it, but we do need to make sure that the cars are taken care of, and there are 911 centers taken care of and everything. THAT'S JUST A LITTLE BIT. THOSE WHO WERE ASKED THAT WERE APPROVED. WHEN WE GO TO QUESTIONS YET. SO THREE BIG PROJECTS WE'VE GOT GOING ON. KEEPING US BUSY. OF COURSE, THIS IS NOT OUR ENTIRETY. OF COURSE, YOU KNOW THAT WE DO A LOT OF DIFFERENT THINGS. PEOPLESOFT HRMS UPGRADE. We've got three different years that we're going to be pulling money. This year is $2.6 million. Next year is about $2.5 million. And the last year is going to be about $600,000 for three years. This is the upgrade of our personnel system, our payroll and personnel. As you guys are all aware, Tyler came in. Tyler failed. And so we are going back to PeopleSoft as an upgrade. And it's the right solution for us. And we actually came to council before with a particular item which pulled down the Tyler Munis costs and gave us back some of the implementation costs to help us do PeopleSoft. Public safety radio frequency upgrade. You all know this one as... Our radio system upgrade, $490,000 is the least cost. I owe you a report update, a quarterly update. I've been waiting on a couple of items, and I'll get that to you in the next week. It's going very well so far. We are on target for November, like Council requested. And so far, we've got a lot of good things going on, and we're pretty much in the green. So I will get you that update this week. And data center improvements, this is just what I talked about before. I mean, it's basically the cooler system and whatnot. So those are our big ones. I mean, we've got other things that we're working on, ADA compliance, which we will be compliant when they finally decide to enforce it. And there's SBA 707, which you are aware of, which is going to affect council chambers. And of course, the transparency portal, which went live today. Any questions? I'm good. That's it. I'm open for questions, ribbing, anything.

All right. Thanks, Director. Short and sweet and a little sidetrack there on the position question. All good. This is probably more of a comment for economic development rather than than your uh your department but just our data centers mentioned and uh you know it's pretty clear we don't have any enough energy water or natural resources here for any of that and i know that because of my chip my fresno chips act that i tried a couple years ago take advantage of the uh the chips incentives under the biden administration and We don't have the resources here to attract those types of industries. The actual manufacturers in and of themselves and or even the supply chain folks have proven very, very difficult, despite all of our other economic advantages around here. And so I think data centers probably pose even more of a drain with respect to those types of resources. I don't know if you'd agree with that or not.

It's very hard here. It is. And it's hard to attract a data center like that. It is. I mean, I think when Council Member Westerlin was here, we looked at it. There were no takers. So, I mean, it might be something that comes up and works on again, but, yeah, you're absolutely right.

I think, Council President, if I can, just to add, I went to a couple of sessions on data centers, and they've now got it down to where they recycle water through. So it's not the water demand as much as the electricity. And With the impact it has on our grid here would be, I think, pretty significant. It blows out of the water. Yeah. Getting our rates and level demand ready.

Bandwidth, connectivity, Internet access is another big one. That's right. So the mayor is absolutely correct on what he's saying.

Let's see. I've got a few folks punched up. Sorry, Council Member Vang, followed by Council Member Richardson.

Very quick. Good morning, Director. Good morning. When it comes to technology and information, one year is like perhaps 20 years, 30 years ago. What does ISD plan to do with hardwares that are outdated when computers, laptops are no longer needed or replaced by newer hardware? What happens to those replacements?

The old replacements, some very rarely get repurposed. But for the most part, what we have to do is, per the city charter, we've got to auction them off. So we work with GSD to auction off the old stuff. So there's an opportunity for the public to get their hands on them and use what's left of them. It's a little tricky because they're not going to have a license for the operating system because we own the license. You're just going to get a bare-bones machine is what you're going to get. So that's like 10, 15 years old. And we tend to hang on to our... PCs longer than we should, but it's a matter of budget, and that's fine. We do what we can.

Is auction them off the only option? What about the possibility of donating them to non-profit organizations that just started that needs those equipments?

We can look into that. I'd like to do that. That'd be great. I will work with the city manager's office and see what we can do. We've looked at that before, and This is a new administration, so it's possible with this new administration. So I'll bring that up again.

Okay. And consider that I will do an RFI request very soon. Sure. Absolutely. Thank you. Appreciate that. Thank you.

Councilman Richardson, followed by Councilman Barrios.

All right. Director Horne of Information, how are you? I'm okay. How about yourself? We started the budget with both of our Bryans. Got them out of the way. There you go. I like it. For ISD, it looks like you guys hit 2.5% attrition. to help with the attrition savings, which is the same as last year. So thank you for maintaining that. With all of the, after coming on board and getting the tour of your department down there and seeing how much you guys kind of punch above your weight class, which is impressive, going through the revenues, I didn't find any revenue stream that came in through your guys' hard work down there. Now, I know that with government agencies or government entities that do any sort of collecting or anything that's active or passive, what have you, there's a lot of benefit that comes out of Fresno. I would say that by extension, the city of Fresno is punching out of our weight class because we have you guys and your staff working hard down there. Is there any opportunity that we're missing? I know a lot of it is just kind of goodwill stuff and hey, this is for the greater cause. Is there any opportunity with working with different agencies to be able to find any sources of revenue for some of the information and data that we're able to gather?

We're kind of sort of looking into that. And I need to get back together with Georgianne and Ruthie because we kind of looked at that earlier. We have fiber in the ground, and we actually are looking at trying to get some providers in here to use that fiber. And I think we've got one, but I don't know where they are in the process. Other than that, we try to look where we can. So fiber is one. We do have a small amount of revenue from the convention center when we do events and whatnot, because we're the ones who take care of the events. So those are two of them. And I've got my staff always looking for opportunities that we can. It's difficult. I mean, looking through this, it's like, what do you want to be responsible for? And the fiber, for us, if we just if we could do something like monetize it, that might help. So, I mean, we can do it. We've been through the motions, because a lot of it was put in with grant funding, and we have documentation behind us that allows us to say, yeah, we can do some things. Okay.

I had a friend in high school who always said, if you do something really well, never do it for free. But he's in prison now, so I want to make sure he's doing things right.

Councilmember, did you say, what attrition did you say?

The monetary attrition that's in the line item detail, there's as documented on page 124 for ISD.

I had 6.18, so you said something about two.

So this is strictly monetary. What I did was I based a 2027 proposed budget, the 1.178 million on their total projected budget of the 46.6 million. I did some quick math for Marines on that and came to roughly 2.5%. If there's a different metric I should be using, please let me know. That doesn't include personnel, but.

I think you're using a different metric, but.

Yeah, I think the denominator, if you're using a number from 26 and putting that over a number in 27, it wouldn't take into consideration the additional costs. of just the same employees year over year, but what I'd like to do is just provide, if the council would allow, the actual attrition by department, and that way you know the numerator and the denominator that we're using to get to the 6.18.

Okay, because right here, the only thing that says attrition savings for them is on page 124. It's in the 2027 proposed budget, and using the 2027 proposed budget on page 127 for the same department, Those are the only two I got. If there's some other algorithm that I can use just to make sure my numbers are correct, I can put it on a big post-it note up here.

Okay. I'll get you the algorithm.

I appreciate it. If you can write it real big and in crayons, that would be helpful for me. Finally, last question I had. I noticed that there's a huge expenditure for communications. I know a lot of what you guys do is radio, telecommunications, digital, things like that. Great. and you've specifically mentioned with law enforcement, they also have communications expenditures. Just again, like I'm a golden retriever. Would you explain where the line, where the breakdown is between what you pay for and what comes out of the budget of a, of a client department?

So what we pay for, um, we, what's that? Yeah, but we, I, yeah. So my, so, We pay for all of them, as Kim was saying, but then we do the ID billing, you know that. So from our perspective, the actual radio system is ours. to pay for. That includes all the stations that are in the field, the radios. It's where the stations come in and the fire and police will start buying their own radios. But we take care of the entire system as far as the hardware is concerned, the software is concerned, and all that. And so that's, if you're talking just radio specifically, if you're talking communications, other communications like cell phones and whatnot, they pay their own cell phone bills. We pay it. I need you to charge them. but they pay their own, so does that help?

Yeah, it does. So essentially a little more nuanced than just black and white, but you are buying it, then essentially it's an internal department-to-department billing that you send out to whatever entity is using them. Got it. Clear enough for me. Okay, that's all I had. Thank you. Thank you.

Councilor Vargas? Welcome back, Director. Thank you, sir. I can't seem to find, and maybe it's not incorporated here as a breakup, but who's tracking the amount of resources we're spending on artificial intelligence software?

Not yet.

So I know PD uses AI. Right. So who controls from the IT perspective? Who dictates when AI can be used and how much can each department spend on AI services?

Let me back up. When I say not yet, I'm not we're not. So I miss most, but it's okay. We track all the usage. We track which programs are being used. We block programs that should not be used. And right now we're in the middle of developing an AO, which is mostly done. And so that will come out and define the city's policy. But basically what we've done is we've standardized a copilot program. And if you have an issue, let me know, because we'll work with you on it.

But I mean, we... Here's what I'm trying to understand, Director. Okay. AI has boomed. Yep. AI is extremely expensive for users. So we have yet to establish and approve an administrative order providing guidelines and guardrails on when it can be used. I've seen departments already spend significant amount of resources on AI features, specifically the police department. So what are the cost controls? to indicate we're spending too much on AI or we're not spending enough? Who does that? Is it our departments are allowed to do that?

I would say it's overseen by our office, generally speaking, or originally as part of the mayor's budget. But we have very tight controls over AI, not only for cost control reasons, but also for cybersecurity reasons, because there are certain things that we do not want into the netherland. That's right. Netherlands? You know what I mean. Whatever, the ether world, whatever. So what are those controls? Oh my gosh, I don't know where that came from.

What are those AI controls?

So we allow Microsoft Copilot and we allow Madison AI right now. Those are two programs that are authorized to be used within the city.

What's Madison AI?

So Madison AI is a software that is used predominantly in departments to help, used a lot for creating staff reports. You can, Brian, you could talk more about Madison AI. We've had it for, it's come to this council. Yes. We've had it for a couple years now.

The reason I asked it in manager is in last week's council meeting, The agreement we approved for the airport parking included AI. And so I'm seeing AI also included in the police department's, you know, camera system operation, the whatever cameras they wear, axon. So it seems to me that we don't have a whole lot of guardrails and controls on who's using AI and to what extent and what limitations on it costs we have in place.

So I think your point about external contractors, so those that you just mentioned were mostly our third-party contractors that utilize AI and their business model. I do know... You know, we look very, for instance, Axon, the one that you're referring to in the police department, is a closed AI system. So when those products, that is one of the reasons why any product has to go through ISD for purchase by departments is for the reasons of making sure that whatever a third-party vendor is using is not going to impact our product system in that there are certain parts of what we do that are very open and transparent and then there are other things like attorney-client communications and draft creation of documents which are not subject to public records so I would say that I think we have a pretty good control over city employee usage of AI. But on the third, I think you're talking about third-party vendor use of AI that we can certainly talk more about and make sure that it is addressed. I think the The guardrail right now is that when a department is going to purchase a software product, it has to be approved by ISD. And so they're looking at it from, I think, obviously a security reason perspective as well. But we can try and address that in the AO that we're creating as well.

I can expand on it a little bit more. She's absolutely right. You have an application, and a lot of them are coming now with AI components. So Salesforce has one. So we're looking into using that. We have Madison AI, which is basically a huge database of city data. It's being used to do reports and council reports, but it also has a lot of city history because we've imported a lot there. It's a closed system, stays in the city, doesn't go anywhere else. Airports, you're absolutely right. There was one for airports, but it's not like general use. It's another application that AI is in that application. So what we do is to make sure that it's benign and it works okay. AI's got a lot of different uses. So Acela has some AI that we're looking at. So yes, absolutely. When AI by itself, standalone block, if it's in an application, then we look at it and we evaluate it from a security standpoint to make sure it'll work in our environment and if it's needed.

So here's what I'm wrestling with. From my perspective, AI has two components. One is where is the appropriate use for the software? You know, should AI have access to all our police records? No. Should AI have access to all our personnel records? Right? Our financial records? You guys have acknowledged that all these third-party contractors are actively using AI. Therefore, we've granted them access to all these sensitive files.

We're not. That's not true. Absolutely not. We are not granting Axon or Madison AI access to all of our confidential documents. There are guardrails.

Axon has access to our police records.

Some of our police records.

Everything that's on video and camera. And police reports.

Body cameras do not use AI, by the way.

The contract called for AI usage on the body cameras that we approved.

Well, I'm telling you that the chief is telling me that body cameras do not use AI.

Well, it's contradictory to the contract we approved.

I don't, I think it was AI that was more for the report writing side of things.

You're talking about- Report writing based on the camera footage and the audio in the camera. It is all the same thing. They have access to our raw content to generate draft reports for officers.

So we'd be happy to get you, come back and get you documents or get you a report on.

I'm more interested, city manager, is, again, there's what access are we granting to AI platforms as public information, right? And what guardrails do we have in place for that? And secondly, on the cost side, are we putting any limitations on how much we're spending on AI services

software so any ai that has access to what we might consider some sensitive information is in a closed environment it will not have access to the outside world it'll be in a closed environment so it stays within the city limits stays within the city data system so that's that's the difference like if you got a chat gpt out there and you just start you know doing things chat gp reports back to the internet and you know it comes back and you know all the data is reported back but Something like an Axon or Madison AI is in a closed environment, stays within the city. So that's the difference.

So just to figure that out, let's talk about the Axon AI. Sure. They have access to our raw content. They generate a draft report. If Axon has a breach and that information gets into the world of the internet, what's our administrative order dictate? Are they liable to us financially for that breach?

That should be contractual.

Is that the case?

Same thing for the parking people? It should be contractual more than it is a policy. So when we build things into the contract, we look at risk. So does the contract stipulate that? I will double check.

The reason I'm asking is we've gone through this in the world of health care, right? At some point, the health care companies that we do business with have a breach. In response, they all give us one year of coverage. Right, right. And then our entity gets stolen on one year and two weeks later. But that's been the world that we've had to operate in. AI is a similar animal, just much more powerful. So I'm a little concerned that we've been approving all these third-party AI agreements without having to administrate over in place first. But that happens for the system. The technology is growing faster than our procedures. I get that. But I want some clarity from staff on the controls for AI, and secondly, on how we control the cost of AI. Because I suspect that AI is going to be like you know, meth. They give it to you at a really cheap price on day one, and then they're going to rob you and rape you on, you know, year two. Because now we're on the hook for everyone having draft reports at their disposal. This is, you know, our version of, you know, meth and fentanyl downstream, but it will kill us financially if we don't put some controls up front. The third element is job reductions implications for our city staff. At some point, I'm assuming somebody's gonna come in and say, we have such great efficiencies thanks to AI, I don't need two secretaries or two analysts or two budget managers. So that's why I wanna openly talk about AI as a conversation for the budget.

I'll give you one comfort level. Even though we do not have an administrative order for the AI, we do put our policies in place on that contract, and it will be the same thing as the AO. And so because ISD is in charge of that and city manager is backing us, we're allowed to, we have that kind of authority to make sure that the stipulations are close to what we're going to have in the administrative order. So right now, since we have an administrative order in draft, right now we're able to do that. So just I'll give you one more. Yes, ma'am.

Also, I would add, I'll give you an example. chat GPT, right, which everybody is kind of like a little bit everybody's go-to. We had a lot of people in this city that were utilizing chat GPT, utilizing their city emails, to which chat GPT notices us and tells us, oh, you need to open an enterprise chat GPT account. Here's your six-figure bill. So that is why chat GPT is blocked in the city. And we've sent out emails saying we're directing people to use Microsoft Copilot, which is included in the suite, I believe, of our Microsoft Office suite, which is kind of the Microsoft version, and actually we had Madison AI before Microsoft co-pilot. But those are sort of the cost controls agreed. We absolutely need to get the AO in place, but we have been monitoring and controlling because obviously when ChatGPT first came out, it was sort of the newest and greatest, and everybody was very excited about it, and people started using it. And that became a problem for us as an agency very quickly because those companies track the usage and when they see a .gov address, same thing happens whenever you are trying to go onto a program and you say, oh, here's a free 60 day trial. And if there are a number of people in this organization doing free trials, with a .gov address, it's not free. Those companies come to us and say, you have this many users, you need to be opening an enterprise account, which we have really tried to discourage individual departments, individual council offices from doing those kind of accounts separately. And so we definitely have tried to do a better job keeping track. But yeah, we definitely need to expedite

and i'm assuming that microsoft and copilot at some point are when we get to renewal of our enterprise agreement are going to stack up to build to be twice as much based on the ai feature that they now have incorporated could be into the software probably i mean honestly if you look at what has happened with our software you know times have changed remember we used to just buy like a

one-time Microsoft Office product. It lasted us a few years. No, now they require us to have subscriptions, Microsoft 365. Then they required us to put everything on the cloud. So that is one of the reasons why you see our contractual obligations going up every single year is because that is exactly what those companies are doing, right? Obviously, that's why they're worth so much money because they have us all captive. We are definitely a captive audience and a captive customer that You know, once you are in, you kind of can't go out. But I would also argue, you know, it's just the way that the world has evolved in using technology, and we don't really have a lot of choice in certain instances.

I want to add, if I can, Councilmember, because the issue you're raising right now is one that's being discussed in departments and agencies and cities across America. I went to a few sessions this last week, and it's AI, AI, AI, and it's everywhere you go. And AI can be great or AI can be horrible. And there are plenty of best practices and policies that are out there today that we're taking a look at. I don't want us to get too far ahead of it. When we're looking at AI, I think we have to be very selective in its use. There are some good things, like we believe writing staff reports for us, as long as there's human intervention and review. And really, there's two types of AI out there. One of them is where AI assists human efforts, but there's still human intervention involved. And then there's AI that has no human intervention. Those are the ones I think we have to be very, very selective on because they're making decisions for us and may not be the best decision. So those are things, for example, on PRA requests, we're not, you know, we have a challenging time getting to all of our PRA requests because there's so many. Well, now there's AI out there today that processes all AIs. I mean, all of your PRAs. So maybe that's something we want to take a look at. But I do believe we ought to look at other agencies, other cities, and see what they've done. But for now, we're taking it very slow. We have a policy that's almost done. Hopefully, we'll get that done with the guardrails on how it's used, how it's approved, and so forth.

Thank you, Mayor. In the meantime, can I get a list of all AI platforms that are approved by the city and all third party AI platforms that are utilized by contractors? And finally, how much money are we currently spending on AI? And I understand some of the AI features are included in the service agreement, which may not be possible, but the total amount for that contract would be sufficient. I wanted to understand what the baseline is now as we get down this path of AI and also be able to have future councils monitor it. Thank you. That's fair. Thank you.

I don't see any additional council members punched up. Director, I'm not going to bother you this year. I don't know what the five stages of grief all are, but I'm at acceptance that this city will just be a PC city, not a Mac city. Apple city. Thank you, sir.

Yeah, so acceptance, year eight. We do have some Apple and Mac in the environment. I have one of two or three. Two or three, yeah.

And thank you to your staff for always helping to calibrate it, if you will. And it'll be available for somebody else when I turn it in at the end of the year. Somebody else can use it. Yeah. All right. No further comments? All right. Thank you for your time. All right. I have one card from Ariana. Come on down. You have one minute.

Hi, thank you, counsel. Oh, thank you. I just had a clarifying question about the department funding for the information tech position for the police department. So is that a position that is entirely funded by the information services department and then they provide services solely to the police department? I know y'all maybe can't answer my question. Maybe someone else. okay i was just wondering like so that funding comes completely from one department and they provide services solely only to another department yes okay thank you thank you is there any additional public comments on the information services department

All right, seeing none, we're going to conclude with that department. That brings us pretty much to the lunch hour. We'll come back here at 1.30. We've still got two departments, finance and parks, as well as a special meeting that we're going to convene as well. So we'll see everyone back here at 1.30.

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All right, we are back. We're going to reconvene. And before we proceed with the balance of the budget hearings today, we're going to go ahead and open up the special meeting that was scheduled for 1130 a.m. So at this time, I'll ask the clerk to take the roll.

Thank you, good afternoon. Council Member Perea. Present. Council Member Carbasi. Here. Council Member Arias. Defending. Council Vice President Maxwell. Present. Council Member Vang.

Here.

Council Member Richardson. Here. Council President Esparza.

Present.

Seven members being present, we have a quorum.

All right, I'll entertain a motion to approve the agenda. Second. Motion by Council Member Arias, second by Council Member Richardson. Any opposition to approving the agenda? Seeing none, that passes seven to zero. Clerk, could you please read, I don't have the exact title in front of me. Could you read the title of the item?

Yes.

One moment, please.

The title will escape all of us.

Sorry, one moment, please. This is resolution establishing the Commission on Family Affordability and Child Care Access.

Fantastic. Council Vice President, I'm going to hand this over to you.

Thank you very much, Council President and City Attorney and Clerk. Just to confirm, both the budget process and this item are both open at the moment, correct? Correct, concurrently. Thank you very much. This morning I held a press conference to talk about an issue plaguing our community. Fresno is one of the least affluent communities in the entire state of California, and we feel that in a lot of different regards, one of them being childcare. Childcare is a crisis that we have been dealing with for some time in this community, and it's something that's only going to become more exacerbated as The Donald Trump administration cuts come into effect later this year. Over $10 billion in childcare funding gonna be reduced across five states. California is the biggest recipient of those reduction in dollars. We know because of the US Bureau of Labor and Statistics that the median family in Fresno that is paying for childcare is paying $11,000 for a preschooler, $13,000 for a toddler, and $22,000 for an infant to enroll them in a local childcare center, which frankly is just untenable for most families across this nation, especially here in the city and county of Fresno. As I mentioned, there's gonna be some huge cuts coming down the pipeline, which is just gonna make this problem even worse. If somehow overnight every single family was able to afford these ridiculously expensive tuitions for childcare, there still would only be a fraction of the slots available for the children across the city and county of Fresno. So we're working on both a supply and a demand issue. I talked about in my press conference this morning, for that being the reason for me wanting to introduce THIS RESOLUTION HERE TODAY. THIS RESOLUTION WOULD EFFECTIVELY CREATE A STANDING COMMISSION ON FAMILY AFFORDABILITY AND CHILD CARE ACCESS HERE IN THE CITY OF FRESNO. WE NEED TO TACKLE THIS ON TWO FRONTS. ONE IS THE SHORT TERM AND ONE IS THE LONG TERM. ON THE SHORT TERM The city, I don't think government is ever the solution to any problem, but I think government could be a part of the solution. And I think that we need to stand up and lead on this and be a partner when it comes to the childcare crisis facing our community. And so when it comes to short term, I think that the city needs to partner with somebody like First Five in order to provide some opportunities to give scholarships to struggling families. to help subsidize the cost of childcare, and to also go towards grants. Those could be grants towards new businesses that want to offer childcare, but we know that it's expensive to get your foot in the door, to get all the permitting and licensing and upgrades needed to offer your space for children. It could also be grants to existing businesses that want to make further upgrades and allow even more children to be able to use their facilities. We need to tackle this on the supply and the demand side short term because we are facing a crisis today. On the long term, I think that forming this commission is going to be pivotal for a few reasons. A couple of the reasons I want to form this commission. Number one, so this working commission can work on coming up with policies to recommend to this council and to this mayor to adopt and take action on. I know Mayor and I had a really good conversation at lunch. We talked about what some other big cities like Albuquerque, New Mexico is doing to help with childcare. And I think having a working body of professionals in the childcare industry across the city of Fresno coming together having a working group where they're coming up with best practices, policy ideas, and also long-term solutions. We need a long-term solution so that we can ensure that every single in-need child across the city of Fresno is able to receive some sort of affordable childcare. The first five years I spent in office, we spent over half a billion dollars fighting some of the biggest issues our community faces, homelessness, crime, and poverty. And we made some really significant movements in all of those efforts. But I think it's become evidently clear to anybody that lives in our community, we're still facing a homeless crisis. We still have crime and we still have poverty. And we need to continue to tackle these things from the back end. We need to continue investing in affordable housing. We need to continue investing into shelter space. We need to continue investing into more better paid police officers. But at the same time, I don't think that we can be so illusioned as to think that any amount of money or investment on the back end alone is going to eradicate these issues. We need to make sure that we're making investments in the front end as well, and that's our children. And so I have a resolution here. Before I make a motion, I'll have us go out to the public, but it would create a nine-member body of folks from across the city of Fresno to meet on a regular basis to come up with ideas for best practices, for policies for this council to adopt and consider and for identifying a long-term solution beyond the motion i'm about to make to ensure that we are able to fund affordable child care year after year and not just this year the crisis is just getting started um and with that council president i do have a couple motions but i'll have you go out to the public before i do that

Great. All right. So at this time, we'll go out to the public for public comments. If anyone would like to speak with respect to the special meeting item, please come on down to fill out a yellow card.

Good afternoon, members of the council. My name is Fabiola Gonzalez. Did you need to call me? I'm so sorry. I just stepped right in.

No, it's fine. We know who you are, and I saw your email card.

Yeah, welcome. I serve as executive director for First 5 Fresno County, and I'm just here to be in huge support of having the city of Fresno step in in such a way to come alongside families that are raising our children today. to figure out what you just heard from Vice President Maxwell about the challenges that I think shouldn't be new to anyone on the dais. Even if you don't have children, I think we all benefit when everybody has access to childcare. When you think of 911 operators, you want to make sure that they have childcare. Bus drivers, you want to make sure that you get to a place to work because that bus driver has childcare. So all of us benefit. and our children there's a lot of talk about the early the brain development the first five years of life when the brain develops the most there's a lot of talk about labor workforce like we need to make sure that people are at work and child care is important i think we need to start thinking of child care as a as a right like we we have our children have a right to be in the right space at the right time to make sure that when they show up to kindergarten or to those classrooms in the everybody knows public education, that they have, that those first five years have been, have had the foundation for them to learn and to be ready to just continue learning and the teachers are not having to have conversations with parents about issues that could have been addressed early on in a high-quality setting. So I commend the City of Fresno for considering this. We are partners. First Fives have been here for the last 27 years. And you're right, just like Councilmember Maxwell mentioned, not one partner can do this alone. We need partnerships with government, with private philanthropy, private sector philanthropy, anybody that can come alongside to see that childcare is not just a parent's issue, but it's an economy issue, it's a community issue, and it's a society issue that we all benefit from. So I'm grateful, and I'm in super huge favor of you all approving the motion before you, or the vote before you soon.

All right, thank you. Is there any additional public comment? You can begin Good afternoon council.

My name is Linda Gleason and I am the director of Fresno County cradle to career and We are our County's cross-sector partnership for the purposes of measurably improving our outcomes for our children and their families. I The partnership spans 10 sectors, has over 100 organizations involved, and a leadership council of 14 different members, all heads of organizations, government, health care, housing, and education for the purposes of strategically focusing the partnership. And I'm here to, again, commend the Council for considering this adoption of this commission. We have, in the recent past, been very focused on workforce-related issues, having a long history, a decade-long history of staying focused in early childhood. The importance is not lost on us, as Fabiola mentioned about the importance of the early years. Recently, most recently, in the heightened focus around workforce, a few data points have emerged. One is that among our county's workforce, we have 61% that are not earning a living wage. We are aware of the fragmentation in the workforce system, and we've also become keenly aware of a couple of key barriers. One, and almost the highest, is childcare. So it is, as Fabiola from First Five mentioned, We're in agreement that it should be considered a right. It is obviously a huge barrier to the economic development of our city and our region. And so we stand in favor of what this represents. And again, a doubling down of the focus and a key area for the prosperity of our city. Thank you.

Thank you. Any additional public comments on the special meeting item? Welcome.

Hello, I'm Brooke Frost. I am a independent contractor, and I work with a variety of organizations, including schools, Fresno Cradle to Career, and a variety of other kinds of nonprofits. One of the things that I have seen throughout my 12 years of being an independent consultant, is the need for childcare. I work with the Home Visitation Network, and those nonprofits are facing a lot of barriers right now, but the biggest one for those who need to reach those in the community is childcare. The other one is although I work with a school district, a rural school district The same thing is true in the city, because we have people here who work in the ag industry and shift hours. And all those different times of non-traditional business hours is a huge need. And so coming up with some solutions that would include that would go a long way to providing a beacon of possibility to other small unincorporated or agricultural business. We do have some examples here in Fresno County with businesses in the ag industry, and we can call upon some of them to be involved. So I'd like to heartily support the formation of this commission. Thank you. All right.

Thank you. Any additional public comments on the special meeting item? Mayor, you want to speak? Come on down.

Thank you, Council President. I wanted to just start off by complimenting Council Vice President Maxwell on bringing forth this idea and those who are co-sponsoring it with him. I know we've had a number of conversations about Affordability, in fact, when I was at the U.S. Conference of Mayors this last week, the number one topic amongst the mayors, especially the large city mayors, was the issue of affordability. Affordability of housing, affordability for energy costs and utilities, the affordability for groceries, affordability for child care. Sometimes we're limited in what areas we can help offset some of those costs, but I do think when you when you think about it child care is one of those things although we oftentimes rely on other agencies like at the county level or state agency to be the ones providing that i do think that we too and local government and city government have a role to play in uh in helping and you know the affordability factors really impacts everybody but it impacts those families that are living on thin margins to begin with they're the ones that are having to make difficult decisions about whether to buy clothes for their kids or to buy groceries. And ultimately, we know that there are people ending up unhoused and homeless because of this affordability issue. And one of the things I was sharing with Council Vice President was, in speaking with Mayor Tim Keller from Albuquerque, they were ahead of this in the fact that they went into the childcare business. They actually operated facilities. And they still do today, but they're transitioning out of that because difficult to find the teachers, the costs associated with that. And now very innovative that they're utilizing city facilities, whether it's office space or community centers, libraries and the like, modifying the facility to allow for operators that provide child care, early learning to kids to come into those facilities and operate out of there for free. in terms that lowers their cost overhead, and then they're able to pass those savings on to families. And then they partner with nonprofits. They're out seeking funds. And I think a number of cities across America are struggling with this one deal. And I'm going to be proud to say that Fresno is also going to be doing that as well. So I support the commission and look forward to hearing your motion.

All right, any further public comment on the special meeting item? All right, seeing none, we'll go ahead and close that and bring it back up to the dais, Council Vice President.

Yeah, thank you for those words of encouragement, Mayor. I think it is always great when the council and the administration can work together to tackle these big issues facing our community. So I do appreciate what you had to say. And I think you brought up some good points. I've talked to so many folks, whether it's nonprofits or teachers or child care workers or parents or even parents. young adults that just had their first child. They're having to decide, young couples are deciding whether or not they can even afford to have a child or maybe that second child that they've been wanting. They have to decide whether it makes more sense for them economically to stay home and raise their child or go back and enter the workforce and earn a salary. Because we're seeing with a lot of families, it actually makes more economic sense to stay home and raise your kid, which is unfortunate because it takes people out of the workplace. And it's also really tough for young people who are trying to get an AA or a bachelor's, trying to go back to school to elevate their family to the middle class, but they can't do that because of the cost of childcare. In Fresno County, median family is spending about a third of their total household income on child care that is just untenable for so many families across this community and so i'm going to make a couple of subsequent motions the first one is to pass this resolution um and to appoint council president esparza and council member perea to the commission as well second that The next steps after that would be to, if you both are accepting of those positions, to meet up again to start appointing members at the next meeting. And then after that, we could start working on some actual policy solutions.

Yeah, amenable to that. Okay, if not the 18th and 25th, but this month. So I'll take that motion first and then I'll make another one afterwards. We have a motion made by Council Vice President, a second by myself. I don't have anybody punched up. Is there any opposition to the motion? Seeing none, that passes seven to zero.

And secondly, Council President, I think a lot of people are familiar with EOC. They're familiar with Head Start. They've heard of First Five. I don't think folks are quite aware about how drastic of an impact these organizations are about to go through when it comes to cutting programming, teachers, or even having to selling properties off, especially with these federal budget cuts coming down the pipeline. First Five was created in 1998 originally as a response to Prop 10. This was an organization funded Primarily if not almost a hundred percent with tobacco sales tax and good news and bad news Good news less people are smoking cigarettes these days bad news is that's less funding for children and child programming across our community So I have total trust and faith in this organization They work really closely with the county who they're chartered with and obviously have a lot of regulations from the state level as well And so I'm gonna make this next motion with them in mind. And that's a motion to appropriate three and a half million dollars as a grant to First Five California for the public purpose of generating childcare within the city of Fresno.

Thank you. All right, we have a motion by Council Vice President, second by Council Member Perea. I don't, oh, we got Council Member Arias punched up.

Followed by Council Member Perea. Thank you, Council President. If my colleagues would remind me, I think it was Member Maxwell, during the pandemic, we made a similar investment for child care, did we not?

It was somewhat similar. We provided slots for, I think, predominantly first responders and frontline workers during the COVID pandemic. What we didn't do was a mixed model where we also offered grants to parents new businesses or existing businesses to also create additional slots to help on the supply side as well.

The two bills were, it was two of them that combined for several million dollars.