City Council - Regular Meeting

Recording in progress.

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All right, good morning, everyone. Welcome to day three of our budget hearings. Clerk, please call the roll.

Yes, good morning. Council Member Perea. Council Member Arias. Council Vice President Maxwell. Council President Esparza. Present. Council Member Vang.

Present.

Council Member Richardson. Council Member Karbasi. Four members being present, we have a quorum.

Just barely. Let's hang on to it tight. Yeah. All right. Let's please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.

And Council Member Vang, would you please lead us?

Ready, salute.

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

All right, I'll entertain a motion for approval of the agenda. Second. All right, motion by Councilmember Arias, second by Council Vice President. Any opposition to approving the agenda? Seeing none, that passes four to zero. All right. So our agenda today, we have four departments for today to complete. As I indicated yesterday, we're going to go on backwards order from what's listed on the agenda, starting with FACTS, going to DPU, Public Utilities, and then our Public Safety Departments, Police and Fire. We will begin with public comment today. If you haven't been tuning in, just as a reminder, what we're doing is doing public comment up front here. Everybody gets three minutes to talk about whatever part of the budget you want to talk about. Could be departments today or yesterday or tomorrow, whatever you want to talk about on the budget. And then additionally, we'll provide some additional opportunity for public comment for each department, one minute for each person. So you are welcome to speak during both components of that. And as an additional reminder today, we will have an extended lunchtime roughly from 12 to two. So when we come back in the afternoon, the afternoon session will begin at two o'clock today. I'm not sure what department we'll be on. Depends how fast we move. But we do have an additional agenda conference we have to attend to. So we're going to start the afternoon session later than usual. Instead of 1.30, it'll be at 2 o'clock, just as a reminder. So, Clerk, do you have any kind of reminders or announcements for anyone else today? That's all I've got in terms of our backwards order today, how public comment is working, and our... later start time because of the internal meeting we have to take for afternoon.

Yes, with regard to public comment, I will note because we've had a couple of questions after the meeting that this policy with regard to when public comment will be taken is the same policy as the last two days and it will continue throughout the week. In addition, if an individual would like to make a public comment in person, there are cards in the back and in the front of the council room. There's a basket for you to place that in. That way we can get your request for public comment. If you do want to make a comment into the microphone in a language other than English, that is fine and great. We have the technology to assist you with that. You do not need to have a live interpreter. Merely speak into the microphone in whatever language you wish, and we're able to translate that in real time into English for the council members on the dais. And our assistant clerk will assist you with that. Just let him know what language you're speaking in, and he can adjust that to provide the transcription.

Clerk, the translation, I know we have it on our screens here, would also be playing up top here on the big screen?

We can do that if that's the choice of council president.

Yeah, just for the audience's sake. I mean, we have the translation, but it'd be great if everyone has the translation as well.

Yes, we'll provide that both on the big screen and the council member screens.

Yeah, I mean, there's not too many instances of it usually, but when it does happen, it'd be great for everyone to tune in. Absolutely. Great, okay. Any other logistics that I missed, council? I think we're good. So summary... 2 p.m. afternoon session. We're going in a backwards order, and public comments will begin now. So I'll go ahead and open public comment. Again, whichever part of the budget you'd like to speak with respect to, you have three minutes. You'll also have an additional one minute per department, if you'd like, once we get to those departments. So I'll go ahead and call some of the cards that I have here. The first card I have is Luke. I can't, the handwriting's like that. Luke is the first name.

So first, I think it's worth noting that Fresno City Council's meetings are structurally inaccessible to most working class Fresnans. Unlike many cities across the country, Fresno schedules the vast majority of its city council meetings during normal business hours. And in doing so, the city is actively excluding a large segment of residents from the possibility of meaningfully participating in the governance and civic life of our city. I had to take a paid day off to come here. I have a Ph.D. in economics and professionally my background is in market design, which means I have a deep appreciation for how accounting and accounting settlement rules affect financial outcomes. One thing that has been astonishing to me over the last few years in my research of Fresno's budget is a lack of clear definition of attrition and savings by attrition. Both the mayor and city councilors appear to see this as a magic bullet for solving the city's rapidly growing budget gap. If savings by attrition is the primary mechanism for closing the budget gap, presidents deserve a clear definition of what it is, how it works, and how it balances the budget, and how it balances the budget beyond just being a stopgap measure. This definition should include what costs are accounted for when calculating savings by attrition, what counts towards departments' filled or unfilled positions. For instance, does this include workers on paid leave receiving workers' compensation? And what's the accounting basis for determining the cost saved? In addition to the cost calculation, what is the ratio being used to determine this rate of attrition? It's not documented anywhere publicly, and this is definitely opaque rather than transparent. These definitions are important because currently, as budgeted by the mayor's police, the police department does not appear to be abiding by the 6.18% attrition rate mandate, and it's closer to 5%. Related to this point, I and others have been unable to find a budget procedures manual relevant to this budget or last budget, This is an essential document for understanding the city's budgeting process and the practices for developing it as well as decoding the various charge codes used in the line item budget. Without this Rosetta stone, it's virtually impossible to meaningfully understand our city's line item budget. I think it's important to note that regardless of how the attrition rate is calculated, adding more positions to a department undermines the strategy of savings by attrition, holding the number of filled positions constant and allocating more unfilled positions to a department increases their attrition rate, thereby freeing up more positions to be filled. Again, increasing the cost that a department can incur. By adding 3.75 sworn officer positions, the HART team, the mayor, and city council are demonstrating that they're willing to worsen the city's financial state and displace the added cost of an ineffective approach to getting the most vulnerable residents back on their feet and into housing onto the rest of the city's budget. Based on the average personnel cost, we estimate that the full cost of just the officers would be $629,000. This is using average personnel costs with ancillary equipment vehicle costs proposed by the mayor This comes close to $900,000. Similarly, the 27 FTE positions associated with the organized retail theft grant will be that grant funding ends December 31st. Allowing these positions to continue would be a continuation of a trend that's been driving the rapidly growing budget shortfall. This is a backdooring of police positions our city can't afford into the budget under the cover of short-term grant funding. These positions, again, based on the average personnel cost. Thank you, Luke.

Next card is going to be for Ruben E. Ruben E.

Good morning mayor and city council members. My name is Ruben Espinosa and I'm a father living in Southeast Fresno near the historic Huntington neighborhood in district five. My wife and I vote in every single local election, including the city council elections. This is my fifth year attending these budget hearings to uplift my family's and my community's needs. Today I'm here to strongly urge you to vote no on absorbing the 27 grant funded police positions into the general fund. and to oppose expanding the homeless assistance outreach team with more police. We are currently facing a massive 35 million budget deficit and a main contributor to this has been the city's police hiring spree. Since 2020, Fresno has added nearly 100 officers with a staggering 80% of the police budget going strictly towards staffing. We have seen this grant to general fund pipeline before. In 2020, the city used temporary ARPA funding to cover nine million in personnel and 10 million in overtime. When it expired, taxpayers were left holding the bag, creating a multi-million dollar funding gap. Now the three year organized retail theft grant is expiring and once again the general fund is proposed to be back on the hook. Permanently absorbing these 27 positions will cost us $2.3 million this year and $4.7 million every year thereafter. To me, absorbing these police positions does not make sense. Fresno is the largest poor city in California. My home in District 5 sits in one of the most burdened census tracts, ranking in the 95th percentile by the CalEnviroScreen for environmental and socioeconomic burdens. Our poverty rate is, our poverty score on there is 95, education is 90, and housing burden is 71. Given what these realities are, not just in my district, but in Fresno, we must allocate our taxpayer dollars towards root causes and not filled carceral approaches. Furthermore, we need real transparency regarding the stewardship of our taxpayer dollars. Recently, Judge Robert Whalen ruled that the city violated the California Brown Act by conducting illegal closed-door budget processes. This happened years after the commission on police reform explicitly recommended the city council engage in participatory budgeting and recommend and recommendation number 36 and also to disband the homeless task force and recommendation number 56. So I urge you to let these temporary police positions lap as intended and redirect that $2.3 million this year towards proven solutions at work in uplifting our residents like the eviction protection program, advance peace and more robust youth programming for all of our youth. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Next speaker is going to be Arianna.

Hi, council members. Happy Wednesday. Good to see you again. My name is Arianna, and I'm a member of Fresno's For People's Budget. And I'm also a mental health professional, and I focus on social services and community investment now. So the last couple weeks, we've been talking to community members about what they would like to see in Fresno. Specifically, we identified these expiring grants that fund these police positions, which the mayor proposes to allocate general fund money to continue funding them. So when we did that math, we found that these expiring organized retail theft positions amount to $2.7 million for this fiscal year, or $2.3 million. And in the future, it would be $4.6 million on the books from our general fund. The ones from the addition of the HEART team would amount to close to $1 million, so we could this year divert $3.5 million from the general fund to literally anything else. I know there's some things on the table, like Councilmember Maxwell's proposal about childcare, and I know that there's some questions around where that money would come from. I also know there's a lot of other requests from constituents, like in Leadership Council, and other individual community members who have reached out to you all. Several of us in Mike Carbasi's district have tried to reach him in the last couple weeks. We actually can't find the correct email to get to him and have just been sending it to the city clerk. So we talk to Fresnans from every single district and our coalition is made up of Fresnans from every single district in all walks of life. And some of the things that Fresno said they want to see is more affordable access to food in certain food desert areas. Sometimes I have family come and visit from Sacramento and they're like, I couldn't find a grocery store in that area and I couldn't find flowers for the graduation. And so that's like that Roosevelt area. Better roads, better public transit, accessible public bathrooms, clean bus stops, urban greenery, shout out to Maxwell. Affordable housing and diverse housing mix, child care access support. Another person said protected bike lanes, specifically on shields. better paid maternity leave, a library in the Tower District, No More Heart Team, more animal shelter funding, walkable streets and spaces where we don't need to pay to exist, and more spaces for the youth, investment in the future of artists and the arts, memory care and senior services, and eviction protection. Almost half of our general fund goes to the police department, and more than 80% of their funding comes from the general fund. This $3.5 million is only 1% of the entire police budget, and less than an eighth of 1% of the entire city budget, which is a record setting $2.55 billion. This feels like a lot of money on the front end because it's so meaningful to community, but it's something that the police department will barely notice. So we've added 90 something police positions in the last couple of years, up to more than 900 already. And increased police budgets are not associated with increased police clearance rates, which are the rate at which crimes are cleared. So you could choose not to grow this again. You could choose not to allocate this money from the general fund. When you look around at our Fresno's crumbling infrastructure and the way we're pushing the unhoused around, that's the built environment. That's a result of our choice.

Thank you. Next speaker is going to be Christina Helm McIntyre.

Thank you. Thank you. Hi, good morning. My name is Christina Holmes McIntyre. I am one of the co-founders of Fresno Community Parent Coalition, as well as I am a business owner in this community. But I come here today and I want to speak to you from a parent's perspective. One of the issues that I have with the budget is that there are very limited preventative services. Um, I have a really big issue with that because as a parent, what you expect is for your city to have programs and processes in place to help parents that have kids before they reach crises. I was in front of Williams elementary school, uh, two weeks ago speaking with a parent and I was so moved and I'm trying not to be emotional right now, but this mom said to me, that she sees her youngest child on the same pattern that her oldest child who is now serving 25 years in prison. And that is because Fresno has not intentionally invested in the prevention of crises for children. We are more focused on policing than we are on creating processes and programs that prevent these children from entering into crisis. Advance Peace is one of those programs that does that. And I was very offended, offended that in that budget, Advance Peace got $300,000. I thought it was very indicative of the values that this city has put forth. I really want you guys to consider, and I have some other things to talk about when we start talking about the police budget, But I really want you guys to consider that what parents are looking for are preventative programs that will catch their kids before crises. We do not care about police response time because response time means that a crisis has already happened. And we need for our elected officials, and let me remind you, and the community at large that you guys are elected to represent the people. You have people like her bossy who have pledged on his website that he is going to increase police funding every year regardless, which means that his vote is already paid for. Are all of your votes paid for as well because you have parents whose Children are falling through the cracks And you are elected to act as their representatives. And I understand that our mayor can be a bully with the text that released from Fresno Unified School District. However, your job is to represent the people. It is not to always align with the mayor when it is not in the best interest of the community. This budget is not in our best interest. Thank you.

All right, next card is going to be for Alfred Aldredi.

Thank you, Council. I will keep it brief. Good morning. You all know me. One of the members and founders of the Fresno Resistance here, part of the Fresno Peace Groups, to let you know that, once again, I'm in opposition of the police budget and urge you to please let the grant-funded cop positions lapse so we can use those funds, those $1.8 million in so many areas that As Christina spoke before me, parents, concerned citizens, business owners, future residents here at Fresno have voiced already that they want to see taken into consideration instead of funding an already militarized police department. Fresno doesn't need to keep turning its police force into an occupied army. What it really needs is to pour more money into uplifting the unhoused. As a resident of District 3, Miguel, I see on a daily basis, living on the corner of Olive and Ferger, right where the Fresno Pride parade kicked off, the unhoused on a daily basis, and I see the way that these HART teams treat these individuals, not like human beings, Almost like they're non-existent to this world. I've seen them throw out all their personal belongings. I've seen them physically be abusive and verbally. So we don't need to invest in another heart team that's going to be out there furthering the problem, sweeping this problem of the unhoused under the rug. What we do need to do is to invest into preventative care for people, mental health care, other services. programs that are going to help people get off the street. And yes, there are folks who choose to be there and, you know, ultimately need to be forced off of the street, but there are different ways to be helping folks other than, you know, abusing them in such a way. The funding of these neighborhoods that are left behind, expanding public transit, building more libraries like we just spoke, the one here in Tower, the Tower District needs a library for the love of God. We need to bring a library to the Tower District, a library. Public gathering spaces across the city, we're in need of those. There are so many things that the money that is saved from from these grant-funded positions can further. And I think we, as elected officials, you all should seriously look into how can we better Fresno instead of militarizing the police, like I said. Another thing that I'm going to continue beating down like a dead horse is where are we going to speak about the $1.6 million contract for the flock cameras here in the city of Fresno and ending that so we can save that money and contribute to to all these different areas that are in serious need in a better way. And the way that the money gets spent should be decided by the people, not by investors or by politicians who already have money put in their pockets to make the decisions, like Carbasi.

Thank you. Next speaker is going to be Taylor.

hi my name is taylor i am a humanic student at fresno state and i also work at an after-school program and these babies cannot read half of them have adhd and are not diagnosed they're foster and unhoused students and they tell me stories that about being scared that their parents will be taken by ice We need resources for our children. We need funded paras who will help with behavior problems. We need more funding for after school programs. I also hear stories from our unhoused community that their items are thrown away and taken by the heart team. Driving down the freeway, I see giant yellow bags, piles of them. I can only imagine what's inside them. that includes ID cards, birth certificates, blankets, stuffed animals, maybe an item that their mother gave to them, who no longer is here with us. I can only imagine what is in those bags. Is the heart team really here to help our neighbors? Heart, police, and flock cameras are funded by our tax dollars. These tax dollars can be better used to fund services that actually help people. Things like youth development, parks and rec, outreach programs, eviction protection programs. We urge that you vote no and let this grant lapse. Police only react to a situation. They simply react. So response time doesn't matter because the thing already happened. If you want to prevent the thing from happening, which I assume and I hope is our goal is to keep our community safe because you guys, council members, are public servants paid by our tax dollars, which means you serve the public, not politicians, not corporate interests. You serve the people. And we urge you vote no and let this grant lapse. Almost half of the general fund goes to the police. The police do not solve issues, they only react. Thank you.

Next card's going to be for Azara Marin.

Good morning, council members. Let's try this again. My name is Zahra Mudding. I'm with Power California Action. Since January, Power staff, partners, and young leaders have met with many of your offices. Again, thank you for your time. We had the opportunity to hear about your budget priorities for this incoming budget. To back those conversations, our canvassing team spent six weeks knocking on doors in neighborhoods during the primary, speaking directly with over 3,400 constituents, your constituents. The aligned message from seniors, parents, young adults is also very heartbreakingly consistent that Fresno residents, your constituents are drowning. They are cutting out basic groceries and medical needs just to survive because their incomes cannot keep pace with the skyrocketing rent in Fresno. We urge this council to take two immediate actions to implement a 3% rent cap across Fresno following the successful proven models from cities like Santa Ana and Baldwin Park. Fresno should not be the exception, it should be the leader for the Central Valley on this matter. Also increasing eviction protection program funding because the current 1.5 million is simply not enough, especially from what you hear today. I want to be clear that these two actions are homelessness prevention, keeping families housed now stops the downward spiral into homelessness, child welfare intervention, survival-driven crime, and incarceration. Housing stability is not a partisan issue. It is a matter of common sense and baseline necessity. I urge elected officials in this room today to look past political divisions and implement a 3% rent cap because keeping working families securely in their homes is the most physically responsible way to protect our neighborhoods, prevent homelessness, and keep our Fresno local economy moving forward. In the last minute and 20 seconds, I want to say just a reminder of what you all ran for when you ran for these positions. The promises that you made for your communities. If you've never had to experience being unhoused, you were in a place of privilege. I've loved someone who was unhoused and was not able to save them. someone dear to my heart. And so I stand before you today to talk about the importance of protecting our unhoused community, reallocating these fundings in ways that could be accessible for our community, and also recognizing that when folks do not have access to their vital records, they don't have access to jobs. They don't have access to housing programs, right? And so I don't want to out anybody in this space who might be experiencing being unhoused currently. But again, you all have the power and the position to make a difference for our community. So just reminding you all of that. And again, there are ways to better use this funding from our conversations with folks at the doors. We've heard folks who did not have their power on real time as we're talking to them. We heard folks who can't even afford red meat. We heard folks who don't know how they're going to pay their rent as their children are in their home. And so again, just reminding you all that there are better ways to invest this money. Listen to the community. Thank you.

Thank you. So the rest of the cards I have are for specific departments that we're going to take on here one by one, particularly the police pile is very high. But at this time, again, if you have public comment, generally, I'll invite anyone else who has nots. who has not spoken, come on down. You all have three minutes. Again, later on when we go department by department, we'll be doing one-minute public comment. So especially as we get to later departments later in the day, if you may not be here, I encourage you to speak now during the three-minute public comment period.

Hi, my name is Alicia. Hi, I've been in here a few times. I'm just going to zoom out for a second. Some community members are going to present some data later, some very well-researched data, and I concur with a lot of it. I want to look at a human aspect real quick. I've been here a few times, and I know you guys know that. Of note, Carbasi's not here. Extenuating circumstances, cool. If not, rude. Also, too, community members have taken their time out of their day, their lives in the morning on a weekday, which is not feasible for everybody. Let's point that out. Parking should be free during these meetings. And your attention, I know, I've been here enough times to be used to that glazed over and not really paying attention, but I think the community members deserve at least that respect. So before I give my comment, I'm gonna point out, there's a forum I follow called Revitalize or Die, and I suggest you guys look into that entity. They do a lot of revitalization work across the nation. But to quote them, why would you move here? Why would you want to start a business here? Why would you want to renovate a building here? I hear these questions in a lot of places I visit, people asking them of their own community, about their own home. That's not pessimism or realism either, but low civic self-esteem, and it's plaguing too many of our places. The problem with low civic self-esteem is that it can't be fixed with a typical approach. There are no technical solutions that lift self-esteem. All the grant money in the world can't make a community like itself. Even in the best plans, you can't force a town to believe in itself. Cities don't behave like machines, they behave like people because cities are made of people, not parts." This budget's lazy. Lazy. And it's of note that our city is run by a former cop and over half of our police budget, our general fund goes to the police. And I know that comes up a lot and there's contention about it, but let's point out the fact that that money can use some imagination. It's not working. And as many shovels as you guys stick into the ground, as many photo ops as you guys take, your constituents aren't going to believe that you mean it unless you show up and innovate. Have some imagination. Your constituents are ready with advice and ready with input and ready with proven stuff that has worked in other locales. This is lazy. This money can go to... The heart team is throwing away people's belongings. This is cruel. This is blood. We're going into another season where there is heat and not enough water and people are going to die. And you guys are going to jockey back and forth like you do every year with the cooling centers and the warming centers in the winter and people are going to die. People are pinched, tired, suffering, angry, and overworked. And if you think this is going to last forever, we're the fifth largest city in the state. Act like it. People are done wasting money on reactive bullshit that doesn't work. Policing is reactive.

All right, thank you. I'll welcome anyone else who would like to do public comments. I see a few people. You guys can line up if you want, or one by one. Come on down. Welcome, you have three minutes.

Hello, everyone. Matthew Gillian here today as a resident of District 2. But as I wear many hats, forgive me if this feels a little jumped around, but I had the pleasure of having an hour and a half long conversation yesterday with a gentleman who is set probably to retire soon from the police force. He's been with the police force for 30 years. From his words, I'm paraphrasing a bit here, as he's worked directly with Advance Peace, he was not in favor of it when he first started working with them and has along his journey has now come to a point where he sees the benefit, sees it in the numbers, sees it in the way that the community receives the advance fees program, as well as himself and other officers in their communities. And he just really was speaking from a place of the collaboration that is there that has been cultivated over its time here in Fresno is very important to the safety of our communities. And now I pair that conversation to one of the other hats I wear is actually a shout out to Taylor for mentioning our paraprofessionals in our schools. I do work part time as a paraprofessional and had an incredible conversation with a young student and the teacher in the classroom yesterday where that teacher actually had a reflection in the midst of that conversation where he was talking with the student about the teacher-student relationship and likened it in that moment to actually less of a judge and you know, person scenario and much more of a referee and, and game scenario where yes, the referee has control over what's happening in this game, but definitely the players in the game are on equal footing with these referees. Um, and so I look at those two conversations of this, of this officer, this 30 year officer, um, who was really over, I don't know how long, but over the past few years has had this reflection in, in his relationship with the Advanced Peace Program and their relationship with the community and teachers and students and this teacher's reflection on his relationship with how he is moving forward with students, right? And it would be great. I know there's been some talk of maybe a larger budget, but the number is $1.2 million that Advanced Peace needs to really effectively be able to implement the layer of service to young folks in community before, as many people have mentioned, before there is crisis. $1.2 million, as I believe Ariana stated, it's been found. It's found in places. We can activate that money. We really could start having a program that police are supportive of, that our mayor is supportive of, that the community is supportive of, and it is having effective results. Why wouldn't we want to do that?

Great timing. Come on down. You have three minutes. Welcome.

My name is Jasmine Hernandez.

Auggie Osuna.

The heat team, they come and take our stuff. They laugh at us when they take our stuff. That's all we have. Everything we own that goes in the dumpster is supposed to be put away for 30 days and for us to be able to go get it. We can't go get it because it's thrown in the dumpster. And first thing I've done, went through all the process to get a house and I can't get a house. It's a running around. You get told to do this, you do this. And there's nothing that we could do. You can't get a job unless you get a house. But how do you get a house if nobody wants to help you? And then we have to worry about the heart team coming to take our stuff.

More like the heartless team is what they call them in the neighborhood. But me personally, I've got several family members that are with law enforcement, both county city and um and state and um you know i got nothing but the highest respect for law enforcement unfortunately um sometimes certain officers or whatnot tend to uh be bullies but no uh i'm not talking about that's our mayor just talking in general uh they tend to laugh at uh at the homeless people when they throw their stuff in the garbage and whatnot and um pretty much treat them like shit in general. They tend to look down on them. That's not cool. What was the other thing?

And bathrooms. If we could have owl houses, it would be better for us to have bathrooms. To take a shower, they do more showers, but it's only in certain areas. Some people can't leave because they have so much stuff. I understand that we should have that much stuff either, but... You know, we just want, I want a place to live. I would love to be housed again, but I can't get it. I can't even get a job because how, who's going to want to give somebody a job that's homeless.

We went through the whole process with the pog and, um, we did everything we were supposed to do and it equaled nothing. We got nothing out of that. Um, the other thing was public meeting places. Um, We just left some friends of ours. There was a group of us before we came in this morning. And our meeting place was behind the dumpster, behind the old Stormer's Bar there.

Trying to figure out how we were going to get our next meal. Because not everybody can get to the pub.

Yes, that's true.

And then we were told that you guys aren't allowed to give us food because it's illegal. It's illegal to be homeless. Well, where are you supposed to go if nobody will help you? So we get arrested.

We need more meeting places also.

We get arrested for being homeless, but we have nowhere to go. And then they want to cut down all the trees, so we're stuck in the heart. And then to get a bottle of water, the rest of us don't even want to help us. So, I don't know, just please think about, we don't need another heart team, we need help. Yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, next. Hey, guys. Hey, clapping's all right, to a reasonable level. We need to respect the chamber.

Hi, Sean Zweifler. I mostly wanted to comment on facts, so forgive me if I'm speaking out of turn.

No, please, you can, you have time now and later as well.

Okay. So the facts system is the, I believe, the largest system in California that does not have tap-to-pay at this point. It's getting implemented all around the state, including in a lot of smaller towns, such as Modesto, Bakersfield already has it. I used it when it was piloted in Monterey. incredibly efficient. It's easy to use. It reduces one of the barriers to actually using the bus system. And as it gets continued to implement around the state, I think it's going to just make us look further and further behind that we're still having to pull out crumpled dollars and try and get them into the dollar machine on the bus, particularly for visitors as they're going to be used to using tap to pay. I think it's just going to continue to be more and more of a problem that we do not have that system. I understand that we are in an incredibly budget-limited environment, and I want to thank Council for all your work on the budget during what I'm sure is an incredibly unpleasant and difficult time, but it really is time for us to to join the rest of the state and implement tap to pay on the fax bus system. And then I do want to uplift what others have been saying about not implementing a second heart team. I mean, I think I don't know if the data bears this out, but it definitely feels like we had a lot more fires this year, and I don't think it's a coincidence that that coincides with the sit-lie sleep system being implemented and increased hard enforcement. I don't think this continued enforcement is really doing anything good for the city, personally. I mean, I think obviously everyone knows that homelessness is... an incredibly difficult challenge and no one likes seeing waste and trash and people dying on the streets, but let's talk about efficient and effective solutions and not just things that look like we're doing something and ultimately making unhoused folks' lives worse and making the city worse, so thank you for that.

Welcome, you have three minutes.

Hi, I'm Mel. I live in Council 1, District 1, and I work mostly with community gardens. I'm interested in community spaces. I'd love for there to be more money spent on that. An example of where the police budget goes to, they have two Bearcat armored vehicles. One is newer, so the older one got used 14 times last year. The newer one twice. Why do we need two super expensive armored vehicles for pedestrian use, for residential use? War vehicles, right? And then instead of preventing harm, and using that money towards social services, toward housing, toward getting people housed. They're on the street, they can't get off the street, and then it's illegal to exist as an unhoused person. So that money could go toward addiction services, community care. So I'm curious as to what you guys care about. You guys have control here over the budget. So what do you care about? Do you care about that money going to the cops and even more this year going to the cops through this budget? Or do you care about us? Do you care about us being housed? Do you care about us having services? Do you care about that? Do you want that for all of us? Or do you want that for the cops so they can come out and throw people's stuff away? so that they can harass people, that we've made it illegal for them to even exist. So please reconsider that. Thank you.

We barely have a quorum. Thank you. Council, I want to agree with the ask of FPB and support Vance's piece as well. Regarding HART, you've identified community needs already that need to be included in a budget. Based on this, as well as community demand to reduce homelessness, it makes little sense to increase funding for a second HART team and would be prudent to motion to reject this. The budget proposes that this increase will result in expanding capacity to conduct street outreach, resolve encampments, connect individuals to shelter and services. But this is false. The increase does not expand outreach. Outreach teams, not the police, connect people with services and shelter and are not accompanied by police. And without an increase in shelter and services, there logically cannot be an increase in these. The police are impeding people from getting on their feet with their practices while denying allowances the city has in the municipal code, disability rights, and constitutional protections, and also actually impedes their safety by pushing them into other areas that may be less safe. They do not reflect the claims of our budget that they are treated with dignity. What purpose does it serve when they refuse to let an old man roll away his cart of belongings or refuse to give a woman back her backpack? How is this helping people to get into services and housing when they refuse to give a man's prosthetic leg back, to name countless cruelties? In addition, Hart's practices are actively creating greater health impacts, adverse health impacts. One woman told me that her insulin was in her belongings. She told Heart they said, too bad. Another woman was arrested after she was given antibiotics for infection, and they threw away her belongings. They also leave pets on the street when they arrest people. We are finding an entity that is worsening the situation. The U.S. Interagency Homeless Council's Seven Principles of Camp Resolution states that Hart's approach will not succeed. We recognize that this approach is not working. The justification is that only a small percentage want help, and while that's a poor justification, it's also false. Your own HOPE team can attest to that, but people cannot go anywhere until there's shelter and housing available. Look at the monthly coordinated entry system. There are hundreds of people that are housing ready on the priority list. Regarding cleanups, we have a city team that does clean an encampment without throwing people's belongings away, and that could be implemented. Also, this puts a strain on public utilities away from other things. The City was given the recommendation by the Fresno Commission on Police Reform to disband the Homeless Task Force and reallocate resources to social services and community-based organizations that provide services to the City's homeless population. This is not what Dyer and the City has done and kept the same entities and practices as the Homeless Task Force and added outreach. Fresno CPR was addressing homeless task force because how they treated people. The city should revisit the recommendations of the CPR and the seven principles to ensure our homeless response actually reflects the mission goals and ideals of heart in the planning community development.

Welcome, you have three minutes.

Good morning. My name is Brianna Zweifler-Katz. I'm a District 5 resident and a homeowner. And I'll save you the trouble. I'm here to oppose an additional HART team. And I would ask the council that the organized retail theft positions lapse. I'm urging you to invest in homeless interventions and prevention that works. Things like safe camps, programs run by people with actual lived experience, increased funding for the eviction protection program. And I know I'm just, this is never going to happen with this council, but for God's sake, we need rent control. And there are three reasons. Number one, policing is inhumane and cruel. In this supposedly godly city, we seem to have forgotten to love thy neighbor as thyself. One Fresno only applies to people with a roof over their heads, and those without get dump trucks and jail cells. Organized retail theft. People are out there stealing toiletries and food. People are poor and hungry. But I'm not going to waste any more time on this argument because while I'm in the audience crying at these horror stories that you all have been hearing for years about what it's like to live on the streets, you all have continued to do the same things over and over. So I don't think these arguments are going to be very effective. Policing is ineffective. We just heard the point in time homeless count yesterday. Homelessness in Fresno has gone up 9.2% while it's gone down around the rest of the state. And that's because things like the homeless response that, sorry, heart, just disperses people. They're not actually providing services. Dyer says that Uh, they can't send people out there. Uh, sorry, I'm getting ahead of myself. Uh, I also says that, um, there's been these, all these reductions in crime that the police have done all this reduction in crime. Uh, however, uh, there have been historic lows in crime across the country. This is not a result of just the Fresno Police Department. These are national trends. And the theft clearance rate actually hasn't changed. And finally, it's a waste of money. Dyer says that they can't send a social worker out without police backup. But countless community orgs, churches, and shelters do street outreach for cheaper without the police. The reason the police need to be there. Because they're throwing people's belongings away. And not only that, they're not just the direct cost of policing, they're the indirect cost, like the lawsuits the city invites when they're throwing people's belongings away in violation of the law. I'm not saying this just as someone from the outside throwing stones. I'm saying this as a formerly homeless person and a person in addiction recovery for over 19 years. I needed a ton of support and services to get to where I am today, a stable person, homeowner, taxpayer, parent. And one of the main things I needed, long-term subsidized housing. I needed all kinds of pro-social supports and especially peers. You can't keep putting people in these chaotic shelters and these barely refurbished motels and being like, well, we've tried everything. We know what works. We know what works. You have people with the experience.

Thank you. Welcome. You have three minutes.

Hi, my name is Jacqueline Pearson. I live in the historic Lowell neighborhood in District 3. I used to live in District 4, and I have family and friends that live and work in every district of the city of Fresno. I believe each person here has a common desire to see all Fresno residents thrive, specifically when it comes to public safety. I propose that, as you hear many ideas today, that you consider heavily investing in advance peace. Thriving happens when basic needs are met and people know that there are people who care about you. The advanced peace model is grounded in evidence-based strategies that reduce gun violence by addressing root causes such as trauma, instability, and limited access to opportunity. Fellows that participate in the advanced peacemaker program receive stipends and coordinated support to help meet basic needs, including food. transportation, childcare, housing, allowing them to focus on healing, growth, and long-term change. Advance Peace is effective. I'll now be referencing studies from UC Berkeley and UC Merced. In its first year, Advance Peace contributed to a 53.2% reduction in the number of gun homicides and shootings during the 18-month Peacemaker Fellowship. Results showed that reduction in gun-related crimes became more pronounced as time passed. By year two, the magnitude of the reduction had increased, demonstrating that the program's effects strengthened over time and highlighted the importance of sustained engagement, mentorship, and support for participants. Advance Peace is also cost effective. In its first year alone, Advance Peace likely saved the city of Fresno and county between $57 to $158 million in gun violence related costs and return between $21 to $58 in benefits for every dollar spent on the Advance Peace Fresno program. Effective programs like Advance Peace take time, manpower, and money. You likely know that Advance Peace lost a $2 million federal grant, and as staffing has had to reduce significantly, Advance Peace responses are currently more reactive instead of the program's intent of being proactive. Having talked to program directors as recently as last week and hearing the personal sacrifice that has come with their investment in the lives of program participants. I feel as though we can't not invest and not just invest but increase the city's investment in advance piece. What's beneficial for one part of our city will be beneficial for all of our city. Thank you.

All right. Is there anyone else who has not spoken yet or not given public comment who would like to provide public comment this morning? Any part of the budget? All right. Seeing none, we're going to close public comment at this time. We'll get on to our first department here, which is the FACTS department. Welcome, Director.

Good morning, everyone.

Let's see here.

I'm short, but not that short. Good morning, everyone. Gregory Barfield, Director of Transportation, better known as Fresno Area Express, to our family and friends. I just wanted to say good morning to Council President and all that are here for this budget. presentation as usual. It's an honor to serve in this capacity. I don't know if I should thank or curse Bruce Rudd out for sending me over to FACTS, but it's been a fun eight years, mostly as a director in that eight years, and it's an honor and privilege to present today's budget on behalf of our 540 staff members. A few of our key leaders are here today, and I just want to say thank you to those that are present, but more importantly to our bus drivers who are on the street, our transit supervisors in the field, our dispatch and radio folks, as well as our mechanics, service workers, laborers, our storekeepers, personnel, our planning staff, customer service team, our analytic folks, Well, you kind of get it. There's more than just me that makes up facts. So, again, thank you to each and every one of them. I want to pay particular attention to Linda Taylor, who is our admin manager, Elizabeth, who's our grants person, Anna, who pays the bills, and Andrea over there, I mean, Angie over there, who takes care of business. So, let's start with our slides. There's just a few. I'm not going to basically read all of them. What do I do, point at you there, Bernard? Oh, over there. Okay. It's been a while since I had a PowerPoint. All right. Oh, it's not even on. I'm technologically challenged already at 10.04 this morning. As you see, our budget continues to grow. This year, in particular, we will move from $232 million to $244 million. The majority of that is the cost and increase in operational services tied to our... our mous in addition we have an additional 140 million that will go for our capital programming and services in this next year Again, in this last year, we've added just 10 positions. There are no new changes in this budget. Those changes will all be realized in the full year's effect beginning in 27. And so we will be at 550 full-time or 550 employees. That's a combination of some part-time bus drivers and full-time bus drivers. Our operational impacts, of course, our paratransit service continues to increase in cost. Our alternative fuel, over time, our FACS PD unit costs are there. That's for 12 individuals, including two sergeants and 10 officers. Staff, I've got one of our sergeants here today, our only sergeant today, Sergeant John Banuelis, who leads this outstanding team with us today. And of course, the parts and inventory continue to increase. There's a list of our state and federal grants. We are strong in obtaining state and federal grants. And again, that's all attributed to Liz, who is our single grant writer, grant reporter, grant director, grant superior officer, et cetera. So she continues to bring in big cash for us over the years. And then we have added a couple of new buses this last year. 11 brand new CNG Gillick's from the Gillick factory in Livermore have arrived. They're all in service. We have purchased an additional 11 refurbished new flyer buses. They are series 13, they were Built in 2013, but been fully refurbished for our use now. And of course, as many of you know, we launched new service in Route 29 earlier this year. Our employees are always in the community. We were out at Pride last week. We're at things this week. And so I'm very appreciative of how active we are in the community. But we do that for two reasons. One, to connect with our riders. One, to reach out to our riders. And two, because we are part of the fabric of the community that we serve. All right. That's all I got in the prepared slides for you all. Now it's your turn.

All right, Council Member Arias. Director, how many years have you been of service to the city?

I've been here 20 and a half years. years now.

Are you close to retirement yet?

I plan to retire in August of 2030. I figure I will get through one more budget if the Lord is willing. And then, as many of you know from my council days, we tend to take some time off, Dr. Barfield and I, immediately when this budget is passed. So I figure I'll put the Cabo trip on the city's dime and then retire on a victory lap when I get back.

That's good to know. I do appreciate your service both on the council side and on the administration side.

Yeah, I'm just glad I'm not the homeless czar today.

Yeah, I know. But I am also glad that you will be here hopefully long enough for the renewal of Measure C and the additional resources that we anticipate. the passage of measures, these renewal would provide public transit and how we then fulfill those commitments to grow the route system. My question for you is very simple. What is the current absenteeism rate of bus drivers?

Well, it depends on the day. We experienced a day, actually Memorial Day, where 48.9% of our drivers failed to show. Although we had Sunday service on that day, that is a lot of impacted service on that one particular day. In about two hours, I'll get the last week's report. Uh, and, um, but last week I believe we had some 60, uh, cancellations in the week before that I think was in a 230 range.

So we're essentially been counseling about 200 routes.

It fluctuates by day. And there's no rhyme or reason. It could be a Tuesday. It could be a payday Friday, which typically we do feel that impact. But there's no rhyme or reason why our folks just call out on one particular day.

Is it fair to say that your department has the highest level of absenteeism rate in the city?

Well, I'm not going to fight with Paul, who you will see in DPU, who also struggles with absenteeism, but... City Manager... Probably so.

Would it be FACS that has the largest absenteeism rate?

I think that's probably a fair statement. I've never done a comparison, but from the amount of disciplines that come through my desk... I would say that facts unfortunately gets the number one spot for numbers of discipline. And I would say most of those disciplines are related to missed routes or call-outs. I think that's probably accurate, Mr. Barfield.

That is correct, Madam City Manager. And Director, when people are absent, what's the response by the department? Do you have additional drivers on standby to make sure that the routes remain or do you need to cancel the routes?

So it's a combination. We carry what we call an extra board of unassigned drivers. There's roughly 60 drivers that are on the extra board right now. They fill in either long-term absences, workers' comps, days off. But after those 60 people are exhausted, then we begin to do the unfortunate process of canceling routes or canceling Partial runs in service.

How often do you counsel routes or partial routes on a daily or weekly basis?

Every day.

Every day. Every day. So... Unlike the police department or fire department or public works, people don't show up to work. We just backfill.

Well, again, after the 60 free people, there may be people who volunteer on their sixth day of work or their seventh day of work. We do force folks to work, particularly the lower level, but there's never enough people.

But every day you're having to go through that 60 person.

We're having to go through the 60 person extra board. We're having to rely on forced individuals. And then if there's no one else, then we go into cancellation mode.

What's the recourse for the city short of a counseling route? Do we terminate folks for no shows on a continuous basis? Oh, absolutely.

Greg, talk about how many chances they get.

You get 10 chances. And so as the city manager has alluded to.

Let me just understand this from my own brain. So you can miss work 10 times before we terminate? Correct.

Correct.

In their contract, the way, and please, Greg, I don't remember the exact specifics, so you need to correct me, but there are different small levels of discipline, including fines. They can, in essence, buy their way out of the discipline. by paying a fine. Greg, if you want to allude. Oh, Samit, thank you.

Yep, I can jump in here.

So for the public who's here to express their concerns around policing and homelessness, if I don't show up to work, not a legitimate reason, the city fines me, I can just pay my fine and start again at zero disciplinary history?

It's a progressive pattern. So in their MOU, there's an incident policy and there's a tier. And I believe it's tier four, the fourth incident or fifth incident is when you can either have some level of corrective action or in lieu of that corrective action, pay a fine. And the fine amounts are all predetermined within the contract.

I'm assuming that I can just work the overtime from the bus driver next to me who's not showing up to work either, use that overtime to pay my fine, and then we start this game all over again.

That's a fair assessment to generally kind of how to offset that.

And the public. ultimately feels cancellation of routes. And the public is angered at us for not being able to get to work and doctor appointments in schools because we're canceling routes. And we have this self-fulfilling arrangement with this group to not address this more aggressively.

I would argue that, and Sumit, you need to stop me if I go too far. We have tried to address attendance. I think many administrations have tried to address attendance over the years. you're in labor negotiations, right? So we go as management, we go as far as we can, it's back and forth. We were hoping that we could put some stronger things in place with the last contract to improve attendance, And I'm not sure that that's happened. But, you know, it's all part of labor negotiations. And obviously, whenever management tries to be more aggressive on something, I think this is universal, not just for this union. The union expects something in return.

Yeah, negotiations are about how much reform you can buy and how well compensated your employees can be. In terms of compensation, are fax drivers on the bottom totem or the top totem of compensation for bus drivers in this region?

Oh, I would say in the region, we're definitely leading the way.

We're the top compensated bus drivers in the region.

Yep.

And we have the highest absenteeism rate that's resulting in daily cancellation of routes.

I mean, we've heard the absentee numbers. I can't speak if we're the highest, but certainly there is a high amount of absenteeism.

All right. Those are all my questions. Director, I just wanted for the public who rightfully so expresses their frustration to us policymakers, I think sometimes doesn't get the full complete picture of what limitations we have. In this case, I get numerous complaints of the daily cancellations of bus routes and why people cannot rely on public transit to get to school and to work and to medical appointments. My only response can be, well, that's what our labor contract calls for. And we, over the years, I have voted to make them the highest compensated bus drivers in the region, because we want to make sure that it wasn't because they need a second or third job or because they're the lowest compensated. We've done that part. And rightfully so, our employees, I think in every category, police and fire, bus drivers, are the highest paid in the region. We've taken care of them very well. I'm just struggling with them not showing up to work and having a direct impact on our ability to service the folks who pay their taxes for that service. On my last question to you, what is the reason why we don't have tap pay as a bus system?

Funny. Thanks to Sean, what was his name? We do coming soon. We are in the middle of our on-demand study, which will help us with our mobile payment on a phone as well as a tap card. So that is coming. I would expect to see that about this time next year rollout.

My final question is, I see you guys are absorbing higher costs for the police officers assigned to FACTS. What's the rationale for that?

Well, we're not absorbing higher cost. It was called out in that particular slide. We are supposed to have two units. We only are paying full time for the one unit and then whatever contracted officers we can get above and beyond that. We just made it, John and I just worked together to make a decision that we would start with offering that contract time to our team first as their overtime versus me seeing one of our officers in the hallway out here to work one of our shifts, and then we go out to the contract team to fulfill.

Now, there's been a lot of comments today in public about the desire to have less officers in the city. Remind me, how many bus passengers do we have a year, in facts?

So we're training right now to hit 10.2 million riders that will in our year in June 30th.

How many calls for service relate to the bus drivers are calling 911 for something that's occurred in a bus or in a bus stop? Do we have?

Calls for service. Here we go. So last month... Last year, fax calls for service were 519 and the year prior to that, 556. Those were just calls for service to respond to the bus or to a situation in one of our properties.

So in essence, somebody in the bus, the bus driver or somebody in a bus stop calling 911 for a police response.

Well, that would be mostly it would be there's an incident on the bus. The bus driver has alerted dispatch. Dispatch then asks one of the fax units to respond appropriately along with the transit supervisor.

What type of incidents would you then dispatch an officer for?

DISRUPTION ON A BUS. YESTERDAY WE HAD AN UNFORTUNATELY BUS DRIVER HAD TO PULL OVER AT ONE POINT YESTERDAY IN HIS ROUTE BECAUSE ONE OF THE PASSENGERS WAS HAVING SOME KIND OF MENTAL BREAKDOWN AND EMS AND PD RESPONDED APPROPRIATELY. THAT INDIVIDUAL WAS TAKEN AWAY ON A 5150 HOLD.

So it could be a medical call. It could be a medical call.

Yeah. There are times even when we pull up to the bus stop and someone may be having a medical emergency, whether they were going to ride our system or not, we're going to stop because that's our property. And we're going to make sure that we take care of them.

My last point that I'm going to ask you to provide me, maybe not on the spot, but I'd like to have a plan or a response. In the Tower District, there's a couple of bus stops. One is underneath the freeway underpass, San Pablo. One is on Olive in front of the Dollar Tree. One is Little West on Olive. And on a routine basis, as you walk through that corridor, you see individuals who are openly smoking crack, methamphetamine. You also see kids waiting for the bus stop and families with strollers waiting for the bus stop. And those individuals have just camped out and engaged in open drug use. I see your crew that shows up to clean the bus stops very frequently. clean out the trash cans very frequently. Are your officers that we're paying for actively going and doing spot checks on bus stops so that people aren't openly doing drugs? Because they're not there to ride the bus. They're just camping out on the bench and not allowing kids to sit in the shade structures that we built for their families.

So not only do our officers and the FACTS unit respond to those types of situations, they may do that either in their car. Yesterday we did a bike outreach where we had two officers that rode the Route 1 throughout the day, and they were spot-checking a lot of those locations. And I know on the end-of-report recap, they were on the bus headed one way When they were on their way back on their bikes, they encountered the same people they saw at the bus stop prior and had them to move on. So that's an all-day situation. We've even run operations at the Dollar Tree location, I know, because that was where our first bike outreach was done in the Tower District earlier this year. And we will continue to do that all summer. All of our officers are bike-trained. We have one that's horse-trained, and so I wouldn't be shocked. We brought out the horses and done some goodwill stuff at Courthouse Park, but I would not be shocked if there's not a game plan with some of those hot spots that we see that John and them may be working on with regular patrol.

Well, I want to encourage you to continue to spot checks in those hot spots because I've engaged with these individuals. I have to stop and say, there's a baby right next to you with the mom waiting for the bus. You know, they're either not in the right mind or they clearly don't care. But the open drug use in a bus stop that's taking place by non-passengers of the bus system is out of control, specifically in the tower. I have not seen it anywhere else at the level that I've seen in the tower. And that will be a conversation for the police department when we get to their budget. Because I'm not seeing the... the results of the highest paid police force in our history in terms of tower and other places that we'll discuss later in the budget. But I just want to encourage for the Office of the Year paying, I recognize there's 500 calls that they're dealing with.

And actually, I need to correct my, that was, it's 500 calls for service that were PD related. There were 3,498 calls that Joe just pointed out to me that were calls from our system to our officers.

Yeah, medical related, mental health breakdowns, things of that nature. So I think it's important that the public get to see a view, a global view of the amount of interactions that we have with residents and the level of impact that we're trying to manage as it comes to people feeling safe riding public transit and public transit operating the way it's supposed to and the way we're funding it to operate which is on a daily basis with routes not being councils because people aren't showing up to work those are all my comments for this budget thank you sure and i and i want to add on i i know that olive has been a hot spot as of late particularly that one stop

But we have done, there are other hot spots that we've had throughout this last year. We've been dealing with some issues on Ventura, around the 7th Street area. We had a very successful joint operation in the beginning of the year with Northwest and Northeast, and our officers in the Pinedale area. It's the bus stop right there where the credit union is. And that was one of those crazy ones where as I'm coming out of Costco, I'm watching a hand-to-hand deal. And after a couple of trips through there and chats with John, we realized that we did have a more serious problem with the motel across the street. And us and those two districts all worked together. And we've also now gotten the property owner to clean up and bring down the shrubs and other things like that. So lots of good things. On the olive one, I do think that I will consider adding a camera there because I think that's one of the things we need there. And we've been talking about buying a couple of extra cameras we can just move around to hot spots.

What do you need for that to proceed with from us?

Nothing. Nothing.

So I should expect the cameras to be installed?

Yeah. I just made a request through PD for us to jointly look at some mobile cameras that we can move around. I remember my code enforcement days when I was on the council side. how they had those cameras. They moved around town based on the illegal dumpings. And we ended up doing one in Thames. It was right there behind the burrito place at Olive and, no, Belmont and Van Ness. No, Van Ness. Yeah, and Van Ness, right there where the meth clinic was at one point. We ended up having to put a camera back there. So, absolutely.

Mm-hmm. All right, Council Member Perea, followed by Council Member Vann.

Good morning, Director.

Good morning.

I'm happy to hear that we will be transitioning to the tap and pay method. Will that still allow, let's see, I come onto the bus and I only have cash or coins on me? Will that eliminate my ability to pay at that point?

No, no. So we want the ability, because we understand a lot of our residents are bankless, so we want to be able to either do the tap card where you can physically add money where a third party, like DSS, could add money to that particular card, or if you didn't have a card at all and you were just visiting or decided to, hey, I want to take a stroll, then you would just use your regular bank or credit card.

Understood. Okay. Bless you. And then what is, more or less, what is the cost of that investment?

What are we spending on? So 2 to 3 million from the last estimate, and that's based on purchasing the actual readers for the buses and then maintaining the software agreement. I'll repeat this. Thank you. OK, for the record, Linda has told me it's about a $3 million investment. But that also includes all the hardware and the software that goes into that particular thing. We did try this about a year ago. We were unsuccessful. We really didn't put enough. details and information into our RFP, so we had to scrap it. And so that's why we're hiring the consultant. It's Flixnakes, if I got that right finally, huh? Flex links, I always call them something different, who is doing that. More importantly, we also want to make sure, not just on the fixed route, but on the paratransit system, we want to move to more same-day on-demand service. So, for example, if I'm done with my appointment early, but my pickup time is 12, and here it is, 10.30, I could then call for a vehicle to come get me sooner than wait to the appointed time at 12 that I'm scheduled for. So we think between that and the airport on-demand service we're looking at, that that will be a game changer for us.

Thank you. So $3 million upfront cost, and then ongoing, what does that look like?

It really depends on the system that we buy. Typically technology in the transit sphere is six to eight years. That's about where we are with our fare boxes. We've now had them eight plus years and they're almost at the end of their end of life. So we expect to see that same materialize on the new system.

Thank you. And then can you remind me who we have MOUs with, what other school districts? Basically, who gets to write the fact system free of cost?

So currently, our number one, our first school was Fresno State, so students, faculty, and staff, followed by State Center Community College. And so that's the students at the West Fresno campus, the big city college campus in Clovis community can ride as well as the first responders campus when it's ready. will also be in that particular group. Then we have an agreement with Fresno Unified, which is the one you will see next week, to extend that until we get to wherever we're going. And then Central Unified. And we've just, now that we have a year's worth of data, saying that we just reached out to Sanger Unified because they wanted to see the success of Route 29. And I will tell you, Councilmember Vang, that We are carrying a lot of those kids going to Sanger West and John F. Kennedy, and so very proud to see the work that, the fact that they're jumping on, and I think that they will be our next partner for sure.

Yeah, I'm happy to hear that. So Sanger Unified next, and then maybe at some point Clovis Unified, and I think that'll round up.

Funny enough, Clovis reached out to my... I was not feeling well on Sunday, so I missed the African American recognition and the scholarship award that we give out in honor of my dad with my mom. But Clovis Unified was part of a conversation with my wife and... and Clovis Community where they were talking about opening up on getting kids from the East Campus to Clovis Community. And so we will pick up a conversation with them now that thanks to Corinne Fulmer reaching out to my wife.

Wonderful, okay. What percentage of your budget is comprised of Measure C funding?

So Measure C funding roughly It's $15 million, but the percentage is what she was asking me. $15? Yes, $15 million. Very small drop in the bucket. But it's the most flexible money we have.

And what is that primarily used for?

So it's used for the night service, the expanded weekend service. It's also used for the frequency increase and then a lot of match. That's how we, because it's the most flexible, we tend to use it for a lot of match funds because the feds will give us 80%. We may dip into measure C for the 20% to match a grant.

I think there's a very rural chance that measure C will not be successful. It will not be on this year's ballot. What would be the facts department's contingency plan if that's the case?

I will tell you, and we are preparing for this more so for the educational part that we'll have to do. I don't intend to be, I can't on the city dime say yes or no on a ballot measure, but I will tell you that the very first thing that we will cut if this measure does not pass, if it doesn't get on the ballot, and then if it doesn't pass, The very first thing I will do is look to cut night service back. That would probably occur in January. We want to protect the school students so frequency may or may not be touched. because we run special trippers on the 38 because of the large number of high schools that are on Cedar. And so we do an AM run. That would probably be cut. And then we will come behind with more than likely weekend service being cut. And that would occur in June.

Okay. And then lastly, just an RFI, I don't know if you have these numbers off the top of your head, but I would like to understand better the ridership during the nighttime and the ridership on the weekends. I just want to understand what the people impact would be if this current renewal effort is not successful.

No problem. We can definitely get that to you in an RFI.

So what I'm hearing is potentially no cuts to daytime shifts, potentially no cuts to frequency of stops, potentially no cuts to bus stops themselves, but just impacts to night shift and weekend.

That would be, again, the first two things we do. So again, January, we would be looking at, so the measure is not on the ballot or doesn't pass in November. We'd be looking to start to wind that down. So January, there's a sign up and a new offering for our drivers. That would be the time we would cut some night service And then probably again in March, we would do some additional March, April sign up. And then by June, we would be rolling up probably the frequencies at that point. We'd be looking at all of the night service and weekends. It could mean for us Saturday would look like Sunday where we're done at 8 o'clock.

Would that equate to the need for having to cut positions?

Absolutely. Okay.

All right. Thank you, Director.

All right.

Council Member Vang, followed by Council Vice President. Thank you very much, Council President. Good morning, Director.

Good morning.

Good morning, and welcome to the FACTS staff for being here as well. And I want to thank the 540 FACTS staff for what you do on a daily basis to serve our 10.2 million riders. This is a critical component. If I had an automobile, And choosing between public transportation and the automobile or private transportation, I believe all of us would choose private transportation. And so it is safe to say that the 10.2 million people who took advantage or who rode on our public transportation did it out of necessity. And so I want to thank this department for providing that critical resource so people can go from point A to point B, whether it is from school to school or job or appointments or visitations, it is critical. And as someone who rely on this critical apparatus as a teenager in high school going from Belmont to Cedar, Cedar all the way to McLean and back and forth almost on a daily basis. I understand the services that this department provides for our community and so I want to say thank you for that.

Thank you very much. Director, you mentioned Route 29.

Yes. One of the newest route. I believe this route came about in the fall of 2025. And it opened the connection connecting southeast Fresno to southwest Fresno. And with regards to my question, I wanted to ask you, are there any numbers or statistics with regards to the number of ridership so far on this particular route? And also of those, can we extrapolate the number of riders being students? I understand that this route runs from southeast to southwest, starting from southeast from Sanger West, JFK, and then on the western side, Edison High and Computech. as well as Fresno City College, the West Fresno campus. However, in between this route, there are numerous school sites, Toronis Middle School, Gaston Middle School, and as well as Phoenix Secondary, as far as Unified. This Route 29 along Church Avenue is critical for the students who may want to attend one of the sites along here. And so this route has been open for less than one year. Do you have the numbers on the number of ridership utilizing this route?

I sure do. So fortunately, staff was able to give me ridership numbers late last night. Typically, I get them after the 10th. So for us, we are looking at 74,402 riders from the August start to May 30th or May 31st on that route. It's averaging roughly about 63, 6400 riders a month. on that and I will say in the morning time the vast majority we're seeing toward the end of that line or i.e. the Sanger Unified boundaries headed toward the school and then in the afternoon it's the Sanger Unified campus headed back to the edge of that Sanger Unified boundary along church.

You mentioned that the Fresno Unified students and the state center community college students and staff can ride fax for free and so because of that condition there is a system in place I assume that you can extrapolate from the ridership how many of those utilize the free ridership system, which means that they are either State Center Community College students slash staff or Fresno Unified students. Yes. Now right now, Sangay Unified do not have a waiver where their students can ride the fax system for free, but that's coming down the road. Given the information that you can take from that 74,000 ridership so far on Route 29, how many of those would you say are students, either State Center Community College students, staff, or Fresno Unified students?

Yeah, for a route level, we'd have to do some research for you, and we'd be more than happy to get that number to you. Please. And the great thing about both State Center and Fresno Unified and the other PATH programs, you don't have to just be going to school. You can use it to go to your job. You can use it to go... you know, for recreational purposes or what have you. But we will dig down on Route 29 and the ridership bypass.

Which means that they are eligible to ride the fax system during the weekends, even though some schools are not in session. Correct. Thank you very much for that clarification, Director. And of the 10.2 million riders, what are the two most popular routes in the city?

Route one is number one, followed by route nines, 28, 34, and 38. 38 being Cedar, West Fresno, Ocala, up Cedar. Route 34, that ridership has exploded because we've extended that route down to the Amazon Ulta complex. So our first two or three buses of the day are completely full. And then, of course, Route 28 is long-time bread and butter. It serves both Department of Social Services to the north, West Fresno to the south. Route 9 is our crosstown Shaw Avenue route. So it serves many businesses and what have you. And, of course, Route 1 is the bus traffic transit.

Thank you. Do you have the number for the most ridership route in terms of the numbers per year?

Yes. So right now, Route 1, the bus traffic transit route, has had 2.149167 riders, so 2.149167. and a half riders. It is our number one route, and it continues to be our number one route with 2 million plus riders annually. Followed again, you know, with neck and neck with, you've got that route 38, which has almost 1.1 million riders right now. And again, with five high school campuses, you know why That one's a bread and butter, but again, it also serves Caliwa, West Fresno, and goes all the way up to River Park and then turns back around.

In addition to the numbers that you will get to my office in terms of the number of students riding the Route 29, if you can also give me the total number of student riderships on an annual basis, whether it is Fresno Unified or State Center Community College students slash staff, if you can get the number to my office, it would be greatly appreciated, sir.

I might be able to take you right now here, if I can find the slide here. All right, so for this year we are trending and the state center number is right now the total rise is 303,475. That does not include the May numbers because we have not updated those yet. So that was as of April. Of that, 24,873 rides were based out of Clovis Community or a Clovis Community College student with their ID did it. And as you know, many of these students have multiple campuses that they may reside at. 65% of the state center students bounce back and forth between one campus and another. And then from Fresno City College, it's 278,602 as of April. And then on the Fresno Unified side, Oh, and I forgot one. We just started a brand-new program at Fresno Pacific College, so I have very little data there. In the Central Unified, I'll have to get that one to you because I only have the cost in front of me, as well as we'll also get you Pacific because that's your district.

Oh, Joe's going to tell me.

Go ahead, Joe. It's your birthday.

Good morning, Council. Happy birthday. Thank you.

Happy birthday, Joe.

Central Unified to date through April, 12,610 trips or riders. And then I think Mr. Barfield already hit on the other ones, but Fresno Unified, 4,066 through May ridership.

And do you have the numbers for the Fresno City College West Campus? Or just City College in total?

Those students either fall under City College or the Clovis Community.

And what is the running time for Route 29 going from east to west, southeast Fresno to southwest Fresno?

We're 20 minute headways, right? On 29?

30 minute. 30 minute headways. Okay, so 30 minutes per. And what is the earliest starting time and the latest starting time for running?

That bus pulls out sometime about 5.30, so probably our first pickups are just before 6.

And then the latest?

And then that bus goes until 9-ish in the evening. I strongly see, based on this one-year result, I strongly see speeding up that route at some point. I can't... I got to get through the Measure C question right now, but that would be one I would definitely want to speed up because of the success we've seen in it and just, you know, the few months we've had it.

Yeah, it appears that there is a demand for this route. Absolutely, absolutely. And as the student population continues to increase, it will allow students and as well as parents to ride from southeast to southwest for the possibility to go from Edison Computech to JFK, Sanger West as well, and schools in between.

And the crazy thing about that route, it's not a straight route yet because we're dodging the high-speed rail construction. So that's another reason why we started at 30 minutes. And that's really probably the best reason why I can think of once that construction is over with to speed that route up.

Now, Director, you may or may not have information on this question. Since the inception of this route in August of 2025, has there been any emergency calls? And if they were, how many emergency calls were made directly because of this route?

I don't have that in front of me, but we can definitely get you a breakdown. Appreciate that.

And then down to my last question in terms of several questions. And this is regarding the structure for the bus stops. What is the process in determining whether a bus stop needs a shade, a structure? And if that is the case, how long does it take to actually put in a structure or request for a shade?

Well, you've been lucky because you asked for one, and there was already a pad there, thanks to the UnitedHealth clinics building the infrastructure there. So we were able just to plop one down for you.

You're referring to the one on Minnewawa in Kings Canyon? Yes.

Yes. Yes. What about... Typically... Typically, the transit industry looks at ridership data, so you're onboarding and you're offboarding at a stop, and then that's where you build amenities from. The mayor has asked us to figure out a way to do more, and so we're tossing that whole thing out, where it's about ridership, and now trying to go to the process where to as long as we have the proper footprint, the ADA capacity, we will put one there if asked. And so, funny, I think I've got a D4 request last night and a D7 request last night that we are evaluating. I think out of the two, one we'll probably be able to deal with immediately. The other one needs some infrastructure.

These are requests for individual bus stops with shade. When was the last time FACTS did a needs assessment for shades? Is it needed in the foreseeable future?

We're working on your RFI, but funny enough, I can tell you that we were last in on this. So through the Fresno Council of Governments, there have been two shade studies that are helping us inform what we need to do on the shade side. That was done more at a higher level, and we wanted that data first. And then Public Works, of course, has done their canopy And now we're taking all of that data and putting it into our shade particular structure program to figure out where we need to have better shading. And does that shading need to be east facing? Central facing or west facing? That's something that in the study that we did with Fresno State last year, as we were talking about alternative shade structures, one of the things that they did was they went out and they studied about eight, I think it was 83 bus stops, and you will be surprised as to some of them have good, adequate shade all day, and some of them need more of an east-facing window, because that's where the sun beats down the hardest, or some need some west-facing. So we are taking all of that data, and we've got another cohort of Fresno State students that will be manipulating that data in the fall.

If I just may add, just to expand a little bit on what Director said, the mayor has asked for a master plan on shading, and I know the staff is working on that. I know that, you know, he kind of downplayed that a little bit, but just want to make sure he's asked specifically for a master plan, and we're expecting that, I think, by when?

September.

Yes, thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. And I thought shade was just shade, but there's more to shade.

There's much more to shade, absolutely. I appreciate that. Much more. And I really want to thank our partnership with Fresno State. We have taken them on as a partner. We started with the Transportation Institute. Now we are dealing with one of the colleges in the design field. And so we've got a cadre of both engineer engineers and architectural students who are helping us put this together. We were successful just recently, we've built, we've had some prototypes of an east, west, and central facing shade structure built by the career tech students at CTE, and that was their junior project, and so now we're moving to the next phase where we're taking those prototypes that were not all built to scale, but they were built by the students. We're taking those prototypes and now seeking a mechanical engineer to sign off on The actual drawings and then we'll go on to into production in the fall again those students at that school as well as the City College Career tech folks and Duncan will all be working with us with the San Joaquin Manufacturing Alliance and to conclude my statement

To state the obvious, we are going to go into a heat wave the next couple of days. And it is critical to even have a conversation about shades for people who utilize the public system here in the city of Fresno. Director, thank you very much for your time. That's all I have, Council President. Thank you.

Council Vice President Maxwell, followed by, actually, did you get the last one punched up?

Good morning, Director. Good morning. Good morning. I know that budget season often devolves into a list of longstanding grievances and demands, but I just wanted to take this time to commend you for what you've done to turn the ridership around on our Fresno fax buses. I know that we had a quickly expanding ridership pre-pandemic. And when I came on, was in the midst of that pandemic and decreased ridership. And over the past five and a half years I've been here, you've done a phenomenal job in getting us inching closer to 10 and a half million riders, which I think speaks volumes to the bus drivers and the staff here, making our buses more safe, making our buses cleaner, making our buses more accessible, more affordable, You've added routes. You've added additional stops. You've added higher frequencies. You've added free internet to all of our buses. You've worked with our school districts to do bulk purchases so that our students no longer have to pay. And you've reduced the overall fare for everybody that's not receiving zero fare. Is that correct?

Yes. Yes. And I thank you for those those compliments. Yes. When you came on shortly after the pandemic, the height of it or the beginning of it, I can tell you in 2020, when we went down to 10 riders at a time on the bus because we are so transit heavy, uh, in our dependence, um, those essential workers, uh, still 5 million of those were carried in the middle of a pandemic at 10 writers at a time. So, uh, that just, I think is a testament to, uh, the fact that our writers are essential workers, but they're, they, they also realize I gotta get this. I gotta get the work. Uh, I gotta do my shopping and my appointments, even in the midst of a pandemic.

I think a lot of people forget that our bus drivers are frontline workers and are exposed on a daily basis to activities that could be dangerous or harmful to their physical or mental health. I don't remember when the last report for facts writers came out, but the last statistics I remember reading was that the average facts writer was a woman of color, a mother on her way to either work, school, or to receive some sort of medical attention.

Yeah, she was replaced in 2024 in our customer satisfaction survey. She was replaced by a Latino male who is 19 to 34, who makes $15,500 and has a family of two. And so I think for my Latinas, I think what they ended up doing was during the pandemic, they probably went to school and took care of a little business and got a car, which is okay. But now it's the young men. We'll be doing our customer satisfaction survey in October, which is an onboard survey where we actually ask our customers, hey, who you are and why are you riding and what do you like and what do you don't like? That's something we do every other year. So you'll be seeing some additional numbers coming out early 27 as a result of that.

Looking forward to it. Me too. You know, I do have a couple of questions, but I do want to just commend the entire team. You are all doing a phenomenal job, and I know a lot of my residents are. and even business owners rely on your services every single day. And our city wouldn't be functioning without you guys. So I really do appreciate everything that you guys do for this.

Thank you.

You talked about worst case scenario. If this measure doesn't pass in this upcoming election, what's the best case scenario? If this does pass, what could transportation look like for our city?

Well, for those of you who had to endure our presentations to the Measure C Steering Committee, you know that we do have plans to speed up a lot of stuff. There's a Bullard Avenue across town that we're looking at. We recently stopped. Can you speak to that a little bit more? Yes, so what we did was we ended up having to put expansion more on hold for two reasons. One, we couldn't get the equipment fast enough. There are only 4,500 buses that are made a year. between the Gillick facility and the New Flyer facility. And so I can't compete with the 1100 bus order for LA Metro. And so a lot of us had to take a step back because most of those buses were for either the Olympics and the World Cup and to be in the correct position. We are back in line. We've got four buses right now. at the end of the building stage in Anniston, Alabama. Those are four or more hydrogen buses that should be arriving before the month that's out, as long as all the parts come in, the little missing pieces here and there. So you will see us expanding our service. So Bullard is one we're looking at. We're looking at breaking the chestnut barrier into its own route north south route a willow route north south route and we will speed up service on we will make the morning 38 permanent and then we will also probably do a 38 in the afternoon, which would be just a tripper service to pick up kids. We want to move the nine to 10 minute frequency in the morning because that is getting people to and from work.

It's 15 now?

It's 15 now, but we would make it a 10 minute peak service to match what we have on the BRT.

Is that just on shower that be seated as well?

That would be on Shaw because it's scheduled trippers that we have on 38.

Because 38 is 15 minutes?

It's 15 minutes, but with those extra buses, it means it's more like seven minutes.

Okay. And in terms of fare and fare structure?

Fare is not going to change.

Yeah. It would be codified, would it not, in this measure that would be on the ballot potentially that, certain populations would be able to ride zero fare.

That's what I hear. I have not seen the measure in its entirety. That's part of what you all do up there. I'm the servant who has to run the service and talk about what we do on the public education campaign. But yes, I do understand that that was included and that's why our extension and our contracts with all of our current vendors do have out clauses in them in case we... Yes, in case something changes.

I know something that we talked about before pandemic before even came into office director. You have long been a champion of first and last mile solutions. Are we coming any closer to possible solutions to address this concern and with the passage of this measure help alleviate some of those concerns again for the public first and last mile is the issue that our bus riders face with getting to the bus stop and getting to their destination after they've been dropped off.

Correct. Yeah, and although our budget doesn't really speak to it because it's kind of baked in our operating, our partnership with Fresno Metro Black Chamber of Commerce is now going to be moving into another gear. As many of you know, the Fresno Metro Chamber had both a bike and a car share program as part of the TCC grant program. That grant has now ended, and we've been in talks with them because we've worked with them all the way since the early inception of that.

And that's why they're only serving southwest Fresno right now is because TCC-

That was the original grant, was just Southwest. However, we've been in talks to expand that. The first place that we intend to expand is with State Center to offer them a fleet of electric cars and bikes so people can either LEAVE CITY COLLEGE AND RUN DOWN TO THE TOWER DISTRICT ON A BIKE DURING THE LUNCH HOUR OR MAYBE GO DO SOME SHOPPING UP THE STREET AND GRAB SOMETHING. BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY, FOR THOSE STUDENTS WHO ARE TRYING TO GET FROM ONE CAMPUS TO ANOTHER, HAVING THE ABILITY TO AGAIN USE THE TAP AND PAY, THE FACTS APP, to tap to release a bike or a vehicle to get to their destination. So we're working to make that all one seamless program. And because that funding has just dried up, there may be the ability to expand the electric vehicles from other municipalities that are, their funding has also dried up and they may not have expansion expansion types ideals like this. This is why we partnered with them at the very beginning. The other thing that we are going to be doing is launching with them at key locations. You will have bike racks that will be at a fax bus stop, and you may have cars that could be checked out that would be connected to a fax bus stop. The two places that I see that happening almost immediately would be Manchester and our downtown transit center.

A couple questions related to that. I believe currently right now private individuals can request those services through Metro Black Chamber.

Yes.

Would that still be open to them? Yes. Would they be getting a larger fleet to accommodate this service that you're describing?

Both. Both. So it would be, again, with the fax rider, they would get probably a greater discount because, again, they would be then taking the bus, then tapping and paying for a vehicle or a bike to get to their last destination. Mile destination and so forth. And then also with this on demand that we're looking at, it will open up the door to the potential other mobility as an option. We call them mouse services. One, the one in particular I really want to do, and this comes from my days as assistant city manager, is understanding the need for service to the airport. So one of the first things we want to launch once that on-demand service is available to us is a shuttle service to the airport. It makes no sense. I tried everything in the world working with the staff to speed up our service, but the only way we can get there for you to catch the 6 a.m. Dallas flight or 605 Dallas flight is for us to start service at 3 a.m. and to get you there in time, and that just wasn't feasible. So we're going to buy a bunch of electric vehicles and do service. uh for some of us who grew up in the bay area you may remember super shuttle we're going to do something like that on demand and that would be a 24-hour service also realize that there's as much traffic after nine o'clock at that airport as there is in a day so we want we want to be able to capture uh that ridership excellent and this tap to pay model

would the writer receive a physical or electronic ticket to their wallet?

Both.

Both. That's how they would transfer. Yes.

So it would tap to pay. If you had a phone, you would see your money delete or go down. I actually have my Clipper card on my phone right now, and you can see the running balance. And then for those who are paying by credit card but then needed a transfer, then there would be the physical transfer that would pop out, and we would give them to make the second connection that they may make.

Thank you. When it comes to electric vehicles and the state mandate, what are the conversations with the state been like recently? I think it's becoming more evident every year. This is not going to be feasible for most municipalities to meet this unfunded mandate by the state of California. We've seen difficulties here locally. We've been able to secure contracts with stable organizations when it comes to infrastructure, when it comes to the actual vehicles themselves. What's the plan?

So unlike Brian Barr and the General Services Division, we are still under our mandate. Our clean transit mandate is by 2040 we have to be zero emission. We were first in. The one for heavy duty equipment was the second response to that. We have no relief. coming forth and so you will see us as we start to buy, like I said, we just bought our final set of compressed natural gas buses, but we will be taking like all of the 16 and 17 series buses and refurbishing them so they can get us to 2030. I mean, 2040, because after 2040, I can't even run them on the roads. So you will see those. That's our BRT and our former Fax 15 buses. Many of those have 400-plus thousand miles on them already, and they're only eight and nine years old.

What's the mileage lifetime of one of your buses?

Typically, it's not about mileage, it's about years. So FTA makes us keep a vehicle for 12 years. And in that 12 years, we may change the transmission out a couple of times. We may rebuild an engine. But more importantly, those compressed natural gas tanks have a useful life and have to be replaced periodically. So we'll be doing that through a grant that we have to keep those buses on the road until 2030. The other part of our purchases moving forward, everything will be out of the 12 to 16 buses, we will purchase a year or we will order a year. We won't see them for 18 months, but we will order beginning this fall. You will see a combination of half of them will be electric and half of them will be hydrogen. We are going with Gillick, who is a proven electric manufacturer. They also build our CNG buses, and they were going down the hydrogen space, but hydrogen's not really popular with this administration, so their plans on hydrogen have been kind of put on hold. A more receptive group comes along in the White House, but we've made a commitment on hydrogen.

What about the infrastructure needed to sustain those vehicles?

So we have all the infrastructure right now for battery electric. So we have heavy duty chargers, 46 heavy duty chargers, and then one in the shop. So 47. And then we've got 30 light equipment chargers around our facility. And as you may remember from our last year's presentation, we were coming out of the the state's and GO-Biz's Arches program, but we've decided, although the feds are not gonna pay for that, Arches makes sense, hydrogen hubs makes sense, so we are marching down the hydrogen hub process. We have money now for a new facility, because we've got 144 buses on a facility. It was only made for 108. So we're busting at the seams and so we will be coming to you shortly with an opportunity for us to purchase some land. I'm in very, very early negotiations, feelers right now on five parcels that we're looking at each in about the 20 to 30 acre range. It would force us to again leave our facility now and then we'll turn over our current facility and all of this infrastructure for a small lease fee over the GSD to use.

Very good. Thank you, Director. We talked about Line 9 that had previously been a cross-city route that had been subsidized partially by the City of Clovis until their new line that they released. What kind of notice and for how long was given before that cross-city aspect was canceled?

So we actually got the prescribed 60-day notice. I think I got 62 days. And that was last year. And I think in my budget, I did speak to that, that we needed to do a Title VI examination. And we thought it was too late to pull that bus out that fast. And so we made a commitment to carry it for one full year, and that's what we did. And so as of Saturday, that bus no longer goes into Clovis.

How was that displayed? Was it like signage on the bus, or how were people made aware of that change?

Oh, wow, a lot of ways. So we did pop-ups at various locations. We did pop-ups at bus stops in and around the 9 Route. We also did social media and what have you, trying to communicate that to everyone that was affected. The real issue here is there's still service, that you just have to make the transfer at Shaw and Woodrow onto, or Shaw and Cedar. You have to make the transfer onto Clovis' bus, the Green Line or G Line, into Clovis.

And that's fixed route with fixed time intervals? Yes.

Yeah, they run, they're not running a schedule. They're just running headways of 30 minutes. I've seen some of the concerns and complaints, and I think the same constituent that has reached out to you has given me an earful. He's not normally a nine rider, but he does work in Clovis. And so he got it very early on that this is, you can't sit your watch by, the Clovis side of what they're doing. And even the app is, sometimes you'll see bunching on the app that they use for their service, or you'll see two buses like on top of each other. So it's, we've given them the year to work it out, but you know, sometimes bunching happens for a variety of reasons outside of our control.

Are there any other lines that are currently cross city that could be in jeopardy in the future from Clovis deciding not to subsidize commercial lines?

No, no, no. And honestly, if there's a sales tax measure that is passed in the near future, I will tell you that that Bullard crosstown, the Shaw one, and possibly one other will end up going back into Clovis. The problem with the nine really was it was the hours that Clovis was paying for it. So what it meant is if you wanted to shop, I remember on the council side, everyone just wanted to go to Walmart. when Walmart was first built in Clovis at Peach. But if you catch the nine, you have to be coming back by like 3.40 in the afternoon on a Saturday. It ceased operations early on Saturday. Most people want that to be more late night service. So I would see a total revamp in us doing that and making it more feasible for our residents.

Thank you. Good possibility that if this measure passes, we'd be able to reinstate that service as well as some additional service like you mentioned Bullard.

Yeah, no, I don't even say it's a good possibility. It will happen.

Appreciate that. I just want to close off with a couple of requests for information. Sure. Do we currently have subsidized fare on election day?

No. We have done it in the past. We've done free rides on Election Day. We have to be careful. I don't think I can do it in a presidential election unless I backfill it with state funds. There's a few prohibitions out there, but we have done it in the past.

Can you give me a memo, Director, talking about what the hurdles are to institute that?

I think it's just the presidential one, and I have to go back and double check because it was a Hatch Act thing, and I have to make sure that it's no longer, because this administration comes up with so many new rules, I need to go back and double check.

You just gave me a memo and talked about that. Thank you, sir. And then if you could also provide me a memo for how... Let me just reiterate something that you said earlier. Right now we offer zero fare bus rides to Fresno State students, faculty, and staff. Fresno Unified students.

Correct.

Central Unified students. Correct. Sanger Unified students. Sanger coming. Sanger on the way. Potentially Clovis. All children ages zero to 12. Correct. Seniors 62 and above. 62, yes.

And state center.

State center, community college students. Veterans? Yes. Military personnel? Yes, with ID. Medi-Cal? Yes. Okay, that's pretty significant. Can you, I'm not making any motions, but can you give me a request memo that would outline what the cost to your department would be to provide zero fare bus rides to city employees and interns?

Okay.

And a separate memo, what it would cost your department to provide zero fare bus rides to pregnant mothers.

Okay.

Thank you.

And you're saying now there's not a backfill to that? You're asking us to cover that?

I'm not asking anything other than a memo right now. Thank you.

All right.

This was probably a question better suited for yesterday because you don't handle any aspect of the hop, correct? Oh, no. Is that something I could put you on the spot about, Mayor? Sure. Remind me how much it costs to operate a single vehicle.

Yeah, and you have Brian back there.

Oh, if Brian's here, he's got this. Oh, if he's here, then I'll.

He's back there hiding. I'm not going to let him hide. Just a joint thing, man. Thank you. Thank you.

Council Vice President, while we're waiting for Brian to come up, I also wanted to correct the record. The fleet under GSD is still subject to the CARB mandates.

It is.

Modified, but they are, yes.

So a director here also has to come up with a plan by 2040.

different time. I believe we have until 2030. Brian, you can correct the record.

Brian has a different mandate than I do.

Sorry to put you on the spot like that, Director.

That's okay. I'm used to coming up here. Thank you. Brian Barr, Director of General Services. If you wouldn't mind, can you repeat your question?

I don't, did I ask a question yet? The cost. Yes, that's right. Cost per trolley. What is the cost of operating just a single vehicle?

Well, if you look at it on a per hour basis, I have to refer to our charter rate of $188 per hour. If you're asking what the overall budget is for our trolley division, that is $559,900. And that's how many trolleys, sir? That is two in regular operation. We have three we use for a spare, also for charter service.

This might not be something that's, I don't think it's feasible now, but it could possibly be with the passage of this upcoming measure. I know Mayor spearheaded HOP, which is the zero fare trolley rides to Fresno State, Brewery District, Tower District. I would really like to see a hope line that connects our medical facilities, our hospitals, and our major corridors that contain a lot of our clinics and hospitals. So if I could please get a request for information, what it would cost for us to provide that kind of service that makes a circuit to those hospitals and frequently used clinics. with this specific service, not fax, but with the trolley. I'd appreciate that.

Thank you.

OK. Thank you, director.

I do want to add that that actual proposal we put together for a state ASIC application for the roofs, the housing authority housing development 454 units that they're going to put at Tuolumne and Van Ness Fulton. And as part of that, in an effort to get the necessary funding for that to make it pencil out, and make it more competitive, that very route that you just spoke about was in that we would provide that service. So we're hopeful. But I like your idea and your thoughts on that, too.

I'm just asking for a memo right now if I could get a better idea of the facility and the cost. Thank you. And that'll actually conclude my remarks and comments. Again, I'm appreciative of the direction you've led this department in, Director, and again, your amazing staff doing a terrific job making our buses fast, clean, efficient, and safe. So thank you very much.

Thank you. All right. Council Member Vang, followed by Council Member Arias.

Director, hello again. Just two follow-up questions. Sure. You mentioned the criteria for free ridership for the bus system. If I do not qualify for any of those and I were to jump on Route 29, how much will it cost me to ride the bus one way?

One dollar.

One dollar. Regardless of day or time?

Regardless of day or time, yes.

Thank you. You also mentioned about the absenteeism rate for fax employees is one of the highest of any department here. You mentioned also about the incidents happened, having to call fax police 500 plus times. 12 officers assigned specifically to this department, and there's a reason as to why that is. You also mentioned about some of those calls resulted in 5150 with mental health issues. And if the activism rate is high for bus drivers and for staff in your department, and day in and day out, and I see and witness incidents like this happening, Are there any mental health support in place for any of your staff who may witness incidents like this and they may need counseling?

Absolutely. So the first thing that I do or any of us do, we will make a referral to our EAP program, which is available to any City of Fresno employee. If that particular driver or staffer ends up going on workers' comp, that could also be another way for them to gain mental health services. We just celebrated May as Mental Health Month, and so outside of this year, because we had our rodeo, typically what we do is a mental health fair where we will bring on providers to our particular campus during the month of May. But yes, we do a lot around mental health for not only our drivers, but all of our staff. Unfortunately, in the time I've been the director, we had a period, a brief period of time where we lost four individuals, two by suicide, and then two sudden. And so we brought in counselors and what have you into that. And then as you may know, last April, we ended up having an officer-involved shooting. at Manchester Transit Center. And we have wrapped a lot of support services around the supervisors and staff that were present that particular day. That's not what we trained for. And fortunately, you know, we got tremendous help also to our officer, because he was one of our FACTS officers that was involved in that. He's back on the streets and doing his thing. And so we really depend on it. Look, I believe in mental health. I go to therapy. And so I praise that all the time. I don't want anyone to be ashamed of using that. And there's been times where I've been in a meeting and I realize that we need help. So after we wipe our tears away because we have disclosed something that was hurtful, we've, again, wrapped services around that individual. We are really a family at FACTS, and I take that seriously.

And I agree with you, Director. This is a very sensitive personal subject matter. And I'm hoping that no one at FACTS or city employee have to face this. But the reality is we do face this. And when and if that time comes, I hope that FACTS employees and city employees, for that matter, will take advantage of the resources available, in this case, mental health counseling, if that's the case. Thank you very much for the...

Absolutely, and I know what a stigma it is in my community. I mean, I think the first person that I realized as a new director, I was in a Skelly, and this individual had saw a horrific accident four years earlier, but what What it was really all about was he was having these mental breakdowns. And one of them, he was in my office because of a discipline. One of them happened while I was driving a bus where he struck a pole. But when he started to chat with me and replay, he was fearful. He was a Latino male. He's in his 60s. He was fearful of that stigma. And so he was the very first person that we helped to bring down that stigma and use EAP and celebrate the fact that he's with us now. He's got 20,000 plus hours under his belt, and he's a very happy person who has dealt with his previous traumas.

And that is a success story. Amen. Amen. Thank you, Director. That's all I have, Council President. Thank you. Great.

Council Member Arias, followed by Council Member Richardson.

Just one request for information. Director, what's our busiest route on the evenings?

Oh, a one. Oh, no doubt about it. Where does it go to? The Route 1, so that's our BRT route. Starts at Fresno and Friant, straight down Blackstone, does the little circle in the downtown area, and then straight out Ventura, Kings Canyon.

What about the weekend?

Same thing, Route 1.

Route 1, so it's basically at the heart of the city? Yes, the heart of the city. North and south.

Right. We also see heavy ridership on Route 3, which was surprising, but you see a lot of the clinics along the corridor that are now open on a Saturday. And I love the stories of people going to do other things like Incredible Johns or heading out to El Paseo on that particular route.

Okay. In terms of a bus stop or a shade structure, I've had a request for the northeast corner of Olive and Fresno. There's an empty parcel there, but there's sidewalk infrastructure. I think there's a bus stop on Olive and also in Fresno, but there's no shade structure there or anything else. You can just follow up.

I've got eyes in the back of my head. I think Joe's writing down all the notes right now.

That's it. Thank you, Director, and thank you to all your staff and the bus drivers.

Thank you.

Council Member Richardson.

Hi there. Good morning, new dad.

How are you? Hey, doing just great. Happy Trash Day. All right. We'll start with the budget. Just a few quick questions. Just some numbers that I would like to have you explain, if you don't mind. Overtime doubled this year in the projected proposed budget. It says a double from this year. Why is that?

So, although you were not here when you do the replay, we started off this morning talking about absenteeism. And so that's really where that comes into play, is really the absenteeism. It's also the fact that on your fifth, if you're a 410 worker, You may want to work on your fifth day, and that's all overtime. We appreciate that. Or we do a lot of forcing on your sixth and seventh day for some of our younger drivers. That is all on overtime. Totally fine.

I'm going to go fast, and you can feel free to be brief with your answers if you like. Sure, no problem. I don't want to beat a dead horse when I miss the first round of preliminary bludgeoning. So clothing and personnel, supplies.

It was all good. It was all good.

Clothing and personal supplies doubled. Is there a reason for that?

We have gone to new uniforms, which we ended up buying two sets of uniforms for our particular drivers. And then we've moved from cash to a voucher system for our drivers in this last year. So that's why you see the difference in that.

Is that a fax decision or a labor negotiation decision?

A little bit of both. On the uniforms, I have people that have... you know, three logos ago, and they would stick that on, you know, a uniform, you know, a $2 shirt that they got someplace, and the quality and the colors weren't all that great.

Got it. Okay, thank you. Information systems equipment charge doubled to over a million bucks. Is there a reason?

We are very technology-laden, and so we've got a lot of technology out there, both that you see in the bus and then, of course, with the addition of adding staff to us. There's an ISD charge that goes along with that, and then some of that may be buried in the physical cost, as City Manager White said the other day. We all pay in to our former staff who used to work for us who now work for ISD.

Okay. Thank you. And then with the overtime doubling and the things you mentioned about absenteeism, workers' comp dropped to about a third of what it was last year. Can you teach me why that occurs, please?

We've been very aggressive in trying to move some of our longer-term cases off of our workers' comp load, and so trying to really work more closely with Samit's group and personnel to address them and get them in if there is no chance for recovery to do alternative work search or medical separations.

Okay, understood. And then finally, can you just speak, and I apologize again if this question is going to be asked. No, no, you're fine. You're fine. Can you speak a little bit to the ADA accessibility improvements that have taken place and kind of your relationship with Public Works as they go across the city and make sure that our bus stops are actually accessible for people with different mobility?

Well, I would say it's them, well... It's really us. So we do most of that work. This council adopted, I think in 2018, 2019, a ADA transition plan that we have been hammering at. And although we have now taken that plan and we're integrating it with all of our bus stop maintenance and our bus stop operations into a single plan that we intend to come forth and present back to you probably in the fall, because we'll need to update our transition plan. That is a requirement of the state and the feds so we don't get sued. But you will see us really kind of looking at a new way of going about dealing with all of those stops.

I appreciate that. Can you just explain it to me like I hide my own Easter eggs? How many bus stops have we improved? What does the accessibility look like now versus a year ago?

So this last year, we have improved 167 bus stops. We have plans to approve over 200 next year. It may mean more. And as I had mentioned earlier, with the mayor's request to put more stops with shade, we have just placed a couple of orders to add more shelters to stops that are compatible that This later this summer early winter you Early fall you will see another 50 or 60 new stops with structures on top of them great Thank you.

That's all I had and just so you know councilman. I can't remember if he was here, but we had asked for a report master report action report from facts to have every one of our bus stops with shade, and that report should be done September. But that's the goal. I'd like to see it done within the next three years for every single one of them.

Yeah, and we'll have to, again, come back to council because it really calls for now an amendment of our ADA transition plan to have to file with DOJ. I'm sure it will.

All right, thank you for your answers, Council President. So I'll have it.

Director, earlier you alluded to the investments of the Fresno Metro Black Chamber. Yes. I think it's like $700,000 or $800,000.

That earmark is $858,000 that we have coming in.

Is it new infrastructure or investing in the existing infrastructure?

No, so that was going to be an expansion of EV chargers. Where at? It was going to be an expansion. Oh. But thanks to this young man right here, our fearless leader, the mayor, he convinced them to take their earmark, even before they officially had it, and to replace all of the EV infrastructure that the city currently has. And so we are waiting for HUD to do their grant agreement, which I just got word may be as early as September. And with that grant agreement, that will call for the city Fresno Metro to replace every EV charger that the city put in in 2020, I'm looking at Miguel, 2020-ish, 2021-ish, replace all of that, and then provide a maintenance and service contract on top of that, and then we'll go into expansion mode. Expansion mode was supposed to be looking at some on-street charging infrastructure at different locations that our planning staff working with Metro have identified, but we're gonna do this first at his request, because it's probably the most important. Fix what's broken and update all of that, and then do the expansion.

So they're effectively the vendor for this?

So it's actually, the vendor is Fresno Metro Black Chamber. So they work in conjunction in how they did the program with the housing authority, Imperial Electric is the vendor who actually did all the installations. That same vendor has also done trainings to housing authority residents and to community members. on how to go into the installation business. And so they will handle the repairs and installation, and then later on the maintenance of those chargers. I think there are like 83 of them they're looking at. Citywide. Citywide and again those were they're already in city structures They will be because of the delay now at risk I've asked the the chamber to at least do an assessment of each and every one of them. They've done a visual look But later on they'll be doing a more. Let's get in with the right folks and figure out what the the what needs to be replaced there. I think it's gonna cost us a little bit more than the 858, but FACTS will do what we can to assist. And then we also have two other grants pending with Fresno Metro Black Chamber too that could help offset.

In the alternate universe where we went forward with Plan A, do we know where the location of the additional infrastructure was gonna be at in the expansion?

No, we talked about just general areas. And so COG did a mobility study that was wrapped up last winter and released earlier this year that talked about key places for mobility hubs. But it also looked at key corridors where investment could be made. I can tell you it's Ventura, Kings Canyon, California. It's Blackstone. It's Shaw. But we were also looking at districts. For example, there's a request that's hanging out there in the brewery district to have a bike installation put there, but also EV charging for cars. So I figure that'll be a location. I'm assuming we'll go to the tower district because these two are not going to let us off the hook when we get to expansion. But that will come at a later base now.

Sure. All right. Thanks, director. Any further comment from council questions?

All right. Again, I just want to say thank you very much for your kind words today. And I want to wish my partner in crime, Joe Vargas, happy 49th birthday. I think it's 1140 and I now probably have to take him out to eat because I haven't given him his gift card yet. So thank you guys very much for everything.

Yeah, thanks, director. All right. Now we've had the presentation. We'll open up some additional public comments. We'll do a minute each for folks who would like to chime in more specifically on the fax budget. I did have a card for Sean Zweifler. Sean's there. I know he spoke earlier.

Greg, can you just hang out until the public comment is done just in case we hear anything? Okay, thank you.

Sean here. Alright, well anyone else would like to speak with respect to the FACTS budget? Come on down, you have a minute.

So first I just want to say, as someone who lives in Tower and walks by those bus stops, I think R.S. 's account is very unique to him, perhaps, because I've never seen open-air amphetamine or other crack drug use. Perhaps his senses are more attuned to that than mine. I do want to say for Richardson, who was missing this morning, that one of the things that came through in public comment was that police can only react to stuff. It doesn't solve root problems. And what came up today during the facts presentation actually was a really clear demonstration of that. He showed that when police were called, it was oftentimes for people who needed mental health services, not policing. He showed that when we draw in property owners to create spaces that are safer, that discourage bad public behavior, that problems get solved. He showed that when police are called, sometimes it just shoos the problem down the street rather than addressing why this stuff is happening. Thank you.

hi good morning um i just wanted to say that it was this was a very interesting discussion to listen to what i heard was overpaid personnel performance issues the ability to pay their way out of trouble and then what i heard was a new demographic of bus riders which is hispanic males between the ages of 19 and 30 with two children making fifteen thousand dollars And then I heard a proposal or request from Mr. Maxwell for the cost of free transportation for city workers and pregnant women. That wasn't the demographic that was talked about, and I think that's why community voice is so important is for us to be able to bring these things back for you and to align to them what is most important, which is your constituents who are funding these resources that we're talking about, the money, right? It all boils down to the money. I want to draw the circle for...

Thank you. Any additional public comments for anyone else to chime in on the facts budget? All right.

Hi, Council Members. Hi, Council Member Richardson. If you could wash back that first hour of public comment, people gave three minutes each related to lots of budget pieces. So with the police department on fax, that money comes out of fax's budget, not out of the police budget. So there are two separate things that people were talking about this morning that wouldn't impact each other. So I just wanted to make that clarification because it seemed like from the day I was hearing some sort of connections regarding the police budget and fax. That's all. Thank you.

Thank you. Any additional public comment on the FACTS budget? All right, we're going to go ahead and wrap that up. City manager, or actually as a DPU director here, you think we could, how long will the presentation take?

I mean, we only have a handful of slides. Our presentation is probably, what, five minutes at the most?

Well, let's get the presentation done, and then we'll come back and pick up the comments and public comment and all that. Okay. Following the lunch hour, or lunch hours, since we have that meeting in between.

You got it. Good morning.

Good morning. Paul Amico, Director of Public Utilities. I heard five minutes, roughly, so I'll try to keep it.

You've got 15.

Yeah.

I mean, we technically have till noon, so.

Yeah, go for it. I heard 15 minutes. I will be concise. I have lots of words I could say, but I'll try to refrain from that. First, just let me take a minute here and express my appreciation for being offered the privilege to lead the department. I think it's a great department, and I'm looking forward to working with all of you moving forward and want to specifically thank our city manager and mayor for the trust and confidence they've put in for us. And lastly, before I start, I have a great team. I stepped into a big role, and we've got a pretty new leadership team in DPU, but we've got seasoned business managers. So they made this relatively painless for me, as did finance. So thank you all for everything you've done. So to start off with, Department of Public Utilities provides essential utility service. We serve 144,000 residential, commercial, and industrial customers and over 568,000 people. Our wastewater collection and reclamation system serves many of those same customers, but there are some areas that are served by only water, only served by sewer, and that area is bigger than our solid waste area. Solid waste serves around 118,000 customers, but they service around 120,000 carts. And that's every week. So it's a big operation. A lot of people, over 600 people doing it. And they're dedicated professionals that work real hard every day to deliver those services. And by the way, we like to do it quietly. So it just works. Additional services that we provide that make Fresno a better place to live, Beautify Fresno, community sanitation services, including alley cleanup, litter control, power washing, and supporting HART. And so our annual appropriation, our FY27 appropriation for all services is $490 million, just over $490 million. The proposed budget includes about 13, almost 14 million for administration, 61, almost $62 million for solid waste, 208 for water, and 206, over 206 for wastewater. We carry about $32 million in debt service right now. And our capital program, as proposed in the FY27 budget, is almost $222 million. All of the subsequent reports on our operating utilities, we are meeting the 6.18% attrition target. So moving on to administration. Our utilities administration group provides finance and general administration. My apologies. What am I pointing out here, Bernard?

Oh, side to side. Okay, thank you.

So our administration division has four main work groups, four main functions that we provide to support our utilities. First is finance and general administration, so the preparation of the annual budget and managing all of our financial and general administrative needs. Our master planning and development services group, our capital program management group, and water resources management. annual appropriation for the administration utilities administration almost 14 million dollars and that includes $800,000 for staff relocation from the Fresno B building which is now completely inoperational and move to a lease space. We're also creating a dedicated delinquency fee fund those funds were normally carried within utilities billing and collection but we've recently made a change where that goes into a dedicated delinquency fee fund that's separate from rate funds and the operating utilities are fully covering the cost of utilities billing and collection again the attrition rate targets 6.18 are met solid waste management as i mentioned a pretty big operation 64 routes around the city We, the city council, adopted a five-year rate plan for FY25 to 29. It was adopted in June of 2024, went into effect August of 25. This budget is the third step of that rate plan. On the personnel side, We have a new assistant director this year and we have two new solid waste managers. So we're really focusing on our solid waste operations, focus on focusing on our employees, trying to be more efficient, trying to be more effective. And we're really proud of what they've been able to accomplish. Our appropriation this year for solid waste, $61.6 million. It includes $2.5 million for the demolition of the Fresno Bee Building, and it also includes $344,000 to address the Fresno Sanitary Landfill, and our costs are split 50-50 with the general fund for that work. This year, we're only replacing the control system, but we are gonna have to do additional capital improvements in the future for regrading that facility. The majority of our non-personnel costs, and I will say for solid waste, we're doing well. We're getting back on track with our vehicle replacements. If you remember when we came to council for the rate update, Before, we were behind on vehicle replacements. Our vehicle maintenance costs were skyrocketing. So this year, we will be replacing 12 side loaders. It's about 13% of our entire fleet. Three rear loaders, two claws, a street sweeper, and three pickups. So we're getting back on track with our vehicle replacements. Turning our attention to wastewater management. Oh, I'm sorry. Did I skip something? Water. Okay. Pardon me. So our water system is really complex. It's probably one of the most complex, if not the most complex system I've ever worked on. We have 260 wells around town that serve our customers, 1,900 miles of water mains, two recharge facilities, 19 sites with granular activated carbon. We have two water storage facilities. So it's really complex. And one of the things we're working on this year is our control system, so to control all of that as well. Because water is so asset heavy, we are focusing on our people this year and implementing an asset management software that will allow us to produce or to collect more reliable data about our work, the work that we do in water, and to really focus on effectiveness and increasing efficiency around our work. Annual appropriation for water this year, $208.6 million. Of that, we have about 80.3 of that that is capital. Those are capital improvements, with the rest being personnel and other charges. Now we can turn our attention to wastewater. So our wastewater system, 1,600 miles of sewer from our customers to water reclamation facilities, and we dispose at the main regional plant out on Jensen. We dispose of the reclaimed wastewater in 1,700 acres of perc ponds, what we call percolation ponds. But we also have a tertiary treatment facility that pumps that water into the purple pipe that comes back into downtown. And there are also 18 lift stations in the system. The assistant director in wastewater is in his second year as well, and I've asked our folks to tell me what their focus is, and he's focusing on taking that group, which has had a pretty mature asset management and maintenance management program for a while, increasing documentation around SOPs, focusing on effectiveness and safety. So a lot of good things happening out of wastewater there. Proposed appropriation this year, $206 million. Again, the attrition rate being met. In this case, our capital program is $138 million. So when we do capital work at wastewater, we go big. Those are always big projects. The plant has big needs. And when you're dealing with big pipes, you have to handle a lot of sewer flow. And that is one of our critical facilities. And as I always like to say, it's a living place. So we take it very seriously. And if we aren't effective there, then we can have big, big problems. Moving on to people, our budgeted positions this year, 683 positions. We are not adding any new positions this year. The increase in the positions is just a catch up from positions that were created last year. 632, oh did I say, oh 683, excuse me, 632. See, it takes a team for a new guy. So operational impacts. I won't go over necessarily any of these in detail except for litter abatement and pressure washing. The remainder of the operational impacts are pretty routine escalation that we've been seeing over the last several years, including the memorandum of understanding negotiations. But let's focus a little bit on the litter abatement and pressure washing. What we're doing here is creating a sixth quad crew that is going to focus on the tower and downtown and also on pressure washing in those areas. We're gonna be increasing frequency for litter abatement and then increasing the frequency of the pressure washing. The timing, a lot of the, on that one, the timing is pretty well worked out and we can get into details if you'd like in the question period. And we're still working out the frequency in the other areas for the pressure washing and downtown. On the federal and state grant side, Over the last several years, we've been awarded $23.7 million across 12 grants. It's a combination of federal and state grants, EPA, US Bureau of Reclamation, Department of Water Resources, and then some from the regional board. Our solid waste operation also relies quite a bit on CalRecycle grants for education and what goes where. So we're really stepping up looking at those grants for customer education. As I said earlier, in terms of capital projects, when we do capital projects at wastewater, we generally go big. The one at the top, the $45.9 million appropriation we're requesting this year is actually going to be covered by a state revolving loan from the state board. And that is for a new treatment process that's required for increasing regulations around nitrate control to the groundwater. So we're going to create a new, we're going to build a new facility at wastewater, and that should be online by 2030. The remainder of these projects, as I said, four of the six that we are requesting this year are at wastewater. We are also going to be demolishing the B building, around an $8 million appropriation for that. And then we have been working early on. When I stepped into this role, I had a discussion with Chief Alcorn, and we're going to start replacing antiquated fire hydrants that are problematic for them and then also hinder their ability with mutual aid when the fire receives mutual aid. We had some chuckles about the pictures for our capital project highlights that, again, several of these are wastewater. If you look at the lower left, that's just our regional plant because there's capital projects all over that. I have a favorite saying that I say about our utilities, our water and wastewater utilities, is that we bury our best work. So a lot of times when you see our projects, you just see a torn up street. So this is our crews in the upper left cleaning out sewers, cleaning out vaults. Couldn't get past this without showing one of Assistant Director Veros' claws out there. And then, of course, because of our fire hydrant program, we took a picture of a fire hydrant. This is actually the part of my job that I like the most, is what we do for community education. Our water conservation team in water is second to none. We have a group of very dedicated individuals that really take their job seriously. There's a lot of landscape specialists there. And if you haven't had an opportunity to download Ion Water to monitor your water usage or any of that, just phone up conservation. They can walk you through it. Come get a landscape audit. We have smart irrigation controllers that we are providing complimentary to our customers through a grant program. Obviously, the lawn to garden program, Council Vice President, we've talked to. That's through our conservation program. And they've also gone to CARTS, the school facility out on Clovis Avenue, and worked. That's been one of their favorite and the kids' favorite programs for some of our outreach. On the solid waste side, if you ever have any questions about what goes where, what is recyclable, what isn't, just call the recycling hotline and we'll be glad to do it. And for those who don't know, please don't bag your recyclables. The bags aren't recyclable. I say that every chance I can get. Dump the recyclables loose into the...

I learned that I was the worst offender of that.

And last, of course, to keep our sewers clean, our fat soils and grease program. Assistant Director Asher has a great team of specialists who go and work with industry and work with our grease dischargers. And again, if any of our customers, any of our businesses or industry have any questions, we're always glad to come out and help and assist. And here's just a few pictures. And we have many of what we do with our customers. For our last topic, before we get to questions, I would not do it service having the mayor and Mark Standreff sitting in the room with me talking about Beautify Fresno, so I'm going to ask Director Standreff to come up and talk about Beautify Fresno.

Thank you. Council President, Council Members, Mayor, City Manager, and members of the dais, my name is Mark Standreff. I'm the program director for Beautify Fresno. I have the best job in town because there's always tangible results to what we do on a daily basis. And so it's my pleasure to kind of present very briefly here the highlights of what we've accomplished this past year. More importantly, with the numbers that are up there right now, those were actually delivered as a package for our presentation back in April, so I can state for the record that those numbers have actually increased to 133 volunteer events, 110,000 pounds of trash, the graffiti and the trees, those numbers still remain the same, but we're continuing to work on that. And more importantly, we provide, in addition to cleanup and beautification events with individuals and groups virtually every week, Four major events per year the one that was most recent was our greatest American cleanup and in cooperation with Our America 250 program that's been spearheaded by the mayor. We wanted to make this one special so we actually had a record number of Locations 25 and all getting with that 250 theme record number of volunteers 1820 and a record number of tonnage collected in a two-hour period over 19,000 pounds Every single council district was represented and very pleased to say that we had actually a couple of our council members actually host locations for us during that auspicious day. We're also very pleased that the program for our quad crews, which was instituted basically as an idea by council president back a couple of years ago for District 7, which has now kind of grown into a program that is collecting 3 million pounds of trash proactively, off the streets. That means we're not waiting around for 311 or Fresco calls. And we're also seeing a significant number in the reduction of those particular calls to our services. So we're very pleased about that. And then finally, something that really has kind of not only captured imaginations, but certainly has become a very visible Outproduct of the mayor's focus on beautification is our Fresno box art pilot program. We decided to start in District 4, thanks to a council motion from Council Vice President that enabled us to kind of focus in the areas around Fresno Yosemite International Airport and Fresno State University. We completed the airport phase so far with the aviation theme. I hope that if you've driven down McKinley or coming in and out of the airport, you've seen these New traffic box wraps, these are artworks that are created by Central Valley artists and were selected by recommendation from a committee that included representatives from Council District 4, the City Manager's Office, Beautify Fresno, the Department of Public Works, our Airports Department, Fresno State University, the Fresno Arts Council, and local artists. So we compile all those. We make the recommendations to both the city manager and the council district office. And then we started going through with the actual production and installation of these works. So we have eight traffic cabinets along McKinley and then Gateway, sorry, Clinton Way near the airport terminal that have been completed. We're in the process of completing that second phase, which would be a theme of Bulldog Spirit along the corridors of Shaw and and Cedar Avenues around the Fresno State campus with the goal of getting those installations completed by the end of the fiscal year. But again, we're really pleased at the public response. It's been uniformly positive. And in some cases, I'm getting calls all the time about individuals wondering when can we get boxes put up in our areas. So this pilot program, as we continue to kind of build the plane as we're flying it, as we see the success, we hope to implement that in the coming year. I'm going to turn things back over to Director Amico for final comments. Thank you.

All right. Thank you all. I hope we met the goal of being concise.

Yeah, you're a good director. You're not off the hook. You do get a one-hour, 57-minute break here to think about all the answers for the questions we're going to ask you. But we'll be back here at 2 o'clock. We'll resume with the Q&A and then continue on with the agenda.

Council President, do you know yet after DPU if we will be doing police or fire first?

We'll do police first. Police first? Okay. We'll go on exact. I told the public earlier we go on exact backwards order. No problem.

The chiefs were just asking. Thank you. All right.

Thank you. All right. See everyone at 2 p.m.

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four, five, maybe more, six. There we go. So we'll have the DPU director come back on up. Council Member Richardson, you were punched up first. You still want that? So, just.

Just a point of clarification before we get started with questions. Something I failed to mention during my presentation is that the water and wastewater budgets, neither one of those include any rate increase in it. So I just wanted to make sure. I meant to mention that as I was doing that, but neither one of them has any increase revenue due to rates.

None of the projections include any accounts. That's correct. That's correct.

Okay.

Thank you. All right. Council Member Richardson, followed by Council Member Vang.

Good afternoon, Director Miko. Good afternoon. Question for you. Just kind of going quick here, faster and funnier. The drug and alcohol testing in your department, is that reactive or proactive?

We have certain units that it's proactive and then it'd be then by reasonable suspicion.

Okay. Thank you. What is the maintenance cycle for the pumps? It's like the trees are on like 11 year cycle or 10 year cycle or whatever for the maintenance or repairs of the pump stations? around the city?

It would vary. A lot of those maintenance cycles are due to, we look at the operation, we call overall plant efficiency, or if you're referring to our groundwater pumps, right? Correct. Yeah, so we monitor the overall efficiency of the well, and then, because we try not to take those out of service unless we absolutely have to, we do that more on a, um, and then of course there's routine PMs that we do, right? There'd be routine preventive maintenance that we would do. I can get you those frequencies, but the general complete overall of a pump station is due to operational, uh, a drop in operational efficiency.

Gotcha. Okay. Um, Can you speak a little bit? I'm not familiar with the TCP settlement fund. Can you speak a little bit about that and the $10 million price tag on it, please?

Yeah. So trichloropropane was a fumigant used decades ago. And then the city litigated with a couple of chemical vendors, a couple of the vendors, and received settlement proceeds to put treatment on, I think it's a minimum of 27 wells, but up to 30 wells that we could do that. And so that money is... to pay for capital and operations and maintenance for 10 years.

Commonly known as the Shell Oil Settlement. Correct.

Gotcha, gotcha. And that 10 years ends? The 10 years of O&M is just for any facility, because those will come online at different times. And so it just was calculated based on the projected capital cost for that station, and then 10 years of its, so when it goes into full operation, it's supposed to pay for 10 years of operations and maintenance.

Great. Okay, so not from the settlement date, but based on the individual installation. That's correct. Fantastic. Okay, thank you. You mentioned the new facility. I'm guessing this is down at the regional wastewater treatment facility that is dedicated to Sidestream? Sidestream, yes. Okay. Is that covered by the solar that went in there and in the last year was a big victory for the city and honestly very impressive? The solar will power that facility.

That facility will consume power, so that solar feed is just into the main plant. This is just going to be within that treatment facility.

What percentage are we looking at of the entire energy consumption of the facility to be serviced by that solar after the side stream is implemented?

I will need to follow up with you on that, on what energy projections we have for that particular facility.

I appreciate that. I can consider that my first official RFI for you there. Okay. Finally, there are certain cities who, I know when it comes to water, water is a very precious resource here. I'm not going to insult anybody's intelligence by talking about that too much, but... When you waste water, usually it's a warning, and then it's a gradual fine structure for every event, every occurrence after that. There are some cities, counties, municipalities of all sizes who implement a volumetric fine, which means that when I waste 100 gallons and you waste 10,000 gallons, we pay a different fine based on our water waste. We started this conversation a few months ago. Can you just speak to us a little bit what the implementation would look like? Because this may lead to a motion.

Um, so right now we need to bring back, bring to council a conservation ordinance. We brought it before council, I think at the end of 2024, um, council vice president. And Council Member Arias asked us to look harder at commercial and industrial because they didn't feel that the ordinance specifically addressed those. What that ordinance will do is it will implement automated enforcement again. It will implement automated enforcement where our automated meter system will notify our staff automatically of water waste. Because right now, if it has to be reported to us visually, then we have to go observe it. During COVID, council suspended finding our customers. So we need to repeal the moratorium on fines. While we're doing that, we can certainly look at the tiered fine structure, because right now it's as you said, which is first occurrence is so many dollars, and then it goes up from there.

Okay, is that the kind of thing that internally you guys with your staff are going to be able to kind of research and calculate, or is that going to require some extra funded manpower that we're going to need to allocate from the dais? We should be able to do that. It'll be a normal course of evaluating this. Okay. I look forward to that. And honestly, I think once we complete a study of if we can implement volumetric fines, I think that would probably solve a lot of the problems that whichever of my colleagues were mentioning, the issues with the commercial and the industrial water waste, would probably cover that because they have so much more capacity than I do at my house to waste water, right?

Right, right. We'll certainly look at it, but I will say this, is that there's been recent court rulings around the Proposition 218 process and the implementation of volumetric rates. meaning you use more water, you pay for more water. That has gone all the way to the state Supreme court. There's been, um, it was not, it did not rule in favor of the municipality.

City manager is somebody from the city manager's office. So correct me if I'm wrong here, but the, the rate structure and the fine structure are two entirely different things. Absolutely agree with you on that.

The problem is, is that if, um, There can be legal challenges to that because they may seem more similar than they are different. And that's all. But we will analyze that through the lens of the conservation ordinance change and get a legal opinion and then potentially implement it. So we'll keep you in the loop.

I appreciate it. I think we're done nerding out on water from my side. Happy trash day. Council President, it's all I had.

Council Member Vang?

Thank you very much, Council President. Good afternoon, Director. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. We're here to talk about water and trash, and so I'm going to talk about water and trash. Just a little perspective. The Water Division delivers 37.4 billion gallons to the folks in the Fresno metropolitan area in 2025, and I looked that up. And Shaver Lake at its maximum capacity holds 44 billion gallons of water. And so approximately for one year, the water division of this department delivered the size of Shaver Lake to the Fresno metropolitan area to be used. And so when we say we use a lot of water, but when we actually compare that to a bottle of water nearby that we actually visit and see and see how much we use, It puts things into perspective. So people, let's start saving water because water is, again, as my colleague in D.C. said, it is a lifeline for all of us. I appreciate that comparison because we operate in a bit of a bubble sometimes, and it's always good to hear some different perspectives. You're correct. When we look at numbers, it's like almost out of the real world, but when you put it into perspective, equate that to, let's say, Shaver Lake, which in this case is a good comparison, that we drain Shaver Lake once a year, at least in 2025.

Well, and add to the fun, we measure ours in acre feet, Our demand's an acre feet, so that's the other thing.

Exactly, and so that's the water part, the trash part, Director. I understand that there are some residents who may go on vacation for weeks, months, half a year, et cetera, and so they want that exemption for trash pickup. What is the city's policy regarding exemption if I want to leave my house for, let's say, a three or even a six-year vacation because of some business or some family issue? what exactly is the limit in terms of getting that exemption?

I would need to look into that. I would have to consult with UVNC. But from my perspective, here's the way it, we're required to maintain service at addresses. Correct. And the cost to deliver that service is about putting somebody behind the wheel of a truck to drive to the neighborhood. And whether they pick up that neighbor's TRASH OR ANOTHER NEIGHBOR'S TRASH, THE COST TO THE CITY IS VERY, VERY CLOSE TO THE SAME. I'M NOT AWARE OF AN EXEMPTION.

BUT IF YOU CAN GET BACK TO MY OFFICE, THAT WOULD BE GREAT. WHAT IS THAT TIMELINE? WE'LL LOOK INTO THAT, DEFINITELY. THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR THAT. THAT'S WHY I HAVE COUNCIL PRESIDENT. THANK YOU.

COUNCIL MEMBER CARBASI FOLLOWED BY COUNCIL MEMBER HERRERA.

DR. AMICO, I APOLOGIZE FOR THE coughing, bronchitis, but it's not contagious. You're okay. Thank you for your patience. I want to talk to you a little bit about Operation Cleanup. You okay talking about that? Oh, yeah. I mean, I know you can, but okay. I just want to state, this is probably one of the best programs we have as a city. benefits our rate payers. It's very, very well liked and highly utilized, obviously. But I will say in the past, there has been a lot of concern about a lag and delay. For some people, it benefits them because, oh, I have an extra two weeks to put things out. But for other constituents, they say, why is there garbage everywhere? That's completely changed. You guys are on time, which is fantastic. I can tell you, I'm not getting those calls anymore. So I want to give you kudos to whatever you're doing to make that happen. because it is a lot to clean up, but I feel like you guys are really just on top of that right now. I don't know that we've been behind since I stepped into this role. Which is great. So kudos on that. Another thing is the issue of... uh, the being able as the public to have another bulk item cleanup. Correct. That's a very big benefit. So, um, I can tell you, I've been learning a lot more about our County and they don't have the same success we have here. They don't. They just wait to see someone to pick. Someone's going to pick it up. It just doesn't happen, unfortunately. So, uh, that's a really, really great thing you guys are doing.

Well, the good news is on that. We, we have rolled it out. We're doing a soft rollout right now. It was active in three, one, one in March, um, where you can go into three, one, one and doing that. You can imagine the complications from that. Um, one bulky item what if somebody puts a bulky item and some tires on it you know what are we gonna so we've got a lot of logistics to work out with that so we're doing a um once we've ironed that out then hopefully in the next months or so we're gonna do a widespread campaign to educate folks about it this is out of the blue you and i have not discussed this but i'm going to kind of put you on the spot a little bit uh you don't have to say yes or no but is there potential so we have a lot of our communities let's say west 99 they border the county or you have county islands for example

In the past, there's been some discussion of working with the County. Perhaps they give us funding and we will use our staffing with the different zone teams. We have the different zones. Is there any potential to work with the county, especially on these bordering areas? Because people don't know it's a border. They think it's all city or all county. Where we can work with them to be able to handle more. Is it really a funding issue or what would the issue be there?

It's a funding issue because obviously we can only deliver service to our customers at the cost that they're paying. So we have been in discussions with my counterpart at the county about piloting an area to offer operation cleanup to those areas where They would pay us right and then we would provide the equipment to collect it And we're still working that those details out and then who would haul it and and where it would go and so on So we've got to provide the county some additional cost information so that they can then go through their process to figure out how that would how that would work and I think our goal for that is we cannot reduce our service to our residential customers. So whatever they would pay us, we would have to do through agreement, and then we would need to procure additional equipment for that.

Okay. Assuming everything goes well, how would that be within the next 12 months? Could it be more than that? I mean, let's say they came up with the money and we were able to find good terms. How realistically, how soon can that work begin?

Well, I'm an optimist, but I'm not going to do that today. So it's pretty easy for us to do the costs and to provide the costs to them. Then, as you know, then we're going to have to go through a process of ironing out an agreement. I think the concept that we've talked about with the county is to enter into an MOU of some sort where we say, you know what, we're going to pilot this. We're going to figure out what it's going to cost. And then we're going to figure out how we're going to get it done. The challenge we have, obviously, is we don't want OCU to slip. We're going to do bulky item. So we've got to be real mindful of that. 12 months, could we get it done? It sounds reasonable to me, but it's our process and their process. Okay. All right, those are my questions.

Thank you very much. Thank you.

Council Member Perea, followed by Council Member Arias.

Director, how many people have taken advantage of the bulky item pickup? service?

I don't think anyone, no one, no, no one because we haven't done a very good job of telling people about it.

Do we have somebody on contract to help us with that? Or is that a responsibility for internal staff?

Our, um, the way we're going to handle that is, um, we're going to look at where the call comes in and we're going to decide whether a crew from operation cleanup goes in and picks the item up or we send one of the quad teams to get it.

And this is a service for multifamily residents?

It would be up to a fourplex. If you're a residential customer of ours, your bill is in good standing, you don't owe us money or anything like that, we need to do that check, and then we would provide the service.

So single family up to a fourplex?

Up to a fourplex, correct.

Got it. And that's one item per year?

One item per year.

Per calendar year?

Per calendar year.

Okay. Okay. And if somebody wanted to schedule a pickup, 311?

311. Okay. Or Fresco or 621 City.

Or Fresco, okay. And then there is budget to add a new quad team, is that correct?

That's correct. We are adding, it's existing staff. There's no new staff to create that team.

And this will be dedicated to the Tower District only, or is this going to be citywide?

Tower District and downtown, if I'm correct, yeah.

Okay. And what will this team be responsible for?

This team is for litter control. It is to make sure that the pressure washing can be as effective as it can possibly be. So it would be for litter control and abatement in those areas. And the tower schedule is scheduled, right, Nick? And then downtown, we're still working out all the logistics on that.

Correct. Yeah, the schedule is still...

it's four days a week so we'll be taking right now scrub can does litter abatement and pressure washing on the sidewalk so we will be taking litter abatement in-house which will give scrub cam more ability to pressure wash the sidewalks and the towers to increase their frequency yes to increase the frequency so it it will go to every morning now pressure washing

It's $500,000 for pressure washing.

Total budget there.

$260,000 plus the $240,000 total budget for pressure washing, and that will be split between the tower and downtown. Correct.

The condition of our sidewalks and the tower are pretty grotesque. And even with the power pressure washing, people aren't really noticing a visual difference just because the sidewalks are in such poor condition. So I appreciate just kind of keeping the area from getting worse. But I'm just wondering, and I think this is an RFI for Public Works. but I'm wondering what the cost would be to just go in and revitalize, to redo the concrete out in the tower district to just kind of have a fresh start, especially now that we are making a more sizable investment in pressure washing, and so in cleanliness maintenance. So an RFI for a cost estimate to do sidewalk, so concrete repair along Olive Avenue between Palm and Van Ness, and then concrete repair along with Shawn Avenue. from Olive up to Fern. I would just like to get an idea of what it would cost on both the district one and district three sides of replacing our sidewalks and just kind of starting from scratch.

When you say, hold on, I just want to double check. Did we not talk about like sandblasting or something to that effect to help kind of take off that top layer of grime? I could have dreamt it.

My office did pay. It was a one time, I forget what the cost was, but it was a one time cost to do an extra heavy duty pressure washing in the tower district. And there was a difference. There was a little bit of a difference, but it still wasn't.

Well, I was walking the Tower District with you right after they did that, and quite honestly, I couldn't tell if there's a difference at all. It was just super bad. So I really think that we need to do some research and figure out what's available to us and what that would cost to make these sidewalks look good.

If I may... Your power washing is not removing the embedded oil that's what causing the safety hazards and the slips and falls because of the food vendors are there. So you're not helping with the power washing of just pure water. So either you guys put some chemicals to lift the oil or you do something dramatically different.

We'll make sure we look at what's available. Other cities, I mean, we're not the first one to be confronted with this. Or if there's something we can put on it, something that's got to bring it back to life, renew that concrete.

Yeah, agreed, especially with the level that it takes every Thursday, Friday, Saturday night.

And that was the intent of adding, actually more than doubling our pressure washing. So whatever we need to do to make it fresh.

Yeah, thank you. Between council member Arias and I, we're spending a good chunk of our pave now, pay later money in the tower district. So whether that's fixing sidewalks or repaving roads, but hopefully if we do see any cost savings, we can put some of that toward revitalizing the core of tower, the main arteries. And then pressure washing, what time of the day will that be occurring? Do we know yet?

The plan is to do in the middle of the night, 3 to 5 a.m. 3 to 5 a.m.?

Yeah. Go through, and we would be doing Olive, Washaun, Van Ness, Maroa, and I believe Fern Avenue?

The same limits.

The same areas?

Yeah, I think it's the same limits that it's currently doing. The same limits.

Okay.

And abatement is 6 a.m. to 4 p.m.?

And then lastly, Director, you said that this budget contains no requests for any rate increases. Is that correct?

That's correct. Yes.

So no Prop 218 elections this year?

We're looking at timing right now, but we intend to come back this year.

For sewer and water?

For sewer and water.

By the end of the year?

Yes. Then you know the process. We have to request to initiate. And at that time, that's when we make the rate reports public. Or we could do a workshop. I mean, there's options to that. But we do the rate reports, and then we have the protest period, then we do the hearing.

And when was the last time this body approved a rate increase for sewer or water?

For sewer, the rate increase was approved in 2004. The last step of the rate increase was implemented in 2007. There was a fifth one, but it was not done in 2008, presumably because of the economic condition. The last time that council voted on rates for water was in 2014. It was 2014, right? And then the last step of that increase would have been in 2019 and been effective in FY19.

This body had to increase trash rates recently, and that was because I personally feel a lack of leadership of past administrations and councils. It's going to be a tough time for many to now increase water rates and sewer rates, but this is sort of the outcome of failed leadership over the years, and it's going to all unfortunately come at once.

Correct. and the drivers for each one of the utilities is slightly different as you can imagine with the wastewater rates due to them not have there's several things have happened in that water conservation has made a huge impact on the cost of delivering service because As my assistant city manager likes to say, with conservation, what goes to the plant is more like a stew than a soup. So less water, less pumping, and we have to align those rates. So they need to be realigned. And then on water, it's just increasing costs. And that's driving, and because water carries debt from, carries some SRF loans from the Recharge Fresno program, we have to make sure that we're staying on top of that and staying financially sustainable.

And labor increases. Every time this body approves an MOU increase, that has to go into the makeup of the rate.

Yep, understood.

Everything's gone up, and a lot in the last three years as we knew from solid waste.

So the divisions are not currently operating in the red, but at what point will they if we continue to kick this down the road?

So the interesting thing differently I think about from solid waste and why water and wastewater rates are slightly different is both of those utilities operate with very large capital programs. So the consequence of not raising rates means that capital suffers. That's just always you defer capital because you've got to deliver the service. But you know that's not sustainable. So on the water side, we can certainly do some cutting, but if we will be... We will be in default on our SRF loans and not meeting covenant within a couple fiscal years if we don't act on water. Wastewater doesn't carry as much debt, but the realignment is desperately needed to get the customer classes paying their proportionate share.

And we've talked about the fact that when we're not doing capital improvements, then we're fixing them on emergency basis, on reactive emergency at significantly higher cost, opposed to doing it on a cycle. And by the way, we're not looking to do things on a normal cycle.

Mm-hmm.

we're just looking to improve our cycle from, you know, like once every 100 years to... No, it's once every 600 years to about once every 300 years.

Yes. I mean, that's really what we're talking about.

And when we get to the point of discussing, I mean, that's seriously what we're talking about. Our cycle right now is replacement every 600 years. To your point, Council Member, that's reflective of lack of leadership in the past. And... We can keep trying to make dents into it to get that down, but pay now or pay later. I know Council Member Esparza has had both significant sewer and water breaks in his district in the last four months that have resulted in risk claims for damaging people's property. So it's part of running the business side of our city. And unfortunately, it means that you guys have to make difficult decisions because it's going to impact our residents who are already impacted. But it's very frustrating when we look at our neighbors, whether it be PG&E or whatever, where, you know, one of the reasons why we're hesitant is because our residents are already being impacted by higher energy rates. And it's like... that automatically happens at exorbitant increases, but we're trying to manage things on a shoestring. So it's an unfortunate situation that we find ourselves in, but it's part of what we do as a city.

And I can tally up just off the top of my head right now, we are doing about almost $25 million right now in emergency repairs, both at the regional plant and then in our trunk sewer system.

$25 million?

About $25 million I can think of just right off the top of my head and things that have been needed. But the news is good. We're completing a collection system master plan. We have a much more structured program about looking at our large-diameter, high-consequence sewers and then prioritizing those in future. In fact, our capital program right now addresses a number of those high-risk sewers. And so we're going to try to be much more proactive about that.

And when or if we do... increase rates, I know it will be incrementally, similar to what we did with trash. So it'll just be an incremental increase each year.

Yes, and we've been, one of the things, we've been scrutinizing these rates, understanding of everything, of all the rates that are going up and everything that's going up, and making sure that anything we're putting into the rate increase, we can explain the why. For instance, building up reserves. Why does it need to be that level of a reserve? Because That's all the revenue. We only have one source of revenue, and that's our, as far as delivering our service, that's our rates. So we're scrutinizing it internally and making sure that we're being very cognizant about the economic impact to our customers.

Thanks, Director.

Council Member Barrios, followed by Council Vice President Maxwell.

Thank you, Council President. I want to go back a little bit towards power washing sidewalks. If I recall, the last conditional use permit in the tower corridor has the last call for alcohol service at 1.30, and bars are supposed to be closed by 1.45-ish. So I like to see the power wash move to 2 a.m. as a start time. And, you know, people got to go home. You know, they got to go home. So the... When we get to the police conversation, you'll see what we've been dealing with in the last few years. And the vendors who keep people there post 2 a.m. are part of the challenge that we've been having to deal with after the fact. On the sewer item, what's your current reserve level of the sewer fund?

We maintain a number of different reserves. What's your overall reserve? Oh, the overall reserve amount.

For the sewer fund. And same thing for your water fund? DON'T SMILE, GEORGEANNE. HOW ARE YOU? GREAT, MIGUEL.

HOW ARE YOU?

GREAT.

GOOD TO SEE YOU.

SAME HERE. WE MAINTAIN OPERATING RESERVES. OUR OPERATING RESERVES ARE TO ADDRESS UNFIRSTING COSTS. CAPITAL RESERVES. Fleet replacement reserve, a rate stabilization reserve, and then we've got two loans that require reserves. So operating reserve right now is $15 million, $15.3 million. Capital reserve is $17.2 million, roughly. Fleet replacement reserve is $10.9 million, $10.8 million. And then rate stabilization, $8.9 million. and then our tertiary SRF loan and recycled SRF loans. Both of those are fully funded and we can't touch those at all. There's no way to get, they're highly restricted. Those are by agreement and they're 1.6 million and 2.4 million.

Great. Are those reserves sufficient for you to continue operating this year and next year? That's a great question and something I would need to – we're examining right now in the rate increases because – Are checks going to bounce this year if the reserve fund is not increased?

Well, there's a couple – the operating reserve is restricted. So the operating reserve is restricted, and if we draw on that reserve, we have to replace the revenue within the fiscal year. That's by Council Act. rate stabilization reserve could be utilized. Will checks bounce? We will cover our operating costs, always. We will always cover our operating costs. What's your reserve levels for the water fund? For the water fund, similar reserves. Right now we have operating reserve in this budget, 32.6 million. Capital reserve, 16 million. Fleet replacement, 5.6 million. Rate stabilization, 6.4 million. And then if you want to, I can do the loans. The loans are 2.1 million, 686,000, 1.8 million, and 5.7 million, roughly.

So in my high school math, you probably have a combined nearly $100 million in the reserves between the water and the sewer fund? I wouldn't combine them because they're two completely separate utilities. But the enterprise fund in general, they're nearly 100 million in reserves. 71 plus 56 is 120. 120? The reason I asked that question to bring it up is because when we did the garbage rate increases, the primary reason that we were given for making those significant increases was the fact that the reserve had been emptied out. Correct. In this case, that's not as significant of a challenge you have.

Operating reserve. Operating reserve.

That was an operating reserve.

And the operating reserve that you just heard him describe is, I think I heard 10 or 15 million.

If I may just keep the floor.

Yes, you may.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

We're best friends, by the way. So this is the good work. I've seen that. Yes. So you have nearly $120 million reserves. So you're not in any imminent danger of not being able to pay your operating expenses if this council was not to do Prop 218 this year.

On the water side, we will pay our operating expenses and we will have to draw down those reserves to make that service coverage. And the rating agencies will punish us for that. If we have a sustained history of doing that, they will erode our rating. But on the wastewater side, we could, but we're out of alignment across our customer classes.

So for the sewer fund, the last adjustment we did was in 2007, correct? Is sewer fund, the last adjustment we made was 2007? Correct. The last step of that rate increase. So since 2007 to now, you hadn't had the urgent need to have cash flow problems. You have been not unable to pay your operating expenses. And I'm assuming throughout those years, we received state funds, federal funds, and grant funds. There's a whole lot of funds that we also receive for capital and operations.