City Council - Regular Meeting

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All right, all right, good morning. We're gonna go ahead and get this meeting started. Welcome to the, what is presumably the last day of the city's budget process for FY 26, 27. Clerk, would you please call the roll?

Good morning, yes. Council Member Perea. Here. Council Member Carbasi. Here. Council Member Arias.

Presente.

Vice President Maxwell.

Present.

Council Member Vang.

Present.

Council Member Richardson.

Here.

President Esparza.

Present.

Seven members being present, we have a quorum.

Fantastic. Let's go ahead and ask folks to, if they can, please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. Council Member Richardson, would you please lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance? Yes.

Alright, I'll entertain a motion for approval of the agenda.

We do have some changes to the agenda or announcements.

Thank you.

With regard to item A, ID 26-795 regarding the resolution to adopt the fiscal year 2027 salary resolution for Exhibit B has incorrect maximum salary for city manager position. Salary range should be 1-9935 to 28234. The fiscal year 26 salary range currently states the range as 1-9935 to 23234. There was a transposition error in that the three was entered instead of an eight. With regard to item C, ID 26-799, regarding the resolution to adopt FY2027, annual appropriation resolution, exhibit B, page three, section three, motions not advanced. Number 76 should read pave more now as selected by district four. It currently reads District 7. Budget motion not required, $930,000 for a Hawk on 1st and Fairmont. Those are the announcements and changes to the agenda.

City Clerk, on item A, it should be FY27 salary range.

We will make that change.

Thank you.

Okay. Okay. All right, we have a motion for approval of the agenda and a second. Is there any opposition to approving the agenda? Seeing none, the agenda passes. We will take public comment here shortly, but first I think the mayor wanted to come on up and give a presentation on his final version.

Well, good morning, Council President and members of the City Council. It's my honor today to be able to present to you what I hope to be the final FY27 budget. And I want to first start off by thanking each of you for taking the time to meet with me over the last week during the budget reconciliation process. Some of you I got to meet with at length. Some of you I did not get to meet with as long. But nonetheless, it did give me... an understanding of what your district priorities were and really to help formulate the final budget as well as for me to be able to share with each of you the limitations that we face this year as compared to years in the past with all of the budget requests and not sufficient funding to cover those. As I shared with you during the initial budget presentation, the city of Fresno faced a $34.5 million budget shortfall, which needed to be reconciled in order for me to present a balanced budget to you, which we did at that time. And I want to just let you know how extremely challenging that was due to the limited revenues that we have as a city as compared to the growing expenses, much of that driven by inflation. as well as contractual obligations with not only unions, but also with many of our vendors for technology. So as part of the budget hearings, Council approved 99 motions totaling $49.91 million, which would impact either the general funds, special revenue accounts, grants, or enterprise funds. The Council... has since been provided a reconciliation summary of those budget motions, and this is broken into four sections and is contained within Exhibit B, and all of you were presented those, I believe, yesterday. At the request of several council members, I will summarize all 99 motions in detail. I'm just kidding, you know I won't do that to you guys again. I will spare you the line item detail, but I do want to give you somewhat of a 30,000 foot look, but also some depth on some of the things that we are funding. So first, in section one, it contains 41 motions that are either fully or partially funded, totaling $9.63 million of these motions. Of the motions, $5.0 million was supported by the general fund. $4.6 million was supported by either grants, special revenue, such as Measure C, Measure P, or SB1. And then $12,000 was supported under enterprise funds. The additional $5 million in general fund motion was funded by the following enhancements. in our revenues. Number one, additional interest projected in FY27 to increase by $1.6 million, plus some in capital. And that's really from outside funding sources that come in. We're delayed on the projects, but we can derive interest on those until we're ready to spend the money. We are utilizing that to make up part of the $5 million. Unanticipated card room revenue, as you know, club one. As a result of the proposed change in the law, we held back $440,000 in card room revenue. Since that time, there's been a court, at least a temporary court ruling, so we have used those $440,000, put those back in the budget. Proceeds from an unexpected settlement that we were not anticipating. $330,000. Additional proceeds for the sale of two city properties, one of those being Blosser and the other the Bricks building, total about $410,000. A two-year adjustment on additional property taxes that were previously designated under our EIFD, the Enhanced Infrastructure Financing District, that those $500,000 are backed out and put into our overall property account. the shifting of general fund expenses to grants and special revenues, and an adjustment in the final carryover amount. And it really took all of that plus some other adjustments to make up the $5 million in general fund. In Section 2, there's 28 motions are included in this section. and are considered to be budget neutral as they were already covered by funds available or they were contained in the proposed budget. Some motions were budget neutral as they are being funded with district operations or infrastructure funds at the request of the council members or at the recommendation of the administration, and that totals $862,000. In section three of exhibit B, That contains 32 motions that are not being advanced for funding. Of those, three motions will be prioritized in the FY28 budget based on funding availability, either in Measure P or the Better Roads, Safer Streets initiative should the measure pass. Four motions are proposed to be funded through the existing Pave More Now dollars, as was selected by the council members of those districts. And those motions are motions number 49, 52, 75, and 76. The remaining 25 motions were not funded. However, many are eligible to be funded with future paid more now dollars or funding from the Better Roads, Safer Streets measure. Again, should the measure pass. I'll wait until the city manager and council member are done.

Mayor, please continue. Please continue.

Council members may also wish to replace one of their existing Pave More projects with a non-funded project should sufficient money be available. Section 4 includes two items that are either an administratively corrected or required correction or funding for the Maddie Institute as part of the mayor's recommended budget. And together, the four sections outlined in exhibit B All 99 motions, and I am pleased to share that the budget is now rebalanced. So at this time, I would like to just highlight a few of the items contained in the budget motions that may be of particular interest to you as well as to the public. Under motion number one, $2 million being funded to First 5 California to support Council Vice President Maxwell's Early Learning Initiative. Under motion number 23, made by Councilmember Preya, $300,000 being added to the eviction protection program. This is in addition to the mayor's proposed budget of $1.5 million. This will provide a total of $1.8 million for eviction protection program. And based on our expenditure trends over the last couple of years, this should be sufficient funding for FY27. Under motion number 14 made by Councilmember Arias, $650,000 in unspent funds is being reallocated from the Dawn Initiative to Advance Peace. EOC will continue to administer those funds for Advance Peace as they did for the Dawn Program. This is in addition to the $300,000 included in the mayor's proposed budget and $182,000 that is being carried over from FY26 into FY27. $144,000 has also been provided to Advance Peace from the Fresno Unified School District. So in total, these funds add up to $1,276,000 and will be sufficient not only to cover the FY27 projected expenditures, which are estimated to be about $831,000. This will also allow for significant additional funds being available for Advance Peace and FY28. This level of funding will allow for three additional change agents to be hired and actually rehired by them by Advance Peace, as well as non-personnel expenses, which averages about $200,000 per year. Under motions number 10 and 11 made by Council Vice President Maxwell and Council Member Perea, respectively, $300,000 being added to the Fresno Animal Center for outsourcing of spay and neuter services. This is in addition to the $225,000 contained within the mayor's proposed budget. This will allow for a $300,000 match to be provided from the Dogwood Animal Rescue Organization. In total, $825,000 will be available for nonprofit organizations to provide spay and neuter services in FY27. Under motion number 30 made by Councilmember Arias, $500,000 is included for potential acquisition of land and design of a new park near the Adams Elementary School. In my proposed budget, $500,000 being funded for additional tower district and downtown pressure washing. In addition to this, under motion number 42 made by Councilmember Perea, an additional $350,000 will be available for a new and successfully tested steam cleaning process that uses high pressure temperatures paired with environmentally friendly chemicals to clean tower sidewalks that cannot be cleaned through normal pressure washing. And this will include not only the north side of the tower district in Council District 1, but also the south side of the tower district in District 3, Council Member Arias' district. An additional $150,000 is being funded for design and potential replacement of existing sidewalks within various locations of the Tower District. Motion number 40, made by Council Member Perea, will ensure public art in the Tower District and downtown as part of the Beautify Fresno Box Art Initiative utilizing FY26 carryover funds. Under motion number 43 made by Councilmember Richardson, $65,000 will fund a part-time Office of Community Affairs liaison for the Middle East and North Africa communities. Now I'd like to just refresh all of our memories a little bit on a few significant items that were already contained in the Mayor's proposed budget that was previously presented to you. And I'll go through those briefly. $75 million available for construction and or award through the Pay More Now initiative, SB1 and Measure C. $2.64 million to support two firefighter drill schools that will support the hiring and training of 40 new firefighters. $1 million to support residential infill housing. And this is in addition to $865,000 that will be carried over in that account. An additional HART team comprised of one sergeant and four officers. $21 million is being carried over for the Regional Fire Training Center with construction to begin in FY27. $698,000 to provide trash removal on the freeway embankments. $550,000 being funded to continue with Council Vice President Maxwell's 1000 New Trees Initiative. $553,000 being added to once again bring the tree trimming cycle in Fresno to 10 years, and this is a total annual investment of $3.35 million. And lastly, $1.05 billion is allocated for 470 major capital projects and showcases the city's unprecedented investment toward building a better Fresno. So let me just give you kind of a recap on the budget summary and the final amounts as I know them today. I know there could be a couple motions made, hopefully budget neutral. The final FY27 budget being voted on today totals $2.56 billion. The general fund accounts for $546.41 million. Enterprise and internal service funds total $1.12 billion. And the remaining $891.97 million comes from special revenue sources such as Measure C, Measure P, various grants, as well as capital funds. So let me close with this. Something that became painfully obvious to me during this budget hearing is that nonprofit organizations in Fresno are facing unprecedented budget cuts. As a result, many of these organizations are seeking additional funding from the city of Fresno. These nonprofits provide much needed service in our community. As such, we as a city, I think we collectively agree, want to do our part to support them. However, we cannot do it all. The burden to fill these funding gaps should not fall solely on the city of Fresno. We need the County of Fresno to do their part as well. The city is providing precious dollars to fund efforts like county libraries, mental health services, eviction protection, support services to address teen pregnancy, and much more, in addition to the $15 million that we spend as a city annually for emergency homeless shelters and services. Therefore, I believe we, as city officials and nonprofits collectively, must challenge the county of Fresno and our philanthropic partners to step up and do their part to fund these agencies in need. And finally, I'd be remiss if I did not say thank you, a special thank you to all of my staff, beginning with City Manager Georgianne White, Chief of Staff Kelly Furtado, Assistant City Managers Nick Macia and TJ Miller, and a very special thank you to Assistant City Manager Ruthie Quinto, Controller Santino Dinesi, and a huge, huge thank to Ed Chenevert, who is beyond remarkable. And lastly, I want to say thank you to all of our department directors who responded so timely to the never-ending request for information that were sent out and continue to serve our community with excellence. And with that, Council, I'd like to again thank you and present you with a balanced FY27 budget.

All right, thank you, Mayor. At this point, we'll go ahead and conduct public comment. Then we'll come back up here for any further discussion. Is that all right, Council?

All right.

I will open up public comment at this point. If anybody would like to speak on the final budget, you'll have three minutes. I have one card so far. If you can, please fill out a yellow card and hand it up here. If not, you'll still be able to speak, but it will be a little easier facilitation. The only card I have right now is for Chris Thompson. Welcome, Chris. You have three minutes.

Dear Fresno City Council members, as you prepare to adopt the fiscal year 26-27 budget, we would like to thank you for your commitment to improving animal welfare in Fresno and for supporting efforts to address pet overpopulation through prevention. While we appreciate the investments being made this year, we respectfully ask that the city begin planning for the fiscal year 2027-2028 budget now by setting a goal to dedicate at least 10% of the Fresno Animal Center budget to community spay and neuter programs. Spaying and neutering remain the most effective and cost efficient tool available to reduce shelter intake, decrease euthanasia, improve public health, and save taxpayer dollars. Investing in prevention today reduces the need for more costly interventions tomorrow. Fresno TNR has demonstrated what can be accomplished through community partnerships and limited resources. In just the first half of 2026, Fresno TNR facilitated the spaying and neutering of over 4,500 cats. And since our founding, we have helped more than 24,300 cats since 2023 throughout Fresno and the surrounding communities. We respectfully challenge the City of Fresno to set a goal to surpass that number through Fresno Animal Center-funded spay and neuter efforts. If a volunteer-driven nonprofit can help 4,421 cats in six months, imagine what could be accomplished with a dedicated investment representing 10% of the Animal Center's budget. We also encourage increased public reporting during the fiscal year 2026-2027, including regular updates on funded spay and neutering surgeries, shelter intake trends, euthanasia rates, live release outcomes, and program effectiveness. Transparent reporting will help measure progress and guide future investments. Fresno has an opportunity to become a statewide leader in prevention.

Thank you.

You still had one minute if you weren't finished. Go ahead and give her the minute, Bernard. Yeah, the first beep is a one-minute warning.

All righty. We are also encouraged to increase public reporting during the fiscal year 26-27, including regular updates on funded spay and neuter surgeries, shelter intake trends, euthanasia rates, live release outcomes, and program effectiveness. Transparent reporting will help measure progress and guide future investments. Fresno has an opportunity to become a statewide leader in prevention-based animal welfare. We respectfully ask that the city begin laying the groundwork now for a significant expansion of spay and neuter services in the fiscal year 2027-2028. Thank you for your leadership and your commitment to Fresno's animals and residents, and we do appreciate the increased funding that you guys are approving for this budget year. That's going to be huge. We get a lot of our funding from Dogwood Animal Rescue, and because we brought to light this, they were able to give this commitment of the $300,000, and so we appreciate that additional funding. It's going to be huge. Thank you.

All right, next speaker is Galeria Juarez.

Hola, ¿qué tal? Muy buenos días a todos y cada uno del miembro del concilio. Bueno, hoy queremos de nuevo venir a abogar por nuestra comunidad de Adams. Queremos agradecerles de que nos sigan apoyando con nuestro parque y como ya han comentado ahorita, todos somos Fresno, pero desafortunadamente nuestra área de Fresno todavía necesita más ayuda y es lo que venimos a abogar todavía, ¿verdad?, Queremos que no solamente el centro de Fresno tenga remodelaciones, que se mire bonito. Sí, estamos de acuerdo. Todos queremos que sea un área bonita para toda nuestra comunidad. Pero también queremos que nuestras áreas rurales haya esa accesibilidad para nuestras familias, para todos los que quieran venir a visitar Fresno. Que no nada más digan que el centro de Fresno These are beautiful areas. Let's say that on the banks of Fresno there is a park where you can relax with a family that you come to visit. We want you to please support us. We want you to please take the community into account. When it comes to infrastructure, not just taking a park into account, but everything, right? que nos pregunten cuáles son las necesidades de nuestros hijos, cuáles son las necesidades de nosotros como mamás, como padres. Queremos que nuestras voces se tomen en cuenta. Queremos que, por favor, escuchen qué es lo que en realidad se necesita. Por eso el día de hoy vengo a pedirles que se escuche, que escuche nuestras voces, que no nada más quieran tomar a veces sus decisiones y nos quieran poner algunas cosas que tal vez nosotros no estemos de acuerdo. Entonces, quisiéramos que, por favor, se escuchara. No importa el precio del parque o el terreno que se vaya a construir, pero queremos algo que sea nuestro y para nuestras comunidades. Muchísimas gracias.

The next speaker is going to be Giovanna Morales.

Hi, my name is Jovanna Morales with Leadership Council. We just wanted to say that we appreciate the continued funding for residents asks. And for the acquisition and design for the park in the Adams neighborhood, we just ask that the city works with the residents to ensure that the park is, that they are collaborating and incorporating their priorities and needs when designing the park. And for the EPP, we ask for continued collaboration on updating the guidelines to ensure that all tenants receive the support they need through this very much needed program. Thank you.

All right. Next speaker is going to be Brandy N. Brandy? That's my last yellow card I think I have right now, so if anybody else wants to fill one out, feel free. Thank you.

Council, I reviewed the motions and her today and there's so many motions, investments and community that are important and will help our community. And I hope that I am glad that the council and city recognizes the importance of advanced peace and the work of Aaron Foster and decreasing homicides in our community, as well as TNR library and other things. uh we mentioned the need for rental assistance and i see that some of the groups are working on that i got again asked in identifying in identifying it where these expenses can be funded that the council does not approve the expansion of heart for more police this is expansion dyer said that people do not recognize the city of that people the city of fresno is doing anything for on house but that is not what people are saying When people are bringing up funding services, it is to give alternatives to increasing HEART. HEART, he mentions that it will increase services, but that's not funded. When Dyer is justifying increasing these fundings, we are saying, okay, here is where funding can go that will actually address the issue. I am grateful for more housing and thank you. The reality is that as long as there is not enough housing, though, people will have no place to go. The National Low Income Housing Coalition states in 2024 that the Fresno metro area had about 44,000 extremely low income households and about 11,000 available. That isn't just in Fresno, but basically 20 out of 100 affordable housing are available for those on low income. That doesn't minimize what we achieve, but is a factor. Again, the justification of refusal of services is both not reflective of the number of those who are in a coordinated entry system and what the service providers are saying. But even if those are refusing, and the reason may be an opportunity to look into barriers, There are more people who have said yes than there are available services. So what is the justification of inhumane treatment and throwing away their belongings? And while the police, the people have told us about being mocked about having their things thrown away, the seven principles and camera resolution, the Homeless Youth Council, the Here to Stay Report, the National Health Care for the Homeless Council, Disability Rights Education Defense Fund all claim that these things are not working and that we need to work on collaborative approaches. And yet when the city says that we are, when we've said no to these things, even these groups like Here to Stay and the Police Reform Coalition have been ignored. Just looking at those with disabilities, I realize there is a psychological impact that happens to people out here that is making things worse. And that 44 to 50% of unhoused adults have a disability who are unhoused compared to 16%. Meanwhile, I have tried to get accessibility more time for a woman who asks for more time and heart refuse. We've had someone's prosthetic legs, people's medications, wheelchairs thrown into crushers. We need accountability and we need a better way. Thank you.

Thank you, Brandi. Any additional public comment on the budget? I don't have any more yellow cards, so if you'd like to speak, come on down.

Hi, Council. My name's Ariana. I've been up here a few times. I was really glad to see some of the funding for teen moms. My mom was a teen mom, and that was really hard. I think what's interesting now is when I'm driving around Fresno or stopping to get gas, my goddaughter is seeing people that are unhoused digging through the dumpster. and there's a couple uh businesses in town where like they don't even want you going in to buy food or water for those folks um and so when we've tried to do that like we get a negative response um and so it's a really difficult place to be in when we're trying to explain that to a seven-year-old like what's going on here and she's just kind of like what are we doing for our neighbors and i'm just like wow that's a really good question from a seven-year-old So I wanted to talk a little bit about some of the policing alternatives and diversion initiatives in Atlanta. And I also wanted to talk about how even when programs like this exist and are really successful, they still have deaths from encampment abatement. So even when they're working really well together with the police and the city staff, when we take this abatement approach, we're just displacing people that are already living a really chaotic life and making it more difficult for them to actually get to housing so that's why i want to continue to oppose the expansion of heart so in atlanta the pad is a program designed to intervene in situations where people experiencing homelessness would otherwise be arrested pad responds to community concerns related to mental health substance use and extreme poverty provides an alternative to incarceration for people who commit minor violations often tied to homelessness and instead connects them with services Alana has housed over 2,000 people experiencing homelessness in 2023, 800 of whom were unsheltered. So responding to homelessness with community response teams instead of police is important because police are trained to enforce the law, but they're not equipped for homeless response. Yet they're under extreme pressure from community members, business owners, elected officials, and others to show up and make people disappear, said Executive Director Moki Macias. The PAD initiative began in 2017 and grew out of a campaign fighting a banishment ordinance targeting sex workers in Atlanta. But today it runs a pre-arrest diversion program based on a successful program in Kings County, Washington. So here's how it works. When law enforcement engages someone and has probable cause to arrest them for quality of life concerns that constitute low-level violations, like loitering, shoplifting, or trespassing, they can instead call PAD to intervene. PAD street outreach workers will have a conversation with the individual to help get their most immediate needs met, like providing adequate clothing and a meal. They will help the individual complete an intake assessment for a local housing provider and ensure they have an immediate place to stay. In 2021, PAD expanded its response to include community calls made through Atlanta's 311 line. a dedicated line for community members to reach non-emergency services. The mayor felt so strongly about this program that he actually moved it from the planning department and the police department directly into his office for more accountability and oversight. I think we have an opportunity to do something.

Thank you. Any additional public comment on the budget this morning? If you do come forward, we have three minutes. Go on once, go on twice. Don't stay too tight. Okay. We're going to go to closed public comments at this time. Bringing it up to the dais. City Manager followed by Council Member Arias.

Thank you, Council President. I know the mayor already did some thank yous, but I would be remiss. I think everybody knows that this budget does not happen overnight. It is months and months of work and putting this together. And I need to give some shout outs to some specific people. who have worked tirelessly to get us to this point. So obviously, I want to first start with Santino, our Controller Finance Director, Ed Shenevere, Assistant Director who oversees the Budget Division. Thank you so much. The budget staff. Pedro, Erlin, Nygma, Sherry, Ellie, Danielle, Mitchell, Chris, and Stephanie as well. Thank you, guys. I don't know how many meetings we sat through doing pluses and minuses, but thank you so much. Also department directors and your department business and admin managers who over and over again have to put together documents and information to submit for us to be able to put this budget together. Thank you to all of you. In addition, I would also be remiss to not single out a few people in my office, namely Alex, Crystal, and Tony, the mom of City Hall, who everyone goes to for everything, and I know everybody out there is smiling because you know it's true. And then our ACMs, Nick, TJ, and Ruthie, who oversees the finance side of the shop. Thank you to all of you. And then I'll end with Kelly, the Mayor's Chief of Staff. As all of you know, I sat in that role for many, many years, so I know what it's like. to guide through the budget process in that role. So thank you, Kelly, also known as my better half and work wife, and don't read too much into that. And then the mayor, right? So he's the one who sets the vision and leads us all in setting out what this document is going to represent. And he was selfless this year. As we put together the budget, every budget has some sort of mayoral priority in it. It could be a new program or new staffing. And There was nothing this year because he knew what our financial situation was and he sort of put his own desires aside for the purposes of being able to present a balanced budget. So obviously the mayor leads us all and is very hands on, as we all know, and very detailed and amazing with numbers. I KNOW THOSE OF YOU WHO HAVE BEEN IN THE ROOM, HE'LL TELL YOU WHAT WAS IN THE FISCAL 25 BUDGET FOR CERTAIN POSITIONS. HE HAS AN AMAZING GRASP OF THE NUMBERS THAT ARE IN THIS BUDGET AND EVERY BUDGET. SO THANK YOU TO EVERYONE. IF I MISSED ANYBODY, I'M SORRY, BUT THANK YOU. THANK YOU, THANK YOU. WE COULD NOT HAVE DONE IT WITHOUT YOU. AND I KNOW SOMETIMES I GET CRITICIZED FOR THANKING STAFF FOR DOING THEIR JOBS. And I don't really care because the staff that put together this budget, it's more than just doing their jobs. It's early mornings. It's late nights. It's working from home when our office is sending a text message at 11 o'clock at night that we need data right away. So they go above and beyond and they need to be recognized for that. And thank you to council. Obviously, you know, this is a give and take process that we go through. You know, we present. You guys like to do some fine tuning, as I call it. And, you know, ultimately, you know, we end up hopefully with a document that, you know, we can all live with. It doesn't have what everybody wanted in it because we just don't have the resources. But thank you for all of you. I know the mayor talked about, you know, the time that He spent trying to, you know, kind of go through all of your motions to figure out what we could do and what we couldn't do. So thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you, Council President.

All right, great. Council Member Adias, followed by Council Member Vang.

Thank you, Council President. I DO WANT TO EXPRESS MY APPRECIATION. THIS IS MY FINAL BUDGET IN THIS CITY. IT'S BEEN A JOY READING AND FINDING MONEY WHERE MONEY SOMETIMES DOESN'T APPEAR ON A FIRST GLANCE. I DO WANT TO ADDRESS A COUPLE OF THE COMMENTS THAT I'VE HEARD FROM THE PUBLIC, THOUGH, AS IT RELATES TO THE UNHOUSED. EVERY COUNCIL MEETING WE'RE INVESTING HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS AND MILLIONS OF DOLLARS OF CONTRACTS TO OPERATE OUR SHELTERS. On Thursday, those of you who are interested will approve another half million dollars to operate shelters for another year, housing dozens and dozens of people. I know there's objection to a secondary HART team, but I think the context is important. I personally am responsible for representing 80,000 residents. My district houses the vast majority of unhoused in the whole city. I invite all of you to visit our shelters. And I also invite you to take your kids so they can see for themselves what it is that we're doing for the unhoused on a daily basis. I remember in 2020 when I took my seven-year-old son to an encampment that had 150 people living there. That residents and neighbors were mad for a year because of the open fires, the human feces, the drugs, the needles, what it had done to the neighborhood in West Fresno. And that was the beginning of us owning and operating shelters for hundreds of thousands of people over the years. Could we do more? Of course. Is there more need than we have resources? Absolutely. But it's also unfair to allow any group of people to put at risk the health and safety of a whole neighborhood or a city. Your kids, our kids deserve to be able to walk to school and not have to step over people. Deserve to be able to stand at a bus stop and not have to argue with somebody who's engaging in drug use. They have a right to go to the neighborhood park and not see an encampment or people engaging in illicit activity. And it's our responsibility to try and reach that balance. Are we perfect at it? No. Is there things that we miss at times? Absolutely. But there's also, I think, this idea that we are fundamentally the parents of adults and that we are solely responsible for every adult in this city. And we simply are not. Adults also have to do their part. Take the help when it's offered. Take the support when it's available. Accept the shelter. Accept the drug rehab. the mental health services. And what I've learned in seven and a half years is not everybody is ready or willing to take that help. And it's our responsibility to make sure there's help available for those who are ready and willing to take the help while ensuring that public health and safety is also maintained across the city for everyone else. So I anticipate as we run out of money, because the federal government is no longer funding these activities, or the state government has less money to fund these activities, that those shelters will come to a close. I know every shelter in my district is being shut down for the purpose of building permitted affordable housing, which unhoused people need to be able to transition into. As we do that, we're gonna lose shelter beds. At some point, we're gonna run out of motels in the city that we can acquire and operate. And so it's incumbent on us to be able to still clean up encampments and still ensure that the general public can live in the city free of health and safety dangers. On the budget itself, in my seven years, I've been able to build two new parks in the district, one in Tower and one in West Fresno that will open up this year. And I was hopeful that I would be able to build a third park in the district. the half a million dollars for the Adams Elementary neighborhood is the beginning of that. That will give us enough money to design a park, to acquire the property, and to set it up as we have the other parks in preparation for Measure P construction money in the following year. So thank you to residents for being patient. We have secured $10 million to fix all the missing sidewalks in that neighborhood. to put street lights curbs and gutters to build the safe routes to schools to Adams Elementary. This park will be constructed after all those improvements are completed which will begin early next year for the construction of those improvements which is going to be great because we'll finally have the sidewalks to connect the neighborhood to the school and to the eventual park that's built in that area. THIS BUDGET ALSO INCLUDES MONEY FOR ADVANCED PEACE. NO LONGER ARE WE HAVING TO REACT TO HOW WE SAVE IT THIS MONTH. WE'RE FUNDING IT FOR TWO YEARS, ALSO EXPECTING THAT OTHER GROUPS THAT BENEFIT FROM THEIR SERVICES ALSO PITCH IN. ONE OF THE AGENCIES THAT BENEFITS THE MOST FROM ADVANCED PEACE IS THE DISTRICT ATTORNEY'S OFFICE. IT SAVES THE MILLIONS OF DOLLARS FROM HAVING TO PROSECUTE SHOOTINGS. And it is my hope that the county of Fresno district attorney's office also sees advanced peace as worthy of investment in preventing shootings that they then have to prosecute. We're also engaging in beautifying the tower district more. We've repaved essentially every neighborhood. We've helped small businesses improve their facades. We put overhead lighting with my colleague to my right. We're going to complete the construction of all the way to the 99. And it puts streetscape improvements and sidewalk improvements in that area. And something as simple as removing the gum up a sidewalk. And power washing improves the neighborhood because it allows people to enjoy the nightlife. And those who go, like me, who are older now, and want to go to breakfast at our beans on Saturday morning, not have to walk through a bunch of trash and dirty sidewalks. So it allows for the family environment to continue. Lastly, in downtown, I know there's been a lot of attention around the entertainment district. But this budget includes about half a million dollars for family events in downtown Brazil. Everything from the ice ring to the Christmas parade to a veterans parade to Fiestas Patrias to Posadas, events that are not focused on the amount of alcohol and volume you can sell or consume. but events are focused on bringing the family into a downtown environment. And I appreciate the fact that we continue to invest in those activities for families in downtown Fresno. Finally, my only regret on the budget, mayor and city manager is that the 50,000 to audit the diamond baseball holdings was not included in the final budget. So I'll be making a motion to include that funded through my budget, but I wanna give some rationale for it. In the last couple years, this city has provided the baseball holdings team $7 million for improvements just to keep baseball here. $7 million above what we're required to give them under contract. We also are paying the debt, which is about $3 million a year, on that stadium. Ever since the baseball team was acquired by the private equity firm Silver Lake, the cost to use a stadium, even to the city, has grown significantly. If the city wants to host an event at that stadium, its own stadium that it owns, its own stadium that it subsidizes its operations in the millions of dollars a year, we have to pay between $150,000 to $200,000 for the day. That's what happens when private equity takes over a public asset. And that's why I think it's important for us to audit the operations of that facility and make sure that they're meeting their obligations and that we're capturing whatever revenue we're supposed to. And they're not just simply, you know, drain the cash out of the facility for their benefit and at our expense. So with that, Council President, I'll make a motion to approve the budget. WITH AN APPROVAL OF MOTION 55 TO ALLOCATE 50,000 FROM THE DISTRICT 3 INFRASTRUCTURE FUND TO CONDUCT AN EXTERNAL INDEPENDENT AUDIT OF THE DIAMOND BASEBALL HOLDINGS OPERATIONAL AGREEMENT FOR CHICHANCEE STADIUM.

WE HAVE A MOTION. WE HAVE A SECOND. Council Member Barrios, would you be willing to parse just the addition out, the amendment, as some specific language we gotta read with respect to approval of the budget?

What I'll do, Council President, is, I would draw my motion now while you approve. You make a motion for the legal language, and then I will amend your motion with my motion. Would that work, City Manager?

May I make a suggestion?

Yes, ma'am.

I would suggest that you make your motion for the audit, and if that passes, then let the Council President or whoever make the motion with all the technical language that's needed.

Okay, yeah, it would be included. I would say make the motion that you made.

So I would draw my previous motion. And I'll make a motion to approve motion 55 to allocate 50,000 from the District 3 Infrastructure Fund to conduct an external independent audit of the Diamond Baseball Holdings Operation Agreement as it relates to Juchansi Stadium.

All right, we have a motion, we have a second. We'll go ahead and take that motion up now for approval. Is there any opposition to that amendment to the existing language? Seeing none, that passes. That's included.

All right, Council Member Ving, followed by Council Member Karbasi. Thank you very much, Council President. I, too, want to thank everybody who has been involved in this process. MARATHON PUBLIC HEARING OF THE CITY'S BUDGET. IN PARTICULAR, I WANT TO THANK THE PUBLIC FOR THEIR INPUT, THEIR COMMENTS IN PERSON AND ONLINE, AND INDEED WE RECEIVED A LOT OF THOSE COMMENTS ONLINE AND I REVIEWED EACH AND EVERY ONE OF THEM, SO THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR PARTICIPATING IN THIS PROCESS. I ALSO WANT TO THANK THE HEAD DEPARTMENTS, ALL OF YOU, FOR HAVING RESTRAINTS TO REDUCE YOUR BUDGET And I know it's difficult, but it is better than having to lay off employees. And so I want to thank your hard work in this process. And finally, I want to thank the administration for presenting to council a balanced budget. Mayor, thank you very much for meeting with me to reconcile on my emotions. As city manager indicated, I have some wins and I have some losses. That's the hard part of this reconciliation. Again, this is second year in a row for me where we have to find the money elsewhere. We were not as in a better position as we were where we had surpluses. And with that, the nonprofit aspect of the city plays a great part in providing services to our community. And as my colleague from D3 indicated, The federal government in many cases have slashed, if not most of their funding for this year and in the foreseeable future. Likewise, the state as well. So it is incumbent upon the city to pick up some of that as much as possible. And again, it's very difficult to find money when there is no money to sustain the current operating cost of the city. WITH THAT, I WANTED TO AMEND MOTION NUMBER 37, SEATED MANAGER. THE SOURCE OF FUNDING STILL REMAINS THE SAME. AND I WANT TO MOTION $20,000 FOR FAMILIES IN ACTION, $20,000 FOR FIRM, FIRM, AND $20,000 FOR A HOPEFUL ENCOUNTER. Yet the total is $60,000 and the source of funding still remains the same.

So you're just, instead of the 60,000 going to one organization, you're going to split it amongst the three.

That is correct. Thank you. Second. Thank you, sir. That's all I have. Council President, thank you.

We have a motion. We have a second. Is there any addition, any further comments on this? Any opposition to approving the amendment? All right, seeing none, that's now packaged into the final version of the budget. Council Member Karbasi, followed by Council Member Perea.

Thank you, I agree with all the comments made about staff, department directors, mayor, Kelly, and of course our senior, Georgie Ann and her fellow, her deputy city managers and assistant city managers. Great work, it is a long, gruesome process. This is a two and a half billion dollar budget. It's very large and a lot of work, so I do appreciate that. Work's not done yet though, I have a couple questions. So I made motion number two early on, and this was regarding existing funding that has been carried over for multiple years towards a new park site in Pinedale for raw land to build a new park out there, in addition to the community center. Now, Mayor, thank you so much because this budget has included another $300,000 for the Pinedale Community Center. This is a multi-year project we've worked on. We've put in a lot, if not over a million, almost millions of dollars in the community center. And we're going to get it back to where it needs to be. I do have a question for the parks director, though, regarding the funding that we have there now. Regarding the funding in that new parks site fund, what exactly can you, what bucket is that in of Measure P? The Pinedale acquisition?

Yes. Yes. That is in expenditure category two, the citywide. So it does not have the highest needs definition. It is citywide.

At the time, because Pinedale wasn't the highest needs park at the time. That's correct. Got it.

Thank you.

You're welcome. One of the frustrations we've had for years, we've been trying really hard to secure land. But one of the reasons why I'm so against paying above an appraisal, which we've done in the past, is now we have a reputation of overpaying for property, and we cannot use eminent domain with Measure P. So I'm not willing to pay double or more for a property. So we've held firm, and it's been difficult to find land. Meanwhile, this money has been held in there, not being spent on other potential park sites. So I'm gonna remake my motion because it was removed, and that is to... amend the terms for use of the existing funding that has been carried over for multiple years towards a new park site in Pinedale to include language to open it up to be eligible for park sites west of Highway 99, including the one we're building at Barstow and Veterans. This is a revenue-neutral motion. It will not cost anything, but it opens up that money instead of locking it in and freeing it up for another park site, especially for an area that's been neglected like West 99. Is there a second on that?

Council member, I'm sorry, what is the difference from the current, from the- The motion was eliminated. Oh, got it. I'm just putting it back on there.

Revenue neutral.

Okay. Second.

Thank you, council member. Okay. No money yet. Motion number three was to allocate... I think with motion number three, it was about $200,000 for the first T program. This is a nonprofit that has an agreement with the city at our city's municipal golf course, which is in my council district, pulls in kids from all over. Golf, unfortunately, I'm not a golfer, which is a good thing, but it's a very expensive sport, but you don't have to pay tens of thousands of dollars as an admission fee to go to Riverside. It's very affordable and open to everybody. So we're trying to make it eligible for kids that normally wouldn't have access to a sport like that. First Tee is a great program, but they've really outgrown the physical space they have out there. So they have made a request to... be able to expand just the facilities. This is not about programming, although it will open up programming. And I think there was a little confusion. I want to be clear. This is only about capital improvements. This is not about any programming in particular.

Correct, I think from when the motion was made, I think we had some confusion because the Riverside Capital Fund would not be able to be used for programming, but it could be used for facility. And so it did not make it on the list because I think we were focused on the programming side of the motion. So we could use Riverside Capital money to improve or increase a facility.

What's the best way to do that? Would it be a new motion?

I think that would be the best way. I would not make any changes to the existing sheet. I think it would be easier if you just made a motion to fund first T 200,000 from Riverside Capital for facility improvements. Okay.

And this wouldn't, just so no one freaks out, this isn't like taking money away from someone else's project. This isn't the capital fund, it's isolated. Correct, exactly. Okay, so what I'll do is I'll make a new motion to allocate up to $200,000 from the Riverside Golf Course Capital Fund to expanding facilities for the first T Youth Development Program non-profit at Riverside Golf Course. Thank you, Council Member. Okay, then next one would be

Oh, do we have to vote separately or could we all do it all together? I mean, let's take them up one by one. So let's go back to the first one. Okay. You said it's budget neutral. There's no money being...

There is no money. It just, the money's been sitting there for years. The likelihood of finding something is minimal. I'm not giving up all hope, but it's pretty minimal, unfortunately, because every time we've gone to three different buyers and they up the price constantly.

All right, so we'll go to, if it's budget neutral, yeah, let's go to that first motion and we'll take it up. Is there any opposition to the first motion regarding?

Regarding opening up the existing funding to other projects less than 99. Okay. Eligible projects. Any opposition to that?

Seeing none, that's now part of the budget amendment. It's part of it. And then the second motion.

It was the $200,000 from the Riverside Golf Course Capital Fund. It will not defund anything else anyone's working on, but allocating up to $200,000 towards a facility upgrade for an expansion for First Tee.

Great, okay. There's a motion and a second on that? Yeah, also budget neutral. Is there any opposition to the motion regarding the capital of the Tee? Seeing none, that is now also an amendment to the budget. Sorry, please continue. Okay, thank you.

The next one, so that was done. It's done. Okay. Motion number 13. I think this has been addressed, but this is in regards to the funding for the police chaplaincy. So the request went from, I think their base that we've contributed every year is 75. The request was to increase that to 150. Now it says that is the reconciliation and says it's a hundred thousand dollars, but that's, there is another, there is another additional 50 somewhere else. Is that correct?

And I'm going to have you double-check me here, but the current funding to the chaplaincy program is $75,000. This would be an additional $25,000 for a total of $100,000.

That's my understanding as well. And that $25,000 was put in the fire department budget, not the police department budget. So it's $75,000 in the police department budget, and it's $25,000 in the fire department budget for a total of $100,000 for the chaplaincy.

Okay. Okay. Gotcha. So it's only a hundred. I mean, the total is a hundred thousand dollars. Okay. I don't, this is a red line for me. I don't want to really pick and choose and start saying, why did we fund this and not fund this? I have a whole list of things that I think probably super funded for some reason, but it's $50,000 in a multi-billion dollar budget. for a program that while they do a lot to fundraise, provides a lot of services for not just the police and the fire department, but for the public as well. So we'll see how the rest of the discussion goes, but I'm a bit concerned that we didn't fully fund this program. If we can't treat our chaplains well, I don't know what that says about us as a budget, but we'll move on from that. I'll come back to that in a minute. So that one's not solved. Okay, motion number 94. Yeah, I thought I was pretty clear. That chaplaincy one was really important to me. 94 was to allocate the, and by the way, thank you for this one, the additional gap money for Stallion Park. I'm just wondering what bucket that came from. Is that Measure P money? It's 77,200. 94, city manager.

94, sorry. And it's eligible for Measure P, Category 1, high needs.

Okay. And I do appreciate that because they still have a metal slide and I think they'll appreciate the new slide. What category was that? Sorry. Bucket one.

Bucket one. Measure P, category one, high needs.

Got it. Thank you so much. Okay.

So I think the question was the funding source is category one high needs, and I believe that's based on the new definition that was adopted in 2025.

It's not high needs. Stallion Park is not high needs. Yeah.

Got it.

OK, well, we can go back and check that.

OK, we'll come back to that. Another question, this is for Public Works, but I mean, maybe you can answer just a basic question. Director, sorry, it's one question, make you come all the way up here, appreciate it though. Good morning. A lot of great motions are in here. Hawk signals, upgrades. Are there any motions in here that if the budget is passed as it was reconciled today, that will take away funding or potential time speed of funding for the left turn phasing at Forkner and Bullard? I only ask because I believe on the city's priority list, it's the number one in terms of need. Surprisingly, a lot of accidents out there.

Good morning, Council. So, yes, the traffic signal at Bullard and Forkner, to clarify, that had design funding that was allocated prior fiscal year. That is in the mayor's proposed budget. That is in the final budget before you funded with SB1. And that is, again, on our citywide ranking, it is number one. That's based upon accidents. proximity to schools, traffic volumes, and such.

Thank you, Mayor. Appreciate it. Thank you, Scott. Thank you, Director. Okay. This might be a question for budget staff. Motion number 18 has to do with, I believe it was $60,000 for the, what is called the Khalsa Community Center. The name was crossed out and it was changed to, what's the description of the program? Just want to be clear. It's still the same organization, correct? Correct. Yeah.

That was a change that was requested by our chief of staff, right?

Well, as long as it's the same organization, because, well, that wasn't the case, I understand. But at some point, it was Colsa Community Center. That's the actual name, and then the description is what was described in here. I'm not saying it was from you, Kelly, regardless.

So why don't we just do a slash? Instead of crossing out Colsa, we'll just do a slash, and we'll go back and figure out why we added that information.

Okay, as long as it's the right organization, we're good to go. Okay. Okay. Motion number, motions 46 and 48. Great motions. This is another example of how county needs to understand that city residents are their residents too. And for motion 46, which is the $50,000, how much of that, is it all general fund or is it part general fund, part operating budget for district one? Because I made a similar motion and I want to make sure what ratio I need to pay out of my budget. It's split 50-50?

It's general fund.

It's all general fund or part general fund, part operating budget?

Ed, can you confirm?

46. 46. Oh, it says 20. I'm sorry. It says 20,000 from District 1.

Okay.

So about 40%. Okay. Those are the notes on here, on the reconciliation. Just to be clear though, motion 48, which is a similar measure, but this is for Weston 99. It was approved, but the recommendation is district two pays for all of it. Okay, my only concern with that, we're gonna do it. My only concern with that is there is only one library Weston 99, just South of Shaw. And it's not even a full-scale library. I think the residents of West Fresno deserve the same kind of priority, not just from my budget, but from the general fund budget. But I'm not going to not fund this. I just think it's unfortunate that it wasn't given the same treatment.

Okay, I'm sorry. I need to clarify. Sorry, because it's on our sheet in two different places. It was partial from... Somebody speak up, please. $30,000.

It's a total of $50,000. $30,000 from the general fund and $20,000 from the district operating fund.

Got it.

D1.

So 60-40. Okay, understood. Okay, that answers my question there. Another one that has to do with Southwest Fresno was motion 97, which was the African American Community Council. They were completely eliminated. And I'm wondering why I need to be able to find a way to fund them again. Part of their goal, and this is a program where a lot of the folks that we know, members of NAACP, they're also part of this organization, well, it's a separate organization. The request was 25,000 and they were totally eliminated. 97. So I have some thoughts how we can restore their funding. I'll just move to that. Okay. So here's what we're gonna do. So motion 97, hold on a second, sorry. So what we're gonna do for 97 is my request is, my motion's gonna be this. We're gonna restore motion 97, but to pay for it, we are going to reduce motion number, excuse me, can't read my own handwriting. We're gonna fund $15,000 out of the district two operating budget, and we're gonna reduce Motion number 18, from $60,000 to $50,000, and use that towards the African American Community Council. And the Fresno Metro Black Chamber of Commerce will serve as the fiscal agent.

Oh, okay, yeah, we could not find any record of nonprofit status for this nonprofit.

Okay, yeah. So their fiscal agent will be the chamber.

In any event, using the black chamber of commerce is helpful. However, the difference of your two motions is not the same.

I'm sorry. Say one more time, Ruthie.

The difference of your two motions was not the same. If we do $15,000 through the black chamber and then reduce motion number 18 by $10,000.

Oh no, so it'll be $10,000 from the reduced motion that will go to the luck chamber for this group. And then the remainder will come out of my operating budget.

Thank you.

Yep. You got it. Second. It'll be neutral, but it'll just be.

Yeah.

Second. The total is 25, 15 from district two and 10 from the reduced motion. Thank you. Yeah. Good. Okay. Okay. Figured that one out. Okay, great.

Let's take up that motion. Oh, thank you.

We have a motion, we have a second.

Is there any opposition to Council Member Karabasi's motion to reallocate from motion number 18 in a District 2 budget into funding this non-profit? Okay. I'm seeing no opposition. That's now amended. Have we missed any, Council Member Karabasi? What's that? Have we missed any other live motions? Yes. Almost done. Okay. No, I meant, like, did I miss any...

No, no, no. We're good so far. Thank you. Sorry for the, we're good. Thank you. Excellent. Oh, this is a fun one. It was no opposition. Motion number 15. I want to thank my colleagues, Council Members Richardson and Vang. We put some money aside because we do have multiple public safety memorials and we don't want anyone, God forbid anyone gets added to that to have to worry about being able to raise the money for the etching and the cost that goes with that and that cost grows. So I believe each of us contributed $2,500 towards that. I'm going to make, this is a fun motion. I'm going to make a motion to rename that fund, the Devin P. McGuire Public Safety Memorial Fund. Devin's not going anywhere. He's still with us, but he is retiring. And so this is just one thank you to you for that.

Okay.

There's no revenue effect. We've already funded that. You don't get a discount if your name goes on there. No, absolutely not. We don't want that. We don't want you on all.

God forbid it happens. We have a motion. We have a second. Is there any opposition to the renaming? All right. Seeing none. Passive 7-0. That's now on it.

The only other one I have left, there was a motion for years I've been trying really, really hard to get us to focus more on the whole sister city relationship. We're really great at ag, that's what we do in this area, but there are things that other places are good at and we've had multiple Groups come here and spend their money here on multiple conferences, international conferences, which is great. But I don't feel like we've really quite been able to get buy-in. So the thought was there's an outside organizations devoted to this. Maybe if we give them the funds that we allocate but don't always use. maybe they'll have a better shot at it. So there was a motion for $150,000 to Sister Cities International. That was dropped down to $80,000. And I just worry with the budget they kind of presented to me, it's just not going to cut it. We're not going to be able to get there. So I'm wondering, I don't know where to get the other $20,000 from. Sorry?

We've never seen a budget.

Like a lot of these nonprofits, they'll go meet with the different council members. That's why my motion said they have to present us a budget that will be approved by council leadership ultimately.

It's just helpful because when we're trying to seek what funding sources there are and what our priorities are, all we're working with is the motion.

It wouldn't be Measure P. It would just be general fund. I don't know how they would apply for Measure P funds. I don't know if anyone has any creative thoughts on how we can bring that up to par.

Might I make a suggestion for us to revisit this at mid-year?

Well, we tried. Did we have any money last year to do mid-year?

Okay, well...

Can I ask what the goal is with that money? What are we trying to accomplish?

The goal is to hopefully bring folks here, but let's say we go battery technology, for example. All these electric cars, what are we going to do with them someday? Well, Germany is the leading nation for this type of technology to recycle these batteries. Wouldn't it be nice to have a facility here that can do that? I mean, we talk about dreaming big, but we don't have all the solutions. It's to have that free exchange with other economies and hopefully bring some of that benefit back here. My focus is more economic development, but these relationships have to actually be with minimal investment. HAVE TO BE KEPT UP.

COUNCIL MEMBER, WOULD YOU LIKE TO TAKE IT FROM THE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT DEPARTMENT VACANCIES?

IS THERE ANY MONEY IN THAT

The only vacancy is it's put up for their attrition savings. So they have one vacancy and the savings from that is them hitting their attrition target. I don't know if we went over on attrition on economic development. Somebody can look that up. But I know that the only vacancy is being held for the attrition savings.

If I may, and again, I'll ask Santino or Ed to correct me, but because they're such a small department and they are holding one vacancy, it does generate more than the 6.18%. However, we utilize that difference where they generated more to fulfill the 5% reduction exercise. So we were already counting on that position being held vacant all year.

Council Member Carbasi. Maybe we can revisit that in mid-year. Sorry, go ahead.

Can you share, I heard what you said to council member Richardson, but from the conversations that you've had, the 150, what was the intent? Like, is it for travel? Is it for staff?

It's mostly for staffing and to make, for example, to make sure all those different cities on that list are getting constant communication. For example, if you want to have travel there, waiting to the last minute and buying those tickets costs a terrible amount of money. If we plan these things early and also recruit them to come here, which is even cheaper for us, that's kind of the goal. But we need someone to actually coordinate all that activity. We just can't do it ourselves. It's mostly staffing.

And so the idea was that the sister cities group would use $150,000 to hire a person? Yes.

That and other potential things, but we're reducing it and just focusing only on the staffing. Even I felt that was a little inflated, but I think going lower than 100 is going to be tough.

What's the delta currently between what was proposed and what's allocated? Well, 150 was proposed. 80 has been accepted in this budget. 20 is the delta. That sounds like 70 to me.

You're only looking for 20? Yeah.

Going from 80 to 100. Could we motion that the money that's been set aside by District 2, District 5, and District 6 to reimburse anybody with the Cesar Chavez Boulevard renaming that doesn't get used can be put toward this? I have a feeling it'll be over $20,000.

I'd be okay with that if that's okay. If it's not used.

Yes. If it doesn't get used. Yes.

Okay. Then thank you. Appreciate that council members. Then what I'll do is I'll make a motion to allocate 20,000 more dollars towards the contribution to sister cities international. That is motion number 98 with the caveat that it's whatever balance is left over from our fund to help businesses along the Kings Canyon corridor. Second. Okay.

All right, we have a motion, we have a second. Any opposition to this reallocation amendment? Seeing none, that passes.

Well, for the record, I do admire Councilmember Arias' creative thinking there.

Okay.

Okay. And with that, that's really all I have right now. Again, I do appreciate... A lot of the hard work that went into this, Mayor. It's not easy, but I think we're gonna be done today, thankfully.

All right, is staff keeping up? Are we still balanced and all these motions are accounted for? City Manager, staff is all right?

I'm sorry. I was trying to catch up. I'm sorry, what was the question?

Is staff keeping up? Is everything clear? Yes, I think we're good. And we're still balanced?

My brain just caught up to the words. I think we're good to go. Ed, you good? We're all good. Thank you.

All right. I have Council Member Perea.

Thank you, Council President. I'm proud to say that this being my last budget, this is what we have before us. I believe the most family-friendly budget our city has ever seen. And I do want to just take a moment to highlight some of the motions that made it through to this final round that are really important to me and my district. We set aside funding to complete a citywide tax amendment to make it easier to build grocery stores, medical offices, and other neighborhoods serving retail all across our city. This budget sets aside funding to support teen moms, LGBTQ healthcare services, domestic violence victims. And it sets aside funding to develop therapeutic community gardens for the Hmong community as well as one in Southwest Fresno. We have $2 million of childcare and early learning investments that we are seeing for the first time. Money set aside to bring back a library in the Tower District. This one was a priority for me and a pretty large cohort of my constituents. In addition to that, we're making a number of other investments in the Tower District, including heavy-duty power washing on the sidewalks. We have funding for concrete repair for the parts of the sidewalks that just so desperately need it. We have funding set aside for tower theater maintenance and for public art in the Tower District. So thank you, Mayor, for including those. We have record investments dedicated to spay and neuter services. We have money set aside to execute the completion of our citywide smoke shop wind down period, which we'll start to see toward the end of this year. We have a record earmark for eviction protection for our renters. We have millions of dollars set aside for District 1 neighborhood revitalization projects, including paving and sidewalk concrete repairs. We have funding set aside to redesign Quigley Park over on Dakota and Fruit. And we have continued funding for our city's newest youth leadership program, which is in partnership with the Fresno Chamber. We kicked that off a few weeks ago. And so if you do have a high school student, if you know of one who is interested in this program, please go to fresnochamber.com to look at that. But we do have continued funding to carry that over into next year as well. And then I do want to echo the mayor's remarks about challenging the county to increase their level of support for our local nonprofits. We cannot run the city without the good work of them. And while we would like to do as much as we can to close each and every budget gap they're facing. It's just simply not possible for us to do it on our own dime. And so to everyone who made a public comment related to social services, mental health services, homeless, homelessness, I encourage you to go across this route to the county side. They're going to start their budget process this fall. And please advocate for funding set asides from the county for your respective causes. With that being said, I think it was either the mayor or city manager you called ed beyond remarkable and i'll echo echo that as well but i'll extend that to the entire department as well as to the entire city administration i know you guys worked weekends and early mornings and late nights and so your work does not go unnoticed i'm really proud of this budget being my last this one is truly reflective of the community's requests and while not everything got funded, we got, I believe, as close as possible to funding just about every request out there. So it's good work. And I want to thank my colleagues for supporting a number of my priorities and couldn't be more grateful. Thank you very much.

All right. Council Member Karbasi, you're punched up again.

Yeah, I'm gonna do the Colombo one more thing. I forgot. Two things I forgot to mention. One was there was a motion, I made motion number five for the sweet potato program, which is a really great program. I met with that group and the original request to me was $10,000 and then that was upped during the budget process to 25. But this funding is gonna come completely from my district budget, and I've just covered some more for other things. So what I wanna do is, I hate to do this, but I wanna reduce that back down to $10,000, unfortunately. That was the original ask of me, but given that this is gonna be borne by the entire district, I think that's gonna be our portion. That's the motion.

Okay. We have a motion, we have a second.

Council President, if you'll retract that motion, I will match your 10,000 with 10,000 for my office budget.

Okay, let's do it. I appreciate that, Council Member. Thank you. Yes, 10,000 from District 2, 10,000 from District 1. Is that a motion, or is that... Can we amend our new motion?

I think you just, I would suggest, let's see.

You can just amend motion number five.

Ed, what's the easiest way to do this? I don't want to mess up any reconciliation. They want to change motion number five, which was 25,000 from district two down to 20,000, 10,000 from district two and 10,000 from district one. Should we modify number five or should we have them do a new motion? What's the easiest way? Make a motion to amend that motion. No, 10,000 from District 1 and 10,000 from District 2 is 20,000. It's a reduction from 25 to 20.

Well, it was 10.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think a modification to the existing motion should be fine. Okay.

Okay.

So it'll be a modification. Is it moved? It was seconded. Okay.

So the motion is to reduce the amount to 20,000, but 10,000 from D1 operating, 10,000 from D2 operating. Any opposition to the motion? Seeing none, all right. Amendment's not part of the budget.

Okay, the other one that we didn't do anything about was the chaplaincy issue. So I'm just trying to think where I can cut or what we can do because it's an important program.

Council Member, can't the Fresno Police Union fund that? I mean, they have a few hundred thousand dollars.

They fund it at 75,000.

So can't they fund the remainder?

No. Yeah, that's what I said. The police department has $75,000.

No, I'm asking about the Fresno Police Union.

Oh, POA also funds it? Oh, I'm sorry.

My question to my colleague is, can't the union fund this, given that they have money to fund the Legal Defense Fund of Harassing Behaviors?

Well, I don't know how to comment on that. Okay. Right. It's gotta be a funding source somewhere here. Well, at the very least, we'll make that a mid-year priority. So I'll motion to, we just motioned to add it to the list, is that correct, City Manager? The chaplaincy, the additional $50,000 to make it a mid-year priority?

Yeah, yes, you could do that.

So I will motion to allocate $50,000 as a priority for mid-year for the Fresno Police and Fire Chaplaincy. Second.

Okay. All right.

Any opposition to that motion? Seeing none, that's part of the budget now. Okay. Thank you. And then last thing I want to add is I want to reiterate how difficult it is to balance a multi-billion dollar budget. Mayor, you and your staff have done a great job. We pass a balanced budget every year. In my seven years in the council, we'll have added 97 new police officers, which is significant because violent crime has dramatically gone down in this city. But part of that also is record investments in parks, in activities, and in programs like Advanced Peace that help to reduce retaliatory gang-related shootings. And I think that If it ain't broke, don't fix it. It's working. The trends are good. And I want to thank our police chief, Mindy Castro, for all her hard work and her leadership. It's a lot of work. But, you know, I guess Mayor had big shoes to fill when he left the department. You're doing a pretty good job of filling those shoes. So great work. Thank you. A lot of important projects were funded that are important to District 2, but also to this entire community. We talked about First Tee earlier. This is a youth program to open up what is traditionally an expensive sport to kids of all incomes and all different zip codes in the city of Fresno. And that's really important because money shouldn't be an impediment to playing sports. we allocated money out of the District 2 budget for Pathways to Art at the Teak Community Resource Center to help them complete this project. Allocated funding for the Hmong Community Garden. Of course, money for our chaplaincy, which is incredibly important. Money for the American Legion because they provide a lot of services. When a service member passes away, they do the honor guard and things like that. But surprisingly, those The equipment they use is rather expensive and they're looking for new flags and whatnot. The Colsa Community Center, looking to move its home to District 2 to purchase their own building. This will help them leverage funds to do that. District 2 is paying $75,000 towards the restoration of the Wilson Theater. Very important project. Also funding for potentially a library in Southwest Fresno. The gap for Stallion Park, so we can get that fully funded after the last couple of years. Thank you, Mayor, for that. And of course, funding for the African-American Community Council, and other things that were already in the budget, like funding for the Pinedale Community Center that the mayor has committed to multiple years of funding, the left turn phasing at Forkner and Bullard. And then of course, traffic mitigation on Audubon, which when we, that stoplight was put in thanks to the help of the Conservancy. It was a great day, Mayor. And you've always been committed. I think our first community meeting was that. And those neighbors are thrilled with the work you've done. Thank you for that. I did have one last idea, city manager. We allocated $35,000 towards yellow light timing. That was motion 93. What was the funding source for that? I was hoping that could have been used for the chaplaincy. It cannot. So we'll just keep that where it is.

Okay.

All right. And with that, I appreciate all the hard work. Thank you, council president. Let's move forward.

All right, I have Council Member Richardson followed by Council Member Perea. Pretty good budget.

Thank you, Nick.

Three words, I like it. All right, you know, this budget's kind of a culmination of my time on the council. Proud that we delivered a balanced budget even after the the ups and downs, the twists and turns. It's balanced, invest in our roads and our neighborhoods, protects essential city services without too many reductions, and I think generally accomplishes our goal of improving the quality of life throughout the city. So this budget really builds on a lot of progress that we've made, historic investments, and I think it's a solid document. To summarize, the council adopted 100 budget motions, which resulted in the general funds for the proposed fiscal year 2027 budget being out of balance. The administration has worked to develop a resolution that would allow the council to adopt a balanced budget as required by the city charter. We've had a few more amendments as you've seen. The annual appropriations resolution and related budget documents for consideration will accomplish the balance budget requirement. The reconciliation summary sheet outlining the changes is attached to the budget AAR as exhibit B, and we all have that to be distributed along with the budget documents. That's in addition to the amendments that were made this morning. So I'll motion to approve the 9 a.m. budget items A through C, E, and F, which includes the changes that were made pursuant to the FY27 budget reconciliation summary identified as Exhibit B. This motion will supersede all previous budget motions.

with just add with the exception of the motions made today. It's not gonna supersede.

You got that? I mean, I included that. Okay. I included those, that wording is throughout the. Okay, thank you. It will not, yeah. The motions that were made today, all of which are budget neutral are included in this. And now this, yeah, this motion in its entirety will supersede all previous budget motions. But I did cover that. We have a motion by myself. We have a second from Council Member Perea. Is there any opposition to approving the motion? All right, great. We have a budget. Congratulations.

Council President.

Wait, wait, wait. Hold on. We're not quite done.

I'd like to make the last motion today, which will be the motion to approve item D, which is for the GAN limit. I know you're a conscientious subjector to that, so I will make the motion today. Would need a second though.

All right, we have a motion to approve item D, the appropriate gun limit. Motion to second. Is there any opposition? Opposed? All right, that passes five to two.

Now we got a budget.

Now we have a full budget in its entirety.

You let me make a couple of comments just towards you guys. I want to say thank you to this council, all of you. I know who The budget process can get very contentious during the course of the year. And that's as a result of you guys being very, very passionate about causes and your districts. And I appreciate that, and I try to be equally passionate about the overall city. My job as the mayor is to try to, obviously, to balance a budget. I'm a fiscal conservative, so I want to make sure we continue to have a good, strong reserve. but to be able to meet the needs of each of you. And hopefully this year we've been able to accomplish that. We have not been able to meet all of the needs, although we strive to do that every year. But two-thirds of the motions that were made were honored in this year's budget. And we were able to do so with only spending an additional $5 million in general fund, of course some additional special revenue. But I can't imagine what this city would look like if we didn't have Measure P. didn't have sb1 dollars if we didn't have measure c and i look forward to the future of continuing to have a transportation dollars that will serve to support our budget and i can't imagine what we would have been able to do this year not been able to do this year if not for the pay more now pay less later program that you all unanimously supported so That $100 million in paving and sidewalk repair is going a long way in our city and I think has offset some of the needs that we have. And for those of you, I know Council Member Vang made a lot of requests in the budget for some of the infrastructure, road projects, et cetera. Those do not fall on deaf ears. I believe in the future that we will be able to prioritize those with a new transportation measure. I think you do know that we're going to be able to trample the dollar amount that we receive as a city should this better road safe streets measure pass and That will be a game changer for 30 years in the city of Fresno So just wanted to close those comments say thank you guys for your understanding as you know, the budget is not personal Yeah with any of us or but it can be it can become very contentious and And I appreciate your passion, your dedication, your districts, and what you fight for. I wish folks could be able to see that day in and day out, but I get to see it. And so I appreciate it. Again, to my staff, city manager, and all of our team, I'm very, very blessed to have the best team anywhere, especially our budget office. We are second to none, and I'm grateful for the work that they put in, their dedication, and the long, long, long hours that they have put in to get this budget where it is. And again, we started back really before January on this thing. And so, again, thankful, blessed to be the mayor of Fresno. God bless you guys. Thank you for a 7-0 again.

Council President, I would be remiss if I did not thank the city clerk and city attorney's office who obviously spend a lot of time on this as well, making sure that everything we're doing is legally sound and the clerk for all of the work that they have to do with the agenda. So I just looked over and realized, oh my gosh, I forgot them. So thank you guys.

Yeah, that should be part of our job as well, to thank them. So thank you.

Council President, can I just make one request that's not budget related, but reminds me of... We have our city manager establish a task force of IT experts to figure out how to get our former city clerk's email address from being sent to us on a daily basis. I know that's been a hot topic for a few months now, but we've had a new city clerk for a while and I keep on getting emails from Todd. So can you work on that?

Okay, first that I've heard about it, we will figure it out and see what's going on.

All right, we're going to keep the meeting open here as we have in the past. And I think we'll conduct a... That way everyone can be part of the press conference. Of course, the press conference requires some press, Mayor. All right, are we doing... We all got to come down and do a little bit of press deal? Okay. All right, sounds good. So we'll... Meeting is still open and everyone on the dais is invited to join us down here in front.

You guys are all pressers? Yeah, right now, right here.

Thank you. Thank you.

Test, test, test, test.

White balance.

Testing one, two, three, four. Test, test, test. All good, good, good.

Thank you. Oh, okay.

Thank you.

Pretty good, yeah.

Audio check, one, two, three, test, test, test, test.

Very good.

Yes, ma'am. Nelson's in the restroom.

I'm doing this.

We had a win.

We had a win.

He's going to zoom in from the left. I wanted to ask you, would you like to be listed on the TorontoLibrary.org website as a supporting politician because you have a slice of the hour? I will sit there to add your name.

Thank you.

How many pages you got there, Jerry? 18? No.

You guys would buy pretty fast.

No, it wasn't that fast. Yeah, but when it's size 36 font like that, it's a lot. I don't know why they do the font like that. You notice the small print? It circles the important words. I do, too. A.K.A. every airport. So aircraft, I mean airport. I don't think I guessed that right. I like to invite the people. Not always for the people, but I like to invite the people. This is a reminder.

This is where you have to cry. I usually say that, like, till the end. Oh, my God. Go on break.

He's eating lunch.

Oh, God.

It's going to be a while. Take it out.

No, he'll be here.

Where's that Miguel guy?

You got him?

No, I didn't.

I'm doing a presentation with Gabby at 12.30. Oh, is that about you? Yeah, the Women's Chamber of Commerce.

What is it for?

It's a Women's Chamber of Commerce lecture. Oh, cool. It's kind of a little slow. Yeah, it's slow. Is that cool?

Especially slow today. Your career isn't what you got to bring up today.

Oh. Being a male-dominated grassroots. Is she working again? She's, yeah, she's at a company called Mark Thomas & Child. She's out. She's out. She's out. Ready?

Yeah, my city manager shouldn't want to be with us. Okay.

Well, thank you to the media for being here and for Channel 30 returning. I appreciate that. I'll repeat some of the comments that I made today at the dais when I presented the final budget to the council, and then we'll have some of the council speak. Whoever really wants to speak is up to them. It is an open session still. But this was an extremely challenging budget year. As I stated, due to limited revenue as compared to our growing expenses and much of that being driven by inflation and contractual obligations, both with our labor unions as well as some of our vendors that we have for technology and the like, as well as facility costs that have increased. And so that made it very difficult. But what made it even more difficult, I think, was this was the first year over the last several years that we did not have outside federal funding from the American Rescue Fund. So it was very challenging, to say the least. But I'm proud to say that we were able to present a balanced budget this year to not lay off a single person or to reduce any employee benefits or pay. And I believe we were able to also retain the essential services that the community of Fresno have come to expect. As you heard, part of the budget hearings, Council approved 99 budget motions during those hearings, which totaled about $50 million, meaning we were out of balance by about $50 million. Very much expected, as has been the case in past years, although to a much higher degree. After meeting with the council members and learning their priorities, we looked for creative ways to be able to meet as many of those budget motions as we could. And fortunately, we were able to. Two-thirds of the budget motions were funded with either special revenue or in the general fund. or we're budget neutral, or we utilize a significant amount of the district operating budgets in order to do that. Unfortunately, one third of the motions we were not able to meet this year, but those motions that were made that deal with infrastructure, road repair, sidewalk repair, median islands, signal lights, hopefully we'll be able to meet those needs in the near future when a new transportation measure passes and better roads, safe streets. And so one third of those motions did not advance this year. I do want to highlight again, $2 million in grants to first five to support Council Vice President Maxwell's initiative on early learning and childcare. $1.8 million this year, so we upped it $300,000 from last year for the eviction protection program. We know affordability is a real factor out there in our communities today, and we know that there's been a lot of reductions from the federal government for certain social services, and so that impact is felt in communities like ours perhaps more than any others. Advance Peace is being fully funded in FY27 with significant dollars that will be left over for FY28, and it is my hope, though, that Advance Peace over the next year will pursue additional outside funding sources beyond the city of Fresno. They get $144,000 a year now, or at least for a 10-month period, from Fresno Unified. But I want to encourage them to continue to do that so that we as a city do not have to endure the entire cost burden. $825,000 for nonprofits for spay and neuter. That is significantly higher than we have ever spent. That's the most money we have spent in spay and neuter programs in the history of our program. And thanks to a matching fund of $300,000 from the Dogwood Animal Rescue Center. And that is what prompted us to increase our amount this year so that we could take advantage of that match. $500,000 to support Council Member Arias' motion, and that was to design and build, acquire land, a park near the Adams Elementary School. This will give us sufficient funding to potentially acquire land, as well as the design for that park in a neighborhood that has been neglected for far too long. $1 million to be able to beautify sidewalks in both the Tower District and downtown. As you know, the Tower District is bordered by District 1 and District 3. But unfortunately, the sidewalks in that area have become unsightly. And in many cases, the pressure washing does not just do what it needs to do to keep them clean. And so we are doing some new pressure washings with some safe chemicals for them. But we also set aside money within that $1 million to replace, at least start the process of replacing some of those sidewalks through design. Proud to say the utility art box program that has really taken off, this was Council Vice President Maxwell and I, we partnered on it this last year. And initially it was in the airport district as well as Fresno State University around that area. But it's been so well received, we're gonna continue with it this year into the tower district and downtown Fresno. Again, box art is what we refer to it as. The addition of a liaison for the Office of Community Affairs, a motion that was made by Councilmember Richardson, recognize a need in our community for an additional liaison to reach out to certain segments of our community with a large population that oftentimes are not heard or underrepresented. And all of these motions were, and in in addition to what was already in the mayor's proposed budget this year and that is 75 million dollars for street and sidewalk construction uh two firefighter drill schools that was about a three million dollar cost and will allow us to train and hire additional 40 firefighters that first fire drill started in june the second will be in august Also, $1.9 million to support residential infill housing. $1 million of that is new money in FY27. About $865,000 is carryover from FY26, but it is put into our budget for the purpose of incentivizing folks, developers, to build within our infill, and it takes care of many of the off-site costs. Additional heart team is being added, a sergeant and four officers, which is critical when you look at what we face sometimes as a city. The number of requests we get from council, the community members trying to prevent any encampments in our city is a difficult challenge. We spend about $15 million a year. providing services and emergency shelter for a homeless population. We have purchased motels. We have done a number of things. But it is important that we be able to address some of the neighborhood concerns and business concerns, and this additional HART team will allow us to do that. A construction of a new fire training center, which will begin in FY27. We're very excited about that. We had $25 million from the state of California to be able to initiate that project. Nearly $700,000 will be utilized and outsourced to a private company in partnership with Caltrans to be able to clean our freeways, our freeway embankments. And we believe that is a responsibility of not only Caltrans, but the city of Fresno. 1,000 new trees will be once again planted in our city as part of Council President Maxwell's 1,000-year initiative. And in addition to that, we have about $3.3 million set aside for tree trimming that will allow us to continue on a 10-year initiative. tree trimming cycle last year we fell back a little bit because of lack of funding this year we're going to be back on course so every 10 years every city every tree in this city will be trimmed and 1 billion dollars to support 470 major capital projects throughout our city because we are building a better fresno and we need funding to do that The final FY27 budget now stands at about $2.56 billion. That will change a little bit as a result of some of the motions that were made today. And with the general fund, which is our most precious dollars that fund police, fire, some of our public works and parks, is at $546.41 million. And enterprise and internal service funds will total $1.12 billion. Those are restricted funds. We can't use them for any general fund purpose in the city, like police or fire. And the remaining $891.97 million comes from special revenue and grants, and special revenues like SB1 from the state for fixing our roads and sidewalks, as well as Measure C and some other funding sources that we get from the outside. And as you heard me say at the close of my comments today to council, I want to repeat those. And I appreciate the fact that many of the council members also reaffirmed that today. And that it has become painfully obvious to us, and we became painfully aware during the budget hearings, based on the number of community members from nonprofit organizations that came up that are in desperate need of funding. They've been cut by the federal government, the state government, not getting funding from the Fresno County, and so they come to us. And we try to meet as many of the needs as we possibly can, but the simple fact is we can't do it all. We want to do our part, but we can't do it all. So we're going to be continuing to call upon our county partners across the streets over there to step up and help us to fund many of these nonprofits that provide, again, a valuable service to members of our community. And I'll say this, that the city is already funding about $15 million a year on emergency shelter and services in our community for the homeless population. And we also fund an eviction protection program to keep people from becoming homeless in the first place. And now that's at $1.8 million. And this budget will go even further, providing precious general fund dollars to fund efforts like county libraries, mental health services, eviction protection again, support services to address teen pregnancy, and much more. So we are doing our part as a city, even though we're not a social service agency, to impact the way that people live their life and to address the affordability crisis in our community. So again, I know the county's facing a very difficult fiscal time. as well, but we do need them to prioritize and step up and to be able to fund our nonprofits as well as our philanthropic organizations. We call upon them to step up as well. So we could not meet all of the needs within this budget, but we did our best to meet as many of the needs as possible. And I hope members of this community will understand and appreciate the fact that we have limited funding And we're trying to stretch those dollars as far as we can. I want to say thank you to this council and to my team for working so diligently and cooperatively to be able to make this budget balanced. And we did today on another 7-0 vote. So with that, thank you. And I will turn it over to Council President Nelson Esparza.

Thank you, Mayor. This is Fresno's largest budget ever, $2.5 billion. And it brings me a lot of joy that we have come together on this particular budget. Take a literal picture, because not every day you see the council members and charter officials and the mayor. all come together and actually agree. And it's never easy to get there. I mean, you've watched the process here publicly and sort of the ups and downs and some of the disagreements. But ultimately, we've arrived at a really good point at a budget that, as the mayor went point by point, genuinely reflects the values of the city and the people that live here. And that's gonna serve our neighborhoods well and continue to build and rebuild on those parts of the city that need it the most. When it comes to my colleagues here behind me, the six of them, seeing them work, each and every one of them, incredibly hard on behalf of their districts, as we all do, and fight for their residents that they are sent here to represent. And so even though you see those disagreements come together sometimes, that's just what democracy looks like. That's the way it's supposed to work. And what's accumulated, too, was this final product that we presented to the public today. And just, again, very glad to be part of the process for my last budget. It's my eighth and final one here at... city hall each one was a ride and i just want to thank the the mayor of the administration really all the staff who you know who put a lot of hard work uh into this you see again you see us on the on the dais uh putting in the hours but really the staff is there doing just as much if not uh if not more so i want to thank everyone and at this point i will open it up to any of my colleagues and we're still in the in the meeting i will open it up to anybody else who wants to make a comment All right, we'll open up to question and answer.

Any questions on the part of the media today? Yes, David. Yes. Sure, sure, sure. Well, a little bit of magic and a lot of prayer is how we balance our budget in Fresno. And I will say that it's not easy to do that. And fortunately, I have a really good team of creative folks. And I think our council is very, very creative, too. You see them fund certain things out of their budget. But I will say that in order to be able to do that, that creativity involves, like, for example, when we get outside funding, that we receive from the state of California or another entity, federal government, and we receive those funds up front. We generate interest revenue on those accounts until a particular time. The same holds true with our reserve. We're generating interest. And so we have the option sometimes of taking that interest, utilizing it to balance our budget. And we did this year to the tune of about $1.6 million for our general fund. And then we, fortunately, at least at this point in time, in terms of card room revenue, we had pulled back $440,000 of anticipated revenue because of a court decision. a law that we thought was going to get in place, a ruling. And so we put those back into the budget. We also received some funding from an anticipated settlement that quite frankly, one of them happened over 30 years ago regarding code enforcement. So there was about $330,000 that we received as a part of that settlement. We had proceeds that came in just in the nick of time on two buildings. One of them was a bricks building. One of them was blosters. That netted us about $410,000. So revenues are increasing. And then we anticipated that our enhanced infrastructure financing district would take an additional $500,000 out of our property tax. But it didn't. And so those over a two-year period, $500,000 is being placed back into our overall property tax fund, which can be spent citywide. And then as the year goes on, as we get closer to the end of the year, we can get a more realistic view of what our carryover is going to be, unspent money. And so we adjusted upward for additional revenue, which we didn't anticipate. And then certainly we had to cut a lot of things. You heard the council members today. We had to cut one-third of the motions. But of the motions that we were able to fund, two-thirds of them, many of those were budget neutral. But some of them, when they made it, they were partially funded. Maybe there was an ask of $200,000. Maybe we funded it at 60 or 80. But we tried to do our part. And as I've encouraged many of our nonprofits that we supported this year, this is our contribution. Now good money from other entities as well, state, federal, and the county. So that's how we did it. We cut expenses. We ratcheted up our sales tax revenue to about as high as I think we should at 2.8% this coming year. Our property tax, I think, is about as high as we can get it at 5.94%. And same with our business tax and our room tax. All of those, I believe, we're realistic, but we're right at the top of where we need to be. So increasing revenues, cutting expenditures, getting very, very creative, and having to defer some of the major projects. And, again, I will say this. The Pay More Now, Pay Less Later program has really helped us this year and last year and will help us in years to come. Well, I'll let the council talk to that.

So here at City Hall, the council is responsible for all budget allocations. The mayor brings us his proposed budget, but ultimately the council decides every last and final line item. And like I said earlier, each person up here, each council member is fighting for their district. You cannot fault them for that. Obviously, if we've gone a little overboard, it's up to us to reel it back in and figure out what ultimate priorities are for this fiscal year and what can ultimately wait for following fiscal years. But the important thing is that the budget came to us balanced, and we returned it and passed it balanced. And that's the important thing.

Okay.

All righty. I appreciate it. David? What is your philosophy of the role of... Well, a municipal government has some core responsibilities, and that is essential services. First and foremost, every city government is entrusted with keeping the community safe. That's the foundation. That's through police services, fire services, code enforcement. There's a number of things that keep our community safe, but it also includes some of our nonprofit organizations like Advance Peace that intervene on the front end. And one could argue that our Parks and Recreation program also contributes to public safety by providing people green spaces, recreational activities that they can participate in. But public safety is the foundation. But we also do much more than that. It's important that we are able to provide clean drinking water when people turn on the faucet, that they've got reliable water stream with pressure and it's clean. When they flush their toilets, the water goes in the right direction. That's the city responsibility. We provide transit services. And we couldn't do it without outside funding sources from the federal, state, government, as well as Measure C. But we provide public transportation for folks, and oftentimes we provide it without cost for folks that are in need. like our seniors and our veterans. And we also have other services that we do provide, as I talked about, parks and recreation. That's a city core service, public works. It's our responsibility to put in streets, to pave streets, to put in signal lights, again, so people can drive safely in our community. So there's a number of core functions that we have. Sometimes I think in local government we tend to drift outside of those core functions because we want to do more. We're compassionate. And we know there's needs that arise in our community. Where absent that, nobody else meets those needs. And like our eviction protection program, we don't want people to become homeless. We don't want people to be out on our streets. So whatever we can do to help people not get evicted, we're going to do that as a city. And I think we've done a very, very good job of that. And in terms of our beautification efforts in our city, that's a core function. People want to take pride in their neighborhood and their community. And for us to do that, we have to have systems in place that beautify our city. Pressure washing, picking up trash, removing graffiti, all of those things are critical. So those are our core functions. And then on occasion, we drift out a little bit and start taking over some of the county responsibility. We've seen that ever since the pandemic even more and more frequently. when we started getting state funding to address our unhoused population, buying emergency shelters. Remember six years ago, we didn't have a single emergency shelter bed in the city that the city of Fresno oversaw. We jumped up to 840. Today we're at about 708. And we spend $15 million a year on services. Fortunately, we get that funding from the state. But when the state funding runs out, we're going to be relying more heavily on the county and nonprofits. Yep, absolutely.

Mayor, to David's question, the city charter clearly outlines our core responsibilities, as the mayor indicated, around essential city services. Over the time, as the mayor said, we've taken up other responsibilities. The unhoused in our community has been a big portion of that. But I do want to give the public some context. For those who have been suggesting that we're not doing enough, in the last few years, we have spent hundreds of millions of dollars housing and providing services for the unhoused. This year's budget includes $50 million for the unhoused community. It is far more money than we have ever spent on youth programming or on senior citizens. And if and when that state money runs out, if we don't make some progress, and if those who are receiving services don't make some progress towards exiting homeless conditions and getting to permanent housing, this city will have a very difficult decision. Do we invest in the youth to keep them out of trouble? Do we provide meals to our seniors, or do we continue to take over the responsibility of essential county services? The county charter is very clear, they're a social service provider. And over time, we have stepped in because of their failure to step up. And I do see a future where we're going to have to take a step back and focus on our youth, our seniors, our streets, our police and fire services, and parks, and allow the county to step forward again and provide those social services for the city.

And I'll just add one last thing on this. You know, when I became the mayor the year before, we were involved in less than 90, fewer than 90 affordable housing units being developed in our city. We recognize the need as a body, the council, the mayor, as did mayors across this country who, quite frankly, were not, didn't feel responsible for housing. I was usually housing authorities. But if we weren't going to get engaged, then we were going to see more and more people become homeless because of lack of shelter. And so I'm proud to say over the next four years, my second term, we're on target to do 2,500 affordable housing units in our city. And so we did not have, when I came in, Council Member Arias were talking at the beginning, it was, we didn't have a housing division in the city. Now we have 16 people that help accelerate housing. And we're doing it downtown, we're doing it throughout Fresno. So that's important, but again, We cannot ever be in this alone. We need partners. All righty. Thank you, everyone.

All right.

I'll go ahead and adjourn this meeting. Thank you all.

You saved me, yeah.

Thanks for watching!