City Council - Successor Agency - Housing Authority - Regular Meeting

i'll now call to order the city of fullerton city council special meeting uh study session to order for july 14 2026. uh madam clerk please call the roll mayor jung president for tim dunlap council member charles here council member valencia and council members are not yet present if i can ask uh chief lozier to lead us in the pledge of allegiance All right. If I can ask for ex-party communications, I'll start with me. Spoke with fire and police. Anybody else?

Fire.

Okay.

I also spoke with fire and police.

Okay. Andy. You're lonely. No one spoke to you. All right.

I think they noted the embargo last time. I mean, the trash embargo.

The trash embargo. Well said. All right. Very good. We're going to, I don't know why this city reports, council reports are in there. It's a study session.

Yes, you don't have to do this today.

Okay, we'll just go to regular business. It's our fiscal year 2026-27 budget study session on proposed operating budget. Before we get to the presentation, I'll seek, actually, let's go to the presentation and then do public comments, yeah? All right, we ready with that, hopefully?

guy's the man of the hour and they couldn't couldn't get him dialed in ahead of time i mean the guy's in the kicker yeah

Yes. Yes.

Do you have to ask for it or not?

We need it. Were you able to get the slides emailed to us? We got an email that just included the updated report. We'll hold it.

You all set there, Steven? Yes, we got it. Okay. Well, thank you, Mayor, Council. Sorry for the delayed start here. But we are here for the budget study session for the fiscal year 2026-27 proposed budget. We're going to cover quite a bit of ground this evening. We'll actually start by covering the fiscal year 2026-27 proposed capital improvements program budget. And then we'll move into the regular budget, which will include the all funds operating budget, detailed overview of the general fund operating budget, and then several general fund budget scenarios. We'll also go over... uh results obtained during the budget community meetings and we'll also review comments made by the ad hoc fiscal sustainability committee and then we'll conclude with uh grant thornton and their uh presentation of five-year financial forecast analysis. That will conclude the actual presentations, and then we'll go into public comment and your questions and deliberations. So with that, I will turn it over to Mr. Grantham.

Warren, please.

So this slide shows our expected budget for our proposed budget for next year. Not surprisingly, it is lower than our previous years. Water fund or the water system is significantly lower. There's also our city facilities and city parks. The parks, as you can see, is very low. Reason for that is we are waiting on developers to pay their park dwelling fees. So once we get those, then we'll come back and allocate them, but we can't allocate something we don't have. So since we don't know the timing, we're not going to allocate anything right now. Storm drain systems are woefully underfunded and sewer system, we're actually taking 1.5 million out of fund balance to address some large projects we want to do. I will say also that our street projects are a little deceiving. Typically, our street rehabilitation is between $8 million to $9 million. We're at $11 million. That's because we have about $1 million in one-time grant funding. We also this year put less money into our traffic system, so we're able to reallocate that into our street rehab. So, a little deceiving, but in a nice way. The street improvements, grant funding, $4.6 million of that. is allocated this year. That was approved by council a couple of years ago, but we're allocating it this year for the construction phase. Next slide, please. The vast majority of our projects is similar to what we've been doing the last few years. It's maintenance of our existing facilities. Our street projects were discussed at the April City Council meeting. The residential projects, all of them but the Yale Santa Fe Princeton are street rehabilitation following a water main project. The Yale Santa Fe Princeton is a CDBG grant funded project. I still want to continue slurry seal and pavement treatment. I think that's a good decision for the city to move forward with that. So we'll be doing streets probably in the southern area of the town. All other water and sewer is just fixing what we have for the most part, water main replacements as usual, and also system upgrades such as PFAS and SCADA for the water system. Next slide, please. It's the same story. We're just fixing what we have, upgrading what we have. Traffic signal synchronization projects are partnership projects with other cities and OCTA so that Hopefully we can have a nice run through the major streets. So when people are moving from one town to another, we don't have a lot of backups. We still need to, we are funding some more ADA improvements as that's something we need to do on an annual basis. So I'm making sure we're providing some funding towards ADA improvements. I can go into more details if you have any questions. No, I'm sorry. That was it for my CIP. So if you have anything else, I'm happy to discuss.

Thank you, David. Okay, now we'll move into the general budget presentation. So Interim Director Stephen Avalos will take it from here, and he'll start with a premier presentation. on municipal finance very briefly, and then he'll get right into the meat and potatoes of the budget numbers.

Thank you, Eddie. Tonight, I will present the city's proposed operating budget for city council review. I'll first provide a high level overview of the all funds proposed budget, including the general fund, enterprise fund and special revenue funds. Then we'll take a deep dive into the proposed general fund budget for fiscal year 2627. As this is the city's chief operating fund. And the city manager and I will present the proposed budget scenarios for city council's consideration and direction. Here's the quick budget primer on municipal finance and the way the city budgets its resources or better known as revenues. As I mentioned, the city's primary operating fund is the general fund, and that is responsible for providing the municipal services residents rely upon, including police, fire, parks, libraries, planning, public works, and all your recreational community services and programs. The proposed budget scenarios we'll present later in the presentation will pertain and focus on the general fund. We also have enterprise funds, which operate similar to a business and are self-operating, primarily supported through user fees rather than taxes. And these are your water, sewer, and enterprise funds, to name a few. Special revenue funds are legally restricted revenues for specific programs or activities, such as transportation funding, any city grants the city receives, or any other dedicated sources. Examples of this are your Measure M2 county transportation funds, the state gas tax and SB1 funds, and the federal CDBG block program. Internal service funds are key city funds that provide centralized support services to city departments, including fleet replacement, equipment maintenance, IT information technology, as well as your facility maintenance as well. And these are supported by costs allocated to the end users or departments that are receiving such services. So as it stands today, the all funds proposed budget totals $290.4 million across all its funds. As you can see on the chart in the graph, the general fund makes up over half or about 52% of the citywide budget. The water fund, which is the largest enterprise fund, totals $45.9 million, and this does not include water capital projects. The proposed CIP budget, as David and Public Works presented just now, totals $28.8 million. And then special revenues account for $39.8 million, or 14% of the citywide budget. And now we move on to the general fund. This slide presents the proposed general fund revenues, and this is pre any budget scenario options. For fiscal year 26-27, the city's baseline general fund revenues totals $141.4 million, and this does not include transfers in. Property tax is the general fund's largest revenue at approximately 52% of all revenues and is projected to total $66.6 million in fiscal year 26-27. Property tax continues to grow due to the city's continued assessed valuation growth and diverse commercial and residential property tax base. Sales tax is the second largest revenue and is projected to total $31.3 million and is largely projected to remain relatively flat in fiscal year 26-27. Charges for services are another key category in the city's revenue base, and this is all the city's user fees. It charges for services provided to the community. This includes your permitting, your planning, plan check, fees, as well as ambulance billing revenue, to name a few. This next slide presents the proposed general fund expenditures. Again, any pre-budget scenario options by department and major program area for fiscal year 26-27. Again, this excludes transfers out and baseline expenditures will total 150.4 million in fiscal year 26-27. As you can see on the chart in the graph, as the city is a full service city, public safety, your police, your fire departments encompass the majority of city budget. at approximately combined 74% of the general fund budget. This is followed by our Parks and Recreation and Library Community Services departments. We also call them Human and Leisure Services, and their budget's total 12.6 million collectively. Public Works totals only $11.6 billion in the general fund, which is slightly misleading, as Public Works makes up a significant part of the all funds budget, as we do have a water and sewer enterprise operations, as well as the CIP program and so forth. This is followed by our community and economic development departments, as well as our administration departments, which include the city manager's office, human resources, and administrative services or finance. So as I mentioned, the baseline expenditures and revenues are pre any budget reduction and scenario options we will present later. With transfers in and out, we started with an initial 13.7 million deficit position, which we presented back in March earlier this year. Since then, the city manager's office, finance team, and department head team have done a lot of work in order to reduce our operating budget, which I will cover now. So in explaining this, I will walk you through our updated financial position, as well as various components of the financial forecast as it stands today. This first portion of our forecast, I will cover fund balances. The total general fund balance is represented in the green row and shows a starting position totaling 26.3 million. And this is per the completed and externally audited financial statements for fiscal year 24-25. Part of the fund balance, we do have allocated fund balances that are restricted or assigned for other purposes and cannot be used for general operations. So this totals 10 million and is netted out or subtracted out from the total fund balance amount. So that leaves us with an available fund balance and starting position of about $16 million. Next are our revenues. Our baseline revenues have increased from 141.4 million to 143.8 million. And this is due to the following. The use of one-time restricted downtown parking program and general plan update revenues that are being repurposed for operations. One-time revenues of about 1.2 million, and this is the use and application of unclaimed engineering development bonds totaling approximately 800,000. as well as the withdrawal of $400,000 from our Section 115 pension trust account that can be applied towards any city pension costs in any given year. Lastly, we do have revenue adjustments in which we've essentially looked at our original revenue estimates, sharpened our pencils, and that totals to about $700,000. Expenditures. On the expenditure side, we have decreased our expenditure budget to approximately 145 million. This is due to the unfunding of nine full-time equivalent or FTE vacant positions, and this totals 2.8 million. Additional operating reductions totaling 1.8 million, and this will be discussed further in the department presentation slides. Lastly, we have identified 2.2 million of reduced allocations to the city's workers' compensation and liability insurance internal service funds that will help contribute to help balance the budget. So the next, the orange row is is a change from prior forecast that we have presented. And this is going off one of the recommendations of the Grant Thornton audit report. So now we're showing the city's projected operating surplus or deficit after operating revenues and expenditures. So in looking at operating revenues and expenditures, the city's net deficit position is 1.1 million versus the previous 9 million. as shown in the original base budget column. After factoring in net transfers, my apologies. So now that we have in the transfers in and out, next after the expenditures, And the main adjustment to the transfers in and out are a 1.5 million one-time payback from the equipment maintenance fund. That will go back to the general fund. The other adjustment is that the transfers out shows a slight reduction for IT capital projects. So that will reduce from 938,000 to 538,000 in the current proposed budget in the far right column. After factoring in net transfers in and out, the city's deficit position is now in its increases to 3.8 million. Again, the increase from the operating revenues and expenditures are largely due to the city's obligation and infrastructure fund requirement per municipal ordinance, and that will total 3.9 million for fiscal year 26-27. And with that, if we keep the city's current operating deficit position of 3.8 million, we will be at an ending fund balance of 12.2 million and slightly below the city's 10% reserve requirement at 8.5%. Okay, so where we are today. This is the city's current general fund financial landscape. So the city does have a structural deficit problem over the last two years. I will now define structural deficit in which this occurs when the recurring costs of providing municipal services grows faster than the recurring revenues available to support these services. So essentially expenses are exceeding revenues simply put. Like the state and many other cities within the state, Fullerton is facing an operating deficit in our general fund. This is due to rising expenditure costs, including maintaining competitive salaries and the salary increases from memorandum of agreement agreements. And fiscal year 26, 27 will represent the last year of most salary increases for the labor groups. In addition, rising CalPERS pension costs primarily due to our unfunded actuarial liability or UAL costs increasing year over year. And then revenue growth being tempered and outpaced by expenditure growth. Property tax has continued to increase, but most other revenues have either remained flat or declined slightly. So expenditure are outpacing revenues. So again, as I stated in the previous slide, we now stand before you today at a baseline structural deficit of 3.8 million. And in order to even reduce the city's position to 3.8 million, we have unfunded a number of vacant positions. We have done further operating and program reductions. And we also have utilized one-time budget revenues and reductions, which will also be covered in the presentation slides. So the remaining 3.8 million deficit serves as the basis of tonight's presentation. And we will be presenting three budget scenarios to address the budget gap for your consideration. And now I will pass it back to Eddie.

Thanks, Steven. So Stephen mentioned the $3.8 million deficit that we've managed to get the budget down to is now kind of the issue that we're trying to address this evening. Quite simply, The decisions that need to be made are, are we going to use reserves to address that $3.8 million deficit? Or are we going to address the $3.8 million deficit through budget reductions and not draw down on reserves? So scenario A is, is essentially where we sit right now, as Steven just went over. We did have some budget reductions in the form of personnel and operating expenditures totaling 4.6 million. That is unfunding nine current vacancies and would contemplate using reserves of $3.8 million. So not a balanced budget. We would be using reserves of 3.8 million. We have a scenario B where we do not use reserves at all in 26-27, but then we would proceed to use reserves in the two years thereafter. This obviously requires an increased budget reduction. The number of full-time employees that we would keep vacant would grow to 24, and we would also be increasing use of one-time funds in year one. But again, in year one, we would not draw down on reserves. And then we also have a scenario C, where we do not touch reserves at all for fiscal year 26-27, for 27-28, or for 28-29. We would end 28-29 still with $16 million in reserves. This requires additional budget reductions, keeping 32 full-time positions vacant. And we would, because of those staff reductions, we would also spread the use of one-time funds over three years. And again, we would not draw down on reserves under scenario C. The reason why we're looking at a three-year, we're not adopting a three-year budget, but we want to show you three-year impacts based on what we do for this year. Because with the current budget deficit of $3.8 million and likely to grow in future years, Three years is about what we would be able to sustain before getting very close to zero. So we want to show you how we look three years from now based on each of these three scenarios. So that's kind of the basic overview of what you're going to be seeing more details on. I'm going to have Stephen now go through a more line-by-line view of scenarios A, B, and C. Then after that, we're going to go through the actual proposed reductions that... create scenarios A, B, and C, and then the department heads will have opportunity to discuss what the service impacts of each of those scenarios will be. So with that, I'll turn it back over to Steven.

Thank you, Eddie. Now we'll go over the budget scenarios forecasts. Each budget scenario forecasts we cover today, as the city manager mentioned, will be over three years and will be a near-term or short-term period to illustrate the financial impacts of each option. Again, each option presented is not a long-term solution, but rather the city's plan to help us navigate the city over the next few years. Since we covered the detail already of how the forecast reads, we are now showing you a condensed version of the forecast with the next three budget options. So scenario A is what we're calling baseline services and use of reserves. This is actually the same as the city's updated financial position presented earlier and shows the next two years of the forecast in fiscal year 27-28 and fiscal year 28-29, which are the next two columns to the right of the fiscal year 26-27 proposed budget. So as you can see, as I mentioned earlier, in the city's updated position, we are now standing with a 3.8 million net operating deficit position, and that is the second orange or beige row, as you can see. And we stand to end the fiscal year projected at $12.2 million. For fiscal year 27-28, we're looking at a deficit of 2.9 million and we stand to end the year at 9.3 million and then the last year of the forecast continues the use of reserves in which the reserves will the net position the net deficit position will increase in the third year and will be at 4.7 million dollars for a general fund balance and well below the city's reserve requirement of 10% at a projected 3%. This next slide represents scenario B, which we're calling a balanced budget for fiscal year 26-27, year one only. And this is through service reductions and deferrals. and looking at this financial forecast I will now point you to the row below the blue ending fund balance row and this is called additional budget balancing options so as you can see in the rows below that in the beige rows this entails the additional unfunding of 15 full-time equivalent positions for a total of 24 unfunded positions. This equates to approximately $1.5 million of additional savings. This also includes $1.5 million in one-time payback from the building maintenance fund. This is similar to the one-time payback from the equipment maintenance fund, and these are internal service funds. This ISF fund is primarily staffing-based and has built up accumulated fund balances due to vacancies over the last several years. And then lastly, there will be an additional $800,000 of deferred maintenance and reduced capacity for IT-related projects for fiscal year 26-27. So in looking at the forecast, we're going to end fiscal year 26-27, again, with a perfectly balanced budget, and end the year at $16 million fund balance from where we started. In year two, fiscal year 27-28, we're looking at approximately $900,000 net deficit position. So that'll slightly reduce the fund balance to $15.1 million. And then in year three, you were looking at a higher deficit position of 3.1, 3.2 million, and we'll end the year at 11.9, almost $12 million. And that is almost 7.8 or 8% of reserve level. Scenario C on this next slide is entitled balance budget for three years from fiscal year 26-27 through fiscal year 28-29. And we're entitling this structural deficit reductions. Again, I will point you to the rows below the blue, any fund balance row called additional budget balancing options. Again, as you can see in the highlighted beige rows right below the fund balance row, This includes everything in scenarios A and B, as well as the initial funding of eight full-time equivalent positions for a total citywide amount of 32 unfunded positions. This equates to about $2.3 million of total savings. Also, what differentiates scenarios being from C, and the city manager touched upon this a little bit, is that scenario C has a deeper level of budget reductions. In addition, the one-time revenues or deferred expenses are spread out over the three fiscal years in order to maintain a balanced budget and zero use of reserves. So as you can see from fiscal year 26-27 through fiscal year 28-29, we will end each of those years with a $16 million fund balance. And again, this entails not using reserves and utilizing a combination of budget reductions and one-time either revenues or reductions to help balance the budget. Okay, so that was a lot of information. So what does this all mean? And now I will pass it over to the department presentations portion to communicate the service impacts of each option.

Can I just ask a clarifying question just real quick here? When you were saying the additional vacant position is 23 and then operation maintenance, this is in addition to the previous scenarios, right? So Scenario A is basically, and B, this is in addition to those two, correct? Yes. Okay.

Okay, so we'll now cover the administration departments. which consists of the city manager's office, administrative services, or finance, as well as our human resources department. So in scenario A, we're looking at, actually scenarios A, B, and C, for our operation and maintenance budget reduction, we're looking at discontinuing onsite security services at City Hall. Next, we're looking at unfunding the Deputy Director of Administrative Services, and the amounts reflected in this chart are only for the general fund portion for this position. In human resources, we're looking at removing the director of human resources position and filling that as a deputy director of human resources. So we're showing both amounts. That should net some savings there. In addition, we're proposing to hold the administrative assistant and confidential position in human resources vacant. And then we will have salary adjustments because Human Resources does have internal service funds that support various personnel. And as a result of some of these position holds, we're looking to achieve $150,000 in savings and internal service fund allocations. So in all three scenarios, this equates to about $420,000 in net savings to the general fund. And now to the service and operating impacts of the scenario options. As I mentioned, these amounts remain the same for scenarios A, B, and C. So by holding the vacant positions, this will increase workload for existing administration staff. through reassigned duties, reducing the department's capacity to support other departments, and limiting the department's ability to proactively address some citywide organizational needs. As for the operation and maintenance proposed reduction, in order to offset reduction of onsite security personnel, the existing utility services from counter staff will assist daily visitors and patrons that come to City Hall and direct them to the various departments. In addition, our police department would be called upon if there is ever a need to respond to disruptive behavior or de-escalate incidents that may occur in City Hall. And with that, that concludes administration. Okay, so the next department is Community and Economic Development, and I will highlight the positions, and then I'll turn it over to Nina to communicate the service impacts. So in scenario A, we're looking at salary adjustments of a nominal amount of about $9,000. And we're really looking at operating and maintenance reduction of professional services by 31% in the building division. In scenario B, we're looking at the vacant code enforcement manager to underfill as a code enforcement officer. We're also looking at holding vacant an associate planner position. And then another proposed net reduction is the economic development project manager to underfill as an economic development specialist. In scenario C, The differences between B and C is instead of the proposed underfilled positions, we're looking to eliminate the code enforcement manager completely, as well as the economic development project manager, in addition to the associate planner in scenario B, as well as the senior permit technician. And again, just to reiterate, all these positions are currently vacant.

All right, good evening, Council. Community and Economic Development is a multidisciplinary division that covers planning, housing, code enforcement, building and safety, and economic development. We provide a service, but mainly a revenue-generating one. A few numbers before the scenario is just for context because they're directly tied to revenue-generating priorities, quality of life, and economic development. through permits, processing times, and efficiency. We process over 8,700 permit transactions a year, over 1,200 plan checks. Code enforcement carries over 1,000 open cases, and we see about 600 customers through our office a month across building, planning, and public works. Every scenario on this slide cuts into the people managing that workload, not necessarily the workload itself. Scenario A already leaves permit tech and supervisor salary adjustments unfunded and cuts building professional services by 31 percent. What that means really is that that's my front line, and it sets us backward on the plan check improvements we've made and hits our 24-hour inspection policy. Scenario B, includes A and underfills the code enforcement manager, reducing capacity for supervision, complex cases, coordination, and counsel response, as well as community, while planning's capacity, if we underfill for an associate, impacts the entitlements, state mandates, and long-range work, which becomes strained. An entry-level economic development specialist would certainly help, but with just a manager and a specialist, the deliverable expectations would need to shift. Scenario C is an obvious one. It freezes everything, slowing the same functions that generate the city's revenue, and reversing the service gains we've made. It results generally everything that we do in terms of the staffing and the workload. It just results in longer timelines, reduced capacity, and fewer resources for proactive initiatives.

And with that, I will give it up to FIRE.

Okay, so next up is our FIRE department. And in scenarios A, B, and C, we're looking to, what's proposed is to unfund the deputy chief slash fire marshal position that would generate savings of $500,000. On the operation and maintenance side, What's proposed is to reduce professional contract services budget for backup plan check services, eliminate paramedic subscription mail, and pass on credit card merchant fees. as well as furniture replacement for the emergency medical services division. And that equates to approximately $139,000 in savings for a total of $666,000 in savings across scenarios A, B, and C. And I will now pass it over to Chief Lozier.

Good evening, everyone. Just to reiterate our personnel reductions, Back in 2022, when council gave us direction to rebuild the fire department, it was a perfect opportunity to look at the organization and make sure as we were rebuilding it, we were rebuilding it better. We were taking into, in fact, all the necessary responsibilities, whether it's fire prevention, emergency management, EMS, fire, and making sure that there was the proper oversight and the job, the, the, job responsibilities were covered effectively and more importantly, efficiently. And so our organization reflects that today. And this reduction of a key leadership executive position definitely has impacts onto the fire department. And I think that the first sentence there, the reduced administrative, financial, and regulatory oversight is critical to this specific position. Recently, earlier this year, we did kick off the in-house ambulance program, a program that brings in anywhere between $6 to $7 million a year. In that program, we built it out with having in mind that this deputy chief of administration would be able to be a key oversight to this program. without having that oversight. Those responsibilities and that component of it falls onto the fire chief and to the deputy chief of operations. In addition to that, we also have the grant that is being managed that is part of our hiring of our 12 new firefighters. That is a three-year grant that is also managed and overseen by that position. And so that is just an additional workload to the administrative office. Lastly, I'll talk about is our emergency reimbursement coordination with the state. So whenever we are deployed up and down the state or in some instances across state boundaries, we are reimbursed for those services through the state. And that is something else that now I have to take on as an additional piece. And I'll tell you as my almost 9 years as the fire chief I've never not had this position. And just in the last month and a half that that this unit position has been vacated and I have been taken on that work. It is a lot. And some of those those key responsibilities will affect some of the other departments see 9 is department is a perfect example. of having that oversight for complex plan reviews. That's what that deputy chief is there for. In addition, if we do have stacked up redevelopment or development projects, eliminating that backup of plan checking also eliminates kind of the backup we have for our sole plans examiner to keep business moving and development and economic growth within the city progressing forward. So those are some of the key impacts by the unfunding of this particular position. Thank you.

Next, we have the library department. In scenario A, we're looking at Operation In both scenarios A and B, we're looking at operation and maintenance reductions of approximately $360,000. This includes reducing the hunt library security overnight only. This also includes eliminating the library book collection budget for adult and teen sections. This proposal is kind of a side proposal in that the Library Foundation and Friends of the Library have tentatively agreed to sponsor the book collection for this upcoming year, as well as the electronic resources budget reduction of $30,000. In Scenario C, it includes all these aforementioned reductions and includes one full-time equivalent library technology assistant, which will add on another $94,000 in net savings for a total of $500,000. And now I'll pass it over to Anita to explain the service impacts.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. Scenario A and B are the same for us, as Stephen mentioned. Security cameras and city staff will be the primary crime deterrents in Hunt Library in these scenarios. Currently, we have a security guard covering hours when the Hunt Library is not staffed. I do want to notate that the collection development budget is actually going to be eliminated in its entirety, and not just adult and teens, it's adult, teens, and children in all related collections. We are fortunate, as Steven mentioned, that our support groups have committed to filling the gap in the meantime. It is for an undetermined amount of time, and it just puts us in a little bit of a position of uncertainty with that continued funding as library books and also our electronic resources are part of our core services. Scenario C, as Steven mentioned, involves both of the above, plus unfunds our library technology assistant. This is a recent vacancy, and the timing on this is particularly impactful because the library is open during hours that are nontraditional hours, meaning evenings and Saturdays. We don't have general city tech support during those hours, so we rely heavily on our internal library technology assistant for immediate troubleshooting, maintenance, and real-time fixes to many forward-facing services, such as our conference center, which provides revenue generation, our passport services, which provides revenue generation, and also all of our public staff computers integrated library system and automated materials handler is the core of our library services, meaning everything about looking up items, checking out, checking items in and out. And yes, so that would be the impact there. Thank you.

Next, we have our parks and recreation departments. In scenario A, we're looking at a total of $241,000 in personnel reductions. This includes reallocation of general fund salaries for those employees that are performing work on behalf of the Water Enterprise Fund as well as the Breda Dam Enterprise Funds. That equates to approximately $150,000. This includes reduced library staffing and programming for 40,000, as well as special events salary savings of approximately 51,000. On the operations and maintenance side, this includes reducing the 4th of July to fireworks only to generate a savings of 175,000. The first night event, eliminating the first night event for $325,000 and producing the Fullerton brochure electronically only for about $86,000. As well as reducing off-site security services at the Fullerton Community Center. In scenario B, the reductions increased to about 1.2 million, and that includes all the same operation and maintenance reductions. This also includes unfunding the public information specialists, as well as the administrative analyst position, and CIP-funded to parks and recreation positions, and that'll generate savings of about $550,000. on the personnel side. In scenario C, this includes the same in scenario B, and it increases by two full-time equivalent positions, and there are two Parks and Recreation Coordinators. And the total savings there will increase to 1.4 million. And now I'll pass it over to Daisy.

Good evening, Mayor and members of the City Council. So under scenario A, the department would maintain its current staffing levels with no position reductions. The proposed reductions are primarily operational and focus on finding efficiencies that minimize impacts to day-to-day services. This includes continuing the city's cost savings approach to special events by reducing the 4th of July, as we did this year, to a fireworks-only event and proposing reductions to the first night event. It also includes transitioning the recreation brochure to online-only format and reducing onsite security services at the Fullerton Community Center. Scenario B includes all of the reductions proposed under Scenario A, but it also unfunds four current vacant positions. These positions provide administrative support, public communications, and project management functions that support the department's operations. While these reductions would not result in layoffs, they would reduce the department's long-term capacity to deliver recreation programs, manage capital improvement projects, pursue grant opportunities and engage with the community. Under this scenario, we would continue providing our core recreation services, but we have fewer resources available to respond to new initiatives, expand programming or support future projects. under scenario c this builds upon the previous two scenarios but unfunds two vacant positions so it's two coordinators one is currently vacant which we were planning to staff independence park so we would restructure how we staff independence park gym as that reopens later this year and then the other one is an upcoming retirement of one of our staff that provides recreation uh programs for youth and seniors. So those services would be reduced if we're not able to fill that position. So at this level, the impacts become more noticeable to the community. The department would have reduced capacity to deliver youth and senior recreation programs, maintains the operational support and implements capital projects, resulting in broader service reductions and a greater impact on overall service levels. While we continue to maintain essential services, this scenario would significantly reduce the department's flexibility and ability to meet community needs over the long term. So under all of these scenarios with scenario A, B, and C, the reduction to the special events budget is about $500,000. Right now, we receive $300,000 from Republic Services. So we've built in that to our baseline special events budget. Depending on how negotiations go with the trash RFP, that may modify what the final special events plan looks like. But this is what we've brought forward so far.

Next, we have the police department. In scenario A, we're looking at the unfunding of five positions. This includes one police corporal, one vacant police lieutenant, two vacant police officers, and one non-sworn police records clerk, which will equate to approximately $1.5, $1.6 million in savings. Under scenario B, and under scenarios B and C, This increases the funding of vacant positions from five to eight. Um, and this includes, um, two additional, uh, police officers, as well as, um, one additional, uh, one police services, um, representative. And, um, in total scenarios, B and C would equate to $2.1 million in savings. Now I'll pass it over to chief Redis.

Uh, good evening, mayor and council members. So, uh, We're currently holding 3% of our vacancies, 3% of our salaries as a result of the request from the city manager during the 25-26 budget cycle. So this continues that savings and then adds some. We are currently authorized 131 sworn positions. We're actually now authorized 127 because of the vacancy savings that we're holding. And just to put that into a little bit of context, there's law enforcement staffing benchmarks. Nationally, the average is 2.4 police officers per thousand residents in a city. In the state of California, that averages out to about 1.8 to 2.2 police officers per thousand. In Orange County, it's a little bit less. It's about 1.15 per thousand residents is what the benchmark is. Fullerton, we're 0.8 currently. So we're 0.8. To put that also into context to a city that we get compared to, and I understand they do have some financial issues right now as well, which is the city of Orange. We're 143,000 residents. They're 139,000. We handled 82,000 calls for service last year. They handled 83,000 calls for service. We arrested 6,001 people last year. They arrested 4,146. So we did about 33% more police work. They have 165 positions for sworn police officers, which is 1.2 about. So just to put that into context, we are already very low. I understand when you look at our budget, and I know there's a little bit of a gasp from a community member when they hear $71 million, 45% of the city's budget. But just to put that into context, we are probably the lowest, if not the lowest per capita in the county when it comes to sworn numbers per 1,000. So for me, scenarios A, B, and C really all do about the same thing. That's a further reduction in our sworn personnel and our non-sworn professional staff. That could require us to collapse our community services bureau so those police officers can be returned to patrol. My main function is to staff patrol. Everything else is, I don't want to call it a bonus because it's important to our community, but our main purpose is to patrol the city. Okay. That causes the least impact to the organization as well as citywide service levels. It could also cause a reduction for us in the number of officers we have assigned to our Investigations Bureau and our Traffic Bureau. Again, for context, I currently only have two police officers on motorcycles. Previously, when I got hired here, we had 13 police officers on motorcycles plus two supervisors on motorcycles. So this could result in the delay in investigations and then also a reduction in traffic safety. And obviously, for us, there's a concern that when you reduce specialty assignments, that often causes police officers to look elsewhere. And so this could have a cascading effect for us if we do have to reduce those positions because they don't have any growth opportunities to do other things in their careers. It's very atypical for a police officer to work 30 years in one assignment, which would be patrol. We would reassign the Operation Clean Streets funds to augment patrol staffing, and it does reduce our ability to fund other proactive policing endeavors. So, for instance, if we have a rash like we have, And every city in Southern California, for the record, from the multinational burglary crews that are hitting homes that back up to, let's say, open space trails. In the past, we've been able to use salary savings to fund proactive policing in those areas. We won't have that ability. And then lastly, unfunding the police lieutenant will result in definitely a lack of oversight or supervision when it comes to really the management of the organization. So again, to put it in perspective, Brea Police Department is about half our size. They have two police captains and four lieutenants. I currently have two police captains and five lieutenants. And Orange, again, we get compared to quite a bit. They have three police captains. I have two. They have eight police lieutenants, and I currently have five projected to potentially go down to four. So there are some significant impacts to the organization. Thank you.

And lastly, we have our public works department. In scenario A, we're looking at the proposed unfunding of one civil engineer position, which will generate approximately $70,000 in savings. And again, this is the general fund portion of this position only. We're looking at operation and maintenance reductions of approximately $440,000. And this includes reducing the graffiti abatement contract from two units to one truck unit. That would result in $150,000 in savings. We're looking at a one-time general fund allocation reduction to the facility capital repair fund, which supports facility capital repairs and maintenance projects, and that'll equate to about $250,000. And then we're looking at reducing the traffic engineering support staff and private development of approximately 30,000 in addition to miscellaneous furniture. In scenario B, this will increase to 875,000. And that includes... seven additional FTE positions in which we're looking at the vacant engineering aid three, a ground maintenance lead worker position, one maintenance worker position, and four senior maintenance worker positions. IN ADDITION, SOME OF THESE POSITIONS ARE FUNDED BY INTERNAL SERVICE FUNDS, AND THAT WILL YIELD AN ADDITIONAL $87,000 IN SAVINGS. AND THEN THE OPERATION MAINTENANCE REDUCTIONS ROLL FORWARD IN SCENARIO B. IN SCENARIO C, WE'RE LOOKING AT TWO ADDITIONAL PUBLIC WORKS POSITIONS. THIS INCLUDES ADDING A CONSTRUCTION INSPECTOR POSITION. in addition to a street leads worker. Overall, in scenario C, this will translate into approximately $1 million of savings. And I will hand it over to Director Bice.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. So the Public Works Department is the largest department in terms of personnel and budget. I don't think a lot of people realize that, and I think it's due to the scale of the various programs that we have to manage and administer, also the scale of our infrastructure that we have to maintain, as well as implement capital improvements. So over the years, similar to the police department, there has been attrition to the point that we are operating extremely efficiently and we are extremely lean. So any impacts will be felt by the community. So scenario A, the impacts there, the civil engineer would reduce our ability to respond to private development quickly. But the most impactful to the Community would be the graffiti abatement reduction so right now we currently have two trucks patrolling the city removing graffiti that would reduce to one. So that's concerning the reduction in facility capital would further limit our ability to address very critical needs in our 30 plus facilities around the city. And then traffic junior support is similar to the civil engineer, it just reduces or delays our ability to respond to private development quickly. Scenario B is where we really start to feel the pain. So you get eight personnel, seven of which, or I should say six of which are boots on the ground doing work in the field. And I would say that's a hard six, but like a soft 10, because that's entry-level position. It is a high turnover position for labor. So there's a constant vacancy savings that we see. So if we do freeze a certain number of that type of position, you're going to see additional to that any given time throughout the year. So you can see here that if we are freezing, you know, say seven maintenance worker positions, that's really a hard seven to a soft like 12, 13, if that makes any sense throughout any time given the year. So you're going to see impacts to landscape maintenance, delay in our frequency or change in our frequency. You're going to see... Chris Wanner, Honestly, more more potholes delays in the getting those filled so the vacancies that are put on the table here are mainly in our streets division in our landscape division and our facility. Chris Wanner, And scenarios he's very similar that's just an adding another inspector to the mix so all scenarios very impactful to the department, but mainly to our landscape maintenance and our street maintenance, as well as our facility maintenance and our graffiti abatement services. Thank you.

Thank you, Steven. That's the end of the department by department information. Daisy is going to go over comments provided by community groups at our study sessions with the community, as well as comments made by the Ad Hoc Committee, and then we'll get into Grant Thornton. But I just wanted to pause after this portion of the presentation just to say that I personally Don't take any of this... uh, lightly. Uh, and I, I can tell you with certainty that these have been difficult conversations with my executive team. Um, there's not a scenario presented before you this evening, including a, that they like that they would recommend. Uh, this is just frankly, just a fiscal reality. And we're trying to figure out, uh, our options for dealing with scarce resources. Um, All of this will require difficult choices. And just in terms of what these positions represent, again, this is a non-layoff scenario right now. But that doesn't mean it's without pain. As the chief commented, there have been vacancies being held in some cases for years. So there's already a pent-up demand for more labor. In addition, I've been holding vacancies for the last several months, not knowing where these budget discussions were going to go. So in many cases, the departments are waiting on projects, waiting to do things, anticipating that they might get to hire somebody, only to be told, not yet, maybe not ever. So I just say all that because it's hard for me to come in here and say that any of these are my recommended budget. This is just some reality that we all need to face. So with that i'm going to turn it back over to daisy to talk about what we did in some Community budget sessions, as well as some prior work we did with the ad hoc committee and then we'll conclude with grant thornton.

as part of the fiscal year 2627 budget process staff hosted two community budget workshops to educate residents on the city's financial outlook and provide opportunities for public participation in the budget process each workshop included a presentation that provided an overview of the city's financial condition education around municipal finances and three budget scenarios under consideration. Approximately 30 community members attended the in-person budget discussions. The same interactive exercise was also made available online to provide additional opportunities for participation where it received 47 responses from residents throughout the city, which you can see on the map on the screen. Tonight, I'd like to briefly summarize what we heard. First, we'll start with city services. Participants reviewed city service areas and selected whether each service area should be strengthened, maintained, or reduced. As you can see, infrastructure remains the top priority by far. Street maintenance and street improvements receive the strongest support of any city service. In addition, core services should generally be maintained with selective strengthening. For example, stronger support was concentrated in street maintenance, homeless shelter beds, and construction permit processing times. Police-related services drew mixed but mostly positive feedback. Police officers received the most support for maintaining current service levels, while police-community relations was more divided amongst strengthen, maintain, or reduce responses. special events were the clearest area for potential reductions first night and the fourth of july festival received the highest level of reduction sentiment among city services suggesting participants viewed these events as lower priorities compared to core services and infrastructure excellent In addition to service priorities, residents reviewed a variety of potential revenue options and indicated whether they were open to exploring, needed more information, or had some concerns. Residents were the most open to revenue options that are targeted or visitor supported. For example, hotel occupancy tax or TOT adjustments receive the strongest support among the revenue options, followed by dedicated street funding, legalization of cannabis, short-term rental permit cap increases, and selling city-owned properties. However, several options included revamping the downtown parking program, increasing program fees to achieve full cost recovery, and public-private partnerships received a notable number of need more information responses, suggesting participants wanted additional information before forming an opinion. Broad-based tax incentive, I'm sorry, increases and privatization generated significant concern among participants. Privatizing the airport and water utility received the strongest opposition among the revenue options evaluated. General sales tax increase and dedicated sales tax for streets and public safety produced more divided opinions with participants expressing both support and concerns. Finally, residents were asked to evaluate three budget scenarios. Participants reviewed the three scenarios and indicated which approach they found most acceptable, which they would modify, and which they found most concerning. Scenario B was viewed as the most acceptable budget path, but residents still wanted refinements. It received the most green dots and the fewest red dots, making it the preferred option amongst the three scenarios. But at the same time, it received more yellow responses than green, indicating participants generally supported the overall direction while wanting modifications or additional information before fully supporting the scenario. Participants also had the opportunity to provide written comments to explain their responses and share additional feedback for the City Council's consideration. The written comments largely reinforced the themes we observed throughout the exercise. Many comments emphasized protecting core services, particularly public safety, road maintenance, and essential infrastructure. Respondents also stressed the importance of fiscal responsibility and accountability, encouraging the city to balance the budget, reduce unnecessary expenses, and ensure public funds are used as intended. Several comments encouraged the city to continue focusing on long-term financial planning and infrastructure investments, while others recommended exploring alternative funding sources, operational efficiencies, and public-private partnerships before increasing cost to residents. Many participants indicated they wanted more details on the budget scenarios, indicating potential service impacts, staffing changes, and the tradeoffs associated with each option before making informed decisions. Finally, we received several positive comments about the workshop format itself, with participants describing the meetings as clear, informative, and easy to understand. Overall, the feedback summarized here should be considered one source of community input to help inform the council's ongoing budget discussions. It is not intended to serve as a formal vote or statistically representative survey. Then I will provide a brief summary of the Fiscal Sustainability Ad Hoc Committee's recommendations. So the Fiscal Sustainability Ad Hoc Committee was reconvened in fiscal year 25-26 to evaluate and make recommendations on potential sales tax ballot measure options. We had a couple of meetings beginning in March of this year, and the Ad Hoc Recommendations based on the final meeting are as follows. So two ad hoc committee members supported a half cent dedicated add-on sales tax for infrastructure and a 5% expenditure reduction or downsizing of our operating budget. Two committee members supported a one cent general add-on sales tax and a 5% expenditure reduction or downsizing of our operating budget, as well as three committee members recommended the city look into or explore the sale of the city's water utility services. Generally speaking, committee members were supportive of increasing revenue in some way or another, as well as reducing our expenditures. We also have Anne Lane from Grant Thorne, which will provide a brief five-year financial forecast analysis.

Good evening, everybody. Can everybody hear me?

Anne, can you speak up or can we get the mic turned up, please?

Can everybody hear me?

Still very low end.

Okay.

A little bit better.

Okay. I'm not sure how much I can do on my end or if somebody is able to do anything on that end.

Go ahead.

Okay, great. Thank you so much. First of all, I would like to thank the Mayor of the City Council and the City of Fullerton department leaders for their time and support during our engagement. As a reminder, we added this brief engagement on as a change order to our Task 1 activities to do a review of the budget forecast to and kick the tires on some of the assumptions that were included in the budget and to provide any additional information we could in the longer term forecast. So we can go to the next slide. The summary isn't much different than what you all have listened to throughout tonight's presentation. So there is meaningful progress in stabilizing the general fund through a significant amount of cuts, both from vacant positions and in other areas. However, the reserve capacity is still constrained and long-term sustainability is going to depend on the city's ability to fund infrastructure and other commitments without continuing to erode reserves. The operating position before transfers appears stronger than what the reserve outlook would suggest. As Stephen pointed out during his presentation, the actual funding from operations in some years is positive and in other years is deficit, but we're looking at $200,000 deficit or a million dollar deficit as opposed to something that is four or five, $6 million deficit. Transfers for infrastructure, residential streets, CIP, and other capital-related needs materially reduce the general fund capacity over the forecasted period. So once you get those transfers out from the general fund, that's when you start getting the larger deficit numbers that start eroding the reserve balance. Current infrastructure funding levels don't meet the city's identified needs and would require additional funding sources to maintain or improve infrastructure conditions. Under the options presented reserves are going are below the city's long term goal of 17% and certain options fall below the 10% minimum reserve threshold in future years. The forecast is also depending on successful implementation of planned expenditure reductions, some vacancy savings, and projected revenue increases. So if any of these assumptions aren't realized, if the planned revenue increases don't come to fruition, if there's some expenses that are unable to be cut or there's any sort of emergency that unexpectedly raises expenses, the reserve pressure could increase. The forecast reflects ongoing tension between maintaining reserve levels and funding infrastructure and other long-term commitments. Generally, long-term sustainability is going to depend on the city's ability to maintain services, fund infrastructure needs, and restore reserve capacity over time, as you can see in all the budget scenarios. And from what you've heard from the department heads, there's only so many expenses that can be cut before there starts to be a major negative impact to the citizens of the city. Eventually, there needs to be consideration of revenues and how those revenues can be increased, whether that's through some sort of tax measure, whether that's through improved economic development, whether that's through... Seeking out additional funding sources from other governments grants and so on and so forth to try to increase, but either way, eventually the revenues got to go up because you can only cut the expenses so much. We can go to the next slide. We did look at some of the key forecast assumptions, just to make sure that what was in the forecast is. reasonable as far as the different components of it. The budget forecast does include labor agreement increases, step increases, specialty pays, and contractual compensation provisions. These are all things that are required by the MOUs. They have to be paid out, so they're included in the budget. It also includes any adjustments to PERS, the unfunded liability related to PERS, and that those are based off of current actuarial information. So they're based off of what's being provided, they're included in the budget. As the city manager has said, the proposed personnel reductions are focused primarily on vacant positions, which does reduce immediate implementation risk. If you're eliminating positions that are currently staffed, you have concerns regarding You're making sure the positions get vacated. You have union employees, so there can be grievance procedures and so on and so forth because these positions are vacant. They can get eliminated without those additional risks, but you still need to monitor the service level impacts, which as all the department heads have stated, there could be significant or will be significant service level impacts and making sure that those don't get to the point that it's massively affecting the quality of life in Fullerton. Police overtime remains a forecast risk in the current forecast. We noted that overtime was listed at $1.8 million in the forecast. Historically, that number has been higher. So there is a risk, depending on what occurs, that additional overtime will be needed and that number could go higher. So that's definitely something to monitor, keep an eye on, because Again, with some of these services, you don't have a choice. It needs to be done. So that's one thing that we recommend the city keep an eye on and do so with regular budget to actual reporting. So it's something that can be looked at throughout the year. Projected solid waste. Franchise revenue is supported by an RFP analysis. But again, there's contract implementation and future customer billings that could affect the realization of that revenue. The budget includes debt service payments for fire apparatus that are on order and are expected to be received in the next fiscal year. Again, those could adjust depending on what the final financing arrangements are and it could either be beneficial or detrimental to the budget depending on how that scenario plays out. Generally, the forecast assumptions are reasonable, but again, the city's ability to preserve the reserves depends on successful execution across multiple assumptions. If we could go to the next slide. What this chart shows is the amount that the city will be below its 10% minimum reserve requirement using the three budget options scenario A, B and C. And this builds out a four year forecast because by the time we get to year four, we're below the 10% minimum reserve requirement in all areas and that does not improve in year five. So as you can see in scenario budget option one or scenario A, we're under the 10% minimum reserve level for the entire time. Under scenario B, we're okay for the first two years, and then it starts to get below the 10% minimum reserve level. And in option C, we're better for the first three years, but we still get below that 10% minimum reserve level in the fourth year, and both of those would continue into the fifth year. So that is one thing to keep in mind, is that even if we make some of these cuts now, we need to think about the how it's going to get addressed in the next few years. Because even with the cuts that are being proposed this evening, there's only so far the city can get before it's getting to the point where it's below its required reserves levels. I think that's the last slide. So again, we've appreciated working for the city. And thank you for the time this evening.

Thank you, Ann. Now, Mayor and Council, that is the conclusion of the prepared presentation. So now we'll turn it over to you in public comment. And what we're looking for this evening is further direction on the general fund budget, particularly on the proposed scenarios or some other scenario. Any comments you have on capital improvement program? And then any direction you want to provide staff in pursuing any of the ad hoc committee recommendations or any other additional revenue options?

All right. Thank you, Madam Clerk. Let's go ahead and start taking public comments. Sure.

We have Chris Norby is our first speaker registered, then Jose Trinidad Castaneda, that is registered. Anybody else, please line up on the wall opposite me. And otherwise, we'll get to the folks who are remote.

Chris Norby, 2800 Puente Street. In facing the long-term challenges that the city faces, we should learn from some of our neighbors, specifically Yorba Linda and Placentia. Yorba Linda's annual police cost is $240 per resident, about half of Fullerton's 473, because they contract with the Orange County Sheriff's Department. How much money would Fullerton save by contracting with the Sheriff's Department? There's only one way to find out, and that's ask for a bid. It's inevitable that you're going to have to do that to have the full information you need, and I think you should do it soon. Placentia's annual fire department cost is $104 per resident compared to Fullerton's $268. Why? Fullerton operates paramedic services in-house while Placentia contracts it to an ambulance company at a competitive rate. We should also look to sell vacant city-owned properties. those along West Baston Cherry, North Euclid, and the west end of Rolling Hills, totaling 21.3 acres and valued at $60 to $80 million. Finally, let's look realistically at the highest and best use of the Fullerton Airport property. The sale of the 86 acres could be worth up to $400 to $500 million, depending on entitlements, remediation, and paying off federal obligations. Any new development would provide huge new annual property tax revenues to the city, as well as new property tax revenues and students to our local school districts. I wish you all the best in the challenges you face ahead. I hope these suggestions have been helpful. Thank you.

Good evening, honorable mayor, city council and city manager. My name is Jose Trinidad Castaneda. And thank you for the presentations from the various providers. Proactively holding executive level administrative positions vacant to save millions is a masterclass on municipal finance and doing what every other Orange County city will be forced to do in the coming years. So to bridge the remaining deficit, we must pursue a disciplined blended hybrid of scenarios A and B. So let me be clear, this council must protect frontline employees, frontline residents, frontline businesses, and accept no personnel reductions for community and economic development, fire, and police. Specifically, we cannot leave the deputy chief of administration in the fire marshal role vacant. We had to keep that within the city's purview. Otherwise, local developers, businesses, and property managers will be knocking on your doors, and we would be no different from the service delivery over at Orange County Fire Authority. We also must protect our frontline services by utilizing a strictly limited portion of the reserves and cap any upcoming service fee increases at a maximum of 2%. Spiking fees beyond 2% penalizes the most vulnerable seniors, youth and recreation users, independent small business owners, and middle class property owners who are trying to pull basic home permits like radios, for example. To sustain these protections, you have to equip your city manager with modern structural tools tonight. Therefore, I recommend studying a charter city pathway. When I served during the 23-24 Buena Park strategic plan process on the city council, I introduced a framework for an agency-wide, fully integrated finance platform that they enjoy today. Transitioning the city to a charter status is the only way to get the city to bypass rigid state procurement laws and implement these modern integrations with FinTech. Initiating, number two, initiating a regional study on municipal service consolidation. Neighboring cities are facing or will soon face the same challenges and will soon be discussing the same elimination of redundant administrative overhead positions. Cities like La Palma are first on that list. So therefore it's in the city's best interest to work with our neighbors to consolidate cities overall. Number three, this is a freebie, gimme one. Right now, the Orange County Transportation Authority has a newly released RFP for an enhanced mobility for seniors and individuals with disabilities grant. It is due by August 28th and the city should definitely look into an electric vehicle, medium duty class bus application. Lastly, approve the

Good evening.

First of all, I just want to start off by apologizing by my misunderstanding regarding the public comments last time. I was incorrect, and I also got up and spoke when it was my turn because I thought no one was waiting to speak, so I apologize for that. I have a prepared statement, but I just want to say in terms of the public comments Budget meetings, they were wonderful, but where I was confused and I answered incorrectly, and I'm wondering if other people didn't as well, is when we rated the A, B, and C, I thought we were supposed to put a green on one, a yellow on one, and a red on one. I probably would have put a red on all of them based on what came up and is reported in our documents now, because I don't agree with some of the cuts. I will go back to my statement, and I'm probably going to run out of time. I'd like to request the following. No privatization of our libraries, water department or airport, our police department, our fire department, our ambulance. We've got good services. No selling of city property or buildings, which can be a slippery slope as to what that means. Implement the CPA's recommendations except for a council budget committee because Brown Act regulations, there would be a limit of two on the committee. Two members of the council should not have more input than the rest of the members of the council. Higher the expertise per Grant Thornton's recommendations. And this is a big one. Focus on economic development and immediately pursue an economic business and development plan as agendized by Council Member Zara and seconded by Mayor Pro Tem Dunlap, and I'm going to skip a little bit here. I think, why pick Scenario C, which is the most extreme one, when possibly each year things may be different, especially if we focus on economic development? That's one thing I want to say. Only a designated sales tax for roads with the sunset clause. I'd like to know the cost entailed in preparing and placing these on the ballot. You have difficult decisions to make. They can be made in different ways, but Fullerton must have a heart. As many have said in the past, our budget reflects our values. For that, I ask secure bike lockers and racks be continued and maintained at the transportation center. It's bigger than the few people who, actually quite a few people who would like to use those in terms of allowing people to transport the city or across the counties without using transportation.

Good evening. And first of all, I want to thank all of the city employees who helped with those community meetings. I know it was a lot of work that went into that. So I want to thank you for that. I think looking at the budget overall, I mean, we were all shocked to find out that there was $10 million missing a few months ago. And And then I know there was an additional amount that was added to that. Certainly, looking at any budget and moving forward, accountability must be your number one priority. Also, it's important to continue with transparency and not just transparency saying that you're transparent, but actual genuine transparency on how all of our tax dollars are being spent. Looking at the different scenarios that were presented and listening to all of these speakers during the presentation. It's really important that we value the people in our community that that is number one. And that includes the employees so is talking about cutting positions cutting salaries. That's not okay. These people rely on that and we must continue to support the employees that we have in the city. I know there were a number of other suggestions that people made that certainly to take care of our own must be the number one priority in addition to accountability and transparency. So thank you.

Hello, my name is Jennifer Garcia. I'm the pastor at First Lutheran on Lemon and Wilshire. I just want to start out by saying I don't envy the decisions you have to make. Thank you for leading us through this. I imagine there have been a lot of sleepless nights between the council and staff and everybody involved. And thank you for all the hard work going into the proposals and into the workshops. I'm sorry I wasn't able to attend last week, but it sounds like they were really constructive. I just want to name what I'm feeling in the room, that there's a lot of grief, grief that's coming out in sadness, grief that's coming out in anger. And budgets aren't just objective documents, they are moral documents. And that means that emotions are involved. So thank you for providing us guidance. Thank you for all of the work that's gone into that. I appreciate that there are not going to be any layoffs in these proposals. But my heart goes out to the staff that's going to have to work even harder than they already do. And I know they work really hard. But again, just as with the fiscal sustainability ad hoc committee you are all in my prayers uh thank you for the hard work you're doing good evening i'm jody ages vallejo i'm a resident of district 2 and i am a professor at usc

And the fact that we're even talking about these cuts, that this is Fullerton's fiscal reality, is on this block right here. At the beginning of this year, I warned about Fullerton's fiscal deficit at a city council meeting during public comments. And my council member, Dumlat, dismissed those concerns by blaming decisions made before he took office. That is not leadership. You do not get to blame leadership. a deficit like we have had on people coming before you. That is not how you actually serve a city. You do not campaign to lead this city, and then when things go wrong on your watch, point to those before. That is a bait and switch tactic that people in this community are not falling for. And Mayor Jung, just a few years ago, you stood at your state of the city address. You showed a slide showing increased city revenues every single year. Either that was a lie or that demonstrates that you do not understand how budgets work, how a complex city budget like what we have here in Fullerton actually works. And today we know the truth. The three of you hold this majority. You set the priorities. You approved the spending. You made the decisions that brought us here. And now you're asking the community to accept cuts, significant cuts to public safety, public works, to our fire department, to our police department, to our city staff who works every single day on our behalf. The services that make Fullerton a great place to live. This budget crisis belongs to the governing majority. It does not belong to our firefighters. It does not belong to our police officers. It does not belong to our librarians. It does not belong to our public works employees, our city staff, or the many residents who depend on the services that we provide with our own taxpayers' money. You work for us. And when you ignore residents, dismiss concerns when you shut down meaningful public participation, don't act surprised when people lose confidence in you, when people lose confidence in your leadership. Mayor Jung, voters sent that message on your supervisor race. Pretty clearly. The growing frustration that we hear tonight, that we hear people talking about constantly, people emailing so many of us in the city because none of you respond to them, sends that message again. We want a city that works for us. We want transparency. We want accountability. Fullerton deserves leaders who take responsibility, not leaders who make excuses, not leaders who rely on privatization of our water, anything else that is our city's resources, public lands, the sweetheart deals that you consistently make the elimination of our public services. These are not the answer. This is our city. This is the city we love. We want you to step up for us, for our community and for the people you serve.

Good evening. My name is Jim Ertle. I'm a lifelong Fullerton resident. I've got a few things I'd like to talk about. In looking at the proposals tonight, I may not have seen it correctly, but there are two things that's really stuck out to me. And maybe I didn't read them correctly, but it seemed to me that the first night celebration says a $350,000 cost. And the 4th of July fireworks were $129,000 or $130,000, something like that, which is close to a half a million dollars, if those numbers were correct that I saw. And it seems to me that those are two things that really, when all these other things are so important that we do not have the money for, those are things that we do not need to do. Many of the people, I'm sure, for the first night are not Fullerton residents. And I know that's part of what we like to do is bring people into the city to see the city. to enjoy the city and recognize what we have. But I don't think in this particular case, if those numbers are correct, that is something we should be doing. With regard to the survey that was taken by the residents of the city of Fullerton, I only found out about it, I think it was through Councilwoman Charles' email. She had a link to it. And I did it, but it's embarrassing really that we had, again, if the numbers that I saw and heard were correct, 100 people, less than 100 people out of a city of 150,000 is terrible from the standpoint of being able to get an idea really what. Thank you. Anyway, 100 people out of 150,000 people is not going to give you, obviously, and obviously it was noted, it was not statistically accurate. I understand that, but I just want to make that point. Regarding the fire department and police department, reductions and so forth, those are two critically important areas, as everyone knows. One of the previous speakers talked about contracting out to the sheriff's department Well, the city of Placentia, for whatever reason, they decided that wasn't the best thing for them to do with the fire department. And I don't think that I would be too comfortable with the fact that the sheriff's department, they bring somebody in from another area down in South County, they don't even know the city. And next week, maybe it's somebody else that they have to switch out. So I don't agree with that at all. And lastly... Cal State Fullerton has 100 different degrees they offer, undergraduate and graduate, and certainly it's not going to solve any of these problems, but one thing they might want to look at is possibly getting interns to help in some of these areas. They're not going to fill the positions. I'm not saying that at all, but that is one thing to take a look at. Thank you.

Good evening, Karen Lareda, District 2. I want to thank staff for this budget report. I really appreciated that it was broken down by departments and it made it a lot easier to navigate. I understand that this is our opportunity to ask for certain clarifications. I have a couple. On page three, fund types, it still notes $11 million plus in the successor agency. I understand that that's coming from the redevelopment, but what is it? Is it a debt? Is it a revenue? And what can we do to permanently get it off our budget? Whatever we have to do, we need to take care of that. In the budget scenarios, there's a couple of places that denote general fund portion only. I would appreciate if somebody could clarify exactly what that means. Assuming the three scenarios A, B, and C form the basis for this budget discussion, I have a couple of observations. Option A calls for use of reserves. In my opinion, that's not an option we can afford. Drop it. Note, there are no differences between options proposed for the city clerk manager, human resources, administration services, or fire. Given that, let's set those departments aside. That leaves police, community economic development, park and rec, library, and public works. Just like any household, cities need to have a breadwinner. Anaheim has Disneyland. Dana Point has luxury hotels, and oh yes, the Pacific Ocean. Brea has them all. Fullerton, we don't have a stable, reliable source of income to support desired services. So in prioritizing limited funds, we should look to maintain basic services, support or add possible, wherever possible, to economic development, and public works to speed up permitting and construction inspections. Let's get it built and let's get it online. We should avoid short-term reductions in park infrastructure that result in greater costs and replanting at a later date. The public survey showed support for dropping extras like the 4th of July and First Night. We can bring those back when the budget is healthier. Please do consider adding a measure to the ballot, a tax measure, for roads only, with an absolute sunset date. While it does not help with the general fund or operating costs, but gives the

Good evening, Mayor Jiang and council members. So I would like to share my story. 41 years ago, my husband and I, among all the countries, all the cities, we decided to move to Fullerton. This is such a beautiful place. We came from Taipei, it's crowded here. We just love everything. And I want to share a few encounters we have. So back then, as a young mother, took my children to the library, if not every day, weekly. It's where my children had great education, and they all have done so wonderfully that all three girls decided to move back to Fullerton. And now my daughter continue to take the grandchildren, my grandchildren, to the library. Obviously, we go to the park, we go to the trails. We drove on the roads for 41 years. And I remember it used to be we go to other city, we say, oh, yeah, Fulton has the best road. Well, now we kind of feel embarrassed that, well, for some reason, other city has better roads than we do. And so we do need help. Additionally, I don't know if you remember or not, so 2019, October 30th, the castle was on fire. My house was right there, but my mother was wheelchair-bounded. I was helping my mother, serving her dinner. I wasn't aware of what's going on outside. Thank goodness the police department came and knock on the door and the fire department were out there helping to extinguish the fire. So with my mother limited mobility, I knew I just have to took her and we went out to hotel to save for a night. But without people come knock on the door, I would not know where we could have been. Anything could have happened. Last year at our school, you know, once in a while you have unreasonable people with domestic fight. Someone coming, the father want to pick up the child. We weren't comfortable. The mother said, don't let the child go. I am coming to pick up the child. Well, there's no paper. I cannot say no to the father. And so I called 911. And I want to delay time so the child is safe. And police came within five minutes. And so as the police coming, I was able to give the child to the father. And the police was able to talk to the father. and solve the situation that I don't have to have nightmare about what do I do with a young child that I don't know what's gonna be happening. And so life goes through ups and downs. We need fiscal responsibility, but we also have to thank all those people provide us amazing services. The quality of life without our hardworking staff, without our department heads, we will not have the quality we all want to live in Fullerton. Thank you for helping us. Please let's move forward with the amazing CT. Thank you.

Good evening, City Council. Elijah Manicero. First, I just wanted to say that Fullerton has had financial problems for a very long time, and the issue has not been and never has been spending. It has been revenue. This, like was said by Karen, is Anaheim has Disneyland, Brea has the mall, Buena Park has Knott's. We have great assets in the city, but we do not have any major source of revenue like that. And we don't even have a plan to go get that. So I think if we are going to invest in anything, it needs to be a plan to go get that revenue, which would be an economic development plan. I also, on the presentation, I saw a lot of cuts that I don't support, but there was one cut that I actually think should be up there, and that is city council benefits. Nick Dunlap and Fred Jung are the only council members who take health insurance from the city. It's 36, it's not true? Oh, okay, all right, so just Nick then now. Oh, just you now. Okay. So it's about, it was $36,000 before with both of you. So about 18,000 now. And I think it is necessary to cut that because otherwise it just looks like austerity for thee and not for me. And I don't think that that is a good look in terms of what we should do for the revenue. I think we should stop the automatic transfers to the infrastructure fund I support infrastructure, but, and you guys can still spend that money on it, but um. that should be a conscious decision that decision was made with the expectation that measure us was going to pass and it didn't so i think that that's something that we need to look into also um i think we should allow cannabis shops in this city it's already legal to have it delivered it's kind of dumb we don't allow them to be here um And I think we also need to look at inefficient land use. Cal State Fullerton is the most attended university in California. Over 40,000 students go to that school and they only have 2,000 beds on campus. So that means thousands of students drive on our roads, use our city services, and then go right back to their home city to pay taxes. That's lost revenue. That's inefficient land use. I think that there are a lot of changes that needs to be made with how we build out our economy, because right now we just have pieces of an economy. It's not really built out. And I think that's really the issue here. Thank you.

This looks like our last person in chambers. And after that, we do have someone remote.

Thank you, Mr. Elijah. But I do have a plan and I've been sharing it with the city council for over three years. It's been reduced to a.m. But for those of you who are new, it's an auto mall. I've discussed this in detail. What Cerritos did with a eight and three quarter acre chicken farm. All right, the Fullerton fire department who's here in numbers tonight they were here, two years ago in the city chambers. And they were requesting the city change from a city fire department to the orange county fire authority, the majority of this Council said no i'm not sure if that was a cost saving measure. or more expensive budget, but according to Chris norbury it's been a very expensive. And these firefighters and their families wanted the fire authority in this city. I heard them speak on one night in this council chamber. Budgets are black and red. They're not about who you like, who your friends are, who your friendships are not. My idea to fix this is very easy. I lived in a city with the same decision that came up years before I relocated to Fullerton. The change was necessary, it was swift. And yes, individuals were upset. And when it came to change, the city after the change became flush with revenue and all learned to live with that change. Those who did not like the change, they had the same choice that all of you have. You can move out of the city. As I have shared before, this city could have had Disneyland, but the legacy families in this city said no. What they did say yes to is a 236-acre Cal State Fullerton. Disney, he built in Anaheim on 160 acres. It's a quarter section where I come from near the Black Hills of South Dakota. I'm sure the five of you tonight would trade the 236-acre Cal State Fullerton for to put Disneyland here and be flush with money, all right? Brea, the mall, that was gonna be in Fullerton, but the legacy families, they said no to the mall, so it went to Brea. Now, what is a legacy family? Well, a couple of weeks ago, we had a developer here wanted to put 32 condominiums on a 1.3 acre land, and legacy families are the ones who lived down the street and said, no, we don't want housing yet, If that homeowner paid similar to the people I bought from that lived there 65 years, let's say he paid $4,000 in taxes, now you're going to get 32 townhomes, because we got a majority vote for that, that are going to pay $8,000 a year. So you want to keep listening to legacy families. One more thing. The majority of this council gave a lease to a restaurant space by the railroad tracks at 1 3rd to 1 5th what the restaurant at Summit Hills pays. That's on the three majority who put that contract or that lease in extension until 2052.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, city council members. My name is Curtis Gamble, activist for the homeless, the veterans, the Cal State Fullerton students, the OCTA bus drivers, the seniors, and the low-income community. Speaking of the budget, I'd just like to share that I'm surprised that we are behind. On one hand, I'm surprised that we're behind financially. On the other hand, I'm not surprised. And the reason that I'm not surprised is because of the way you guys got along. You know, it's just like a basketball team or football team. If you had that much chaos from a team, you would never win. And here, when the budget came up and it says that we're behind, I'm thinking that that's about right. You know, okay, I'm just gonna talk about whatever. To not let Zara be mayor and share some of the responsibility is not fair. Because he perhaps could have brought some great thinking to this situation. But what happens, even with the athletes, when they try to control everything and run the whole team, they usually lose most of the time. you know, not that they intend to. They have good intentions, but you need the other people. You need the other people on your team to perform. You have to trust them. And if you don't, you're going to always run into these budget crisis. You have to rotate. You have to rotate. You have to let everybody be in charge. You're not going anywhere if you don't. And I'm saying that in a good way. What else did I say? Oh, I know it. We need to work with the OCTA. And I know The reason I said that is because I used to be a bus driver 20 years ago. For 14 years I drove bus. The buses that we drive up and down the street probably cost almost a million dollars. So OCTA has just as much to lose as the city of Fullerton does as far as this road problem is concerned. It tears up the buses. And if you go ask them, I'm sure they'll work with you because it's cheaper to fix the roads than it is to repair million dollar buses. We spend more time arguing with each other instead of out networking together, meeting at these different functions. It's hard to get ahead when you don't like each other. You have to get past that and meet some people who can invest. For example, the Goodman Center, that was a good deal back in the day. I'll go ahead and say this even off the mic. Osmoba Home Parks.

Okay.

You need to hear a course correction on that. Budget last year was passed 4-1. The majority you're referencing, he voted no. So he wasn't involved. It's got nothing to do with the budget. Please know your facts. It was passed 4-1. Thank you, sir. Please know your facts. I'm just trying to be factually accurate for you. It was voted 4-1. He voted no. All right? All right, sir. Very well. I'm not the smartest one at all. I'm just trying to tell you what the budget vote was last year. Yeah.

Since we're on the topic of being accurate, Cerritos has a $10 million deficit. Anaheim has a $40 million deficit. And they are both charter cities, just to let you know. Also, I... I don't want to go back to pandemic times when we had so many people had three job titles and you couldn't figure out who was supposed to be in charge of what. Um, and everybody was overworked and underpaid and, um, There were a million temps who all said, I don't know when you called and pass the buck to the next person. I spend so much time on the phone with I don't know. Let me check and let me hand you off to this person, that person. because the temps didn't have any idea what was going on in the city. I don't want to go back to those times if we can help it. I don't think that this is sort of a knee-jerk reaction to, oh my gosh, we don't have any money. Instead of really figuring out where we can cut better, I don't think fireworks is important. I don't think the holiday things are important at all. When you're a household, if you were a household and this was happening to you, you would stop going out to dinner every night. You would stop throwing lavish parties and doing all the things that you love to do, but you would stop doing those so you could save money. I also think that there's... We definitely have some priority issues where we 100% need a CFO and we definitely need somebody who's looking into how to get revenue into the city. And those are, I know, investments, but they are also important investments because we don't know what we're doing if we don't have somebody who's overlooking all of the finances correctly and seeing where we can possibly cut and where it's, you know, these damaging losses of money or miscalculations or whatever they are. Anyway, those are my thoughts. Thank you.

We have two hands raised remotely. Call-in user, you should be able to unmute. Go ahead, Colin.

Can you guys hear me? Can you hear me? Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it. First, I just want to thank, I am Dominic Moonhart. I am a former resident of Fullerton in District 3. I just want to take this time first before I get into my comments to thank the Fire and Police Department because I know how it feels for the City Council to feel unheard. And I feel that this, the fire and police department are unheard by this council. I'm talking about contract cities. Well, uh, that is horrible. Just look at what happened with the palisades and the mutual aid response. Um, and again, this, if we lose our fire and we lose our police department, there's signs of disincorporation. And if this, if, uh, this council would continue to argue and moan and bitch and whine and cry and fight. you know, nothing's going to get done. And, um, you know, that's why mayor Jung lost his supervisorial race, sorry, dictator Jung lost his supervisorial race. So, um, I am very opposed to the contract cities, uh, or contracting with a fire and a police, uh, to OCSA, OCSA, Cal fire, CHP, whatever we have, uh, in our, in our vicinity, uh, cause it's, Again, the response is not going to be improved. As a matter of fact, it's going to get worse. Just look at Riverside. They don't even have their own fire department in Riverside County, not city. And so that's, you know, Cal Fire, it takes forever for people to respond. It's just sad that a city has to go through this when all of this could have been prevented. It could have absolutely been prevented. And we're pointing the finger at everyone. And nothing's getting done. So it is absolutely just horrible. It's depressing. It's sad. And Fullerton is a depressing city and Fullerton is known for the people who, for the people who go to essentially die from the infrastructure that we haven't fixed. So it's, it's absolutely horrible. I had something else planned, but this is a special meeting. So I'll save it for the next meeting. But yeah, Please figure this out or just face a recall, because again, vote. We have, you know, power to the people. Connor Trout for supervisor. Thank you.

All right. Next speaker.

One more speaker, Sharon Kennedy, you should be able to unmute.

Hi. I just wanted to make one comment about the fire department paramedic service. That takes the place of the vendor cost of emergency service. And so you can't just... compare the cost of Placentia's emergency service firefighters with Fullerton's because they contract out and Norby failed to add that cost into. anyway the emergency services the in-house paramedic service is a great idea and it should stay i also want to say absolutely no privatizing of our water that would be a terrible mistake please don't do that thank you very much no more callers all right thank you everybody for those comments

I want to remind everybody this evening is a study session. No decision on the budget will be made this evening. That said, I don't know the professor well sitting in the audience, but I can assume that I don't agree with her on much. But I do agree with her on the budget is my fault, and I own that. With that in mind, my position bears explaining. I'm sure to some it'll sound like excuses, and that's fair. Perhaps they are. Some son of an immigrant small business owner, I am culturally opposed to any kind of tax increase. More often than not, I find them to be regressive as they impact those in our community who can least afford it disproportionately. And I came to city council firmly believing in this. I suppose there are municipal agencies who do waste taxpayer money and grow government beyond its merits, but I can assure you that's not the case here. Outside of the last few years, during which time we added positions that were vacant for years, resulting in diminished levels of service and bringing our ambulance service in-house, which the city of Anaheim has confirmed is a positive long-term choice in terms of fiscal impact. Outside of those select examples, this city's government is not large at all. In fact, it's shrunk, not by a little, but quite a lot. You know, I've said this before, and it bears repeating again. There was a time when a dear friend of mine used to be the mayor, sat in my seat. He had 168 positions at the police department. You heard our police chief. We only have 130. Indeed, comparable to a city our size, City of Orange, which we often use, which coincidentally is working through their own fiscal challenges. Both their police department and their fire department are larger by significant percentages. It wasn't so long ago our firefighters sat right there, five years ago indeed, sir, not two, five, to contract out with OC Fire Authority. I voted to keep our fire department and stop the bleeding of our firefighters. I voted for the most significant compensation increase in recent department history. And I stand ten toes behind that decision. I voted the same for municipal employees as well as our police department so we stop the employee exodus. But this all came at a cost. And to ignore that cost, along with our unfunded pension liabilities, we're not solving much of anything at that point. It's been well documented, this misallocation of reserves this year. It was a gut punch to me. I'm sure it was to all of you. Ideally, the breakdown of revenue for a city of our size should be 35% to 45% property tax, 10% to 15% sales tax. Fullerton bats way above our ideal sales tax numbers not by a little but by a lot we bat 20 plus that means we are out kicking our coverage and simply outperforming as a community so for the most part we have looked under the financial rock look between the funding couch cushions so cutting our way to a healthy budget you heard the consultant an expert on the subject matter without uh ignoring infrastructure, diminishing services, and diminishing quality of life, that's not factual. So I came to the city adamantly opposed to any sales tax increase. And with a better understanding of how this government works, I understand the value of one, particularly when we don't have a robust mall, like somebody pointed out, like Brea, or an amusement park, sports teams, Apple tourism like Anaheim, which also, by the way, has their own budget challenges too. Just like Irvine, Orange, Santa Ana, Huntington Beach. Get the picture. Here's the running theme. Last year, I championed two special tax measures, a half cent towards street upgrades, another half cent towards public safety. Reasoning behind that was, well, simply, we all drive our subpar streets, so the need is obvious. But public safety accounts for 70 plus percent of our yearly budget. And not addressing that fiscal impact in a real way, might as well be putting fingers in a breaking dam. So I failed to predict one very simple thing, the hardline federal immigration enforcement policies that have impacted our community negatively. And that's going to require some time to repair. Turns out a public safety special tax may not work right now, may not even be the environment for it now. You know, I disagree with some of the folks that speak about the majority, because the one person on this council that voted against every single budget while we've been on council, I think, has been the person to my right. So I don't know that he bears any responsibility, but I certainly bear my share, if not more than most. Again, I can't stress enough, cutting simply just won't get us to fiscal health, doesn't do it at all. And with all due respect to the honorable former council member, Placentia's fire department savings didn't do a darn thing to their budget because they, it turns out, have budget problems too. And the state of the city presentation that was referenced by the professor that I probably don't agree with at all, but I do agree with her assessment that this is my fault, yeah, showed a graphic that revenues increase year over year. And I suppose what I should have done was show another graphic that sorted our expenses. Lastly, I understand the community always asking for things like Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, saying that somehow these consumer amenities are important to have a robust shopping option. I don't disagree. But contrary to some, grocery stores are not terrific tax generators. Not at all. There should be worth noting that in this city, in the city of Fullerton, A gas station, not Costco, on Harbor Boulevard was a top 10 revenue generator for a decade. That's what we're dealing with. So when folks warned that when Heinz left, when Hughes Aircraft left, when Kimberly-Clark left, when all of these industries that we had left, that we'd become a bedroom community, I suppose those warnings are coming to roost now. So while we have this discussion, I think if we're gonna really truly discuss the budget, we discuss all of it. And again, this bears repeating again, this is my fault, not anyone else's, certainly not his. All right, council member.

Thank you. It was on, it's on, but it's not on. I can speak louder, though. I mean, if I have to, I'll just use my theater teacher voice. But I think the Zoom needs the mic. Is it catching it? OK. OK, well, I apologize for that. And thank you for those remarks. I appreciate that. I do have a lot of questions for staff on the presentation. So if I could start with those before getting into comments, just some kind of clarifying. lots of clarifying questions. So going all the way back to the CIP budget, and I think where he ended is a good place to begin thinking about a half cent sales tax for roads and infrastructure, which many people in the public comment also brought up. I would like to kind of get an idea of if that half cent sales tax were to be on this falls ballot. And if it were to pass, what would be the difference in what we're seeing here? for CIP and then also for the Public Works budget cuts that were discussed as well.

Mr. So, a half-cent sales tax, correct me, gets about $15 million extra a year. So, it all depends on how the tax or the revenue is going to be allocated. If it's strictly for streets, then we'll have some money that can go to our streets division to help with that. but the vast majority of the money is going to be put towards construction projects. So you're hiring contractors to do the work out on the streets.

Okay. So the CIP budget would remain very similar.

Well, I'll tell you that. So if you get 15 million, the, the, The vast majority of that is going to go into our street funding. So you'd go from, say, $8 million, $9 million, plus $15 million.

Okay. And Director Weiss, would that help with the cuts in public works, or would those still be necessary and the $15 million would be on top of that to do the backlog of roads that we all know exists?

It depends on how the funds are allocated, to David's point, and how the ordinance would be written. So what those funds could be used for is very important as you draft the language that would go on about it, and that would restrict the use. So if it is an infrastructure sales tax or specific to streets, yeah, it would mainly go to CIP. But we could fill some of those voids within our street maintenance division and possibly some others, depending on how you define the use of that fund.

Okay, thank you. And then moving to the reserves and just some really kind of basic definitions. And thank you for the very lengthy discussion you did, but some of the basic definitions I think need repeating and kind of discussing. Why do we need reserves at 10%? Why is that a good thing? If we could just talk about that for a moment. 10 to 17.

Yes, so our 10% reserves is our minimum requirement per our policy. And the importance of maintaining, one, essentially a reserve policy is to, if there's any unforeseen emergency, to address that in a situation. Normally, you would draw upon reserves to address any emergency situation. In addition, in years of fiscal constraint, and any particular year, budgets will be typically balanced, you know, with the use of reserves. You know, however, we've had, you know, deficit years and multiple years now. So we shouldn't be continuing to rely on reserves to balance the budget. And, and maintaining a healthy reserves of upwards to 70%. You know, that's a best practice that all cities normally adhere to, you know, it could be 70%, it could be 20%, or higher. But that also helps our financial stability and credit rating and ability to issue debt and so forth.

Okay, thank you. And I know that this is a very new law that was just passed at the federal level. I was grateful to see the housing bill went through. I don't know if you all saw that, but a landmark housing legislation, bipartisan, by-cam roll went through. And part of that I know, I read with this with great interest, is that they're increasing CDBG funds to cities. I'm wondering if the federal government has reached out with any discussion of any possible increases in CDBG, or are we just going to kind of assume that that's not for this year and might be for upcoming years?

I don't know. Sunaina, do you have a read on that?

Okay, so just because Zoom can't hear you, our director just said 2028 probably and farther, so it's not something we think about for this year.

Yeah, and the CDBG allocations are usually formulaic for per city, so we'll understand what our share of that would look like, but we could see an increase hopefully through this process.

Okay, but it probably won't be something we see this year. And for our city manager, are we, including the recruitment of that new admin director in this in any of these scenarios or is that person not happening.

No, that that budget is still intact, so there would still be the ability to recruit.

the finance director with all three scenarios or is that just a scenario yes yes okay in that department it was the deputy director that's proposed to be eliminated okay thank you um going to slide 11 and it's just scrolling through here that's the one that says the general fund revenues um i was curious why we have a seven percent reduction in charges for services that's projected Are we lowering our fees or we were expecting people to use less services?

So the reduction in charges for services, I think most of the reduction has to do with slightly lower ambulance building collection revenue. Some of the increased revenue were due to state intergovernmental transfer programs that initially we thought would be higher. IN FISCAL YEAR 25-26 THAT WE ANTICIPATE TO BE LOWER IN FISCAL YEAR 26-27, AS WELL AS LOWERING SOME OF THE DEPARTMENT USER FEES, PARTICULARLY IN FIRE THAT HAVE, YOU KNOW, IT WAS ORIGINALLY PROJECTED TO BE HIGHER DUE TO A FEE STUDY, BUT THEY HAVE COME IN SLIGHTLY LOWER IN THE LAST COUPLE OF YEARS. THAT'S PROBABLY THE MAJORITY OF IT.

Okay, thank you and i'll repeat again I know people don't necessarily know this, but there are TVs back there and they can hear everything we're saying and and all of that when they're even when they're back there so just so you know. Okay, so moving on, thank you, there was a lot of talking in multiple departments about security personnel being removed from here at city hall from hunt library. but then we also said there were no layoffs. So what's happening to that security personnel? Are they being moved to different jobs or are those actual layoffs?

So the layoff discussion that's related to city employees, several of the reductions proposed are for contractual services with contracts or vendors that we have, including security services.

Okay, well, thank you for that clarification. So the security services we have now is under contract. It's not under our union FEC. Okay, thank you. Okay, and I would like to have also the question that came up in public comment about the successor agency $11 million. I did notice that that wasn't discussed when we went through all those different funds. Can you explain a little bit what that is?

Yes, so the successor agency is an agency that was created by the state dissolution law, and it's an agency to wind down the former Bulletin Redevelopment Agency. So I believe the question from the resident was, you know, it's $11.6 million, and why can't we be done with it and what have you not? So the last remaining obligation for the successor agency is our – 2020 Series A and B bonds. And we submitted $9.6 million is the remaining debt obligation. So we'll pay that in both fiscal year 26-27 with the last payment occurring in the first half of fiscal year 27-28. In addition to that $9.6 million, there's a $2 million cash balance adjustment that the state under gave us a few years back. So that got added back and that is needed to fulfill the final debt service payments.

So you said that's going to be done in 27-28. So in those three-year projections, that was incorporated for next year and the year after?

Well, so the successor agency is a different fund on our book, so it's not part of the general fund.

So the three-year projections are only general fund, so we don't have to worry about it.

That is correct, but it is a part of the all-funds budget for fiscal year 26-27.

Okay, thank you. And then I just have a couple more questions, and I appreciate my colleagues' forbearance as I'm asking these. I got a little confused in the discussion about first night it looked to me like under even scenario a under every scenario that first night's being completely eliminated. But I thought I heard parks and REC talk about that it was getting reduced and possibly not eliminated, are we talking about eliminating it completely are we talking about a reduction at this point is the 325 or reduction.

The 325 is the entire amount of the program budget right now. The final event, if we have one, will depend on the outcome of the waste hauler RFP.

Okay, so what you're saying is that we are reducing the city's contribution completely, and if we are able to get a contribution from a different entity, then we could reinstate it. But at this point, it's essentially off our books.

That's correct.

Okay, thank you. And then the last question I have is on the police side there's this line item that says reduction in part-time services for police, but it says zero FTEs. Could you describe what that is, please?

Yeah, so that would be we have, we do have a fund for contractual services. So from time to time, we do hire someone to do contract services on critical incident community briefing videos, we bring back what are called 960s that assist throughout the police department. So they're part time employees that are on a contract basis that assist with different projects that we have.

So the reduction in those would have what kind of impact?

Well, I mean, I think I think we do get to keep a small portion, but it would it would definitely impact our ability to bring our cadet program back, which is something we had wanted to do, which are 18 to 21, 22 year old students that we often hired police officers from. And that went away and it would it would inhibit our ability to hire part time dispatchers or to fill voids.

Okay, thank you. So to adding, those are my questions, just to add some comments here. This is tough, and I was one of the folks that did vote for the past budgets. I do feel like that $10 million reallocation or misallocation or double counting or whatever you want to call it really made very stark just how important how tough our situation is. I'm against privatizing the water system and privatizing the airport. I think those are two immense city assets that we don't want to lose control of, but I think it's possible that we could explore selling some city property. I don't know whether or not former Assemblymember Supervisor Norby the mayor all those things um was correct in his assumption that it might be 80 million dollars that we could get but i do think that that's something that should be put in front of us as an option about uh if we have any city properties that could be sold i know under current state law it's possible that they would only be sold for housing and other things and whether or not that would it but i think that's something we could look into um scenario a is a lot of cuts already and and honestly i would if i'm Supporting putting back anything I would definitely support putting back the deputy fire chief because i'm very worried about that i'm also worried about that our police is at point eight per 1000 and would see if we could do something with that but. In my mind, I think scenario A, if we do this, we do these cuts, really needs to be linked to a half-cent sales tax increase. I actually had the opportunity to be in a bus yesterday on the 91 Expressway getting a tour from OCTA. about that project and I was with council members from around the county and one of them happened to be the mayor of the city of Orange who has been in this game a lot longer than me, by the way. He has certainly been in politics a lot longer than I have and he also is, as the mayor is saying about other folks, he is very ideologically on the complete opposite end of the spectrum from me. However, he's talking about a one cent general fund sales tax increase for Orange That is what they have to do. And I mentioned I'm looking at a half cent sales tax just for roads and infrastructure, but I'm not sure if we can even get it on the ballot. And he said, well, you don't really have any other choice. It's what we have to do. And so I think that if we go back to... I agree going back to pre-pandemic levels of service is not what the city wants from us. The city wants services. The city wants employees that stay, which is why we had to vote for those union contracts because we needed to make sure that people weren't continuously leaving, which is what they were doing before those union contracts. We need to make sure that we filled the vacancies that we possibly could. I would like us to be able to hire more over time. And I think if we just start with the half cent for roads and infrastructure now, That's gonna build a foundation of getting done what the public wants us to get done while we make cuts so that they see we have to make these cuts to have some kind of balance. I understand, I think a hybrid of A and B is what we have to do. I think we have to use some reserves but maybe less than what scenario B is calling for if we can come to some kind of consensus on that. with hopefully putting a half-cent sales tax increase on the ballot by talking about it on our next agenda. So I would like to make the motion that we, at the July 21st meeting, talk about putting a half-cent sales tax just for Rosen infrastructure on this upcoming November ballot.

If I may, we are scheduled to talk about the budget at that time, and staff will have direction to include that in their presentation. All right?

excellent so i i'm glad that that's part of the discussion thank you so much and and that concludes my comments thank you very good uh councilman czar anything sir sure thank you i came in already with a headache so i've been looking at screens all day so forgive me a little bit and this isn't really helping at all and sure that's some tylenol with me I don't know where to begin with this one. I do want to make, I was curious about past votes, to be honest, and I just looked up The last budget actually was for one with Mr. Jung. I believe you voted according to the record against it and voted for it. So just wanted to make that little correction. I thought we'll bring a little trivia there. The last budget, it was actually for one with you saying no to it. I just looked it up in the... No. Anyway, that's what the record is saying, so we can look at the video later on. And I certainly voted on budgets. I remember there was one budget that I forgot which year was that I voted against because it had egregious cuts at a time when we didn't need to. I think it's important, before we move forward, I think we do need to take a little step back and understand how we got here. I think it's important that because we keep repeating the same mistakes over and over and over again. The issue has and always will be a revenue problem. I mentioned that back in 2019, we had a Measure S, which a lot of people criticized, spoke against and campaigned against, said that it can, Our budget and our deficit could be fixed without a sales tax, and of course, the reality is very different. We were lucky that we had a federal administration at the time that was willing during the pandemic to give us direct funding, which was the American Rescue Plan Act. We got 31, I believe, something like that, $31 million of one-time funds. That bought us some time. But it's been five, six years now since that, and that time should have been spent working on economic development, putting plans in place for long-term revenue generation. But we didn't. We had three election cycles that we failed to put up another ballot measure, whether dedicated or not. We had a cannabis ordinance that got canceled that would have generated $3 to $5 million on a conservative estimates annually. It's still sold. Now we just spend money trying to cut that. I mean, shut it down. And we're spending on code enforcement, which is going to be cut. We have deals that were made that were just in favor of some and not the public. And there were options for economic developments, whether it's housing developments that got delayed and delayed unnecessarily only to be approved in the end, wasting time. We had management turnover unnecessarily. I mean, it takes three votes to give any direction, but it created a turmoil that was unnecessary, got us into hiring malpractice situations with the state. We ended up with an exodus of employees All of that is money and poor management. And then we discovered that the whole budget has been sort of this smoke and mirrors thing where it's been sort of balanced with misleading information. Yeah, we voted for it. But if you go back and look at the report by the Grant Thornton report, it says there were transparency issues. Go look at the details of it, not just the presentation. There was transparency in presenting the information. It was misleading, the whole thing. Why? Because it was a politically motivated, in my opinion, budget. Now, we will never know that because there was really no fraud investigation or any digging into that. That was not part of the scope of that audit. And the city, right after that, posts on social media saying there is no fraud. The problem we have is that there is no accountability. There is no real transparency. There's no cohesion on council. And all of this culminates into this mess of a situation. The budget is just a reflection of this. There are also political reasons and all of that. I think we have to look at short term and then long term. On the short term, we need to have, and this has to happen at the next meeting, we need to have a set of mechanisms in place, protection mechanisms, so that this misallocation situation doesn't happen again. Now we are protecting the funds that we are supposed to protect, but obviously have failed to do that. They have to be objective, cannot be overridden by a council on a council whim. So those need to be in place. Then we need to look at these cuts. These have to be short-term only. They have to be, these positions have to be very selective. They are vacant positions, so obviously they are not, at this time, you know, positions that are filling a certain service. But we also need to make sure that these positions that we're defunding, are not going to hurt us next year. So we have to be very, very selective of that. I'm not a big fan of this, but there could be some balance there achieved. What is it that we have lived without for three years or more, then maybe those are the ones that we can defund for now. But something that is crucial, I don't think that. use of reserves i think the reserves in the past had been inflated for you know whatever vanity purposes but and i and i spoke about that i think it needs to come back to a realistic number something safe secure uh and but reasonable and i think um just like the councilwoman said about creating some sort of balance there i'm not a This is a very unique situation, and I think reserves are meant for situations like this, so I'm okay to use some of those to balance. We also have to look at the long term. A sales tax, I've championed a sales tax. I've even proposed the dedicated a long time ago. I'm always opposed on these things, but I, I really think that in order for us to build trust with the community, for people to vote for something like this, for us to even consider putting something like this on the ballot, because campaigns can be very deceptive, and you're going to sell it to the public and people could vote for it. But are we entrusted with this money properly? So, we need to have those mechanisms, those protection mechanisms in place before we even consider that. And that has to happen very, very fast because we've ran out of time canceling meetings and wasting time. We all know that. Let's not kid ourselves. So, we also have to really, if we are looking at long-term, we need to invest in our economic development. So any cuts in the economic development department is cutting revenue, future revenue. And so we need to do that. And we need to stay away from these fake politically motivated suggestions on privatization or charter cities. These will not generate revenue. What they will do is open up for more corruption lobbyists behind the scenes making money. I mean, it's all about contracts. What was the term was used? Um, procurement, right? That's what this is about. So let's not, let's not get derailed on that longterm. Let's build accountability measures and protection measure measures. And let's look at these revenue options. Um, As far as specific things, I think the graffiti issue is really, I wouldn't cut that because that is the look of our city, especially in areas that are dense. It will create a broken window effect. It will invite more crime and more shabbiness. So I think that's something we should probably maintain. And as far as events, I'm okay to keep them as long as it's not coming, you know, if it's from third parties, as far as deals that we're making with them, that's okay. But we also need to start monitoring their economic activity. I've talked about this in the past, never happened. We need to know how much it's generating in economic activity. We need to track these things. Because if it is generating money, then maybe we should invest more in these events. During the private that the museum hosts some of the businesses had their highest. High sales for the for the year. So events do bring in money that because they create economic activity and that translates to sales tax. Code enforcement is one of those things also we have to be very, very careful not to cut because I think it will have also some implications on the look of our city and also neighbors and neighborly relations, I think. Finally, I think, I mean, that really is all it is that I have for now. What I would also suggest is that any any decisions made, that these are put in some information sheet for the public to easily digest any decisions ultimately made, and that these slides are made also publicly for today. I want to, before... I live in the city. I love the city. And I really am very sad that this is going to be the last thing I do. And I hope that we can reach the best decision possible. But I think we all are responsible. I don't think it's the responsibility of one person to claim that. I think everybody is responsible. We all are. And this is the time where we should come together, learn from the past, understand where we went wrong, and then come together with some solid plans. We're all neighbors and we all are in this together. So with that, thank you.

And thank you to staff as well.

It's hard for you to write this. It seems like you're writing your own. I don't want to say that. All right, thank you.

Councilwoman Valencia, anything to add? Any questions you'd like to ask?

A couple of questions, thank you. Since I am the newest person on council, this is my second budget really, first one full year circle. So I just have a couple questions of clarification. When we remove the FTEs or the vacancies, how do we get them back? What process does that take or how long does it take to get them back.

So if we defund them to get them back would require coming back to Council and having Council reauthorize them okay and that can happen at whatever time Council is ready to do that okay.

And then, moving forward, would it be possible to get quarter budget updates.

Yes, that's been the practice in the past. We probably got off cycle a little bit, but quarterly budget updates have been the norm in the last couple of years.

Will we be able to make tweaks at the quarter marks? What does that look like so the public understands what we can do with these quarter updates?

Tom Preston- yeah so we do quarterly updates which have historically just been updates typically cities will do a mid year budget review where often they'll make tweaks but. Tom Preston- You know the way I look at budgeting is once the budget is adopted, we can amend it throughout the year as things come up and. A lot of times you see that actually does happen. We'll come to you with an item and ask for an appropriation. That's a budget amendment for all intents and purposes. So there can always be course corrections during the year as long as it comes to council and it's voted on.

Okay, thank you. And then can you, someone explain, I don't know which department is the person, but please explain what city credit downgrades are, what is our grade, and how do they increase or decrease? So the public understands, like if our deficit is severe, what does that negatively impact our city, and how?

So, periodically, from time to time, we'll get based on our city debt structure we have, but we'll get rated by credit agencies. So I believe SP Plus is a rating agency that rates our bonds. And actually we just got a request from them to interview the city and reassess and rate the city. But I believe we're at an AA minus right now.

I think an answer to your question with regarding to bond rating, if our rating gets downgraded, then that just makes us a little less marketable in the bond marketplace, which means we wouldn't get as good of terms trying to issue future debt or financing.

It's like a city credit score. So the higher credit score, the better our interest rates.

And like if our reserve isn't robust, does that negatively impact us?

yes that could negatively impact the credit rating okay thank you those are all my questions right now all right mayor proton yeah bear with me because i've got i think some thoughts some comments and there was obviously a lot that uh i think to take in both during the public comments trying to reconcile those along with some of the items that i had just for my own kind of homework preparing for tonight uh but i think what's interesting is that you know there were obviously good comments made from the community, there were comments made in support of revenue, there were comments made, you know, maybe not so much in support of cuts. But, you know, nonetheless, you don't get involved in a leadership role at the city necessarily because you want to make cuts and you want to deplete, you know, these treasured community resources in some cases that we're forced to deal with and that we're forced to confront. And so, you know, we find ourselves in somewhat of an impossible situation where, you know, we're looking at a situation that really anybody paying attention saw this coming five, six years ago, more than that, because it's something that the city has dealt with, you know, decade after decade, really going back 30 years. You know, it's the failure to invest in our infrastructure. This resulted in sort of the exacerbated and exaggerated poor conditions that we see today. And it's the reason that, you know, in what, 2018 dollars, we were facing something like $125 million in road repairs, and that's now ballooned up through inflation to, you know, upwards of $185 million. But... you know, I don't want to get too into the details there. I think it's kind of important to bring it back and speak a little more generally with respect to some of the themes and other issues that came up. And I did want to address a comment that was shared by Mr. Norby. And I've shared this with Chief Redis privately. I had shared it with Chief Dunn prior to his departure. You know, it happened in conversation that I was actually able to bring up that very same topic to you know, the Orange County sheriffs and ask them just, hey, out of curiosity, this is something that I am approached with quite frequently from members of the community. We would save money as a city making a shift to the sheriff's department. Do you believe that statement? Do you think that's accurate? And actually, it was interesting because at the time, the sheriff's department said not only is that inaccurate, We don't believe that a city like Fullerton would really benefit from having the sheriff's department serving it because of the level of policing that is required and the level of policing that is involved in a city like Fullerton. And, you know, just to hear, I think, some of the comments made about Yorba Linda, you know, another city I believe that has serviced, you know, I know they've also serviced the city of Mission Viejo since inception. And I think those are two very different cities than, you know, than Fullerton with different needs. And so, you know, that from a, yeah, I know people toss out those things as sort of low hanging fruit or big bites at the apple, so to speak, whichever example you want to use. But the reality is I just don't think that's a suitable option, not something I'm supportive of. And it's also something I think based on the general comments I've heard would not actually benefit our city. So I think we're forced to kind of deal with, you know, what we can and what we can control today. And I think that part of, you know, I talked a little bit about the short-sightedness and I think our failure is to address and really to look ahead. And I think that's kind of what we have to do. I think we can't, unfortunately, we can't just look at this as like a one-year bridge. I think we really have to look at this as a two to three-year bridge because the reality is, I think past councils have made their decisions predicated on tax increases that they thought would succeed or that they were certain were going to pass only to see those go down in flames. And I think the reality is, if you look back at 30 years of increases in property tax revenue and sales tax revenue, and any other general revenue increases in our city, they've almost been entirely tied to pay increases related to labor unions, like it or not. And I don't say that disrespectfully. It's the facts. You can see it. It's public. It's not going to roads, streets, and infrastructure, right? It's going to other personnel needs. And so it's not going to serve necessarily members of our community directly. Obviously, it's going to the, you know, to pay increases associated with, you know, with staff. But I say that because the reality is, and in my view at least, we are in a situation not where we want to cut, but because we have to cut at least that's, that's kind of the way I see this. And I, you know, again, it's, it's maybe not, it's not a popular decision. It's not something that you really want to do, but it's, it's something I think given the circumstances we have to do, you know, one of the, one of the earlier speakers, I think made a comment about, you know, suggesting that I had somehow deflected a responsibility of leadership, you know, that somehow I, based on a comment that because I had not voted with or in support of any of the decisions that got us to this position, that somehow I had shrugged off my leadership or my responsibility to my community. I'd say that's absolute hogwash. You know, the fact of the matter is we've gotten up here, and whether we agree or disagree on the dais, and certainly we've had our share of heated disagreements, the reality is we are each voting for, at that particular point in time, the decisions that we believe are going to carry our city forward in the best manner possible. And I stand by those votes and those decisions that I've made and have never shied down from any criticism and never shied away from any of the tough decisions that we've had to make up here. And I think that's kind of where we find ourselves tonight. And my hope is that I certainly heard what the department heads had to say. And again, it's not an ideal situation, but we are in a situation where Yeah, there are going to have to be some changes and have to be some adjustments made. And we can't just look at this as a one-year solution because, you know, I think we've seen what that's done in the past. We really need to think about this. And frankly, you know, two to three years is not long-term, right? That's not even, you know, that's short to mid-term, right? But we need to get out of this sort of immediate one year and we need to start, I think, in my view, looking two to three years out and kind of looking at that as more of a, you know, more of a bridge or path, if you will. So, sorry, I'm going to look at some notes here and see if I got everything I wanted to touch on. I apologize for bouncing around. You know, well, so one other thing, I do agree with some of the comments. There were comments made about, you know, surplus property owned by the city. That's something I think we've been pushed, you know, we've sort of pushed on, I think, in various capacities over the years. And, you know, frankly, there's no reason that we shouldn't be more active there. You know, these are public documents where these items are posted. And I think in some cases, you know, I don't know that this is our own, you know, failure as a city to actively market these parcels or if this is something where, you know, the free market is simply telling us that they're not in demand. But I do think we need to do a better job there to help, you know, try to monetize some of those assets for the city. With respect to the airport, I've heard that comment before. It's my understanding that the city would actually owe quite a bit of money to the federal government if anything were to be done with that property. And again, that's not necessarily something I'm supportive of. But I think for the people that point to that as sort of a silver bullet, if you will, I don't believe that's the great windfall that some folks are suggesting that it is. And I think... One of the other things, we did talk also a little bit about some of the reporting and the transparency needs. Something I brought up, I think, during one of the audit meetings was as we do look at our city's financials, I think anybody that has invested in any kind of a partnership or group investment of any kind where there's a financial sponsor that's generating, whether it's a quarterly report, a monthly report, there is an ongoing budget document that shows a variance where it'll show revenue that was collected, where that was in relation to budget. where the expenses were in relation to budget. I think documents like that, that really kind of simplify the city's finances, because of course we don't have the, you know, several hundred page document up here today, but you know, the reality is you look at our city's budget, it's about the size of a phone book. And so, you know, I think, you know, kind of, you know, summarize, you know, getting that into sort of an executive summary form where those details are effectively summarized and made easy, I think, for the public to read. I think that would be the type of transparency that we're looking for. I know Mr. Avalos had indicated that that might be, you know, a possibility for us in the future. But in any event, those are my comments tonight. I think generally, you know, you guys understand where I'm at. Again, these are kind of the – this is a tough situation, and it's going to call for, you know, decisions that are – you know, not easy to make.

So that's all I've got. Council Member Valencia, you had one more thing to add.

Thank you. Yes. I just had a couple more comments that I had in my notes. i know this is difficult for the city i know this is difficult for us fiscal discipline builds reserves for emergencies or recession and natural disasters so we don't have to slap slash all the jobs in the future when times get tougher it is also signals to businesses that our city is reliable place to invest and hire The regular budget review and clear reporting and citizen input trust encouraging residents and businesses to stay invested in our city is important for their future. Due to the previous fiscal irresponsibility, this has led to growing deficits, which led to the credit, potential credit downgradings, the higher interest costs on bonds potentially, and less money available for payroll on our services. I just know this is hard. It's not easy decision at all. It's not easy choices. It doesn't come lightly at all. So I call to action a potential positive outcome. Let's commit to tough but necessary choices today, smart prioritizations, efficiency reforms, and living within our means so we can deliver reliable services and stable employment for years to come. Thank you.

Okay. One other thing, lastly, late 90s, early 2000s, there was a development in Fullerton, 80-plus acres of land in District 1, the old Huestite, and 1,450 and a half, Ms. Su Ling Chen, half homes were built there. The shopping mall or the shopping center, excuse me, not a mall, shopping center and the homes generated 20% of at that point the city's revenue. We don't have 80 plus acres of land anymore. In fact, the largest parcel that we had, West Coyote Hills, is no longer developable. The Watershed Conservancy, we purchased that. These are tough choices ahead. You've heard plenty of direction from our council. I expect these scenarios brought back on the 21st for a decision next week, and we'll continue to debate then. Anything further? Thank you, everybody.

I do, Mr. Mayor, before you adjourn. I just want to make sure that I'm clear. and its staff's clear on direction for next week. Hearing no additional alternatives or requests for changes necessarily, I mean, I know you all have your individual opinions. At this moment, I'm assuming we are just simply bringing back these options A, B, and C as we're presenting.

Your assumption would be correct until I hear otherwise. And then, of course, in that discussion, please have some sort of revenue generator. Yeah.

So with that, I've heard discussion about the sales tax measure. If there's going to be discussion next week, there also has to be action. There has to be a vote. It's our last opportunity.

So I would have it part A, part B, however you want to parcel it out. But I'm sure we can take a vote next week.

All right. But is it for the special tax?

That's what the council member asked for. That's what I agreed with. All right. Okay.

Can I get one more clarification?

Okay.

So I did hear a request from council members are on protection mechanisms. I don't, I don't know what that is.

I think he can expand on that next Tuesday. I certainly don't expect staff to adjudicate that now. I would expect you and staff to meet with councilman Zara and, and figure out what those protection mechanisms that he's referencing are and put them as an option somewhere for us to digest on Tuesday.

If I may answer that? Go ahead, please. So the auditor did provide some list of items. I think those need to be considered. I also had agendized a lobbyist registry that creates more transparency. And I believe there needs to be something in the measures themselves, as they're written, that there has to be some oversight committees and more public input on the expenditures of these. So these are just some of the things I've mentioned. I'm happy to give more but uh if i mean we haven't i haven't seen any of anything so uh the lobby registry will come and as at a separate date we're talking about the budget sir so uh right but they all tie into these things right this is about building trust and transparency with and okay we have to rebuild that in order to i hear you secure you know in order to get something on the ballot i i hear you yeah

All right. Thank you. So just in terms of budget book production and sequencing and timing here, kind of what I'm hearing is that next meeting next week, hopefully we can get a decision on which of the budget scenarios to implement. But as to the actual budget, I have to know which one I'm producing. So are you open to budget adoption in August?

I think that's a good game plan. All right. Okay.

May I add one more thing on the sales tax measure? The public clearly wants a sunset provision. I would encourage staff to look at that.

We can discuss that when we get there.

I'm sure we'll... Yeah, a sunset is something... We'll work on how to phrase that. Again, I'm just struggling out loud here with just how many permutations of various documents I'm bringing. Well, I think you bring what you presented. Start there. Well, sure, with regards to that.

But when it comes to the sales tax measure, sunset, no sunset. Well, I think we have something available, don't we? We're not having to go from scratch, are we?

No, we do have material we can build upon, but I'll take a swing at it.

Okay. All right. Thank you. With that, we are adjourned.