Council Budget and Finance Committee - Regular Meeting

Okay. Alright. Welcome, everybody. Good evening. It is Wednesday, 10/15/2025. It is 05:32PM. This is Budget Advice Committee, and miss Melo, if you can please state your role.

Yes. Mayor Salinas?

Correct.

Council member Bonia Junior? Perfect. Council member Cyrop?

I second. Thank you.

Next, we have public comment, and it's reserved for anybody in the audience that would like to make a public comment on something on the agenda or

not on the agenda. I don't see anybody in

the room nor do I see anybody online, so I'll close public comments, and we'll go to we don't have minutes from the left?

No. We're going to move them to the next.

Okay. Alright.

So going on to reports and action items. First, there's item number one, which is ten year budget actuals. This is, like, oral presentation by a assistant sitting member here.

Yes. Maybe this where you got a lot of Yeah.

Perfect. Thank you.

That one is the address. So, actually, we're gonna that was second.

Oh, okay.

They want the and this is a, you know, request for the mayor, but I think you all have been requesting some more information. So wanted to just take this next hour or as long as you want to go through these and ensure that you understand what you're looking at, answer any questions, and then if there's any information that you feel like you need that's not here, we get can that for you. So why don't I just I'm just gonna go sheet by sheet. Yep. Okay.

So the first one, general fund, budget to actual. And and can see we'll show it on the screen in case you need it slightly bigger, but hopefully, this is big enough for you. So what this is showing you is the original budget is the top table. That is what you adopt in June. The revised budget is everything that happens throughout the year. So if you guys make an appropriation at a council meeting, anything you adopt at midyear would go into the revised budget. So, usually, expenditures increase. We might revise revenue because we see more revenue coming in or or less revenue coming in. So that's what you'll see in the revised budget. And then the actuals obviously are will be actually spent or received that year.

So one thing yeah. Question. Any questions so far?

Sorry. Was doing my foot. It wasn't No. Yes,

sir. Just something that just sort of jumps out. So if you take the revised budget versus the actuals Yeah. And start at $20.18 in salaries, it's actually not that far apart. It's 77,000,000 versus 81,000,000.

We yes. For that year, you mean?

Yeah. And then and then the following year,

it kind of the gap starts to build even bigger because then it's 78,000,000, and it actually ends up at 83,000,000. Then it kinda grows to 4,000,000 because it's 80,000,000, and then it kind

of really starts to build in from that point forward. Right?

Yeah. And, actually, the numbers so you go to the next page. You'll actually see the backside of that page. Yeah. So you'll see the actuals percent plus and minus year over year and then the actual dollar plus and minus year over year. So, yeah, you can see exactly what you just said, which is, grew by about 1,000,000 and then, like, last year, 20 23,000,000. So, yeah, so that's what this yeah. That analysis is. The other thing there's two rows that went to the next page for this one. I do wanna just call this out because you can also see the actual surplus or deficit in the general fund, and you can see that in some years, we were running a surplus.

2020 was a deficit, which is for obvious reasons, and then the deficit, you know, ballooned this past year. I also included in there salaries and benefits as a percent of revenue because that's something that cities will sometimes look at when you come in and do a staffing study is what percent of your general fund money are you spending on salaries and benefits. And, typically, you'll see around 80%, maybe 75 between seventy five and eighty, which we were tracking on that, and then we jumped way way high.

To 94.5% just for the public knowledge.

Yes. To 94.5% last year. Mhmm. And so okay. So that that's what you're looking at. And then I what else can I I think the rest of it is all this metric? So any questions? Yes.

Just one more question. No worries. For this one, where does the reserve show? Because, like

It this doesn't have the reserve in it. So we can give you that give me give that information in it. And yes.

Because the one thing that, you know, I I wanted to show the public is that when we made the movie theater purchase, we had a healthy reserve when we did that. And things from there just continued to sort of combine and and snowball, but we didn't necessarily make that purchase with but what you know, I think we're almost meeting our reserve target if not exceeding it when we decided to make that purchase. Mhmm.

Got it. Okay. Yes. So I think what we can add to this is the reserve, so the beginning and ending balance, and then we can also add a percentage because it's a percentage of expenditures. Gonna let you guys start. Okay?

Well, the other thing too, I mean, I think the you know, if I look at actuals, you go to the actuals, and if you look at salaries, benefits, and you flip the page to where where it says the the the percentages. Right? Mhmm. I mean, I I mean, clearly, I mean, let's you know, so when people ask, what happened? Right? Let's go to the you know,

you know, we get that

question. What happened?

That's

You know? Well, okay. So let's look. What happened is from, you know, 78% to 94 95%

Mhmm.

Right, in salaries. Mhmm. So, you know, when people ask what happened, I said, well, you know, this is the investment in in in the workforce. This is I mean, part of it is the this is part and parcel of the story, but

Mhmm.

This is a significant piece of the story. Yeah.

And, actually, you will not see the movie theater that's in this at all because what it just did was it changed our fund bound. It changed our our reserve from un spendable to unspendable. Became unspendable when we yeah. So he won't be here. But, yes, you're exactly right that Yeah.

Changed in short was was the salaries and benefits, really. I just I also wanted to call out just to be aware of what it is, the charge outs on the others on the, like, The charge outs of that are in red, what those mean is and I don't know if I'm not getting this quite right, but that those are our public works primarily in maintenance services. They charge out to projects that are not the general fund. And so it's gonna effectively take me it's quite a credit a back to the company.

Yeah. They're allocated to they may be allocated to the general fund, but part of the work that they do is attributed to a project that is funded in a different fund. So they charge that time back

to see what that where

that project works.

So between salaries and benefits, between 2024 and 2025 Mhmm. We roughly increase about 40,000,000.

Yeah. I got you. Yeah. '23 plus '12. '30 yeah. '35. Roughly 40,000,000. Yeah. Yes. So that was where well, I think '23 it's on on $50 actual, 23 plus 12. So 35,000,000. We and then the total expense was only 30.3. That's we actually reduced our supplies and services last year. Like, we did take steps reduced our internal services last year. So I'm on, yeah, I'm on the opposite.

Yeah. I was just thinking about on page one, the salaries and benefits. When you guys say 24 versus 25 when you combine those two increases, We kinda like, to the mayor's point, we invested $40,000,000 in workforce salary.

Asked where did the money go? The money went to the workforce. That is the that is the answer to that question. Yeah. I mean, I

It's not really it.

It's not that yeah. Yeah. That that's my takeaway too.

And and if you

and if you look at

I mean, and I that that that that's why

I wanted that's why I wanted us to go back and present it this way. Right? This is all part of the story when people are asking us everywhere. Right? And when, you know, when the newspaper calls me, this is what they're interested in right here.

Mhmm. Yeah. And I think, you know, there's very good policy reasons for wanting to bring up people up to market, but in terms of looking on hindsight, we just couldn't afford to do it as quickly as we did. And so now we're happy to think about ways to reduce reduce those costs. So

Yeah. Go ahead. We can jump

in. Thank you.

So looking at the 2025 on audited, our revised budget was a 110,000,000. Mhmm. And then the actual that we're looking at here is a 129,000,000. So it's a $19,000,000 drop there, which I think has a large part to do with why 94 or 95% of our budget is now salaries and benefits for the percentage of revenue.

Mhmm.

What could be helpful here is that these other documents are for, but, you know, we've become aware that a lot of this cost is in overtime. So we're looking at this big $19,000,000 jump. How do we drill into what comprises that So

million dollars.

There's act

so there's an entire spreadsheet. We can just jump to that one on overtime. Mhmm. That's under your file. Okay.

That's It does I

know I overtime by department. I'm sorry.

I should have labeled them, like, a, b, c.

But But

time will cover time after.

The footer also has what they're what they are labeled

as. Electricity? Yeah.

Yes. Alrighty. Okay. What I do wanna mention for this, and this is it, so we can go back and clean this up. Although there isn't a lot of overtime in metric c. Mhmm. For for for the rest of these, I can bind because metric c is effectively general Mhmm. A general one. I can we can bind them for these.

Okay.

And so we yeah. So what you can do here is you can see the the last one is what you're looking at here, is the actuals over under revised budget by the firm.

Okay.

And so you can see that last year, fire was $8,000,000 over budget, and lease was $4,400,000 over budget. Okay. So overall, we're $12,000,000.

Minus 12,500,000.0 in here and here.

Where where where you wanna flip it over?

And then it's these numbers here.

This is Oh.

Over. Yeah. So that's $12,500,000 out of the 19 that I just identified comes specifically from that going over the budget for overtime there.

Yeah. So I think what I do wanna point out is that the previous year, we were $10,000,000 over budget. Mhmm. But we didn't see, you know, the same overage in our overall. So we just, quite frankly, have not been quite blood pushing for overtime. You just because what we we shouldn't be this far over Mhmm. Every year. And so that's something we're absolutely looking at. We're gonna work on it. Actually, it's already addressed this this year Mhmm. To some extent. But so I the story is not as simple as last year, suddenly, the overtime spiked because it didn't it was only $122,000,000 dollars more than the previous year. Yeah. The story is more that everything went up, including overtime.

Yeah. But they also when you look at it kind of not not just to pick on fire, but just because

it's

It's the biggest one. Yeah. When you look at 2019 Yeah. That's where you start to see some kind of structural problem beginning. Right? Because you kinda look at, like, you know, 1 and a half million, 1 and a half million, two, eight, you know, three, three, and then you jump to 6.7. So something there

And I can explain to you.

And then it just goes up and up and up. Right?

Yeah. What happened there was and we can go back and look further at the staff reports, but my recollection of what happened there was that you can be overhired a bunch of firefighters because we were going to tear down a training center. And so we knew, okay. We're gonna need all these firefighters. We're gonna need to have, like, multiple years of academies before we tear down the training center because we won't have any way to train them. And so we we did these huge academies, and we overhired. And so at the time, we said and it's actually 2018. We said, oh, we can reduce our overtime because we have all these extra people. We're not gonna have any overtime. And it worked for one year, and then people started retiring.

But we kept the same budget. So you can see actually go to their budget on the first page. The budget for fire was 2,000,000 in 08/2018 and then drops to basically not nothing. Ninety six thousand. And just save the 96,000 forever until now.

And so what what ended up happening when people started retiring and and leaving, as the overtime started going up, we never remedied that. We never we remedied that budget. We just kept it low. And didn't cause as much of concern year after year because we were coming in over on our revenue and under on certain other expenses. And so we but that's not very bad shape.

We should've we should've

we should've gone back and make sure that

It's so am I reading that this 96 is $96,000? Mhmm. 96,000.

So we were not budgeting. So so when people are saying, oh, it was fire over time, it's a little bit more complicated then. Because, of course, they're gonna run over their budget if their budget is 96,000. Yeah. So over budget and so police's budget is a little bit more realistic. Exactly. And so, I mean, they still run less fire less overturning fire. Cars are running more. And that's partly to do with the minimum staffing in their contract. It's quite high. I mean, especially in I'm just saying higher than police. I'm not trying to make a judgment call there. But and so yes. So that that's why I really want you guys to see this totally understand the

And there's no overtime for mayor and council?

Yeah. You have no budget overtime, and you ran it over time. So you stay within your budget of no

over time.

So what I'm seeing here I I get what you're saying. Like, this this number for going over their budget is because the budget was so low.

Yeah. It's also very it's also a lot of work. Yeah. Yeah. Is. It's like

saying even if they have pieces over time, 3,000,000 and 55,000,000 over budget. Right? So, I mean, this is not a this is more of a management question. It's not a judgment call on the work that the firefighters do. It's more so the way that we structured, how we structured both our contracts as well as how we're managing fire has led to a significant increase. Actually, we're looking at overtime that's more than all the other overtimes combined at this point than fire.

Yeah. But I would say that to your point, though. If you look at police Mhmm. They're running close to 5,000,000 too. It's 4.4 over. So to your point, if you normalize fire

in the

way that you just described You're right. One's at five and one's at 4.4, that's still very high overtime numbers.

Yeah. And so I think for fire to get

because what you're saying.

I've looked more closely at fire because it had been so many questions. Mhmm. So another thing that was happening, and we can parse this up. We're actually chief Omar has a presentation he can give to you guys, so they parsed it out for 20 for both the fiscal year. Mhmm. But they do go they can close it over time. So you can see how much of it is related to someone being called, like, mandatory, basically meeting them in on staffing levels Yeah. Versus maybe mutual aid or other purposes. Mhmm. One other thing that we we're doing in this five year period is adding special programs in the fire department.

So from the heart programs, some of the we do special assignments Yeah. To help us deal with some issues. And we had money at the time, ARPA, some of these before. We just don't always have those funding sources anymore, so we it might So, actually, what's already done already this year is they ended all special assignments and moved all those people back to the line, and that hasn't been immediately reduced the other time. So that's something

I recall, you know, we kinda put the we hoop part of the heart program on pause because we were funding that in a way where was overtime that was paying for the program rather than, let's say, hiring a community paramedic for our connection with the cost. Yeah.

I mean, I'm not

super happy about those savings because it's a program that think a lot of our residents value, but now it doesn't exist at the moment. We're in a slightly modified form because of that. So I guess I I understand that they're doing work to to do that, but it just feels like we have to figure out how this it feels like a management what am trying to say? I mean, this feels like it's baked into the the contracts, like, trying to address this issue.

Yeah. So if you have minimum staffing, we I think getting getting that power can useful, but I can say that I just did some back envelope, and we will we can do more thorough calculations. But if you're gonna staff a rig with three people Mhmm. To your to an engine Mhmm. And but those people so but just having three people is not enough. Because people take vacation. They get sick. You know, they're they take leaves. Yeah. So you actually well, sorry. You actually need nine people to separate because it's there's three shifts.

Yeah.

You know, work these twenty four hour shifts. You need nine people to separate, but you actually need closer to 10.5 if you account for all of the patients. We only have enough staff to not have any like, we don't have enough staff for every we're gonna have 10.5 people on it. So we have we have over 10 basis points of contract. I understand. That's how yeah. So I guess the

the question that I just wanna ask and let me know, you know, there's lady logged around this. I just wanna make sure I'm not over something in the balance here, but it feels like this question around known staffing is kinda central to us really getting to the meat of this deficit. And, obviously, this is baked into our contracts. We have to figure out

how to come back to

the table to have those conversations. But when I think about things like the heart program closing, it makes me worry about what other services we're gonna start to fold if we don't immediately address specifically, you know, what's happening with fire entities over time. So, you know, do we feel like staff is aware of that as well that the the the bulk? Because we're looking at the hard numbers right here. Like, again, 12.5 out of the 19,000,000. Mean, sorry. Sorry. That's even that's just what's going over in terms of overtime. Right? Like

So the yeah. So we yeah. It's just going over the

You definitely well, I don't wanna I don't wanna put us in a position we're talking about, like, reducing the library by one day because we have to do the viral over time. Right? Like, I think we have to figure out what's going on here.

Certainly. So I think a couple of sure. Well, so to answer your question, these these same specialties were shared with all labor, all the revenue units. They did a big data request to go with Sherry. The latter half of that, I think we should talk, like Okay. More to labor discussion. But what I can say is there are certain things that we are now contractually obliged to, such as our contracts, and there are other things like the number of days of. That is not a contractual obligation. It just is that is just a statement of fact. Yeah. It is yeah. Understand.

I I just wanna express it here because I I I would hope that as as partners in running the city, right, we we wanna I would imagine we wanna have our residents have more library days. Yeah.

Understood. Understood. I think because of the situation around this, most of these complications are gonna be out trade offs with the disparity. Yeah. It's very fair. Yeah.

Our our these documents here, I know you're sharing them with us, but will will all the other groups and all management see this? Yes. Yeah.

Yeah. This is all considered public information. So if anyone else wants to see it, but I think we may on I think I think the I think maybe the guess that we have really. Yeah. Can show you. Alright. Thanks, babe. Okay. And and labor has received all of this.

Okay. And, you know, to cancel members, Sarah, when it's like placing fire already have such a significant portion of the budget without overtime. Right? I mean, just so it's like, how do they how do we control costs within a relatively generous, what I would consider allocation already so that it doesn't have such significant bleed over to then impact other parts of

the city? If you don't want to feel a second,

if we're not able to control these budgets with with police and fire when the rest of the city starts to become impacted

Yeah. I think it's all really good conversations.

I know. I get what you're saying.

I Yeah. I know.

But maybe what I'm saying.

That that that's the kind of, you know, it's tough to be in a situation that feels scary, and it's it's really time factor. And the hope that I have is that we come out of this having had some of these larger, broader conversations about kind of, okay. Well, if what what policies do we wanna set ourselves with? We don't go over 80% of our revenue budgeted for financial values and benefits. Yeah. That we have a new compensation plan that talks about our differential pay. Like, those those types of things, hopefully, we come out of this with some of those policies in place. And not to put too positive spend on it. But

Okay. Just out of curiosity, what is the you know,

what is a a industry standard, like,

you know, for comparable standard of salaries and benefits as the, you know, as a percent of the budget.

Yeah. And so it's 70%. 80. And so it's gonna depend partly on the mix of person. Yeah. We have we're we tend to be more expensive on the staffing side because we do not have a parks and rec department, which have a lot of part time staff that are not that are hourly. We don't have them hourly, and we have both fire and Mhmm. Police. So for example, Bolsonaro City. So example, San Leandro has a parks and parks department, but they don't have a fire department. So they're, you know, they're the mix might change a little bit of what the percentage is, but but, yeah, that that would when you get over 80%, you start to be concerned about our ability to to, you know, to

Well, sir.

Yeah. Well, because we need to

say Yeah. By the bills, you have to pay.

Said sell. We we have materials, and we we wanna put a little bit of mind towards capital improvements or replacement, fleet replacement. Like, all of that needs to come out of that stuff. Yeah. But it's pretty normal to be at 80. Like, that's not yeah. Yes.

So if we're at 94%, then you kind of you know, of course, you can look at the salaries. But then the other question is to get back into the percentage ratio, do we have the right number of employees?

Yeah. So I think that that's a but, yes, that's a question that we're gonna have to ask this year because with a base in in effect of $30,000,000 structural deficit, because we had last year's source and assume that that's the that's the that's the deficit that we if we have to reduce costs some some way, how how do we do that? It's and we have these closed contracts, so we are asking roughly of our units to to come and have discussions with us that they are closed contract.

Because, like, I I I don't know

if the number is, you know, a true benchmark, but

I kind of heard somewhere in the ballpark of, like, know, city or size should maybe have somewhere between, like, eight eighty and nine hundred FTEs. I don't know if you agree with that number or not.

There's there are groups that can do the study, but I I think, again, it depends on the mix of services Yep. A little bit. So it's not it's not as easy to just compare apples to apples with cities. That said, sure. I don't I don't have number. Yeah. I don't have a number. That's fair. And I think also you just have to under we have to be realistic about the tax base that we have in Hayward. So what works in Hayward might not work. Why it could be different in that different study, but it's depending on who's tax base. Yeah. I'm not I I'm trying

to understand the limits of what we're able to express in terms of our roles as elected officials. I'm trying to encourage

us to work together to build a solution because

of the around, like, difficult decisions of reducing headcount and ultimately affecting people's livelihoods versus addressing some parts of contracts that are driving up significant costs and raising our budget and sustainable headcount.

I just want that decision to

be laid bare so we're all on the same page about it. I'm not suggesting we're doing anything or trying to negotiate any terms here in the public domain, but just to say that feels like what the the challenge is here. And that I just I'm I'm wondering, like, from your perspective, do you feel like staff understands that dynamic? Are they still doing the research and looking through these numbers?

No. Stats yeah. Let me explain what what what the next steps are. Okay. So we we want to have at least two discussions with each labor partner if we can, if they're if they are, you know, willing to come talk to us before we finalize finalize the fall revise for you guys to adopt. We just feel like that's that's fair. Mhmm. And we probably won't have that fully ready by the eighteenth. What you will see on November 18 are a couple of things. What we're doing actively is, one, we know the general fund ended with almost no funding in it.

We do have funding in some other un unrestricted, such as measures fee, fleet, unrestricted funds. We from a policy standpoint, it is really scary. That's just scary. There's, again, policy to not have two months of expenditures in your general fund balance. So we we probably can't get there, but we we want we wanna have something to aim for 10% or something.

So what we wanna do in November is to do some transfers between funds where we can to kinda clean that up for you. And so I think you're seeing you're seeing a true picture of what's our unrestricted if we have unrestricted funds, let's get that in general. And and then I also think that helps us make the case of waiver saying, like, there's there's no pots of money. Like, it's all you see it here, and we've transferred it all over, and there it is. And so we'll do that. And then the other thing that we wanna do in the the executions are like, we're going we're going live. We we are gonna bring a list of proposals

Yeah.

That we won't ask probably for the adoption on November 18 because we still want these conversations in favor. We'll bring up proposals and be very transparent of these are the things that we will recommend doing if we can't find other ways to reduce costs. And we we just have to do that from a

Yeah.

You know, fiscal stewardship standpoint.

And all the accounts made aware aware of some of these proposals.

Yes. So we'll definitely make sure that you guys have a chance to to look at the and then to to to talk.

Is this after or before the eighteenth, do you think?

Oh, we'll we'll have we're developing a list. They're all of those proposals are due October 24. Okay. So, yeah, we'll have some time there. And this year, because we do have some other unrestricted funds like measure c, we are in a little we're not looking at 30,000,000. Next year, we are. So and actually more than that because we've called us building the contracts. So it'll be a totally different conversation on the spring. Well, not totally. But it'll just be a harder conversation even than this Yeah. To say, we'll have to be addressed next year. And as you guys are saying, we have a structural major structural issue, so we're gonna have to make some decisions about that.

Yeah. I mean, I understand the this this two phased approach. I think what I'm just trying to express for especially if somebody's familiar listening is is the longer and the longest, the worse it gets. And so we're taking this two phased approach to try to be accommodating. But I would hopefully want to encourage our labor partners to come to the table sooner or faster and and whatever we can do to accelerate getting to the meat of the problem. Yeah. It it's just that it's it's incredibly urgent.

Absolutely. I can't do so. I I

I mean, I know I know you're doing everything we can.

Well, no. And I and I think we can't. We gotta have those conversations at the the table with them. What I can just share is and I think it's helpful to just be super transparent from management's perspective is that we will bring you guys a recommendation to use to balance this situation. We have to. And so we will bring all of the proposals, and everyone will be able to see, you know, what those are. Yeah. Regardless. Yeah. Yeah. But, yeah, appreciate that, those comments. So let's get through the rest of this thing. Mean, make sure that you know what you're missing at. Yep. So really briefly, I'm sorry. I just wanna let you know these are the attendees that we have right now. Yes. I think we have some of our labor partners, which is great. It's great. It could want as many as much information as possible.

And I hope everyone has questions if they have any. So let's go to the measure c. Well, yes, measure c back to taxes. This is the same as we saw for the general fund, but just for. And, actually, we're gonna do a deeper dive into Oh, yeah.

This is Okay. We're do a deeper dive in a second, but I just want you to see that we what I what I wanted to draw your attention to is the actual surplus deficit line on the first page because I think one of the more useful ones. And what you can see is that with measure c, we, you know, we do have operational costs every year for salaries and benefits and some debt and debt service, which is the debt services transferred out. Am I there's some debt service in there. Okay.

So in one of these, I so what what what you're seeing here is that last year, you know, we had a deficit. But that said, we had reserve. So we're we're not in the same situation in the legacy. But for a lot of

the best You're looking at

the number of six hundred and thirty two six hundred and thirty two thousand down to 1,200,000.0.

Yeah. And so I get but we we transfer money out. You can see the transfer's out to capital projects, and we did have we did have a Sorry. I'm I'm in this line right here. I just wanted you to see sort of the this is just comparing the amount of money we're taking in versus the amount of money we're spending. Yes.

So so, basically, right now, we have about $4,000,000 in that you're seeing?

No. So let's jump. Can we jump to the next agenda item, mayor? We can go back and forth with that.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

What what's the oh, yeah. Yeah.

The address? Yeah.

So That's this

This is the large breadstick. Thank you, Christine. And this is Tiny Tiny. So but we can zoom it in if you need if you're I thought it's like mine. So what this shows you and thanks, Fran, help create this. Okay. So, again, thanks to all of them for all their work on this. It's a lot. This is a lot of extra work. So what this shows you is going back to the beginning

Okay. It goes.

What's that?

Of measure c, which is fiscal year 2015. The revenues that we received on the top part, and then which is sales tax for the most part, which is good. And then the expenditures. And so the what you'll see, the first part, the capital expenditures, that all comes out of CIP budget that you adopt, fund four zero five, if you if you care. And the operating expenditures down below, that all comes out of fund one zero one, which is in your operating budget.

Mhmm. But we just actually combines both of them together so you can see the the inflow and outflow. Yeah. And so to file four zero six, we just do a transfer out of one zero one every year. And so what you could these are what we spent it on year after year. I'll I'll let you look at it and see if you're.

So so, basically, just so I know what I'm looking at. So measure c at the very top.

Yeah. Right.

$20.15, that that was the revenue. Right? Yeah. 8,000,000 that you've done. And then it went from 8 to 13 to 14 to 15 and went up. Right? That's annual revenue. Right?

That's annual sales tax. What you will see in the totals is that we issued bots and got set. So we had $79,000,000 come in in fiscal year sixteen, and then we over the time spent those down. So we had a huge huge spike in cash. Mhmm. And then we had to set at least we've had that other balance. Five.

Very bottom. The other bottom.

So Okay. So that's how much is left in the fund?

Yeah. So right now, we have about 16,000,000.

So right now, actually, if you look at the 2025, we ended with 21,000,000

Got it.

Between those two funds. Yeah. Yeah.

And how much of this are you guys gonna try to transfer into the general fund?

So we will bring you a rec a recommendation to do, like, very various things, all of it, and then somewhere in the middle. And I think the yeah. We let's see. Some of this, as you can see in the next row, some of it might be reserved for some projects for this year. So it might not be all 20. But yeah.

And then if we transfer it all, and then we're gonna have zero in electricity.

In short, then you have zero in electricity funding. Now what you can see, though, what I do wanna what I just wanna draw your attention to is the annual cash flow, which is right above the cumulative fund balance. Yeah. So this year, it's actually quite low, and that's because there's a chunk in there for La Vista. But moving forward, we're looking at, you know, 9 oh oh, 9,500,000.0 a year. So we're not of, like, additional funding more than our expenses if we don't spend it, if we, you know, don't don't add more projects to this. So I'm not concerned with us spending from a cash flow perspective, we're not concerned with spending the fund all the way down.

But how concerned are we with having to spend it all now, not solve the problem in the next budget cycle, not business to dip into?

So that extremely. So we are as I mentioned, yeah, earlier, we're basically if you lump our our audit, our app for lumps measure c in when they're not on because it is all general fund funding. What it calls it is called assigned because we assigned it for its purpose, but it's in there as part of the general fund myth. Well, so we're actually only in, like, a semi okay position. We're not in an okay position, but we're we're in a we would be in a much worse situation if we didn't have it.

We and if we do that this year, we will not have it next year. Now the bigger picture there, and this is great for our labor partners to understand too, we actually we cannot have zero reserves with no unrestricted funds anywhere else. And the reason why we've been over this is the first few months of the year, we go negative. We cannot legally spend restricted funds on general fund purposes, so we need to have some cash available for those first few months of the year where we're starting to go negative. So what's another thing that we're we the outside fiscal analyst is on board Yeah. Is in the system. The first thing she's gonna do is that cash flow analysis for us, and she'll present that to you, or we she'll present her findings on that.

So it's not to be alarmist or anything, but there exists a reality where after waiting for that revenue to come in, if we haven't solved this deficit, we might have a wave of, like, mass furloughs because we just have no cash flow,

and we can't have restricted funds for set of balance.

Yeah. So that so what I'm anxiously waiting on is is the what I'm anxiously awaiting when the is that the all those balances and sort of that cash analysis Yeah. How much of our cash right now is restricted and how much is unrestricted. We know that our if you look into Munis right now Yeah. Our general fund is don't know what it currently is, but our cash is, like, maybe $2,020,000,000 in the negative. We have money sitting in measure seek. But if it keeps going in negative, do we have money sitting in enough unrestricted buckets that we're not using it for credit funds?

So I asked because that means there exists some kind of wall here. Even if we would have the revenue, hypothetically, for the whole year, we could expect that revenue. There will be a period of time during the year before we receive that revenue where, like, if we get to that point and we don't and we don't have any unrestricted funds, then we're like

Yes. So we're much if we spend this down this year, we are month we will run into that next year. So there is That'll

be next year.

Like, again, don't Hopefully, it's not this year. Yeah. I'm gonna use it then. Yeah. But we do that analysis, like, when we come in Just

to be clear, I'm asking because I really need to understand the urgency. Right? Like, like, this is this is a wall where, like, we need to come and have conversations

with each other because And I I'll be very transparent. I'm still trying to understand that fiscal state legally, what that fiscal state looks like. Sure. And what because in in short, if we're in a situation where we're saying, well, we actually can't even make payroll, we're we're effectively breaking our contracts. Yeah. Because our contracts say we're gonna pay this amount. Yeah. And so how much cash can we say like, we need to have certain restricted amount of cash so that we don't get that. But whatever. I'm trying to we're trying to get that I I I wish I already had it for you, but we're not quite there.

The the other the the other question is so

I know one of the recommendations as far as

to borrow from measure c and, you know, will there be a plan to pay back measure c of what we borrow?

I mean, certainly, if that is the direction that council wants to go and we can be the reality of that situation, that will be possibly for future council is we're at such a big deficit that let's say we do solve for the $30,000,000 deficit and we build back our 20% reserve. That's a huge undertaking. Then what we're talking about is also repaying that money to measure c, which means you're not gonna be adding any new services or getting any call. Like, you're you're gonna be in a scarcity mindset for a very long time.

Because I let me just say this,

and I'm you know, in

in for folks listening to us at home, you know, measure c the intent of measure c Yes, sir. Was to do infrastructure. Yes. And and if you look at others, you know, other tax measures in other cities have failed miserably when they were sent to voters to pay for salaries. Right?

I mean, you know, or or or or pensions or, you know, all this I mean, I I think there you know, city well, I'm not gonna call out cities, but there have been cities in Alameda County that have tried that because they couldn't get their structural deficits Mhmm. In order. And that's the first thing. The second thing is that, if we don't have a plan to pay back measure c, this council, future councils, can just kiss any other measure ballot in the future Mhmm. Oh, goodbye.

Because, you know, you know, I have been told very specifically by people who are who watch this very carefully that, you know, they have been they they will never support another bond issue or another tax measure if it goes to salaries and not to infrastructure. I mean and I mean, that's that's the reality of this. And we the third thing is my last point is that I'm telling you right now, this is not what all of us and what prior councils this is not what we want to voters for. I mean, this right here is precisely what we did not do. And and if we don't have a plan to pay this back, you know, it's it it you know?

Okay. So what I think that's a very valid perspective. And so I think what I'm hearing and what we can do is bring a couple of options, but one of them should be it instruct those alone. And then that just review all the reality check on that is that that takes longer for us

to Yeah.

I mean, it I I I get it. We're not gonna able to pay it back next year or in in the next two or three years, but but there there has to be you know, as we you know, as we're paying, you know, as we're putting contributing into reserve Mhmm. We should we should, you know, have have a percent where we start putting back into measure c.

And and even if it's, like,

just a million dollars, you know, over a twenty one year period, that would be better.

No. I think that this is so we should and can review our financial policies, and we have some, actually, some very strong policies in there. So getting a review of maybe that's something we could do with this this group too. Yeah. But that might be something you wanna add to the financial policies. In addition to building the reserve, we wanna have, you know, this amount of money that goes back to under c or this amount of money that you know, whatever.

That would be my request because I agree with the the mayor and council members were made here as far as trucking is the loan. I know that in our budget, we have a list of our fiscal policies, including our reserve policy. I think it would be helpful for us to review those together as well as everything in this conversation, setting some benchmarks for what it means for us to recover from this deficit. We're not just trying to replenish our reserves, but I like earlier that you mentioned. Let's set a goal for what percent of our revenue should be paid in salaries. Right? Like, why isn't the 80%? Why don't we have that on the books yet? That would help us immensely in our later contract negotiations. If we knew, it is about that percentage up to a certain level, so we can't we can't go past that.

I think keeping a specific percentage of revenue in unrestricted dollars makes sense, but I think that's a function of the reserve ultimately, so that would be redundant. But I just I think Adam putting benchmarks as a as as management at least of what does it mean for us to get out. What when when will we know where our steps are?

I think we should have

to clearly articulate and define that and and put in some policy that'll make sure that we don't find ourselves in this position again. So I I I would hope that we could review some of our fiscal policies. What what is those appropriate? Because this is definitely priority one. But I think looking at those kind of us figure out what we're trying to do. At

the same time. Yeah. Yeah. And that's something we've asked the the analyst to hopefully do is review those. And, you know, she already did the and and we we do have have some good ones. We just weren't necessarily Yeah. Holding ourselves to them.

So Great.

We can all review those. Yeah.

And the reason I brought that up is because I think we having being able to pay measure suite a measure suite loan back at a certain rate should also be one of those benchmarks too. If we have not succeeded yet, would definitely completely if we haven't set up the appropriate revenue structure for us to begin, you know, retaining that debt. Yeah.

Okay. I mean, that's a really fair conversation. And I think the conversation there will be we're seeing something we continue to discuss is what percentage of metrics are you comfortable spending operating expenditures on? Because you already do spend a certain percentage on operating expenditures. Absolutely.

And so Absolutely.

If it's what what's the basically, let's set a cap, and anything about that cap would be very

But I think But but

but but the but the with the the the connection that I'm drawing is that we had, you know, 90 you know, where where is it at? You know, go back to the percentage. You know, 94.5% of the deficit is to, you know, salaries and benefits. And we're taking, you know, this is what connection people are gonna make. You know, you got 95% of your deficit is the salaries and benefits, and you're taking money out of bankruptcy. And people would say, well, you're paying for salaries and benefits. That's precisely what we did not want. Mhmm. You know, we said we were gonna build a park. You know? Yeah. And and that's the connection people were gonna make.

These are supposed to be, like, additional salaries that that manager c was adding when it comes to food service, services, not necessarily now using all of it

to value. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. And I understand that to implement measure c, you need people to do the work. I get that. But it's the it's the far beyond that is

Yeah. No. That's well stated. I think we can absolutely

Yeah. And then and all I was gonna say is, you know, if if we have no other choice but to use measure c at this point. So I totally agree with the mayor's sentiment that this is not what the public promise is, but I do think the way that we rebuild that public promise is by structuring this as a loan. And just say, a million dollars we can find a million dollars a year over twenty one years to pay this back, and we're still keeping the commitment that this 21,000,000 is gonna, you know, it's gonna be paid back.

It's gonna go to these things.

It's just right now, we're finding ourselves in a situation where this is our only avenue. Otherwise, we're gonna bankrupt the city and, you know so so I do agree that we need to use this, but I also agree that it has to be followed up with a repayment option even a long term one. Yeah.

You know, we do the, you know, like, we have a policy. Maybe one time cash comes in. We send it to reserve. You know, we should have, you know, whatever what one time cash comes in. We should have, like, a percent goes to reserve, a percent goes to emergency.

Yeah. Or the policy maybe is, like, once you hit 20% or 16.6%, it's the GMOA minimum, then anything above that goes to measure c. And so Right. Or what yeah. Which, like, I think Yeah. And and the point that you're making to yourself there or your new commitment as a council is we're not going to add new services with this money. We're gonna we're gonna, you know, make an extra c whole again so we can do some less capital. Yeah. I

I just wanna express the the larger point. I hope we can communicate to the community. I'll I'll read this again. It's really about reestablishing trust or maintaining trust between the residents and the city as an organization. I know that because of the you know, ultimately, the council's decision, even though we have a number of reasons why we found ourselves in this position, iterations of this council and prior councils have the average of the trust between ourselves and our labor groups.

Ultimately, the faith that our residents have in not just the council, but the city as a whole, including these firefighters is as quick as possible. There are cities like Los Angeles where they're having slash services all across the city because they have completely unstable police contracts. We don't wanna find ourselves in a similar position. We don't want our residents feeling a similar skepticism or animosity towards our public employees. So this is really, I guess, the larger, like, partnership I wanted to afford here is about maintaining trust between the city and its residents, not between the council and its labor groups. And that to me is the the larger goal that we're pushing for. Yeah. Yeah. Got it. Okay.

I let's see. I wanted to go through a few more, and then the rest of them are for your own perusal. So all expenditures by department, then all line and measure c. What this shows you is is that all the expenditures

Mhmm.

And it's broken down by department. And just to note that this is not gonna perfectly match up with what you see on your general fund because it includes membership as well. And so I mean, there's it's it shows the same thing. If you go to the next the second page, you can see total actuals versus the revenue actuals. And, actually, I think even better is to see the percent total percent year over year versus revenue percent year over year, and you can just see that we we haven't been our revenue percent increases were not matching all the third. And the reason that this isn't working quite as bad is the 500 c mixed into it.

So so on page one, those for fiscal year twenty twenty five on holiday, those are the total amounts of each department.

Yeah. So I think the reason that I wanted to combine this both of these funds is because maintenance service or police and maintenance services do have staff. We just wanna be very transparent about all of expenditures and all of the staff that are paid out of general. Right. So that's why you can.

So some of these do and some of these don't have.

Yeah. And you and what you'll see

Like, for example, mayor and council.

And then you have all these departmental ones. Mhmm. And that will show you which

is done. Perfect. Okay.

So what happened? How much is fire? Is it 60,000,000? Right? How much is, please, 97,800,000.0?

Yeah. That's the total expenditures.

That's the original budget.

Oh, okay. You wanna make sure you're on the actuals, which is

The revised budget or Oh, oh, oh, oh, 44,000,000. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Agree.

Actions. There you go.

Fire is I got 65.

Fire is 40742. Yeah.

Oh, no. I'm sorry. Yeah.

Then please set a 106. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah. So Spire does not have any emergency. Police does. It's basically maintenance services in police, so there's two different emergency. Yeah. Yeah. Nondeparliamentary as well. I also did this exact same exercise, but for just salaries and benefits. You can just combine everything. But if you wanna do just salaries and benefits, that's one another. Right? I mean, we sorry.

No. This is good.

I'm glad I'm glad we did this because, I mean, here it is.

So so I guess what is the barrier to kind of control of actually, I think we already talked about it. You gotta go back to the contract. So I was like, what is the plan to control over from the fire? Because it just keeps on ballooning. And I'm like, eleven from seven to eleven to twelve. I'm like, what do we what do we think it's gonna be this year? Actually,

Nick, I think or I think that they're trending downward.

As a good training. Training.

Yeah. They've been taking steps to, actually it well, again, taking some of their special assignments off and instead so they're actually. At least not in this.

Yeah. That's

great to hear,

actually. Yeah.

Yeah. And Luis has also taken steps. Some of them, they're you know, they've discussed with you guys some shift change that also is in the contract. So there's there's some conceptual conversations that need to happen, but they're also trying to take steps to figure out what they can do. The last one I wanted to

Have we critiqued the the finance department?

Go ahead. Yeah. Ahead.

Yeah.

Bring him on.

They're actually

one of our yeah.

Yeah. It's basically development services, finance, and HR are the only ones that haven't hit the drag during this ten year forecast.

Okay. Let's see. Where are we with where are we on the extended call expenditures, like, one?

The last page.

Oh,

this one.

Oh, yeah. Well, also, though yeah. And this is this is, yeah, budgeted to this is the revised budget attached.

That's that's the that's the finance department's way of flexing, apparently.

Stay within your budget. That's that's

the.

That's great.

Yeah. And and also you know?

However, you can look if you look at percent increase year over year, you know, there's some departments are higher than others, but even if they're within their budget, they might have been increasing. But that Yeah.

That makes sense, I see. Yeah.

Okay. So two last ones, and then we can go. That's okay. We

still Yeah.

Okay. We've got I wanna grab the nondepartmental expenditures by category.

No. Is that the one nine departmental zero zero? Yes.

Sorry. These numbers up here, because we shared it with labor groups, we also wanted to if they wanna run their own units reports, all the numbers that you're seeing in are how Oh. In units. You just took a cheat sheet for them.

So What's the number?

Nonaffartmental They're they're not.

So so the labor groups are are looking at the are they giving I mean, you know, let's say let's say they have their own, you know, physical third party physical analyst. Do they have access to this, or are are inside content experts doing it?

We provided them this spreadsheet. I don't think anyone from labor has asked. They no one has asked for external access to Munis for a consultant for labor.

For second.

Well, but every do all employees have any sec? Many employees

I think all

of I think all employees technically have access, and they can log in and run account inquiries, but a lot of them don't necessarily know how to. But Oh, okay. But there are definitely people on each of the bargaining unit boards that know how to run some of the boards. Perfect. Alright.

Okay. So I just wanted to show this because these these are nondepartmental things, and I think it should be good for you guys to understand that these exist as well. And so what you're seeing is the non governmental ones are there's a little bit of supply chain services, but very minimal. There's also transfers out through their debt service. You'll see it's actually higher for measure c than for general fund.

We don't have a huge amount of debt, we don't have a but $22,500,000.0 last year. And then we also have transfers out to CIP, and that is for your big capital projects. Is it also no. Yeah. I'll just Okay. Your big capital projects. And then liability insurance, this goes to your to fund seven ten, the the liability fund.

Right. This

is managed by the city. Okay.

And so that's the amount that we're we're transferring out every year to that fund. And then there's then there's some other that goes out, and I couldn't speak to those off the top

of my head. If you This large jump in CIP, the revised budget, that's what this, I'm assuming, from 8,000,000 CIP to 13.39.

Where are we?

Revised budget.

Yeah. Yes. That is. Exactly. That is. So that's a $524,000,000. K. Because you guys appropriated that in the middle of the year. Yes. Yeah.

So so, yes, that that's what this is. And then the last thing I wanna do is about news because

we're So, basically, our city budget is made up of salaries and benefits and then this.

Well, each each department has if you go into a specific department, like, let's just grab grab a mayor and council. Each department also has main has supplies and services, internal service charges, and maintenance.

But all that rolls up to this on this sheet that we just looked at, really?

No. So if you grab a departmental sheet

Oh, it's not too much. See. I see.

And the internal service charges are fleet facilities and IT, are the internal service charges. So

the 1,600,000.0 that, like, let's say, supplies and services and the revised budget this month department fill in Mhmm. That's in addition to every department having their own supplies and services budget. Correct. You know, what is this?

So yeah. So transfer is out for non departmental. Usually, that means a transfer's occurring, like Mary mentioned, to a specific product project or service, but it isn't tied to one single department. So for liability liability insurance is an easy one that is coverage for the entire city. It's not just structured in city attorney's office.

Every department is affected by that service. So the transfer is occurring across a bunch of different funds. The allocation is determined by the amount of staff that are tied to a specific fund, and then the breakdown of the money is tied to each of those funds. So the portion that you see in the general fund for liability insurance, that's the amount attributed just to that. There are other amounts attributed to other funds. Transfer's out. Once again, it's just for project or service, not necessarily tied to city manager's office or finance. It's usually a company of multiple departments or doesn't have a home. So we created that number to track those transfers.

And that's where it's coming out of department zero zero versus the. Yeah. So in in something just to if you're understanding the liability insurance, we do it directly out of the funds of the no department versus the other internal services, like technology The facilities. Facilities. They have a different check they we they they they have each impairment.

So it's just the other. Yeah. The last one is revenue. And just wanted to show Yeah. The actual I think the the actuals over or under are probably the most of the most interest.

And we what I want what we wanted to come out here is we obviously we've been under in 2020 because of the pandemic. We had but then we also came in quite a bit under this year. And that's because at midyear, staff came back and revised our projections up quite a bit, but then we did not actually realize those revenues. So

we thought we would have a higher revenue in

our original budget or another five?

Yeah. Our original budget, we had for the nine so it split out the general fund in both months. Got $216,000,000 for the general fund, and then our revised budget was $227,000,000.

I see. So the last part here is, like, for example, we were $400,000,000 below our expectations for the UUT utility resource tax. Is that correct?

Yes. Okay.

Exactly. And And then 5,000,000 below our estimates for

real property. And is was that one was related to bar cars not being manufactured here? Was it that?

That actually is the sales one.

So we

actually came in more than Oh. More than we should.

How many just out of curiosity, how many cannabis organizations are contributing to that cannabis revenue? Just one. Just cookies. So one one dispenser is at 1,100,000.0

in terms of cannabis revenue.

Actually, I think last year, it was 700. 703,000. Are you It's almost like 2,000. Or you might be looking at you're looking at the revised, but don't we're looking at actuals on the page. Oh, no. You you got it. Right? That's what makes that right.

Yeah. I'm looking at actuals. So That's

at 40. Yeah. $7.44 is.

So so and just to kind of drive this, because I wanna be clear on this too. So those cannabis dispensaries contribute more than just cannabis tax. They contribute taxes in other areas that hit this as well. It's just the cannabis tax is a 100% general fund.

And then cannabis tax is separated out, but they'd also yeah. There's also sales tax in some of the areas, but we don't have it.

Yeah. I wouldn't accept it too. But I think

so because I'm just because when I think about sort of what projects might be coming in front of the council, and then I think of the impact to our budget and sort of what, you know, it's like we I hope that we're all thinking about the economic impact, the development impact, the planning impact, and all of those considerations when we're considering a billion dollar revenue generating business in our community.

Yes. And so we're you know what? I should have added for this one that I didn't is actual numbers minus oh, for the like, it's the the grower. Just because it was under the amount that we wrote our revised budget doesn't mean that it actually went down. Like, for example, while user utility user stacks actually went down.

I'm trying to find yeah. The fees and charges for a service actually went up last year slightly, but we had, like, you know, $1,800,000 below, but that's because we budgeted much higher. Mhmm. We think the utility users' tax is going down because of solar, but we're not a 100%. We were there was yeah. There's three more studies. So this could be an entire work session piece of all of this. It's pretty honestly, I don't know if you have did you have you guys have anything to ask this one or any trends that you've noticed that

The the the data center. I know that the data center is will be paying the UUT. Yeah. Do we know, you know, what when the data center will be online?

I do not. So I mean, I've not probably couple years, but I but I didn't even get you an exact. Yeah. No. It's it's currently they've pulled from they've pulled Yeah. So, yeah, it's entitled. Yeah. Okay.

Investment income. So I've seen there was an expectation that we were bringing in, I don't think it's right, 650 k approximately. And then we were significantly lower on that fund. Is there a reason why

this? We have less cash.

Less cash to invest.

Yeah. Because we were we're we're

Yeah. Well

Are you

pulling it out to support with

I know we had a

investment portfolio, like, 260,000,000 ish. I know that money sits there to collect more money than interest.

Oh, I see what you're saying. Sorry. We have we collect interest on not just our long term investments, but also our shorter term and the short the shorter term ones we were using for liquidity.

Okay. So have we pulled back our shorter term ones already? That, I'm not sure. Okay.

Yeah. We can bring a specific report to Gus on about in fact, it is I think this is we typically think that

It'll it'll come forward. I'm just curious. I know we we were seeing a lot of knock on our investment portfolio. I know not a lot of it is necessarily liquid, but is that one of the ways, like, versus using Metric C dollars, I guess? I think we're able liquidate some of the short term.

So all of that money on the investment fund is actually associated with a specific fund. Okay. So it is Metric Like Okay. But all of our cash is pooled. Yeah. And so there that's that's what I'm hoping. That's what we I'm we we I want to get as soon as possible is this sort of cross reference guide between how reconciliation between how much do we have in our bank and investment funds versus how much of

it goes to each fund. Okay.

And we because it it's not that we don't have that. I just have questions about like, we we we we can pull that. Yeah. Just wanna Okay. I wanna before we share it with you guys and, like, build draw conclusions, I wanna make sure that it's absolutely

So for the utility user test, did we ever increase them?

I don't know if we get I don't think we

It wasn't the UT. It was the The t

o It was the t

o t. T o t.

T o t. Do we ever increase that?

Yes. Oh my god. Think. Yeah. And then you would

say more view. But Yeah.

And we said 14 as soon as the excise tax expires. Because in total, you're gonna hit with 14% with the excise tax. Yes. Got it. But I guess similar question is how we maxed out on the new UT. Like, are we already charging the maximum rate? Was this a imagine that was passed in the past, and it's is there a possibility there?

Don't believe that there's a range in the UT, but we can we can absolutely look into that. I I don't know for sure. I I don't see it.

I don't think so.

Yeah. I I don't think I think it was a specific. Okay.

Yeah. I'm just curious.

What does when does it sunset?

Yeah.

It was not too long ago that it was reached. The TOT? Am I

The UU.

The Yeah.

I don't know. I forget.

I feel like it happened in 2019. Don't know. Never mind. I'm not gonna say that on record because I You are. Yeah. I don't

know, but I I forget.

Because because, you know, one of the first things that we're part of that is more important

in this situation. Maximize our revenue?

Yeah. What revenue options are there? If we have it, we'll remove any of our our taxes. I'm seeing business tax up there. Like, was that touched in the nineteen eighties, or was that touched recently? Right? Like

Business taxes have not been touched for a while.

That's a good one to look at, actually. I know it's

yeah. Where did the prices stop?

You know, the the, you know, I I have been you know, it has been explained to me that, you know, there are, you know, lots of in in all the different departments, there are lots of different ways to increase revenue streams and, you know, to, you know, generate more revenue. Right? And so I I guess the question I wanted to ask is, is there a process or, you know, does a process exist? Or does a is there a platform that that we can go to to look at, you know, all of the creative and innovative ideas that staff may have Mhmm. To We can share

You know, because I've

heard the increased business tag.

I mean, I've heard all the

you know, we can increase, you know, the price

for this service or increase the price for that service.

I mean, those are just sort of things that you know?

Yeah. So there was a status survey. I think we could look through that and then pull together, like, kind of bulleted list of the different ideas that came Yeah. Came out of the staff survey.

And and and I don't know if this I mean, I don't wanna overtax you guys, but, I mean, is it is you know, also, like, let's say, like, business tax. Let's take the business tax, for example. And and comparatively to other cities around, like, what, you know, what is the business tax? Like, you know, what, you know, sort of you know, you know, I still wanna just willy nilly start raising and start raising taxes everywhere. But, you know, we wanna do it methodically. We wanna do it, you know, just intentionally. And and and and, you know, I don't wanna prevent this from behavior. Yeah. Right? And so so, yeah, I guess that's what Yeah.

I think I can't yeah. That's that's a good way to think about it. Yeah. That's how we can bring it right jurisdictions. Don't I mean, we don't I don't know if that I don't know. Have you guys have you there done any analysis on business tech since you guys have been here?

I don't believe so, but we would I can check-in on Michael to confirm.

Request that for a future agenda item. So I I just I'm curious about when it was passed, what with room we have, and our surrounding Thirst Nation is doing it a little bit differently. So I I agree with the mayor. I don't wanna discourage this setting up here. But if we're criminally undercharging and we have an opportunity to also demonstrate to our labor partners, like, look. We also are looking at our new generation beyond just having to revisit these contracts.

Yeah. And I think, similarly, you know, what a lot of departments have asked to come up with, have to come up with additional revenue. Of course, we don't want to charge you. You know? Yeah. But they're gonna be on the fees and charges for services as well because that's that's what departments can do is say, well, we could theoretically charge a fee for this, or we could and so that's something else we could Yeah. You know, review. Yeah. Okay. That's

Anything else? Questions? First of all, I I just wanna say thank you very much. I I know this was rather it's gonna give me a lot to in fact, I'm just gonna go home. And while I'm

eating dinner, I'm gonna be looking at food. Sure. But I appreciate this.

And I think I just do wanna recognize your two staff here as well as accounting department. We had 30 43 requests data requests from labor that some of them were unfilthy as this. So it's been a lot of reports for the last couple of weeks. So, yes, thank you.

Yeah. I just wanna say thank you too. This is such good information. I mean, the whole time they've been on this committee, we've been asking. I know it hasn't been, you know, like, decades, but we have been asking for, like, this kind of transparency and these type of numbers. There's always been a reasons as to, like, why we couldn't get them. So to see it, it's clearly with this level of transparency, it is fantastic. So I just wanna say thank you to the entire team saying that this is not easy work to pull a number aside for us and especially for such a large organization. But what it also says is we do have the right accounting and budget principles in place to be able to pull this data because there's other agencies who can't. So, you know, I do I know that we have work to do, but it's not like the house is burned down.

And we you know, there's a collapse of our financial discipline. It's just we need to tighten a few things up to make sure that the financial prosperity of this city is is is no longer at risk. Mhmm. But thank you guys for doing this.

Got a good team. Yes. It is a great team, I know. A lot of work. Yeah. Stay motivated. Thanks, Christy, for always getting us organized. Oh, yes. And we're seeing all of this. Yeah. All of this is a lot of printing today. It's helpful. Really? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Good. Thank you. Get an incurred copy. It's nice to hold. Mhmm.

And you'll get these documents to the other members?

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I'll I'll the first one, make sure you have that. I'll I'll send it to everyone and say that they're welcome to walk

Oh, yeah. That's right.

But they're welcome to approach walking if they wanna do a discussion or I have clinical efforts. And any of us have a unique

Yeah. You did email to everybody. Guess.

But we could do that again and add some other I think it more reports than that as well. Yeah. We'll do that.

Great. Okay. Okay.

Thank you very much.

Meeting with Sarah.