City Council - Regular Meeting

Testing, testing. Welcome to the City of Fresno Second Budget Meeting for 2026. We are happy to have you. Hehehehe.

so so . . you so so you Thank you. you you Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. you Thank you. Thank you. . . . . you you you Thank you. Thank you. you so so so so Bye. Thank you. Thank you. So, Cheers.

All right, good morning everyone. Gonna get our second day of budget hearings started here for the 2026, 2027 fiscal year. Let's go ahead and begin with a roll call.

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

Present.

Council Member Richardson. Here. Council President Esparza.

Present.

Six members being present, we have a quorum.

All right. Council Vice President, will you please lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance?

Ready? Salute.

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

All right, I'll entertain a motion for approval of today's agenda. First, second, and third by Council Member Arias, Vice President, and Richardson. Is there any opposition to approval of the agenda? seeing none passes six to zero all right uh today we've got six departments on deck capital projects economic development planning and development public works personnel and the fresno animal center so we're going to do as we did yesterday We're going to take kind of a general public comment period where people have three minutes each. And going forward for the duration of the day, folks will have additional opportunity to comment on each department for one minute, some additional opportunity there. But we will go ahead and do the main public comment up front here. And so we'll open that up at this time. I've got a few cards here. So the first card I have is for Natalie Escobedo-Garcia. Come on down. We're going to this order here. There is no main presentation today. We're just doing presentations on each department. Oh, you want to just do the one minute after a certain department?

Okay.

Oh, that's fine. Okay.

Yeah.

Yes, you did. You did, actually. All right, I'll call that during the Public Works Department later on in the day. Next card I have is for Kyle Kirkland. Again, right now you have three minutes. Later on for each department, you'll have one minute.

All right.

Thank you. Thank you, council members. I'm going to speak a little bit later on the Animal Center, but I just want to introduce myself, Kyle Kirkland, K-Y-L-E-K-I-R-K-L-A-N-D. I'm president of Kirkland Foundation, and I'm here to talk on the Animal Center budget. I'd like to see the presentation before I pass judgment on that, but I'd like everyone here to have a little bit of a frame of reference. WHEN I READ THROUGH THE BUDGET, AND AGAIN, THIS IS MY CURSORY REVIEW OF IT, NOT HAVING CONSULTED WITH CITY OFFICIALS, BUT WHAT I SAW WAS A $9.6 MILLION BUDGET, ROUGHLY 7.7 OF WHICH WAS EARMARKED FOR SALARIES AND WAGES, AND ABOUT 380,000 ALLOCATED TO VETERINARY EXPENSES. saw that and talked with some other people in the animal rescue community, there was a candidly a bit of agitation about that because a lot of us, there are a lot of rescues that are out there working actively trying to solve this animal problem. And this is no disrespect to the good work that's done at Animal Center. I would encourage the city council to understand that there are rescues out there that are doing a lot of this work and taking animals that are being turned away from the animal center and actually treating them at a significantly more cost-effective rate. And I would encourage the council to think about perhaps offering those folks some funding. And I'll give you an example. In 2025, my foundation spent $900,000 to deliver value on animals. Of that, about $260,000 was on personnel. I'm one of the few rescues that have paid personnel, part-timers, and we use volunteers. We also spent about $500,000 on veterinary services compared to the $380,000 that's earmarked. an animal center. And I appreciate that in an animal center they have their own veterinarian. The point is we helped 4,000 to 5,000 animals last year on that budget. And I think if you look at the cost effectiveness of that, you need to consider that in your thinking about how to deliver services to the community. Thank you.

All right, thank you. So actually, looking at all the cards I have, they are for specific departments. So I won't read the cards off. I'll save them for when we get to those departments.

Council President, I do have just a question. What is it? In terms of protocol, I know the Animal Center is on the agenda today, and there's a lot of outside experts around animal control. Would it be appropriate for us to ask questions of some of those experts in the audience, or are we limited to just asking questions of our staff?

I think when we do that department, it's never stopped us before in terms of being able to kind of engage with some of those experts that have happened to be here. Thank you. So I think it's an issue. So at this time, you know, I'll read these cards off later, but anyone is welcome to comment generally on the budget or if you would want to comment on a specific department right now. You will get the additional opportunity later to comment for a minute under each department, but right now is the general public comments with a three minute limit, if anybody would like to speak. All right, going once, going twice. All right, that was easy. All right, well, we're going to go ahead and close public comment then and move on to our department presentations. We have this morning capital projects. That's first on the list. We'll buy you up. Thank you.

morning we have to do this in three minutes uh... good morning council president and uh... council vice president and members of the council uh... my name is dennis and beyond that record for capital projects department today i'm in front of you to present uh... the fiscal year twenty seven budget for the capital projects uh... department also called cpd Before I go into the presentation, I would like to take a moment and thank my staff, my assistant directors, and budget person who worked on this tirelessly for the last four months to get this to this place. And they're all here. In addition, I want to thank my staff for asking only the essential things during this budget process. So everything that we ask here is absolutely needed, and that's why it's here, and it's not much. With that, let me go into the presentation. As you know, the Capital Projects Department, CPD, was established in fiscal year 2024. CPD is still a young department with only about three years of history. CPD's mission is to help all other departments deliver their capital projects. In other words, all the other departments within the city are our clients. Once the scope and funding is identified by the client department, we enter into this thing called charter, and we enter into an agreement on what the scope is, what the funding is, and we give them what the estimated cost is, and the client department tells us if there are any deadlines associated with the funding, et cetera. Once we have that, we take that project. CPD takes over that capital project. We do the design. Sometimes we do it internally. Sometimes we do consultants to do the design. And after that, we go into the right-of-way phase. Sometimes we may need to acquire right-of-way or access rights. If not, we move on to the construction phase where we advertise and award the project. And we manage the construction contract throughout the project, including paying invoices and things like that and claims, et cetera. And at the end, we close out the project. This year, we have paid over 2,000 invoices for over $153 million. So we are a project delivery machine. We keep pushing all these projects out. The budget for the capital projects are actually residing in the client departments, with one exception. I'll get to that in a second. So when you are delivering a capital project, that budget resides with the client department, except the IIGC, which is the Infill Infrastructure Grant Catalytic. I'm not sure why we named it that way, but that's the name. And then also the GO-Biz project. These are the two funds that are managed by the mayor's office, and we act like the client department for them. So those two funding sources are within our budget, our capital projects budget. As you can see from the screen, the change in the overall budget for the department is very minimal. Fiscal year 26, amended budget was $140 million total, the bottom line number. And in the proposed fiscal year, the 27 budget is about $139.7 million, a reduction in only about $300,000, which is 0.2%, which is almost nothing. The personal budget dropped from $8.2 million to $6.8 million, about. A reduction of $1.4 million, or about 17%. This is the budget we use to pay for the staff, salaries, and other costs that are not directly attached to a project, a capital project. A drop in the personal budget does not mean we are paying less for the staff or we have fewer staff. You will see that later. But we are able to shift some of the fund budget that we deserved for cost that cannot be charged to capital projects. We were able to identify and shift that cost to the project itself. So that project, the cost actually shifted to the capital project. That's why you see a reduction here. It's not truly a cost savings. It's a shifting of the budget from this budget to the client department's budget. Non-personal budget increased from about $127.8 million to $129.7 million, an increase of about $1.9 million or about 1.5%. This is the budget we use to pay for the capital projects related to the IIGC and the GO-Biz I already mentioned. that we act like the client department. That's one of those. And in addition to that, the non-personal costs related to the department, such as the rent of the buildings, office supplies, security services, clothing, et cetera, all of that is paid under this budget. But most of that is capital cost. Our inter-department budget dropped from $4 million to $3.1 million, a reduction of about $900,000, or 22%. These are the internal services funds, or ISF, we pay to the other service departments, such as ISD, PSD, GSD, and all those service departments. In this slide, you will see the positions. As you will notice, there is no change in the number of positions between the amended fiscal year 26 budget and the proposed fiscal year 27 budget. The department has currently 140 approved positions, and we are maintaining the same into the upcoming fiscal year. The department is made up of five divisions you can see on the slide. On the left side, administration or admin division is comprised of budget, compliance, real estate, personnel, and project management. Basically, they provide the admin support for the rest of the department, the other four divisions that are listed below. Design Services Division houses mostly design engineers. They primarily work on public works projects. However, once in a while they do get other projects from other clients. If that can be designed internally, this is the division that takes over that. Transportation Project Management, or TPM, works on bigger or specialty projects that are designed by consultants, but the project management is managed by this division. Then we have the utilities and on-site project management division that manages utility projects and parks projects and vertical constructions like garage and fire stations. For the most part, these projects are designed by outside consultants. In order to make the CPD client focused, we are in the process of combining design services and TPM, because they both serve, primarily they serve the public works department. So we are merging them into one division, and we will call it the design services. So their primary client will be public works. And then we are splitting the utilities and on-site project management into two, to keep it, again, client-focused. The utilities division will be focused mostly on the DPU, because that's our second-largest client, and the on-site will take care of all the other clients, including the Parks Department. The fifth division, which actually is fourth on the slide, is construction management. Once the project moves from design into construction, irrespective of who the client is, this division takes over the construction, managing the contractor, paying the invoices and the claims and all that is handled by this division. It should be noted sometimes this construction management team will work on projects that are designed by other clients and we will take over only the construction portion of the project. So there are some projects that will come directly from the client straight to the construction management. Currently, the department has 21 vacant positions. That's about 15% of our total position 140 position around this time last year we had 23 positions so we had made some progress but not a whole bunch last year you heard from our assistant city manager at the time who was the interim director he was expressing that the challenges that we have in getting engineers on board and that still continues to be the challenge of the 21 vacant positions 13 are 13 are engineering positions. We hired some engineers and we lost some engineers, so we are almost at the same place where we started. In this slide you'll see the ask, the new, what are we asking for new that was not in the prior budget. The first thing is the CPD is asking to replace 10 vehicles that are used by our inspectors while inspecting projects. These vehicles we want to replace are 18 to 23 year old. And these vehicles have mileage between 108,000 to 213,000. These are old vehicles. So we are asking these 10 vehicles be replaced. and that's what is in the proposed budget. The new vehicles that we are getting will be leased to purchase. In other words, we pay the lease payments, and at the end, we will own the vehicle. We are, of the 10 vehicles, we are asking for three Mavericks and seven Silverados. But what you see in this budget is not the entire cost of the vehicle. It is only the, once we buy the vehicle, we have to do a one-time upgrade to put all those flashing lights and things like that. So what you're seeing here is only the one-time upgrade and the lease payments that we expect in fiscal year 27. The second request you see on the screen is the technology needs. So when it comes to computer replacement, ISD, Information Service Department, in their budget, they have the replacement plan for all our computers as needed. They have a replacement schedule. They go by that. But what we get from them is a standard computer that anybody gets. But we have some special needs, especially for the design engineers. We need high-powered computers so that can run software like AutoCAD and things like that. So we have a need of about 11, I believe. Yes, 11. No. No. Eight, sorry. We have a need of eight of those computers. So what we are asking here is only the delta between the standard computer and the high-powered computer. So we will be providing this money to the ISD and ask them to buy those high-powered computers rather than the standard ones for those staff. In addition, we are asking for 11 additional AutoCAD licenses at a cost of $41,800 per year. I already mentioned most of the capital projects we deliver are in the client department's budget. The exemptions are the projects or grants administered by the mayor's office. We house those grants and projects in our budget. Currently, there are only two types of grants under this category, which you see on this slide. The first one is the GO-Biz grant. For fiscal year 27, we anticipate receiving a $100 million grant. This will be the last piece of the grant that the city will be getting or anticipate getting. And that's what you see on line number one. In current fiscal year, we received $100 million. And of that, $19.4 million is budgeted. in fiscal year 27. And then the first year, fiscal year 25, we received a $50 million grant, of which about $4.9 million is budgeted in fiscal year 27, which is in line three of your slide. Like I said, the other grant is the IIGC, or Infill Infrastructure Grant Catalytic, and the total grant was about $43.7 million. Of that, we are budgeting $5.4 million in fiscal year 27. That's the line four that you see on that slide. So that's on the funding level, but here you see some of the projects that are being funded with those funds. In this slide, you'll see the first one you see here is a placeholder project because we still don't have that $100 million. So we are putting that $100 million and some leftover money from prior years, so about $118 million as a whole placeholder project in the budget. Once the grant becomes available, a set of projects will be brought to the council. The second one is the water and sewer project that is happening right now in downtown area. You may have noticed that. The third one is to reestablish the Broadway connection between Tuolumne Street and Merced Street. And then the fourth one is the parking structure. at the northwest corner of Mono and H Street. You authorized the construction phase back on May 21st council meeting, so we will start the constructions shortly on that project. The last one is the North Fulton Garage that is already under construction, and the project that we are really proud of that is going on schedule, and we expect to deliver that on time. You'll hear a little bit about that later on in the presentation. Currently, CPD is managing 86 projects that are already under construction. So it goes through the project development right away and then construction phase. 86 projects are already in construction. Of those 86 projects, we anticipate to complete 72 projects in the fiscal year 27. That's a lot of projects. That's almost three to... A project is closed almost every three to four days. We close a project. So we do a lot of projects. Let me quickly run through some of the key projects. I don't want to go through all the 72, of course. I briefly talk about some of the projects. This one that you're seeing on the screen, this project will replace about 16,000 feet of water mains and about 3,300 feet of sewer mains in the downtown area. In addition, it will also rehabilitate about 9,700 feet of sewer main. We started construction of this project in March of this year, and we expect to complete this project in December of this fiscal year. So this project, we briefly talked about it. This project will provide over 600 parking spaces, the one in North Fulton. This construction started in December of last year, and we estimate to complete this project in February of 2027. This is the 911 emergency call center. This call center is a 12,000 square foot facility designed to accomplish 10-year forecasted staffing levels with spaces for 37 phone operators, 12 radio dispatch operators, eight supervisors, and two managers. Construction started in July of last year. We expect to complete the construction by December, and then we will need some time to switch over or to cut over from the existing call center to this call center. So that will happen. We already started coordinating that with the ISD department and then also our police department. But this will take some time even after the construction to cut over into this new facility. The next one is the Fresno Sports Complex, Southeast Fresno Sports Complex located on South Peach Avenue. Phase one includes synthetic and natural turf sports. sports fields, accessible pathways, shaded play areas, and an outdoor calisthenics fitness zone. And now I know what it is because I looked that up last night. We started the construction in August of 2024. We expect to complete the construction in December of this year. This one is the MLK Park or Les Kimber Park, located near MLK and Church Avenue. This is a 10-acre park. with a themed play structure. The project includes swings, percussion, musical panels, spinning balls, which is a lot of fun, picnic tables, barbecue grills, and other facilities. This project was started back in March of 2024, and we should complete this project around November of this year. Last but not least is the Fire Station 12, located in West Ashland Avenue. This four bay station will be capable of housing a crew of 11, accommodating one engine, one truck, and one squad. We started construction in May of 2025, and we expect to complete this month. Oh, next month, sorry, next month. Moving along. Those are some of the key projects. At any given time, CPD manages over 270 projects from various client departments. As you can see here, Public Works is our biggest client, and that's why we were combining the two divisions into one division to serve primarily the Public Works department. Currently, we have 108 projects out of the 270 projects from Public Works. The second biggest client is the public utilities. Currently 68 of the 270 projects are from DPU. And 54 projects are from Parks Department. Although we have fewer projects in other departments, they tend to be the key projects or priority projects that are coming from other departments. By the end of June this month, CPD would have awarded 60 projects this fiscal year for construction. In this slide, you will see those projects by client department. Again, you see DPU has the most project, and you will see Public Works as the next bigger portion of those 60 projects. The next slide is my favorite slide. That concludes my presentation. I would like to take any questions if you have.

All right, Council, I don't see anyone punched up.

Council Member Vang, followed by Council Member Barrios. Thank you very much, Council President. Good morning, Director, and thank you, staff, for being here today. preparing this lengthy report and you should now size into a couple of pages. I want to thank you for that. Director, you mentioned about keeping only the essentials in your department and I want to thank you for that. Your fiscal year 2020 summer proposed budget is $139,723,400. your amended fiscal 2026 budget was 140 million, 21,900. And as you noted, it was a reduction of 0.2%. You're able to do that with the city asking every department to cut 6.1, but you're able to cut only 0.2%. Yet at the same time, you're able to keep 140 of your staff. And so that is, I guess I would call it accounting gymnastics for you to be able to do that, to just cut 0.2% of your budget, but able to retain 140 of your staff. So that's kudos to your department. I'm looking for every nook and cranny to cut as much as you can. So thank you very much. I wanted to also just touch base on slide 10. I don't know if the public caught your comment, but you said this is only for phase one, and that is correct with regards to the 49-acre park, Southeast Reservoir Sports Complex on Peach Avenue. The amenities that is going in there, yes, the outdoor calisthenics, fitness zone, yes, I did look that up as well, and I know that people, and including myself, will need that outdoor calisthenics fence zone in that park. But I just wanted to echo what you said. The construction completion of phase one, phase one of three phase is scheduled for December 26th. And again, you did state that in your presentation to the council. So I want to thank you for that. And director, there was a project in district five That was due to complete in February of this year, which is on Butler near Orange Avenue. And there was one business that was impacted by that project, the little restaurant El Piron. It was scheduled to be completed by February of this year, but it was extended until March. And according to the notes that I have, the established restaurant did not receive any notifications, nor my understanding is correct that if there is a change in order for additional days for a project to be completed, it would come up to council for an extension for an amendment of the completion of that project. Walk me through to see if that is the correct or the correct timeline that I have with regards to this particular project on Butler Avenue around Orange Avenue.

Council Member, what kind of project was it? Was it a road project? It was a road project. A road project.

I'm sorry. Yes, it was a road project. Yes, thank you.

Council Member, I'm looking for that project. I couldn't quickly get to that. I do not have the information that you're asking currently with me.

That's fine. I think this is just a concern brought to my attention by the established business there, and they just wanted to know. WHAT IS THE PROCEDURE? IN THAT CASE, DIRECTOR, WHAT IS THE PROCEDURE IN TERMS OF NOTIFYING ESTABLISHED BUSINESS OR THE PROCEDURE WHEN IT COMES TO IN-HOUSE CITY STAFF AND THOSE PERFORMED BY THIRD-PARTY CONTRACTORS? SO IF THERE'S GOING TO BE A DELAY IN A PROJECT, WHAT IS THE PROCEDURE AND SPECIFICALLY WITH REGARDS TO THE IMPACTED BUSINESS?

So we do have a unit within CPD which deals with all the right-of-way that I mentioned. It is within the admin division. So they are the one who will be contacting, doing the appraisal or any easement that we need with the businesses. They are the one who will be dealing with that. And it is strictly guided by federal and state legislation on the protocol on how we contact them and when we contact them and all that. So we will be following that protocol with that business.

And in the future, I know that my office will work closely with your department to ensure that if there is an extension of a project that impacts small businesses, and I know that every dollar counts for these small businesses, we'll make sure to be in contact with your office. And you mentioned a little about the possibility of rearranging the departments within this capital projects department. perhaps in consolidating one or two sub-departments together and then separate the utilities department and on-site project management. Is there any reason as to why the change now?

Yes. Like I mentioned, we are trying to be more client-focused. So in the future, the design services will be the primary contact for Public Works. So if Public Works has any issue, that's the only division that they need to contact, and they'll take it from there. Same thing with the, and Public Works is our biggest client with the number of projects. And then the second biggest client is public utilities. So we wanted to have a division that's focused on public utilities. That's why we took the on-site and public utilities division and split that into two. We have now focus for public utilities.

And thank you for the answer, Director. And I'm looking forward down the future, we're dealing with fiscal year 2027's budget, but the arranging of your departments, creating two separate sub-departments within utilities and on-site separating those, and then combining design and transportation, is that going to impact any Personnel right now you have 140 if that changes takes place in the foreseeable following year will that impact? The number of personnel you have or they're just going to be rearranged?

No, it'll be still the same. The number of divisions before and after will be the same because we are combining two divisions into one and we are splitting one into two. So it's a net zero game. It's the same number of people. It's the same number of divisions before and after. It's rearranging the people, staffing to focus on the client's needs. Okay.

Thank you very much, Director. That's all I have. Council President, thank you.

All right, Council Member Arias, followed by Council Member Perea.

Director, I want to focus on a couple of your requests for resources. And this may be to the city manager. Is there a standard that we've adopted around vehicle replacement? The 100,000 mile threshold has been referenced. You all referenced it for justification for police. I understand the need to have good working cars for emergency vehicles. But now the reference is a vehicle is at 108,000 miles and now you need it replaced. My vehicle has 220,000 miles as much as my kids would like me to replace it, it's still in good working condition. Typically vehicles that are owned by the public agencies get maintenance routinely and are in good working condition. Is there a threshold that we've established that 100,000 is the disposal time?

Yes, there is. And that has to do with the analysis of the cost of maintaining and repairing versus the lease payment of new vehicles. And I think the fleet staff has analyzed and the general principle is the $100,000. is the 100,000 miles 10 years. That becomes the diminishing returns of it costing too much for O&M costs on a monthly basis versus a lease payment of a new vehicle.

So the 100,000 mark is standard across the city. Every vehicle has been replaced at that threshold?

I believe it is, is that accurate, Brian? Yes, that is the standard. I'm going to tell you, like they watch, they monitor the mileage and the age and the fleet division, when they're building their budgets, they have those conversations with the departments. Like I said, they look at what we're spending on maintenance on those particular vehicles, like every vehicle is monitored.

Can somebody walk me through the formula? I'd like to understand. what is the amount of a lease payment? What is the amount of maintenance for the vehicle? And how does that differ for electric vehicles? I'm assuming you don't have the same 100,000 mile threshold for electric vehicles, correct?

Brian, you're here, so can you handle it without fleet? I know your hearing was yesterday.

You can just work me through the basic math. Like, how much is the lease payment on a new vehicle? How much do you anticipate spending on an oil change or maintenance at 100,000 miles? And why would that lease payment be cheaper?

So give me one second.

Because you also have the cost of changing the equipment on a new vehicle, all the lights, gadgets, all that kind of stuff. The insurance on a new vehicle is going to be probably higher than a used vehicle. So there's other costs associated to going new versus just maintaining a vehicle at 100,000 miles.

So these are great questions, Councilmember. Brian Barr, Director of General Services. First of all, I do want to clarify that there are some vehicles in our fleet that are replaced at different intervals, specifically like street sweepers. Those are five years or 10,000 hours of operation. That makes sense. So it's a different measure. And then police motorcycles are five years, 50,000 miles. Everything else is, for the most part, 10 years, 100,000 miles. Now we have... 35 years of data to rely on to determine what point is at the optimum moment to replace a vehicle before it becomes too expensive to maintain and repair. For instance, we know at about 115, 120,000 that a Ford pickup, whether it be a F-150 or F-350, 450, the transmission's gonna die. And that's a pretty significant replacement cost. So when you think about not only the increased maintenance but the repair cost, $150,000, $200,000, we're looking at a new engine, you look at all that, it exceeds what it would cost to buy a new vehicle. And for that reason, we recommend replacement at 10 years or 100,000 miles. There are plenty of vehicles out there that we have that exceed 100,000 miles, only because we don't have the money to replace them. So we drive them into the ground until they cannot be driven anymore.

So why not then do that with other vehicles, drive them to the ground? Since money is tight across all departments, why not take the same philosophy? Because these vehicles, I mean, Ford or Chevy, they don't die after 100,000 miles. You do got to replace alternators, things of that nature. But don't we have a full mechanic shop that can do that?

Yes, we do have a very well-equipped mechanic shop of almost 90 employees. These vehicles range in mileage from 108,000 to close to 200,000 miles.

I understand a 200,000-mile vehicle, right? I just had to do a bunch of repairs to my car. But even when you account for other repairs, the cost of a new monthly payment, the interest rates that we're paying, I'm assuming that we are also having to pay the market rate of a more expensive vehicle today versus given inflation five years ago. And what is an annual lease payment for a truck?

It's typically about 10% of the cost of the vehicle because of the way the financing is done. I do want to point out the fact that a new vehicle requires significantly less maintenance and repair for sure the first five years. And then from five to 10 years, it does gradually climb. Over that 10-year period, that is savings in comparison to keeping a vehicle longer to where you have to replace significant components on that vehicle. That's very expensive to do, requires a lot of labor, and the parts are not getting cheaper. As the vehicle ages, the parts are harder to find, and therefore they're manufactured less, the prices go up. It is proven that over 10 years or 100,000 miles is more expensive to maintain the vehicle. I hate to say it, they're making vehicles like washing machines nowadays, they're meant to be replaced instead of impaired.

For sure, I would concur with that. Of our inventory of 3,500 vehicles I think you referenced. 31, 32 is around there. 33,000 vehicles that we have. How many of them are above 100,000 miles?

I don't have that information with you, but we are compiling that information as you asked in an RFI yesterday.

Thank you.

Council member? Yes, ma'am. I think Brian has explained, based on 35 years of fleet data, that is the recommendation from the professionals within our team is the 10 years, 100,000 miles. we can certainly provide, we are working on the data of all the vehicles and we can give you the details of the analysis. I mean, certainly it's not set in stone. I mean, if there is a desire to increase that, we actually have increased it. It used to be eight years, 80,000 miles, and then it got increased to 10 years, 100,000 miles, but that's certainly a conversation that we can have. We try and balance the wanting to make sure that we're being efficient with the vehicles and making sure that we are putting good use on them at the same time. if you are running them into the ground and they become unreliable and then we have staff that are stuck because their vehicles break down in the middle of the day. So, you know, that's sort of the balance of the evaluation. But I'd say it just that that is the professional staff's recommendation. It's not to say that it can't be changed. And we can certainly have further discussions about that if that's what you would like to do.

Thank you. Yeah, I want to see the inventory. I want to see what the scope of the current reality is on how many vehicles we have, how many of them are of what mileage and what age so that we get an idea of. It's like tree trimming, right? If you trim trees every 30 years, you're going to lose a whole bunch of trees. And we've gone the other way. So I think there's a fine spot in the middle that we can reach. But you didn't address my question on the electric vehicles. What is the standard for replacement of electric vehicles?

I don't think there's enough data out there to give you a good answer. We haven't had electric vehicles.

What do we do now? What's our practice now?

We haven't had to replace any electric vehicles yet because we haven't had them in the inventory long enough. I think the first electric vehicles we received were just after COVID, and I believe they belonged to the city attorney's office, code enforcement.

Would your inventory also include the electric vehicles and the age of those and mileage of those?

Yes, it would. And to specifically answer your question about how many vehicles we have, we have 3,192. Thank you.

So, Brian, we don't have enough data right now on electric vehicles to have, like, to develop a standard. I mean, I know that everybody knows that replacing batteries on electric vehicles are pretty expensive from what I understand. But other than that, we don't have sufficient data to come up with sort of a standard like we do with the regular gas-powered or diesel-powered.

Correct, correct. I mean, we can assume 10 years, 100,000, but that's an assumption. We just don't have the data based upon this technology.

Okay.

Yeah. Yeah, batteries are definitely a challenge, but it's far cheaper replacing the battery than buying a new car at $60,000. A battery now costs you $4,000 to replace.

I think one of the problems, Council Member, is originally, at least on the Public Works, Public Utilities, we went with the Ford Lightnings because that was what the product was, and then they stopped making them. And so now we've switched to Chevy. So whenever you have a manufacturer that stops making something, you know, then in the out years, it gets to be problematic to be able to repair. So we'll be watching it and see what our experiences with the electric vehicles.

Absolutely. And I wouldn't argue that we should be doing electric trucks. I think those are heavy duty use vehicles. But every other passenger vehicle we have in the inventory, I don't understand why we would need a gas vehicle for that. Especially if you're replacing them at 100,000 miles and it's extremely expensive to maintain, as you indicated. Those vehicles are being made to replace, not to maintain.

I'm sorry, you said you can't see why we are doing... We shouldn't or we should?

We should not.

We have to. Under the CARB mandate, we really don't have a choice. Brian can cover that more, but we really don't have a choice pursuant to the CARB regulations. We had to go into that business of electric trucks as well.

On the capital side of it, I know we've referenced city manager and director that We staffed up for the GO-Biz infrastructure projects with the expectation that at some point those projects would be complete and we would then be subsequently reducing staff positions because the funding that was funding those positions was the state infrastructure dollars. What is the anticipated timeline for the reduction of personnel in your department as these projects get offline or go online to completion?

So at this point, we are, like I said before, we are anticipating the next $100 million to come in in fiscal year 27. And we don't have a list of projects for that. And it is very hard for us to project when this funding will be depleted. But usually when one funding goes out, there is another funding that's come through. So at this point, we don't have a plan of attrition. But if that is the case, then we should, if we don't have another funding source, then we should come up with attrition plans.

Let me ask you this differently, City Manager. Yeah, I know what you're talking about. This upcoming fiscal year, do we anticipate any reduction positions, or is the money sufficient to get us through?

No, I think when we first created the department, just based on the money from the state, we thought that was basically like a seven, could be up to a seven to eight year plan. But that was also, we didn't fully take into consideration all of the work for DPU. I think you guys have seen that we are finally... starting to move on getting DPU projects through the process. Because as you know, we've had a number of very unfortunate breaks because the infrastructure is old and I say it all the time, we have to go in and do it on an emergency basis, which is three times as expensive. So we really have dialed up the replacement plan for the DPU project. So we are watching that. We do have, while this department is sort of a, it's not internal service, but it basically is fed by the other departments. So they, quote, don't have like the attrition exercise like the other departments do. But they do have vacancies because it's just difficult to hire those positions. So we do watch it closely to make sure that there is going to be sufficient revenue for to be able to cover the expenses, especially the employee services of this department. And I think what we've seen is I think we're going to see as the state money winds down, we're going to see the DPU money wind up. But unless there is a replacement source, for the state money, there is gonna be, we are gonna have to retreat positions down, but I don't think we're close to being there. You know, we haven't even gotten in the last 100 million. And depending, you know, this pot of money, we've had two really big projects, the two garages. So, the rest of the money has been the other type of infrastructure, which is they're not little, but they're not the huge bites of the apple like some of the garages are. So, we do watch that very closely, but I think originally we thought we were going to have a good seven years worth of work.

And to your point, there's so much aging infrastructure within the city of Fresno that is costing us three times more to fix after it breaks. And hence my opposition to SATA. I think we have plenty of need in the existing city and we can be busy for the next 10 years replacing all the existing sewer lines and wire lines within the city proper before going on the fringes further.

Well, council member, come on, you know I can't leave that out there, insinuating that we're going to use rate payer money to go and- That'll be a debate when rate payer- We're not going to pay rate, we're not pulling rate payer money from the inner city to go build new infrastructure in SEDA. That is just a false statement. So I need to make sure that that's clear on the record.

And we'll be watching very closely their rate proposals.

Yeah, the rate proposal will be for existing infrastructure.

If I can, City Manager, get back into the conversation of this budget. Walk me through, Director, the difference between rehabbing existing sewer lines and new sewer lines. You made a reference on page 7.

Yes.

That you did rehab on 9,700 linear feet. Yes. And then 33. 300 linear feet of sewer mains. What's the difference? In the world of sewer lines, what's the difference between a rehab and a replacement?

Yes, so the portion within the downtown area is replacement, but then if you, that's why I wanna bring the map here, so the yellow line that you see here, it'll be there in this, oops, one too far. The yellow line you see there on the screen is the rehab, so we are not replacing those pipes, we are doing, with the existing pipe, we are doing some rehabilitation work, so it's cheaper to.

But I'm trying to understand,

why the distinction when do you make the decision to rehab a line versus replace a line i do not have the specific information but as like any project that at some point that it is beyond repair so we are replacing the one you see in the downtown area and and also to increase the capacity go ahead hi paul amico director of public utilities we replace lines if we need additional capacity for that line uh or rehab if we can if it's more cost effective just to leave it alone and it doesn't need to be upsized

Got it. So in the world of downtown, if we're building it for future housing, we need additional capacity, that's where you would replace. Correct. For an inner city neighborhood, it would simply be a rehab versus a replacement because you're not looking to intensify the use?

Well, when we don't intensify use, so if it's just a standard residential neighborhood in District 3 or any of the other districts, There's a break point, sort of like the discussion you had on vehicles, where it's more cost effective to rehab it in place or if it's just so deteriorated, it may be more cost effective to replace it.

In the world of rehabbing, are you tearing up the street or is that done underground?

Most of it's done underground. You may need to dig up laterals or super laterals or certain things, but we try to minimize the amount of digging.

Do you have an idea of how much of our current infrastructure when it comes to sewer lines are rehab versus replacement? I don't have those details with me, but I'm glad to bring that tomorrow during our budget hearing. I would like to understand of the 100 miles of sewer lines, X percentage is rehab, X percentage is new. I'd like to have that understanding.

There's an analysis that we do from a budgeting perspective where we make some assumptions around it and then forecast those costs, and I can have those details tomorrow.

Same thing for water lines. I'd like to understand what the scope of the problem is when it comes to the aging water lines. Perfect. Definitely do that. Thank you. Thanks.

COUNCILMEMBER, IT'S ALSO THE MATERIAL THAT IT'S MADE OF, TOO.

PLAY VERSUS, YOU KNOW, PVC. WHICH IS PROBABLY NOT PVC, BUT SOMETHING SIMILAR. ON THE DIRECTOR, THE EMERGENCY CALL CENTER. YOU INDICATE 37 PHONE OPERATORS THE BUILDING IS BEING BUILT FOR. AND I DON'T RECALL THE DETAILS WHEN WE APPROVED THE PROJECT BUT HOW MANY CURRENT PHONE OPERATORS DO WE HAVE NOW AT THE CENTER THAT WE'RE CURRENTLY OPERATING? WHAT'S THE CAPACITY THERE AND HOW MUCH ADDITIONAL CAPACITY ARE WE BUILDING THIS NEW FACILITY?

I do not have that information for the existing call center. Did somebody know?

I don't know off the top of my head, but we can certainly get that for you unless the chief is listening and she can text me that information. Mayor, do you remember? We want to know how many dispatchers we currently have versus what we're projecting.

I'm just trying to understand how much additional capacity we're building in. Would this center last us 10 years, 15 years, or is it going to be maxed out on day one?

I'm going to tell you that... they've revamped the existing 911 center multiple times in order to increase the number of call taker positions. The new facility based on the size gives them the ability not only to start right off the bat with nearly double the size of the complaint takers and dispatchers, but then to have the room to be able to expand even beyond that. So in terms of how long that's going to take, I would definitely say it's going to be 25 plus years, depending on call volume. But I think this facility is large enough to accommodate us for the next three decades.

I'm assuming, City Manager, the police budget has proposed additional dispatch positions for the new center?

We have not, but we have added 18 dispatchers over the last four or five years, as well as supervisors. But that's going to be based on call volume, call answer times. When the call answer times start to get too much, that's brought to us, obviously, when we make a determination. but I do think it is wise for us to periodically add dispatchers for that purpose.

Thank you, Mayor. On the MLK Park, Director, that's been delayed on and off for a while now. What's the latest update on where that park is? Has your department completed the underground work?

So that delay is because of some series of unfortunate events, I would say. Originally, the delay was because the scope, the funding that we had was not sufficient for the scope we had. So we had to reduce the scope to match the funding that we had. Then what happened was then the subsequent delays were external. We were told at the time that PG&E would be undergrounding their facility along Church Avenue by the time we are ready. So we designed it in a way that we will tap the power from underground. Then we were told, no, they won't be undergrounding by the time, so we were asked, Okay, now you tap it from the pole. So we had to redesign that portion of the project. We had to reapply to PG&E, and then that's how we were proceeding. But then they came back and said, no, we expedited the project. We were able to put it underground. So now redesign... to go underground. Well, we already had the design for underground. But then the rules have changed by then. They said, no, because the stretch from where you tap to the park is so long, we need to add two more vaults on the way. So there was another change order to add vaults. So it is a series of... Events that are beyond our control so anyway What we think is that the project will be completed the construction will be completed by August, but then there is a 90-day plant or turf establishment period So we put in 90 days because we thought that's safe But eventually parks department can take a look at the turf and say well 90 days is not needed maybe 60 maybe 30 depending on how the Turf is establishing itself So it is somewhere between August and November that I would say.

And I'm sure you're aware of that people are using the park already even though it's still under construction.

I was there two weeks ago and I noticed some folks have used it.

Yeah, there's been a couple of fires set on the park, which have been my concern for several months now. that the lay of the park continues, and eventually somebody's gonna set the playground on fire because they're openly setting fires in the barbecue pit areas and the cement areas, which I've reported numerous times to the Parks Department. What's the plan for security on that facility since it's still under construction?

So at this point, it is still, the contractor owns the facility because he's still there, so he's responsible, the contractor's responsible for the fence and all the security associated with that.

So any fire damage that occurs during the construction phase the contractor's on the hook for? Exactly. Okay, my last question on your department director is specifically around, are you guys involved in any way on the underground work on Fresno Street that High Speed Rail is undertaking?

Not CPD.

Who is involved in the... That's the Public Works Department.

Okay, so I'll wait for my questions then. Thank you, Director, for your time. Thank you.

Council Member, we have 114 dispatcher positions authorized.

Council Member Perea.

Good morning, Director. Just wanted clarity on the $100 million that we're anticipating. Did we say we stacked up? anticipating we are going to receive that or we will after the fact if we do receive the 100 million?

No, we are not staffing up or down. We are only putting that project as a placeholder project like I explained. We have not assigned any staff for that. Obviously there's no project so we cannot assign staff for that.

So if we get the $100 million, you're saying we still will not staff up for that, to accommodate that?

So I don't think we will staff up. We have to absorb it. So the way we manage the workload is sometimes we do the designs in-house, sometimes we do consultants. And that's where the managing part comes in. So if we have the staff internally that's available to do the work, then we will do the work internally. But if the work is coming in that's beyond our capacity or bandwidth, then we would hire consultants to do the work. So that's the way we manage the workload.

Okay. And I have to give kudos to you and your team because you guys are taking on so much work. I guess my only concern is that I'm afraid of staff fatigue at some point. I know it is increasingly harder to find good qualified engineers. both in the government side and the private sector side. So I'm just wondering, how do we continue to perform at the same level of service with the assumption that we will be taking on more workload this fiscal year while not staffing up at all? Does that mean we will be subbing out more of our work to the private sector? So first of all, let me- One more thought, one more thought. And then my last concern is how do we handle all of this with no impact to our current project schedules?

Right. Let me start from the first question. So the staff fatigue. First of all, I have to say that I have a very good set of staff, highly motivated, want to deliver the project. So I'm thankful for that. We are constantly shifting our priorities. For example, Pay More Now, it came up. And it's a huge project, and most of the work so far is designed internally. So we had to reassign some of the workload, either by pushing the project out or by consulting it out. So that's how we are managing it. So far, I'm very appreciative of our staff that were making these changes quickly and adapting to that. I forgot your last question.

I guess it's more of a statement. My concern is we are putting a lot on you and your staff, and there's been talks about not increasing staffing internally. So it sounds like there is potential to increase what we're subbing out to the private sector.

So another point I want to make is, like I said, there's a lot of engineering positions that are vacant, and we are not keeping that intentionally vacant. We want to fill that position, and we couldn't find good engineers. So even if we have work to do, hiring qualified engineers is a challenge, not necessarily having the positions.

Yeah, understood. And it's a challenge in the private sector right now as well. Are we, sorry if this was already answered, but are we still competitive in salary and compensation packages compared to the private sector?

I do not know the answer to the question, but I do know that the market for civil engineers are very competitive out there. Last month, we almost got an engineer, a licensed professional engineer. We made an offer, and then His current employer raised the salary, so we lost him. So it is very competitive out there, and it is hard to get a specially licensed professional engineer.

We've done a lot of work in that area, and unfortunately what happens is it's the domino effect of we can take it as far as we can go, and if we go any higher, then it would require us to raise everybody... above that, and so we've really tried to balance trying to be as competitive as possible without having the domino effect of the positions above it, which then costs more money and then creates issues with those positions. So it's one of those things that we deal with all the time. You know, you guys did give us some tools in the toolbox with regard to hiring and retention provisions that I don't think that we have used yet that if we need to, I'm perfectly fine and open to bringing the resolution that is necessary to council to establish it as hard to hire. And whenever the personnel and the department and other departments say that we're there, I've got no problem bringing that to you guys. I haven't had that yet, but we'll talk to staff. But it's very frustrating. I feel like it's actually gotten a little bit better because I think with some of our competing agencies, And, you know, kind of some of their work policies, it's gotten a little bit better, but it is certainly still really, really competitive out there. I'm sure you know that from your other job that it's a tight game out there.

A job I no longer have, just for the record. It's like parted ways last year. Okay, well, I forgot about that, city manager, and I would like the department to be open to utilizing those retention tools because as the workload continues to get more and more aggressive, I think we have to be equally as aggressive with our staffing capabilities just to make sure that your staff doesn't get overburdened. And I know we can only rely on the private sector so much, but I would like to see us retain as much of that work in-house as possible.

Thank you for your concerns, Councilmember. I appreciate that.

Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Council President.

All right. Any further, Councilmembers? All right, Director, last year you had, on the last budget, you had 32 vacancies. I think you said it earlier. Are we up or down this year?

I think last year, around this time, we had 23 vacancies, and this year we have 21, I think.

21, okay. That was 32 last year. So roughly the same. Roughly the same, yeah. Okay.

Maybe you're referring to by the time they put the budget together, I'm talking about today. As of today, we have 21 vacancies. Last year, as of around this time, we had 23. Okay. But what you may be seeing is the time they put the budget book together.

Sure, well, obviously a lot runs through you all, and I don't have too many additional questions. Just obviously we want to see those positions filled because you're executing very critical projects, right? There's the vessel for all the other departments and stuff that's come through them. So yeah, continue to keep it up and appreciate your time.

Thank you very much, Council President. Of course.

All right, so now that we've done the presentation on capital projects, again, we have concluded the general public comment on the budget, but if anybody would like to comment specifically on capital projects, you will have one minute if you would like to do additional public comment on this specific department. So I'll invite the public at this time, if there's anybody who would like to speak with respect to capital projects department. All right, seeing none, we'll close that public comment period. I noticed most of the cards I have here were for the Animal Center, so conferred with the city manager and is our department director here yet? They're here, okay. Yeah, so we're going to move the agenda around a little bit because I have so many cards for the Animal Center. We'll go ahead and take up that presentation. There's a lot of demands for that item, and we have the ability to do that item right now. So we'll go ahead and invite the director to come on down. While we're speaking and going out of order, city manager and council, and for the public as well, for folks who will be here tomorrow. So we're jumping a little bit out of order right now to accommodate all the speakers who are here right now. We're going to go a little bit out of order tomorrow as well. Probably going to take the agenda backwards, starting with FACS, DPU, and then going to the public safety departments. So just to give everyone a heads up as they plan for tomorrow as well, in the order that we go on.

Good morning, council members. Alma Torres, director for the Fresno Animal Center and here to present our request for 2027. So our, um, request for 2027 include 9.6 million of which 7,054,200 is allocated to personnel services. 1.6 million is allocated to non personnel services and 957,000 is allocated to, um, interdepartmental charges. Um, of this 9.6 million, 9,546,900 is supported by general fund dollars. We don't have any new staffing requests for fiscal year 2027. Our staffing remains the same. Our total position count is 78.4. That is a total of 79 positions with three positions that are funded at .8 permanent part-time positions. That's our custodians. And we have 30.4 positions allocated to animal care. We have 28 positions allocated to community resource and engagement. And we have 10 positions allocated in veterinary services. Excuse me? The 10 is for veterinary services. That includes two veterinarians. So for our operational impacts, we have the majority of our budget and our non-PERS is really dedicated to veterinary care. It includes $350,000 that are being proposed for additional support in spay-neuter services. Let's see, we are working with Fresno County on a collaboration so that we are able to also support our county citizens in providing spay-neuter services at our facility. The county of this $225,000 is slated for outside contracting, and then the county will be providing $125,000 revenue. We have $100,000 set aside for per diem veterinarians. If you recall, we did add the per diem veterinarians to our salary resolution. We have successfully secured a couple other veterinarians that are doing per diem work on a scheduled basis out at the animal center. But just as a reminder, we still only have one veterinarian that's full time dedicated to the care of all of the animals that come into the shelter. Let's see. Some of the major increases that you saw earlier in non-personnel are really driven by contractual obligations. As I stated, we didn't really have any additional costs for new staffing. As far as federal and state grants, we really do not have any more funds that we have received. We have basically neared the completion of all of our funds. However, there is still funding for spay and neuter services that has been happening through the governor's $50 million California for all animals that was awarded to the San Francisco SPCA and the San Francisco SPCA holds the budget for that and then they provide the spay-neuter services at our facility and actually at other places in Fresno County. That total grant was for about 3.2 million dollars and it is slated to end or at the conclusion of fiscal, I'm sorry, May 2027. for fiscal year 27, there's about a million dollars that have been allocated from that grant for Fresno County. I just wanted to touch base on this. If you recall, we came to council to accept it a couple years ago. We did go back to the funder and asked if we could change the scope of the grant. And we were approved to take that money and allocate it to a mobile spay-neuter unit. We anticipate that that will be coming in in July. So we're very close to having a mobile spay neuter unit that we can actually take out into the community. Some of the program highlights. So for calendar year 2025, our total animal intake was 9,854 live intakes of cats and dogs. 9,612 was cats and dogs, and then the other ones was rabbits, small rodents, poultry, livestock. In 2025, we also issued 2,563 dog licenses. We're really, really busy out there. Over the course of the year, we received over 30,000 calls, 30,000 requests for services, and that ranged from people wanting help to support keep their animal, or people wanting to surrender their animal, to animals injured out on the street, animals that may be found deceased, to dogs that are biting, neighbor disputes, noise disputes. So our team receives a lot of calls throughout the year. We have been able to really get our team in compliance. The majority of our animal resource officers are now certified animal control officers through the state of California's Cal Animals program. So that really puts some validity into the things that we're doing. We're enforcing our municipal code. We're still working through making sure that we're providing the resources for our community whenever there is a violation, including providing them with the ability to do low-cost spay-neuter if they have been sighted. We have issued nearly 900 violations for illegal breeding, animals at large, unlicensed pets. To date, as of the end of May, we have issued 50 illegal breeding violations. And here you can see some of the program projects and highlights. We continue to host San Francisco SPCA. We continue to host Animal Balance at our clinic to provide public spay-neuter. We have been partnering with the San Francisco SPCA to conduct vaccine clinics out in the community. Council member Perea has also provided for hosting some of these. Some of our challenges is really having the veterinary staff available that can actually make this happen. As we continue to grow our veterinary pool, we're able to provide more resources. And we've been attending a lot of events, making sure that our community knows about what we're doing and really that we exist and where they can come and reclaim their pets. Other highlights is that in 2025 we adopted 3,354 animals into new homes. We reunited 722 pets with their owners. That is significant and I'd like to really point that out because this means that a lot of our community despite the fact that we do not charge reclaim fees, despite the fact that we are really wanting these animals to go home, maybe just do not know that we exist, or there's other challenges that are keeping them from being able to reclaim their animals. The majority of the animals coming into the shelter are not feral, they're friendly animals, and they certainly did have an owner, so we really just need to communicate to our community that we exist and that this is a place where they can come and reclaim their animals. We also transferred 2,326 dogs and cats to adoption partners. Earlier, as I said, we continue to host sterilization clinics. We hosted 49. And overall, including animal center pets, we sterilized 6,854 animals. We hosted the three vaccine clinics and we provided a combined 3,355 rabies vaccines to 1,800 dogs and cats. And we're really focused on making sure that we continue to reunite pets with their owners and we continue to do free microchips. And we, in 2025, we implanted 6,591. So that continues to be a free service for our community to help us make sure that we reunite the pets with their owners. So I've reached the end of our presentation. There's really not much more in our budget that's changing. Before I'm done, I just wanted to say, for the employees that are listening, I just wanted to say thank you for your commitment. Thank you for continuing to show up every single day in this field that's definitely difficult, and for your passion and for everything that you do to make sure that the animals that come into our shelter reserve the dignity and care. that we can provide for them. Also, thank you to you for being able to sort of understand some of the constraints that are out in the shelter. We have to abide by the law. We have a lot of requirements when it comes to animals because in the state of California they're considered property. So those are important factors in many of the decisions that are made out there. And also thank you to the administration for you know their their patience and guidance and um really you know allowing us to uh be able to be proactive in supporting this community to the best of our ability i'm open for questions all right thanks director we have council vice president maxwell followed by councilman perea good morning director torres hi good morning thank you for that presentation and

Thank you for the work that you do, too. I know that your department is one of our newer departments, and you know there's some trial and error involved in figuring out what's the best way to get these animals the best care that they deserve. And your position is truly one I don't think that I could ever do. As somebody that's been a longtime cat person and recently become a dog owner, I'm too much of a baby to ever do what you do. It is really tough work, but it is very hopefully fulfilling, and I know that it's very meaningful to so many people that live across the city of Fresno that rely on these services. Most of my questions today were clarifying ones, things that you'd already touched upon, but just wanna make sure that my understanding is complete, Director. You mentioned that we're having some personnel increases, and that dollar amount was about 400,000?

We don't have any staffing increases. The amount that's actually being increased is really driven by contractual obligations. So that would be just negotiated MOUs, step advancements. If you recall, most of our staffing is fairly new, so they're still in the advancement process throughout the steps of the salary resolution.

So no new positions for this budget, just contractual obligations mostly to do with salary increases for existing personnel.

That's correct.

Okay. And we have 78.4 current personnel, three of which are not full-time. Correct. 34, you said animal care personnel.

No, so we have 25 animal care specialists in our animal care operations, and then we have three animal care specialists in our veterinary services.

Can you talk about what animal care specialists do, please?

Sure. So the animal care specialist is the person that initially receives the animal. They do all of their assessments. They do all of the vaccines. Every animal that enters a shelter upon intake gets assessed. They get their vaccines. They get a behavior determination. These are also the people that every day show up to make sure that the animals have food, that their kennels are clean, that they're clean throughout the day, that they get at least a little bit of walking time if possible. But they're also the people that communicate with our community because they are the people that are working with the animals on a daily basis. So whenever somebody comes into the shelter and they want to do a meet and greet, they are also the greeters. They're also the ones that bring this animal up to the front and they tell them, everything that we know about the animals. Sometimes that's not a lot because maybe we've just had it in for a few days. But our animal care specialist team is really doing a whole lot of the duties throughout the shelter, making sure that, you know, we're addressing all of the deliveries that were helping microchip animals. And unfortunately, they're also the team that is tasked with the hard duty of euthanizing. So we have this team that we ask, hey, care for this animal as well as you can. But when we are unable to find an outcome for it, please help it, put it to sleep.

And are they licensed in any way, director?

Yes, all of our animal care specialists are required as part of their job specification to receive euthanasia certification.

Okay, so that's the part that they're licensed for is the assisted?

Certified euthanasia training, yes.

Thank you. And then 28, community engagement. How does that differ from the animal service specialist?

That would be our front-facing team. So that would be the team that's actually out in the community, really dealing a lot with our public. So we have 11 animal resource officers or 11 animal control officers. These are the staff that enforce the municipal code. These are the staff that are out there issuing citations, that are issuing visiting homes when we have any reports of animals being abandoned. Other things that they do, they actually also provide first aid. So any animal that comes in that might be after hours, they will be the ones that provide first aid based on our policies and procedures and veterinary protocols. So most of our team has received training in medical. They have received training in They have received training in behavior. We really use them very much as generalists so that, you know, they're the eyes on our animals so that then we can escalate it to the veterinary division, that we can escalate it to the behavior manager. Other parts of the community engagement team also include our community coordinators and our animal programs coordinators. These are the teams that are actually representing us between our community and the various organizations that we work with, including our rescue partners. So much of the work that they do is they coordinate transfer, they answer questions, they go and they provide pictures and information for...

Rescue partner meaning...

So there's plenty of nonprofit organizations that also are in the animal welfare field that will pull animals from us.

Like these folks in the audience today, essentially? Or is that what you mean?

Yeah, there's a few.

OK. There's a few.

But we work with a lot of rescue partners, not just here in the city. We also transfer animals out of state. We transfer animals all the way to Canada. And we are willing to partner with anybody that needs animals in their community. There's animals that get flown out to other areas. So there's a network. We ourselves also transport over to the Bay Area We transport to Santa Barbara. Just, you know, that is one of the ways that we're able to make sure that animals have a chance at a live outcome.

Thank you. And then let's talk about veterinarians. We have 10 budgeted in this budget, but we have only one on staff.

So we have two budgeted veterinarians, but we have not been able to recruit a full-time veterinarian to support.

So veterinary services, that includes two vets and eight?

The additional staff, right now I believe we have four RVTs, and we also have- Can you tell me- I'm sorry. It's okay. Yes, I got into this language now, and I'm expecting everybody to know it.

You're part of a different world than me, director.

They're registered veterinary technicians. And there's four of those? Yes. So a registered veterinary technician is a nurse. So the veterinarian is the doctor and the RVT is the nurse. And then we have some animal care staff as well that support daily medications that we have. We have so many treatments for the animals that come in as, you know, just as a reminder, the majority of the animals that we intake immediately are sick or injured. So we provide medical for them, at least to the extent of our ability, to give them a chance. And there's, you know, tons of treatment. There's tons of animals that are coming in. We put animals in foster. And when they're sick or injured, they also come back for treatment.

So we have two vets, one in house one per diem.

So we have that correct. Okay. So currently we just have one permanent, permanent veterinarian on staff. We have several per diem veterinarians and we have two contracted veterinarians. So that's just a little bit nuanced. We have two contracted veterinarians.

What are those per diem folks? What category do they fall under when it comes to this page on positions?

None. They don't have a position. What are the 10 positions? I'm going to come out at a depth. What are the 10 positions that are listed under veterinary services? We have 10 positions proposed that hasn't changed from previous years, but what are the 10 positions?

So we have two veterinarians, one clinic manager, which is also required to be an RVT, Okay, four, register veterinary technicians. And then three.

Staff support.

Yeah, they're animal care specialists.

And where do you budget the per diem veterinarians? What part of your budget is that?

So last year we didn't have a budget for per diem veterinarians. What we did is we used salary savings. So the savings from the veterinarian.

Number two.

Yes. This year part of the budget includes $100,000 for per diem veterinarians.

On top of the second position?

That's correct.

And how much is each veterinary position funded at?

I would have to take a look at that detail, but I want to say that. including salaries and fringe, probably about 225. Can budget help me with that one?

Let's use that as a working number until we hear something more finalized, director. Okay. $350,000 for spay-neuter services in this budget. Yes.

For, yes.

Okay. And out of that 255, did you say going towards outside groups? Can you explain that model to me how that works?

Sure. So we have been contracting outside veterinarians. One of the organizations that we have been using is Animal Balance. Animal Balance typically will come in and do a weekend of spay and neuter services. We have also, with grant funds, been able to support some of our community organizations and spay-neuter services, but we don't have those appropriations any longer.

Thank you. We took in about 10,000 animals last year.

That's correct.

Do we have a heat map director of where most of these animals are coming from or getting picked up from or where the citations are taking place?

Yes, we do have that ability to do that now. A lot of it is in our southern parts of town. Southern and probably west.

Could you provide those documents to my office, please?

Sure. How would you... I mean, we can give you a heat map of all of the calls, or we can...

I'd like to have it maybe broken down calls. These folks that you have on the ground, your community engagement, where they're actually picking up strays from would be helpful. And then also where the citations are coming from.

OK.

Thank you, director. Appreciate it. Out of the 10,000 animals that we took in, what is the euthanization rate?

So overall, last year, we euthanized about 27% of the animals. Well, a significant portion of them do come in sick or injured, so we provide the ability for them to be fostered or adopted. We don't necessarily have the ability to nurse them all back to full health, so we have to make tough decisions. We have a lot of animals coming in. I can tell you that this weekend we held the California Adopt-a-Pet Day event, and we were able to get out the door... approximately 60 animals. That same day, June 6th, we got 68 in the door. So the number of animals coming in on a daily basis far surpasses the amount of animals that we can get into homes or that we can transfer out.

So we're taking in 10,000 animals a year. Let's say roughly a quarter is euthanized. What quarter of the remaining is sent out to community partners, whether that's local, out of state, out of country? What percentage is going towards adoptions? And then is there another category on top of that as well? I'm trying to figure out where all these animals funnel off to.

Sure. So, you know, and just to add a little bit more into, you know, our decision-making on euthanasia, we have to consider the quality of life for the animal in the shelter. Not every animal thrives in the shelter. Sometimes they get stressed. And every animal is different. Some of them will last a little longer, but our team evaluates on a daily basis to see how each animal is... conducting itself in the shelter, what it's doing to them. But I can tell you that I don't have the percentages, but in 2025, of the 9,612 animals that came in, 3,354 went to adoption, 722 returned to their owner, and 2,327 went to an adoption partner.

Thank you, that's helpful. City Manager, you recall the resolution that we passed in 2023 regarding euthanization. Can you give a reminder to myself what that entailed?

Are you talking about the intake? Yes. I think, well basically what that intake, what that did was at the time we were advised that we were borderline committing animal neglect by the volume of animals that we had in our center and our ability to care for them properly. And because we had so many animals coming in, it was recommended to us by the professionals who we consult with pretty regularly at UC Davis, and then I can't remember who the other group was, we needed to pause intake We needed to kind of get our ducks in a row, get control of the animals that we had. At that time, we did not have a veterinarian on staff. And so some of the condition of the animals was not good. So we did that. Obviously since then, we do have a veterinarian on staff and we have started back with what we call managed intake. And TJ can go a little bit more into that. But we do take animals into the shelter. We just don't do it in the way that we did previously where it was just sort of a free-for-all because otherwise, I think what Alma just said, we're going to be right back to where we are. We get 60 out, we get 68 in.

Yeah, I understand that. But I think when this was sold, to the public. It was sold as a temporary measure. Have any significant steps been taken for us to be able to repeal this?

So I would say we've instituted a managed intake. If we open the shelter. I'm going to tell you, we are not in a position to just open it up for anything and any animal to come in because we will absolutely be where we were previously. So I think where we are, I don't know, we can... Talk about can go back and look at the specific language. But I think with the managed intake, which, you know, certainly totally recognize that does not make everybody happy because that still that still has animals out. that are strays, but we just simply cannot take every single animal in. So I can, like I said, I think the managed intake is what is a little bit different.

But even with that managed intake, we're still euthanizing 27% because some of them are coming in sick and unwell. So how does that factor into this managed part of managed intake?

You want to cover that, Alma? Absolutely. So I think that the way that we can think about managed intake, it's just our ability to provide care. If you recall during the COVID days, not everybody that went to the hospital had that, you know, urgent scene immediately. because most of the immediate cases were prioritized for intake. Since January, we have not turned dogs away. What we have asked our community is that we offer them the opportunity to be able to house them and then schedule them in for an appointment. So that has really probably changed a little bit of the perception. At least I have not seen any complaints from your respective districts related to intake at least since then. So everybody that comes and visits our shelter and the animals have to meet city jurisdiction. We will turn away animals that are not found within the city and that is just, you know, we will refer them to the right area. We may also turn away cats. Cats are considered free roaming, so if a cat is not unwell or if it doesn't need our immediate care, we will turn them away. However, all of the animals that have been brought in, whenever people come in, we offer them the opportunity to help us be a part of the solution, to take them home. We provide vaccines. We provide everything that the animal might need. We also provide scheduled, low-cost, well, free for that one. is spay-neuter. And then in the meantime, we are trying to find an outcome before the animal comes in. So that has been implemented since January. So I would probably refer to it more as appointment-based intake. You did ask about this last budget year, and this is the solution that we have provided based on the things that you requested.

Thank you. Out of the $350,000 plus any free services that we offered for spay-neuter, do you know how many individual animals that we provided that service to last fiscal year, spay and neuter, and how much of it was paid for, how much of it was provided for free or at a reduced rate.

So one of the things that we found, unfortunately, is that if you recall, initially we were providing these services for free. When we provided the fees for free, 30% of the appointments did not show up. So we implemented a cost model. With that cost model, we have less than 3% of people not showing up for those appointments. So when this has really just, we open it up. If anybody actually does have a cost constraint and is unable to afford that, we will work with them. We will schedule them personally.

So the 350 is for subsidization?

The 350 is going to, no, the 350 is to pay outside veterinarians or outside services in order to be able to continue to provide this service.

That's only two-thirds of the funding set aside though, right? 350 for spay and neuter services, 255 goes to outside services.

350,000 will be used, 250, 225 will be used for outside contracted veterinarians through animal balance, through any other mechanism that we're able to find it. We're collaborating with the county on that. $100,000 is for per diem veterinarians. So that would be per diem veterinarians operating out of our facility or hopefully our mobile spay-neuter clinic. So this would be payment directly to veterinarians to operate, including the staff that it takes to support them. So it's not just the veterinarian going out there. It's also the staff, and it's the preparation, and it's all of the supplies.

How much do we charge for spay and neuter of each animal?

$35, and that includes microchip vaccines. It includes all of the services, e-caller out the door.

That's pretty reasonable. Out of the 78.4 employees, how many of them are City of Fresno employees?

All of them? Well, we don't have all of the positions filled. As you can see, we also have an attrition rate that we have to realize. Yeah, those are all city employees.

They're represented city employees?

Represented city, with the exception of a handful, Alma and a couple other people who may be unrepresented, but I would say 99% of them are represented employees. Yes.

Thank you. Thank you, Director. I got some questions for folks in the audience. I might call you up here momentarily, but thank you again for the presentation, for the work that you do.

Thank you.

I'd like to call up Kyle Kirkland if he is available to answer a couple questions. Good morning, Mr. Kirkland.

Good morning.

Thank you.

You and I have sparred words up here once or twice. You believe me when I pay you a compliment.

We have history, but I think we've moved past that.

When I pay you a compliment, you know I mean it then. When I say that your nonprofit does fantastic work in this community. I've seen that firsthand. I've seen firsthand accounts. I've heard testimonies of not just you, but folks across our district. You know Brandy obviously really well. She does some amazing work in my district and across the city of Fresno. Some people with some of the biggest hearts that you could ever hope to meet showing up at odd hours at your house to provide medications and support and services at no cost. I mean, really, I think a lot of people would consider this a miracle and really a blessing for our community. And so can you talk a little bit about some of the services? Tell us a little bit about who we have in the audience today and about some of the services that get offered by our partners.

Sure. And there are a number of really dedicated animal rescues throughout the community. And thank you for the kind words on that. We have had differences, but I think we found common ground through animals and other things, and other progress in Granite Park. Some of the rescues that I know are here today, Fresno TNR, which was sitting behind me, we've got Brandy, Cassie, Pat, Chris, others that represent them. They're entirely volunteer-based. We share offices with them over in northeast Fresno. I know that some of the dog people are watching, Mel's Mutts, Bandit's Buddies, others, Paw Squad, I think he's watching as well. There's just a lot of highly dedicated animal people out there doing work, trying to pick up the slack, where, frankly, we come up short as a city. It's a very overwhelming... problem that we have here in the Central Valley. So, Georgeann's absolutely correct. You can't possibly take them all in. I stood up before you guys when you were holding back on intake and said, I'm in agreement with you because your boat isn't big enough, right? So, one of the strongest things I know that we need to do in this community is more spay-neuter. And the problem is veterinary resources and making it as cost-effective as possible. The folks at Fresno TNR have done amazing work with cats. It's much harder to do. We did the county program for a couple of years. We've stepped back from that, trying to regroup on how we'd actually provide dog services if we were to do that. that's a much more difficult task. Bigger animal, tougher to get done in volume. So I think whatever the city can be doing in terms of thinking about spay-neuter and frankly stopping the leak in the ceiling, if you will, as opposed to getting a bigger bucket, that's where we should be putting attention. I also think that it's a mistake not to use the nonprofits that are in the community because as Director Torres pointed out, you have a lot of represented employees and they tend to be more expensive than the volunteers and others that we're using out there in the community. That's not to say that we're trying to misuse labor, it's just we got a lot of dedicated folks that can't provide value. There's also folks like, I think in your public comments, you have a letter from Dogwood Animal Rescue. They've offered to match spay and neuter over, I want to say, $200,000, up to $500,000. That's $300,000 of money that can make city funds go further. That's something you should definitely take advantage of. There are a lot of people focused on the Central Valley because we're ground zero for animal overpopulation. Governor Newsom wants a no-kill state. It's not happening without getting the Central Valley taken care of. So whatever we can be doing to do more spay-neuter, and it is incredibly overwhelming the number of calls that all of us get. I know Animal Center gets 30,000, if I heard that correctly. I know I get thousands of calls and texts all the time. A lot of people, when Animal Center has to direct them away or turn them away, they then come to... Mel's Mutts, Fresno TNR, us, and others, and then we have to take that on.

And you guys do 24-7.

Yeah, we don't close. I'm involved with a casino that has no locks on its doors, so people know that they can call me. But I think it's, you know, more of a, I think that Animal Center, frankly from us in the rescue community, and I'm not, others want to come up and speak, but I think understanding the stresses that we're going through too, and taking those animals that are turned away, it's incredibly emotionally draining. The, you know, compassion fatigue is a real thing. All of us react to the posts of the injured animals that are out there, that are at Animal Center with a deadline. So I think just trying to make better use of those community rescue resources is a good thing. I know we had a program early on in this process when Animal Center was staffing where we were allocating a certain amount of money to nonprofits. And, you know... $50,000 allocated to one of our nonprofits goes a lot further than maybe it does in, frankly, a city agency, just to be candid. So if you're really trying to solve the problem and make your dollars holler, consider using those resources and pushing some out there.

I appreciate that, thank you. We'll have another opportunity for you to come up here again shortly. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Kirkland. And then if she is willing to, would Ms. Sherman be willing to come up for just a quick moment as well? Good morning, ma'am.

Good morning, council members.

Hi, thank you for being here today. I just wanted to start off by saying I know this really has to be a passion for you to do what you do. I'll ask you in a second why you do it, but I know it could be frustrating. It could be thankless, especially when people around you don't understand why you do what you do and they don't see that passion and that love that you have. But I want to let you know that I've seen it firsthand. I know that you're a resident of the district, but really, I mean, you're serving families and animals from across the city of Fresno. I'm so happy that we were able to connect get you situated somewhere nice. And I want to continue to be the best partner I can to you. I just want to let you know that, that I do appreciate the work that you do, but what is it that drives you to do this? Cause it's, it's difficult work.

It is very difficult work. I just got off my 12-hour shift at the hospital, and I'm here. I'd rather be sleeping, but the cats need a voice. The reason I do it is because I've seen so much suffering, and I want it to end. I want it to stop, and I know the only way to do that is to do the spay and neuter. And with what we have going, I'm very impressed with it. I'm very impressed with the volunteers that show up every day. They do understand and see, and that's why they're driven by... what we've put out there for the community. Very proud of my group and what they do. At the end of the year, we're hoping that we'll get about 10,000 cats this year. We've done about 23 in the past three or four years that we've done that. Saying that, Dogwood Animal, Rescue group up in Santa Rosa has been the reason we started this and the reason we're able to do this. They'll probably spend about $800,000 this year on the cats that we get fixed, and that's about 10,000 cats. So seeing that that was not enough money allocated to spay and neuter, I felt we needed to step up and just try to get more money for that. People are desperate to fix our animals, and it's just not happening fast enough. We do about 200 a week.

Wow, that's a lot.

It is, on top of all the medical stuff that we end up doing.

Well, hey, thank you very much for what you do, Brandy. I really appreciate you calling our office anytime, but thank you and God bless you. Appreciate you. I know that over the last couple of years, I've tried to champion additional veterinary services full-time for the city of Fresno, and I know that that is a difficult position to fill. It is a very in-demand job, therefore it can be a very expensive job, and Sometimes we can't always offer the same amenities or attractions or benefits that other private businesses or other municipalities might be able to offer. I think that's why we've had a funded and unfilled position for the last several years. I've even tried coming up with innovative ideas like having a student loan forgiveness program for vets. Unfortunately, it just has not been successful. What I'd like to do today is to make a motion to move the second unfilled position veterinary funds of $225,000 towards grant programming funds for our nonprofits. And I still want us to be active about trying to find a veterinarian. And if we do find somebody who's interested, the administration would have my commitment to work to find the funds to bring that person on board. But until that time, I think that our nonprofits and our community are doing a fantastic job at what they do. I've always believed that there are some things government does well, there are some things that we cannot do alone. And I think that this is truly a ripe opportunity for partnership that is worth investing in. So that'll be my motion and seconded by Council Member Arias.

Question for you on that point. Would you also be willing as part of that motion to direct staff to look into having the matching from that Dogwood Foundation to reinforce that?

Yeah, I wasn't really clear on that. If that could be explained better to me, I might be acceptable. I didn't really understand what that was all about, though. Okay. That's my motion.

I'd be happy to reach out to them and get a little more clarification. It was just a public comment email that we got. So we'll be happy to work with either the rescues or Dogwood directly to get more info on that.

Okay. This motion is subject to change, but that's where it stands as of right now. Thank you, Council President. Thank you, Council Member.

All right. We have Council Member Perea, followed by Council Member Arias.

Director, I want to start by just thanking your team for your partnership over the last couple years. We together have hosted a number of vaccination and microchipping events at Roading Park. And then I also want to thank your team. I believe you guys have started to enforce our illegal backyard dog breeding ordinance as well. I know there are difficulties that come with entering somebody's private property, and I'm sure there's opportunities for them to get combative in nature, but can you talk a little bit about how implementation of that ordinance has been going?

Yeah, certainly it's difficult. We are not law enforcement. We do not have all of the powers of law enforcement, so there are certainly challenges when we ask for somebody's ID and they refuse to give it to us, or when we're unable to enter property because we don't have a search warrant. But overall, we have issued 50 citations for illegal breeding. Of those citations, I think a couple of people have wanted to work with us. They have fixed their pet. They have complied with the terms of the ordinance. But many of them, we don't get more than the ability to just provide that citation.

Yeah, thank you. And with this overpopulation problem, I have a really hard time with people that are profiting off of breeding pets and then selling them to make a dollar. And I know you guys have been actively working to enforce that because my office is getting calls from some constituents who are upset about that ordinance being enforced on them for illegally breeding pets. On spay and neuter, there is this mobile clinic that is coming next month, you said? The mobile spay and neuter clinic?

We have a unit, like a trailer, that we hope to receive. I don't know if Brian is here, but I understand that we'll be receiving it in July. Okay.

Okay. And do we have any idea yet on how many span neuters that we can conduct within that trailer?

Not yet. We got to get the veterinarians on board so we can have the trailer, but we also need the staffing to ensure that we're able to provide that. Okay. But what we are hoping to do is really take this out into the community to those areas where we may see high activity. on just lots of roaming pets or lots of calls. So we're hoping that we're able to even take them out to our unhoused community, get those animals fixed as well. We're working with the HART team to get a little bit more of feedback on what areas would benefit from our being there.

OK. And then the $1 million grant, I think that was a statewide grant. It was $1 million for Fresno County. Is that correct?

Well, the grant itself was $3.2 million. It was from the governor's $50 million allotment. $3.2 million was allocated to San Francisco SPCA for spay-neuter in Fresno County.

Okay. So we don't know yet how much of that will dwindle down to the city of Fresno?

I can tell you that they haven't approved their budget, but $1 million of it is slated for Fresno County based on what they have spent here before. I would say maybe at least 40 to 50%. Okay.

And then remind me how much, as the budget currently stands, is set aside for Span-Neuter, 300 and something thousand?

That's correct.

Okay. And then, Council Vice President, your motion was to add an additional $200,000? and some thousand to that?

My motion was to take the funded veterinary position that has gone unfilled and redirecting those dollars towards our grants for community partners that offer some of the similar services. A lot of that is spay and neuter for the most part, as you heard the nonprofit say.

So that would roughly total about $500,000 for spay and neuter?

Yeah, just about. So 350 plus 225.

It's probably less because it's an unfilled position. I know.

It's technically $183,000 or $185,000, but it's whatever the council member wants to put down. you know that was based on you saying that's what you thought it was but it's fine no no no worries at that point but I think um what Councilmember Perea like we have 350 000 and if we added this 200 roughly 225 000 takes us a little over 500 000 for spay and neuter efforts okay um include well I want to clarify that in what the council member is redirecting from the vacant vet is for partners with our nonprofit community that likely will include a spay and neuter component. It's not just you only can use this for spay and neuter. I don't want to put words in your mouth.

Sounds like that's a majority of their current funding, but it could also be eligible for other services as well. I'd be fine with it.

So city manager, what I heard you say is the cost of that budgeted position is closer to 100 and what was the number?

183,000. 183,000, okay.

And how much during this current fiscal year that we're in now has gone to our nonprofits or similar services?

The fiscal, when you say current, you mean fiscal year 26? 26. I'm not, Alma, do we have anything from the 26 budget that went to nonprofits? Oh, we had the money that we gave California Spay and Neuter that I don't think has been fully expended yet.

correct twenty thousand dollars to california spay and neuter of which six thousand two hundred eighty seven forty has been requested to reimburse the remaining we have not received a request alma do we have any additional besides the twenty thousand um we do have agreements with fresno hope animal foundation we provide um vouchers for our community to schedule their own spay neuter through hope it's at a cost similar to what we do that's a 30 35 um

So we have that. How much is our agreement with HOPE? We just increased it to $100,000. Okay.

So we've got the $20,000, $100,000, and then is there anything else in $26,000?

Is that not counting the $46,400 outside agency support under the UC Davis grant?

Yeah, so overall, and I would have to break this down, since May 2024 to December of 2025, the city of Fresno has dedicated about $892,000 to spay-neuter.

Alma, in the 26 budget, let's stick to just 26, how much funding do we have for our outside nonprofits? You mentioned Hope, we mentioned California Spay-Neuter. We don't have to break them down, but total, how much support do we have for outside nonprofits in fiscal 26?

I have to give you the breakdown because it was part of our, I'll have to come back with the breakdown because it was part of our grant funds.

Oh, got it. Yeah. So we got the grant funds and then we put some of it back out in the community. So off the top, we know it's at least 120. 130, sorry, 120, but it could be more. So at least 120, we'll go into the grant and figure out how much was directed to outside nonprofits.

Okay. Our overpopulation problem, I equate it to like the snowball effect where the more time that goes on, it just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger. I would like to see a bigger dent in it now. I think a more sizable investment in spay and neuter will help us to better get ahead of this problem. I would like to learn more about the commitment from Dogwood, what that match program would look like. So Mr. Kirkland, I don't remember that letter coming through, but I'll take another look and talk to the city clerk to see if I can get a copy of that.

I just got it sent to me so I can send you, it just came in through like the public comments and there were a lot, but basically what it says, it has been brought to our attention that you are currently considering what Fresno County planning to budget, I'm sure they mean Fresno City, for spay and neuter of dogs and cats in your county. I'm assuming this is for the city, for those of you who are familiar with Dogwood. So I'm gonna just, even though it says county, I'm going to assume that they meant city. We'll follow up with them. The amount we have heard, $200,000 is small in comparison to the need. Dogwood would like to offer to match dollar for dollar for the amount you commit in your budget over $200,000 up to $500,000. up to $500,000. Based on this offer for funding from $200,001 to $500,000, Dogwood will fund up to $300,000 more than is in our current budget for spay and neuter in Fresno County. Not only will we do the work we do every year, but we will pull out the stops to ensure up to $600,000 between the county and Dogwood is invested in further reducing the dog and cat population in your county. If you will make this commitment, we will draft an agreement for your review that will outline pricing and other details to ensure the highest number of surgeries for the funding within the agreed upon framework on how the pledge will work. Dogwood will sign on the bottom line to make this pledge to help even more. Will you join us? And I'm getting messages that, yes, the intent is for this to be about the city of Fresno. Somebody just sent me the excerpt from it. TJ, did you email it to me? It's maybe the clerk's office. It came in through the public comment. So perhaps the clerk's office can pull out that one and send it back around. I did not go through all the public comments. So it's somewhere buried within there. But hopefully they can pull that one out for you and send it around.

Thank you, city manager. Yep, just saw it. Okay. um with with that being said i would like to see the commitment to span neuter closer to 750 000 um assuming that 300 of that comes from this foundation a portion of that comes from this unfilled position a portion comes from the money we had originally set aside in this budget 300 and something thousand and then the delta of that to be determined from an undetermined funding source I think the bigger of an investment we can make ahead of time will be more cost effective than trying to continue to tackle the problem on the back end. So that would be my motion, would be to overall set aside $750,000 for spay and neuter, assuming 300 of that does come from that match. And then we can work on that calculation, I think, a little bit later. Thank you, council member. Thank you, director. You guys are doing incredible work. Director, my family and I fostered a puppy. And I think it's easier to raise human babies than puppies. And so I can only imagine what the work, not just your staff and you are doing, but the nonprofits out there, Council member, Council Vice President said it nicely, but you all have huge hearts, and I just wanna thank you and your team and our community partners for the good work everyone's doing. Thank you. Thank you.

All right, Council Member Arias, followed by Council Member Richardson.

Thank you, Council President. I think the Spain nutrients are gonna get a little more expensive after I'm done today. Just to kind of give you some context, I now have four rescues at home. And I've done spay and neutering on all of them. And one of them, I paid $600 at the vet for. The most recent one, which was last week, I paid 150 at the Hope Foundation. But here's been our experience. Each time, we've called the animal center. And you guys have a huge backlog. There's no availability. Each time, we've gone online and searched everywhere. Our default vet, extremely expensive. Hope, we called them on Friday, there's an appointment on Monday. I was not aware that we were funding them, so I don't know how that works. Definitely didn't get a $35 price, we got the $150 price. So what I'm struggling with is looking at this from two perspectives. One as a policymaker, and one as a consumer and customer. As a customer, I recognize that we're overwhelmed as a system. And I do wanna start off, Director, with I do believe that you guys have done some amazing work and our staff has done some amazing work. And I also believe that as an advocate, I have seen the level of disrespect, the level of attack by a lot of advocates, especially online of our staff. The last time we discussed this subject matter, I ended up being two weeks attacked on social media by animal advocates. And the level of doxing that they do, the level of threats, the level of engagement is completely unacceptable. So my hope is that those are in the audience today as partners, you have a conversation amongst your communities about what is civil disagreements and how we interact because our city staff doesn't sign up to be threatened over the most difficult task ahead. We don't do that to our partners and we don't expect our partners and supporters to do that to our city staff. So I want to apologize to you because I know you are taking all the hits online, on the phone, in person, and you didn't sign up for that. You signed up to try and do the best you can to help as many animals as you can based on the limited resources. But again, to all the advocates listening in, TONE IT DOWN AND LOWER THE TEMPERATURE BECAUSE YOU'RE NOT HELPING YOURSELF. YOU'RE JUST MAKING IT MUCH MORE DIFFICULT FOR US TO ENGAGE IN THIS VERY COMPLEX SUBJECT MATTER IF WE'RE JUST GOING TO END UP BEING DOCKS AND OUR FAMILIES ARE GOING TO END UP BEING ATTACKED ONLINE. SO I WOULD ASK YOU ALL TO TAKE A STEP BACK AND LOWER THE TEMPERATURE ON THAT FRONT. BACK TO THE SUBJECT MATTER, THE ROOT CAUSE OF ALL THIS IS IRRESPONSIBLE OWNERS. and you can categorize them from breeders to everyday owners to my mother who doesn't seem to get the hint that she shouldn't be allowing neighbors dogs inside to impregnate her dog and that ends up being my problem. So we all have that. What I'm struggling with is a couple populations. I recognize in California they're treated as property. What is the threshold for somebody to claim property to an animal? Is it they have a license for them? Is it they're within their vicinity? And the reason I'm asking for this clarification from legal counsel, maybe not in the spot, but in a memo, is we have a huge problem with the unhoused community and the amount of animals that they have. And our historical practices, we show up to an encampment, there's 20 animals, we don't touch the animals because they're somebody's property, right? Those animals are replicating significantly on the streets and creating a bigger problem than we're already trying to tackle. So what is the threshold for somebody claiming an animal as a property? Do we know?

Well, we'll get you a memo on that.

Thank you. And secondly, are we allowed to mandate spay and neutering versus recommending it once an animal comes into our facility? Can we just undertake the spay and neutering or do we need consent from the quote unquote owner?

So, based on property laws, for 72 hours, when an animal is found, an owner has the right to come and reclaim their animal. After the 72 hours, what the Animal Center has implemented is that we no longer allow animals to leave unaltered. So, they're fixed. If an owner comes back after the 72 hours, we're like, hey, we're happy to adopt it back out to you. I do have something into the city attorney's office right now so that we can potentially modify the language where any animal that enters into the shelter needs to be fixed.

Is the 72 hours a state mandate or local ordinance?

It is, it's a state law.

So right now, is it a guarantee that we're spay neutering every single animal after 72 hours of them being under our care?

There is some caveats to that. That would be some safekeeping holds. So, for example, if somebody, if the animal was not found astray, maybe the owner had to go take, you know, had to be taken to the hospital. Maybe the owner was, you know, picked up for an arrest. We do allow a 14-day hold on those. It's an industry standard. But we're also writing into our policies that the owner will have 72 hours to pick it up. We will hold it for 14 days. But after 72 hours, we're fixing it.

Okay. What is the... Of those a year, how many can we process through spay and neutering? How many of the animals that we have, the 10,000 that you process, are... exiting the system spayed and neutered?

So definitely 3,000 have to be spayed and neutered because they're adopted out. The ones that are transferred out to partner organizations, then that responsibility, based on state of California, is part of their requirement. that they fix the animal if it has not yet been spayed or neutered. However, if an animal is at risk, it's an animal that we've considered that, hey, we tried to find the best outcome for it and it may not be able to find that, then we will actually offer spay-neuter for any organization that may need that for us to transfer the animal.

What's your current backlog for spay-neutering?

Well, we were able to catch up with dogs, but after this event, we're probably a little behind on our foster program. But I can tell you that right now we have about 200 cats. We are in the middle of kitten season, so we have 200 cats. Not all of them are ready for spay-neuter because they haven't met the weight. But what we've instituted is really more of a program within the shelter where we take an adoption deposit, and then those are the ones that we prioritize so that our veterinarian can get them done. So we've been probably less than 10 days out on getting the ones that we adopt out spayed and neutered.

So if I was to take my neighbor's dog tomorrow and call tomorrow the animal center, because I looked at your online webpage, and it tells me that you're not taking anybody in. that you are backlogged, what is the process for me to go and get an actual appointment since your website indicates you're not taking anybody in? What's the process?

So if you were to come in and you would say, hey, I need some help, the very first thing that we're going to do for you is we're going to say here's a voucher to Hope because that is the quickest that we can get you.

To get a voucher, I have to go to Animal Center. I can't get it at the Hope Foundation.

You cannot get it at the Hope Foundation because we have to make sure that we are writing, validating jurisdiction, and then getting your address, and then we give you a voucher. We can mail it to you. You don't have to come in.

Just spend a little more time on that. Right now when I go to Hope, they need my driver's license to conduct the enrollment process. Why isn't my address in the city of Fresno sufficient for me to get the voucher at the Hope?

It's something that we can work on.

The reason I ask is as we do these partnerships with nonprofits, I want to make it as easy as possible, right? Getting to the animal center is a whole additional step for people. IF WE'RE GOING TO AT SOME POINT DISPLAY THAT THESE FIVE NONPROFITS ALL HAVE VOUCHERS FOR PEOPLE TO GET SERVICES THERE, THEN IT SHOULD BE AS EASY AS YOU CONFIRM THE ADDRESS OF THE CITY OF FRESNO AT THE NONPROFIT, YOU GET THE VOUCHER AND YOU'RE DONE. I DON'T THINK ANYBODY'S GOING TO BE CASHING IN FALSE VOUCHERS IN THIS INDUSTRY THAT WE'RE OPERATING. IT'S NOT LIKE OTHER PLACES. So right now it would be Hope Foundation, you direct me there. Is that the only option, is the Hope Foundation at this point?

We also have some open appointments through our, if we're working with you, we will make some appointments available. But a lot of our appointments are set aside for animals that are found. So once again, as I mentioned, we do provide that for free. And we also provide some of those appointments to our partners. So some of our partners here receive appointments from the clinics that we host.

It feels like the city has so many animals that our animal shelter is overwhelmed just by the pickup process, the amount of animals that we're getting calls from the public to pick up, correct?

I would say that we're overwhelmed more by the number of animals that are brought to the shelter rather than the number of animals that are picked up by staff.

Oh, so even just brought to a shelter before practically picking up.

Yes.

So you get animals essentially from three categories. People who drop off an animal at the shelter, people who call you to go pick up an animal, and then people like me who want to get a service from the animal center instead of my vet based on price point availability. And you're already overwhelmed at the first stage of people dropping off animals at the shelter. if we were to be out of the spay-neutering business as a city shelter, just completely outsource that whole process, what would that do for your operations?

So if we were completely out of the spay-neuter, it certainly would free up some time, but our facility is the one that is used to support, so we would have the facility just used for our use.

That's what I'm wrestling with is whether we just treat this more like a medical triage facility where you handle the high-risk animals, you handle the animals that are dropped off to you, and whether we just outsource all spay and neutering, because it seems to me spay and neutering is a million-dollar problem in the city. It's not a $200,000 problem in terms of the amount of spay and neutering that's still needed in the city. Is that accurate, or is a million dollars too much for spay and neutering?

Well, if we look at our problem, a million dollars is not enough.

Where would you put it at, in the ideal world, with respect to this budget and our limitations?

Well, I think that also the things that you have to consider is our ability for veterinarians within our community to provide that as well. Previously, I've come to council, and one of the things that has been identified is that here in this region, our access to care is very low. We do not have sufficient veterinarians for the population and for the cost. Based on a study that has previously been done on a you know, a value of 100, where 100 shows that you have easily accessible veterinarians, easily able to afford cost, you know, your community is able to reach it, even within, you know, a reasonable distance. When you can meet all of that, you get a score of 100. We were at a 12.

Hence why we have to leverage the existing organizations that have capacity, because we don't really have it here, and we struggle to hire a second vet, right? It's a challenge. The back to the animal population related to our in-house community. Are you proposing any changes on how we deal with those animals?

So we have been working with the in-house community. We also work with organizations that work with the in-house community. With the way that we have been addressing it is similar to whether you are a property holding individual. You are held by the standards of the municipal code. We will work with you in order to reduce the animal population.

But the municipal code limits my ability to four animals at home.

That's correct.

Hence why I met my maximum, no more. I actually just sent that to my wife, no more animals. I'm not going to jail for this stuff. But in the unhoused community, there's half a dozen dogs that are walking around with one unhoused individual. There seems to be no enforcement of the number to them, and they're not housed. So are we enforcing the limit on them?

We are enforcing the limit. I can tell you that we are working with a current individual that has made social media, had 20 animals. I personally went out there, talked to him, and I said, you're way beyond the number of animals that you can house. We were able to reduce that population down for him, and he was able to get all of his animals spay-neutered. We helped them through our clinics. They're licensed now, and he is down to the limit. It might not look like he's actually complying because his neighbor, which is also an unhoused, is now... licensed, you know, for the other three. So he has a total of seven combined. So that may not always appear to be that we fixed the problem, but now all of the animals have ownership, they're licensed, they're fixed, and they've complied with the requirements of the municipal code.

The other requirement of municipal code is that you have your animal on a leash, correct?

Yes.

So when I drive on my daily drive in front of Pavaralo and see 25 dogs, none of them on leashes, Do we not have the right to go and pick up all of them?

Yes, we can. There are leash laws in the city of Fresno.

But the challenge would be the capacity at the animal shelter.

That's correct. Many times when we take animals in, as you can see, we don't have the equal number of live outcomes. So that would mean that we would not be always able to find them a home.

But at least they would come out spay and neutered.

That's correct. And we provide that.

If the council was to take action to force the enforcement of leased animals on everyone, including the unhoused, and as a consequence, we pick up the animals and take them automatically to shelter and spay and neuter them, would you be able to handle that workload if we were to direct that

I would have to take a look at the numbers. But what I'm hearing is two things. One is the first component of this would force the unhoused community to take the animals in and basically force them to spay-neuter. But the second component is once they're returned, they may still be off-leash.

And we picked them up.

Okay. So, I mean, that is already situated in the municipal code.

But we're not enforcing it.

No, we're not necessarily taking all of the animals away from the unhoused, but we are helping them comply with certain aspects of it. Certain aspects of the code.

Yeah, what I'm more concerned about, and I've had this conversation over the years, is the unhoused have as many rights as anyone else does, but they also are required to follow the same laws as everyone else does. When it comes to the animal challenge, we've essentially left them alone. And the overpopulation is occurring in large segment with those animals, right? They're reproducing. There's a whole lot of puppies. There's a lot of animals. They're not in leashes. They're also the source of the pack of dogs that have been injuring kids and male carriers that we have to call you for because once they become part of a pack, the behavior changes significantly than when they're on their own. What I'm trying to understand is if we provide relief to your department in the spay-neutering world, would you then be free to actually enforce leash laws, whether it's my dog around the block or an unhoused person's dog? Would you have the capacity then to pick up all those animals, at the very least they're now spay-neutered, versus reproducing on the streets?

So I think there's several components to that, and I'm only looking at this from a systemic approach. One, it would be we have 11 animal resource officers, animal control officers that would be the ones to be out in the community providing that. Second is if we impound, we are still, you know, for up to a certain amount of hours, we are still bound by law to return these animals based on our municipal code. To the owner. Yeah.

Where they have to show up and get them, right?

That's correct. After that, we certainly would be able to provide that spay-neuter And then there would be that secondary aspect of whether that unhoused individual is willing to comply with the leash law portion of it. Once that animal, the code actually has the pet responsibility act, it has the habitual at large. The way that it's currently worded is they would have to be running at large four times within a period of a year. where we can designate them habitually at large. And then after that, there's the appeal process. So certainly maybe changes to the code would provide us some more flexibility. It would probably be a deeper analysis than I can provide to you right now.

And the in-house are like the general population. Some of them are very amazing animal owners, and they will feed them before they feed themselves and care for them like family members. And there's others who are too high and too mentally unstable, and they're abusing the animals or just not caring for them. WHAT I'M TRYING TO GET THROUGH IS HOW DO WE HANDLE THAT POPULATION BECAUSE THAT POPULATION IS ALSO LARGELY RESPONSIBLE FOR THE OVERPRODUCTION AND, YOU KNOW, ON THE STREETS. SO FROM MY PERSPECTIVE, COUNCIL, I THINK THE SPAIN NUTRIENT SHOULD BE MORE CLOSER TO A MILLION DOLLARS. I WILL HOLD OFF ON MAKING A MOTION AT THIS POINT SO THAT WE CAN HAVE STAFF GET BACK TO US ON SOME OF THE PROPERTY RIGHTS QUESTIONS AND THEN SEE WHERE ELSE WE CAN FIND SOME MONEY FOR SOME OF THIS EFFORT. I DO AGAIN APPRECIATE THE WORK THAT YOU'RE DOING AND I APOLOGIZE ON BEHALF OF THE CITY FOR THE CRITICISM AND THE ATTACKS THAT YOU AND YOUR STAFF HAVE FACED. THAT'S NOT WHAT WE EXPECT FROM THE PUBLIC AND YOU SHOULD NOT ACCEPT THAT AS A NORM. AND I WOULD HOPE THAT THE ADVOCATES GOT THE MESSAGE. IF YOU WANT US TO LISTEN AND TO BE OPEN, THEN IT HAS TO BE IN A CIVIL AND RESPECTFUL WAY BECAUSE OUR STAFF DOES NOT SIGN UP TO BE HARASSED AND BULLIED ONLINE. SO THANK YOU AGAIN FOR YOUR TIME.

All right, I move next. Good afternoon. No, still morning, Director Torres. Goodness gracious. Quick question for you. Who in the city is responsible for the collection of dead animals?

We are.

Okay. For the record, on the southwest corner of Pinehurst and Woodrow, there is a dead animal of unknown type in a box labeled dead animal. City has been contacted. It's been there for almost a week. Someone could grab that. That'd be fantastic. Okay, so real quick, just backing up mostly commentary on what you've already said. Habitually at large, how do we track that an animal is habitually at large? Are we marking them? Are we just kind of identifying them by appearance? How does that work?

So any animal that leaves the animal center must leave microchipped. So that would be the first indication. So that would be how we would track them, by identifying them for being at large. You know, there's several... Instances where we may not be able to identify him because we only got the information from a neighbor and a brief description They might have two dogs that look alike. There's there's certainly a lot of Investigation to make sure that we are proceeding appropriately within the law But are all animals that enter the shelter and leave the shelter by state law must be microchipped

So that's only an animal that's been to the shelter and then left microchipped that could be tracked as habitually large. It doesn't apply to any of the other ones. Are you guys able to remotely scan chips in the field, or do they have to come back to the center for that?

A microchip works. It emits a signal, so you have to do it really close to the animal. It's not like a GPS.

But that technology, it's not like you could, do you have a remote ability to do that, to scan it with something, or does that have to come back to the animal shelter? I'm not the veterinary side.

Yeah, we have microchip scanners.

Okay, that they can take with them in the vehicle. Okay, thank you. Hard to, city staff, city manager, the certain positions within the city are designated hard to hire. Is there a specific criteria that has to meet or is it just designated after a while? Well, this is a specialized skill. This is just hard to hire. Or are there certain black and white criteria?

TJ, was that only related to engineers or was it open? It's open. So I'd have to go pull the resolution again because it's been a couple years. But basically, we have to have gone through a number of recruitments and figure out. And then I bring a resolution to the council and declare a position. I don't remember if it's called hard to hire, but something like that. And what that does is it allows us to pay either a hiring or retention fee. Payment equal to a certain amount in the salary resolution.

Okay. Um, and then this is probably more for the city attorney's office. We talked to, so this is kind of a two part problem, right? We've got the animals once already strays. And then as council member areas mentioned, this is all just like issues with kids, issues with kids are rooted in grownups, right? Issues with animals are rooted in owners. So we talked about all the things that we can do with the animal positively to help them out and help them exit out of the unbridled reproduction community, right, and get into a stable home where they're responsibly whatever. Is there anything outside of leash laws that we can do to kind of tighten the reins, if you will, on owners who are negligent? And by owners, I mean anybody, sure, who was breeding with the breeding ordinance that came out in the last year, that was fantastic. We have the leash laws, that's great. What about those who are encouraging these stray animals to stay out on the streets and continue to reproduce unchecked? Is there anything that we can do either incentive-wise or disciplinarily with the change in the municipal code that would put any sort of disincentive for me to be a resident who says, yeah, there are stray cats and dogs out here. I'm just going to continue propagating this stray community.

Well, on the cat section, it would probably be a little difficult. State of California does allow cats to be free roaming. I think that one of the things that we have previously discussed is perhaps allowing the free roaming, but only when animals are fixed. So that would definitely take a change in the code. But State of California, like I said, does not necessarily require that animals be spayed, neutered for cats. And even within our code, you know, our code states very clearly no animal shall be roaming except a cat. Um, so, so, so that, that would definitely take some change as far as leash loss for dogs. Um, yeah, I mean, there's certainly a lot of things that we can take a look at it. We can work with the city attorney's office to see what, um, changes can be made that would be a little bit more harsh.

Well, and unfortunately, I don't mean to cut you off, but unfortunately this, this seems to me like another kind of half-ass governmental attempt at fixing a problem from Sacramento in that, okay, my animals, namely cats in this instance, um, Not a huge fan, but I still care about their well-being. They are not allowed to be free roaming. However, if I'm a resident who encourages these free roaming cats to continue to feed and get water and reproduce and sleep and everything else and continue to propagate, there's no sort of punishment or no sort of discipline or anything for that kind of person. Is that true?

That's correct. Not in our ordinance.

I mean, I could even have a cat that says, you know, all cats should have homes, but then continue to propagate this stray community. Is that something, city attorney, that potentially we could look into, people who are continuing to propagate and allow the stray communities to grow without any sort of interaction with a nonprofit partner or with the animal center? We can definitely take a look at that and get back to you. Just, I mean, just food for thought here. No pun intended. All right. The... Is there any limitation on if we have a nonprofit partner or a for-profit partner for that matter, how much we can assist them or get them budgeted monies as were proposed by my colleagues up here and I support, is there any issue with them collecting any sort of profit city manager if we enter into a deal of that sort? For example, if I decide that Mike's Husky Rescue is my favorite and we want to help them out and give them money to go out and do spay and neuter, is there any issue with them collecting with how they may manage their profits or their charging or their fees or anything as a city that would get us in trouble for coordinating with them. Like we can't just pick a for-profit company to do business with. There has to be an RFP process. It has to go out to a bidding and everything else.

Yeah, so I think, you know, normally when we do, normally when we do grant programs, there is some sort of competitive process where we sort of outline kind of what the guardrails are for a program or a grant program. I think, no, do I, can we do it? Yes. The only thing.

Do we have quorum right now?

I'm sorry, what?

Do we have quorum?

Oh, okay. Okay.

Sorry. As vice president, I'm going to call a five-minute recess. You're doing your job. Thank you. I think we have some folks that needed to use the restroom.

The floor still. Yeah, still floor. Please proceed. Go for it. We have quorum. No, we're still going. All right, we're back. Director. Next time I'll count chairs before I go fill up my water bottles. All right, Council Member Richardson, you still have the floor.

Thank you. Director Torres, welcome back. Still good morning. Question for you. Can you go over maybe the top three services that are provided at the Fresno Animal Center and the level of qualification that is required to perform that service? I.e., we do this operation, this requires a vet. We do this procedure, this requires an RVT. Can you run through that for those of us who are not veterinarians?

Okay, so you're only focused on the medical portion of it?

No. Enlighten me.

Okay. So our top work is accepting stray animals. That requires our first person that's involved is an animal care specialist. And that is, it's an entry-level position, but we provide extensive training. Within that, there's also evaluation for medical. That will then get elevated and that requires medical training, especially if it has to be elevated all the way up to a veterinarian. So that's our biggest intake. I would say that our second one, and at least a big driver of intake as well, is going out to the community. We have written into our job specifications that our animal resource officers need to be certified. That requires PCA 32 training and that requires for them to go through the Calo Animals as a voluntary certification that they receive the training and I think it's about 70 hour academy. that they have to go through. And everything else, you know, certainly for our medical professional or all of the animals that are taking in, the majority of them are taking in immediately because they have some type of medical issue. So we have different levels. I mentioned earlier, the RVT. We have some constraints. Not everybody can work with an animal while it's still owned. So we have to make some decisions based on that because we're just a depository. We're holding an animal until the owner comes forward. And we're able to provide some emergency medical care. And then... After that 72 hours or once the animal becomes our property, we have a lot more leeway because then just as any other California owner, we can have more of our staff work with it.

Great. Okay. Apparently I got to be faster and funnier. So the next question I had, no animal. First of all, are we missing a level here? We talked about vets. We talked about the RVTs. We talked about the animal care specialists. Is there another level in the hierarchy I'm missing?

Well, we have administration, and that's everything that complies with our city policies.

Okay. As far as animal qualifications, though. Got it. Okay. No animal unaltered. You mentioned caveats. Are there any other caveats? For example, last year we fostered a little dog for a little while who we brought in, couldn't get it fixed because she was too young, is my understanding. Is it weight-based? Are there any other caveats we're missing where animals are going to the animal center and leaving unaltered?

Legally, they cannot leave unaltered.

Does that include vaccinations? Is that considered altered?

No, it's surgery. It's a veterinarian. Only a veterinarian can perform surgery to alter an animal.

So are you required to keep any animal that is below that weight threshold until they can be altered and then leave the animal center?

That's correct. And different veterinarians have different thresholds. Some will do it at two pounds. Some will do it a little bit lower. But it is based on veterinary directives on when we can get them in for spay-neuter.

So we left the same day with that animal entirely unaltered.

But you didn't adopt it. You were holding it as property of the city of Fresno until such time that we are able to bring it in where it meets the qualifications.

That's what I was looking for. So all the animals that have a stay there leave unaltered, not the ones who come through.

Not all of them. If they are transferred to another nonprofit organization, then that responsibility falls on them as a state of California mandate.

Okay, fantastic. How many cats can the Fresno Animal Center hold?

We have, I think, well, Kelly stepped out, but I think we have less than 100 cat condos.

Okay. If you were to give an estimate, you talked about, well, all of the animals who left, we know were spayed and neutered, so it had to be at least this number. How many roughly are you doing a month? How many spays and neuters?

How many spay and neuters are we doing a month?

On-site. On-site. Not with Vouchers to Hope, not with anybody on site.

Our veterinarian does about 20 daily, so about 80 per week if we have more than that. Or if we just, well, I would say that probably about 80 per week.

So there's a veterinarian there every day enough to do 20 per day every day of the week?

No, she also, you know, she's not there all the time. We do bring in support veterinarians to cover.

Okay, so between the actual one and the contracts, you're estimating roughly 20 a day?

Yeah. Okay.

No charge for adoptions. This has been brought up, and this is brought up a lot in the comments, and this is the last thing that I'm going to talk about after a quick question. So no charge for adoptions. I 100% understand the benefit there. You want to be able to get these animals adopted out to responsible homes. That makes sense. Correct me if I'm wrong, this is a double-edged sword. I know that unless someone in general puts some sort of stake into something, they are going to care about it less. It is transient. The thing that you are given doesn't mean nearly as much as the thing that you earn. Now, I don't want to ever institute a monetary penalty on people or a barrier for you to become a responsible home or pet owner. However... when they have to come back to the animal center for other services later on, for example, if the animal's underweight or if the animal has some sort of disability or they're waiting on a shot or anything like that, veterinary care, a checkup, whatever it is, is there any appetite to have a deposit that you make when you adopt an animal, thereby when you go back to the animal center and you need services, great, you know what, you paid your deposit, it comes out of that, no charge necessary. Is that a possibility? Is that something we could look into to kind of help this process and maybe put a little bit more stake for the owners who are adopting from the Fresno Animal Center.

Just, you know, research has really shown or debunked that their commitment with an adoption fee really doesn't increase how much they care or whether the number of animals that come back changes. However, to answer your question, we do not... We do not provide services after an animal has been adopted. After an animal has been adopted, it becomes the responsibility of the owner. We may work with them to provide them vouchers. We are looking into providing some additional support right now, but after it becomes adopted, it becomes the responsibility of the owner.

Okay. At Fresno Fit Fest this year, do you guys have any success bringing the animals out and getting them introduced to people? Any adoptions or anything like that result?

Yes. Fostering. Sam, do you have the stats for Fresno Fit Fest? I think we just were out there letting people know about the various programs that we have. I think we were really hitting hard our Embark program, which people can come in and take an animal out and Maybe take it for a run take it for a walk and then bring it back if they're not interested in adopting That's certainly a program that would probably go hand in hand.

Don't get up. We'll lose quorum. Okay. Thank you. I think director Torres That's all I had at this time. Mr. Kirkland. Would you mind if I ask you a couple questions real quick?

Sure, go ahead.

Thanks again for being here. Thank you. Real quick, from what I'm able to estimate from the Fresno Animal Center, minus the animals that had to be put down, calculating 27% off the number that didn't quite match from what was said at the podium, but at least matches the PowerPoint, I'm looking at just over 7,000 animals processed by the city. How many animals came through your operation last year, ballpark?

4,000 to 5,000.

Okay. And total funding for that is where?

So $900,000 is what we spent on what Kirkland Foundation spent on personnel, supplies, and veterinary care. We do get some reimbursements. It's not counted in that, but it's not a significant number.

Okay, let's say you had to go through a severe belt-tightening exercise and reduce overhead as much as possible. imaginably possible to cut down and operate on a shoestring budget while not cutting services, what would that look like?

You know, our biggest expense is veterinary expense, so we'd have to cut back on that. We're very fortunate that we get donations from folks like Amazon and others on supplies, but we spend a fair bit of money on supplies, spend probably $75,000 a year on cat litter, for example. It would really cut back on the number, the services, one, of the cats that we could take off the street and then adopt out. For reference, last year I think we adopted out 700 cats through our network, and they were all paid, no free adoptions. It's very different. We're a PetSmart partner, so we're in a number of PetSmarts in Northern California and here locally. But it would put the biggest dent in our ability to service the medical cases that routinely get turned away at Animal Center or come to us because they don't really have Okay.

How much do you charge for a cat?

Locally, probably $100 for an adult, $125 for a kitten. And then in Northern California, it might be $150 to $200. Okay. And for reference, we put about $300 of services into every cat between spay, neuter, chips, worming, socialization, transport, the whole bit. We estimate that there's about $300 of services in every cat we adopt out. So we're subsidizing every animal that we put into a new home.

Okay, I appreciate it. Everybody's pet is priceless to them, and a human life, sorry if you ask me, is worth more than an animal life. However, this is the cynical business of dollar to service, and that's part of government, so we've got to do it. So thank you for being here, and thank you for answering that.

All right, thank you.

That's all I had, Council President.

Council Member Vang.

Okay, thank you very much, Council President. Director, good afternoon. We just passed the morning session into the afternoon, and thank you very much for being with us from morning to afternoon. How are you doing, Director? I'm good. Thank you very much for staying late, or in this case, early. This is a very emotional subject matter, and it should be, and I want to commend both sides of this issue, the animal advocates as well as your staff. I know that 78.4% of the staff could be elsewhere, but you are here. You decided to work for the Animal Center for the Cedar Fresno because your heart is in the right place, so I want to thank the staff for choosing the Animal Center as their place of work. I just have one question towards the end, but you mentioned in your presentation earlier that the majority of the calls or activities that you service is in the southern part of the city. Would you mind elaborate, I know that you're gonna provide information to council and administration in terms of where the costs are coming from, but in terms of geography, would you say south of Shaw, south of Shields is your, I guess your logic when you said the southern part of the city?

Yeah, I would probably say south of Shaw. South of Shaw.

Okay. And you also mentioned that there are 11 control resource officers that deals with co-violation. They've been trained in first aid and medical as well. Now, in layman's terms, are they also dog catchers per se?

Yeah.

Okay. So there's 11 Quanko dog catchers out there. Now, Hypothetically and as real, I've encountered a few questions when I was out there in the community. What is the procedure when the owner of a dog, the dog is loose? Either by digging through the fence or an open door and the dog is loose out there in the community. And that dog bites someone and then runs back to the owner. What is the animal center's procedure in that real life scenario? I know that if it happens to the constituency of District 5, it is likely to happen elsewhere. And so can you take me through what the procedures are in terms of the policies that is in place for the animal center?

Yeah, we follow the municipal code as outlined in FMC, I believe, 10-325, 10-326, and 10-327. So whenever we receive a notification that somebody has been bitten, we start an investigation that is handled by our animal resource officers. we evaluate the conditions on how that bite took place, what was happening. The code is actually very specific on the things that we need to evaluate. If we even take a look at the level of the bite, there's different levels that we consider. If we deemed that this was a bite that was so severe that we are not comfortable with the animal being out in the community, we will impound that animal. The code does allow for in-home confinement while there is an investigation taking place. We have about 21 days to conduct an investigation. And from that investigation, we may move forward with deeming a dog either potentially dangerous or dangerous. And it's not just bites to humans, it's also bites to other animals. So once we determine that a dog is either potentially dangerous and or dangerous, the owner has five days to submit an appeal through the hearing process in the city. So they may submit an appeal and that can take- Who hears the appeal process? Excuse me?

Who hears the appeal process?

Our hearing officer, the hearing officer for the city. So that typically takes, I would say, at least 90 days to get that before the hearing officer. If our designation is upheld, then we proceed with the specifics of each of the designations. A potentially dangerous dog is able to return home with conditions. A dangerous dog is euthanized. If somebody is, and we have had these instances in which we may deem a dog potentially dangerous, owner complies with several of, you know, well, all of the requirements of the municipal code, we continue to monitor and sometimes we just wait for that call that there was a violation, maybe a left area. then that is a violation of the code itself. The way that the code is worded is that we then impound, and it allows us to create a disposition for that. Based on the attorney's review, we're actually allowing for a secondary hearing to take place if we are going to be moving forward with an outcome that basically to allow the owner to contest whether our evidence really supports whether they were in violation or not.

Thank you for that. Now, in that scenario, there is an owner and that owner is identified. What happens in the case if there's a stray dog or an owner that has not been identified and Animal Center has control of the animal? What is the process in terms of determining whether that animal is dangerous or not, to be euthanized or not, or to be adopted or not.

Well, once again, we take a look at the conditions in which things happened. If an animal was potentially just attacked a smaller dog, we take a look to see whether it was really a behavior issue that cannot be controlled. Dogs have prey drive. So we will evaluate that. We do comply with the SPARC decision, which allows nonprofit organizations to pull animals, unless there's very few conditions in which a nonprofit cannot pull an animal from the center. If we are not able to put that animal out for a way that they would comply with a potentially dangerous dog, the requirements of the potentially dangerous dog in the municipal code, then we may proceed with euthanasia.

There are 11 dog catchers out there now. Not all 11 are active out there working at any time. What is the number of the control resources officer that are out there at any time at the maximum number?

Well, we have 11 that have to cover 24-7. So for the most part, we have coverage at the shelter from 7 a.m. to about midnight. And that's about four to five staff per day. which really makes it about three per shift. We also have to cover Saturdays, Sundays, and we also have to cover after hours, so all of our staff is on a rotation of standby. So definitely very busy, and there certainly is some burnout from our teams.

Yes, and this is the frustrating part, is when a call is put in, it takes some time for the resources officer to come out there, and when they're out there, the animal is gone from where the scene is, that they have to track it down. And from my personal experience, the animals are not tracked within the next 24 hours. And then it becomes an issue for the next concocted victim. And so it is frustrating. We're spread thin throughout the city. And I am in agreement with the motions made today to nip the bud, so to speak. this issue from the very beginning with spay and neuter, and also with microchipping the animal. If it's lost, we can at the very least try to find out where the animal is. Now, you stated that there are 6,591 microchips administered to animals, and they're free of charge?

That's correct. For city of Fresno residents.

City of Fresno residents only, yes. What would the market rate be if we were to microchip every animal of the 6,591. If we were to microchip every... Yeah, well, what's the market rate? How much does a microchip cost? Yes.

Okay, we actually just recently switched over to a cheaper microchip, but we were paying, I would say, about $7 per microchip.

Okay.

Yeah.

Now, is there an additional cost attached to that once an animal's been microchipped? Is there a cost to the owner to keep that active? and so we can locate the animal if the animal is lost?

There is no cost. There are some pay-to-play programs that could be attached, but that's up to the owner. We, through our programs, we register the microchip ourselves. Now, you know, the microchip organization may try to upsell, but that is not a requirement.

Okay. Just a testament to my own experience. One of my neighbors... I had to intervene a dog attack. It's about half a mile from where I am. And understanding who I am, you know, he rushed to my house and knock on my door and tracked me down saying, this is what happening about five minutes ago. And so, uh, appropriate procedures were taken. But again, by the time the, uh, resource officer came there, the dogs were gone. And so that's the frustrating part of this. But, uh, I JUST WANTED TO INFORM THE COMMUNITY THAT YOUR DEPARTMENT IS DOING EVERYTHING THAT YOU CAN WITH THE RESOURCES THAT YOU HAVE. 99.99% OF YOUR BUDGET IS FROM THE GENERAL FUND.

Yeah, you know, just to give you additional information on that, all of our calls are prioritized. So we do have, you know, priority one urgencies. We do have priority twos. We respond to the most urgent priorities. You know, earlier council member Richardson stated about not being able to pick up or an animal that had not been picked up. That is one of our last priorities. The animal has already, you know, is deceased, but we do respond to active, you know, bites. We do respond to animals injured. And once again, we receive plenty of calls. We may not always necessarily have the staffing to respond immediately. And also, you know, a lot of the times we do get out there and the animals are not there anymore.

One last question, Director. The three or four control resources officers out there, are they stationed strategically, geographically throughout the city at any one time, or are they housed at the Animal Center, and when the call comes in, they will go out to where that call is from?

So we did try the BEAT system before to where they would be responding to certain areas. However, based on the number of calls, it really wasn't working for us for our ability to respond. But right now, we do monitor who is the closest and we dispatch whoever is the closest and available.

Okay. And just for the record, the scenario that I mentioned that happened near Sanger West High School, so it's on the very eastern side of the southeastern side of the city of Fresno.

Yeah, and if I recall, we did find who took the animals, except that they hid them from us. Is that correct, Sam? Because we did go out there. We found that it may be that one, but they did not give them to us, and then they claimed to not have them any further.

Okay. Thank you very much for the update on that, Director. That's all I have, Council President. Thank you.

All right, Council, we're at 12, 13. We're holding a quorum by a thread here. I've got right now five, six cards. We want to do, Council, should we take these cards now or do that after? Okay, we have more in the quorum now. All right. We'll do these cards for folks who have been waiting. The first card, and again, this is, we already did the general public comment on the budget. You'll have for this portion, just one minute, to kind of give some feedback with respect to the Animal Center. So first card I have is for Cassie Garcia. I don't think I see her. Brandy Sherman. Welcome, Brandy. You'll have a minute. Thank you.

I just want to say thank you for listening to us today.

Thank you. Next card is for Chris Thompson.

Good morning Council President and Council Members. My name is Chris Thompson and I'm speaking on behalf of Fresno TNR while also advocating for the life-saving work being done by many rescue organizations throughout Fresno. Today I respectfully ask the City to make a bold investment in prevention by committing $500,000 towards community spay and neuter services This investment would unlock the matching commitment offered by Dogwood Animal Rescue Project from Santa Rosa, effectively turning the city's contribution into $1 million dedicated to reducing pet overpopulation in Fresno. This is a rare opportunity for Fresno to double its impact. Everyday rescue organizations are seeing the consequences of underfunded prevention, overcrowded shelters, abandoned litters, rising euthanasia numbers, and unhoused individuals struggling to care for the pets they love. Organizations like Fresno TNR are working tirelessly to fill those gaps through volunteer efforts, donations, and partnerships. But the need continues to grow faster and available resources.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Mel Garcia.

Hi, I'm Mel Garcia from Mel's Mutts and California's Bay. Real quick, I want to just reference what Council Member Arias mentioned about the harassment. We do not think that's okay. I do not think that's okay with any harassment of any of you guys on social media. I do want to bring something to your attention, though, that we also get that harassment. And we get that harassment every day. In fact, when people go to the shelter right now, to go take their dogs back that they adopted, they are told by the staff and I actually am on your pamphlet to contact us, to contact me to take that dog back or to assist them. I don't get paid. I don't get that funding. I currently have 69 animals, dogs under my care and I am one person. You guys at the shelter, they have a max of 200 and they have 80 full-time employees. There's no reason why they should be sending people my way to help with these animals. Because then it puts us in a bad position. And then we get even worse, more harassment than anybody else. And then we have to tell them no. And it's a slap in the face. It is. And we're not funded for that.

Thank you. Next card I have is for Larry Holt.

Hello. I'm good? Sorry. Yes, yes. Okay. Good morning, Council. My name is Lurie Holt. I'm the founder of Paw Squad 559 in California's spay. I'm here today because Fresno does not have an animal shelter problem. It has an animal overpopulation problem. The last time many of us stood before this council asking for help, several council members came outside and spoke with us directly. We were told there would be efforts to find funding for spay and neuters. We left hopeful, yet we are... Here, months later, and once again, there's no meaningful funding. What we need is a larger percentage of the budget invested into a dedicated spay and neuter program. It would reduce shelter intake, euthanasia, and taxpayer costs, and reduce the burden on rescues and shelter staff alike. I'm asking the council to honor the commitments discussed with us, create a dedicated line item for spay and neuter. I know not everybody is passionate about animals like we are, but thank you.

Thank you. Last card I have is for Kyle Kirkland, and then anyone else who would like to speak with respect to the animal center.

I've been up here a bit. I just want to say thank you again for listening today and putting attention to this real issue. It is an animal population problem here in the Central Valley. We are ground zero, and I do believe it's a fixable problem if we put resources to it. So thank you very much for putting the attention and resources to it. Thanks.

Thank you. Is there anybody else in the Audit public who would like to speak with respect to the Animal Center? Hello.

I'm continuing the public comment for Chris Thompson, who is unable to do so. Spay and neuter is the solution that works. It reduces shelter intake, lowers... euthanasia rates decreases animal suffering and saves taxpayer dollars long-term. Prevention is far less expensive than intake, housing, medical treatment, and euthanasia. Fresno has the opportunity right now to leave with compassion and fiscal responsibility. A $500,000 investment that immediately becomes $1 million through Dog Words Match would create one of the most impactful animal welfare initiatives our community has seen. Please partner with the nonprofits already doing the work in the community and help us create lasting change for both animals and residents of Fresno. Thank you for your time. And I want to note that they have been waiting all morning and should have been able to get the total amount of time to be able to share these important things. And I appreciate what they're doing and ask that we allow people who are waiting to have the full time. Thank you.

As a reiteration, full-time public comment was this morning, but we are doing some additional public comments just on each department. We'll have same thing tomorrow and Thursday as well and Tuesday for continued opportunities. Any additional public comments on animal services? SEEING NO, WE'RE GOING TO GO AHEAD AND CLOSE THIS DEPARTMENT. WE'LL COME BACK HERE AT 1.50, 1.50. AND WE'LL PICK IT UP. THE NEXT STACK OF CARDS I HAVE IS FOR PUBLIC WORKS. THAT'S THE NEXT LARGEST STACK. YOU THINK WE COULD PICK THAT UP, CITY MANAGER, IN THE AFTERNOON? IS THAT SUFFICIENT? YES? OH, YEAH. SO WE'LL COME BACK WITH PUBLIC WORKS. AND I'VE GOT A STACK OF CARDS FOR THAT. 150.

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All right, folks, we are we are back. in session, we are going to pick up with the Public Works Department. I'll invite the director to present.

All right, good afternoon, Council President, Council Members. I'm Scott Mosier with the Public Works Department, and pleased to present to you our proposed fiscal year 27 budget. All right. City clerk will pull up the presentation materials. All right. Thank you. All right. Uh, so to start off, uh, just a big picture, uh, introduction, especially for the public, uh, who are viewing about the public works department, uh, we're composed of, uh, several divisions, uh, ranging from traffic and engineering services, Special projects, capital management, street maintenance. That's often the first thing people think about with public works. Traffic signals and street lighting, landscape maintenance, and administration. So all told, overview from the budget binder, the materials online as well. Total operating budget of $98.98 million proposed. Total capital $367.5 million. And a total is shown here, 466.4 million. So drilling down a little further, uh, personnel, uh, you can see, uh, council and the, uh, progression over the years of personnel costs, uh, just increasing, uh, over time. I did note, uh, during the capital projects department presentation earlier today, uh, there was a note made about the decrease from fiscal year 26 to 27. And really, that's a lot of the methodology. So for staff who are capital funded, they are part of the capital projects. Those are not operating. So we're not actually losing staff, losing appropriations in there. There's just a little accounting correction up on that. For non-personnel, which is predominantly capital projects, design consultants, right-of-way acquisition, capital construction contracts managed by the capital projects department. Predominantly in that area, 377.6 million. That's a little bit down from 26, but of course this is largely dependent upon the actual capital projects that we have within the portfolio. The vast majority, as you know, of what Public Works does in terms of major projects, predominantly those are grant-funded, and we'll get to that further in the presentation. Interdepartmental charges are slightly up, 40.1, a very natural progression, and we're glad to see that holding at just slightly higher than 26 as compared to what you see to the 24, 25, and 26 progression. In terms of general fund, two quick notes on here. Proposed budget includes $19 million of general fund and $447.3 million of non-general fund. In public works, our general fund for operating is predominantly in graffiti abatement division, and then general fund does include all of our developer fee-for-service, things like plan checks, the vacation hearings that come before the council, and inspection of new subdivisions and other developments. All right, moving on to the next slide. That clicker is moving a little bit too quickly. My apologies. In terms of budgeted positions, I want to highlight overall the negative one position, much like you've heard with other department presentations. This one does not represent a reduction of staff, but rather one position that is moved budgetarily from the Public Works Department into information services department. This position is very technical in nature, business process and systems analyst who is on board doing great work. But those positions are best managed by ISD. They are funded within the department where the person is assigned. So all in all, the rest of it is a bit of housekeeping. I want to highlight where you see a negative. drop in three positions in street maintenance. Those are not people out filling potholes, fixing sidewalks. Those are positions housed within our street maintenance, landscape maintenance, administration office for functions like payroll, personnel, and so forth. And this represents a better realignment of the work. So you see landscape being up to streets down three. So just some minor housekeeping with position assignments. All right. In terms of operational impacts, we want to highlight some major items proposed within the budget. Number one is our milling machine, which is really past its service life. We hear from the companies who make, manufacture, and sell these City of Fresno Public Works, we are putting more hours and tonnage through our equipment than anyone else up and down the valley. So that's a piece of equipment we purchased several years ago. It has grown a bit more unreliable. We have had to postpone some projects. Our crews get out there. We have issues and have to basically button up the job and shut it down for the day and redirect staff to other functions while we go back and get that repaired. So to really sustain the paving program, this is very critical. This is the machine our staff uses to mill out the old pavement in preparation to then repave the street. And we've worked with General Services Fleet Division on that costing. We have 11 additional vehicles proposed. Those are all replacements for some past the service life, in some cases non-operational. A couple of those are in our paint and sign section, an aerial platform truck, sign truck. Within landscape, the type of equipment, we're talking about a spray truck. Two irrigation trucks, again, past service life, median island maintenance. Street sweeper, we have a roll-off truck proposed as part of the street sweeping operation. And then, as discussed during some earlier department hearings, this does also involve, it triggers through CARB, the need to replace two of our just standard pickup trucks with the EV Chevy Silverados. So all of those are rolled up in that $822,900. I wanted to note also utilities increase. This is largely PG&E, but also includes water that's used in city-maintained landscapes. Item four, just operationally. council will recall the great benefit of the citywide LED retrofit project several years ago we're near the end of that but that that we've already gotten the benefit of that of about 35,000 streetlights were placed but we still have those loan payments on the books for one more year item 5 on this slide covers over 1.3 million of contractual obligation increases and and that deals with things like consultant agreements, our vendor landscape maintenance contracts. Item six, fleet service charges increase. This is not our fleet acquisition line, but this is just the repairs of the existing fleet with our aging equipment. And lastly, I wanted to highlight, Operationally, the proposed budget does include $100,000 for the citywide school zone signage. Our crews are actually already underway with that effort. Council adopted a resolution to basically accelerate the timeline under state legislation to reduce the speed limit when students are present from 25 down to 20 miles an hour. So that's underway. And $100,000 out of our Prop 111 special gas tax fund Okay, moving to moving to the next slide talked about federal and state grants Being really the vast vast majority of the capital program So going down the list that ranges from typical Community development block grant we're very pleased in our part with our partners in planning and development housing division and Council's action through the annual action plan That does include CDBG projects for neighborhood streets this next year at 9 million. On the federal side, you see a number of acronyms that come up regularly with council agenda items on grants, ranging from surface transportation block grant program, congestion mitigation air quality, the highway safety program, and, of course, ATP. THE ACTIVE TRANSPORTATION PROGRAM. ALL TOLD, 27, THAT INCLUDES 33.5 MILLION IN GRANTS ALREADY OBTAINED AND AWARDED TO THE CITY. OF COURSE, WITH USDOT, SMALLER AMOUNT, BUT AN IMPORTANT ONE, 424,600. ON THE NOTES ON THE RIGHT SIDE, THAT'S A VISION ZERO ACTION PLAN, A SUPPLEMENTAL INTERSECTION SAFETY AUDIT. COUNCIL RECENTLY ADOPTED the Vision Zero safety action plan. But this gives us the resources to go evaluate another 15 intersections and identify some really critical solutions. Moving through, of course, the largest capital project that we have in the portfolio. We're working with CPD on is the Blackstone-McKinley railroad grade separation. Those funds are secure and in the budget at 89 million of state funding. On the ATP side, I won't read all those, but there's a list noted here. Note five, quite a number of projects that serve safe routes to school, enhancing mobility, cycling in the community, and traffic safety. And then also I'm very pleased to note that the budget includes over nine million state funds through the San Joaquin River Conservancy, and that's for the River West Eaton Trail extension. Okay, moving to the next slide. Measure C is an extremely critical component of public works budget. This slide notes the capital portion of that at over $63 million in the budget. This is the last year, of course, of the current Measure C extension that is due to expire at June 30, 2027. But still included in there, going strong, with the Tier 1 regional projects at $18.4 million. That includes two projects on South Peach Avenue. along with we have a little bit of work left at Veterans Boulevard near Bullard and Carnegie related to the street closure. Herndon Widening, the overpass at BNSF, and then the California Enhancements Project from Fruit to Mayor. Transit-Oriented Development Program is providing $5 million in capital funds for previously awarded grants, where noted, Also, just wanted to highlight for the council, we are working with the CPD team on the new technology reserve program. Those are wrapping up mostly in the ITS arena, traffic synchronization and advanced traffic connectivity. And that ranges from dynamic downtown up to downtown. northeast fresno near the front road corridor and then we also have within that not part of measure c but obviously other its corridors such as king's canyon others throughout the city lastly also you noted on the previous slide about state funding for blackstone mckinley here also is the largest use of measure c right now blackstone mckinley grade separation at 35 million So again, that's $63 million in capital. What's not shown on this slide is all the Measure C operating that is contained in the mayor's proposed budget. That's over $18 million that takes care of everything from pothole program, street paving, to all of our traffic operations and a lot of the transportation planning we work on with the Planning and Development Department. All right. It's moving to program and project highlights. Again, number one, this shows you, Council, the grand total for Blackstone McKinley in the budget at nearly $140 million. The Pave More Now program represents 46.8. We're very excited about that investment for the community. And with some bids having come in lower, Some great management with CPD team. That's been able to actually add mileage to that program, move it forward. So those are included. I already talked about the Herndon widening. Polk to Milburn due to go to construction shortly. And then some other key items. Concrete strike team continuing to move forward. Same program as years past. We do have the seven-week program included within the proposed budget, as the council has been accustomed to seeing. Geo-based tree trimming. We, as Mayor noted during the budget kickoff, costs do go up for vendor. Wages go up, fuel prices go up. And so what was once a $2.8 million program to hit the 10-year cycle, we've been able to identify funds for that to be over $3.3 million and achieve a 10-year trim cycle. In other words, trimming 10% of the city-wide urban forest. Pothole program remains at 2.1 million. Same program every single day, dedicated team filling potholes and dedicated team doing the hot patch work, which is in between, not just a pothole fill, not a complete street repave, but dealing with those high priority areas. We want to highlight the tree planning program. Once again, resources would be in place to achieve the 1,000 net new trees in the city. Glad to share that we've been able to hit that mark in past fiscal years. And lastly, number eight, and thank you, Council, for your patience on these highlights. There's a lot there. With highway litter control, the proposed $698,900. That will maintain a weekly service on the 41 corridor, twice a month on 99, 168, and 180. And the breakdown of that, of course, is we do have 200,000 committed from Caltrans, as has been the case in years past. Measure C provides 100,000 from the FCTA, and the balance is measure P, category five litter control and beautification. We wanted to include just some photos to highlight crews in action and couldn't be prouder. It's a very humble opportunity to serve with a great team of individuals, really doing what they love best, paving streets, getting to repair sidewalks. Our theme for many, many years has been building a better Fresno and we really take a lot of pride and joy in that work. On the community outreach front, You know, we're also, as Public Works, we're also looking forward, and we do have three efforts in the FY27 budget proposed. Number one is through Measure P, Category 5, The proposed budget includes a trail feasibility study west of Highway 99. We've been able to do that work in other areas of the community, but west of 99, we have quite a number of trails that are adopted on the general plan. They're adopted in the southwest Fresno-specific plan, but they've not gone to that next level of determining which side of the canal should this trail be on, how wide, what's the cross-sections, and all the connections and that way to set up those trails, those corridors, both for either new development or grant funding to really expand that network. Item two, council did approve a grant application back in late 2024 that was awarded, and this was an enhanced connectivity for Southwest Fresno, both pedestrian and bicycle in nature, really across the 99 corridor and that connection from downtown to the Southwest. So that has been awarded. We're still working with USDOT on that grant authorization, so that the dollars are proposed in the budget. uh, for when, when we get that green light, uh, through Washington DC. Uh, and lastly, um, there was an item earlier this year on an awarded mobility design guide, uh, and getting the consultant underway. So all of those will involve a robust, uh, community engagement effort. So with that council, uh, thank you for the opportunity, uh, to, to serve and, uh, deliver these projects and programs together. So we're available for questions. Thank you, Director.

First up, Council Member Richardson.

Director Mosier, good afternoon. Good afternoon. A few quick questions for you. One, you mentioned the intersection evaluation program going on in coordination with ATAC, I believe, or the Vision Zero, is that correct?

That is correct. That's a new federal grant received to provide the city more resources for that effort.

Can you just speak really quickly as to the time frame? How long is required to get a good sample size of the safety of the intersection of the traffic involved? How much money goes into that manpower, things like that? What kind of stuff are they using?

Absolutely. I would anticipate that effort being complete within one year of actual authorization through the grant. It will involve a collection of data, for example, traffic counts, making sure that we have the latest accident information in partnership with the police department, and then doing an actual traffic evaluation of the intersection to see Okay, based upon the issues that are occurring, what are some opportunities for safety improvements in a cost-effective manner?

Okay, so I would imagine this would apply, too, to the ongoing work that we're doing at Friant & Shepherd to implement a change, analyze it over time, get a feel for how that impacts the safety of the traffic, and then go forward with future steps if need be.

Very similar. And staff is available within our, of course, limited resources to do that type of evaluation. But this grant really provides robust resources for a very deep dive.

Great. What's usually the minimum time frame needed to get a good sample size on an intersection? Do you need to study it for three months? Do you need six months? God bless you. Do you need a year?

I'd like to ask, actually, my assistant director, Jill Gormley. who oversees our traffic and engineering services, just to talk a little bit more deeply about that.

Thank you. Don't get comfortable, though.

Good afternoon. Jill Gormley, Assistant Director, Public Works Department. You know, the longer period that we can have to evaluate something, the better set of data that we get. If we're talking collisions, we're usually looking three to five years worth of data, so we would go back three to five years. Count data, you know, typically we look at like a week's worth of data is kind of standard, but again, as much as that we can get, whether that's in the moment or if we can pull past data from studies or other efforts that we've done.

So something really short-term would be like a speed study?

Yeah, speed study.

All right, that's all I had for you. Thank you. Director Mosier, has there been a cue or a priority list for the expedited school speed limit sign project that has been passed up to the council? Has that just come out, I've missed it, or just kind of seeing all of the schools that are getting these speed limit signs and the order in which they'll happen?

So as a department, we've been able to put two crews on that effort And so we're looking to get, our goal actually is to get everything done citywide prior to start of school in August. Yes, so the crew is working very methodically around the city, and we're glad to keep your office posted on timeframe of specific areas if you have any concerns.

That'd be fantastic. If we could just kind of get a little bit of a heads up, hey, these schools will be hit sometime in the next few weeks, something like that, so we can iterate that to constituents, that'd be very helpful. And the last question I had for you is, well, two, one's budget related. Looking back, and I'm not going to quiz you on this, I got all the numbers right here, but if you go back to slide two from your presentation, if we still have that up, Hopefully, you can just make sense of this for me. When it goes into the budget building, for those watching at home, there's a lot of number crunching that goes on in the individual departments. And some of that can be opaque, and some of it can be very transparent. So if you can just explain, it looks like huge savings, but I might just be interpreting this wrong. So looking at last year's budget, the 2025 actuals, and I understand from last year's budget, all we had was the 2025 amended. But the amended, which were amended in January of last year, the last year's budget, looking at $298 million, which is just under $300 million, granted. Now the 2025 actuals actually came in over $100 million under that, which usually you'd see it the other way around, right? You'd project for low, and then you'd kind of adjust and add some costs due to overruns or contract changes or whatever else. The actuals came in over $100 million less. Why does that number look like that?

And that can actually be, Council, good news and bad news. That's, again, a rolled up number, the grand total. So in some cases, sure, we do have some savings. And let's say the pothole program, if our measures are working well, we may have a little bit less there. But something of the $100 million nature, what that typically represents is is that a combination of capital improvement projects did not get awarded for construction. And that can be due to a variety of factors. For example, right of way can sometimes take longer. Sometimes utility relocation, we need PG&E to get out of the way before the construction can occur. Or sometimes it's the CEQA or NEPA environmental process that delays projects. And then those projects then have to get rebudgeted in the following year with their federal, state, or Measure C regional funds.

Or some Pay More Now, Pay Later program.

Yes. Great. I'm very pleased to see a lot of movement, a lot of delivery around the city of those projects.

Okay. That's like 5% of the city's total budget last year, that difference there. So it just made me want to ask the question. The last question I had is, PCI, I know this is kind of an art more than it is a science as you go and certain stretches are evaluated differently. And I also understand it's a degrading metric because every PCI today is not going to be that, you know, a week from now or a month from now, um, based. So from last year to today, is there anything that you can speak to that is, you know, these neighborhoods, these thoroughfares are overall as a city, as a district, as a quadrant of the city, what have you has increased in a PCI, anything measurable kind of that we can report back to, uh, constituents based on the success of your department this last year?

Absolutely. Uh, so, uh, the, We had a presentation that came before the council in early 2022, and that was based upon the consultant's work in calendar year 2021. That, as reported to the council, resulted in our citywide PCI of a 60, 6-0 was the number. But meanwhile, through mayor's proposed budgets, Council decisions on use of things like American Rescue Plan funds, Council infrastructure dollars, successful grants we had obtained. We are actually able to improve upon our PCI up to a 64. So Fresno COG did fund a countywide update, pavement management update this past year. And they noted that a number of those investments were very beneficial. That said, they also updated our deferred maintenance totals based upon construction costs and found, yes, we're still looking at a $1.2 billion deferred maintenance need. Okay, gotcha.

I think that's all I had for you for this time. Thank you. Thank you, Council President.

Council Member Vang.

Thank you very much, Council President. Good afternoon, Director. Good afternoon. Good afternoon, and thank you to the... Men and women in your department, especially those who are out there today and the next couple of months when the degree is over 100, 105, trying to put potholes, clean up potholes, gutters, resurface the streets, so stay safe and stay hydrated out there. Director, in 2023, when council change the street names along Kings Canyon, Ventura, and California to Cesar Chavez, and then a couple of months ago, this body reverted the names back to its original names. In 2023, there were allocations set aside for a business along that corridor. The businesses who were impacted by that name changed to offset some of their expenses, and the businesses who took advantage of that were minuscule. I think it's one or two only. This go-around, I plan to... find some funding to offset the cost of the name change to those businesses in terms of business cards, changing the names on the website, et cetera. And I believe the last time the process was through public works and planning and development departments who were in charge of that distribution of funds. This go around and that's for a city manager as well What do you think and what is your opinion if we also reach out to? include economic development as a partner in the reimbursement and outreach process When and we get to that point?

I would say it depends on just the level of work that you're asking to have done as far from outreach. You know, obviously we have limited resources. And so if it's a matter of helping to process, should there be money allocated? If it's a matter of processing requests, then I think that that's certainly doable. If the expectation is that we are going to sort of pound the pavement, I think that is something that we probably are not resourced for.

Well, it is safe to say that the first go-around, I mean, the outreach was, at least according to the results, was not effective as we would like it to be. And this go-around, the business owners out there, again, in just three years' time, and we're asking them to absorb costs that they have no control over. And so, at the very least we can set the bar a little bit higher to do outreach and hopefully they could take advantage of whatever amount that we will allocate for for reimbursement to offset some of those changes and I would hope that the city can do a better job in the last go-around because if you have just one or two of the business alone in this huge six plus mile corridor being impacted, but there's only one or two businesses who took advantage of that and understand that there were conditions attached to the reimbursement as well, but I believe if we can do an outreach in where the business owners are aware of that and the conditions attached to those funds, then hopefully the people and the businesses who took advantage of this program will be greater than I believe the last time was one or two business only.

And Council Member, I would say I personally was surprised at the low response that we received. Staff did send a letter to each and every business owner, property owner, There's a letter explaining the program that contained a QR code. We set up a special website within the city that had all the forms, processes to make that as easy as possible. And you are correct. There were criteria Council established. One was that it would pay for actual things like stationery, business cards, It would not pay for the business's staff time to go through processes. They are simply required then to provide receipts, invoices with that request. Staff did receive four requests for reimbursement. They were contacted back just to provide invoices. And as noted in prior hearings, we only received one. for I believe $77. But we certainly expected, given the large volume that were mailed out in that effort with the website, QR codes and such, that we would have gotten a lot more response.

And the anger is more this go around than the last time. Again, it's none of their fault that they have to absorb these expenses. And a majority of the businesses along the Kings Canyon Road in my district are smaller, if not a mop and pop business. And so if they were to have to forego or absorb $100 to $1,000 in expense in changing their addresses to the original address, then that cuts deep into their pockets. And so even if it's $100 or $500 reimbursed for them, that will help them a little way. So I'm hoping as we move forward and the funds are there, the city can find a better way to do outreach to the businesses that has been and will continue to be impacted by the name change along the Kings Canyon, Ventura, and California corridors. That's all I have. Thank you. Thank you.

Any takers? Director, I just want to say thank you. I have absolutely no questions for you. In my seven years, you've always been the most honest and direct personnel on city staff. That cuts to a chase and just gives us the honest answer on all the complications of a project. So I do appreciate you doing that for the last seven years of my tenure. That's all I have for you. Thank you, Council Member.

Director, on the highway litter control, are we contracting out the full amount, the whole $698,000, $700,000?

Council President, that is correct. That represents that full amount being contracted out. That is being performed by our current vendor, Scrub Can.

Okay. And what are the boundaries? I ask because I'd like to see a more proactive cleanup on the D7 portion along the 180 from Cedar to Clovis, kind of that eastern part. That's kind of what I'm looking at. What would it take to add the 180?

Very good. And let me walk through that program. So the 180 corridor, it has two components of that cleanup, one Uh, is just, uh, kind of a cycle cleanup in end to end. Right. And it's within the entire city limits. So, uh, vendor starts, uh, down at the Brawley Avenue end, uh, and Southwest, uh, goes all the way to the, uh, city limits, uh, out in your temperance, uh, cleans that entire corridor end to end, uh, two times per month. But then in addition. We do reserve, we set aside a little bit of that funding for what we call hot spot cleanup. That way we've not committed 100% of the dollars just to the cycle cleanups and not having any resource to go tackle a particular issue. So if there are any concerns, certain areas within, Council President, that your staff want to pass along or highlight or really anywhere citywide, please do provide that to us and we'll work at getting that tackled. We don't necessarily need to wait for the next time that we go end to end to pick up all the litter.

Scott, can you speak to the difference in responsibility between the embankments versus the median on the freeways there?

Absolutely. Thank you, Mayor. And one clarification. So by Caltrans policy, our vendor or crew cannot cannot work in the center median of the freeway. That is limited to Caltrans Cruise. The scope of services for the city's vendor is really the outside, and it's whether the freeway is elevated or depressed, whether that bank goes up or down. Those embankments can be cleaned up. They also deal with things like where you have a loop ramp, an on-ramp, there's the area in the middle, As long as it's away from a high traffic area, the city's vendor, Scrub Can, can service it. When we do get in areas that are really tight and close to high speed traffic, we do forward that on to Caltrans crews. We have a great working relationship, cell phones, text messages, and then Caltrans works to go out and tackle those that are in those high traffic areas.

And, Council President, if you have issues where you're seeing trash out there, please feel free to get a hold of Jim Veros. He loves those calls. Perfect.

Yeah. All right. I see, yeah. His face tells me he loves the calls. Yeah. Okay, yeah, we'll get in touch about that section. Because I know, like, the 41, nine are the only ones right now on the weekly circuit. So, yeah, we'd love to get kind of a portion there where possible, you know, within our sort of jurisdiction, if you will.

Very good. Thank you.

Switching gears, on my first RFI, can you all provide a memo listing the streets that will be repaved as part of the 70 miles covered under the overlay and paving operations? We, Public Works, can provide that, yes. Thank you, appreciate that. Switching gears again, could you provide an update on the residential infill program?

We can. And we track that regularly, how many dollars are in the pot, who's in the queue, and their status.

I know we have a million dollars in this budget. What's the carryover that we're bringing from this last fiscal year? Let me check on that. Significant or not significant?

800 was a carryover? Yeah, about 875. And I think we had Scott wasn't already spoken for the vast majority of that.

Yes. So so total is about one point eight million. Some is carry over unused from this year and then adding the new million. So the amount of applications is actually greater than that one point eight million. The program does come, it works on a kind of a first in, first out basis. We would love to see, it'd be a great problem to have to have all of these infill projects moving forward, but the reality is some do not. So we've worked to ensure that there are enough dollars in that program to meet the infill developer's needs to make the projects pencil and move forward. So is the full 1.8 million encumbered at this time? Not technically encumbered, but we do have approved fee waivers on the books that are in excess of that $1.8 million.

But I believe that in order for those to be executed upon building permits have to be pulled by June 30th.

That's correct. The developer needs to obtain their certificate of occupancy prior to June 30th.

Oh, certificate of occupancy.

So to kind of dive a little deeper in that, so impact fees are actually deferrable to occupancy by developers. You come in, pull a permit, say build 100 multifamily units. You pay your utility connection fees up front, but you do not have to pay your park impact fees, fire, police, and so on at time of building permit. They're due at final inspection and occupancy. So that is the time when these dollars in the program then get transferred over to essentially pay the fee on behalf of the project. They move into that account.

Scott, how many of those projects are far enough along that they would be able to meet that June 30th deadline of the one of the 800 or whatever money is available?

So the 800,000 that's, that's what we estimated is the unused portion. So the answer really does of the 800,000, how many projects would be able to use it? The answer is zero. Therefore, it would be carried out. It's proposed in the mayor's budget to carry over.

Okay, so that's the $800,000.

And then what about in addition? I think we could provide a report on that of how much has actually been drawn down during this year.

I think it's definitely going to be more than the $800,000, council member. Yes. Depending on where those projects are in the cycle. But time is a ticking between now and June 30th in order to be able to get those projects across the finish line to be able to draw down those dollars.

South Stadium is one of them. Helm Building is one of them. I think Uptown. I will say, Council President, that the one money that you and I had met on, we had set aside about $750,000 for Manchester. Obviously, that project isn't, to my knowledge, going to come to fruition. So those dollars are free to put back in the pot.

And council, to add some of the dollars that got used this year, were for a component that the council set up with that program, which was not just fee waivers, but a 50% reimbursement for their offsite improvements that are required. So this fiscal year, we have made some payments where the developers completed the project, they completed the offsite work, submitted, and they've gotten their 50% share back from the program.

Okay. How many applicants? So, I mean, it's an excess, but I mean, how many applicants does that amount to that are currently approved? And do we have sort of a backup, a backlog of applications that have not yet been reviewed or approved?

Uh, we counsel good news. We do not have a backlog of applications that have not been approved. So, uh, those move very quickly. Uh, I, I can share with you, our city manager moves very quickly on them. Uh, once, uh, we've, our staff has reviewed and we get it to her office for approval. Uh, so grand total, uh, we do have, uh, approximately $2 million, um, of approved waivers in the pipeline. And then we also have an estimated $866,000 of off-site reimbursement. So in essence, the total amount the program has approved that are eligible are about $2.9 million. However, some of these projects have not moved forward. They have that approved waiver, but As I understand, a number of them are assembling their portfolio. They're assembling their tax credits.

So a million bucks short with some falling off and some not set to receive it in this fiscal year. Absolutely.

That's correct.

It'll shake out.

Some of them are, likewise, they are grants for the state, affordable housing, sustainable communities, the AHSC program. And they're waiting to get They're essentially saying that the fee waiver program plus an AHSC grant plus tax credits, then that gets them to construction.

Okay. Thank you, Director. Different topic. What's the criteria? How does your department evaluate for what might be a good stretch of road for a road diet?

All right. Uh, so road diet, a big consideration is traffic volumes, um, along that corridor. Uh, so in, and where we have been repaving, if we find a street that was really overbuilt, uh, that was a four lane roadway, four lane undivided, um, studies have shown, uh, that, that the effect of changing that four lane undivided into three lanes, uh, one center turn lane, one lane each way, and then adding, adding the bike lanes. That's improved safety significantly. So some are very clear-cut. If the volumes are low enough, typically if they're well under 10,000 cars a day, those are very straightforward road diets. Then we get into the range if we're near more so, say, 15,000, low 20,000s per day, then the answer is maybe. And then my assistant director, Jill Gormley, And our team will do traffic studies, sometimes with an outside consultant for that analysis. And we actually look at intersections to see, well, how would the intersection function if we make that change? We know mid-block we're fine, but we look at intersections, and we go through that process.