Fiscal Sustainability Ad Hoc Committee - Regular Meeting

The April 28 meeting of the City of Fullerton fiscal sustainability ad hoc committee will now come to order at 06:05. Can you please call roll? Secretary.

Chair Roza.

Present.

Vice chair one.

Here. Committee member Boushala?

Here on Zoom.

Committee member Duong? Here. And committee member Smith? Here. Thank you.

If you are able, could you please rise for the pledge? Thank you. I would like to now call item one fiscal year 2627 preliminary budget budget expenditure overview. Does staff has a have a presentation?

Yes. We do. Thank you, chair. We'll have Steven Avalos, our interim director of administrative services, kick us off. And then at certain points, I'll jump in. And then we will have a series of department heads making presentations about their individual departments.

Quick question. Are monitors supposed to be on?

Your monitors? Yes. Because you're supposed to be able to see the PowerPoint.

Okay. Thank you, Eddie. Tonight, we will provide an overview of the Ad hoc Committee's role and purpose. We will present the city's current fiscal condition position and budget updates and an expenditure overview of the fiscal year 2627 preliminary budget in which departments will present an overview of their operations and proposed budgets.

Quick interruption. We're we're seeing a bamboo forest instead of that right now.

We have the proper screensaver, but you should be seeing the presentation.

It is a very nice screensaver.

Okay. Alright. And one just one note before Steven moves on. Like I said, each department, when we do the expenditure overview, will be presenting. We will have a consolidated presentation for several of the internal departments, but all of the major external facing departments will be giving a presentation. We do have a lot of material for you this evening. What we'd like to do is get through the presentation and we'd like you to take notes with your your comments and questions. And then when we're done with the presentation, then we would like to engage you in your questions and comments. So, you can continue, Steven.

Okay. Okay. On this slide, the ad hoc fiscal, committee was originally established on 08/06/2024 on a limited term basis to do the following. Review short and long term city financial matters and economic conditions and recommend financial strategies and fiscal solutions to the city council to improve its economic condition. The committee finalized its budget balancing recommendations, which was presented to the city council on 05/20/2025.

A number of budget balancing items were presented, which included two proposed add on sales tax measures, which were reviewed and considered by the city council. This included two half cent dedicated add on sales tax measures, one dedicated half cent for infrastructure, and one dedicated half cent for public safety, and the second measure was a 11% general add on sales tax measure for for general city purposes. The city council voted five o to proceed with the 2 half cent dedicated sales tax measure options. The ad hoc committee was then convened. Moving forward to 2025, the ad hoc committee was reestablished on 11/18/2025.

However, in contrast to the prior ad hoc committee, the committee was tasked with the more specific or limited scope of work. This was to assist with the development of sales tax measure options for city council to consider placement on the ballot. The first meeting was held on 03/30/2026 and presented an overview of the budget, infrastructure, and sales tax options. Today, meeting number two, we will focus on the general fund expenditures and cost containment efforts and what these will look like for each department.

I think you just forgot to advance your slide deck, Steven.

Oh. Yep. Thank you. And now I will pass it over to city manager, Matt Manfred.

Thank you, Steven. We do have a few updates for you before we get into the meat of the presentation. On April 7 at the city council meeting, I was directed by council to proceed with an independent audit of the city's finances. That auditor auditing firm is Grant Thornton Advisors. This stems from the items that we talked to you about in the last ad hoc committee where we had the accounting adjustments and then reclassification of funds and a budget deficit that contributed to approximately $10,000,000 in lesser reserves than what we anticipated.

That audit is getting started. It's being done in multiple phases. We're starting phase one, which is the immediate items that I just mentioned. Council is also bringing an item on Tuesday night to consider phase two of that audit, which will get into more robust discussion and dissection of the city's budget and operations, ways to look for efficiencies and and ways to provide services differently similar to what was done for the city of Orange. So I want you to be aware that that process is underway and will be considered for expansion on Tuesday.

Also wanted to update you that community polling with regards to a sales tax, a second round of community polling is currently underway and should be done in the next several days. But people have already received phone calls and emails with that. At our next ad hoc committee meeting is when we intend to go through the poll results and the methodology and we'll get into more robust discussion of of the sales tax effort at that time. And then lastly, we are working on a q and a document based on comments and questions we received at the last ad hoc committee and then we'll keep a list of those new comments and questions that we received this evening. And then hopefully next week we'll start getting a document up there, probably be a live a living breathing q and a document that's responsive to what goes on in these proceedings.

So before we get into the presentation, I do wanna to let you know that kind of the the meat and potatoes of this presentation is really kind of like a draft review of where staff is at with current budget development. So you really are getting the first preview of of our draft of our draft work. Nothing you're gonna see this evening is final, but you do need to know kinda where we're at as a staff with the things that we're thinking about to try to create a a more balanced budget. The as we start the budget process, our estimated budget deficit is 13,700,000. We certainly don't wanna adopt to that level of budget deficit, so we have a lot of work to do.

And what you're gonna see this evening is staff's first pass at, reductions that would help get the the city in line financially. None of them are are desirable, in our opinion, and they are still draft at this point in time. So I do want you to to know that. In some cases, staff in our respective departments are seeing some ideas for the first time that are not comfortable. But again, we're stressing to everybody that this is this is the department heads team team's first pass at it and there's plenty of work left to be done before anything is final and of course city council has the final say on all of that.

So with that, I will turn it over to the department head. Oh, no. I got a few more slides that we're gonna go over before we get into the presentation. So we we we did some digging around, and I have to thank our our library director and her team for basically keeping everything that that's been put in print about the city. We wanted to see kinda when was when was the last time Fullerton had, like, a solid budget.

Kinda hard to find, but what we did find is a lot of evidence that the city has been struggling with budget issues for a very long time. So you'll see right here in 1978, early warnings of budget pressure and tightening resources. I don't know if we're still in order here, but in 1982, there was a headline talking about city projects deficit, concerns about potential insolvency. In 1991, recession driven revenue losses create fiscal storm. In 1993, budget cuts and new utility tax adopted to stabilize finances.

1996, downsizing reduces staff impacting infrastructure maintenance. 1999, a 147,000,000 in unfunded infrastructure needs identified. In 2001, city considers special tax for long term street repairs. In 2005, glum outlook tied to infrastructure deficiencies and funding gaps. In 2010, great recession leads to layoffs and service reductions.

And in 2020, COVID era deficit prompts cuts and use of reserves. And we did come across another document that's not a headline, but it is it's it's my favorite. It's a it's a gem. So this here is an agenda report that was brought to the library board back in 1982 with the subject of gifts catalog. And if you if you read that, it's basically a overview of the city struggling in the wake of proposition 13 and how they're faced with shrinking revenue and increasing costs.

And the the outcome of this at the time was that the city created a Fullerton gift guide where literally, they put out a a book with, all types of materials and services that the city was asked to, if they wanted to, on a tax deductible basis, donate to the city. And you can see that it's all summarized here. It's very thorough, but, I mean, you can you could buy a SWAT van, you could buy security cameras, you could buy a computer, tape recorders. I mean, it's it's pretty interesting what they came up with back at the time. So goes to show you that desperate times then called for desperate measures, and here we are all these years later and still facing some similar pressures.

We'll go on to the next one. So here's a little more historical context about the citywide staffing levels going back about twenty years. So dating back to 1995, the city had experienced a steady increase in the number of employees reaching a peak in 2008, 2009 with about 706 full time employees. Since that peak, the city really has experienced a steady decline. In 2010, just a few years after hitting the peak and due to the recession, the city faced fiscal challenges resulting in the layoffs of 22 employees and reducing our employee count to 633, approximate 11% reduction in the workforce.

In 02/1920, the city outsourced both its jail services and street sweeping operations. Staffing continued to decline to a low of 585 full time personnel in 2022. This was due primarily to reductions in the police department. 10 police corporal positions remained unfunded. Other factors included the reorganization of parks and rec resulting in the elimination of seven positions, seven positions eliminated from public works, and three and a half positions eliminated from the library.

Since fiscal year 2223, the city has experienced moderate growth. It should be noted that the increase for 2526 includes the fire department's safer grant, which increased the fire department personnel count by 12 from 88 to 100. My takeaway from this slide is that, basically, once we had the the recession level dip, we've really just been kind of flatlining and a little bit up, a little bit down for the last fifteen years, but really never able to get back to sustained growth. You can see in in the last couple of years, the the line is on an upward trend. And as we sit here today, I believe that that trend line is gonna flatten, if not come down.

So it just those those days of the early two thousands, and there's several staff in here that remember those days. So I think there's a yearning that one day we're gonna get back there, but it doesn't look like that's gonna be anytime soon. With that, I'll turn it over to Steven for overview of our general fund financial position.

This next slide shows the city's updated financial position based on fiscal year twenty four twenty five audited financials. This information was presented at the q two financial report, back on May 03/17/2026. For fiscal year 2526, we will start with an available fund balance of $19.19800000 After adjusted revenues and transfers in of a 140,200,000 against expenditures and transfers out of a 144,000,000, the city will end the year at 16,000,000 available fund balance. On the the column on the right, we have the preliminary budget for fiscal year twenty six twenty seven. This reflects the city's initial base budget without further cost reductions.

So after revenues and transfers in of a 142,100,000 against expenditures and transfers out of a 155,800,000, the city is facing an initial 13,700,000 operating deficit and is estimated to end the year at a 2,300,000 available fund balance. Again, I just wanna reiterate that, this is if nothing is done moving forward, in which the plan is to reduce the operating deficit and what we present to city council in June. These next two pie charts present both the proposed the proposed all city funds budget and proposed general fund budget as it stands today. The pie chart on the left, the all funds chart. All funds totaled 290,400,000 across all city funds.

The general fund, which is on the right blue, makes up half of the citywide budget or approximately 52% of the budget. The the other half encompasses the water enterprise fund as well as other enterprise funds, special revenue funds. This is, like, your gas tax funds or any grant funds we have, as well as the city's capital improvement projects or CIP, program budget, which make up the other half. The pie chart on the right, which is the general fund chart, the general fund totals a 150,400,000 across its nine operating departments. As a full service city with in house police and fire departments, public safety makes up 71% of the general fund budget, and this is pretty typical for cities with both in house public safety departments.

And now we begin the department overview sections starting with our administrative support departments first. Administrative support departments are this are your internal departments that support the entire organization, in addition to our external and and, parties and community. The city manager's office department oversee oversees the city's other eight operating departments and daily operations, and this also includes contracted IT or information technology services and implements the city council's priorities. The administrative services department manages the city's financial operations of the city, including budget development, general accounting and financial reporting, debt management, its treasury operations, as well as its utility services. Our human resources department oversees the city's personnel system and recruits, supports, and develops the city's workforce.

It also manages the city's risk management programs, which includes both workers' compensation and its general liability programs. Together, all these departments provide administrative support to all city departments to ensure efficient, transparent, and effective city services. The admin support total budget reflects a net operating budget of $13,500,000. The general fund makes up the majority of its budget and totals $10,600,000. The admin support budget also includes its internal services fund budgets, which include workers' compensation, general liability, and information technology or its IT fund, to name a few.

These budgets are offset by cost allocations to all the receiving departments for these services. As a personnel or position overview, this includes budgeted full time equivalent or FTE positions, with 56 FTE positions. This includes a nominal non regular budget or hours of 2,017. And as you can see on the slide, salary and benefits total 7,900,000 or reflect 59% of the admin support budget. This includes 20 management positions, which include your managers, your senior analysts, well as supervisors, 36 administrative and professional staff.

And of these position count, seven full time positions are currently vacant.

Real quick, Steven. I just wanted to for the for the committee and the public, the the use of the term non regular hours, that that means they're not full time benefited employees. A lot of places would call them hourly or part time, but really, it it they could be full time without benefits, but typically, are our hourly employees, just to let you know.

So adding some context to our our staffing. We're utilizing existing staff resources and restructuring roles wherever feasible. We're maintaining current service levels without adding new positions when possible. Existing staffing resources are fully utilized with limited ability to absorb addition additional responsibilities, with the which is the challenge. As as well as maintaining current service levels is becoming increasingly difficult without adding positions.

So what we're doing is we're trying to yield efficiencies, develop cross training opportunities, and alternative staffing models are being utilized as short term solutions. Should note that continued understaffing may lead to service impacts and responsiveness. For fiscal year twenty five twenty six, all departments, contributed to, a 3% salary salary reductions, as part of the cost containment strategies, we're implementing today. The following positions were held vacant during fiscal year twenty five, twenty six, which to achieve our 3% reduction in salary expenditures. So, in administrative services department, this included accounting supervisor, and human resources.

This included the director of human resources, which was vacant for a portion of the year, as well as the city manager's office, which included a vacant admin analyst too. For fiscal year twenty six twenty seven, when looking at a 5% budget reduction, this translates to achieving $435,000 in savings, and it would look at holding the following positions, vacant as well as reduced contract costs. So, again, we have holding the HR director vacant for for approximately five months. This would also entail holding the budget purchasing manager vacant for half the year, and there is a deputy director of administrative services be held vacant for a full year. And in the city manager's office, there is a reduction in animal control, shelter costs, which yielded, about 246,000 in savings.

So for if we had to make further reductions, these may include eliminate or freeze all vacant positions across administrative support departments. This would likely result in reduced organizational efficiency and coordination. There would be a decline in service quality and responsiveness to both internal and external parties. The fourth bullet, which I think is probably the biggest potential impact is that the city could be exposed to financial internal risks as well as future city liabilities and claims increases. There would also likely be a consolidation of the positions across all departments.

And now I'll hand it over to director Thomas for committee and economic development.

Thank you, Steven. Good evening, committee members. My name is Tanaina Thomas. I'm the director of community and economic development. My department has five divisions. We're a multi disciplinary department delivering core services, facility development, and supporting revenue generation. We have building and safety, planning, economic development, housing, and code enforcement. We process over 3,300 plan check cases per year. That doesn't include permits issued. More than 1,100 in person customer interactions per month that doesn't count calls or emails.

We manage over $2,600,000 in grants managed by the department that doesn't touch the general fund. And an overall general fund budget is about 7,500,000 outside of protected funds that are here. We also bring in what probably should have been here is that we also bring in roughly $7,000,000 in revenue through permit fees, plan check fees, and application fees. There, of course, is some variability with that because we do share some of the costs with public works and, fire. But for the most part, we are a cost neutral cost neutral department.

75% of our there's cost recovery through department fees that we collect. We don't not a 100% of that stays within the department. It goes straight into the general fund. In the overall past year, we've had projects with an overall valuation of $85,000,000 or more. Next slide please.

Our department based operating budget is 10,700,000 restricted funds of $3,100,000 that includes a housing fund, CDBG, and so basically state and federal, grants and other programs and initiatives that are restricted to those programs. And then there's an operating budget left of 7,500,000 Next slide please. The department has 37 full time positions. Our salaries and benefits, of that 7,000,000 we are about $5,000,000 in terms of salaries and benefits. For close to a decade, this department has chronically been understaffed.

The results clearly in terms of what we process per year and we'll see more of it throughout this throughout this deck. But the results were absolutely visible, especially even four years ago with slow turnaround times, project backlogs, and a reputation within the development community that Fullerton was hard to work with. Why this was was because of this 22% back and forth. So just to be clear, we haven't had a 22% vacancy, excuse me, vacancy over the past four years. When we started, it was probably that if not higher.

We've increased positions, but we it's just natural attrition that has also happened. We made a strong effort, in '24 with the salary adjustments and other, and we were able to fill it with probably only one to two vacancies. And then, more recently is because of retirements, folks leaving for other opportunities or others. So now we're still we're back at that 22%. But historically, if you go back into previous years over the last decade, you'll see that cycle pretty much repeat itself over and over.

Next slide. Next slide, please. So where do we compare in terms of the region? So our population is probably comparable to City Of Orange and very close to Garden Grove. Our CED budget is about $10,600,000 7,500,000 is what we use out of the general fund.

8.54, for Orange, Garden Grove about 14,000,000. The biggest, you know, the the quickest way to understand this is the the load that Fullerton carries, which is very similar to our peer cities and especially with five divisions, high plan check volumes and complexities around that workload. The plan checks plus permit issuance per year, city of Fullerton is about 8,700. Compared to our other cities, this is, of course, there might be variables. This is the numbers I pulled out of their most recent budget, but on average, of them are saying 6,000 in terms of plan checks and permit issuance.

Then you look at the staffing. Garden Grove has their building and planning office alone has 31 staff members, the economic development office and housing has an additional 33, city of Orange has 39.5, and of course Fullerton is at 37, we've pretty much ebbed and flowed between probably 32 to 37. Next slide please. So the catch 22 is our CD vacancies or oftentimes we say staff augmentation professional services. So we do have a professional services budget and we use those for, any sort of consulting fees, but also to offset some of that vacancy.

Because of the vacancies, we rely heavily on the consultants to maintain the service levels. While it is necessary, you know, it's not what it was maybe ten to twenty years ago, it's significantly higher. It's almost two times the cost of a full time, employee. There's no institutional knowledge that we build. There's variability depending on funding as we're talking about today and especially within this fiscal year and also next.

And there's just no continuity there. There are positives in the sense that, you know, we can kinda turn over staff fairly quickly or they'll they're able to jump onto projects, but it's very difficult when we have to pull them midstream and get another staff on board, etcetera. The full time position, what we're able to do is just consistent service turnarounds. There's institutional knowledge. There's revenue generating capacity.

There's just long term stability as part of it. But one thing to really highlight is that while we're trying to by taking the approach of eliminating or freezing positions, it's not doing anything to the workload. The volume is significantly increasing and we've seen that not only just in the one or two years, that's been at least for the last five years with the development activity in town. Next slide, please. So the existing vacancy holds, I'm not gonna go into this very detailed, but you'll see we we are ending the year with sort of under in terms of about 700,000.

We you'll see the differentials because I am using that for staff augmentation for the vacancies that we do have. Over the last two years, we've held about a three to 5% salary reduction exercise and kept it that way by year end. But what this is considering is that all of these positions when they're not filled, we're not able to go into meeting those services, the case loads, the projects, the initiatives, not including, you know, case loads for, like, code enforcement, for instance. I've got a, I just realized that's not on here, but the code enforcement manager is vacant. Overall, code enforcement in general, that's probably my highest in in a challenge is we have 900 code enforcement cases, and we only have about seven staff members that are there.

To put that into context, on average, they should really be dealing with about 80 to a 100 cases. They're well over the 200 range at this point with the volume that we have. So we try to triage the best that we can, but they're very much so in a reactive phase. They've always been that way and they'll continue to be that way until there's more investment into some of these specific departments. Another anecdote is a senior permatech.

They're really the front line of the revenue generation we get into the city with one person down. We're about five days behind on processing alone, meaning the minute it touches us to get it routed is behind five days. Again, to put into perspective, four years ago that was two to three weeks behind all across the board. So now that, that has been streamlined and so what we're looking at, next slide please, is all of those improvements I've been trying to make for the last four years, they're at risk. So right now, we're at 93% on time plan check performance, between planning and building, but I can also respectfully say that for public works and fire as well as, permit issuance.

And on average, we're about nine and a half days in terms of plan check turnaround. Meaning, do twelve day first plan check. It's twelve ten five five. This is something that we do, that is unique or different than everyone else in the in the county. We've 100% we've gone 100% digital. Many cities have certainly absolutely gone 100% digital, but we've also made our plans digital. Why all of that matters is because we can now do reviews. We've, we've cut a lot of that sort of, communication gaps. We're doing interdepartmental connections so that we're all on the same page as conditions and corrections are out. It's just time and money as folks are investing into these processes.

What is, overall in terms of what that happens is that we're we're we are at that shift where if we're a if we're needing to make that 5% or even 10%, we're starting to not only affect the staffing ceiling that we have, the staff's capacity ceiling, but there's also, like, really there's no margin, in terms of error or how we pick up on some of these workloads. Next slide, please. Potential for further reductions. At a 10% level, we would observe reductions through a combination of vacancy holds, reduced professional services, and service prioritization. The primary impact would be on the timelines and our ability to respond at peak demand, which will affect when revenue is realized.

We're not certainly in a vacuum. Again, this belongs with fire and public works as well, which are absolutely integral to those review times because even though we can be, you know, efficient within those twelve days, I need my colleagues to be there with me in order for the full, process to work. So it's really important to kinda highlight that permit review capacity, you know, that does correlate towards our approval time frame. That does correlate with deferred investment, and that's less revenue generated to the city. Next slide, please.

Now we have, again, over the past four years, looked at ways to reallocate, to be able to be more efficient with some of our resources and kind of spread it as thin as possible, and we've done that through fund reallocation. Temporarily, we did move housing staff costs into CDBG and other non general fund funds. We, as I mentioned, the staff augmentation strategy with using professional services. We streamlined operations, digital streamlining, counter hour redesign, process improvements, and departmental coordination. And then of course there were also strategic position delays so that we're able to create a salary savings by the year end.

What's at risk is general there are a lot of long range planning, efforts that are state mandated, but also for just general growth within the city that is required to be done, and also what we proactively should be doing as well in terms of that overall return for the city. But in addition to that, we have a lot of state mandated streamlining processes and timeframes. Those would be at risk at that point. Again, a lot of it is also tied to, turnaround times and customer service. Next slide, please.

Lastly, this pretty much just shows how our work translates directly into the revenue for the city and why timing and staffing for this department matters. The fast approvals attract developers and investors. New construction generates fees now and property tax or sales tax for years to come. As we look forward to the ways to close our gaps to continue growing our revenue base through development, through business retention, attraction, real estate, etcetera. To truly see this work, we have to be more proactive across the board.

Within economic development, outreach, long range planning, corridor support, downtown activation, enhancement, I mean, list goes on, but that capacity is just not there today to do it in a expeditious manner. It will just take much longer probably in a, eight to ten year span versus what probably could be done within a within a few years. Staying flat, is certainly not being it's not the same as saying that we're fine. The volume is growing, and the structure just doesn't support that volume. But hopefully, through everything that's shown here, we can show kind of both the positive, but also the channel challenges that are coming up ahead, and how that revenue is really tied into not only just our department, but also the city, citywide budget as a whole.

So with that, I will pass it over to fire.

Thanks, Sunaina. Good evening, everybody. Adam Losure, fire the fire chief. I'm gonna give you a little background on the fire department and line out similar slide deck to community economic development. So just a quick overview view of the fire department.

So we are what's called an all hazard emergency response agency that responds out of six fire stations. And that all hazard encompasses your fires, your rescues, your hazardous materials, your paramedic level call volume. It also includes fire prevention, plan checking, code enforcement, and, of course, investigation. But there's we do take the lead on emergency preparedness as well. The importance of that is to make sure that we are, we have the documents, the citywide documents that are updated, managed.

So in the case of an emergency, we are poised to, put in for reimbursement for state and federal dollars. Next slide. So here's a a department budget overview of the fire department. We are 100%, general funded, and our salaries, similar to the other departments, make up a large part of our our budget at almost $31,000,000 in salaries and benefits. This shows also our maintenance support, just about ten nine million, capital outlay of 103,000,000.

So a total fund, general fund total of just about $40,000,000. What this does not include is the cost of fire heavy apparatus. We currently have three fire apparatus that are on order. We will be receiving two of those this current this upcoming fiscal year and then a third one the following fiscal year. Each one of those ranges from $1,200,000.

The third one is $2,200,000. So that also that is not accounted for what you see up here. Next slide, please. So this this slide just shows what our apparatus, the years of our apparatus, what they look like for our fleet. And the reason why this is important because it is a huge investment by the city.

Fire engines, fire apparatus are are one of the most expensive pieces of equipment that a city will purchase. So and we have standards that we have to we have to abide by not only for technology, but also for the safety of our members who are responding to those to these incidents. Code three driving, from a dead stop to out the door. So it is it is something that we as a city have to contend with and try to work around. You may have heard recently that we did file a class action lawsuit against the apparatus manufacturers to try to push for some resolution, not only on the expense of the fire apparatus, but also on the long term build times for these apparatus.

Because what that does, that those long build times put more pressure on our reserve or our fleet that we use in in backup. And you could see some of our apparatus from 1999, 2002. They're they may look really good, and we take a lot of pride in our fire equipment. But they are they are being held together very precariously. And our our public work staff does a great job of supporting that.

But just like any vehicle, they do take they are taking a beating. So So that is part of the long term planning and financing that is part of the fire department. Next slide, please. So some activity that's happened with the fire department. So in October 2022, the city council made the provided the direction to rebuild the fire department.

So as a as an apartment, it's one of those rare opportunities where we had the we had the ability to look at the service we deliver and build it back better. That means what are the the needs and not so much the wants of what a fire department and the service it delivers. What are the components of that both in manpower, equipment, and in the actual different So at that time in '22 in in 2022, we're at a 35% vacancy rating. So those were that's where those opportunities came up to rebuild the fire department. We've been able to do that, with the support of of council and contract negotiations that aided in our, in our retention of our current employees and also in our recruitment of new employees here to where we're just around one to 2% on our vacancies right now.

On sat last Saturday, we just welcomed 13 new or 12 13 new firefighters to the city, and I'll talk about that here in just a minute. Over the last three years, we've grown our EMS, revenues or reimbursements, from $4,000,000 to $10,000,000. So we've we've tried to look at another opportunity and not so much, alright. We understand there may be needs for reductions, but are there other apps options for us to look at for revenue sources? And so in 2018, we we we started on taking on emergency medical services billing, and we've been able to grow that over the last several years from 2018 to current, and add new monies into the general fund to help offset the cost of of our department.

On February 26, we started our in house ambulance program, and what that was able to do, was able to lower the the service or reduce the the cost of delivering that service by about $700,000 long range. So about 400,000 for this upcoming year, and then consistently over time, increase that. So it's a reduction of the service that that we are required to provide, but now we have complete control over that service, along with the cost that it takes to deliver that service. For example, all of our employees, and I'll show you on the next slide, are non regular employees, as Eddie mentioned, And they are they are hourly employees typically at minimum wage or just slightly above that. We we pay them when they work, so they are not salaried.

So we're able to control that that that level of employee compared to the private sector where we don't have any control over that as far as contracting that service. In May 2026, actually, on Saturday, that is where we are going to increase, our service. So in 2018, we removed the unit out of service, due to some budget restraints, we kinda saw the dip in, in staffing levels around that same time. So when the direction was to rebuild the fire department, knowing that in order to bring service back the expense of that, that's where we looked at the in house ambulance program and also federal grants. And we were able to receive a federal grant for just just over just over $3,000,000 to help offset the cost of that.

So on Saturday, we will be redeploying our our ladder truck back to Station 1, and we'll have a paramedic engine up out of Station 6. So now all six of our our fire station areas will have paramedic level service. Next slide. So, budget overview, as I mentioned, just about $31,000,000 in salaries and benefits. That represents about, 76% of our budget.

We have a 100 full time employees, and our growth has gone from 88 to a 100, but that is supported by just under $3,000,000 from our federal SAFR grant. Our nonregular hours are about six just about 61 and a

half

thousand nonregular hours, and those are primarily utilized by our ambulance operators. We have four ambulances that respond from within the city. And then we also have an additional utility driver position that provides basic utility work between the different six stations, to help augment operations. Next slide, please. So this slide is just a, this is a breakdown of our what our staff looks like, based upon the chief officers or actual fire suppression personnel at eighty four, our prevention staff, and our prevention division, is next to cost neutral.

So we work with community economic development and public works, the building division, to help maintain our businesses, keep them safe both for the occupants and business owners, but then also for our first responders who may have to respond into the businesses for either a medical emergency, or a, you know, or a fire emergency. We have an emergency preparedness coordinator, which I spoke of earlier. We do have a, EMS manager, and that that person serves as a critical role as well because every single one of our firefighters is a basic EMT, and then two thirds of our department are also paramedics. And so that person makes sure makes verifies that they are being educated, they have the proper qualifications and licensing, and oversees quality control as they respond out to our public. Our administrative staff, we'll see on the next slide, but, we have three people that support the entire operation of our fire department.

And in my opinion, it very lean compared to what we are producing and the work the volume that we have going through our department. Next slide, please. So here is our call volume. So we we responded to just about 16,800 calls for service last year. That is almost a 19% increase over the last five years, and that trend we expect to continue to to escalate at 70% over the last ten years in call volume.

So we as a city, we have more building going on. We have a aging, population. We have the largest Cal State Fullerton or Cal State in the system with Cal State Fullerton with about 45,000 people that attend that university, Fullerton College. We are a very busy dynamic city that has heavy emergency responses and needs, and we're proud to do that. And I think what what the the part of this slide does show, it kinda lines out similar to another department as how do we compare up to the the other cities.

And Orange is a very comparable city as we mentioned earlier. So similar in population, but they do have eight fire stations compared to our six. They have a 140 full time employees. They respond to about 2,000 more calls than us, and their calls per firefighter are vastly that's where the big difference is noticed. We have a 187 calls per firefighter.

There's at a 165. Firefighters per thousand people, we're at point six two. I guess that's a little over half of a person compared to their point 0.82. So did just give you a little bit of context from a light city within our area as far as the call volume and the work that we are doing. And as I mentioned in the very beginning, we we looked at what we do and on a daily basis and how we deliver the service across all divisions and what would be the most effective, efficient way to deliver that service.

And that's what we put together over the last four years. Next slide, please. So this, just talks about the administrative support that goes for the fire department. The Fullerton fire department, as I mentioned, we have we're mighty and mighty and strong with our three, and they do a fantastic job for us. But they are they are maxed at what they're doing. And compared to our other cities that are around us, I think that speaks for itself on the slide deck. Next slide, please. So we also participated in the 3% vacancy exercise. Our savings goals to achieve was $800,000. That's 3% of general fund salary budget.

We were holding five firefighter positions. The the difference between as as we work through this throughout the year, is the difference between what the fire department has compared to the other departments. We have constant staffing. So what that means is that twenty four hours a day, three sixty five during the year, every fire station is staffed. So it doesn't matter where you live in the city.

You're gonna get a fire and a medical resource to your your residents within industry standard times. We can only do that by being constantly staffed. We can only do we can only make entry to fire fires when we are staffed the way we are currently staffed. So, the reductions we thought we'd be able to realize, during this particular time, were minimal at best. Next slide, please.

So as part of this is, alright. Well, what does a 5% budget reduction look like for the fire department? And really what this comes down to is primarily due to our how our budget is is allocated or fixed. As we mentioned, a large portion of that of our budget is salaries and benefits. Another 10% of that is due to internal service fund allocation. So as a department, we pay into different funds that support how we do business. So that's our that's our IT or our technology. That's our vehicle allocation or replacement with public works. That's the insurance. That's facility maintenance for our six city buildings.

On top of that, we have fixed contract costs. So we do have a joint powers authority or agreement for dispatching for fire and medical resources. We share that with seven other fire agencies in the county. That is known as Metronet dispatch. That is a fixed contractual cost.

Our EMS billing is also fixed, and our hazmat response, which is also part of a JPA, is also fixed. So that's about 99% more of our budget. Now we get down to what is our actual noncontractually obligated costs or somewhat of our discretionary monies, and that equates to about 1 and a half million dollars. But within that 1 and a half million dollars, we utilize those funds to take care or maintain our six fire stations. Half our fire stations were built in the in the mid fifties.

So they're they're feeling a little unaware just like some of us that may be 50 years old. So and then we have a 100% of our budget discretionary costs that are only they only allow us to hit 77% of our target for this $2,000,000 reduction, which is the 5% ask. So reaching that 5% really comes down to people. Next slide, please. So what does that look like?

And, you know, admittedly, this this is a tough slide to to show because I just, as I mentioned, brought on 13 new people here. And so I'm showing you what 5% reduction would be, which is kinda reversing what we just did. But, nonetheless, I think it's it's important for us to to see what that looks like. So 12 full time employees, firefighters, at about a $166,000, all in, fully burdened, equates to that $2,000,000 mark. What that means is that we would forfeit that federal grant that we got from known as the safer grant and reverses on what we've been doing over the last four years is building rebuilding the fire department.

It also would have to reverse that engine six deployment, which causes a a paramedic gap within the the city. It also puts our response times in jeopardy in noncompliance. It also it also drops our ISO rating, and that's our insurance rating. Hot off the press, we we were at a three due to what's going on on Saturday with moving forward with redeploying that that that unit up at Station 6. We are back at a two for ISO.

So it's with the work of public works and the water department, our dispatch services, and the work that we've been able to do over the last four years, we're able to kinda claw our way back from a class three, back to a class two, which is impactful to our our businesses. And as far as when they're looking for insurance rates, it is a factor that can be contribute that can contribute to, either higher or lower interest rates when businesses try to get their, their insurances. One other impact to this is, reliance on mutual aid. We did realize this over the last several years, last, yeah, several years that we've been down a unit is a heavier reliance on our neighbors. And our neighbors, we have a great mutual aid, agreement, especially within Orange County.

But you you what you don't want to do is lean on that to cover your own department. It's it's widely recognized that each city, if you have your fire department, police, right, you cover your own you take care of your own dirt. There's gonna be extenuating circumstances where, of course, the incident is larger than what a city is able to handle. You lean on your neighbors to help you out for those rare instances. But on a day to day day to day basis, that's a little bit you start crossing the line of taking advantage of your neighbors.

Lastly, it's just it starts to erode our recent recruiting and retention gains that we've made. And like I said, we started at 35%, and we've had the support of everybody that's sitting here in order to do that. Specifically, though, with our human resources, finance, and public works, they've really been able to prop us up in order to do what we've done in such a short amount of time. Next slide, please. So one of the last slides here is just, alright, what does further reductions look like?

And at this, this equates to double of what the 5% would look like, which is just about $4,000,000. And that's 24 sworn firefighters. So one full engine company on the three shifts equates to 12 firefighters to give you some context. So this is this would be two two stations, that we would be looking to make reductions to. We would have to we would have to forfeit our safer grant, jeopardize some federal funding, our ISO rating, response times, and shifts from the Calburn to our to our cities.

That's where the biggest piece comes in is that our ability to respond as quickly as possible to those who have the needs, will be delayed. And I don't I don't want that to happen. We pride ourselves on being very quick, professional, answer your call, take care of business. But just like everything, if you don't have the the the man the personnel and the equipment to do so, other things other things can can take a hit. So those are all policy decisions from council that we would have to work through if that is the direction.

But that does give you hopefully just some an idea of what what a large reduction would be, to make things happen here. Next slide, please. So just to kinda summarize because it's a lot. I understand that. But 96 of our our budget is is fixed.

We have a lean administrative staff. We have a rising service demand, as I said, nearly 20% over the last five years. And we've made some fantastic recent investments in both trying to secure federal grants, starting up an ambulance program, taking on the the EMS billing to bring in that additional revenue, those new monies over the last several years. And on top of that, balancing all that out so that we can increase service to our city at a cost just about a cost neutral perspective. So a lot of strong work's been done by the men and women of the of the fire department and a lot in the departments that are here to support us, and we greatly appreciate that.

But, hopefully, that gives you just some background on, you know, our story, where we've been, and what we're looking to do into the future. I'll have staff and personnel available after this is all done to address questions. Thank you.

Good evening, committee members. My name is Anita O'Keefe Torres, and I am your library director. The library department consists of the main location next door to City Hall. We're currently operating at thirty six hours per week. We plan to increase that to forty beginning in July which I'll explain in just a moment.

Our Hunt branch location is currently operating at twenty hours per week and we do we participate in approximately ten plus hours per week of off community outreach that includes class visits, having outreach tables at the Fullerton Night Market, etcetera. Our collection is currently at approximately 300,000 print audio, visual, and digital resources. We provide programs and events for all ages. We have a local history resource center and digital archive. And we have a we will soon in just a couple of weeks have our passport application acceptance facility up and running and so we will then become a revenue generating department once again.

That is where the additional four hours, we will be gaining those four hours. We plan to increase the Friday and Saturday hours by two per day. We currently close at 5PM. We're looking at closing at seven Evening hours are some of the most requested for passport acceptance because other locations are not able to process those applications during evening hours. Next slide please.

What we do for the community. The library staff takes much pride in providing assistance to the community five days a week in person, but really seven days per week if you count our online and digital resources, whether it's helping with research assistance, literacy programs, technology tutoring, informing with our online news databases, language learning programs and homework and job resources, entertaining with books, DVDs, game programs, craft story times, stay and play activities, or supporting volunteer opportunities. This is both for high school students and all ages. Our local history room and that we lend out free Wi Fi hotspots. We are also one of the rare welcoming spaces where you can come for free study rooms, event space for community groups, a teen zone for that sort of elusive young adult age group and just family friendly spaces and a space for all ages.

Next slide please. The library department is general fund. So currently we're operating at just under 5,200,000. But as you'll see on the next slide, next slide please. Thank you.

Well, our last bullet point, the library also receives an average of 150,000 in annual pledges from our support groups. So our Fullerton Public Library Foundation and Friends of the Fullerton Public Library support the majority of our programming research resources projects and they they are committed to helping even more where needed. Currently, our budget, the majority goes to our salaries and benefits. And after that, it would go to our internal service funds. This is a breakdown of our current budget staff budgeting.

We do have six management positions that I just wanna note, have three underfilled division managers. This means, maybe we had some retirees or people who had, separated for whatever reason and they have been underfilled with existing staff. Next slide please. In fiscal year twenty five-twenty six, there was a request for a 3% vacancy hold exercise. This slide demonstrates how we got there.

We had five, positions that we held and the goal was to, have a cost savings of $88,378. We were able to exceed that a bit by getting to 97,889. Those positions have since been filled. Next slide, please. This is a local comparison.

We found that the City of Orange Libraries was our closest comparison. They have just one more location than we we do, but you can see that their staff is nearly double. Our outputs, are comparable, to what they produce with, much more staff. Also to note is the local income per capita. This is the most recent information that we had available from the California State Library.

City of Fullerton is operating in the bottom third in the state at $31.22 per person, whereas Orange is just a bit higher, but they are closer to the median in the state at $38.57. Next slide, please. Looking at our proposed 5%, requested reductions, 5% of our general fund budget would be 259,525. We plan to get there by eliminating the overnight security at the Hunt Library location and pivoting to a blue light security camera scenario instead. You can see, on the right, what the the net would, be one hundred sixty thousand dollars fifty two in savings, after purchase and installation of the cameras.

We also are looking at reducing our book budget by $96,473. And I just wanna say thank you again to our, support groups who have already expressed interest in picking up any of any of those gaps. Next slide, please. Further reductions may include additional, reductions to the library book budget. This includes print books and also our digital, ebooks and downloadable audiobooks which are becoming increasing in popularity.

They're almost starting to catch up to print books in popularity. Further reductions may also include smaller scale and fewer library programs and events. It would also include reduced outreach to local schools. We're just a couple of locations for a geographically large city. So outreaching into the community directly for those who maybe are not able to reach our locations is very important.

We would be greatly affected in not being able to do that outreach if we had further reductions. Another potential scenario is a merger with Department of Parks and Recreation to reduce costs and consolidate administrative staff. And lastly, there have been talks about potential privatization of library library services to an outside company. Next slide. So in summary, our library programs are highly utilized and valued.

Our our general fund budget is largely tied to staffing and internal service funds. Currently, we have limited flexibility for expansion of programming, collection development, and community outreach. And I just wanna reiterate here, I should have added another bullet point to just say that our support groups are really there to, pick up pick up the gaps than they already are. So thank you, and I will turn it over to chief Reyes. Oh, sorry. To Daisy.

Alright. Good evening, committee members. I'll be going over the parks and recreation budget. So, city's parks and recreation department plays an important role in supporting the quality of life of Fullerton residents. Our team maintains 53 parks over 30 miles of trails and operates key community facilities.

We also provide programming for all age groups and support many of the events that bring the community together. Because they are highly visible community facing services, we approach any change thoughtfully and with care. Next slide. The department's total operating budget is approximately 12,400,000 with about 7,500,000 supported by the general fund. Significant portion of the funds, nearly 60%, come from other revenue sources such as the Bray Dam Fund, grants, and special revenues.

We've been intentional about leveraging these fund funding resources to help offset impacts to the general fund where appropriate. The general fund continues to support our core operations, particularly staffing, maintenance, and programming with building maintenance and just maintaining our facilities as a significant, factor. Next slide. Personnel costs represent about a third of the department's budget, which reflects a relatively lean staffing model for the level of service we provide. We currently operate with 21 full time staff members budgeted, supported by a large part time workforce or nonregular hours of 50,000 nonregular hours, which translates to just over 75 part time or nonregular bodies.

I do wanna note that we currently have seven full time vacancies as well as two staff members which have been on leave for several months. Next slide. So as part of the city's initial cost containment efforts, the department met its 3% reduction target primarily through vacancy management. And there was several positions that we held vacant. Of those that are, still vacant are the recreation coordinator for special events that is currently being underfilled by, some part time help, not the same amount of hours or the same level of service.

The recreation coordinator for private vent rentals was vacant due to staff turnover, but that position has now been filled. And we've also had a reduction in part time hours across the department in several divisions. Next slide. K. So over time oh, I'm sorry.

There's been a couple of things that we've done before we talk about further reductions to reduce our cost over the years. After the COVID pandemic during that time, that's when the city made a decision to, lease out several of our or all of our neighborhood centers across the city with the exception of, the Chapman facility. All of those are now leased to different nonprofits in the community. We've also outsourced our pools and other facilities throughout the, community. We've also have a private company that manages our golf course on our behalf, so that's also, part of our portfolio.

We've also reduced or eliminated different programs, including, different youth sports programs and adult sports or offset some of those responsibilities, or partnered with various, partner leagues. We've significantly reduced operating hours at our various facilities. Hunt Library was closed for years, and the Fullerton Community Center hours have been reduced. Several of our park restrooms in town are already closed, just to help manage costs, custodial, building maintenance, and some we just can't keep up with the level of vandalism, that it takes to just continually repair and maintain those facilities. We've cut staff for vacant positions, throughout the years during the COVID pandemic.

Another parks and recreation took a huge hit. All of the part time staff was cut at that point, and we have not been restored to those levels. We've also reduced the reservations of our park facilities and park pavilions just due to limited staffing that we have. And we've also transitioned the Fullerton Museum, which used to be part it used to be a city facility run by city employees, and that is now operated by the Fullerton Museum nonprofit. Next slide. One one more, Steven. I have this in two form. There we go. Thank you. So the department's 5% reduction target is about $378,000.

A key component of this proposal is ensuring that costs are aligned with the most appropriate funding source. So this includes reallocating certain staffing costs to funds that more directly support those activities. So for instance, we have staff at the tennis center and working at the Fullerton Sports Complex. So we're able to allocate a portion of their time reflective of their current duties to the Brae Dam Fund instead of the general fund. And we also, at the community center, have staff that processes water bill payments, every single day, including weekend service.

So we would allocate a portion of their time, to the water fund to offset the general fund. In addition, we are proposing a few targeted operational adjustments such as transitioning to a primarily digital recreation guide and modest reductions in part time hours where activity levels are lower. But overall, the intent is to meet the reduction target while maintaining service levels to the greatest extent possible. Should additional reductions be required, the department would need to evaluate a broader range of options. This could include adjustments to service levels, facility operations, or program delivery models.

There may also be opportunities to explore expanded partnerships or alternate service approaches, but any such changes would be carefully considered and brought forward with a clear understanding of potential community impacts. Next slide. And with that, I will, turn it over to chief Radis from the police department.

Good evening, committee members. My name is John Radis. I serve as your chief of police. I'm gonna give you an overview of the Fullerton Police Department. We are a full service law enforcement agency. Here in the city of Fullerton, we respond to 911 calls, traffic collisions, crimes. We conduct community enhancement patrols, and we conduct proactive policing. That's comprising 22 units divided into two divisions. Last year, we responded to 82,000 calls for service, and we closed 1,900 cases with the, our crimes persons and crimes property detectives. We do provide three, school resource officers to the Fullerton Joint Union High School District.

One of our school resource officers covers two schools. They are paid for 66% of their salaries are paid for by the school district. We also have one school liaison officer assigned to the Fullerton School District, and she covers all 20 schools. Again, 66% of that is paid for by the the Fullerton School District. And then lastly, we conduct at least two community events, every month, and that could consist of, an area commander meeting.

Our city is divided into three areas. Each area has an area commander, which is a police lieutenant who serves as a watch commander, and they're responsible for all the community and crime that occurs in that particular zone. We conduct a coffee with a cop, pizza with the police. I like to say, really, anything that rhymes with cop, dog, police, or dispatcher, we have. So donuts with dispatchers, cookies and canines, pops with the cops. We do it throughout the year. We also conduct a national night out, and then we do holiday events such as, shop with a cop and adopt a family. Next slide, please. So our budget, we are we are primarily general funded, through the general fund budget of $70,000,000. We do receive grants.

It says 947, but it's typically about $2,000,000 a year. That's currently what we have now and we're in between potential grants. We have the SLES fund which is a supplemental law enforcement fund and that comes from the state of California. That's $211,000 and that's typically applied to overtime at the end of the year. We also have asset forfeiture or asset seizure funds.

Those funds are funds that are, seized by the government, from, people that are committing crimes. Typically, it has to do with drugs and drug enforcement. That goes through the federal government and at some point will end up, with us in our asset forfeiture funds. I wanna be very clear though, the asset forfeiture funds can only be used for training and equipment and they cannot they cannot supplant our budget. So for instance, if, we need to receive, new vests, that's called PPE, which is personal protective equipment that the city should be providing to our employees.

So we can't use asset forfeiture to purchase things that the city should be providing to our employees. So our total operating budget is roughly $72,000,000. Next slide, please. We're currently budgeted for a 196 positions, full time positions, and that includes both sworn and non sworn professional staff. We have roughly 3,600 non regular hours and and like the other, departments and divisions, that that includes, part time, annuitants, consultants.

We have roughly thirty six hundred hours for that. 74% of our operating budget does come from salary and benefits which is $52,000,000 and that supports our 32 sworn management supervisors that includes the chief of police, two captains, six lieutenants, and I'll get to that later. Currently only have four and twenty three sergeants. We have 100 sworn non managements. Those are police officers and police corporals that fill our patrol and investigations bureaus among others.

Our non sworn professional staff consists of five professional staff managers and then 59 non sworn professional staff. We also have are currently holding 10 full time positions, and seven of those have to do with our 3% vacancy savings which I'll get to for 2627. Next slide, please. So these are the different units that comprise the Fullerton Police Department. Again, they're they're separated into two divisions.

A couple that we just recently brought back, I'll I'll just touch on, which is our gang unit comprised of, one sergeant and, three detectives. The four of them are cross sworn as f, task force officers with the Orange County violent gang task force, which provides us federal resources through the FBI. A second one is the special investigations unit that consists of, a sergeant and multiple detectives that are also cross sworn as ATF task force officers, and they investigate all of our crimes that involve, violence using guns, with the exception of homicides. They'll assist on those, but that's handled by our crimes persons. And then lastly, one thing I wanna touch on is, our mounted unit.

I know there's a a lot of people enjoy seeing our horses out there. There's a misconception that the that the police department owns and maintains those horses. They do not. Those are owned and maintained and paid for by the officers that ride them. So they they incur all the costs for those horses to feed them, to house them, the vet bills, changing of, everything is is handled by those officers.

And then lastly, our behavioral health clinicians, that's a that was part of a grant, that was given to us by Orange County Board of Supervisors, supervisor Chaffee. It was, it expires in May 2027, and it funds two behavioral health clinicians. We are the first in the county, and I think the only in the county still to have them, and, they're an incredible resource to, our community. Next slide, please. So I wanted to do some comparisons just for context.

And when when you you hear that the Fullerton Police Department has a $70,000,000 budget, sometimes eyes pop out of their head because it's a big number, and I understand that. That being said, the national average is 2.4 sworn employees per thousand residents. In California, it's 1.8 to 2.2 sworn employees per thousand residents. In Orange County, the national the the average is 1.15 sworn employees per thousand residents. In Fullerton, we have point eight eight police officers per 1,000 residents.

We handle 82 call thousand calls for service, and we made 6,000 arrests last year. Again, we we're we're being compared quite a bit to Orange. They have 1.18, police officers per thousand employ per thousand residents with a 165 sworn. Their calls for service were pretty similar to ours, and we took roughly 33% more people to jail than they did last year. And another one that we like to look at, and I can't really see it right now because mister Wein's in the way, but is Garden Grove.

It's a 100 they have a 171,000 residents. Their theirs is 1.06, and they took about the same people to jail that we did, and they have they handled less calls for service than we did. So I'm very proud of the numbers that are up there with the fact that our officers are are doing quite a bit more with, you know, obviously quite a bit less. I mean, numbers don't lie. So we are, well well, again, I understand that we have a a large budget and can and take quite a bit of the general fund.

If you look at us compared to the rest of the county, I would venture to say, at least on the board up there for sure, and I would say countywide, are probably the lowest, per thousand residents here in Orange County. Next slide, please. So for 2526, our three percent salary reduction, it was not an exercise for us. It was a reduction. We saved roughly $1,400,000, and we did that by holding a police lieutenant position, one police corporal, two police officers, a lead dispatcher, a dispatcher, and a records clerk.

And we did that to achieve our 3% reduction in our general fund salary expenditures. Next slide, please. So for our 5%, reductions, and and, that's 5% of our general fund budget, not just 5% of salary and benefits. So that's why the numbers don't always look the same when you look at 3% versus 5%. It's 5% of the entire budget.

We will be adding, if if this goes into effect, a second lieutenant, and I wanna explain what a lieutenant is in the Fullerton Police Department. Is a mid level manager. It is a watch commander. So during the day and during the night, we have police officers, we have police corporals, and we have police sergeants. They are, police sergeants are first line supervisors, and they are all all overseen by what's called a watch commander, which is a lieutenant.

So that lieutenant is responsible for all crime and all response to crime, during that twelve hour period, and they work, roughly twenty two hours a day between the two of them. So, we will be reducing it by two, which means that we will have a gap, and we'll have to use acting sergeants to cover that potential gap. We will also be, eliminating what's called operation clean streets over time. We've been doing operation clean streets for the last, three years. It is proactive quality of life enforcement going after people that are committing quality of life crimes in our city.

So, whether that's drinking alcohol in public, using drugs in public, public defecation, public urination, drugs, illegal camping, violating our critical infrastructure ordinance, and it has been funded by the city council for the 2526 fiscal year in the amount of $250,000. In that one year alone, we have issued, 227 citations, made almost 400 arrests, and they've conducted 227 homeless camp cleanups, but that is something that we will, forego to reach that 5%. Another thing that we'll forego is a reduction of crossing guard services. In in the city of Fullerton, we pay for 30 locations within the city of Fullerton to have crossing guards. Of those 30 locations, only 15 are mandated or warrant it's called warranted by the manual of uniform traffic control devices, and that is a national manual that describes how traffic control devices, whether it's street lights I'm sorry, street, turn signals, how roads are constructed, and then it also describes what should warrant a crossing guard.

In Fullerton, we have 15 locations that are not warranted, but they have been brought to us by the school district or by parents that come to meetings whether it's TCC saying, hey. We feel like this should have a crossing guard. Now they're not warranted based on the manual of uniform traffic control devices. We pay about $550,000 for those locations and we'll we'll based on, the request to reduce our budget, we will do so, and reduce 244,000 of that. And then lastly, and certainly not least, we will be reducing, if if instructed to do so, by 10 police service representatives, and I wanna explain what a police service representative is.

They are non sworn professional staff uniformed employees that respond to calls for service that are cold calls, meaning they need a police report, there's a traffic collision, and it allows our police officers to respond to in progress calls. They also staff our front desk, and when people walk into the Fullerton Police Department, they're greeted by a professional staff member who is a police service representative. They take police reports. They they assist with, questions. They release cars that have been impounded or or stored.

They release, private party impounds. They facilitate documentation for people that come to the front desk. And so the resulting of these 10 PSRs that we would have to lay off, would require us to close our front desk, which would mean that our response times currently, the the standard, industry standard response time should be five minutes or less for a priority one call for service. A priority one means life life is at risk. In the month of March, our our priority one response time was four minutes and thirty seconds, and we hover around that every month.

I can tell you without unequivocally, if we have to close our front desk and police officers have to come to the front desk to respond to calls for service, that number will skyrocket. And we we will have people waiting for quite a bit of time at the front desk for a police officer to come in from the field. But that is that is as as all these other departments have mentioned, we are we are pretty bare bones, and so what we have left is staff, and that's what we have to get to our our 5% reduction if that is where we are directed to go. Next slide, please. If we're if we're requested to do further reductions, it could include reducing our staffing by additional 10 officers, and I wanna just touch on that real quick.

I got hired in 2002, and you saw on the on the on the PowerPoint that the city manager mentioned that in 2000 early two thousand, our numbers were higher. We had a 167 police officer positions here in Fullerton in 2002. Today, have a 127. We had 13 police officers on motorcycles and two supervisors on motorcycles in 2002. Today, I have two and a supervisor.

We had 21 general crimes investigators. Today, I have 10. So the numbers are all significantly reduced. And if I have to reduce staffing by additional 10 officers, it would mean that we would, again, have to close most of our investigative, units including all the the ones that go after really bad people that do really bad things. We would have to shut down our traffic division, our gang unit, our special victims unit, or our special investigations unit, and we would most likely have responding to calls for service and patrol and investigating general crimes.

We would also look at having to close the Fullerton PD jail. As you saw, we we take quite a few people to jail. We took 6,000 people to jail last year alone. If we had to close our jail, that would result in our office. We are a type one jail facility, which means we can house people up to a year in our facility. We typically don't, but we could by law. We feed them food. We provide medical care if needed, and, it's a it's a full service jail. If we were to close our jail, our officers would, number one, most likely elect not to place somebody under arrest if they didn't have to. If they could issue him a citation.

We typically don't here. If we could, we probably will. So those 6,000 I'll give you an example of what that would look like today. If you were to call the Fullerton Police Department because you're a business owner and there's somebody doing drugs openly in front of your business or you live across the street from a park and you see someone shooting up heroin or smoking meth from a meth pipe, you call the police. We are gonna get there and we're gonna get there quickly.

You are gonna contact that person. Today, we will take that person into custody and we'll bring him into the Fullerton City Jail. If our jail was closed, the officers would not do that. They would issue them a citation because that's what the state of California says is the minimum that we have to do, and they would not take that person into custody to take them to Orange County Jail because what happens with Orange County Jail is we now have to transport them to Santa Ana depending on the time of day. That could take anywhere from hour to get there, depending on how many people are in line before us to book their whether it's, you know, 10 or 15 people because everyone eventually ends up at Orange County Jail.

They could be there for five or six hours, which means that two things. One, our police officers are gonna be out of out of service for quite a bit of time doing that. Or two, you know, of the 6,000 people, maybe 5,500 of them no longer go to jail. They get issued citations, they're back out in our community without being removed from from the issue. So it's not a scare tactic.

That's just a fact of what what would occur if if we close our jail. Lastly is the closure of our community services bureau. It would result in, additional four officers being laid off, and we would reassign all of our school resource officers and our school liaison officers back to patrol in addition to the supervisor that works there. And then any supervisor that we have over our allotted number would be, reduced or returned back to the previous rank, is a corporal. And then we would have no ability to support community outreach and events because our budget would be gone from that as a as a result of the closure of community services.

And I wanna be really clear because I'm I guarantee I have employees that are watching this right now, and I wanna be very clear that this these are these are this is not being put into place. Right? This is potential at a 5% reduction and beyond, because I I I'm very thoughtful of the fact that people are watching this, our employees are watching this, and this does create panic for our employees. So next slide, please. And in a summary, you know, reductions are both mostly based on personal savings. It would have an incredible impact on the police department, our operations, and mostly our service level to our our residents. Some of this could be attained through vacancies and attrition. Others will require layoffs at the direction of the city manager and city council. So thank you so much.

Alright. Good evening. My name is Steven Bias, director of public works, I'll and be giving an overview of the public works department. So the public works department, what do we do? We make the public work. So we're comprised of essentially 11 different divisions starting with general engineering that oversees development review, permit plan check, and our permit counter. Our capital improvement program, they administer and design all of our capital improvements. Traffic engineering overseas, they also help with development review but also oversee our traffic system citywide and any type of traffic improvements that we have planned. Water engineering, design and administer mainly water improvement projects as well as different reporting with state and regional entities. We have a Fullerton Airport, pretty self explanatory.

We manage our our own municipal general aviation airport. Our water system operation, we are our own water utility, so the public works department does manage and maintain the entire water system within the city of Florissant. Facility maintenance, we oversee the the maintenance of the 31 plus facilities citywide. Streets and sewer maintenance, so that's obviously streets, all of our sewer systems, our flood control channels, our storm drain systems, and also our traffic signing and striping amongst many other things. And we also have our landscape and tree maintenance divisions, which oversee maintenance of our parks, our trails, our medians, and other landscape space.

And we have our equipment maintenance and replacement division, which oversees the maintenance and replacement of the 400 plus vehicles and heavy equipment that help support other city services as well as the public works department. And then our admin environmental services that help support all of the other divisions as well as manage some of our major environmental requirements. So overall, we are pretty a full service public works department minus maybe four major contracts that we outsource. That's refuse collection, street sweeping, and traffic signal maintenance as and tree trimming. Those are the only big contracts that we outsource.

Everything else is in house. Next slide. So we probably have the most complex budget overall because we dip into, I believe, 17 different funds, most of which are restricted funds or special funds. We do utilize some general fund, and you can see there that we utilize $11,500,000 of general fund, but the majority of our funding comes from from other places, which are restricted. For instance, our enterprise.

So enterprise would be like a water fund or sewer fund. Those are enterprise funds. Restricted funds could be something like a regional or state sales tax or gas tax, and they're restricted for certain purposes. Next slide. So we actually went through a very efficient budgeting process for the fiscal year twenty six-twenty seven.

We were able to achieve a almost $300,000 decrease in our general fund, and that's due to the flexibility of us having these other funds that we could allocate some of our our staffing salaries and resources to as well as just kinda lean out and make sure we were being conscious of the the financial position the city's in. So I just wanna emphasize that. That was already a difficult exercise that we went through during the the budget development process. So we've we've already maximized our efficiencies before we even got here today. Total operating budget, 93,500,000.

We have 200 positions. So again, we're probably the largest department in the city in terms of staffing and budget. Out of that 200, 114 are budgeted through other funds, non general funded. I mean, currently, we have 28 of the full 200 are currently vacant. So general fund, we just thought want to talk about general fund specifically.

The operating budget for general fund is 11.5, and it's about 12% of our operating budget. Then about $9,000,000 is covered through internal service funds, material supplies, and others. So salary and benefits is about $2,500,000 of that 11.5. And you can see that below there, there's 13 management positions, four admin, and 69 maintenance staff, all of which are partially funded by general fund. We do not do not have a single position that is fully general funded.

And it's important to know that because, if there are reductions, and we'll talk about that in later slides, it really needs you really need two or more positions to be cut in order to see, like, a full time equivalent savings within a general fund type of position. And currently, from the 69 maintenance staff, 13 of those are currently vacant. Next slide. So budget overview on just the capital side. So that was the I talked about the operations side.

We also oversee our capital improvement program, and I'll talk about how that ties into the general fund. So in 2627, our CIP budget right now prior to adoption is a little under $29,000,000 The majority of CIP is funded by restricted funds. Again, enterprise, regional tax, and others, they're very restricted, dedicated for certain purposes. But we are using some general fund. So we are proposing a few expenditures through general fund.

One is through an infrastructure fund, which is a subset of the general fund, and that is projected at $3,900,000 this year. And that is that was established by council in 2020. It's an annual allocation of at least 50% of general fund revenue above a specific baseline. So it is technically general fund. We're also requesting an additional $500,000 of actual general fund, but that's obviously just pending budget review and approval process.

And I did put a facility capital in here as well. So we do budget we have a projected budget of 475,000 and this is revenue that we receive from other departments which primarily operate through general fund. So you've heard fire and PD and others as part of the internal service funds. So it's general fund that's making its way to the capital improvement program for various facility needs. So the the last bullet is is important to note. So we are required to maintain our maintenance of effort, so

an

MOE, which is required by Orange County to maintain our m two funding. So our m two funding, which is baked into our capital improvement this year, is projected to be $4,000,000. That's our m two fund local fair share for roads. Our maintenance of effort in order to not only give that but also participate in other programs through m two is 5.9. So we have what does that mean?

We have to spend $5,900,000 of local funds on streets in order to maintain eligibility for M2 funding. So it's very important. So between our traffic ops and street maintenance on the operations side, plus the infrastructure fund that you see here in the capital improvement, we projected only half a $260,000 buffer to our m two obligations. And that is not a comfortable position. OCTA, they encourage agencies to to report far above that in case of an audit and items are deemed ineligible. You dip below that benchmark, you you could potentially lose

a lot

of money, especially towards streets, which we know that's that's gonna be disastrous for the city of Fullerton. Next slide, please. So like every other department, we had the 3% vacancy hold, and and that was realized this last year. So for for us, it was a 139,000. It's 3% of our general fund salary budget.

And we did it through these these positions here, basically six positions, two in our engineering group, two within our facility maintenance division, one within landscape, and one within streets. And you can see here the dollars don't really equate to a full time FTE salary because they're partially funded by a general fund. Next slide. So a proposed 5% reduction, what does that look like? For us, it's 426,000.

So we'd have to increase basically add another civil engineer to that list. So now you're looking at two civil engineers, an engineering aid. Again, the two maintenance workers in facility, one on landscape, one in streets. And we'd also be proposing to reduce our graffiti abatement services in the tune of a 150,000. And what does that mean? Just this last year, I think it a year, year and a half ago, we came to council to add a second truck that rotates around the city due to call volumes. By taking reducing a 150, we'd go back to one truck. So right now, we have two throughout the city responding to the high volume of calls. We're going to be going back to one. So that would reduce the response time for graffiti abatement if we did that.

Next slide, please. So and this is a a further reduction, but really a 10% scenario. What would that look like? It's additional staffing and some programs. So, again, the two civil engineers, an engineering aid, two maintenance workers for facilities, and four maintenance workers for landscape, unfortunately, and three for for streets.

Again, reducing graffiti abatement services. We'd also look to reduce our facility capital allocation, so essentially asking less from other general fund departments to contribute for facility capital repair, and we'd also be reducing our professional services within our traffic engineering division in order to achieve approximately a 10% general fund savings. Next slide. So we also looked at the the flip side of the coin. I know we were all tasked to look at how do how do we cut or how do we reduce 5% or more, But we were like, okay.

We gotta think of some maybe outside the box ideas on some revenue injections in general fund. And we came up with three. They're one time initiatives that we're gonna explore. The first one is unclaimed engineering account balances. Largely with private development, we open accounts. Money is put in there, and then staff time kinda eats away at it over time or consulting costs. Over time, those don't always get refunded or the the applicant doesn't seek reimbursement. And these are very old. They date back to the nineties. Some of them date back into the nineties.

So we're based on what we what we have, the data we have, and and the amount that we're comfortable looking to claim, it's about 700,000. So that would involve a robust noticing process as well as council action to claim that into the general fund, but, again, it's just a onetime revenue initiative. Very similarly, it's our engineered bonds. We did a very we we actually did that last year. We claimed bonds in the tune of about 800,000 from late nineties to 2,016 into the general fund.

We're looking to be a little bit more aggressive this time around just from 2016, 2021, and that would give us about a 145,000. Again, we have to provide proper noticing just letting people know, hey. This money is out here for you to to get back or or claim, and if no one claims it, you know, we can inject it back to the general fund. And then internally, we looked at our internal service funds because public works, we do manage several internal service funds. One of them of which that had a a fund balance that grew over time was our equipment maintenance, essentially our fleet division.

And now as you just assume, long term vacancies. Probably about eight to ten years, we have difficulty hiring and retaining staff, accumulated vacancy savings over several years. So we looked at that and said, okay. We can we can shave off about a 101,500,000 of that fund balance back to the general fund. And we did a little deeper dive of approximately 63% of that internal internal service fund is funded by general fund and about 27% specifically from the police department.

So these are all one time initiatives that we're going to explore moving forward. Next slide. So service impacts with reduction, reduced maintenance frequency at parks, trails, medians, and others. And just to put in perspective, we did back in the 2010 era before before the dip. We had upwards of 50 to 55 landscape employees.

We currently have 38, eight of which were just added two years ago as part of a budget request to increase our frequency of maintenance at parks, trails, and medians. So similar to the fire, we'd hate to go backwards from something we just implemented. Reducing downtown cleaning frequency of streets, parking lots, and structures. Delayed pothole repair, increase the number of potholes through the city, and subsequently, that could affect and or could impact or incur additional claims for damages from people that are running over them or tripping. Delayed response for graffiti abatement, which is increasing the visibility of graffiti citywide, a reduction of in facility maintenance and capital repair, and likely reduction in local support, local event support such as Love Fullerton, which we just had last weekend.

Next slide. So in summary, our efficiencies are retained through the budget process. Really, there's no more room to to there's no more fat on the bone. For us, a further reduction would include cuts and service impacts. One time revenue initiatives would not be available in future years.

Unfortunately, our landscape division and street division would be the the most impacted because those are the two divisions that have general general fund financing in them. And then reduction in general fund for CIP is really a nonstarter, because it would it would put us at significant risk of, of funding for our roads, senior mobility programs, traffic signal sync programs, capacity enhancement programs, and local transportation programs that are funded through them to county measure. Next slide. That's all I got.

Chair, that is the end of the prepared presentation. So I think next on your agenda would just be turning it over to the ad hoc committee for for your questions at this time.

Okay. Committee member, do you have any questions for staff?

I have a lot, but Okay. Going first, I guess. First question's on the, additional polling. So we were told at the last meeting that point had already been done, and there was some kind of, strong consensus apparently formed out of that. But it sounds like now there's additional polling that's being done. Is that am I understanding that correctly?

Yes. That is correct.

Is that if if there was already a consensus from the last poll, why are we spending money on another one?

So the the last poll, dealt with two questions. Basically, the 2 half cent sales tax measures, one for streets and one for public safety. What came out of that was that streets was potentially viable. Public safety was not viable two at thirds level. So this new polling is really, drilling down into the, streets and infrastructure, to further test the viability of measures related to that.

Just off the top of your head, what what kind of cost does something like that have?

Each poll, probably run around $40,000.

Okay. My my next is and it's a little little difficult going through almost two hours of a presentation and trying to tie back to where this was from. But on the budget near the beginning, mister Avalos was was going at that time. And one thing I noticed was the there's an $11,000,000 increase from twenty twenty five, twenty twenty six spending to 2627. We're we're talking about cuts, showing an 11,000,000 increase.

I'm I wasn't sure I was I was understanding that correctly. Sorry. It was, like, almost at the beginning. Yeah. Sorry about that.

Commissioner

or I'm sorry. Committee member went while he pulls that up. I just wanna note the numbers that were shown for fiscal year 2627, those are baseline costs with just contractual obligations, already built in. Those do not include any of the proposed reductions yet. That's just the starting position.

Okay. That makes sense. Next thing that just kinda stood out to me and and been on the parks commission for as many years as I was. Probably could've asked this about nine years ago, but there's a a budget allocation for people paying water bills at the Fullerton Community Center, and I think that was $30,000 that was that was towards that. It it seems to me there's a office right there. There's a window right there where people can pay their water bill in person if they want. Is it really worth spending $30,000 because we don't want someone to cross the street?

So this is already a service that we provide. Staff staff is already trained to pay the water bill. And this is we have far longer hours, and we're open on Saturdays. So it's really to offset and offer those additional services. And those would be paid by the water fund. And right now, they're being their time is being billed to the general fund. So we would propose to bill their time processing water bill payments to the water bill or to the water fund, if that

makes sense.

Okay.

It's not an additional service. It's already an existing duty that that staff members have.

Sure. I'm I'm just saying looking at the what the cost of that is, does that make sense to continue? But, that's a that's a valid point with every other Fridays. Community center is still open on those.

Correct. So that that staff is already there. And while they're helping people with water bill payments, they're also able to help people that come into the front desk. So if we don't provide that service at that front counter and we're not able to shift those hours to a different fund, potentially, we'd have to, like, reduce that position altogether.

Okay. Fair enough. The next question I had was to, chief Radius on the police department. The mounted units that you had mentioned, and there was there was no cost to the to to PD. Wasn't there a trailer a horse trailer involved with that?

Yeah. There was. So there's initially a cost of one budget line item of a $150,000, and that was in 2022 or 2023 maybe to purchase a the trailer and the horse, but the there are no ongoing costs. Okay.

And then the the other thing, also to you as well, there was a in in one of your reduction possibilities, there was two lieutenant two lieutenants with a cost savings of $905,000. Am am I understanding that correctly that they're $450,000 each person?

Yeah. That's the fully burdened that's the fully burdened amount. So salary benefits an average police lieutenant is $486,000, including salary and benefits.

Wow. Okay.

And, that's that's about all my questions. Thank you.

Yeah.

First off, I wanna thank everybody. This is really, really thorough work, and and I appreciate all the thought that went into it. I'm sure it was not a labor of love to try to consider how you cut 5% off departments that mean a lot to you and mean a lot to the city of Fullerton. And I think you all made really good cases for your respective departments. I have a couple of questions.

I guess I will start let me see here. I was just taking furious notes. On the building planning and code enforcement, that was Ms. Thomas. So you had mentioned that what your personnel can't cover, you end up spending with consultants?

Correct.

So what gets lost with the budget? If you're spending money instead of spending it on people, you're spending it on consultants, What what falls through the cracks?

It's it's the volume of work. Right? So right now, we've got the full time, budgeted employees. Right? The underlying issue is that that's too low for the volume that we have. So it should be fully, no vacancy plus professional services, right? So that you're able to at least add that cushion. What we're doing right now is I don't have that plus factor. It is I'm using that professional services or what's allocated within the department for staff augmentation. The challenge with the staff augmentation is that it's at, you know, almost, anywhere from $150 an hour to $200 an hour five days a week, you know, that that depletes it fairly quickly.

So what drops is us again ability to have full time employees here for the work that we're doing. But in addition to, I'm not able to add staffing above the 37 with professional services as it typically should work.

I understand. And then code enforcement, code enforcement brings in revenue, does it not?

Just through administrative citations.

I see. Okay. Thank you. For the fire captain, actually one overall question just because it's a concern because I think about it, but there is open space in Brush and Fullerton. How much concerns me, but how much does it concern you or how much should it concern just Fullerton homeowners or residents who live near open spaces? Is that covered or is that does that does that contingency get covered by the city or is it covered by the state or or how how do we deal with that?

Well, the fire department is acts as the responding agency if there's any fire that's in any of our vegetation areas. This last year, the high very high fire severity areas evaluated and identified by the state doubled within our city. So in previous years, it was the West Coyote Hills area. This last year, the East Coyote Hills area was deemed a very high fire severity area as well. Now we've had a we've had a couple fires over the last ten years over off of, Gilbert and in the West Coyote Hills, Hills there.

Fortunately, you know, things have not there hasn't been any activity in the East Coyote Hills area. So when we are working on that as part of prevention and mitigation efforts, we work with the homeowners. But a lot of times, it is with the homeowners associations that are that are manage those homes that are there. In the case of both of those, though, there are protective vegetative vegetation and animal species that also reside in those areas. So it's it's a balancing act, and it's a a partnership that we work together to try to maintain the space for the homes that are there and then also preserve the environment that's there, which is, you know, in a lot of instances, why people move to those areas because they have that visual appeal of the open space.

We are just getting ready to send out over 3,500 mailers, to residents in those two areas to provide some guidance on what they can do to increase their defensible space and take action within their own homes and yards to make them more fire resistant or less susceptible to to fires moving throughout the community. And that's our big thing. And and those those situations happen when you have the alignment of the weather, and the topography typically, and you have a continuity of of burning material that's in alignment with that. And that's what we saw with the Palisades and the Eaton fire was exactly that, only on an extreme extreme level. So, I guess to answer your question, the federal government takes that, but we partner with the homeowner associations and the the residents to to mitigate that the best we can.

Does our preparedness what what's impacted with a 5% budget reduction on that on that issue?

So as it relates to that issue, it is not because, as I mentioned, our fire prevention division is is fairly a cost neutral division. We are we right now, we only respond to complaints, so we are not be able to be proactive in out there working with neighbors. So that's why we use the the the postcards that are sent out to provide direction. Ideally, it would be to have a an inspector that's able to work with those two areas to do proactive maintenance on those because there's a lot of people that take action, and there's a lot of people that don't. And, unfortunately, if you have if you have a yard that is overgrown, there's all all that can impact the neighborhood or the community.

But right now, we take we deal with that on a reactive set of circumstances and being instead of being proactive. So that 5% doesn't touch that part just because it doesn't make sense.

Understood. Okay. Then my other question for you, and this is a hard one to answer. You said that further cuts would impact response times. Can you make a guess on how much they would what what level of response time would be impacted with a 5% reduction?

I can't really give a no. I can't really answer that specifically. You're right. It is very difficult to ascertain what that would be. But anecdotally, you can say if you have less resources and your number of calls are increasing, of course, the amount of times you're gonna be able to respond to those calls is gonna be reduced because when a call happens in a particular area and then a subsequent call happens in that area, everything is drawn towards those calls.

At a certain point, you're bringing in outside resources to re to respond to a call that's in that area that takes longer to get there. So less resources, longer time to get there. Those are those are definitely be that would be a statistic or metric that we would want to provide if direction is given that way so that council, everyone else has all the information in front of them to, to look at that.

Mhmm. Understood. Okay. And my to the police chief I I didn't catch your name. Same question about the response time. You said the same thing. Same answer?

Yeah. Unfortunately, I can't quantify what that would be. I can tell you it will dramatically increase. And, I'm not I'm not trying to provide scare tactics. Sure. It'll just increase. It's a number it's a numbers game. Right? And and it's about a re it's about resource. And so if my my resources are responding to the front desk to help get someone's car out or to take a police report at the front desk that would be normally done by one of our our PSRs or non sworn professional staff, they're not available to respond to priority one calls. Or if they do, it's gonna be delayed. So it will

minutes, five minutes?

I couldn't tell you. I couldn't tell you. I wouldn't even wanna

guess. Understood. Another question for you, sir. And I appreciate everyone kind of laying out what Fullerton is compared to other cities, like cities, because that's how I think about these things. And you lay out a number of specific units that Fullerton has from mounted to gang, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Those take the city of Orange. Are are they does Orange have those similar units as well as are there more specialty units in Fullerton than in in the sort

of surrounding areas?

They they they have about the same. Yeah. Very similar. Again, they're like size. If you if you were talking about a La Palma or a La Habra, those are smaller agencies, and they would not have the the breadth of specialty assignments that we would have.

Okay. And then for mister Bees, this is maybe an easier question. You laid out a number of of three things that would enhance revenue. Is Is there a downside to doing any of those things?

No. I don't think so. The the the account balances and the bonds, you do run the risk that someone is gonna come after we do the noticing and council action to to claim those bonds. They ask for a refund or reimbursement of that, so we'd have to have make a decision on whether to to do that or not after we went through the process. It's a very

small

risk, and they're small amounts. So you're you're talking about dozens and dozens of accounts with the really small numbers that add up to that 700 or a 150,000. So it's not like one or two accounts. So if you did the risk would be someone coming back after we did the noticing and claims and claim that number saying, oh, I I want my $5,000 bond back that I had ten years ago. And then we have to make that decision. Okay. Do we just give it to them or say, sorry. We did the noticing. You didn't show up. So very small risk.

The internal service fund or internal service fund fund balance, I don't see a downside to that. That division, again, it built up a fund balance based on a decade or so of high vacancy. So the departments were contributing all that time for those services, but, unfortunately, we weren't able to attract or retain the personnel that we had budgeted. So we were getting the revenue, but we weren't incurring the expenses of the staff. So the fund balance built up over time. So that that that transfer wouldn't be impactful to that division.

Okay. And then my last question is since since the subject of polling was brought up, and I had thoughts about it when I served on this last year. I I tried to go through the last meeting as best I could. Was the question of the question of whether it's a half percent or half cent or a full cent? Was that polled in terms of whether that was sort of people are more likely or less likely to support?

So in the first poll, the specific direction we were given was to pull two separate half cent measures.

Right.

So that that was the first poll. In this particular poll that we're doing right now, we're doing full cent. Question.

So we're not testing for half cent or full cent or a cent and a half. If we're if we're foregoing the public safety measure, is it is there value in making a decision on whether one cent jeopardizes it to the extent that half cent might not or vice versa?

What we've heard from our polling consultant, and they are a long standing firm that does this, I think nationwide. And what they've seen just over time with polling that they've done is when they ask different amounts, it typically doesn't move the needle in terms of the difference in results. The bigger difference is if the voter is inclined to support any tax or not.

I would agree. It's commensurate to my thought about it as well. And then did this question of sunset, or is that part of the polling questions as well?

We did not poll, sunset for very similar, reasons. The the the polling consultant has not seen that sunset, at least for the general public, moves the needle. It does, I think, for for policymakers, sometimes move the needle as to whether they'll support it, like putting it on the ballot. But, for the for the voter, that's not something that they see, really changing. They're they're either for the tax or or they're not.

Okay.

Alright. Thank you very much. Questions

from our online members?

Which one would you like to, ask first?

Member Duong?

Yep. Looks like she's raised her hand.

Okay. Thank you.

My questions have already been asked by my colleagues. I just wanna thank staff for all their hard work and details that they put into their presentation. Thank you.

Does member Boushala have questions? Is there a hand up?

No no questions.

So I'll come back with mine. I just wanna thank staff for all your continuing efforts to reduce costs and and looking closely at vital service delivery and and weighing that as well. I do have a question. It's perfect, and thank you for leading into this. In regards to the polling, you say that there was not a question regarding a sunset clause, but I don't I don't know if that was is that even maybe possibly explained?

I don't know if all voters are aware of what a sunset clause is. I was wondering if there was a way to pose a question saying this is what a sunset clause is. Would that have any bearing on if you would support it? And I am surprised that the size of the half cent cent cent and a half. I I'm surprised that that's not an issue. But, so in regards to the independent audit. Now you mentioned that there would be a phase two, but that phase two needs to be approved by counsel. Is that correct? Yes. Okay.

What is the degree of the additional information that can be gained, and what is the approximate cost of taking it to a phase two?

So the phase two, and it it'll be in the staff report that goes to council on Tuesday. Phase two should cost a $130,000, and that's gonna get more into how we deliver services, ways that we budget for services, just a deeper dive into our operations and budgeting practices to see, you know, from an outsider's point of view Okay. If there's other efficiencies or other ways of delivering services that could be done, funding internal funding mechanisms, just doing a deeper dive into how we do things to see if we can do it better.

So more of a forensic approach?

I don't wanna say forensic approach. Really, forensics would be so you you'll see on Tuesday the the staff report will actually also go into a possible phase three. Okay. Phase three would be a true forensic audit if phase one showed signs of fraud or abnormalities that they need to dig deeper into. Okay. So that that's kind of what what we talk about with with forensics. Phase two, I would say is more more along the lines of an organizational analysis, more of an efficiency study.

Okay. So

And then chair Wozab, if I if I may add quickly.

Yes.

One of the examples that director Bice mentioned was how there had been, fund balance that built up over years in one of the funds. That's another thing that they'll look at, not just where we have efficiencies, but where we may have redundancies of, fund balance that's built up over time that makes sense to transfer back. So they'll look at both a full analysis of revenues, expenditures, similar to what we've done in terms of these are staff's recommendations on what they feel is a reduction, but maybe from an outside perspective and an agency that has analyzed this for various organizations, they'll provide a different professional perspective in terms of what they feel would be effective Okay. Or appropriate.

So we have a lot of shared services throughout the city or shared areas. Like, for example, we share fields and things like that, being able to look at that and maybe water use or something like that where there might be additional.

We actually recoup. We actually already divvy up our water use based on field usage so I can turn it over to director Bice just to elaborate because they just finished that reallocation with the school district.

Okay.

Yes. It was it was essentially, the the task was to separate assets, because there was, like, a joint use agreement

Mhmm.

Where we were invoicing them water usage and maintenance services for various fields in the school district. They there was a decision made to just okay. Let's separate that out. School district would maintain school district and city would maintain city because we have a lot of city parks right next to schools. So the asset transfer in in some locations was feasible.

Some not so much because if you think about your irrigation, there's pipes that are crossing controllers, pressure pressure zones, electrical connections. In some cases, it just was not practical or feasible to separate assets. So we still will have an ongoing relationship where we do bill them, water usage, but not the maintenance. So that's the we're still ironing out the details on that, but most assets have been transferred. Some we will still maintain, and bill them water, but they are now responsible for all the labor as for maintaining their fields.

Okay. So since we're talking about parks, do we have any outstanding park tolling fees that are still

So that was, one of the many decisions that was done during COVID was to continue the development process moving forward. There was a decision made at that time to defer the collection of park dwelling fees for several large developments in the pipeline. Many of those, even with a deferral, have not been able to move forward. Their projects have not penciled out, and they're currently not financially feasible. There is some projects in the pipeline, so we had to wait, like, three plus years for the hub over by Cal State Fullerton to pay us.

They finally have. The Pines, or it's a different name now over on Rosecrans and Euclid, Their fees were deferred, and they have now been paid in full. So we're excited to have received those. And then the last one, fingers crossed, in the pipeline in terms of deferral is now called the Atlas, which is the large project over by the Costco and the AMC. So we were anticipating to receive that when they pulled permits, and then we found out that was also a deferral.

So we won't see park dwelling fees for those until, I don't know, deny deny deny that when the they finalize their condition their certificate of occupancy. What? Two years, maybe a year and a half?

Yeah. We're hopeful in the next eighteen months or so, that they should be able to complete that. The park dwelling fees can only be provided at the issuance stage, so they need to be at final. The deferral does help with the 2020 deferral did help, but there were also a lot of requests by the developers over the past four years to be able to do that, especially at the beginning because of market realities. But for the most part, we have not you know, we've we haven't had a situation where they're not paying, but they're they're doing it later. But to her point, you're you can't assume that revenue coming in the following year from an entitlement. You you really have to assume that anywhere from probably one and a probably two to four years is probably what you're looking at.

Chair Wojsav, and I just wanna clarify the use of park dwelling funds. So those cannot be used for maintenance, and those cannot be used for staffing unless those are project management costs specifically to manage the capital project that is being funded through those dollars. But, typically, it would fund replacement, acquisition, and enhancement. So it has to be something new. It can't just be maintenance or regular day to day operations of an existing facility.

But it can be renovation. Correct?

Yes. I'm sorry. I was looking for one more word,

and that

was it. Renovation. Okay. And I'm curious because sometimes those park dwelling fees and I imagine it goes probably where most need is is found. Sometimes they're not necessarily as close or located as closely to the development as I was surprised at that sometimes. And I guess it's probably where most need is needed, like Pinecrest or The Pines. I was surprised that it was over by Summit House. So some of it. So I was surprised.

So the the Pines funding has not been spent, and we are internally earmarking

Then I'll take that back.

Yeah. We're internally earmarking those funds to be used towards the Bass And Cherry Greenbelt area.

That's what I was Yes.

So it's still relatively close to that development. Okay. And then funds for the hub, the there actually isn't very many parks that are city parks over on the East Side. So Chapman Park is the closest one, and that's one that's on our list. And, funding for that went towards the Hillcrest or Lions Field turf replacement, and then there's 2,000,000 allocated towards Independence Park. And then the remainder of the park dwelling funds that we've received over the last couple years have been some of the developments on the South Side, and those funds have stayed in the South Side either towards Union Pacific Park, Union Pacific Trail, or Independence Park renovations.

Okay.

Fire.

So you mentioned that it would that you would have to forfeit the grant. I'm my question is, is there a reserve threshold, and what is it? Is it similar to, like, an MOE? Like, you said that you would lose that. Is it because there's no matching, or you just wouldn't be able to keep the the program going?

Yes. So for that grant, there are performance, reports that we have to provide, and the stipulations to the grant are based upon, staffing according to NFPA, which is National Fire Protection Association, industry standards. So through reducing of those or, eliminating that, that would that would put us in jeopardy of not being able to fulfill our our side of the bargain as far as maintaining that level of personnel to meet why we got the grant in the first place.

Okay. So it's personnel threshold. Okay. Chief Raidus, I have a question. I have a have a question in regard to the SRO. I understand that about six you said 66 of the budget cost is is that's covered by you said by the school district. Is that correct?

That's correct. Yeah.

Okay. So how much are how much time do the SROs stay with the school? What is the policy? What's their ability to be called out in an emergency? I'm just curious, like, their percentage of time that they stay.

Yeah. So they're schools. You mean you mean during the day?

Yes.

Yeah. They're they're at the schools throughout the day. They typically don't get pulled for patrol calls for service unless maybe there's an emergency right down the street and they decide to go to it, but the majority of their days are dedicated to being on campus and responding to follow-up relating to on campus activities. There's nothing that says they can't be dispatched to something else, but, I mean, we wanna be good partners to the districts that are paying 66% of their salary. So if they have training, they can miss. If they have you know, if they're sick, we we typically will replace them with another police officer at our cost. They also pay for an an overtime officer every Friday. The the SROs work four tens, and so they pay for an overtime officer on that fifth day of the week.

K. Also, on motors, how long did we go without motors? I know that was quite a while.

I think we went about a year and a half, maybe a little bit less.

About a little bit less? Okay. And we have three now, you said?

We do. Two. Well, we have two two motors, and then one, supervisor on the motorcycle. We're holding one of those positions, one of those police officer positions that you saw us that, we're currently holding right now as a motor position.

Okay. And the front desk attendants, when I've gone in previously, there's been cadets. Are those considered your

We don't have cadets any longer.

You don't

have any? Okay.

Well

Yeah. We don't have cadets. Our budget didn't support it.

Okay.

And we haven't had a cadet program for at least a year and a half. I had to go in and get fingerprints. Yeah. That's how Yeah. The people that you see at our front desk are, are professional staff, career employees.

Okay. Okay. Thank you. Library director, please. So you did say about possibly, no longer using the overnight security guard.

Correct.

And with one security camera, you said, like, the blue light camera?

Yes.

Because there's been millions invested in the renovation of the Hunt Library site. You think that one blue light camera would be sufficient for the size and of the layout of the property?

We're using those budget estimates Okay. That quote estimate based on, a quote that was received from another department and that we just sort of adopted onto, this slide. I don't we haven't yet done, like, a survey of that property. Daisy and I, we can probably do you want me to speak to that?

Yeah. I wonder if, if chief Reatus would have any opinions as to the effectiveness of a camera versus a a guard.

Yeah. I I don't think you can compare the effectiveness of a person on-site to to that of a a camera. There's a the deterrent factor, number one. Of course, people don't wanna be caught on camera, but, some people don't mind being caught on camera or that's not a deterrent. So I I I don't think that it would be it's not certainly not apples to apples.

There are some really, really good products out there, and I I think she's we're the department she's referring to that did the survey. And there are some really good effective products out there that have night vision, etcetera, but it still doesn't compare to having somebody that can call our dispatch center and say there's somebody there. AI has certainly advanced, and there a lot of these are AI enabled, and they could contact our dispatch center, but it doesn't compare to an actual person that is is there. And to your point, it is a big property, and, I I would doubt that one camera could equate to the effectiveness of a person or multiple cameras throughout the property.

It's just the lay it has it's a very tricky layout, so I was just

But it it's certainly an option, and and times are, you know, times are tough. So it's an option.

Yes. Right. I think that's it. Anyone have any further questions? Do you have anything come back up to mind? Anyone?

Chair Willsab, if you're if you're ready to move to public comment, could I request a five minute break for staff and public and committee members to possibly use the restroom?

Absolutely.

Alright. Thank you.

Mhmm.

Alright. If everyone wants to take their seats, we're gonna get started.

Alright. Chair Wozab, I believe staff's all ready. Are are you ready? Okay.

We're ready to reconvene.

And

I are we ready to open for public comments now? Okay. I would now like to open the public comments and invite those members of the public who wish to address the the committee on this item, these items that they were presented tonight, please come forward and line up on the north side of the chambers. When you come forward, please state your name for the record. Speakers will have three minutes to make their remarks.

Good evening. My name is Elijah Manacero, District 5. It was a good presentation, and I appreciate staff's efforts on it. I disagree with this strategy of cutting, though. I think 5% across the board, which is what I got from that.

I think that it is politically easy, but it's not efficient, and it's not the correct way to do these kinds of things. There are some departments that are more essential than others, and I think that that needs to be seen with how these cuts are made. And I wanna specifically ask I brought this up to council as well. I wanna specifically ask that planning staff, not be, cut or be protected a little bit in this process. We have a lot of, housing bills that will be coming to the city, this year that will affect us.

We have a train station. We have a community college, and we have a university in this city. And there are three major housing bills that will make it easier to develop in this city. So if we don't have the planning staff to handle that increased development, there's a chance that our housing element will be decertified. It's gonna be a risk if we if we, cut staff too harshly.

And that is what happened in 2022, In 2021, after they fired, Domer, a lot of planning staff left, and so much so that planning commissioners were being asked about projects because so many people had left. So, and that is now why there's that project going up on Hermosa And Harbor. It's because of those decisions. So if you don't want any more Builders Remedy projects, you don't want your discretion taken away, then you should preserve planning staff. Also, there's a culture issue, I believe, among the police and labor unions sorry, police and fire unions.

And I know that the department heads don't have, they don't have their separate union, but what the union should care about is what's best for the city. It shouldn't be about getting the new toys that you wanna get with this next council. If it you're just gonna reduce everything to that, then that's how we get in these situations. Lastly, in terms of, code enforcement, they've said that their caseload is very high. I think a lot of that, it could be solved potentially or at least mitigated by looking at our municipal code and, maybe decriminalizing lower level offenses, getting rid of subjective language to reduce appeals.

And I was here. I oppose the noise limit strongly. I think that in general, we should just reduce a lot of the stuff that we have in our municipal code. So thank you.

Thank you.

Gonna have a stroke. I almost agreed with Elijah on something there. Joshua Ferguson, also d five currently. Couple things. I wanna set the record straight on one of popular narrative that's going on about this.

Actually, last time, he actually attacked one of the committee members. We have a committee member also in mister Smith who tried who's, through his job with the UFCW, I believe, the union, tried to buy a council member in Kitty Yaramillo by dumping $60,000 in, which ended her campaign, which would have skewed the balance of our council and changed a bunch of things. So there's a lot of ethical issues we could talk about, and I know it's been popular on the Observer and with mister Mensera's with, fuller transparency, but it's also very one-sided. Setting that aside, everybody here should be ashamed of themselves. This was a joke of a set of presentations.

This was doom scaring. This was no actual proposals. This was no long term forecast. This was we have to have staff as if there isn't bureaucratic bloat, as if staff members actually do their jobs. I had code enforcement cite my vehicle. My working vehicle is inoperable with literally zero evidence. And I asked everybody in that department, hey. What evidence do you have? And they're like, oh, we don't know. And I had to go back three separate times because nobody could open the case and say and I could say, hey. Here's a picture of my car in front of city Hall. See how it's operable? And I had to keep going back. It's it's it's ineptitude. It's laziness. It's just bloat and bureaucracy and all this nonsense. It's never addressed. The fire department likes to say, hey. We cut everything. Yeah.

I remember when the fire unions lobbied the state of California to kneecap anybody ever being able to do what Placentia did without looking into whether the idea was good or bad. We aren't actually overturning stones here. You guys at this at at the committee should be just offended at what's happening because they're presenting this doom scrolled nonsense and then saying, hey. Ask questions about what we present you, and it should be completely inverted. You should be looking at the budget, you should be looking at all the items and then going, hey.

Answer our questions. Now we're gonna ask questions about what you bring to us in these little tiny morsels. This whole meeting is a clown show because we have an audit coming forward because staff didn't know what the budget was for five years. 2,000,000 2,700,000 missing over here, couple million missing over there, till the numbers aren't even true until we get the audit back. This meeting should have been canceled until the audit happened because then at least we'd have real numbers to look at.

The idea that we're already spending money to do a second survey to sell people on a tax when we don't even know what our budget numbers are because staff screwed it up for years and years and years on end, at least going back to 2020, and then you're being told, hey. Go ahead and go ahead and look at ask some questions about the few line items that we gave you. We didn't give you real depth. We didn't give you real hard hitting options. Why is the fire department not talking about how 85 firefighter, firefighter, firefighter, firefighter, firefighter, is eighty five percent of calls are are medical. Eighty five percent. How do we deal with that? How do we do proactive things? How do we actually dig deep into everything? I have eight seconds left. I could tear everything that every one of these people set apart 50 ways from Sunday, and nobody's gonna do it, and it's insulting.

I think it's, really commendable that you guys are doing such a great job in the city with such, you know, little bit of resources that you actually do have being able to spread it out. Don't forget to state your name for the record. Sorry. I don't need to, but thank you. And I I think that's it's I know Josh is very passionate about his opinion, but I I think that you guys are doing a great job.

And I am really hoping that you're not going to be cut any more than you already have been. We've been slowly building it up to where this the community's finally starting to feel the impact of all the changes that have happened since, COVID. You know? And I think that it's important to try to maintain that as much as possible. I understand that this committee is mostly, trying to figure out how to prove that, a tax is a reasonable and viable, you know, thing to put on the the to vote for.

But I don't think that no matter what you do, that it will actually change the perception that the public has about the city council. We have two people who overshare exactly what their position is, and we have three people who undershare and don't let anybody know. So the trust isn't really built up between the public and the city council who is in charge of the budget. They're in charge of telling people, okay. Yes.

We're gonna spend here. We're not gonna spend there, etcetera, etcetera. I think that until that breach has happened, and you I don't know how you can possibly build that bridge, between the public and and the city council now. I don't think you're gonna get anybody to vote for this tax. Thank you.

Hi, commissioners. My name is Steven Sherry. And I wanna also thank and echo previous comments, to to staff. This is not an easy process. I think, I think that's obvious in all of your presentations and the comments that you've made.

You know, a city is here to provide for its residents, and and we're gonna have to make some cuts that are going to be pretty impactful, I think, to the city. So I thank you for taking the time to consider these cuts. But I also think that there's a narrative that that the city has more than enough revenue and mismanages that revenue. I've heard this before. And I I think that all of you probably have had projects that you've worked on that maybe didn't go the way you wanted.

But what I saw today and what I've looked for over the last several months is evidence of a city that has out of control spending or is bloated. And a lot of your presentations, you did provide examples of comparisons to other similarly sized cities. And I don't think any of those comparisons show a city that is bloated or is spending above its of above its means. I think that we're actually punching above our weight maybe in some areas, doing more with less. And so I don't have too many comments on the cuts that are gonna have to happen, but I do think that there needs to be a conversation about revenue, which is the ballot measure, the tax increase.

And in a vote that happened at a at a previous meeting, maybe it was last year, it it was sort of looked at to have two ballot measures. And I think that this year, it's gonna be really, really hard to pass any sales tax increase, probably. That's just my instinct. I work in campaigns. I'm just saying that. I don't know if that's true. But I certainly think it would be very hard to have two on there. And I think that's very confusing to the public as well. And so I would just sort of encourage the commission to look at that. You know, why are there two sales tax increases on there?

And there was something else I was gonna say. Oh, and I I talked about this last meeting. There needs to be a champion for this. If it does have any chance of passing, somebody at the city needs to want this. And that's gonna be a that's gonna be a united city council. That's going to be a united front to the public. It's not going to be a city council that's, you know, split on this issue, a commission vote that's split. I mean, we're gonna need to get to unanimous decisions and things on stuff that we're gonna send to the public like this, especially in a year where up all about affordability and and and these types of things in our election. Thank you.

Good evening, commissioners and and staff members. My name is Sonia Carvalho. I spoke at the last, fiscal meeting that you had, and I wanna say tonight for me was a great improvement. We got some background information on what the ad hoc committee is about, what you've been asked to do. I think our staff I don't attend council meetings.

I don't like the back and forth. I think we should be a united community that is doing the best to try to grow our city, and constantly we see people that is one side or the other. What I saw tonight for me was really evidence of an incredible staff that's very passionate about their departments and that's really as a resident who doesn't often come and participate at this level, that's really good for me to understand that. I do think however that there were a few questions that were left unanswered for me. For example, I still don't know if that 3% imagination cut is solving the $13,000,000 deficit. I didn't hear that. If I missed it, I don't know. Maybe someone could answer that. I don't know if the 5% threat cut, oh my goodness, we're gonna lose everything. If that solves the $13,000,000 deficit.

So if I could leave this evening with a better understanding of that, that would be helpful. I also don't understand the very beginning about our historical context. I appreciated it. I think it was a good place to start. But what that really left me with is wondering, has the city of Fullerton since 1982 been crying woof? Or have we been declining? I don't know. That confused me a little bit. Is it really that we don't have a problem? Was the message I'm supposed to take away from that historical concept that we just cry woof and then we always fix it and then we just limp along? Is that is that what that was for? Or is it hey, don't worry about it. We've had problems for over forty four years and we will come and we are heroes and we'll fix it. I'm just confused about that. And I'd like to to really understand what we're doing here.

So understanding whether the 35% cuts the deficit would be helpful. I think also I'm not understanding the tax measures. If you do a special tax, I don't see how the special tax revenue solves your general fund problem. Don't see it one bit. I because what you're gonna end up with is a lot of revenue sitting in a street fund or perhaps a public safety fund. By the way, something I would personally support a public safety tax. But if you don't have any staff to then spend that money, that's not very helpful. So again, I'm not seeing the connection. A message of the city council is this. I appreciate that you all spent hours and hours here today.

You're gonna make a recommendation to our city council. But our city council failed us the last time because they adopted a budget with a $9,200,000 deficit and then they didn't have the strength to actually even discuss a sales tax to let the voters choose for their community. So I I think that what I'd like to recommend is for you to seriously consider the infrastructure fund. Remember that ordinance which can be repealed by the city council, has a couple million dollars in it and was supposed to go hand in hand with a sales tax measure. Take that $3,900,000 and don't threaten us with cuts to public safety. Don't take away the clean street funds or the graffiti or make this place less safe than it is. Those those are my closing recommendations to you.

Well, good evening, chair and commissioners. My name is Sulin Chen, and I want to say that sitting here tonight, I really feel your pain because I'm thinking, god. All this department have to think about how do I cut 3%? How do I cut 5%? Would I even imagine to cut 10%? And, you know, just thinking, okay. At our household, if I have to cut, doesn't matter what's the percentage. How would I do it? Would that be my child? Would that you know, whatever that we are going to do that.

So there's so much pain just to think about that we have to cut. And I truly appreciate the passion of each one of you, not just thinking about your responsibility, but also the people that who you work with to make things happen, to serve our community, our city. And I want to say that I came across Pacific Ocean to come to live in Fullerton. Why? Because Fullerton is really in the middle of our whole metropolitan area.

So much easier to go to airport, much easier to go to the mountain, to go to ocean, and it's just an incredible place. We have good public schools, private schools. You know, we feel protected by our, you know, fire department, police department. We love our trails. We love our parks.

There, you know, numerous quality that we love about our city. And, obviously, my children, when they were young, we visit a library every week. And so the the love that we have for the city, it's tremendous. And I appreciate everybody spend time here to think about how we can make things work. And to me, I'm thinking in a simple first grade math, if I want to, you know, have money, do I always have to save?

What I teach my child to spend less, or what I teach my child to go earn more? So could we kind of change our thought process thinking about can each department find ways to bring more money? How can we bring more more money to the city that we don't have to worry about the service is going to cut or quality of life is gonna be changing? I don't work in the city business, so I'm thinking there gotta be ways. People talk about we compare to the city of Orange, the Garden Grove, how they compare services.

How can we compare that? How they bring money so that the residents of the city can receive the services? Thank you all for being here, and thank you all for your services. Thank you. Thank you.

Do we have anyone online? Any hands raised online? Okay.

Anybody else? Okay.

Okay. Seeing no one else wishing to address the committee, I'll now close public comments, and we can proceed with staff communications or any matters from staff. And we actually

I'm sorry, chair. Now you should turn it over to the committee members for further discussion

Okay.

And deliberation.

K. Bring it back. Okay.

That was a that was that was a lot. I'd I I think in in general, when when I have to manage my own budget and I look at the different things that I have to pick and choose and what I'm gonna do and what I'm not gonna do, the first things I'm looking at are, like, maybe the streaming services. I don't need that. Or maybe that you know, the fancy dinner night, maybe I could skip that. I don't say, well, I guess I'll just have to not feed the kids.

And I and I feel like that's that's a lot of the the presentation felt to me. It's like, oh, we're just we're gonna we're gonna pick the worst things possible to put up as what what we would cut. That being said, I I I still feel very similar to way I the way I did last the last meeting in that, there are so many alternatives, to a sales tax increase. And more importantly, e even if a sales tax increase is the, is the solution that this committee recommends or that council recommends or the voters recommend, we're gonna come pretty close to running out of money before any sales tax money could come in anyways. So at this point right now, I think we're we're kind of dooming ourselves to to cuts.

And I I I don't want it to be misunderstood, like, from from my previous comment that I'm I'm saying yay cuts or something like that. That's not the case at all. I I I see a possibility of having no cuts and not running out of money without a sales tax increase. And if that sounds like magic, well, I'd I've worked in the water industry for a very long time. And in that time, I had customers all over Orange County and LA, City Of Fullerton being one of my customers.

And and what I saw with working with a lot of different cities and and municipalities was there were city owned water companies. There was private companies. There's investor owned utilities that that ran water. There is an opportunity that we could perhaps entertain to have either a private company or an investor owned utility purchase our water system. I don't know, again, if that's something that this committee would entertain or counsel or the voters.

But just from what what I know about the city's water system and what I've seen happen with with with other cities that went this route, we should easily be able to get at least a $150,000,000 a long time before we run out of money and have to start talking about cuts. That would be my suggestion. On top of that, all of the property that's owned by the city and the water assets right now, that's all money that we don't collect any property tax on because it's city owned. Why would we? Private company or investor owned utility would have to pay property tax on that.

And that's a that's a lot of property, and that's a lot of additional property tax that can come in. There's also the addition of franchise fees that can be placed on top of that that could bring additional income into the city. There's a there's a lot of benefits to to an idea like this, and I I I have a little frustration that that going back to the one of the original polls from I think that was the 2020 time where or after 2020, where people were saying the number one concern in this city was the cost of living, the affordability. The the top three things listed as concerned concerns for Fullerton residents were all on the cost of living. And we're we're still ignoring that and trying to push a sales tax increase anyways that's gonna make that cost of living worse for everybody.

So that that would be in in general what I would like to see come out of this. I guess that's about it all I had for right now.

Thank you. Since I wasn't at the last meeting, I'll spoil the surprise about where I'm landing on a lot of this, which is that I am more of a increased revenue guy than an austerity guy. And so I I I'm interested in as it was the last time I served on this ad hoc committee about the ballot measure and sales tax and the best way to move it forward because I I I think that certainly is most people who live in Fullerton expect a certain level of city services, and they deserve it. And so it seems reasonable that costs go up every year and that we've got to have the revenue that accommodates that cost. Since the subject of today's meeting seems to be more about cuts than revenue, You know, I'll speak to that.

And I thought that a lot of the public comment was really wise and astute and on point. I agree with Ms. Carvalho's suggestion about, looking actually at that infrastructure bill, I believe, which brings costs a lot of money because we are spending an infrastructure. And my recollection when I heard about it last time was that that was intended to be a companion piece with sales tax. And so that I think should be on the table every bit as much as a 5% across the board.

And I also agree with the point that I'm not sure that 5% across the board is intrinsically fair because there are just departments that have a lot more money. And certain departments are necessary for quality of life in a city, and the 5% is much more difficult for them to absorb. In any event, those are my comments. I I not sure I feel qualified in the time that I've spent just digesting this budget to weigh the merits of each department and whether the 5% is just or not. But I wonder if there are not other suggestions on the table besides 5% across the board, that we might be able to keep quality of life as best we can for for people who live here.

And and I certainly while I do believe that a sales tax is the proper way to go, I also agree with the the the sentiment that we need to have unanimity on our leadership to make that possible. It's not easy to pass a sales tax, less easy in a recession. And if we are divided at all levels, I think that austerity, here we come. You know? Because that's that's the only way out. So those are my thoughts.

Our online members can we go to our online members, please?

Tony here. Okay. So I actually like what Eric had to say about the city's water dish the water fund. City has quite a bit of properties and yeah. I think that's a good idea just to look at, you know, privatizing the water system.

A lot of cities in Orange County have their own water district that are made up of board members, and it's it's a business. And I I think that's a good thing to do is to is to look at that and and study it, and and I think that could be a good thing right there. You know, I think we are heading into recession, and I could feel it myself. We've made some layoffs in in in our business. And so, yeah, I I think it's it's you know, we all have to do our part when, you know, when when the chips are down, we gotta do what we gotta do.

So I I would recommend, if anything, if we do any kind of tax, I would support a a half a cent sales tax that went specifically to the streets and the infrastructure. And I think a lot of people in Fullerton, a great majority of the people would vote for that. Yeah. I think, you know, a sensible approach of, you know, putting something forward is you know, we're coming up on you know, November is gonna be here pretty soon, so we gotta have some plan. But, again, I like what Eric had, his idea.

I think, you know, thinking outside of the box is a is a good thing, and coming up with ideas to study is a good thing, and I think that's worth I think it's worth, you know, looking into. It could be it could be the savior. Anyway, so that's what I have. Thank you.

Thank you. Our other member? Member Duong? Is she right there? Yes. Okay.

Go ahead.

I have to say that one, you know, one suggestion is not the only solution. We're gonna have to look at everything, including how can we be more efficient, how can we raise our revenues. I think it was community and development talking about how they're they've improved their efficiencies. I think every department needs to look inward and see how they can improve their efficiencies and how they can better just their operations and all that. But definitely, our other committee member on our revenue issue.

I truly think we do need to explore explore that. And like what Tony says, November's coming up already, and so we're on a time crunch, and that's definitely something that's gonna have to take top priority right now. Those are my comments. Thank

you. For myself, this was this was a lot to process tonight. We've heard a lot. I'm sure I will wake up in the middle of the night. Oh, I'll think about something.

But one of the things we did discuss is that the tax measure is not immediate relief for us right now. So obviously, we hear have fear of essential service cuts impacting the residents of our quality of life and safety. We we do have that. I really feel strongly that we need to get more clarity on this on this audit and where we fall and then be extremely clear on what you are weighing in the way of the size of even a potential sales tax increment. I would like more information on that.

The beginning of the of the presentation, it was a great presentation, I I just saw that, there's a lot of focus on prop 13. And so I I didn't necessarily know if that was the best way to kick off this presentation that so much of where we are is based on when when we had, prop 13 implemented. So that's just me personally. I think that we do really need to look at, and you guys have done a fantastic job. And I realize that there is an an an erosion of public trust, and I really think that for all of us that we do really need to work on that on and and communication in that way and and transparency and a little bit more clarity of where we're at with with the residents.

And I do think that just kind of looking at, ways to look at the efficiencies. So that's my thoughts. I will have a lot more, but I just I really appreciate everybody coming out. Know it's been a long night. You've all had I have a a lot of notes.

I really appreciate everyone's, input. Definitely, I'm concerned about the impactful nature of of these cuts, but also to the the timeline. If there is going to be some type of a ballot measure, we're we're on a incredibly tight timeline going forward. So that's just something to take into consideration. I know that we do have another meeting, coming up. And are there any other questions from staff? Or any do you have any more thoughts? You guys wanna add?

Before you adjourn the meeting, I just did wanna note that the slide deck will be up on the website Thank you. Tomorrow morning. So full full deck. And I did wanna answer one or two questions, if you don't mind, that that came up. There was a question as to whether the 3% whether the three percent balanced the budget.

Is that is that what the question was? But what the 3% did, this was a directive of the prior city manager. The 3% actually got the deficit down to the current $3,700,000. So that's and it's not a perfect mechanism as as you saw with some of the presentations. Over time erodes that, consultant costs erode that, but but that was the gist of of the 3%.

As to whether or not the five or the 10% cuts would solve the problem, so the problem as we sit here today is $13,700,000. A 5% gets you roughly 7. A 10% gets you roughly 14. There are other things that we can consider, obviously, besides cuts. So, you know, my feeling is that we'll have to do some measure reductions, but then we can hopefully offset the need to do severe reductions.

But there there's gonna need to be some tightening of the belt beyond what what we're already doing. So the the the point of tonight is to show you kinda what what the options are that generate significant dollars. There are numerous options that we could do to generate, you know, 50,000 here, 20,000 there. But when we're looking at $13,700,000, we're we believe we're looking at significant actions. So that that I just wanted to to to say those comments, but by no means is this final.

I do appreciate everybody's comments here tonight from the dais and from the from the gallery. You know, staff is charged with looking at how to make the numbers work, but this committee and you represent the voice of the public, and that is what we need to hear and that's what the council's gonna wanna hear. And ultimately, staff's gonna take direction from the council as to what direction they wanna go in in terms of eating into reserves, doing cuts, looking for other revenue measures, ideas like what committee member Wynn suggested. These are these are things that have been talked about kind of privately. They're gonna be talked about more openly now.

Right? Because we we need to look for for other alternatives. So I appreciate that.

Just curious structurally on on these meetings. It seems like did we kind of accomplish what we wanted to tonight? Is there

In my opinion, yes. The next meeting, again, we'll get into really more direct talk about whether the sales tax is something that this committee would would recommend, and I'm sure there's gonna be differing opinions. It'll also give us time. If if you have questions as you as you mentioned, chair was that, you know, when you wake up in the middle of the night and and jot down ideas in your notebook, if you can start emailing us those because that that'll give us some some additional content for for the next meeting. But in general today, we wanted to give you the the expenditure overview that we promised you in the last meeting.

And if if I could just an another kinda quick question. I I remember I was part of an ad hoc committee after after COVID, and there was a bunch of RFPs about the the tennis center, and then there was a city manager, Domer, had a bunch of ideas for these bunch of different RFPs. I know some of those ended up happening, some didn't. Some were beneficial, some weren't. And in general, RFPs, are these, are these a costly thing to do? Are these difficult? Are these simple? How how would you put them?

I didn't let, Daisy jump in on that one because she took over some of that work.

So RFPs don't cost a lot of money to do in terms of additional expenditures, but they take up a significant amount of time of staff time to do research and develop that. And it's not just staff time from the individual departments, but it's coordination with the purchasing department. And our purchasing department has probably a vacancy rate of about 75%, at the moment. So our purchasing supervisor, recently left for a different opportunity, and then we are left with one buyer in that role. And the purchasing manager has been, promoted to interim finance director.

So there is a very lean too lean, support services internally. So you'll see our RFP turnaround times that staff is working on have increased exponentially just because of the volume and the amount of time that takes is not matching up to the amount of resources internally to handle that. I can say staff has achieved, substantial savings, in my opinion, in RFPs that we've done. But, again, this can take six months to a year to actually materialize. So one of them is not general fund, but we did an RFP on the golf course operations, and we were able to, reduce our cost because we pay a contractor to operate on our behalf, which ultimately leads to savings for us of about $700,000 a year.

We've also done an RFP recently and reawarded a new vendor for IT services. That will result in significant savings of over $1,000,000 a year. But again, those conversations and process can take six months, a year, or maybe more to develop, but certainly open to, beginning the process or exploring additional items like that over the next couple months. If you have ideas of other areas that we can look at, we're certainly open to beginning to explore those.

Okay. I I I would hope that if there was, if there was an option on the table that would prevent the city from having very large cuts and instead would provide enough money to make all of mister Grantham's dreams come true that the little resources we have would hopefully focus on that and be able to get it done in in a a timely fashion.

By our next meeting, will we have, more polling data?

Yes. We'll have we'll have the completed the the completed data and be ready to show you everything.

And that will be the first round and the second round. Correct?

Yes.

Yeah.

Okay. Thank you. Any further questions? Okay. I adjourn this meeting at 09:20 oh, I have to use that? At 09:24 p. M. Thank you. Yes, we do. Oh, our next meeting oh. Also, our next meeting will be take is scheduled for Thursday, May 14 at 6PM in the Council Chamber. Thank you.