City Council - Regular Meeting

Our closed session Mr.. Stock is there anything to report from the closed session council met on one item and took no reportable actions that concludes my report perfect, so we'll go ahead and Reconvene to our open session Open session is there any announcements miss shocky?

No announcements and no changes to the agenda perfect I

So we'll go ahead and call to order the open session. Ms. Wolf, would you mind calling the roll?

Council Members Birdseye? Here. Largaspada? Here. Masensky?

Here.

Scott?

Here.

And Mayor Young?

Here. And I'd like to make an announcement. If that was the right time, I'm participating remotely under the exception for official city business. I'm at a Bay Area Council delegation meeting. on energy equity and economic development in Atlanta. And there's no one else under 18 or of any age in the room with me.

Well, you look very comfortable, so please hang out. We'll go ahead and have the Pledge of Allegiance. So if everybody in the audience would please join me. All right, so real quickly, we have to make reference to a plaque at the back of the room, which is stating the fundamental rights of each member of the public. As I had mentioned, it's posted at the entrance to this meeting room per section 4.04.030 of the City of Benicia's Open Government Ordinance. Just on announcements, Steve throws a party in his office every Monday. There's no cocktails, but he usually hangs out there. So if you want to have any questions for him, you can go ahead and stop by at that time. Otherwise, you can make an appointment otherwise.

It's the first and third Monday, Trevor.

There you go. Not every Monday. 707-746-4200 in the event that you can't drop by his office hours. We do have one proclamation, so if I can go ahead and have the City of Venetia's Vibe team and Martha Ramirez and Francisco Roman join us from Chico's Taqueria. I will join you down there. So this is a proclamation for Hispanic Heritage Month, whereas the observation of Hispanic Heritage Week started in 1968 under President Lyndon B. Johnson and was expanded by President Ronald Reagan in 1988 to a 30-day observance starting on September 15th and ending on October 15th. Whereas Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua celebrate their Independence Day on September 15th, Mexico and Chile celebrate their Independence Days on September 16th and September 18th.

It's all good, dude. You're doing great. Keep going. It's fine.

Whereas Hispanic Americans have been integral to the prosperity of the United States, their contributions to the nation are immense and embody the best of American values. The Hispanic American community has made lasting contributions to culture, economy, and civic life in the United States. Now, therefore, be it resolved that I, Trevor Macensky, on behalf of Mayor Steve Young, and the rest of the council hereby proclaim September 15th through October 15th Hispanic Heritage Month, and I encourage all citizens of the city of Benicia to honor the rich diversity of Hispanic communities and celebrate the many contributions to our nation and our society. Would you like to say anything? Go ahead. You don't have to, but you can say whatever you want.

We want to thank you so much to everyone that supports all small businesses, not just ours. We're truly appreciative for... This proclamation and also this recognizes our culture. We love our culture and we always try to tap into other cuisine like El Salvadorian food. We've tried that with our pupusas because we love El Salvador. We love all the countries. But in general, thank you so much for recognizing. I don't want to say small people because we're not small. But thank you so much and we appreciate it. On behalf of all Latin, Hispanic people, small businesses here in Benicia and throughout the whole Bay Area. So thank you so much for seeing us and recognizing, and we love all of y'all. So thank you. Gracias.

Thank you for supporting my mom's and dad's business for all of us, and thank you for supporting us. It really means everything to us. You know, we also love Spanish. We love all. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Amen.

Moving right along. There are no appointments that are going to be taking place this evening. We do have one presentation. I think... Bob Sachs, if you're in the audience, now is the opportunity for you to come forward. Bob is part of our Independent Oversight Committee. We have about 10 minutes for you to present. Deputy Senior Manager Shockey, I believe you also have a follow-up, so it'll probably be about 20 for those in the audience trying to gauge their time. The floor is yours.

So, thank you. The group has been together for... A lot has been happening since that happened. I'm going to go fairly quickly. I'm going to try not to read every slide. You've got them in front of you. We appreciate the opportunity to be here with you tonight. We've had a lot of opportunity in those couple of years to engage with council members and with city leadership. We have strong followership on social media, and we feel good about the work we've been doing. So let's get to it. We're going to go over quickly who we are, our overall findings. We'll get into how we did our evaluation that we're going to be presenting. We'll go into a bit more detail with our findings, and then we'll get into some recommendations and offer suggestions on how we can move the dial on some of these areas that we think the dial could be moved on. So our mission is to review the revenue that's being used and to be sure that it's being used consistently and to make sure that residents can find that information easily. That's basically what most cities would call oversight. And I think what's important here is that we see our role as more than just oversight. Ultimately, what we're asking for is that taxpayers can feel confidence when the city asks for additional revenues that those dollars are being used in a way that that they feel is consistent with what they were asked to vote on and that's ultimately what our goal is as a as a as a group the members of the group we have you can see the names in front of you we started out with 19 of the names that you see on there five of them are the original members Most of them are sitting back there. One of them, Bart Sullivan, is in the bocce championships tonight, so he's not joining us. The newest member, Jen Bonner, can't be with us. She's with her family up in Tahoe right now. Jen is relatively new to Benicio, though not new to Northern California. She did move back recently from Nashville. She's a professional working mom. She has a four-year-old little girl. If you look at me and the folks sitting in the back of the room, you see she's a bit different than most of the group. She did a lot of work on this presentation and we're glad she was part of the group. How do we define oversight? First of all, it's pretty simple. Is the information easy to find? Is it going where it was supposed to go according to the language that was defined in the measure? And when it's utilized is effectively achieving something of value. That's basically what transparency and alignment and execution is about. And as we move forward, you're going to see the evaluation that we've done is against those criteria, and the evaluation tool that we used is based on those criteria. So how did we do this evaluation that we're presenting to you this evening? Every member of the group independently utilized the evaluation tool to evaluate the tax measures. The measures we focused on were measure C, measure B, and measure F. And while there was some variation amongst the members, it was very, very slight. And so the averages, while in some cases averages can hide what the real meaning was, in this case the averages do not hide what the scores were. And when we got in the room and talked about why we voted the way we did, those gaps closed immediately. So they do represent the averages of the group. We based our evaluations on information that was available in the budget document, the annual report that the city put out. And then we used the links to that document to get to the budget. And that was how we did that. The rating scale you can see there. 0 being poor, 3 being exceeds expectations, and so on. That's how we did the actual evaluations that resulted in the scores that you see. OK. Consistently, and that's true in all the measures, measure F scores highest. No big surprise there. It's a specific use measure. You would think it was going to score high, and it did. The opportunities for improvement are on the other two measures, which draw funds out of the general fund. They're not currently tied to any specific program or service, and as a result, the overall score of needs improvement is what you see. Keep in mind that our overall goal is for the community to have confidence in how dollars are being used, and in order to do that, we think that the improvement is necessary to get that level of confidence, and we also look at this not as a score like a a fixed thing. This is a baseline for improvement and hence we're going to be presenting recommendations that we think will be the basis for getting that improvement. We think it is very possible to grow the confidence that you need to be able to continue to be able to move things forward for the city and that level of confidence. Okay, let's get into some details. This slide goes a bit deeper. First of all, we applaud the city for putting out the tax measure report. That was a step forward. Measure F, as written, is obviously a positive, but again, that was a unique measure in the way it was put forward. Where are the gaps? The tax measure report, while it was a step forward, is a retrospective look on how measures C and B contribute to the overall general fund. The information is not timely for oversight purposes, and in order to get to the budget, it requires multiple steps to get to the budget. So it is not easily accessible for the committee, let alone for the average citizen. It's too hard to find. ANOTHER ITEM THAT TOOK UP A LOT OF INFORMATION TIME FOR THE CITY IS TRANSPARENCY AROUND PENSION COSTS. YOU ALL KNOW THAT THE GENERAL FUND IS USING A LOT OF THE DOLLARS FROM THE GENERAL FUND IS GOING TO CALPERS AND THERE'S A LARGE UNFUNDED ACTUAL LIABILITY. IT GREW SIGNIFICANTLY FROM 2018 TO 2025 AND CONTINUES TO DO SO. THIS IS NOT JUST AN ISSUE THIS IS AN ISSUE FOR MANY CITIES WITHIN the state of California. The rising CalPERS costs have pressured the general fund budgets everywhere. We believe that it is likely that some of these tax revenue measures contributed to that CalPERS unfunded liability. We can't prove that because it's not possible to trace those measures. However, regardless of whether or not they did or did not, Just the fact that within our own group there is question, it undermines confidence in the city and how the city is using the measure dollars. Okay, alignment. Measure B is, measure F again, great job. Measure B, it's untraceable, so alignment cannot be evaluated. So it obviously needs improvement. Measure C, used to have some ability to track. Up until 2022, you could actually look at capital expenditures aligned to measure C. In 2022, that went away. There was also oversight associated with measure C that went away in 2022. Both those changes happened with no communication to tax holders. at taxpayers. So as a result, that resulted in some of the needs improvement score. Execution. Same things play out. Measure F, great. Multi-year plan to find outcomes. I see stuff in Nextdoor and everywhere else consistently with Measure F. And I won't repeat myself except again to say that Measure C, there were some highlights I pointed out up to 22, but no plans found after that point. I'm getting tight on time, but I'm going to move along. Transparency on recommendations. We recommend, like other cities do, that the city begin to publish tax measure landing pages, potentially available to citizens by a link that would actually indicate budgeted revenues, past uses, and relevant staff reports. This would be something that would be easy to find, and again, other cities do that. Also, we recommend that a similar page be put up for CalPERS and how that, what the strategy is for managing it and where those dollars are going. Again, other cities do it, and we provide links to that in our report. Goal alignment. We applaud the city moving to priority-based budgeting. We would suggest that the scoring that is going on leading up to it, where you're defining current state of program services and outcomes and dollars attached to it, could be useful for oversight purposes so that we can begin to see better alignment and execution. And we'd like to see that information while that scoring process is going on prior to implementation of priority-based budgeting. Once priority-based budgeting is in place, we would like to have that information and that will really provide a tremendous amount of value for us to be able to, again, improve, get better a sense of transparency, alignment, and execution. And again, when we get to execution, we're suggesting that a plan be published for each measure, like Measure F. That should be put on the landing page for the measures, and that would solve that problem. Again, to finish up, the IOC believes these recommendations in this report and the expected implementation of priority-based budgeting will improve the scores in the management of revenues for the voter-approved tax measures. And we believe that this is highly doable. And in fact, if these are implemented in an effective way, we think it's likely that the scores could not only go for one, but there's huge potential for them to go to three, which as the city needs to come forward perhaps and ask for additional revenues, the confidence might very well be there to get those passed. Thank you very much.

Mr.. Sacks, thank you so much for taking the time and not only having the conversation with the council but also informing the rest of the community I think a lot of our community members don't know the amount of work that maybe goes into the Investigation and reporting and scoring that you guys are taking very diligently, so I appreciate it personally Council members before mr.. Sacks Departs is there any questions that we have for him? Go ahead Terry.

Yeah Thank you For an excellent presentation a hard lift I think we all agree that good governance begins with good communication and understanding of how things happen. One of the things, though, that really tripped me up as I was trying to get through the document and understand how you could measure apples and apples. And in the apples and apples, I think that was the only place I felt a slight bit of failure in that I didn't understand how you could rate a Measure F that is a single-use measure initiative. against a general fund B and C. Those funds tend to shift based on the priorities or the shortfalls or the water main break or the bridge gets knocked down or something happens where we need to shift money around compared to a single source measure like F, which is it comes in, you got a million seven to spend, did you spend it on roads? Were the roads done right? Were you able to check the boxes? So how do you keep apples and apples in there? Because I thought the scoring was unfair when you measured B and C and F. Okay.

All right. I'll welcome a response from my colleagues, but let me take a shot at that. Okay. Agreed. And one cynical option could say, well, don't come to the taxpayers any longer with anything but a specific use measure. If you want additional revenues for the city, I think what the committee would say, and colleagues, you can jump in, you need to be able to show where the money is going. And there are ways, even with a general fund sourced measure, to be able to do that. We are in oversight, but we have ways that you could do that. I can give you an example if you took measure B and You were to say with particularly with priority based budgeting And this was an example that we gave in one of our meetings not with you But with with Mayor Young you could say as you score a particular set of programs and services And you draw the line you could exclude tax revenue measures from that budget. If the budget comes up short, you could decide, well, we need more of this service, or this service just falls below the line, but it's important. We're going to use measure B revenues to pay for that. That is a way to begin to use a general use measure consistent with that language and still be specific with its use. So that's one way to do that.

Just a quick follow when it comes to the general measures a and B and C I have no issue with that. It's just commingled commingling them and then getting an aggregate Rubik Rubik's Cube a rubik number For the evaluation that's but we did not there's no aggregate score each measure was scored individually I Think there's just a few more questions if you don't mind.

I

Thank you. Vice Mayor, can you explain what you meant by how the measure would put pressure or impact our pension costs?

It's the other way around.

Okay. Can you explain that? Yes.

So given the amount of dollars that need to go toward meeting your UAL, your obligations, that's taking money out of the general fund. as a result, the money has to come from somewhere. And so it's likely that some of that pressure might be using, because you can't say what money is coming from where, it's likely that some of that money could be coming from monies that is flowing in from the tax measure. You can't say for sure where that's coming from. I can share with you a conversation we had In the committee we did not put it in the report. I don't know if you want me to say that here Would you like me to share? Okay, so one of the conversations we had There were some on the committee who said we think it's crowding out some of the measures to the point where it seemed when we added up the dollars that needed to go into the general that needed to fund some of the pension costs and There was a surprising correspondence between the amount of revenues that were needed for Measure F and Plaid. So some of the committee felt like maybe the reasons we needed those was to cover the pension costs. We did not put that in our report because we can't say that for sure. But it was a hypothetical that we did discuss.

Thank you.

I'll just only respond anecdotally and then I'll Mr. Lager spot has a question. I'd say that you know given the amount of Cost in which the city has to figure out paying for related to its employees. I don't think the Looking for it in pension costs or in employee salaries is you know the wrong spot because a lot of the general You know measures which were passed in the community ultimately end up there because that's how we then provide the service But I do think we can get better in the transparency of percentage allocation relative to the cost basis now so

Sure, and some of those services are, most of the services are cost of the employees. That's right.

Yeah, yeah. Mr. Largus, you have a question?

Thank you, Vice Mayor, and thank you for the work that, to the committee that went into establishing, I think, which is kind of a baseline, right? This is our first of future reports. And I agree with one of the conclusions, which is that we can get better at making it more I don't know if it'll ever be easier for residents to get access to this information, but we certainly can work on the accessibility piece. As you guys know, it's not just spreadsheets. It's just really hard to visualize this data without just heads popping up. My question is, can you give us a little information on the rubric? I'm just trying to understand, like, specifically what separates a zero from a one from a two or a three.

Well, again, it's obviously a judgment call, but there were specific criteria within that. The developer of the rubric is sitting back there if you really want the details. But, you know, basically there were multiple criteria for each one, and then you rate each one. individual criteria and then add those up. And if you want the details, Greg would be more than happy to give them to you. We did review those with you at one point, but it's been a while since you saw those. Do you want any more detail than that? Anyone in particular?

If there are cliff notes, sure. If not, then I'm just happy there are not. So that's okay. Yeah.

Yeah. I think if we can get around to the website, it would be good to have, so everyone understands when the report starts.

We don't put the rubric on the website, but we have described it in detail in our summaries. We don't actually have a website.

I'm saying in your ask though one of your ass was to actually have websites for each of the measures Oh, yes, if we're reporting it out.

I think the independent you know scoring if we can get there It's another to-do item, but I appreciate it along and by the way those landing all the recommendations that you see in there We did give you links to other cities that are doing these things I will say that some of the cities do a better job than others and But they're doing it including the UAL stuff which we were surprised with how transparent some cities are being with that information Well, we appreciate your time again.

Thank you so much and Look forward to the continued conversation to help the community and we appreciate working with the city on this We think it's important work. Thank you. Mr.. So I do have a like to ask a question Okay Do you have a question? Steve, you're muted. We can't hear you right now.

I want to thank the committee for their work, obviously. But I think there's some very important lessons that have come out of this that I wanted to talk about. The issue of accessibility that our Budget is hard to get to, even for experts like Greg and Bob. If you have to drill down two or three steps to get to a page that gives you the information, that's a problem. I think we do have a problem with accessibility on our web page, particularly when it comes to budget documents. I also really appreciate and like the idea of a transparency landing page. I think if we can create such a document that other cities have done that talks about how revenue is expended, not just collected, but how it's expended in plain language. And I would certainly want to look at some of these other cities that have done this. I think we would benefit from that as well. And then the larger question, I think, is how do you, I think one of the things Bob said was, well, maybe you shouldn't bring forward general tax increases, only specific tax increases. Those, of course, require, if the council were to put on a specific tax increase, that requires a two-thirds vote as opposed to 50% plus one, a much higher bar, a much more difficult thing to accomplish. The monies that go into the general fund, obviously it's very hard to track. All the money goes into a big pot and all their services that are not utility-based come out of that pot. So how do you show measure B money, measure C money tied to a specific project expense or allocation? Maybe talking about pensions is one way to do it. If we were going to spend $8 million this year on pension payments, soon to go up to, I think it's $13 million in 2031, is there a way that we could say Measure B is paying for pensions? It's a little bit, I'm sure there's more to it than that. But for the public to understand where the dollars are going, that might be a way to show in very simple terms the connection between revenues raised through these tax measures and expenditures that we make. Otherwise, we can say, well, 13% or 40% of our general fund goes to police and fire, so 40% of all measure B and C go to police and fire. Actually, I think it's over 50%, but still, the point is we can make sort of these assumptions about general percentages, but I'm not sure that's meeting the need that Bob and the committee has talked about. So I just want to, again, thank them for what they have brought to the table. And I think I would really like to see some follow up on that part of staff on the landing page, making the budget a little bit more accessible to the average person. and some discussion about how we can perhaps tie the expenditures a little closer to the revenues coming in from the tax measures.

Thanks. Thank you, Steve. And the only thing that I'd say in response to your comments would be that as part of their budget subcommittee, I think we got a firsthand experience of kind of the roll up of the department by department budgets and what actually makes it into the calculation of the budget that is then presented to the community. And as priority-based budgeting moves forward, we've talked at depth with our finance director about the granularity and transparency needing to be there so that anybody in the public can kind of go through and click the tab five times and see where it's actually going instead of two. So we share your similar thoughts there. So again, thank you for your time. Thank you to the committee for putting the good work in.

Okay.

Thank you for the information. I think we're at the point now where we actually have to adopt the agenda. Meshaki, you had something you wanted to say? Go ahead.

This evening, the city manager, Mario Giuliani, actually had developed a few slides as a result of the great work of the Independent Oversight Committee. And unfortunately, he couldn't be here this evening, but he did prepare those slides, and I was hoping to be able to review those on his behalf. And hopefully, by reviewing those slides, it helps address some of the questions that were raised this evening. I'm just going to click through. Some of these might be, I think it's, so on behalf of Mario Giuliani, sorry he couldn't be here, but I'm going to do my best and put my own spin on it. But if you would indulge me, this is an opportunity to discuss some of these, the importance of our locally approved tax measures. and in particular these that end up supporting general services or general fund services so the way that this first slide is developed across the top you'll see city department this is based on the revised 24 25 budget as that is what's connected to the annual tax mailer that the city sent out, and it's an annual for a reason. We did it for the first time this year. We're really proud of it, and we'll continue to do that moving forward. And then as you continue to move across the top here, you see the percentage of a budget that each department takes or needs. And continuing across the top, you see we have our utility user tax, which is called Measure A. It was adopted in 1996. Then our business license tax, adopted in 2004, known as Measure R. Our Measure C, which was mentioned earlier this evening, it's a 1% general sales tax. That was adopted in 2014. Then there's Measure B. a general sales tax for a three quarters of a percent that was adopted in 2024 and we have measure a our transient occupancy tax or a hotel tax and that was adopted by um benicia residents in 2024. and so that's this theme will carry through the other slides but really this is an opportunity to showcase how each of these how each of these locally approved measures support services so here you can see the it's it'll be the same breakdown on each slide but for like the utility user tax This is allocated and supports the services of departments. So for example, 21.4% is directed towards police services. And I think sometimes we end up thinking of police services as individuals, we think of officers and staff costs, but also it's the service of solving a crime, of arresting a perpetrator, of protecting our residents. When we talk about our business license tax, again, the percentages are the same, but of the total revenue of almost $750,000, that contributes to the work of these departments. So another one to highlight is 19.7%. supports the fire, fire department, but fire services, fighting fires, responding to emergency services calls, which I'm proud to say we have one of the highest response rates in our county. And when we talk about Measure C, I think another one that's worth highlighting is 12.1%, and it's the same percentage on each of these slides because that's how these locally approved measures end up supporting the work of our departments, but 12.1% is public works. Before I started in the public sector, I didn't fully appreciate what that meant. But it's, you know, it's every stop sign. It's our parks. It's maintaining our infrastructure, our capital improvement. You see the works of the streets. When we talk about Measure B... It's a similar breakout. This is how measure B is broken out across departments. Similarly, also with measure A, and this again is our hotel tax. There's a few closing slides here and I think an important point to note is that these locally approved measures that we just discussed that I just went through rather quickly here on these slides are They make up a third, approximately a third of our services. And so this picture and the pictures that follow show a third of the puzzle pieces missing. Just to really try to showcase where does that money go? It's filling in those blanks, if you will. Also for police and, of course, for our fire services. And so I recognize that maybe this presentation didn't address all of the great points that were raised, but this was just in large part and in gratitude to the Independent Oversight Committee for your judicious work and for helping make the impact of our tax measures even more clear.

Thank you, Ms. Shockey. Appreciate it. Any questions for staff on the presentation? I think it's a good step forward related to being transparent with information and a good use that we can put on that website once we get that figured out. Thank you so much. With that, I think Ms. Shockey. Was there somebody online that had a question for Ms. Shockey? Yeah. Go ahead, Mary. Yeah.

THANK YOU. SARAH, WOULD YOU PUT THE SLIDE BACK UP, ANY OF THOSE SLIDES THAT ARE ROUGHLY THE SAME ABOUT THE DEPARTMENTS? OKAY. ALL OF THESE DEPARTMENTS LISTED ARE WELL KNOWN EXCEPT GENERAL SERVICES IS NOT REALLY A DEPARTMENT THAT WE HAVE. WHAT IS GENERAL SERVICES AS YOU'RE DEFINING IT?

That is a great question, Mary Young. General services is essentially city-wide expenses that are not specific to a single department's operations. So a couple of examples are... lafco fees or even like our liability and property insurance for example that doesn't that's not how a property tax or excuse me property insurance isn't attributed to a specific department for their operations but rather that goes through um general services so that's how that's defined um and and i realize there might have similarly administered yeah 16 is a pretty big chunk

And certainly, you know, LAFCO and even property insurance is not going to make up 16% of our budget. In what I've worked in other cities before, what we typically did with these kind of costs is we just sort of spread them by per capita by department and everybody picked up a piece of it if it was in fact a general cost to the city. I don't know if we can do that here, but I think it's a little bit I don't want to say misleading, but we're putting a big chunk of money in a category that's not really a department, doesn't have a department head, doesn't really have somebody responsible for it. And it's a little bit opaque. And so I'm just wondering if in the future we shouldn't look at a different way of describing this or a different way of allocating those costs.

I think you make a great point, and that is actually part of the work of priority-based budgeting. For example, utility expenses, water, wastewater, electric, natural gas, all of those types of costs are not typically attributed per department. They are also allocated to this general services, but in priority based budgeting you'll actually start to see some of these department costs Or excuse me programmatic costs the cost of these types of things but spread across Individual programs and services so you can see the full freight if you will of a program and if we did that we wouldn't necessarily have a line item for general services in the future

Because we reallocate those costs to the actual departments.

I would see I see priority based budgeting and our line item budgeting distinct and unique I think priority based budgeting will help us tell the story and make our line item budget make even more sense or tell the story by program rather rather than by a department and trying to decipher what a specific a contract service budget means As far as how we will move forward and continuing our line item budgeting that is The current way that we do it and it certainly does Bring a lot of streamlined so I'll let the if you want a further answer on that We can certainly ask the finance director to speak to it, or we can simply take it under consideration All right, thank you Thank You miss Shaki Thank You Steve for comments

So with that, we'll go ahead and move on. The next item is to actually adopt the agenda. Ms. Shockey, is there any changes to the agenda? Since we started, you told me there wasn't any changes.

No changes, Vice Mayor.

Do I have a motion to adopt the agenda? We have a motion. Do I have a second? Second. A motion and a second. Ms. Wolfe, please call the roll.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

I didn't hear, but if it was by name, I'll say yes.

You adopted the agenda. Thanks for helping. All right, moving on to the next item, which is this is the opportunity for public comment for items which are not on the agenda. I have two speaker cards in front of me. I'm not aware of anybody online besides Mr. Young, but I do have Nicole Newell. Please come forward.

Hello, everybody. My name is Nicole Newell. I'm a program manager with Sustainable Solano, and I'm also a Benicia resident. I'm here to spread the word about our countywide air quality summit coming up on Saturday, October 17th. It'll be at the Joseph Nelson Center in Sassoon City, and the event will bring together community groups, experts, and policymakers to learn about and discuss air quality issues in Solano County. There'll be resources and information from other organizations. You'll be able to see projects created by our youth interns, a presentation from the California Air Resources Board on the biggest sources of air pollution in the county. There'll also be skill building workshops, opportunities to ask experts your burning questions about air quality, and more. The agenda will be released soon on our registration page, and I've got some flyers that I'll put in the back. So the event starts at 9 and ends at 4, and it'll include lunch. The first 50 non-government-affiliated registered participants to arrive who stay for the whole day will receive a $50 check to compensate participation and time spent attending. There'll be Spanish language translation services available for people that need them. And then space is limited, so please register today to reserve your spot. I'll leave flyers and info at the back for anyone who's interested. If you're concerned about air quality and want to be involved in initiatives in your community, I particularly encourage you to join us. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Newell. Is there anybody else in the audience that would like to make a public comment on items not on the agenda? Don't all stand up at once. Is there anybody online that would like to make a comment on the agenda? Not items not on the agenda. Sorry. Awesome. So with that, I'll go ahead and close the public comment period. Is there any ex parte communications anyone wants to make related to the consent calendar? All right, so we do have one item for the consent calendar mr. Shin field would like us to pull 14i is that correct it would not not yet But is that the correct item okay? So we have one request for item 14i to be pulled is there any other items? on the consent calendar that the council would like to to pull I Would like to pull 14h So we have I and H currently being pulled. Mayor Young, is there any items on the consent calendar that you would like to be pulled? No, Council Member Scott got it. Number H. Okay. All right. So with that... Just for the audience and the folks that are watching, I'll go ahead and read off some of the items in the consent calendar. Go ahead.

And just double check there's no one from the public who wishes to pull any additional item.

Sure. Is there anybody in the audience besides Mr. Shinfield that would like to pull any of the items on the consent calendar? Nobody's moving. All right. Anybody online that would like to pull an item? All right, so we'd check that box so just as a matter of Making sure that we disclose everything 14a is minutes from the August 18th and September 1st regular meetings 14b is approving a second amendment to agreement with DC electric 14c is authorizing administrative services director to make the necessary budget amendments in both police department and general fund and the police department asset forfeiture account and 14d is the 2526 quarter investment report 14 e is the first amendment to the professional services agreement with Shane consulting group I believe so you pronounce it 14f is an approval of agreement with TRB associates for development review services 14g is disposition of city-owned sites for housing development 14 egg 14h is polled 14I is pulled, and 14J, the remaining one, is approval to waive the reading of all ordinances introduced or adopted pursuant to this agenda. Understanding that I and H are both being pulled, do I have a motion to approve the consent calendar? So moved. Second. Ms. Wolfe, would you please call the roll?

Council Members Birdseye? Yes. Largus Spada? Yes. Misensky?

Yes.

Scott?

Yes.

And Mayor Young? Yes.

So why don't we start with I? Mr. Shinfield, would you please join us at the podium? Say it again. Would you mind sitting down? We're gonna do H first, just for the purposes of keeping notes. Sorry to get you so excited. So Mr. Scott, would you please take H?

Just one quick question. I just want to be assured of the netting.

Yes, it is planned to be an addition to the scope.

Is there any other clarifying items on item H? I have some, but I wanted to see if anyone else does.

No questions, just comments.

Mayor Young, do you have any questions on item H? No, just comments. Okay. Is there any members of the public that have questions on item H? Anybody online? All right, so we'll go ahead and bring it back up here for deliberations and decision. Ms. Birdseye, you said you have comments you wanted to make? Or you want to move it? No, I just want to move it. Mr. Largispata, go ahead.

Thank you, Vice Mayor. So two things can be true. One, I want to keep this project moving forward. The second thing is, while I recognize the need for outside support, based on the information I've received and spent time with, I'm not persuaded that this project requires 570 hours and a $90,000 construction management budget. the competitive process Produce a qualified lower alternative, and I appreciate staff taking input so tonight I can't support or won't support the Unico proposal But I will support the Concord proposal the second alternative.

Thank you Mr.. Young were there any remarks that you'd like to make I?

Well, I'd like to follow on to Council Member Largespot is there. We talked about this a lot a couple of weeks ago. I was a little surprised to see it come back and essentially say the same thing again. A $195,000 project spending almost half that amount in contract management for what is essentially re-roof gutters and a paint job. It just sounds crazy to me. I'm sorry. I would not support the staff recommendation. In fact, I would make a motion that we award it to Concord. Is that the other company? That is correct. I will make a motion that we award to Concord and see if there's a second for that.

I will second that.

We have a motion and a second on item H. Is there any further discussion? If not, I'll ask the clerk to call. Please call.

Council members Birdseye? No. Largaspada? Yes. Misinski?

Yes.

Scott?

No.

And Marriott?

Yes. Motion passes. Thank you very much.

This is not the preferred vendor and option of staff, and if this job isn't done right, it's... It's on the shoulders of the members that voted this way. And I think that we should have gone with staff's recommendation.

Heard and understood. Thank you. Moving on to our business items. Aye. Aye. Sorry. That's right. Can't forget you. Come on up. Now it's your turn. There you go.

on this you know I don't appear here very often most of my works on outside of these chambers I just couldn't help but coming down here for this I have a little I think that this should not be on the consent calendar this is not about whether these memorandums and understanding are proper or not but I The staff report talks about increases to a lot of things, health insurance, education reimbursement, contributions, comp time. There are costs to these memorandums, and I think they should be made public. I think the public has a right to know. I think the council ought to know, too. I mean, the staff report talks about whether non-pensionable, true, they're non-pensionable. I don't know how minor they are, but I think that given the city's situation, I don't think you can say, well, okay, the city's budget is $2.5 million more. Say, well, it's going to fit within the budget. I think that the staff, something that should not be on the consent calendar should be a public record of what these costs are. It's impossible to know how significant these costs are, but they could be quite significant. And that's my particular issue with that. So that's all I have, very briefly.

Thank you very much for your comment. Is there any other members of the public that would like to make a comment on consent item I? Anybody online? Okay, so I have questions for staff related to the comments, and I was wondering if there's any clarifying remarks we'd like to offer on consent item. Aye.

Yes, this evening, Director Kim and Bowden prepared some remarks to help provide some clarifying, to help address some clarifying questions.

Kim, the stage is yours.

Thank you. So thank you for your comments and the opportunity to expand. We did have a little bit of a timing issue trying to get the agenda posted along with some other priorities. So we do apologize that there was not detailed budget information. But I want to provide a little bit of context on that. During negotiations, you know, staff met with council and staff is given parameters for which to negotiate and staff stayed within those parameters. I do realize the community is not privy to those discussions. So it is important to be able to report out and we're able to do that tonight having this item pulled from the agenda because it allowed us to present some numbers for you that will hopefully answer some of the questions. So I do have a chart on the screen. The overall cost this if we were fully staffed and I do think it's important to note we are not fully staffed and I'll expand on that a little but if we were fully staffed the estimated cost for this one-year agreement citywide is about nine hundred and fifty five thousand and the reason I say estimated is because some of the items and I will expand on them depend on behavior of the employee you know do they take a day off which doesn't cost the city any additional money Or do they choose to cash that out, which would cost the city? So we have included in here the assumption that anything that is possibly able to be cashed out would be. I think in reality, the cost is going to be much less than, well, not much. The cost will be less than this for two factors. One, this was estimated, again, if we were fully staffed, we are not. And then also not all employees are opting to, you know, cash out some of the provisions. And we already know that. 955, again, you know, the biggest number if everybody, we were staffed and everybody took advantage of the cash out. There's also a breakdown by MOU. And I'm happy to read out those numbers if we want it, you know, for the record. Otherwise, you can see it on the screen. So your choice on that. But I... Happy to expand on any of those numbers. I think it's also important to note that these are one-time costs this year. So unlike a COLA, if the city grants a COLA this year, let's say we granted a 2% cost of living, and then next year we didn't. We gave zero. That 2% that we would give this year continues on into future years. This year, these are all costs for this fiscal year, and they will go away next year. unless they were renegotiated. So aside from one provision, you know, a couple minor, very, very, you know, couple dollar provisions, these all are one time this fiscal year and go away. The reason that it was important to do that this year, and, you know, I do think it's important to note that, you know, this was not what employees wanted. Employees, you know, requested COLAs, you know, the CPI and inflation, you know, justified giving COLAs. Our position in the marketplace with our surrounding agency would justify giving COLAs, but the city was just not in a financial position this year given Valero and some of the other uncertainty. That being said, there was a little bit of, you know, funds available that were included in the budget. You know, council might remember we have, you know, the employee retention bucket. That's part of the budget. There's, you know, Vacancy, there's money that is built in. And the finance director would have included some funding in anticipation for negotiations, not knowing if we would have COLAs. So the other questions we get is about PERS. So everything that was done for this year is non-PERSable. So it will not impact our CalPERS rates. It will not impact our unfunded liability in any way. And so, you know, staff and council, and, you know, we applaud the council for, you know, allowing us to give these provisions, you know, gives the city this year to get through this next year, continue to assess the impacts from Bolero, continue to work with employees on recruitment and retention in the most fiscally responsible way. Yes, 900,000 sounds like a lot, but a 2% COLA would have been that much and would have gone on into future years. With that, oh, let me, I'm sorry, I have two more slides, my apologies. The next slide that I do think is important to point out, because I did mention our comparison in the market, And just kind of a little teaser alert, I will be bringing back the annual recruitment and vacancy summary at a future council meeting next month or in November. So this is just a little snippet. But we have 150 job classifications in the city, full-time job classifications, which I think also shows and reiterates how complex our agency is for such a small city. We have such a variety of responsibilities in this city being a full-service city. Of those 150 classifications, we survey 59 of them, approximately. And so we don't survey every single classification. And I'll use an example for police. We go out and survey the police officer classification, get what the market average is. And then internally, we will determine, with counsel in the bargaining units, what's the appropriate differential for that next position of sergeant. And we'll set it at a percentage above the officer. So of the 59 benchmark classifications that we surveyed, 48 of those are under market. Now, it varies. There might be a few that are 5%, 7% under market. We have positions that are over 30% under market. The closest to market was negative 1.2. And we do have a couple positions that are probably appropriate at market. So I think that's just important to remember that, you know, in my staff report said, you know, the average under market was 15% and this chart has 12. And the reason for that is you take a classification that's, you know, 10% under market and you have 20 employees in that classification. That means we have 20 employees that are that far under market. So the staff report reflects our employees on average are about 15% under market. But when you look at our actual classifications, On average, it's about 12% under market, and again, you have the range. And again, in a future council meeting, I'll be bringing much more detailed data about that. Another point that's important to just remember is our vacancy. We strive to be fully staffed, and we do have some challenges in certain departments. While there is no official state or federal database that is the official word on government turnover, most agencies and organizations trend it to be around 8% for government, and especially in California. And as you can see, our police department, 10%. Some of our managers classificate 14%. So we want to continue to work on that. And the further that we get behind the market in salaries, it's going to affect that. We didn't do anything to address that this year. We're basically stagnant as far as our salaries go. These were one-time costs just to, again, kind of buy us some time next year. With that, I would be happy to expand on anything or answer any questions.

Thank you, Kim. Any members of the council have any questions for Kim? It says I do, but I know you do.

Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you, Ms. Bowden, for the information. I understand why this item was pulled. At the same time, I'm comfortable with why it ended up in the consent calendar, as well as why most items end up in the consent calendar. It makes sense to us, for the most part, in most cases, because in this case, This complex topic was vigorously negotiated and discussed in good faith between the staff and the members and so forth. And then also with the staff report, I believe the agreements were attached as well. Earlier in the presentation when the task force came forward, they talked about Transparency, I don't think we have a transparency issue here, but I think maybe there's an opportunity as was recommended This is kind of a general recommendation and or direction to staff reports is whenever we can make our staff reports more convenient or more accessible to the public let's do our best to anticipate that um i don't know if this would have prevented uh mr schoenfield for coming forward but i think those charts in this report would have satisfied probably 99% of the questions and concerns, which are all legitimate. But I think it was they didn't participate in the meetings that you all did, and we did as well. And so we know it, they know it, they don't know it. And so I think going forward, again, just a consideration, anytime we can... pull some of this data forward in anticipation of some of the questions that might come up. I think the better these reports are. They're very good. This was very good. But again, convenience, clarity, I think is always a plus. And having that in this, I think probably would have satisfied it. Just feedback. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember. Mayor Young, do you have any remarks you'd like to make?

I do, thank you. One question for Kim. You said that the costs that were in these MOUs were one-time costs, but most of the costs, if I understand correctly, went to health costs, increased costs for Kaiser and other things. Those costs are not going to go away. Those costs are going to be with us FOREVER, I MEAN, WE'RE GOING TO HAVE TO PAY IT EVERY YEAR, BUT NOBODY EXPECTS THOSE COSTS TO GO DOWN. AM I MISSING SOMETHING HERE?

NEW SPEAKER NO, THANK YOU, MAYOR, FOR ALLOWING ME TO EXPAND AND CLARIFY ON THAT. SO OUR PRIOR MOU HAS A LISTED A PERCENTAGE. SO THE CITY WOULD PAY 85% OF THE KAISER RATE AND EMPLOYEES WOULD PAY 15%. SO IF OUR RATES WENT UP $50 million. The city was going to be responsible for that. And that's been in prior MOUs. This year, the city did an increase to cover the additional increase to health on a one-time basis. And next year, we will have to renegotiate health. And because we don't know what our health rates will be next year, the city still feels it's appropriate to have a cost sharing. And employees still do pay. Employees did not have a reduction in what they are paying for health. Employees are still paying towards their health. But we were able to talk with our health care provider to restructure the rate a little bit. to allow us to kind of move some things around and put things in different buckets. But, you know, thank you for that question.

But I think my point is health care costs are not going to go down next year. Nobody believes that. So whatever we paid this year, we're going to be paying again next year, if not more. Isn't that right?

Potentially, but every year we do get to negotiate with our employees. So, you know, the city could say we can't pay as much for health. And that could decrease. But you are right that health premiums overall do generally go up year over year.

Right. And the other thing I want to say is that there's not a lot of things I agree with Mr. Shenfield on. This is one of them. I think we have too many items that go on consent and not enough go on business. This certainly should have been on business. Anytime we're talking about employee salaries and pensions, it's been a hot topic on social media lately. This is the kind of thing that people do pay attention to. And it's certainly an important feature of the city's finances. And I would agree that this should have come off of that. And partly on me for not insisting on doing that when I met with Mario earlier in the week.

Thank you, Mr. Young. Any other further remarks? All right. Ms. Birdseye.

For the record, Mr. Shinville left while our HR director was talking to the first slide, so didn't stick around for the details.

Okay. All right. So with that, if there isn't any other further comments by counsel, I'll entertain a motion. So moved. Second. Ms. Wolfe, will you please call the roll?

Council Members Birdseye? Yes. Larga Spada?

Yes.

Misensky?

Yes.

Scott?

Yes.

And Mayor Young?

Yes. All right. We're in the business items now. So the first business item is actually amending Chapter 12.41 to apply fishing restrictions to the Benicia Marina boat launch. Mr. Stock, our city attorney, is going to be tackling that one. Go for it.

Good evening. Thank you. Pretty much covered by staff report. Pretty brief. Again, this has to be on the open agenda, non-consent, given that's an ordinance amendment. For use night is amending chapter 12.41, which currently prohibits fishing from the float launch at the 9th Street boat launch. and have that same restriction applied to the Benicia Marina based on requests by the marina and by residents who use the boat launch and who have given information to the city manager's office about damages on the boats from people fishing on that float. So the amendment makes it clear that no longer would be allowed to fish on that float. And that concludes my report.

Thank you, Mr. Stock. I think the only thing that I'd say before we go out for questions is that my kids fish. And I would say, you know, there is definitely, the clearer we can be about where they can be and cannot be, I think the better it's going to be for the community. There seems to be always negative interactions with fishermen and boaters sometimes when there's conflicts about whether lines get wrapped up in propellers or whatever it is. So if we can avoid that conflict, it would be good. And further defining and being consistent across the community I think would be helpful. Those are my remarks. I don't have any questions for staff. Does anybody in the audience want to make a comment on this item? Please come forward.

Members of the Council, my name is Scott Trummer. I've been a 25-year slipholder in Benicia Marina. I am a harmed party due to the fishing that's been there. I submitted a comment sheet. Hopefully you all get a chance to read it. So I would urge you to vote in favor of this. It makes sense. There's no marina that permits fishing. There are more of those. Not one. Not one in the state, not one in any country I've been to, and I've been all over the world. So I seek your affirmative on this. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Anybody else would like to make a comment? I was hoping so.

Just briefly, I'm Ryan, the harbormaster there. And I like the kids fishing, you know, not playing video games. There's just so many better places to fish than right there, even at the marina. There's Cromwell Park on the end there, by the break wall. That right there has been, it's became a liability issue, a safety issue.

Thank you so much for your comments. Thank you. Is there anybody online that would like to make a comment on this item? All right, I'm bringing it back up to the council for deliberation and decision. Ms. Birdseye, go ahead.

I really appreciate the comments that were sent in to us. They really illuminated what is going on out there, and I fully support this recommendation, so I move to approve the first reading of this ordinance.

Second we have a motion and a second, but real quickly mr.. Mr.. Young is there anything you'd like to Okay, so with that we'll go ahead and call the roll council members bird sight.

Yes, Larga Spada Masinski. Yes, Scott.

Yes, and Mary yeah, yes Awesome all right so with that we are that's the only business item that I have on my agenda Any updates from task force groups or anything like that that we want to say all right? Going once, going twice. Steve, of course you've got something to say. Go for it.

Of course, last week was a big week for the city in terms of the Air District. Most people know, but we did receive $30 million from the Air District in what's called a Catalyst Grant, and then later in the week, actually a couple days later, the COMMITTEE WHO WILL MAKE RECOMMENDATIONS TO THE BOARD RECOMMENDED AN ADDITIONAL $5 MILLION. SO IN TOTAL $35 MILLION SHOULD BE COMING OUR WAY FROM THE AIR DISTRICT GRANT PLUS ANOTHER 10 MILLION FOR THE School District, and they did make it clear in some of my discussions with Dr. Fine that they're going to give us some flexibility in terms of how we structure some of the grant categories that we had in particular around electric charging and what and where and how That ought to go, but the money is there for electric charging infrastructure, but the devil's in the details, and we'll have an opportunity to work out some of those specifics going down the road. The staff, I understand, is going to be working out contracts with the Air District, and it will be hopefully later in the fall that we might actually begin to access some of that money.

Thank you, Mayor Young. Ms. Burnside.

So I really hope that the Air District Board passes the opportunity grant. This is really $5 million near and dear to my heart. It's going to help the neighborhoods that are closest to the refinery. get off of fossil fuels and modernize their homes, getting heat pumps and getting away from gas-powered water heaters and appliances. And so I'm really happy that that was staff's recommendation, and I do hope the board passes it.

Thank you, Ms. Birdseye. Is there any other council members who would like to make any updates? Hearing none, meeting adjourned. Thank you very much.