City Council - Regular Meeting

Okay, good evening, everyone.

We're going to get today's meeting started. We'll start with our land acknowledgement. We would like to acknowledge that the land we inhabit today was once known as Tavangar, the home of the Gabrielino-Tomba people. We show our respect to the Gabrielino-Tomba people as well as all indigenous people past, present, and future, and honor their labor as original caretakers of this land. We commit to uplifting the Gabrielino-Tomba people, invite you to acknowledge the history, and join us in caring for this land. Please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.

Please put your right hand over your heart.

Ready, begin. I pledge allegiance to the flag Thank you. You may be seated. Madam Clerk, may we get a roll call, please? Councilmember Goh?

Present. Councilmember Wong? Councilmember Sanchez? Present. Mayor Pro Tem Lo? Echo.

Yes, I'm here.

Mayor Yang. Present. We are warm. Okay.

No, let's keep it. Thank you.

All right, while they're working on the echo, any public comments for tonight? No? No. All right, then we'll go right into new business 5A, our fiscal year preliminary 2026 to 2027 budget.

Madam Mayor, members of the council, if we can just, we're going to need just a minute.

It looks like we're having a little bit of a technical issue.

Testing. Testing.

Still an echo? Testing. Testing. Hi, Robert.

I think there's still an echo. Yeah. We can do updates in the meantime.

Test, test. Test, test. Can we get one more mic check?

Testing, testing. Is it better?

Yes. I think it's better. Dodger tickets just went on sale for Monterey Park Dodger night. Just want to put it out there. August 15th, right? Yes. 4 p.m. Saturday. $60, yes.

Good evening mayor mayor Potem council members Martha Garcia finance director and welcome to the annual budget workshop for fiscal year 2627 We're going to be discussing the budget background the city financial plan staffing changes and general fund reserves and expenditures, and next page, the CalPERS unfunded accrued liability, debt service, and then we'll move on to department presentations, and at the end we'll do capital improvement projects. So the city's proposed budget for fiscal year 26-27 operating debt, capital, and successor agency budget total is $188.2 million, of which $77.8 million is from the general fund and $2.2 million are for successor agency obligations. THE CITY'S FINANCIAL PLAN, THIS INCLUDES ALL OF THE FUNDS, IS 188 MILLION. GENERAL FUND IS 77, THESE ARE EXPENDITURES, BY THE WAY. GENERAL FUND IS 77.78 MILLION. SPECIAL REVENUES, THAT INCLUDES GAS STACKS, MEASURE A, MEASURE ALL OF THE GAS TAX AND OTHER MEASURES. THAT'S 36.5 MILLION. GRANTS IS 3.7 MILLION. NOW I WANT YOU TO KEEP IN MIND THAT FOR GRANTS, THE CITY DID APPLY FOR a grant for the from the water land water conservation fund and we were awarded six million dollars this grant is a cost reimbursement grant so you won't be seeing the the expenditures or the revenues until we start the project And then you'll see what the expectation is, and then we'll add, we'll come back to council to include the anticipated revenues and expenditures. But we do have, it is on our target to, our list to do as soon as the money starts to come in, or as soon as we start working on the project. For refuse, we're only expecting about 690,000. For sewer, we're expecting 9.6 million in expenditures. For water, it's 26.3 or .4 million. And internal service funds, 31.2 million. And successor agency expenditures of 2.2 million, which is a total of 188.2 million. next this is a just a pie chart to show how the expenditures are split by percentage in a pie chart you'll see that general fund takes up 41 percent of the expenditures for the city budget with next one is special revenues NEXT SLIDE, PLEASE. WE ARE PROPOSING A COUPLE OF FTE STAFFING CHANGES. For HR and risk management, we would like to add one principal HR analyst and delete one HR specialist. For the police department, we would like to add two police officers, one for the neighborhood engagement team and one for the community engagement bureau. FOR COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT, WE WOULD LIKE TO RECLASSIFY ONE ADMINISTRATIVE AID TO A MANAGEMENT ANALYST. FOR COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT, WE WOULD LIKE TO ADD ONE ASSOCIATE PLANNER. PUBLIC WORKS IS ASKING TO ADD one part-time water production system operator and one part-time maintenance worker. Public Works is also asking to reclass one auto shop technician to an administrative ed. This will increase our FTEs full-time equivalent to four. And total cost to the city for next fiscal year is $702,000. Next, we're going to talk about general fund revenues. In the chart, you'll see the table and the pie chart. The table talks about we have the property tax that we're expecting. The property tax continues to go up about 3 to 5 percent, depending on the seller homes. But the other funds are not trending as well as the property tax. So we're anticipating, in property tax, $27 million. In sales tax, we're anticipating $19.9 million. Utility user tax is $4 million. Transient occupancy tax, $4.5 million. Business license tax of $1.9 million. Other taxes is $1.6 million. In other taxes, this category consists of property transfer tax and franchise tax. The property transfer tax is a real estate transfer tax at a rate of $1.10 per $1,000 of value transferred. the city and county share the tax equally. The franchise tax is imposed by the city on gas, electric, cable, television, and for the privilege of using city streets. Another tax that's included in this is like personal property tax. For example, motorhomes and other vehicles are also included in other tax. The next one is license and permits, and we are looking at $1.9 million, and this is slightly less than last year because these are permits that are for plumbing, electricity, building permits, and various other licenses and permits. So based on our community development department's estimation of what kind of permits were going to be issued next year is how we developed that dollar amount. And then the next one is service service charges that is at eight point six million and then other revenue is at seven point nine Other revenue this category includes investment earnings. It includes rents fines and miscellaneous revenue accounts and so it's where you put the rent in the interest revenue and So the two top categories that bring in the most revenue are property tax and sales tax, and that generates 61 percent of the general fund budget. Next page. Our general fund expenditures, which we are very glad to say that we have a balanced budget, which is very good. Our expenditures are 77.8 million. Community and economic development is at 3.4 million. FIRE is 19 million. General administration, which is finance, HR, City Manager's Office, Council, City Attorney's Office, City Clerk's Office, they are at 8.2 million. Library is at 3.7. Police is at 29.3. Public Works is at 3.8. Recreation and Community Service is 3.7. Non-departmental, that is payments that we make to CalPERS. That's payments that we make to OPEB, which is our other pension benefits, like a the medical that we pay for our retirees. That is what's in the also workers' comp and items like that are in the non-departmental. And that's at $2.9 million. And then capital improvements that are general fund from the general fund are $3.7 million. For a total of expenditures of general fund for fiscal year 26-27 is $77.8 million. Next slide. So our reserves are, while we are doing okay, I have concerns for the future years. We are growing our revenue at about an average of like 2.6%, and our expenditures are growing at an average of 2.7%. I'm concerned that as we can hold what we have now, we can hold in line what we have now, Any other additions or any other stuff we need to seriously think about before we add anything else in the future? And we're looking at a budget surplus for 26-27 when we close the year, about $49,000. At mid-year, we'll revisit what's going on. We do monitor during the month to make sure that our revenues are coming in as they should. But at mid-year, we will come back and make sure that we're still at target for our expenditures to be less than our revenues. The next slide. So our unfunded liability, this is where it's getting a little bit harder for us too. We did a bond on February 16, 2021. The city issued pension obligation bonds in the amount of $1.106 million, paying off in its entirety the city's unfunded liability. This payment brought the city's UAL to a zero balance in February of 21. The CalPERS discount rate has since been reduced to a 6.8. And the updated UAL balance that we now have is $38.9 million. as of June 2024. The UAL payment for fiscal year 26-27 is $3.6 million and will continue to rise in the next three years, but it looks like there might be a drop in fiscal year 30-31. But these are all variables that CalPERS uses, so every year it changes. We just need to monitor and make sure that we stay at the 90% Ownership of our pension Because we are about 92 percent right now that we own it Next page These are our debt service we have for fiscal year 26 27 we have debt service of 11.8 million Our Siemens for example will sales tax revenue bonds that is for the streets this that we borrowed from about $20 million. I don't remember the exact number. But we put all that money, we spent it all, it's in our streets, and now we continue to pay for the bond. The Siemens energy efficiency, we're almost done in June of 2030. We'll have paid it off, but we continue to have payments until then. Police mobile radios, that one is looking to, we're going to close it out in September of 2032. And that payment is $307,000 a year. This is our pension obligation bond. So not only are we paying the 3.6 in UAL, we're also paying about 7.3 million a year on the bond. So it's still a good thing that we had this bond because if not, our While we're paying, what is it, about $11 million a year, it would have been like $15 or more if we would have not paid all this off. The bond brought us, instead of paying the 7% to CalPERS, our interest was at $2.66. And then you have... Water revenue bonds, we still have some of those bonds and we're still working on water infrastructure, but we're also paying on the bond. And then we have... The San Gabriel Valley, that one has zero interest on it, and we got $4 million bond, or it was more of a loan, and we're now paying it back at $400,000 a year for 10 years, and there's zero interest. And then recently we bought a fire engine truck and dump truck in City HVACs, and those are also payments that we pay of $190,000 each. And then that completes my summary of the next year's budget. Do you guys have any questions?

Thanks, Martha.

On the UAL for PERS, I don't know if you went over OPEB, too.

Do we have the unfunded liabilities for OPEB and what that number is, too?

I don't have the number on me, but we do. You know what? I think it's in the letter. Give me one second. It's in the letter. Here it is. Our liability is $16.1 million based on a 30-year amortization. We own about half of it. So what we have is we have a trust fund with CalPERS as well, and we funded by advancing a million dollars fiscal year. And eventually, the idea is that eventually that trust fund will pay for ongoing costs, and we will not have to budget for ongoing costs because the that trust will pay for the ongoing cost. So because we have money in that trust, which is around 16, I think it was 16, my senior accountant, 16 point, it was a little bit under a 17 million, that offsets the liability. So we're only at 16.1 that we're short of our shortfall.

So we're prepaying the trust for OPEB liabilities and we'll hopefully continue to do that with our budget going forward, assuming revenue.

We do. We have another, we're asking for another million for next year as well because we've been, like I said, we've been advancing the million so that eventually it takes care of itself.

So over time, it should zero out, assuming PERS continues to, right, that trust fund generates revenue, earnings, pays for itself, and assuming medical costs, retiree medical costs don't go above their assumptions.

Well, we have a limit of how much each employee can get at retirement. So even if medical costs go up, our numbers won't go up. Because we have a specific amount, and that's it. It's a flat amount for each employee that retires in a different bargaining unit. So that, in a sense, wouldn't go up. What would change is the potential of variables that... you know people die or or people live longer or we hire new people or those are the variables that change it but medical costs would not change it because uh we only give the next amount of money so pers covers the if there's a no the employee does when they're retired the employee covers the rest so let's say for example i would say i get 500 a month uh in my my um Insurance is $800 a month. I personally pay the difference.

But the point I want to get to on that is that it's important for us to continue to pay into the trust fund because otherwise that liability will continue to grow and we're not paying it. We are doing PAYGO on that, too?

So we do both, yes. We front the trust and we do PAYGO for the active, currently retired active retirees that are benefiting from OPEB. So the pay go is for the bills, the normal bills that come in for the current retirees. And then we want to use, we're doing the trust funds so that, like I said, eventually we don't have to budget for it. The trust will pay for that particular benefit moving forward.

Right. But that's still, I mean, at this rate, it's still 15 plus years out.

Yeah. Possibly.

And then for the UAL for PERS, I

Hopefully, we're not going to see additional discount rate reductions for PERS that would increase the UAL, right?

Yeah. I haven't heard of any more discount rates. What changes and what increases is, again, you know, what our interest rates are in the market. Another thing that increases is every time we add more staff, that will increase. Every time that you... Do a salary increase, like COLA or any of that, that will also change it. So there's a lot of variables that go into the UAL that could potentially change going up or going down depending on what we do.

And we're not pre-funding. Do we have a trust account for PERS too? No.

So what we did with PERS is in 2021 we paid off all of it. So in 2021 we were at zero debt and we were just paying the bond. So we actually got a really good credit because we were paying like 7% to CalPERS but our interest rate was 2.66. So we basically saved the city with with that bond have about 50 million dollars in a time of of a 30 years 30 year span we saved 50 million dollars for the city um the ual can continue to grow because of the variables like i said if you continue to add more full-time staff to the city if you if we continue to um and again the the the how long people live, if people are dying sooner, if people are living longer based on their variables that they use. And increases in pay also affected quite a bit.

Yeah, but the UAL, if market returns for PERS continue to come in right above the assumed discount rate that they have, 6.8, which the last few years it has, You're noting that we should expect the UAL to shrink.

So I was expecting it to shrink in 24 because it's two years behind, and it didn't. It actually went up about two, three million from the prior year. My only assumption of this, because, again, they use quite a bit of variables, my only assumption of this is that we gave, with our new MOUs for staff, that we gave, you know, CalPERS has told in a training that Laura and I went to that if we give more than a 3%, it really triggers an increase in the UAL. So more than a 3% in a year can trigger, it adds more. it adds more to the yield for the city that does that. So you have to look at everything and make those kind of conscientious decisions when you're giving, when your people are doing their bargaining, their bargaining units are negotiating for increases because anything more than 3% will trigger a higher UAL.

Okay. Well, let's, little concerning in terms of because the ual should be shrinking with the return i mean they've been pers has been getting double digit returns the last couple years we're not seeing any shrinking we have not seen um we have not seen a reduction it keeps going up Obviously, something to keep an eye out, but I think all things considered, compared to some of our neighboring cities, we're in a very healthy spot relative to our neighbors in terms of our unfunded pension liabilities.

Yeah, that POB that we did, it really put us in a really good spot.

But we're still not fully funded with our pensions.

Right, right.

I just note, generally, right, the reserves posture, I appreciate the conservative nature of kind of our general five-year projections. Obviously, this is all assuming the economy stays relatively healthy.

But, yes, stable, we don't start dipping in our revenues. It's assuming a very, very small increase, but hopefully we don't lose that.

I'll just characterize it as we're tenuously balanced with our budget projections going into the next few years, assuming moderate growth?

We did a lot of scrubbing of our budget with our city manager this year because we wanted to make sure that we stayed in line with the revenues coming in. So we did quite a bit of scrubbing of our budget, and we plan to continue to do that. And Laura and I monitor if the revenues aren't coming in as projected, then we'll start talking to staff that they'll have to cut back more.

Great. And then we may get into this in the police department presentation, but the additional staff Was there any thought given to, I assume these are both, the both proposed ads are, it says police officers, sworn officers, any thought to non-sworn personnel potentially taking on these roles or these responsibilities and thinking through that as potential opportunities for lower costs going forward?

Do you want to answer or do you want me to?

Sure. Madam Mayor, members of the council, We have the last few years been extremely conservative on any type of full-time positions being added to the budget. In fact, over the last several years, the adjustments that we've made to full-time personnel has really been reclassifications, reevaluating departments' workflows, and trying to make sure that we're keeping up with advancements in technology to continue to just monitor and reposition the city, utilizing our resources to the best that we can. Over the last several years, the other adjustment that we've made is yes, we did add, we reclassified a position in the police department prior to this to add one more sworn, but we removed two other personnel to allow for that. reclassification to happen. And we made an adjustment in the fire department as well. So the sworn positions, evaluating those two positions at this point, we felt that we have tried to maintain staffing levels, especially in our public safety divisions. However, we do feel that these two positions are critical as we understand that that we have additional resources that we'd like to put in for one would be a school to be used as a school safety officer. So if the position is being considered tonight by council, that position would be a combination position of a sworn person that would be working directly with our schools. In addition, they would have an emotional support animal that'd be a handler for that. So that would be that combo position. Our school resource officer, we don't currently have one in our department. Other cities have had school resource officers, but for that position, it would need to be a sworn officer understanding that they'd be working directly with the schools in cases that they need support. The other position that we're looking to add as a sworn position is to our net team to provide additional continued services around homeless and mental health needs that we've seen slowly rise over the years. So that's the other position that we're looking at for council's consideration tonight. So we don't take these positions lightly. We definitely are diligent in thinking about long-term impacts to the city. We try to do our best to reclassify positions, utilize part-time staff where we can. But in this situation, we do believe that the request for the two additional sworn officers are needed at this time.

Great. I appreciate that. I appreciate the thoughtfulness that goes into personnel and the staffing levels. We want to make sure. have we balance uh right fiscal responsibility making sure we can balance the budget with the making sure we're providing global service our community needs and deserves uh and that's always a tenuous balance every year appreciate staff and the city manager and the finance department really helping to take the lead on that um maybe final question on this uh so the ending fund balance right the slide 10 the projected five-year fund balance uh over the next few years This doesn't take into account, I mean, this takes into account some of the, all the projects that are in the SIP, or some of them, or no, no?

Yes, the money that's in reserves, that is the money that's been assigned, most of that money has been assigned to CIPs.

So, right, if we execute all the CIP projects the next few years, this fund balance will go down significantly.

Yes, with the exception of the catastrophic, that cannot be touched.

So, just note again, right, our catastrophic is only $11 to $12 million right now. 13 which on a 70 80 million dollar general fund budget is not very much uh so just echo my calls and our calls to continue to be conservative here this money is not just lying there we've got right if if it's 13 million that is in catastrophic that's about 30 million in capital improvement projects that we can spend on When I looked at the SIP project, if I read it right, I think there's 250 million unidentified SIP projects in the next few years. And that's if all the funding comes through. We don't have all the funding identified for all those projects. And that, from my understanding, at this point does not include a rebuild of Barnes Park Pool beyond the $6 million grant that's been received. So we're we've got a long ways to go this budget in terms of general fund in our day-to-day expenses looks balanced but there's a lot of other work we need to do and we need to find money for if we want to Get this full budget and the plan and the particular capital proven projects funded and to realize in the next few years Well, we can go into the departments, okay

Mayor, I wanted you guys to have a tough question first. I just have a, I guess, clarification on slides 10 and 11. I'm sorry, no, no, it's eight and nine. On slides eight and nine, I'm just looking at this from an income and expense standpoint, right? So this slide shows that we have roughly a million 260 in surplus budget this year. Is that correct?

2 million.

And for this fiscal year, we are anticipating about a 2.2 million surplus.

So if I could clarify, the chart that we have, the two point, the surplus of two million is for this current fiscal budget that's ending in June of 2026. So the following year, the budget workshop tonight is focused on fiscal year 26-27. Yes. Yes.

So that was my question. Last year, our budget is not only balanced, but we actually had a surplus. And then, where's my second question? Oh, the second question is, last year, and more importantly going forward, do we have federal grants or allocations anticipated in our budget that we think there is a potential that it could be cut or revised.

at this point we the only one that i knew that was going to be possibly cut was a hud fund which was a home in cdbg and we haven't heard anything at all that they're planning to cut it for 26 27 so at this point we should be okay the rest of them are those are recurring those are recurring the rest of them are grants that we submit for awards and so that we're still getting federal grants uh when we submit for awards so at this point i do not believe um we are

Any of the federal grants or state grants are recurring are going to be cut at all Madam Mayor's the council if I can jump in here So those are as Martha was indicating those are the reoccurring grants. We did apply for federal earmarks We haven't gotten that's still considered pending in the pending phase. It hasn't been approved awarded or denied just yet, but we did request $2 million for our Fire Station 63. This is in a later slide during capital improvements, so we'll go through some of this, but I'll answer the question in advance here. So we requested for... It's for the next federal budget, which would start in October. It's for that cycle. We asked for $2 million and we heard back that it's still being considered, but the amount was reduced to 500,000. So it's not guaranteed just yet because that budget cycle hasn't been approved, but our request has been lowered, reduced from 2 million to 500,000 for Fire Station 63. and we don't know if we'll get it for sure but just wanted to answer that question so we have seen um those types of reductions um yeah until we know until we get final word about that application we'll be able to respond better but we are monitoring the federal administration closely to see if it's going to impact us any further

Okay. Then just to follow up, CDBG, what is that line item? What's that number? Is that $200,000 or is that $2 million?

The CDBG is normally half a million. The home is about $200,000, a little bit over $200,000. Okay.

Thank you.

um martha thank you for your presentation and for uh budgeting or having a balanced budget i think that our u.s congress could take some lessons from you and having a surplus from last year so appreciate that um i just had a question regarding um i know that the majority of our fund for our city comes from a property taxes and sales taxes, and I know that you said you're coming, anticipating come back mid-year to kind of give us an update. I know that the intro to our budget report talked about the economic forecast of this country in terms of where we are at, and I know a lot of that is very unpredictable, but I think a lot of people are predicting that

we see we're starting to see a slowdown of our economy and if have you started to see um at all um reduction in sales tax revenue coming into the city so we did get a we did get a reduction for this year about 250 000 250 to 300 000 i don't remember the exact amount so there is a reduction that's already happened that we uh we because we get all our numbers from hcl so um so yeah we have seen a slight reduction

and not significant but it's just been slight okay but um compared i'm not sure what other cities are or i know that other cities are struggling to balance their budgets and i know and a lot of that has to do with stuff that we can't control, like increased costs and stuff like that. Have you started to see other cities have revenue issues, too, in terms of sales tax as well?

Yes. Yeah, as well?

Okay. And then I'm assuming that if we had serious declines in sales tax revenue, you'd probably come back before mid-year, right?

Oh, yeah, we would definitely start, because we monitor, and we would definitely be sitting with INES to figure out our strategy and then bringing it to council.

Yeah, and then I think that it behooves us as a city as we start looking at potentially other forms of revenue income stream coming into the city to kind of counteract, not just because I also saw in the intro the increased cost of tariffs and the economic forecast, a lot of stuff that we can't control, but the stuff that we can control in terms of being able to find creative ways to bring more revenue into the city to fund a lot of our... not just our budgeted items, but a lot of our capital improvement projects. I think Council Member Wong mentioned earlier, $250 million that we still need to work on. That includes the pool and many other projects that are desperately needed in the city. Same question, but with property taxes. Have we started seeing any declines in property? No, not in property tax. I saw that there was an increase, right?

The property tax has been pretty steady and going anywhere from 3% to 5%.

Okay.

That's very hard news. But I budget at 3%. I don't want to over-assume.

Okay.

Thank you, Martha.

Thank you, Mayor. Martha, as always, thank you for a comprehensive report. My question is, again, my understanding is that You know our general fund revenue is very strong. We'll get F fiscal year 26 27 77.8 million and of the Part of that review from sales tax out of curiosity how much of that Revenue stream is also attributed to voter approved measure MP and

I can't give you the exact number, but it's right around 9 million.

9 million. Yeah. And again, had...

voters not approve measure mp would our situation be weaker or more precarious without measure mp oh definitely we would not be able to do any cip projects we wouldn't be able to submit the million uh to opeb we'd have to look at not you know maybe looking at our staffing and our services to reduce staffing and services there's a lot of things we would have have to have done if we didn't have that measure mp

And thank you for pointing that out.

We would be like the other cities that are struggling. Measure MP helped us stay afloat.

Right. And if I ask, I know the information is here, but I felt important to ask and say publicly, because again, this is where I think it's important that we, again, thank the voters for working with us to pass Measure MP, because yes, these are, of course, challenging fiscal times. But if we're not for residents' approval of Measure MP, as Martha said, we will be in a much more precarious situation. I would also like to add, I mean, although it's probably a small revenue, but nonetheless, because voters approved adjustment to the TOT, that is also probably, I'm just curious, what have we seen in terms of revenue from the adjusted TOT that was approved by voters?

That one's about $400,000 a year that we get more from the TOT. From the business license tax, we get an extra million more a year. So with Measure MP, with Measure BL, Measure LG, you basically have about almost $12 million that's coming in into the city.

12 million. And I think that's important to thinking that if we didn't have that 12 million, again, we would be in a much more curious situation, wouldn't we? So, so, so again, a big thank you to the residents for supporting these measures. Um, and while we're on the topic of TOT, um, I mean, again, I know we've been talking a lot about the Olympics, and also if I'm not mistaken, a lot of our hotels are already booked or being booked. I'm wondering, too, just a strategy, especially because we're talking about how to maintain a stable source of revenue. We know whether or not there's also a way in which we can bolster the attraction area for tourism as well. I think that next two years again we know that with interest rates you know housing might be a challenge if people are are looking at difficult to find you know housing affordability with interest rates you know but all the more than why we should also accelerate if we can the housing projects we have before us to get them built but I think also looking to offset I think that's where you know if we can find ways to increase tourism host activity even commercial visitations. I know that the hotel sometimes is used as a space for, like, conventions. I think that's something that we should really look at in the next two years.

Definitely, we will.

That's it for now.

Thank you, Martha, for the detailed presentation. It's really good that we have another surplus this year, $2.26 million, because I know last year it was also about a $3 million surplus, so that's two years in a row. And I think the proposed staff changes are much needed, adding two police officers, including a neighborhood engagement officer to cover the weekend gap. That's much needed given that we've been seeing an uptick in homeless people in our city with the Olympics coming. And then also an additional associate planner for the community development departments, as there's so many community development projects coming up. And I know the current planners are already swamped, so having that extra planner would be good. On page 5, under the 2% grants, 3.725 million, you said that does include the 6 million and the 3 million matching grant for the Barnes Park pool, or it doesn't?

it does not right now we're just uh the six million is not anywhere in the budget or on our gl account we will um we are still waiting for the the final uh federal to award it to us and that's in october when they i think i'm not sure when are we expecting the federal to award are you gonna

Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Persim, city council members. We're still going through environmental. Our environmental process will take at least about a year or so before we'll start seeing an award of that. So we still have to go through environmental, NEPA, CEQA stuff that I just met with the grant officers a few days ago. They said that process is at minimum a year or so.

And once we start the project and we recognize the award, it won't be six. It'll be $9 million because we have to have a $3 million match, which we've already set aside in our reserves. So you'll see $9 million, $6 million in grants, and then $3 million in general fund. Got it. Okay.

Madam Mayor, if I may, just for clarification, the $6 million grant that Robert was just speaking about, we're still in the process of working on the design. So we're not losing any time from that standpoint. We're still, we went out to bid, we got proposals in, so we'll be able to do that part as we're going through environmental and the rest while we're waiting for the other grant funds to come in. So that's just for clarification.

Yeah, and I know as we go down the presentation, it's going to be covered in the capital improvement projects.

Now, I just want to confirm and additionally clarify, the current budget in the SIPP doesn't include the $6 million. That hasn't hit. But it's still going to be a net $20 million, at least an estimated $20 million gap that we don't have in the SIPP either, right? Our SIP currently, I just looked at the number again, so it's $260-something million in SIP projects identified, not including the pool, which would add a net $20 million that we don't have. That's right.

Yes, that's correct. And we have some slides that will go over capital improvement, and we did call out some key projects in there that we do have funding gaps for, so we will go over that as well.

All right, any other questions for Martha? If not, we can move on to the departmental presentations.

Good afternoon, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, Council, Laura Beauchamp, Finance Manager. It's my pleasure tonight to present the departmental budgets. City Council fiscal year 26-27 proposed budget is $227,670 with five full-time equivalent positions. The City Manager fiscal year 25-26 accomplishments include completing a communications audit and branding refresh, implementing new SB 707 requirements for public meetings, and expanding crisis communications preparedness. their fiscal year 2627 goals include hiring a communications manager completing the january 21st 2023 memorial and to oversee the general municipal elections in november City Manager Fiscal Year 26-27 budget is $5,200,083 with 11.7 full-time equivalent positions. Do you have any questions with regards to this budget? For the City Manager's Office? For the City Manager's Office? Move over, move over. Additionally, there are no significant changes for the city manager's office.

Just to confirm, so the communications manager, that's reclassifying an existing position, right? We're not adding a new position?

Madam Mayor, members of the council, that is correct. The communications manager position is a reclassification of another position that we had. So we're not changing the number of full-time employees in that department, correct?

And that reclassification was done in mid-year?

Okay. Fiscal year 26-27 proposed budget for the city clerks, $29,911 with one full-time equivalent position, and there are also no significant changes. The city treasurer fiscal year 26-27 proposed budget is $32,445 with one full-time equivalent position, also no significant changes. The city attorney's office fiscal year 2627 proposed budget is $942,900. The finance department 2526 accomplishment includes deploying upgraded technology systems to include upgraded Windows domain controller and replacing the end-of-life firewall at remote sites. We updated the lifeline and utility collection ordinances, and we implemented the governmental accounting standards boards, or GASB, Statement 101, which establishes a unified comprehensive accounting model for compensated absences such as vacation, sick leave, and paid time off. Fiscal year 26-27 goals include increasing network bandwidth infrastructure citywide, transition to new banking and credit card services, and to complete the development impact fee and building valuation studies. The fiscal year 26-27 budget, proposed budget is $7,017,651 with 21 full-time equivalent positions. Effective July 1, 2026, the Community Housing Assistance Program will be reassigned to the Community Development Department after five years of being administered by the finance department. This shift will strengthen continuity and better align related services.

Do we have any questions for finance?

When you say increase network matter with infrastructure citywide, is that for city facilities or is that?

Our IT manager will answer those questions. Yes.

Because my spectrum internet has had trouble the last week, including today.

afternoon manor mayor City Council the increase network facility is for the entire citywide and including our remote sites just for city city facilities correct okay I mean if there's a way to improve it for everyone else

And I just want to note, I know it looks like it's a goal for the next fiscal year, but we've already initiated the transition to a new banking vendor, right?

Correct. That is correct. We did select a new bank, and we are going through the transition at the moment. We will complete it next fiscal year.

I just wanted to express kudos to the team for that. I know it's been a long time, I think, since we've transitioned all of our financial kind of outside banking vendor. And I know that's a lot of work to transition, move all the money and all the processes over to a new vendor. So appreciate all that. Thank you.

Before we move on, if I can just make a note. So each department division in the budget document, each division will have accomplishments and goals. For the presentation summary for tonight, we're highlighting some of the major accomplishments and goals. But for the full list, those can be found in the budget document. These are just kind of the overviews and highlights that were selected so we could stay more focused on the more major ones, but there's plenty of goals and objectives in each of the divisions. So just want to point that out. Thank you.

Yes, that's correct. Thank you, Ines. Human Resources and Risk Management Department fiscal year 25-26 accomplishments include negotiating MOUs with seven associations, revising the city's employee evaluation form, and implementing a new employee meet and greet orientation. For fiscal year 26-27, their goals include to review and revise administrative policies and evaluate the city's 457 plan and health care savings plan vendors. HR and Risk Management Department Fiscal Year 26-27 proposed budget is $1,993,124. They remain at six full-time equivalent positions. There are no additional significant changes. Any questions for HR?

For HR, I know we have done a city survey in terms of staff sentiments and all that stuff. Are we planning to do that? Is that a regular basis thing we're doing or is that more one off?

The HR risk management manager will respond.

Good evening, Madam Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, Council Members, Julie Deziel, HR and Risk Management Manager. The survey that we did, we will plan to do that every year.

Oh, great. We'd love to just, Council, maybe get a high-level, I think probably anticipating already that we will get a high-level review of the results. It would be great to just make sure we're integrating those sentiments and seeing what we can do to improve our internal processes to make working at in maury park even better and onboarding i know we went through a whole process of uh streamlining and revising and updating our hiring practices and all that stuff so appreciate that uh and whatever we can i think that should be a continuous continuous improvement kind of process for for us going forward too thank you

All right. Community Development Department 2526 accomplishments include streamlining accessory dwelling unit or ADU housing development, implementing major initiatives of the economic development strategy plan, and they expanded community development customer service hours at the public counter by 25%. Fiscal year 26-27 goals include enhancing housing development by streamlining the review process and strengthening economic development through marketing, expanding ELAC partnership, small business support, and growing MP business alliance program. The Community Development Department fiscal year 26-27 proposed budget is $4,779,405. With the addition of the new associate planner, they now have or will have 16 full-time equivalent positions. Significant changes include increasing one FTE in the planning division to support processing projects faster, assuming oversight of the city's community housing assistance program from the finance department, and reclassifying an administrative aid position to a management analyst to support community housing assistance program. Are there any questions for the community development department?

uh similar comment to what i will say for every department uh what do we do to encourage i would love to encourage more continued innovation integrating new technologies to make these processes easier and simpler not only for us internally from the staff perspective but also for our customers the residents and businesses in the in the community i know we've been making a lot of those efforts the last few years i just reiterate uh although I know out years looks like our budget doesn't have a lot of room, but I, at least speaking for myself, would very much be open and want to encourage staff bringing to the council if there are things that we need to pay for up front that will make things easier and cheaper and more financially make sense down the line in the long term. Let's do those things. I know some of those things have been brought in and are baked into the budget now and have been the last few years. Just want to continue to encourage that. If there are programs and technologies or different programs different things we want to integrate into our best practices for all of our departments, including community development, and particularly community development in terms of building permits, permitting process, streamlining all those things, making it easier to open businesses, build housing, all that stuff. Let's do those. If there's an upfront cost to some of those, that will make it easier down the line for us internally and for our external customers, let's absolutely do those and continue to bring those to the council. But kudos to the community development team. And it's great to see a nearly full staff and look forward to filling the vacancies in time.

I also had a question. I think in the past, to echo some of what Council Member Wong has said, this Council has been asking for whatever we can do on our end to be able to streamline a lot of these requests, especially dealing with ADUs. i know that um in some cities for example los angeles next door they have like pre-approved adu plans that people can potentially use um to kind of build adus but not just adus and i know that we are working faster because i see a lot more housing projects coming down the stream line, a lot of them. And I know that there is a list of them that were highlighted in the budget report. So I know that a lot of that is happening, but maybe you can share a little bit more about how we're streamlining a lot of these projects.

Yeah, Commissioner, sorry, Council Member Sanchez and Honorable Council Members, sorry, I'm still in planning commission mode from last night. Yeah, so you touched on a couple of really important points. It's always worth noting that all of our, the department's plan check process currently is all digital. So we don't take in paper documents you know, construction documents that we review, that whole process is currently done digital, electronically. We are continuing to further enhance that and look at opportunities to continue to modernize that. What was current three, four years ago is not state of the art anymore. And as we're looking at new technology and how those software opportunities have advanced, we're continuing to look at how we can make our services more efficient faster for the customers and provide better capability for our staff so our staff can do more with these tools. So when there are opportunities, it's really heartening to know that council's interested in hearing about those investments and if we need authorization from council, we won't be shy about bringing that forward. You also mentioned accessory dwelling units. You're absolutely right. I was here a couple weeks ago talking about our annual progress report and how a significant portion of the housing production over the last couple years has been accessory dwelling units. So we are absolutely seeing that. Steps that we've been taking to facilitate that include exactly what you mentioned, pre-approved ADU plans and designs, and happy to report that we now have five pre-approved ADU designs. Credit to the city, even before my tenure here, went through a process of advertising that opportunity to designers. And so we've had our first five make it through the process and get approved. So as we move into the next fiscal year, we'll be spending quite a bit of time marketing that opportunity and publicizing that, as well as seeking additional designs to pre-approve. opportunity is still very much open. So we're happy to do that as well. I'm happy to note that in terms of building and safety, our processing times, frankly, are second to none in the San Gabriel Valley. But that's very important that we maintain that. And that's easier said than done. So the budget support really helps us to be able to uphold and maintain that level of service.

Thank you. I mean, that's great to hear. For the 580U pre-approved plans that you mentioned, are these available online on our city website?

They will be shortly. There's rights things that we have to discuss with the architect to be able to provide and what he was willing to allow us to provide and place on the website to advertise.

So they'll eventually be?

They will be, yeah, very shortly.

Okay, excellent.

Thank you. Actually, thank you. I have a similar question. I guess the follow-up is that, I mean, what else can we do to, I guess, enhance our ADO support? Because I know that, I know this has made great strides, and I know initially, you know, there are concerns about the approval process or getting ADOs that were built, I guess, before code up to code, but how else can we accelerate approval or even applications for ADUs.

From my perspective, there isn't much that is standing in the way besides the obvious construction costs and the pre-design process that happens before anyone's even ready to submit to the city. I will touch on one thing that some jurisdictions have looked at, which is essentially not requiring zoning clearance for accessory dwelling units. There are some definite cons to taking that approach, and frankly, zoning clearance for an ADU is a very quick process. You wouldn't be saving much time, but you're doing quite a bit to make sure that we're still meeting the standards in the city by going through that process. That's a days, not weeks or months process. So you're not really, you wouldn't really be buying much time there, if any at all, frankly.

I think it's great to hear that the community development team is always looking for newer technologies and processes to keep up with the times, because communication is really important when someone's going through a project. I've had cases come in front of me where, let's say the property owner has an architect, so the architect is in communication, and then the property owner doesn't really know what's going on, and then reaches out to us, or let's say if it's commercial property, maybe the landlord or the property manager doesn't know what's going on, but because only the tenant is in communication, so they'll reach out to me and then I get them information. So if there's a way that everyone who's involved or has, you know, some kind of effects that can can be kept in the loop, that would be helpful.

Thank you, Mary Yang. I used to get paid pretty good money being the middleman at Amazon because of those exact communication breakdowns that would happen on construction projects. So those learnings and the feedback and experiences so far here have informed how we've already implemented some changes. that frankly didn't require a major technology investment, but more thoughtful processes in terms of how we can help facilitate and do what my colleague Joe likes to call being a concierge for our businesses. So we've already implemented those changes to bring more people into the loop in our communications to address those gaps.

Awesome. Thank you.

Mayor, if I could just add and harp on that a little bit more, I really appreciate our approach as a concierge, both for community development and for the economic development portion, us being city being proactive, reaching out to potential developers, existing property owners in the city, businesses here. And really, I know for a fact, and I think you can test this too, a lot of cities don't take that approach and wait for businesses to come to them. I appreciate that we're being proactive and reaching out to them and really being a partner in wanting to attract quality development, quality businesses, and supporting them. So kudos to that and really appreciate that. and want us to continue with that approach, not only for community development department, and I know I can attest to this being the case for all of our city departments, really appreciate that all of our, Our departments and staff are taking this approach, being proactive and being community service and also customer oriented in terms of helping to solve problems, not just saying no to people when we need to say no, but helping them get to yes where we can. So that's, I think, very positive and I think very helpful. Again, tying this back to our finances and our budget, the way that we're gonna pay for a lot of what we need to pay for in the next few years is growing the economic pie and economic activity here in the city and your department more than others is directly responsible for attracting those businesses that are gonna generate revenue, that are gonna add to our tax base and to help fund all the work that Sean and everyone else are gonna be working on building in the next couple years. So kudos to you and just on the economic development part, don't know if Joe's here, but appreciate the economic development team as well really being proactive and I just wanna note how critical that work is in terms of attracting businesses to fill vacancies here in the city and then once landlords and owners have identified tenants, getting them in and open as quickly as possible so that they're generating revenue for the city and for themselves as quickly as possible i think this approach is is great and i think we've done a lot and really appreciate all the the work the hard work not just for the community development team but right fire marshal and all those inspections public works everything all the teams and all departments working together to help with this approach to supporting businesses and business growth and economic activity in the city

Yeah, and also one thing to add on that is if there's like a CRM that can save email communications, because there was a case where I think one of our staff, there was turnover, and then the applicant has sent in an email when we had to search the, staff had to search the previous staff member's email to try to find that email. But if there's a database where all the emails can be stored and everyone impacted can access it, you know, that'd be good for the process.

Appreciate it.

All right, thank you.

The police department fiscal year 25-26 accomplishments include implementing the Sunridge RIMS CAD RMS system. They completed a major police department computer refresh project and implemented the Axon Enterprise body worn cameras. For fiscal year 26-27, their goals include the implementation of Axon TASER-10 Connected Energy Device, or CED, program. Identify and implement artificial intelligence technologies and software solutions to enhance operational activities. The police department fiscal year 26-27 proposed budget is $33,714,536 with 130.25 FTEs. Significant changes for the police department includes adding two new police officers, one police officer to be assigned with the NET team, and the other will be assigned as a school resource officer and comfort dog handler. Any questions for the police department?

Madam, just a curious numbers question. So for food services, we're projecting, I guess, I'm sorry, the fiscal year 2026 waste and budget will be $13 million, $358,000 versus projected $14 million. I'm just curious how, why a million less for field services.

A few items. First of all, we did scrub the budget quite a bit. So you'll see some fiscal year 26, 27 that are lower than the prior year because we did quite a bit of scrubbing. This can also mean that they shuffled FTEs around within the divisions and they made changes to where the where those positions were going to go. So that could also have caused that change. There's also some other services that I think were eliminated. Our lieutenant can speak about that. But, yeah, there's a lot of variables that go into this. Like I said, moving, shuffling staff around to different divisions. Also, we did a lot of scraping. We took out a lot of expenditure, a lot of items that we were sure that we weren't going to need or that if we needed them, we can come back at mid-year. Oh, I see.

before um lieutenant hung jumps in here i just wanted to clarify so i know martha's been talking about um scraping the budget scrubbing the budget what we were looking for is to try to keep our costs definitely balanced with expense revenues that we're going to be coming in So if there was opportunities for funds to be shifted or other funds to be utilized to support those types of operational costs, that's what we did to try to just continue to keep the budget as low as possible. Definitely a lot of shuffling and making sure that we were going to have a balanced budget, but I'll let Lieutenant Hung jump in here.

Madam Mayor, members of the council, Lieutenant with the police department, kind of like what the city manager and finance director did say, we utilize some movement within the department, moving some bodies from field services to other bureaus in the department, and also utilizing some grants and also some other opportunities to cover some cost.

Thank you for clarifying. I'm just curious. I mean, again, it doesn't mean a reduction. It's just, as you said, making us more efficient, right?

That is correct. If possible, I would love to hear more about some of the ideas around AI and technology that we're looking at and exploring for PDE.

Yes, the police department is working in collaboration with the IT department, and IT manager Martin Din and I have been brainstorming and coming up with some ideas, and we're exploring some avenues. To start, though, I think one of the major AI technologies that the PD is looking at is through Axon as well. They're kind of like the Apple of the police department. They do have AI technology that is only they have the technology to that would assist the police department in helping us translate and transcribe in 50 languages, allowing officers to be able to communicate in real time through the bottom warning camera system in order to communicate with our community members. with the Olympics coming before us in two years, the idea of utilizing this type of technology to streamline the efficiency and not utilizing a telephonic translator, and to streamline the communication process between the community members and the officer will be paramount.

I don't know how well they work. The Apple EarPods that do some automatic translation that's coming up. I have not tried it. I don't know how effective or accurate some of those translations are, but it sounds like some of that is what's being tested through Axon, potentially, in terms of being able to interact with residents that speak different languages or others we're interacting with. And if it works with PD, it would definitely, if there are opportunities to share this with other departments that are customer-facing, let's definitely explore that. And yeah, I would want to encourage us to explore these technologies. Obviously, let's pilot some of these until we know they actually work. which I'm sure we are going to do, and would love to hear about these ideas as we're implementing them. I'd love to tell other people as we go to conferences and see other council members. I'm always asking other councils and cities what they're doing and new technology and new practices they're implementing. Would love to show off some of this stuff, too, with other cities and kind of hear what's going on.

And IT manager Martin Din has some, and the PD's been kind of working on an idea, but I'll have him share.

Madam Mayor and City Council, PD and IT has partnered up in looking at some AI technologies to simplify some of our challenges right now throughout the city. One project that we're looking to pilot is to take all of our manual paper processes and do a scanning project for the entire city so that we'll be able to analyze, copy, and summarize all these processes paperwork into digital format so that the city and all of our staff can be able to look at all of these historical documents and archives and make some sense into it. So that should be able to coalesce a lot of our services that we use for third party, for standing old archive documents.

Yeah, city clerk stops, I can imagine would love to, I don't know if they're already using this would probably be helpful. I mean, even use transcribing the minutes for council meetings and other meetings, I think, would love to, if this tool works, would love to see how we can integrate this into other other teams, other departments.

I'm going to just use this opportunity to share something that a resident shared with me. They said that the Beverly Hills Police Department recently partnered with Pipe Down Solutions for loud exhaust enforcement training. Because I know a lot of our residents have told me that there's a lot of vehicles that drive by with loud exhaust noises, and it's hard for police officers to catch them because they're not there. So I don't know if recurrent officers go through a loud exhaust enforcement training, but it sounds like it might be worth looking into.

We can reach out to Beverly Hills and get additional information and look into the training.

Awesome. Thank you.

Any other comments, questions? No? All right. Thank you.

Fire Department Fiscal Year 2526 accomplishments include the securing federal funding for Fire Station 61 renovation. They filled six firefighter and two firefighter slash paramedic positions, and they replaced two rescue ambulances. Fiscal year 26-27 goals include implementing a workforce recruitment and retention strategy and developing response protocols for emergency risks, including electric vehicle incidents and advancing facility master planning, including fire stations 61 and 63. The fire department fiscal year 26-27 proposed budget is $23,820,175 with 64 full-time equivalent positions. There are no additional significant changes. Are there any questions for the fire department?

This may be in the SIP, but are we planning to do the Fire Station 61 internal renovations? Is that going to be this fiscal year or this next fiscal year?

madam mayor honorable city council uh to answer your question council member wong um we're in the planning stages right now uh consulting with the architects and our fabulous zayad and we're looking at breaking ground uh hopefully sometime the first of next year 2027. great would love to let's i know we're on the clock for some of that money because that's uh correct part of it was fairly remark or all of it i don't know uh but

yes great and look forward to hopefully a groundbreaking for fire station 63 at some point too yeah that is uh ongoing and concurrent with the design process for fire station 61. great thank you nothing else thank you thank you

library department fiscal year 2526 accomplishments include completing library upgrades including the hvac generator and exterior paint and carpet they offered programs for all ages through partner organizations and served approximately 1 300 adults with esl literacy and citizenship classes Fiscal year 26-27 goals include to procure a bookmobile to facilitate mobile outreach, redesign library spaces, and identify funding sources for proposed construction projects, and strengthen partnerships with schools to support education. The library department fiscal year 26-27 proposed budget is $3,952,008 with 26.5 full-time equivalent positions. Are there any questions for the library department?

So we're definitely getting the bookmobile next fiscal year. Travis made me ask, sorry.

Good evening, Mayor, members of the City Council, Kristen Olivera, City Librarian. We are working on the bookmobile. We have initiated conversations with Camino Real to acquire the cabin chassis, which is a starting point for us. So myself and Public Works Director Sean Igoe have been in conversation with Camino Real.

I look forward to the ribbon cutting for the bookmobile.

Me too.

Oh, thank you. My follow-up question is, I know your goals are to redesign the library spaces as well as work with the city to identify funds. But I'm just curious, what is the vision as far as how we want to update or modernize or redesign the library spaces that you have in mind?

Sure. So the idea, we do have specific spaces in the library that we've already identified and are working with an architect to re-envision. And the idea is to create additional public programming spaces, as well as make our spaces more functional and efficient to improve stack workflows. So some of the projects that we're looking at are creating an additional large programming space on the first floor of the library that would be accessible from the exterior of the building, which is something we don't currently have with our existing friend's room. That would allow us to do programming outside of library hours. as well as it would be a little bit more accessible for residents who may have mobility issues and find it harder to get to the second floor. We're also looking at redesigning what is our circulation area now, again, to improve efficiency in the department and make workflows move a little smoother. And we'd be relocating the staff that's currently in the public, what we look to renovate into the public programming space back into that circulation workroom. We are also looking to convert what was our copy room into a passport room. Passports are currently processed in our literacy department on the second floor. Again, make that space a little bit more accessible for folks who are coming in just for those passport services. Give it a dedicated space downstairs closer to the entrance.

That's good to know. Thank you. Sure.

Any other questions? No?

I returned my books. Thank you. And I'm glad we don't have late fees. Otherwise, I think it'd be about the library's budget right now. Thank you.

Thank you.

Recreation Community Services Department fiscal year 2526 accomplishments include resurfacing outdoor courts at seven parks, securing major grants for the Barnes Park Aquatic Center project, and receiving six awards for city events and programs and the parks system master plan. Fiscal year 26-27 goals include installing Gabrielino-themed playground at Sierra Vista Park, facilitating construction documents preparation for the Barnes Park Aquatic Center, and partnering with the East Los Angeles College Art Department to host exhibits and shows at El Encanto. The Recreation and Community Services Department fiscal year 26-27 proposed budget is $4,817,950 with 36.75 full-time equivalent positions. Staff is available for questions.

uh kudos to the team and really appreciate robert taking to heart the the getting more art into our public spaces and our parks facilities really appreciated the art show and the collaboration with uh vpam at the lm content i think great use of the space uh there and it sounded like from the conversation i know i got there later than my colleagues but uh sounded like some of the conversation was people were admiring the building as well and people had driven by there some of the artists even have driven by there and did not even know that this was what it was. So great to be able to highlight an existing city facility that way and to integrate an institution like East LA College and the Vincent Price Art Museum that way. Would love to have more collaboration. I know you're working on that. And whatever we can do to continue to fill our blank walls in the city, which there are still very many. It sounds like the library might have some more blank walls after this renovation. With more art that's representative and inspires the community, we'd love to make sure we're integrating that. And if we need to budget a little bit more for that, I know maybe this year versus next year might be better. But want to make sure we're doing that and really making the community a vibrant one that's filled with art.

I have a question for Robert. I know Barnes Park is well-utilized, sometimes over-utilized, depending on how you look for parking. Just thinking out loud here, do you guys consider having more localized functions at, for example, Service to Park, Elder Park, where you can activate that community, where you will have specific events for that community in that park? I'm not saying... the equivalent of Barnes Park, because that's not possible. But maybe once a year, twice a year, every quarter, just do something that's more localized at that park to activate the community and get the involvement out there.

Yeah, no, absolutely. That's something we can definitely look at. I'll challenge our staff that's listening here now with looking into some of those things. We have done some of those activations in the past with movie nights at various parks. So happy to do so and continue to encourage our residents to visit various parks throughout the city. That's kind of what the goal of when we redid all of the themed playgrounds, was really to try to activate those spaces and encourage the community to not just go to the park nearest to their home, but also go out and get to know their neighbors and visit the parks throughout the community. So that's a good way for us to continue to activate those spaces.

Yeah, I mean, the background purpose of that is not only to activate it, because if you activate it, then all the local in that area within maybe a quarter mile, they'll be at the park, and then they'll keep those parks clean for the future. Absolutely.

Where'd you go?

Robert I just wanted to thank you, I I realized over the years, how much more programming we're doing, and I feel like we're constantly adding more and more items. Through your department and the budget is for the most part, pretty much staying the same, so I really appreciate you doing more with less or with the same I should say, not less with the same. Because it's very visible, a lot of the new program we have the camp out coming up, we have a lot more activities for our seniors happening. And just a lot more activities happening. And a lot of the activities that were pre-existing are much bigger than they've been in the past. So really appreciate you and your department for all the work and effort that's been done. And to use Martha's word, appreciate the scrubbing that's happening within the budget to try to find ways to be able to continue not just the program that we already have, but expand it as well.

So very appreciative of that.

appreciate that and a lot of that's attributed to our staff being creative being resourceful also reaching out getting sponsorships support from our local community support from organizations support from volunteers so it's really a community effort but really attribute that to our staff in the recreational department doing an amazing job and then also the support that we have from the rest of our teams and the other departments also putting it so it's really a community effort thank you yeah absolutely and i hear it i mean from other communities as well i mean a lot of people from other cities come here

because of the programming that we have. And not just at the Langley Center, but just a lot of the events that we host as well. And so very, very thankful for that. A lot of the programs that we do are very family friendly. I know I participate in a lot of them. It's great to have an agenda of items that we can do. And you see a lot of the parents that say regular parents come out as well. So continue to do a great, you guys are doing an amazing job. So very, wanted to make sure that I highlight that for people to know that all of the extra effort that's being put in by yourself. Thank you so much.

Uh, you know, the only thing I wanted to just share is again, I know you'll see your accomplishment, but I just wanted to, again, say for the record that, uh, uh, the Department of Recs and Community Services received six awards for its, um, programs and parks master plan. And I think I just want to emphasize that because I know that probably in the past, some in the community have been skeptical to downright hostile about why we're doing this. But I think this is a vindication about doing things right and having game plan and I just want to again compliment your department and staff for again staying the course to having this master plan and again the fact that we received acknowledgment I think it speaks to the importance of again doing it right and do it comprehensively and methodically as well thank you so much really appreciate that

Yeah, I think summarizing all the accomplishments into three bullet points must have been so hard for every department because there's so many accomplishments throughout the year, and three bullet points just minimizes all the work that's been done. But we know all the hard work behind the scenes that you and your team and all the other departments do. And just Recreation and Community Services Department has done so much to keep the residents happy. The pickleballers, are happy. The pool players in the Langley Center are happy because they got new pool tables and a new pool hall. And the ping pong players are happy. So we just got to get the swimmers happy in the next few years.

Working on that.

Yeah. And the signage in the ping pong room got handled.

The netting got handled.

Yeah, you guys are just on top of every detail. So thank you.

Thank you, Councilman. Appreciate the support. Staff does too. Thank you.

Public Works Department fiscal year 2526 accomplishments include completing city sidewalk assessment, hosting the first Arbor Day, And completing the Russell reservoir rehabilitation project for fiscal year 2627 their goals include working on the 710 on 710 projects completing the water meter projects and starting the sidewalk mitigation projects. Due to the size of the Public Works Department, we broke it up into three different slides. The first slide includes, I want to say, seven or eight different divisions. And for fiscal year 26-27, the proposed budget is $53,394,661, with 75.25 full-time equivalent positions, which include the two part-time positions that were proposed for this fiscal year. Are there any questions for the Public Works Department?

I do actually. I'm just curious here. I know we started working on the ADA projects, Sean, going back probably 10 years now. So what would you estimate is the percentage that were done? Because I know the major corners are done, the big public streets and even some of the smaller streets. But what about the smaller up in the hill area where it's just harder to get to?

So are you talking about our ADA improvements, or are you talking about street improvements?

The ADA streets for the yellow curves for ADA compliant?

So I don't have a percentage based off of that. I will be bringing back the CIP for adoption next meeting, so I can have those numbers for you, which I'll also be highlighting all of our projects we've completed over the past year. Okay, great. Thank you.

Along those lines, this just sparked another question, comment for me. The daylighting law is now in effect. People are getting tickets if they're parking there. I believe our policy is if we are retrofitting or doing construction on sidewalks and streets, we're painting the curb red to highlight the daylighting area where people shouldn't be parking. Is that right?

no we so our policy is not to paint red because of the daylighting law however we do make exceptions if there's high traffic areas such as like schools or areas where pd is seeing significant ticketing then we will go out there and paint them red because we're seeing significant violations but it's not historically because then it becomes a significant maintenance item and we could see in the millions of dollars between staff time and painting every single year to repaint these locations

Yeah, whatever we, I know people, I know it's been law for a year plus now, and we've been enforcing for maybe close to a year-ish, but occasionally pops up on social media and other places where people still don't realize it's the law. I understand why. There's a lot of law, we're passing a lot of laws. at the state level, but whatever we can do to continue to educate residents through the Cascades and other places to remind them about daylighting and the need to park further away from intersections to allow for greater visibility and safety.

We can do more outreach.

And then I'm assuming some of these numbers going up and down are just because we're moving some things around.

We're moving money around, and then we're also seeing some increases here and there because of materials and things like that.

And the refuse collections, I noticed, went from this year's budget, $925,000, to $465,000 next year. I know that's just a path where we pass through most of the actual costs for trash collection. But do you know why that is, or was that just reassigned to other accounts?

Yeah. So again, because we're shifting some of the costs over. Cool. That's all. All right. Thank you.

Thank you, Sean.

Finally, we have the non-departmental department. The non-departmental function accounts for costs that are not generally associated with a specific department, which include general liability insurance, post-employment benefits, costs, and workers' compensation insurance. The fiscal year 26-27 budget is $30,628,292. That concludes my portion. Sean Igoe is here to present the capital improvement program.

Really quick on workers' comp and the liability. This is a mix of our insurance premiums, I guess, and then our self, right, we have to self-insure up to a certain point. Is that accurate?

Correct, correct. General liability, we have an administrative prism, and we still have to pay them an annual amount, and then... and we are self-insured but we still have to pay the premium for them and then we also have earthquake insurance and in vehicle insurance that's under general liability and workers comp we this includes the money we the where the claims that we're paying out and insurance that we're also paying. Post-employment is our UAL and our pension payments that we pay and our OPEB.

All right, so post-employment includes both OPEB and PERS, our annual payments?

Post-employment include OPEB and PERS, yes.

And then general liability is, are we, I'm just curious from a broader perspective, are we having issues, I mean, it doesn't look like we're projecting significant increase in terms of our

So for general liability, it just went up slightly. My goal was to try to increase the reserves in general liability and workers' comp, our auditors keep asking us to, but it's been difficult for us to increase the reserves because the general fund can only go so much. So I this year because again we were scrubbing I just made sure that we had enough revenue to cover our anticipated expenditures and I didn't increase that much more so because I didn't we didn't have the money to increase it significantly to add to our reserves.

Okay. But for next budget year, this increase from this year to next fiscal year does include some growth of the reserve or no?

For this one, no, especially for post-employment. Unless you consider the $1 million that we're sending to the $1 million that's going to the trust fund, that basically you could call it reserve. But other than that, everything, our actual costs that are coming in for post-employment, For general liability, we do have a little bit of, we have some cash, but our auditors, when they do our year-end, because they take into consideration the potential of liabilities that we have that are cases that are open or whatnot, they take that into account to do the reserve. So while we do have cash, it shows as a deficit because of those potential claims. And the same thing for workers' comp. Well, workers' comp has a little bit less money than general liability. They use the potential claims to show our reserves, and that's why it shows less in our ACFR, because they're using these numbers that have not realized to show what our reserves would be. But I am working, when we do have money in the budget, I increase it by 10% so that we can try to build our reserves in those funds.

We should, of course, prioritize because it's a very likely cost unless something strange happens. We will bear those costs, and I think we would be smart and it would be prudent to continue to set aside additional funding here to make sure we're ready to carry those costs when they actually do hit. And are we experiencing any I know the rest of When I have to pay my car insurance bill and my home insurance bill Which is actually very hard to get homeowners insurance even in non high-risk areas like Maury Park Are we experiencing as a city? Some of those difficulties in terms of insuring ourselves and getting insurance for those similar. I mean generally I

No, we've been doing pretty good. Like I said, we switched over to Prisma a few years back, and we haven't had any problems.

Good for the city.

Oh, yes, thank you. A question under capital improvement for street construction. I know for projected budget, fiscal year 25, 26, it's around a little over $8 million. And for fiscal year 26, 27, it's a little over $5 million. And I'm just curious, the difference, is it because of revenue challenges or because projects are winding down? Or I'm just curious the difference. Mayor Pro Tem.

Maybe we should start with the presentation first.

Oh, I'm sorry about that.

Yeah, that's okay. I was just going to clarify. We haven't gotten to that slide. If you're looking at, I think you're looking at slide 44. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Sorry. It's okay. Sean's about to go through. I know this is the exciting part. This is the exciting part. This is their capital improvements program section. Yes.

Not a problem at all. Uh, good evening. Honorable mayor, mayor pro tem and city council, Sean, I go public works to director. Um, Tonight you have before you the updates on the capital improvement program, so I'll go through all that. And as I mentioned earlier, I'll be giving another highlighted presentation at our next meeting, which will be the formal adoption at our public hearing for the CIPs. First slide highlights our enterprise capital projects for the water and sewer divisions. These projects include sewer manhole rehabilitations, various sewer mainline repairs, sewer line video assessments, water main replacements, and facility improvements at the water division for a total of $3.3 million. Street construction projects are funded through Prop C, Measure M, SB 1, and CDBG. These projects include traffic signal upgrades, ADA improvements, roadways resurfacing, concrete and sidewalk improvements for a total of $5.3 million. Sorry.

Going back to sewer and water, we did issue that water bond, and that's paying for some of these projects. We didn't do a bond for sewer, right? We did not do a bond for sewer, that's correct. Pay as you go. We did increase the sewer rates a few years ago, but we're not looking at bonding to accelerate any sewer projects, right? That's correct. We are not looking at bonding. Thanks.

Community improvement projects are funded through the General Fund, Technology Fund, Building Maintenance Fund, Measure A, various grants, and AQMD funds to name a few. These projects include facility roof repairs, additional funding for Station 61 remodel, council chamber upgrades, EV infrastructure and equipment, service club renovations, Barnes pool design, Garvey Ranch trail design, and facility improvements at Langley, George Elder, Garvey Ranch, and the Loma for a total of $7.5 million.

Sean, I know there's a million set aside for Station 61 renovation. We're still waiting on the final number right with final design? Or is that?

I'll go into that a little bit in one of the next slides. But yes, we do have some additional funding that may be needed. So, um, this, this slide highlights, uh, anticipated, uh, project expenditures for the fiscal year, which is approximately $17.3 million and the pros project budget of approximately $16 million. So there are a few significant projects to take note of which have some funding gaps. This includes Station 61, Station 63, and Barnes Park Pool. Station 61 has a $1 million general fund allocation and a $1.5 million federal funds, with a total cost of approximately $3 million, which is a funding gap of $500,000. Station 63 had a $4 million general fund allocation, $250,000 federal earmark, and $2 million in state funds, with a total estimated project cost of $17 million, leaving a funding gap of $10.75 million. Note that the $4 million general fund and $2 million state funds were used to purchase the property to relocate this station. We additionally requested two million dollars for another federal earmark, but recently heard back that it was reduced about five hundred thousand dollars We anticipate hearing back on this reduced amount. Hopefully within the next six months Finally we have our Barnes Park pool council set aside one million dollars for the general fund previously we received five hundred thousand dollars and in federal funds and six million dollars from the LWCF grant which was previously discussed and We are still working through the final approval stages for the LWCF funding. But again, as Robert mentioned, we have about a year to work through the environmental process. With an estimated cost of $32.5 million, this leaves a funding gap of $25 million. These three projects alone total over $52 million, and with a funding gap of over $36 million, which ties into my next slides. Highlighting our five-year CIP to provide a quick summary of our funding, we have currently appropriated what we are requesting for the next fiscal year and what we have planned out through fiscal year 2030 to 31. This current fiscal year, we have $165 million appropriated. However, this includes approximately $100 million of SR710 funding that can only be used for transportation and mobility projects approved by Metro. These projects currently include Monterrey Pass Road Complete Streets, Garvey Improvements, and the Mobility Hub and Structure. Other projects in construction, completed, or in design include Potrero Grande, Garvey sewer improvements, Atlantic and Garfield water main replacement, street rehabilitation, water meter upgrades, court resurfacing, and various facility improvements, to name a few. Newer funding requests for the next fiscal year, which were previously mentioned, total $16 million. Outer years include projects such as water pump station improvements, additional backup generators, water and sewer main replacements, station 63 construction, and various facility improvements to name a few. As you can see, the outer years include $39 million for fiscal year 2027-28, $26 million for 28-29, $10 million for 2029-30, and $6 million for 2030-31. This brings our total to $261 million over the next five years for our capital improvement program. As always, we will continue to seek grants, earmarks, and other funding opportunities to help pay for some of these improvements. With that, we'll take any questions.

Sean, just to be clear again, this $261 million is identified projects. We don't know what other projects we may need to build or rebuild, construction, things that might fail. Our facilities are all at least decades old, all of them. This doesn't also doesn't include, this does or does not include the pool full build or the full barns pool build.

So to answer the first part of the question, that's correct. There could be other projects that come to fruition over the next five years. Additionally, this design, you know, include any unforeseen items that may come up either during emergencies or things like that. But you are correct regarding the pool does not include the complete construction of the pool.

So really, if we're committing to the pool, this is really a $290 million. Correct. And just a reminder, Martha, right, that we have about $30 million in our current fund reserves to potentially spend on capital projects.

Correct, about $30 million, yes.

And then is it safe to say, Sean and Martha, that this 260 some odd million dollars does not include projects we know we need to do that we did not budget for either because we don't have funding?

Overall, I would say that's a pretty accurate statement. I would say from the water and sewer perspective, we have our master plans that we follow. So we do have those generally under control. We know what needs to be done over the next five years. But yes, there could be things that come up that we do not see or have foreseen that were not a part of that master plan that maybe see some degradation quicker than we anticipated.

And then back to the... service clubhouse. I know we set aside some funding in here, or at least we're putting it on the SIP list, some renovations. Can you detail, I'm just curious, this is the first I've heard of it, our interest in renovating the service clubhouse?

Yes, that is part of our CIPs. We will be doing some renovations at that location.

Is that, and that's just, I mean, at that amount, it sounds like it's just interior renovations, right? Correct. And that would be to retrofit the smaller room space to be usable and maybe the kitchen there that no one wants to use and the larger space there to make it a better space, right?

Generally speaking, yes. The larger area did see some renovations over a couple of years ago. But, yes, it would be to provide some repurposing for the other spaces.

Great. I look forward to that because I remember as a kid going there after swimming for our holiday parties and stuff, and it being old then, and I'm not that old, but I'm also not young. So a lot of love needed, not just the service clubhouse, but a lot of our city facilities in the community rooms and community spaces and open public spaces in a lot of our communities, community spaces, including here at City Hall, that need a lot of retrofitting that has not even been identified and put on the CIPLAs. But Martha's going to find it all before the next few years to pay for all this. Thanks.

Madam Mayor, members of the council, if I can jump in about the service clubhouse. In addition, we anticipate doing some renovations here in the council chambers. While this renovation is being planned, We would need to relocate our meetings, our council meetings. So some of the renovations for the Surface Clubhouse, that would be a temporary location for our meetings, while the renovations are happening in this space. Some of those renovations include upgrading our audiovisual equipment and making some of the space a little bit more functional. So that's the reason for the Surface Clubhouse as well.

What is the timing on the council chamber renovation?

Yeah, so we still have a little bit of a funding gap there, so we're trying to find some additional funding, but we're working through design, hope to have design done before the end of the year, and then we can, you know, pending funding, then we can go out to bid early next year.

Awesome.

I'll harp on that a little more, too. When was, does anyone know when this council chamber was actually built and the last time it was renovated, if at all?

I do not have that off the top of my head, but I can bring it to you next week.

I'm just curious. I mean, City Hall, I think, was built in 1980, so I assume around then. Yeah, I don't think it's seen much since then. Yeah, I don't think it's seen. I mean, personally, very amazed at how well preserved this room is, given how little has gone into investing in it for at least four decades.

It's not for decades. I'm sure of that because I was in here doing a presentation back in 1991. It was not this style.

All right. Any other questions? No? All right. Thank you, Sean.

When we start looking at where we want to relocate, I do want to recommend the Encanto. I know it's a little bit on the smaller side, but it's a No, it's a very small, yes. It's quaint, but it's a very beautiful building. I don't think we use it enough. Or the Langley Center, that's fine too, yeah.

All right, anything else?

I want to actually make some concluding comments. So first off, Martha, thank you for all the work. It's about 143 pages. I wish I had the ability to throw this into co-pilot and spit out the summary for me, but I didn't, so you're going to have to live with what I did. I wrote down a couple of things here, and I'm very, very pleased and happy with the state of how our city is performing. I mean, most of us, when we came in here a couple years ago, we kind of made it the strategy, and we talked about this in our annual planning, to make this city, to make Marley Park the best place to live, to work, and to play. So in your budget, what I pulled out from the best place to live is, number one, the budget, is a surplus, that's critical. Because if you don't have a balanced budget, we did better, we have a surplus. You're always under the gun, and you're always cutting back on stuff. So we have a surplus, and anything that's related to community has to do with first responder. I look at PD, I look at FIRE, we've added three PDs in the past, we're adding two more in the budget going forward. And FIRE, we added two and a half FIRE FTEs over the last year. So you think about that, that's only seven people. But we hadn't increased PD and fire in terms of first responder since early 2000s. So that's significant for us. Population shift, more growth, more people, more demand, but now we're finally catching up to it where we're adding public safety. You looked at home values. The average home value in the city of Martin Park today is $931,000. I went back and I looked at the last couple of years, it's about $900,000 last year and $850,000 the year before. So home values have continued to increase above what I call the pace in Southern California. That speaks volume in terms of your revenue growth on property taxes, which is a huge component of what we do from a city revenue standpoint. Then I looked at the next five to seven years. We've identified on paper, and it could all come to fruition, or it could be just a percentage of this, but we're looking to increase about 1,266 units, which is a great number along our Garvey corridor, mainly the bigger projects. But the reality is that we are still 5,600 units short on arena numbers and change. So we get there, we're taking, a step forward, but we're still three steps behind in terms of our housing arena numbers. And I think about the best place to work, there's two components to that. The best place to work for folks who work in the city, for example, you guys. And I look and I see a lot of familiar faces, and the key to that is we have very little turnover in leadership and also in staff. And I remember coming in three years ago, we were about 18% short on staff. I think we're closer to 12%, someone needs to correct me on that next time, but closer to 12% on shortage on staff, but that's a far cry from neighboring cities or other communities where they're at least 15, 18% behind staffing, because that's just the environment we live in. And then the other thing is, just this year, we closed out seven contracts with our work groups. So kudos to, is Christine here? She's not here, but risk management's here. You guys did a good job in doing that. And then the other part of work is the folks who come to our city to work, who I call our clients, because technically they may not live here, but they come and they serve our city because they work here. And from that standpoint, We did 131 new businesses, new business license. That's key if you think about where the other cities are. You looked at What else is being done to kind of help that? I think Tim spoke about streamlining, digitizing the permits, right? It makes their business licenses easier, and it's now digitalized. So it's no longer slower paper process. Who said what? What are we missing? The person's gone. Where do we go to? It's actually more efficient. And then we look at the work that's done on capital improvement with Sean's group. the paving in the streets, the sewer system, the water system, all that's done with traffic. That adds value for people wanting to come here and work which builds to our community, adds to our tax base and revenues. And then the last thing here is play. Now I am just super proud of this part because I know the library, you don't think the library is play, but the library is a genuine resource area for people all over the community. We have programs, we have events, And during all this time, we renovated the library per se, and we're looking to add more renovations to that, including a bookmobile. You look at Langley Center, all the interior, the billiards room, the workout room, the gym, the ping pong tables, that's all renovated too. Meanwhile, People are still happy. They didn't complain about the renovations. They actually accepted the fact that they had to delay the gratification. Now that it's fixed, they're now more happy. And then I looked at the parks. So Robert, that's epic here. Because the pickleball courts, the tennis ball courts, the gym, the playgrounds, and then we're working on the biggest of them all, the pool. It will be done. It's going to take time. Be patient. It's going to take a lot of money. Again, we know we're short on the revenue number, but we're going to get this through together. We're going to start fundraising and we're going to build it forward because that's what we want the city to be. Best place to work, live and play. Thank you.

I will just echo what councilor Virgo was saying and ditto everything. Appreciate staff and particularly finance department for really putting this budget together. I think it reflects tremendous fiscal restraint, which is important and a lot of work put in by the departments to really clean up and look through and dig through their budgets and their finance, all of our finances to really just to make sure that we can do and provide as many services as we can with the limited resources we have. for the community and appreciate that effort. It's very clear from the budget that's been put in front of us tonight, the preliminary budget that's been put before us tonight, that the staff and all the departments in the finance department have done a lot to get us to this point of a responsible, fiscally responsible budget going forward and an outlook going forward that's sustainable. That being said, We're still, I think, in a precarious position, better than I think some of our neighbors who are dealing with significant budget deficits already this year without the economy suffering kind of negative impacts. And so I appreciate that and the approach that our city continues to take and the staff continue to take. To keep us in that position and there's a lot of work in continuous work that I know even the council doesn't see of the staff are doing on a day-to-day basis to really be Efficient and effective and using taxpayer resources as responsibly as possible I just want to note that and appreciate the staff and the team for for all the work that goes into making that happen and I want to take a little bit of issue with what Council Member Goh and how he characterized our fiscal situation, though, a very friendly opposition or friendly other perspective and take. I don't think we have a surplus at all, right? Just back up onto our deficit in terms of our longer term outlook, in terms of our capital projects, we don't have a deficit. Where we don't have a surplus, we have a deficit. There's hundreds of millions of dollars of projects that we need to do that are in our pipeline that we don't have the money for. And so that's the perspective I'm taking and that I look at when I see this budget, I don't see a surplus. All that money goes towards our reserves, which helps to pay for significant capital improvement deficit that exists in the city and many cities are experiencing as well but doesn't get characterized as an operational annual kind of deficit but we have a huge hole to fill not only in terms of our existing debt right our our pers and our open liability our our outstanding bonds that are paying for some infrastructure in some cases that isn't gonna last as long as the debt payments are gonna last so those are things we need to get ahead of on that and while From a year-to-year or an operational basis, this budget is balanced. There are tremendous needs that the city needs to address going forward. That's not even talking about the capital improvement projects that we have that are, again, I'll point out, $260 million that's identified here in this preliminary budget. It doesn't even include the pool, which would add another $30 million there. We have a significant more than $200 million gap in terms of funding those projects that we know we need to do. It doesn't include things that are going to pop up in the next couple of years, which we know are going to happen. So there's a lot of work to do still to get to where the community and our residents expect us to be in terms of our facilities, improving all of those things. and making these investments for future generations and current generation. So I don't see a surplus, and I want to just, my perspective is that that surplus doesn't exist, because we've got a lot of needs that that money's gonna go towards, and that surplus will not cover The needs that exist that are even listed in this this this preliminary budget, but I look forward to this coming back to Council for approval But just want to just continue to highlight the challenges that exist in front of us there's a lot of work to do to continue to get there and to make the Investments we need to make particularly on some of these priority projects that we've identified in the coming years.

I

I also wanted to thank everyone for the budget report, I think, when I was looking at this budget report and hearing all the presentation. It was very heartening to see the position that our city is in and all of the amazing programming programming that we continue to do and i'm going to speak more as a parent and as a. Mayor Mrakas, teacher I guess can be a Community Member here more more than a Council member and say that a lot of the it's very. Mayor Mrakas, Great to see a lot of the upgrades and updating that we continue to do as a city and a lot of the work that we are working towards. Mayor Mrakas, I think one of the very first things that really impressed me when I joined the Council that we worked on. to update where the parks and i think that a lot of the people a lot of the family members and you see all you see all the kids out there in the parks not just barns park but all of our parks are very excited about their parks they're very excited about exploring different parks because they're all thematic uh in nature and and i'll say as a parent my my daughters really love going to bella vista and they call it the castle or dragon park but they also really enjoy going to garvey ranch and they love coming to barns park because i think There's something special about the City Civic Center here. And a lot of that was possible because of all of the upgrades that we did. So I really appreciate all of the stuff that we have done in the past, but we're continuing to do. I think looking at the budget and the work that we've been doing as a parent makes me feel that the time that I'm away from my family to be here and help with this process It's very well worth it. And so I really want to, without getting too emotional, really appreciate all of the work that goes into that. I think a lot of the stuff that we've also been doing in terms of strengthening our relationships with our schools, it's great to see that we're budgeting for a school resource officer. We have a lot of schools in our city. We have four major school districts that we operate in our city. And so that's four different school personalities that we work with. every school run I know in PD you know this better than than I do runs their schools very differently right so very appreciative of that we're making that effort to try to allocate funds for a school resource officer also to me at least it's very important that our staff be very happy that they want to come to work so I'm glad that we were in the last bargaining cycle able to and we've been trying for a while now To raise salaries and bring everyone up and same thing with healthcare systems as well, we understand the health care has become very, very expensive, but making sure that that everyone has enough healthcare. In their cafeteria plans to be able to afford those types of things. And then lastly, just wanted to say that, I mean, there's always so much that we can continue to do, and obviously the 260 or 300 million probably, if not more, of capital improvement projects that we still have to work on, including the pool. The pool is very important. I think that we still need to continue to work hard to fund the unmet need in the pool. but also start looking at how we can, in the future, update also our other pool, which is at George Elder, because these are all unfunded capital improvement projects that we need to start looking at. And then lastly, I do want to say that I really appreciate all of the effort that goes into Mayor Mrakas, The Community engaging our community from town halls surveys everything that we do to engage our Community, I think it. Mayor Mrakas, I haven't seen a city engage their their residents and their community as much as I see, and I know that takes a lot of effort on city staff side, so I really appreciate all of the Community engagement that happens from. um, library to, uh, public works. And I know public works, you know, we had, um, we had their one at the Langley center, you know, just two weeks ago. So, um, and I know that a lot of people came out, not just for the Boba, but, you know, to really offer insights about, um, about our streets and, and how to improve our, you know, our, our streets and, and how to make them friendlier for, uh, pedestrians. So really appreciative of that because I think those things really do matter. So anyhow, I, I will just end with that. And then, um, looking forward to passing this budget in the near future. So thank you.

Madam Mayor. Yes. Well, as always, I want to thank the staff for providing a very robust budget presentation, not just for us, but for the community as well, for those who are in the audience, as well as those who are watching from home. And I'll be brief. I think what I want to say is that I appreciate what has been very sound and prudent fiscal management, at least from my perspective, being on council since 2020, and from the depths of the pandemic and the pandemic-related recession, its impact to our city finances, to the recovery, and to where we are today, I think I want to compliment what has been, I think, a very prudent fiscal management, in which we had a lot of focus on long-term long-term planning and also where I think the council you know we've been honest you know with our community and our constituents in terms of our fiscal situation which is also why I think we were able to successfully pass measure MP and adjustment to TOT and hopefully that we can continue to work with the community because we as much as we have been I think, successful in our fiscal management. We do still have a lot of obligations, a lot of projects, a lot of needs, and they won't go away. And meanwhile, we will continue to have externality challenges. And I just want to emphasize that I think in terms of our management, I think that we have done so with a lot of eye on making sure that the city services are stable and strategic and proactive, and it's something that we should, I think, be proud of, especially in looking at this latest budget document. And I'd also like to add that we continue to do so in an environment in which The federal government is not really been a source of stability, and that has to translate to the state, California, which itself is looking at a $10 billion structural deficit in the next few years. And because of Sacramento's $10 billion in structural deficits, I have a feeling it will at some point in some shape or form impact us as well as the city and all cities. And so I think something that's just to be mindful of in the next few years.

Yeah, I wanted to echo my colleague's sentiments and thank all the staff members for all the work you guys put in into the budget presentation today. Thank you, Martha, for putting together all the numbers for us to review. I know we don't hear from community members on a regular basis as to how much they appreciate the efforts from our staff, but I think it's really rewarding when we see the impact that all of our efforts has on the community. driving down Atlantic, seeing all the crowds in Atlantic Times Square and the young people just walking down the streets in the middle of the night, knowing that's the efforts of the community development team and the police department keeping all of us safe, or residents can feel safe to walk down the street, no matter what time of day it is. and then going into our library, seeing the kids playing and parents with their children reading books, knowing that the library is creating all these programs for a community and the immigrants who are there learning English. And then of course the parks, seeing when I'm driving down McFerrin to go home, seeing all the pickleballers there and everyone enjoying the parks, knowing that that's the efforts from the Parks and Recreation team. And then if there's a fire, the fire department immediately puts it out. So it's a huge team effort. And I just want to say I'm very honored to be a Monterey Park resident. And I know it's like, you know, such a amazing experience to live in our city and have such awesome staff members. Yeah, thank you for this great budget. Very, very much looking forward to the next year and years to come. Anyone wanna make a motion or do we need to vote? No, no, just presentation? All right, any final words before we adjourn the meeting? No, okay, then meeting adjourned. Thank you, everyone.