City Council - Regular Meeting

So city attorney, city manager, I understand there's a request to add an urgent item to the agenda.

Yes. Thank you. So tonight we do have to add an urgency item to the agenda. The city manager will provide you with some brief facts to provide to the council in order to make those findings. But the findings we will need to make tonight are, number one, and it will require a motion. And it will require a four-fifths vote of the council in order to add this item to the agenda. The findings that the council is going to need to make are two. The first is that the need to take action first came to the attention of city staff after the posting of the agenda. And then the second finding is that there is a need to take action tonight before the next regularly scheduled council meeting. So city manager Charpentier will give us a brief, you know, few facts to substantiate the findings. And then if we could get a motion and a second from the council, then we can add this item to the agenda.

Okay. For the first item, on Thursday morning, June 4th, city staff noticed significant cracking in the abutment at the pier and around the Chit Chat Cafe. And that cracking and our notice of it occurred after this agenda was released for public review. And the second one is that due to the damage to the abutment, I had to declare an emergency order to protect health and safety by closing the pier and the surrounding beaches. And that was necessitated by the damage that we saw.

So what you heard is this Item came to the attention of staff after the posting of the agenda and that there is a need to take action because the city manager declared a local emergency and that requires that the council ratify that determination within seven days. That seven days will elapse prior to the next regularly scheduled meeting. Council has the facts it needs in order to make those findings. So if we could get a motion and a second.

So moved.

Second. Second. Okay, please vote.

With a motion made by Vice Mayor Wright, and I heard a second. By everyone. Council Member Beckmeyer.

Yeah. Both.

And the vote passes.

Oh, you voted no.

Four to one.

Yes, I think my chair hit the thing. Sorry, let's start the vote over. Thank you.

And I had the motion by Vice Mayor Wright seconded by Councilmember Beckmeyer, and the vote passes unanimously.

And so, Mayor, at this time, the Council should, I think that the City Manager will have a recommendation on where to place this on the agenda, but the Council needs to decide where to place this on the agenda at this point.

Okay.

So I think we'd like to place this first on the agenda, and then there will be a time for public comment related to the pier as part of this item also. Okay.

Correct.

And if I wanted to make another change to the agenda, should I suggest that now also? Yes. So just because of the number of people in the room, I would like to switch items five and six. So to start with the budget and then move the technology disruption policy to the end of the meeting. Great. Do you need a motion for that? I move those two things. I second. Okay. OK, please vote.

And for the adjustment to the order of agenda as stated by Mayor Bowles and moved by Mayor Bowles, seconded by Councilmember Beckmeyer, the motion passes unanimously.

OK. So is there a further report on the pier?

Item information you'd like to share there is staff request that the City Council adopt a resolution ratifying the proclamation of local emergency confirming the existence of a local emergency at the Pacifica Municipal Pier and the order of and also ratify the order of the director of emergency services relating to temporary closure at the pier and that is the requested action, and I can give the council an update. As noted on June 4th, there was significant damage noticed to the abutment and the surrounding area around the Chit Chat Cafe. We promptly closed that area and prevented any access to those who are not professionals in our employ. We did a subsequent preliminary assessment of the situation and engineering assessment. And the conclusion of that assessment is that our first order of priority is to demolish the Chit Chat Cafe so as to prevent it from falling into the ocean and then preventing that size of a cleanup. The next steps will include, once the Chit Chat Cafe is demolished, we will continue our assessment of how to shore up the abutment. And that will take a little bit longer of that assessment, but we'll want to move quickly on that as well. And then move forward with efforts to shore up the abutment in a way that would slow down some of the damage that we are seeing. Shoring up the abutment just to manage full expectations does not mean reopening the pier. It means stabilizing the portion that connects the pier to where Chichet Cafe is so that those conditions do not worsen. And then also with the caveats that this is a highly dynamic environment and these conditions may change rapidly. And we also have city staff from the engineering department available if there are detailed questions. In terms of the demolition of the Chit Chat Cafe, we anticipate that that will begin tomorrow.

Okay. Are there any clarifying questions from council at this time?

I'd like to reserve until after public comment, please. Sure.

Can I just ask, so you mentioned the assessment would continue and would come back. Do we have an approximate timeline at this point to hear back from GHD on the shoring?

I don't, because the assessment really tried to prioritize... what we can do now in this rapidly changing environment. But as we conclude that first step, we are looking at beginning the concurrent analysis of what the next step would be, which would be to shore up the abutment and try to stabilize it. But I don't have a specific date.

OK. All right. Thank you. So this is not the period. Okay, so if anybody would like to speak about the peer, again, please fill out a yellow card in the back. I only have one right now. Because we have so many people in the room, but I don't see Emily there. I'm just going to start with online public comment. If anyone would like to comment about the peer online, if you can please raise your hand now, and then I will cut off the number of speakers just to control the time limits for the meeting. Do we have anyone online?

Mayor Bowles, right now I see four raised hands on the Zoom for public comment on this item. Okay.

So we'll give one more minute. We'll give one more minute. So again, if anybody else in the room wants to comment on the pier, please fill out a yellow card in the back.

Through the mayor, do we have any extra chairs? Do you know? I don't think we do. Do we have any extra chairs anywhere?

We don't. We do not. Okay.

I'm sorry.

OK. Mayor Bowles, I have six raised hands on Zoom. The last in the raised hands is Liana.

OK. All right. So we don't have that many, so I'll leave three minutes per comment for this period. Go ahead, Liana. You can unmute yourself now, Liana.

Sorry, I wasn't sure how to unmute myself. Good evening, Mayor and council members. My name is Leanna Lowe, and tonight I am speaking on behalf of the Board of Directors and members of the West Coast Crabbers, a local 501c3 nonprofit dedicated to community stewardship and bringing our communities together to share in our love of fishing and crabbing. First, we want to thank the city leadership. We recognize the multi-year battle the city has fought to reject the managed retreat and protect our coastline. We know that you want this pier here just as much as we do, and we understand that with the recent severe damage, the financial hurdle has now escalated well beyond the original $19 million estimate. We want to focus tonight on the incredible community that this pier creates. So many of us travel from hours away, driving miles upon miles just to step onto this pier and connect with the community that houses it. We feel deeply honored to be able to give back to Pacifica by being active patrons of its local businesses every time we visit. The pier isn't just a structure, it's an economic and cultural anchor for the whole town, where generations of families have grown up together and shared memories and experiences. We are not here to demand miracles. We are here to offer our time and dedication to the betterment of our treasured environment. The West Coast Crabbers is keen on forming a coalition with the City of Pacifica to oversee the pier restoration. As a nonprofit entity, we want to work together with the City of Pacifica to establish a dedicated restoration fund, spearhead grassroots fundraising, and use our collective regional voice to help lobby for state and federal emergency grants now desperately needed to save this landmark. Please look to us as a resource and a partner. Let's build a public-private coalition and face this challenge together. Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Liliana. While we also applaud that comment, we really need to control the meeting so that we can keep running. So if you agree with something, we'll ask you to just raise your hands. Thank you.

Okay, who do we have next, Sarah? The next public commenter I have is Vicki. Okay, go ahead, Vicki.

Hi, this is Vicki Sunstrom calling. Mayor and city council members, I am angry. I'm angry because the Pacifica Pier is not just another city asset. It is one of the defining landmarks of our community. Generations of residents have finished, excuse me, fished from it, walked it, photographed it, and shared it with visitors. It is a part of Pacifica's identity, and today it sits closed and damaged because the people entrusted... with protecting it failed to do so. This did not happen overnight. Infrastructure does not suddenly fail without warning. Deterioration occurs over years. Maintenance gets deferred over years. Problems are identified over years. What residents are seeing today is the result of neglect. The city council is trusted to be the steward of public assets. Stewardship means preserving what matters before it reaches a crisis. It means acting on known problems before they become emergencies. And the pier is not an isolated example. Residents are seeing deterioration of roads, aging infrastructure, and growing lists of community concerns. The pier is simply the most visible reminder of a larger problem. Pacifica... appears unable to maintain the assets it already owns. Let's be clear, we were fortunate nobody was injured. But avoiding injuries is not the standard. Preventing failure should be the standard. So tonight, residents deserve answers. How did we get here? What other city assets are at risk? And what is the plan to stop managing infrastructure through crisis and start managing it through stewardship? The community valued this peer. The community supported this peer. The community expected the peer to be maintained. That trust was not honored. Pacifica deserves better. Thank you.

Thank you. No, no clapping hands only, please. I'm going to have the police escort you from the room, really. I have to keep control of the meeting to keep us moving forward. Sarah, who do we have next?

The next commenter I have is David Law. Go ahead, David.

Hi, everybody. Well, thank you for providing this platform this evening. I'm a citizen here in Pacifica. I've lived here for a number of years and always enjoyed the pier and the surrounding area. I hope in an area and a focus of constructivity, we can look to cities like Santa Cruz, our nearby neighbor, who had a similar situation with their pier. They've made a playbook. that made it possible to organize and fundraise and reconstruct a portion of their pier in a relatively short time. I hope that the leadership of Pacifica can look to this playbook and mirror it and return the pier to what it once was or something greater. I encourage everybody in this community to contribute constructively, to work together, whether that be through Leanna's previously mentioned fundraisers and nonprofits. I think this is a time for the community to come together and support the city as best as we possibly can. Hope to see you all out there and hope to get a response to this comment.

Thank you, David.

The next commenter I have is Sam C. Go ahead, Sam.

Good evening, sitting council members. This is disheartening on a much different level to me about what's going on at the pier. It's really... based on even the two comments that we just had. First, this whole anti-managed retreat position is just really irresponsible. Whether we want to admit it or not, we are ground zero for climate change. And I'm not saying that we have to look at everything and say, oh, let's step everything back and just do things like do away with the pier. I'm an advocate of the pier, and I think it is part of our economic engine. But we also have to start being realistic about what the challenges are with climate change and look at actually what it would cost to keep that up. The latest... I don't even know what you want to call it, but drawdown of what the seawall is going to cost $80 million is a joke. It's going to be at least three times that. And then we look at the pier as well and say, what is it realistically going to be able to cost us? to not just stabilize it, but really keep it for another generation and do the responsible thing and actually look at what the soil content is and what actual sea level rise looks like. I understand that a lot of cities are fighting back to try to basically dumb down what the levels of sea level rise is, and they have these cute little sayings about... for the 3.3 level of sea level rise, which is unrealistic. And it's based on individual municipality risk. Well, here's the risk. And now that we have to basically take down the chitchat in an emergency declaration, we're left with unmanaged retreat. Is that what we're going to continue to do? I like that answer. Thank you.

Thank you, Sam. Are there other callers, Sarah?

The last raised hand I have is Jolie Bauman. Go ahead, Jolie. And she put her hand down. I don't have any further raised hands on. She raised her hand again. Let me allow her to stop. Jolie Bauman, you're now able to unmute and begin your comment.

Are you able to hear me now?

We can hear you.

Great.

Excellent. My name is Jolie Bauman. I live here in Pacifica. I've been here for more than 40 years. I'm here tonight because I believe our pier is worth saving. The Pacifica Pier is more than a structure extending into the ocean. It's one of our most recognizable landmarks. It's where families gather, where visitors stop to experience Pacifica, where fishermen cast their lines, people walk, reflect, watch the sunset. It's part of our identity. The ocean didn't suddenly become powerful. The Pacific Ocean has always tested everything built along its shoreline. That's not the issue before us tonight. the issue is whether Pacifica is willing to invest in preserving one of its most important public assets. For years, residents have watched millions of dollars spent on other priorities while the pier continued to age and deteriorate. Today, we're seeing the consequences of deferred maintenance. The lesson should not be that the pier isn't worth saving. The lesson should be that iconic public infrastructure requires ongoing care and investment. Every generation inherits community assets from those who came before. Our responsibility is not simply to use them. Our responsibility is to preserve them for those who come before us. I urge the City Council to view the pier not as an expense, but as an investment in Pacifica's future. Explore every available funding source. Pursue grants. Develop a long-term maintenance plan. Make a public commitment that the Pacifica Pier will remain part of our community for generations to come. The question before us is not whether we can afford to care for the pier. The question is whether we can afford to lose it. Thank you.

Thank you. All right, I'm going to move to the four cards I have. David Belkin, followed by Patrick Cavanaugh, and then Himal McCarthy. So if you can please come up to the podium, starting with David.

Good evening, Madam Mayor, Council Members. My name is David Belkin.

Could you pull the microphone up so we can hear you a little bit better? Thank you.

Good evening, Madam Mayor, Council Members. My name is David Belkin. I'm a resident of actually Moss Beach, but I'm a lifelong resident of the peninsula. I'm a lifelong resident of the peninsula. And I am heavily vested in the idea of the pier being here for future generations and not necessarily waiting for me to pass to get to that point. I've used the pier my whole life for about 45 years. I fish there. I bring my kids there. So I'd really, really like to see the pier remain and happen in a future. way that is typically faster than government normally moves. I know that it's going to be, I mean I've reviewed the 2025 January report that engineering provided the council. I am of the opinion that the pier is probably not saveable at this point with the additional damage. That if you look at what it's gonna cost to repair, in the long run, where you're actually providing basically a bandage for the next 10 years before you're looking at 10 to 15 more. It's a slow bleed. I think maybe between a public and private partnership, a new pier can be built, considering looking at what an ocean tide down in San Diego did. Something along that lines is, you know, I'm shooting at the hip, $125, $130 million. But that's a pier that will be there for 50, 60, 70 more years instead of something that potentially every 10 or 15 years you're looking at this crisis reoccurring over and over again. So I'd like to see the city move immediately to start charitable trust that the community can put money into and know that that charitable money is going to the fund and it's going to be in place for, you know, maybe some large donors to come in and make a move to make this happen fast. Okay.

Thank you so much, David. Okay. Patrick and then Maria is my last card.

evening council hi patrick my name is patrick cavanaugh i'm an executive director of pacific beach coalition i actually have more fully prepared remarks for a later item on the agenda tonight but i appreciate this opportunity and it struck me something that you had said why someone want to speak on this part of the agenda on your emergency order the first option of closing chit chat to prevent anything from further falling into the ocean is an example of just having to act, right? We have no longer times to plan. And Pacific Beach Coalition has been acting and trying to respond and pick up that debris after it falls in. A good example of that is the tsunami, right? So I... I encourage everyone to think about this in terms of ongoing maintenance, stewardship. You know, we've heard a couple different words. Risk mitigation, resilience. You know, what truly is an asset? Is the peer the asset? Or is our ability to live and thrive in a healthy living environment part of the investment as well? I encourage everyone here, thank you for coming out to join us at our monthly beach cleanups. We do have Sharp Park and Esplanade. Sharp Park this weekend and Esplanade next weekend. And you can help us. Because unfortunately, there's still debris falling into the ocean every day. Not just when the chitchat falls. We have lead weights from fishing lines and things like that. So thank you. I know you have a lot ahead of you. So I'm going to keep these brief and talk to you later.

Thank you, Patrick. Himal and then Maria.

Hello, hello city council members. It is nice to see you all. It is nice to see everyone else here as well from the wonderful city of Pacifica. Love to hear it. What I wanted to talk about right now is of course the pier. First of all, public bathrooms. We need public bathrooms and I would advise you not to put up porta potties in this neighborhood. Use this space if you must as a place for people to use the restroom because this is an area where there are so many people coming through every day to fish, to look at the ocean, to enjoy. One of the things that we have yet to consider is the environmental implications of the constant level of sea rise. I think that something important for how we move forward is not only structurally, how do we acknowledge our shore coming in closer and closer, but how can we support our local ecosystem in order for it to thrive, in order to combat the swell of the ocean. I strongly encourage working with organizations like the Pacific Beach Coalition as well as many other in our area in order to understand the environmental strategies that we can take in order to prevent further damage along the line. Plant sea kelp out there. Plant sea kelp because that really helps, one, absorb a lot of carbon dioxide because we are facing climate change as it happens currently. And two, it helps combat against the severity of waves. This is a long-term plan. This is not going to happen in three months. If you plant sea kelp down there, it's not going to fix the solution like that. But this is something that can sustain over many years. Because we're looking at the equation of the pier may not last if we build it again for another 15, 20 years, you might as well be doing some work in the environment that would be preventing... severity within the increase of how the ocean is interacting with our coastline. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Okay, Maria, that's my last card.

Okay, good evening, Council, community. I'm glad that we're all here this evening. I'm Maria Demarest, a photographer. I live now in San Bruno. I spent a lot of years on the Half Moon Bay Coast. And when they put in all the jetties, the by the Army Corps of Engineers, it created an incredible amount of erosion. And we've been kind of nickel and diming it down there to get the repairs made. But what I really want you guys to explore and please share with us is what organizations you expect to team up with and work with as the report comes in as to the sustainability of the pier or future options. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay, with that I'll close public comment and bring it back to Council for further questions. I don't think staff is asking. Well, I guess we're just declaring the emergency is our ask. We're ratifying it by adopting the resolution. Okay. But are there other questions before we go to the needed motion?

I have one quick question. Does that open the door to making it easier to apply for state funding to help us with this emergency?

It should. It should open the door to that. No guarantees. It depends on what's available. We're also going to be seeking a gubernatorial declaration of emergency, which is something that the governor has the right to do, and that should help as well.

And are there other agencies that we will be seeking grant funding from?

There are two issues. To the maximum of our ability, we'll be seeking to be refunded for emergency costs, if that is possible, for the stabilization work. And then also, as we move forward into what's the next stage, we'll be seeking funding for continuing to stabilize the abutment and what may come next. In all those scenarios, we would be looking at the state, the federal government, and hopefully the county.

Okay. Would you do me the service of explaining to the public how hard Public Works has worked to make sure that we maintain public safety? How appreciative I can express to them what they've been doing around the clock, and the work you've been doing, sir. Thank you.

Well, I don't really deserve any of the credit. Our hardworking team does, and they were there from the first moment, and they're there now. and they've served this community and worked on this emergency with professionalism, speed, and respect, and have done everything in our ability to maintain safety in that area as well as address local concerns. And it's been the whole team, the whole city team. Public Works has definitely been out in front, but it's the entire city structure. Thank you.

Thank you for mentioning that, Greg. I was going to also bring up the incredible response of staff and how there's no questions asked. They just show up. They just take care of it. And we find out later all that was done throughout the night in many cases. So thank you, staff, everywhere that you are in the back of the room. Thank you, engineering staff. Thank you, Sean. Really, we can't Thank you enough.

I was just wondering, because there are comments made that we haven't been doing anything, and I know that's not true, right? We've had work done on the pier before. I know Bob Battaglia was involved in that and shoring up the abutment itself previously. I'm not sure when that happened, but we've also recently starting, I think in 2019, having assessments done and actually trying to get funding, and unfortunately, the more we look and DEEPLY AT THE ASSESSMENTS, THE MORE MONEY IS NEEDED TO FIX THE PEER EVEN BEFORE THIS. COULD PERHAPS SOMEONE FROM PUBLIC WORKS TALK ABOUT WHAT WAS IN PROCESS? WE HAD JUST APPROVED A GRANT FOR SOME ENGINEERING AND DESIGN WORK AND KIND OF WHAT WE KNOW THE PEER, JUST ROUGHLY WHAT WE KNOW THE PEER NEEDED EVEN BEFORE THIS DAMAGE TODAY.

YES, WE HAVE ROLAND, THE CITY ENGINEER, CAN GIVE AN UPDATE.

Thank you, Christy.

Good evening, honorable mayor, vice mayor, city council members, Roland Yip, deputy director of public works slash the engineer. So back in April 2026 of this year, we approved a contract to do a design for the pier. And the design, the, the, The design was funded by the NOAA grant, and so it was fully funded for close to a million dollars, and this was to design the $11 million of repairs that was from our 2023 structural assessment. Some people mentioned it's close to $20 million for the full repair. That included the design, some contingency, additional contingency and project management, and project management costs. So that was what has been in progress. We were just about to issue agreements out. Right now we're in touch with NOAA to see if we could possibly use some of that funding to now use it for the building demolition and the shoring up of the abutments.

Okay, thank you. And I know we had a coastal conservancy grant at some point, For peer repairs too and my recollection is that when they saw the number closer to 19 million That they rescinded that right so that that state money that had been awarded to us But because the extent of the damage was so much there was concern that we wouldn't be able to raise those funds. I

That's correct, yeah. We had several hundred thousand dollars from the Coastal Conservancy, and some of it was the cost estimate, the progress, and also the timing of grants. Most grants have a certain time frame where you have to bring it to construction. So originally, as you mentioned back in when we start first having issues during a storm of 2021, and some rails on the L portion of the pier, that's the portion that is perpendicular to, or parallel, sorry, to the coastline. And so we received some money from the Coastal Conservancy to do rail repair, but the project pivoted from rail repairs because of the sheer cost of just doing the damaged sections where... close to over a million dollars, and then replacing all of the rails were four million dollars. So we pivoted to try to understand how much repairs we needed to do, because we probably didn't want to replace the rails that were sitting on the deck, which also needed to be repaired. So that's why we did the full structural assessment.

Okay, thank you so much. I think it's just really important for people to have context that these have been long-term issues that we've been trying to deal with, but it's just really hard to find money, right?

Through the mayor, could I ask a couple follow-up questions on that? Yeah, absolutely. Roland, in that, when we were finalists for the BRIC grant through FEMA that got rescinded when there was a change in Washington, would that have addressed part of the peer...

So there is some overlap from our BRIC grant that was supposed to fund the Beach Boulevard Infrastructure Resiliency Project. There is some overlap in the area. Possibly, yes, while we're working through the design, it possibly could have done it. That grant is actually back, we're back to where the sub-application process right now because there was some reinstatement of those funds.

And additionally, were there other grants we applied for after the storms in 23 from the damage that occurred during those storms?

There were definitely... Yes, we sought after... There was a state emergency that occurred after the 2023 storms, and we also applied for some reimbursements for some peer repairs. We have applied for some... community project funding for the peer repairs, and that is how the NOAA grant came to be. It started with some congressional requests through community project funding. And so we have applied for several other ones, yes.

I appreciate your continued attention to this. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Is it okay to comment as well? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Okay, great. Thank you, everyone, for coming out. So when I look out and I see Pacifica, it just makes me so proud. So I really appreciate all of you being here. And I want you to understand that I'm a lifelong Pacifican. I've been on that pier my entire life. I care deeply about it. I care deeply about our community, and I know that my colleagues do too. So please do not forget that. as we move forward because we all want what's best for our community. And I love seeing you all here. It's super important because our city always shows up. You guys always show up. And I can depend on that. And we need you. We need folks to call in and give us really great suggestions about how to move forward, how to create a coalition and work together. Like these are the things we need. We need ideas to come from you as well. And so I look forward to the opportunity to be able to talk about that more. And I think that's one of my questions is what will that look like moving forward? Like how will we be getting information to our community? Will we have a study session? What will that look like? I don't know who I'm asking, but that's a question I have.

I think that's a question for you, City Manager.

Right now we are in sort of the crisis emergency mode, so we do try to communicate as best we can. I would envision this being, at least in the near term, a regular update to City Council on City Council agendas.

Okay. Okay. And then press releases, there is a webpage on the city website specifically devoted to the peer, and that's where all the previous structural assessments can be found as well.

We do have a webpage for the peer, and we do post the press releases on it, but some of the communication will not go through press releases, but rather regular updates, and we can think about ways to keep that page more active so people can check it and see where we are.

That'd be great. And maybe perhaps at one point when we have more information that we can share, perhaps we can have a study session or a town hall or somewhere where we can all be together and really talk this through together. Yeah, absolutely.

Okay. If there are no other questions, I need someone to make a motion.

I move to adopt the resolution ratifying the proclamation of local emergency confirming the existence of a local emergency at the Pacifica Municipal Pier and the order of director of emergency services relating to temporary closure of the pier.

Second.

Okay, please vote. With the motion made by Councilmember Beckmeyer, second by Vice Mayor Wright, the motion passes unanimously. Thank you.

Okay, that moves us to our consent calendar. We have items one to four. Are there any council clarifying questions? Or would anyone like to pull an item off consent? Seeing none. Open up for public comment on the consent calendar, and I don't believe I have any cards And those are items one through one through four so it's disbursements minutes a General local emergency on the coastline and amendments to planning consultants Contracts And I don't have any cards is there anyone online There are no raised hands for consent calendar. Okay. I'll close public comment and bring it back to council. I move approval of the consent agenda. Second. Okay. Please. Wait. We need to clear the board first. Okay. Please vote.

I heard the motion by Council Member Beckmeyer. I didn't catch the second. Espinosa. Espinosa. Thank you. And for the consent calendar moved by Councilmember Beckmeyer, seconded by Councilmember Espinosa, the vote passes unanimously.

The meeting is still in session. I need you all to please not be talking. We really have a lot to get through tonight. So the more we can focus, the sooner we can get to the items that you care about. So that brings us now to public comment on items not on the agenda. So if anyone wants to speak on general public comment online, please raise your hand now. I'll give you a minute. I currently have three, four, five, six, seven cards. So again, this is for anything that is not on the agenda, but that is within the purview of the city council. if anyone else wants to fill out a card. How many hands do we have raised, Emily? There are two raised hands. Okay, we'll take those first.

There are now three raised hands. The first is for David Rakoski.

Okay, and then please just remember where we are at three, and we'll cut that out.

City Clerk Coffey, could you please make me co-host? Sarah.

Yes.

Okay, David, go ahead. So you have three minutes.

Good evening. I'm actually Joanne Rokoski. It's just a function of my Zoom setup. And my name, and I'm speaking tonight on behalf of continuation and extension of the Pacifica Safe Parking Program.

I'm sorry, I'm going to interrupt you right now. That'll be on the agenda for item six as part of the budget. So if you don't mind raising your hand again when we get to that item.

Okay.

Thank you.

Okay. The next raised hand is for Delia.

Okay, go ahead, Delia.

Can you hear me? I can. Hi. Hi. This is Delia McGrath, and good evening, Mayor Bowles and City Council staff and people of Pacifica. The Pride event on Saturday was great. It was a joyful celebration for the many members of our community that celebrate Pride and their particular joy. lifestyles. So Pacifica Peace People welcomed many to our table at the event where we invited people to sign a specific request to Congressman Sam Liccardo. I'm going to read that request. Dear Congressman Liccardo, I live in your congressional district. I am requesting that you become a cosponsor of the Block the Bombs Act, H.R. 3565. To date, U.S. weapons to Israel have caused the death and destruction of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza. I appreciate your kind attention to this request. Sincerely, and then there was a line to sign for June 2026. People who came to the table where we were stationed readily, eagerly signed this request. We also gave them a beautiful peace button to put on immediately. over a hundred signed requests which I will hand deliver to the Congressman a week from now at his town hall meeting in Half Moon Bay. People are heartbroken that our country is funding this terrible and unconscionable death and destruction of the people of Gaza. I urge everyone in our city who wants to send a request also to go ahead and contact me at DeliaForPeace39 at gmail.com and I will make sure that you can join us in this urgent request to the congressman. We also would appreciate you to join us at the town hall in Half Moon Bay next Monday night June 15th at 6 p.m. at the Ted Adcock Center. And we hope that you will speak at that to, again, urge the congressmen to join the now more than 70 Democratic congressmen who are co-sponsoring the Block the Bombs Act. And just know that I love the Pacificans and I love our community and I know that peace over war and then, you know, hearing about the peer.

Thank you, Delia. I'm sorry, your time's up, but I'm happy to hear more from you directly.

Thank you, Delia.

Thank you.

The next raised hand is for Caitlin Hennigan.

Go ahead, Caitlin. Hello? Yes, please go ahead. We can hear you.

Hi, great. My name is Caitlin Hennigan, and I'm a resident of the Pacifica. I'm here today to urge you to preserve the city's aquatic program in the face of the proposed budget.

I'm sorry, that item is part of item six, the budget, which is the next item. So unless you have something else to say on something else that's not on the agenda, I encourage you to raise your hand again a little bit later.

Thank you. There are no other raised hands.

Okay. I have a few cards here in the room. I'll start with Nancy Tierney, followed by Nancy Smith, and then Anita Reese.

Good evening. I had two items to speak briefly about, and actually one was the Safe Parking Program. But I take the message really just to say It's a beautiful program, and I think it reflects the values of our community.

Again, that's on item six, if you don't mind. Okay. So this is just general public comment.

So the other thing was to talk about Make Polluters Pay initiative. This was introduced in last year's legislative session as a means to charge fossil fuel companies for the climate damages they caused. A statewide coalition is actively promoting this climate super fund for next year's legislative session. Fees collected by these industries will be distributed to communities for such programs as wildfire resistance, emergency planning, restoring a pier, and addressing sea level rise. I'm pleased to report that the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors adopted a resolution in support of Make Polluters Pay at their meeting on May 19th, it concludes as follows. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the County of San Mateo Board of Supervisors supports the policy goals of legislation establishing a California Climate Superfund and encourages the state legislature to reintroduce an advanced legislation that holds major fossil fuel polluters financially accountable for a share of the climate-related costs borne by California communities. Note that this is a source of revenue for the problems that communities like ours deal with. So look for a proposed resolution for council adoption later this year. And to talk further about this campaign, we are hosting a town hall on June 20th at San Mateo High School District Office. You'll hear from climate activists in public health, climate resilient communities, and public office, and certainly youth will be involved. So thanks very much. Thank you, Nancy.

Okay, Nancy Smith. And I have your name for two things. Yes, ma'am. So we'll save the pool for later.

Oh, okay. Thank you so much, Mayor and City Council members. There's been a growing concern over the years for all of, at Lindemar Beach, for all of the RV parkers that have homesteaded there for a very long time, I would say years, and it's getting worse, the problem. It's endangering our environment, public use, and also providing security issues as well. I'm not sure if everyone's aware of the Supreme Court ruling, City of Grants Pass versus Johnson. That was back in 2024, in which the court held that local government ordinances with civil and criminal penalties for camping on public land do not constitute cruel and unusual punishment of homeless people. So I would like to implore that our police department enforces parking rules that we currently have posted there at the beach where they're not allowed to park 24-7. and also cite these kind of laws rather than wait to see if we can work out an agreement with the Coastal Commission because it appears that that seems to be like an obstacle that we currently have. And I believe that if we just follow the Supreme Court law, that we'll be fine. We're not... trying to kick anyone out and go against their civil liberties.

Thank you.

Also, in terms of the budget, I know that item six will cover that. Yeah, so you can't speak to that now. I can't speak to that. Okay, thank you. Okay, thanks.

Okay, Anita Ruiz, followed by Alice Elliott Sowell.

Hello, Anita Reese with the Pacifica Resource Center. And I just wanted to share a couple of things. We continue to be open Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, nine to five, Wednesdays nine to seven, Friday nine to one, and one Saturday a month, which is coming up this Saturday, June 16th from nine to one. We are closed for lunch Monday through Friday, 1230 to 130. I wanted to share that we are continuing to provide groceries weekly at our pantry, which is at 2316 Palmetto Avenue. It is by appointment. And our next grocery distribution is on June 24th at the American Legion Hall, which is at 555 Buell. If you haven't already signed up for the grocery distribution, folks can arrive around 4 o'clock, and we will provide groceries and connect you to our services. I wanted to let you all know that we had a lovely volunteer appreciation lunch honoring Chris Porter-Gabrielli and Ms. Pa last week. We are also enrolling for our back-to-school program, which we will provide gift cards for backpacks and school supplies for Pacifica youth. The deadline to enroll is July 11th, though we'll continue to support folks through the first week of school in some way. I also wanted to share that our Unhoused on the Coast outreach team will respond to requests for outreach to unhoused folks in Pacifica through Pescadero every day Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m., Saturday, Sunday, and holidays 9 to 5. So if you see someone living outside or in vehicles, please email us at ucoutreach at pacresourcecenter.org or call us at 650-452-6279. I know you all are aware that the executive summary for the one-day homeless count was released last week, and Pacifica's unhoused documented on the early morning of January 29th showed 228 folks. That is higher on that night than any other city in San Mateo County, but I want you to understand that while the numbers are surprising, Homelessness is a complex issue. It's not something that has a single solution. The one-day homeless count is a snapshot, a point in time, and as of today in Pacifica, there are 119 folks who are unhoused, including 21 folks in the temporary safe parking program. so much lower than the 228 back in January. This represents about an 11% increase from last month, and I would say that the increase is primarily due to our outreach staff connecting to more folks who have been previously uninterested in services, so that just means they're closer to returning to housing. And I wanted to mention or just encourage folks to have compassion, empathy, partnering with surrounding cities even when they don't. And moving forward, not backward, with creative and regional solutions, because that's how we're going to make a difference with the unhoused in Pacifica and across the county. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Anita. So Alice, followed by Lila Ranero, and then Suzanne Moore.

Good evening. I'll be happy to speak later because I want to speak on the issue of the safe parking program.

Okay. All right.

Great.

So Lila, Suzanne, and then Joaquin Jimenez.

Good evening, Mayor and Council Members. Lila Ranero here. I sent a letter of public comment earlier today about things in Pacifica that are making me sad, and there's no way to shorten that down to two minutes, so I humbly request that you please read it when you have a chance. Instead, I'm here to follow up again about the concerns regarding the short-term rental program and its enforcement. As of today, HDL lists 41 permitted coastal short-term rentals and 32 non-permitted ones for a total of 73 permitted properties. By comparison, Inside Airbnb currently reports 221 Airbnb listings in Pacifica, and that figure reflects only Airbnb, not the other platforms. Even accounting for inactive or exempt listings, the discrepancy raises an obvious question. How many short-term rentals are operating without permits, and what is the city doing to identify and bring them into compliance and or find them? If it's just 100 short-term rentals operating without permits, that would represent more than $170,000 in uncollected permit revenue alone. More importantly, it raises questions about whether all operators are paying the TOT taxes that help fund city services. It's frustrating when we continue to hear that Pacifica faces significant budget constraints when at the same time there appear to be missed opportunities to improve compliance, enforcement, and revenue collection in areas where regulations are already on the books. Accordingly, I would like answers to these questions. How many active short-term rentals does the city estimate are operating in Pacifica, and how many are believed to be unpermitted? What enforcement actions were taken against unpermitted operators during the past year, and what were the results? When permit holders fail to respond to notices, complaints, or enforcement actions, what consequences follow? How are repeated violations, including nuisance complaints, trespassing, vandalism, or other documented violations considered during permit renewal reviews? What metrics does the city use to evaluate whether the short-term rental ordinance is being effectively enforced? Finally, I'll briefly note one other area where stronger enforcement could benefit both the community and the city's finances, tree protection. Illegal tree removal continues to occur without required permits or replacement plantings. Trees provide significant environmental and community benefits, and meaningful penalties should be assessed when violations occur. Stronger enforcement would help preserve Pacifica's urban forest while generating revenue through fines and mitigation fees. For both short-term rentals and tree protection, Pacifica may be leaving substantial revenue on the table by failing to consistently enforce existing regulations. Thank you, as always, for your time, consideration, and service to our city. I really appreciate you guys a lot.

Thank you, Lana. No clapping, please. Suzanne, followed by Joaquin, and then Patrick Kavanagh.

Suzanne Moore from the Manor District, and my remarks are my own. These remarks are about homelessness in general, and I think consistent with this section. Since 2017, Pacifica is one of three San Mateo County communities with the highest number of homeless, and the January 2026 confirms the crisis. Homelessness is linked to three known causes. High housing costs, low affordable housing vacancies, income inequality where cost of living exceeds pay increases. I believe there are three necessary ingredients to address homelessness. a clearly identified need, a program that works, and community will. Who are our homeless? There is an increasing number of coastal families who are homeless, including families with young children and newborns. Many homeless are our working poor. Many homeless were previously housed here. Homeless numbers are not fixed, and as Anita said, as of June the 3rd, there are about 120 unhoused folk in Pacifica. Our homeless outreach team and the 2026 homeless count confirms the need. This is a coastal and regional program, or problem rather, with an identified solution. And temporary housing with a wraparound service and successful transition to permanent housing is that solution. I won't talk about our Safe Parking Program and its success and hold that off for item six, but I do want to say that ending homelessness needs something more. Community will. Too often, the news reports on failed efforts to incorporate transitional housing into communities. The coast and Pacifica are not immune to these setbacks. I want to believe that Pacifica can lead the way. Yesterday, over a three-hour period at Pacifica's Pride event, I received 56 signatures of Pacificans and visitors who expressed sensitivity and signed in support for extension and expansion of Pacifica's Safe Parking Program. And I didn't even have to tell them that LGBTQ are more proportionately people at high risk for homelessness. Please let's move forward. And thank you, City Council. And Sarah, I'm just going to give you our list.

Thank you, Suzanne. Joaquin, Patrick, and then Cindy Abbott is my last card.

Sarah. Good evening, honorable mayor, council members, city staff, members of the public. My name is Joaquin Jimenez, Joaquin Murrieta in social media. I am the founder of Vaquero Days HMB, Vaquero Days Half Moon Bay. And I would like to invite you all to put on your calendar. This year's event, Vaquero Days, is August 15th and August 16th in Half Moon Bay. You can follow us on Instagram. Vaquero Days HMB. One of the reasons that we do this event, this is going to be our third year organizing this event, is to maintain and preserve our equestrian heritage of the coast side. And we like to invite the community. We expect... about 150 to 200 horses in Half Moon Bay. We have live music, entertainment for the family, food. On Sunday, for the wine lovers, we're going to have wine tasting from the local wineries of La Honda. So please join us August 15th and August 16th to celebrate Vaquero Days HMB. And this is a tradition that we want to continue to maintain our heritage for our next generations. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Hey, Patrick, Cindy, and then I have one more card from Michael Wallman.

Good evening. Hello. Once again, Honor Roll Council. My name is Patrick James Cavanaugh, Executive Director of Pacific Beach Coalition. So as you may know, Pacific Beach Coalition is dedicated to preserving the ocean, coastal habitat, and wildlife, and ending litter through advocacy, education, community building, and citizen action. And I'm here to wish you all a happy World Oceans Day. That's today. We recently had Kids Ocean Day, where we brought Mission Science Center out to Pacifica State Beach in Lindemar for a cleanup, and they did an aerial art display of a guitarfish. The Marine Science Center has been finding a lot of baby guitarfish this year in the South Bay. I'll speak more about PBC later. I think that's in the budget section, number six.

Cindy.

I'll leave my remarks to that. Thank you.

Thank you, Patrick. Cindy, and then Michael.

Hello, Cindy Abbott. Listening to the ocean tonight sounds like a lament for our beloved pier, the special place that you all heard about earlier and have declared an emergency about. And as a caring community that we know we are, it's also been greatly impacted of the two owners of the Chit Chat at the pier. Brandon Jenkins, and Ginger Davis. They do own another place up in Manor, 5 West Manor, but I hope folks can find it if they're able to to contribute to the GoFundMe that has been set up for them. They've been unable to get back into the structure due to the emergency conditions. There's over $150,000 worth of equipment and supplies in there, and folks have been really generous so far. But please continue to do that. The hurt isn't going to go away. So you can find the GoFundMe, just Google GoFundMe, Chit Chat Cafe Pier. Thanks. Thank you, Cindy.

Okay, Michael, this is my last card.

Hi, Michael Wallman, resident here in Pacifica. From what I understand, the general policy about oversight vehicles is not part of the budget discussion, is that correct?

I'm sorry, I'm not hearing you.

Oversized vehicles, that's not, in general, is not part of public budget. No, you can talk about that now. Okay, great. I'd like the council to please consider reducing our oversized vehicle policy to only two hours to match the other major city and other cities in the area. I think it's pretty apparent that other cities are... encouraging people to leave that are in oversized vehicles. And given our policy is 72 hours versus two, it is a very attractive option for people looking to relocate from those cities. Thank you.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, I'm gonna close public comment. And that brings us to, since we switched things around to item six, the proposed budget. Oh, I see Marisol. Coming in, ready to present.

Through the mayor?

Yes.

I'd like to start with a public service announcement. I've heard from people in the back that they're having a hard time hearing us, so I would ask all staff and council to really aggressively address the microphone.

Okay. Sounds good. Thank you. Yulia, welcome back. Yulia was in Sacramento, our assistant city manager, advocating for us for money today.

Ready? Through the mayor, I'd just like to give a brief introduction.

Absolutely.

So John Charpentier, new city manager. This is my first budget with the City of Pacifica. I wish I had better news. I did follow the conversation last fall quite a bit where there was a lot of discussion about the structural deficit and imbalance, and know that was carried through the mid-year and then through budget actions before I arrived. And part of that conversation was that Most, all of the strategies have become exhausted in prior years. All of the nip and tuck, find some money in the SOFA strategies have become exhausted, and that is reflected in this budget. What was also evident in the course of those discussions and still remains unchanged is that we do have a structural deficit. It's existed for some time, We also have fewer staff than comparable sized cities. We have about 20% fewer staff than most comparable sized cities. And then in addition to that, we also pay, or our total compensation is about 7 to 15% less than those other cities. And all of these factors combine to lead us to the budget where we are today. And we do have wonderful staff and they're deeply committed to the community But the budget that we have recommended before you today is unfortunately a continuation of that message and Even in some ways a worsening of that message as a lot of the the easier strategies have been exhausted And also a sort of dire warning of what next year's budget may be like I'm relatively new, this was a difficult budget for me. Just because I lacked a lot of the context and certainly got a lot from staff and from council and the community, but I sort of flinch a little bit when I say this is my recommended budget because in some ways these represent maybe the least worst scenarios. and recognizing that at the staff level and recognizing that among us who worked here still is no consolation for those who will be negatively affected by some of the proposals put forward in this budget, whether it's a resident that waits longer for service or a police officer who works more mandatory overtime or the 1,200 people who regularly utilize the aquatics program. But to accomplish this budget, we asked the departments to come up with 5% reductions across the board. And then from those reductions, I made recommendations on which ones should be brought forward for council consideration. And that's where I sort of flinch about my recommendation. But I also think that the staff and the council have been very transparent about these budget issues over a very long time and increasingly in the last 12 months. And I know that's not the most optimistic segue or opening to the budget, but I do think it is just a recognition of sort of the general context where we are. And I am presenting it as my recommended budget knowing that there's a lot of disappointing news in it and also asking council and the community to please come in and share with us what they think. And with that, I'll turn it over to Yulia and Marisol.

Thank you, City Manager. I'm Yulia Korda, Assistant City Manager, and I wanted to add just one point to the City Manager's remarks that the Challenges that the city is having are structural, and they're not new. So we've been having discussions about the structural deficit for quite some time, but it's the first time, unfortunately, when we have to make the very difficult choices. And we completely understand that residents are concerned about some of these choices. I just want to point out that over the last several years, the city has worked proactively to stabilize We've done some efficiencies. We've done some restructurings. We pursued grant findings. We recently presented economic development work plan that would generate revenues. But again, economic development strategies are long-term, so they're not immediate in nature. It doesn't mean that we are not pursuing this. balancing the budget is the problem that we have before us today. And the choices, again, that you will see will be reflective of some of the immediate needs that we need to do to balance the budget. So today... I'm trying to advance the slides. So we... We'll have a little recap today about the budget strategies and where we are in the process and the budget timeline. As city manager already pointed out, the ask that was made to all departments was budget reduction target of 5%. So each department was forced to identify some of those choices. We'll go over city manager's recommendations by department, what was included in the budget and proposed budget and what is not. And touch base on projected fund balance structure for general fund and non-general fund. Talk about the reserves. And we'll also discuss what is not in the budget, what we present as a council consideration for community requests for the council to give staff direction on. Discuss other funds. And recently, well, new this year, considering how difficult this process is, we've done the budget survey of the community, so we'll give the high-level summary of this survey today as well, and included in your packet also a work plan for the upcoming year. And we'll finish today's presentation with the next steps. what's upcoming for the budget adoption. Again, where we are in the process, so you can see we've had six public meetings related to the budget. So far, this meeting is meeting number seven. We call it budget study session number three. So that's the main study session when the choices need to be made and give staff this opportunity to bake it in the budget for council adoption at the next meeting on June 22nd. And very quickly, just a recap of how we do the budget as far as budget methodology. So first we establish the base. The base budget is the current level of services without any addition or reduction. In other words, the base budget is the today's services at Tomorrow's Coast, as we project them as of July 1. From that point, and that study session was presented to Council back in on April 11th, and from the base budget, we on May 11th, I'm sorry, we determined surplus or deficit, again, as we already Discussed with the council, we're running a significant structural deficit this year. And in order to fix or balance this deficit, what is before you today are various decision packages or options for service changes to the budget. And these services are a combination of service reductions and, in some cases, service enhancements because, again, Life goes on, and there are several new mandates that we need to comply with, and there are some opportunities to gain efficiencies. But again, every department was asked to identify 5% of reductions for the operating budget. These packages or options are presented in Attachment 1 to your report. They're ranked in order of department priorities, and city manager also ranked them in categories, also presented on that attachment as well. And we'll go over each one of them individually in a little bit. With that, I want to turn it to Marisol Gomez, Administrative Services Director, to just go over the numbers and financials.

Good evening, Council and members of the public. I'll be going over some of the base budget recaps as well as take you through the department slides. Just a base budget recap to reiterate, at the base budget session May 11th, we presented revenues at the general fund of $53.2 million. Operating expenditures were $57.1 million. This was a 3.5% increase over the revised 25-26 mid-year budget. The structural deficit is $2.3 million, and that's after 5% salary savings. Previously approved budget strategies, as Council approved in our Budget Study Session 1, we kept the ERAF revenues in the general fund. Two years ago, those ERAF revenues were split between the Housing Action Fund and the Disaster Accounting Fund. We have the VLF revenues and backfill in the budget currently, but we assigned restricted fund balance of $1.06 million in the general fund in order to offset any potential loss of these revenues. We have yet to have final verdict on the state's budget, whether the backfill amount is included in the full Part of the other strategies as well that were incorporated into the base budget were advancement of the economic development work plan and prioritizing revenue generating development, incorporating cost allocation plan findings into the base budget, and incorporating the conservative fee assumptions to the fee study in the base budget at this time. And the next slide is just a recap of where we are with the structural deficit for the current year at 2.3 million. Again, that's after applying the 1.6 million in salary savings, reducing the 3.8 million deficit in the current year. In the next slide, we are just recapping the request that we made for the departments on their target reductions. The request was for $2.8 million, approximately 5% across all the budgeted departments. This is above the $2.3 million deficit as City Manager Carter mentioned because there might be some requests, there were some requests that were legally mandated and we needed to be able to factor in some of those requests as well as present options for the city manager to review. Every department met their target reduction options as presented to the city manager. So that was a big lift for every department. The finance department worked really hard in meeting with each department individually, as well as we collectively met with the executive team to go over everything presented to you tonight. In the next couple slides, we'll go over the service categories. This was presented in budget study session two. There is attachment to that staff report that explains all of the services provided by the departments in these three buckets, legally mandated, core services, and service level enhancements. This comes back into a play with the budget forms that are attached in attachments four to seven. There is an option on there to select for every budget request that's coming forward. to request whether it's legally mandated, whether it's a core service or a service level enhancement. It just adds to the information presented to the council with hopefully providing some understanding to the public on these services. The next slide is just a summary recap of that long list presented in the last budget study session. Of course, this is not a comprehensive list as this will be updated annually with any ongoing changes. In the next slide, we look at the recap of the city manager's recommendations. The first column shows the base budget with our deficit at 2.3 million. Incorporating the city manager's recommendations that we'll go over in the next slides, department by department, this brings the general fund balance to a small surplus of $169,000. Again, as our city manager, Sharpentier, mentioned, that this was a hard task to be able to prioritize and categorize all the options that the departments put forward. Largely, those were categorized in categories one, which is highest priority category, including anything that was revenue generating or legally mandated or anything that had to do with regulatory compliance and operational efficiencies. Everything else was categorized by the city manager as a category two, symbolizing the second tier of recommendations, preserving core services or addressing critical operational and organizational needs. In addition to the service level reductions that will be presented on the different department slides, The departments really dug through their line item budgets and identified approximately half a million in budget adjustments for operational efficiencies that reduce the general fund deficit without directly reducing public services. Everything that you'll see in the coming slides has an attached budget form to the staff report with more detailed information. But these adjustments to the base were more of those operational efficiencies that didn't have direct correlation to direct services for the public, more administrative. Some examples of these included updated revenue projections based on the latest economic data for sales tax and Measure Y, reducing some nonessential contractual services, ELIMINATION OF UNDERUTILIZED DEPARTMENT BUDGETS AND OTHER ONE-TIME OR DISCRETIONARY OPERATING ADJUSTMENTS TO THE BASE. THESE REFINEMENTS HELP IMPROVE THE CITY'S FISCAL POSITION WHILE MINIMIZING IMPACTS TO RESIDENTS AND MAINTAINING CURRENT SERVICE LEVELS WHERE POSSIBLE. ON THE NEXT SLIDE WE'LL START WITH OUR FIRST DEPARTMENT SLIDE. EACH SLIDE WILL HAVE A DEPARTMENT WHERE WE'LL GO OVER THEIR CATEGORIES IN DETAIL. THESE OPTIONS WERE PRESENTED BY THE DEPARTMENT PARK SPEECHES AND RECREATION. AS YOU CAN SEE HERE, THERE'S THREE OPTIONS PRESENTED. IN THE GREEN COLUMN, AND THIS WILL BE THE SAME FOR ALL THE SLIDES GOING FORWARD, IN THE GREEN COLUMN, YOU'LL SEE WHETHER IT'S A CITY MANAGER RECOMMENDED YES OR NO, WHY FOR YES AND FOR NO, AND THE CATEGORIZATION OF THE CITY MANAGER, EITHER ONE OR TWO. What's also something to note is the one-time column. If it has an X, that means it is a one-time adjustment. If there is no X, it's possibly an ongoing adjustment to the budget. The other columns that are of importance are the service categories column. Going back to the service category exercise we mentioned in the earlier slides, M for mandated, C for core, E for enhancement, and then of course the impact to the general fund. I'll go down these line items for each department and move forward from there. The first one on the list for PB&R is freezing a vacant lead teacher position. That position is currently vacant with no staff in the current position. The PB&R department will be able to maintain their ratios for child care services. and currently are utilizing other staff to fill in the responsibilities for this vacancy. The impact to the general fund on this item is $118,000 in its savings. The next line item is discontinuation of the senior services transportation program. The reduction impact is $115,000. Currently, there are 24 registered users. Average number of users has been very low. The ridership has been shrinking over the past decade with less than four round trips per day. Alternative transportation options would remain available through the city's Connect-a-Ride program, SamTrans, Paratransit Services, or other community-based transportation providers. This discontinuation is just a portion of the senior services programs. The next item is the phase-out of the City Aquatic Services. It is important to note that the cost shown here is not the full cost of the program. The reduction listed here is $154,000 to the general fund. The cost is six months' worth of reductions, not the full cost or future cost of this program. This will keep the current joint agreement working through December 2026. The 50-year agreement with the school district will end January 2027, and the school district will at that time become sole owners of the pool. If the city were to continue moving forward, the school district could ask for investments in capital requests for deferred maintenance, as well as increase operating costs that may reflect updated costs to run the pool. This will inevitably increase costs by possibly hundreds of thousands. NOT INCORPORATED IN THE CURRENT COST OF SERVICES. THE COST OF THE CURRENT PROGRAM DO NOT INCLUDE THESE FUTURE COSTS AND AS A SIDE NOTE, DURING THE LAST FEE CYCLE UPDATE, RAISING PULL FEES WAS NOT WIDELY SUPPORTED AT THAT TIME. WE DO, HOWEVER, HAVE AN UPCOMING FEE STUDY THAT WILL BE COMING BACK TO COUNCIL BEFORE THE END OF THE CALENDAR YEAR AND WILL INCLUDE UPDATES AT THAT TIME. ON THE NEXT SLIDE, WE'LL GO OVER THE POLICE DEPARTMENT. ON THE TOP HALF OF THE SCREEN YOU'LL SEE REVENUE ADJUSTMENTS AND THE BOTTOM HALF WOULD BE ADJUSTMENTS TO EXPENDITURES. ALL DEPARTMENTS WENT THROUGH ALL THEIR LINE ITEMS, THEIR SERVICES. THIS ALSO INCLUDED MAKING SURE THEY WERE ACCOUNTING FOR ANY GRANT REVENUE. FOR THE POLICE DEPARTMENT AN INCREASE TO TRAFFIC GRANT REVENUE INCLUDES THREE DIFFERENT PROGRAM INCREASES. accomplished that $95,000 increase to revenue, which offsets their target reductions. Also, as well as $78,000 in utilizing opioid settlement funds to offset cost sharing for a mental health clinician. Some of the other adjustments to the expenditure line items in the bottom half of the screen here are Transferring Police Department employee wellness funding to the Self-Insurance Workers Compensation Fund. The wellness program was something that was incorporated over the last few years to help reduce stress on the police department as they have mandated overtime and are in... Working for the city through that mandated overtime, incorporating the wellness programs to be paid out of another fund other than the general fund this year is a one-time request of a reduction in 35,000 to the general fund. The next line item is reassigning the community emergency response team, the CERT program, from police to the NCFA oversight. That reduction of $20,000 to the general fund includes reduction to overtime as well as to the CERT program expenditures. Now, this does not get rid of the program, but it just reassigns responsibility to the NCFA. The NCFA can incorporate these services quite easily as they do maintain this program with the other cities in the agreement. This is an opportunity for the program to continue for Pacifica while also providing savings to the general fund. Just as a side note, PD has spoken with CERT leadership and will help work with NCFA on a transition plan for this program. Another one of the city manager's recommended options are a hiring freeze of a vacant police officer position for six months. That cost is a reduction to the general fund of $110,000. That also incorporates slight increased cost to overtime. As positions remain vacant, that also increases overtime costs for the police patrol. The next item is a transfer of salaries and benefit costs for the community service officer position to the supplemental law enforcement grant fund. Again, this is incorporating the use of grant revenues to offset general fund expenditures. This will allow the CSO position, the .5, excuse me, position of a CSO to continue as long as the grant funding is available in the 207 grant fund. Currently, we have Ample balance and expecting incoming revenue to be able to cover this cost The two at the bottom of the screen are city manager no recommendations meaning These recommendations are not moving forward with the city managers options but it is good to note that these are part of the options that the department had put forward in order for the city manager to to review them and And those three at the bottom are hiring freeze of one vacant police officer position for a full year, a hiring freeze of one vacant community service officer position for a full year, and a reduction in police department community outreach and engagement programs. In the last item, the police department community outreach and engagement programs, That means that the current teen academy and community academy, for instance, will continue functioning if the council agrees with the city manager's recommendations. The next department is the fire department. The fire department, since they have the allocation to the NCFA with that joint agreement, A lot of their budget is in salaries and benefits. They hardly have expenditure line items that are non-discretionary to choose from. So the options you see here are very limited and are largely with salaries and benefits. In the top one, however, this recommended option is a decrease to the annual transfer to the fire equipment replacement fund. Currently, we have in the base budget 125,000 contribution from the general fund to the fire replacement fund. Reducing this contribution by 65,000 will leave a 60,000 contribution to that fund. At the end of the projected fund balance for this fund would then be 392,000 in fund 764. The fire equipment fund incorporates savings for turnouts and self-contained breathing apparatus replacements that will need to happen for firefighter engineers and our staff. So reducing the contribution will not be reducing the liability that the city has in the future years, but will just be delaying the contribution to cover those needs. For the turnouts, which are slated to be replaced in about 2028, and for the self-contained breathing apparatus in about six years from today, that total is roughly $600,000 in today's value. Of course, that might increase when we get to the point of purchase. The second line item that is recommended to move forward is a higher-end freeze for one vacant firefighter engineer position for six months. You'll see a notation here that says ALT, A-L-T. That is meant for an alternative option that was brought forward. The original option was a freezing of a firefighter engineer vacant position for a full year. The city manager recommends only freezing this position for a six-month period because, as you can see, there is another vacancy that is brought forward for the fire department. Just a note here that any reduction to the firefighter staff also impacts our regional mutual aid and regional coverage through the NCFA. So this is also a A highly sensitive item that may have service reduction impacts in not only Pacifica, but our neighboring cities of Daly City and Brisbane that we are in agreement with NCFA with. The last item is not considered to be moving forward, which is the hiring freeze of one firefighter vacant position for a full 12 months. In the next department, the Community Development Department, on the top half of the screen, we do have some revenue increases. This revenue increase was due to some restructuring of utilizing contract planner services, reducing the standard development review, and redirecting the review of more strategic, more entailed higher reviews, thus increasing the REVENUE OF PLANNING FEES TO THE TUNE OF $120,000. THIS IS ONE OF THOSE ITEMS THAT HAS MULTIPLE FACTORS OF A REDUCTION INCREASE AND A REVENUE INCREASE, AND THIS IS THE NET OF THAT. THERE ARE MORE DETAILS FOR ALL OF THESE BUDGET FORMS IN THE ATTACHMENT 4-7 OF THE STAFF REPORT. ON THE BOTTOM HALF OF THE SCREEN FOR THE COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT DEPARTMENT, WE DO HAVE SOME EXPENDITURE CHANGES that were brought forward and City Manager has recommended that we move forward with these reductions. The first one is funding a limited-term senior planner. The senior planner is specifically a specialized local coastal planner that will work with the LCP, local coastal planner, through CARP. Funding this is a net reduction to the expenditures because there is a matching grant that the city will be applying for to cover 0.5 of this limited term senior planner, as well as redirecting current funds that are funding a Civic Spark and a part-time program manager for the CARP program. The next item is reallocating funding for objective design standards. to the Housing Action Fund. So this means that this item, work for this item doesn't go away. It just gets covered through the Housing Action Fund should the council decide to agree with the city manager's recommendations. That's a net reduction of $85,000 to the general fund. The next item is unfunding a management analyst and funding an administrative assistant three position. This is a net reduction as we take into account salary savings for the current year and incorporating any changes to the expenditure line items associated with this item. The next item is converting to action minutes from verbatim minutes for the City Council and Planning Commission and unfund a part-time stenographer position. The reduction of $26,000 shown on the screen is just a portion of... of the work that goes into this item between the community development and the city clerk's office. They spend 30 plus hours reviewing the stenographer's work on verbatim minutes. The last item is reducing general legal city services in the Community Development Department, including legal support for the Planning Commission, and diverting questions through the staff as the first point of contact as opposed to the city attorney's office, as well as reducing review of city attorney-approved templates and items of that nature to the tune of a reduction of $25,000. in the Community Development Department. The next department is the Public Works Department. This is the example of some legal mandates that are thrust upon the city and other cities in the region. The top one is considered a legal mandate to provide funding to support SB 1383, which is the recovered organic waste products and the compliance requirements. This came to council within this fiscal year and in 25-26 was covered with grant funding. There's no more grant funding that would cover this amount in 26-27. This is considered an enhancement request to the budget. And the city manager does recommend moving forward with this item as it is a legal mandate. The next item is a conversion of a limited term maintenance worker one position to a permanent position. This is at zero cost to the city as this budget for this position was incorporated into the 26-27 budget as the expiration for that term was within the fiscal year. This will just be solidifying that position conversion. The next request was a continuing consulting Consultant support for geographic information systems the GIS implementation again a city manager categorization allows For this item to move forward at a cost of fifty two thousand dollars because the GIS implementation will support other ongoing efforts for efficiencies as well as revenue generation down the road and At the bottom half are reduction requests put forward from the Public Works Department. One of the items here is reducing janitorial services in public parks at a net reduction of $70,000 to the general fund budget. The current janitorial services for 15 public use facilities includes locations at the pier, Rockaway, Lindemar Beach, community center, exterior restroom, and frontier land. The next item that the city manager recommends moving forward with is the hiring freeze of 2.5 FTE vacant part-time maintenance assistant positions to a total reduction of $48,000 to the general fund. Freezing two of the part-time vacancies will reduce some service level of core field operations that support street maintenance. Staffing capacity for routine and preventative maintenance activities will become limited. The last item is not recommended in the city manager's budget to move forward, and that's adding a management analyst position for a public works department, splitting an FTE with the wastewater department. As the city manager mentioned in his introduction to the budget item, the city of Pacifica remains understaffed and public works department spans a lot of services across the general fund and the wastewater fund and A management analyst is is severely needed in that program However, that is not moving forward as a budget request at this time This is the last slide of the departmental breakdown in sorry, the next slide is the last slide and in the departmental breakdown. This is the general government departments and they include city manager's office, city clerk's office, administrative services, city attorney, economic development. The top half of the screen are those enhancement requests. Again prioritizing, prioritization from the city manager includes prioritizing anything that will feed into revenue generation. The top one is a feasibility study evaluating special financing districts for streets and road infrastructure improvements at an increase of $30,000. The next one is funding for Pacifica Library's outreach project and community engagement activities at an alternate level of $20,000. In the current budget, the Pacifica Library's outreach project was funded at 50,000 through the library fund. Currently the library fund only has 8,000 in projected fund balance. Thus this was recommended to come from the general fund but at a reduced amount of the 20,000 here. This reduced request would provide the library commission with a chance to hold a joint study session and plan out next steps for the library outreach project. The next line item here is a reduction request in the non-departmental fund. Eliminating funding on the annual contribution to the trust for unfunded OPEB liability, that's other post-employment benefits. As you may recall, in the current budget cycle, we reduced the pension contribution to go towards our unfunded liability amount. However, this year we recommend that we reduce the OPEB contribution. At this point in time, the PARS program is closed. Therefore, there will not be any increased staff that will sign up for the program. And we have our projected balance of our liability that will not continue to grow for this program. This is separate than our CalPERS pension program system. This is under our PARs. So reducing this contribution in this current year does not reduce our ongoing liability. However, it will help in one-time general fund savings of $283,000. The next one is reducing consulting services, software and equipment replacement. for the IT division to the tune of $75,000. This will reduce any flexibility that the department will have in the administrative services department in order to compensate for any emergency items or any cybersecurity attacks or anything that comes up during the year. If there's any emergencies of those nature, the department will need to come back to council with requests. The other two line items are from or the next three line items are from the human resources department and the administrative services. Reducing executive recruitment of $25,000. Our department head team is fully staffed at this time. Normally the city goes out and utilizes consulting work to recruit for those higher level positions. So this is just right sizing the budget in that amount. Reducing conference registration of $8,000. One of the reasons this has become a higher level service impact is because the human resources department and their staff go to these conferences to get trained and share resources with the City of Pacifica staff as a whole, and it helps mentor and grow our supervisory and management staff. THE LAST ITEM FOR HR IS TRANSFERRING EMPLOYEE WELLNESS AND RECOGNITION TO THE RISK MANAGEMENT FUND. THIS IS A ONE-TIME REDUCTION FROM THE GENERAL FUND, AND YOU WILL LATER SEE IN SLIDES AS AN INCREASE TO THE RISK MANAGEMENT FUND. AGAIN, WITH THE WELLNESS PROGRAMS ACROSS THE CITY, WE WANT TO CONTINUE THEM FOR ANOTHER YEAR, BUT SHIFTING THE FUNDING OF THESE WELLNESS PROGRAMS AND NEEDED PROGRAMS FOR THE STAFF TO THE RISK MANAGEMENT FUND. THE NEXT ITEM THAT IS CONSIDERED A CITY MANAGER RECOMMENDATION IS TO REDUCE THE GENERAL LEGAL CITY SERVICES OF 57,000. THIS IS IN ADDITION TO THE REDUCTION THAT I WENT OVER IN THE COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT DEPARTMENT, BUT ALSO RELATED IN THAT REDUCING OVERSIGHT OF review on templated items that were already approved by the city attorney's office and making sure to direct any questions through the department heads before reaching the city manager sorry the city attorney's office The next line item is the eliminate funding for, sorry, that shouldn't say portable restroom, but the American Portable Services for RV cleanouts. This is for the on-street parking for the temporary safe parking program to reduce it by $25,000. The next line item is a deferral of funding for the special financing district feasibility study, the CFD, EIFD, and PBID for Sharp Park and other commercial areas. This is a reduction of $75,000 to the general fund. As you can see, this is sort of offsetting the feasibility study that was mentioned as the top line item. uh... as a separate item but also related to future revenue generating areas however the seventy five thousand here is recommended not to move forward uh... and is considered a reduction at this time the last line item uh... that is part of the general government department and city manager recommendation is removing the economic development committee budget of 70 750 doing this as an ongoing budget reduction and if there's future needs roping that into the economic development work plan and coming back to council The last two items on this list are not recommended to move forward with the City Manager recommendations. The top one being unfunding a vacant management analyst position in the City Manager's Office. The City Manager's Office shared a management analyst with Community Development, 0.5 in both departments, thus making up a whole management analyst. Since that position is recommended to be unfunded in the community development department's list of things. The city manager will be losing out on 0.5 FTE of administrative support. The city manager is recommending not to freeze the current vacant management analyst, but they will support complex projects, strategic initiatives, such as a short-term rental program administration and citywide communication and community engagement efforts, which are severely needed for a continuation of public communication and transparency with residents. The last item that's not recommended at this time is funding for professional event planning support and community activation efforts per the economic development plan. That request was $30,000. However, that is not recommended to move forward with at this time. I know that was a lot of information to go through and we'll take questions by department from the council, but we do have a few more slides to get through here. With those city manager recommendations, again, reiterating that we are at a small surplus of 169,000 in the general fund. What this does for our general fund fund balance is achieving a balanced budget for the current fiscal year. However, maintaining structural balance over the long term will require ongoing expenditures to be aligned with ongoing revenues. As you can see from the department slides, a lot of those reductions were one-time reductions at this point in time and will need to be revisited if we're in the same position next fiscal year. While fund balance can provide temporary flexibility during periods of transition or economic uncertainty, it is not a suitable solution for supporting recurring operating costs. Continued reliance on one-time resources would reduce the city's financial resilience and increase the magnitude of the future budget adjustments needed to address the projected structural deficit. Again, even though we're presenting a balanced budget at this time, it is not a structural budget. We are utilizing salary savings and other offsetting costs, and this will definitely require ongoing communication and discussions with the council. However, we do have the $12.4 million in unassigned fund balance, and this is taken into account, setting aside as part of Budget Strategy 2 the VLF restriction of $1.06 million. On this last slide, I'll go over this last slide and then hand it back to Assistant City Manager Yulia Carter. On this last slide, sorry, next slide, we'll go over general fund requests not funded. This is a good recap of the items that are not presented currently in the general fund city manager recommended budget. Again, some of these items we did go over in the department slides, for instance, the funding for event planning and the additional management analysts. But the other items on here are CIP items that were presented as, sorry, that were requested by departments but not incorporated into the current general fund CIP request because the general fund was presenting at a deficit at that time. These CIP requests include fire station repairs, community center improvements, and the long list at the bottom under public works, which include Sanchez Center improvements, community center backup generator, Rockaway to Pacifica State Beach Trail Rehab, San Pedro Headlands, Terranova Tennis Court Lights, Rockaway Bridge Replacement. It is good to note, however, that these, or important to note, however, that these CIP have been included in the unfunded CIP list in the CIP program, so that way they do not get lost in the requests of things. However, that does add to our unfunded CIP request list. I'll pass it over to City Manager Yulia Carter to go over the remaining slides.

Thank you, Marisol. Marisol provided a good summary of what was requested for the budget, what was funded and what was not funded. And now we are transitioning to some of the policy considerations that we will be looking for Council to provide direction on. As you well know, during the annual budget process, Council often receives requests from different community organizations for financial support for discretionary community programs. This could be also some pilot programs or any other contributions to outside organizations. And given where we are in the budget and current financial constraints, The city manager's recommended budget or recommendations itself were focused primarily on maintaining core municipal operations and services, as well as some regulatory obligations and organizational stability support. So these items before you are not included in the budget right now, but again, as I mentioned earlier, we do want to see or hear your direction related to them. So that's why we are presenting them separately. And this item is one shoreline 40,000 contribution that is in the current budget. So we are participating in the regional efforts related to climate resilience and sea level rise adaptation. So the continuation of this program will require new contributions for the year. So that's... That's what it is. The annual contributions to community nonprofits, again, in the current fiscal year, is included the contribution to Fogfest of 25,000, Pride 5,000 for Pride, 100,000 for Pacific Resource Center, and 10,000 for Pacific Beach Coalition. Again, we group them together. And we'll hear council recommendations related to all these community grants. And the last two are, again, something that we've heard here and there from the community and some of the council's discussions. We included potential pilot programs for the public bathrooms. There is an innovative approach to this with Throne Labs. Some of the council members are well familiar with this. So two pilots that before you hear, one from Fairmont Park and another one from Municipal Pier, which is very critical now. So those services are more like a subscription services that the city would participate in and it comes with the solar system and automatic cleaning, and the reason why you see municipal pier cost is a little bit lower because it's offset by existing services that the city provided up to this point on the existing bathrooms. So total of this request would be 259,000, but again, it's considered as a la carte because you only have 169,000 remaining in the surplus at this point, unless, again, any additional allocation would have to be a trade-off with something else on the list. Next slide. Now we are moving to other funds. And for, well, we're starting with the Housing Action Fund. So this is unrestricted fund. Just as a reminder, the source of revenues for these funds used to be ERAF allocation, which considered to be, well, unstable revenue, and the Council's past policy was to split those revenues between, if we receive it, between the Housing Action Fund and the disaster accounting fund but again for second year in a row we've been keeping this revenues in general fund just to try to stabilize and well as one of the strategies trying to stabilize the organization and keep the budget balanced so here you see a rundown on the housing action fund again projected fund balance for the fund was a little bit over two million dollars at mid-year you see there is no source of funding right now so no designated revenue source. We included in the base budget, there are a portion of two positions charged to the Housing Action Fund for economic development and housing manager and specialist. Again, only a portion of those two positions are allocated to this fund. And what you see in city manager's recommended budget, A NUMBER OF ITEMS THAT CONTINUE ADVANCING COMPLIANCE WITH STATE HOUSING MANDATES AND IMPLEMENTATION OF THE GENERAL PLAN AND HOUSING ELEMENT. AND OBJECTIVE DESIGN STANDARDS WITHIN THE ZONING CODE. ZONING MODERNIZATION AND CODE UPDATES ON CODE PROFESSIONAL SERVICES SUPPORTING HOUSING ELEMENT IMPLEMENTATION. evaluation housing opportunities of public-owned land consistent with the general plan allocation. So altogether, with Council's consideration of TSPP, Temporary Safe Parking Program, all this funding would end up to $934,000, which would essentially... I'm sorry. All these findings will bring the fund balance down to $934,000 if all of these items are approved today. But again, we are looking forward to Council's consideration for TSPP program operations as well. Next slide. And just a few highlights of the other funds, recommendations of the funds. Again, the transfer funding for one of the CSO community services officer position from general fund to the supplemental law enforcement fund grant is again the second part of that transfer that Marisol already mentioned in general fund. There are a number of wastewater fund recommendations. Again, wastewater fund is the enterprise fund. It has no immediate reflection on the city's structural deficit, because the fund is supported by the sewer rates, and you can see several recommendations here. Again, they're independent from the considerations for balancing the budget. On the self-insurance workers' compensation fund, again, the second end of it, what Marisol already mentioned, the transfer in of police department and HR wellness programs. You can see it as the recommendation for appropriation here. Again, I want to highlight this as one time. It's a temporary patch because the Works Compensation Fund can support these programs now, but it cannot do it indefinitely. And the last item on the list is funding for purchasing of four Vehicle replacements in public works and police department. Again, this is ongoing. This request is consistent with our equipment replacement schedule request. It totals to $286,000, and again, it's coming from the motor pool fund right now, not in the general fund. Next slide. So if all of these recommendations are approved or recommended for inclusion in the budget, the total out-of-fund projected fund balances will be $36.1, almost $0.2 million. It's important to note that the enterprise funds and internal service funds, especially motor pool, include capital investments and depreciation. So those are not the cash balances. So they also include the pipes in the ground and depreciation on the vehicles. And total all fund balances will include $55.6 million as listed on this summary page as well. Next slide. So that concludes the budget recommendations, but we also, as I mentioned earlier, we also wanted to touch base on community feedback on the budget. Again, we did a quick flash vote survey, opened it up right after the agenda was published, and you can see 223 Residents responded to the survey, which is a great response. And again, it reflects the difficult choices and trade-offs that we're all facing in our community. And as a summary, residents clearly recognized the city's physical challenges, but also expressed strong desire to preserve some of the core services and maintain infrastructure and public safety. as well as focusing on sustainability and revenue generation. So a few key takeaways. When we ask people what reductions would be most supported by the community, residents generally support administrative and operational cuts. One of the strongest support was transfer of third administration to North County Fire, again, because there is no Well, we don't anticipate the reduction of services here. It's just operating transfer, giving a little bit more capacity to our police department. Residents also prioritized preserving infrastructure maintenance, as well as aquatic programs. There were quite a bit of comments there. Child care and senior transportation. And quite a few comments were related to revenue generation and economic development. in addiction to reduction, so just to focus on future new revenues. Next slide. And when we asked the people what are the services that are most important and they most want to preserve, some of the common themes were about preserving core municipal services like public safety and infrastructure. focusing on long-term economic development goals, again, and strategies, also reviewing staffing and consulting costs for various efficiencies and the right structure, pursuing grants and new revenue opportunities, and also avoiding reductions that may harm the business growth in the community. Next slide. And also included in your packets, the work plan for the upcoming fiscal year. Again, this is the work program. It is one of the attachments in the staff report. It's a program with the staff put together in response to the council strategic planning session on March 7th. Well, we are not asking the council to approve this work program. Again, it's more of a staff interpretation how to achieve the goals and strategies that the council adopted for the strategic planning. And one thing I wanted to point out what we added for the upcoming year is the sum of the items that were already in the plan from the previous year. You can see there is a column here, reasons for not selecting the task, and the reason is all the same reason for organizational capacity, staffing, and budget, because we felt that it was really important to give departments an opportunity to align the strategic, the resources that they will have for the upcoming budget with actual capacity to execute some of the strategic goals. So as you review this document, take a look at those items that have been proposed for delays or not included in the strategic plan. Next slide. So that is essentially the last slide. For the presentation, we anticipate the discussion in council's direction on all of these recommendations and options. All department heads are in the back ready to answer your questions. We are really hoping to receive your direction tonight because we have two weeks to put the final recommendations in the budget and bring the formal bring the full budget for your formal adoption on June 22nd and That will officially conclude the budget development process for the year With that just won't take a moment to thank all the executive team and all the teams who worked on this recommendations as well as Finance and the city manager's office wasn't an easy process and As City Manager mentioned earlier, it's hard to even call the recommended budget because the recommendations are quite painful for the community. So we fully recognize that and we look forward for some solutions.

Thank you, Assistant City Manager Carter and Finance Director Gomez and City Manager Charpentier. Now, these are hard decisions and discussions for us. Coming ahead, and thank you, public, for sticking with us. Sorry for those who had to leave, especially the children that we always love to hear from. Are there any pressing council comments, questions before public comment? Yes.

I have two for prior.

Go ahead.

Public comment. First one is for Sean. You mentioned that the current status is about 20% less staff than the average. If there's a five-day work week, 20% less staff means that we're asking staff to do six days' work. for 15% pay, which seems to me to be like 4.25, four and a quarter days pay. So we're asking staff currently to do six days work for four and a quarter days pay. Is that relatively accurate? Does the math work for you?

Conceptually, there's truth to it, but there's also an element that is hard to price in and that is what doesn't get done. And that represents a loss to the community.

I just want to set the right mindset when people have expectations of staff being able to do miracles with less. What they actually are doing is doing more with less. And I just want to be really, really clear that that's what they've been doing for years.

Yes, Pacifica has a highly efficient staffing structure and highly committed and efficient staff.

And my next question, and last one before public comment, is for Yulia. And no, not my usual ones. I'll save those for later. But looking forward to not this budget, but the following year's budget, is that better or worse than what we're looking at now?

Thank you, Vice Mayor Wright. So the... Again, I'll go back to the point that we've been making for the last probably year or several years, the challenges that Pacifica is facing are structural. So it's not caused by one specific event. It's a number of several things that kind of resulted in some structural deficit, but Structural issue of the revenue is just not keeping up with the expenditures and the cost of providing municipal services. So for the next fiscal year, you're looking for structural deficit again. And without new or renewed revenues, unfortunately, the changes would have to be more structural in the way how we provide services. As we mentioned both Marisol and I throughout the presentation, some of the options that you see in front of you now, they're not sustainable long-term. So these are just the band-aids and the patches to help balance the budget. But if the city is not looking for additional revenues or new solutions, we will be considering more structural changes.

And by structural changes, you mean... Further cuts to service.

Correct, or revisiting how the services have been provided.

Did you want to add anything to that, John?

No, that was a better explanation than I provided, I think, in my intro when I said if we don't find more revenue, changes next year will be dire. We've exhausted one-time solutions, patches,

Thank you. That's all I have for before public comment, but I would like to ask for a point of personal privilege.

Okay. Right now?

After we finish pre-public comment.

Does anyone else have any questions before public comment? Pull your microphone down, please.

I just wanted to make sure that people understand the magnitude of our budget. So we bring in, let's just run the numbers. We're not gonna talk about the pennies and stuff like that or the thousands. So it is, we bring in $53 million and we are spending 57. So for this budget, we are bringing, Marisol gave me that amount but I left it at home. So how much is that one-time amount that we are putting into the budget?

Sure. The one-time amount amounts to just under a million dollars in reductions.

Right. So looking at the budget for next year, we already exhausted those one time. So next time we're not going to have that. And I have one question about the Roy Davis Trust. I don't see it anywhere on the budget. And I was hoping that with that money we could fund the bathroom for Fairmont. Last time I saw that on the budget was I think 600,000?

It's on page 243. Oh, it is?

Okay, so I was hoping that we could have used that money. Don't deliberate for what you want right now. These are just questions until after public comment.

So anyway, I'll leave it like that right for now. And my question is, we need to figure it out how to cut the bleeding, how to kind of go backwards and instead of going negative every year, we need to figure out how to kind of stabilize ourselves, break even, or maybe get there somehow, some, and maybe, I don't know how many years. And that is my question for now.

Sue or Mary, anything right now?

Nope, not till after.

Okay, I have two quick questions. One, I think it was slide 18, if you don't mind pulling that back up. Okay, yeah, that's the one. As Council Member Espinoza pointed out, just looking at the top of that slide, so our total revenues are $53 million. Our total operating expenses are $57. So with the city manager's recommendations, we've cut about $2 million from that. We have to balance a budget by law. And you told us that with... these cuts we would have 169,000 left that we could consider for some of these programs that are maybe on the chopping block now. Can you just explain a little bit more the unassigned fund balance that was 9.7 that's now 12.4. So my understanding is that these are like extra money that's sort of saved It's not money we're generating in a particular year, but money that we've got in a pot that... But some of that we have to keep by state law, right? And then...

Yes, so I'll go over that in more detail. For our policy-level decision, we have 10% of expenditures that we put aside from general fund operating... So some of that increase from the 9.7 to the 12.4 is because we recalculate that number based on the reduced operating expenditures. So two-thirds of that by council policy is set aside for emergencies, and one-third is set aside for economic contingency. The rest of the set aside is the VLF, the Facilities Maintenance and Replacement, compensated absences, child care reserve and legal reserves. Those are set aside by council policy decisions over the years in order to make sure that we do not tap into that portion of the general fund fund balance. However, that does remain out of the removing the assigned reserves and total designations of 8.6 million. There is an assigned fund balance of the 12.4. Normally, unassigned fund balance is utilized for one-time expenditures, things that are not ongoing or not operating in nature. typically those include funding for capital improvements, making one-time debt payments. A lot of cities, if they do have fund balance, they may contribute a little bit more towards their unfunded actuarial liability or paying off debt. If there's two years left, they might want to pay off the two years if they can. And contributing to reserve funds. For instance, the Policy level 10% is your council policy. However, you might want to put aside some more into that restricted reserve. So typically unassigned fund balances are there, but they're typically utilized for one time in nature items.

And I want to add to this that you mentioned that we have to maintain some by state laws. Those that we have to maintain are listed in restricted and non-spendable, so it's already accounted for. So if we go back to unassigned fund balance, there is a GFOA recommendation what the cities should maintain as unassigned fund balance. And the recommendation is at least two months of operating expenses or revenues. So for Pacifica, two months of operating expenditures would be about $9.2 million. So what you see here is about, what, two and a half months? But again, keep in mind that this is the minimum reserve that the GFO recommends to mandate. So we're right there, essentially. And to Mary Sol's point when she said that the best practice to use, yes, you can tap into reserves for capital improvement, And part of the reason why it's acceptable from, again, the GFOA standards, because you invest in infrastructure, you capitalize this infrastructure, and it comes back to you as an asset. Right. That money is still there.

Exactly. It's just in a physical sense.

Okay.

Thank you. That's helpful. So there's about $3 million there, but we really don't want to spend it. And speaking of infrastructure, we didn't really talk about the CIP that is in here, but could you just briefly say what our unfunded CIP total amount is because, you know, things like the seawall and, you know, now the pier improvements and so forth are not funded at this time and are total unfunded.

Well, we earlier reported in November session that we had 371 million in unfunded CIP projects. But we had a slide earlier what the new projects were presented

I understand the new projects. I'm talking about the unfunded. It's still $371 million of unfunded. So all of our roads, we complain about our road paving. And that was before the pier. Okay, those are all my questions right now. So we'll take a five-minute break, and then we'll come back and take public comment. By asking people online to raise your hands so that we can start to get a count in a minute or so. I see more cards are still coming my way. I currently have 34 cards. I know a few people have perhaps left. Yeah. This is what is beautiful about our... How many about the aquatics program? 35. So we're really glad you're here because these are hard decisions, and your input is really important as we deliberate on how we meet our budget. So thank you for being here and for sticking it out with us. And actually, I'm really glad because all of our budget meetings, we don't usually have this many people here, as you can imagine. And I know the presentation was long, but it's really important for you all to see the whole context of what we're facing. and understand because it's going to take more than just tonight's cuts to try to solve this in the long term. We have to work together to bring more money to town. Probably means more building in town. Anyway, there's changes coming so that we can stay viable as a city. So what I was going to suggest, I don't want to, normally we have three-minute public comments. I'm going to suggest that we cut it down to two minutes. I don't want to cut it too much because there's a lot here on this agenda. But even not counting the new cards that I'm getting right now and not counting the people online, that would already put us at about an hour and 15 minutes of public comment. And we have a lot of work to deliberate after you all are done commenting. So does that sound okay to council members to have a two-minute limit? Yeah, and I'll talk about that in a second too. And how many people do we have online now?

We have 11 raised hands. Okay.

So I'd like to cut that off at 11 now. So if you can make a note of who the last call is.

The 11th caller is Jaya Paley. Okay.

I won't remember that. Okay, so, and then the other thing I'd like to suggest, again, just to be mindful of everyone's time so we can get out a little earlier, if you have heard something already said, we don't need you to repeat that again, right? You can say, I agree with so-and-so, like about the pool, right? And I thought I would actually start with the pool. I've organized all the comments because I think a lot of you are here about that. And we received 150 written public comments about the pool. in great detail. Again, thank you. I think we hear you loud and clear already before you speak tonight. So again, if you can just be mindful and try to be as succinct as you can in the two minutes you have so we can move through and do our work. I'd really appreciate it. OK, with that, are we starting with people online? I don't know. I think, yeah, I agree with you. You've been sitting here. They're all at home in their comfortable chairs. And their jammies. And their jammies with their hot chocolates, yeah. Okay, so we'll start with, and I'm going to ask, I'm going to read three names at a time if you can line up so that also saves time in between people. So Howard Brooks Corn, followed by Hamal McCarthy, followed by Joe Pinky. Howard just left. Okay. Thank you. So you are him all.

Oh, sorry. Hello.

Hello.

Hello again. Hello again, everyone. It is a big deal to be the first person to speak about saving our pools, but we must save our public pools.

No clapping. I'm going to have to ask you to leave. No clapping. Just hands, please. Thank you.

I have been a swimmer since day one. In the womb, I was swimming, and when I came out, I learned how to swim at our public pool here in Pacifica, California. When we think about what a community needs, we need public spaces, and we need spaces for children to be able to come to, for communities to be able to gather, and one of the pillars of our community that gathers a numerous amount of people across all ages is our pool. We are now facing a crisis of our pier collapsing, which means that who is coming to Pacifica right now? Are all of the fishers who can no longer fish on this pier able to come to Pacifica and spend their money and revenue also in our town? Oh, I had a minute left.

One more minute.

Okay. And so basically to follow through forward, Please save the pool because it is a space for people to be able to enjoy. Think about it. It is summertime. Kids need to be able to spend their time swimming in the pool. In 10 years down the line, when the ocean has encroached even further upon our shores, do you or do you not want our children in the future to be able to swim the heck out of there, right? I implore you to consider saving the pool as a means to fostering a greater community within Pacifica, because we are a coastal community. We need to know how to swim in order to get into the ocean, in order to surf, and so on. We need to be able to think of other solutions. That one person who was talking about looking into Airbnbs and trying to get them for 170K, observe that further, please. Thank you.

Thank you, I'm out. So Joe Pinky followed by Tanya Mochil and Adrian Zanini. And I'm sorry if I'm butchering some names. Is Joe here in the room? Joe, Tanya, Adrian. Who else? Sorry? Joe, yes.

Good evening, Madam Mayor and Council. To support the pools, Pacific is the greatest resource. It's not the ocean or the hills. We were lucky enough to use the pool after the 2024 renovation for a million dollars that Jefferson Union School District picked up. We got the benefits of that. The cost benefit to the citizens is so high as far as... The overhead it costs to staff it and the agreement we have with the school district right now, which is very beneficial, but we have an obligation to do our share and cover whatever that next agreement is because it's still going to be a great value. I know we're not San Bruno. I know we're not South Lake Tahoe that has recreation centers for their citizens. But this is the best thing we have. And if you miss this agreement deadline in a couple years, the next year, and the citizen loses this natural, this resource that benefits young and old, provides health and camaraderie, it'll be sad. Thank you.

Thank you, too. Please, quiet. Quiet, or I'm going to ask you to leave, okay? Really? So Tanya, and then Adrienne, and then Nancy Smith.

My name is Tanya Mokul. Thank you, council members, for considering all the decisions that you have on your plate. Conducting these meetings, just attending the meeting has been an eye opener. It's been excruciating to watch. And so the idea that you have to make decisions, I appreciate that you consider each one with seriousness. So I'm here about the pool and I've been going there for over 15 years. My children learned how to swim there. I did water polo. We've been part of a community of swimmers and I would gladly pay as a San Francisco resident much more than you're charging me. You're charging me the same as residents pay and I've paid much more in other communities and I think you can consider that option. Looking at Pacifica's neighbors, the San Bruno Pool was just recently built. The Orange Pool in South San Francisco is being renovated. And being on the coast, being part of the peninsula, it's important that you don't get rid of this beautiful pool. Thank you. Thank you, Tanya.

Appreciate it. Okay. Adrian, followed by Nancy Smith, and then Catherine Choi.

Hi, good evening. I'm Adrian Zanini. I'm not going to go through your names because that takes up time. Okay. Please, please. We've got to save the city aquatic services. It turns out that... So many, I mean, there are a lot of people here who I recognize and I don't usually see them in clothes. And to think that we will miss that social interaction, which is so important to the seniors that have been here for a long time. And we want to stay active. We just, to lose the swim lessons, to lose the activities for the kids, to lose all the recreation.

It is a beautiful pool.

It's a beautiful pool. And to think it'll be empty, I just, I mean, I shudder to just think. It doesn't seem that you're saving as much What are people going to do? I mean, I'm just off these notes completely, but hours have been reduced and without warning many times. We bring our own soap and we bring our own shampoo. It's not like we're in this elite system, but this is something else where you can see people of all ages and communities working together and just enjoying each other and We gotta save something about that pool. We just have to. Thank you.

Thank you, Andrea. I've seen you there without clothes on, too.

I know it might seem silly to you guys to do this with your hands, but we can see each and every one of you even better than when you're clapping.

Yeah. So is Nancy Smith still here? I don't see her coming up. Nope. So Catherine Joy, followed by and Scar Lorenz, and then Jean Brink herself.

Hi, I'm Kat. This is my daughter, Harper. My husband and I purchased our home in 2023 in Pacifica. We've been residents for about three years, and since then I've been a consistent user at the pool. The pool has been a big part of my life here. I swam lapsed through my pregnancy, postpartum, and now my daughter's signed up for swim lessons there. Pacifica Beach is a coastal town, and we live by the ocean. Water safety is not a perk. It's a public safety necessity. If we eliminate the program that teaches our kids to swim, we are not saving money. We're creating risk for our children. And let's be clear what that elimination means. The closest public pool is Daly City, four miles away, about 20 minutes, which is impossible for me to get to during our nap time or for me to swim. I'd like to point a comparison that the city should consider. Carlsbad, California also has a coastal city with an aging pool next to a high school. They face similar budget pressures. They didn't cut. They went to voters with a reinvestment plan and passed as Measure J. So I would like the city to reconsider and look into other coastal communities who have similar situations before any budget cuts are made. We'd like to request that the city reconsiders a moderate fee increase and see how other cities have made this effective. Look at grant funding through California State Parks, USA Swimming, Make a Splash Grant, the California Department of Public Health, water safety programs, or San Mateo County Parks and Recs grants. A renewed partnership model with the high school is another consideration. And then finally, that community measure ballot that I said, so that way the people can vote whether or not the city has cuts for this budget. The community funded this bullet in 1974. Nearly 50 years later, we are still here, still defending it. Don't take it away from the future children of Pacifica. Thank you. Thank you so much, Kat.

Hey, Ansgar, followed by Jean.

And please make sure to pull the microphone right in front of your face. Thank you so much.

Good evening. Good evening to everyone here from Pacifica and from elsewhere and city council. My name is Onscar. I grew up here. I grew up going to these pools. I grew up swimming here. It prepared me partially for the surfing here. There is a lot that goes on in the pool, not just swimming. It's a community place. I think people have said that before, so I won't belabor that too much. Water safety, again, to add an exclamation point to that, we have a lot of beaches, a few very steep beaches here. Good water safety is critical for everyone who comes here. One of the biggest things I think is that the aquatics program provides a bunch of jobs for the youth and hopes for their futures. There are not a lot of jobs around here in Pacifica, not entry-level jobs at least. There's construction. There's some other stuff out there. There's restaurants. But to have a high school job, to have a part-time job, to have something where you can actually make a big impact on the community, looking at you guys over there, is a huge thing. Gets people ready for the workforce. Gets people ready for life. Gets people in a community. And I would say, in summation, we benefit more from this program than we would lose through $154,462 budget item suggests. Thank you.

Thank you. Jean Brink, for whom our pool is named, welcome.

Madam Mayor and council people, persons. I have lived in Pacifica for 50 years. I've been going to the pool for 40 years. Although I no longer swim, I do something called aqua jogging, which is just as good for me as swimming, I think. I didn't find out about this until last Thursday, and I was shocked when I got a phone call from a fellow aqua jogger. And when I think about the programs that the aqua, it provides for, from four months old, And I know a woman who is 90 years old who comes and swims, does the aerobics, and does the aqua jogging. So you've got this wide range of ages that you close the pool, and I know, to me, it's devastating. I know you have a big job ahead of you to find the money, but I think there are ways to find the money, and I hope you do, because we need to save the Jean Ebring pool.

Okay, I'll allow that one, because she's famous. So Chris Marshall, followed by Joanne Wolbahawa, and Vic Abatey.

Which is a tough act to follow.

Good evening, mayor and council members. My name is Chris Marshall and I'm here obviously to speak about the proposed defunding. Before any final decision is made on June 22nd, I am asking the council to hold a dedicated public study session or special meeting focused specifically on the pools with full public input and a complete review of alternatives. You do have a handout that will give you some options. Okay, I've been swimming here with many other swimmers, again, some of them for 30 plus years. Many of us swim five days a week. These pools are not just a line item in a budget. They are part of the health, safety, and daily life of this community. If the city defunds the aquatic programs, we are not just talking about losing lap swimming. We've also got the aerobic classes, the water polo, swimming lessons, recreational swimming, lifeguards, swim teams, summer camp. and swim parties. We are talking about taking away a place where people exercise, recover, socialize, learn, and stay safe. Pacifica is a beach town. Teaching children how to swim is not optional here. It is a public safety issue. Children who grow up near the ocean need access to swim lessons. Families need safe, supervised places for children to learn water confidence. Closing or defending these programs would remove one of the most practical safety resources this city has. I'm not gonna reiterate some of the things that people already said, but once a pool program is dismantled, it is not easy to bring it back. You lose staff, lifeguards, instructors, swimmers, programs, and trust. You lose the community rhythm that has been built over years. That should not happen through a rushed budget decision that we only learned about three days ago. I understand the city has financial pressures, but cutting the pools to save approximately $154,000 a year does not seem like a complete solution.

Thank you so much. You're welcome. Okay. Joanne, followed by Vic, and then Tom Judge.

Okay, Madam Mayor and Council, I've been swimming at the pool for 12 years. Let me take you back 50 years when I was a university student at Tulane. My father had an important principle. Son, do everything you can to raise the tuition money. When you've done everything you can, I'm going to step in and help you with the rest of it. Number one, raise the fees, okay? And then... Number two, my wife and I have a 5013C, a nonprofit foundation, and we'd be willing, once that's done and to see how that affects the deficit, to pitch in with a grant to make up for the difference. So we no longer have a deficit there. This is such a wonderful community asset. It has helped so many people, and we all love it, and we're all willing to put our money where our mouth is and save it. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Can you email us so we have your contact information?

Oh, we will.

Appreciate it. OK. Sorry, Vic, followed by Tom Judge, and then Brad Pence.

I'm here in the guise of Vic Abadie, who couldn't make it because he's recovering from serious surgery, but I have a short letter that he's written, and I'll read it. Pacifica should retain lap swimming, aerobics class, recreation swim, swim lessons, and parties at Brink Pool. Some lap swimmers and aerobics class members have no alternate exercise. and thus depend on the pool. Some lessons include surf rescue are vital for water safety, especially here on the ocean. Birthday swim parties, you can't deprive families of those. Budget solutions, increase prices for all pool use enough to eliminate the budget losses. If that means large price increases, so be it. Improve pool hours to attract more swimmers. I have been swimming laps at Brink Pool for decades and many long time regular swimmers quit swimming here for good beginning early 2025 due to reduced pool hours during winter quarter. Closing the pool 9 to 11 a.m. weekdays further alienates lap swimmers, as does closing the pool at 1 p.m. instead of 2 p.m. as in years past. Bed hours would bring back more swimmers and their money. The most economic and feasible solution may be to privatize the pool programs as you did with Pacifica Sea Lines swim team. Please consider doing so. The aquatics programs that bring pool are vital to the community. Create a way to retain those programs. Thank you so much.

Tom, followed by Brad, and then Avis Freeman.

And I'm Tom Judge, so here I am. I don't have much to add to what's been said before. My wife and I have been regular three days a week lap swimmers for the last 20 years. We don't see it as recreation. We see it as a lifeline. And I'm sure we're not alone. There are many people that look to the pool for their lives. And the solution, and also, as has been said many times already, is we're by the ocean. The lifeguard training, the swim lessons are vital for this community. If the prices have to increase, increase the prices. Because this is a program that can fund itself, potentially.

Thank you, Tom. Okay, Brad, is that you? And then Avis and then Dr. Thomas.

Madam Mayor, city council members, my name is Brad Pence. and I've lived in Pacifica for 35 years, and I've been swimming at the pool for over 30 years. I'm a past member and chair of the Parks, Beaches, and Recreation Commission, and so I'm very familiar with how the aquatics program works up at Oceana, and I want to urge you to keep the Oceana swimming pool open. It's important as a resource for families, children, seniors, everyone who depends on exercise, recreation, and relief. It also provides, as people have mentioned, employment opportunities for a lot of people in this community as lifeguards and swim instructors. I understand that there may be financial or operational challenges. I want to commend the staff for coming up with $169,000 surplus in the budget at this point, along with a $12.4 million fund balance. But I respectfully ask that every effort be made to find solutions that allow the Oceana pool to remain open, whether through budget adjustments, increasing fees, fundraising, or volunteer support. I know someone mentioned increasing fees, and I know if you just increase fees 10%, that's $20,000, $22,000. So thank you for listening, and I hope we can work something out.

Thank you, Brad. OK. Avis, followed by Dr. Thomas, and then Igor Kleiner. Avis must be gone. Dr. Thomas. And if I can ask you, if I'm calling your name to please line up so we don't lose so much time in between, I'd appreciate it.

Hello. Mayor Boyles and city council members, like Brad, I've been swimming at the pool since 1993 for lap swimming. And I'm also a chiropractor in town, and I've been working here for 33 years. And it's one of the go-to places that I refer my patients to of all ages. I was on swim teams since I was six, and because of that, I was able to enjoy lakes and rivers and oceans and seas and any kind of water. I'd pretty much jump in without my parents worrying about me, and I'd like to see more children be able to swim safely and not drown or get hurt. And I just can't believe that this program would be considered to be cut. It's just a loving place. I have a lot of friends here from the years I've been swimming. I still compete. And I think there should be a way that someone else would overtake the program and be able to make it profitable and useful. Because once you close it, I don't think it's going to come back. And I do think there's ways to make more money at this pool and make it profitable. So for a health standpoint, I'd like to encourage it and I hope we can find a way. Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Dr. Palmas. So Igor Kleiner and then Kathy Skillicorn. And I butchered that, I'm sure. And I'm not, Igor and Kathy. Maybe Kathy's coming up, but maybe Igor's already gone.

Madam Mayor, city council members, my name's Kathy Skillicorn. I also implore you to find a way to seriously consider reducing the budget elsewhere and saving this pool. I've been in Pacifica 12 years. I swim at this pool. Today I went for the first time to the aquatics program. The woman next to me was 90 years old. She told me that she's been going swimming for the last 12 years because her doctor recommended it. This is a pool that provides social, physical, emotional, and mental health benefits. And it serves seniors, it serves children and families, and it would be very short-sighted to say that you couldn't figure out a way to save this pool and that the health and emotional benefits aren't important. Please consider saving this pool.

Thank you so much. Okay, now moving on to names that don't say pool, but they might be pool. So we'll start with Susan Miller, Lynn Adams, and then Alice Elliott Sowell.

Thank you for listening to all of us. And thank you for the very difficult job that you have to do. I really do appreciate it, as do all of us. First of all, I want you to know how much I love this town. I love it so much, I'm missing the NBA game. Do not tell me what the score is. I left after the first quarter, and he's recording the game. But I love this town so much, I'm missing that game. I'm not going to reiterate what everybody said. I'm just going to tell you I've been here 40 years. I've used this pool all 40 years. Deepwater aerobics, lap swimming kept me strong as a young woman, and now it's what's keeping my joints flexible and lubricated. Please consider keeping the pool open. It'll be very difficult to reinstate it once it's closed. Thank you for your work.

Thank you, Susan.

I'm not a big swimmer, but I agree that the pool should stay open. And perhaps one of the ways that we could keep it open is to turn it over to some of the volunteers to do some of the stuff that costs us money. So volunteerism is really important. And that brings me to the Pacific Beach Coalition and the funding and the budget of a mere $10,000 that's on the chopping block. Now if I was president, which I'm not, I would resign and I would leave and I would pull Pacifica Beach Coalition out of Pacifica if the city does not have their skin in the game. The amount of money we save for the public works, the amount of work we do for Public Works and with Public Works. We have been a team for 25 years, almost 30 years, for the commerce that the Pacific Beach Coalition brings into Pacifica. A mere $10,000 is a slap in the face, and if the city is not on board with finding funds for $10,000, which saves the city hundreds of thousand dollars, I don't know what to say, but I already told you what I would do. Finally, Like I said, volunteerism is really important. And we could look at the Beach Coalition model of having volunteers maintain our beaches, restore our habitat. What else can they do? So I think that is one of the revenue things that we could do that will save Pacifica. We see the dedicated and committed people here. There's a lot more of them out there. Volunteerism is the way to go.

Thank you, Lynn. Alice, followed by Tiger, and then Ellen Haig.

Good evening, Mayor Bowles and city council members. My name is Alice Elliott Sowall, and I have lived in Pacifica for 21 years. I love the pool and the Pacifica Beach Coalition, but I want to speak about the Safe Parking Program. I also want to share that as a college student, I navigated homelessness throughout my undergraduate career. I am now a professor at San Francisco State University and that's why I moved to Pacifica. I understand it's not popular to support the homeless in Pacifica. There are a lot of confusions about homeless people. It's not popular to support marginalized people. It's easy to scapegoat them. But I think about the story of the Good Samaritan and the work that's done to bring the neighbor to the next safe place so they can be a contributing member of society. Without this, other solutions quote unquote will arise as they did for my very good friend when I was an undergraduate who became trafficked because she was homeless. So Pacifica has a real solution. There's a beautiful thing when community members come together, identify a problem, come up with a solution, put that into practice, and what needs to happen is it needs continual support of any amount of money so that they can have that seed money and go to other places to continue that support. So how do we go deep below the fray of the controversy around the homeless people? and avoid further scapegoating. Thank you.

Thank you, Alice. Tiger, Ellen, and then Randy Decker.

Good evening, Honorable Mayor and Council. I am Tiger Jazz Twirl's Big Stick of Pacifica. I echo Lynn's comments regarding the pool. When I first stepped into this council chamber in 2012, I had never heard the name Pacifica Resource Center. Then a young new whippersnapper Anita Reese had gathered about 30 community members into this room two of whom were friends of mine who had been helped by the Resource Center and by the time that it was my turn to speak for the first time ever I had devoted a portion of my three minutes saying wow that Resource Center thing seems like a really good idea. Since that moment in time I have worked for a lady whom I stood in the food bank lines for. I have housed people who were taking in Pacifica Resource Center resources. Aside from serving on the board and volunteering to hand out food to people. I think that if you look at the three major employers in town, one of whom I work for, The vast majority of the people who work for those employers in town qualify for resource center resources, myself included. They act very much as first responders when things get bad in this community. Pacifica Skies Estates, mobile home park, everyone gets kicked out, resource center. Apartment building falling into the ocean, resource center. COVID hits, resource center. They should never have been taken out of the general budget to begin with. And they need to be maintained. They are amongst our first responders. If a tragedy happens, cops need to be called. Resource center. If a house burns down, resource center. If a branch just fell on your house, resource center. Along with the police, the fire, and public works. It is imperative that that money not be touched. It should be put back into the general budget. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Tiger.

Hello, I'm here to speak on behalf of the aquatics program at Oceana.

Sorry, can you tell me your name?

Randy, Randy Decker.

I missed Ellen, so.

I won't repeat any of the stuff that other people have said, although I agree with all of it, and I'm a swimmer myself and use it on a regular basis. What I will say, when hours have been cut at the pool as an effort to save money, I think the pool's actually lost money, and I see Oceana swimmers or bring pool swimmers at San Bruno Pool, Burlingame Pool, Brisbane Pool, all these other pools that charge way more money than Oceana Spring Pool does. And I think it's a missed opportunity. I think the community would support what's necessary. And it doesn't make sense to me that that pool would sit there after the agreement with the school district goes away and it will be empty most of the time and cost them probably the same, almost the same amount of money except for the guard fees. I mean, you still have to heat the pool, keep it clean, so it seems to me like some solution could be made and I would urge you not to end the program without some alternative option for people because then people go away and they don't come back. So I really hope, living on Paloma, just down the street, that that resource is going to continue to be there.

Thank you, Randy. There's Ellen. And then Justin Ferreira and Susan Herring.

Good evening, Mayor Bowles and City Council and staff and members of the community. My name is Ellen Haig, a member of Faith in Action, Bay Area and Coastside Faith in Action. I'm here this evening with a heavy heart, recognizing the serious responsibilities before you and the difficult decisions you're charged with to keep Pacifica moving ahead and on sound financial footing. I urge you once again to preserve and protect the successful safe parking program that will end in a few weeks without continued funding. I believe you understand the value and the importance of the Safe Parking Program. I want to remind you and emphasize there are consequences to not continuing the program. People who are our neighbors and members of our community will be adversely affected, losing the place they temporarily call home as they try to move ahead in their lives. We're talking about 28 folks in our town in the Safe Parking Program. Where will they go? Where will they get the support they need to find permanent housing? They are residents of Pacifica. They are not going to just disappear. As you deliberate on the city budget, please be mindful of the human cost as well as the economic cost of losing our safe parking program. Once it's gone, it will still be needed but virtually impossible to start up again. Thank you and deep gratitude to each of you for your leadership and hard work.

Thank you, Ellen. Justin Ferrer, I don't know if you're still here. Susan Herring and then Gloria Stofan.

Good evening, my name is Justin Ferrer and I've been swimming at Oceana Pool for over 10 years. This pool means so much more than just a place to swim. It's been a second home to me and so many others in our community. Over the years, I've spent countless hours here training, competing, and making friendships that will last a lifetime. This pool has taught me discipline, hard work, resilience, and commitment. It has helped shape me into the person I am today. Most importantly, this pool gave me opportunities I never thought possible. Because of the coaches, teammates, and training environment here, I was able to develop as a swimmer and earn the opportunity to continue my athletic and academic career at the D1 level. Without this pool and the programs it supports, I would not be where I am today. Thank you.

Thank you. Susan, Gloria, and then Suzanne Moore.

Hi, thank you. My name is Susan Herring. I appreciate all of your hard work and I think I don't want to I'm here to advocate for the aquatics programs but I just would like to ask that you don't end them without a guaranteed replacement. I agree with all the people who have come before. They've given solutions. I just want to say my mom was a swimming teacher for many, many years. She taught all of us to swim. My sister, who was younger, could swim before she could walk. It's just so important. She taught drown-proofing and she taught people who couldn't have swum without that program. But anyway, it's really important for health and fitness and safety. So thank you. Thank you, Susan. Thank you.

Gloria, Suzanne, and then Margo Myman.

Good evening, city council members and city staff. My name's Gloria Stofan, longtime resident and homeowner of Pacifica and a member of Faith in Action and Coastside Faith in Action. God, this is a hard night. So many programs are not being funded or funding's being cut. Big decisions. And I feel for the pool, I really do. Recently, on a day in January, a one-day count report on the homeless was sent out to our city police. Pacifica had the highest count of homelessness in San Mateo County. It was just a snapshot of what our coastal city is experiencing. However, this high count shows that there is a need in Pacifica and on the coast. The Pacifica Safe Parking Program is a creative solution in this need. Nearly 40% of the unhoused who have participated in this program have returned to housing. I believe you have all heard this before, that Pacifica Safe Parking Program is the only one of its kind on our coast and in San Mateo County. I urge you as leaders of our city not to completely cut the safe parking program, but to continue in finding creative solutions and the possibility of extending it for just a few more months. Thank you.

Thank you, Gloria. Yeah. Suzanne, Marco, and then Linda Peoples.

Suzanne Moore. And pool people, you had great turnout. Congratulations. I'm also here to discuss something that provides physical and mental well-being to the most vulnerable in our community, and that's support of the Pacifica Resource Center. I also want to say that, as was said by Gloria and Ellen, that this is a program, our Pacifica Safe Parking Program is expiring in just a few weeks, and it has demonstrated that it works. I won't go into the details that have been offered by others, but I do want to just remind why this system works. It provides temporary housing with wraparound services and successful transition to permanent housing. Any program like this is going to help our community. They can reduce homeless living on our streets, mitigate environmental impacts, and improve the community health and well-being. Pacifica's SACE Helping Program works. I would hope that this council might consider token support for this program so that we can demonstrate to other communities that we are committed. And as we work toward what we might be able to do for our program to make it successful here on we can show that we've got this commitment so please do what you can to keep this program and thank you for all your hard work thank you Suzanne is Margo still here oh there she is

Good evening, Mayor Bowles and city council members. I'm Margo Mymon, 21 year resident of Pacifica. I want to congratulate staff for compiling a balanced budget. I know it was very difficult. Even so, I was surprised to see that certain community grants were not included in the city manager's recommended budget. It seems unfathomable, for example, that the city would consider withholding funding for the Pacifica Resource Center. That's one. It also seems unfathomable that the city would consider withholding funding for the Pacific Beach Coalition, As you know, the Beach Coalition hosts two to three events every single weekend, which is equivalent to almost 130 events every year. The heart of the Beach Coalition is its volunteers. Right now, the Beach Coalition has about 40 adult site captains and 60, six zero teens, who serve as assistant site captains. And in 2025, these volunteer site captains hosted over 10,000 other volunteers who came to be PBC events from all over the Bay Area and beyond. So people are coming to Pacifica not only to enjoy the beaches, but for the express purpose of cleaning them up. So even though PBC is volunteer based, of course there are costs associated with running this kind of organization. Not to mention the education programs and Eco Fest and the thousands of pounds of trash and cigarette butts and green waste that are collected. So PBC needs to be in the budget. I think it shouldn't even be consideration for being removed. One more thing, CARP, of course, the Climate Action Plan needs staff support, and I'm not certain that discontinuing participation in one shoreline might exclude us from grant opportunities related to shoreline resilience. Thank you.

Thank you, Marco. Okay, so Linda and then Rhianna Kartzat and Robin Reneals.

Good evening, hardworking city council members. My name is Linda Peebles, a Pacifican for almost 60 years. So, it's the night of making very hard budget choices, and I know it will be very difficult for you. All of you have good hearts. You are compassionate people. but financial circumstances to the city are forcing you to make very tough choices in order to balance the budget. How do you prioritize? What important things need to be maintained? What will be lost in the cuts? How many people will be affected by these cuts? And who will suffer the most? I don't want to be in your shoes tonight, but if I were, I'd ask myself what cuts that would take away the most basic human needs of residents in our community. I think most people would say food and shelter are our most basic human needs. Without shelter, everything goes downhill for people. They can't take care of their families as they would like, it's very hard to hold down a job, and they can't lead a normal life. We've heard the stories about people who end up being houseless. It breaks our heart. That's why Pacifica came up with the Safe Parking Permit program, so that people can recover from the circumstances which led them to their houseless state. It works. It's successful. It's helped a lot of folks, some of whom who even grew up in our own community. So please, if at all possible, I'm urging you not to cut the safe parking program, the shelter that has helped so many people recover from their houselessness and lead normal lives that they long to live. Thank you.

Thank you, Linda. So, Rhiann, Robine, and then Michaela Jennings.

Hello, everyone. Good evening, mayor and city council members. My name is Rhianna Karstead, and I am speaking tonight on behalf of the Fogfest organizing group. I want to first just begin by acknowledging the realities that are facing Pacifica. The city is confronting an extreme budget deficit, and I understand this puts us in a very difficult position, and city council members will be having to make some very hard decisions. I just want you guys to know I greatly respect all of you, and I appreciate you for standing up for our city and representing all of us and making those hard decisions. Having said that, I want to explain why I believe Fogfest is an investment that the city should be considering in their budget. For nearly 40 years, Fogfest has been Pacifica's biggest community event. Throughout the course of one weekend, Fogfest brings over 60,000 visitors to Palmetto Avenue, bringing customers to our restaurants, stores, hotels, and many other local businesses. The Fogfest also showcases our city and community, highlighting everything that makes Pacifica so great. Fogfest is facing a big challenge this year. Sponsorship recruitment is currently behind where it has been in previous years. Like many nonprofits and community organizations, we are finding out that businesses are struggling through financial insecurity just like we are. While our team continues to work hard to secure sponsors and raise funds, the reality is that sponsorship revenue is far below previous year's targets. At the same time, the cost of producing a safe, high-quality community event continues to increase. Public safety requirements, permits, insurance, and most other expenses have all increased. These are all necessary costs to ensure that Fogfest remains safe and successful for attendees. Even in difficult budget years, some investments are worth making because they generate benefits that extend far beyond their expenditure. I believe that Fogfest is one of those investments. It supports Pacifica's unique character and bring residents together when welcoming visitors who spend money throughout our city. Sorry, I wrote a three-minute speech and you guys only gave me two. I would like to request that you consider Fogfest when you're making your budget decisions.

Thank you. Robine, Michaela, and Deirdre Martin.

I don't think she breathed. Good evening, Council Members and Mayor Bowles. My name is Robin Reniels. I'm a board member on the Fog Fest and in support of the parade. and also, like Jean, a 50-year resident of Sharp Park. The Pacific Coast Fog Fest is Pacifica's signature end of September event and a tradition for 39 years. Founded in 1986, the two-day festival along Palmetto Avenue in Sharp Park, one block from the municipal pier, was created to highlight the scenic coast side and promote all things Pacifica. It has since evolved into a massive volunteer-driven community celebration that has raised and donated more than $1.25 million to about 40 nonprofit groups that in turn continue to support Pacifica's community. Please consider finding a way to provide support for Fogfest No. 39 as you did last year. Without your backing, the financial and logistical hurdles might make it impossible for this vital community tradition to return, costing us the beloved 40th anniversary next year. We believe Fogfest represents the heartbeat of Pacifica. A question for the City Attorney. Given this budget deficit, can we supplement our tax revenues and officially use municipal funds to bail us out with California lottery tickets? If that is considered an illegal use of funds or an investment strategy too risky for taxpayers... is there a legal workaround to simply hire a local psychic to read winning Powerball numbers instead? Thank you, and Pacifica does need a peer. Old, new, a peer all the time. Thank you. Thank you. And thanks for all this work, you guys. This is a bleed out, okay? Thanks.

Michaela, Deirdre, and then Marissa back. Mm-hmm.

Hi, my name is Michaela. Nice to see you guys. I will point to Deirdre and say what she said, but she hasn't said it yet. So I will say what Margo said. Thank you. I care a lot about the Pacifica Resource Center, the Pacific Beach Coalition. And also I see that we have a Civic Spark fellow for the CART. And I hope that we could get a little bit more time with that. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay, come on up and tell us the rest, Deirdre. I haven't called Michael yet. He's later. Oh, no, okay, that's all right. I just got your card, so you were later on my deck. I am. We'll let you go. Okay.

You have little kids. I will suggest that the city put strings upon any budget funding for people that cannot demonstrate that they've ever been a resident of Pacifica. We know that San Francisco and other large cities are cracking down on homelessness and oversized vehicles. If they can't manage it with their own budgets, I don't know how we can. So again, I would say if you can't prove you are a member, have ever lived in Pacifica, whether that's your driver's license, voting registration, rental agreements, do not provide funding for them. Move them along. Thank you.

Deirdre, Marissa, and then Candice Sintran.

Deirdre Martin, Pacifica, thank you all for everything you're doing. I do not interview your position this evening. I disagree with that statement severely. Anyway, I actually support the Safe Parking Program, and I think I was helping to stand that up at one point here. So... Talking about the pool, 34 folks were at water aerobics today. Every lane was occupied, and a swim camp of 40 kids were there. So I thought I had a busy day. Oceana Pool had a busy day today. Let's make sure that that keeps going, please. You heard enough of that tonight. As a 18-year site captain of Pacific Beach Coalition, 17 years here right out at this beach. I am here to say that the $10,000 is a drop in the bucket compared to what we do. We bring corporations here two to three times a week. Any weekend you can find a cleanup here. Children in our Pacifica schools rely on our cleanups for their service hours. Father's Day is coming up. Birthday gifts are coming up. Please donate to PBC. Please donate to Pacifica Resource Center. We're still working. They're still working. I support the Pacific Resource Center. Also, Climate Action Resilience Committee, we just stood it up. I see that you kept it in there, but the resources, please read the line items in that packet. It seems very, very minimal what we're getting. We're not going to be able to do much. I do not want to turn into a fog-fest staffing booth committee like I see other committees happen to be. Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Deirdre. Marissa, Candice, and then Jessica Shepard.

Hello. Good evening, mayor and council members. My name is Marissa Beck. I'm speaking on behalf of the Pacifica Sea Lions Aquatic Club that was established in 1964. Many of our current sea lions are here today, and I'm sure some former sea lions as well. The pool provides us with so much. It allows our club to swim there, but it also allows local teens and adults to have jobs. It helps teach all the life-saving safety skills that are necessary in a coastal community. It gives our swimmers an opportunity to be competitive, develop discipline and confidence, It allows spaces for the community members to pursue fitness through their lap swimming, water aerobics, and aqua jogging. It's also a gathering place, as you heard tonight. Many people mentioned that. And it provides a home away from home for many people. Additionally, our particular swim club, we host events that bring in people from out of town who then spend money in Pacifica. at local restaurants and nearby areas. We respectfully ask the council to carefully consider the long-term value of the aquatics facilities that provide to Pacifica, invest in the aquatics as an investment in public health, youth development, safety, and community well-being. We urge you to preserve and support the services that make this facility accessible and successful for residents. Thank you. Thank you.

So Candace, followed by Jessica, and then Toronto Lee.

Good evening, Mayor, members of council, and fellow Pacificans who are still here after almost four hours. I'm certainly in awe. I'm Candace Cintron. It's my first time doing this, so thank you for the opportunity. I'm a mother of an elementary-aged child who I skipped tucking in tonight to be here. He goes to our pool almost weekly, but I'm here for much more than that. I know the choices ahead are incredibly difficult for you, but as you look at department reductions, I beg you to fiercely protect the budget lines that directly impact Pacifica's youth, and I'm so proud and encouraged to see some of them here tonight, sitting through hours of discussion. To our kids, budget cuts aren't lines on a spreadsheet. They mean dangerous potholes on their bike rides, crumbling sidewalks, and reduce youth programming. To protect them and our city's fiscal future, I ask the council to consider practical actions. And I'll just share three, but happy to help dive deeper, pun intended. And to these and any others, I'm really moved by today and I want to help. First, we must aggressively look at revenue generation, not just cuss-cutting. We need to streamline our permitting processes to make Pacifica open for business. By actively attracting small businesses, family-friendly commercial spaces, and multi-day coastal tourism, we can build a resilient, high-yielding sales and hotel tax base that naturally funds our city without constantly relying on our residents' pockets. Second, establish a strict youth and safety buffer. Ensure that any proposed department-by-department reduction completely exempt core neighborhood traffic safety measures and direct youth recreation programming. Third, maximize existing dollars by pursuing joint use agreements with other public and private entities. By partnering to share the costs of maintaining fields, recreational facilities, we can protect youth infrastructure without duplicating expenses.

Candice, I'm sorry, I'm going to have to cut you off. Your time is up, but please do send an email. We'd love to hear your ideas.

Thank you. So let's just build a future for our children and a place that we can all be really proud to live in. Thank you.

Jessica, Toronto, and then Liam Wilson. Jessica, I see you. Come on up.

Hello, hello everyone. Good evening community members and good evening to the council. I want to be the second person to call out that we have been here for a solid three hours and 45 minutes. But we'll get into that in the next item. So I want to ground us all in the reality. I want you to go home tonight, wherever home is to you, and I want you to calculate out how many paychecks you are away from being unhoused yourself. For most people it only takes two, three, but for most it's just one. So when we talk about funding resources like the Safe Parking Program and the Pacifica Resource Center, those are foundational, not just for the people who need them now, but for the people who will eventually need them in the future. So, a few things. Number one, the Pacifica Resource Center is integral to our community being able to function as well as it does. You can donate. Some apps that you get paid through do allow you to do automatic donations from your paycheck, so please, if you haven't already, look into that yourself. Fog Fest, we've been talking about bringing in revenue. That event is the largest event that I've ever gone to in Pacifica, and it needs to be continued to be funded. If we're going to talk about actually bringing businesses and people into the area, that is... one of the biggest events for our city. And then the Pacifica Beach Coalition. We are a coastside beach town. If we have really disgusting beaches, nobody is going to come. We are famous for our Taco Bell cantina, our beautiful views, and our gorgeous mountains. So please, please, please do not cut their funding. All of it is important. All of it is vital. And I recognize that it's a hard decision, but please, please. Please, please fund them appropriately. Thank you. Thank you, Jessica.

Toronto, Liam, and then Gavin back.

Hi, I'm Toronto Lee. I've been swimming with PSL for about six years. And even though I live in San Francisco, I've made the 20-minute drive to Pacifica almost every day because of the opportunities that the swimming pool has given me. I was able to meet some of my lifelong friends. and even qualify for the state championships through swimming at PSL. And I want future kids to get that same opportunity. Thank you.

Thank you. Liam, Gavin, and then Meadow.

Good evening, Mayor and Council Members. I am one of many in here for support for our Gene Brink ePool. My name is Liam Wilson. I started swimming when I was 11 years old. My first job was a lifeguard at the pool, which led me to teaching children through swim lessons recreational camps and lifeguarding, et cetera, stuff like that. But those lessons eventually sparked a passion for me to start coaching. Now I'm a coach here at PSL and I love my job and I love the kids I work with very much. The aquatic programs at the pool are that entry level to getting kids onto our team, which is very beneficial for us, but also very beneficial for the city as we bring in revenue with our events we host three to four a year. Yeah, I really appreciate you being here tonight and helping us out. Thank you, council members.

Thank you, Liam. Gavin Meadow and then Patrick Cavanaugh was my last part.

Hello, city council. I'm Gavin Beck, and I've been swimming with PSL for four years and lifeguarding for almost a year and a half. And the pool has been a huge part of my life. And it's also a big part of a lot of other Pacifica kids. And I would really like for it to keep being a thing in our community. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Meadow? She's gone? Okay. All right, Patrick.

Last but not least, hopefully, this time I rise. Once again, it's Patrick James Cavanaugh, Executive Director of Pacific Beach Coalition. So starting at Lindemar Coastal Cleanup Day 1997, we've hosted monthly cleanups for more than 20 years now, removing more than 200 tons of debris, mobilizing 200,000 volunteers, and recycling 2.5 million, that's right, toxic cigarette butts, turning them from pollutant into picnic table. Our Earth heroes have monitored and restored vital, diverse habitat ecosystems with data sampling, planting, watering, and weeding. While our naturalists, pelican squad, teacher toolkits, school assemblies, field trips, give back events, and emergency communications network continue to expand our capabilities, reach, and accessibility. Our mission-driven programs are strategic, delivering impact and driving awareness while also inviting and inspiring, regenerating and sustaining a multi-generational culture of stewardship in Pacifica and across San Mateo County, both up and down the coastline, from street to beach and creek to sea. Many of you may have joined us at EcoFests, an annual event co-sponsored co-sponsored by the city, and our many proud partners, including Recology of the Coast, North Coast County Water District, and Peninsula Clean Energy. It was a special treat this year to remind all, especially our new city manager, Sean, amongst everybody else, to cherish the fact that steelhead trout still run in San Pedro Creek, surviving just beyond that very much more famous Taco Bell Cantina mentioned before. It's testament to the resilient, rich diversity of our local Bay Area coastal watershed. As I said then on that beautiful day by Pacifica State Beach, no doubt we do live in challenging times of immense opportunity amidst greater uncertainty. As the tides of change rise in a climate of unprecedented risk, refusing to face reality is a fundamental failure to appreciate the irreplaceable. Now more than ever, we must come together with a commitment to collaboration, compassion, and stewardship. Let's cultivate joy and work together for a better tomorrow we can imagine and push towards by taking action today. Good luck with the budget, sincerely. We hope to continue our close collaboration with the city, whether at Pride, at Camp, Went Wild from Pool to Pier, July 5th Dog Surfing, and Fog Fest too. Thank you.

Thank you. And I have one more card from Cindy Abbott in the room.

Somewhere in all of that, there's probably two cards for me on this. So Cindy Abbott, West Shore Park. It's ironic that as Half Moon Bay talks about creating a pool, the Pacific is talking about winding down a 50-year program. We lament about nothing to do for our kids and families. And yet in 150 pages and, you know, robust public comment, we're hearing what this program does and how it's utilized. And as a 15-year parks, beaches, and rec commissioner, there is no program that I know of or that someone on the council knows of that has more to offer this community than the aquatics program. All ages, all abilities, all hours of the day. I think that we need to really think about unintended consequences as well. You cannot create a robust and positive and lively and full community by only reducing expenses. We need to figure this out. I learned that a long time ago in department store retail budgeting. You cannot expense your way to profitability or to community and to continuing on. It will be a less desirable place for everyone. It will stop people from wanting to live here and be here. The aquatics programs brings in visitors to our community, and it could do even more. There was an idea tonight to bring together some folks, and I think that really needs to happen in the next several months. We really need to see the numbers, and I understand that it's more than just the one-time cost that's in the number for this budget, but we need to dig deep and figure out how to keep this program here. So I hope you make that happen. There's not been enough information shared yet at this time. There is a $20,000 budget cut you can do. We do not need the funding for the consultant for the library advisory committee. Thank you, Cindy.

Thank you. Okay, we're not done. So there's comments online, but I just want to do a time check because it's 10 to 10, and we obviously haven't started deliberating, so we're not going to finish by 11. Sorry?

I move we extend to 11.30.

I know I'm going to do that, but I just, I don't want to cut them off. So I just want to make sure we're aware that we need to go long. I second. Okay. To 1130. Can I also ask a question about item five? Does that need to be heard tonight or can that be put off until the next meeting?

Just to complete the vote on this, the motion to extend to 1130 was made by Vice Mayor Bright, seconded by Council Member Beckmeyer. The vote passes unanimously.

Item 5 relates to SB 707. It's a change in state law that must be in effect by July 1st, so it can be moved to the 22nd, but not beyond that.

Okay. All right. Thank you. We'll see how we go. All right. Continuing public comment with people online. We had 11 people before.

The first raised hand is for videographer. Okay. Please go ahead. They are unmuted.

Please go ahead and speak, videographer. If you're having trouble, maybe we'll come back to you. Who's the next person?

The next raised hand is for Sam C. Okay, Sam Casillas, please go ahead.

Thanks, City Council. The cuts to the budget are cuts that will happen regardless of what we say today. There are just no good options here. My concern, though, is when city leadership continues to neglect potential economic development. Right now, the seabull sits derelict due to a developer trying to strong-arm the city to accept yet another condo development that will only add to our deficit because of cost of services. The city was the only... This was the city's only family friendly entertainment business that was generating a minimum of 100K in taxes for our city. Think about that. So as we sit here, we have squandered half a million dollars in revenue from the city because we won't use all our levers to reopen the seaball. We need to get serious about economic development through visitor serving, commercial and stop pandering to developers and get serious about stopping them so that we can have more commercial businesses. Because over the past 20 years, I have lived in Pacifica and seen multiple housing developments have been built, and yet we don't get any more growth from it. Our deficit continues to grow. We need serious leadership that takes... THAT TAKES ACCOUNTABILITY ESPECIALLY FOR HOW THIS COUNCIL SUPPORTED A CITY MANAGER WHO FOR EIGHT YEARS DID NOTHING BUT SACRIFICED OUR ECONOMY TO APPEASE DEVELOPERS AND REAL ESTATE LOBBYISTS. AND WHAT DID WE GET FROM HIM OTHER THAN A DEFICIT THAT CONTINUES TO GROW AND A LACK OF ACCOUNTABILITY? Just think of the millions we lost in legal fees defending developers, developments that should never have been approved. Again, I ask, where is the accountability for all this? We need to get serious about economic development, and the seriousness starts with the Siebel. Get it open again. Thank you.

Thank you, Sam. The next raised hand is for David Rakoski.

Go ahead, David.

Hi, I'm actually Joanne Rakoski. And I appreciate all the hard work and the difficulties that lie ahead for you. Tonight, nevertheless, I'm speaking on behalf of continuation and extension of the Pacifica Safe Parking Program. And I do so on behalf of Faith in Action Bay Area and its coastside members who fully endorse this important program. Now, I am not a resident of Pacifica, but instead I live in El Granada. And from this vantage point, I see the importance of maintaining and actually extending the Pacifica Safe Parking Program. In El Granada, we have many families living in RVs parked along Airport Road and other areas. And these are families who resorted to living in an RV when they had no other options. They're families with young children and working adults who can't afford to move elsewhere. So they live in an RV because it's better than living in a tent. However, their neighbors complain because of illegal waste dumping. The safe parking program is a win-win for both RV dwellers and neighbors. And that's why I advocate for not only its continuation in Pacifica, but working with the Board of Supervisors to extend it further south. The RV dwellers get wraparound assistance to find better housing options and a way of safe dumping. And neighbors no longer have a reason to complain about trash and and pollution of nearby streams. This program has been a documented success. I believe that Pacific can lead the way by continuing the program and by doing so even by funding it in a small manner while continuing to search for alternatives.

Sorry, Joanne, I have to cut you off. Your time is up. And I think we got a written public comment from you, so I really appreciate it. Thank you.

The next raised hand is for Bridget Parr.

Go ahead, Bridget.

Hi, this is Bridget Hart. You can hear me okay? Yes. Great, thanks. So I wanted to get on here and comment. I have a couple of children that have grown up swimming at the pool and I've used it myself socially, swimming and everything. So definitely think it's a great resource. PSL has been a wonderful program that's come through there from even before it was privatized. The lessons, I want to point to the safety of the lessons. You know, I think having a place for our kids to go learn to swim safely in the ocean since we are a coastal town, it is cheaper than emergency services. As I have sat here chatting with friends on text as we're sitting through this meeting, we talked about, you know, The fact that the biggest expenditures looks like it's police and fire. So adding to that through, you know, the safety of our kids at the beaches by utilizing lessons in the... at the pool is really important, let alone the health of lap swim and things like that. I also want to point out to the jobs, my daughter's a lifeguard there as well, and this is an important thing for kids going to college as well. Not only having a job, but in order to get, say, into nursing school, you have to have a job that is in something like lifeguarding, because that is, you have to have those skills walking into college with these jobs. So taking that resource away from our kids is huge as well. And I just want to speak a little bit towards, you know, we were kind of chatting the annual budget it looks like is roughly, you know, 500K for this, for the pool. And, you know, it's a convenient time that the 50-year lease is up, that it'd be an easy out. But maybe look at it from a different perspective. What are ways that we can increase the resources here? Other pools I've seen, they've done, like, movie nights with activities, and they'll have, like, watch Jaws while you're swimming. Or, you know, as 20-somethings and young adults... Thank you, Bridget. I'm sorry.

I have to cut you off. Your time is up. But thank you so much for your comment.

The next raised hand is for Arita. Arita. Okay, go ahead, Erica.

Good evening, everyone. I'm here on behalf of Aquatic Program.

In coastal city like Pacifica, swimming is not a luxury. It's a safety skill, and I have my son here wanting to speak about it as well.

Hi, my name is Hugo. I am 10 years old, and I go to the PSL program too, and I don't want you to shut it because I go there often, four to five days a week, and swimming as that program has saved me multiple times, surfing in this beach.

Thank you. Oh, thank you so much, Arita and Hugo. Great job with your comment. The next raise hands for Lulu Thrower. Go ahead, Lulu.

Hi, my name is Lulu Thrower. I'm a resident here in Pacifica. I'm a lifelong swimmer. I swim masters at Terra Nova Aquatics and also frequent the Oceana Pool. I could write a thesis on how swimming has saved my life quite literally, but I will not do that tonight. I'm here to speak out against the cuts to Pacifica Beach Coalition, Pacifica Resource Center, and Oceana Aquatic Center. I want to reiterate all the comments made tonight and urge council to vote no on the proposed budget cuts. I am concerned, I hear that the budget is a big issue, but I am concerned that council is taking the easy way out and we are not thinking creatively on how we can address these issues. I want to revisit revenue generating efforts. Increasing rates at the pool is a no-brainer, right? Neighboring cities charge twice the amount that we do, so that's something that we could start immediately. We can also look to other cities who have faced similar problems. Another thing I've been talking about with other residents is, as somebody, I live right by the beach here in Lindemeyer, walking distance, and parking is oftentimes a problem, even in front of my own house. So maybe looking into parking passes in our... Neighborhoods close to the beach, Rockaway currently doesn't charge for parking, neither does the pier. Adding lockers to popular surfing spots so people can put their keys in there, that could all... you know, increased revenue, and also looking at some of these line items in the budget. I did hear, and correct me if I'm wrong, $286,000 for new police and city recreational vehicles.

Lulu, I'm sorry. I'm going to have to cut you off. The two minutes is up, but do please email us. We're going to continue these conversations at our next meeting.

The next phrase, Hannah, is for Teresa. Go ahead, Teresa.

Good evening. My name is Teresa and I'm speaking tonight on behalf of Fogfest. This year's Fogfest 39th year as Pacifica's signature community event that draws crowds of over 60,000 to our town. And this year we are facing even bigger budgetary concerns as the cost to host the event rises and the economic impact prohibits businesses from being able to sponsor and donate at the same amount. I understand the budget restraints you are facing, but an investment in Fogfest is an investment in Pacifica. So I'm asking for the City Council to continue to invest in Fogfest and support this community event that also gives a boost to our wonderful maker community and our small businesses. Thank you.

Thank you.

Several members lowered their hands, so the remaining raised hands from the original queue are Jaya Paley and then returning to Videographer. Okay. It looks like Jaya Paley lowered her hand, so we're back to Videographer.

Okay. Go ahead, Videographer. They are unmuted.

Can you hear me?

We can now.

Okay. Stand by.

All right.

Just want to introduce myself. My name is Frank Chiardi. I'm a lifelong resident of Pacifica. I'm an Air Force veteran. I learned how to swim at Terra Nova back in the late 60s. I also earned my lifeguarding position there. I'm co-founded and manage the Mavericks rescue team. Without the pool... You know, growing up, these resources are invaluable to this town, right? My son, who was also born and raised here, learned to swim at the Jean Brink Pool, and his grandfather, Jeff Jones, was a longtime swim coach at Oceana. I appreciate the hard work of our city managers and the colossal job you have balancing this budget when there's not enough cash to cover the costs, but I strongly urge the city of Pacifica to reconsider any proposal to closing the pool as a means of balancing the budget. This pool is more than a recreational facility. It's one of the few resources that serves nearly every demographic of Pacifica. From infants and parent-child swim programs to seniors participating in water aerobics, the pool provides health, safety, fitness, education, and a community connection at all levels. Swimming is not simply recreation in a coastal community like Pacifica, it's a life-saving skill. Our beaches, ocean access points, and water-related activities, they surround our city. The ability to swim can mean the difference between life and death. Over this past decade, tragic drownings and water-related fatalities along the San Mateo coastline and northern California beaches have become increasingly common. As people visit our beaches and coastline, the need for water safety, education, and swim instruction has never been greater. Closing a public school that teaches these skills would move us in the wrong direction. Along with our U.S. Coast Guard and Pillar Point Harbor Patrol partners, we travel to our Pacifica and Half Queen Bay schools, teaching water safety and referring all these kids and their parents to attend Jean Break Pool for affordable swim lessons.

Thank you so much for your comment, Frank. Your time is up, but we appreciate it.

There are no other raised hands from the original queue.

Okay, I'm closing public comment and bringing it back to council. What I was going to suggest... just to kind of hone us in and guide our conversation. I mean, if anyone has any sort of general comments that aren't about a particular line item, cut, or add, you can ask those now. And then my thought was to go through the line items that are listed on packet page 170, and that's where the actual sheets are behind them that give a little bit more information. So if we can maybe pull that page up and then just kind of go down and then we'll see one at a time if we need to discuss the item or if we're okay moving ahead with the recommendation. Does that sound okay?

Yeah, department by department so we can have folks come, our department heads come up.

Yeah, I guess so. That's not the way this sheet is. What was presented to us was different than our packet, so it's just I have everything organized this way.

In your presentation, the slides actually are grouped by departments, so if you want to pull up the presentation, you can discuss it by department by department.

That makes sense, so the staff can come up. And I will need some time to go through and find each one, because I have mine organized a different way. No, it's just the agenda was different than the staff report. So are there any questions, comments that are more general? Or should we dig in?

One very general comment that I'd like to make is that Scott's obviously doing a very, very, very good job if this many people show up to support a program that he runs.

Yeah. And also, they don't just name a pool after anybody. So it's good to have you here.

Okay, well, this isn't the page.

Sarah, can you start us back off at the department pages, slide 11? Thank you.

Okay, so PB&R was the first one. Okay. Any issues with the freeze vacant late lead teacher? That's a preschool teacher that we haven't been able to fill? No? No. Okay. So I'm assuming if we don't get discussion direction, then council is approving that. How do you want us to confirm? Do you want thumbs up on the things that we're going ahead with?

I think discussion about the items where you would like more information or that are highly, I mean, I know they're all problematic, but discussion about ones where you have the most concerns.

Right. Okay.

It is a study session, so no action is being requested other than direction and comment.

Okay. And maybe further research. Right. So that for next time. Okay. Great.

I do think we obviously have to talk about the pool.

No, I know, I'm not there yet. So are we okay with the lead teacher childcare? I'm assuming yes, nobody's talking.

It's a one time expense, it's not an ongoing, it's not gonna help our structural deficit, but it gets us 118,090 for this year.

Right, yeah, okay. And discontinue the senior services transportation program. So that's the van that the city has. And your comments were that the ridership is really low.

And there was alternatives with one of the SAM trans programs that could provide the same on-demand service.

Yeah, okay. And so... maybe you can help me understand so if we discontinue this then those 24 folks will will someone reach out to them and connect them to other services or what happens what happens to those 24 folks yeah uh good evening honorable mayor and city council scott let's see director of park beaches recreation so um there's 24 uh current

seniors signed up for the program. The actual number of daily usage is very low, less than four round trips per day. So there are seniors that are using this program, but it is very low usage. We would reach out to them and put together a list of options that they could use. A lot of these seniors might get a ride with us to the center and then maybe to ride home with a friend. I'm not suggesting that we go out and get friends for everyone or to drive, but there are other options that they've already sort of figured out. And we do have the car program, the Connect-a-Ride program, which they can use a limited number of times per month if that would supplement it. But ultimately, it would be a reduction of a service, so there will be some people who will have to find some other options, and we'll do our best to connect them with them.

Thanks.

For seniors, isn't there like a special Sam Trans service as well that will pick them up at their door? There is some services.

I don't know all of the details. I think we're disabled, but not necessarily all seniors. Right. You have to qualify certain conditions.

Connect Ride is for seniors, though.

Yeah. And Connect Ride is, you said, eight rides a month. So if they're going back and forth instead of going every day to senior programs, they can only come four times a month with those reduced rates.

It does add four rides. That is correct. Okay. Some of these seniors, that's all that they do come on, but there are some that come on a much regular basis.

Is it possible for you to kind of report back if you're finding some issues or maybe some carpooling can be, like I know Calvin Chan is working on carpooling for youth, like maybe just internally that could be something that they could look at themselves or with some help of some volunteers. Yes.

We'll work with the seniors and see if there's some options for them. Without getting too much into details, any time we have volunteers driving people, there's a lot of infrastructure.

Liability issues. Yeah. Okay. And are we selling the van?

We have multiple vehicles we'd have to take a look at. We'd come back and discuss what would happen with it. But we have a minibus and a large van and then regular van. So we have... Use it for a variety of other things, but the big two vehicles we'd be looking at, probably divesting.

Okay, so that might be some additional income coming back.

I'm like, don't sell them yet.

Don't sell them yet.

I said might be. Yeah, and I mean, like you said, there are events and things that you organize with seniors that you need those for, too. Okay, are we okay with that? Thumbs up? People sadly, but... Yeah, that's fine. Okay. All right, the pool. I think we've heard loud and clear about the pool. So remind me, so this budget cut, so the pool services were continuing, so this budget until December, right, and then this budget cut would be for January to June, the other half of the fiscal year.

Let's do a couple quick clarifications. I've listened to a variety of people, lots of people speaking about it. I want to make sure I spoke to it. First off, it's thrown out as $154,000, but that's for half a year. This is a program that gets approximately, currently, in the budget, $300,000 a year in support from the general fund. In reality, it's probably going to be a little higher than that because we are slowly eroding away at our cost recovery because it's hard to continue at that pace. Just if every condition stayed the same. I ALSO WANTED TO SAY THAT WE ARE, THE IDEA FOR THIS IS TO FIND ANOTHER OPERATOR TO TAKE ON A LOT OF THESE TASKS THAT WOULDN'T NECESSARILY BE THE CITY. MAYBE TALK TO, I KNOW THE SWIM TEAM HAS THOUGHT ABOUT THIS AT LEAST IN SOME CAPACITY. THERE ARE OTHER FOR-PROFIT, NON-PROFIT OPERATORS THAT DO AQUARIC PROGRAMS. IT JUST WOULDN'T BE A CITY PROGRAM. AND WE WOULD BE LOOKING AT WORKING WITH THE SCHOOL DISTRICT TO SEE IF THERE IS SOME WAY OF TRANSITIONING SO THAT THE aquatics could continue, but in a different realm, not a city program.

But we don't have any of that information now. So what you're asking us now is to stop the program.

Well, we would use the next six months to see if we could figure that out. But you're right, there is no guarantees. This is all speculative. But we would do our best to work with the school district to work that out.

Scott, if you doubled fees, would that generate enough to run the program for an entire year?

So the answer to that is if we doubled fees and everyone continued to pay their fees, it would cover that. Well, mostly cover that.

By that, you mean a whole year's fees or this $154,000?

If we took all our fees, every swim lesson, every pool pass, the amount of money that we're charging for our rentals, we get a lot of money for rentals, IF WE DOUBLED THAT, IT WOULD PROBABLY COVER THINGS, BUT WE'RE FAIRLY CERTAIN THAT PROGRAMS WOULD DROP OR DIFFERENT INDIVIDUALS AND PROGRAMS WOULD DROP OUT AND WOULD PROBABLY PASS THEIR PRICE POINT. A CERTAIN PRICE POINT YOU DROP OFF, PEOPLE WON'T PAY. JUST A VERY GENERAL STATEMENT, PUBLIC POOLS ARE SUPPORTED BY COMMUNITIES, WHETHER THAT BE SCHOOL COMMUNITIES, CITIES, COUNTIES, ORGANIZATIONS. AND THIS POOL CURRENTLY IS SUPPORTED BY THE GENERAL FUND AND The school district also is putting money into this and has been for its entirety. Whatever fees we charge, we have to charge a lot more money to fully recoup the amount of money that would be required to operate an aquatics program. It's not just us. I've talked to almost all the directors of Park and Rec in the area that have pools and aquatics programs. It's very similar. We're not an outlier. It's just how public aquatics programs work. They're supported by funding outside of fees.

There are a lot of community benefits that are drawn from it, right? Absolutely. So it's an investment in our community.

Right. So if you were targeting a cost recovery model similar to your other programs, which is what, like 80%, something like that?

We would probably need to charge quite a bit more, and it It's in, I believe, the report, but one of the other issues is a long-term problem, just very quickly, is that the pool, we own the pool right now. We are half ownership of the pool. We've been a part of a 50-year joint power agreement with the Jefferson Union High School District. We're 49 and a half years into it. On January 1st, 2027, the pool reverts. It's entirely owned by the school district. We are no longer owners, at which time we're going to be working, if we move forward with aquatics, we've been negotiating with for how much we would pay in rent moving forward. Our current arrangement is to try to cover costs. But I think we've gotten to the better end of the deal. In fact, I know we've gotten to the better end of the deal over the last few years, maybe even longer. And in the future, they're going to need to fill that delta. And lastly, the pool has millions of dollars of deferred maintenance. I mean, we've talked about it, everything from the pier to our buildings and everything. The pool is no different. The school district put in $25 million to fix the roof and repair things about 15 years ago. We put in $80,000 for a new office. The school district's been an incredible partner with all of this. But moving forward, there are millions of dollars of pool heaters, air exchangers. We had to redo the bottom of the pool. I had to resurface it. They have agreements with, say, Daly City, and Daly City says, well, we'll pay half of that or a third of that or a portion of that which could, I assume that they'd be looking for a similar agreement with us, whether that be that we would just promise to pay for a portion of all renovations, or if we just maybe put in, I don't want to quote it, but I'm sure they would ask for a lot of money extra besides rent to cover these future expenses. That's the way that Qualitics programs would work if we were to be paid. There's no defined amount, and we've only had a few discussions, but it would not be the amount we're paying now. It will be more, substantially more, most likely.

And when would we find out that information? I mean, before January 1st, obviously.

We would be negotiating a future MOU with them, and that's part of the discussion is this is the time to have this discussion, regardless of where the city budget situation or the economy is, we'd have this discussion right now as it is a landmark in the pool and aquatic programs. But it is, I wanted to make sure that all the realities were out there when we started discussing this. We have to negotiate in good faith with the Jefferson Union High School District too if we're gonna move forward with whatever agreement we're going to do.

Right. I'm raising my hand. Oh yeah, go ahead. I think that there could be an opportunity for us to have some two on two, like an ad hoc committee to do some two-on-two meetings with the Jefferson Union High School District Board of Trustees to really talk about this before we start ending the aquatics program. I think we need to hold on a second and make sure that we are looking at every avenue that we can, which is I'm sure what we're gonna be saying about every item tonight. But I do think that there's opportunities there to have some discussions directly with the Board of Trustees and us. And just to put it all out on the table and see what they have to say, I think the partnership is strong enough to have these conversations, but we don't know what's going to happen until we have them. And I think that we deserve to have them.

Have you had these discussions? Just very preliminary with other staff, not with any board.

Not with the trustees. No trustees.

Yeah. Yeah. I called Andy Lee yesterday just to see what he knew, and he doesn't know anything yet, right? So he only knew that this conversation was coming up, right? So I agree with you. I don't feel like we have enough information right now. I think it would be helpful to get more to understand how much, I mean, we're doing our fee study. How much more can we raise our fees? Can we do some fundraising? A lot of people mentioned particular grants and partnerships that could maybe help, right, in the health.

It's possible that the school district might have the ability to take on the programs. We don't know this, right, until we have those conversations. But we have to do the political massaging and have those conversations with our partners at the Board of Trustees.

And do we know any other city pools that have a third-party vendor?

A lot of Well, a number of aquatic programs. I know Menlo Park, Palo Alto. Oh, my goodness. I wrote these down, but I can't pull off the top of my head. And Mountain View have transitioned to where they were not operating the pool. In fact, I know there's been some comments about pools that are opening potentially locally nearby, and when I talked to some of the members of their staff, there's a lot of apprehension of how they're going to make it work for long-term as well. It's a great, everyone loves a pool. Everyone loves a pool. They're very clear and you can see it. But it costs a lot of community funding to keep public pools open. And we have to have that to make it work.

It also sounded like we had some community buy-in. Right. for that, so we might want to look at that as well.

Some donations, some fundraising, some volunteer support to take load off of staff. So, I mean, maybe a study session is the right way to go. Maybe we'll let staff come back and recommend.

I like Mary's idea of a two-by-two. What did you say? I said I like your idea of a two-by-two with elected officials.

Yeah, before we make any

decisions to cut a program this program okay so we can't appoint any ad hocs tonight that would be something that staff would come back on also do I hear consensus that we want to try to save the pool and continue our discussions about how to make it work financially we have a lot of other things to talk about if we set this one aside that's 154,000 we need to find somewhere else

I'm just going to put that out there. So we can't go page by page and say this about every item that we come to. But we've already heard from the community, there's a few coming up. They've made it really clear. They expect us to set those aside.

But this isn't something that we need to cut until six months from now, right? But this is, well, I need clarification on that.

We can't because we have an MOU.

The way the budget is put together, though, it shows this as a reduction in the 5% bucket, right? Yes. If we take this off the table, what happens to the rest of those numbers, Marisol and Yulia?

So you would have to find 154,000 elsewhere.

So I would like to frame our conversation with anything we want to change We should start our ticker adding that up because that's going to have to come from somewhere.

So should we start a list of things we'd like to consider not cutting?

Yeah. Might be a good idea. And to the fee schedule, I saw staff answer that that is running a bit behind. So we don't know when that's coming before us at this point at all.

So at this point in time we are looking to bring it back before the end of the calendar year we are Experiencing some delays in some time data a lot of the user fee studies have some time studies that need to be done by each Department and we're still waiting for some feedback there in order to get some draft analysis done and then from there we will be able to do some outreach for comparable cities and comparable fees schedules with the consultant and be able to bring that back. We're hoping to bring that back before the end of the calendar year, although I don't have a definitive month in which that will happen, but we're trying to move it forward as much as possible.

Okay, now that's unfortunate. That's a lot of loss.

And I also want to add that the 60-day public hearing and 60-day wait time will be in play once we bring it forward. So even if we bring it before the end of the year, so you count additional time until the fees can go into effect. So that's partially the reason why we didn't make any assumptions.

Yeah, and I know some fees have to be justified with particular studies? Does something like pool fees have to be also? I mean, like development fees have to be, right? That you're not charging too much.

Correct. This should be reflective of the service cost we provide. And the cost recovery is part of your policy decision.

All costs. for fee schedules need to be based on the reasonable cost of providing the service. So, and that's where the next studies come in. That's the purpose. But they all do need a rationale.

Okay. So my understanding is that we are covered for six months right now with this program.

So, again, for clarity, the current, what is in the budget is funding the pool with a slow sunsetting of it for six months and then not operating from the city would be operating the program starting January 1st. And we would be paying for both getting the revenue and expenditures for the next six months because we're going to honor our JPA with them for sure.

And when you say slowly sunsetting, are you talking about cutting more classes and programs and hours in the next six months?

We suspect if when the pool starts to, if moving forward with the pool, if it were reduced, that there might be less interest as it goes on and we would probably, we don't know. So at this point, the plan would be to expect similar revenue and similar expenditures for half a year, knowing that it's possible that there may be some reductions.

When do we come back for mid-year budget review?

Usually it's the first meeting in March because we need to close the second quarter and we use the half-year mark, reconciled half-year mark to do the analysis. And typically once we come back after the holidays, it takes about a month to put it together.

So we can't just kick this to mid-year because that's too late. That would be a couple months.

That would be, yeah, that would be most realistically March, first meeting of March, maybe last meeting of February, but that would be pushing.

If I may, also, if we're going to continue on with the program, we need to start negotiating with the Jefferson Union. That would be, depending on how this process turns out, if that were where we're going, that we would immediately start that process.

Okay. Okay. All right, so we'll come back to the pool. I'm making a list of things that come in.

Just one more clarification. So that $154,000 represents no rent?

It means that the agreement ends, we would have already paid the rent for the first six months, and we wouldn't pay beyond January 1st. So, yes.

So are we making our little list now, and then we're going to look at everything else? Yes, I'm making a list. All right. So let's go on to the next item. Thank you, Scott.

Wait, are we making a list first?

Thank you, Scott.

I got a list. Oh, well, I mean, how would you like to make a list? Well, I think we're going to need to have our list in order to see what's going on. I don't know. I don't know. I think we need to talk about all the things that we would like to save so that we understand how much money we're looking at.

So I think we need to keep going down so we'll have some savings and then we'll see what we do in terms of the offset.

So we understand in the PB&R slide we're coming back to the Quatics question but the first two are moving forward as is. And then we're moving on to the next department.

We could manage a table in Excel that just shows where these are and where the We do project, I hate to say it, but sort of a surplus. It is identified. And just show where the sum total of things that council may have additional questions about so we can track them for the purposes of this meeting.

Meaning you can do a spreadsheet as we're talking now.

I think so, yeah.

That's correct. That'd be great.

This is the delta of what's in discussion.

Right. Okay, that sounds good. Thank you. We're inviting Captain Glasgow up to speak on the police department. When you guys identify your questions.

Okay. Do we need to talk about the first two, which are money coming in? I appreciate you finding those.

I don't like them, but I can live with them.

Okay. Go ahead, Mary.

Captain, I'm glad you're here. Thank you. I know that CERT is very important to our community, and so I think it would be great to hear from you about your discussions with FIRE and what you think that could look like moving forward as far as like Pacifica, like our volunteers and how will Pacifica like be able to participate in CERT if it's within fire.

Sure. Thank you. Uh, good evening, uh, council bill Glasgow, your police captain. Um, great question. And, uh, as it relates to our CERT program, it is a valuable opportunity for a lot of volunteers in our community to be a part of the police department. Um, we have spoken with North County fire as it relates to the transition of certain emergency services to their, uh, agency. And they currently serve the CERT program under Brisbane and Daly City. So this would be a streamlined process. We're hoping to have compassionate conversations as it relates to the transition of the CERT program to include our CERT leadership team and our current volunteers and how we're going to logistically make that transfer.

Thank you. And is there no cost from them? I mean, there's obviously staff costs for you all serving this meeting right now.

My understanding is the supplies and all that stuff.

Oh, we have someone here from fire.

Maybe I can assist. Let me back up just a minute. So we wouldn't necessarily be running a North County Fire Authority program. That would be kind of the education piece. Each city still would maintain its own, you know, Pacific would still maintain its CERT program, and we'd support it. So currently we already provide classes. We invite people from all three cities to participate. We have people that actually teach from all three cities. We have our own instructors. A lot of times police will come and help us and so forth. We help each other's programs. So basically we would, instead of offering almost duplicate programs, we basically provide the education piece. And then we would support Pacifica's CERT team. So it would still be Pacifica's CERT team. We would just support it. So if they needed training, if they needed something like that. So I don't think you would see a whole lot of change to the program itself. As far as cost-wise, we'd have duplicate instructors. So right now we're providing two classes where we're paying for instructors. So by streamlining this, we have one class. when we offer it, that would eliminate some of that cost. So that's where we would see some cost savings.

And would classes ever be offered here in Pacifica?

Yeah, we would probably move them around. you know, to appropriate places. We'll work with, just like we do with all our programs, we try to make them, you know, get each city involved. We don't like having one city doing everything. So, yeah, we would basically work with the training program, would move around, and then... You might be needed outside.

I'm sorry? I think it's some fireworks.

Oh, fireworks. Okay, sorry. Yeah, we would work with, you know, with each city and see what the needs were and try to accommodate those, but I don't see why we wouldn't be offering trainings here as well as moving around the training.

And what happens to the CERT office, which is right now in police?

That's part of the transition, that compassionate transition of how we're going to logistically make that happen.

So we don't know yet?

More than likely, all CERT responsibilities will now fall under North County Fire Authority.

We have places like the Fire Station 72 and things like that that we could find something here in Pacifica to work with. We haven't got to that level of detail yet.

I'm a little bit concerned. I spoke with Bonnie Miller, who's the director, I'm not sure what her title is, of our CERT program right now. And as of this morning, she hadn't spoken to you yet, Captain Glasgow. And so I know she had a lot of questions.

I was able to touch base with Ms. Miller today.

Okay. My... The concern she raised, too, is that we're just sort of restarting our CERT. It had really struggled under COVID, and they're still a little bit fragile. So anyway, there's some fear and trepidation a little bit about the transition.

And I can understand that. And I think if you're looking at the overall picture of the police department's budgets with the significant vacancies that we currently have, the significant number of officers that are out, there becomes a capacity issue on the ability to continue some of these things. And the partnership that we're going to be able to have with our neighbors at North North County Fire could possibly maybe even enhance this program. Again, it's a transition, and I use the word compassionate transition because there's got to be further dialogue amongst our two entities in order to make this successful.

So this isn't something that would start July 1st necessarily, right?

Well, the budget and the overtime cost, yes, as it relates to the Pacifica Police Department staff, yes, it would.

I just wanted to also add on the police department sheet here, the last item that's marked no is the reduction in police department community outreach and engagement programs. That $75,000 reduction option that wasn't considered right now through the city manager recommendation, also included the CERT program. So in order to sort of save some of the other programs, which was Teen Community Academy, the Community Policing Academy, there's a long list of other options that the police department put forward and reductions to community services. So this was one where we actually get to keep the program but capitalize on some savings here.

City Manager, can you talk about, so there's one line item that says a hiring freeze of one vacant police officer position for six months. And then down below, it just says a freeze of one vacant police officer position. So I'm assuming that one is for a year, correct?

That's correct. And that one, the year-long freeze of a vacant police officer is not recommended anymore.

Can you explain the difference? Like, so I'm seeing something here, like, well, could we just do a hiring freeze for a year instead of for six months? And is that, like, horrible?

You're not going to get my support on that at all. I did a ton of research on this.

I was just asking a question, Greg. I understand.

I'm just being clear.

I mean, one of the priorities was to, we are a service organization, and that service is provided through our hardworking and dedicated employees. And one of the priorities, at least in my recommendation, was to try to protect as many of those services and positions as possible. The police department and also the fire department, they are very service intensive, even for a city. They don't do a lot of general plans or things that we can put off. So that's why we ended up with the recommended freeze for the half of a position. But we also recognize that freezing a full-term position would strain the department and public safety in the community and also require possibly more overtime. So as a way to minimize that impact, I recommended the six-month freeze.

Thank you for the answer. I appreciate that.

Now that we've opened the door on the personnel, though, I would like to discuss some of the things that I came across. I looked up what the average amount of police officers there are in the state of California per 1,000 residents. The average is two per 1,000. Nationwide, it's 2.1 to 2.4. Pacifica, we are less than one. You're correct. We're talking about public safety. We're talking about the people that in the case of a wildfire are the people that are responsible to evacuate us. We are talking about the people in case of a tsunami who are supposed to evacuate us. Manhattan Beach, a similar sized community of 32,000 as compared to 37,000 to 38,000 here in Pacifica. has 72 officers. Talking about a hiring freeze when we have six officers that are approaching retirement age and we don't have people in that funnel is not a sustainable way to provide public safety. And so I just want to be crystal clear, I am not okay with freezing positions.

And I was really just trying to understand the difference and the logic behind it.

No problem. I just wanted to tell you why it is I feel so passionate about how I feel.

I appreciate you, Fred.

Yeah, I was trying to remember what sheet it was on, the hiring freeze for six months, because the discussion actually talked about... Sorry? Sorry? She's looking at the packet. Yeah, and this is where my thing is on a different sheet than this. But what I remember reading is that...

It's page 217.

217, thank you. What I remember reading is that come January 1st, one of our police officers, I think it's Travis's, going to be doing some training of some junior officers, so we're losing another officer. So if we're not recruiting until January, there's not going to be anyone to take that place.

Well, Ms. Mayor, keep in mind there's other vacancies that we're currently trying to fill on top of the one that we're suggesting of the six-month freeze. So those efforts are quite extensive to hire, train, and get an officer recruited. on their own. It's well over a year. We have three officers currently in the police academy that just started last week. They won't be able to hit the streets for over a year. So we're looking at, you know, next time this year that they'll be on the streets solo by themselves. So that's how long it takes on top of a six-month hiring process.

Okay. I think that's what's not really seen here is the other positions that you are trying to fill that are in the budget that we're not talking about tonight. Okay, that makes more sense to me. So you feel okay with this? I'm sure you don't really, but...

I agree with the city manager's recommendation.

Okay, smart. Well put. Okay. Is there anything else that people have concerns about or... be okay moving along with these recommendations.

I am not okay with moving along with these recommendations. I'm not okay with the hiring freeze.

The hiring freeze for six months. That's the only hiring freeze on here. That's correct. Okay. Can we just put that on our little list to come back to you?

If it'll help. I understand it's difficult, but... trying to fill the vacancy positions, it will take some time to get them on board. So this might happen organically, if that helps.

And how will that address the pending cycle? Because it sounds to me like it takes at least a year and a half to end up with somebody who's ready with your retirement cycle. Can you talk about the interplay between those two and how that's going to balance out.

Well, I don't have a crystal ball when those officers, those six officers, me being one of them maybe, as to when they're going to decide to retire. But I also think that strategically our agency has worked extremely hard to continue to recruit and retain the people that we do have. And I think also with some of the strategic budget challenges that we had and the contracts, And the third year coming to next year might have convinced people to stay because you guys have made a tremendous effort in getting our salaries comparable to other agencies. So that's a hard, that's, you know, some people, if they have a 5% leaving on the table, It's making their choice to stay longer better. So we're hoping that those people that are eligible to retire do stay, which will allow us the opportunity to catch up, say those three individuals that I just said that are in the police academy right now. Maybe they'll be able to come out and be ready to go by the time additional transition happens.

So you'll re-up for three more years guaranteed?

I don't think that's what I heard him say. I have a question about fees. Is there such a thing as a public safety fee in developer fee land? If you're building and you're bringing more people into a community that are permanently here, I realize that's not an ongoing refunded fee, but I just wonder.

Well, we would need to talk to our Nexus study consultant who is working on these development impact fees, but my understanding is that they consider everything. They consider all the services that new development will impose, including public safety, public works, right, streets, roads, the service aspect of it.

That's what I'm thinking about. Listening to my council member here.

That is generally considered in our development impact fees.

Yeah, I should also add that we do have what's called a general government impact fee currently, which includes the public safety already. And so in our current development right now and where we are with the development impact fee, we have talked a little bit about what that means to break it out from the general government, which encompasses public service and also increases or sorry, investments in other facilities such as the community center because that's considered general government but separately breaking out public safety to see whether that will impact us or hurt us in the way the fee is generated and in the way the fee is restricted for use so that's going to come back later in the study about policy decision on whether keeping it the same or breaking it out separately

I think something that makes Pacifica and many coastal communities a little bit different is the level of hazard that we have and the influx, as I like to say, with our visitors that come over the hill and you can't drive on Highway 1 because there's so many people coming to visit. They're not bringing their police officers, their firefighters, and their EMTs with them. We're providing those services for them. So I don't know how to quantify that into some way that we can afford to do that and a more thorough job of that, Councilmember Wright. But I'm just thinking maybe there's something there. Thank you.

Can I just also ask real quick what the Supplemental Law Enforcement Grant Fund is typically used for? I saw there was a balance of a few hundred thousand dollars.

Yeah, that's a fund that we have that's grant funded through the state. The state provides us several hundred, or about 100,000, 130,000 a year. And that's to augment programic changes within our organization, such as a cost sharing measure with some of the public safety technology that you guys so graciously provided us the opportunity to expand our resources. and then to include training and specialized equipment.

Okay, thank you.

Could you answer one more quick question? Yes, sir. About how often do people get mandoed?

Oh, people get mandatory quite often. Our minimum is our maximum. If an officer has to go to court, we need to call in someone to cover a shift. If someone calls in sick, we've got to call in someone on overtime someone's on vacation, if someone goes to training, if someone's going to a specialty event. You know, we're currently on emergency scheduling. Our POA and our members of our staff have come up with a creative schedule to lessen the impacts, but we're getting through it. Our people at our department are resilient. It's tough, but... They're seeing the light at the end of the tunnel with those three new officers that are starting the police academy right now. So when staff starts seeing those bodies and those names start filling up on your roster, it really impacts morale and it really boosts things that are going on.

Great question. I'd still advocate for putting the freeze on the list.

Okay, it's on the list. We'll come back to it. Okay, and otherwise we're okay approving these changes. I am. All right. Thank you so much, Captain Glasgow. Appreciate it. We'll move on to the fire department. Oh, there you are.

I apologize. I didn't introduce myself earlier. Deputy Fire Chief with North County Fire, Joel Abelson. Joel Abelson. Thank you, Joel. Okay.

Oh, I have a question about this. Please, Steve. I couldn't even read my own notes on this. So the first item is decreasing the annual transfer to fire equipment replacement fund, and this is for the turnouts and the breathing apparatus?

Self-contained breathing apparatus, which we call SCBA, and also it's where we fund our radios. Oh, radios. We purchased radios fairly recently, and so I imagine they'll last a little bit longer than this. Our first purchase is going to be the turnouts. which is about, we'd have to purchase about two years from now. So we're on a, we rotate, we have two sets of turnouts. They have a 10-year lifespan, so every five years we purchase. So we'll put a new one in and we'll retire the oldest ones.

So if I understood the presentation, Mayor Saul, it's we would have ordinarily put 125 into this. This would be our normal contribution to this fund so that we have the money when it's time to make those purchases. And the recommendation for this budget cycle is to reduce the amount we're putting in to $65,000. Is that correct?

Reducing it by $65,000. So keeping it 60%. 50%.

Okay.

Yes. The contribution would be $60,000.

Okay. And does that... does that contribution still meet your timeline for the things that you need to replace in the short term?

No, I believe we would have to re-up it at some point. We will be able to purchase the turnouts, right? But if we start looking at SCBAs, we're going to have to find more funding for the SCBAs. Okay. Because the SCBAs can be a much substantially larger cost than the turnouts. With the current funding, we will be able to purchase this round of turnouts with the current funding.

Okay, okay. So we're just in a deeper hole next year.

Well, yeah, it'd be a few years out, right? So we're looking about six years until we have to purchase the SCBA, which would be our next big cost. But it's going to be substantially more to do that. In the meantime, we're always looking for grant funding and things like that to do that. But it's getting harder and harder to get that funding. But that'd be great if we can find the funding there, and that would relieve the need for that.