Administration, Investment, & Fiscal Management Board - Regular Meeting

We will call to order the Budget and Audit Committee meeting for May 26th, 2026. And welcome to those of you who have joined us. Why don't we call the roll to establish a quorum?

Thank you, Council Member Talamantes. I'm here. Council Member Maple. I am here. Council Member Guerra. I'm here. And Chair Dickinson.

I'm here.

We have a quorum.

Thank you. And Council Member Maple, would you lead us in the acknowledgment and the pledge?

Please rise if you are able. Rise for the opening acknowledgements in honor of Sacramento's indigenous people and tribal lands. To the original people of this land, the Nisenan people, the Southern Maidu, Valley and Plains Miwok, Patwin Wintun peoples, and the people of the Wilton Rancheria, Sacramento's only federally recognized tribe. May we acknowledge and honor the native people who came before us and still walk beside us today on these ancestral lands by choosing to gather today in the act of practice of acknowledgement and appreciation for Sacramento's indigenous people's histories, contributions, and lives. Remain standing, salute, and pledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

All right. Thank you all for joining us this morning. If you wish to speak on any item on our agenda, you're welcome to do that. You need to fill out a speaker form and deliver that to our clerk here at the front of the chambers, and then we'll make sure to call on you on the item in which you are interested. Please keep in mind that public comment is limited to two minutes, and you can see the clock ticking down as you stand at the podium. So be sure to keep an eye on that so you time your remarks, so you get everything said that you want to get in. And with that, I think we can move to our consent calendar. So do we have any items that members wish to address on the consent calendar? And we have a motion and a second on the consent calendar. Do we have any members of the public who wish to address the committee?

I have no speakers on the consent calendar.

All right. If there's nothing further, then all in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed say no. Any abstentions? Hearing none, the motion passes unanimously. We'll go on to item six, which is the audit of emergency medical services. And because it's an audit, here's our auditor. Yes.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Good morning, Chair Dickinson and members of the Budget and Audit Committee. I'm Farishtha Arari, your City Auditor. With me today is Joe Fleming, who is primarily responsible for completing this audit. And the recommendation that's before you is to accept the audit of the Sacramento Fire Department's Emergency Medical Services and forward it to the full City Council for approval. So first I'd like to provide some background information regarding EMS operations and trends in EMS, in demand for EMS services. The EMS division within the Sacramento Fire Department provides basic life support, advanced life support, and ambulance transport services for the city. 911 calls first go to the Sacramento Police Department Dispatch Center, and then they're transferred for fire and medical calls to the Sacramento Regional Fire EMS Communications Center, who then provides the alert to the stations for units to respond. SFD does not always respond to incidents with ambulances, trucks, or engines. More recently, for non-emergency or low acuity calls, there are other teams that may respond, such as cases for substance abuse or mental health crises. Since fiscal year 2019, Sacramento Fire Department incidents for both fire and medical have risen about 15%. which is more than double the 6% growth that fire operations and EMS staffing have seen during that same period. The number of fire stations has also stayed the same at 24 since 2018. And then to help address this, EMS has more recently also contracted with ambulance services to provide basic life support services. And many EMS operational policies are set by the county EMS agency, though Sacramento Fire Department does maintain its own policy manual. And the state also provides guidance and coordination. In addition, there are outside groups such as the National Fire Protection Association, NFPA, that suggest performance standards that are widely accepted. So our audit objective was to evaluate the quality of the fire department's emergency medical services delivery and identify opportunities for improvement. To do this, we looked at EMS processes from all stages of the operations, so from the point when the dispatch answers the 911 calls to when EMS personnel mobilize and respond to the incidents, and when patients are offloaded for care at the hospitals, if applicable. This provides the perspective of both the provider and the patient, and to do so, we reviewed data on call answer times from the dispatch center, turnout time data for Sacramento Fire Department personnel, responses from patient surveys provided by the city's ambulance billing provider, and accreditation and licensure data maintained by the fire department. Additionally, we reviewed the various policies maintained by the department, operational standards established by county EMS agency, state EMS guidelines and regulations, state codes, and best practices that are suggested by third party organizations such as the NFPA. So for our first finding, we addressed the impact of non-emergency calls, or as I mentioned, low acuity. on SFD operations. So we reviewed data on the disposition of all the different types of 911 calls that SFD responded to in calendar year 2024. So as I mentioned, low acuity calls are things like minor pain or flu-like symptoms or other non-life-threatening medical concerns. And then of the more than 98,000 incidents that we reviewed, most, 61,000 were medical, and about 18,000 of those were low acuity. So in other words, for the most common type of incident, personnel were responding to non-emergency or non-life threatening about 30% of the time. And that means that personnel may be tied up with non-emergency calls when other actual emergencies are occurring, and this can create additional workload burden on EMS personnel. And financially, a rough estimate shows that responding to these incident costs about $4.6 million across ambulance, fire engine, fire truck maintenance, fueling, repairs, and staffing. And combined units spent 1.2 million minutes responding to these calls. About 20% of the incidents were homeless related, meaning that as a share of the city population, there were about four ambulance responses for each person experiencing homelessness compared to about 0.15 incidents for non-homeless individuals in the city. Many of these calls were located in the downtown and midtown areas of the city. As I mentioned, EMS now utilizes multiple types of units that are designed to respond to low acuity incidents with an alternative approach designed specifically for different needs. So for example, they have teams of paramedics that respond to substance abuse related incidents with harm reduction kits and provide follow up visits. So our recommendation for this finding suggests that there is further collaboration that could happen with the dispatch center which could allow for dispatch to directly dispatch alternative response units to calls which is not currently a level of authority that they have. This would also include continued exploration of models like the nurse triage line where non-emergency calls are potentially routed to a nurse over the phone rather than sending out paramedics or EMT to respond in person. In our conversations with the fire department and the dispatch center, they have indicated that they've researched this option and have identified some certain obstacles, but we believe that there might be additional consideration there. And then other strategies could include building out the existing behavioral health crisis hotline, which responds to individuals in mental health crises or ride share options where we can send a ride share to transport individuals to doctor appointments or urgent care instead of taking them to the hospital with an ambulance and Additionally, we recommend that fire department continues to expand its use of alternative response units like the mobile integrated health Team which did roll out earlier this month so one of the challenges that they've indicated for these types of units is that the city is might not be able to bill for some of these services. And so expanding their usage could benefit with also working with state officials and legislators to build out a way that we can get reimbursed for those services. Our second finding is that while EMS providers and hospitals countywide have reduced the time it takes to offload patients from ambulances into the care of the hospitals, there is still room for improvement to meet the offload standard time set by the county policy. In 2023, Assembly Bill 40 was passed to streamline the transfer of care between ambulances and hospitals, and added requirements like establishing a threshold for how much time the hospital has to take in clients. For example, you could set a 30 minute patient offload time for 90% of incidents, and it requires the hospitals to develop protocols to reduce the patient offload times. When we looked at the 2024 data, we calculated that an additional 21 minutes per patient on average ambulance waiting times above that 30 minute offload time, which was about 7,000 hours in total and $970,000 in terms of ambulance operating costs. More recent data in 2025 shows that that time has gone down significantly from the even 2023 data, which was 73 minutes. And the county standard, which was 30 minutes at the time we looked at it, has slowly reduced to get to a 20 minute standard. So fiscal year 26, that standard was 25 minutes. At the end of this calendar year, it's gonna be closer to 23 minutes, and then January, it's gonna be 20 minutes. So our recommendation, is to continue to work with the area hospitals to ensure that they are in compliance with the patient offload times to reduce wait, wall times for the ambulances. The fire department does currently meet monthly with representatives of the area hospitals and insurance providers, as well as neighboring fire chiefs to discuss additional strategies. So we believe that continuing those discussions is gonna be helpful. And they have mentioned that there there have been some changes implemented by the hospitals and so Continuing those changes will also benefit the city Our third finding is that the fire department has not formally adopted turnout time standards to measure their performance against so the NFPA standard is for units to begin traveling within 60 seconds of being notified of the incident 90% of the time. Our review of the turnout time for 2024 was that we were meeting that 60 seconds 60% of the time. And the performance was generally faster during the day and slower in the early morning hours. And at the dispatch level, the dispatch center is also not consistently meeting the call answer times, Again, set by the NFPAs, 90% of calls answered within 15 seconds. Between January 2019 and March 2021, they did exceed that benchmark, and then they've kind of fluctuated over the last couple years on meeting that. So our recommendation is for the fire department to work with the dispatch center to regularly reach the call answering benchmarking times. The dispatch center did state that they are planning to add personnel, which could help expedite call answering and processing times. And then we also recommend that the fire department formally adopt the NFPA standards, especially for turnout times of 60 seconds, 90% of the time. And then our final finding is that the fire department's continuous quality improvement committee roles and responsibilities could be strengthened. The CQI committee is currently exceeding the standards set by county policy to review patient care reports to look for things like gaps in service delivery or identify conduct violations. This work is done by staff on a volunteer basis as funding constraints are. always an issue, and it limits our ability to do fuller reviews of other data, such as patient feedback surveys, and that information is not currently utilized to improve or change the policies and practices of the operations. Additionally, in our review of the licensing and accreditation data, we found that there were some credentials that were listed as expired in the fire department's internal tracking system, Two of those 44 that we had identified were for paramedic licenses. And then lastly, among the fire department's internal policies, many of them were outdated. About 85% of the policies in the EMS division had not been updated in more than 25 years. We recommend for this finding that the CQI committee roles and responsibilities be clarified that the committee is satisfying internal policies and those guidelines set by the state EMS authority. We recommend that patient survey data be incorporated into the quality improvement process and be provided to the Office of Public Safety Accountability and Fire Department's internal investigators where warranted. And we recommend that processes by which employee certifications are reviewed to ensure that they're current and to reinforce processes that prevent certifications from lapsing. And we also recommend that the fire department perform a gap analysis to identify any missing policies that need to be added to their manual of operations in addition to working on updating some of their policies that they currently have. This concludes my presentation. I'd like to thank the fire department for their collaboration and assistance throughout this audit. The response from the department is included at the end of this audit report. And as you can see, they've already begun working on and addressing many of the issues we identified. And before we conclude, I believe the fire department did want to say a couple of words.

Thank you. Chief. Good morning.

Good morning, everyone. I'd like to start out by just thanking Farisha and her auditor team for what they help us with. As we went through this audit, the Sacramento Fire Department has significantly strengthened its EMS division by taking part in the audit. Many of the community medical services that we didn't have before we have today, because we worked through this audit, it showed us places where we could either enhance or be innovative in the region. And you heard us talk about the APOT times, the ambulance patient offload times at the hospitals. That's something we have to collaborate with the hospitals with. And although there may be penalties for us, there's no penalty for the hospital for a slow patient offload time. So we have to foster that relationship with every hospital in the region to get the times that we do have. And as of April, we're down to 28 minutes, which I would have told you would have been unheard of several years ago when we were seeing sometimes four, six hours sitting for patient offload times. Many of the advancements are through our communications center. We have the backbone here in Sacramento County on fire. Having a dedicated fire dispatch center is unique in Sacramento County that we use the whole system. And when I mean the whole system, it's we share a borderless boundary. So companies from the city and the county move across lines, as well as medic units. That also gave us the ability to integrate with the 988 Suicide Crisis Hotline, develop nurse navigation pathways with those other units that you hear us talk about, so the street overdose response team, the MCU, which is a crisis unit, and now MIH, which the two previous ones, SORT and MCU, they are dispatched through text, from dispatch, but the MIH units are dispatched by radio, so that's something new since the audit started. I talked about we're actually a leader in the region in the ambulance patient offload times. We meet monthly with all the clinics, the rehab facilities, insurance providers, the hospitals, and sit down and work on ways to reduce those times. which makes our ambulances more available more often. Modernization and CQI, we talked about a lot. 10,000 certificates that we manage with two people. A lot of those certificates that we hit on, the 40 that were expired, some of them are people that are employees that are going from EMT to paramedic, their EMT license will lapse when they move to paramedic. We did not have anybody work on an ambulance that was not certified. So some of the other certifications that were lapsed were, I think there was 14 or 17 reserves that were licensed in our system, and we no longer have a reserve program. So those licenses go on that lapse category. I think when we talk about NFPA, NFPA is a recommendation across the U.S. If it's not adopted locally, then it is not something that you would typically use. Our dispatch center uses APCO, which is public safety officials that regulate the times that we measure and dispatch. So for us as a city to adopt one NFPA recommendation, we would have to go through council to do that. And it would be, there's a litany of NFPA books that It's daunting when you look at NFPA and the requirements of NFPA across the nation. So we tread lightly with NFPA, I guess is what I'm trying to say. And then the 60-second times that you see for EMS calls, that's because you're not having a turnout and full turnouts before you get on the equipment, so you have less time to get ready. Daytime versus nighttime, I think it's obvious they're coming from a bedside versus being maybe out on the street. So those types of times do slow in the evening times or nighttime. If you have any other questions, I'd just like to finish by thanking both, again, Farishta's team and the EMS team that is behind me and answer any questions you might have for us.

Thanks, Chief. I would say don't go too far. There may be some questions for you. And as we get into discussion, we'll see whether some questions come up or not. So I think, first of all, do we have public comment on this item?

I have no public comment on this item.

Okay. Let's go to Mayor Pro Tem Guerra.

Great. Thank you very much, Chair. First, you know, and maybe, Chief, if you can come back up here because...

You didn't get very far, sorry. Exactly.

And one, let me just thank the auditor and the team. Obviously, the audit is intended for process improvement. You know, how do we look at improving our response issues? But I want to hone in on the finding number one. I think it's the most significant that, you know, that 30% of those calls were of non-emergency were in the downtown area, and I think it was 20%. were primarily on homelessness calls. And there were non-emergency calls. And in essence, there wasn't a rush to the emergency room for an immediate life-threatening situation. And I guess, let me break it down into three places. A place to call, a person to respond, and a place to go here. And so first off, a place to call the 988-911, for lack of a better term, coordination here. How is that evolving? So if there's a mental health call of, most of the time it's our first responders that are out there. Someone sees somebody that's talking to themselves walking in the middle of the street, that's obviously a dangerous situation. and and how are and clearly it's a visible mental health call how does 988 and 911 how are they coordinating those calls together so at the surface level 980 is 988 is a suicide prevention hotline in Sacramento County 911 is

If someone's call doesn't get answered right away, they may go to 911. 988 may divert a call to 911. So if they can't handle the call themselves with their navigators, they're going to divert it to the fire department. So we have those units out on the street now today, which I'm not sure of the metric that we use, but between SORT, MCU, and MIH. Those are our alternative response units that can take that call now, where before we were answering all those calls 100% with either an engine and a medic unit. We still may require a medic unit for some calls, depending on the severity of the call, if the person's cut themselves or something like that and there's bleeding. So it's not a simple answer, I guess, is what I'm starting to say. But we do have more tools to answer the calls with. And the coordination comes at the communication center.

Okay, at the communication center. And then when we're looking at the response here now, and I appreciate moving forward to the mobile crisis unit as well, to reduce the amount of personnel that's not responding to an emergency call as well. Now, how are you guys looking at where to deploy those? Because clearly, I mean, downtown obviously has the largest number of calls when it comes to that population, but we're seeing it throughout the entire city. Can you maybe talk a little bit about what the effort is to reduce the number of non-emergency calls by EMS by using the mobile crisis unit?

Yes, so let me back up just a little bit to go forward. There's actually three different units out on the street. There's a street overdose response team. There's a mobile crisis unit that deals with the psychiatric problems the most. And then you have the MIH unit, which could be non-emergency in-home. Say a loved one needs a prescription filled. That would be an MIH call. They can go in the home, help them with their script, and get it placed. There's a litany of calls that MIH can run because they have clinician with them and a paramedic MCU handles the calls Across the city as well, which is the crisis unit They're handling the non-emergency psychiatric Problems that sometimes elevate and we have that continuity care of care because we have a paramedic on the unit Along with a navigator so those are employed a lot in the downtown. But our companies as well, they have the ability to call what we call a TAD provider and we have over 50 TAD providers working in the department now and that number's growing daily. But that's transport to alternate destination and it's a paramedic that can make triage call that says, hey, this person needs to go to this type of a facility. And the company on scene will stay and wait for a transport. And that transport can happen with a number of different units, including the SORT and the MCU units.

Okay, good. And then I guess the final, more of a, I guess, direction, or you may be already doing this or moving in this direction, but one, Mr. Chair, I'll go ahead and move the recommendation to the council, but also one of the concerns is how we're coordinating with the community wellness response team and the homeless engagement and response team that are county run and could be maybe doing some of that work or maybe a response to that work so that we don't have an EMS call. As you mentioned, if there's a person who's cut themselves and needs a medical immediate response, well, of course, you're going to have an ambulance there. But in many of the situations, at least, when I've done the write-alongs, they're not immediate emergency response calls. They need to be addressed, but I think that's – I think we still have a coordination issue on how to maximize both all the different teams, the MIH, the MCU, the CWRT, and then the HART team, you know. That, I think, is the coordination that I'd like to see moving forward in that effort. And I don't know if you have, you know, Captain Moore, I don't know if you've got some thoughts on this, because I appreciate your, you know, the effort that you've done on this, and I think it's evolved a lot as well.

So, um, captain Moore is not with us today, but he's working on the, um, the, uh, care court for us. And we continue to add to care court, but, um, deputy chief Sharon is here and he does run the EMS division. So I'm going to let him talk about the heart team and CWRT a little bit to answer that question. Great.

And the more files is what I hear, you know,

Hi, Dave Chiron, Deputy Chief. I oversee the EMS and CMS Division. So for your question with 988, so 988 gets essentially two evaluations through the dispatch center. Law enforcement has a contract with 988. They're the first line. And then we at the comm center also have a 988 contract as well for an evaluation of 988. So if an individual calls 911 with a behavioral health emergency, our dispatch center will send it over to 988 for an evaluation. That is done through a phone interview. If that individual hits certain benchmarks, they get referred to the CWRT, which is ran through WellSpace, and then they will respond to the field to the individual. cw cwrt doesn't uh feel comfortable with the incident it gets referred back to the 911 system back to the fire department and then with that we will respond to unit out maybe because there was a scene safety issue maybe they identified a medical component attached to the individual so we'll send a first responder with a an ambulance and then our mobile crisis unit which is a uh paramedic who has a higher level of training for the transport alternative destination program with a clinician, a clinical social worker from Sac County Behavioral Health. That's a zero cost contract that we have with the county that they did specifically with the fire department. And then those individuals will go to the scene. They'll make a determination on what the proper transportation for the individual looks like. In the EMS division and the CMS division, took an overview of we want to send the right resource to the right patient at the right time. Not everybody needs to go to an emergency room. So we will try to identify what's best for the individual that we're responding to. And so they'll make a determination. We have the ability to take people strictly or straight to a behavioral health center for care. They can bypass the emergency room or we'll take them to an emergency room for medical clearance if they hit certain criteria. So that's how we utilize 988 and CWRT.

How many of those are we actually moving to the crib, you know?

Can I just ask a question to clarify at least for me? What you've just described would be responded to with what? Would it be responded to with a, with a truck and an ambulance, with an ambulance only, a truck only, non-fire apparatus?

So after 988 does their evaluation and if it gets pushed back to the fire department for whatever reason they do, it's usually a first responder and an ambulance that'll get dispatched for it. The company officer, the captain, will make a determination on what's needed for the next part. They'll usually cancel the ambulance. Our mobile crisis unit will go out and then they'll do an evaluation on the individual and determine the right course of action for that individual.

So an ambulance would respond

It could either be a paramedic ambulance, depending on the individual, or we'll use one of our contract ambulances.

Right, and then a determination, the captain would make a determination whether that really was necessary to have on scene or not. And the lead paramedic on scene. Yeah, the lead paramedic on scene, okay. Okay, but nonetheless, you've got an ambulance at least out there.

Yeah, if needed, yes.

Okay, okay, I'm sorry, go ahead.

Oh yes, and then the final place is the crib or the crisis receiving center. Is that your primary location to transport somebody?

We'll take individuals to Sac County Medical Health Center or we'll take individuals to Sierra Vista down in the south area. And then there's a couple other agencies that are coming on board with the county. The Transport to Alternative Destination Program organized and ran by the Sac County EMSA that's been approved by the state. So we have to operate within their purview. So they're the ones that hold the contracts with the facilities that we get transport to.

Well, thank you. I appreciate the thanks, Captain Moore. And thank you for the helping in bringing the agencies together to try to coordinate better as well. And so, Mr. Chairman, I think one of the key things here is any other methods where we're diverting folks to additional, like whether it's the crisis receiving center here downtown or Sierra down in the south area, I think that also helps what is occurred on the offload time, because if they go to the ER room, they got to stay there. And it's almost a million dollars in lost cost hours that we're losing there. So thank you, Chairman. I think we'll move the motion there and then the direction on the further coordination with the HART team and the WCRT.

We have a motion to accept the audit and send it on to the council. Is there a second to that motion?

I'm happy to second it.

All right. We have a second from the vice mayor. And vice mayor, you're next.

Yes. First, I want to commend the fire department on getting the wall time down from six hours to 28 minutes. That is huge. And I know it's just, you know, I used to drive by Sutter and Kaiser and I used to see all the ambulances just like parked outside and I thought they could be helping saving people. But right now they're just sitting there waiting to offload. So just want to commend you on your work for that. And then just one question for Frishta, our city auditor. On one of the slides, you said that nearly 20% of the fire incidents in 2024 were flagged as related to homelessness. Because you're doing the homeless audit as well, do you have a dollar amount of what that 20% looks like? What would be?

We did a very high-level calculation of what is 20%, the cost of 20% of the whole fire EMS's division budget. I'm going to have to look it up real quick, if you don't mind. We calculated, if we just did a rough calculation of 20% of their $153 million a year budget, it would be about $30 million. $30 million? Okay. I mean, some of those are, you know, true emergencies, life-threatening. Right. So, but yeah.

Okay. I think my ask then is for when you do your audit of homelessness and you bring it to council, if you can just include that number as a subcategory of city-related expenses, that'd be great. Okay, we can try to think how we, is that audit? If you can plug it into the staff report, just because obviously there are two different audits. Right. But how much money the fire department is spending responding to homelessness related calls, I think is important to factor into the audit. I mean, that's still dollars allocated to this issue that we're trying to address. And so if there's a way that you can plug it into your staff report, that'd be great.

Sure, okay. Yeah, because that audit is gonna be specific to Our expenditure is on the shelters, but I'll see what we can do. Sounds good, thank you. We can highlight it.

Okay, thank you. Just on this same point, I'm assuming of that $30 million, some of that is recovered by Medi-Cal, is that reimbursement, is that true?

I believe so, yeah.

Do you have any kind of estimate on that?

We did not look at their billings or reimbursements, so I'm not sure. I don't know if Fire has some numbers, no?

Yeah, any kind of sense of how much of the homeless response ends up being covered by Medi-Cal reimbursements?

I think what we could do, because there are different focuses, So yes, some of it is recovered through the Medi-Cal reimbursements. We need to get you that number, and we could drill into the straight nine number of the 30 million as well, instead of separating the two, the homeless audit and the EMS audit. We can work with our biller and provide those exact numbers, and we can run it through, run it by Farishta as well, so she can see that.

Okay, I mean, I think that would give us some more complete and accurate picture of what the net cost.

Yeah, there's a lot goes into it, too, because there's some of that percentage are people that call us out and then sign out. They don't want our medical advice. So there's a lot that goes into getting you that final number, but we can get it.

Sure. Okay. Thanks, Chief. I wanted to just explore this general topic a little bit further, and I see Brian back in the the back row, not quite ducking down. Brian, can you shed any further elaboration on this particular subject of emergency medical calls for homeless?

Sure. Brian Pedro, Director, Department of Community Response. I have the unique experience and opportunity to have spent many years with the Fire Department and in the MS Division. So I've looked at this from both sides. If you recall, the department community response was actually brought up to be the alternative response for the city to not have exactly what we have going on with fire and police going to calls that come out as 911 calls but are alternative response calls other than. What we have in DCR, so we're kind of running pilot programs right now. What we have in DCR, we have also an alt response going. Ours, I feel, ties in in that all of our NRCs that are out and providing outreach also provide that sort, that substance outreach along with it. So we also have the kits, no harm kits that we hand out as well. We can transport and we do transport to treatment centers. One of the things I'm also looking at is in our shelters of carving off the people that want to work getting clean and sober into a separate part of our shelters so that when we take them to their appointments to get treatment for the injectables for the chemical dependency, that then they go back into a shelter with others that are also trying to get clean and not just into the general population of our shelters. We are in connection with CWRT. We work with the county HEART team now. So we already have the behavioral health at our fingertips in our outreach setting. We also have the back line to CWRT if we need a crisis response. And then we're looking at July to pilot our program where we're looking at taking the calls on the SAC PD side when they come into 911 and looking at calls that are non-priority, non-emergency alternate calls that we can respond to and then provide outreach or transport to either substance or behavioral health. The treatment to alternate destination is specific to The fire department as an EMS agency because they are an ambulance EMS agency so they need the the certification and Sac County EMS agency to allow them to transport. Because DCR is not an EMS agency, we can simply transport. So it is much easier for us to manage all response. And it's much closer, I mean, as you saw, 20% of these calls are homeless related anyway. It's likely people we already have relationships with, and then it's just a matter of transporting them to where their need is.

So is that transport by the police department or is it by your DCR staff? So this just occurred to me while you were speaking that I know in the past there were lots of instances when the police would be called for a behavioral health issue and they would end up transporting a person, say, to Schmick, for example. And so I'm assuming that still occurs? Yep. And so we... Are we looking... Now, this is making me wonder, are we looking at the total universe of... of what we're doing in terms of response to those who are homeless or on the street or even in shelters, as you've been describing, Brian, and who's the appropriate entity to respond and what's the appropriate intervention and resolution. This is making me wonder about whether we should be taking a look at that whole picture or not. I don't know if that's a question for you or not, but if you want to say something about that.

Sure, yeah, because most, like if you look at just the, I mean, just homelessness alone, we're already, we likely already know all these individuals. We already offer the substance care. We already have connection to behavioral health. So it's already there, we just haven't made it official that DCR is providing the all response. We are in that, we have a pilot now doing essentially what we're doing now, but we have the ability to have, we have nine teams out there with any one of them making contact with somebody who's homeless, somebody with substance, somebody with behavioral health, and then we have the ability to transport them if they need. The key is to grab the individual when they're willing to. I think today, right now, I'm willing to go try and help treat my substance dependency. And so you have to be able to just pick them up then and take them, which we do have that ability now. If you're waiting for somebody to call, it's going to be far and few. And crisis, I'd say there's a little misnomer on crisis because people that are actually in crisis are... are few and far as opposed to many people that we see around that just have a behavioral health concern of some sort that needs to be addressed. Those are the people we're trying to capture. There's very few actual crisis events.

But you're encountering those people by being out in the field, not by responding to calls. Is that right? Say that again. The people you're encountering and you're describing you're encountering them mostly by being out in the field and in contact with them as opposed to responding to a call that says, I need help or hey, this person's in trouble. Can you come help? Is that correct?

Yeah, so we are responding to the 311 calls currently that are called for all those concerns. And then the pilot will be tied into 911 to then dispatch us to those calls. So it'll be both and.

Okay, I see. I mean, we're a little beyond the scope of the audit, but it seems to me that if we want to understand where and how we get more effective and more efficient, we need to see this larger universe. And so it's not so much about what the fire department's doing per se, it's about how that fits in the broader context, it seems to me. And I, you know, yesterday morning, I was coming in on North 12th, And at Salvation Army, there was a fire truck and an ambulance, lights flashing. And I didn't stop to inquire, but I make the assumption that that was a response to someone at the Salvation Army shelter. If that is so, then if my assumption is correct, then could part of that response be a function of your staff's not out in the field on a holiday morning or would it be more likely the nature of the call that went to presumably to 911? Right. So. Maybe the chief wants to respond to that too or as well.

Sure. And I think what we're trying to do is grab the call when it first comes in because it'll come into PD first and getting triaged there and if it's a low-level call that that doesn't so it'll get handed over to fire if there's a medical component to it and So if we grab the call on this side before there's medical then we'll be looking at all the calls in the city for the person that's on the corner and looks uncomfortable and is bothering, is maybe sitting in a business and they're afraid to make contact with them or tell them to leave, that's gonna go to PD to go take that individual out. It's probably somebody that we know anyway and for us to take that call and go over there and find out that it's Bob and say, hey Bob, I don't want you here, Can we get you into shelter? Can we get you into behavioral health? Can we get you any kind of treatment today? Then that clears that call off of their plate. PD didn't respond, ambulances and fire trucks didn't respond. That's the whole purpose of alternative response is to not have these units respond. We're looking at a budget. It's not only a cost savings, but it's a force multiplier for police and fire. Absolutely.

Absolutely. Okay. Thanks, Brian. Chief, did you want to add something to this?

Yeah, I think that Brian sheds a light on a lot of good things. I think what we are stuck with as a city is the 24-7 response that's needed to address these calls like you address the other day, holidays and weekends, nights, the fire department is there and in place and has the backbone infrastructure to answer these calls. And I think the other thing that we often forget is there's no shortage of calls. So the calls that can't be answered or do increase due to being medical in nature, which a lot of them do, and we can get those numbers for you, but They're the ones that the fire department is going to end up answering. Last year, we eliminated about 8,000 calls out of the fire system. And that's not all with our alternate response, but that's us working with dispatch, working with DCR, working with all the partners that we have to reduce the calls to make us more available. So Brian's work that he does with... all response does help both police and fire. There is that medical component that's gonna come back around and that's what we're there for. That's why our units have the paramedics on the units. If a call does increase, you have the continuity of care from no need medical aid to something that turns for the worse. You have a paramedic there that can take them all the way to the hospital. So, yeah.

Okay. Thank you, Chief. And I think we all appreciate the work that you're all doing to try to calibrate the right response with the right people and taking them, if they need transport, to the right place and trying to do that as effectively and as efficiently as possible. And I think, as Brian said, to the extent that we can divert calls from the fire department or the police department to an appropriate level of response but doesn't require your or the police response, it gives us a chance to, you have the opportunity to do other things as do the police and there's no shortage, as you know better than I, of things that you need to do. Thanks for working. I agree with my colleagues. Thank you very much for all the improvements you've made. I want to thank the auditor for giving us a window onto this, which I think has been very helpful. I'll let you sit down. And there's a lot to chew on here, but my thought is that maybe in the context of the homeless audit, I don't know if this will fit in the scope, but But exploring more of this issue of the appropriate level of response with the right people, getting the person addressed to the right place, maybe that's something that we should look at in the course of that audit.

Yeah, we're getting ready to release the next homeless audit next month. Oh, okay. It's going to be focused more on the shelters, but I believe the next one on our work plan is interdepartmental coordination, so I think that would be a good place to explore that.

Okay. Thank you. Oh, Mayor Pro Tem Gara.

Yeah, thank you. And then on the inter-departmental coordination, you read my mind. I punched up right there because I want to, one, thank Captain Moore and Brian Pedro for coming to a meeting that we pulled together on the pathways for CARES Court here. And so I think what I'd like to make sure that when we're looking at departmental coordination, one of the challenges we've seen to address the cyclical part of repeat and frequent utilizers has been the ability for us to transfer information from the fire department, DCRs, HMIS, and also the other agencies that are contacting individuals so that when we are going to the public guardian that they have all of the information. Because what sometimes is not available, and we tease this out with our city attorney's office, is that an individual might have been at the ER five or six times at the crisis receiving center, in and out of, say, the county jail five times, but not all of that is in front of the public guardian when they go before the judge or magistrate. And so the real information about how to provide the best outcome for the individual isn't present. So I think that's an important piece on the dysfunction in communication so that a person who truly needs either guardianship, receivership, or involuntary conservatorship, you have all of the information that is present, and that unfortunately seems to be that there's still a data gap. So when you get to that point, I'd like to make sure that that is part of how do we do process improvement for that, for the data getting to, once it gets out of our agency into say the county or the county council or public guardian. So thank you, Chair.

Thank you. And thank you, Farishta, very much. We have a motion by Mayor Pro Tem Guerra, second by Vice Mayor Telemontes, to approve the audit and send it forward to the full council. Any further comments or questions? If not, all those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed, say no. And any abstentions? Hearing none, the motion carries. Thanks very much. We're on to our next presentation. So let's... Let me get back to my agenda. It's the 2025 Audit of City Employees, Workforce, Diversity, and Salary Trends. We'll turn it over to you, Frishta.

Yes. All right. Well, now, good afternoon, Chair Dickinson and members of the Budget and Audit Committee. Again, I'm Frishta Rari, the City Auditor. And with me is Chevelle Jackson, who is primarily responsible for conducting this audit. And the recommendation before you is to accept the city auditor's 2025 audit of city employees workforce diversity and salary trends and forward to the city council for final approval. All right, so our office has been conducting employee diversity assessments since 2016 when the city council first directed the city auditor to analyze employee diversity and compare the results to the demographics of city of Sacramento residents. This report contains six chapters and analyzes city employee gender and ethnic diversity as of July 1st, 2025, and employee diversity trends from 2016 to 2025. The audit also has a detailed section on the improvements the Human Resources Department has made relating to diversity, equity, and inclusion. Since the last audit, the Office of Diversity and Equity integrated into the Human Resources Department and continues to focus on building a representative and inclusive city of Sacramento. This slide highlights just a few of the improvements identified by the human resources department since our last assessment in 2021. The report has a lot more. And then just a reminder that we did create a city of Sacramento gender and ethnic diversity dashboard to allow users to analyze city employee gender and ethnic diversity of the data on their own. We have updated the dashboard for 2025 And this dashboard is updated annually, and again, just analyzes more, allows you to analyze the data in more ways than just how we have it in the report. First, we want to cover the gender and ethnic diversity of city residents, which is what we use to compare the diversity of city employees. So as the chart on the left shows, the three most populous ethnic and racial groups in the city are white at 28%, Hispanic or Latino at 29%, and Asian at 19. And then the chart on the right shows the gender composition of city residents. There are slightly more females at 51% than males at 49. And the city of Sacramento has also updated ecaps to allow city employees to update a variety of personal details, such as gender identity, sexual orientation, and more. It is a relatively newer option, so we only had about 100 city employees report this information this time around. So we did not include it in our analysis for this year, but hopefully next time around we'll have a lot more data that we can report on. This slide shows the overall gender composition of city employees by department compared to city residents. The red box shows the gender composition of city employees overall is at 36% female and 64% male. And then as you can see highlighted in yellow, mayor and council is closest to the composition of city residents at 51% female and 49% male. And then if you are interested, the audit report does contain additional gender analyses for management and non-management employees. And then again, you can analyze more information on the dashboard. And this chart analyzes the demographics of full-time and part-time city employees by ethnicity or race and gender as of July 1st, 2025. So you can see on the chart about 31% of the employees that identify as white are female and employees that identify as two or more races are the most evenly split by gender with 48% female and 52% male. and that's the closest to city residents. This table analyzes gender composition of full-time and part-time city employees by department as of July 1st, 2016 to 2025, so there's a lot of data, but just highlighting one of the departments, you can see there has, some departments, there has not been much change in those 10 years, and in others, there has been slight changes. departments with more staff, such as the fire department, it is kind of harder to see changes very quickly. This chart shows the gender composition of legacy staff, which we identify in this report as those that were hired prior to July 1st, 2024, compared to the newly hired employees, which were those hired after July 1st, 2024. So the chart on the left shows the gender composition of all newly hired staff. There were 953 newly hired employees during fiscal year 2025. 52% of them were male and 48% were female, which is really close to the gender composition of city residents when you compare that to the legacy staff or all staff. And then the chart on the right shows the gender composition of newly hired management staff during that same time period. There were about 20 newly hired management staff during fiscal year 2025, and 55% of them were male, 45% female. This chart identifies the ethnic and racial composition of full-time and part-time employees by department compared to that of city residents. And as you can see, there is a deviation from the city population in many of the ethnic and racial groups overall in the city and in some departments. This chart shows the percentage point difference of the ethnicities and races of full-time and part-time city employees in each department in relation to that of the city of Sacramento residents. The scale at the bottom shows the extent difference. I do wanna note that the color scale just reflects the direction and size of the percentage point difference. The use of red and green doesn't really convey that, like one is a positive or one is a negative. This chart shows the trend of the ethnic and racial composition of all city employees for the past ten years. So as you can see, the white ethnic group has been the largest each year, but it has been trending downwards while Hispanic or Latino has been trending upwards over the years. And then there are other groups such as Asian and two or more that also appear to be trending up a little bit. This chart shows the gender composition, again, of the legacy staff compared to newly hired employees. The left chart shows all newly hired employees. And as I mentioned, there were 953 during fiscal year 2025. And you can see of the newly hired employees, their gender and ethnic diversity is closer to that of city residents. And then the chart on the right is similar data for the 20 new management employees that were hired in 2025. We'll go into a little bit of the salary analysis that we also did. This chart shows the average salaries of full-time employees by gender and ethnicity for 2025. As shown on the chart, Male employees, on average, have a higher salary than female employees in all ethnic groups. The lighter blue column is always higher, pretty much, than the darker blue column. And in addition, those that identify as black or African American did tend to have a lower average salary. This chart shows the average salary of full-time city employees by gender for the last 10 years. And as you can see, there is still a gap between the two genders. But in 2016, the average salary for female employees was 84.5% of the average salary of male city employees. And 2025, it improved slightly to 85.6%. And then this chart shows a similar analysis for only the management employees. In 2016, the average salary of female employees was 84.4% of the average salary of male employees, and by 2025, it did increase to 86.6%. And then finally, this chart is similar to the last two charts, but analyzes all employees excluding part-time and sworn employees in the police and fire department. And when we do that, you can see that the pay gap narrows significantly. So in 2016, the average salary for full-time non-sworn female employees was 90.1% of the average salary of full-time non-sworn male employees, and by 2025, the gap was narrowed to 97.2%. And then this table identifies the average salaries of full-time employees by ethnic racial groups and gender, and the ratio of earnings relative to white males, which is the largest group in the city. And as you can see, male groups did tend to be higher on the list, and female groups tended to be more on the bottom. We also did analysis of each department over time that contains gender, ethnic and racial and salary information. The analysis for each department can be found in chapter six of the report. And again, our online dashboard allows anyone to analyze all this data in any particular way that they would like. This concludes my presentation, but I'm going to hand it over to the HR department, who also did want to provide some additional information on their efforts.

Okay, thank you.

Good afternoon. Good afternoon, budget and audit committee members. I'm Samantha Hardy, the interim human resources director. Human resources appreciates the opportunity to highlight our initiatives supporting workforce diversity, equity, and inclusive recruitment practices. This afternoon, Diversity and Equity Manager Ami Zenzile-Barnes will provide an overview of the work being led by the Office of Diversity and Equity. And then Employment Services Manager Ebony Heaven will review HR's recruitment strategies and ongoing efforts to strengthen outreach, access, and workforce representation. And so with that, I will turn it over to Ami.

Good afternoon.

Good afternoon. Good afternoon members of the Budget and Audit Committee and those in the dais and those online. Glad to be here. So let's jump right in. Workforce equity. This is our definition of workforce equity that we adapted from the City of Seattle. It is a workforce that is inclusive of people of color and other marginalized and underrepresented groups. And the most important piece of this is understanding structural and historical barriers but also we want to reflect through the depth and breadth of the organization. Workforce equity is very dynamic, and while our report definitely reflects the trends that are encouraging of signs of workforce diversity and the efforts that we are doing, we know that this is ongoing work and it doesn't stop. So to meet our workforce equity goal, it requires ongoing and sustained systemic effort that commits to engaging with staff leadership and care holders throughout the organization. So I really want to highlight that workforce equity is the principle and it's a practice, it's a process of ensuring fairness and justice within the organization's employment practices, creating an environment where all individuals have a genuine opportunity to succeed, contribute, challenge, advance, regardless of background, lived experiences, or identity. So the key aspects that you see on the slide there are all dynamic, nonlinear, and they're happening simultaneously. Some of our goals and efforts are to eliminate disparities, fair access to opportunities, career growth and advancement, fair treatment and respect, tailored strategies of support and resources as well, and of course, dismantling systemic and procedural barriers. Our race, gender, and equity action plan is just one of those initiatives to help do that. And I do, to make alive and operationalize all those dimensions of workforce equity, collectively and citywide. So I'd like to thank Assistant City Manager Laney and Interim HR Director Samantha Hardy for their leadership and facilitation. Leadership is critical in this area to move these initiatives forward. I'd also like to extend an appreciation to former HR director Shelly Banks Robinson as well for helping advance this work. From 2020 to 2025, Workforce Equity Goal was the central focus of the Race, Gender, and Equity Action Plan. As a plan, it facilitated normalizing and organizing our equity work across the city and operationalizing racial equity and using a shared analysis and vocabulary, building capacity, implementing equity tools, partnering with others, using data and metrics, and also operating with a sense of urgency as well, to meet our goal to reflect the city to better serve the city. This is just a brief timeline of those efforts. Our journey began, and wanted to give you a breath of this, because this journey began in 2018 with the establishment of the office, but it was also the city's commitment to advance workforce diversity, not only inside the organization, but external. So the cohort began with the Government Alliance on Race and Equity in 2018-19. There, a cohort of city leaders began to work, apply racial equity lens, look at data, and really try to understand what was happening in their departments. And so 14 outcomes and actions of the Race, Gender, and Equity Action Plan were created in 2020. And then that little thing called COVID hit, and that's right when we were launching the plan. but we were still able to do that through the virtual environment. We also began to form and support equity teams, which began in 23, 24, and then we also established our equity team convening in 23 as well, so that it would maintain the ongoing work and capacity building of our equity teams. A central approach, which is a national best practice of the Government Alliance on Race and Equity, also known as GAER, this approach is affectionately called VNU. It's visualize, normalize, organize, and operationalize. It is the guiding framework that informs our office and our work, it shapes strategy, it shapes our efforts and capacity building. It's important that we start off with visualizing because it's important to see and understand what does it feel like to have a Sacramento that looks and reflects everyone but also works for everyone. Normalizing racial equity and equity as a key value in our decision making creating shared understanding and then organizing building staff capacity and collaboration across departments to break down silos in order to make sure that this work takes root and then operationalizing it is putting into action for decision making analysis measurement and accountability the rgap since 2022 consistently has had 14 outcomes. It has 15 departments, including two charter offices. We also were able to do a 43 equity point department assessment profile. We're currently working with city leadership to actually launch that redone assessment and profile that alternates with the employee engagement survey that is conducted out of the city manager's office. It is also, we've also been able to do in-person as well as virtual foundational racial equity and role of government trainings. And of course, the first phase of our development equity leadership through action. The ongoing work and support I really want to thank the equity teams for their work and dedication and leadership over the years. This work takes not just the small and mighty team of the Office of Diversity and Equity, the HR department is behind this, as well as the city manager's office, but the equity teams in the departments working and talking with city leadership and trying to understand the nuances to this work are critical to advance this work moving forward. So this is just a brief timeline of the ongoing work and support. And the two things that I really wanna highlight here is that this work is emerging from workforce equity. We want to look at other systems and processes and procedures with the Race, Gender, and Equity Action Plan, but not lose workforce equity. The other key piece is that we are integrating the results-based accountability framework which is Clear Impact Software Program, which is also known as RBA, which is about identifying key equity-centered performance measures that advance equity, but also that tells the story of what those performance measures and those outcomes are. So that's really the transformation of the RGAP moving beyond 2025. What we learned, we learned that the most common RGAP outcomes that teams resonated with or felt they needed to work on were two, 10, 13, and 14. Two and 10 were often paired together. As you can see, this was about career development or outreach strategies. 13 and 14 was about capacity building, career development, professional development. And so those were often paired together as well. Some of the changes that we have been able to see has been better collaboration across city departments, the normalization of this work, and in the hiring and interviewing process, which you'll hear more a little for the rest of the presentation, departments being more organized in their efforts and more thoughtful about embedding equity at the beginning of the process, expansive in thinking and looking at external care holders and how community can help and collaborate and in terms of advancing messages around outreach and encouraging communities of color as well as marginalized communities to see the city as an employer. While the cohort that began in 2018 reflected the depth and breadth of our city leadership, the one lesson learned is that it's important to develop goals and performance measures without the input of staff cannot necessarily make those performance measures take root. And that's informing our process about how we're transforming the RGAP currently. And in that transformation is, as I mentioned, equity-centered results-based accountability framework, which we're very excited about. This is a very precise framework where you identify performance measures that are directly from the equity teams They're equity centered. We've been able to collaborate with the Sacramento County Department of Family and Child Services at the county in order to access this clear impact software, which will enable us to do a turn the curve strategy on these performance measures. So we're very excited about that. That came off the heels and as a result of the networking, because we had a race, gender and equity action plan, we were positioned and invited by the Government Alliance on Race and Equity to participate in their jurisdiction evaluation learning exchange from October 2024 to 2025. This enabled us to receive technical assistance, especially during budget challenges. To receive that technical assistance really boosted the way that we're going to collect data, the way that we report the results, and the way that we'll be able to support the equity teams. Ongoing efforts, 2025 and beyond, employee resource groups. Want to highlight here that all of our new hires receive information about ERGs during onboarding and through the city's learning management system, including opportunities to get involved. Our office is also a point and a liaison for all ERGs as well. In addition, all employees receive annual communication regarding ERG opportunities and participation And in September of 2025, the city implemented the employee resource group policy to further the city's goal of reflecting the community we serve. And so our office is currently working with the Office of, excuse me, the African American Leadership Employee Council, Asian Pacific Islander ERG, Women's ERG, and the LGBTQ plus ERG to support the establishment and recognition of these structures under the ERG policy framework. Also want to extend an appreciation to the efforts of city staff, Emilio from the city attorney's office, Jessica from community engagement, council staff, Eduardo from Vice Mayor Talamante's office, along with the Vice Mayor Talamante's and Mayor Pro Tem Guerra to help bring staff community together to see the interest for a Latinx Hispanic ERG.

So really appreciate that.

um the developing uh equity action through leadership that's our delta program so in 2024 we did listening sessions with staff particularly staff who are not in offices or have access to offices we wanted to understand how we can help build the capacity and include them in trainings and other initiatives and efforts around diversity equity and inclusion and racial equity in that and so that will be informing our program. Our future goals currently right now are to create managerial tracks as well as develop learning journeys through the city's learning management system. We also in 2025 implemented our curiosity and openness series along with our annual 21 day racial equity habit building challenge. Lastly, we will be working with city leadership on the implementation of an equity point assessment to measure areas of organizational commitment measurement to continuous quality improvement. This will not only help us understand the needs of departments, but it will help us elevate strategies to a city-wide level as well as inform future work. The RGAP was intended to be a five-year plan. We know practices needs and strategies need to change. We are at exciting time to strategically align and embed equity-centered RBA results-based accountability as an approach to implement city equity-centered initiatives, which are currently underway. Efforts, long-range planning, and strategic priorities of city leadership and council, as outlined in the Sacramento Centered on Race and Equity Work Plan, just approved by the Racial Equity Committee, and of course the One City, One Future strategic priorities plan that was just launched earlier this month as well. So now I'll turn it over to our colleague, Ebony.

Good afternoon. My name is Ebony. Hi. My name is Ebony Heaven, human resources manager for employment services in the HR department. And I'd like to discuss a few recruitment strategies we've implemented to diversify our workforce. Employment Services has focused heavily on modernizing recruitment processes to improve both efficiency and accessibility. One of the most significant advances has been the expansion of online civil service examinations, allowing applicants to complete examinations remotely and on a flexible schedule. This approach broadens access to candidates who may otherwise face barriers to attending in-person examinations. Additionally, we've implemented automated scoring methods, particularly with training and experience examinations, which has significantly reduced manual processing time. Collectively, these efforts have shortened recruitment timelines by approximately five to eight weeks while also improving consistency, confidentiality, and overall operational efficiency. A major priority for HR has been ensuring that recruitment practices align with the city's equity and inclusion goals. Since 2023, all staff participating on an interview panel are required to complete an implicit bias training focused on recognizing and minimizing unconscious bias during the interview process. We have also worked to modernize examination content and classification specifications by removing gender specific language or exclusionary language and partnering with vendors to ensure equitable assessments and practices. In addition, Human Resources is reviewing minimum qualifications across classifications to identify opportunities to substitute experience, certification, demonstrated competencies in place of rigid degree requirements where appropriate. These efforts help to reduce barriers to employment and create more equitable pathways to city opportunities. We recognize that long-term recruitment success requires proactive workforce pipeline development. To ensure this effort, we significantly expanded outreach efforts through social media platforms, community events, strategic marketing initiatives, including the use of city-owned billboards. We also established a general intern classification, which allows individuals as young as 16 to gain workforce exposure without requiring minimum qualifications. In addition, departments are being encouraged to strategically utilize non-union classifications to help develop internal pipelines to fill hard-to-fill classifications. These initiatives are designed to broaden access to employment opportunities while strengthening the city's workforce. Beyond recruitment, HR has also focused on improving the candidate and new hire experience through the implementation of a centralized onboarding platform. This platform automates pre-employment tasks, streamlines document completion, and provides employees with early access to important information and resources. The onboarding platform creates a more consistent and transparent experience citywide while reducing delays and administrative burden. It also supports equity and accessibility by allowing employees to complete onboarding requirements electronically and at their convenience. These improvements better position employees for long-term success and better engagement with the organization. While HR has made significant progress in modernizing and improving the city's recruitment practices, several workforce challenges continue to impact public sector hiring both locally and nationally. The city continues to operate an increasingly competitive labor market where many employers, both public and private, are competing for a limited pool of candidates. The challenge is especially challenging for highly specialized technical or hard to fill classifications where candidate availability and market competition is strong. At the same time, HR must continue delivering high quality recruitment services while navigating staffing limitations, budget constraints, and increasing service level expectations. Departments are seeking faster hiring timelines, improved candidate experiences, and greater workforce flexibility, all while maintaining compliance with civil service board rules, equitable hiring practices, and operational consistency citywide. In response to these evolving needs, HR remains focused on long-term workforce sustainability and strategic modernization efforts. We will continue focusing on modernizing classification structures, strengthening workforce analytics, and expanding educational partnerships and identifying innovative ways to streamline hiring recruitment processes. Equity, accessibility, and workforce sustainability will remain central to all recruitment and workforce development strategies. HR is committed to ensuring recruitment processes are equitable, transparent, accessible, and reflective of the diverse communities we serve. The city's long-term goal is not only to fill vacancies, but to build a sustainable, inclusive, and high-performing workforce that is prepared to meet the future organizational community needs. This concludes HR's presentation, and we're happy to answer any additional questions you may have.

OK. Thank you. Thank you very much for that very thorough presentation. And Council Member Maple.

Thank you, Chair. And really, I do appreciate the thorough presentation. I think especially because I think being reminded of a lot of the work that's happened over several years before some of us were on here on this dais, including myself. is important. And then the work that's happened to address the things that have come up in previous audits is important, too. So I just wanted to open with that I remember before I was elected to this council, several years before then, I was sitting in that audience advocating with then Councilmember Angelique Ashby and others. on the very first diversity and equity and inclusion audit. And that was a huge milestone, and I thought it was a great way. I believe on any policy issue, whatever it may be, you have to understand first what the problem is. If there is a problem, have the data, have an understanding, and to be able to actually address what comes next. A lot of times some folks will try to come up with a solution before you really understand what the problem is. And sometimes the solution is not actually the right one. And so I'm really glad that we do this continuously. I think we've learned a lot over the years. And I think that because of that work, you all have been able to implement very real strategies internally in the city to make sure that we make the changes that we want to see. And we're already seeing the outcome of that. And I think that's evident if you look at the reports over time. So I just wanted to say that's exciting. And I'm glad and looking forward to future ones and continuing that work. The only major question I had was around the gender pay disparities. So as I read the report, basically, we didn't do a study of actual pay, of gender pay throughout the entire city. We kind of did an averages of certain positions. Is that right?

It's very high level. I mean, doing a gender study by looking more detailed on every specific position and experience, education, qualifications of every a person in each of those positions is beyond the scope of this audit. It's very high level.

It would need to be, if we wanted to do something like that, we would need to have you work on it. different specific audit to do that work because it would be okay I think that's really important to point out because I don't want anyone to read this you know and I know that you pointed out in there that it's high level but I just want to say for on the record that you know it's not necessarily that we're seeing a problem here at the city we don't actually know that per se we just know that there's some high level trends and there's trends also nationally and so we can we can glean some things from that but Yeah, I just I just think that's a good thing to point out cuz I don't want anyone to take you know I don't the headline to be you know gender pay disparities Without us really understanding that and so okay with that. I'm happy to move this and just wanted to say thank you for the work I know it's been iterative over time, but it always gives me I always get excited when I see this on the agenda, so thank you We have a motion to accept the the audit and forward it to this one go to the council I

Yes.

I'm not looking at it. Okay. It goes to the count. Thank you. And a second by Mayor Pro Tem. Do we have any speakers?

I do have one speaker, Lambert. Okay.

Good afternoon. Good afternoon. This is exactly... some of the things that I'm challenging at City Hall. First of all, I would like to thank the auditor for confirming what I already know, and also Ami. Now, there was an article when I returned home. There was an article in the newspaper called Sacramento News and Review. People should study this. And my family showed it to me when I moved home. It was called the H&R Barnum and Bailey racist scandal at City Hall. And I have no idea how many years ago that was, but I'm looking at the same thing today. They tried to blame Donald Trump for resisting DEI, but if you look at these graphs, There's been resistance. We've documented before he even became president. Now, here we look at blacks are always at the bottom of salaries. Are you telling me that black people who go to college and get degrees are still at the bottom? How is that possible? Also, why are whites always at the top? What's that about? Also, Asians, I've often said it was my vein who confirmed that 25% of the workforce at City Hall is Hmong and Hmongs are not 25% of the city. That's a quota system and I put that on record at City Hall, quotas are illegal. Also, it said, Ami made a good point. She said the outcomes can't take root without staff support. And most of the people who are implementing this resistance are still on the payroll at City Hall.

Chair, I have no more speakers. Okay, thanks for your comments.

Thanks for your comments. This is important work and the commitment has to be one that is felt throughout the organization. So we've taken some time today, but it's worth it. And it's both important to do this updating every period interval of time on a regular basis, and it's important to know what you're doing from a human resources, perspective to have the city workforce reflect our city. We know that that is meaningful, and in every sense, not just in numbers, but in pay equity, in positions of responsibility and management, in every respect, so thank you for the presentations. We know there's still work to do. That's apparent from what we see, but I think the fact that we examine this is also a reflection of the commitment that we have to strive even to be better over time. So with that, we have a motion and a second. If there's nothing further, all in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed, say no. Any abstentions? Hearing none, motion carries. Thanks very much. And we're on to our next item, which is item 18. Eight updates on current City Council member proposals that have been heard before the Budget and Audit Committee. And I think we have Amy here to walk us through the spreadsheet.

Great. Good afternoon, Chair Dickinson and members of the Budget and Audit Committee. My name is Amy Williams. I'm Chief of Staff to the City Manager. And I am pleased to provide an update this afternoon on are council proposal log items that have come before budget and audit committee. I'd like to begin first with just a very brief overview of how the current proposal process works. This is a process that was instituted a few years ago to where the council proposes an idea, so a council member office proposes an idea and submits a council proposal Request submission to the clerk's office which then is reviewed by the mayor city manager and the city attorney's office at that point the proposal idea Either there's refinements being asked back to the proposals or it gets assigned to an actual committee Once it reaches the committee the proposer office then also presents this idea to a committee so say budget and audit and then budget and audit here's this proposal idea and And at that point in time gives a thumbs up or maybe asks for refinements. But if it gives a thumbs up, it then gets assigned to the department to work on the idea. And at that point is when I start tracking the log. And at that point also, Generally speaking, the staff assigned to that particular proposal idea reaches out to that council office, learns a little bit more, and again, I start updating and maintaining the log as it progresses as this council proposal idea becomes goes through the system. Just so you understand, the tracking log itself is actually housed in our Microsoft Teams under the OneDrive account and is shared to all its staff for visibility. It includes both current and past proposal for easy reference. In addition, just to add, we've added a new process to this entire process, which is called a closeout memo. So when an item goes through the entire process and an ordinance gets amended or a program gets launched, we then send a memo out to formally request closing out that item and concluding that item from the active tracking log and it's put on a concluded log list. This helps with and will help us with transparency and accountability through this process. There are currently 18 active council proposals being worked on and tracked and today we will just be reviewing the three from the 18 and you all have copies of a large spreadsheet here and there's copies for the community behind me if they're interested. So we'll start with the first item. You'll see on the far left what happens is the log or the council proposal gets assigned a number and this number marks the year 2025 and it's the first one of 2025. It was submit date was actually January 31st of 2025 and the subject item is the authorizing staff to begin the process of creating a mechanism to fund community infrastructure that boosts tourism, markets, and improves opportunities for hotels and businesses. Council sponsors included Councilmember Kaplan and Pluckybaum. And our department lead is Office of Innovation and Economic Development and the Finance Department. The mayor, this gives you several times when the mayor did review. There's some refinements, as you can see in the status notes to the far right. This particular proposal idea had lots of refinements, kind of some tweaks along the way, but the mayor reviewed it a few times. It went to law and ledge in August 26 of 2025, to budget, my apologies. And meanwhile, what's happening, if you go to the far right where my status notes are, I always start with the item that's the most recent. So the date this was last updated was May 18th of 2026. And there has been a meeting with the hoteliers. Visit SAC is deeply involved in this process. And so they're moving towards an assessment and looking at building out an assessment for this work. But if you go again down, you can see all the different dates and times that staff reached out and maybe when there were pauses or questions being asked. And so this particular item is moving along. If there's any questions on that item, I'll do my best. No? Okay. The next item we have here, submit date was October of 2025. This is a request for illegal dumping It was a request for staff to come up with a very specific program to address illegal dumping issues that we see citywide. We do address our illegal dumping in one-offs, but this is asking staff to look at the numbers, understand what's going on, and come back with an overall program looking at being more efficient and comprehensive in our approach. Councilmember Dickinson, you can correct me if I'm wrong on any of those details, but you are a sponsor as well as Councilmember Vang and Councilmember Maple, and the department lead is recycling and solar waste, but it does include many other departments that are involved actually in developing this program, but our lead person is in recycling and solar waste. The mayor reviewed it on November, And then it went to be an A on the third. Now you'll notice on this that the council on the legislative body review to the far right, the council column is highlighted in green because when it's done, it's gonna go to council next. So that's an indicator as to why that column is green. And the last update I got was on May 16th and they are finishing up their data collection and they're beginning Their analysis, they're hoping to come back in the fall. And all of this is listed. All the dates are up to date on where it's been and where it's headed. So it's on its way.

I just have a quick process point. That's okay. Michael Benjamin, my office, no longer works there. And so we'll talk offline about who the best person from my team is to connect. Thanks. Thank you.

Well, we're on that one, Mr. Chair. Okay. I think I made the motion on moving that one and asked to be listed as a co-sponsor. That's all. Clarification.

Well, I will definitely add that. And I will mention that I do have monthly meetings now with each of your staff scheduled and will be ongoing. So this will always be one of the items that I just bring up. So it's just going to be something we... you naturally talk about more often. And I understand we're coming to law and leg a bit more. Maybe I'll be coming to budget and auto a bit more so we can just keep tracking these and moving them along and making sure the data and the information is correct. OK, and the final one we have here is an item that came in submit date of November of 2025. And this is District 2's Enhanced Infrastructure Financing District and Council sponsors were Council Member Dickinson, Vice Mayor Talamantes, Council Member Maple, and Council Member Guetta. And this was assigned to our Office of Innovation and Economic Development and our Finance Department. This item has gone through, went to budget and audit in December of 2025, no, 2026, and went to Council this spring. So what I understand is that we are doing some fiscal analysis right now, which is three months of work, was what the estimate was. And then we'll be bringing it back to council as soon as we can.

Yes, as soon as we can.

As soon as we can. Yeah, I'll be tracking that.

Underlined. Okay. Amy, thank you. Vice Mayor.

So is this going to become the new process where you come to budget and audit to present where we're at on all these policies that we have passed?

I don't know. I haven't been directed to, but law and ledge direct me to do that. So I was just assuming that that would be the case here.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's great because I'm not on Law & Ledge, so it's great to hear like an update, but yeah.

I think both the chair of Law & Legislation as well as I think it's very helpful to have these presentations on a periodic basis, on a regular basis. Even though this information is accessible in the teams, it has a home there, which I will admit I didn't know before we had a similar presentation at the Law & Legislation. So we can look at it any time, but I think it's still helpful both for us and the public to have these routine updates on how the proposals are progressing.

Well, like are we going to do this quarterly or every other month or what's the plan?

I'm trying to remember what were we talking about, quarterly?

Well, I can tell you what we have done at Lawn Ledge, which was we I think it was quarterly. It was what we landed on. Yep. Just to make sure that everyone's updated in public about how things are moving, but not necessarily so much so that, you know, you're getting the same updates over and over again.

Yeah. Yeah. So I think that's the the the plan is quarterly. OK, great. Thank you. Any other questions for Amy or comments? Thank you, Amy. Keep them moving. And do we have some members of the public who wish to address this item?

Yes, Chair. I have five speakers. Lambert, Douglas McPherson, Gleyl Sawa, Greg Chapman, and Anne Amato.

This is outstanding, this long paperwork that they gave us. because it gave me an opportunity to comment on who's on here. Now, it's been me who actually brought up that we're concerned about Mr. Pluckybaum not being on the rostrum a lot. He's late. He leaves a lot. And he shouldn't be part of any sponsorship till he tightens that up. It's a lot of people watching his behavior, by the way. Now, on District 2, I like the people that are connected with that. Mr. Dickinson, Vice Mayor Telemontes, Maple, and Guerra. I know they care about District 2. So they should be able to get a lot of things accomplished. Now, what concerns me about that is that somebody mentioned the Department of Economic and Innovation. That department, during Measure U, and I went to a lot of Measure U commissions, they did not properly allow the Measure U commission to Q&A them. That's a violation of the Brown Act. They should have, and when Mrs. Dickerson was here, we never had that problem because she knew the procedures. And Minty was not there that night, so that's why. They panicked. And they let that department, and by the way, that department receives a lot of economics from Measure U. They receive a lot of money. And guess what? I was scheduled to speak to them, and Ash Regani and the rest of them panicked, and they decided we'll let the last nine minutes of the commission go to that department. And nobody had a chance to talk to them. So they should have to come back in front of the committee.

Next speaker is Douglas.

Good afternoon. Thank you, Chair Dickinson and members, for letting me speak this afternoon. It's not morning any longer. My name is Don McPherson. I live in Midtown. I'm here to advocate for a public bank in Sacramento. As you know, this body approved $250,000 in May of 2023 for the completion of a viability study and business plan for a public bank. That money was put on hold. A public bank is needed now more than ever in Sacramento given the budget deficits, federal rollbacks, and deep cuts in housing and climate funding that we are experiencing. I know this is a tight time for budgets, but I believe that our team of public bank advocates from our community have found sources for these funds, which we have shared with you in written comment, and would not affect staffing. I would ask that you reintroduce the $250,000 into this year's fiscal budget, given that it was a great idea in 2023, and it's an even better idea today. And Chair Dickinson, I would ask that you agendize this topic on future budget and audit committee meetings. Thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair and members of this committee for the opportunity to speak. My name is Goli Saba. I'm a volunteer with the Sacramento Public Bank Project of SAC Act and Sacramento Climate Coalition. As you're aware, funding for an RFQ, as my husband mentioned, was passed unanimously by the Budget and Audit Committee. You already know that the community members and organizations have been working for, preparing for, early on in this budget process to reissue funding for the SAC Public Bank RFQ. In March 24th, the Mayor and Council were supportive and the Mayor asked for a timeline of the past RFQ and said that you would determine whether to place it on an agenda on the Council or the Budget and Audit Committee. Just last week, the Treasurer responded to us stating that He had no reservations based on his interest or time on this project, but just mentioned that no council member had submitted this in their budget request. So here's our ask. We request this committee to reaffirm their previous commitment with another motion to place the 250,000 for an RFQ for a viability and business plan on this year's budget. Of all of the budget asks, this is the one or one of the few that when functioning can actually bring back millions and multiply our precious tax dollars to help fund our community's needs. We understand that this is a deficit budget year, and that's why we've researched and submitted a document with multiple options. There's A, B, and C. I'm not gonna go through the whole thing with you, but just to mention that B and C do not involve any sort of cutting from any staffing. B, basically takes, it says earmarking funds from community reinvestment grants. We would take 250,000 from the California Natural Resources Agency Community Reinvestment Project.

Thank you for your comments. Your time is complete. Next speaker is Greg, then Ann. Thank you for your comments.

Thank you, thank you.

Is Greg here? No, okay, Ann Amato.

Good afternoon.

Good afternoon.

Members of the Audit and Budget Committee. I'm Anna Motto. I'm a retired social worker and member of the Sacramento Climate Coalition and their public bank project. I'm here to ask your support for the public bank for Sacramento. While you're looking at budget cuts, I recognize that, you can save the city a great deal of money while addressing urgent needs. with establishing a public bank. The public bank can offer small business loans to those who are unable to obtain them from big banks, funding for low cost loans for affordable housing, funds for other improvements for our community like addressing homelessness. Public bank can offer low cost lines of credit, keep public interest dollars in the public sector so you keep the money in the community rather than going to Wall Street. and to reduce overall borrowing costs. Currently, my understanding is that 50% of the cost of a bond measure goes to interest, and that money goes to Wall Street. Public bank can assist in funding bonding measures, offer underwriting issuance, bridge loans for local projects, and all this saves the city in interest and underwriting fees. Let's keep the interest money in our community. I ask you to please support the public bank and the funding that we need to do the viability and feasibility study, the business plan as well. Thank you.

Chair, I have no more speakers on this agenda item.

Okay, thank you to all the speakers. Council Member Maple, did you want to make a comment?

If I may, Chair, and I recognize this is not on the agenda, so obviously we won't be able to make any decisions related to public banking here at this meeting. But I do want to say, generally speaking, that I've met with the proponents of this measure, and I personally think that this is something that's worth exploring. Absolutely. I do recognize the history as well as it was before my time on this council, but I do know that there was a history of allocating money, and it never went that way, and there were a lot of different reasons behind that, so we don't have to get into that here. But I also want to say that there's big questions, too. One question for me is, you know, the $250,000, that was from 2023. Knowing how much costs have gone up, I really wonder whether that's the actual cost of doing the feasibility study now in 2026 or 2027 versus in 2023. And being in government, we have seen the costs skyrocket on almost everything. So that's a key question. And then two, on some of the possible sources, I really want to appreciate everyone who showed up to speak and the work that they put into looking into the budget. It's not easy to do. But really finding ways that we could look into. And I think those are worth exploring. But we really don't have a way of knowing right now whether or not those are actually grants that we could pull from. We'd have to do some research into that. And so as much as it may be disappointing, my thought is that this is worth exploring in the next budget cycle, perhaps through budget and audit, if you want to do that, Chair. But I think it would be really challenging to try to move this forward in the current budget process. That's just my personal opinion. Thank you.

Thanks for those comments. I would largely agree with them. I appreciate the advocacy and I think there's some conversations that need to occur internally just to determine the feasibility of this. I appreciate the fact that you made concrete suggestions rather than just ask for something. You suggested where it could be funded from and that's a great degree of responsibility that many of us resist in similar circumstances. So this is still a live conversation. I think it's also instructive to watch what's going on in San Francisco in particular and the Bay Area as well, which I know has been something of a limitation on the feasibility from the treasurer's point of view in pursuing this. So it is not a dead letter by any means. And I think there is the opportunity to talk about this further, see if it fits an agenda in the future. And thank you again for being here and for being consistent and steady. This item requires no action. It was an update for us. So we'll move on to committee comments, ideas, questions, and meeting reports, if any. Seeing none, do we have any members of the public who wish to address us on items not on the agenda?

Chair, I have one speaker, Lambert, speaking on matters not on the agenda.

This one I had to keep notes. I normally look up at you, but I got to really stay on this to get it right. First of all, I'd like to send a shout out to Chairman Dickerson for bringing up Medi-Cal for people who get picked up by fire or ambulance. I never knew that. And the city should know if they're being reimbursed. If they don't, people should be reprimanded for that. That's the county. You should know how much money you receive from Medi-Cal when you pick people up. Also, there was a study done called the Leadership Group Race Equity. And Laney Milstein was part of that group. And we were trying to figure out where the $250,000 went. When I asked the Race Alliance Committee, they said they didn't receive any money. And one of the main reasons why we're having problems at city hall is that people are not paying attention to people who like me who come up here to talk. It's very rude as you learn that as a child to not talk when other people are talking, but it's being recorded anyway. Last time I was here, I mentioned about the no written agreement about wide open walls and people got emotional. When I started asking the question of who wrote the seven checks, Everybody got quiet. Well, the millennials have found out where those checks came from. And I don't have time to announce it today, but it's coming. And it's going to shock a lot of people where those checks came from. We know where they came from now. Also. This race, this measure, you. innovation and economics, they should not get funded until they go in front of the measure you commissioned.

All right. Thank you for your comments. We have no one else to address this on matters not on the agenda. So we're going to adjourn into closed session if we get one more member of the council to join us.

Yes. Thank you, Chair. If we can get one more council member to join us, we will then adjourn this meeting directly into closed session rather than having to call to order that meeting.

And we're going to let the auditor staff go have lunch. Thank you.

So good afternoon we are calling a closed session meeting to order We're calling this special meeting for the purpose of a closed session. I have a quorum of council members and chambers there are two items on that agenda and We have no speakers on any of the agenda items on the closed session agenda. The first item is Conference with Labor Negotiators, Government Code Section 54957.6. Designated representatives are Laney Milstein, Aaron Donato, and Tim Davis. Employee organizations are Sacramento Police Officers Association and Sacramento Area Firefighters, Local 522. Second item is Public Employee Performance Evaluation, Government Code Section 54957B1. Title is City Attorney. And, Chair, you may now adjourn to closed session.

All right. We're adjourned in closed session.