Railyards Public Financing Authority - Regular Meeting

Good afternoon. Welcome to, let's see, Monday, May 18th, 2026, meeting of the Measure U Community Advisory Committee. The meeting is now called to order. Will the clerk please call roll to establish a quorum?

Thank you, Chair. Vice Chair McGee? Present. Commissioner Smith? Present. Commissioner Sala?

Here.

Commissioner Cook is absent. Commissioner Miller?

Here.

Commissioner Johnston. Here. Commissioner Ruiz Benitez. Commissioner Noveo.

Here.

Commissioner Jorofsky is absent. Commissioner Paschal is absent. Commissioner Fry Lucas. Here. Commissioner Rosa is absent. And Chair Georgoff.

Here.

Thank you. We have quorum.

I would like to remind members of the public and chambers that if you would like to speak on agenda item, please turn in a speaker slip when the item begins. You'll have two minutes to speak. Once you are called on after the first speaker, we will no longer accept speaker slips. We will now proceed with today's agenda. Member Friar Lucas, would you be willing to lead us through the Pledge of Allegiance and the land acknowledgement?

Please rise for the opening acknowledgements in honor of Sacramento indigenous people and tribal lands. To the original people of this land, the Nissan people, the southern Mayu Valley and Plain Miwok, the Patwin, the Wintu people, and the people of Wilton Rancheria, Sacramento's only federally recognized tribe, may we acknowledge and honor the native people who come before us and still walk beside us today on these astral lands by choosing to gather together today in the active practice of acknowledgement and appreciation of Sacramento's indigenous peoples, history, contribution, and lives. Thank you. 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.

OK, the first item is to the approval of the consent calendar. Do I have a motion and a second? Or any comments on this? Also, are there any members of public who wish to speak on this?

Thank you, Chair. I have no speaker slips for the consent calendar.

Okay. I'll move. Member Noveo for first. All second. Yeah, let's do a voice vote. All in favor say aye. Aye.

Abstain.

Abstain. Decline, no, okay, cool. Great, then we will move on to the discussion calendar. So I think first we're gonna get an overview of the fiscal year 2026-27 and the measure you propose budget. Welcome, welcome. It is not.

Okay, it's on now. Good evening, commissioners. My name is Marthala Santizo. I am the budget manager, and with me I have Brian Martin. He's one of our principal budget analysts, and today we are going to go over the fiscal year 27 Measure U Commission budget along with just the general proposed budget that we submitted and released at the end of April. Okay. Okay, so moving forward, we'll talk about the hearing schedule. We'll go over the fiscal year 27 budget overview. We will do an overview of the Measure U budget. We'll talk about closing the gap and the fiscal year 27 Measure U reductions and augmentations. We'll go through the five-year forecast and discuss long-term funding challenges. Okay, so here's the budget schedule, and I do realize that there is a mistake on it. So we are at the bottom part of the schedule on May 18th here at the Measure U Commission. What has been changed is that we will no longer have a budget and audit commission meeting. We will have another meeting with council tomorrow on May 19th at 5 p.m., and then, of course, we'll come back for June 9th for a 5 p.m. Council adoption Okay in regards to budget challenges we've had several in the last Three years that we've been discussing and trying to balance the budget our immediate a budget of core our immediate challenge of course was the structural Deficit that we've been balancing since 25 but for this year we had also a structural deficit that continues on in our forecast. In regards to the near-term budget challenges, we have federal funding threats and economic risks that could hit us but hasn't hit us yet. And then long-term, we have quite a bit in unfunded pension liabilities and unfunding capital needs that will be discussed a little later in the presentation. So for our mid-year budget, we presented Council with this five-year forecast, which shows that fiscal year 27 would have a $66.2 million deficit, and of course it continues to increase as we move on to fiscal year 30. This deficit is not caused by an economic downturn. It's due to the imbalance of our expenses growing much faster than our revenues. So moving forward, any sort of ongoing balancing strategies that we keep in our budget will lower the projected deficits in the future fiscal years. The fiscal year 27 proposed budget for all funds is about $1.7 billion. It's an increase of about 48 million. For general fund, it's an increase of about 26 million and close to 900 million. For full-time FTEs, we have dropped down to about 4,800, which is a drop of 164 FTEs. This proposed budget is balanced and closes that 66.2 million funding gap that I showed earlier. For Measure U, there was an increase in revenues of about 2.3 million. Expenditures dropped from 161 from last fiscal year to 145, so it's about a $16.3 million drop. And the number of employees also dropped from approximately 800 to 700. All right, so closing the budget gap. As we have done in the last three fiscal years, the goal for council was to define and preserve core services and advance council priorities, which is economic development, homelessness, and public safety. The goal also was to minimize the impact to services on the public and also the impacts on staff here in the city. At the beginning of this budget process, we asked the departments to develop reduction plans to hit a target reduction of 15% of their net general fund measure you fund use. What we also asked them to do was to define their service and staffing's impacts of each strategy so that council and city manager understands what those impacts would be. The finance department reviewed all of the reductions and presented them to the city manager for review, which is what the proposed budget shows. This is just a summary of what the proposed budget has, but as you can see, the mid-year forecast starts at 66.2 million of a reduction. We also added some additional 11.3 million to that amount for labor contract adjustments. The midyear forecast did include some funding for labor contracts, but we knew that it wouldn't be all of it. It was just what was presented to the unions at the tables at that moment in time. So this is essentially the number that we know of at this moment in time. Then we include also the budget balancing strategies of 68.8. We have Some additional funding from the encampment relief funds for 2.3 million. HAP funding for 3.5 and other adjustments which leaves us with a balanced budget of about 300,000. We're also showing the fiscal year 28 budget just so that everybody can understand what this impact has to the next fiscal year. And so with this proposed budget, it will have a 35.4 million deficit in fiscal year 28. And here are a few of the budget balancing strategies that equals up to the 68.8. We have our treasurer's office did a really good job with essentially savings from higher interest earned from the treasury pool investments that you see up there at 4.3 million. We also refinanced some of the general fund debt, which also created savings. There was a renegotiation of contracts with several vendors providing homelessness services, such as shelters. And while it is a reduction in funding, it doesn't reduce services. And Brian will go into further details of other homelessness reductions, but that's what equals up the 8.9. We have about 13.6 in departmental revenues, and that is could be of various fee increases or departments just realizing revenues that they have increased in previous years. We also have cost shifts to other funds, and what that means is if there is another funding source that could pay for specific services or staffing, we have shifted for those funds to pay for those. We have 11.1 in project reallocations, which is essentially reductions of projects that we either had some monies left over and they were finished or they never got off the ground. And then the rest of the other ones are for various expense reductions in departments. The fire department had a single role implementation savings of about 3.5. Police department has expenses of 7.5, which is a reduction of a lot of staffing. Fire department, 3.3, again, mostly staffing. And YPSE with 2.9 with staffing and supplies and services. And then various other departmental expense reductions. And with these strategies we have about three quarters of it being ongoing which is why the Amount that you saw it for fiscal year 28 dropped down to about 35 million. So Okay with that.

I'm gonna pass it over to Brian In the creation of the proposed budget there were a number of strategies of reductions coming from measure you These are listed in detail in Attachment 3 in tonight's item, but some notable reductions include a reduction of funding for the X Street Navigation Center in light of a potential Caltrans lease expiration, reducing funding for the City Motel Program, shifting to a voucher-based model, resulting in $3.2 million, a one-time reduction to the Gang Prevention Intervention Task Force project, GPIT, for $1.4 million, Reduction in operating schedules to three days per week at our neighborhood pools and reducing aquatic staffing for about $460,000. And deletions of 12 positions in the police hiring pipeline, resulting in a savings of about $1.2 million. To get a little deeper into homelessness, as you can see for FY27, our total funding going to homeless services is $39.4 million. Part of the funding that alleviates the cost on the city, we have our state encampment relief funds, community 2.3, HAP 6 funding, which reduces the city's contribution towards that to 33.6. In years going forward, our state encampment relief funds run out. HAP 6 has its final year in 28, and HAP 7 we're projecting just the one year. And then in the out years beyond that, the green row you can see, we're going from 30.2 million to 41.7 as the full burden of paying for those services shifts to the city. And then this is on the Office of Violence Prevention funding shift. This is regarding a new state grant resulting in program delivery adjustments. This is shifting from the Gang Prevention and Intervention Task Force, as well as the Evidence-Based Community Violence Interruption, Disruption, and Suppression. funding and moving to the CalVIP cohort five. This results in a few changes, shifting to a school-based referral system versus the current law enforcement-based referrals, providing consistent pre- and post-school community engagement, and moving to prevention-focused deployments versus a current law enforcement-driven model. One other thing of note is that youth violence prevention is also an eligible Measure L funding category. In the first round of Measure L allocations, approximately $900,000 was awarded. And then we move on to our staffing impacts for Measure U. In the proposed budget, a total of 91.7 FTE Measure U positions are eliminated. 54.6 of these FTE are vacant, and 37.1 of the FTE are filled. As of April 3rd, this affects approximately 34 people who will be subject to being bumped or separated from the city. The table below is a breakdown of it by classification and department, the majority of which are... coming out of UPSC from park maintenance workers and program coordinators. Here's a chart showing the reductions of Measure U by program area. The lion's share of this is between community response and youth funding. The community response is largely the motel voucher program that discussed earlier and the reduction of funding for the X Street Navigation Center, with youth being the one-time reduction in GPIT funding. Once again, attachment three details all of these reductions. Next, we go into the augmentations for Measure U. There's approximately 800,000 in augmentations. The lion's share of that made up from a community response between the language, excuse me, funding the spay and neuter clinics one time and a new administrative technician for a DCR new position. and then with inclusive economic development, the funding of the language access coordinator position. These are also all detailed in attachment four on the item. All right, moving to our proposed budget forecast. Marthala discussed this a little bit earlier on, but here's our five-year forecast. As you can see, this year we started with a $66.2 million deficit. We needed to close, and next year, because of the AMOUNT OF CUTS THAT WERE BETWEEN ONGOING AND ONE TIME, WE WERE ABLE TO REDUCE THAT IN, DOWN TO 35.4 FOR OUR STARTING POINT NEXT YEAR. AND AS YOU CAN SEE, AS IT CONTINUES TO GO FORWARD, WE, IT CONTINUES TO CLIMB. SOME OF OUR LONG-TERM FUNDING CHALLENGES, A LARGE ONE IS OUR UNFUNDED LIABILITIES. SO IN ADDITION TO OUR STRUCTURAL BUDGET CONCERNS, MEANING OUR EXPENSES OUTPACING OUR REVENUES, WE HAVE Large number of unfunded liabilities, including a 1.5 billion unfunded pension liability, 200 million OPEB liability, and a 2 billion unfunded capital and deferred maintenance needs. And OPEB, excuse me, OPEB is other post-employment benefits. So addressing some of these long-term challenges, Council's already taken a few actions, one of which you see in the first bullet is to establish a financial policy allowing for our prior year savings to be administratively applied to current year budget needs. And then using our capital plan to identify these unfunded needs, allowing Council to adopt priorities around what we're going to prioritize and fund for the year. Staff will continue to support council in addressing these to ensure the fiscal health and stability of the city. Some of the pending factors looking forward. A good number of these, unfortunately, are factors beyond our control. The economic uncertainty and the potential risk of recession. The future of state homelessness funding. Currently, we're able to take advantage of HAP funding from the state, but each year, and as our homelessness count changes, the funding situation for that also changes. Next, our unfunded liabilities. And then achieving structural balance. And so that's bringing our expensive growth in line with our revenue growth. And that concludes the presentation. We're happy to take any questions.

Speaker, just go ahead and queue up if you have questions and comments. Member, what would you have? Okay, let's do the public comment first then.

Thank you, Chair. Actually, we have one speaker slip for this item. Mr. Lambert-Davis.

Okay. Measure U is back to being empty. Why? because the people have already come down here and cut their deals. Now, one thing that we're going to be very, uh, aggressive on, and I went to city council, uh, twice because in the last meeting I was here, it was crowded and there was a group that never did, uh, present it to you in the right manner. You never got to Q&A economics and can't think of it right now, but economics department was not Q&A. I wish Mr. Cook was here because he really was aggressive with that. You had a decision to make and that's why I say that most of the problems at City Hall are with the staff because that decision was made by the staff. It was nine minutes left. and you decided to let a department go and we looked at them afterwards, they were like children because they knew they had pulled a fast one because they didn't get Q&A. But that was a violation of the Brown Act based on what I saw because you didn't follow the rules and procedures of this city hall, which I'm very familiar with. Not only that, but I wanted to speak on them.

So what Mr. Cook said was true.

Mr. Regani should have pulled the plug and said, hey, we only have nine minutes left. We need to do the right thing. You could have had them come back in a special meeting. They have them all the time. Now there's no more special meetings, from what I understand. And if you're going to stand on it, we're going to stand on it, too. They should have been questioned as much money as they get from this city.

Thank you for your comments. Chair, I have no more members of the public sign up to speak.

Member Milley.

Yes, so I wanted to know, you mentioned that the state HAP programs are winding down. the state is also experiencing some financial challenges at the moment, but I'm sure you communicate quite often with staff at the state level. Any indication of potential future funding, what that might look like?

Good evening, everyone. Pete Collado, the finance director. We were just actually... At 4 o'clock today, we had a meeting internally about that. So where we are right now is the state has appropriated a seventh round of HAP funding. So they appropriated that as part of last year's budget adoption. The legislature has wanted to double that to a billion, which would match HAP round six. The governor just released his May revision. He kept it at half a billion. So they're fighting a little bit of back and forth now. And with the governor's half billion for round seven, there's also a whole slew of new, what the state is calling accountability measures that they're working on. So trying to kind of tighten up around that. But we're really waiting to see how the budget negotiations go. It was disappointing that he didn't put... more funding in. The big city mayors are all lobbying for not just more funding, but more importantly, ongoing funding because we're scrambling every year. All of us cities are as the state kind of considers this on a year by year basis. So there's a lot in flux. It's something that we're watching and advocating for, but that's the latest that we know right now.

Thank you.

Member Navajo. First, I want to start by saying thank you, Commissioner Smith, for your presentation, or presenting in front of . Thank you for the presentation, and whoever helped you create the visuals, definitely, they were really cool. And for the amount of time that you guys had, kudos to you both, and Commissioner Salad also for being there. And for the staff, and probably a general question, during last city council meeting, there was an exercise of the memos. I'll just call it that way. How much of that conversation are also reflected in this report, and how much of those different reallocations or deductions are going to be impacting the Measure U funds?

Okay, so the discussion that occurred on May 12th at the council was not included in this report because this is just a report on the proposed budget. But there are definitely some changes that council would like to... to reinstate where it will affect Measure U funding. The first one is that they did call a motion to restore the violence prevention GPIT grants for 1.3 million. and the waiting pools and the recreational swim hours. So that is approximately $1.9 million and they'll be funding it with additional HAP funding and parking enforcement vacancies. That was agreed upon by all the council members and they passed a motion to move that forward. The second part of their discussion was in regards to other restorations. And we are actually going to be going back to council tomorrow to discuss not the restorations, but what we can do to fund those restorations. And the restorations that came about was the North Sacramento Economic Development Project reinstatement for about $260,000. North Sacramento code enforcement project for about 201,000 reinstating the heart senior center staffing for approximately 274,000 bringing back the park maintenance workers so that they do not get for about 567,000. Summer at City Hall and other youth projects as well for about 132,000. An additional 275,000 for the violence prevention grants. It was the, I forgot the long acronym. The EBVids one. And then also some YPSE workforce development positions for about $107,000. I would say that I believe it's the Hart Senior Center, the Park Maintenance Worker, Summer City Hall, the Violence Prevention Grants, and the YPSE workforce development positions. Those are all Measure U funded programs that will be reinstated. I'm not sure about the projects. I think they're a general fund, right? Okay, and so with the discussion that will be held tomorrow will be the funding sources that Council directed staff to look into, and we will present that tomorrow.

Thank you.

Vice Chair McGee?

um specific to some of the information on your slide concerning the mobile the motel voucher program and that being cut and going away i've heard rumblings i don't know how true that sacramento is going to be looking at the um i looked it up here the income the earn not the the income stipend model I'm kind of matching what Stockton had done. And so I wanted to kind of know if that's a consideration, maybe a swap out.

Sure.

Guaranteed income, I'm sorry. That's what I'm calling for, guaranteed income.

So I think, so thank you, Commissioner. I think there's kind of two things going on. So the hotel program, they're not looking to cut it. They're looking to... kind of realign who it's serving to be more focused on families. So we're still going to have a hotel program. Under the Measure L Children's Fund, the city is launching the guaranteed income pilot program for foster youth.

Okay, so that is going to happen. Yes. Okay. Thank you.

Member Johnson. I have an initial question, I guess, maybe it's for the commission. I just want to make sure I'm understanding the questions we're asking tonight. We can't really incorporating to a recommendation recommendations outright. So this is just like for our own edification possibly and potentially help us advise down the road. Right. I just want to make sure I'm framing the questions correctly because, you know, ultimately it's the city council that passes the budget. And we really, I want to emphasize the finance department's always been very, very helpful in coming out and answering our questions. I just want to make sure I'm utilizing your time the best. Is that the right understanding is like however you want to spend it. okay that's a good answer um so i have a lot of like one little specific questions that i don't think are going to be useful tonight but i have just kind of a structural question based upon the note that i saw that the departments were asked to reduce 15 general funds measure you fund so let's say department comes up with the 15%. It doesn't really matter where that 15% falls, whether it's Measure U or General Fund, you just want to make sure that the General Fund is balanced. So that's why I'm trying to understand the deficit for the Measure U Fund, that's not really the concern, it's the overall General Fund and whether that entire budget's budgeted, right? So if you happen to reduce 15%, let's say YPSE, just throwing it out there, just, oh, that's a bad one, because most of their budget's in on Measure U. Let's find one that has a balance It just so happens that 15% of their entire reduction happens to be a measure year. You're not gonna necessarily take money from general fund and plug that hole, right? Or I guess it'd be vice versa, because you're reducing. Does that make sense? I'm doing a double negative, I realize, because they're talking about reducing and transferring to fill in a reduction. So let me see if I can say this. So if you have 15% reduction, and you're only reducing it in, you're not covering that reduction in the measure U. So therefore, measure U is now operating at a deficit. because the reduction is only being recognized in the general fund side of this hypothetical department that covers both, you're not going to plug in the Measure U to make sure that balances. You're just going to make sure that the general fund balances. Is that question? Hopefully, for the love of everything going on, it makes sense.

So yeah. So the reductions exercise is for, I mean, most departments have either, they're usually either funded mostly by general fund with some Measure U or mostly Measure U with some general fund. So their reductions can come from either one of those funds. So just kind of to answer that initial question. So yeah, it can come from either one of those funds. Um, if it's a reduction and the way that we look at the general fund, it's the general fund and measure you included combined. So in regards to reviewing the, um, that were submitted by departments we if it was under general fund whether it was measure you or general fund monies it didn' t matter to us in regards to that. If there is a reduction that was that would be considered a savings to so and you' ll see it in the details in the attachments that Brian has referred to, that if it was a funding shift, those particular services or staffing will continue on. It would just be funded by a different funding source, but it wouldn't be funded by the general fund per se.

Yes. Okay, that's consistent with my understanding.

Okay.

And I understand they're commingled, and that's the difficulty, and that's something we've always been struggling with is A LITTLE BIT OF WACKAMOLE BECAUSE WE'RE LOOKING AT THE MEASURE U FUND, BUT IT'S ALSO PART OF THE GREATER GENERAL FUND, SO IT'S THE FUND OF THIS COMMISSION. SO THAT ANSWERS THE MAIN QUESTION. I GUESS THE OTHER ONE I MUST HAVE MISSED TOO, THIS IS UNRELATED, BUT THIS IS ONE OF THE MORE SPECIFIC ONES, IS THE X STREET NAVIGATION CENTER. WHAT'S HAPPENING WITH THAT? BECAUSE THAT SUPPLIED A LOT OF SERVICES, RIGHT? IS THERE ANY WAY TO PLUG THAT WHOLE OFF?

So the way the X Street Center is working right now is we are operating it under a lease from Caltrans. And so that lease is expiring. And one of two things will happen when that lease expires. So if it expires and it goes away, it goes away. However, there is a community organization that would like to run a center there. And so if the lease does get renewed, they would take over the operations of that site.

Okay, great. And then just because it's the largest FTE decrease within Measure U, do you know if YPSE did any studies of the effect on part maintenance with the cuts of the maintenance workers?

So, you know, it would be, you know, it would be a cost savings to contract that out. The thing I will say is that Council, you know, passed a motion last week looking to restore those positions and keep those services in-house. Okay. All right. We already, in some of our parks, especially in newer areas that have Melrose districts, you know, we do contract out some of those services. And so that's how, you know, YPCE was able to have kind of a cost comparison. Yeah. However, you know, we may be bringing some of those in-house as well.

Yeah. Which also shows the difficulty of having this conversation because I know it's still in flux and the city council might move it. I know there's some issues with the pools that people are pushing back and all that stuff. So, all right. Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it.

Member Sala.

Thank you. And I do want to thank Commissioner Smith for presenting last week. It was, he did, your presentation, his presentation, it was well done and I was happy to be there. And it was a very good discussion that occurred. thoughtful discussion. They did not like our recommendation not to fund arts and culture and they brought people in. And there was no one on the dais that supported reducing that budget and our recommendation. Everything else they accepted and embraced. There was a participatory budgeting came up and I know that, are you gonna talk later about that?

I was just going to say I'm working on a report.

Okay, so what happened is they want to know what has been the results of the impact that that funding went to the community-based organizations. And I think maybe I should have spoken up. It's not like we haven't done an analysis. We did an upfront analysis of the whole process and the engagement of community. And then after that, we invited all of the CBOs that received money from us to come and present. Some of them did a good job of showing us how many participated. and what was the outcome, but what didn't happen was get all of that data and put it in a report. So I think it was Vice Mayor Talamanta said, I really want to see that before we decide to go forward in funding this project. PARTICIPATORY BUDGETING. THERE ARE SOME MEMBERS THAT REALLY WANT TO SEE IT GO FORWARD, AND I AGREE THAT, BECAUSE THERE WAS SOMETHING VERY VALUABLE IN THIS WHOLE PROCESS, BUT UNLESS WE SHOW THEM THE VALUE, THEY'RE NOT GOING TO ENTERTAIN FUNDING MAYBE NEXT YEAR. SO THAT WILL BE REALLY HELPFUL TO HAVE THAT PRESENTED. The other the other thing I'm glad I see that there's restorations. It's not in here, but if you attended the city council, you see where and you mentioned at the restorations. What's not clear is. And you didn't mention it. So what the mayor said was, if you want a program restored, you've got to tell me what you want to have restored and then how it's going to be funded. And each member had to submit a memo to that effect. And that's kind of what was presented last Tuesday. So the... The, is it, it's not, it's the restoration and what's the other, the cut path?

So, you know, they had to say, here's what we want to restore, here's the financing source.

Finance, yes. So what's not clear is we know what they're restoring somewhat, mainly, but so how is it going to be financed?

Sure, so.

What's being recommended for cuts?

Yeah, so council they passed a motion and they said let's restore that 1.8 million in services at Murthala Mentioned before and they gave us a list of available Financing sources and told us to come back with a plan. And so the financing sources were Park maintenance savings. So this is areas where We are contracting out and we're paying for it with community facilities district funds, trying to institute what we're calling dynamic staffing at the parks to be able to serve those parks and reduce some costs to the general fund. Freezing the community ambassador stipends, finding roughly half a million dollars of one-time savings in the Department of Community Response. reduction in commission meetings but not elimination but accepting the planning or not impacting the planning and design commission and then the balance being from a reduction in the contribution to the economic uncertainty reserve so they said with those constraints come back to us with a plan and that's what council is going to discuss tomorrow

That's good. I just have one concern, and I saw it last Tuesday, the recommendation of reducing commission meetings. And so we're already are short to, instead of meeting, I think we meet 10 times a year, 10 times, more or less. And it would be reduced, the proposal is to reduce it to

Yes, so the information was just posted this afternoon. I don't want to get too much in front of council, but I will say, you know, the plan that we're bringing forward is having a maximum of five meetings per year for commissions.

So I'll just give you my opinion. That is not enough. Five. We already struggle with ten and to... Lambert's point is we ran out of time to have all of the ones we wanted to present, and we ran out of time. We couldn't go beyond 8.30. There was no way. And we couldn't have a special meeting because we needed to present this. We already had a special meeting, which was a cost to the city. And we needed to have this ready to go to present budget and audit. So we already ran out of time. We didn't even have enough time to do all the work that we wanted to get done. So five, might as well not even have a commission because we're not going to be able to get the work done. And so it's either the, and I will speak to that tomorrow. and give my opinion about that, but I just think five, and I can imagine the police, there's so many commissions that are doing really valuable work uh... with the exception i know they said with the exception the planning commission which i don't agree i think we're either all valuable or not valuable pick and choose which ones are more valuable than the others is not equitable or maybe it's not fair not equitable it's not fair so uh... other than that i really appreciate the work that you're doing and i uh... and I'm hopeful that I agree with whoever spoke about taking the park maintenance off the table, because when I first saw that, I thought, that was, these are, I don't know how much they make an hour, but it's not a lot. And them being laid off sounds the wrong message that we're laying off the bottom of the pyramid that are mainly African Americans and Latinos probably in those jobs versus looking at other ways to do that. So I'm glad that's off the table and I hope it stays off the table. But I know measure, that would be part of our Measure U funds, right? That funds?

Is Park Maintenance Measure U? It is, yeah, it is.

So I think since, I know that it's general fund, but if it's Measure U funds, I would have serious concerns that they're being at the backs of these low earning wage funds. city employees that were balancing the budget. I don't agree with that. And then I have one more question. So I know the Hart Center is being restored and their staffing, but there are many community centers throughout that have senior programs. So are they being, because it wasn't clear to me, I know the Heart Center, I get that, and they're being restored, but the senior programs in the community centers, are they being affected?

So originally, back in March, that March baseline had closing, reducing community center days open. cutting senior programming, things like that. So those are all, those are restored. So we're not closing the community centers. You know, the city, all the senior programs that the city provides, we're going to continue to provide them. And, you know, at the heart, that reduction at the heart center was to try to preserve the programming, but, you know, obviously it was going to have a staffing impact and council wanted to restore those people. And they'll be hearing that tomorrow as well.

Okay. I forgot one more comment. So back to the commission.

Do you mind just queuing up again so that people can get a chance to talk?

Oh, yeah. There's just one last comment. Okay. That's it. Is the, instead of reducing our only meeting five times, I would, so... When I first started, I never received a stipend, and I didn't receive a stipend for like five years, and that was okay. I was surprised to find out that we get stipends. So I would almost say, and I'll say that tomorrow too, is that instead of doing that, we don't need stipends. Get rid of the stipend, and if that would be enough to offset the finance piece, I would think that that's possible. That's just my opinion. I mean, our stipends, they probably pay for parking. That's about it. Okay, I'm done.

Member Jeltsin? Yeah, I had a quick question, and then your comment added another question. Real quick, I promise.

uh so the first one is this reduction to five commission meetings what would that am i did i miss the number what would the savings be and what is the the makeup of that is that yeah so we're i don't again i don't want to get i understand it's not overall it's about 35 000. um they had we're looking for around 30 so around 35 000 is the savings and we'll get into more of the detail about that tomorrow with council

And what is the makeup of that? Is the stipends a big part of that?

So the savings are, it's stipends, it's clerk overtime. So our friendly clerk folks have to work overtime. There's other organizational efficiencies that will occur as well. There's, you know, there's staff, most of, a lot of the city staff from the departments who come are exempt. So it's not overtime, but it frees them up to work on other things. Again, it's council directed staff to look at this as an option for them, and they'll debate that and decide whether or not they want to use it as an option.

Okay, I'll just say that I also agree. I don't know. I think if the stipends is the issue, I know this isn't for you. This is a city council issue, but I want to say that I'm supportive of that. My actual question before that topic was brought up is all the pending factors seem to be trending negatively for the long-term outlook. Are there any other than Is it just that we're hoping for, like, what would be a positive pending factor that we're hopeful for? Because it's all, like, unfunded liabilities. I don't see how that can really change, obviously, the future state of homelessness funding. That's so much up in the air. Do we need, like, is there anything positive, or are we just always going to have to be more in a,

a in a i don't know what the right term is but just projecting gloomy when you're the when you talk to the finance team you're going to get a lot of doom and gloom and i appreciate that's how you budget right you want to be conservative but yeah i think you know um there there's kind of a couple things so one is you know as a city we're partially in the the place that we're in because we've tried to do we've tried to be all things to all people and we've really expanded in a lot of different areas And I think one of the good things that the commission has helped us with is looking at performance metrics, looking at things that are working and things that aren't working and focusing. And so, you know, one of the positives of going through the budget exercise is it allows us as a city to focus on what is important for us to do as a city and how do we do it well. The other positive area is just technology. So as technology advances, that gives us a lot more tools to address the needs of our community. But yeah, when you talk to the three of us here, what we see are a lot of economic uncertainty. We see energy prices rising, we see inflation, and we see these other things that we wanna address, and we just wanna make sure that council and the community is mindful of these longer term things when we're looking at an annual budget. Got it. Thank you. Appreciate that. Vice-Chair McGee.

Just going on the record to say, it just amazes me that of all the things that they could look to potentially cut, commissions would be it. Like, the stipend came before my gas tank. So, I mean, you know, of all the things they're looking to cut, you know, it's just really that they would get that granular and get down to the commissions, right? And to cut us to five, like, If our work is not valuable, then just cut the commissions altogether. But to cut to five, what impact and what outcome could come from five meetings a year? How could we truly advise and be a voice to the citizens? And really what it is a censorship of voice of the community for which we sit and we stand. And so I just want to put that on the record because I think that that is the issue. It's the censoring of the community voice and the community's ability to have people sitting and championing their beliefs. Because I am embedded in my District 1 community, and I am on the streets, and I am going to all the events, and I'm hearing the various things that are on people's minds. Coming back to when I first came on this commission, there was talking about the metrics and how they look at funding in the city. And it was like District 1, oh, you know, they don't need the money, right? But I said, no, you're not looking at the right metric because when you look at my daughter's free and reduced lunch through the Department of Education, it's astronomical how many kids in District 1 are getting free and reduced lunch. And that is by their tax return, right? That's real data that informs, that allows them to be eligible for that criteria of getting the free and reduced lunch. So I just think... It's quite grievous to me. I am just very appalled that of all the things they can cut, that they would even consider cutting the community voice. And I just want to put that on the record. Thank you.

I just have a few questions for you guys. So one of the things that I've heard from the budget department, as well as I think the city's general position is, is that we want to get ahead of this, right? And it seems like we're starting to, because you basically were saying that about 75% of it is long-term savings, and then 25% is these one-off sort of cuts. But as we hit like 29, we're back to like 63 million in deficit again. So it still feels like we're staring down that barrel like we haven't gotten in front of it. So I guess what do you feel is remaining in order for us to get ahead of it truly and actually look at like, oh, wow, we can actually stand up a new program now because we have $5 million extra compared to the last year or something like that?

Yeah, you know, one of the big, when you see that delta from 20 to 29, one big factor in that kind of increase in the projected deficit is the loss of state homelessness funding. So that's a big factor there, right? That's a big contributor. You know, I think as far as a longer term planning, one very positive thing is You know, we've been in negotiations with every one of our labor groups. We're still in negotiations with two, but we've closed the other 11. And we've closed the other 11 with three-year contracts, and we're negotiating three-year contracts with the other two. So it's going to give us a bit of a planning window. You know, the way I look at it is we took a big... kind of bite of the apple this year especially compared to the last two years where we We did a little bit but we kind of kicked the can down the road and we did some of the easier stuff I think what what it's going to take again. Is that refocusing so you know what do we want to do? For homelessness, what do we want to do? What's do you know? And how does that impact the rest of our budget and what we want to spend on? that we have been able to make a lot of the decisions that we have been able to make this year. We are in the process of making a lot of those decisions. I think we made a lot more of them this year.

essentially refocusing is the answer. Meaning a little bit more cutting, trimming the edges That's the answer, essentially. So we've overexpanded. We've created too many programs. Those have become too expensive. And that's the issue that we've faced.

Well, I think it's two things. So it's not just investing in the new program areas. And again, that didn't come out of nowhere, right? We didn't stand up a homelessness services program for no reason. We did that because You know, we heard from the community there was this need. We also stood it up with state funding, which has kind of dwindled. So it's partly we're doing more things than we can afford. It's also partly the macroeconomic situation, right? So inflation is terrible for California municipal finances. Our property taxes are capped by Prop 13. inflation makes our sales tax revenues flatline. They have not grown since I've been at the city, and our costs all go up. So it's kind of a combination of things, but the answer is we have to live within our means, and that means we have to choose what we want to do.

sure okay um i guess moving on to the next part um we have 1.5 billion in unfunded pension what does this cost us per year can you speak to like how this is funded and like so um the way it works is uh it basically gets amortized over roughly 20 years and so uh when you make a

When we pay our pension bill every year, it comes in two parts. So there's the quote unquote normal cost, and that's what we would pay if we didn't have any unfunded liabilities. So that's just to kind of fund our people. That's roughly $60 million in the general fund, just to give you an order of magnitude. Our unfunded liability in the budget is roughly double that. So it's a big drag on our budget. It's, you know, it's grown 25 years ago. California's pension plans were fully funded. And then the state allowed benefits to be expanded and the discount rate went down. Right. So that's caused these big unfunded liabilities. And now we're trying to dig ourselves out of it. The other thing I'll just know is, you know, one way to pay it down as you pay it. every year as part of your CalPERS payment. Council also passed a policy, excuse me, my voice is going, also passed a policy for when we do have these one-time surpluses to set part of that aside to start paying down this debt to help our budget get in balance in future years.

Sure. And so year over year, we're paying essentially interest on this amortization schedule of 20 years. And at the end of the 20 years, does it go away? So if all else being equal, yes. But will all else be equal? And so what do you mean by that? Can you explain what you mean? Like, what do you mean by that?

Yeah, so every year we have an actuarial evaluation of our plan. And what the actuaries say is, okay, well, we're expecting people to live this long. We're expecting, you know, raises to be roughly this amount. We're expecting inflation to be this amount. And then one of the most important assumptions is we're expecting the CalPERS fund to return this this much on our investments every year. So, you know, if, again, if everything stays constant, we are within all the actuarial assumptions, CalPERS doesn't have, the stock market doesn't tank and CalPERS doesn't have a big loss, then we would pay it off. But if any of those bad things happen, then we would, those bad things generate unfunded liabilities.

Yeah, bad things. People living longer, not a bad thing. That's not a bad thing. No, no, no. That's a good thing, but the stock market crashing, all of those things are bad things. Sure. And so this principle that we have, this $60 million—sorry, that's a different word. We have a principle which we also are paying off, which is this 20-year amortization, but we are adding to that by $60 million every year. But we're paying off everything that we owe year by year then, so we're not growing that—

Yeah, we make our we make our payment every year. So we're not deferring our payments like you hear other jurisdictions elsewhere do, which gets you into really big trouble.

Got it. And so that's why you're saying everything else equal in 20 years, this will actually go away. Yes. Okay. And then I guess my last question. is sort of this idea around seeking external parties to help. Like we just discussed, like the youth or YPCE program with parks, doing sort of external vendors to take care of parks or various other services. Can you explain a little bit as to the budgetary advantage that you've seen so far in going this route and also quality of service? I mean, maybe quality of service is a little bit out of your department, but if you have a sense of it, I'd love to hear.

Yeah, so I mean, budgetarily, it's pretty simple. It's, you know, for this service, is it cheaper to do it in-house or is it cheaper to hire somebody else, right, who doesn't have a pension obligate, who doesn't have some of these other costs? And in some cases, it's cheaper to contract out. In other cases, it's not, right? So, like, for the example I'll give where it's not is for just general legal services. You know, Angel's cheaper than a law firm. So to the extent you don't need that super specialized skill set, you would much rather do it in-house. There are other areas where it can be more cost effective to outsource. But then there are other trade-offs involved with that as well, right?

Sure. And those trade-offs generally are like quality of service, or do you find...

They could be. It could be that. It could be, you know, direction, right? How much can you direct your employee versus an outside contractor? Those can be some of the trade-offs. But, yeah, budgetarily, it's pretty simple. If it's cheaper, you get budget savings.

And I think I remember one of our discussions you were talking about this is actually is an advantage to contract out for directing because you can like request certain metrics get captured that maybe the union wouldn't allow.

You would have to, you know, you negotiate your contract, right? So you can, and you can also change easier. You can cancel if your event if your vendors not performing you can cancel your contract right versus where you know in other cases you may have a longer process to to change things right so if we're hitting a fiscal year deficit and we need to like shift things around it generally becomes much simpler to shift around external parties and it would say internal parties which might have a lot of.

regulation around it, or is that something that's accurate?

It can be, yeah. I mean, generally in your contract, you can terminate it, right? So it can be simpler that way.

Sure. And so my last question around this is, like, roughly what percent savings do we see without the pension liabilities, without the insurance costs? If we were to say, for YPSE as an example, maybe, where it feels like, oh yeah, we could do an external and it would save us money. Can you give me a rough percentage of what that looks like?

You know, I'd have to sit down and do a percentage, but I can tell you when we looked at the outsourcing of all of park maintenance, we were projecting roughly a million dollars of savings.

Okay, and that was for a program which cost us?

I just don't have that off the top of my head.

That's why I can't give you the percentage. Fair enough. Okay, Member Smith?

Picking up on the pension liability issue, you know, just sitting here listening to all of Commissioner Georgeoff's questions, I realize that I could probably question you for about an hour, and I'm not going to go down that road. Instead, for the sake of our time, I think I'll just echo the concerns of my fellow commissioners about shortening the number of And I'll also bring this up, that as you present the pros and cons of this plan to the City Council, one aspect that hasn't been discussed is how it affects the issue of transparency. People are already complaining, our critics complain, as you heard earlier this evening, that we aren't as transparent as we need to be, that deals got cut. And there is a perception that the Measure U Commission and the Measure U on the whole isn't doing what the voters voted for all those years ago. The only way that this commission would be able to get its work done is to assign more work to committees that don't meet in the public eye. Deals will be cut. simply because they have to, or we'll get our work done, but it won't be as transparent as we would like, and I suspect as the public would like. And I can't speak for anybody else, but that is my main concern. So I'll leave it at that. Thank you. Member Sala.

I'm going to make a comment. Commissioner Georgeoff, I... respectfully and with a lot of respect. I didn't appreciate you cutting me off because you said other people had to speak. And then I just heard you ask all your questions, take up the time, but that was okay. But when I was trying to ask my questions, you said, give other people a chance. And I didn't appreciate that.

Understood. I think I was just like trying to limit it to around five to eight minutes or something like that. Yeah. Okay, is there anyone else who is willing to speak at this time? No? Okay, I think that's it. Then we can move on with the agenda. Ash, go ahead. Interest number four, which is the Measure U Department presentation schedule.

Good evening, commissioners. Ash Raghani, special projects manager in the city manager's office. Tonight, I just kind of want to reflect on our work this year in terms of scheduling presentations and kind of respond to some of the feedback that we had. I'll kind of rewind a little bit and start with your annual work plan that outlined your meeting schedule for the year. And that work plan just kind of had these blank department presentation placeholders in that work plan. And so what we tried to do this year the commission at one meeting who did you want to hear from at the next meeting and at that meeting who did you want to hear from at the next meeting and we got to a point where we realized there was greater demand and interest in hearing presentations from a larger number of departments than you actually had time for in your meetings. And so kind of rewinding back to your April meeting where we tried to cram in four different presentations, this just became a time management issue where we just didn't have enough time. want to kind of propose a solution here and get your feedback on it. On agenda item number four, it basically outlines a new presentation schedule. So thinking about where you want to be in April of next year. So April this year is when you approved your budget recommendations. Fast forwarding 12 months from that point, rewinding back and thinking about how do we get to that point given the number of departments you want to hear from, we're basically proposing this presentation schedule that would consist of cycle of basically June through April where you would receive department presentations that allows us to spread them out Following a couple of principles number one is just basically budgeting an entire hour per department I think you know the budget team just took about an hour and you know on average I think give or take that's many of the departments presented for an hour and took that amount of time others presented for a little bit less but not being able to know in advance how long any individual presentation is going to take and recognizing you may have other items on your agenda I think an hour or so is good and then not scheduling more than two of those presentations per meeting That gives us, you know, basically two hours worth of presentations per meeting and then potentially another hour for your other commission business. I can run through the actual schedule. I mean, this even starts as early as next month. So this is. Not necessarily like the departments you would typically hear from, but, and I haven't even reached out to the library, so this is pending their willingness to present. But I would also, I want to give you all an update on our strategic plan that we presented a couple of weeks ago to the city council. And then maybe even share with you a draft of the participatory budgeting report, which I think might be useful. And so following that, you basically get into August would be city attorney, public works. September, Convention and Cultural Services and Community Development. October, IT and the Office of Public Safety Accountability. November, Fire Department and Office of Diversity and Equity. January, Community Response and Police. March, Youth Parks Community Enrichment and Innovation and Economic Development. um no presentations in that april to give you the full time to really deliberate on your budget recommendations and then in may again this is just kind of when finance is able to present the proposed budget so that's kind of the idea i'm looking to see if i had any other notes here Yeah, just kind of open to your feedback. I will just call out the elephant in the room as of the last presentation was if there's fewer meetings in the year, how are we going to adapt? My initial thought on that would be potentially there's more involvement and work within the ad hoc committees. But I don't know how all that's going to play out. We just kind of have to see what the council direction is. But just know, Pete and the team, they're responding to council direction. And so you all definitely ought to consider communicating your I was going to say feelings, but perspective on this to counsel. And ultimately, that's who's going to decide what happens with this. But with that, I'm happy to just take any feedback and see what you all think.

Just two things. One, I think we'll cross that bridge when we get there. If they end up doing it or not, then we can decide then. Let's just go with the assumption that it's not going to happen. And then what do you need to walk away with today? What do we need to provide to you that you're happy, essentially, at the end of this?

Just some general feedback. I mean, ultimately what's going to happen is, you know, we'll kind of know what council decides and then we'll kind of have this schedule in place. So when you go to work on your annual report and work plan for next year, I basically want to be able to take copy and paste what's in the staff report into your work plan. So we're all on the same page in terms of what we agreed to and committed to. And then if anything falls off track, you can hold us accountable.

All right. Sounds good. Member Noveo.

Thank you. And thank you for providing such structure. I sincerely appreciate it. And I hope that every single one of the departments is going to be willing and able to come and join us, especially because you're giving them so much of a heads up. My question and directive, if possible, I don't know if I can give directive, but we have heard that there's conversations about a strategic plan for the Office of Innovation and Economic Development. So what will be the economic strategy for the state of Sacramento? Would it be possible, because such a big department gets a lot of our funding, can we listen to that plan? Or can we be embedded in their strategy so we can provide some sort of feedback as they're developing that strategy that comes to us after the fact? type of situation. I don't know what the timeline is for that, and I would appreciate if you can work with the department. So hopefully, you know, I know that I see it for March, and I don't know what the deadline for that is, but if it would be possible to come to us before it goes to City Council, that would be something that would appreciate.

Sure, and this is actually one thing that is highly underutilized by the commission. You have an agenda log, and so I actually want to take this item and add it to the agenda log. So I'm understanding the request basically to try to sync up the timing of the development of their strategy before it's completed to the time that they present so that that gives the commission an opportunity to help. to help provide feedback on it. Correct. Before it's finalized. Correct. I will, and I obviously don't have the authority to decide that, but I'm happy to relay the message and do what we can. And I'll just add it to the agenda log so we can keep track of it.

Thank you. Member Miller? I think that's a great strategy and it sort of aligns with what I was going to mention in terms of being more strategic about when we hear from who. And I don't know if this is even possible, but to characterize an entire department as more or less predictable in terms of what... So I guess what I'm saying is, is there any way to kind of... Some departments, it's easy for them to anticipate their expenses so they could go... first whereas others might have new expenses coming up that they could or things coming up that they didn't anticipate and so it would be better for us to hear from them later. I don't know if that's even possible but just a thought.

Yeah, I'm honestly not aware of that dynamic within departments. I think largely most departments look at the adopted budget as really driving their expenses and their costs for the year, but we can definitely consider that. And if you have any ideas on that, if you see some sort of pattern or something emerges that triggers kind of a light bulb, just let us know and we can try and redo the schedule. I will say, the order of this schedule is a combination of two things. One was kind of past surveys to commissioners to prioritize the departments they wanted to hear from first, and that really led to the departments we heard from this year, kind of the highest priority departments, and then thinking about, okay, let's try and space it out to about 12 months from the last time you heard from a department. So, for example, library is a good example of a department that didn't come in super high in the list of priorities. and had last presented, I think, in August of last year. So that's why we're kind of looking at them around this June, August kind of timeframe.

One thing I wanted to note is that we have finance on here only once. And I think generally we've had them come pre-budget finalization, kind of like now as well. I think I would have them on here two or three times because I think they're like the most, they're most closely related to what we do, right? Which is budget. Um, so yeah, I would just maybe try to find another spot to put them maybe early this year, early in the year.

I mean, yeah, I think Pete last came before today. It was either, yeah, I want to say February. I think it was February. Yeah.

Yep.

Sure. We can bake that in.

Any other commissioner comments? We have a public speaker, I believe, on this one. Thank you, Chair.

Mr. Lambert-Davis.

So this, this is an all time low to me. I didn't think it can get any lower. Now here you are discussing five meetings in a 12 month calendar year. You couldn't get it done in a 12 month calendar year. And I'm a little disappointed that finance left because we're still talking finance. Finance is not over yet. I just heard it. Now, I keep hearing about participatory budgeting. That's a sore spot for me because I, in District 2, I went to about five meetings. You understand me? I went to five different meetings, and we were paid for our cheesecakes at 2, but they were stunned because that's not why I went. I went to find out how they did it at different communities. Who does that? Even my family was stunned. But I was the winner because during that time, it was discovered for those of you who are on the rostrum, you should know this. During that time, there was an advantage given to the Asian community, and she was on the rostrum. And we were able to figure it out that there was an advantage. Now, that was just for a million dollars. So they disadvantaged black and brown. So if they'll do that for a million dollars and they won't listen to someone like me who says, let's cut some of these city attorneys. It's too many of them cut some of these city managers. don't give people raises that are working remotely. They're catching people that have sold their homes and they live in another state and they're still receiving money. I mean, you're going to have to really think about that in sort of five meetings.

Thank you for your comments. Your time is complete. Chair, I have no more speakers on this item.

There's also no more comments. I guess the only thing that left I would say is we have youth parks and community enrichment and then innovation and economic development. We'll probably be trying to make our plans like finalized by March. And those are some like pretty I don't want to seem like they're all important, but like those are like really hot. Youth is like our biggest budget element. So I would put it like a little bit earlier because we'd probably already have a draft by like February. And so I don't know if we can swap that with like maybe something that we have less say in like public works, perhaps like because it's just like one program. And I don't think we really have much problem with it in the past. So.

Sure. And was that just for YPCE or for also innovation and economic development?

I mean, I opened up the commission to see what they think, but YPCE was definitely the one I noticed. Member Respendit Benitez? First time I'm saying that.

Yes. It's not on this. It's more about... what you'd mentioned previously about let's go to the impression that the meetings don't get slashed in half. I thought we were done on this section, so that's why quick question. Is the commission able to submit an official statement on the position of the idea of the slashing of the hearings, maybe like a letter, an official letter that we could submit? Because it sounds like this is new information for us that we did not incorporate in our previous round of recommendations. So there's no official statement. I'm not sure if that's even allowed, just putting it out there.

Yeah, so I'll defer to the city attorney if I get any of this incorrect, but basically the commission wouldn't be able to formally adopt a position on behalf of the commission, like a formal recommendation, because that item wasn't agendized for this meeting. So you wouldn't be able to take a vote on it and officially represent the commission. What you can do is as individual commissioners, you can contact the council members directly and or show up to tomorrow's 5 p.m. city council meeting and basically voice your opinion. You can basically say that as a commission we had consensus on this idea. It just wouldn't be an official position of the commission.

So just to clarify, actually, maybe this isn't my question. We wouldn't vote on it, but as an off-agenda item, you could form an ad hoc that went and talked and gave a statement or something like that, which would be fine. But not on, yeah, I guess maybe not, because you'd have to vote on it. I don't know.

Yeah, so I think the issue is that there was no item placed on the agenda for you to have a vote to provide the official recommendation of it. However, you could form, I suppose, an ad hoc because you can just do that on your own. But I don't think they wouldn't be able to present the whole Measure U.

They could represent that ad hoc, right? Like we as an ad hoc of the group. I have aligned and correct.

Yeah. Assuming that the ad hoc all agrees with that.

Yeah, sure.

If you know, okay. But yeah, you can always, you, you, the chair can always the point or create an ad hoc.

I don't think it's necessary in this case. I think people are going to show up and state their case, but yeah. Member Sala.

I was going to say, just show up at the meeting tomorrow. And you get two minutes, and just say, I'm a Measure U commissioner for what district, and this is how I feel about this recommendation, and just state it. And the more of us that show up, the better it is. If you can't show up, you can submit e-comments, and you can do that as a citizen. Even though you're not representing Measure U, you can still identify yourself as a Measure U commissioner. So I think to the extent that you have availability, show up tomorrow and give your comments.

Okay, anything else you need from us, Ash?

No, I guess I will just, I think I said this earlier, but in terms of the process, we'll kind of see how this plays out, but I think this will really be formalized when you start working on your annual report and work plan, and that's where we can kind of revisit and make those fine-tuning tweaks, like with moving YPSE further up in the agenda. and aligning with the economic development strategy.

So we do have this, we have, like, library, for example, next.

Yes.

Okay, so that's...

If they're available, and I, this is, I probably should have talked to them first. I haven't talked to the library. I need to make sure they're available. What I'm assuming is, like, in these early months, we have a little bit of wiggle room. It is, so we can kind of move different departments around, like, For example, if the library isn't available, I can reach out to city attorney's office, public works, see if either one of them would be able to fill in that slot, and then maybe library can come back in August. So it's a little fluid at this point, but yeah, hopefully it does become more of a formalized annual schedule where it has predictability and mutual expectations, both between the departments and the commission.

Okay, no need for a vote on this. We can just move on.

That's correct.

Great. Okay, so then I guess the next thing is budget recommendations ad hoc. Really, I just kind of wanted to open up to you, Member Smith, like how did it go? If you can give a quick debrief. Member Saul actually already kind of gave a bit of one, but if you have anything to add from your presentation.

I thought it went well. By and large, they accepted what was in the presentation. They're, you know, again, Commissioner Georgoff did a yeoman's effort to pull it together. We had a complex discussion around a lot of the ideas that went into that document. He cobbled together all of our comments, took some things out of the draft that he presented, put some other things in, and presented slides, or rather created slides as well as a report in less than, I think it was about 10 hours of work time is what I heard. Just big hand for our chair. That was incredible. The slides laid out pretty well. There was one grammatical error in the slides, but other than that, yeah, it went incredibly well and was well received, I think.

Good to hear. And thank you so much for stepping up and presenting that on behalf of all of us. That's a big deal. Okay, anybody else to add anything to this or any last questions or we can move on? Okay, great. Community engagement and outreach ad hoc. I don't know, Member Sala, if you want to talk on this one for the community outreach or, you know.

No, because we haven't met. But now that this budget piece is over, I'll schedule something with our group, and then also invite community engagement, because I think they're the partner that we need to really... So I will work on scheduling so that we can pick up... We had recommendations of where we wanted to go, but nothing's happened, so that... I'll pull everyone together and we'll see what steps we take.

Okay, sounds good. Then the metrics ad hoc, I don't think there's anything to report. They also haven't met. It's mostly all focused on budget. And I think both of the budget and the metrics ad hoc will get dissolved, you said, in the next meeting. Yes. Cool. We can remake them if we feel the need. And then lastly, Commissioner, comments, ideas, and questions? Any last comments, ideas, and questions? No, then public comments matters not on the agenda.

Thank you, Chair. I have one speaker slip. Mr. Lambert Davis.

When you study...

When you study too long, you're studying wrong. This is an example of what's the problem down here. Now, last hired, first fired. That's a policy of this city. It's mainly black and brown. So those people from Yipsey, I bet you they're of color. Last hired, first fired. That's always been a policy. Also, I keep hearing about all of these ad hocs and metrics and all of that. Why can't we see something tonight? The budget is in two weeks. It's intentional, and I said that a long time ago. It's intentional to hamstring you so you can't reach your goals. They change it every time. Mr. Regani... I've studied him for a long time, and he knows a lot more after the fact. But I'm a type of person I want to know. See, I learned that commissions can only go three hours. I learned that just watching. We're at City Hall. I thought everything goes that long. No. So now I know, okay, if it's three hours, they know if they bring four departments in here at one hour each, they're not going to make it. I learned that just watching it. And then here's the finance people they left before we finished with number four, which was talking about finance. I run a business. There's no way my family would tolerate me doing what I see here. Whatever I know, I better put it in writing and show them because we're invested. See, if this was your money, you would do better. Not you on the rostrum. I'm talking about people that are on the payroll. A lot of people should be brought up, and I've said this, and I'm going to say it at City Hall tomorrow. A lot of people at City Hall should be brought up on criminal charges.

Thank you for your comments. Your time is complete. Chair, I have no more speakers.

We are adjourned.

Thank you.