City Council - Regular Meeting

Testing. Council Member DiRigo, if you can hear us.

I can hear you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We are going to go ahead and get started. I'm going to call the May 26th, 2026 special city council meeting, which I'll explain what that means in a bit. So we'll go ahead and call that order. And Alexis will be handling the duties of the city clerk this afternoon. So Alexis, you're on.

Thank you, Mayor. This meeting is available in Spanish for members of the public in attendance and on Zoom. Translation devices can be attained in the foyer. I'm laughing because

This meeting includes teleconference participation by Council Member D'Arrigo from the Cubis Hotel. And now I have to say Polish things in English. And so Margaret, I may need your help. Apparently you are in Grodzka 36, dash 85, dash 109, Bajojewicz? Okay. I stumble over that.

You're doing well.

All right. Poland, pursuant to California government code section 54953, Zoom webinar participation will also be available for members of the public. And the Zoom webinar ID and link are available on the posted agenda on the city website. And with that, will everyone please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance?

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.

Mary, just out of curiosity, what time is it in Poland?

I believe it is one. Is it 1 a.m. or 2 a.m.?

1 a.m., yes, it is.

Okay, well, in Poland, that's considered the night is young.

That's right.

Margaret is bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and ready to go. All right, so just a couple things. We are going to go into closed session. We will be back out at 4.30. We will... When we come back out, we will make sure, Council Member Sandoval, congratulations. Is this son or daughter?

Yeah, it's my son Sean's eighth grade graduation.

Okay, and this is the last high school graduate in the Sandoval household, right?

Middle school, but.

Oh, middle school, okay. Okay, all right, good. Well, trust me, you don't want them to leave too soon, so that's good that you've got more graduations to look forward to. All right, and then we will come back out. The one thing I want just everybody to know, there will be public, comment tonight. It'll be limited to 30 minutes after the staff report. This is a special study session for the council. Public comment will only be, it is not general public comment, it is public comment as it relates to the budget. So just FYI. So everyone knows that ahead of time. And with that, we will go into closed session.

Mayor, if I may do roll call.

Well, everyone can see who's here. Please do.

Council Member Barajas.

Here.

Council Member De La Rosa. That was for Council Member Barajas, but noted. Council Member Barrera.

Here.

Council Member Di Arrigo. Present. Council Member De La Rosa. Here. Council Member Salazar.

Here.

Council Member Sandoval.

Here.

Mayor Donahue.

I am here.

Thank you.

Did you say? My ears are plugged.

Does anyone have any comment about the item we're going to hear in closed session? All right, we're going to close session. We will go ahead and resume. Just a reminder, this is a special council meeting strictly to for the purposes of uh... it's a study session for the council we will take some public comment up to up to thirty minutes strictly as it pertains to the budget there's no general public comment this evening it's only pertains to the budget uh... and uh... prior to taking public comment we're gonna let council member sandoval uh... uh... provide his uh... budget comments so he can uh... get going to a happy family event, a middle school graduation. So Council Member Sandoval, you have the floor.

Thank you very much, Mayor. Yes, I just want to let you know I'm going to be leaving a little early today for my son's eighth grade graduation. I want to take this opportunity to make some general public comments on this year's budget. I want to start off by reading AN ITEM FROM THE STAFF REPORT WHICH REALLY HIT ME. IT SAYS UNCERTAINTY ASSOCIATED WITH INFLATION, INTEREST RATES, NATIONAL AND STATE ECONOMIC POLICIES AND GEOPOLITICAL CONFLICTS ALL CONTRIBUTE TO THE ANTICIPATED SLOWER-PACED GROWTH. DEFICITS ARE PROJECTED FOR FISCAL YEARS 2026 THROUGH 2030. Proposed biannual budget balances continued unknowns that could impact the city's fiscal health, such as economic uncertainty, tariffs, inflation, federal spending reductions, requiring the city to prepare to adapt to changing environments. I want to share that because we are facing some uncertain times in which we don't know what's going to happen with the following year's budget. So as we face some difficult decisions in this budget cycle, I want to reflect that we can't always ask residents or small businesses to bear the burden of of city expenses, which is why three years ago I proposed a tax on the agricultural industry. Some of the significant changes that we're going to see in this year's budget revolve around improvements to Abbott Street, which is one of the biggest probably trafficked areas by ag trucks in our city. And so I just want to share a little bit about that. So I think we need to bring that sooner than later to generate some revenue because we're facing some difficult decisions which are going to impact not only our neighborhoods, but some of our most high traffic impact areas in our city. So my first ask for the city council or direction to the city manager is that, as you know, one of our priorities is economic development. And we do that directly through impacting small businesses. So I'd like to the council to consider doubling the amount that we contribute to small business grants. Those are really small amounts, but they can make a big impact in terms of advertising dollars for small businesses, technology grants, and really lifting up our small businesses. It's also why I share frustrations about investments in things like the Welcome Center. In the presentation you're gonna see later on, you're gonna see some reallocation of funds, for example, $224,000 from striping and signage improvements, $113,000 from North Main and Baronda Road improvements, $99,000 from Baronda and North Main intersection improvements, $80,000 from West Alvin Drive crossing improvements when we just gave the Welcome Center almost half a million dollars. So every dollar that this city is currently spending and allocating to things that I don't think are the priority of the residents should be concerning. The council's gonna consider some of these But the items I identified are things that the council is considering moving reallocating those funds to fund other things. And so we shouldn't be at a position where we're picking and choosing between striping and certain improvements in our community. I also want to share that with the. budget allocation, these $3 million that we're gonna be, well, that the council's gonna consider allocating to Abbott Street. We currently have a pavement management plan which identifies five years of specific roads in our neighborhoods, in our community to be improved, and that's based off of a $6 million annual road improvement project. If we reallocate these funds to specifically Abbott, I'm concerned that the promise we made to residents to fix those streets, which by the way are in our pavement preservation list, which includes streets in all our districts, neighborhoods, that those promises that we made to those residents are not gonna be able to be honored because of capacity. I also think that Abbott is going to be heavily trafficked by Amazon and continue to be used by the ag industry. And I think it's fair to say that those two industries should be contributing to the repair of Abbott Street. The city of Salinas has recently been given or will be given $10 million in traffic impact fees from Amazon. That's not reflected in this year's budget, at least not where I could see them. So I think that before we allocate or take away money from some of these much needed areas, we should consider that $10 million to make road improvements to that area. I'm in support of some of the reallocations to more traffic calming. As you know, that's an issue that is affecting all our districts. Also, I support the chief's recommendation for continued funding to our mobile crisis unit, which I think provides a lot of needed support to our police department and the people in need. You know, we have allocation this year for half a million dollars in rental assistance. It's great, we have a lot of renters in our community, but we have to be honest, the rental assistance program was a reaction to the repeal of rent stabilization. It was meant to offset the hurt that the council did by repealing rent stabilization and tenant protections, and it's gonna help a very limited supply of folks. When this council said let's focus on rental assistance led by the mayor, they said we were gonna be looking at private public partnerships. We're gonna find long-term sustainable solutions. And right now we're pulling this half a million dollars out of our general fund. And so my question to the mayor and to the council is where are those solutions that were proposed when we brought this program forward. I haven't seen them, I haven't received a single update, neither has the community. And so when we bring these programs forward and we tell the community, well, we're gonna start off with general funds dollars, but we're going to then leverage these private, I don't remember, foundation dollars. I mean, all that went up in smoke. I think we need to consider that. I'm also concerned that, you know, we have a community sponsorship policy, but we continue to or I continue to later on after the fact, find out that we are now becoming members or sponsors of specific events or groups. I think it speaks to the need for a policy to decide who we're going to become a member of. You know, the Chamber of Commerce, we became a member of. Of them for $5,000, I was unaware that the last Council voted not to continue that. And so without those types of transparent policies and procedures, so the community also knows if you are a nonprofit. You can also submit the same request as the Chamber of Commerce to be to get sponsorship for the city, or we can become a member of your organization. I see the use of here. here to ask likely for the city's allocation, but we are still sponsoring certain groups and becoming members of certain groups without giving other groups the same opportunity. I'm also in support of increasing staff in our housing department. As you've seen recently, the compliance level for our rental registry is very low. I've said it since the beginning, I feel like without proper staffing, we aren't able to be proactive in both providing services to tenants and landlords. So I'm in support of that. Also, this council has over and over talked about the need for better communication with the community. But in this budget, I don't see any increase to our communications staff. So in order to better communicate with the community, we need to make sure we're funding that. And CIP carryovers, if I'm not mistaken, we have about $60 million in projects that are in the queue and maybe they're moving along. But I think it's time that the city allocates some money to additional support in either project management to help move some of these projects along. Because the longer we wait for some of these projects, it's just cutting our dollars, the value of our dollars. I'd also like a response to why the Amazon $10 million that we're receiving is not reflected in this year's budget. I'm in support of the community sponsorship amount of $150,000. I think it's a good amount to continue supporting Some of these much needed projects, but I do want to really, really push the fact to the council that if we reallocate 3M dollars. To Abbott road, I am concerned that all these streets. Like, uh, market street commission Alice L street. Davis Road, Laurel, Cherokee, North First Street, Rider Avenue, that we won't have the capacity to make improvements to our neighborhood roads as we already promised our community. So I think that summarizes all my comments. Give me one second, let me just. I also don't see the money that we collect from the ticket surcharges from the rodeo reflected in the budget, so I'd like follow up on where that line item is. And before the council does reallocate money from all these projects to Abbott Road, I wanna make sure that none of the roads that are gonna be in our neighborhoods are gonna be you know, pushed aside or not taken care of or pushed another year. So that concludes my comments. Thank you, Mayor. All right. Thank you, Councilmember. All right.

All right. With that, we will proceed to public comment. We will take up to 30 minutes of public comment. Two minutes. Well, she didn't put it on there. Or? Yeah, here let me OK. We're going to do take two on this. We we before public comment we wanted to present the staff report first, so we're going to. We're going to so that way the public will have a chance to hear what what staff has to say and then and then we'll do comment so. Hang tight. Well, no, I agree with you. That's what I work with, the agenda. So, all right, let's go ahead and get the staff report. What's that on there?

Good afternoon, mayor, council members.

Can I say something? Hello, so the idea with waiting for public comment after the presentation with the public will be informed what's in the budget. So that was the whole idea in a special meeting. So we just didn't read it, it was in here. So my mistake, it was here, but that was the idea to do the public comment after the presentation. So at least the public's more informed kind of what we're presenting.

Good afternoon, Mayor, Council Members, Selina Andrews, Finance Director. It's a pleasure to be here. Today, the item before you is the proposed biannual fiscal year 2026-27 and 27-28 operating and capital improvement program budgets, as well as the five-year CIP plan. staff's recommendation is that you receive the presentations provided by all the departments and provide input on the biennial budget. So we'd like to start off with some budget, budget 101, to help everybody here and the public understand what is a city budget. and it' s a financial plan, a policy document and a communication device and sources of funds include revenues such as sales tax, property tax and other local taxes. And the use of funds is essentially the expenditures that you'll hear throughout the presentation. And that pays for, typically, a local government, pays for public safety, street maintenance, landscaping, building, and planning, library, parks, and recreation. And generally, a budget is separated into categories such as general funds, Special revenue and grant funds enterprise funds debt and internal service funds and capital funds So we'll go over all of those today and the budgeting process occurs Once a year every prior to the fiscal year and we'll go over that timeline in a little bit So the budget philosophy essentially is to establish and accomplish council goals and priorities, focus on community needs, maintain a balanced budget, and adhere to financial and budgetary policies, and maintain prudent reserves. What informs budget recommendations? The council's strategic plan and priorities, federal and state regulations and mandates community budget engagement activities operations and maintenance needs reserve requirements other financial policies short and long-term obligations and the economic outlook and financial forecast You may recall from prior presentations, we've shared the biennial budget process, which includes budget adoption in June. So that's the 26, 27, and 27, 28. We'll also refer to that as year one and year two of the biennial budget. IN FEBRUARY, 2027, WE'LL BRING YEAR ONE TO, WE'LL REVIEW IT AS A MID-YEAR PROCESS. AND IN JUNE, 2027, WE'LL DO AN ANNUAL REVIEW OF YEAR TWO, WHICH IS THE 27-28 BUDGET PROCESS. And in February, 2028, we'll bring year two to this council for any mid-year adjustments. And in June, 2028, we'll then review the new biennial budget. So the key elements of the budget that you're being presented with today are in alignment with economic development, housing, infrastructure, city services, public safety, youth and seniors. Now we're gonna go over the community engagement that occurred earlier in the year. I'm sorry, yes, earlier in the year, late last year. And our communications manager, Sophia Rome, will go over that.

Good afternoon, Sophia Rome, community relations manager. So I'm gonna share a little bit about our budget community engagement process this past year. We had the budget online survey that was open for participation from January 9th through February 12th. We had a total of 1,601 individuals participate in the budget process. The majority of those were community led. and were paper surveys that were submitted to the city. We also had a budget community meeting that was bilingual, hosted on February 5th. In terms of participation, this is a breakdown by council district of where we saw the most participation, which was in district two, followed by district five, one, and then four, three, and six. In terms of ranking, this is in order based off of the responses that we received. So the number one priority based on the survey results was economic development, followed by infrastructure, housing, public safety, and city services and youth and seniors were right about the same. These four categories here are not ranked in any priority, but these were the common themes that we saw about what residents enjoyed most about Salinas, which was our climate and our location, diversity and community, parks, libraries, and public spaces, and our agricultural heritage and job availability. What the community felt needs improvement, this is also not in ranked order, roads and sidewalks and ADA improvements, street lighting, homelessness and housing services, public safety staffing, permit center processing times, and urban forestry and tree maintenance. I do want to, there is a comment on there regarding minimum wage, cost of living, and job stability for year-round employment. I do have that on there. It was something that was highly commented on. However, it is not necessarily directly driven by city services, but we can use that information and are using that to inform and how they connect indirectly with city services. Some examples of that could be with economic development, job creation, and housing-related development projects.

With that, I will turn it back over to Selena.

So we're going to kick this budget study session off with the strategic support departments, which include we will talk about what these departments do first. Support service departments are essential to the effective operation of the city as these departments support citywide all other departments. They provide foundational services and allow all departments to function efficiently. and responsibly, support employees, manage public funds, ensure compliance with the law and maintain transparency. And these departments also provide critical support that enables the city to deliver high quality services to the community. the administration department consists of 19 employees and five divisions or program areas provide leadership direction and oversight to all city departments in order to accomplish city council goals and objectives. And the divisions or support areas are city clerk's office, economic development, communications, the airport, and community safety. Current and ongoing initiatives for this department are downtown vibrancy, plan implementation, LSL marketplace and investment attraction, airport business development, support for commercial revitalization and infill development projects, regional collaboration, on workforce development and economic competitiveness, business engagement and assistance with development processes, pursuit of grants and external funding to support economic growth initiatives. The city attorney's department consists of six employees in three program areas. They serve as the legal advisor of all city officers and provides legal representation and oversees citywide risk management programs. The Department of Finance has 33 employees within five divisions and are responsible for managing the city's financial resources and ensuring fiscal accountability, transparency, and long-term sustainability. Human Resources Department consists of 11 employees in four separate program areas. They assist citywide recruitments, developing and maintaining, retaining skilled workforce dedicated to the city and the community, work closely with departments to help build an effective and customer-focused organization. So in general, the service delivery includes expanding economic development, high quality and effective customer service, inclusive engagement, communication and outreach, legal representation, adequate insurance coverage, allocating city's financial resources, and streamlining effective hiring processes. So with that, we're going to hand it off to the departments and community development will present first.

Good afternoon. Lisa Brinton, community development director. So the Community Development Department provides permitting, inspections, development review, long-range planning, code compliance, housing programs, and homeless services. And over the last year, department staff have worked really collaboratively to establish a department vision and mission. The department's mission is to further the vision of a thriving Salinas with a healthy, safe, and sustainable future for all through development, planning, and public engagement. The department is comprised of 79 full-time staff split into six divisions. So we have administration, advanced planning and project implementation, code enforcement, current planning, housing and community development, which includes homeless services, and permit services. And functions, as shown on the slide, include administrative support, planning, permitting, inspection, code enforcement, management of federal funding, rental assistance, housing production and policy, homeless services, and neighborhood improvement projects. This past year, community development has invested in staff training and development. Every first Friday of the month, the permit center is closed to the public until noon to allow staff to meet as a division with other divisions or the department as a whole to work on organizational development, communications and training. organizational development center around developing the vision and mission statement that I shared earlier, as well as incorporating the city adopted values of accountability, collaboration, trust, innovation, and service excellence into our daily work and department functions. AS A DEPARTMENT, WE PARTICIPATED IN COMMUNICATION TRAINING TO LEARN ABOUT OUR INDIVIDUAL COMMUNICATION STYLES AND DEVELOP SKILLS TO IMPROVE OUR COMMUNICATION INTERNALLY AND WITH CUSTOMERS. THESE SKILLS ARE ALSO BEING APPLIED TO UNDERSTANDING AND IMPROVING PROCESSES ACROSS DIVISIONS TO BREAK DOWN SILOS AND INCREASE EFFICIENCY. In 2526, the department furthered city council objectives under the 2025 to 2028 goals of economic development, housing and infrastructure by completing the final design and submitting plan entitlements for mixed use affordable housing developments in Chinatown along Soledad Street. processing land use entitlements and building permits to bring in six new businesses and tenants at Northridge Mall, committing over $7 million in grant funding to projects, proposing 167 affordable housing units, launching a pilot rental assistance program to prevent eviction, and awarding over $1 million towards the operation of permanent supportive housing at the Fairview facility. In addition, we utilized city funds and community development block grant funds to conduct a lighting needs assessment in the Alisal to install cameras and lighting for neighborhood safety. To further the goals of city services, public safety, and youth and seniors, we upgraded technology to provide automated solar permit issuance through Solar App Plus, updated our pre-approved ADU plans and guidebooks to reflect newly adopted building codes, and filled all vacant CODA officer positions and launched a citywide proactive enforcement program and identified and advanced for receivership cases. COMPLETION OF THE VISION SALINA'S 2040 GENERAL PLAN IS AN OBJECTIVE UNDER CITY SERVICES. IN 2526 WE RELEASED THE DRAFT GENERAL PLAN AND OUR FIRST EVER CLIMATE ACTION PLAN. AND IN JUNE OF THIS YEAR THE CITY WILL CONSIDER ADOPTION OF PHASE ONE ZONING CODE AMENDMENTS TO BRING CODE INTO COMPLIANCE WITH STATE LAW. Public review and consideration of the adoption of the general plan and climate action plan will occur in fiscal year 26-27 with public review documents released summer through fall of this year and consideration early first quarter of 27. Phase two and phase three of the zoning code update will begin in the summer of 26 and will continue through 2027. In physical years 26 through 27 and 27 through 28, the department will support city council objectives under the goals of city services, public safety and youth and seniors by identifying, testing and launching a new platform to streamline planning and permitting processes and continuing to streamline the entitlement and permitting of residential developments and modernizing website content with clear permitting information, forms, and workflow. Under public safety, we'll be transitioning vendor enforcement and special events to permanent code enforcement staff, and we will support the inspection and construction of El Gabilan top lot. I think I skipped a slide. My apologies. Go back. So I just spoke how we are going to further city services, public safety, and youth and seniors, and I'm gonna go back and talk about economic development, housing, and infrastructure. So we'll be processing the consideration of two specific plans, the Farashi Business Center and the East Area specific plan. Both include residential components as well as employment and revenue generating opportunities. We'll also be selecting a developer and beginning construction of the Soledad Street mixed use developments in Chinatown and finalizing packaging for consideration of approval five tentative maps, which would add over 2800 residential units. We will also be launching the first time homebuyer program to promote homeownership and we'll continue to seek funding to sustain street outreach and emergency shelter coordination with the county. So four new positions are recommended in fiscal year 26-27 and two positions are recommended in 27-28. The addition of these positions has no impact to the general fund or Measure G. There will be an increase to the permit services enterprise fund budget of $414,000. Our budget includes shifting funding for an administrative division position and administrative analyst that will improve workflows, website, and public outreach for the permit center. We are going to be reducing funding for supportive consultants for code enforcement and move operations in-house and we are going to be combining part-time temporary positions to fund a full-time administrative clerk to serve the public at the permit center counter and new inspection staff are needed to support future growth area in permit services as construction begins All permit service enterprise fund positions are covered by fees collected for services rendered. Also, we'll note that the business navigator position will be moved from community development to be aligned with the economic development division. And now I will turn it over to Kristen Lundquist.

Good evening, Mayor and members of Council. Kristen Lundquist, Library and Community Services Director. So I'm pleased here to talk a little bit about the core services that our department provides to the community. It really is focused on libraries, recreation centers, after-school programs, senior programs, parks, literacy services, a variety of critical important programs. We have a total of 74 full-time equivalent positions which deliver a variety of critical programs and services that support quality of life, public safety, and economic development. The library continues to provide lifelong learning opportunities, creative programming, and various digital resources to the community. In the coming year, we will continue to evaluate the library operating hours and using a data-driven approach, look to expand those hours. The makerspace has been used for program-related activities and staff is finalizing a plan to provide open lab hours where residents can come in and use the various pieces of equipment that we have to make their own projects. We're also focused on delivering services outside the library walls and will continue to increase our outreach to the community through local schools and community events. The park maintenance team continues to care for and maintain over 250 acres of core parkland. The national average of acres per full-time equivalent is 11, and we're currently at a service level of nearly 16 acres per full-time equivalent position, and are anticipating the acquisition of the restoration area at Ensign Community Park, which will bring our service level to 20 acres per FTE. which is just shy of double of the national average. Despite this, our team is dedicated and works extremely hard to ensure park system is well maintained, safe and accessible to the community. In addition, we continue to review the appropriate timing of adding additional staffing and operational resources. Our recreation and neighborhood services teams are providing critical quality of life services to our seniors, youth, and families. Anywhere between 30 to 60 seniors attend the Bread Box daily for a lunch, a socialization, and various monthly parties. Our recreation centers provide safe spaces for youth after school, evening classes, and support early learning through our Tiny Talk program. Thousands of youth participate in our various sports leagues, clinics, and camps annually learning fundamentals of the various sports as well as critical life skills. The neighborhood services team provides leadership and engagement opportunities to youth and the community creating links between residents and various city services. For the last several years, we've been very busy improving our infrastructure to include new playgrounds, an ADA restroom renovation at Closter Park, to opening the brand new Hebron Family Center, which I know many of you attended or most of you attended. We have accomplished a lot, but there's still more to do. This year we will look forward to the acquisition of the restoration area at Ensign Community Park, a grand opening at Closter Park, initiating construction of the ADA restrooms and refresh of the Firehouse Recreation Center, and continuing our engagement with residents around the District 5 Recreation Center plan for Northgate Park. All of these spaces will support quality of life and well-being of residents through nature, connectivity, programs and services. just wanted to highlight some of our accomplishments we've really been focused on improving our facilities and so just to highlight a couple of the accomplishments from 25 26 we obviously opened the brand new hebron family center and we're in the substantial completion phase of cluster park the cluster park renovation project which It means we're in the 120-day maintenance period so that all of the landscaping can take so that when we open the park, it will be in a better ability to maintain as we move forward. We completed the District 5 Recreation Center feasibility study, completed ADA restroom improvements at Closter Park. We finished the design and build process for renovation of El Gavilan Tot Lot. We finalized plans for improvements at the Firehouse Recreation Center. We've replaced the flooring at John Steinbeck. And I think it's always important to highlight some programmatic stuff. And so we've also increased our library program attendance by 18%. And as we look to 2026 through 2028, again, we're looking forward to a grand opening of Closter Park. We're gonna continue to refine conceptual design, initiate design development, which is really gonna be focused in ensuring that the community comes along with us and participates in a variety of engagement opportunities for the next phase of outreach related to the District 5 Recreation Center. Again, we're... looking very much forward to having the restoration area complete, and that's all through partnership with the Big Sur Land Trust, who's really been working tremendously hard over the last couple of years, actually many years, to bring Carr Lake and to community park to the community. We'll be finalizing the renovation at the Sherwood Rec Center, the former municipal pool. Again, we're looking to increase our library hours of operation, launch our maker space, and then complete the firehouse, or at least initiate the construction of the Firehouse Recreation Center ADA restroom renovation and water damage repairs. With that, I'll turn it over to David Jacobs, our Public Works Director.

Good evening, Council. David Jacobs, Director of Public Works. I'll go through some of the items with Public Works that are in this year's budget. Oh, they changed my slides. Sorry. I'm a little bit surprised. But anyway, Public Works is comprised of four different divisions. One is engineering. Two is maps and GIS and maintenance services. Actually, there's three. Sustainability and stormwater fall under engineering. But engineering has specific areas that they are in charge of. So I broke those out as individual divisions to talk about. So engineering is made up of traffic engineering, development engineering, and design engineering. Design engineering puts together plans and specifications for projects. One that's coming up. The Abbott Street project it's due to open on June 2nd, so hopefully we'll move forward with that Development engineering deals with the developers that are coming into the city encroachment permits they plan check the plans that come in so that we know that we're getting proper projects built and And then traffic engineering deals with the traffic signals and the traffic that's generated in the city to try to make sure everybody is driving safely. Traffic calming falls under the traffic division. So anyway, moving on to sustainability, We have two employees in there currently. They deal with franchise agreements with Republic Services and also the solar panels that we have throughout the city. We recently finished installing the solar panels at El Gabalon Library and currently finishing up the police department. So that falls under the sustainability group. Stormwater group, that's the clean water group. Salinas clean water group they go out and basically monitor what's going into our storm systems they do a lot of public outreach and teaching folks why it's important to Look after what's going to into our storm drains the picture you see here is us at an event showing people how the water flows through our system and into the ocean eventually and then maps and GIS The GIS works with a number of city departments. What I have on the screen here is the current work with the Community Development Department and all the issues that we have with the code enforcement. So these are little pins that go in when we get a code enforcement violation. They can see where that is on a map. So GIS works with them and everybody else in the city. We move on to our maintenance service, which is comprised of 72 employees currently. It is comprised of street maintenance, urban forestry, fleet maintenance, industrial waste, sanitary sewer, and storm drain. Street maintenance does a lot of work in terms of maintaining our streets. They do crack filling. They do mastic. They do pothole filling. They also have the sidewalk crews within that street division. Also, the sign crews and the streetlight crews. So if the streetlights are down, that falls under the street maintenance folks. Urban forestry deals with over 30,000 trees within the city, trying to maintain those and cut them and make sure they're in a safe manner. Our fleet maintenance keeps our fleet running. We have over 300 vehicles that they maintain. And then our industrial waste is our industries, our 23 industries that flow into our industrial system, that flows down to our industrial waste treatment flat down on Davis Road. Sanitary sewer, we're basically responsible for maintaining the sewer lines underneath the city and making sure that sewer can flow down to our pump station and ultimately down to Monterey One Water for treatment. and then our of course our storm drains making sure that when it rains the water has some place to go so moving on to our 25 26 accomplishments we completed our 25 payment management program we completed the gardner pacific acosta plaza intersection improvements GIS completed the fire department response statistics dashboard, which is shown on there that shows fire department can monitor how they're doing. We completed the sanitary sewer rate structure that's going to allow us to do quite a bit more sewer projects over the next couple years. And then we continue to maintain our streets and sidewalks and city-owned properties. Some of our goals for 26-27 is to complete the Veranda-McKinnon roundabout project. Probably toward fall time is when that's projected to be finished. Complete the Adabit Street sanitary sewer and road improvements since that's opening in June. We'll hopefully get that underway this summer. we're wanting to complete the industrial wastewater treatment facility, pump station and electrical improvements. Uh, that was actually a grant, uh, prop, uh, one round two that we got to improve the industrial waste facility. And then we're going to hopefully complete the Sherwood rec center building here in the next month or so. Um, put that in next year because it's going to be right at on the timeline there. Um, so some of our goals, for 2728 we want to complete the san juan grade road sidewalk and street project we want to complete the design of the veranda el dorado and and the veranda natividad roundabouts that's like a year-long year and a half long project to get those designs done and then we'll have a cost estimate and try to figure out where we get the money to do that project we want to complete the design and construction of the Constitution Boulevard signal improvement project, complete the design of the Lake Street sewer pump station, and that particular project we're kicking off now. Oh, there are two different lines, sorry. Again, they messed with my slides. I can't have that. So anyway, the Lake Street project is currently going on, but we're doing a design build. So we're hiring a design contractor. They're going to be designing it over the next year and then building it over the next year and a half. So hopefully that's all completed by the end of 28. And then we want to support... Other departments with our GIS folks. So anyway, we move on to the police department.

Thank you Good evening mayor city manager city attorney council members. I'm gonna briefly talk a little bit about the police department Carlos Acosta chief of police and So our first slide here is to really take a deep dive into how many calls for service we responded to in 2025, a slight increase, about 1%, 133,000 calls for service, just under 14,400 front desk reports, 3,500 citations, and 2,735 arrests, which is a 29% increase from 2024. And our solve rate for homicides, I'm happy to report for three years in a row, we've been 80% or higher, and 2025 was actually 86%. Accomplishments. Those were major accomplishments. These are just as important. Our community engagement continues to be a top priority for us, reaching 25,000 community contacts just in 2025, an increase of 700% since 2023. Revitalizing our youth cadet program. Just two years ago, we had 11 cadets. We have 36 cadets today. And first of its kind, Youth Alternative Diversion Program for the City of Salinas and the Police Department. We're happy to report 15 youth graduated from that program in 2025. Continuing on with accomplishments. as our staffing staffing is really important for us to be able to provide those key core services while continue to engage and solve crime in one one of 2025 we had 128 sworn positions a year later we had 143 and just recently the most recent numbers of april 30th we had 150 sworn police officers so that's a very good increase for an agency our size Some of the things we're going to continue to prioritize is our organizational wellness, continue to enhance our peer support teams. And as you'll see on our next page, I think the most important hire and add that we did at the police department was Sage. There's a good picture of her. She was hired in 2025, or actually adopted, however you want to call it. So 26, 27, and 28. 27, 28, our goals will also represent continued focus on organizational wellness with our employee retention. It's really good that we're hiring, but we also want to retain our incredible employees, continue to focus on that recruitment, and continue to focus on meaningful, intentional community engagement. I'll now turn it over to Fire Chief Sam Clement.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council, Sam Klemek, your Salinas Fire Chief. We did have the benefit of presenting your annual report a couple of weeks ago, so I'm going to point to just a couple more statistics just for the public in going over what your fire department's been up to for the last year 2025 we saw over 17 000 almost 18 000 calls for service 11 400 of those being ems calls and 1200 of those being responses to our unsheltered population brighter note 50 cardiac arrests that were legitimate field saves those are folks that have pulses and were able to leave the hospital as a result of our paramedic program. Residential structure fires, 153 of those, part of our over 884 total fires last year. And the property value saved valued at $68.9 million. $72 million of that was at risk from fire. So that was actually fire at risk and property at risk from fire. versus property saved. Total inspections for the prevention division, over 2,403 permits were reviewed. Our staffing for the fire department remains at 92 with admin staffing at 13 and our total department staffing being 105. Some of our accomplishments really are focusing on furthering the recommendations AND THE ROAD MAP WE PUT TOGETHER IN OUR 2023 FIRE DEPARTMENT MASTER PLAN. ORIGINALLY IN THE IMPETUS FOR THAT WAS OUR COMMUNITY RISK ANALYSIS IN 2019, UPDATED IN 2023 AND TURNED INTO A MASTER PLAN. SO OUR BUDGETARY REQUESTS SINCE THEN HAVE ALL RELATED AROUND ACHIEVING SOME OF THOSE STRATEGIC GOALS OF THE FIRE DEPARTMENT. SO IN INFRASTRUCTURE AND EQUIPMENT MODERNIZATION, WE COMPLETED THE FULL RENOVATION OF FIRE STATION ONE THAT WAS REPOPULATED EARLIER. in January this year. It was a long time project, actually we did complete it with two months to spare under budget. And we were able to get ARPA funding for that with a blend of CIP funding to get that fire station restored and units repopulated over there. We also placed orders for one type six wildland fire engine as well as two type one pumpers and another tiller ladder truck to get those on order. As we've talked, those are taking in excess of five years to get those delivered. We'll be waiting for those for quite some time, but at least they are on the docket and being built. We also filled a deputy fire marshal position. to support also in fire plan checks. And we filled that temporarily with a retired annuitant to help with a lot of the overflow work of plan check. And we were able to fill that position permanently about two months ago, a month and a half ago. We supported training two paramedic students from our existing ranks that have graduated and have hit the streets that are part of those cardiac arrest saves right out the gate. We also expanded our cadet corps from 11 to 20 participants last year with our budget allocation, and we increased the capacity for plan reviews and prevention workload, as I talked about. So we were able to improve our plan check turnaround times and also get some training hours, some freed up time for some training hours, and enhance our service delivery in that respect. We still have some current challenges. Our budget requests moving forward all, as I said, relate to our goals in overall reduction of our response times. we have a high call volume that reduces our ability to deploy units quickly, lower probability that the closest fire engine will be available when 911 is called. When we talk about that, that's available unit hours. More than 6,000 times a year, we have more than two concurrent calls, 5,400 times a year, more than three concurrent calls, and over 3,300 times a year, four concurrent calls going on at any given time. as I've expressed you before this is where this is where available unit hours really becomes critical in that response times really really suffer when we have to have fire units responding from opposite ends of the city to cover those concurrent calls that's what our focus is on improving. looking at our looking at our statistics against national standards firefighters per thousand residents as you'll see the national average is about one point two firefighters per thousand the western region which we are a part of we're just at point nine eight firefighters per thousand and salinas is still at point five eight per thousand We were able to make some gains in our utilization from 2024, where we had five of our units were overutilized. We now see this continuing. We were able to make some improvements with some adoption of some response policy changes to improve utilization of our medic engine four, five, and six. But as you can see, medic engine one, two, and three are still overutilized significantly. We also have focused this on maintaining our ISO classification. We just completed our interviews with ISO. If you're not familiar with that, that goes into what insurance companies use to assess risk and establish insurance rates. So we really, really covet our class two rating. We're really fighting to keep that in place. And hopefully, maybe someday we'll work to improve it. But a lot of this goes into those formulas. So our goals. Oh, actually, going back to this real quick, we have this slide in here. This is our real-time response dashboard that Director Jacobs talked about. This is so any member of the public or any of you can real-time go onto our website and look at how we are doing. that we have to consider when we' re making those decisions. You can look at how we' re doing from the dispatch center perspective some of the things we can' t control versus the things we can control with policies and procedures and turnout time and then total travel time when we start talking about traffic calming and some of those other measures that while they do reduce speed they do make us safer they' re also coming a bit of a tradeoff that we have to and then obviously our total response time. I can't quite see the date on when this one was pulled, but we're still consistently in the red. Obviously, keeping it in the green is where our western region standard is, and we want to keep that at about six minutes, six and a half minutes for a fire, six minutes or five and a half minutes for an EMS call. So our goals. Again, Engine 7, more unit hour availability. That decreases our response times. That is an item mainly related to staffing, and that is a pending budget approval item. We'll continue to recruit, focused on filling vacancies created by attrition, local hiring pool, and youth development, again, through our cadets, through ROP, and through our local fire academy. we' re also continuing to pursue our deferred maintenance for all of our fire stations obviously station one was our big lift this last year there are plenty of fire stations that still need a host of just updates and deferred maintenance that we' re Looking at our multi-jurisdictional hazardous materials response team, as well as bringing other counties into that, perhaps some regional collaboration that would bring some responsibility for service, but also bring a cost recovery aspect to that into the fire department. Also looking to just maintain our timely plan reviews, our permitting and inspections and bolster that by adding prevention staffing as the needs of the community grows and expansion goes into the future growth area. We're looking to restart our commercial fire inspection program that was paused going into COVID. Again, as a revenue measure, but also as part of our community risk assessment, identifying the need for us to go beyond our state mandated inspections that currently revolve around multi-family dwellings, schools, and the like, getting back to inspecting on a regular basis all of our commercial occupancies. And we still continue to look at alternative response policies and methods, and that's something we are constantly looking at, constantly tweaking, and we'll continue to go TO LOOK AT THAT. SO OUR BUDGET ACTIONS FOR 2026 THROUGH 2028 IS REALLY FOCUSED ON IMMEDIATE READINESS, ENGINE 7 STAFFING. WE HAVE OUR SAFER GRANT OF NINE POSITIONS THAT TOOK EFFECT IN 2023 THAT WILL KEEP US FUNDED WITH THOSE NINE POSITIONS FUNDED THROUGH MARCH OF 2027. We also have been engaging in overhiring. For the last five years or so, we've looked at overtime statistics. We've been able to reduce our overtime significantly by overhiring. In combination with the Safer Grant, we were able to bring our overtime down just about $900,000 over that period of time by being able to make sure that we had enough folks. As attrition takes effect, we were able to absorb those positions within nine months. It's a challenge, but it does allow us to at least take a break in the off years and have an academy every other year and keep these positions filled. Also, MOU commitments for our ladder trucks staffing from three to four are also considered into our funding request, as well as continuing the funding of those safer positions, again, that are funded through March. That goes into the following budget year. And then also looking at some anticipated revenue starting in 27, 28, again with the commercial fire inspection program. Coming in July, you will have the Engine 7 pilot program. You'll have a full report on statistics, how it's affected response times, so on and so forth. And that will come at the six month mark with Engine 7. So with that, thank you for your time.

thank you we're going to go give a budget overview of what is included in this proposed budget that you're reviewing today. We're going to start with the citywide budget and this consists of all funds so for comparison we provided the 2526 that's going to be the farthest left to the left column there and as you can see the budget was 285 currently in this year about 285 million and what we are proposing is 323.9 million in fiscal year 26-27 and 320 million 0.3 in We're going to go over some of the revenues that are included in this budget and some revenue projections initially in the current year. These are the projections in that column on the left. for the fiscal year 25-26 budget. Hasn't closed out, so we don't know if all of the revenues came in either weaker or stronger. But in general, this is what is being proposed, sales and use tax, property tax, utility, user tax, franchise fees, business license, charges for services, investment earnings, transient occupancy tax, intergovernmental and other revenues. And these are the general fund expenditures that are being projected in this proposed budget by department. police department. Non-departmental is our services that include the 9-11 dispatch contract with the county, animal services, community sponsorship, and so forth. And then there's fire, library and community services, public works, finance, which also includes IT, community development, administration, human resources, City Attorney and City Council as you can see again. We provided the numbers for the current budget for comparison purposes and those general fund expenditures are 196.2 million and 203.1 million for years one and two respectively So this pie chart illustrates the general fund's expenditures by category. So if you take a look at the personnel, you'll see that that's 135.3 million, and that's 68% of the total general fund capacity. And the non-personnel, which includes everything else, is 61 million, and that's 31%. And then we have reserves of $1.4 million. Now, this is everything that is being added to the or included in the budget, the proposed budget that's being presented today. And that is for year one, 26-27. And year two, you can see the personnel is slightly increased, and that's about 70% of the total general fund expenditures, $142 million. And the non-personnel is $61.1 million. And to maintain those reserves, within at 12% per our budget policies. We needed to increase an additional 800,000 to keep that at 12% in year two. now this is this chart you've all uh you've all had an opportunity to or i'm sorry some of you may have had an opportunity to see this it was presented at the finance and measures oversight committee meetings measures e and measure g and the budget was still in the development phase and so they were preliminary projections that were included and this is a revised table from those meetings. So you will notice some differences and that's because this is what's being presented today is what is being proposed for the budget. We start with the general fund with the resources which are Revenues that are coming in that are being projected for the city and we break out the general fund measures E and G and so in total the resources are 193 point 1 million in year 1 and 200 million in year 2 and then we also break out the expenditures and for year one and year two. And as you can see, there's an imbalance there. And so the first in year one, it's 13.6 million and year two is 14.4 million. So we had to look at different budget balancing strategies to make this budget to balance the general fund budget. and that included using some fund balance as if you may recall at mid-year we closed the books and presented what was the projected fund balance at the close of twenty four twenty five and so that's where that number comes in so four million is being used a fund balance in the first year and we are reallocating from the from the industrial waste water treatment facility that now has revenue and can pay for its own expenditures so that's going back to the general funds and then the police development impact fee there was a balance there that wasn't needed for anything in the immediate future and so that is being used to pay for the police that police service debt the police building and And then there's a vacancy factor and that's pretty customary of all agencies to use a vacancy factor because generally all positions are not filled throughout the year. And so we were able to make up that imbalance by using these strategies. And so what is being presented to you today is balanced general fund budget. Now we're gonna go over some recommendations that are being presented in the proposed budget. And some key additions include, we'll start with personnel, police officer positions, so that's unfreezing four of the police officer positions that were previously frozen over a period of a few years, adding a deputy police chief, administrative analyst code enforcement officer one combo building inspector and an administrative clerk those are all in community development some additional recommendations that are not personnel related are the sheriff's center The IAFF, you may recall about a month ago or so, the labor groups settled and you approved a new agreement for the next couple of years. So that was also included in this budget. the rental assistance program in the amount of 500,000, which is what was previously supported by this council. And we also have some, the Chief, Chief Klemek mentioned earlier, some safer grant that is paying for some fire personnel, sworn fire personnel. So that is included here because the grant ends in march and so after the grant ends the general fund has to pick up those costs there's the sanitary sewer payment assistance and then we are also projecting an amount here for the amps labor group you may recall that it we are in labor negotiations with that group additional city manager recommendations include two personnel additions both in community development one is in the code enforcement officer and another is a combo building inspector. Now a pedro said the assistant director of finance is going to go over a c.i.p.

Good evening, Council. A. Pedroza, Assistant Finance Director. The next few slides are going to focus on the citywide capital improvement program efforts. Currently, there is 66 million in unexpended and unencumbered CIP funds. This amount encompasses 123 projects citywide. from all funding sources. Whatever amount is remaining at year end will carry over to next fiscal year, 26-27, in addition to the new money funding that is being proposed for adoption. 29.3 million, or 45% of the total, are categorized as street, sidewalks, and related projects. I want to point out that staff conducted a review of CIPs as part of the mid-year budget report, and also the current proposed biennial CIP budget has a large investment in sanitary sewer infrastructure due to the rate increase approved by council last year. This slide details the road infrastructure funds, gas tax, Measure X and SB1. Shown in the table is the adopted revenue budget for fiscal year 25-26 and the proposed revenue budget for fiscal years 26-27 and 27-28. City staff provides the Measure X estimates while the gas tax and SB1 projections come from the State Department of Finance. Total revenues are projected to increase from 14.4 million to 15.6 million over the three-year period. Year one of the proposed biennial CIP budget totals 47.2 million and includes funding for 40 projects. Some of the larger projects are listed on the screen now, such as sewer lift stations and mains at 16.5 million, Street maintenance at $8.5 million, Buranda Road $3.4 million, and pavement and sidewalk improvements at $1.8 million. Year two includes a total of $40.3 million over 38 projects citywide. Sewer infrastructure is proposed at $15.3 million. Two safe route to school projects total almost $12 million, and significant additional funding for various street related improvements. This is a recap of the CIP biennial budget, 87.5 million in citywide infrastructure is being proposed over the course of the two years. The top three categories for both years are streets and sidewalks, sanitary sewer, and engineering and transportation. The details of the CIP budget are provided in the hard copy capital binders, as well as a second attachment to the staff report. And that concludes our biennial budget study session presentation. Staff is here for questions.

A couple things. Just as a reminder, this is a special study session. We are going to take public comment for 30 minutes. As you'll note, those of you who like to follow the agenda, we are scheduled to be adjourned at 6 o'clock. That will not happen. but we will take the half hour. I would encourage folks to be mindful as you pay attention to the time in the line that if they're here, folks here, reiterate the same thing you may want to consolidate your remarks and then kind of a show of hands how many people are interested in a particular topic and then it is important to note we are not passing the budget tonight this is simply a study session the budget is scheduled uh to be in front of this council for approval on at the june 16th meeting so there'll be plenty of time to talk to uh The let's see the 2nd 9th. Yeah, this June 16th is the scheduled date. We're planning on looking at the budget. There will be opportunities to visit individually with Council members, staff, myself prior prior to that point. So this is simply. A study session. This is not the evening we passed the budget, so with that we are open for public comment for 30 minutes and at 2 minutes of throw the normal time.

It see that. Nowhere in there did we mention that $10 million that we got from Amazon. In that budget is not budget in there. I want to know why. And then that's where our infrastructure to be built. I don't understand why we don't prioritize other things we're doing roundabouts in the roundabout when we fix the streets where we did the roundabouts that's where our money is going on the roundabouts. The McKinnon runabout, that's a waste of money. I've told you that before. You could have fixed all the streets out here in Salinas and then did that in a couple years from now. I don't think it's that busy here for you to have a roundabout like that. We're not a big city yet. And then I did like that Mr. Rene Mendez actually took a page out of the playbook to actually have you present the thing first because that's what you guys do with the consent agenda. You guys wait till we do our comment first and then you present it and it's wrong. I like the way he did it. Take a page out of his book, Mr. Donahue.

That'll help you out. The mayor and the city council.

Same thing.

The mayor and the city manager. There you go.

I thought I was talking though. You're interrupting me again.

Come on, Mr. Donahue.

Come on, Mr. Donahue. Just things like that. You guys, if you want us to trust you, you have to open the books. Show us the cooked books and uncooked books. We want to see them. Tony Burr, we made that comment a few years ago. And you laughed at it, but you know it's true. Where's the money really at? And how are we using it? You want transparency? You have to show us where the money's at. And then you guys are not paying attention when the presentation is going on. I've seen you guys a couple times talking to each other. It's like, guys, have respect, man. Someone up here is talking. Selena, thank you. Great job. She's probably the only person I trust in the whole city right now. Thank you, Selena. Appreciate it. Well, guys, thank you. God bless you guys. Be safe. Have a good day.

Good evening. That was an hour and a half. We can't get back. I had my head down. I was looking up. We got, you know, Mr. Callahan was like a silver fox up there with his big old head of hair. And then I looked up. He's Mr. Clean minus the earring. And there he was. We got a new person in. So anyways, good to see you, Mr. Callahan. But, you know, a lot of hard work there with our staff. Thousands and thousands of dollars put into propaganda to get us to curb our public opinion of the budget here. Could have probably been done with AI. 75% less cost and it's so let's start there with being responsible in business, but I did want to state what I saw up there priorities at the city was I Didn't see raising the pride mental health awareness flag over our city June 1st That was not on the priority list So I hope that we can maintain our flags that we have out there and not get involved in politics Now you like to have sex With that said, I'd like to say a prayer for Jose Luis. Um, I do actually from the bottom of my heart, um, understand, uh, health conditions and I, and I pray for him there and I hope he gets better. I do not agree with the extending of services. He has an abandonment there. We need to appoint somebody. But with, uh, something Andrew was saying about Abbott street, Something I've said before, I provide services that monetize efficiency in loading semi trucks with produce. It's a long wait, and with that said, I believe any truck that delivers a set of bill of ladings or receives a bill of ladings for shipping out should be paying $5 per load. I'm gonna load more trailers than any individual in this town, and I step forward saying, I'll pay that. So please, let's put something together real and put a solution together. There is one. Let's charge the trucks. Thank you.

Good after eve, everyone. I am Kimberly Bryant, and I just want to release peace and loving kindness over this room. We are all here because we love this city. We love it. The public come, your constituents come to comment. because they love and they care for this city, they have concern for this city. And I just pray that everyone in public comment today would just come with that spirit of love. love care and concern and that each of you would receive those comments with that same perspective i also want to release and pray for the wisdom of solomon and prudence over each of you council members as you look at this budget and you study it and you decide what it is that you're going to do for our city just the wisdom that you need and I also want to pray, not just for provision for our city, but continued prosperity. That our Father would open the storehouse of heaven and release new revenue streams for our city to meet all of the needs that we have that may be where we fall short. I just pray that in our Heavenly Father's name. Amen.

Good afternoon, Mayor and City Council. My name is Caitlyn Valencia, and I am a junior at Alice Hall High School. Investing in Ciclovia means investing in the future of Salinas. Every year, Salinas youth come together every summer to help plan and facilitate the Ciclovia Salinas event. Youth have the opportunity to participate in business outreach and tabling, all in order to reach a larger audience among Salinas residents. As of now, Ciclovia stands as one of the only events where its main purpose is to promote healthy living habits, closing down a 1.2 mile path where residents are encouraged to move, either by walking, cycling, or running. This helps combat larger health concerns among residents, such as obesity, diabetes, etc., which provides for a healthier city overall. Not only that, but Ciclovía supports local businesses along the path by incentivizing residents through the means of extra raffle tickets if they do decide to support a business by purchasing an item. Raffle prices also include gift cards to these local businesses. This helps ensure that local businesses still have the exposure needed to maintain their stores during and after the event. Local businesses are crucial to the development of Salinas and Ciclovia does all in their power to support them. Ciclovia also serves to unite the community. This event presents a safe and inviting environment where all residents can freely participate. Booths provide simple arts and crafts to the distribution of helmets, which can improve the well-being physically and mentally of all Salinas citizens. Additionally, Ciclovia allows youth like myself to get involved, where we're able to take leadership roles and take initiative. Investment in Ciclovia Salinas is fundamental for the overall improvement of the city of Salinas. The request today aligns with the priorities La Escuelita has shared around. Thank you.

Good afternoon, members of city council and mayor and Salinas community. My name is Alexis, and I'm a senior from also high. When I was in elementary school, I participated in Mariachi Juvenil Alisal, which I played for the crowds in the 2019 Ciclovia Salinas. I remember looking out at the crowds and seeing their joy, seeing their culture being played and represented through music. Five years later, I came into Sicilia Salinas as a captain for the volunteer committee with Building Healthy Communities. For approximately five months, youth worked tirelessly coordinating over 60 adult volunteers and student leaders. However, we have to look at the reality of why an event like Secularia Salinas is important and necessary. The need for accessible public spaces in low income neighborhoods, particularly on the east side, are important. The lack of space has created a disconnect between the city's decision making and the people. To make matters worse, the east side is seen with a bad reputation that ignores the resilience of the community. Clearly, there is a need to improve the city. We mapped a 1.2 mile route along Sanborn and Front Street, connecting the east side to the west side. On the day of the event, more than 5,000 families walked, biked, and danced in the streets to bring community resources. Investing in a community event like Ciclovia will allow for more unity and support for families who are struggling, but will now have access to the resources of organizations that create a stronger bond. And we are also changing the way people see the east side and Salinas Youth as a vibrant place that supports youth leadership. To the members of City Council, we are asking you to back up Ciclovia Salinas with more significant financial funding. While the city covers city costs, we are requesting a deeper investment. Ciclovia and the youth who built it is an investment in the safety and leadership development of Salinas. Thank you.

Sorry, my phone's not working. Good afternoon, mayor and city council members. My name is Areli Colleen, and I am here today as a community member and youth advocate asking you to continue funding and supporting Ciclovia Salinas. Ciclovia is more than just a one day event. It represents community support, health and opportunity. It creates a safe and welcoming space where families can come together, local businesses can thrive, and young people can develop leadership, communication and civic engagement skills. Before becoming involved with Siglobia Salinas, I lacked awareness of many of the real challenges affecting my community. I believed that being healthy simply meant not being sick. However, I learned that many Salinas residents face environmental and social barriers that make achieving health and connection difficult. Crime and violence create fear among families, limiting their ability to safely enjoy public spaces. high living costs, limited access to healthy food, and the lack of safe recreational areas further discourage healthy lifestyles. Ciclovia directly addresses these issues by opening a safe 1.2 mile route for families to walk, bike, exercise, and connect with one another. Along the route, community members gain access to free resources, health information, local organizations, and small businesses that strengthen our local economy. For many families, this is one of the few opportunities they have to safely and freely enjoy the city together. Personally, Ciclovia helped me grow as a leader. Through this experience, I developed communication, organization, teamwork, and civic engagement skills. More importantly, I became aware of the importance of taking initiative and creating positive change with under-deserved communities. Funding Ciclovia means investing in youth development, public health, violence prevention, local businesses, and stronger community connections. It is an investment in the well-being of Salinas residents and in the future of our city. As an intended civil engineering major at the University of California, Berkeley in fall 2026, thank you. Thank you.

Hello, everyone. My name is Lona Navarro. I work with Monterey Waterkeeper, and our job is to preserve and protect our drinkable, fishable, swimmable waters. I've been fortunate enough to be working on our Gabaland Creek restoration project since the start of January, where we've had more than 50 Alvarez students volunteer their time and their service to help restore Gavilan Creek, which is full of trash and full of litter, as well as a lot of drug dealing and stuff. We're here in community asking for $25,000 to help support our Gavilan Creek to Coast project. The Gavilan Creek project has been going on since January. And Monterey Waterkeeper has been funding this all with our reserve money. So we would like the city support to help projects like this to create stewardship projects as well as to better salinas, to plant trees. Water affects our human health, the economy and the wildlife. So water is in the air. It's everywhere. We have to create new leaders that want to look out after our waterways and want to protect the parks and want to protect all their health. So I'm here representing Monterey Waterkeeper in hopes of the city's support of $25,000. And now I'll pass it along to some of our students. Thank you.

Hello, my name is Eli Gonzalez, and I am a student from Everett Alvarez High School. I am here to ask for $25,000 on behalf of Monterey Waterkeeper. I first became involved with Monterey Waterkeeper earlier this year, and I participated in a few cleanups with the Gavilan Creek Restoration Project. I realize something that's probably not news to most people here, but Salinas has very little trees. and the creeks we have here are just full of trash i know this because i there's a creek right in front of my school and i've seen it and i picked up we can we can make whole um there's whole entire clothing items just there um the creek in creekside park if you go there the stray cats there have just used that trash to build shelters So from this experience, I can say that increasing the tree canopies here in Salinas, it will help filter our air quality, our water quality, and ultimately create a better environment for the people here in Salinas and our city. It will just look better and it will help people's health. So yes, that's all. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi, my name is Lucille Lopez Sanchez, and I'm a senior at Ever Alvarez High School. I'm here on behalf of Monterey Waterkeeper asking for a $25,000 grant for their Gavilan Creek to Coast project. This project helps promote stewardship through creek restoration, trash cleaning, and education. And it filters out or is trying to filter out pollution in water and in the air. It's, I've been working with Modern Rain Water Keepers since March, or late March to early April, and I've helped them in multiple projects. One of our projects, we went down to, was it, sorry I forgot, but we went down to Watsonville, and we picked up I think like 200 pounds of trash there. But also, I've been helping out in Everett Alvarez High School where Leonel is at every Wednesday. And we've picked up pounds of trash. It's like buds of cigarettes, glass bottles of alcohol, cardboard boxes, random plastic bottles and bags. items of clothing, it's just all out there. And it kind of like, it makes me a little worried about how our city looks. I'd want our city to look beautiful and for our future children to be proud of it. And so it'd be really helpful if the city of Salinas could support this project. Thank you.

Not a spectator sport.

Peter Zelaya. As a taxpayer, I'm concerned by growing deficits and spending that outpaces revenue. Last year's operating budget projected a $1.8 million deficit growing to $5.7 million within five years. Yet the biennium before us now projects a $13.5 million shortfall next year and $14.4 million the year after. You continue increasing spending far beyond inflation. Over the last four fiscal years, cost of living rose about 20%. Yet nearly every department exceeded that growth, often dramatically. Human resources, 45%. City council, 87.9%. Non-departmental, 90.8%. The non-departmental category functions as an everything fund, where expenditures become harder for the public to scrutinize. The proposed biennium continues the trend of massive increases. Community development, 35.9%. Administration, 32.7%. City council, 13.4%. This is not sustainable. Not every idea, want or request justifies more staff, more facilities, more spending. In an era of structural deficits, government must focus on essential services, police, fire, infrastructure, while rigorously evaluating existing or new programs, positions and facilities for effectiveness, necessity and cost. There is no shortage of good ideas, but politicians too often suffer from Santa Claus syndrome, wanting to say yes to all of them. But here in Salinas, based on this budget, Santa's bag is empty.

My name is Chris Barrera, president of LULAC Council 2055. I am deeply concerned about the proposed budget reallocations that takes millions of dollars away from projects throughout our city in order to fund improvements on Abbott Street. Let me be clear, Abbott Street needs repairs. Nobody is disputing that. But what I am disputing is the idea that neighborhoods across Salinas should have to sacrifice their long awaited improvements to make that happen. The budget proposes taking funds from Airport Boulevard, Williams Road, Laurel Drive, Baranda Road, bicycle infrastructure, traffic improvement, and other capital projects that serve residents throughout our city. Many of these neighborhoods have already waited years for investment. Many of them have a long history of being overlooked. Why should they be asked to wait even longer? Let's also be honest about what causes much of the wear and tear on Abbott Street. Heavy ag truck traffic and industrial activity plays tremendous strain on that corridor. Ag is a vital part of our economy, but major agricultural businesses should be paying their fair share towards the infrastructure they rely heavily upon. The same applies to large corporations such as Amazon and other major commercial users that benefit from our roads every single day. The answer cannot always be to take from one neighborhood to give to another. We have seen this before, the Alisal Vibrancy Plan. Funds were borrowed and never fully restored. Remember that, Tony? A real community comes together and shares responsibility. The city should be negotiating aggressively with industry partners pursuing outside funding and requiring those who benefit most from these roads to help pay for them. Don't balance this budget on the backs of neighborhoods that have already been waiting too long. Make everyone pay their fair share. Thank you.

Good afternoon, mayor and councils. My name is Wendy, and I come from District 1. My name is Elena. I'm from District 4. We are here representing Team of Prosperous Neighborhoods, BHC. We would like to thank the mayor for attending our meeting based on the budget on May 14th. My partner Elena and I are showing the six priorities of the community that it needs, where they like to spend the budget on.

We believe it was an honor to have the mayor in this session. We really feel supported and here we would like our voices are heard when we talk about the budget as well. We're glad you considered the Ciclovia event for the next two years on the budget. Once again, thanks for listening to our sincere opinion. Please consider the cultural events in the budget. Thank you. Thank you.

Buenas tardes, miembros del concilio y alcalde. Mi nombre es Bernardo Alexis Cordoba Iraeta. Vivo en el Distrito 3. Estoy aquí por primera vez. Gracias a BHC, Equipo de Vecindarios Prósperos Salinas La Escuelita, Estoy muy contento, emocionado y motivado de ser parte de los cambios para mejorar la comunidad y conocer cada uno de ustedes. BHC fomenta, invita a la comunidad a unirse a esas reuniones y unificar esfuerzos. con ustedes, que son nuestros representantes del gobierno en esta ciudad. Quiero agradecer y resaltar el liderazgo de los jóvenes que están compartiendo la obra de teatro, las cuatro llaves para quedarte en casa, fomentando nuestra cultura por medio del teatro, compartiendo educación a la comunidad. Una de las mejores inversiones para este presupuesto será invertir en la juventud.

Good afternoon, city mayor, city council members. My name is Bernardo Chico, and I'm from District 3, and this is the first time I'm here speaking before you. I want to thank BHC, Thriving Neighborhoods, and La Escuelita. I am very happy and very excited to be here and be part of the change. The community is involved and BHC invites us to be part of all these changes and be unified with the government in the efforts to really improve our city. I want to highlight all the work that the youth has been doing, these leaders, and I want to thank you for the theater, um play that they're doing it's called the four keys to be able to stay at home we really have to appreciate because through this play we have been able to educate and unite the community so i really think that we have to thank our youth for this thank you thank you city council city mayor and our attorney and everyone else i'd just like to say my name is yolanda

And I'm here again to ask for trees. We need trees. We were promised trees in 2023, that the Gavilan Creek was going to be restored. So we hoped, I didn't see any of that in the budget. I'd like to ensure that we get money for the creek. I know that we're asking also for 20, I think they said 20,000 for, in general, more trees. But for our creek, Gavilan Creek, the conservation easement, we need to make sure that that area is restored. We need more trees. Trees should not be cut at the bottom. We need canopy trees. So please put us on the budget. We need more trees. We need restoration. And we also have a flooding concern in that area. So please listen to our plea and listen to the people that are asking for trees. We're very short on trees in Salinas. Thank you.

Thank you. Hello, City Council. It's been a while. These are some disjointed thoughts, but I just wanted to bring them up. Is mixed use the best use in Chinatown? You look on Abbott Street and drive down Abbott Street where you built the new luxury apartments in the building, and they're supposed to be commercial underneath? They're vacant. They've been that way for a while. Why do we want to do that in Chinatown? It's not going to work. The other thing is when you're doing reporting on things, I'd appreciate numbers rather than percentages. I can't relate to a percent. And sometimes percentages are like, oh, yeah, we had 18%. Well, 18% of what? How many people did you talk to? What was the absolute amount of people there? 18% could be nothing. So I'm just throwing that out. One and a half years to design roundabouts seriously Anybody thought about that? It's like they've been making roundabouts for quite some time. I'm not quite sure why it takes one and a half years to design it yeah, so anyway, there's that and I The last thing is new hires to be able to rob from landlords for your registry. I don't agree with it, thank you.

Hello, good evening, City Council, Mayor, City Attorney, and Manager. You know my name is Carrie Swenson. First of all, thank you for working on the budget. I just work on my personal one and my business one. I have a small business. It's hard to work on a budget. I know it's hard. There's a lot of need. I also wanted to comment on the young people coming up here and talking about their city and interest in helping the city and they can see that it doesn't look nice. They want their city to look nice and I think we really need to listen to the young people and work on making our city look nice. You feel good when things look nice. But my question I have, and maybe this can be answered next time, I understand this is just a study session, but you have the rental assistance program for 500,000, and I know, Mayor, you talked about public-private partnership. So I'm wondering if we can't get some of this money from that private partnership, public partnership, somebody else. So there seems to be, I see the same thing with school district, public partnership, but it just doesn't seem to pan out. So I'd like to know what you're gonna do. Maybe some of the costs can be offset by, I don't know, a program like Hartnell's program. They have millions of dollars. Maybe they can help with some rental assistance for their students. I mean, maybe we can look at different programs. like you mentioned, so that some of this money can be offset. Okay, thank you.

All right, Mary Ann.

Mary Ann Wordman. I've been listening to our traffic commission's meetings and our finance commission meetings, and when you talk about this budget and our finances, Our new building down there is going to pay us $5 million or whatever. Make sure that that money, part of it goes to the intersections and the roads that they're going to be affected. Because when I was on the traffic commission, we didn't just fix the one road like Abbott, which it needs it badly. I'm not against that. That needs it really, really bad. But One of their ways that they will be getting into the east side will be the airport and Skyline Drive. Now, Skyline really needs a lot of work. We did get some work on airport, but Skyline really needs it. We need work on our Williams Road. It's been over 20-some years that we were promised it was going to be done. I know we're saying we're gonna be done now, but I'll wait to see it, hopefully before I die. Buronda, the same thing. Buronda was supposed to have been done over 25 years ago. That hasn't been done. That needs to be finished, folks. We need a desperate stoplight on Veranda and Sanborn. You put one on the other street and then it doesn't, there's no, the lights aren't even turned on. Buckwheat. They've made the mistake of putting it, it's supposed to have gone on Sanborn. I was on that commission. at the time, not on Buck Week, unless we had a lot of kids going into school there. These are the things that need to be taken care of with some of this money. Thank you. Before it goes to Measure G, it should not go into the general fund at all.

All right, we're at the time. I will take two calls on Zoom. So the first two.

Okay, Ozzie. Hello Mayor, good afternoon City Council, so I do want to express my disappointment with what happened a couple weeks ago with this meeting. I was listening to a couple weeks ago, and I remember the Mayor meeting me on Zoom, and I thought that was pretty unacceptable. Mayor Donahue, I'm going to be direct to what he said during the decorum on Zoom was unacceptable, and it is considered a punishable offense for a loss of what you did, so I'm hoping this doesn't happen again. But I also do want to comment on the City Council, and all the horrible things happening in the community, starting with what Solis Barajas and Mr. and Mr. Mayor who are doing a lot of corruption in this community. And I do want to thank Carrie Swanson for taking a stand against Margaret D'Arrigo. I'm hoping that she will be in the city council and she'll do wonderful addition there. Do you have any comments on the budget in your remaining time? All right. Oh, yes. About the budget. I think the budget is bullshit. I don't even know what it says.

Thank you. All right. Robin, last. Robin, you'll be the last call on Zoom.

That was hilarious. Thank you for having me. I appreciate y'all's efforts. This city runs on volunteers and I haven't heard anything talked about neighborhood services. Every one of you have representatives in that department and we really need to have them well funded to get the volunteers out into all the projects the city could use. Also, I'd like to comment on the police budget. I just looked up San Jose's budget. It's 30% of the general fund. Ours is over 40%. I wonder why the difference. And I also haven't heard about other social and projects to help ameliorate the need for so many police officers. Not to cry that we shouldn't have them, but there's other ways to work in conjunction with the police so you don't have to keep increasing the budget by $10,000, $15,000, $20,000, or $20 million a year. I just think it's incredible. just shows that we're short-sighted also i like to have the businesses uh have an entrepreneurial push in the city um ag is going to take some hits in the coming uh decade and there could be less ag jobs and so we need to diversify and get those entrepreneurial spirit going and also to have manufacturing that's that manufactures short runs of products say like the telotruck for instance is contracting a car manufacturer for a short run of vehicles and there's other things that need short runs to get the product launched So there's a good avenue there for Salinas to get involved in. So I like to see diversification, more services to work in conjunction with the police. That's less costly than having more police officers. And get neighborhoods.

Thank you, Robin. All right. With that, we are going to go ahead and close public comment. And what I'm going to do is since Margaret is now well past the bewitching hour, I'm going to ask Margaret to go first. Any questions? And then following that, we'll just we'll take a quick break. Yes. Yeah. So, Margaret, questions and comments at the same time. So this is this is your bite at the apple was with staff. And you're certainly welcome to stay with it. I just want to give you the option of, since it is so late. Are you muted? Margaret, you're muted.

There we go.

There you go.

Okay, perfect. Okay, let me get to my list here. So similar to what Andrew Sandoval had, I had just a list of some areas of concern, things that I want to support, things I want more information about. I'm still in favor of infrastructure being one of our top priorities. And that's roads, streets, trees, sidewalks, et cetera. So I'm glad that we're putting a lot of funding towards that. I think that's a number one priority. Staffing for the Salinas Fire Department and setting funds aside for their deferred maintenance and future growth I think is really critical because we need to have a longer term look at our city and the needs that are coming down the pipeline with all our future growth area, et cetera. The, uh, let's see, uh, also I, I support support the cleanest police department. Um, I think. As was mentioned tonight that those are essential services that have to be prioritized above some of the other things. Unfortunately, we don't have enough money to do everything we want to do and that's just. The way the world works, so, um, economic development is an important part of our, our future. So we can start building more, um. More pots of money in different areas, and Amazon is just the beginning of what we need to do here in Salinas to get more income and revenue coming in. I am concerned about the $10 million, and I would like some follow-up on that. The $10 million that we talked about fits the traffic impact fees that Amazon will be paying. Where is that money going? Why is it not in the budget? That was a question that I had as well, and I think that needs some explaining, because that's a big pot of money. Part of my economic development growth areas are the train station, the ITC, I think using that property Properly really delving into what's the best use for that that acreage and making it an economic development and revenue generating. Versus maybe putting a bus station may not be the best idea. So, that's 1 of 1 of my concerns. I did want to comment that we have amazing events in Salinas that. were referred to earlier that we're partners with, and I think those events bring a lot of money and people into our community, and they spend money here. So let's not forget that those are important to our economic development. I want to continue to support the sports complex and Only community cleanups. I think we're going to need more volunteers to help keep our facilities clean. Obviously, the city cannot do it all. And I think if we have organized groups like someone mentioned about neighborhood groups and neighborhood services being taking the lead on that and really getting out and getting people engaged is really important. i i have i do have a concern about taking money away from the neighborhoods that we promised infrastructure to for the last 20 25 years or less and that we need to make sure that we prioritize those so i'd like to take a deeper dive into the reallocation of funds and make sure that those are not being cut so that avid street can be um paved over we need a better plan for that i think going forward so in the next week or so i'd like to Meet on that subject and get a little bit more information on how that that money is flowing. I did notice that in the priorities that people mentioned in our survey that homelessness was, I think, a year or two ago was probably top and now it's not really even mentioned, but housing certainly is. So that is the importance of our. increasing our customer service in our permit process. I think we have to continue to work on that. I'm not in favor of just throwing money at increasing staffing. I'm for training and getting more out of the staff that we currently have and giving them You know, whatever they need to be as effective as possible. So I don't like just. Adding more bodies, I think that's that's a huge cost to the city and a long term cost in terms of purge and everything else. So. I want us to be very, very cognizant of that. And then 1 of the things I'd like for the future, certainly not for this. but in the next two years, but to talk about the rec center rehab in District 3, we've rehabbed most of the rec centers throughout the city. That one is in severe disarray and it's an important part of our city. It's right kind of in the epicenter. So I think that would be something I want to put on the future agendas. And then I think we just need a very carefully planned traffic calming program. So we're not just putting traffic calming everywhere and causing even more traffic congestion and and problems for the city and then finally um i think the rental assistance program that we have i think the funding that we have is probably all we can allocate at this time i don't i don't think that's that we're going to find money to just keep growing that but let's see how it's utilized and really evaluated before we throw more money at that and then um I think we need to invest in a citywide disaster plan and training for the council, for the communities, so that in the case and when a disaster hits, that we have a plan in place. And I know that the police and fire chiefs have been meeting and talking about it, and that's upcoming. So I don't think that takes a lot of resources, but it's going to take a lot of time from staff from different departments to put something together. I also want to thank... finance department and all the departments that spoke tonight they did a great job presenting it was a lot of great information i i know that budgeting is really a drain on um on resources so thank you for uh being cheerful about it and um and thoughtful and giving us the best information you have available but i do have a few questions that i'll i'll be following up with you on just to get a little bit better idea of how the money's flowing i think that's it for me okay

All right. Margaret, the city manager will have a few comments just in response to your thoughts. Great.

Yeah, Councilmember Mayer. So a couple of things on the impact fee provided by Amazon. The money is in the fund. It's in an impact fund. It's a separate standalone fund that cannot be used for general fund purposes or anything like that. The reason why it's not yet reflected in the budget is we haven't, there's a whole list of projects that all impact funds that are received are supporting. So those projects will be coming forward. That's the reason why you don't see it in the budget. Those projects are not yet fully developed, but the money is there. If you look at our audit and you look at the funds, you will see that when it comes up, you will see that the money is there. The other thing is, once the budget is presented, you'll see sort of a flow of a bunch of, today was a workshop, you will get a much more detailed budget with much more numbers. So that's the issue, and the $10 million impact fund. And that was presented, frankly, several council meetings, several report in the past, the money had been received. our Public Works Director will bring that forward as appropriate probably over the next year or so. We will provide a much more detailed report on the proposed reallocation. It's not being taken away from projects that are in the queue. a lot of that's been taken away from projects that already been done and had some remaining amount and all of that so we'll present you a much more detailed report on that because i know that's come up from several of the council members as we've given the updates uh so those are my two um sort of immediate responses to your questions i know it's come up from the public before the money from amazon is there One of the reasons from the impact funds is there just has not been a lot of development and growth in Salinas over the last several years, as we know, and that's what pays the impact fees. As new projects are done, new development is done, there is money that goes into those impact fees. So for example, as the new growth area uh permits are pulled and all that they will be providing their share to the impact funds another large project that comes in the industrial part will be providing its share of the impact funds so that's that's how those funds are generated when development occurs they pay their share

And I understand that there is they cannot be used for general funds, so that's that's a good note to be taken. So thank you. You answer both those questions for me. I appreciate it.

All right. Thanks. Thanks, Margaret. All right. We're we are going to take a 10 minute break. And then we'll be back and start with council member.

Do I go?

So the second.

Let's see.

Is staff back? Back, okay. Tony, we'll go ahead and turn it over to you for questions and comments.

Thank you. Well, first of all, I want to commend the staff. Lots of work. But it sounds like we're going in the right direction. Imagine in the police department, 86% with homicides and being able to bring some family members at peace about what's happening. I do want to thank the police department for its obvious morale is picking up. I see it. If people are happy working for the city, they'll be happy working for the people that we serve. Mr. Mendez, being that this is a study session, I'm going to ask you some questions. And thank you for bringing up the $10 million that is there. We do have it. But on the... As we can tell, it is a very tight, it's a balanced budget, but it's a tight budget. And Mr. Mendez, through some of the comments that were made from our, the people that are in front of us, your recommendations, how do you see them being, will we be able to do it with the money that we do have going into 26, 27, and then on to 28? You do wanna hire, A few people and then you went on freeze for police positions. How do you see as far as the budget being even more tighter? I'd like to get your thoughts on that.

Sure, council member, to the mayor. It's a balancing act and so part of the balancing of a budget is you look at all available resources and you try to match it with expenditures. So available resources are also money that you have when you start the year, which we refer to as fund balance, or that's simply the balance in the fund. So if you think about it as a savings account. And then we have money that we set aside in reserves. And so the city, we have a 12% reserve policy. So we tried, our finance director spoke to what we needed to add more to our reserves to maintain that 12%. We also have an additional $10 million set aside for our retirement costs and so forth so we can draw down on those when needed that would take council action then we also have another another approximately six million dollars and our finance director and our assistant finance director can help us can help with this when it comes to our maintenance reserves and so forth as you recall EARLY LAST, THIS FISCAL YEAR, WE HAD SOME UNEXPECTED EXPENDITURES. I THINK OUR HEATING WENT DOWN ON OUR POLL. WE HAD A CLOSE ON OUR POLL AND A FEW OTHER THINGS THAT WE QUICKLY RAN THROUGH A MILLION DOLLARS IN CONTINGENCY MONEY THAT WE HAD SET ASIDE. SO WHEN YOU LOOK AT SORT OF BALANCING THE BUDGET, YOU LOOK AT, OKAY, DO WE HAVE ADEQUATE RESERVES? NOW, I WILL, I THINK MOST CITY MANAGING FINANCE DIRECTOR WOULD LIKE TO HAVE MORE RESOURCE, BUT AT THE END OF THE DAY, THERE'S A LOT OF COMMUNITY DEMANDS. YOUR COUNCIL GETS ASKED DAILY FOR THINGS TO DO, AND PEOPLE PAY SALES TAX AND PROPERTY TAX AND OTHER FEES, NOT SIMPLY FOR THE CITY TO SAVE EVERYTHING, RIGHT? SO THAT'S THE BALANCE. So do we have adequate reserves? My answer is yes. Like maybe have pushed a little bit more as we can. The flip side of that is when you look at the positions that we're adding this year that are recommended for addition, There are not a lot of positions. The four positions, for example, in the planning department, they're being supported by permit fees that people pay them for us to process projects. They're also being supported by a consolidation of existing part-time positions that our community development director is trading off for one full-time position. That gives us a lot more certainty. We've heard a lot. from the council and the community as far as our counter at the permit center, our public engagement, and can we do better tracking? The other thing that we've heard a lot is can we keep up with the development that hasn't quite started yet when it comes to the building of houses but it's being processed so what that means is we've got applications that are being processed uh that those take a lot of time it just you know when some people submit their building plans their infrastructure plans that it takes a lot of time so those positions are not impacting the general fund per se they're non-general fund positions We've heard a lot about, I've been here a little bit over two years, and I've heard a lot since I got here, about what are we gonna do about those frozen four police positions? The councils have, I think, given the time for the appropriate time to unfreeze them. You could have directed me at any time to unfreeze those positions. You have not. I think now we're prepared today. So you've given me the opportunity to build the budget. And by the way, if you look at the code and the charter, presenting the budget is a core responsibility of the city manager's office working with staff. So we brought those four vacant positions here today just because I think it's appropriate. I think the chief has done a great job with our HR team of filling positions. And so we are closer to, I think, having the ability to unfreeze those positions and fill them. So that's why they're here. WHEN WE START TALKING ABOUT SORT OF THE BALANCING EFFORT, OUR FIRE CHIEF TALKED A LOT ABOUT, YOU KNOW, RESPONSE TIMES AND HOURS ON THE STREET. WE JUST NEED MORE RESOURCES. HOW DO WE MAKE THAT HAPPEN OVER A TWO-YEAR PERIOD? SO IF YOU NOTICE WHAT HE PUT UP UNDER CONSIDERATION, WE'RE STILL WORKING THROUGH THAT. funding from federal resources and so forth to bring positions on board to try to give us more capacity. That funding doesn't last forever, and so how do we maintain those fundings and continue to add? We've heard a lot about, there is no Station 7 yet, but we are modeling what additional resources would allow us TO IMPROVE OUR COVERAGE. SO OUR LIBRARY COMMUNITY SERVICES DIRECTOR TALKED A LOT ABOUT KIND OF ALL THE IMPROVEMENTS TO INFRASTRUCTURE THAT HAVE BEEN DONE THAT WERE DIRECTED BY THE COUNCIL. WE INVESTED A LOT OF MONEY IN OUR COMMUNITY ASSETS. AN OPPORTUNITY PRESENTED SOME YEARS AGO FOR CAR LAKE. THE CITY HAS BEEN WORKING I KNOW FOR A LONG TIME ON HOW TO MAXIMIZE THAT RESOURCE. So that's going to be more, at some point, personnel to maintain that resources. The question of whether it's appropriate or not, we have an equal amount of community members that want more assets, they want more parks, they want more recreational assets, they want more natural resources. so that's the balancing right so so in short when we look at a budget do we have adequate reserves can we fund what we presented in front of you which we can that's going to be funded through tightening the belt it's going to be funded to using a fund balance that's not uncommon another policy decision that the council could do is say, look, unless we're able to match what we anticipated revenues to expenditures every year, we're not adding another increase. That's also sort of something that councils can do. I just don't think that fulfills the promise to the community. And so I've never had a council that has Council members run to try to support and improve the community, which means you have to invest in the community. The question about our streets and how we're allocating the resources, last council meeting you approved, and there was questions, a payment management plan was done for year one of the payment management projects. Those were done. There are two ways that we maintain the payment management, well, several ways. One is we outsource to do the streets. The other is what our own crews do in neighborhoods. So those are the two areas that hopefully we stay up with our payment management plan year one, year two, year three, year four. Abbott is part of the year two payment management plan. It includes a bunch of other streets as well. So our task and our goal is can we make it work as expected in year two, year three. When the payment management plan was done a few years ago, COSTS HAVE GONE THROUGH THE ROOF. SO WHAT WE ANTICIPATED WAS GOING TO WORK THREE OR FOUR YEARS AGO IS NOT GOING TO WORK TODAY. SO THE QUICKER WE CAN DO SOME OF THESE PROJECTS, AND I KNOW THE COMMUNITY IS VERY INTERESTED IN GETTING THESE PROJECTS DONE, THE CHEAPER IT WILL BE. THE CHALLENGE AND THE HARD PART IS THAT COSTS ARE OUTSTRIPPING HOW QUICKLY WE CAN GET THESE PROJECTS DEVELOPED. We have to engineer them. We have to put them out to bid. We have to go through the public procurement process, which is months. And we try to engineer them ourselves, or we try to put them out to contractors, to the engineering companies, which, by the way, requires their own public procurement process to hire them to be able to get the work so they can do the project. WHEN PEOPLE ARE QUESTIONING HOW LONG IT TAKES US TO DO PROJECTS, IT JUST TAKES TIME. AND THAT'S EVEN IF WE HAD 100% OF THE MONEY TODAY, IT WOULD TAKE US FROM DAY ONE TO GET INTO PROJECTS AT LEAST SIX MONTHS TO GET IT IN FRONT OF YOU TO AWARD. THAT MEANS THAT NOTHING GOES WRONG. AN EXAMPLE, WE HAD, IF YOU RECALL EARLIER THIS YEAR, OR MAYBE LAST YEAR, THE IMPROVEMENTS THAT WE'RE DOING AT SHEERWOOD RECREATION, WE BROUGHT A PROJECT TO THE COUNCIL BASED ON IMPACT IN SOME OF THE CONCERNS THAT LABOR BROUGHT, COUNCIL DIRECTED US TO GET THE PROJECT OUT AGAIN. SO WE DID. So that added more time to the process. That's part of the process. There was nothing wrong done there. There was nothing, that's part of the process. So that took us time. So in short, would I love to give you a budget where we had more reserves? Absolutely. Do we have adequate reserves? I believe we do. Do we have a budget that addresses, tries to balance them with community concerns, council priorities, and things that we need to do? For example, we talked a lot about a portion about where we put our 911 costs and our JPA costs. They're detailed. We don't list them out because then it would be a budget of a million lines. But so we try to group those. So we pay for 911 services. That's a contract with the county. We pay for JPA services, animal control. And so there are those costs that we pay for that are part of that item. So we think we have full of those costs and we're trying to provide the council some ability to meet some of what you want us to do when it comes to the request you're getting from the community and priorities that you want us to support.

I think well, thank you for that. Long winded answer. It's a lot of great information. You know, as we're discussing the safety programs, the police and fire. I know I know. The fire chief mentioned filling vacancies through attrition. As far as cost savings, how does that work? I mean, is it? Can you explain that to me?

So the over-hiring process, I kept both by HR director and the finance director.

You know, because I do know that we do want to support our departments to be able to be staffed correctly, but at the same time, I believe what the council expects is that we continue doing a better response. Yeah.

Yeah. Chief?

So to the point of overhiring, Council Member, we looked at this a number of ways. If you remember back to the Salinas plan and some of the recommendations that came out of the Salinas plan was to start looking at overhiring as a way to better control overtime costs. So as our overtime budget, if you remember, our overtime costs in 2019, 2020, 21 were over $3 million. And we started the overhiring practice over that. that period of time, and we're able to show how those overtime costs were able to come down significantly. As we absorb those positions, part of overhiring combination with safer grant, things like that, where through our normal attrition process, retirements, resignations, and we always have a factor, I like to say about an average of four to five folks that are on long-term leave, usually medical disability or something like that. We take that all together, we factor that into a vacancy where we can guess what we need, we overhire by that amount, and that keeps our overtime more stable.

Okay, thank you. City Manager, there's concerns. You know, now that we're looking at working on Abbott Street, which is a needed project, I guess the concern is, all these other projects, all these infrastructure that's already been designated. What are your thoughts? I mean, how's that gonna happen without these projects that will not be hindered, you know, that we can just keep fixing these neighborhoods?

So let me, great question, and maybe David's out there, but let me break it up, answer it in two phases. So one, there's the payment management program that we have that's got a list of, has a list of streets. And you recently approved, accepted the payment plan of year one. That came to the council. Year two has Abbott and a few other streets. Abbott's under, so it was anticipated we were gonna get to Abbott. year two, we're currently, we're hoping to get the big close for Abbott next week and see kind of where we come in with the project and then see how we can find both Abbott and the streets targeted for year two. So there's that piece of it. The other piece that showed up today was I asked the public works director and David with this team looked at CIP PROCESS THAT WE HAD, SOME OF THEM WERE COMPLETED THAT HAVE SOME REMAINING RESIDUALS OR LOOKED AT OTHER PROJECTS THAT MAYBE WERE PART OF ANOTHER PROJECT AND WE ENDED UP NOT USING THAT MONEY. LET'S JUST SAY FOR EXAMPLE, I DON'T EVEN KNOW IF THIS STRIPING, WE WOULD HAVE HAD STRIPING BUT WE DID ANOTHER STREET THAT HAS STRIPING SO WE DIDN'T NEED TO SET IT BY ITSELF. So that's the money, those are the projects that comprise about $3.4 million that is being recommended for repurpose. Being recommended for repurpose portion to Abbott because we think Abbott's gonna be more costly than what we initially anticipated. We need a few more dollars there. And also adding more to traffic calming. As you know, we get a lot of requests for traffic calming. We have a huge list of projects in the queue. And the Public Works Department tries to do two or three projects a year based on the funding that's been allocated historically for those projects. But you have recommended for the next two year budget is an additional funds for traffic calming. And you already had $200,000 reflected in the budget. So that would be approximately $700,000 that we would add to traffic calming to maybe do a few more projects to just start clearing the deck. IN ADDITION, WE HAVE PART OF THE CARRY OVER WAS MONEY THAT WE'RE WORKING THROUGH IN THIS FISCAL YEAR TO GET THOSE TRAFFIC CALMING PROJECTS DONE. SO IT WILL BE APPROXIMATELY $1 MILLION TO $1.2 MILLION OF TRAFFIC CALMING PROJECTS IF WE CAN HAVE THAT SPECIFIC. SO THAT'S TWO WORKS. SO WE'RE TRYING TO DO ALL OF YEAR TWO. But Buranda and the list of projects, because of the nature of that street and where it's at, it's gonna be the most costly street to do. So we're trying to say, can we set aside a little bit more money so it doesn't impact some of the other projects, number one. And number two, the repurposing of money is not taken away from projects that were already sort of in the queue. Now the council has the option to repurpose that however you wanna repurpose it. This is just staff's recommendation.

But my comment to that, Mr. Jacobs, if we already let the public know what we're doing, I don't think that would be wise to try to get money. That happened to us about 12 years ago on Williams Road, or maybe longer. There was money already designated. They said, we're going to borrow it. Never came back. That's my concern there.

Well, yes. We spend an awful lot of time on the CIP projects to figure out what can move forward and what can't. We just don't randomly say, oh, we can't do this, we don't do that. We have a certain amount of money. We plug it into the CIP programs and say, OK, let's get six projects done. Oh, we can't do six because we don't have enough money. Which of these projects? is the harder project to get done. Let's take that off because it's longer. It'll be two years before we can get to it. Now we can do these five in the next couple of years and then start putting money away for that sixth project. So in the sixth year or the fifth year, that project has enough money to move forward. And then we get all that done. and then we go to finance and they say okay well your your estimates are off you need to cut a million dollars off of cip so we go back there and rearrange everything to try to make everything work within within the budget obviously we had a lot of projects that we closed out this last year because we had projects that remained open um they're done but they have just a little bit of money in there so at mid-year we went ahead and closed all those finished projects out and moved those into current cips that we think we can move forward with does that does that answer your question yes it does mr jacobs there was a

I'm sorry, I can't find it, but you had mentioned Williams Road. I think there's a couple of million dollars in your report. I apologize, I can't find it, but what is that about? I apologize, I can't find it here. You're talking about spending $1 million and then another amount on Williams Road. You know what I'm talking about?

Thank you. I don't see a $4 million. Did we move money around? Okay, we'll have to get back to you on that. I'm not really sure in terms of, we got 20 different projects here and I'm not sure if you could.

I'm very passionate for Williams Road. Let me ask you, thank you, Mr. Jacobs. Mr. City Manager, on the cannabis, is it here on the numbers, how much revenue came in from the cannabis?

I provided that and I can look it up.

Well, we're talking about maybe $700,000.

Yeah, I think it's not that much. Well, it's money. It's a lot of money. It's a lot of money, but it's not millions of millions of dollars.

$700,000?

Probably $700,000.

Okay. You know, I like that, and I just got a couple of more questions on the... It was mentioned on the surcharge for the Rodeo. What's happening there? The surcharge for the Rodeo.

Thank you for the question. We do have a contract, and I don't have the specific details here with me, but I can definitely provide that for you.

That's fine, but we are receiving revenue from that. That is correct, yes.

We receive revenue year over year from Rodeo.

We don't know how much, no?

I unfortunately do not have those figures with me.

Okay, that's fine. I just wanna make sure that, go ahead.

So the agreement we have with the Rodale is they're supposed to provide us a surcharge for ticket sales. Yes. So they provide us that amount and we will get that number for you based on some of the concerts and events that they do.

Mm-hm. Okay, and you know what, on the talking about, you and I have spoken briefly about this, Mr. Mendez. An allocation, I'm going to go into Santa Claus's bag here. There was money that were, a specific amount of money that we could use to assist, if the council so chooses, to assist groups that are doing some good work in the community. Is it like $250,000 or so?

So the city does have a community sponsorship program. So what? It has a community sponsorship program that was established by resolution I believe a few years ago. I think the first year we started was a fund that the budget had $100,000. We ended up increasing it by $50,000 to $150,000 based on council direction at the time. We brought it forward at $150,000 and it maintains at $150,000 this year as well. However, the resolution allows up to $250,000. So the council could direct, if you want to have more opportunity to use the program that was established, which has the criteria, you could... direct staff to bring back as an option. 250 we will present it at the next council meeting and when you adopt your budget and we will adjust the budget and we will bring back what that means. That's the whole point of the workshop today is for you to tell us kind of what you want to see. So the resolution and the program that was established allows up to 250. I wanna point out that the recommendations come to the council. There's a staff committee that looks at it. The recommendations come to the council for approval. So the council still gets an option to increase it now. Certainly you can give us direction on other things that you wanna see in the budget.

Yeah. Well, I would like to give direction. There was two specific groups. I think there's good investment here. Ciclovia had asked for 60,000 and I believe the other group is Gavilan Monterey One Water Keepers, 25,000. I would like to see if the council would assist me with this, but with the, with the intention that for next year, they start getting prepared to go to places like community foundation, you know, other areas where they can get funding, whether it's the hospital. But this year being that, I do appreciate, I see it as an investment, I don't see it as a, Any charity I mean these these young people are doing some great work. I think we we need to assist I see it as pennies on the dollar to be honest with you, so I would like to recommend 60,000 for Ciclovia and 25,000 for Gavilan Monterey one water keeper with with the caveat that they also understand that that we wanna encourage them to go out and look funding for next year as well. And just my last thought, I wanna thank the staff. When I sit down and read this thing and try to study it, I'm just amazed the work that you folks do, seriously. I'm humbled that I can be up here and make decisions based on your professional work. This is a lot of work, but it's a lot of great work. And I think to the directors, to the department directors, please consider us as we're part of your team. Sometimes as a council, we're viewed like we're the outsiders. No, we're all a team. The next time you go into the city hall, there's a real wood sign there. It's not particle board, it's real wood. It says we are people serving people for a better community. That's it. But we're all in it together. And I want to thank you and I want to, I feel great that we can say we're going to freeze those four police positions because we're going to see some greater work in our communities. And then to assist the fire department. Mr. Jacobs. You're doing, that street sweeper, you get an A plus today. That street sweeper is doing great. And you know those palm trees? You're going throughout the city. I don't know if you're doing it yourself or you got some people doing it, but I want to thank you for your work, Mr. Jacobs. I really appreciate you.

Are they doing the palm trees?

And I think if we just go through all those palm trees, the city will look better. And then maybe we can come... figuring out how we can get into the truck and start fixing up those potholes. What do you think there, Mr. Mendez? We'll get in the truck together there.

Thank you. I can tell you that probably a week doesn't go by with Davis exploring a different option for potholes.

That's great. You'll find the right formula. Thank you. Really?

No. Me? OK. Want me to go or you want him?

You look ready to go, Gloria. OK. Let's put you in the game.

Well, I'm going to echo Councilmember Barrera on the recommendation for Ciclovia. I think that's a very much well spent money. I LIKE WHAT THEY'VE BEEN DOING FOR YEARS AND IT'S A COMMUNITY EVENT THAT BRINGS A LOT OF FAMILIES TOGETHER. SO THAT AND ALSO THE MONTEREY WATER water, the group that came, cleaning up Gavilan Creek, which is a, that's very much needed. All that water goes into the ocean, so I would also like to support that recommendation by Councilmember Herrera, and that And I just, forget it, I was gonna say something else, but that's all I'm gonna say there. But I just wanna say that I'm going to approve all the recommendations that have been given to us. Thank you to the staff on all the positions that are necessary with police, public safety, fire, and all the other, positions that are being presented. But I just wanna say that in supporting these positions, we have to remember the community is hearing us. You know what they're gonna want from us now? And I'm seeing it now. I really am. Good service. That when they call a department, that they're getting what they need. OK, because these we we are funding your positions, I hope. I mean, I'm talking for myself and. Yeah, I should talk for myself, but yes, they need to receive good customer service and they want a response. We cannot give them the response that they need. So that's what I'm going to do. And then I just want to go back to the Williams Road came up and Buronda. I see it here that we are going to do and we are giving money to Williams Road and Buronda. So I don't know. what the community thinks that we're not funding them. We are, it's here. Am I correct? Okay, so it's here, Marianne, it's here. And on public works, Mr. Jacobson, yes. I think it'd be nice if sometimes our social media, Sophie's been doing a good job. If once in a while, police is doing a great job on social media, thank you, Chief. they're getting their information out. But Sophie, if we could let the community know which streets we're working on, because again, we're being dinged on, you're not doing anything in East Salinas. Well, I see a lot of work being done in our streets, especially... District four, we've had a lot of Market Street. We have a lot of projects that have been done, but I think the community that's on Facebook, they need to see. They need to see more of what we're doing you know, from the city. What are we doing? I'm sharing everything that you post there. I'm sharing it, because I want the community to know. And I think that that's good city manager, you know, that we get that out, and that the community needs to see what we're doing, where their money is going to. But that was a comment that I had, and Thank you for the good job. And again, we hired work, you know, again, I'm okay in the positions again talking for myself. So again, the community is going to be watching public works. So that and then in District 4, I am very concerned about, Kristen, that we, you know, I know we have a grant writer or grant writers, but to get those grants when we can for our parks, especially our new park and Yeah, maybe we can get some funding question, but that. And that the community needs to know that the city can't do everything. I know it's been said again, but we have a really good, I believe a volunteer base, Amor Salinas, that you get involved. Get involved and try to give back to the community, maybe two hours, a month, a week, whatever. But we need to do our part as community members too. And some groups are looking for something to do. So again, if we put that out there, Sophie, that we're doing a project and everyone's welcome. I know there's some seniors that can still move and we want to do something. So again, there's projects out there and we can't do everything. So that, and then I think I had something else. So to the city manager, great job. And I did all your recommendations that are back here. I will approve all the recommendations that you made back here. Now let me find them. Can you find them, Rene? It's this one. Yeah, all these here. Uh-huh. And I just want to make sure I got this. Yeah, the sidewalks, of course, that's very important to continue to work with Public Works and give them the funding that we need to fix the potholes, the sidewalks, and the lighting. And I'm glad to hear that the palm trees are finally being taken care of because that makes the city look really pretty when they're all trimmed. And for community development, kudos to your department. I had, and I'm going to mention her name, Christy Parker, that handled the case very, very well for one of my families, my constituents. And again, that's what the community wants to hear. They want to see that type of professionalism that was given and how she listened to them and said, I'm going to do everything I can to help you. Boy, I was very impressed. So again, community development. Yeah, we have a couple of buildings that I hope that later on you'll give us a report on community development. We need some jobs here on that empty building on Sanborn and Walgreens. Yeah, we need something there. So there, and then another thing is, I don't see any report on catering trucks. What revenue do we bring in?

Thank you for the question. That would be under business license tax, so they are required to be licensed to run a business within the city of Salinas.

So I don't see anything in our budget on that. So can that be thought of or, you know, I'm not against them, but I know that other cities, they bring in revenue.

They do. And we have it under business license revenue category, and we can definitely break it out for you so you could see how much is actually coming in.

Yeah. In the future, we've asked for a report about the catering trucks.

Okay. Okay?

Thank you. So that's my comments. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you, Gloria. Aurelio. Thank you. I'm gonna try to. GIVE EVERYBODY A STARTING POINT. WHEN I CAME ON COUNCIL, ONE OF THE THINGS I REQUESTED I THINK WITHIN MY FIRST 30 DAYS WAS TO MEET WITH EACH COUNTY DEPARTMENT HEAD AND FOR THE MEMBERS OF THE AUDIENCE AND SOME OF OUR STAFF THAT ARE STILL HERE AND THOSE THAT ARE WATCHING ONLINE, My question at that time was I really want to get a broader understanding of each department. Some of the questions I had was, you know, I wanted to know each department heads professional or work background or work history, you know, making sure that they were like the right fit for whatever department that they were leading. I asked. what were like the three main department challenges and what were the three main department successes, what they were most proud of, any professional development that they felt that they may need or that the department may need in order for our departments to be successful in the implementation of their work in their respective department. And then I think lastly was asking like, how can I be an advocate for them and whatever organizational needs there are? There was another question regarding like staff and staff size, right? Because we have various departments of different shapes and sizes. In my first year, I don't know if I missed it, but I caught it in this year's report. I just wanted to draw that out. This is very helpful to me as a council member. Any department, I can pull this sheet out and get an understanding of the department's size in terms of like the number of staff. That really helps me figure out, you know, who's leading the department, who's actually doing the work, and taking a quick glance at it, I can get a feeling like if there's a need. And I do appreciate where it does indicate where there's an increase or decrease in that particular physician. So I just want to thank everyone for doing that. It really helps me conceptualize a multimillion dollar budget when you start breaking it apart by department. Some of the things that I think I'll probably advocate for is As a council member, there are things that I continue to hear about regularly as I'm in passing with members of the public. Things like sidewalks, our streets, lighting. Those are things that I typically hear from residents like, hey, we've got a really bad sidewalk. We've got trees destroying our sidewalks. We've got a lot of potholes. Lights are out. um in different parts of the the city so as a council member i'm able to bring that information back share that with our city manager and and continue to bring that up and i know that our city staff is working on it um and can see it when we do receive your reports like you know WHERE LIGHTING NEEDS TO BE DONE, WHERE SIDEWALKS ARE BEING PREPARED. VERY, VERY FORTUNATE THAT I'M ABLE TO RECEIVE THAT INFORMATION. SOME OF THE THINGS THAT DO COME UP AND I THINK ONE OF THE THINGS I MAY CONTINUE TO ADVOCATE FOR ARE THINGS AROUND LIKE THE PERMIT CENTER. I CONTINUE TO HEAR THINGS SEEM RELATIVELY SLOW, LIKE GOING INTO THE PERMIT DEPARTMENT AND things not turning around as quickly as they should. I remember, I think maybe over a year ago, I had some recommendations on how we might approach that. So just FYI to our city manager and staff, that's one thing I wanna make sure that in fiscal year 26, 27, that we're addressing that because it is an issue that comes up along with our sidewalks, our streets and things like potholes. One thing that I'm a particular advocate of, and you'll probably hear me say this over and over again, we've been doing all this great work with some of our recreation centers. I know that we have a couple more that need some attention, and I know that we will get there, and I know that we will prioritize that work, and we will continue to fill those gaps. But like El Dorado Park and the Bread Box, the Salinas Recreation Center, I've visited those on numerous occasions over the last year. And as we're bringing some of our recreation centers up to standard, again, there'll be a point in time when that needs to happen. So I bring this up because definitely I would wanna hear back from our department leaders and department heads and even staff what those needs are gonna be as we're addressing our recreation centers so that we are continuing to serve our youth and I don't call them seniors, I call them young at heart. So as we continue to serve our young and young at heart that they have programs and services available to them. One of the ideas I did float by the city manager about a year ago is that as council members quite often we are looking for meeting space and we tossed around this idea of as we're working on our recreation centers like having the idea of like a floating office for like council members or even members of our law enforcement so they can go in and fill out some reports and have that public presence. IF THAT'S SOMETHING THAT WE'RE NOT ABLE TO DO THIS YEAR AND THIS YEAR'S BUDGET OR MAYBE A PORTION OF MOVING FORWARD, IT'S AN IDEA THAT I DO WANT TO FLOAT BY THE COUNCIL. IN TERMS OF ADMINISTRATION AND THE OFFICE OF THE CITY Again, I would continue to advocate or consider having like a director of grants. And in speaking with some of our department heads in the past, I believe that was one of my questions like, is there anybody within the department that is actively just tracking and monitoring grants? That's part one. And then it's also the final reporting, right? And typically those fall like within 30 days of one another. So as departments are applying for state funding, As those application deadlines are coming up or those notifications of funding availability are coming up, it's also right around the same time that the report from the previous one also needs to be submitted. So I think it's very important that we also have somebody that's coordinating across departments our grant application and also monitoring and tracking. When it comes to like staff and staff that may retire or move on to another position or leave us for another jurisdiction or another position, sometimes that information gets lost in terms of grant applications and grant funding and the final proposals that are submitted. So having somebody coordinate that at the citywide level, I think that would be a tremendous amount of support. Because there are funding opportunities that are out there. When I think about our city budget, the funding comes from our taxpayers and Measure G and Measure E, which is funding from our taxpayers and our taxpayers and our taxpayers. That's where the funding sources are coming from. So if it's not that, then it's fees for services. But outside of that, in terms of the revenue generating side, I am gonna continue to push for that grant writer. um we take a look at ensign park right 35 million granted over a 10-year period 35 million dollars came into the door that came in from the philanthropy field and major donors wanting to support that something that the city would not have been able to do without the private sector and and the philanthropy field So, you know, I know that our city manager has also been very involved with the community foundation serving on that board, but sometimes it's like, I often think, you know, what can we do to alleviate some of your time by having somebody come in, you know, and be out with our local funders right they can be an advocate for us and by that i'm referring to like our neighborhood watches right there is a while back when you know we have our neighborhood services the neighborhood services coordinator there are some philanthropy dollars that are out there that support neighborhood watch groups and having those neighborhood watch groups throughout our City you know and having those neighborhood relationships with law enforcement helps law enforcement you know do their work when it comes to like handling calls and hearing and having their eyes and ears to the to the to the community. In terms of things that you probably won't see me advocate for is some of the traffic calming. I am worried about response time as it relates to fire, ambulances, and police trying to get from point A to point B. If we're slowing, you know, especially like ambulances or fire trucks getting to, you know, responding to a call. If we do get, you know, state funding to do some of these roundabouts, okay, that's fine, but I really want to protect our city dollars and making sure that's getting back into where residents are, keep pointing out where the major, where the major needs are. And again, you know, there's some opportunities we don't want to miss out on, you know, We had a number of speakers talk about Gatling Creek. There's a number of environmental groups out there that really do a lot of work, extensive work and support as it relates to protecting local watersheds. And so again, having that grant seeker doing that work knowing who the local funders are and their funding priorities can help bring in those revenues to do those cleanups, to do tree replacement. And you hear me say that over and over again. And it probably just isn't just one position that we should probably have. Ideally, it's probably like a team of four or five. that are doing the grant writing, evaluation, and final reporting. But if we can start off with one, I think that's a right step in bringing in additional revenue for our city and not have that fall on the backs of our residents. That concludes my comments. No questions, but thank you for the annual budget. Very informative and I appreciate this year's layout.

Okay, thank you, Relu. A couple things, just, you know, one of the things, you know, budgets are dynamic, not static. And, you know, there's, I think it's important for us to understand a couple things about where we are in time and kind of the nature of Salinas. You know, this budget, SITS AT THE INTERSECTION OF HAVING TO CATCH UP WITH THE PAST, BUT BEING PREPARED TO INVEST IN THE FUTURE. AND THIS COMMUNITY HAS MET A LOT OF TESTS OVER THE DECADES. WHETHER IT'S 2001 AND THEN THAT PROCEEDED REALLY VIRTUALLY SHUTTING DOWN THE CITY AND THAT GAVE US MEASURE D WHICH EVENTUALLY BECAME MEASURE E. I served with council members Barrera and De La Rosa during the great downturn, whatever you want to call it. Great recession, mild depression, and that was a difficult moment for the city because all our plans to get ready to grow with the future growth area came to a screeching halt and that echoed through through the next decade and then just as you're getting all dressed up and ready to go out again here comes covet and today we obviously live in at a moment where there's a lot of concerns geopolitically about costs. So I was thinking about this community and I was thinking about my life, whether we're young at heart, as Aurelio said, but I remember my sophomore year in high school on the varsity baseball team, we had to go out to Sherwood and we had to pay for our own gas. And I happened to have a quarter. We got a gallon of gas and we made it out to Sherwood and back. So today we're worried about cost. But this is a city that has been resilient when asked to address certain things as a community. They've done that. So I believe Salinas will do that again. We'll get an early test of that when we take a look at do we want to eliminate the sunset with Measure G just as the sunset was eliminated for Measure E and became permanent. So by the way, we're very preoccupied with G, as we should be, but he also had a mandate. And that mandate said we care about a basic portfolio of city services. And this city is very narrowly focused on key services that the community has said they want. And I, and you know, Renee has a list of 10 cities that you compare Salinas to in terms of our general fund, number of employees, and frankly, if you were to look at the portfolio of services that these other cities provide, ours is pretty darn narrow. And so I think we are focused. But I also believe, and You know, I'm always intrigued when folks say they sit on a city or a county dais, I balance the budget.

Neat trick, you're required to by law.

So the real issue is what's in that budget and how do we go about business? And what I look at is what the city manager said, and I think this speaks to some of the concerns we all share. If the reserves are in place, if the basics behind the line before you ever take the field are there, those are our guardrails and our safeguards. Now, I looked, and I was very keyed, I looked at there's an anticipation that our sales and use tax, that those numbers are gonna grow. I can tell you that I certainly routinely check, are we on track, are we being affected by those you know those external things that we have no control and so far numbers are holding now should we assume that's going to continue to be the case we certainly need to continue to look but budget is dynamic the information we have so far says things are holding And we know we have the ability and as Selena pointed out, most cities do rely on attrition. And so when you see parentheses, that's not necessarily a cause for alarm. If you see parentheses and $20 million, that's a big problem. But in a budget our size, we have a pretty good idea of what that attrition combination is gonna look like and if we have to pull back. So I feel, good about this budget i think and you know just on some of the things i heard tonight you know salinas has a terrific small business community And, you know, there's a new generation of young entrepreneurs taking the field. All that is in place. Salinas has an exciting innovation footprint, whether it's ag tech and what's going on in Reservoir Farms that is working with 12 different startups, whether it's Archer, which is part of – we are in the middle of the – National Air Advanced Avionics Air Mobility Conversation. There's a lot of things, exciting things happening in the medical field. The soccer complex, which by the way, they were just named Senator Laird's Business of the Year and just received that recognition. That is the front end of an economic, an emerging economic development play as well as quality of life. So there are a lot of good things. And I think we have to make sure we're putting ourselves in position to invest and grow because I believe we are on our way over the next 20 years to a couple hundred thousand people. So either we shape it or it happens. And so I think this is a really balanced approach from the budget standpoint. Now, having said that, I do have a couple of questions. And I want to do it to just kind of illustrate. So I'm going to ask the police chief if he'll come to the podium. You know, Chief, freezing the officers is good. The growth of officers, you know, the 125 to 150, terrific. I want to make sure this budget also contains, I know we were talking about a couple of other positions, I want to make sure they're there. In terms of you know forensics and that sort of thing so I want to make sure they're in the investment, but in the budget, but I also Think it's important from an educational standpoint every police chief I've ever talked to since I've been the mayor has been very very consistent that the right number of officers for a city of this this size is much less the size we're gonna be, close to a couple hundred. Now, your department has been guilty of over-performing for decades, and we appreciate that. But what should we be working towards and planning on as we look at growth? And I ask the question because 157, 160, it's not the right number, I don't think.

Well, great question. So I do appreciate the four unfrozen and we have made some significant strides in the last year and a half where we've been. We've been anywhere from 175, 187. So in order to get to that, we have a baseline, right? We've been doing really well. It's not sustainable, but the growth has been impactful. Now, before we get to 161, we're at 157, 161, and we did have some great conversations with our team here and the city manager about what would look like to increase it for 27, 28, so we did ask for an additional 10 positions. What those metrics look like, you know, I think we need to be at least at 200. How we get there and when we get there is another story. But, the numbers right now are consistent to what we're doing as far as providing key core services. Now, we are doing a lot of things on overtime. That is part of our deployment model. Really, if we had every single officer, there'd still be overtime. There are unforeseen mitigating factors that we just really can't plan for. So a lot of the things that we're doing on the engagement side, on our enforcement side are sometimes generated because we don't have the full officers and professional staff on overtime. So we are pleased that we're gonna get those four back without a doubt, including a higher level executive position, but we are having conversations in hopes to continue to build that team. It's one thing to ask for 200 and it's another to actually hire the best qualified people to come and work in the city.

Well, but I think what's worth noting is at one point we were at 180. And so that's kudos to the department. The thing I want the community to think about particularly as we look at trying to stabilize Measure G going forward, and it speaks to the importance of the investment we've made in economic development with standing up a department for business diversification because an opportunity community that tracks investment and creates jobs helps with resources. So we're not gonna be at 200 tomorrow, but I think it's, I really think we just need to be thinking about how do we get ready for the future? Where do we wanna be? So I think, I think because of the track record you've already established, I think you have a lot of credibility when you help the community understand this is where we want to try and get to.

Absolutely. We're in those conversations. weekly if not monthly regarding projected growth, Amazon, the traffic, the activity and things that we have been doing to keep crime down. I mean, I'm also conscious and aware that this can change us on a weekend. So we have to make sure that the level of enforcement and engagement is where it needs to be to making sure that we try and mitigate and reduce crime moving forward while building relations and really building a fantastic team to service when we do get to 200 000 people or when we get to the point where we could get to those 180 officers we used to have eight motorcycles full time here right i mean we used to have a lot of things to your point earlier i think the department has done a remarkable job reducing crime and really engaging and while utilizing technology and building those community relationships which help us do a lot of things but in the future we're obviously working very closely with our team here to making sure that we build the police department for the future to make to obviously get to zero homicides i'm not sure that's ever happened but at the end of the day we're training in the right direction i can be here till midnight talking about the rest of the crime and other things we're doing but We are pleased, we are happy, and we're constantly working with our team here to making sure, because there are some key positions that are not there that we're hoping to get in the near future.

Okay. Well, I for one will be voting to make sure that you do. So I appreciate that. But I think the big picture is I think we want to let the community know that we're moving in a certain direction, because that's how we can be a safe city. And that even incorporates the fact, because I think you are bringing technology into play with real-time crime center and those sorts of things. So the world's going to change, but we're still going to need those well-trained, salacious police officers.

Yes, we certainly do. And we've been, again, we've been the team in the recruiting, HR, everybody's really played a key part in hiring the best qualified people that we can hire here. And we have hired from 129 to 150, not to mention nine lateral positions that were promoted or moved into key roles. So we appreciate the support. Thank you. And we're hoping to get to the 200 mark.

Good. All right. Thanks, Chief. All right. Chief Clement, I'm not going to let you off the hook. I'm going to channel Margaret, who's I assume is now asleep in Poland. And I know one of the things that is really important to the department is, you know, improving response times. You know, so, you know, I want to give you an opportunity to talk why that why that's important to the community. The other thing I was a little What I found interesting was based on a number of calls that, you know, it was and I'm not gonna say only, but I would have expected the response to homeless situations to have been higher. So the nature of your calls, I mean, you're obviously a busy department doing a lot of things, and obviously that's part of the mix, but I think, I'm not sure people fully appreciate the number of calls you have coupled with the response time, so just a quick comment on that, if you would.

Sure. What we wanted to show to you was obviously a very realistic look. I actually think, anecdotally, it is significantly higher than that. We did experience a changeover in the national reporting system, a change in our software that has made it a little bit difficult to really drill down into the finite numbers and the way they're reported now. This system is being changed at the national level, and our service providers PROVIDE THE SOFTWARE ARE MAKING A LOT OF CHANGE. THIS JUST HAPPENED JANUARY 1ST. SO I ACTUALLY DO THINK IT IS SIGNIFICANTLY HIGHER THAN THAT. I DIDN'T WANT TO BE VERY CONSERVATIVE IN HOW I PORTRAYED THAT.

TALK, IF YOU WOULD, THE IMPORTANCE OF IMPROVING RESPONSE TIMES.

SURE. GOING BACK TO YOUR COMMENTS ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED LEADING INTO 2008. I'M GOING TO GO BACK A LITTLE FURTHER INTO 2000 WHEN THE FUTURE GROWTH AREA WAS FIRST CONTEMPLATED AND THOSE CONVERSATIONS THAT EVOLVED DURING THAT TIME PERIOD ABOUT FIRE STATION 7 AND FIRE STATION 8 AT THAT POINT AND WHERE THE CITY WAS GOING AND ALL OF THE THINGS THAT WERE TEED UP AND ALL OF THE THINGS THAT SUBMARINED AFTER THAT, RIGHT? SO, YOU KNOW, COUPLED WITH THOSE CHALLENGES THAT WE MET, RESPONSE TIMES the call volume didn't slow down, right? All those initiatives that were on track to start, Fire Station 7 increasing the staffing, increasing the unit hours and unit hour availabilities, while that all stalled, the call volume did not. So we arrive at where we're at today in the focus of, I would like to get the needle going back the other direction, focus with our budget request, knowing that holding the needle steady and working with the city manager and our finance director to give us a pathway to get there. $35 million worth of grants in the last 12 years have really, to your point, Council Member Salazar, have really helped keep us back from the brink, if you will, and providing some of that extra runway. We'll continue to apply for those grants, look for those opportunities, but I will always be back in front of this Council explaining what we need today, tomorrow, and into the future.

Thanks, Chief. Just a couple of final things. Both Gloria and Tony have mentioned, and I'm certainly supportive of the Cyclovia request, the Monterey Waterkeepers is interesting. And I know there is obviously a lot of interest, and particularly as we look at the general plan and how that might fit into the sustainability I think those two, I'd certainly like to know more about the Monterey Waterkeepers, but I think we should probably get that teed up for consideration. I do want to, and so Renee, just a final clarification. So this whole Abbott Street versus, it was never either or. no it's cost and timing but it's never either or because i i think it was never either or abbott versus this you know and you know when this when this when this council uh passed its first budget the abbott you know we specifically knowing how important infrastructure was to the community we asked for two million dollar additional dollars towards what you know which i guess is materialized in the asphalt pavement program and then and then also abbott street was simply we wanted to pave more streets that that's what staff recommended you know let's say hey let's take a look at abbott with everything that's going on uh and and that that type of thing so so that that was never set up as as an either or So I just want to clarify that. But what I also think is important for people to understand, no general fund was ever designed to address infrastructure in its entirety. It never happened, and it never will. And all you have to do is look at the CIP report, and you see gas tax. Now, sadly for each of us, my quarter won't get me a gallon anymore. Good news, though, is we got more gas tax because you're taxing a higher amount of gas. Now, I hope, I kind of sort of hope that one does go down, but for now, it's been up, but as you can see, in terms of road infrastructure, gas tax, Measure X, and the state, infrastructure is always knit together, and then as, as Renee pointed out, this thing gets spent here, so that can be moved there, and so big projects, and I appreciate, and Mary Ann, besides being the conscience of the city, is also a pretty good historian, and I think Tony and I and Gloria can remember when we used to look at CDBG funds, and I've got 10 projects. Boy, Williams is really big. We can't afford that one, so let's do three of these, and it would just get, so that's always been, One of one of the challenges, but I think the important thing to note is that this Council has specifically looked at the general fund and say, do more. And then let's look ways. Can we do it faster and better? So, you know, you can be rest assured the play has been sent in for the sidelines. You know, is there a better way to fix a pothole? Is there a different machine we ought to be looking at? Because we understand exactly where the public is on that. But I think, you know, I would just, and then I do want to address the rental assistance conversation. The, you know, we're at half a million, and we specifically earmarked a quarter of a million for homeless students. with the idea that that's obviously something that tugs on all of our hearts. But it also crosses into the homeless situation. And so the ability to address encampments, we've built some more capacity with that. But I think this is a council that that has a heart. The value of the homeless students' contribution, in my mind, is when you talk to the educators that are involved with that, if you can help students cross the finish line in high school, that it's also a preventive strategy. You can diminish the possibility of homelessness by a third. So I think it means the council is trying to be smart. I'd like to see that number bumped up closer let's say 350, because I've had some conversations with MCOE and the quarter of a million is good, but then we also know there's some issues with some of the other school districts and homeless families. So I'd like to see that. I'd like to see that. Bumped up a little bit. And I will directly address. And I'm comfortable with the voters are going to provide their thoughts. But as I'm sure people can appreciate, There's a little bit of a suspended animation of the private sector that was willing to come in on that issue. And I do believe we'll continue to have some options along those lines. But that kind of hit the pause button. But we kept moving forward because we think it's important. Because we know the other quarter of a million dollars, I've certainly had feedback that people appreciate. immediate assistance for some of the issues they've had so i think i think that's a good uh contribution while while the community is getting ready to go you know because we'll be uh looking at that uh ballot measure language uh and placing things on the ballot next week but in the meantime in terms of this budget uh i'd like i'd like to see that bumped up maybe a hundred thousand dollars my input so for for yes mcoe how do they come into play They're the administrator. They're the pastor. They work with a group called Housing for Kids. And so they work with the dollars because they have the infrastructure in place. So they do come in with dollars as well? They're handling it. They may have what their other resources are, but they're the pass through for our contribution. They'd be the administrator.

Yeah, as you recall last year, NOW 500,000, THEN WE HAD ANOTHER 250,000 WENT TO MCOE TO AN AGREEMENT. THEY'RE THE PASS THROUGH. THAT MONEY WAS DESTINATED FOR SALINA'S STUDENTS. THE MONTEREY COUNTY OFFICE OF EDUCATION CLEARLY IS A COUNTYWIDE AGENCY SO THEY MIGHT HAVE OTHER FUNDING SOURCES FOR OTHER PARTS OF THE COUNTY. but the money allocated by this council to MCOE was for Salinas students, and we entered into an agreement with them. And I know we're working on a report to bring back to you kind of just how all that's worked, because we had our own half a million that we put out, and then the, as you recall, the planning department came before you, it was able to allocate, I think we ended up sending aside over a million dollars.

1.25 for rental assistance so we've been using that money before we get to the general fund all right so those are just uh just uh i wanted to just kind of provide my my thoughts in terms of what i'd like to see uh the fine the final budget reflect reflecting and so i hope those are captured and then and then like i say i think i think it is important as we go through the process, knowing out of the 12 cities in Monterey County, we surely must be the most watched city council. So we have a big platform to educate, and I think it is important for folks to understand really where we are at this moment. Catching up with the past and trying to invest in the future. Not an easy task, but I think this budget, given the resources we have to work with based on what we know and really to, and this has been said, the hard work you've all done to pull this together. you know, with just some minor tweaking. I mean, I'm certainly comfortable with the direction we're heading. And so with that, good work. And unless anyone strenuously objects, we're adjourned. Okay. And I'm taking my quarter and see what I can to get for a quarter.