City Council - Regular Meeting

Alright. Welcome back. We're gonna resume our council study session on the budget, the proposed budget, and we're in the midst of the public safety discussion. And if you're ready, councilor Candelas, we'll resume with your comments.

Alright. Cool. Yeah. Thank you, mayor. Okay.

So jumping right into it. I I guess, obviously, wanted to thank the chief for for your for your overview, but I guess my my first line of questions go to the other chief, the the fire chief, specifically on the community paramedicine pilot. And you know you know, it's it's, you know, for me being able to lean in and see how we can be nimble and strategic as a city is obviously something that I think is important, especially when it comes to long term cost savings. But, you know, one of the questions I have on this program is what kind of program metrics are we actually looking at with regards to that evaluation that's gonna happen at the conclusion of the pilot? And I was hoping you could speak on that and see what, success looks like with this with this, proposed, program.

Thank you, council member. Yes. Community paramedicine is a pilot proposed by the department. The funding stream is from the opioid settlement funds. What we hope to achieve is a variety of of things that aren't currently achieved through the nine one one system.

Ultimately, we look to invest more time in assessing patient needs or 911 caller needs, especially in those cases where there are matters such as addiction, perhaps, repeat 911 users who aren't getting the benefit that they need through visits to the emergency rooms, and, certainly, folks who have, struggles in terms of taking care of themselves and and who might be a a danger to themselves. So in terms of metrics that we're looking for, we are going to start with some some very basic, metrics that would include, our our reach. So in other words, how many, of each circumstance are we running into out there in the field? Yeah. Certainly keeping track of how many times we're able to provide definitive pathways to care.

Certainly tracking repeat nine one one users and seeing if we can reduce those numbers towards, you know, ultimately getting folks the care that they need. And so that'll be generally the type of metric that we're looking to to capture.

Okay. And then, you know, I I think essentially, like, that diversion of calls from from from our our police department, is is that something that we're also gonna be looking at? Obviously, if somebody's calling 911 for somebody who's has a substance or behavioral health issue challenge, I mean, where how are we gonna be able to to differentiate and or divert calls that that are more paramedicine focused as opposed to, you know, somebody from with a law enforcement background?

Yeah. The on the outset, as we as we develop the parameters of the pilot, we'll be engaging with with partners, especially law enforcement, in terms of being able to triage 911 calls and get them on the right pathway. And so currently, there are some 911 calls that are police only responses, but they may have perhaps a a mental health aspect or or substance addiction type aspect where there is a a a either a borderline or or actually, you know, substantial need for some level of medical care. And so what we'll be doing on the fire department side is we'll be implementing new protocols into our triage system where we will be able to capture those types of calls, and send the appropriate unit. In this case, we're we're hoping that that community paramedicine unit would be the appropriate unit so that we can really understand what the patient needs are at that Got

it. Okay. Like I said, this is an opportunity, and I and I just wanna make sure that we're setting this program up for success to be able to do what we wanted to do, and ultimately address some of our, you know, high utilizer populations that do that, that utilize the 911 response system as their de facto health care system. And so I'm curious to I do have some concerns that it's gonna take a while for us to even ramp this program up. I mean, we we invested in, what was it, trust a couple years ago.

It took us, you know, six months to set that program up for folks to know how to divert or who to properly call. And but from this program, I know it's gonna be more so our, our dispatchers who are gonna be able to, ID based on the call that's coming in to be able to deploy this para paramedicine team to be able to address. Correct?

Yes.

Okay. Alright. And then the next area that I've I've gotten several concerns from, you know, we actually had a phone call about this last last week. Mhmm. So the you know, this is nothing new is is with regards to the fire station twenty four's operations.

And, you know, I've had a lot of villagers, you know, older adults who live in adjacent neighborhoods to the hillside, and they they did express some some some concerns with, you know, given the limited access and narrow slash steep terrains by these proposed type three engines and the unintentional negative operational impacts of the these the train in my district, especially adjacent to the villages. Can you can you speak a little bit to this chief to their concerns?

Yes. So the station 20 or 24 proposal, excuse me, would place a type three fire engine where currently a type six fire engine exists. Now both type threes and type sixes are, configured for wildland firefighting. You may know the type three most familiarly, as the primary unit that CAL FIRE operates from. So it carries 500 gallons of water, has a 500 gallon per minute pump, has a complement of hose, has seating for four personnel.

The difference, as you point out, it is it is somewhat larger than the type six. Has more capability, but it's also physically in size larger. Knowing the area around the villages, there, are no concerns that we have right now relative to access. Certainly, as you move up Quimby Road, you have some very steep terrain up there that that neither of those apparatus, frankly, do well on on the steepest parts of those slopes. But in terms of access, I I think we actually do better by way of the capability of the type three apparatus.

Okay. That I mean, that's reassuring. I I think what about the escape slash evacuation escape slash evacuation routes identified in the villages that have the back road up Yerba Buena that's, like, formally a utility road? Does that what is that still still the case even for our

We should have type three, Rick? I'm sorry to interrupt. We we should have, access to all of those areas, and it it it's important to understand that we will still have type six capability responding to larger vegetation fires throughout the city. And so if there are areas that we discover either by roads that are washed out or or existing narrow, tracks that that we will still have the type sixes. The the the other truth is that today's type six is a very stout vehicle, and the and the road the the the wheel base is not much different at all than the type three. And so they'd be very similar in terms of what what access roads they can travel.

Okay. That that's reassuring. And lastly, so do you can you confidently say there's there's gonna be little chance to a delayed response with this staffing or operational change?

I think the type three is an enhanced service relative to the type six. That's my that's my professional view on this. In fact, going back to our our previous organizational review for station eleven at The Villages was to enhance wildfire capabilities there, and and this is a a a incremental step in that direction.

Okay. Great. No. Thank you. Thank you for that reassurance. I look. I was out I was out at The Villages maybe a month ago with the with the hiking club Mhmm. That we were doing some vegetation clearing and digging in some steps into this the hill because seniors can't get up these really, really steep Hills. And so that's one of the primary concerns that I had, given given the sensitivities around, you know, wildfire risk and, you know, even my previous question with the with the previous CSA on on our vegetative vegetation management investments that we're making. And so I I appreciate you answering my questions, chief, and, appreciate, the work of the CSA in its entirety. Thank you, guys.

Thanks, council member. Let's go now to council member Campos.

Thank you, mayor, and thank you staff for the presentation. I appreciate your work in this very important CSA. And, I do have a few questions and comments about the proposed expenditure for the AI report writing tool. One thing that I noticed is that we are looking at deferring the police training center by two years, and it's roughly at the same cost as the AI reporting writing tool. As you may know, the police training center is what is standing in the way of being open being able to open the South Substation, and it is a priority for District 2 in South San Jose residents that we get access to that substation so that our residents can, you know, feel better connected to our police department and resources.

And so I'll start with some comments first because, you know, looking at at the AI deployment through the budget process before as a council, we have an established citywide framework for AI procurement, oversight, accountability, transparency, data governance, and performance evaluation. I want to better understand the department's rationale around reducing administrative burden and overtime pressures because I do understand that this is why we're we're moving in this direction to free up staff time. And, you know, the budget actions are difficult to separate from policy when they effectively operationalize new technology frameworks across the city. I have been made aware that we have an AI policy, and I've asked for it twice from staff and have yet to receive it. And so before moving forward with operational AI expansion, I am trying to better understand what governance standards currently exist and whether there is a broader citywide AI strategy that's under development and what role council is gonna have in shaping those standards before additional deployment occurs.

And so just asking for more specificity and the expected operational benefit of this investment, how many office hours are projected to be saved, and how does that translate into deployable service capacity?

So there's quite a few issues you touched on there. First of all, let me just say that we agree with you. We would love to have the South Substation open as a functioning substation, and that was what it was intended for when it was built. It's unfortunately never really realized that capability. I I would disagree in that.

I wouldn't say that the only thing standing in the way of operationalizing the substation is the training center. There there's actually more costs associated with it than that just to transfer all our our people down there to make that an operating substation. But certainly, that is a goal at some point. In terms of the two costs being similar, yeah, I would agree that what the cost we're deferring is similar to the cost of the initial, outlay for the software, but we believe and and I and I can't give you exact hours, but we believe that the the, software program for the report writing is going to be a money saver, like, tremendously in the long run. So each you know, again, officers are are moving call to call to call and have very little time often during their shifts to write reports.

Yet report writing is an essential part of their duties. They can't not do it. In fact, the duty manual states that they've gotta complete their reports at the end of their shift. And so often, they're spending two, three, four hours after a shift, which is incredibly costly. The software that we're looking at, which which will not be implemented without, you know, your full understanding of what those guardrails are gonna be, working with our IT department, our city attorney's office, and anyone involved to make sure that, you know, we're not work what the goal here is to generate reports that are accurate, thorough, comprehensive, and make sure that, you know, the public can trust in those documents.

They're gonna go to court. They're gonna be vetted there. We have to make sure that these reports are are accurate. So so you will have an overview of all of that. And while I can't give you an exact dollar savings amount, I'll just just sort of anecdotally tell you that one quick trial we did, an officer told me that a a domestic violence report that would have taken him two to three hours took him about fifteen minutes to write. So I can't say that that's the the type of savings or the proportional savings for every single instance. But I think if it's anything even remotely like that, the initial investment in this software will pay off in you know, tremendously.

Thank you, chief. And what mechanisms are in place to help us ensure that AI generated content is reviewed by officers for accuracy and fairness?

So, again, not not everything is written out yet, but the the software programs that are available all require the officer to review and make changes. Like, they'll put bugs in it where if you don't catch it, it won't allow it to be sent. You know, it'll there's there's safeguards in place there. Ultimately, every officer is responsible for the report that he or she submits as being accurate, whether they're writing it by hand from scratch as they do well, as but from scratch as they do now, or whether it is the result of a software generated template as a starting point. A lot of the early forms of this type of software listened only to audio from a body worn camera.

So that's where there would sometimes be fill in the blanks by the algorithm that weren't always accurate, but some of the newer versions take into account the video feed from body worn camera as well, which has reduced the errors, reduced the inaccuracies, and that's really what sped up the whole process of the report writing. Because now the officer's not correcting a bunch of mistakes. They're starting with a template that's far more accurate. So, again, accuracy is every bit as important to us, if not more important, than saving money, but we think there's a tremendous cost savings here.

Thank you. And then what measurable outcomes should counsel expect to see over the next twelve months? And how will the department report back to counsel on whether this tool is being used as intended?

I'm not sure we'll have measurables for you within twelve months because we still need to go out to RFP and and all the rest. But I think ultimately, what you should see is was there a, a corresponding reduction in overtime costs for report writing, and I feel very confident that you will see that.

Okay.

I guess my one last question is how these anticipated outcomes are comparing to other unmet needs in other city departments?

Can you be more specific?

You know, we know that public safety remains a a top concern for our residents. And so how how is the improvement here? Is it going to help some of the other unmet needs that we're seeing in other city departments? The homelessness, for example, is it able to help us with those outcomes?

I'm not exactly sure how to answer your question. I mean, I think what what we're trying to do here is improve the efficiency and reduce the cost of operating the police department. If that helps the overall city effort to meet every need of the city and every department's need of the city, then, obviously, that would be a terrific outcome. I'm not sure I

can speak

to that.

Maybe also just putting aside the overtime, because sometimes obviously the report writing happens on regular time. To the extent that the officers can do their report writing much more quickly and efficiently, that will free up officers' time, and maybe that's to your point, council member, to do other activities in support of the safety of all the communities working with youth, doing community policing, working on homeless matters, what have you, anything that's neighborhood quality of life, it would ultimately help impact that, not just the overtime piece, because of course that's important, but also their ability to move on to another call and improve our response times to 911 calls and especially the priority one calls. So I think that's it's it's also it's more than overtime.

Thank you, Jennifer. That that is exactly what what I was trying to ask. So I appreciate you articulating that because as we are working on giving more time back to our officers to do things like street patrol- you know. Ultimately I. I'm not against us using technology to better improve our outcomes- and I also.

Don't want it to be the only solution that we're looking at because when we look at other programs, cities have implemented, for example, Oakland cease fire program. That is a program that really ensures people to people connection that we are able to better identify the individuals who are most likely to be impacted and involved by gun violence and making sure that they have peer support networks, ways to ensure that they have options so that violence isn't the only way to address whatever it is that they're going through. And so just going back to the original point that I made is as we're looking at ways that we're spending and just wanting to make sure that we're also finding ways to give people the services that they need, whether it's access to the substation or whether it's making sure that we are providing that safe climate in our neighborhoods, in our schools, in our communities overall. So, thank you.

Next council member. Let's go now to councilor Cohen.

Thank you. Thank you for the the CSA update, and, I just have a couple of comments and one question. I'm I'm I'm gratified to see the, attempt to use AI to make report writing better. We've been I've been asking for, as you know, for six years during these budget deliberations why we spend so much in overtime. And this is one of the reasons that we spend so much in overtime is the time it takes for officers after their shift to write reports that we're paying them the overtime rate.

So if this speeds that up and reduces that cost, it will be a move in the right direction. It it there's no doubt that this tool should be helpful in that regard. So it's not necessarily because we'll be redeploying people, but because people can go home, back with their families, not spend so much time on overtime, and we can have accurate reports. I tell and tell a story about my physician when I had my physical last year. He walked back in the room and said because he told me, is it okay if I use AI to record this this appointment?

And he walked right back in after said, hey. Look at look and he showed me the the chart report from the appointment and how it captured everything. And he goes back through, rereads it to make sure it didn't miss something or didn't do record something incorrectly. But the amount of detail that's in that report and the amount of information that's now collected and charted because AI is hearing the the report and documenting it and giving a first draft saved a huge amount of time for him, and I'm sure that'll be true for our officers. So I I you know, I think we ought to be embracing some of this technology.

This isn't the kind of technology that reduces our workforce or it takes the place of other jobs or does oversight or things that will actually harm our employees. This is something that should compliment them. So I'm I'm happy about that. I did wanna ask a question about crossing guards. I know that many of us are interested in that. And I I I wanna understand a little bit better what is it that's being proposed in the cuts. What I know there was a freeze during the year on hiring crossing guards for priority locations. And my understanding was that freeze has been lifted, we're beginning to try to fill some positions again. Is that correct, or are we still frozen on filling positions?

Council Margo and Jennifer Shembry, deputy city manager, we have approved those positions for filling. So if they're not posted, they should be posted shortly.

Okay. So so it's it's not quite like we're stopping where we are today. We're going back to filling some previously budgeted positions, but we may not be expanding to new locations for now in the in the current budget. Is that the cut that we're that we're talking about?

Correct. I believe that's the right way to say it. I think that when you look at the amount of expenditures that was expended in 'twenty four, 'twenty five, we were below what the budget amount was. So really, this is really more reflecting the budget amount to be close to what the actuals would likely be, given that there are vacancies. Even absent the hiring freeze, there are always vacancies for these hard to fill positions, well as just the normal challenges of doing that program.

Okay. I just wanted to confirm. And I know you and I talked about this last week, but I mean, I know there's a priority school in my district that's been waiting. And I've assured them now that we're back to hiring and filling positions for those priority schools that are already on the list. So just wanted to make sure it was confirmed publicly that that's the case. Okay. Thank you so much.

Thanks, council member. Let me go to vice mayor Foley.

Okay. Before I get into crossing guards and work on on that line of questioning, first, I wanna thank both chiefs and all of those all of you involved in the the CSA for the work that you do. It's extremely important, and it's probably the the subject that we get asked about most often in our districts when we're out at town halls or when we have office hours is public safety, firefighting, etcetera. So I truly value all the work that you do and the responsiveness of the police force and our firefighters. Both Both were out in force at my big event a couple weeks ago, and I am grateful for the time that they spent there, but also the work you do reading to the kids next door and the library situation or everything else.

I just am so grateful for police and fire. Before I get into crossing guards, just one thing about AI and the report writing. We always hear that we have the most thinly staffed police department in the country. And the only way that we're able to be as effective and efficient in law enforcement is by capitalizing the use of technology. So the use of technology is expanded with the use of AI and report writing.

I see that as an absolutely important tool If we're taking officers off the street or they're using their overtime, which is increasing cost, two to four hours of overtime every day to write a report, that's a ridiculous use of their time. They should be out on the streets fighting crime. So I'm all for it. Of course, do we need guardrails? Of course.

Do we need to have a way to implement it and oversee it? Absolutely. But moving forward with it, we also must go in that direction. Regarding crossing guards, I'm the Vision Zero Council member. And I know we all think about pedestrian safety up here.

But we've also recently just had several schools closed or slated to be closed in three in my district in particular, two in one district and one in the other school district. So the concerns that parents have, and frankly, I have too, is are we eliminating any crossing guards from those schools just because they're being closed? Because we have to understand or know what the traffic pattern is, the pedestrian pattern is going to be for those students who are going, for example, from Terrell over to Carson and how they're going to get there. Or if they're going to walk, then they have to cross major streets to get there. And so will crossing guards be available?

So earlier, heard so this is what I'm thinking about in relation to the crossing guards. We heard earlier that the 5.79 positions that are being cut are vacant currently. Are these it would be helpful to know where these positions are that we're cutting from, which schools or which areas, because it's just important to know that as we look at the whole piece of crossing guards. The other thing is it's very difficult to analyze what the need of the crossing guards will be at these new enlarged schools, either at downtown or in my district or other parts of the city, because we don't know what those patterns are going to be. We don't know how the students are going to walk.

We don't know if the parents I think Council Member Ortiz talked about how crazy parents are driving. Yeah. Okay. I will. I was a crossing guard near a neighborhood, you know, as council member crossing guard. Parents running right past me. It's crazy. Yeah. I know. We all know that. Sorry, parents. You all know it too. So we don't have good data yet until the schools reopen and patterns start to emerge. So first, I'd like to know what do you have a list of the schools or the areas?

I don't know if you have them, chief. But these have been long term vacancies. And we have 111 authorized intersections, but 10 of them have not been staffed for quite a long time is my understanding. You can correct me if I'm wrong, chief. This would cut half of those vacant positions. So, it doesn't cut cut them all. So, we can certainly get you the list of all of those intersections that are not been staffed that were authorized but we they have they because of the vacancies, the, you know, perpetual vacancies, they haven't been they haven't been staffed in quite a long time if ever. Is that correct, chief?

That's my understanding. And and this is something that, you know, we can evaluate over time if, you know, if it turns out that there are higher so so we're cutting positions, and and the reason it comes out to a sort of a weird number of 5.79 is these are all part time employees. They're not forty hour a week So if it turns out that there is a higher need location, you know, at some point in the future, you know, we can move guards around or whatnot.

Yeah. But we can give you we can send you the list of all the authorized locations and the ones that are unstaffed, if you'd like. Oh. Through an LBA, if that's

something we

can do.

Thanks. I Jim? Okay. Actually, so this is one of the areas I was going to try to look for funding to keep these crossing guard positions open. But I think we really need to do more analysis of the closed schools and the traffic patterns and assess it at a later date to understand if crossing guards are needed, how many, where they might be needed.

So rather than try and look in the budget for the 300,000, I think it is, I think I'd rather see and, Jennifer, maybe you can offer the best way. How can we revisit this in September or so to determine if if we need to do something with crossing guards? Yeah.

I would recommend I think that I mean, obviously, a lot of the council members have concerns about this and and we understand the concern and sharing that. I think probably I'd say October, we should we should deliver you an information memo and have the police department analyze what those traffic patterns are and and we can have our school crossing garden program leadership do that, and we can let you know what it looks like and give you an assessment. And if we need to make adjustments to the budget, we can certainly say what that adjustment would look like at that point, and then the council could take a budget adjustment at some point, and we'd have to probably cut something else to be able to do that, but Julie should have a more informed understanding of what's happening out there based on school closure. But I would say probably October, so we can really see what's happening in August and September because, you know, it it kinda settles down after those two months about what the normal patterns are, and that's been my experience as a mother and dropping off as well. But I'd say an information memo in October.

Does that sound good to you, chief? Would be Okay.

Okay. That sound that actually sounds good to me. That will give us some information as to whether we need to take different action going forward. Thank you. That that's it for me.

Thanks, vice mayor. Let's go now to council member Kameh.

Thank you so much. I, I wanted just to add a little bit to what was just discussed in terms of the crossing guards is you are going to get what council member Ortiz talked about, which is the super schools, right, where they're trying to consolidate everyone, and maybe that might be an area to focus on to see if there are special needs in those consolidated schools. So, I just wanted to add that. I'm going to go back to the contingency plan. And under public safety, I know that the ALPR is suggested to be reduced, and it seems to have doubled in the ongoing basis.

And I just wanted to get an understanding of what that means from the budget office.

Sure. To answer the question, there are some of the ALPRs that are currently funded on a grant that expires on December 31 of this calendar year. So the 04/20 is just six months worth of that cost, and then the $8.80 is the annual amount. Yeah.

Okay. And then, you know, it occurred to me that we will not have very much time between when we know how things are in June to when the budget is due to be passed. And so I'm just wondering, will there be enough time and discussion in terms of should things not go the way we want them to go? Like, what is plan? I mean, I know you have the contingency plan, but is that sort of an automatic? Or can we talk about it? Or how do you think how do you envision it proceeding? Should we have to do anything?

I

mean, would be great, you know, to say, no, you know, we don't have to worry. But, I'm just sort of thinking it's only like a month away. Less than. Less than. So I'm just wondering, like, will we have more study sessions or talking about I mean, I want I just wonder, is is there a plan to navigate that?

So so I

yeah. I was gonna say we would have a couple of council sessions between the between June 2 and the council adopting the budget.

Okay. So there

will be end

of the fiscal year. It would be rushed. We're very much hoping not to be in that position. Right, Jennifer? But.

I know. Yeah.

We would we would make time during a council session. If we had to, we'd schedule a special meeting.

Yeah. There'd be generally, we're we're thinking it would be in a council meeting again. Hearing, we still would want to look at that list one more time but we would, it would be actual council Nothing would be automatic about that contingency plan, and we still, you know, as we continually get updated information on the budget, we want to evaluate that again before we ask you to take action on that.

That's great. So there will be opportunity for conversation, and just because it's on there doesn't mean it's exactly, you know, a done deal and all of that. Because I think it's really important for us to have these discussions and know that should we have to go in any direction, there are consequences. So I appreciate that.

Just to be very transparent, it does give a very good sense after cutting the budget for the last couple of years what's kind of next up for having to cut because we're such on a thin margin in our general fund. So I definitely we obviously hope that TOT passes, but we also need to be realistic about what the next level of cuts look like. That doesn't mean that it'll be exactly that way, but those are kind of the magnitudes of of kind of services that will be at stake. So but, again, we'll continue to refine before we made our final recommendation to you.

Thank you.

Great. Thanks. Run to Councilor Tordios. Thank

you, mayor and staff. Just two quick questions here. First one is again on the AI pilot. I know we've had some, you know, astounding success with some of our early AI pilots speeding up our buses. In other cases, you know, we've looked at things and it turns out the tech is not quite there yet. You know, it sounds like we're gonna be doing an RFP for this. Do we have a sense of, you know, how confident we are that the tech is mature enough to kind of realize these benefits?

Without saying definitively, because it is a pilot that we're going out to do, but we do feel that there have been some advances that are gonna make it worthwhile this time. There was something we piloted previously that didn't really meet our expectations, but we're confident that there's products out there now will.

Thank you for that. I think as others have said, a lot of potential here would definitely be interested in some of the data that's been called out here, both trying to understand how much time are we actually saving on average reports, and then also what ends up happening to the officers bandwidth after that. Are we actually realizing those overtime savings? Are people being redeployed for other purposes? I think all of that useful for council to make an ultimate decision on, you know, continuing this pilot in a future budget session. And then finally, just wanna, you know, plus one all of council member sorry, vice mayor Foley's comments on the crossing guard program. Glad to hear that we are not, you know, cutting all of the vacant positions so that hopefully in the future we have the potential to fill some of these, get some more coverage out there. And then as, you know, we see the impacts of our consolidated schools, I think it will be good to adjust. So glad to hear that there will be the info memo come off coming in October. So thank you.

Thanks, council member. I'm gonna try to just wrap up this section with a few quick questions. First is just this may be for Jennifer Shambri. Just back to the, top level focus area, we know that public safety, the public's perception of safety is our North Star. Obviously, crime rates in the traditional sense are a very important input, but not necessarily the whole story. Can you share a little bit about what we know right now about the public's the primary drivers of of the public's perception of safety in our city and how that information is shaping our strategies and investments across this focus area?

Sure. Jennifer Shembry, deputy city manager. So as you know, our, resident safety perception has been increasing, and that's been very good news, and it's also been increasing in the downtown area. We do ask for the reasons and it's kind of an open ended question and then we categorize them or lump them into various categories. So that includes theft, homelessness, crime in the area. And so we're kind of seeing those things go back and forth. Sometimes it's homeless, sometimes it's crime. And so I think that that I think all of our efforts across kind of all of the focus areas look at those sorts of things and where we need to focus our efforts.

Okay. Thanks. And then along those lines, I wanted to ask a question or two on behavioral health response, which obviously is not the city's core competency, but is something that we need our partners at the county to really work with us to improve. And I appreciate that we are finding new ways to engage here, including the community paramedicine program we discussed as well as the Harvard Bloomberg initiative, which is really focused on the subset of individuals who lack long term stabilization and are kind of cycling between streets, emergency rooms, treatment, jail. Can you share a little bit about what we're learning from our partnership with the county where the system has the biggest gaps and is breaking down and what kinds of interventions at the moment we think are most needed to help stabilize this group and and with the acknowledgement, this kind of an ongoing learning process with our partners at the county.

Sure and you you're specifically asking for alternate response or more along the lines of Bloomberg Harvard work?

Well, when it we know that a big driver of public safety concerns is untreated behavioral health issues, addiction and mental illness, other forms of mental illness, not just in downtown, though, obviously, certainly here, but also in other parts of the city. And we're trying to engage the county in a new way. Yes. And thinking about different ways that the city can lean in, but also trying to make clear to them what's at stake in our community and how how our shared constituents feel about these issues. And I'm just I'm curious what hypotheses we have as we head into this next fiscal year around what interventions we might be investing in or we're we're expecting them to invest in that might move the needle here.

I I'm hoping to see some progress in the coming fiscal year on this issue of untreated addiction and mental illness out on our streets in that intersection with with public safety concerns and and other issues.

So there are a couple of things we're working on that I will share, but I think Lee wanted to jump in.

Sure. Let me start with we actually met with the county on Friday just on this bucket. And, you know, one one thing that I think we heard from the county loud and clear over the last year was stop coming us to us with solutions. We have a complicated system over here. We'd much rather you guys come to us with Right.

What is the problem you're trying to solve for? Like, what is the issue? So I think, you know, one of the things that hopefully you saw in the reducing unsheltered homelessness focused area was very a very narrow focus on our high acuity individuals, specifically Eric and his team and Paul, everyone, like, we've taken a subset of folks in the downtown and really been close with them over the course of, you know, the last few months of where the system is breaking down. So we're gonna be coming forward and kinda presenting here's where the system is breaking down with these 60 individuals in the downtown. Some have very high substance abuse issues.

Others have a lot of behavioral and mental health issues. We've identified kind of the the voluntary treatment is a missing policy that the the county does not have or believe they have from the state.

Involuntary. Excuse me? Involuntary.

Yeah. I'm sorry. Yes. Involuntary. Yeah. Yes. Sorry. They do not believe they have that policy tool from the state. I don't know if if we fully agree with that. We believe that there's some things that they could exercise.

So we presented that to them Friday. We're gonna be having another meeting with them in June, kind of just how we move forward, kind of with this. I think from our side, we've realized knowing where they are with their budget, I think that involuntary or capacity inside a system is gonna be very difficult in this next year given where they are budgetarily. So we will be really focusing on where do they believe they really don't have a tool from the state or where we believe that they do that they could exercise. So we get through this year with actually being able to experiment with different things because there's four or five different avenues that they've presented to us, some of which I think we're very interested, others that we just don't believe moves the needle for the greater need that our community is expressing to us in these surveys, but also, you know, half of the things that you guys have talked to us about this morning.

Yeah. I appreciate that update, and I'm glad to hear at the staff level, you're continuing to engage in that conversation every month or so. I think it's important that even if the commitment we get for the coming fiscal year is small, that there's something one or more concrete things even if they're they're baby steps that we're actually taking together because this is a perennial issue. It it has not gotten appreciably better. We've moved mountains on the city side to bring thousands of people indoors but for those who can't benefit immediately or or or unable, you know, unwilling to come indoors, we've gotta have our our friends over at the county lean in. I don't disagree. I know we agree completely. I'm just Yeah.

And I honestly, I just would say, I think, like, one thing that we need to do better as an administration with you is we're constantly having these conversations and sometimes we feel like we hit a brick wall. And then we have conversations like this and say, hey, we're really trying. I think we need to paint a better picture for all of you when we are running into roadblocks with the county, because I do think this is much more of a shared responsibility between staffs, but also electeds on our side and their side. And so I think whether it's through the council focus area reports, or just when specific programs come forward, think I we can do a better job of being more transparent when we need your help in pushing as well.

Yeah. No. It's it's good. And I'm just asking the questions because I think as we as we think about this focus area slash, in this case, CSA, it's just important that we keep going back to first principles of what makes people feel unsafe, and it's it's not always a violent or property crime. And we don't always have all the tools we need, but I appreciate, the administration leaning in there.

Look forward to continuing that conversation. So I think we are in a position where we can move on to strategic support and updates from council appointees. So, why don't we take a moment? Thank you to everyone who presented and took questions. Alright.

We're ready to begin? Excellent. Let's do it.

Good afternoon, mayor. May I have council members and members of the public, Caled Toftik, chief information officer and information technology director. I'm joined by Aram Krumqian, director of human resources and employee relations, Sylvia Jefferson, Assistant Finance Director and Matt Lesh, Public Works Director. And we are here to present the Strategic Support CSA proposed budget. Strategic support CSA includes essential services from the finance, human resources, public works and information technology departments.

Core services include debt and treasury management, employee benefits, facility and fleet management, business solutions and San Jose three eleven program. Programs under CSA include payroll, accounts payable, accounting and procurement services provided by the finance department, medical benefits recruitment and related hiring activities managed by the human resources department, facilities maintenance and capital program administration led by public works, and IT systems, cyber security and network infrastructure managed by the information technology department. Some of the track performance measures highlight the city as it continues to receive strong bond rating from credit agencies, demonstrating sound financial management and ensuring access to affordable borrowing when needed. Through dedicated ongoing recruitment and retention initiatives, the Human Resources Department continues to reduce staffing gaps while operating within healthy margin levels. The San Jose three eleven customer satisfaction continues to improve, reaching 66% relative to the 70% target with continuing improvements planned for next year.

The vehicle equipment availability remains strong at a 100% vehicle availability for a fifth consecutive year for public safety and exceeding 97% availability for other staff. The finance department budget increased by 0.5% to support software upgrades, including a new grant management system, cashiering system, cloud migration and planned enhancements to financial management system. The 19.1% information technology investment increase will enhance infrastructure resilience, strengthen cybersecurity capabilities and drive greater efficiency. And the 1.7% increase in public works budget reflect a modest increase in fleet staffing, which we'll be highlighting in the latest slide. Strategic support services remains committed to protecting and allocating resources in alignment with community needs, maintaining accurate financial reporting and improving operational efficiency through effective business solutions.

Strategic priorities also include attracting and retaining highly qualified staff, while continuing to reduce vacancy rates through expanding digital recruitment efforts, maintaining safe and reliable facilities and fleet assets, and leveraging innovative solutions and data informed decision making capabilities to address service gaps in support of city priorities. The following actions are included in the proposed budget. A one time $5,000,000 to refresh critical infrastructure equipment and end user devices to ensure availability, efficiency and cybersecurity compliance. The 500 allocation will replace the city's grants management legacy systems with a centralized platform that meets current compliance standards and tracking grants citywide. The proposed $380,000 budget adds three mechanics to help reduce vehicle availability gaps for the general fleet maintenance services, as indicated on Slide number four.

The $276,000 investment in San Jose three eleven will increase the number of software licenses needed for staff access and supports Edge three eleven integration with internal systems. Finance will use 100,000 as a one time funding to migrate the city's cashiering and payment processing system to a cloud based solution, improving security, ensuring up to date functionality and reducing IT support demands. Two reduction from public works will reduce funds by 20% for unanticipated or emergency building repairs. In addition, public works not replace two to three vehicles in the coming year. Finance will eliminate two vacant positions, a staff specialist that provide administrative support in finance administration, and a senior accounting account clerk in payment processing.

Duties have been absorbed by existing staff due to efficiencies realized through the new banking system. The human resources and IT departments will reduce workforce development and support services staffing as part of the proposed budget. In summary, strategic support services will continue focusing on maintaining strong financial stewardship of public resources, maintaining city facilities, equipment and vehicles to ensure safety and reliability, supporting a well trained, engaged and service oriented staff, and empowering employees through effective tools, innovation and collaboration to deliver exceptional services. This concludes our presentation and staff available for questions.

Great. Thank you, Appreciate it. Sylvia, welcome to the team. Thrilled to have you here. Alright, colleagues. I'm not seeing anyone rush to raise their hands. I'll go ahead and ask a question. So, Khaled, after the investment we're making in 03/11, I assume we hope to see the customer satisfaction score go up. What on your mind, again, I'll frame it as a hypothesis. What's the top one or two things that you think will have the biggest impact on customer satisfaction when it comes to three eleven? And can you put a time frame on our delivery of one or both of those?

Absolutely. Thank you, Mayor, for the question. There are two things related to three eleven, the application which is the front end and the back end which actually deliver the service. And while the investment that we're making here is primarily for the three eleven, We're also working through the customer experience initiative, which really looks at the operations and to see how we can make the intake of three eleven seamless, where delivery of the servers also becomes integrated as part of the process. And one of the things that's currently being worked on as we speak is the illegal or junk pickup.

And I believe in a couple of weeks, we'll come back to council to present that part of the CX experience project. But between improvement to the front end, more integration and business process reviews, we're looking to see improved deliveries of services and therefore will result in higher satisfaction from customers.

Okay. I'll take that for now. I may have some follow ups at a future meeting, but that's good. It's a good example. Okay. Council member Kameh.

Okay, mister mayor. You touched a nerve there with the the s j three one one. I wasn't gonna say anything, but then I thought, oh, no. The mayor started, so I I have to kinda, like because because I'm still I'm still receiving, information from my residents that, they report something, especially when it comes to some kind of vehicle or a vehicle being there three, four, five, six weeks, whatever, And they get the response of, oh, your item has been closed. Right?

And is that still happening? I mean, it it would seem a simple thing to fix, and maybe it's more complicated than I understand. But when someone reports especially in the I hear it more when it comes to a vehicle, like a big truck or I have big trucks in my district that are just behaving badly. And and so I'm I'm just wondering. It doesn't it doesn't make sense to me that they're still receiving this response that says, your ticket has been closed. And is that still the case? Or am I just like

So that is still taking place to some extent in much more minimal ways than they were. I I do wanna go back. So next week, we will be forward in front of you with the customer experience work plan, kind of a status update of where we are with that. I do wanna understand the importance of that and just at a high level kind of explain what Khaled just mentioned of large junk pickup. So that was also something like vehicle concerns that got added on to three one one without us taking a step back and saying, well, what is the actual resident's journey through reporting that?

We have city services, you know, within the city that are, you know, oftentimes siloed, you know, within departments, but they're also, because of how lean we are, they are built around efficiency for staff, the most efficient way to get something from a to b for a staff person so that we can kinda move on to the next thing. That doesn't mean that we've taken the time, like, view concerns before we put it up. Okay. Are they really reporting something that we can enforce? Are we communicating them about, like, what we can enforce and describing city you know, the city services that we do have?

So I think to Khaled's previous point, I think what you'll hear next week is a more intentional way around, you know, vehicle concerns, junk pickup, and the other services that we wanna migrate from the existing three one one system over to the new, but also the services that we'll be adding in the next year is much more intentionality around what is that front door and what is the interaction with residents. And sometimes that is communicating to them on what we can do and then a time frame that we'll be able to do it. And certainly with, vehicle concerns, you know, a vast majority of those were sometimes, vehicles that reported on that actually there was no enforceability to that at all. But we had a system in place that let residents report that.

So what I would say, and know, I'll be looking forward to what comes next week or whenever it does come to us. The whole idea of SJ three eleven was to consolidate and give the resident or the person out in the community a sort of like one stop shop to report things, right? You know, when we ended up moving out all of the unhoused or the issues with the unhoused separately, and then you had to go through this menu of things, it took time to let people know about it. From a public information point of view, people really like the idea of going to three eleven, having it as an app, having it in one place, and being able to report whatever it is that they wanted to report. Right?

And so I don't know if you're going to remove it or take it out or whatever. I'm a little bit concerned, and had my staff send some information a notice to Jennifer Schembry of, you know, if people can't report or complain or do whatever it is on the three eleven map, I worry that they're going to go back to 09:11, right? And, you know, it sort of it takes time to get people accustomed to a new way. And I don't know. Last year when we were talking about, you know, the transition of SJ three eleven and that it may take one year, but, we allowed we gave authorization for a two year transition.

I thought that we would at least find a way to be able to keep things together, not create something else that we would have to educate the community all over again on, hey, you got a complaint on this. So I'm just wondering, will you have everything on the SJ-three 11 app so that people can can kinda find ways to to report there as opposed to going someplace else?

So that is the goal of 311 is to have the services where our residents engage with and report that they are eventually all on 311. 311 is simply just a front door, whether it's the app, call center, or or any place else versus now we only actually have the 20 city services on three one one. So a great majority of other things that are, you know, come in are through email to your offices, emails to our offices, or various things, you know, directly to departments, which creates a bit of inefficiency. Creates inefficiency for us, you know, within management and the rest of the organization that sometimes we don't have a clear picture on what that resident is actually trying to solve for at times. Same with you as you have a resident in your area.

You may have different staff members getting different emails. It also is very frustrating for the actual resident that has to engage six or seven different city staff at times trying to figure out where to go. So the intentionality and the vision for three one vision for SJ three one one is eventually everyone comes there to ask for that request, to report something, or figure out a city service that they need to access.

I I think that's great. It's just that when it came to the whole issues of the unhoused, we pulled it out and put it separately so that they have to go through the menu to address if someone sees someone unhoused. So I just I just wanted wanted to make sure that it just stays together when it comes to abandoned vehicles or other vehicles or things like that and not as a separate thing because then people won't know where to go.

Sure. And and report an encampment was added back to S J 311 last week, so that is now on there and live. I would just say for that, it was important that it sat off to the side for a while. So as we did some of these larger encampments and really learned how the reporting parties, you know, wanted to engage, that we had flexibility and didn't limit ourselves through three one one. But we did feel comfortable enough to add that back last week.

K. Thank you.

Thanks, council member. I'm not seeing any other hands. It should indicate that the council is ready to move on to our next item. Okay. Next topic. Alright. Well, thank you all. Appreciate it.

So, it's for the appointees next.

Okay. So, got it. Let's go to questions to appointees if we have any. I'll wait a moment. There's no presentation but if there are questions directly to appointees, Councilor Candelas.

Thank you, mayor. Yeah. You know, this is I guess to to Tony in the city clerk's office. I know we've been discussing about having to conform to state law and we do have an item coming to the rules committee later this week but I guess for for the full councils, I guess heads up. You know, we do we do have to provide that public commenting opportunity for for for Zoom participants or people who are not in person to conform with state law and so, you know, as a as a I guess, I guess, how would you how would you say the the trials have been going and just at a real high level conversations with your peers on this same topic in California?

Just We're all ears.

We're ready at the same level we had before. There is software out there that would make things quicker, easier, better. We are requesting rebudgets to maybe get some of that software. But as is, we're we're actually testing it right now. We're having a little glitch today, but I think we figured out the the problem. We'll test it again tomorrow during council. We accidentally have two meetings scheduled at the same time, and it keeps wanting me to switch over the other meeting. So that's user error. But we're we're ready to go. We've got the the hybrid meeting guidelines. I think the attorney's office is finalizing those today. Neelam and I have been working on them back and forth back and forth, and we made some tweaks this morning.

So Perfect. Thank you, Tony. I I we'll we'll discuss it a little bit more in detail in detail later this week, but I just wanted to give you a shout out and appreciate your work on this to try to, you know, get more folks involved in our in our public process. And and, you know, there's there's trade offs because we know the the last time we're we were doing this, we it was it was not so pleasant, not because of San Joseans. I firmly believe that.

But folks out of the era and out of the state even. Yeah. And then I guess my next question regard to one of our appointees is is to the the customer experience transformation investments that we're making to the tune of 3,900,000 this year in addition to, I wanna say, $2,900,000 balance that we currently have. So was was hoping the the the administration can talk a little bit about what we're hoping to see and why we're prioritizing this funding all the way through 2029 given our fiscal situation.

Sure. I'm happy to help with that. And you'll get obviously, a lot more next week when we come forward. Of the the 3,900,000, a great majority of that is actually for the the CRM licensing and software, as well as the professional services and the technical service about migrating s j three one one over to the new system. And then eventually, s j three one one will connect to the CRM and all of the different departments so that we kinda do have all of the data in one area to be able to look at some of the metrics, performance, and to be able to just kinda support all of the different functions behind that one front door.

So a a great majority is for for technical work and software.

And and I'm I'm looking at the at the proposed budget changes, I guess, descript description. Where where would it be able to delineate what's going to the actual licensees? What's going to obviously, I think the we're in addition to this, we're adding, obviously, a deputy director position to oversee this and an assistant to the city manager, a senior executive analyst. But curious as where where we can see, you know, the cost of this. And, obviously, we wanna, you you know, it it we want it to be an iterative process, and we wanna be able to see what's working, what's not working. But that that's what I I'd like to see, and I'm curious to where where we can find that.

Sure. So that this budget wouldn't reflect a detailed budget like that. That's something I can follow-up with you offline on that we definitely have within the office where it shows specifically what goes to three one one or the CRM, but a more detailed background than what you see in this budget write up. Alright.

Thank no. Thank you. Thank you, Leland. I appreciate that. Obviously, we all want, that better interaction with our with our residents and that customer experience, to be pleasant. And, yes, our office does do constituent services along with everybody else's here. But, just, you know, I I I'm looking through every every pot of money that we are dedicating funding funding for. And and if if there's, you know, savings to to be had and and questions to be asked, that's that's what

I Yeah. And and I mean, I I I will say that you can obviously, we'll hear more about it next week. We really have looked at other cities about how they've stepped into this work so that we can, a, properly phase it, b, make sure we're kinda headed in a direction in which we feel comfortable, but also kinda benchmark ourselves versus what we're spending versus other cities. And so this budget, you know, has come down an awful lot, you know, versus where we wanted to go to be able to kinda do it within reality. But it is really, you know, overlaps with some of the service optimization stuff that you've all wanted.

Because when we do have that friction or even you guys get so many emails on the the vehicle concern or someone that didn't you know, you know, their garbage was missed or anything else, It does require a lot of noise in the organization to fix those things. So this is ultimately, yes, there's some one time investments here, but it is about kind of the ongoing efficiencies that should help us save money in the long run.

No. And I I appreciate that, Lee. And, obviously, I think we we we are very we're hyper, you know, sensitive to any any expenditure and and, you know, whether it's looking to see where we can bolster our funding towards our immigrant in support services to other, I I think that that's where that's where my my thinking is, but I appreciate you and and the the all the appointees' response. Thanks.

Thanks, council member. Let's go to council member Mulcahy.

Thank you, mayor. Susana, city attorney, question for you. Actually, more of a just an observation in the budget around a deputy city attorney for the muni code. I'm just wondering, what what's the expectation around how that, sort of sort of rides shotgun with, you know, code enforcement and that, and any other actions that you're taking around that kind of enforcement?

Yeah. Thank you, council member, for the question. Quite proud of the work that we're doing there. This position was actually one time funded last fiscal year, and so we appreciate the city manager's support in making that a permanent position. This is our single sole prosecutor that dovetails nicely with a lot of the more significant problematic properties in the city, multi family housing, drug abatement problems, a lot of police cases that we get information from and then we build cases around and then we proactively file against them.

It's the position that gets the receivers appointed or seeks to get receivers appointed to take over the property. And as we've launched in a more proactive community justice based effort to kind of lead a lot of those plans, that's what this civil prosecutor would be doing.

And is there any other work that you're doing in the office related to interaction with code enforcement?

Yes. So we have two attorneys that serve as our municipal prosecutors, and so they will take the cases into the Superior Court and actually prosecute violations of our city code. We have attorneys that advise code enforcement. And then we have well, we have a number of attorneys that actually work with court enforcement depending on what in particular is discipline or the cases that are presented to us. What I'm hoping to do is engage more proactively to try to bring some cases over and take action and then build the cases from our office.

Thank you. Tony, just a question for you. Going back to what council member Condellis was bringing up about, you know, come in August, we'll have to be available remotely. I don't remember in the budget seen any technology related to that. I would imagine there is some consideration. Is there a plan for that? And did I just miss it in the budget?

It's not in the budget. We just found the software two weeks ago. We are working with finance to rebudget our excess funds. It is we're we're trying to see if we can get it approved. The the current software we right now have works for it. The the software we're looking at enhances. It makes it better, makes it easier for us, and it makes it better for the people in person as well. We love it. It's very exciting. But the way the way we currently have it with Zoom and everything is it will work. It'll work fine. Just won't be as flashy.

And if I know you, you're sort of tied into clerks across the state. I would hope that we're not the only one using that software.

Oh, no. The the new software is there's a waiting list. Right. Because they're the only provider of it that's s p seven zero seven compliant. So although he said he would rush it for us if we could get something.

But Thank you.

We're working on that. K.

Thank you, mayor.

Thanks, council member. Okay. Oh, vice mayor, please.

Well, we have one council appointee up here who is here present. I just wanted to acknowledge Joe Royce as our city auditor and someone who always is there to give us a briefing, and, I just want to acknowledge your efficiency and professionalism. Yes? And Eddie Aubrey too is our other council appointee that are in the audience, but we're not bringing for you. That doesn't mean that we don't love you. It means we just don't have any questions for you. Thank you.

Yeah. Alright. Thanks, vice mayor. Okay. I don't see any other questions for appointees, which means we're going on to fees and charges. And Jim, think I'm turned over to you, or is it just for questions?

Just for questions. We don't have a presentation.

Colleagues, do we have questions on fees and charges?

Just to remind everybody, it's a separate whole document. Nice and thick.

I'm pausing.

Oh, actually, right? Yeah. Okay. Well

We'll go to councilor Kameh.

So, I know that when we do these annual fees and charges, usually most of the fees are cost recovery and all

of

that. Earlier today, I mentioned something about citations, especially parking citations. Does that fall outside of? Okay. We are able to because I know that there are some of these that we haven't really we just sort of incrementally bring them up. And I'm just wondering, when have we looked at it a little bit more deeply in terms of being able to charge more?

What for the so for those costs where the city is providing a service to a a defined customer. We we capture the vast bulk of those in this fees and charges document. Ones that are maybe outside of that would be the things for like your water bill or your sewer bill that's sort of handled through a separate ordinance and resolution. The the amount recovered for citations or fines is also handled through that's not really a fee for service. That's really just a a punishment kind of and you're and you're you're paying a fine for violating some some rule or or law.

So those are normally handled through separate resolution also. The amount, I don't know offhand the last time we did sort of a deep dive into the citation revenue individual amounts for things like parking tickets. That's something that we could look into.

Yeah. Because I think that, you know, earlier on when we covered transportation, you know, I mentioned, you know, the potential of increasing the number of parking enforcement officers. But, obviously if we are in a revenue crunch, we are not able to do very much. And so I was just wondering if we were able to have a little bit more revenue, maybe next year John could have a little bit more in terms of the ability to take a look even at parking enforcement officers. So if it hasn't been looked at in some time, maybe that's something to think about in the future in terms of what seems appropriate, what have others done within our Santa Clara County or other cities or what have you, because you know, I think that we have to start thinking about revenue generation in multiple ways.

Thank you.

Thanks, councilor. Let's go to councilor Cohen.

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, council member Kameh, for bringing that up. I think it's important for us to also always be doing an analysis of how our fines and things compare to our peer jurisdictions around us. I I don't know that I've seen a report that says, how do our citations compare to Oakland or San Francisco or other places? And it might be a good quick analysis for us to make some adjustments. I was just going to ask for a brief overview of what we're thinking on parking, just so, you know, to have a little conversation about parking. Are we this includes increase in parking parking rates. Right? So I know that this this affects does it affect just the parking meters?

It affect garages too? What is our overall vision this year for changes in parking rates downtown?

Yeah, so the parking rates, so that would not be a fees and charges, that's also a separate resolution, so that'll be coming forward as part of the budget adoption process. We do in the proposal in the in the transportation section. We are recommending an increase in the meter rates. Think by $2 an hour in the down the downtown.

John's there.

Oh, John, take that.

Yeah. John can help out. There we got the expert here.

Jim was doing a great job. John Russo, director of department transportation. So to answer the question on the parking revenue that proposed is increasing the rate by $2 per hour in certain parking meters that are within about two blocks from parking garages. Parking garages still have ninety minutes free for the first ninety minutes and that doesn't change. So, we would be changing the rates and then and then also changing the time. Right now, they end at 6PM. We would be extending it to nine.

Okay. And then and we we based some of these changes on what we see happening in other jurisdictions around us. Is that the are we are we Yes.

We can we compare that to other jurisdictions, whether they're nearby or some some other ones, San Francisco, Oklahoma.

How will we get the message out to residents? I I'm you know, the rates are one thing. People will see them when they when they try to pay to park, but the after 06:00 thing, people, if they just have a memory that it used to be free to park after six, how are we gonna let people in the in the area know that this has changed? Is there gonna be some publicity

or something? So this isn't the greatest way, but each one of your meters does have a very, very tiny little note on there that you have to have to look at. So, you know, on top of that, we would be putting out information whether or not we're gonna put it on every meter or not, but we're definitely gonna have to let people know that that time frame has changed, and then the rates at certain meters has changed. But they'll get that as soon as they try to pay for it. They're gonna see that rate pop up on the meter. It's the time frame that'll change. There are signs that are out there that give the time frame also. So, you don't have to look at the little meter. You can see the the sign on the on the roadway but even those are probably not gonna be good enough for the change.

But we're but we will be having to change.

We're gonna have to do some outreach to actually make sure people understand that.

And we're do we have a budget line item for actually updating

the status? It'll it'll it's included in our responsibility. It's also we will help have to rely on some of our partners, Downtown Association, P bid, that that sort of thing because they are actually under contract to help us to get the word out on parking.

Okay and council newsletters. I'm sorry. And council newsletters to make sure we tell all of our residents.

Right now, it's just in the downtown area, parts of six and

Last month, I was parking in Sacramento, and I parked at 06:15 thinking it was still free and got a ticket because last year, they did this there, and I didn't know. But I guess it's a question we have how people will find out.

Yeah. We're not we won't be changing anything outside of the downtown proper, Japantown, East Side, anything like that. So it's just in that core downtown.

Okay. Thank you.

Just a note on on just to go back to fines just to not lose lose that. In the 2425 budget, we did increase, parking violations by $5 for, violations for bike lanes, street sweeping zones, residential parking permit zones, and

metered parking spots. That was last year.

Okay. Yeah. And then back to the process here, this will come forward during the budget, but it's a separate item other than this particular fees and charges. It'll we it will be but it'll be wrapped into the entire budget adoption?

So I think the way we have this structured is the budget will be approved. I think this fees and charges this resolution to increase the rates is tentatively scheduled for June 23, it would happen right after the budget was adopted.

So a separate action separate from the budget. Correct. Thank you.

Alright. Thank you. Let's go to vice mayor.

Thank you. I have a few questions and comments, about the fees. I'm really happy to see the fee structure for the murals, particularly the the ones on city properties that the cost is $500 for a mural versus what it was anticipated to be much higher than that. We really want to help our citizens beautify their neighborhood. Same thing with Caltrans. We were working on

a

Caltrans mural in my district and received this huge quote from our department. And then now I see it's only $1,500 so that's much more affordable for us to for this neighborhood to do the mural that they wanted to, even though Caltrans is difficult to get that permission from. But I'm glad to see that. I know that was in your budget message, mayor, and I'm glad to see that. I have a couple of questions regarding the ambulance transport fee, user fee.

It looks like so we budgeted 1.7 last year, and now we're modifying that budget to 800,000. And same thing for the first responder fee, we're reducing that. Can you tell me what's the complication in in why how did we end how did we overshoot so much?

Yeah. Thank you for the question. Vice mayor asked asked the fire department to to come down. I think essentially as we're rolling out this new program, know, getting a better handle on those that are able to pay through insurance has been sort of a work in progress, but we'll have the chief come and talk to that.

Okay. Yeah, I was curious when we approved this is how it was going to actually work. So chief, maybe you can talk us through how someone calls for an ambulance, how we get them information and are able to bill their insurance carrier.

Yeah. So for the thank you. Robert Sapien, Fire Chief. For the first part of your question, I think we're gonna have to have at least a few years of experience to really understand the very complex payer mix that relates to insurances and what they pay and all of that. And so estimating what revenues will be, I think will be refined over time.

In terms of what's happening right now, nine eleven callers access our system as they always had. We arrive on scene as we always do. We do not refuse care. We do not condition care based on ability to pay or anything like that. We simply, while we're on scene, request identification and insurance information. If we're able to obtain it, then our third party billing firm will make contact with that insurance provider and will attempt to to gain remittance for the for the services provided. Beyond that, customers will receive a statement basically saying that all that occurred, but right now, we're not doing balance billing or doing collections or anything like that.

Okay. So they well, they're in medical crisis, so it's not it's unlikely they have their Kaiser card sitting in their hand. They're more likely very concerned about their health or their loved one is certainly too. So we don't necessarily collect the data there, although we try. And then we send a follow-up. Do we send a follow-up bill to their home?

No. Patients do not receive bills directly.

Just a letter saying we need this information in order to proceed.

Right. And and to your to your

Or to collect.

Right. To your point just a moment ago, this is really not different than than what has occurred on every other emergency medical call for as long as I can remember because we do have an ambulance provider on scene that has been doing billing forever. It's the same information that they would ask for on scene. So that really is not not a different practice.

Okay. And and other cities that have this fee, how do they how are they doing it collecting? Is there are there is their process similar to ours, or can we learn anything from other cities who do this?

Very similar. In fact, the the third party billing process that we have is is widely adopted by by many agencies. The payer mix, obviously you're not gonna get 100% of billable patients aren't gonna be able to pay or aren't gonna have insurance to pay. And so you do have regional experience based on that particular payer mix in that environment. And so we're still learning about how remittance will occur in in our service area. And as I said, over time, we'll we'll be more refined in how we budget that.

Great. Thank thank you for answering my questions.

Thank you.

I I think the the lesson to learn is that when we have these opportunities that we think may be generating big dollars, that we should really need to be very conservative until we have a pattern established and we know that the funds are actually going to come in a dependable way. The other question I had is we have a lot of the fees and charges are in cost recovery categories, which to me means 100% cost recovery, not $0.95 on the dollar. So what stands in the way from moving all of the cost recovery to 100%? And then what's the impact on the general fund for not being at 100%?

Sorry. I didn't quite catch the first part of the question. Was for all of the fees or just for a particular

The category one. Is category one, you know, things that should be cost recovery or why are we having some of those fees be less than cost recovery? I'll let you answer that, although I could answer it.

You might do a better job in Jennifer. So I mean, yeah, there are, I mean, our goal is to have category one be cost recovery. It may be that in instances, is, you know, after there's a couple instances it could it occurs. One is just the overall cost of the program is just to have that be borne by individual customer might just be too much. It also could be that after we've adjusted for the fees based on an update of the time it takes to complete the work for that fee, the jump in the rate might be too much to swallow in the first year, and so we phase into that over a multiple year period.

But we do have a pretty rigorous process where we go through each individual fees and charge, and we're saying, hey, let's get to 100%, or it's not going to work out, and we might not get all of the way there. But that is our approach for all of those fees.

You do that every year, Jim?

Every year. Every

year. See? I learned something new. Mhmm. Okay. Thank you. That an that answers that question. And and one other note is that I noticed that the in lieu developer fees, many of those were reduced this year. So I was happy to see that. I don't know what kind of economic impact that will have on the developers, but I noticed they were reduced like $02 or $0.10 per square foot. Not a huge, but it's a drop in over a huge development. It might really add up to something. I don't know. But I just noticed that and I think in a time when we're trying to build more housing, that's important. That's that's it for me. Thank you, mayor.

Thanks, vice mayor. It's good to Councilor Candelas.

Thank you. Mayor vice mayor, I appreciated your comments on the mural fee structure. That that those are the the that that's the area that I quickly wanted to just ask. Has well, I hope that OEDCA is able to go and do some outreach with our, with our folks in the art community, whether it's the arts commission or anybody else to to talk about, this and just hopefully bring this awareness. Because essentially, it is a new fee wherein otherwise the TOT would be 100% subsidizing this this work.

So I I hope we're able to reach out to artists and talk to folks. I don't know, if you'd like to comment other. Carrie.

Good afternoon. Carrie Adams Hapner, office of cultural affairs. Yes. Absolutely. That's a great idea. Thank you for bringing it

up. Yeah. I just don't wanna have a a meeting where we got a whole bunch of artists pissed off that they gotta pay fees without knowing. So that that's one. Thank you, Carrie. That's that's pretty much it. And then lastly, Jim, there's in the subsequent paragraph of this, there's a, fee revenues from gated events on public properties. There's a 5% gross gate receipts. Do we not do we not have that fee or that that revenue for the time being given our given the I guess the the exemption or the suspension of the gated event on public property fee that we have?

Correct. So that's revenue that we don't have that revenue coming in. That revenue has been suspended for, as you can see, for a long, long period of time. Think is the impetus there is to sort of incentivize those types of events. And I know that I think back a number of years, actually it doesn't say that, but it's not obvious through that paragraph, but that gated event on public property fee has been suspended for a long period of time and is extended for an additional year. I think that's in place to help those events make it more Right.

To make yeah, it I get it. Were you know, we've had some big time events, I appreciate it. But curious as to, like, that gross gate receipts fee in in general, and and I don't know if we if we still, you know, charge a 5% gate, receipt, for for revenues generated on on on on public property for these for these big time events. I don't know if we do that or that's suspended or what the future plan is for that.

We we do not. Go. Yeah. Carrie. Yeah. The the the call.

Thank you.

Oh, Carrie. My bad. I thought I thought this was for Jim.

Hi. Thank you for the question. So we suspended this fee maybe about ten years ago. Mhmm. And when we did collect it, it I would say it generated about $30,000, and then we reinvested it in our festival parade and celebration grant program. So what we found is that we were essentially kinda regranting money to the organizations that were giving us the fee, the revenue. So, you know, with escalating, you know, cost controls around the city trying to incentivize outdoor special events, we did suspend it.

Got it. No. And the reason why I asked that, I mean, we've had some, you know, big time entertainment, like, big time events that, you know, have evolved since I'm I'm assuming since the suspension of this whenever it was. Just seeing so the thousands of people, you know, lining up to to participate in what what we're we're craving. Granted, you know, it's a it's a balance. We don't necessarily wanna hinder that from happening. But if we see it as a strategic opportunity to generate revenue for for for for our city, that may be something that's worthwhile and something that that the administration should consider.

Thank you. Thank

you. Fair points.

Great. Thanks, council member. Okay. I don't see any other hands, so I think we'll move on from fees and charges to the proposed biennial capital budget and '27 through '31 capital improvement program. What's that? Jennifer wants everyone to be clear that this is a separate document. She is displaying it for all to see. Jim, I do believe we have a presentation on this one. I'll turn it to you. Thank you.

Yeah. Correct, mayor and city council. We do have a presentation. So as Matt Matt Lesh, our public works director, and Jennifer Tell, our capital budget manager in the city manager's budget office gets settled in there, We want to just have a couple of remarks here. You'll remember that last year was our first year for implementing a biennial capital budget and five year capital improvement program.

And so last year was the first year of a two year budget, but of course, things change, of course, throughout the year, and we need to carry forward funds that need to finish our projects that are already in progress. And so we are in our first mid biannual update of that two year capital budget process. And so really want to appreciate all the work the departments did, and Jennifer Tell in leading us into sort of pioneering this first mid biannual update. So we also though have a charter requirement to approve a five year capital improvement program, and so that is also part of our presentation today. So without further ado there, I will turn it over to Jennifer.

Thank you, Jim. Thank you, Mayor and Council members. Jennifer Tell, capital budget manager in the city manager's budget office. As Jim mentioned, I will provide an overview of the proposed capital budget and the funding sources for the five year capital improvement program or CIP. Then I will turn it over to public works director Matt Lesh to discuss major project changes in this mid biennial budget update.

There are 14 capital programs under that fall under the city's six city service areas or CSAs. We will review the major project changes for the programs in each of the CSAs. As noted in the overview of the proposed operating budget last week, next year's proposed budget reflects a $5,500,000,000 recommended spending plan across 152 funds. This presentation is focusing on the 18% or $1,200,000,000 slice of the budget that is made up of the capital funds. Here's a historical comparison of the five year CIP over the last ten years.

For fiscal years twenty seven to thirty one, the CIP totals $3,300,000,000 The fiscal years twenty to twenty four and twenty five to twenty nine CIPs were the largest to date. A large contributor to these CIPs was the Measure T bond passed by voters in November 2018, which authorized the city to issue up to $650,000,000 in general obligation bonds for investments in emergency and disaster response facilities and infrastructure, such as roads and flood and water quality protection. In this proposed CIP, we see exhaustion of Measure T funds anticipated in fiscal year twenty twenty eight-twenty nine. So as Jim mentioned, new last year was the transition to a two year presentation of the budget, the twenty twenty five to twenty seven adopted biennial capital budget. Given the long term nature of planning for city infrastructure investments, the adopted biennial capital budget allowed the administration to highlight strategic investments planned to move forward in the first two years of the CIP.

However, as conditions are never static and funding for the current year must be carried forward into the following year, adjustments to the previously approved twenty twenty six-twenty seven capital budget are necessary. This proposed mid biennial capital budget update in CIP lays out the changes to the twenty six-twenty seven budget previously included in the twenty twenty six to thirty adopted CIP. The changes focus on rebalancing the capital funds response to adjustments and revenue assumptions, such as new grants or updated tax revenue forecasts, addressing unexpected changes in project costs, and reallocating funding to address unexpected conditions or needs. This proposed capital budget and CIP also extends the five year CIP horizon to fiscal year twenty thirty thirty one. Of the $3,300,000,000 in the total five year CIP, dollars 1,200,000,000 is budgeted in 'twenty six-'twenty seven for the proposed mid biennial update, as compared to $670,000,000 shown for 'twenty six-'twenty seven in the adopted biennial budget.

The proposed mid biennial budget for twenty six-twenty seven is substantially higher than presented in last year's adopted CIP, largely due to our process of carrying forward or rebudgeting unspent appropriations for multiyear capital projects. Here is a breakdown of the funding source categories for the $3,300,000,000 five year CIP. We'll go into more depth for the top five categories listed here. Revenue from other agencies is the largest source of funds in the capital improvement program, representing approximately $738,000,000 funding, up 4% from the last adopted CIP. The increase is largely attributable to increases in contributions from the local user agencies served by the regional wastewater facility.

The increase aligns contributions with the scope, timing, and cost of capital projects included in the proposed CIP. Revenue from the state is higher due to recognizing additional gas tax and road rehabilitation funding based on updated forecasting. Revenue from the federal government is down due to removal of a US Department of Transportation safe streets for all grant award that is not expected to move forward, and the need to rebudget grant funds that are still eligible for reimbursement as part of the year end cleanup process. The next largest funding source is contributions, loans, and transfers between funds. The largest transfers are from the sewer service and use charge fund to the water pollution control and sanitary sewer capital program.

Fees paid by the users of the sanitary sewer system are used for capital projects in these programs as well as operating costs. The proposed CIP includes $61,000,000 in contributions from the general fund with the largest allocations for fire apparatus replacement and replacement of the nine eleven dispatch backup generator. The amount of General Fund contributions in the proposed CIP is substantially lower than the last adopted CIP because we do not carry forward existing General Fund appropriations for capital projects in the proposed CIP. These will be included as part of the year end cleanup process, which will likely increase the amount of general fund contributions. The beginning fund balance is made up of money carried over from prior year allocations.

There are plans for most of this money pending the determination of a final scope for projects, final project locations, and or availability of future funding. The amount of beginning fund balance in this proposed CIP is about 1% above what was included in the last adopted CIP. And this amount will increase as part of the year end process when capital appropriations not spent this year have returned to fund balance. The increase in beginning fund balance is largely due to the final issuance of measure t bonds in twenty twenty five, twenty six. Those funds will be carried over until fully spent, which is anticipated in twenty twenty eight, twenty nine.

Taxes, fees, and charges funding is up slightly from $572,000,000 to 579,000,000. Airport passenger facility charges are estimated to be down by about $15,000,000. However, construction excise tax and building and structure construction tax are estimated to be up compared to the last adopted CIP due to anticipated construction of data centers. Financing proceeds are anticipated to provide about $521,000,000 in the proposed CIP, down 40% from the CIP adopted last year. Similar to the last CIP, the largest use of financing is in the water pollution control capital program with $392,000,000 of wastewater revenue notes and BOM proceeds for implementation of capital projects identified in the plant master plan.

The sanitary sewer capital program anticipates increasing its use of financing in this proposed CIP to support capacity improvement projects. As mentioned earlier, the final issuance of Measure T bonds was completed in the current fiscal year, so Measure T financing proceeds dropped to zero in the proposed CIP. The airport has also deferred the $200,000,000 short term parking garage project beyond the five year horizon of the CIP, and that project would have been financed. Those were the main funding sources for the capital program. So now we will talk about the expenditures or use of funds.

This chart shows where the $3,300,000,000 of investments will be made by capital program. The water pollution control and traffic capital programs together make up over 56 of the dollars in the CIP, followed by the airport and parks both at 11%. Now I will turn it over to Matt Lesh to discuss major project changes in this proposed CIP.

Good afternoon. Matt Lesh, director of public works. The delivery of the CIP in preparation of the capital program is a team sport, and I'm the less than eloquent, deliverer and spokesperson for the team. Many of the representatives are in the the audience here if you wanted to ask specific questions that are detailed in nature around their particular program, but I'm happy to help as best I can. As you oh, next slide. Measure t. So in the first selection of the Measure T program, it's a $650,000,000 bond that was passed in 2018. It's largely, as Jennifer said, coming to its conclusion. It was mostly focused on areas around public safety, but it also had a massive amount of paving in that program. We have included in here some of the deltas.

So you'll see lists of projects that are deltas from last year's listed CIP in general. So we have the emergency operations center HVAC replacement project at about $7,000,000 and other programs that are projects that are in flight. We talked about earlier about Fire Station 32 as that gets to conclusion and Fire Station 6 that is in design. We have many projects that are coming to conclusion, whether it's the the hangar at the airport for the the PD, whether it's a police training center and so forth. Those things are all continuing on in the CIP.

Onto the next program. This is the developer assistant program. It's one of the smaller programs in the CIP. It largely focuses on undergrounding overhead utilities in coordination with PG and E, Comcast, and AT and T. Those are done with all of our utility partners.

The rule 20 a funds are utility funded, while rule 20 b are projected, are projects funded through developer fees, and we have no major changes in this current cycle. The next two slides, this is the utility and environmental services CSA. We have the sanitary sewer system and the storm sewer system. The sanitary system is a much larger portion of the CIP. And so we have these two sections talking about the sanitary section, which is the sanitary services group, which is 2,000 miles of pipes in the sanitary sewer system, and three other jurisdiction jurisdictions conveying wastewater and regional to the wastewater regional wastewater facility.

The program priorities are preventing sanitary sewer overflows, managing the capital systems, capacity and conditions, and rehabbing and upgrading aging infrastructure. The projects of note in that area are adding in the Chesbrough project It's a good example of a capacity increase project and replacing of aging infrastructure. And then we also have the because of some master planning and reviewing of the existing systems, we were able to remove the Alvin, Tully, and King project. It's no longer needed as downstream improvements along Fontaine address those capacity needs. On the storm system, which represents the smaller section of it, just over $68,000,000 in the CIP, that's about 1,100 miles of storm drains and 31 pump stations.

We have no major a few minor adds to this group, is some minor storm improvements, some large trash capture devices changing around the project descriptions and condition assessments. For the wastewater pollution, they have some very small they're very large projects, they are guided by their master plan, which is updated in 2025. It's roughly a $1,600,000,000 program over thirty years with key updates to enhance the focus to project delivery, digester upgrades, pump station improvements, and laboratory enhancements. Those are the changes that are listed here on that slide. And then in the water utility system for municipal water system, there are no major changes that are listed here as they're adapting to to their new water resources administration and operation facility that opened last year.

In library, that consists of library's ERP supports accessible high quality library services. The funding supports collections, facilities maintenance, and capital improvements. The recent investments in the building forward grant included repairs to HVAC systems, boilers, flooring, and other essential buildings, and you see the adjustment there in the building forward grant with 6,700,000. In the parks community and facilities group, which is also very large of 350,000,000, the changes that you'll see here are the enhancements to Elliot Park, turf replacement at the Pat O'Malley Field, and the all inclusive park at the Camden Park. Finally, in public safe not finally.

Next in public safety, CFP focuses on the delivery of mostly on Measure t projects. We have a $100,000,000 is allocated in this current cycle, with the emergency medical services equipment enhancement changes of 1,000,000, the fire station privacy enhancements of about 600,000, and the fire station alarming system router replacement at about just under 500,000. In the transportation and aviation services CSA, we have the airport parking and traffic. At the airport, as noted, there's some minor changes there where they have the airport configuration updates about $12,000,000. The zero bus emission bus adds of about 6 just under $6,000,000, and the short term garages was removed of $202,100,000,000 dollar project.

The parking program, you've seen a lot of the investments in the downtown parking in recent years. We had all of the elevator upgrades recently and also facade improvements and digitization a curb digitization pilot program. So there's no major changes in this in this portion of the CIP this year. Traffic, as we know, DOT has been doing a marvelous job with all the paving program over the last, basically, decade. And this year, we have continued improvements and enhancements to the paving program of about just under a $100,000,000.

They have a speed safety system pilot of just under 10. We have some EV changes and advancing the curb management the advancing curb management program of $3,000,000. Finally, in the strategic support CSA, that is the communication system, that's the radio communication systems, You mean it's

some

improvements area and the service yards. We have no major changes in the radio communication systems in the CIP this year. And the changes to the CIP, municipal enhancements. We have some lighting improvements and upgrades at the convention center and also some restroom upgrades. And then also we are beginning the project of dealing with the water intrusion here at City Hall. And as a service yard, there's no major improvements in those programs there. And that concludes our presentation, and we are eager for your questions.

Thank you for the presentation, Matt, and welcome, Jennifer. Thanks for your presentation. I don't see any council hands. No questions on the capital budget? Oh, I see them now. Council Member Tordillos.

Thank you, Vice Mayor. I had one quick question. I was hoping we could get some more context on that HVAC replacement at the emergency operations center. Kind of stood out as a big ticket item for what I thought was a pretty new building. So I just hoping we could get a little bit more information.

Certainly. That complex is new as is the HVAC system. That HVAC system is a very modern version of that system that's very complicated and complex. We are in some disagreements with as it's installed for by the contractor and by the design. And so but it's also a very critical facility that we need to have that is able to operate. And so we've made the choice of going ahead and replacing that while we are engaging in further conversations with the contractor and design firm on the prior implementation that we have there.

Thank you. That makes sense. I think given how critical that facility is, it makes sense that we would go ahead and do some of these repairs upfront. But hopefully, the city is able to recoup some of those costs, if this is fundamentally, an error on the part of the contractor. Thank you.

Good question and and good catch. Council member Mulcahy.

Thank you, vice mayor. Matt, I wanted to ask about the water intrusion remediation. We have 2,000,000 in here, but I think we all understand that's a much larger project than the 2,000,000. Can you we first talk about the two, and then I wanna talk about the longer term portion of that.

So this begets the beginning of the project because this it will take us a little more than a year to develop the whole project. We need to get the contract get going. It will likely be a design build, but it might be a design bid build. And so we're still in this early stages. So we need some seed money to begin that process. And then as that gets clearer, we have an evaluation of the building from a professional firm giving us an estimate of what they think the cost will be. But as we get into the specifics in the design, we'll get clearer on what that final larger number is. So rather than ask for all the money up front, it will take us about this year to get that whole plan put together and give us about a year's worth of time to figure out what specific funding mechanism we'll need for that larger number.

So this is sort of prescoping what the ultimate program will be for

Think about more design than prescope. We're ahead of prescope, I think, because we have had the whole facility evaluated from tip to tail. And so I think we know what that scope is, but we need to get them actually putting pencils on paper and and doing some design work for us.

Okay. So I'll say it out loud. The concept that we've sort of talked about of, you know, we've got a major plaza out in front of our building and I know I don't pretend to know about the waterproofing, but I do know a little bit of something about construction. It it seems to me I don't want us to ignore the idea that we have a major collector of concrete in front of this building that is, in my mind, must have some relationship to the water intrusion in and around this campus. It seems to me an opportunity to look at the plaza as a way to capture some of that, you know, rainwater that's coming down, not as much as we would all want, but it does, and look at ways that we could consider greening the front of the plaza, whether it be decommissioning the public art that's out there to utilize that space in a different way.

But nonetheless, we have a lot of acreage out there that could be a part of the solution, and I really would like to make sure that we add that to this prescoping notion technical consideration for how we address the waterproofing of the of the property.

Well, it's usually not prudent to contradict a council member in public, but the roof the the roof deck actually has no challenge with the waterproofing. It actually is on the sides, and it's groundwater mostly that's pulling in. So not not the rain coming down. It's the majority of it is groundwater coming up from the outside, from the bottom, and from the sides. And so it's not necessarily the the deck itself is actually sound. And it's mostly on the sides and along where the vertical faces meet the plaza itself. That's not saying we can't look at greening, but that's not the reason for where water is coming in. It's not the deck itself. The deck is actually quite good.

I can appreciate you disagreeing with me in public, but here's what I would just say.

And we would agree.

I just think it would be helpful to, as you're talking to technical consultants, I would appreciate asking the question out loud to see if that could serve any purpose to this. You know, that's a lot less expensive to me than some of the other work that's going to be done at the 40 plus million that we're going to be spending. If there's a way to include a portion of that, you know, to both, you know, aesthetically improve and and and cool our facility at the same time capture more water that's going somewhere, and it's likely going into our basement at some or parking garage at some place. So I just wanna put it on the table as you're starting to spend this $2,000,000 getting into this process.

We will have an evaluation of greening up the plaza to see if it mitigates the cultural space gathering space that's on the plaza as it was currently designed. We certainly will.

Thanks, ma'am. Great.

That was a valuable interchange. Thank you, gentlemen. Seeing no other hands from the council, I think this concludes this presentation, and we move to open session, which also means that we will not have a study session on Wednesday or Thursday. So you can clear your calendars. Do we have any members of the

public here who wish to speak?

Yes. Antonia or Antonia. Antonio, can you come on

You need hear from up there.

We can bring a microphone up to her.

We'll bring a microphone to you.

While Steven is running a microphone up to you, I wanna let you know you have one minute.

Hi my name is Antonio Martinez I am a resident- I live on Orlando in Cunningham I've been there for fifty years. And I do have a few concerns. One of them is it's safe. It has to do with safety and it starts on it has to do with safety and it concerns sweep cleaning. For starting on Ocala all the way To Adrian there is no schedule sweep cleaning days in that area that section and there's cars that been parked there over twenty five years and hasn't moved.

So what would be the process on initiating sweep cleaning for that area. Another concern I have is-

thank you ma'am that's your time.

Antonio, what I'll do is I'll pop up there after and we can chat a little bit. Okay? Awesome.

With that, we stand adjourned.