City Council - Regular Meeting

Please call the roll.

Council member Adler, council member join at present council member of arose here. Vice mayor Rubio here and mayor Armstrong here.

Uh, I want to make sure that the videos on we're, we're good to go over here on the, we're good over there.

Apologies. It seems we're not streaming currently. Oh, okay.

Let's hold on a second.

So to the best of my understanding as city attorney, we are live on zoom, but we are not streaming live from our own website. Okay.

All right. Then, uh, I'd like to proceed. Let's go ahead. And if everyone would please join me in the pledge of allegiance.

All right, thank you.

Please be seated.

And for those here this evening who are just coming in, we're getting a little bit of a late start due to two prior meetings before this one. So at this point, we're going to go on to item three, announcements. Do we have any announcements?

Just one moment, please.

All right.

Item 3.1, changes and additions to the agenda. There are none. If you wish to speak under public comment or regarding an agenda item, please fill out a speaker card located in the back of the room and submit it to the city clerk.

Okay, thank you. Item 4, public comment. I'm going to open up public comment. At this time, public is permitted to address the City Council on any non-agenda item related to the business of the City Council. You can speak on items that are on the consent calendar, including requests to pull an item from the consent calendar and the reason why you wish to pull the item or items. Please note that the decision to remove the item from the consent calendar is strictly at the discretion of the City Council. You can speak on requests for future agenda items or on special presentation items under section six of tonight's agenda, which we do have one item there. Or you can speak on items that are not on the agenda and are within the City Council's jurisdiction. Please be reminded that while the city ensures the First Amendment rights of its citizens, we do not accept nor endorse any offensive or hateful comments made during our meetings. The city celebrates the diversity of our community and we strive to be a welcoming and open community for all. If you wish to speak on a public comment or regarding an agenda item, please fill out a speaker card located in the back of the room and submit it to the clerk. While we encourage your comments, unfortunately state law prevents the city council from discussing items that are not on the meeting agenda. City Council does take them very seriously, however, and if appropriate, staff will follow up. Okay. Do we have any speaker cards?

We do. Our first speaker card is from Elena Formosa.

Okay. Okay.

Council Members, I would like to point out that would you please kindly ask all the staff who are up here presenting financial balance sheets or information to please observe proper accounting procedures, meaning the balance really should be on the top. I was mistaken because the balance was on the bottom and then it was very confusing. So please make sure you guys start with balance on the top always and so then there is no misreading. I'm not sure why there is such discrepancy these days and how the sheets can be presented differently. from different staff. So please have a uniform way of presenting information to us. Also, I was recently in a financial committee presentation, but it was only to the public. None of you guys were present. I felt it was a little fishy. Why is it that there was a finance committee meeting that none of you were there, but only the public and people? I don't usually see them here, so I had a hunch that they are not our citizen. So I also want to point out that please review your consent agenda rule right now. It is a violation of the Brown Act because consent agenda, when I request, for example, to pull it, you are by the Brown Act you need to respond to me. But right now, you lump it under public comment, which you do not need to respond to me. So then that's why you guys are used to treating me like I'm just nonexistent and I'm a puppet, because you don't need to respond to me. because it's under public comment. However, this is where you want me to pull a consent agenda where you need to answer to me. So can you guys please put it together and know what you're doing instead of confusing the public and undermining my right to exercise my civil duty as a citizen to make sure that you guys are transparent and we are aware of how you're spending our money. Thank you.

All right, thank you. And just a reminder, that was not a finance committee meeting the other day. It was a finance, financial discussion, the FY27 budget update, budget status update for the public. So, okay. So next speaker, please.

Mayor Armstrong, we have 22 public comments. Okay. Would you like to keep them at two minutes?

Yeah, we'll start at two minutes, and hopefully each comment will be separate and distinct and unique as opposed to just saying the same thing. Next speaker, please.

Jamie Wolfe.

Hi, my name is Jamie Wolfe. I'm a 30-year-plus resident of this area. And I want to first thank you for your staunch support historically of the LGBT community over so many years. I have always looked up to San Ramon as a beacon and the embodiment of decency. FBI data show that LGBTQ, Jewish, and African-American citizens far and away suffer more violent crimes against them and hatred than any other group. LGBTQ people are five times more likely to be victims of violence and three times more likely to attempt suicide. Studies show that visible support such as community pride flags reduces both rates of violence and suicide among LGBTQ people, particularly children. Clear support matters and paints San Ramon as a safe and compassionate community where LGBTQ folks can feel welcome. Again, thank you for your continued support, and as you plan ahead, please know that your decisions on continued support will help save lives. I look forward to many more years of San Ramon serving as a beacon of hope, safety, and tolerance. Thank you so much, and thank you again. All right.

Thank you. Next speaker. I just ask the audience to not applaud or make comments on other speakers' comments during this session. Thank you.

Bruce Hickson.

I recommend that San Ramon renew its longer term commitment to flying the rainbow flag during the month of June. Such a commitment evidences support for a city that everyone is welcome, including minority interests. The rainbow flag represents inclusion as opposed to exclusion of a broad array of public interest. not just the LGBT community. Minority interest recognition allows a community to adapt to changing interests over time and for an ability to remain relevant and vibrant. While minority inclusion may seem imperfect, it should not be traded off for targeted exclusion. Any form of Christian-only opposition is fundamentally exclusion. It does not represent the breadth of our community. We consist of non-religious folks other religions, the business community, more open Christians, and many others. Your leadership provides you with an opportunity to promote the greater benefits of broad-based inclusion. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker, please.

Pantra Gupta.

Good evening, everyone. My name is Pankaj Gupta. Thank you, Mayor and the council members who supported the Pride Flag resolution. As the parent of an LGBTQ plus daughter and a long-term resident of San Ramon who felt safe in the city, I'm heartbroken that the Pride Flag policy is under review. I want to express how important this tradition is and what it means to us. LGBTQ plus kids do not have the same rights as other community members. I know that because one of our child is and another child is not an LGBTQ member. They are marginalized and often not safe. The flag represents safety and helps us with a sense of belongingness. We hope that you will commit to raising the flag in the future and spare us the angst by committing to support the LGBTQ plus community in this and many other ways, both public and doing concrete actions that are visible to the community at large. Thank you. Okay.

Thank you. Next speaker, please.

Anruta Gupta.

Good evening. I'm Anuradha Gupta, the president of PFLAG Danville San Ramon Valley. On behalf of the chapter, I thank the mayor and council members who voted for the pride flag being raised this year. And we express our distressed that a longstanding civic tradition is being reviewed and a council member voted against the resolution. In the three minutes I speak, two minutes actually, Three LGBTQ youth will attempt suicide, and even one affirming adult can reduce the probability by 40%. The LGBTQ community faces four times the violence than its peers do. Eight in 10 LGBTQ kids are bullied in school, according to GLAD. These are not numbers. They represent people in the room and in our community. While we have been told nothing is changing, the pride flag policy is being reviewed after five years. And this in the backdrop of unprecedented attacks on the LGBTQ community, who do not have the same rights as many of us do. And those rights are constantly under attack or review. The LGBTQ community are our families, kids, neighbors, peers, seniors, students, teachers, politicians, artists, business owners, veterans, scientists, lawyers, first responders, healthcare workers. The pride flag is symbolic. It's a historic symbol of this struggle signaling the victory of love, resilience, community, and courage. Sadly, the struggle continues. We look to our representatives to provide dignity and safety in the face of marginalization and continue flying the flag. Please commit to a community stakeholder process before making any future changes policy changes impacting LGBTQ residents and provide concrete steps to support the community. We would appreciate your commitment to inclusion, non discrimination, safety and support for LGBTQ residents. Thank you.

Okay, thank you. And just a reminder that the review that's going to be done is not a review of the pride flag policy. It's the commemorative flag policy, the overall policy. Next speaker, please.

Rita Chaknabari.

I did have copies of what I was going to say to distribute to you all. Good evening, Mayor Armstrong, Vice Mayor Rubio, and council members. My name is Rita Chakrabarty, and I'm a 30-year resident of San Ramon. I'm here to speak in support of continuing to fly the pride flag, not just this year, but in years to come. I want to address the concern that flying a flag means the city is choosing between viewpoints or creating inconsistency. The Supreme Court case that was mentioned, Shurtleff versus City of Boston, actually makes a different point. It says that if a city allows expression, it cannot exclude a viewpoint simply because some disagree with it. The issue is that in that case was inconsistency, not the act of flying a flag in support. But even more importantly, when the city flies a flag, it is engaging in government speech. And cities do this all the time. We recognize holidays, honor veterans, and commemorate civil rights milestones. These are not neutral acts. They reflect shared values. The pride flag fits squarely within that tradition. It represents inclusion, safety, and equal treatment under the law. These are not fringe ideas. A strong majority of Americans support LGBTQ rights, and federal policy increasingly treats these protections as part of our core civil rights framework. This is not about opening the door to every possible viewpoint. Cities already draw the line every day. We do not fly flags that promote exclusion or harm. We do choose to recognize movements that expand rights and strengthen community. So the question before you is simple. Should the city use its voice to affirm that all residents, regardless of who they are or who they love, belong here and are safe here? Flying the pride flag says yes. And that is not a political statement. It is a statement of basic fairness, dignity, and community. And I strongly urge you to make the decision to keep on flying the flag. Thank you.

Okay.

All right. Thank you. Next speaker, please.

Dan Frank.

Greetings City Council Members. My wife and I have lived in San Ramon for the past 23 years and raised three children at the SRVUSD school district. We have all gone through K through 12th grades. I want to tell the council about our personal experience with our LGBTQ son who came out at age 15. We are so proud of him. He is the kindest person I've ever met and a better human being than I will ever be or hope to be. He's living his best life currently as a graduate student at UCLA, and I'm honored to be his father. Unfortunately, this is not the case for far too many people in the LGBTQ plus community. They face threats of violence against them from family members and strangers. The lack of emotional support from parents and supposed loved ones is psychologically devastating for them. The LGBTQ plus community faces, I'm sorry, four times the threat of violence. Every 45 seconds an LGBTQ plus child attempts suicide. Even one supporting adult can reduce this probability by 40%. In a survey just released by the Williams Institute of Law at UCLA, it says 66% of trans parents reported their children were more fearful under the current regime in Washington, DC. California has flown its bright flag over the state capitol in Sacramento since 2019, each June. It's flown out of the state capitol without any issues or a made-up policy review. If it's good enough for the state of California, it's good enough for the city of San Ramon. To those in the LGBT plus community here tonight who have been shunned or punished by any family member, know that you matter, you are loved, and I encourage you to find your own community of friends and partners in crime. These are the people who are your real family. They will stick with you in good times and bad. Hold them close and know that just because you were related to somebody via bloodline, that does not mean they deserve to be in your life. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you. Next speaker, please.

Mayor, would you like for me to call two people at a time? I can bring up the first person and let the next person know who's on deck?

Yeah. Or just one at a time? Go ahead and just let them know who's next. Sure.

Okay. So our next speaker is Douglas Medlin. And after that, Santosh Kanjala.

My name is Douglas Medlin. I'm a 30-year resident of San Ramon. As my wife and I have raised our family here in San Ramon over the years, I've often reflected on how fortunate I am to live in such a diverse and welcoming community. To that point, I have been very proud of the city of San Ramon for its courage to fly the pride flag on the commemorative flagpole in recent years. Echoing the previous speakers, this flag is an important symbol of inclusion and welcome for our city's LGBTQ plus community. I want to thank the city council members who voted last week to support flying it again this June. That said, that this question became a matter of debate That the vote was not unanimous, yes, and that the policy is now under review makes me worry that the council is retreating from its past support for the LGBTQ plus community. I encourage each of you to reaffirm your support for this community and to ensure that in reviewing the commemorative flag policy, no steps are taken that would preclude flying the flag in future years. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker, please. And who's up next?

Santosh Kanjala.

Hi, good evening, honorable mayor, members of the city council. I'm Santosh Kanjala. I'm a resident of San Ramon. I'm here today to thank the council for authorizing the hosting of Pride Flag on the commemorative flagpole on the city property for the month of June. Symbols matter. They signal who is welcome and valued in our public space. By flying this flag, Citi is not creating any public forum for individual expression, but rather exercising its own voice to affirm that we are a community that celebrates diversity and stands against historical exclusion of LGBTQ residents or any other minority sections of our community. So I will provide an example. One of our neighboring city school districts went through the similar stuff last year and by mistake the school board has acknowledged they have done it by mistake and there was a big huge support similar to that of today's that we are seeing and they have corrected their path and I hope the city council would do so similarly. I'll just give a brief history of the special meeting that was held in June 2020 and it was decided on May 2021 the City Council has a separate commemorative flagpole and the flags such as LGBTQ flag will be hoisted for no more than 31 days so that everybody is aware of it and that policy has been reviewed just five years ago. I'll also quote one thing, the government can advance its own speech without requiring viewpoint neutrality when the government itself is a speaker. So long as the government does not show religious preference or encourage a certain vote in an election. I think our city manager would remember that quote. He was the one who said the deputy city manager in May 2021. I want to thank everybody who has come out here, and I would support the commemorative flagpole that exists. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next speaker, please.

So Allison Gardner, followed by Helena Kelker.

Hi, my name is Alison Gardner. I'm a teacher, mother, wife, and resident of San Ramon after introducing myself. I'm not quite sure where to begin, but council member Robert, may I ask how you pronounce your last name? Join it. Thank you. I wanted to honor you by pronouncing it correctly. Honor honoring names. These acts are simple, but can be profoundly impactful. I honestly came here to thank you. Thank you for speaking up for minority voices. When my friends and I asked this jurisdiction to fly a symbol that marks support of our existence, it's an uphill battle for an invisible minority. You see, being gay is invisible. A white child doesn't have to sit their parents down one night at the kitchen table and say, mom, dad, I'm white. In our world, Standing up to create space and on-ramps for minority voices, that is what bravery looks like. But we need to explain why we matter each and every year. As it was, the proposal was only and finally passed with the acquiescence that the flag would not actually be flown at City Hall, but at the corner flagpole down the street. Distance made it palpable. Despite this, the impact of the flag became inspiring. We deserve the microphone. We deserve the space for our voice to be included in the conversation. We deserve much more than to have our fight with the city to fly a small piece of fabric one month a year to tell us maybe, just maybe, we do actually belong here in San Ramon. And each year the pride flag resolution was passed, signed, and stamped into action. Each year we felt more and more acceptance, but honestly, thank you, Mr. Gwynnette. Close? Our watchful eyes may have wandered a bit too far off the goal. Honestly, I'm here to thank you for pushing us all back to action. Thank you for speaking for the minority voices, because after all, that's exactly what we're trying to do.

Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker, please.

Helena Kelfer, followed by Shalana.

Good evening. My name's Helena Klecker. I've lived here for 15 years. I moved to San Ramon because it's pretty and safe, and I was here last month, and I presented a case about where I live being highly unsafe. I had a stalker that broke into my apartment and did some perverted things, and he is still living on... My management has not honored the court order that I received to give him, to make him stop. My situation has become worse. To relieve themselves of their responsibility, they filed an unlawful detainer against me to move me off property. It's a manufactured case. I paid my rent three times for the month that they're suing me for. This is absolutely outrageous and I would really like someone to follow up with me as promised last month now that my situation is much more dangerous and urgent. I'm a senior living on a very limited income. I'm happy to live in San Ramon just not under these conditions. I've lived in my apartment for 15 years, it's my home. Yeah, like I said, I'm a disabled senior. I would just like someone to follow up with me and help me please. I'm doing everything else I know how to by myself, but I don't have any family or anyone to rely on. So perhaps someone could follow up as they said last month.

Okay, all right, thank you. City Manager, can we have someone follow up, please? Okay, next speaker, please.

Shalaya, followed by Veena.

Good evening. My name is Shailaja Dixit. I'm speaking today as a longstanding resident of San Ramon. Some of what I'm going to say is probably going to be repetitive. A lot of speakers have shared it, but I think some things have to be said over and over again until they're heard, understood, celebrated, and accepted. I was really happy to hear that this year, too, the progressive flag will fry. I was really happy with that. But I was also deeply disturbed to hear that there was a single no vote cast against it and that the commemorative flag policy is now going under review. Under current times, this feels very threatening. When we put a vulnerable community through such unexpected denial and review, it is shocking, it is exhausting, it's scary, and it's very unsettling. Especially, as I said, these are unprecedented times where the LGBTQ plus community is facing erasure. The progressive pride flag has flown freely every June in San Ramon for the past five years. It brings our community joy, pride, inclusion, and celebration. We all come together to celebrate it. This flag is not a political statement. It is a human one. It signals safety, dignity, and belonging. For some, it can be life-affirming, even life-saving. So I thank the San Ramon City Council for all the support that you have extended over these years, and I strongly urge you all to continue this support, this very visible support. After all, San Ramon's motto is, everyone is welcome here, isn't it? Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker, please.

So Veena Loha, followed by Neha Sharma.

Hello, good evening.

My name is Veena Lohia, and I live in San Ramon, and I feel proud living in such a diverse community. LGBT community are our kids too, and they are friends, neighbors, and they contribute to our society, but they don't have the same rights as we do. And the attacks on their rights lead to higher suicide rates and violence against them. So thank you for raising the pride flag this year. It is a symbol of their struggle and give them hopes. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker, please.

Neha Sharma, followed by Swari Kanjail.

Hello, everyone. I'm Neha Sharma. I'm a resident of San Ramon. The LGBTQ community and their families are our neighbors, friends, and an integral part of our community. They are also a marginalized group that continues to face stigma and unequal rights. Thank you for raising the pride flag this year as a meaningful signal of support and inclusion. I respectfully urge that the pride flag policy review affirm the continued raising of the flag in the future years. It serves as an important symbol of our commitment to inclusivity, respect and support for this valued community.

Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please.

Swati Kanjil. Next person, I believe it's Mike G. on deck.

Hello, everyone. My name is Swati Kenjale. I live in Saint-Romain for more than 10 years now, and I am here to support the LGBTQ community. I feel really sad to see their struggle. They struggle for equal rights and safety and against discrimination. The pride flag is a symbol for visibility and support. The community belongs in Saint-Romain, and it is a precious part of our I request you to please make sure the pride flag policy review, ensure the flag is raised in future years, and city takes the steps to support the LGBTQ community. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker, please.

Mike G., followed by Hanyu Sun.

I'M A LONG TIME RESIDENT. I'VE BEEN HERE MY WHOLE 21 YEARS OF LIFE. I'M HERE TO TALK ABOUT FLOCK. There are 42 flock cameras in San Ramon. And guess what they're doing? They're watching us, people. Is this 1984? No, this is 2026. That was 42 years ago, people. Ronald Reagan is super dead. So with that being said, why are we being watched? Why are we being treated as criminals for doing nothing? I go the speed limit. I use my turning signals. Why are you reading my license plates? Why? I don't get it. And you're doing it for everyone. Everyone. You're watching everyone just being a citizen, an innocent citizen. Maybe they're going five over. but they're doing nothing wrong. And also, what are you doing with that data? With that public data, right? You can sell that data, right? Are you selling it to third parties? Are you selling it to third parties who are going to use it to send us targeted ads, to know where we live, to know our license plates? I want to know. Also, flock cameras aren't secure. People can access them. Strangers all over the internet can watch them like a live stream, right? Why did you guys think this was a good idea? I want to know. It baffles me. Okay, also another thing is, in Dunwoody, Georgia, a suburb outside of Atlanta, there have been flock employees accessing cameras to the community center there. Just for an unknown amount of time, this was found out through a FOIA report. I highly recommend looking into Ben Johnson's reporting on this, but these flock employees, right, were accessing these cameras, and looking at a girls gymnastics class for an undisclosed amount of time. So you are in support of a company, right, who, so why are you like this? Let's cancel the contract with Flock. Let's get rid of those cameras immediately. And if you don't, I will get rid of them. We will get rid of them by any means necessary. Thank you so much.

Okay. City Manager, any comment on that? Okay. All right. Next speaker, please.

And my apologies. I'm having difficulties reading the speaker cards. I believe it's Han Looch or Han... Hanuna. Thank you. You write so tiny, Hanuna. And that's followed by Deb Briggs.

Hello, everyone. My name is Hanuna Al-Sabur, and I've been a resident here since my son, 10, 11 years, or 12 years. And recently, my son, the day after Ramadan, he was at the market, and a boy came in the store, and I was like, okay, so now we're about to deal with it, called him the N-word. And so they got into a scuffle, and then it just broke my heart, because I'm like, okay, here we go. So my son, he's a good kid and everything. The next day, it was April 1st, and so the astronauts were getting ready to take space. And so he was just so excited because he's an astronaut. He's a nerd. You know, we're science nerds. And so he said, Mom, so we watched the blast off. And he said, Mom, you know, I want to go down and I want to thank them publicly, you know, because, you know, the climate that we're in right now, everything's all nasty and people are divided and. You know, we don't speak to our neighbors. He said, I want to go personally thank and wish the astronauts a good trip. So he did that. And then we called up here because we were like, OK, so this is a big deal. I don't know why no one's making a big deal about this. Because at the end of the day, he said, they might brush away Black History Month. They might throw that under this school that's just one day, boom. It's not really too much talked about it, even though we've made great contribution to this great nation. He said, well, they can't deny the fact that this group that's going up to the moon, it's a woman, it's a man, it's a Canadian, it's a fabulous four. They're going up there and they're going to make history. It was a beautiful day on April 1st. And so he said they can't deny that. And so I guess they didn't think that it was a big deal like we did. And so we say inclusion and we're wondering like, well, why aren't they celebrating the first woman to go to the moon or the first black man to go to the moon? There was like crickets. So we come down here and he says, no, I want to stand in front of the flag and I want to thank them. So he sat in that chair and he thanked the astronauts on behalf of San Ramon in California for their bravery. and their contribution to science and just discovering and just being a human race. And that was a great day for humanities. And so we don't see visibility. There might be Martin Luther King, that's one day. But you say Black History Month, that's only just one day. There's no noted people that have contributed to our society. So we want that type of inclusion. inclusion to let you know Mr. Blackwell, Dr. Blackwell was the man behind AI. So we just want that type of inclusion. So I have a son that I'm raising, and I'm raising a very good man. And so that kind of broke my heart. And so that's why I'm here today on his behalf. So thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please.

Deb Briggs, followed by Sangeeta Biswas.

Hi, I'm Deb Briggs. I've lived in the city for almost 40 years. I raised four kids here. And I'm lucky. I've always felt welcome. I've always felt included. But when we go on road trips with my family and we bring our trans daughter, she doesn't always feel safe and she doesn't always feel welcome. When we go to places that are flying the pride flag, she feels more accepted. She feels more seen. So I want to thank the mayor, the council members who voted to fly the commemorative pride flag, and I would ask you to consider doing that going forward. There are other communities here, too, who should also be commemorated. I would ask that you continue to include the LGBTQ community in your commemorative flag policy. Thank you.

All right. Thank you. Next speaker, please.

Sangeeta Biswas, followed by Mitchell Hobson.

Good evening, everyone. My name is Sangeeta Biswas. I am a long-term resident of San Ramon. I am a mother and I'm a therapist. I have worked for over a decade with kids, youth, and families belonging to the LGBTQI plus community. And I'm not here to talk about the mental health implications of belonging to a minority. But I'm here to talk about and give voice to what a parent, a fierce advocate of her child who belongs to that community, had once told me during the course of an interview that I was taking, and I thought that would be the best way to speak up for the community. And she'd once told me, she's an amazing ally and an advocate, and she said, From one South Asian mom to another, she was talking to me. I am a South Asian. I belong to a collectivist culture, which basically means the group before the individual. And she told me that as a South Asian parent, we have internalized a message, which is what will people say? In Hindi, it says, we all have that. We are constantly in that anxiety, and we work on that, carrying the message. Myth of the model minority, we carry all that burden. And she said, you know, as a parent, for my child, I don't have to think what will people say. That's not what my first concern is. My first concern always is, what will people do? And in that moment, as a parent, I completely connected with her to know what it feels like to have your child out there in an unsafe environment. And that is her child in almost every environment. So when you take away a symbol of safety, like the pride flag, and you think of reviewing it, I want you to think of that mother who has to think about the safety of her child. And when that flag flies up there, it sends out ripples of safety messages. So before you review it, I really want you to take a moment to think about that. Thank you very much for having us here and giving the voice to that. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker, please.

Mitchell Hobson, followed by OG Sturgatz.

Good evening. My name is Mitchell Hobson. I'm part of the San Ramon Valley Diversity Coalition. I'm also speaking here as a father, husband, and parent of San Ramon for like 10 plus years. I do agree with the symbolism, and I'm here to support the pride flag to be specific. But there are symbols for me personally that when I see them, they make me cringe. They make me uncomfortable. But there are also symbols that I see that make me happy. So as a person who wants to support my residents, my neighbors, I think the pride flag is a positive symbol to show. If I saw a noose, a swastika, or a white robe, it would make me feel very uncomfortable. So I can imagine that if I were a parent of a LGBTQ child or if I was myself and I saw the pride flag, it would bring me joy. It would make me think why San Ramon is special, why it makes sense to be here. But I think that it's up to us as citizens and you as council to continue to perpetrate the negative word, to produce and to promote symbols that make people feel positive and make people want to come here. Otherwise, you're going to have a situation where we feel uncomfortable. And I think people who feel uncomfortable, people who feel attacked, have a negative connotation of their environment and they do negative things or they allow negative things to happen or they don't speak up for their neighbors. So I encourage you to provide safe environment where parents, families can be supportive of each other and produce a more community feeling. Thank you. Thank you.

Next speaker, please.

O.G. Sterogatz and then Dr. Kimberly Payton.

Good evening. I'm O.G. Strogatz, a volunteer organizer with two local grassroots groups. One is Indivisible Resisters Contra Costa. The other is Lift Up Public Schools. Indivisible Resisters Contra Costa is a central Contra Costa County affiliate of the national progressive pro-democracy volunteer Indivisible organization. Lift Up Public Schools is a coalition of regional volunteers who advocate for outstanding public education across Contra Costa and Alameda counties. Both organizations enthusiastically support your raising the pride flag in San Ramon. The recent decision to review this longstanding tradition is deeply disheartening. San Ramon has long been a place, as many others have mentioned, long been a place where many felt a sense of belonging at a time when LGBTQIA plus individuals, especially youth and transgender people, are facing increased hostility and isolation. Visible support from local leadership matters more than ever. I hope you will broaden the scope of policy to embrace support for the numerous flags throughout the year to celebrate San Ramon's diversity. As examples, in addition to honoring Pride Month, flags honoring Hispanic heritage, Native American heritage, Asian American heritage, and Black History Month. I'm counting on your unanimous support for reaffirming San Ramon's commitment to inclusion by supporting the pride flag and standing visibly with all members of our community. Thank you.

All right.

Thank you. Next speaker, please.

Dr. Kimberly Payton and then Siketh Medhuri.

Good evening, Council. Dr. Kimberly Payton, President of the East County NAACP. One of the many things that we advocate for is social equality. And I'm here to request the City Council's consideration of several initiatives that recognize and celebrate the diversity and inclusion of the community. We respectfully request that the City of San Ramon issue an official proclamation recognizing February as Black History Month. The proclamation would honor the history and achievements and contributions of black Americans and reaffirm the city's commitment to equity, inclusion, and cultural awareness. In addition, we request that the city consider displaying the flag in recognition of black history pride. Excuse me. and also considering displaying a flag for Disability Pride Month as well. Both these things offer inclusion and welcoming into the San Ramon community. And as I stand here tonight and got to listen to the community coming together to speak up for the pride flag, as a mother of a gay son, I also ask you to consider and continue to recognize the pride flag and lift it up. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker, please.

Sakeeth Medhursu and also Dale Jones.

Hello, everyone. Good afternoon. First of all, I'd like to thank you for giving us the opportunity to all be here. My name is Saket Madhavarsu. As a student at Gale Ranch and resident of the San Ramon for eight years, I do support the diversity and inclusion. As Californians, we all get to see our flag waving in the air, and I know many members of the LGBTQIP plus community, and I believe that every member of this community deserves to see their flag waving in the air, the same way us Californians see our flag. It displays that the San Ramon City is diverse and respects everyone's choice and how they want to be. Thank you for not only raising this flag, but also continuing our respect to the community. Thank you.

All right, thank you. Next speaker, please.

Our last speaker card is Dale Jones.

Good evening, everyone. My name's Dale Jones. I've been a resident here in San Ramon for about 21 years. I'm coming here tonight because I'm a representative of my court. I live on a court here in San Ramon down the street from Pine Valley Middle School and we had a home that was sold and it was sitting for a long time and then there was a lot of construction and then we found out it was subdivided into five units and there were cars all over the place and this has been reported I think already to the city manager and but I just wanted the residents to know this person's using Airbnb, misrepresented themselves probably to the city, and we're very concerned that this could happen, and we think that maybe this individual has other properties through the city. So we just wanted to bring it up this evening, just that it's something that we're shocked. We've had a quiet court, a lot of professional people that live on the court, and then to see a home turned over in this way to make a business out of it. Some of the residents don't want their small children playing on the court now because they don't know who's there when these people come in. It's a short-term rental situation, I believe. So anyway, that's it. I think we're going through a process. There's several residents on the court that are trying to communicate with the city through the correct channels. Thank you.

All right, thank you. Anyone else?

There are no more speakers, and we did not receive any written public comment.

All right, thank you. All right, then I'm going to close public comment. I want to... thank the audience for your respect this evening, for all our speakers, and we are committed that San Ramon is a very diverse and welcoming community. Everyone is welcome here, that's our slogan, and we'll continue to uphold that. So thank you for that. Now we're gonna move on to the next item, which is our consent calendar. Do we...

I move the motion for consent calendar.

Thank you. I will second.

Okay. We have a motion by Council Member Varrosa, second by Vice Mayor Rubio. Do we have any further comment on it? Okay. If your pad has timed out, make sure you get back in here. I've got to figure out how to get myself back in.

Oh, 1983. Tap the screen. Tap the screen. 1983. Okay. You can do it up there. Tap it. Tap the screen. Yeah, 1983.

All right.

I know. Sorry. He's got it. He's good.

No.

Adler is good. Is that what you're asking?

No, he's not good.

Oh, he's not good. It didn't pop up for him.

No.

and Council Member Varos.

All right, motion passes 5-0 unanimously and we'll move on to Item 6, Special Presentations. We've got Item 6.1 San Ramon Valley Fire Protection District presentation. Presentation by Jonas Agriar, Fire Chief, San Ramon Valley Fire Protection District. Welcome back, Jonas.

Thank you, Mayor Armstrong, members of the council. Thanks for having us here tonight. I'm excited to be here tonight for a couple of reasons. As you all know, I'm new in this position. I've been in this position now for about four months. I'm excited. We've got a lot of great things. Come on up, Joe. A lot of great things going on with the district, and part of what I want to make sure that I'm doing on an annual basis, if not more, is coming in and providing updates to the council, specifically about the types of calls that we get into the city of San Ramon and how You know with the breakdown on those calls the which ones are EMS fires all that type of stuff So we're gonna come and give a presentation about that today But I also wanted to introduce Joe Bradley Joe Bradley is one of now one of my deputy chiefs He actually got promoted today as a matter of fact We're very excited about that and he's gonna be your liaison here for the city of San Ramon So I'm excited to introduce Him, the U, Joe's been with the fire district now for over 20 years, started out as a comm reserve, little known fact, and then he worked his way up as a firefighter, an engineer, a captain, battalion chief, and he currently manages the communications division, which as you all know, we have a joint primary PSAP, so he's the main fire representative for that, works very closely with San Ramon PD as well as our dispatchers to make sure we have good cohesive unit there. and he also manages our training division. We've got a couple slides about our training site that you're all aware of. So Joe's done a great job with the district in his 20 years. We're excited to promote him today and excited to introduce him to you all today. So I'm going to let Joe start the presentation, or actually I'm going to kick it off and then I'll turn it over to him, which... All right.

Joan, you may need to help him get Get the presentation up.

I can see it. I just want to make sure the council can see it. There we go. All right, so a little bit about the San Juan Valley Fire Protection District. I appreciate the new graphics on our slide.

Chief, if you touch the lower part of the screen, it should say clear on the screen because that's an annotation tool. There you go.

This here? I'm doing it myself?

No, other people touching the screen did that before you, so you're clear.

No worries. Technology, that's why I have Joe. So a little bit about the Fire Protection District. As you all know, over 155 square miles, we cover from Alamo, Blackhawk, Danville, Diablo, City of San Ramon, obviously, and then Southern Morgan Territory and Tassajara Valley. About 200,000 is our population, and it's really from the border of Alamo all the way south to the border of San Ramon and Dublin. We have a five-member board of directors. One of them is here tonight, Director Jay Kerr in the back. I know you all know Jay. And it's managed by myself as the fire chief. One of the big things that we're very proud of and that we make sure that we let all of our residents know about is we're an ISO rated class one organization, which means that we adhere to and maintain the highest standards for our responses, our response times, the amount of resources that we have deployed throughout the entirety of the district, the amount of training we do and the type of training we do, as well as calls and how fast our dispatch center processes them, et cetera. We have... Only 19 class one fire organizations in the state of California and less than 1% nationwide. So it's a huge achievement for us to be able to maintain it. We've got a reclassification process that's gonna start in January of 2027. So we'll put forth the effort and I know we've already been performing at that level. So we'll be able to maintain our class one certification moving forward. I'm gonna turn it over to Joe. He's gonna talk a little bit about operations and again, some more specific details about the city of San Ramon itself.

Thank you, Chief. Good evening. It's nice to see you all, meet you all. This is a big moment for me to be here, and I appreciate you having me. We're really proud of our fire district and our department and the community we serve, so I'm happy to share with you some of the things we're doing. All right, so starting with the map, this shows, as Chief had mentioned, it's the entirety of the district and the community that we have served. The yellow portion here is San Ramon, so I just want to highlight some of the infrastructure that we have in place. So starting with Station 30, which is out at Windermere, it's staffed with three firefighters, and we have a fire engine, a wildland unit, and a water tender that's located at that station with paramedics. Station 34 is right next door here, next to Central Park, and it's staffed with two crews. And we have an engine, a truck, a rescue, and a wildland unit there, as well as our battalion chief. So there's seven firefighters there, plus the battalion chief. And then at Station 38, which is right next to our admin on the corner of Bollinger and Crow Canyon, we have five members there. We have a Type 1 engine, an ambulance, a water tender, and also a Type 6 unit for wildland fires. And then on the south end of our district, Station 39, we have five firefighters there with a Type 1 engine, an ambulance, and a Type 3 wildland unit as well. Some other specialty apparatus that we have throughout the district that's available to come into San Ramon should we have an emergency that arises is the hazmat unit that's located at station 31. As it's a part of our fire district, it can come into San Ramon for natural gas breaks or spills or things like that. It's a certified type two hazmat as well as our rescue is a type two as well. We have auto aid agreements with Alameda County. So if we were to have a major incident within our jurisdiction that would pull our resources up north, that engine 16 from Alameda County can come in and cover station 39 so that we maintain that coverage in our district. And then at the bottom, some of our other special teams, it says arson here, but really that's our fire investigator program where we have eight investigators that investigate 100% of the fires within our district to give us cause, origin, let us know if it's arson. you know, citizen caused or if it's like an appliance failure or something like that. We also have our peer support team. It's an internal program of firefighters that provide mental health support to our members to help lighten, you know, the mental load with some of the calls and things that we deal with to keep our firefighters safe and healthy and ready to respond to all types of emergencies. And then also we have a canine program that helps with search and rescue in the event of a major earthquake, structure collapse. These canines are trained to be able to go through rubble piles and see if there's life in there so that we can target a rescue in those situations.

We also, we have five canines now. We have an arson canine that helps us with our investigations. We have two of the peer support canines, and we also have two of the search canines. So we have a rapidly expanding canine portion of our organizations.

All right, moving on to some of our equipment. Touched on some of these before and here's some pictures. So the one up top, that's our type one engine. Every station has one of those. It's primarily built for structural firefighting. It holds 600 gallons of water and it's initially, it's what shows up on scene first when we get a house fire. It's at every station. It does wild land as well, but it's not built to go off road because it's got the long wheel base and low center of gravity. We don't have a picture of a truck on here, but it's our tiller trucks with the big aerial on top and the driver on the back. We have two of those and three in reserve. We have our heavy rescue unit. We have five in service 911 paramedic ambulances and then four reserves as well. So if all five of those ambulances are on a call, we have four additional ones that we can put in service to pick up the 911 calls until those get back. We also have a communication support unit, which is a mobile command post. It's essentially a dispatch center on wheels so that for major incidents, we can take that to a campaign wildland fire and it can act as the incident command post and have dispatchers and radios. It's also a backup communication vehicle for the dispatch center. We also have three water tenders that we use primarily in areas where we don't have hydrants. So on the Tassajara Valley, if we get a wildland fire, it helps support water supply for those areas. And then we have our wildland fire engines. So the one here in the middle, that's a Type 6. It's designed to go off-road, has 400 gallons of water. And then we also have Type 3 engines, which is essentially a shorter version of the Type 1, but it's taller and it's designed to go off-road as well. All right, moving into our call statistics. So for the city of San Ramon specifically, in 2025, we went on 5,667 calls. That's for the city of San Ramon. 69% of those calls were for medicals, which is standard across the industry. Any fire agency, a majority of the calls that you go on will be 911 medical calls. And then the other 31% of the calls that we went on is everything else that we do. So structure fires, wildland fires, vehicle accidents, hazardous conditions, service calls, you name it. You call 911, we show up. But this is the total call volume for San Ramon. All right, then moving into our emergency medical services. All right, so we have a full service advanced life support system. And what I mean by that is in order to get hired here as a firefighter paramedic, or to be a firefighter, you have to be a paramedic. And we maintain at least one paramedic on every piece of fire apparatus that we have as a minimum standard and two on every ambulance that we have. So if you call 911 for a medical, at a minimum, you're gonna get three paramedics on scene, five personnel. But due to us hiring paramedics and our staff maintaining their paramedic license, a majority of them throughout the, for the majority of their career, you can get up to five paramedics on scene at any time you call 911 for a medical, which is, exceptional customer service we are also a transporting agency which is unique because not every fire department provides transporting services so the benefit to that is as a fire district we have control over you know the equipment that we provide the training that we do the standards that we set so anytime you call 9-1-1 you're getting three firefighters on the fire engine and you're getting two firefighters on the ambulance who know each other by name work together, and that all just benefits the outcome of the patient if you know the person that you're working next to. And then down here at the bottom, when I mentioned earlier, 69% of our calls are medical. The 3,962, those are the medical calls that we went on.

That award, the Gold Achievement Award, that means that we meet the highest standards for our stroke and our cardiac care, so that's worth mentioning as well.

All right, and then moving on to our behavior health program. I'm sure you're all aware of this program. This is something that we do with San Ramon PD, and it's a program that we're very proud of, and we feel like it's an excellent service that we provide to the community as well to manage mental health emergencies. It's a one-of-a-kind. When it went into operation, When the program was activated, there wasn't anything like this. And so this is something as an organization that we're proud of and we're here to share with you some of the success that we're having with it. So in 2025, we had 227 behavioral health calls. And before this program was in place, the only option that we had was to take them to County Hospital in Martinez. And they provide... Great service over there, but it was kind of a one size fits all program. And so with this, it allows us some flexibility to get our patients, our citizens to the most appropriate level of care when they're having mental health emergencies. So starting at the top left, the warm transfers to 988, 7% of these calls don't even get dispatched for fire apparatus to respond and it goes straight to 988 and then they can get the care that they need through that if that's deemed most appropriate. On the top right, 26.4%, these are the ones where the firefighters' first response went into play, where our firefighters got on scene and made first contact with the patient before PD, and then we were able to initiate our care and then get them somewhere else other than county hospital. And then that diversion rate of that 26%, 63% of those calls were diverted away from county to some alternate level of care that was deemed most appropriate for the situation. So that's a big number right there. And then finally, in the bottom right, the reduction in total time on task. It takes, when we have to go to county hospital, that takes our resources out of the district, right? So we have a paramedic ambulance that has firefighters on there that can respond to not only medicals, but structure fires as well. And then they have to leave to go to county to deliver that patient there, and there's wall times or return times and all that. So by having the warm transfers, the firefighter first, getting them to closer facilities, that has reduced our time on task by 12.6%, which essentially what that means is it keeps our paramedic ambulances in San Ramon ready to respond for the next emergency.

Anything else?

All right, and then moving on to our communications center. This is just some basic stats here to share with you the load and the things that they're doing. So the dispatch center last year received 78,611 calls. Not necessarily responses, but call taking, that's the total number. And then you can see the split there between police and fire. And then I'm happy to share with you the new training tower and facility that we have here at San Ramon. It's located right next to our administration building in Station 38 on the corner of Bollinger and Crow Canyon Road. If you haven't been there to see it, I highly encourage you to come and visit and I'd be happy to show you around. What you'll see here, starting on the left, is our four-story state-of-the-art tower. It has all kinds of capabilities for structural firefighting, multi-story, single level. We're able to work on search techniques, forcible entry. There's a state-of-the-art fire simulator where it's got a screen with fire on it that's tied to a smoke machine that pumps smoke into the building to give our firefighters, and more importantly, our recruits, that firsthand experience of what it feels like to be in the fire without the heat, but with low visibility and needing to search a room and find what they need to do. There's three hydrants on site that has a contained water system, which saves water and is a valuable resource to us as well. that when our engines hook up to the hydrant so that we can perform these training evolutions, there's a recapture system so all that water stays on the ground so that we're not, you know, drawing from the reservoirs. And then on the top right, this is the, or top right and bottom right, this is the classroom and apparatus bay that's on site so that we're able to host classes. There's a training captain on site. And then we have a fire engine and a tiller truck as well that can be used for training. All right, and I'll pass it to Chief.

Yeah, absolutely. So we know wildland season's coming up, and it's something we always want to make sure that we give a good briefing on. We've had some late rains, which means we know we're going to have some additional fuels provided on the hillsides of San Ramon. We were getting brown a little early, then we got some rains, it greened up a little bit, but we see a lot more of that growth taking place out there. We've done I think a great job with the city of Santa Ramon collaboration. We had the earthquake town hall that we had a couple months ago and wildfire preparedness is the next part of that and it's definitely something that we're working very closely with with the city manager as well with Chief Chestnut and her staff to make sure preparedness is always on our forefront. We're getting out the information we can to the citizens and residents of City of San Ramon as well as the Fire District. Some of you may have already received a flyer that we sent out. I don't know if you've gotten it yet or maybe you haven't had a chance to get home. It's been a long day for you. It's probably in the mail. But we've sent out a flyer that highlights a lot of the different programs we have, but also has some QR codes for you all to be able to access, scan, and download some of the different services that are related to wildfire preparedness. We also have in the back, I put on the table, our emergency preparedness handbook that the residents here can take home with them so they can make sure that they implement some of these things at their houses. These are some of the things, I know we briefed a little bit on this last year. We're still working very diligently on this. The fire district is prepared for wildland season that comes up. We have, every time there's any sort of red flag warning within the fire district, we up staff an additional 20% of staff for that day. And then we strategically place that staff where it is the highest risk for that vegetation fire may be. So that's a big component to us. We've also updated our response procedures. for what we call an enhanced response. So if there is a wildland emergency in some of our more remote areas, we have an actually a larger response that will go to those specific areas right out of the gate, which means we get more resources on scene faster, which allows us to get ahead of that fire as much as we can. We've been using this program, Xyla Plan. I know I've briefed the city council on it before, but we're in the midst of completing a district-wide analyzation of all of the fire pathways within the district. And then through that information, it's going to be able to allow us to prioritize where we need to target our fuels mitigation efforts and where those fuel mitigation efforts will have the greatest success to stop that fire spread into the community. We did a A small sample out in Blackhawk, we had 22 acres that we were able to mitigate. And through that mitigation work, we were able to slow fire spread by up to 60 minutes. And if you think about that, in relation to our resources that are responding, now we're getting more resources there quicker. We've slowed fire spread to specific areas by up to 60 minutes, which means we have a much better chance of stopping that fire when it's smaller and keeping from what happened in Southern California happening here. We also go through on an annual basis. We test all of our fire hydrants. We have over 6,500 fire hydrants within the fire district. We go out and we inspect them. We make sure they're operational. We make sure they're clean and we make sure they can flow water. That's a big thing for us as well as exterior hazard abatement. We start inspections on that on June 1st. So that's coming up shortly. As part of that exterior hazard abatement, we also on our website have the ability for neighbors that potentially have areas of concern can go on there and they can file a report related to that, which allows us to track that and ensure that those properties have been mitigated appropriately. For the individuals we just need to make sure everybody's prepared like we talked about you need to harden your home again I have the emergency preparedness handbook back there as well as the flyer you'll be able to go and scan and See what you need to do to be able to harden your home and make sure it's fire safe and ready the fire district also has a resource where we will send out inspectors free of charge to the resident to provide a courtesy inspection to provide tips that they may utilize with their property to make it more fire safe. It's not punitive, we don't hold it against the property owner if they decide that they don't wanna take our recommendations, but we wanna provide as much information as we can as far as that's concerned. And then firewise communities as well. If you're not a firewise community, there's resources on what you can do to band together to create a firewise community. So we accelerate a little bit that at the end. We appreciate your time. We know it's been a meeting for you. We want to open it up to any questions you may have. And again, thank you for your time here today.

All right. Thank you, Chief. And congratulations, Joe. And welcome to the team. So I'll just kind of start it off or maybe a comment and a question. But You were talking about typing, Type 1, Type 2, Type 3 resources. So under the National Incident Management System, we have standardized incident management resources for personnel, for teams, for equipment, things like that, as I recall from years ago, but with Type 1 being the highest level and down to Type 4 being the lowest level. Any more to add on that just so people understand when you're talking about a type one resource versus a type two or type three, what you're really talking about there?

Yeah, absolutely. And we utilize the typing component for everything that we do. So you mentioned it for the incident command system. We have typed incident command teams that are ready that are regional assets because a fire agency typically can't staff its own incident command team or incident management team. so we have the east bay incident management team which is a type 3 team so if there's a larger incident we have personnel overhead personnel from other areas that can come in and offer support as part of that team we also use the typing as you were talking about with our specific equipment and it's broken down for the standards that we utilize for that equipment when chief bradley mentioned the type one that's our fire engine that's primarily what you see on the road all the time that's what we run out of the majority of the time And a type one has to have a certain capacity pump. It has to have a certain capacity water tank on it, it has to have a certain amount of hose on it, it has to have a certain ladder complement on it, and that's how you get that to be a type one. And as you go down, they typically minimize this, as you said, so a type three, that's our standard wildland apparatus. It has less water, it has less hose, it doesn't typically have ladders, or maybe it only has a small ladder on it. The pump doesn't have to pump at the same capacity because it's a smaller unit used for more agility in the hillsides for wildland fires. So hopefully that answers your question.

Great, thanks for clarifying. Okay, let me turn it over to council members. Any questions?

Congratulations, Joe. And Chief, congratulations, four months. You know, just to comment, I don't think many people know beyond the numbers, how much work really goes on in the prevention and just the constant just triage you and the team have to do. So thank you very much because it's not just, you know, you look at those numbers, they're impressive, they are, but how much more work really goes in beforehand. And so I just want to thank you on behalf of the community. So great job. Thank you, guys. Thank you.

Okay. Questions or comments? Questions and comments. Okay. Thanks for the great presentation. You know, as a city of San Ramon, public safety is our top priority. And I have a friend in San Ramon who is alive today because of your quick and skilled response when he got cardiac arrest. So he's still alive. Thanks for your great work.

Absolutely.

And my question is, Where we are, our city is evolving, you know, you see like we are a lot of new development is coming up and how we are preparing ourselves ready for response times as well as how about your staffing levels and all that. Are we, how, I just want to understand how you keep progress as the demographics are like, count is changing, right?

Yeah, that's a great question. That's something we're definitely paying attention to, the amount of development that's taking place and ensuring that our services stay at the same high level that they currently are. So we utilize a lot of data to help us make those decisions. And we have trigger points built into that data that tells us when our calls get to a certain response time, that means we need to start adding resources into the system, but we took it a step further, and what we were able to do is we were able to analyze the types, the projection on the types of construction that is being proposed to build, and we were able to use actual comparisons within the city of San Ramon itself, same demographics, that already live in structures that are built similar to that and project similarly call volume because we already have historical data on those types of structures. So if you take a multi-family dwelling apartment complex, what are the demographics of the people that live in that apartment complex? What type of call volume do those individuals generate? And then what is similarly gonna be built in downtown San Ramon in the next 10 years? And then we can actually very closely project what that call volume is gonna look like so that way we know where and how many calls it's gonna add to our system and we can plan resources accordingly. So we are staying on top of that. We actually have a projected to add that additional ambulance into our system coming up towards the end 28, 29 timeframe. But that doesn't mean we're not flexible. If we need to add it sooner, we can. Or if construction doesn't continue at the same pace that it is, we can push it back a year or two. But the main focus for us is ensuring that we continue to meet the standards that we have and that we track that time standard appropriately. So we are definitely on top of that from a district. It's a huge perspective or a huge responsibility and it's a huge priority from not only the board but also operations and internal staff.

Sounds great. So is that includes the behavior health services also? Is that including that? Yes, that would be including that as well. And just give us a quick rundown on how a call from behavior, like a call comes and then how it will walk. If you can give us a walkthrough, that would be great.

Absolutely. And when Chief Bradley was talking about it, he mentioned the warm handoff component. That was that data point on the top left-hand corner of that slide. And a warm handoff is when somebody calls 911 and they're experiencing a behavioral health emergency, Our dispatchers at our communication center receive that call, and they're able to triage that call by asking the caller a series of questions. If that caller meets a specific criteria, we take that caller, we keep them on the phone line, we call the 988 receiving facility, which is in Walnut Creek, and then we're able, because we have a specific number that goes directly to their operators, we don't go into the queue and have to wait, we go directly to their operators, and through that, we're able to transfer while that caller is still on the line to the other operator now if something happens maybe that caller's situation gets worse, maybe they don't feel comfortable, maybe the operator who takes the call is able to uncover something that makes them uncomfortable, they can transfer that call right back to our communications center and we'll immediately dispatch crews to it. That's step one, triaging the call as it comes in. Step two is once the dispatcher actually gets the call and they say, okay, this doesn't meet the warm handoff qualifications, but it could qualify for a firefighter first, they then go through that triage process. They'll ask them additional follow-up questions to make sure that our crews can be the first ones on scene, and then we'll dispatch not only our fire resource, but also our San Ramon PD resources, and San Ramon PD will stage outside that call, typically down the block a little ways, and our fire resources will go in first, and they'll triage the call, they'll speak to the person that's having the issue, and they'll figure out what it is that we can do to help support them at this point in time without having to get police department involvement. So that's typically the rundown on how that would operate.

Awesome. Thank you. My last question is I had been to your building during the ribbon cutting as well as in the following meetings, a couple of them. It's such an amazing facility. Now, if any resident, if they want to visit, do they have any option? Is there any date or time that they can come and visit?

Uh, no, typically we have the gates closed on it because we're doing training there. So we want to make sure that nobody just, you know, comes onto the property and there's the potential that they get hurt, but they can obviously reach out to our front desk. They can speak to the training division or to the training captain. If they want to see the facilities, we could, we can arrange a time for them to come and see it and understand it. We've done that with some local residents that surround that area that want to come and see it and understand what its capabilities are and just get a walkthrough of it. They see it every day as they're driving to work. They want to understand it a little bit better, and that's something we can coordinate through our front desk. Front desk, great.

Thank you. All right, great. Thank you. Next, down to Council Member Adler.

It's great that you're both here and answering some important questions. I just think, you know, the 988 thing has come a long ways. It just seems like a couple of years ago there was a, you know, the police would show up and they realized, wait a minute, this is mental health and we've really worked out a system. And I think we were... I think we were one of the best in figuring out how to do it. I mean, we studied other places in the country and we came up with the best plan. And we're doing it quicker. Is there anything else we, I mean, we're always trying to fine hone, fine tool these procedures when we have an emergency. Anything else you think that we're working on that we could improve in that area?

So we do 100% quality improvement on the calls that come in. So we make sure that the protocols were followed appropriately, that the communication center dispatchers asked the appropriate questions, directed the calls to the appropriate places. I think the biggest thing that we can continue to do is just the refresher training that we do on an annual basis. We get new hires, police gets new hires, we have to get them brought up to speed and make sure they understand what the standard is and how to how to manage those types of calls. And I think that's the biggest thing that we do on a regular basis is just ensuring that everybody understands the system. Because it is a dynamic call, you know, regardless of, you know, sometimes there are lower acuity, you know, there isn't a significant health, physical health issue, but it's a very dynamic call when somebody is experiencing a mental health crisis.

And if there's a threat, even though these maybe mental health issues are going on, if there's a threat, there's always going to be an officer, police officer near there in case they're needed.

Absolutely.

And the other thing is, you know, the L.A. fires, the Palisades, Eden fires, I'm not sure how much we've learned here, because it's a different geographical setup that we deal with. But have we learned a lot from that? And do we do a lot of this at Camp Park still? I know we used to do the fires over there, and we have more space to practice.

We don't do as much of the wildland training at Camp Parks as we used to. That used to be an annual thing that we would do. Multiple fire agencies within the Bay Area would go there because they had an abundance of space. And with the development of Windermere, and now you pretty much have housing on all four sides, that's been limited. Sometimes Alameda County will do some smaller burns. Alameda County Fire will do some smaller burns there, but we typically... don't participate in those anymore. As far as lessons learned from Southern California, I think what the biggest thing, even though we already do it, and as I mentioned, inspecting the fire hydrants, 6,500 different fire hydrants, we've been doing that since I've been here with the agency. So this isn't something that we got from that, but I think really what it did is reinforce that we need to go to East Bay MUD And we need to make sure with East Bay Mud that they understand, you know, some of the implications that took place in Southern California, that we are really in tune with what their systems are, where we can take generators to, where we can pump with our engines to help supply reservoirs, you know, the redundancy in the system. And I think that was one of the biggest things that we took away last year after that situation is going through and actually Joe is our our water systems experts. So it's a great question to ask because he was one of the main ones that worked with East bay mud as well as Dublin San Ramon services district to facilitate that thorough evaluation of the system.

Right, right. And I guess it's a double-edged sword because we like to see the rain, right? And kind of staves off our hills becoming dried out. But as you said, it also fuels some vegetation. So we have maybe more vegetation than we want. But I don't know. I guess it's better to have more rain, though, later in the season, I would think. so that it won't dry out as quickly. Is that kind of the way you look at that? It depends who you ask on one day, unfortunately.

Less fuel is better. We need rain. More rain at times can be good because it does keep things... As far as vegetation, it keeps the higher fuel moistures longer into the season. But by the time July and August roll around, especially as we get into September, we know those moisture levels are always going to be back at... very low level and we just have the additional fuels now on top of it. So I'm an advocate. I like the rain. I think we need it as much as we can, but it does create more fuel for us to have to continue.

And one really quick question about, you know, I know the state has the zero emissions policy, you know, look for the vehicles and the Is that apply for fire? Do we have any electric vehicles that are used or you think that's gonna be part of our type of equipment that we use or is that something that's not even applicable Because you don't want to mess around with an emergency situation.

It's not something we're looking at implementing into our response vehicles. It's something that we are implementing with our staff vehicles that we can easily charge at our charging stations. One of the concerns is that if you have an electric vehicle and it's a full electric vehicle, sometimes these incidents, you know, you're on scene for 12, 14, 24 hours. well, what do you do in that situation, right? So it would have to be a hybrid vehicle, but, you know, we're going to let the technology develop a little bit more before we go down that road. Sounds good.

All right. Thank you very much.

All right.

Vice Mayor Rubio.

First and foremost, thank you both. Congratulations to you as well, Joe. That was a very thorough and really shows the extent of the exhaustive work you've been doing for quite some time. And it shows, and congratulations also for the Gold Achievement Award and also achieving, attaining the ISO-rated Class I. So I wanted to ask, just in, you know, when you were showing about the 988 calls and the percentage that were kind of passed over and handed over, is there any information or data that you have to share on sort of the back end of it? Like how did things end up? You know, was it, were there usually, were these like more positive outcomes? And if so, what kind of metrics were used to kind of assess the success rate of that?

You know, it's a great question. That's, I would say, one of the components that we wish we had more data on, because we can't really track the call once we transfer it. Due to HIPAA regulations, et cetera, we don't typically know or we through 988 we do. I would say through the firefighter first we don't because we're able to follow up with the 988 center. They will actually send us basic metrics on what happened with that and what services they were able to provide. Were they having a behavioral health issue because they ran out of money for food, or they need a housing voucher, they're able to tell us that type of information, and again, the majority of those calls are all very positive calls, outcomes are positive outcomes. As far as the other 210-ish behavioral health emergencies, getting that information downstream is very difficult for us to do.

Sure, sure, and the good thing is even the information you do get, it kind of lets you and the county and others know sort of, well, what resources do we need more of, right? To be able to meet the needs and the demand as it arises. The other thing, oh my goodness, I was holding my thought, and the training center. The training center, if I recall correctly, and feel free to expand on this, it is open to helping to, it's a regional training center, correct? And what region does that cover?

Well, I mean we can host classes throughout Contra Costa County and that's the goal behind it is that there's only One new training site which is ours that has been built in this county in the last 60 years 60 plus years I think the last one was built in 1955 so there isn't a lot of space as we know property and Contra Costa County is hard to come by and to be able to build something of that magnitude One of the great things about it, as Chief Bradley mentioned, is it has a fire simulation trainer inside of it that uses theatrical smoke and really gets fire recruits the ability to flow water against, you know, a screen that simulates, you know, what fire actually does. And when you apply the right amount of water to it, the fire actually goes out. and it actually creates more steam through the smoke system, which is a great benefit for them, the training that they do. But we can use it for rescue training. We can use it for other types of training for agencies throughout the county. Typically, the classes that we put on, we will send out invitations for other people to potentially attend if they choose.

And when you provide these sort of training opportunities for other fire departments and what have you, do you receive any... Revenues from that is there something that they contribute to because I know that was a very huge project So I'm kind of sorry. I'm just thinking about is is there some kind of compensation or well?

They're all classes typically through the state fire training they require like Certificate fees and there's some instructor fees depending on how that works now we have a very good internal cadre of instructors that can teach a variety of different classes. If we have to go to the outside and hire an independent instructor, we typically split that cost between the attendees of the class. So it's not necessarily revenue, it's just more so making sure that we're whole for the cost of the class. But if we do it through internal instructors, we don't typically charge anybody to attend those classes.

Okay, okay. Well, and let me see. So in your experience, aside from everything that you've observed and the data that you've provided us, are there other things that you sort of foresee would be good things for us to kind of keep an eye on or, you know, I guess your wish list?

Our wish list right now is we're working a lot on technology, and I think that's a big part for us. AI, how can we implement AI, you know, obviously utilizing safeguards and ensuring we're doing it the right way, but how can we do that to make staff more efficient in the work that they do, as well as we're looking really heavily at drones. We're looking at AI thermal detection cameras that can help spot smoke earlier.

We're looking at other technology initiatives. I think that...

Yeah, so quite a few different things like that. I think that's the big push that we're looking at. Now, there's a lot of emerging technologies. Are they ready to be rolled into the field yet? That's where we're evaluating. So there's a lot of great things out there, but can it really do what it is it's advertised to do is what we're trying to determine.

Wonderful. Well, thank you, and congratulations to you both, actually. You're kind of in your first year in your respective roles, and that's wonderful. Thank you for the great work you're doing here in our city, and anytime you know where to reach us. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you.

All right, and I'll thank you also for the great presentation. Thanks for being a great partner, being a good neighbor over at the Public Safety Complex, and you've got a super new facility there, the Joint Fire Training Facility. That's great. Joint EOC dispatch, all that. Uh, it's wonderful. The work that you do and, and, uh, and you work so closely with our police department. So, uh, thanks for all that. And thanks again for, uh, put together the initial, the details on that earthquake town hall.

Absolutely.

Uh, I think that was really informative for the community and for continuing to offer your certain classes and the emergency preparedness classes and, and things like that. So, uh, Great job as we come up on fire season. I know you're going to be out there hot and heavy on the weed abatement business. We are. We look forward to good reports on that. Did you have a final question?

Just a really quick question. Have you guys seen any spikes in calls? Spikes, but with the data, the increase because of Belmont Village. I know it's a retirement community, et cetera, home to a lot of seniors. I know we have Ivy Park fire.

I wouldn't say spikes. new population, you get calls over there, but they're not substantial amount of calls that it's generating, you know, a concern for us.

Yeah. Okay. It's just a concentrated area in one area. Okay. Thank you.

Oh, I just want to give a quick shout out to our, uh, San Ramon Valley fire district board members. Thanks. Jay always there. So thank you for all your great work.

No, thank you. We appreciate the partnership. Appreciate the help. City Manager's been great with getting us set up and getting us organized with this presentation. And Chief Chestnut, we can't leave her out in the back because she was integral in developing the Firefighter First program. So I think that's why it works so well is because we had buy-in from PD and fire. So thank you.

All right, thank you. Keep up the great work. Appreciate it. Thank you.

All right, thank you.

All right. All right, does anybody need to take a break before we move on? All right, let's take a eight minute break until nine o'clock. Okay, we're going to resume the meeting and we're going to move on to Item 9, New Business Library Advisory Committee 2025 Annual Report. We've got an introduction by Steve Cox and we're looking forward to hearing from Cindy Alpert. Thank you for waiting and joining us tonight.

Well, good evening Mayor Armstrong, fellow council members. It's our pleasure to be here tonight. My name is Steve Cox and I was the 2025 staff advisor to the Library Advisory Committee. As part of the City Council's adopted procedures, all committees provide an annual report outlining their operations and their goals. This evening the City Council will receive the Library Advisory Committee's 2025 annual report and then we ask for feedback for their 2026 term. And now it is my pleasure to introduce the 2025 Chair of the Library Advisory Committee, Cindy Alpert, who will present that annual report.

Come on up, Cindy. Thank you, Steve. Evening, Cindy.

Good evening, mayor, vice mayor, city council, city staff, and members of the audience. As Steve said, my name is Cindy Alpert. I'm an outgoing chair of the Library Advisory Committee, and I'm here to present the 2025 Annual Report. You did receive a much more detailed report in your staff package, so we just have some slides here to present. So first of all, I'd like to introduce the rest of the committee. We are a committee of five people, two alternates. And we also have a lot of additional staff that help us, support us. We have the two library managers who are here this evening. Thank you very much. We have somebody from the Parks and Community Services. We have a city council representative. And then we also have Marina Shea, who is our Contra Costa County Library Commission representative from San Ramon. So we really appreciate all their help. The charge of the committee, this is essentially our guiding principles. So these were established in 1992 when the committee was formed, and we use these as the basis upon which we do our work. We essentially are a group of liaisons. We act as liaisons between the residents of San Ramon, the community, the libraries, and city staff. We receive a number of reports every meeting and we take that information, we provide feedback when requested, and we do make one decision at least every meeting that I'll get into. We meet four times a year, January, April, July, and October, and we meet at one of the two libraries, and we alternate between the two libraries. So before we get into the actual details, I just wanted to provide some context of actually how our libraries are influenced by other entities within the county, the city. So the Contra Costa County Library essentially oversees the operations of both libraries. San Ramon is very fortunate to actually have two libraries, Doherty Station and then San Ramon. Not every city has two libraries, so we are very thankful for that. They provide all the staffing in the libraries. They provide the hours within the libraries, the collection, resources. They provide the consistent operations of libraries all across Contra Costa County. Next is the city of San Ramon, which you're all very familiar with. So the city actually oversees the facilities. So they oversee the two library buildings. Public Works provides a lot of assistance for maintenance and repairs that need to take place within the building. And then, of course, we have the benefit of a city staff person who attends our committee and is a good link between the committee and the city itself. Third is the San Ramon Library Foundation. So the Library Foundation is actually an independent organization, a non-profit 501c3, and their primary goal is to raise money for our libraries. The money that they raise is done through various activities. We have a bookstore across the street. We have book sales. I'd say we are actually a member of the foundation as well. We have a jazz series that we present, and of course we have donors, members, and we do receive community grants. The money that we raise goes back to the libraries. It funds programs, it funds activities, and it funds supplies in both of our two libraries. And then finally we have the Library Advisory Committee, who as I said, we're essentially a liaison. We advocate for our libraries, receive a lot of reports, and provide feedback. So now I'll get into our goals. So we were very ambitious in 2025, and we set six goals covering a wide variety of areas. The first one was really about receiving information as it relates to library performance standards. And you can see some of the particular standards that we would receive information on. And most of this information came from our library managers. So at every meeting, they provide a report. and it generally includes various information, facts, background about all of these different areas. I forgot to mention one other thing the city does for us. You provide funding to add hours to both of our libraries, so I apologize. That's a very important aspect. I know we went through a little bit of a change in 2024 and 2025 until Measure N was passed, but I do want to say we very much appreciate the fact that you do fund additional hours at both of our libraries. Okay. All right. Our next goal is that we do evaluate the library services. And again, our whole goal is to ensure that the services are meeting the needs of our community. We have a very diverse community. We have a very changing community. And we just want to make sure that our libraries operate in ways to meet those community needs. Again, a lot of this information comes from our library managers. They do provide a lot of statistics and information about the programs that they put on. Always very well attended. They provide programs that address the needs of a wide variety of our community, from young to seniors. Facility usage, so again, meeting rooms being used, how are they being used, staffing levels, we get a regular report about their staffing, and of course, circulation trends. And one of the interesting things about the circulation trends, and I'm sure this is not a surprise, but digital resources are a much higher, have been growing significantly over the past few years, so not everybody checks out their materials as a solid book. A lot of people use digital resources. Our next goal was to monitor the implementation of the Contra Costa County Library Strategic Plan. We did receive an update. This was a plan that they put in place in 2024, covers multiple years. We did receive a report with updates as they related to the San Ramon Libraries. And then I know Elaine handed out a copy of the most recent update when she and Dr. Francis received the proclamation. So it just provides the goals that the county has set and some of the specific accomplishments that they have achieved over the course of the last year and then where they're looking to go for 2026. And this is our favorite one. This is the decision that we make at every meeting, and that's to review and approve the Story Walk books. So if you're not familiar with it, across the street in Central Park, there are a series of stations throughout the park where a book is basically taken apart and the pages are put within each of those different areas, and it gives an opportunity for parents and kids of all ages to actually read and enjoy the park at the same time. So at every meeting, our library manager presents two books to us, and we have to make a decision on which book to use, and here is just a list of the four that we chose for 2025. We do try to incorporate a lot of different aspects when reviewing those books, including the community that we live in, the interest, inclusion, a lot of different things. The season, we generally pick a book that relates to the particular season, and each one is up for a quarter. And then of course we always look at the performance usage indicators. So these are ones that really tell the story of how are our libraries being used. So the circulation rates, the attendance, they installed some new door counters a couple of years ago, so we get a much more accurate count as to what the attendance is at each of our libraries. Not only people coming in and out, but also those that attend the programs. We have visibility to the digital resources that are being used, patron satisfaction, and then of course operational efficiency. And then the last goal, we really wanted to try and collaborate with the county and the city and to develop a survey just to get some more feedback from our library users. And fortunately it turned out that Contra Costa Library had issued a patron survey in 2024. And so we had some really good information that was provided back to us on usage, languages that the patrons really wanted to see, how satisfied they were with the libraries, and I'm happy to say they're all very satisfied with our libraries. what other kinds of programs and services they wanted, and the feedback that was received was utilized by both the library managers to actually develop some new and different programs and offerings within the library, and then of course accessibility at both libraries. Going into 2026, we tried to be a little bit more reasonable in what we could accomplish in the four meetings that we had. And these goals are in some ways very similar to what we've projected or what we did in 2025. So again, we'll annually review the library programs, facilities, activities, services, and make recommendations back to city staff based on the information that we received We'll continue to monitor the library performance indicators. So again, this is just a really good way for us to understand how those libraries are being used. Are there things that we would recommend as changes? And we can provide that feedback to the library managers. We'll review the Contra Costa County Library Strategic Plan. So again, we wanna make sure that we're utilizing what the county is doing as far as providing library services. We'll review and compare the services that are being provided both at the city level and at the county library level just to ensure that there's not overlaps, maybe clarify roles, and then we really want to try and collaborate more with the library foundation so much of what they do is impacted by, not necessarily decisions that we make, but is impacted by the programs and services that are provided within the libraries. And so we just really feel that in order for us to both understand what the other one's doing, we're gonna develop some additional ways to collaborate with them. And then, of course, the Story Walk. So we will continue to review and approve the Story Walk book selections that are provided by the library community manager. So with that, I would like to just thank you for giving me an opportunity to present this. The picture that's actually shown here on my right hand side is actually the new Zoom booth that was installed across the street at the San Ramon Library. So the funding for this actually did come partially from the San Ramon Library Foundation. And the installation of it was really driven by the fact that the meeting rooms across the street get used very frequently. And a lot of people, of course, are doing Zoom meetings. And so we decided that we would, the county decided that they would test the use of these Zoom booths. And so I think Dr. Francis gave us an update and said that it's very well used. And if you hadn't have a chance to go across the street, I would encourage you to go and take a look at them. They're really quite interesting. So with that, I'm happy to take questions, feedback.

All right. Thank you. Appreciate it, Cindy. So any questions before we go to public comment? And then we'll close it up at the end with your regular comments. But any questions?

I just want to thank Cindy and the team. I'm on the Library Foundation Committee with Frances and Elaine and others in the audience as well. I have to say that the empathy you guys put in and the work you guys put in, it's not just checks and balances. I really do see the care that you guys give to all the patrons, especially the students and the programs you guys offer. So thank you very much. It's a wonderful program. And I really think you guys are doing a fantastic job. And I love visiting the library when I get the chance. So thank you for all your work.

You're welcome.

All right.

Any specific questions? Questions? Right.

OK. Thanks for the great presentation. So do we still have our 3D printer in the library?

Both libraries now have a 3D printer.

Awesome. Now, as... Yeah, so this is great. And then Zoom. So as we are evolving, right? So the... From books now, you mentioned that in 2025, your focus was getting objective was to get the digital usage and all that, that sounds great. Are we measuring like in the past, maybe with the books, you used to have some measurement, right? How many books checked out, checked in and all that. So do we measure something like that on this digital usage?

Yeah, very much. I don't know if library or Elaine or Francis wants to add in, but in the progress report, there's actually a figure in here that talks about how many books were borrowed versus how many were digital circulation. So the library knows how many are being checked out both ways. And the digital resources include a lot of other things. You can do newspapers, magazines, LinkedIn learning. We can watch movies. I mean, there's just a vast wealth of digital resources available.

Okay, so we do track on that. Thank you. That's my question. I love the LinkedIn learning. Yeah.

Yeah.

All right.

Yeah. I was just interested in knowing the library usage, like, has it been pretty consistent over the last couple of years? I know during COVID it was another story, but now I would think that everybody's there. Is it, is it kind of where you want it to be as far as the kids coming in? And, um,

I'll defer to our managers to answer that question.

Yeah, I think I had mentioned in my presentation that door counts are increasing. Between the two libraries, we serve about 1,000 residents a day. Great. Doherty Station, one-third. San Ramon, two-thirds. Okay, good.

Thank you.

Okay.

All right, Vice Mayor Rubio.

Thank you, first and foremost, for all the work you do every day and for the very thoughtful and thorough presentation you gave tonight. My question has sort of an extension of what Councilmember Adler asked is, so with the increasing influx of people to the libraries, which is a great thing. It's a great problem to have. Are there any prospective constraints that you're sort of looking at and trying to prepare for as you look forward maybe in the next five, ten years?

I'll speak based on the information that's been presented to us. So of course there's a confined space within the library and I know furniture is something that they continue to evaluate as far as the furniture needs, seats. And those are some of the metrics that we've evaluated in the past. So it's in the Doherty Station Library, they don't have a big meeting room. And so when they do their programs, they generally meet in the middle of the library. And so one of the things that Elaine has done is she made a recommendation to modify some of the bookcases so they can be moved out and create more space. So I think they're looking at that internally as to what kind of resources they might need. The county, of course, oversees the collection, and so they're evaluating that. But I'm sure it'll be top of mind, especially with the developments that are going on around here.

Sure, thank you. Okay, so I was really curious about the Zoom booth. Sorry, I find it fascinating. I need one of those in my home to keep background noise down. So I was just wondering, are there any times similar to the study rooms you have in the meeting rooms? Are there like time limits, usage limits per day, per week type of thing?

Well, you can only reserve meeting rooms on the day of, so you can't reserve them, or the small rooms, you can't reserve in advance. And the Zoom booth is the same thing, so you have to go in and reserve it. Yeah, oh, Francis can talk.

You got it right. Maximum time allowed is two hours. Initially, when we got there, we were thinking of, because of the use, to do one hour. you know, maybe just brief calls and all the rest, but people were asking for more hours. So we wanted to standardize everything with the other study rooms. So we made them two hours and they are heavily used. Matter of fact, they come and people asked precisely, I want both G, both H, you know, and all the rest. And we let them know that if after two hours, nobody's waiting, they can extend for one hour, but that never happens. People are really waiting for that.

Wow. Wow.

We have two of them. Many thanks to the foundation, you know, and I said, yeah. So pretty much, you know, part of emerging technologies we'll be looking at.

And how much does it?

Just like you said, space, furnishing, and all the rest, you know, kind of.

That's wonderful. It's wonderful. So how much does each one of those, do you know more or less how much they run? 35,000. 35,000. Is that for both of them? Both of them.

Yeah, sorry, that was for two. For two?

Yeah, that was for two. 35,000. Yeah, sorry.

So about 17,000, 18,000 a booth. Wow.

Okay, maybe that's not happening but Wow, okay, that's pretty quite substantial but I'm sure a Really closing a digital divide for many people who may not have that ability for whatever reason right to have access and be able to do things they need to do to you know, whether it's for school or work or what have you. So, well, I just want to, and I look forward to the next meeting, and just want to thank you so much for your time and dedication. I know it's not easy, and you're just doing this because I know you're giving of yourself and your time to do this, so I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you.

All right, thank you. So we're gonna go ahead and open up public comment. And do we have any speaker cards?

We do, we received one speaker card from Elena Formosa.

I want to express my gratitude to the volunteer committee members, but especially Ms. Alpert. I have been to the committee before and I'm really, really impressed with her faithfulness because she's been doing this for many years. I do have two questions and one comment. I really would like to hear the survey results directly from our residents instead of from the county. If it's possible, I would like to have forms offered to those 1,000 residents a day that come through the library because if you were gonna give me the form, if I don't go to the library, my feedback would be very different from the users. And I really think that their responses are valuable. Instead of just hearing it from the county, we should have it directly from our city. Also, I was wondering, for physical books, if there are kids who want to read the same book, What is the reservation time nowadays and if each copy of those more popular books Do we have just one copy or multiple copies available for the children? And lastly, I was wondering if Ms. Alpert would be happy to organize adult book clubs for our seniors to do so that our tax dollars go to service all ages of our residents and not just mainly school age residents. Thank you.

All right. Thank you. And staff or the librarians are available to answer some of those questions perhaps. But go ahead.

Yeah. I was going to say if maybe Elaine or Frances want to come and talk about the reservation time. I can mention that the San Ramon Senior Center does work with the library and we offer a monthly book club. They call it the Page Turners Club, and about 20 to 25 people show up on a monthly basis working with the library directly. So that might be something. And also the San Ramon Senior Center does manage a small library in the senior center as well, a free library there. But Francis, maybe you can speak to the reservation of the books.

Thank you again. Regarding reservation for the books, we have multiple copies of different titles in branches. In addition to that, we have 26 branches within the county. Even if we don't have them within all those 26 branches, there's a system called Link Plus that we use with other library system within the state of California so we can get those. Matter of fact, because Our children's circulation is the highest. We ensure that we have lots of materials for them, for those things. And there's a process. You see, they visit the branches to get those books, and if we don't have them, we can always get them, reserve them from other branches. So that isn't the problem, that we won't have anything in circulation. I mean, there's always a way to get books.

Okay.

All right. Thank you. You're welcome. All right. I can address the last one.

For the survey, I know the county administered the survey. They did, though, identify that you can look at it by each library, so you have the results by each library. That is in one of our staff packets from earlier in the year, and then I could check with the library and see if they'll give us all the results to make that available.

All right. Thank you. Any other speaker cards?

No. No.

Okay, I'm going to close public comment, and any final comments by... Oh.

Okay.

Please. Who had a comment?

Oh.

I was going to add to what the speaker requested regarding comments from the public. Yes, we got those. That was when we did the survey. The survey was for the whole county of Contra Costa. We now filtered the ones for San Ramon. So based on what they said and what they needed, that was what prompted the request to get the Zoom booth as well. So we have individual comments of everybody coming into the library that filled out the survey. So if it's something we want to do again, it's possible to get those information.

Okay, awesome. Thank you. All right, any final comments for our Library Advisory Committee?

Thank you. Thanks for all the great work that you do to bring equity and knowledge base that we need within the community.

Thanks for the report, and your next year's goals look good. I'd say keep up the great work.

Thank you.

Thank you. All right.

Thank you.

We are going to move on to no action on this item. We're going to move on to item 9.2, which is FY26-27 budget workshop number two. We're talking about expenses this evening. And we've got a staff report by Yulia Helbo, budget manager, again. And welcome back. Good evening. Evening.

Today is our workshop number two, and we're going to be talking about expenditures.

Can you put the mic on?

Expenditures for fiscal year 26, 27.

The mic is off. Oh, there you go.

Sorry about it. So our second workshop, we're going to talk about expenditures for the fiscal year 26-27. This is a draft of the results of the expenditures that our departments worked very hard on developing. The report that was prepared in today's presentation is going to be covering several main points. The first one is we're going to remind everybody about the fiscal sustainability guidelines. We're going to talk about the balancing strategy, review draft major fund expenditures, review the capital project, CIP projects of our draft, and we are expecting to receive a feedback from the council and discuss what are going to be our next steps. The process of developing this year's budget was based on the guidelines that were developed in 2025. At the October 28, 25 meeting, the council agreed to specific guidelines for recognizing the structural deficit that city is presently, currently is, and the guidelines is no new programs or positions without trade-offs, no spending money that we do not have, and no unsustainable commitments. Following these guidelines and looking into these strategies of balancing our budget, At the February 14, 2026 budget kickoff meeting with our departments, we provided additional guidelines to how to approach balancing and specifically for expenditures. Departments received the guidelines of keeping their non-discretionary expenditures within the 2.3 percent growth, and they were advised to approach it not looking at their budget numbers from the last year, but looking at the actual expenditures. What do they spend in different areas? And mostly, it was focused on the recognizing the non-discretionary items. Then at the March 24 meeting, we're talking about that we are starting developing the process of developing the budget. We've talked about the strategies of what will keep us balanced going forward when the measure end is going to expire in 10 years, in 2035. And the approach is to keep our expenditures growth below the budget growth because the revenue grows. at about 2%. Of course, when we're developing the budget, we recognize that some of the expenditures will not be able to stay within those guidelines because we have existing contractual obligations. So let's talk about the general fund. General fund is the city's primary operating fund. It accounts for most of the city's financial resources as well as the largest portion of operational expenditures, including transfers out which support funding of internal service funds and capital project needs as well. The development of the budget for the fiscal year 26-27 recognized two major changes in the accounting approaches, accounting processes, and they are also reflecting the end results of what you see today on the expense side. Those two major changes were that the instructor payments are going to be now recognized as an expense. Previously they were recorded against the received revenue for the class revenue. And that accounting change would result in increase of both revenue and expense on about 1.8 million on both sides. And the other change, significant change, as we eliminated a pair of the transfers in and out that were going out of the general fund and then coming back to the general fund from the pension obligation bonds funds. Those transfers in and out, they were canceling each other. So looking at this, we decided we need to eliminate those transfers that will have zero effect at the end on the end result fund balance. There are several major categories of the expenses, and of course, it's not a surprise that the personnel expenditures account for the major portion of our development, of our budget. It's for the fiscal year of 26-27, the personnel costs are expected to be about 72.2% of our operating budget in general fund, which amounts to $55.4 million. It's on average a month's different department. It's a growth of 1.57%. It is different for different division, different departments, and different represented groups, represented and non-represented groups. This level of expenditures for the personnel cost is not unusual for the service-based organization, which is CDEs. So it is consistent with the services that we provide. The next category is professional consulting services that amounts for about 10.5% of the budget or almost $9 million. And the average growth in this area is 5%. And a lot of the existing contracts that Citi already obligated to continue using, they have built in cost about 5%. Those supplemental consulting services are often needed to supplement the staffing capacity with specialized expertise. And sometimes they are required, the city is required to engage in specific contractual services. For example, for audits or for conducting the next study or some other type of businesses where we have to use the independent third party to provide those services. The next category from the largest categories of expenditures is utilities and maintenance. And we expect in this category to grow about 7.7% or $6.63 million for the next year. And unfortunately, there is not much that we can control in growing rates that our providers of gas, electricity, water services are embedding in the cost of those services. Overall, the total expenditures for the general fund are expected to grow at about 2.61% or 2.2 millions. This number, this growth, includes transfers out to support other funds. As I said, some of them are internal service fund and capital needs. If we exclude transfers out, the operational portion of the expenditures is going to grow in about 6.59%. And the next slide, maybe not very large numbers, is presenting the summary of what I was just talking about. We can go over some of the major changes for different departments. And you can see the different department budgets grew or decreased at different rates. So let's discuss some of the details of that. For the city administration, the biggest increases are in the area of part of the city administration budget is information technology. And this is where we're going to see the biggest increases. One of them is implementations of the new citizen request management system, which is going to cost about $68,000. The other The other item is the increased cybersecurity services and system upgrades in a cost of $206,000. Website upgrade to meet the requirements of ADA compliance, $45,000. And also the increase includes the additional needs for the training and professional development. On the other hand, we can see that human resources budget went down. The biggest difference, the reason for this for the general fund side is because some of the expenditures were removed to match where they belong and they are now being charged in the internal service fund for the insurance. On the finance, increase of 4.4% is related to engaging of professional services, which I've just talked about. On the community development department, we can say that their budget pretty much stays flat, and it relates to the fact that The budget was approached looking at the actual positions that are filled currently Being fully filled and where they are in the budget not looking at the vacancy factor of vacant positions and Approximating where those positions are going to be filled The increases in police department on non-departmental site relates to the increased cost of the animal control contract with the Contra Costa County, which amounts to about $126,000. The 4.4% increase in the dispatch services that cost additional $100,000. And another $100,000 is the increase of the contract with the Exxon cameras. For the public works department, approximately 9% increase is related to the water and electricity costs, $273,000. The other cost is the built-in 3% CPI index in many of the contractual services. Additional cost for the newly opened parks and trails, $81,000, and implementations of the streetlight data software for mobility and traffic analysis, $32,000. For the Parks and Recreation Department, as I said, one of the largest portions of this 24.75% is the change in the accounting for the for the payments to the instructors of $1.8 million. The other pieces is the $104,000 for the additional library hours. The implementation of the new recreation management software is going to cost additional $100,000 in fiscal year 26-27. However, going forward, this new software is actually going to cost about $20,000 less than the one that we've used before. It's just for the 26-27, there will be an overlap period where they will have to use both of them, and plus implementation time for the new software. The about $200,000 increase is related to the adjustments for the part-time salary staff. to comply with the new minimum wage requirements and $24,000 in other costs related to the special events that city holds for our residents. This next slide is representing the modeling of the expenditures growth. The blue line shows historical growth of about 9 percent a year. The green line is our target of 2.3 percent. And the line in between the yellow line is where we are today if our budget is going to be changing, if our expenditure budget is going to be changing with the same speed as we are projecting for the fiscal year 26-27. This slide is corresponding to the table that you've just seen to show the weight of each department in the total general fund. budget, expenditure budget. And it shows how many employees are working for different departments, FTEs, what is the percentage and what is the total cost of operating that department. So looking at our revenue reserve calculations, before we discuss where we are at our reserves for the, as we're expecting them at the end of the fiscal year 26 and going forward to 27, I wanted to share good news with council and the public. We had another meeting with the HDL consultants for our sales tax projections, and they indicated that their projections are now very different from what they told us three months ago about the expected revenue for the Measure N. The Measure N revenue is now expected to be about 14.94 million for the fiscal year 26-27, which is almost 1.5 million higher than they were projecting three months ago. And that significant increase definitely helps our bottom line, our fund balance. And this is what the expected fund balance will grow at about $2.8 million for the fiscal year 26-27 and will be which will be our about 39.5% reserve calculation, which is, as we know, above the targeted 36%. Okay, let's look at the next largest, the next most important fund, operating fund of the city. It's the Doherty Valley County Service Area. As we know, the Dorothy Valley Fund was created to track revenues and expenditures associated with the services provided to the county service area at Dorothy Valley. According to the existing agreement with the Contra Costa County and the major developers, the city is required to separately budget and track both revenue and expenditures in that fund. The sources mostly come from the county special assessments and 1% property tax growth. For the expenditures on the expenditure side, there are two major expense categories. It's to provide services for the safety, our police department, and also services for the public works department to maintain parks, roads, and landscaping. The police services growth is very consistent with the percentage growth in general fund. It's about 6.8%. And for Dorothy Valley, it amounts for $841,000. And for public works, the growth is close to 2.6% or $383,000. $383,000. And total expenditure growth is 4.52%, or $1.2 million. And as you see, The collected revenue through special assessment and property tax is not supporting fully the operations of the necessary level of services provided to that area, and it's largely supported by general fund. The expected transfer in from general fund into Dorothy Valley is going to be about $5 million for the fiscal year 2026-27. Talking, going about into other funds that city operates, there are two major categories of those funds. Those categories are operating special funds that a lot of them are special assessments, landscape and lighting and landscape districts and Also, capital expenditures. And the other category is non-operating special funds. The non-operating special funds are those funds where revenues are coming on a non-recurring basis or they could vary drastically year over year. And those revenues mostly are in support of capital needs. The total expenditures of other funds is expected to be about $46.7 million, and it actually represents a decrease from prior years. Part of this decrease is the change of the transfers in and out. The other portion of the decrease is the projected lower premium for the general liability. which also accounted in the internal service fund. So, that decrease is accounted for in this, from these categories. And also, the other reduction is the reduced transfers out from those special funds into capital project fund. And at the end, I wanted to take a look at our debt service funds. As we know, the three major debts that city currently is holding is our pension obligation bonds issued in 2010 and 2021. Those pension obligations funds were issued to reduce the outstanding accrued liability with the culprits. And then in year 2019, the city issued certificate of participation to support our capital needs. And after the, at the end of the year of 26, 27, the outstanding liabilities in all of the combined outstanding liabilities in those funds is expected to be $41.5 million. And with this, I'm going to transfer to Jennifer to talk about capital projects.

All right. Thanks, Julia.

She'll come back for other questions. Good evening. So I'm here tonight to talk to you about the Capital Improvement Program. So as all of you know, we have taken a great effort this year to improve our communications, the efficiency of our processes, as well as to recognize greater fiscal stewardship and ownership over our finances and ensuring that we have compliance. And one of the areas that was most significantly impacted was the capital improvement program. So in coordination with city administration and with public works, these are the changes that we are proposing for fiscal year 27. The first is the creation of a CIP and grants program manager position that would be created within the finance department. and would be offset with future FTE vacancies. This position is expected to provide fiscal oversight and analysis of capital projects. It would serve as the lead for information and activity related to the CIP. It would oversee development of the capital budget and the five-year CIP. and would be responsible for compliance and reporting on restricted revenues and grants. As you may recall, we had a comment in our fiscal year 25 audit about making sure that we were on top of our grants in order to ensure that we would continue to be a viable recipient for future grants. And so this is a step towards having greater oversight of that role, as well as making sure that our CIP is syncing up between the engineering requirements and expectations about program management and also what we need from an accounting perspective. The second significant change is that we've talked about what it looks like to separate maintenance projects from the CIP. It's my understanding that past city management preferred to have maintenance projects combined in the capital improvement program. And what happens is that it makes it very difficult at the end of the fiscal year when my staff go to look at the CIP and figure out what needs to be capitalized as a fixed asset for the city. We have to go through the hundred projects or so and try to figure out what was an actual new asset added to the city that needs to be booked in the audit versus an ongoing maintenance project. So that was one of the challenges. Also I think in terms of communications and transparency it makes it very difficult to know what in our CIP program is maintenance and an ongoing cost and commitment for the city versus a one time investment of resources into a specific project. And so for the purpose of separating the maintenance projects from CIP, we are proposing to use the currently existing infrastructure maintenance fund. This infrastructure maintenance fund has functioned in a rather odd way. It has been the recipient of funds from the general fund each budget year, and then when CIP is ready to receive those funds, it is transferred from infrastructure maintenance to CIP. So it doesn't have a specific functionality on its own, and this would create a specific use for that fund that I think makes sense in the context of what we're trying to do. So the item for feedback is, so at the May 12th council meeting, we're planning to bring you the preliminary budget, and at the May 26th, the proposed budget. The work that is going to go on in the background on the accounting side is significant. for identifying all of the balances in the history on each of these projects that needs to be carried over. We have a project management module within the accounting system. So not only does the accounting system general ledger need to be revised, but also the project ledger needs to be revised. So we want to make sure that we get all of the projects properly reconciled and captured before we move them into the infrastructure maintenance fund. And given the amount of work, we expect to know the numbers, but I'm not sure that after council adopts a budget at May 26th, usually it's just a couple weeks' time before we get the adopted budget out on the city's website. There may be a little bit longer delay if we want to present the new format. So I just want to know how important it is to council that the new budget for fiscal year, that the adopted budget for fiscal year 27 reflect the new CIP and IMF format, or if we should just proceed with the historical until we have everything kind of nailed down in the background. Yeah.

I was just curious how much of a delay are you anticipating?

I think that We have the expenditures nailed down already. We are just trying to get a better understanding of some of the revenues. I would say that probably in a month we'll have all of that nailed down. So maybe it would be, I think maybe a month delay on issuance of the adopted budget.

Yeah, I would just say from my perspective, given the uncertainty, and the timing and everything else. I'm okay with, it makes sense to separate the functions, but I'm okay with continuing to do it the way we've been doing it in the past for this particular budget cycle. And then as soon as possible, we implement the change for the next budget year.

Okay.

That's my thought.

Great. And we can also have the, maybe we can provide revised pages for the budget at mid-year so that you can at least see what it's going to look like when we bring it back for fiscal year 28. Yeah.

Any other council members have thought on that?

I just want to say I agree. Historical perspective, just do what's been done before. No need to go into uncharted territory. And I think the year that we have for the, actually, when do we start our next budget cycle? It's how soon after, like in February of the following year?

For mid-year?

Yeah.

We'll start that in January.

In January.

Sorry, November.

November, yeah. So that would be a good lead time to start, you know, the new CEIP IMF format. Okay. In my opinion. But I agree with the Mayor.

So in this new format, in this new format, is the IMF, whatever the fund is there within the IMF, is that considered as part of the general fund or is it part of the general fund?

It's out of the general fund. It's an internal service fund.

Okay.

So this does lead into a potential discussion that I would like to have with Council about an infrastructure maintenance discussion policy around how you want to fund it and how Public Works has a schedule about the maintenance that they see needs to be done in the city. So it would be good to have a policy from council about how we evaluate that schedule, how we, if we decide to defer items on that schedule, how we address them, how we bring them back onto the schedule, how we fund the items on that schedule, that sort of thing. So it's going to be, this is the first step towards formalizing kind of better communication and transparency around the current assets that the city has and how we are maintaining them.

So just to make sure I understood, so once we allocate the fund in IMF and then once we have CIPs, are we going to assign those transfer outs for these CIPs immediately or...

That's a great question. No, now the projects will reside in IMF, so all of the maintenance will occur in the projects that are in the infrastructure maintenance fund. So CIP will now only be the projects, the tracking for the projects that are capital, one-time, non-recurring projects, and infrastructure maintenance fund will be tracking the projects that are ongoing annual commitments of funds for maintenance.

Oh, okay, great. Like, for example, repairing our buildings and all those things we'll be assigning through the IMF?

Yes.

Okay.

Yes. And you can easily identify those when you look at the five-year CIP. The maintenance projects are the ones that have funds allocated every single year. Usually are labeled sidewalk maintenance, that sort of thing. So we want to call those out to let council and the community know that these are regular commitments of money. These aren't one time allocations of resources that we're talking about.

Is it like in past we used to use IMF for even CIP projects?

I'm not sure how it was used before. I just know its current use is to take money from the general fund and hold it for maintenance projects that are then, and then the resources are transferred to CIP to fund the maintenance projects.

Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Any feedback over here?

Yeah, I just had a question about, You were talking about CIP, which I understand, versus one-time investment. Can you give me an example of that, just so I can picture it in my brain a little better?

Yeah, so capital improvement programs are projects that... most often are capitalized in the audit at the end of the year. And that means, when they're capitalized, it means that it has extended the life of the system or is a new piece of equipment or new facility for which we are responsible. It's not maintenance of, like putting in new carpet doesn't extend the life of this building. But if we were to do some kind of extensive renovation, we are adding value, we are adding utilization to the building, adding capacity.

Okay. So I guess, I mean, I think, to me, I think everything needs to be maintained over time. But as you're separating maybe a brand new, something that's brand new, which is going to have a long life, as opposed to something that's kind of been going on for years and you're just kind of keeping it maintained. But so I guess that's kind of the balance between those two.

Yeah, and you make a really good point there, because one of the things that the Public Works Director and I have also talked about is once we have the separation of capital and maintenance, it allows us to say when we invest in a new park, for example, we are creating a new asset that the city is responsible for, And when we give you the budget for the capital cost of that project, we can also let you know what the maintenance cost is going to be that you will see over in infrastructure maintenance. Over in infrastructure maintenance.

Over time.

Right, because that should be part of the conversation, right? No unsustainable commitments is that third tenet of the guidelines. And so making sure that we break out capital and maintenance kind of makes that conversation very clear.

Okay, thank you. It's in corporate world like CAPEX and OPEX. It's like in corporate world it's CAPEX and OPEX. Like CPS are all CAPEX and all IMF is going to be OPEX.

Okay, did you get the feedback you needed?

Yes, thank you. So the third change is alignment of CIP and now IMF and the city budget development. In the past, CIP has gone to a number of commissions and committees before it has kind of aligned or been brought into the city budget process, and usually it's lagged the city budget process. So we have historically brought the projected expenditures to the council, and then at our preliminary budget, we would incorporate CIP, which is this huge piece of the city's resources at the last minute. And so our intention is that with the CIP grants manager and finance they can work closely with the budget manager and finance and sync up the two timelines so that we are you know talking about all the city's resources at one time in the same timeline and not having any surprises at the last minute because of capital needs. So for fiscal year 27, the draft CIP and IMF numbers, since they are still combined, that is what I asked the public works director to do since they weren't broken out yet, to just use the same practices as we have been. The total draft budget is $10.2 million. And as Yulia pointed out, a lot of the CIP is funded by restricted funds that come in from other sources. So what I've highlighted on this slide is the funding from the general fund. So this year we are funding from the general fund $148,000 worth of capital improvements, capital or maintenance improvements for Doherty Valley, as well as $444,000 worth of projects in the capital fund, and then $826,000 of maintenance costs from the general fund. and all of that detail is provided in your packet, but I can answer questions and rods here as well. And then, just as a final note on CIP, Public Works, and I thought it would be good to drop this note to let you know that our current funding for pavement management is not sufficient to maintain our current pavement condition index of 74. So as you can see, we actually had project savings in 25 that will allow us to do a greater investment in our project for 26, which will elevate our PCI to 76. But then based on our historical contributions or allocation of resources to pavement management, because our dollars are buying less, our PCI pavement condition index number is expected to decline to 71 by 2031. then at that point council will need to determine whether or not to allocate additional funding to maintain the PCI of 71 and 71 is significant because that is the designation of fair versus good which is 72 and higher.

So isn't this should come in IMF because it is like we are maintaining it?

So when you do an over, pavement management is usually an overlay where they take off a layer of the gravel, of the asphalt, and then put down new asphalt. And so that is usually considered extension of the life of the road. Whereas if you do slurry seal, not a lot of words I thought I would say as a finance director. Whereas slurry seal is more a maintenance project where you're kind of filling the cracks and doing patch paving. That's more maintenance.

Okay.

Right, Rob?

So, yeah. What's the level when you really start to get in trouble? Because, you know, you're going to spend more money when it gets, as it starts to go down, obviously you're going to have to spend more to get it up to an acceptable level. And so what is the number that we're kind of like, we don't want to get below this number or we're going to get in trouble?

My sense is that Public Works feels like 71 is the number we do not want to get below.

Or the number of wheel alignments.

And I think that the Public Works Director said that they could come back, but there was some discussion that we had about the level of discernment between 76 versus 74 or 74 versus 71, and he had more information that he can bring back to you on that.

Yeah, we did review that in policy committee meeting, and we are not in a danger as of now. So I won't think we'll need to press any panic button at this point.

But yeah, we want to put it on the radar.

What is 71? Oh, it's fair. Okay. All right. Thank you. I have a question.

Yeah.

So regarding in order to meet the need as it stands right now, of course, you know, just to have a sense of how we want to sort of close that need, that gap in need over the next few years, right? How much is needed to fill that gap right now in order to keep ourselves where we're at? In other words, 72 or higher?

So we are at 74 now. So you're talking about staying above 71 before 2031?

Yeah, you said 72 or higher is considered good. So what I'm saying is we want to stay in that range. So how much in absolute cost is the gap, the deficit that needs to be met in order for us to be able to maintain that?

I think Public Works would have to come back to you with that information. I think they can definitely provide it, but I don't think it's ready tonight. And then our last slide is just to review that, again, on a prior slide, Yulia showed you that the total general fund expenditure growth was showing 2.61, which is close to the targeted 2.3, but it's primarily due to the change in transfers out. it's kind of a win but not really. So when we're really looking at our expenditure growth, we're really considering the 6.59% as where we are in terms of controlling our costs because the change in transfers is one time and it's going to we've already discussed that next our future presentations will show the reduction already the transfers out already reduced for both years so that it's not showing such a discrepancy because it's creating such a variance in the numbers right now that distorts it. But really we're looking at about a 6.59 to 7% expenditure growth for fiscal year 27. And then, again, we are in the process of developing a long-term financial plan that will help us identify future cost containment measures and give us a better sense of how we can plan for the financial future. And that is scheduled for July 14th. So our next steps is incorporating the feedback from Council tonight into our preliminary budget presentation for May 12th. And again, when we present the preliminary budget, it will be the whole deal, revenues, transfers in, expenditures and transfers out. We have a handful of changes that we are still working to incorporate, but nothing that is hugely substantive and everything should be in by May 12th. So unless council has changes for us, everything is pretty smooth right now. Okay.

All right, thank you. Jennifer, does that conclude your presentation? That does. Okay, let's turn it over to questions. It looks like you've got a burning question in your advice.

I'm not burning, I just didn't know you saw me. So I just wanted to know when you sort of talk about total general fund expenditure growth or target versus actual, right? Is that, that's adjusting or accounting for inflation, all those things that may obviously, you know, there's increasing costs all over the place. I mean, especially as it pertains to utilities and and a whole slew of other things, even taxes and what have you, and so I'm just wondering. Yeah.

So the very simplified high-level model that we provided showed 2.3% growth. That did not include CPI, but the long-range financial plan will, and that has consistently been showing that we still need to target expenditure growth at 2% less than revenue growth.

Okay.

All right. Thank you.

No, it's fine.

No, no, it's fine. Thank you for your burning question. Any other burning questions?

Yeah, very quick, and thank you for the presentation, Yulia and Jennifer. Slide seven, if you go to that graph with the dotted yellow line and the green line, I just wanted a clarification. So the delta from the target, so if I understand correctly, if you could go back, what does the yellow line mean again?

Yeah, so the yellow line is fiscal year 27. The growth that we are projecting we will have for fiscal year 27.

Growth and revenue or expenditures? Expenditures. So that's expenditures.

All of this is expenditures and transfers out.

Okay, good. Okay, so that leads to my next question. So the delta between those, just the target and the FY seems pretty big. Do you... I mean other than like slashing something like a major budget or taking what what what else could we do do we do we offset that with another revenue stream or what you know how do we I want to prevent another measure going out for tax so but how do we because that that optic there looks really and I don't know the answer and I read through the packet but it how how have you seen it done in other cities? How, how, how do we close that gap down to 2% or even just get close? Cause just even if we get this, even the Delta, just to just a 5% from 2.3 to five is, is, is large.

Yes.

By orders of magnitude, because it's, you're, you're talking that each it's like from 70, that that's million, millions of dollars, right? So seven, that's 20 million. Yeah. It's 20, about 20, 20, 20 million each. each time, so yeah, how do we, I don't expect the answer, but I'm just thinking.

The simple answer is all of the above. That's why the fiscal sustainability plan lays out having discussions about the city's reserves and where we need to be funding our assets that we currently have so that we know how we are using what we currently have and so that we can anticipate how we need to be planning ahead in order to have that balanced operating budget by the end of 2035. Got it. So it's going to be a combination of program reductions, cost reductions. We're currently in a lot of contracts that didn't have to consider these kinds of budget constraints, right? So as we renegotiate those contracts, hopefully we'll be you know, taking into consideration things like this, right? And trying to find ways to be more creative and in targeting and getting to our target levels. And then also revenue options, everything. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I read a recent study that some towns are suffering because of the roads conditions has nothing to do really with the budget as much as it has a lot to do with the cars that people are driving. The electric cars are getting heavier, right? And there's a lot of people that are buying these heavier cars, and they're driving them on just roadways that have general weight restrictions. And you see this big Escalade electric driving on an arterial roadway here. And I mean, you can see the asphalt just start to chew up.

And our gas tax structure isn't designed to... Exactly, that was my next point.

Incorporate electric vehicles. Yeah, so stop driving electric vehicles. So, no, I'm kidding. So, thank you. Okay.

Sure. All right, other questions?

So, thanks for the presentation. On personal cost, 72.2%, is that all... fully staffed, or is it still there are open positions that we include in that 72.2%?

This growth in personnel costs includes vacancy factor of 4%.

Vacancy factor of?

Four percent.

Four percent, okay. Yes. And on professional and consulting services that we are putting 10.5. Is it fair to say that pretty much majority of our, in the professional and consulting services, it's again, it's like a personal services?

Professional consulting services will include portion of those augmentation when we hire consultants with specific expertise that not necessarily required on a daily basis from our staff, but it will also include those contracts that we're currently in where we cannot not meet the already existing terms and the contract grows every year, let's say with 5% or 7% a year. So it's a combination of several factors.

Yeah, or yeah, finance is a good example.

We are currently in contract with a consulting service firm to supplement the extended absence of the accounting manager.

Oh, okay. So is it fair to say like pretty much 82.7% we are in personal costs?

For service.

For service. For the service and pretty much. I'm just trying to understand where, like, what are the other options, like 80 point, yeah, wow, okay. So now I have the next question is.

So transfer.

Yeah, on the first, I think first or second page you mentioned about transfer out of pension obligation bonds. So I didn't understand that piece. What does it mean?

So the two of our pension obligation funds are we make annual payment that's required by the structure of the bond. And because those bonds were issued to lower our existing at the time when they were issued. They were used to pay the outstanding accrued liabilities . So the way we are funding for those payments every year is through the deduction that's been processed through payroll. So there is no need to do additional transfer and then at the end of the year when all of those little pieces from every payroll came into the fund that pays for the pension obligation bond to transfer it back to general fund. Those transfers that were like canceling each other, this is what we eliminated. Does that make sense?

A little bit actually I have, okay.

We capture the cost of what we pay in debt service through regular transfers that go along with the payroll process. We collect the debt service that we pay throughout the whole fiscal year. But we have two semi-annual payments that we have to make throughout the fiscal year. So previous finance administration were transferring the cash ahead of time to make the payments. But our bank account doesn't know whether it's a debt service dollar or a general fund dollar. So we don't have to move the cash. We have cash to pay our bills, and it's our accounting system that keeps track of where the dollars belong. So this transfer was moving the cash from the general fund to debt service to make the payments, but it was unnecessary because the cash was always there. And then the debt service fund was paying the general fund back at the end of the year after it had collected all the money through payroll. The bank doesn't care. The bank account is just one bank account. Again, all of the dollars are tracked through the accounting system.

So it was duplicative. Just process change, that's it, right? Yes. Okay. And in this whole presentation, we didn't talk anything about pension liability. Is that a separate thing that we need to talk about, or is it, how that works?

So our pension liabilities are part of our personal costs. There is a required contribution from the city. And in addition to that percentage, depending on which type of plan it is, the city also pays every year payment for the outstanding liability, accrued outstanding liability that's been recalculated by CalPERS every year. They do evaluation reports and they tell us what is that portion for the next year. And it depends on the funding status of the plan that we have with the CalPERS. We have several different plans. And current position of our major plans is in about 85, 86% being funded, which is pretty good position.

Yeah, so funded, that's after we got the pension obligation bond so that we can get to that place, right? So that's good. But then as every year we are still continuously keep paying, right? So where is that number?

that number becomes part of the asset that's accumulated on the culprits' side. And when they calculate what is their expectation of how much the, what is the present value of the future benefits for the retirees, less, and then they, it's a complex calculation. So they evaluate in the present value of those future benefits. They evaluate the value of existing assets. And then when they find the difference, this will give them, this provides the number for this unfunded liability level. It provides the number for the funding level of our plan, which becomes the basis for the calculation of the liability.

Okay. So are these Every year, are we paying for pension liability?

Yes.

How much we are paying?

Let me look. I think I hit that number. We have two major plans into which we're paying, and I don't have it on my printouts. If my memory serves me correctly, we're paying cumulatively about $2 million of that outstanding liability every year.

Every year, okay.

Split between those two plans, major plans.

So that is considered as an expenditure, or is it considered as- It's part of the expenditures, and it's part of the personal cost. Personal cost, okay. It's already part of the personal cost, okay, perfect. Now on the debt service, what is the percentage of debt service we are in right now? I know you give the numbers, but Do you have any percentage?

Rather than telling you what the percentage is, I can tell you where we are on the years, how many years we have left on those pension application funds. For the pension obligation fund that was issued in year 2010, it was a 30-year bond. And our last year when we're going to be making the payments is going to be 2039. And the pension obligation bond of 2019 was a 20-year bond. And it's, again, the last payment is going to be in fiscal year of 39.

So what is the threshold? Let's say, for example, I didn't want to go back and get some money, but what is the threshold that typically we have to go back if we want to get any money from outside? If you want to again do some kind of COP, let's say COP, additional bonds.

I honestly don't know. We will need to do some research on that and come back to you.

Thank you. And what else? Now, for CPIs, when we allocate a fund, now let's say, for example, if we use 80% of it and then the 20% is left out for some reason, then what we do with that 20%?

With CIP? With CIP.

Yeah.

So what I'm hearing you say is that if we have a CIP project where we expend 80% of the budget and we have 20% remaining, the funds will be returned to the source that provided the funds. So if it's a pavement management program and it's funded by gas tax, gas tax requires us to return the funds back to gas tax to be reused for a future pavement project.

Okay. And if it is coming from general fund, then it will go back to general fund?

Yes. Okay. But again, these are things that are not in policy that I would like to clarify.

Okay.

Sounds good.

Thanks. Okay. For now, that's my questions. Thank you. Other questions down on the left here?

No.

Okay. Go ahead. I'll start with kind of a continuation of, I only have a couple of questions, but just kind of a continuation of what was mentioned previously a little bit. The gas tax, I know ABE 1421 is the bill that's initiating sort of a study for the California Transit Commission to continue looking, studying the possibility of having a a per mile charge road usage for EVs to help make up for the losses that they've been experiencing. It's like where it's good intentions and it's having these sort of adverse effects on the other end. And so it's creating, they're trying to study right now what would be sort of the mark that's needed to meet the need to replace the gas tax for EV drive with for EV drivers because right now there's currently $118 annual fee but it's insufficient so it's kind of one of those things that we have to watch and see where it lands who knows how people are going to feel about that it's a very regressive tax that could actually hurt people who have to commute farther which we also know usually those people who are socioeconomically more disadvantaged so to be determined is my point. I just want to make a comment on that. The other thing is, so when you were talking to the general fund, I was trying to figure out like, so just curious, you don't have to know in detail.

Excuse me, Vice Mayor Rubio, your mic. It might not be on.

Oh, sorry. I hope, oh, don't worry about it. I think they heard.

We usually pick it up somehow, just for clarity though.

Thank you for letting me know. So it's getting late. That's what's happening. So... The general fund, when we talked about their personnel costs, professional consulting services, utilities and maintenance, we all have a sense of why some of these things are going up, right? But in terms of relative to other comparable cities on these metrics specifically, is there any analysis on that?

We can bring more details. We can actually... I was looking at... going into development of our budget book for next year. I was looking at what else can we provide, what other type of information we can provide to our readers, to our residents. And comparable matrix was one of the things that I had in mind of adding to our budget book. I don't know how many of them we will be able to develop, but I definitely want to go to that direction to add more of those matrix. But in general, those percentages are pretty standard. 72% to 76% for personnel cost is what the service provider government entity will have for their budget cost, especially if they have their own police department. If they have their fire department, the number will be even higher. That percentage will be even higher. professional services is also very standard because as I said there are certain areas of expertise that we are not requiring on a daily basis from our employees and we just in specific cases like legal services even for human resource for negotiations for auditing services will require to engage third parties so there are we are in a situation where we have to augment our staffing with those professional service providers.

Okay, great. And then, so you mentioned fire, and it just made me think. So I know, so we share some of that, I'm assuming, with Danville as well. And how is that percentage sort of broken down? How do they determine how much does Danville pay versus us?

At current existing agreement, the portion of the city is about 49% and the Danville, I think 51, something like that. It's not exact breakdown, but it's in those. In that range. In that range, yeah.

Okay, yeah, I would love to see just sort of a matrices, like how other cities sort of breaking this down. Maybe there's, the reason being is because it may help us sort of narrow in a little more, and like what potential areas could we tighten our wallet a little bit, you know? And what are they doing to keep it a little more lean than maybe we are? So that's why I'm asking that. The other things in that chart that Council Member Joannette asked about, so when you show the top line, the historic line, so that is the historic rate of growth historically. So we're actually under that right now.

Yes. We were able to lower that historical growth by about 2%. Okay.

Okay. That's good. We're in the right direction. So I just wanted to make sure that was clarified because even though, yes, it's not ideal, we are going in the right direction. And if we do some of these other initiatives that we just discussed a second ago, we might find other ways to save additionally. And if we have this grant person, grant person can start to help us really tap into those opportunities that are absolutely available. I can't tell you how many times I've sat in meetings and they're like, nobody asked for this money and it's just sitting there. So, and it's not just San Ramon. It's like all of the cities tend to overlook these opportunities and that's free money. So, um, we definitely want to bring that in whenever we can. So I, I, uh, look forward to seeing how that impact of once we have someone to really do that, focus on that, how that will work out. And hopefully, I know with the Sustainability Advisory Committee, I'll also be a source of support for staff in that regard to look for those opportunities and hopefully provide support in that way. Yeah, I think that's all of my questions. Thank you for the presentation and all of the work you've put behind that. You make it look easy, but I know it's not. Thank you so much.

All right, thank you. We're going to go ahead and open up public comment at this time, and then we'll come back after public comment for final comments from council. So who do we have first?

We have Elena Formosa.

Okay.

Council members, I'm going to ask you to please entertain my length of my questioning and comments. It's necessary because there was so much material presented and everything was very as clear as mud. A lot of them were actually unsubstantiated. First of all, I want to address Ms. Wakeman's presentation. The CIP in the past were basically the staff members ability or opportunity to present their request for fund in the past. I went through two cycles of that before COVID and they were functional, they were legitimate and our budgets balanced. Now, the way you guys are trying to disguise CIP as some sort of blanket request that now is going to be disguised kind of like our consent agenda, where you don't really need any accountability under the umbrella of infrastructure maintenance fund. That is the reason why you're not balancing. And for that, I would like to recommend finance committee to please go back to how we had come up with the budgets, which was, everything was, you can verify it, because it initiated, because they all came from initiation coming from our staff. I have gone through it, the paperwork were this big. So if you have any questions, you go back there, you can backtrack and say, oh yeah, this is why we have this money allocated for that. I am very puzzled by Council Member Rubio's comment just now about, and that's free money. What money is free? That money's from me, taxpayers' money. If you don't have to spend that, you don't have to spend it. That's what CIP is, is to hold government accountable. The way Council Member Rubio is functioning and communicating scares me. My money is free? No, my money is not free. If it's not initiated by the staff, you should not spend it. I want to question, I want to move away now to Ms. Yulia's presentation. Absolutely strange. Let's go to slide number five, if you will, please. Okay, this one, I do not understand this. You have an average growth under personnel cost at 1.57. You have an average growth of 5% under professional consulting services, which is 10.5% of our budget, amounting to almost $9 million. And then the utilities and maintenance, which should cover our roads, which is at 7.7 budget. And then growth, I think there's a mistake. The probability of it both coming to 7.7% is almost impossible. And then finally, that's where I want to question. Then you tell us your expenditure growth is only 2.61%. How did you come up with 2.61% and only at a growth of expenditure of 2.2 million? You did not provide the details of that. So I question the validity of that, of this slide. And also, please go to the general fund expense slide.

Okay, and I'm going to need you to wrap it up here after this.

I would like to speak as long as I can because I have other points that I would like to...

I understand, but comments are normally limited to three minutes.

With permission, I can extend. Yeah. I would like to request for your permission.

I've already extended you, and I'd like you to finish up your point here with public comment.

Okay, so for this slide, you can see the increase of 37.5% under finance non-personnel is all going to consulting services. That tells me our finance committee staff have ability, have competency problems. That's why we need to spend so much money, which is taking away from our row maintenance to subsidize their inability to do their job. And that's why we have to spend a lot more to consulting company to do this. And regarding our consulting company, that is now good news. We have enough from Measure N. Bull crap. I don't believe one word of it. When they shift like that, that tells me these accountants... are not properly trained. Either they made a mistake the first time, or they're making mistake now. And then there's also parks increase of two million, which is a jump of 24.75%. Everything, if you look into the detail, they're unsubstantiated. And then that delta, That delta graph is a joke. Unsubstantiated. For accounting, every picture you paint, you need to be able to ballpoint and substantiate it, support it. I did not see that at all with tonight's presentation. It is a child's play. I'm sorry. And debt, please, debt service is not a fund. It's an obligation. Thank you.

All right. Thank you.

May I provide just a clarification because there was a misstatement? I was referring to, thank you, Martin, for confirming. I just wanted to say I was referring to state and federal grant money, not city tax money.

Okay. All right. Any other speaker cards?

Our next speaker is Pascales Datos.

Mr. Mayor, council members, I might repeat myself, city's residents. I might repeat myself in a couple of points on the previous speaker. It is true for me it's a little bit challenging to actually recognize where goes and what in this report. It's very challenging just by mentioning a couple of things to see reality and see clarity about the expenses and the cost of some things. I'm going to stay on the big item ticket with the 10% for consultation and professional fees. And my question is a little bit more into, and in my past, in the past council meeting, I mentioned implementing AI infrastructure, which I'm not 100% in favor. I want to think for myself. I want to talk for myself. I want to do my own mistakes. I don't think sometimes that's efficient, though. But my question is, do we provide the right tools to the city staff to be efficient enough so we can avoid getting into a 10% consultation and finance fees and professional fees. I heard here that we must, in some contracts, that we must continue that. The question is which contracts we must What is the process of assigning a contract to a third party so we can actually, as residents, to have a clear view that the job is being done properly? And then moving forward, we shouldn't be happy that the consultation company three months ago, they told us something, and three months later, they give us a different response. This is wrong. This is poor handling and this is not a professional job. And we shouldn't accept it as it's something great. We should accept it as something that we need to judge and we need to move forward maybe to a different company. And we need to figure out how to make the city staff efficient so we can remove that kind of huge percentage on the city's budget, which is called professional and consultation fees. So we become more efficient and that drops down. That might mean that the city staff needs more certifications or maybe adapting to new technologies or maybe having some more and quicker answers. So yes, it has a little bit more spending there, but we need to monitor how much that spending and actually make sense and it's good for the city. Thank you.

Okay, all right, thank you. Next speaker, please.

There are no more speaker cards.

Okay, then I'll close public comment and let's turn it back over to council for further discussion. Closing, any final comments?

No, I think I just wanted to say that I think The last comment made is an extension is basically reaffirming what we talked about earlier when I asked about comparable other cities, what they're doing and when looking into how we can reduce that cost. So definitely, I think, you know, we I hope we can get that information back sooner than later before we confirm the budget, you know, and be able to really see where we can sort of tighten those screws a little bit and, you know, rein in some of the potential extraneous costs that are not immediately necessary. So thank you.

Well, to that, I would like to say, though, that we are and I'm sure that we'll be able to show this through comparisons. We're one of the leanest cities in the area already. We just went through an exercise two years ago of massive cuts and service reductions to help cover a 19 million dollar shortfall, and I would like to say that in terms of consulting, as Yulia mentioned, that's about average for a city of our size. If you were to establish a goal of having no consulting fees, you would see that personnel cost go through the roof. because your options are okay if I'm not consulting instead of spending money on consulting attorneys we might need to hire two more attorneys probably an admin staff to cover those consulting costs with all of the pension obligation that comes with it so we do use our consultants for specialty we use it for filling in when we have vacancies or not necessarily vacancies but when somebody is out on extended leave or if we have an influx of permit applications for development we might shift some of that work the permit review to consultants the alternate could be okay we don't do that and now the permitting process if you want you know a remodel or something and we don't use consultants now you're waiting you know for months plus for your permit, so it is a balance, but to get rid of consulting fees altogether, that's just really not, you would increase fees through that.

And let's just be, to be sure, City Manager, I agree. If anybody looks at actual, the revenues that we work with and the amount of output that we put out in actual work, it is quite impressive what is being accomplished with what we have compared to other comparable cities of the same size. And so I think that sometimes when people get caught into the details, they may not see the bigger picture and that we are actually meeting a lot of those needs with very little on hand. So thank you for clarifying that as well.

Just a point, yeah. Thanks for clarifying on that. And also, at least from my conversation with you, always you're exploring new technologies. You're always exploring new options. I'm sure our department's heads also continuously exploring that options, that how we can use leveraged technology. And AI is a thing, but it's not really at a stage where it can really solve many of all the problems at least, right? So it is still an evolving stage. So yeah, I expect that you are already doing that, right? So obviously we definitely want to keep it low, but it's at least at the optimum level we need to continue. But thanks, thanks for the presentation. Looking forward for the next session. And I like the idea of separating IMF with CIP that way it will be much more clear for us and also not having like tons and tons like these huge file of CIPs that used to make really challenging for us. So I hope it will be much more thinner and much more easier for us to understand. So I like the approach. Thanks.

All right. Let me go down to Council Member Adler. Any final comments?

Okay. Council Member Ruina. Okay.

All right. Well, again, thank you. I frankly was pleased to see that revised projection on the estimated revenue measure in revenue. You know, this is a baseline year still, and market conditions change, sales figures change. I can understand some fluctuation, and I think we'll You know, by the end of this year, we'll have a better feel for what it might be like for next year. And I appreciate the conversation on the personnel cost when we were talking about all that, the 72%. You know, we have minimal staff. They do a great job with minimal staff. And, you know, the idea of, you know, if we didn't have all those staff, contracts and professional services and things like that as a city manager said we're going to have more FTEs in order to we still have to get the work done we have minimal staff already and so the only way if we're not going to contract it out to do or consulting we're going to have to you know, have more FTEs on board to do that. When you do that, you got more personnel costs, you got health costs, you got pension costs, you got all the salary stuff for full time, and it might be just for a very specific thing that they need to be doing. So to me, it's a very efficient way of getting the work done when you have minimal staff. The other, I guess the final thing I'd say is that our, you know, a good, a good part of our budget ought to reflect those things that go towards the stuff that we value. And we've talked about this before, like protecting our neighborhoods, protecting our open space, ensuring we have a good quality of life, protecting our retail and our businesses, and making sure we've got a good environment for that. So when I see things on the budget that are related to things like road maintenance, traffic circulation, park maintenance, even I've talked before about flood control for the Sunny Glen area down in South San Ramon. Those are things to me that matter, that will help us to protect our neighborhoods and make sure we have good quality of life for our residents going forward. And I think those are the things that our residents value and the things that we should value, that we should prioritize. So again, thank you for the presentation. I look forward to the May 12th session where we talk about the FY27 preliminary budget. And unless there's any other final comments from anyone, we will close this item out for the evening.

Not to beat the data, but many cities are suffering Many cities are suffering with the pension liabilities issues is because of too many FTEs. Because it's ongoing costs. It's ongoing costs, right? So a lot of cities are suffering now because of that.

It's too many FTEs combined with not having a plan to address. It is quite concerning how many municipalities don't have a plan to address pension obligations, and we'll worry about it or our offspring will worry about it way down the road because it's just a growing liability. We actually have a projection where we can show and we can have a refresher with the council that at some point we actually see it going down because of the plan that we're on. Sounds good, thank you.

All right, with that, we're gonna close that item out and we're gonna go on to item 9.3. We're gonna be talking about... Thank you, Yulia and Jennifer.

Through the mayor, we are approaching the 11 o'clock hour. Okay.

Since we're approaching the 11 o'clock hour, can I get a motion to extend beyond 11 o'clock if we need to go beyond 11 o'clock?

So moved.

I have one question about that. Sorry. So about extending not extend the next item. Is it possible to move to the next next meeting?

Well, what we're going to what we'll get to that here in a second. Just let's let's extend them, extend the meeting, and then we'll have that discussion. OK, OK. So I have a motion by Vice Mayor.

Yes.

A second by Councilmember Adler. Are we going to do an electronic vote on this? OK. Everybody save your vote?

Oh, sorry. I gotta click.

Okay, I think we got them all now. All right, so motion passes 5-0-0. Okay, so we're gonna, if we need to, we'll go beyond 11 o'clock. If I, I think this might be quicker than you think it is. Every time I think. But let me get the quick staff report, and then we'll make some comments here.

Well, Simone's been waiting here the whole night.

All right.

Yeah, we're definitely going to let her do the presentation.

All right, so this is a 9.3 discussion of informational community events on housing and transportation. Simone Finney, you got it.

All right.

Good evening, Mayor Armstrong, Vice Mayor Rubio, City Council. I have six slides for you tonight. This item came about because a previous council meeting, there was a request from the council to consider for a future agenda item a, over here, a town hall on housing and or transportation. There was interest in discussing whether it should be one town hall for both or two separate town halls. And the reasoning was that it would be very beneficial to help the public wrap their minds around what the vision for San Ramon is. Okay, so just to start to structure the conversation, it would be helpful to identify who the audience is that you have in mind. I've put up a couple of guesses. So potentially residents, potentially business community, and then if there are any other groups that you think would be interested in these topics.

Are you asking?

I've structured this so that we can do feedback as we go. Sorry. Oh, okay. Residents. Yes. So residents, yes? Yes. Okay.

But it's open to everybody.

Yeah, so right now I think very generally the established topics are sort of housing and transportation. Business community, is that a yes, is that a no, is that a maybe?

Long story short is business community will be part of the discussion actually.

Could you elaborate on that a little bit?

Okay. So, so I initially proposed this and I'm very grateful to my fellow council members for, um, allowing me to agendize this because, um, what I envisioned was maybe having just a town hall because of Brown Act rules. We are only allowed to have two people, um, participate in the town hall from the city council. and asking maybe two to three staff members of which, and the reason I had to bring it before council is because I'm wanting to consider if two to three staff members could also join us, and that being either like a housing staff member and one transportation staff member, or a city manager plus a housing staff member, or a city manager plus the city attorney, or option four, one housing staff member, city manager, and city attorney. That's what I envisioned. In terms of community leaders, which I have already spoken to just preemptively to get a feel before we were here discussing it to see if they're open to the idea of attending and participating in the discussion. I spoke with both the school district and water district representatives. I've spoken with transportation agencies, the Chamber, as well as developers. And everyone has, at least one person in each of those has said yes. They're happy to participate. And I was thinking of doing it separately, 90 minutes each with, I liked what is actually in the staff report, the suggestion of having, collecting the questions online and maybe giving four to six weeks of marketing it to collect those, you know, maybe for four weeks collect the questions and in spending the last two weeks organizing them because there's oftentimes people ask the same question repeatedly. They have the same common concerns. So to save time and make sure we try to address as many questions as possible, we can sort that out prior to the event. Basically, what I'm really asking for is consent. It's open to an amendment if anybody wants to amend it. However, if it veers very far away from this, I may just simply elect to do it myself because I've already done a lot of work. And right now, basically all I need is really to know who would be a co-host. and consent from my fellow council members to be able to host this either in the rotunda here or at the San Ramon Community Center, possibly the fountain room or any other room really that works therein, along with the two to three stipulated staff members with the options list illustrated and the proposed community leaders that have agreed to participate in this initiative. Thank you.

All right. So that was a lot of information. So I'm wondering if we even need to go through the rest of the presentation here.

Mayor, I would suggest that we do because we have a lot of unanswered questions and there is a proposed methodology to approach this. Sure. So I would recommend going through the presentation. All right.

Okay.

So the next piece of this is to identify what the objective is. So, and we'll pause here and I'd love to hear from all of you. What do you want people to understand about these topics? What questions would you like the event to answer? And what questions or comments are you hearing from residents on these topics?

Go ahead. Traffic is one question. We always get that, hey, the development is going on. What is the traffic impact? Do we do traffic impact study? That's always one, number one question. The second thing is when all these new residents come, as the development is going on, do we have enough school capacity, water capacity? Right. And then how our PD department is going to be expanded, or how they are going to meet the increase in the population size. So those questions we get . Those are the same things on here.

I'm just curious. Town halls are great. If it's nothing more than just an information setting, what's the end result? Because at the end of the day, if we say we're going to build somewhere, let's say we're going to build on this corner over here, an apartment complex, and it's going to be done in five years, the commentary that's going to come, which is totally fine, I'm just curious what what is the efficacy of the feedback going to be? Because we could sit and pontificate and figure out everything under the sun, what we want people to understand, and yes, water and traffic and all that stuff makes sense, but what's the efficacy? What are we trying to accomplish from here? What are we going to take from it? Is there some, like, somebody's going to say something that's really going to change, like, the outcome of something. And that's what I'm trying to understand. Otherwise, it's really what it's going to turn out is it's going to be a debate. It's going to be a debate. And unless you actually gather, if you have questionnaires and a survey, et cetera, what's the end result going to be?

That's a great question. I can provide some clarification on that because since I introduced this, this is kind of what I was envisioning. So what I was mentioning is about collecting the questions in advance is so there is no, we don't start having a debate in the middle and we only have 90 minutes. So 90 minutes and I also forgot to mention, sorry, under community leaders making sure that SRPD and FIRE are there at least one representative. but the point is is that um in the conversation the reason i brought this forward is because in the multitude of conversations i've had with residents they are oftentimes relieved once they actually understand what's happening and unfortunately um people many people are are um you know receiving information that's happening in in ice in like public like forums and it's the people providing that information are not actually aware of what's actually happening. And so this is really to provide some reassurance and clarity to our residents. It may not answer every question, but I guarantee you every conversation I've had just a little bit of information I'm able to have in a 10 minute conversation with people, they walk away feeling a lot more reassured and there's immense gratitude for giving them the time of day to ask their question and have it answered.

And I agree with that.

Just to add a little bit on that one.

If I could just finish really quick.

And again.

If I could, which is totally fine, but what I'm trying to understand is I'm not debating whether to have it or not. I'm just trying to understand the efficacy at the end of it. Because if we, I get questions all the time and I answer it. But that's after the staff report and after the meetings and after the fact. And then people come to me with questions and then they are like, well, thank you. Councilman, thank you, Robert, for explaining it to me. I'm sure you do, too, as well. I'm trying to understand what the point is of it, because if there's something more value we could add, I want to talk about that than just giving, like, just repeating what we just did at a council meeting. BACK TO THE PUBLIC AND GIVE THEM THE SAME INFORMATION?

THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT THIS PROCESS IS DESIGNED TO DO, TO IDENTIFY WHAT THE GOAL IS. THESE QUESTIONS ARE A STARTING POINT TO START TO IDENTIFY WHAT THAT GOAL IS. WE'LL GET INTO THAT A LITTLE BIT MORE ON THE NEXT SLIDE ALSO.

JUST FROM MY EXPERIENCE, TO We do regularly neighborhood meetings, town hall meetings, and we get people come there, they start asking questions, and thanks to always, our chief used to be with us, who used to be able to answer some of those questions that as a council members, we cannot answer those questions. So the reason why we want to have a subject matter expert in that situation is because they'll get a first hand information rather than we, refresh it, change it, and add it the way we wanted to do it. Instead of that, they will get, for example, when they ask, hey, how many beats is done in this neighborhood, right? So that information I cannot provide. But when the chief is there, chief provides that better information. What are precautions that they can take? So those things, like in city council meeting, they cannot come and ask those questions here. And due to Brown Act, we cannot even respond to them comments. Now, what is happening is when we are losing that communication with our constituents, the problem is someone else is filling up in that gap and putting a lot of misinformation and disinformation. And they're putting, like, you'll be shocked. For example, not to digress, but for example, someone said that, how come we took so much money out of our general fund and built this over-crossing and became a budget deficit? Right, so I was shocked. This is like, who gave you this information? How you got that information? So those kind of questions, when people are coming, that clearly shows that there is someone else is using that gap to put all this misinformation. So the best option is when we have subject matter expert Right. They give the first-hand information, it's done.

And I think we need to, this might also be a larger discussion. I think we're going to be starting to touch on some of the items that are coming up in our strategic communication plan to address some of these sources of information, if you can, because If we're talking about internet, that's a whole different world. People that would attend an in-person event might not be active on the internet and vice versa. So it's identifying the audience, identifying the purpose of the message. So that's one topic to discuss. And Simone will touch on a little bit of this, in particular what I'm about to say next. Also, we're talking about different formats. So if we have two council members having a community event, and asking staff to attend, then we have to start talking about staff workload because we wanna make sure that we afford that opportunity to every council member. And if we have multiple council members holding multiple events and trying to get staff to it, hasn't been a problem. I don't project that it will be a problem, but that's an item to address. Also, not to jump too far ahead with Simone's slides, we will discuss an event that we recently had that didn't have council members involved. And when you don't have council members at an event, either two or all five of you, that does change the tenor of the meeting. So we have to discuss, is this an event for the council to interact with the public? Is this an event for staff to provide information in a one-on-one discussion? If people are submitting questions ahead of time and you're having staff answer all the questions, what role do you see the council playing in a particular meeting? You could have all five council members there, then it turns it into a Brown Act meeting and it's completely different. I would want to note that if the proposal is to expand it to invite other agencies, I would like to communicate with the superintendent, the directors of those agencies as a courtesy to make sure that we are following their procedures for inviting, if it's their elected officials, I don't know who you're talking about, but those are questions we should ask. And then if we are organizing it, then we have to have a dedicated staff member to putting together agendas, or you can do something on your own as well and use a city facility.

This is what I'm actually proposing. If it seems like it's getting way too complicated and I already kind of had a vision And I'm happy, you know, to share this opportunity with another council member so we don't break a Brown Act. But I really would love to have another council member or the mayor, whoever wants to be part of this. But I personally, and I feel bad saying this, but I personally feel like I would rather just do it myself.

Well, and I wouldn't feel bad about that because we do have rules and regulations depending on the scope, the budget. If Simone can continue, she will outline.

Absolutely. I mean, I want to let her finish those presentations.

Yeah, we had a great meeting last week and we can increase those types of engagement. But I just want to make sure that, you know, that we're all on the same page. So we all expect the same outcomes. Sure, sure.

It's a good learning experience nonetheless. Yeah.

100%.

So is there anything else on the three questions that are at the top of the slide that you'd like to add? So I'm hearing traffic, the impact of new development. I'm hearing the impact on schools and services like water, impact on PD services. and maybe more direct communication with residents on these topics.

Is there anything else that comes to mind from those? Sure, I can kind of break that down really quick. So the developers is just so people can get a little bit more specifics if they have specific questions that they can actually answer more concisely. In terms of talking with the Chamber or any other business entity, it's really to, as people talk about, okay, concerns about growth, what are we gonna do for revenues and commerce, right, and continue to bring that in. The transportation agencies, it's also to address traffic issues, impact, as Council Member Varos mentioned, you know, that was the whole point of mentioning their presence. The school district, same thing, you know, is to address, you know, some people have actually been saying that our schools are going to be overcrowded when we're actually in some of our schools, we're actually suffering from under enrollment. So, and then the water district is also another question that sometimes, so the district representative, when I mentioned that is also because sometimes people are concerned about water. and how do we meet the demand? And I think it would be a great opportunity for them to learn how actually when we do have more density in the way that is being built out, we actually conserve more water. And how does that, how are they, but also learning more specifically how their agencies are preparing for that. And so, And then I think what was already mentioned is, you know, we always, like Council Member Verros and I have done several occasions in the past is we've invited our San Ramon PD, you know, and we could also see if FIRE would like to participate, but it's just that sometimes people have specific questions, and this isn't really so much, you know, about centering ourselves as it is about facilitating a conversation where all the different stakeholders can say it in their own voice and share what their vision is.

Does that make sense?

So that's it.

Taking notes, yeah. I don't write as fast as I type.

Anything else on those questions? Anything else to add? Okay. So... There is a, so in terms of next steps, there is a strategic communications framework that I find really helpful for things like this. This is used pretty widely in like public relations, community engagement, and it's basically the first letters of some of these, oh, I'm sorry, did I go backwards? No, I didn't, okay, sorry. But it's research, plan, implement, and evaluate. So for the research step, which would come next in this process, what we're proposing is launching community survey about these topics to identify what questions people have and how they would like to interact with that information. What that would do is allow us to bring data back to the city council and look at how we can approach community engagement on these topics that reflects what the community is interested in learning and in what ways they're interested in engaging. SO THAT WOULD BE A FUTURE COUNCIL MEETING PROBABLY IN JUNE AND THEN DEPENDING ON THE DISCUSSION THERE, THEN WE WOULD GO AND WORK ON DELIVERING WHATEVER WAS AGREED ON AND THEN WE WOULD COME BACK AND EVALUATE AND REPORT ON WHAT THAT EVENT LOOKED LIKE. EVENT OR WHATEVER FORM IT TAKES. SO JUST AS A QUICK EXAMPLE OF SOMETHING THAT WE DID RECENTLY THAT KIND OF WENT THROUGH THIS SAME PROCESS, ONE OF THE COUNCIL STRATEGIC GOALS FOR FY25-26 WAS ENHANCING ENGAGEMENT AND COMMUNICATIONS WITH RESIDENTS IN THE BUSINESS COMMUNITY, SPECIFICALLY AROUND MEASURE N AND THE FINANCIAL OUTLOOK FOR THE CITY. So some of the research that we've been doing over the past year on that topic, we've had one-on-one conversations with community members. We did a survey. We have heard feedback from a lot of public events and presentations. And so in putting that together, one of the things that we heard was people were interested in more conversational FORMATS FOR UNDERSTANDING THE BUDGET. AND SO LAST WEEK, DIRECTOR JENNIFER WAKEMAN FROM OUR FINANCE DEPARTMENT PUT TOGETHER A ROUND TABLE STYLE DISCUSSION. WE INVITED MEMBERS OF THE SOME STAFF ALSO CAME AND PRESENTED AN UPDATE ON THE CITY'S KIND OF CURRENT FINANCIAL OUTLOOK AND ALSO THE MEASURE N AND KIND OF BUDGET OUTLOOK INTO THE FUTURE TO GET MUCH MORE INFORMAL FEEDBACK FROM PEOPLE. And one of the things that we found through that format was that that conversational approach to it really helped us get past the first questions and really get into the level of helping people understand some of these topics that can be a little bit more technical or or require a little bit more context sometimes. And it gave us some really practical feedback that we're looking at how we can integrate into our future communications on the budget and on Measure N. Whether that is in print, we've committed to putting an article in all of our printed city newsletters that go out quarterly now. So making the budget really central to those updates is one of the things we were hearing was important to people. And as we start to hear more of these questions from the community, it also helps us identify what pieces of the budget there may be an interest in like a deeper dive on. So that's just a quick example of one of the ways where we were able to kind of take some intentional research and then design outreach that was based on that and being able to come back and see what we learned from it. So that is one way we could move forward here. There are also some other things that are listed in your staff report as alternative options. Thank you.

OK. Well, here's the discussion and feedback part. So you've already provided some good perspective. I think we've heard some good perspective over on this side. But if you want to clarify anything,

Yeah. I love the idea that you had a specific discussion about the budget and so the staff could hone in on, you know, the subject matter. I don't think you should have it too complicated. I think you should have one or two major topics. And I think if the public... gives us those questions ahead of time, then the staff can really do the research so that we are prepared when they come in. And there could be some additional questions maybe at the end that people have based on what's already been discussed. But I think getting those questions from the public is really important because it kind of brings the public in more. Because when we're up here at the dais, you know, we're kind of not as accessible and maybe we're not getting what the public really wants to know about. And if they don't show up, you know, that's their problem. But if we are here and we know the subject matter, I think it's going to be very fruitful if we have an ongoing discussion on issues. you know, the city is dealing with.

So, yeah, I know I brought up discussion of feedback portion, but let's just go with the standard routine here. Any questions on the staff report? Because I do want to open it up for public comment as well. And then we can go into final feedback.

Okay. No, I think what you were, the last thing, forget it. Don't worry about it.

Okay.

It's getting late.

All right, so if there's no more questions, let's open it up for public comment. Public comment is now open. Do we have a speaker card?

Yes, Elena Formosa.

I really think that Council Member Rubio should ask the staff to initiate this request that is your baby as a CIP. You need to explain what is your frequency that you're thinking of, like every month you want to have this, every quarterly? or like what time, during work hours? Are you gonna get a lot of residents or in the evening? If it's in the evening, you're gonna have to spend extra money for staff time. I know you think money is free, but I'm paying for it. Quite honestly, Council Member Rubio, right now, I feel like you are telling us this. I am hungry. I feel like I want to eat General C's chicken. So please, can you tell me how I can cook it when it is your hunger and it is your dish? None of us feel the same hunger. None of us really want to eat this dish. But you, because of your power, of your position, then you're imposing it on us. I wanna talk about your housing and transportation. I hope this is not like you're gonna push for expedition of some of the projects that are being slowed down. And the transportation is not because you're funded by maybe communist Chinese BYD with electric company, car companies, that they already defrauded $1 billion from Newsom to make medical masks. Did you get any? I certainly didn't. But $1 billion of California taxpayers' money went to buy those medical masks. from a electric car company for what? I never received it. So what are you trying to push? Like driverless electric cars made by BYD in China? Or are you trying to push for electric scooters made in communist China? What are you trying to push? Are you... forgive me, funded by them, using your power, because that's how those communist Chinese officials in China make a lot of money privately. And then they're able to come here and buy our house in cash. Not me. Every house I want to buy, I have to go through the bank. I have to be approved. So I don't know what you're trying to accomplish. If you're trying to make me richer, spend less of my property taxes, then I can buy houses. If you want to keep spending my property taxes unaccounted, without any accountability, then I will be poor, and I can never buy houses. And then you'll have to get communist Chinese or other immigrants from other countries who are very rich. And we Americans are so poor. Lastly, I really would like you to please not disguise any of your baby in the future as the staff's report. Please, we have proper meeting structures that is established and proven for over 100 years in California. Please respect that. You're trying to establish a republic on your own, and it's not going to work. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker, please.

There are no more speaker cards.

Okay, we'll close public comment. And back to staff for final discussion and feedback.

Yeah. Oh, staff, go for it.

Anyone?

Oh, you want me to, should we say, are we speaking right now?

Do you have any final comments, Robert?

No, thank you. Thank you for the presentation. Thank you.

Okay. Oh, okay, go ahead. Let me kind of come down here. I'm going to get you last, Vice Mayor.

Yeah, that's fine. I APPRECIATE YOU BEING HERE AT THIS LATE HOUR AND LUCID AND MAKING GOOD POINTS OF WHAT YOU'RE LOOKING FOR.

I APPRECIATE IT. ALL RIGHT. THANK YOU. SORRY FOR KEEPING YOU WAITING THIS LONG.

NO WORDS. THANK YOU.

OKAY.

WE GO OVER TO VICE MAYOR RUBIO.

SO JUST TO CLARIFY, SO I brought this forward was because I had some residents reaching out to me and asking me for this information. And rather than having, answering each single person over and over and over again the same question, it just seemed more efficient, like, why don't we just get all the people in one room, collect the questions and we answer them and record it in some way possibly, document those answers so that those answers are available should someone in the future who didn't attend have the same question again. So it's about, and one of the reasons I also offered to just do it myself is because I actually am putting my own free time and energy to putting this together. And this would also not entail any staff time to carry it out.

All right, so I guess I'll just say from my perspective, I mean, I like your survey idea anyway, regardless of whether it's just transportation or housing, but I like the idea of, you know, seeing what people want to talk about, and I do like the format, that financial budget roundtable. The feedback I got from that was that it was, Well received and it was good like you said a good conversational way having a getting information conveyed And as council members, I think we already can use City facilities if we want to host our own events Informal events we can converse with the public We can do that conversationally And we can do that without having all the council members present and triggering a Brown Act event and all that sort of thing. So I guess maybe it's back to you. What's your preference on the transportation and housing side of things, how you would prefer to move forward?

I just think to make it easier for everybody because it sounds like it gets much more convoluted and complicated if we get staff involved and all of that. I'm happy to just kind of do this independently and, you know,

I think that, I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

Well, I think the challenge is that it sounds like staff may not be coordinating. You might be doing the coordination. No, no. You might want some staff present so staff would still be involved.

Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I just want to reduce the time and labor to staff. I would love to have just, I mean, when I initially brought this forward a few months, actually, I think it was last year initially, but finally made the formal request back in February 10th. You know, it was more because of that, because I had to bring it before council in order to have, my understanding was, is I needed to have bring it before council. I was informed I had to bring it before council in order to have staff there, correct? Is that correct?

Yes and no, we don't need to have things brought before council for staff, but the reasoning behind the request is to make sure that we have direction that's supported by the council, depending on the scope. And so I'm hearing a scope of right now, that the city, and we can, it hasn't been consistent past practice, but we can after discussing it with the attorney, or Martin, sorry, I didn't mean to. just generalize you here, it's getting a little late. But we can provide city facilities as long as it's not campaign related, it's perfectly acceptable. But if it's a more formalized approach, like the example tonight that Simone presented, then we do need direction from council because we have to shift our efforts. Now, whatever a council member holds an event, we are more than happy to provide staff if we have the capacity to do so under the timing. And I also make that request that the request come through me so I can monitor who's going where, just to make sure that if we start having more and more events, then we might need to bring it back to council for discussion. I don't anticipate that, but I just wanna make sure that that's out there, that we have to be aware of staff's time and participation.

Right. No, this is just something I want to do one time because especially in the last, I would say, year and a half, there's been just an uptick in concern about this. And so I just really want to be able to make ourselves, avail ourselves, and in conjunction with other people who equally are excited and happy to do it, to answer questions and the whole, I love the idea, like I said in the staff report, of collecting those questions in advance because it allows us to make sure that we have, we can give thoughtful, thorough answers to those questions. So for me, the only thing I need at this juncture is a room or a space and maybe, like I said, two, Staff members, max three, but it doesn't have to be a lot. I just need someone, you know, a staff member who'd be happy to just be a, even one might work. Just somebody that can kind of provide a little guidance if we get stuck somewhere. It's very, very casual. It's intended just to be very welcoming.

Okay, I have a couple of questions. Comments, but I would like to ask the council to once again extend the meeting All right.

Thank you. We are drawing I think towards conclusion here, but let's go ahead and get a motion and a To extend for another 30 minutes. I move to extend another 30 minutes, please I Second okay motion by vice mayor Rubio second by council member Rose Everybody save your votes.

Oh, I'm sorry. It's because it keeps shutting off on me. Sorry, just waiting for the window to pop up. There we go.

Okay.

All right. We are extended for another 30 minutes, and you have another point.

Well, I think I had my question just answered by the city manager. But if we do get to a point where we need to formalize this some more, this is sounding a little bit like ad hoc subcommittees under the Brown Act. And we could use that process, because it's already set up, whereby the council would just appoint a one-person subcommittee or a two-person subcommittee to hold a town hall meeting type of of meeting using uh you know the required and necessary city staff and using city facilities to do that that is another option that's that's at the council's disposal

But if we, may I ask a question about that really quick? Well, it would be a two-part town hall, because it would be one for housing, one for transportation, so we don't overload people.

It would be two separate subcommittees, yes.

Oh, so it would be two separate subcommittees. And then the thing is, with... the arrangements I've already put in place, how is that going to potentially be make, how is that gonna be further complicated now because see that's why I'm almost like just thinking like.

That's one suggestion but the other suggestion could be we provide a room Council members can organize whoever they want and then go through me for staff, you know, who is available and what our workloads are. So I appreciate that conversation. And then, you know, we discussed earlier, if it becomes burdensome or an issue, then we can bring it back to council at a later date and say, hey, let's hold off. But I don't anticipate that happening unless all five of you want to start reserving rooms and inviting agencies. I mean, it could even be just myself showing up if the expectation of a question answered is general and we'll get back to you with more detail. There's also, we haven't discussed that, but it's also getting late. What's the scope and the scale? Because each topic could be its own 90 minute, two hour discussion, depending on how deep you want to dive. Or if you want just a general, hey, I heard you guys use $27 million of general fund money on a bridge. I can stand up there and say, nope. We didn't. It was a certain portion, and here are the funding levels. If you need more information, I can send you to the right person.

Right. And so it's more what you and I have discussed in the past in terms of my vision was really to just create something that was engaging, you know, because there's many people there and voices and experiences, right? Right. And having, as I mentioned to you before, I'm like, I'm fine if it's just even yourself, you know, or maybe one other person if you'd like, but we don't really need a lot. We just need just at least, it would be nice to have at least one yourself would be great, because if there's anything in between that you can fill, that would be wonderful. And like you said, if for some strange, if we collect the questions in advance, we can address that too, you know, and make sure that we're not like, you know, and if it's still something that we can answer in a reasonable amount of time, we can just say, you know, we'll need a little more time. We'll get back to you.

As, as city manager, I can worry about staff and figure that out. And if it becomes an issue, we can, we can bring it back to the council for further direction.

I like that process rather than a subcommittee process. I think so too. I think the formality of that, because then we have to decide on what, you know, who's on the subcommittee and do all that kind of stuff, and that becomes a public forum meeting and all that. I think we just want to have a conversation with residents on a topic and have some SMEs show up to maybe answer it when we get in a hard spot.

Right. Yeah, exactly. That's it. Nothing fancy, but... You know, hopefully we'll answer some people's begging and burning, like Mark said, burning questions, you know? So, yeah, that's it. So should I make a motion for that or what should I do? We don't need to vote on that, right?

If staff is clear on direction, I don't see that we need a motion.

Okay, so I will work with the city manager for guidance. Do you anticipate any other complications? I mean, if I've organized...

If you've organized it, we can provide the room space. Just let us know the date and the time, and then I will look at what staff can attend to answer any potential questions.

And work with your schedules. Okay, perfect. That's it. Thank you, Simone. I appreciate it, and sorry about the tardiness. All right. Thank you, everybody.

okay well that sounds like that closes that item out for now and uh be a little bit more development on that but uh appreciate the discussion so let's move on to the final item of the night which is city manager comments and council member comments it is getting late so i would just implore the council members to keep bear that in mind in your report outs and mayor along that theme i will cede my time to the council and waive my update for this evening Okay. All right, who would like to go first? I'll go quick, thank you.

Go ahead. Yeah, thank you, Mayor. So Thursday at 5 PM at the Danville Police Department, we are doing our ribbon cutting for the Naloxone emergency kit. This was brought to us by the San Juan Valley leadership. Leadership group which I'm a I'm a student of this year. So please come out and support us at the ribbon-cutting at the Danville police station this April 30th 5 p.m Thank you.

All right. Great.

Thank you Okay, April 15 they attended art advisory meeting important item is that they elected chair, Robert Bickle, and Ranjini as their vice chair. And also they touched based on all our San Ramon cultural art programs, which are pretty thriving. And a lot of good things happening in arts world within the San Ramon. And the next one is on MCE, April 16th, attended MCE board meeting. There was one closed session item that I cannot divulge all those details, but there is a news article released that there was an overpayment payroll error for CEO for $59,000, which she's going to pay back. But then there was a lot of composition on that. And also another important item for everybody to know is There is an agenda item for delegating energy procurement authorities, CEO and the technical chair. So that conversation is going to continue in our next board meeting. So that's two items. Thanks.

Great. Thank you. Council Member Adler.

Yes, on April 15th, Wednesday night, I was asked to help kick off a Start Smart class at Cal High. And I made some opening remarks, talking points that they had asked me to raise. Dolores Pita of the San Ramon Valley Street Smarts Program said, was asked me to do that. There were about 275 people there, students and parents, all has to do with teen driving safety. That's what really Start Smart is a teen driver safety education program. and it's presented by the CHP, and it's specifically designed for new and future teen drivers, along with their parents or guardians. So the Principal Demetrius Ball was there, and we had CHP Officer Daniel Gilmore lead the presentation about, and shared insights about teen driving safety. On April 18th, Saturday, I went to a Relay for Life cancer survival event, which was held at the Doherty Valley High School football field, and I was asked to do that by the president of the American Cancer Society Club, and they were having a few people share their cancer survival stories, and I actually have one, because I had prostate cancer about 12 years ago. And we had a teacher from Cal High who has breast cancer. So the only people there were the kids, but they were there to raise money So we shared our stories. They spent the night on the field and raised money for the Cancer Society. So I thought that was a great thing. On the 21st of April, I went to a team council meeting at the community center here close by. There was a discussion about recycling and sustainability presented by John Bell of our public works department. We discussed emissions mandated by the California Air Resources Board. There was a discussion about passenger vehicle, what we needed, when those emissions were required by 2035. We also talked about water conservation. And talked about how we have, you know, these sprinklers that we have around the city can be activated by your cell phone. So it's kind of convenient where they can keep an eye on those. And also talked about lighting. 90% of our park's lighting is LED, so that saves money on energy. On the 22nd of April, the mayor and I went to, along with Brian Bornstein, director of public works, we went to a briefing by Luz Gomez. who's the Ward 2 rep, and also the Community Affairs rep was Joe Volker, and that was put on by East Bay Mud, and they made a point of talking about our water supply is strong, the total system storage is 91% capacity, which is about 111% of the average for this time of year, so we're doing very well. March was not a good month for water, but it was made up for by April, which was a great month for rain supply. So we're doing well. On the 23rd, I did a phone interview with a Cal High student We talked about third spaces, which is, I wasn't familiar with that subject matter, but I learned that it has to do with a place outside home, work, or school where teens can gather without spending a lot of money. So we talked about that, indicated we do have a lot of parks and community centers, libraries, downtown squares. So we also have middle school teen centers at the Iron Horse and Pine Valley. So I think they're gonna have a committee where they're gonna find other spaces for teens specifically, who, by the way, suffer from depression, and especially when they're not with other people, a lot of times they suffer from depression. So it's a good idea, so they're gonna work on that. Also, I went to sheep shearing, other people did, forest home farms. And, of course, I had to buy kettle corn because I couldn't stand it and the smell was so overpowering I had to buy a bag. I bought some of the mayor's honey. It was a great event. It was well attended, one of the best attended I think we've had for a while. And it's great to see the community out there, you know, the kids riding the tractor. And we also raised money for Forest Home Farms, the residents there. So that was really what we were trying to do. On the 26th, the Dublin San Ramon Women's Club hosted a art reception. at the also at our community center and uh pat anderson and joan nurse were there we um gave certificates to the kids the parents were there it was a wonderful event i love art and so i asked the kids you know what their projects were you know if they drew a picture of their dog what their dog's name was but they really had good under wonderful Art I was so impressed with the kids and it also builds confidence when you do An art project and get recognition and I think it really helps with your self-esteem. So it was a wonderful event. I was glad I went there and then next day we went to Marisol I went to the San Ramon Historic Foundation and And of course, it was good to hear how well we did at the sheep shearing event. So talked about future events for that. But anyway, that's what I did. Thank you.

All right. Thank you, Vice Mayor Rubio.

Okay, I'll keep this short. So April 11th to the 15th, I attended the APTA legislative conference. As many of you probably know, there are some concerns On behalf of County Connection, which is the board I sit on, having some concerns coming up on funding. So we went to advocate to restore the Federal Highway and Mass Transit Fund and ACDAPTA's recommendations on mobility and innovation and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act reauthorization. There were also three other bills, which I will, for the sake of time spare, not go into it, but if anybody wants to ask me, I'm happy. to discuss with them what those three bills were and County Connection's position on those bills. Then on... On April 16th, I attended the regular meeting for County Connection, which just key highlights. We talked about the summer outreach calendar and Youth Ride Free for this year, even though 2CTA is eventually going to merge and take over the Youth Ride Free under a different name. For this year, we are going to proceed as usual with the same program through triple CTA. And then we approved a revised draft alternative service plan should funding not be forthcoming and basically what it is is that County Connection for some time has provided expanded service not out of obligation but out of will and so if that funding is cut it will impact in particular paratransit which are services that provide rides to people with disabilities and our seniors. And then we just approved the new MOU with the choice in aging, and I think that should suffice for that. And then on... 420, on April 20th, I went to the Tri-Valley Transportation Council. Basically, we just approved the 2025 audit, reviewed and provide direction on the Tri-Valley transportation development fee, revenue conditions, and policy for project funding, and adopted resolution number 202606, approving rotation of chair, vice chair, administrator, and treasurer for fiscal year 2026 through 27. and through fiscal year 2027-2028, an authorization to rotate LAIF successors. And then after that, I attended on April 24th, the San Ramon Valley Unified School District Liaison Committee meeting. I will basically just report out on what was... Primarily said from the school district side to share with our residents is that the meeting discussed the recognition of seven schools in San Ramon District for their achievements and the implementation of an ethnic studies graduation requirement which received positive student feedback. Staffing changes included promotions and new hires including a new special education director. The district reached a budget agreement with the teachers union and restoring counseling positions and maintaining class sizes. A new general obligation bond is being considered to address facility needs and the city's budget is projected to be 500,000 in the black next year despite a 1.7 million loss in franchise revenue. This is from the city of San Ramon, so I apologize. I crossed over by accident. I was just trying to read quickly. So that's about it. And I also attended, as Council Member Adler mentioned, on April 27th, the San Ramon Historic Foundation, which he reported on. Thank you.