City Council - Regular Meeting

I'm going to call to order the regular meeting of the City Council for July 14th, 2026. We've got a lot of items to cover tonight. I've got like 11 consent items, a proclamation, we've got two new business items, and so we'll Hopefully we'll get it going and we'll keep things succinct and on track. Just for everyone's awareness, this is our first meeting under the new rules of Senate Bill 707. So that requires a two-way communication. This is similar to what we did coming out of COVID, having a hybrid type system. So bear with us as we do this for the first time with the city council. So having said that, please call the roll.

Council Member Adler. Here. Council Member Joannette.

Present.

Council Member Varoze.

Here.

Vice Mayor Rubio. Here. And Mayor Armstrong.

Here. Everyone, please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under none, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

All right. Thank you. Please be seated. Okay, let me turn it back over to the clerk. Any announcements?

So announcements, changes and additions to the agenda, there are none. If you are attending in person and wish to speak during public comment or on an agenda item, please complete a speaker card located in the back of the room and submit it to the city clerk. If you are attending remotely via Zoom and wish to speak during public comment or on an agenda item, please use the raise your hand feature on the computer or dial star nine on your telephone to request to speak when public comment is open for that agenda item. When it is your turn, you will be unmuted and may provide comments up to three minutes. After your allotted time has expired, you will be muted again. Written public comments received by 5 p.m. today were provided to the city council and are available for review in the red binder in the back of the room and on the city's website under tonight's meeting agenda.

Okay, thank you. So I'm going to call for public comment. At this time, the public is permitted to address the City Council on any non-agenda item related to the business of the City Council. Items that are on the consent calendar, including a request 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 and special presentation items under Section 6 of tonight's agenda. And as a reminder, please limit your comments to three minutes. And do we have any public comment?

We do. We've received several speaker cards. Our first speaker is Freedom by God and Above America.

Hello, I haven't even started and the time is already ticking.

Okay, we'll give you five seconds at the end. Go ahead.

No, can we start fresh, please? I need to be able to put things down before I start. Okay, can you restart the clock, please? It's not fair, you just started ticking as soon as, I'm like still right here, the time is already ticking.

Okay, noted. Thank you. We'll start over.

First of all, my deepest condolences to the loss of our great Senator Lindsey Graham. Secondly, I wish to invoke God above America, because he is above the flag of the United States of America that I just pledged allegiance to, give me courage and strength like the forefathers who founded this nation, so even a Gentile born in Taiwan like me may partake in the freedom derived from our inalienable right, because we are all created by you, and help me tonight to defend my freedom that is in jeopardy because of corrupt government. In Jesus' name, amen. Today, because I only have less than a few minutes, that I cannot properly question a lot of items before us that you guys are trying to pass millions of dollars tonight. without disclosure to the public under consent agenda. So I will do my best. First, non-agendized comment. Per government code, fight point, per government code, 54954.3, parentheses C in Brown Act, The legislative body shall not prohibit a member of the public from criticizing the policies, procedures, programs, or services of the agency or of the acts or mission of the legislative body. Furthermore, the courts in the past in Laventhal versus Vista Unified School District in 1997 had stipulated that members of the public have broad constitutional right to comment on any subject relating in the business of government body. Any attempt to restrict the content of such speech must be narrowly tailored to effectuate compelling state interest. Specifically, the courts found that policies that prohibit members of the public from criticizing school district members, employees were unconstitutional. Therefore, I wish to remind you to observe my right and not to frivolously ask the police to arrest me or toss me out of the public comment because I criticize city manager or any employees that work for the city with communist Chinese last name. I wish to pull today in consent agenda 5.3 and 5.5 because there are probable cause for financial corruption because of insufficient disclosure of why there were spending that total to $3 million under 5.3 and for 5.5 there is a two million dollar in grant money that will impact the Quality of life of the residents that were not disclosed to the public. Thank you.

All right.

Thank you And please let me know if you granted or not Catherine grace

Good evening, Mayor and council members. Is it hot enough for you today? Experts warn that this is just the start. The Guardian newspaper highlights research showing that in the years ahead, California and Las Vegas could see more heat related health problems than anywhere else in the country. We're not alone. According to the BBC, more than 2,700 people may have died during recent heat waves in England and Wales, with 2,200 deaths in June alone, just a month ago. Extreme heat is claiming lives around the world. How long before heat threatens the most vulnerable among us? our grandparents, infants, our neighbors. Here's what this means for us both nationally and right here in San Ramon. By 2040, annual heat-related hospitalizations in the U.S. could double. Extreme heat already causes more deaths in the U.S. each year than all other severe weather events combined. Heat-related deaths have increased by over 50% in just the last 20 years. Here in San Ramon, we're no strangers to high temperatures, wildfire smoke, and power outages. Last summer brought several days over 100 degrees, and the East Bay faced wildfire warnings and shutoffs. Higher bills mean tough choices for the elderly, outdoor workers, and those without reliable air conditioning. As Mark Wolf, an energy expert, notes, when temperatures break records, utility bills often do too. They certainly do ours. The threat of extreme heat is here. By staying informed, checking on neighbors, and supporting local action, we can help protect those most at risk. but we also need bigger solutions. I urge the council to support the new California Polluters Pay Superfund bill to be introduced next year. With bold action, we can meet these challenges ahead. For your reference, I've provided a handout of the original Guardian article that informed my remarks tonight. Thank you very much.

Thank you. And we do have that article. Thank you. Next speaker, please.

Sarah Leshenlow.

Hello, council. Hi, staff. I hope you are all having a wonderful, wonderful, warm, warm evening. I am here tonight in support of Catherine and in support of the Make Polluters Pay movement. So I'm not going to add a whole lot else to what Catherine already so eloquently articulated, but I actually want to define something for the people in the room that may have never heard of this before. For those of us in the room that may not understand what this whole Make Polluters Pay initiative is it is a push to get massive fossil fuel companies, the ones that are responsible for the lion's share of greenhouse gas emissions, to finance climate disaster repairs, infrastructure upgrades, and public health costs instead of passing that burden on to everyday taxpayers. That's for all of you in the room. And this is undeniably a good thing. And if it's not, if there's problems with it, it's something that we should discuss as a city. We're not really asking you guys to do too much, to be honest. I think we're just asking you very simply to maybe sign a letter, express support on behalf of the city of San Ramon to our state legislature. Because I can send an email to my state assembly member, you can send an email to your state assembly member. But when all of you represent the people of San Ramon, we show up in full force and we're really, really hard to ignore. And the truth is that this is going to happen sooner or later. It is simply your choice whether to put San Ramon at the forefront of this movement or just to follow as other cities take initiative. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Mr. Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council Members, good to see all of you. I'm going to speak for the main reason I came today at the finance, but I wanted to share my thoughts on one thing, something you've all heard me say, so I don't want to sound like a broken record, but in terms of principle, that's very important. Yesterday, I came here to support a friend of mine who's running for a position here in San Ramon in November. And I got to sit down with Lisa and Joan. I thought it was going to be a 10-minute meeting, go and look at it, sign, support, whatever. It turned out to be very, very educational meeting. They ended up spending two hours. It's just the two of us. They ended up spending. We got here 3 PM. We left 5 o'clock. AN HOUR AND 15 MINUTES WAS GOING THROUGH PAGE BY PAGE WHAT IT TAKES TO BECOME A COUNCIL MEMBER, WHAT IT TAKES A MAYOR. I WAS PLANNING ON RUNNING FOR MAYOR BUT DUE TO HEALTHY ISSUES I STOPPED IT. With the amount of work I saw, I still would have withdrawn my name because I absolutely underestimated it. But the most important thing for me is after the meeting, for 45 minutes, they sat down and answered all our questions regarding the process, how a government, a city government, what works what. Why am I saying this? It's something I've always advocated for each and every one of you. to have whether it's a town hall meeting, call it whatever name it is, to have a discussion, not a three minutes where I don't know where you stand. Of course I know where you stand, because I always meet you outside after the calls, but officially, where there's finance, marketing, where we get to answer, where you educate us, where we get to debate, it's missing from the city. It truly is. That makes us to get involved, appreciated. So I want to really appreciate them yesterday for really educating me and my partner, Pascal, for educating me on how the city works. But more than anything else, the last 45 minutes, without complaining, for taking the time to debate and answer my question. And I hope this is something that will go with the rest of the departments and everyone. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Next speaker, please.

Nick Harvey.

Hello, Mayor, Councilmember, staff. My name is Nick. I'm a lifelong Centerman resident, student, and a public policy researcher. And I'd like to echo what Catherine and Sarah, as well as numerous local community organizations like 350 Contra Costa and Indivisible Tri-Valley, have said in regarding to supporting the Make Polluters Pay Superfund Act. You all know it was hot today. I know it was hot today. And we know that temperatures are only gonna keep increasing in our city as the effects of the climate crisis get worse. And the city, by supporting a resolution to support this act, could potentially help promote climate adaptation and mitigation in our city, and help make the companies that are most culpable in this crisis pay their fair share. And I've worked in a local government before, so I know people bristle at these kind of symbolic proclamations. You have a lot of things on your plate. But this isn't just symbolic, because it means that if this bill is passed, it means more funding for climate change adaptation and mitigation. and ultimately a healthier and safer city that's better adapted for the century that lies ahead of us.

All right, thank you. Next speaker, please.

There are no more speaker cards, but we do have one remote participant with their hand raised, and that is Chirag Kathrani. And please begin speaking after you are unmuted. Your audio will be live, and we will be able to hear your comments. Please limit your comments to three minutes.

Hello Mayor, Councillor. council member and the city staff. I want to take this opportunity. The reason I did not show up over there is because I wanted to try out the remote Zoom comment because it's just enabled back after since October 9, 2023, when it was disabled without council's consent. City staff took addition without any consent of the council. When it was back in a discussion on April 8th, All of our council members spoke about reasons saying that they were anti-Chinese, anti-Semitic comments without any proof or with a zero incident of it. I'm thankful for the state of California for allowing us to speak back in the city council. And thank you. That's all on my side.

Okay. Thank you. Anyone else?

There are no more speakers.

Okay.

All right. Thank you. Then, uh, I will, uh, close public comment while we encourage your comments. Unfortunately, state law prevents the city council from discussing items that are not on the meeting agenda. Uh, city council does take them very seriously, however, and if appropriate staff will follow up.

Mayor, I'm so sorry. I forgot to mention we did receive written public comment for item number four from Brian Swanson.

Thank you.

Which again is online and in the back of the room and also for item 5.3 and 5.5 on the consent calendar.

Okay. And we have those, we received those electronically as well as have hard copies. Thank you. Okay, so we're going to move to item five, which is our consent calendar. So we've had a request to pull 5-3 and 5-5. I will just say on 5-5, this consent item, this is the $2 million grant that we requested, that we, some time ago, we received this grant from the Federal Housing and Urban Development. This is for design and improvements for our intelligent transportation system. So this is nearly seven miles of fiber optic cable. It goes across our major roads. This is Bollinger, Crow Canyon, Al Costa, Camino Ramon, San Ramon Valley Boulevard. And these improvements are going to help with our traffic. It will replace our old traffic signal communication system. It's going to help connect our traffic lights. In Contra Costa County, there's a smart signal project that's going to be taking place. Over 1,000 traffic signals within the county will be connected into that. This will connect our public facilities with high-speed internet, connect our automatic license plate readers. Anyway, from my perspective, what is being asked to be done in 5.5 is fairly simple. This is asking the council to authorize the mayor to sign the document that is basically gonna allow us to receive these funds, to receive $2 million of federal money so we can make these improvements. So I see this as an administrative item and I don't personally think it needs to be pulled. But I wanna hear if any other council members have any items that they think should be pulled or if they think 5.5 should be pulled? Anyone?

I just have a comment about that. So the importance of these fiber optics is if you drive on Doughty Road, From my home to here, based on the signals, it will take like 18 minutes to it can go to eight minutes because the intelligence of the traffic signals. That means every time someone is breaking, that means you are wasting the energy, like fuel. That will add cost as well as add pollution. All these things happen, right? So it is very important that we improve our infrastructure. This is very important that we also make sure our community receives a quality of life. So this helps us to address those important questions. So thanks to Congressman DeSonier for helping us to get this grant. And thanks, Mayor, for bringing this item.

Okay. Would anyone like to make a motion on our consent calendar? I move.

I will second that.

A motion by Council Member Veroz, second by Vice Mayor Rubio. And let's go ahead and take a vote. Okay, motion passes unanimously. We're going to move on to item six, a special presentation. Tonight we've got a proclamation declaring July 2026 as Park and Recreation Month and Parks Make Life Better Month. And I will do that. This presentation is for our staff as well as a commission member. All right. Hello, Henry, Adam, Kyle. This is really important. So, you know, this proclamation, and I hope when you make your comments, maybe you can tell us a little bit about the upcoming Critter Crossroads Park opening that we're going to have tomorrow at 4 o'clock. So I'd love to hear about that and let the public know that. Okay, this is a proclamation of the City Council of the City of San Ramon declaring July 2026 as Park and Recreation Month and Parks Make Life Better Month. Whereas this proclamation recognizes the importance of access to local parks, recreation, trails, open space, and facilities for the positive development of all San Ramon residents. And whereas parks and recreation promotes physical, emotional, and mental health and wellness through organized and self-directed fitness, play, and activity, and whereas parks and recreation supports the economic vitality of communities by partnering with local businesses and non-profits and offering events for residents' engagement, And whereas parks and recreation creates memorable experiences through youth sports and enrichment activities, teen centers and programs, senior activity centers, adult fitness and enrichment programs, free community events and beyond, And whereas parks and recreation foster social cohesiveness in communities by celebrating diversity, providing spaces to come together peacefully, modeling compassion, promoting social equity, connecting social networks, and ensuring all people have access to its benefits. And whereas parks and recreation supports human development and endless learning opportunities that foster social, intellectual, physical, and emotional growth in people of all ages and abilities, And whereas Parks and Recreation strengthens community identity by providing facilities and services that reflect and celebrate San Ramon's character, heritage, culture, history, aesthetics and landscape. And whereas Parks and Recreation facilitates community problem and issue resolution by providing safe spaces to come together peacefully and serving as key points of service, helping our communities heal both physically and emotionally. And whereas Parks and Recreation sustains and stewards our natural resources by protecting habitats and open space, connecting people to nature, and promoting the ecological function of parkland, and whereas Parks and Recreation supports safe, vibrant, attractive, progressive communities that make life better through positive alternatives offered in their recreational opportunities, and whereas Parks and Recreation remains versatile and innovative in providing vital services to San Ramon through local, national, and global emergencies, and whereas the California Park and Recreation Society has released a statewide public awareness campaign, Parks Make Life Better, to inform citizens of the many benefits of utilizing parks, facilities, programs, and services. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the City Council of the City of San Ramon recognizes the importance of access to local parks, trails, open space, and facilities for health, wellness, development, inspiration, and safety of all our residents, and hereby proclaims the month of July 2026 as Park and Recreation Month and Parks Make Life Better Month. Signed by me today. And I'll present this to who would like to receive this. We'll give it to the director.

All right.

I think they're probably going to want to take a picture of some kind. All right. All right. All right, so we've got Director Henry Prezzalonzo, Commissioner Kyle Levy, and Adam Chow, and whoever wants to speak. You going to start it off?

I'll kick it off just shortly, and good evening, Mayor and Council Members. For May-July, again, it's our opportunity to proudly celebrate Parks and Recreation Month in partnership with you all as well as our community. It's a brand promise that we bring out that says parks and recreation makes lives better, and communities better now and in the future. And that's what really we're looking at. It really highlights how we put play in all of our lives and how much of a vital community service we are as well. And simply, we do it through play. We do it through the nature, the exercise that we provide through our opportunities. positive spaces, gathering spaces, as well as, again, we try and do this for now and forever, and that's really what we're looking for from our end, and I just thank you for the support that the council has given us and for this proclamation that really kind of tells everybody, hey, it's time to play, and my invitation to each one of you is to go out and enjoy a park. Speaking of parks, I will do the quick one. I'm going to have Adam kind of give you a few more things that are going on, but tomorrow, 4 p.m., Critter Crossroads is the grand opening. It's officially... It's happening, it's ours, and we'll go ahead and celebrate that. So we invite you and all the community members to come join us four o'clock tomorrow on the dot. We'll kick this off to just come play. So thank you.

And Henry, what number park is that now?

After extensive research and doing many, many looks at what number park this, this is number 59. So we're gonna call it 59 officially with a 60 coming soon.

All right, okay, thank you. Next, Kyle, please. Sure.

Thank you. On behalf of the Parks and Community Services Commission, I just want to also thank the council for recognizing the important role that parks play in the quality of life in this city. If parks make life better, then life is better here than in a lot of other places. I mean, you just heard 59 parks. There aren't a lot of communities that can say that. And it's not just the parks. It's all the programs that go into it, the community events, the sense of community that parks help create. So I just want to thank the council for that. And also on behalf of the commission, I'd like to thank city staff for everything that they do to help with the community services and the quality of life in the city. It really is incredibly important, and it's what makes San Ramon such a special place to live in.

Thank you. All right. Thank you, Kyle. All right. Adam Chow or Parkson? Community Services Recreation Supervisor.

Yeah, and I'm here just to simply say thank you to allow us to be able to do things that we get to do. Serve the community and provide all the opportunities that we have for our community. Speaking of opportunities, I want to invite everybody to the number of different activities we've got even coming up just this week. We just talked about our grand opening for Critter Crossroads Park happening tomorrow. Thursday, we have our third Thursday Arts and Eats happening at the Doherty Station Community Arts Center from 5 to 9. Friday, we've got a dive-in movie doing Coco at the Doherty Valley Aquatic Center. Saturday, we have a Parks Make Life Better event day over at Athens Downs Park. And then on Sunday, we've got a summer concert called here at Central Park in the amphitheater, and that's going to be Pop Rock. So we offer a ton of opportunities for our community to get out, get involved, meet your neighbors, be in a park, enjoy. And so I hope that our community and our council and everybody else will be able to take advantage of all the different opportunities we have to have the parks, have the services, have the facilities that we have, because parks do make life better. And I do have pins for you guys as well that have that. So thank you so much.

Okay. You can leave those with the clerk. All right. Thank you. All right. Thank you, gentlemen. Any comments from counsel? Okay. I've got one from our former parks commissioner.

Thanks. The proclamation is very well written. Parks makes life better. Example for that, I play sports in our San Ramon. I use our fields for playing cricket, pickleball, playing basketball. So I can understand the importance of having these beautiful fields, sports fields and parks, because I have kids who are able to use each and every park so that we could enjoy the open green space. And these parks are not just about open green space, these are more than that, where you can meet your friends, make network, friendships are built there. So thank you, thanks to the staff for all your great work, especially focusing on diverse events and sports that we can cater to our diverse community. That makes very special about San Ramon. And also, I'm very glad to see that Critter's Crossroad Park is going to open. I was parks commissioner at that time when we were reviewing that design, and it's great to see it is going to open. Congratulations to staff, to council, to community for this beautiful park and proclamation. Thank you.

All right. Thank you. Anyone else? Council Member Adler.

Yeah, just briefly, I mean, I think parks are the heart and soul of this community. We have a great community, we have a lot of smart people, but everybody needs to take a break and get some exercise and at the same time meet your neighbors out there. It's such a great opportunity to do that. I always feel lucky and fortunate when we look over all our parks, what a thriving community we are. And it just builds sportsmanship, you know, just so many little things, lessons of life are part of sports. And it can be games or it can be just a picnic, any of our parks. So I just want to thank all of you who make that possible, all the staff, people that take care of the grounds that we don't think about maybe, but who do such a great job. So well-deserved proclamation and way to go. Thank you. All right.

Thank you. I, what can I say? Uh, this is my, one of my favorite parts of living in San Ramon. It's the parks. It's, uh, it's the events that are coordinated, um, the arts programs and everything that we do here in San Ramon is truly outstanding. I'm not saying that mildly either. It's just a really beautiful place to live and just a vibrant place to live and I'm really grateful to all of you for the hard work you put in because I know it does not happen overnight. It takes a lot of long meetings, I remember, with our arts advisory committee as well. You all just put heart and soul into it and it shows and we're just very grateful for that. Thank you so much.

All right. Thank you. Anyone else? Okay. Hearing none, then we will thank you very much, Henry, staff, and the commissioner. We'll move on to item nine. This is new business. First item is 9.1. This is a resolution, number 2026-105, authorizing the mayor to approve an amendment to the Southern Contra Costa Commission. Joint Exercise of Powers Agreement, that's the SCCJEPA, pertaining to fees for regional traffic mitigation. And I will turn this over to Brian Hornstein for a staff report.

Good evening, Mayor Armstrong and council members. Yeah, that's hard to say. Anyway, yes, tonight we are asking for your authorization of the mayor to approve the amendment to the Southern Contra Costa Joint Exercise of Power Agreement, also known as SECGEPA. We kind of use that, you know, that... acronym a lot, and it's pertaining to fees for regional traffic mitigation, and I'll go into that. There's two different fees that we've been collecting. So rewind back literally 30 years. In 1996, the county, Danville, and San Ramon entered into this JEPA program. And this was a result of wanting to charge traffic mitigation fees for development in southern Contra Costa County, which included Doherty Valley of 11,000 homes. So we wanted to establish that to collect the fees as they build out for infrastructure that was critical to the area. So with that, the county, San Ramon, and the town agreed to the format of collecting all these fees. FOR 30 YEARS, WE COLLECTED FEES THAT WERE CLASSIFIED IN TWO CATEGORIES, THE REGIONAL FEES AND SUBREGIONAL. SO REGIONAL FEES ESSENTIALLY ARE FEES THAT WERE FOR THE REGION, AND IT WAS FREEWAY IMPROVEMENTS. SO OVER THE YEARS, WE DID, I THINK IT WAS AROUND 2005, 2006 AND 2007, WE DID THE IMPROVEMENTS TO THE ALCOSTA on and off ramps, the hook ramp, if you will. And then over a number of years, we did the auxiliary lanes that were in many phases to add better improvements getting on off the freeway, starting from Diablo Road to Sycamore Valley Road, then Sycamore Valley Road to Crow Canyon Road, and then Crow Canyon Road to Bollinger Canyon. And those were all phased out over another year. So there was a lot of improvements under regional. There really is only one left. That is the Stone Valley Road in Alamo. They chose to kind of hold off on that for a number of years. They're still unsure when they'll begin that, but that is on the list. So essentially San Ramon and Danville have no projects left. So the county is holding their funds to eventually at some point do those improvements. So at this point, it was consensus that there is no reason or nexus to continue to collect regional fees, because all those improvements are done that were listed in the agreement. and the county has some left and then the other question came up is what happens with some of these remaining funds that we may have left maybe in Danville's account the town or the city what money we have left so it's agreed the best thing to roll it into would be to CCTA to innovate 680 which you guys are all aware of we've had some presentations over the past of a number of projects they're working on, the interchange with 680 and 24. We got the bus on the shoulder. We have the mobility hubs. There's a whole, a lot of projects that are involved in that. So essentially, the consensus was to roll that extra money in, which we're, I'm working with finance to see what it is, because over 30 years we spent quite a bit of money going in and out, and also some of the funding for some of the regional, we want to make sure we're reimbursed appropriately as well if we utilize some of our funds to get that done. Because it was early on, and if you recall, as development happens, then the funds are coming in. That is the regional component. The sub-regional component is really the major arterials. So over time, we've done an amazing job of getting those funds and really putting them to work. So some examples are real easy. So Bollinger Canyon Road in 2018, when we widened that, $14 million. Half of that was from SEC JEPA. The other half was from city center. So that widened basically from all cost to the freeway. It was hardly any general fund funding for that. THE ONE THAT IS REALLY EASY TO VISIBLY SEE IS THE ONE RECENTLY DONE LAST YEAR IS CROW CANYON WIDENING PHASE ONE FROM ALCOSTA TO ST. GEORGE. IT WIDENED TO THREE LANES, BIKE LANE BUFFER ZONES. THAT IS PHASE ONE. So there is another phase left. So that's what's important. We don't want to close out the sub-regional because our work isn't done. We don't have money. We need money to still come in to do phase two of Crow Canyon, which is St. George, to finish out and widen the three lanes all the way to Doherty Road. That's still in the books in the agreement, and the other project is some improvements to 680 and Cook Canyon Road on and off ramps, just little improvements with that. There's still funding available for that, too. So those are two projects San Juan has on the books, not completed, still need more money as developers develop and... pool funding in, we would finish those projects. So we felt it's prudent to move forward. And if I leave anything out, Martin, we work together as a team. We met months, maybe even a year or so with Danville and county counterparts to kind of come up with this agreement, and we finally kind of solidified it makes sense to stop collecting regional funds. We don't have any more projects that were listed, but we'll continue to collect sub-regional. We haven't finished all the work we've done. So with that, I'll answer any questions, or Martin also can jump in as well if I missed anything.

Well, I think what Brian presented was very comprehensive. I would only add that we will continue to work with the town and the county to address how to wrap up the sub-regional fee when it's appropriate to do so. As Brian mentioned, there is one or maybe one and a half more projects to do along Crow Canyon. And once we have a handle on the financing there, we'll be able to sunset that fee as well.

Okay. Well, let's let's go to questions from the council, I guess Maybe I'll just make a comment or a question in a question form, but Isn't it correct that these funds these are not paid by our residents and Through property taxes and things like that. These are developer fees. These are from Chappelle or these are from Windermere From those who developed Doherty Valley and that sort of thing correct. This is not a no one in this room paid these fees.

That is correct. These are developer impact fees. This is one of many fees when they develop is the traffic impact fees. And as a matter of fact, there are four different types of impact fees in our resolution. There is the SEC JEPA, there's a Transportation Improvement Fund, there's the TVTC. So yes, this is one of many. And again, all of those are when developers develop They come in for building permits, things like that. We collect those fees at that time. So, no, it's not any other methods of collection.

Yeah, I thought it was very interesting to read in the staff packet that attachment B that listed all those projects. That's an incredible amount of work that's been done over the years with these developer fees. Okay, other questions? Who's got questions?

How's my reverse? Thanks, Brian, for the presentation. My question about if we need additional ramps or improving the ramps from the interstate, so how we are going to, like, do we need to fund it or do we get it from state? How is that going to work if we stop this regional funding?

Well, the regional funding, it's very specific to the certain improvements. As we talked with the town and county, it's a very complex project to reopen that up and do assessments, traffic studies, things of that nature to find other projects. and so it was agreed by three parties. It's so complicated to partake in that. Now, to answer the other question, I think we work closely with CCTA for the future, and there's a lot of projects we have to see how they flush out, really. There's the coordinated ramp metering, there's the smart signals, there's the smart system that'll control the whole corridor, so all these elements need to really marrying come into place to see how the dust clears. We've been very vocal with coordinating because we do have that special continuous green there and Bollinger and how that all plays out. But we work closely with CCTA each step of the way to see how this all integrates in all this new technology. along the corridor, all these innovate 680 improvements. So at this time, we just move forward with all those improvements and we continue to monitor and see what needs maybe to be adjusted, adapted, and so forth.

Yeah, especially because there's a new technologies are coming up and to mitigate the traffic conditions, right? So how we are going to fund if we that's my concern about if we stop the regional funding. So that's because as the development is keep going on and more and more residents going to be added and they may need a base to, like we need funds to mitigate, right? So if Do you feel that we are in a situation where we should be okay to stop this regional funding? Do you feel that?

Yes, I think that source is ended. It's been 30 years. And it would be a massive effort to reopen that up. And again, it was a settlement, which was almost like a lawsuit. So it was contentious. So I would say there's other methods to get the same result. I'd say, first off, we have a transportation improvement fund that's hosted by the city where we collect fees. Every about five years, we reassess what projects are on there. Last time we did the assessment, we added the Crow Canyon and the bridge to add some funding to that. Meanwhile, you got TVTC that does other bigger projects. They added the Crow Canyon. So it's a combination of efforts and different other fee studies and analysis that could potentially pick that up. And I think the SCCGIPA, once we finish out our projects, And I won't say for certainty. There's been discussions with the county and Danville. If there's a meaningful reason to open that door up, then we may partake in it. But at this point, we're not sure. We're not sure if there's enough valid projects to... BE MEANINGFUL ENOUGH FOR THIS MASSIVE EFFORT TO OPEN THAT DOOR TO HOW BIG, I MEAN, IF YOU LOOK AT THE STATES 30 YEARS AGO, IT WAS MASSIVE OVER NOT ONLY JUST DORY VALLEY, BUT THE WHOLE AREA. SO EVERYTHING'S CHANGED. IT WOULD BE A BIG ENDEAVOR, A LOT OF EXPENSE, TOO. AND IF WE DID THAT, I DO HAVE TO REMEMBER, you need three parties to agree on it. Because this agreement is still binding. We're only changing the regional. If we start tinkering with the sub-regional, we all have to agree. And that's sometimes challenging to do also.

And I think it's also important to note that this isn't the only source of funding. There's many other pots that we can draw on for future improvements. So there's other regional, as Brian mentioned, some of the TIF and other regional. So this isn't the... THE ONLY POT. IT WAS A POT THAT WAS USED FOR SPECIFIC PROJECTS DUE TO A SETTLEMENT AGREEMENT. NOW THOSE PROJECTS ARE LARGELY COMPLETED, SO YOU REALLY CAN'T KEEP COLLECTING.

OKAY. YEAH, BUT I UNDERSTAND THAT, BUT THEN, YOU KNOW, THERE'S A LOT OF CHANGES HAPPENING, AND I'M SURE THERE WILL BE A LOT MORE COMING UP, ESPECIALLY WITH AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES COMING INTO PICTURE, AND THEN THE NEW TECHNOLOGY THAT THEY ARE GOING TO IMPLEMENT ON THE RAMPS, CRAM,

Yeah, CARM, Coordinated Adaptive Ramp Metering, which is, yeah, a whole other phase where it's more smart technology than the old ramps that have that. Former ramp metering had a bad taste in everyone's mouth because it wasn't adaptive, and it was just more robotic in the programming. So, yes, that should be improved too.

But I think to your point, Council Member Ros, I think it'll be more technology that'll be used to help relieve congestion rather than projects that were funded under this that were more capacity, adding lanes. An example is Crow Canyon Road. We added a lane in each direction to Crow Canyon Road. There are other segments of Crow Canyon Road that could use another lane, but the segment that we just completed was the easy segment to add a lane two, which we all know how that went. So if that's the easy segment, the rest of the segment, just with the topography, stormwater treatment, capacity issues, grades, that's gonna be very complicated. So I think there is a focus on technology to help our existing infrastructure be a bit more efficient. We're always looking at that. And we led the way with smart signals. There's a lot of cities that are just now getting into the smart signal, and we've been doing it. It's kind of like second nature here for 10, 15 years. So we're always looking for any technological improvements that we can make.

That would be great. My only thing is as long as we have funding source, that's we need to make sure we continuously keep exploring and keep it ready. And also for a sub-regional, you mentioned about Crow Canyon Road, phase one is done, but phase two, for that, we are going to use sub-regional funding?

Yeah, that's correct. It's on the original agreement for sub-regional. The only reason we haven't started design or anything is we're waiting for more funds to come in. That's, I think, a price tag of another $14 million. So I don't know the balance right now, but as we figure out the balance with... What we have left with the regional will be truing up the other balances and projecting out when we'll have enough money to go further in design and have it built. So I think it's within a five year, five, 10 year timeline.

Five to 10, sounds good. Now, another question is, can we use this fund for any enhancement for our bike lanes?

No, the agreement is very specific. It outlines specific roads and specific improvements. It essentially did not generalize any improvements. And actually, in that timeframe 30 years ago, it was, I would say, vehicle-centric. They weren't really thinking about the biking as much, so it really was, you're gonna widen this road, you're gonna widen this, it was all capacity of vehicles, and now, 30 years later, we have a broader spectrum of how to get point A to point B. We have worked within that, because we did put in on Crow You'll Notice the buffered bike lane, so we worked within that to add those features, but they weren't prominently specified originally with bike improvements specifically.

My last question. So on sub-regional Crow Canyon phase two is the only last project or is there any additional projects we have?

The last few projects we have is there is that one's the most prominent and most expensive and the other one is Crow Canyon the interchange on and on ramps with the freeway if there's just a little tinkering and adding a lane, a turn lane, things like that that also is in the books. That, I believe, when our traffic engineer left earlier from one of the consent items, but that we continue to monitor and see when warranted as well if we need to make some adjustments with that. But that is listed too, so we have an option of that to do some improvements there. So those are the two PROMINENT PROJECT. THERE IS ONE MORE THAT'S A SIGNAL ON OLD RANCH AND ALCOSTA, BUT THAT WE DON'T FEEL WILL EVER BE WARRANTED BECAUSE IT'S BEEN BUILT OUT. THERE'S NO NEED. SO THAT ONE WOULD NOT BE REQUIRED. AND THERE ARE SOME ON THE LIST THAT JUST AREN'T NEEDED. THEY WERE ANTICIPATED, BUT NOT NEEDED. THAT'S A GOOD EXAMPLE. THEY THOUGHT MORE VEHICLES WOULD BE TRAVELING THROUGH THAT ROUTE, AND IT'S NOT THE CASE.

SOUNDS GOOD. THANKS. Okay. Other questions? Council Member Adler?

Yeah, I like this story, 30-year story, and I think it's a good example of how government can be effective. It gets dinged a lot for doing bad things or incorrect things, but it seems like we had the parties all working towards a common goal. You know, you had the city of Danville and the city of San Ramon, and you had the developers. All working to do it and it's and now we're gonna kind of be weaned away from the fee or using that although there's still some money left and I guess you know other it's gonna still be used but what was the legal issue that was part of the lawsuit was that part of some of the parties not being willing to do this or you indicated there was legal issues that went on and

I wonder if I should pass that to Martin. But at the time, of course, a reminder that Doherty Valley was owned originally by the county. And they had control. And as we go through this process, it was a complex process. MOUs and all these other things. You'll see in staff reports, it's like the park, the whole list of all these requirements we all agreed to.

So that was part of the Doherty Valley issue.

So they would get all the improvements ready. The county was the lead. And then the city would check it. And then we finally eventually come to you to approve it and then take it over. But it was a complex process. But maybe, Martin, you can touch on the legal, I guess, settlement years ago.

Well, I think you pretty much covered it, at least as deeply as we need to cover it here. Doherty Valley came with 11,000 new residential units, and as such, it was highly controversial. It was within the county, but there were questions early on as to who would be incorporating that area. All of that, and who would be the lead agencies, and how would the improvements get funded? All of that came together in a comprehensive settlement, and I think there might be people in this room who remember it better than I, but I wasn't with San Ramon at the time.

Weren't you just working privately on this for a while? I mean, were you an attorney at that time, or was it before your legal career, I think it was?

Well, you outed me. I was an engineer for the Public Works Department for Contra Costa County when this was happening, so I did do some of the technical work on putting together the fee.

Great. Good story, though. Thank you. Okay.

Council Member Burnett? Okay. Vice Member Rubio? Questions?

No, I just have a comment, so I'll wait until after.

All right. Thank you, Brian. With that, if there's no more questions, I'm going to open a public comment on this item and turn it over to our clerk.

We've received one speaker card from Freedom by God Above America.

I oppose the approval of this item because of lack of confidence in this government as well as the city councils who just refused to allow the public to pull transportation project grant written by Ms. Fair who may have familiar relationship with Fair and Pierce who is a financial beneficiary in this item of all transportation projects that are executed by the city. who is a service provider that may contain fraud because the public is not allowed to vet it. What is so horrible for this city council to allow the public three minutes of public comment? What are you so scared of if you are not guilty of financial corruption? It is not what you guys are planning to do. It is how you are going to do it. There is no guarantee what you say is going to trickle down to the direct benefit of the residents. THE MONEY COULD JUST BE STOLEN FROM THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT OR OUR SALES TAXES OR WHATEVER SOURCE OF MONEY YOU CAN FIND SUCH AS WHAT CITY COUNCIL MEMBER VIROS JUST DIRECTED THE STAFF TO SEARCH FOR MORE. THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO FINANCIAL ACCOUNTABILITY. IN THE PAST WHEN I ATTENDED FINANCIAL the Committee of Finance meetings, there were disclosures that we had a hard time keeping clear balance sheets for grants that we receive. That's why I wanted to question , Joe, who is the one who documents these transactions, yet what do you do when asked to vet it? under 5.5, you refused. If there is no financial corruption, what is so scary for you to grant me additional three minutes in public comment to question the staff? Because you're guilty. Whatever you guys just did were actually to cover the staff so that it doesn't look bad, that our city can possibly be guilty of something fraudulent. But we do, because we have city council members who have connections with Silicon Valley tech companies. In the city of San Jose, they have wanting to actually give millions to tech companies to mess with election system by going with a different system. That is unconstitutional. Because why? They can get those money with quote unquote technology and the machines that they can sell to governments. IT IS VERY EASY TO STEAL GOVERNMENT FUNDING IF YOU DO NOT ALLOW PUBLIC VETTING FOR TRANSPARENCY. SO I OPPOSE THIS BECAUSE THE MONEY THAT COMES TO CITY OF SAN RAMON REALLY SHOULD NOT GO TO TOWN OF DANVILLE. IT IS UNNECESSARY AND THERE IS FAIR AND FAIR AND PEERS THAT YOU ARE NOT ABLE TO DISCLOSE WHAT THEIR RELATIONSHIP IS.

THANK YOU.

Hello, Council. There's a couple of siloed items going on here. First, I think it's important to point out that 5.6 and 5.10 should be kind of merged together, at least sequential, so you understand what's going on there. Relative to Mr. Bornstein's presentation and relative to item 5.5 and funding, Understand when you get $2 million worth of free funding, it's not free money. You are required to meet environmental commitments. Environmental commitments to federal money are related to NEPA. For projects in California, they are required to be approved via the CEQA process. What you've done with the previous, with 5.5, is snuck, snuck the undelegated signature to your senior engineer.

Brian, I'm going to ask you to stay on item 9.1, please.

No, it's all related to funding. That's the umbrella we're talking about. We're talking about smart signals and Verosa's comments that he needs to zoom down the road. And then you talk about Again, regional mitigation or impact fees. But you're not doing the work. in item 5.5, which is all induced demand. If you increase the throughput or speed traffic because signals are coordinated, that in turn increases the demand and the actual cars on roads. So the deferral, the silo, the segmentation, Transportation is a system. You are part of the system. Make sure you take responsibility. And even when you get $2 million, you have to do the work. You can't cut corners. It's not automatically free money.

All right. Thank you. Next speaker, please.

There are no more speaker cards. And we don't have any remote participants on Zoom that have their hands raised to speak.

OK. All right. Then it's going to come back over to council for further comments, and then we'll take action. Go ahead.

Comment? I want to make sure that if you see any corruption in city council or in our local government, please report to our district attorney. You can always reach out to district attorney. And also, if you want, the phone number for our district attorney is 925. 9578540. I just want to make sure we share that. And also I want to clarify that when I mentioned about the traffic signals, it's about how our residents are suffering whenever they drive due to the traffic signals coordination issues. They have to break and every time you break, you're burning fuel. Whenever you burn the fuel, it is going to financially cost personally and also it will create a climate pollution. So we want to reduce that. How we reduce? We add the better technology so that we have a coordinated traffic signals so that we can improve the efficiency of traffic and improve the quality of life. So that was the idea behind it. So thanks, that's my comment. Okay, thank you. Other comments?

House members, why not? Council Member Adler? No. Vice Mayor Rubio?

I just, now I have a question. Okay. But it's a small one. So I was just curious. So I do agree that, I mean, I think there's only a finite number of, I mean, honestly, we can't keep adding lanes infinitely, you know, every time there's a demand. So we, I think there's some concessions that... as a society that we are going to have to rely, you know, if we want to be socially responsible in our own personal lives as much as we can, if we can take public transportation to take it. But for that to happen, obviously, we have to make it as feasible and accessible as possible. So one of the questions I was just curious, and I don't know if anybody can answer this, is if the money is going to CCTA, is there any idea about how CCTA will use that money?

That is part of the Innovate 680 program. They do have a project list associated with it. I think Brian listed a couple of them. There are coordinated adaptive ramp metering projects in the pipeline, part-time transit lanes, I think he mentioned, and also the shared mobility hub that's proposed. I'm sure I'm leaving a few of them out. Yeah, I can jump in there.

Yeah, there's six distinct projects within Innovate 680. First one is part-time transit lanes. That's the bus on the shoulders. That is public transportation. They can get to and from a lot easier instead of being in the gridlock. EXPRESS LANE COMPLETION, THAT IS ALSO THE HOV LANE, AND THAT IS, THOSE ARE BIG IMPROVEMENTS TO THE INTERCHANGE WITH 680 AND 24. ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY, THAT'S WHAT WE TALKED ABOUT, INTEGRATED CORRIDOR MANAGEMENT WITH THAT WHOLE SYSTEM, AND THEN AS WE TALKED ABOUT THE ADAPTIVE RAMP METERING, COORDINATED ADAPTIVE RAMP METERING WAS ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY. SHARED MOBILITY HUBS, WE'VE BEEN TALKING ABOUT THAT WITH ALL THESE HUBS, INCLUDING ONE IN San Ramon that's getting developed as well to have this core where transportation hub that has all the amenities and connections to other Transportation uses whether it's the come in and bike or bus or vehicle EV chargers Project five mobility is a service. They're creating that app I guess they'll help you to put it all together to get to and from and And then the last one, and you guys have touched on too, is advanced driving systems, the autonomous vehicles, that whole grouping of that new technology and working with that. So those are the six projects. I did want to note, I am working with Jennifer, our finance director, on this, and I don't think there is going to be a lot of money left over. It's well under a million. It might even be only in the hundreds of thousands. I mean, you're talking a magnitude in these projects of millions of dollars, hundreds of millions probably. So it's not going to be a lot, to be honest, that we contribute. But we need an endpoint, and we need to funnel that money somewhere. If we don't... then we have the challenge of AB 1600. If we don't have a nexus to spend it and we have it left over, we have this complex way of, how do we give the money back? Okay, well we have to go to developers in Doherty Valley, which was, Chappelle, which is now Toll, then we have BLC, Brookfield, Lenar, and some of them aren't even in business anymore. So you have to go back to give that little amount of money legally back to them because you didn't spend it. So very complicated, and just to put in perspective, I don't think, and I'll be working closely with Jennifer, a lot of money left, but we have to convey it somewhere, and this seemed like the easiest, most logical place to put it, because it's part of our OUR OVERALL HOLE TO IMPROVE THAT CORRIDOR ANYWAY. SO ANYWAY, HOPEFULLY THAT ANSWERS MORE OF YOUR QUESTIONS.

OKAY. IT'S JUST SOMETHING BECAUSE I WAS JUST THINKING, LIKE, I THINK ALL OF THESE THINGS, OF COURSE, ARE NECESSARY. I DON'T THINK ANY OF THEM ARE BAD OBJECTIVES. BUT IT'S JUST SOMETHING I WOULD LIKE, I KIND OF CROSSED MY MIND AND MAYBE I would like to see more frequency of the buses too that we have locally. And that's just something that crossed my mind that we could also be investing in to make sure because if we don't think about the fact that, you know, if we don't get the funding, our services here locally are going to be cut. And I think that the money should go back into local investment.

One point I'd like to make too is outside of this realm of SCCG, but we do have our transportation division. They work very closely with all the bus systems and They work hard with trying to reach all the areas, but it does come down to financial well-being and making it work with the routing. I can tell you there's some areas of San Ramon that hasn't worked, but we created these programs where it's go San Ramon and they get subsidized using Uber and they get money back. So we find creative ways to solve things when, and everyone's dealing with it. BART is everybody where the finances are very challenging right now. And to add more services, obviously, it's the pro and con is their demand for that or not. But what I can tell you is we do have our transportation division headed up by Chris Weeks, and he's involved in a lot of these meetings with the transit agencies and working on that. And we always are doing our best. Some agencies do not even have a transportation group or division. So we work closely to try to get everything we can for San Ramon.

And just to be clear, I'm talking more specifically, for example, County Connection is the Route 35 here on Bollinger Canyon Road. It comes every half hour. There's a chance that if we don't have funding, it's going to get even longer than that. And what I'm trying to say is that while I think all of these things are great, We're really going to feel that impact should those funds not become available to maintain the route as it is, which I already think takes too long for those buses to get there. Ideally, we'd like them to come every 20 minutes Max, you know, and that's not happening because of funding, same situation. And so I don't know, it's just something that I'm thinking, you know, no more lanes, but we, you know, but if we, with no more lanes, that means we should provide more accessibility and feasibility of public transportation here locally.

THIS MONEY IS SPECIFIC FOR INFRASTRUCTURE AS WELL, SO IT CAN'T BE USED FOR OPERATING, LIKE INCREASING FREQUENCY ON A BUS LINE. THAT WOULD BE, AS BRIAN MENTIONED, SOMETHING THROUGH THE TRANSPORTATION DEPARTMENT WORKING WITH 3CTA TO HELP THEM WITH FUNDING OPTIONS. I DON'T KNOW OF ANY CITIES THAT SUBSIDIZE MAYBE WALNUT CREEK WITH THEIR DOWNTOWN TRANSIT SERVICE. This money specifically that we're talking about which is in the six-figure range is one time and must be used for capital Okay.

Okay. Well, thank you Look at other ways. Yes.

Yes, exactly. There's transit service in San Ramon has a very long history It's what I started my career here in San Ramon advocating for so yeah It's there's a lot that that we can look into.

Okay. Thank you.

Any other final comments? Okay, if not, can I get a motion to adopt Resolution 2026-105, authorizing the Mayor to approve an amendment to the Southern Contra Costa Joint Exercise Powers Agreement, SCC-JEPA, pertaining to the fees for regional traffic mitigation.

I move the motion.

Okay.

I second.

We have a motion by Councilmember Vroes, second by Councilmember Adler. Okay, motion passes unanimously. Now we're going to move on to item 9.2, the introduction to the long-term financial plan. And this can be by Jennifer Wakeman, long-anticipated long-term financial plan.

Good evening mayor and council members. So, uh, way back in October of 2025, when we talked about the financial resiliency framework, one of those components was to establish a model for forecasting. So I'm pleased to present to you tonight, uh, the product of that effort, which is our long-term financial plan. So this long-term financial plan is a really necessary tool for council to make informed decision making. We have talked several times about when you don't have timely and accurate information, you're kind of in a black hole of making decisions. And so this long-term financial forecast allows you to have accurate information that will give you projections based on firm numbers and give you a picture of what we expect. A long-term financial plan is a strategic document that helps the city plan its finances, not only over several years, but also it's a way for us to ensure that we can continue to provide the services that our community values while we also maintain our infrastructure and meet our financial obligations. Some important notes that I wanted to call out about the structure of our forecast model are that it is designed to look out over 10 years. We talked about this several times as well since Measure N is expiring or has had an expiration of 10 years, which will be in April of 2035. We wanted to make sure that we looked out as far as that measure will go so that we can plan for when the measure goes away. The long-term financial plan only includes numbers from the general fund, because that is the primary operating fund for the city, and so that is the most important financial resource for the city. Our baseline forecast includes items that are known in terms of timing and their amount. So because we want our baseline to be something that we know we can count on, that is going to be kind of the foundation for what the decision making is, that's why we only build into that the certain information that we have. Other information that is less certain in terms of timing or amount can be built into the forecast in terms of alternative scenarios. So we can do different projections that take into consideration various factors. Some of those items might be the timing of various developments in the city or potential changes to benefit policies or legislation. So now I'd like to take the opportunity to introduce Russ Branson. He is the founder of Russ Branson Consulting. He is also the former director of finance and assistant city manager for the city of Roseville. And he is a long-tenured instructor for CSMFO. He is one of the premier municipal finance professionals for California. So without further ado.

All right. Thank you, Russ.

Hi, good evening. Thanks for having me here. I'm going to talk a little today about the financial plan and how it was developed and some of the history of where you've been and where we're going and how that fits into the forecast. And Jennifer provided my information here that I've worked really since about 1980 in municipal finance. I've done 14 years in the city of Roseville. I've done another 24 years, 25 years of consulting and have worked with a lot of cities in developing budget models and budget forecasts. And one of the things I've been working with Jennifer on a number of things this past several months and one of, part of your, financial resiliency framework is do the forecast and that was an area because you as you know that she's has a lot of things going on on the finance side and has been here just a little over a year and is really getting up to speed and doing a lot of changes so I offered to help out on that to build this model I will be providing the model to city staff and training Yulia the budget manager on how to update and use the model. So it will be a tool that is ongoing for the city and not tied to me. So it's something that I think that will be used for a long time. So we're gonna talk really about two things. This is, again, an introduction to what we've done in this tool. The tool itself is, you know, I think pretty robust, pretty detailed in terms of how you work it. It does have all the information for the city's budget actuals and then our forecast since 2020, not 1920, since 2020. And then we can look at, kind of line by line, we roll things up into broader pictures, but you can really see what's been happening with the city's finances over time, and that's what helps us to predict what's gonna come in the future. So we'll talk about the forecast and some recommendations. Talk about one of the main issues that you have to look at when you're looking at the forecast, as Ms. Wakeman mentioned, was Measure N. So Measure N was approved by the voters in 2024, took effect in 2025. And it adds 1% for 10 years, right? So then the question is, well, what happens after 10 years? That's one of the things we'll talk about tonight and you want to think about and how you can use this model to kind of think through future issues that'll be coming up. Because if it's either going to go away, you're going to have to have another vote for it to continue at that time. So we'll look at the impact of that when we get through this. But the forecast itself, one, I think, and Jennifer said this, it's a projection, right? It's not a prediction. So we're not trying to say that this will happen. We're trying to say, what's a good forecast for what might happen, given what your history has been, what we know, our current changes. Oh, thank you. Current changes that have happened in the last couple of years and that might happen in the next few years. And then what are reasonable estimates then of other things going forward? So there's lots of different, there's a lot of assumptions in a forecast model, right? So we want to be clear about what those are. And we want to be able to change them, right? To stress test the model based on different things happening. And for those that's been around, and all of you have been around a long time and looked at what's the impacts of the Great Recession in 2008-9. the you know the pandemic in uh you know in 2020 that things happen periodically that stress our budgets and so the budget model can be used in part and we're not showing talking about that tonight but it can be used to stress different forecasts about what if right something happens do we have the resources to do that that can then help you make decisions about hey what our reserves need to be are they enough do they need to be higher they need to be lower or other things like that. It's a tool. It doesn't tell you exactly what's going to happen. It can give you information that can help you make decisions now. But we're going to show a forecast for five years from now. I don't know what's going to happen in five years from now. So we'll redo it. Jennifer will have us to redo it next year. So it's something that's an ongoing process. Public finance is very dynamic. A lot of things change. A lot of things have changed. I've been involved in this since the end of 1979, and there are so many things that have changed. Nothing really looks very much the same now as it did in 1979. And so things change, and this just helps us evaluate the impact of those changes as we go forward. So some of the recent changes that we do include in the model, and I want to call your attention to, As one of you know, Measure N, we've talked about, started in 2025, ends in 2035. The end of the retail, the state retail theft grant, which went down, will be going, has gone down, and you'll go down and you'll lose it all after, in 2028. So there's a $1.3 million loss of revenue there. The solid waste franchise fees this year went down $1.9 million because of a finding that you were charging too much based on what the impacts were of those things. There's some kind of lawsuit, you had to redo it, and that resulted in a cut in half of your old franchise fees. So those are just two things where it's impacted the revenues just these last couple years. And other things will come, other things will go, but we want to look at those things. It's one thing to just look at all those things in the context of a larger model. On the expense side, health benefits are actually, you're gonna see this, health benefits are up from 2025 and prior by $3.8 million. Now, it's not that health benefit costs went up, it's that health benefits were actually being funded by some health, from reserve monies that you had, and they weren't showing up as expenses in the budget. So part of that is an accounting issue, and I know that the finance department has been diligently working through how things have been accounted for, and we'll talk about this a few times, but changes have been made. So you're getting to better accounting practices, but one of the things that happens, you go, you know, first thing I said when I looked at the numbers was, what happened with health? Why did that just increase so much? That doesn't make any sense. Well, it didn't increase, but how you accounted for the expenses, all of a sudden they were out of the general fund, then they were back. And so one of the things that you'll see those kind of trends. So a forecast can both give you a really good picture of a long period of time and what happens. It can cause you to ask a lot of questions. I mean, when I first do a forecast, I ask a ton of questions, right? Because I look at it and said, why, why, why? Why is this? Why is that? Some things I can figure out, some things I can't. So I'll call up Jennifer and say, what's going on here? And she said, oh, yeah, that's, you know. This is happening. But we look at all those things, right? So it's not just a, you know, we're applying necessarily a blanket increase to everything. We kind of look at kind of, you know, category by category and can really get down into object code by object code of what's going on in the budget. The PERS growth is, and this is based on the PERS actuarial data, is expected to grow about 6% to 9% a year in the next year. you know, two or three years, and then flatten out. So that's kind of what we show. But PERS is also redoing their actuarial assumptions. And last time that happened, things went way up, right? Because their assumptions are, you know, when do you retire? When do you die? How much do you make when you retire? How long do you live? How much do you make when you retire? And they found out, wow, all our assumptions were wrong. They changed those. So things like that, you keep an eye on. You know that things may change. But those are some of the things that we've looked at and are included in this forecast. I just want to talk about the main drivers of revenue and expenses. This is the orange vertical line. To the left of it is historical data. This is actuals from your general ledger of what was actually recorded in the general fund. We talked about some things that should have been general fund expenses were taken offline and shown somewhere else for a while. This is property taxes, and actually between 2020 and 2026, the average growth per year in property taxes was 4% a year. Sometimes it's up, sometimes it's down. That's going to compound average growth over that time, kind of continue that growth going out. And just as a reminder, the way property taxes in California work, Is that you get on the base property tax rate, you get up to a 2% growth per year, and that's based on California CPI. It's likely that California CPI is going to remain above 2% a year right now anyway for a foreseeable future. There have been some years where it's been negative. You actually see property taxes go down a little. But we assume that 2% and the other 2% is going to be growth. It's going to be turnover in housing stock where something that sells for more gets reassessed and you have that kind of go up. And so that's a continued history. Might it be more? Might it be less? Yes, right? And so we can test that, what if it's more, what if it's less, how does it impact your overall budget? But the baseline forecast we're talking about here assumes that kind of this continuation of a 4% growth per year. Sales tax revenues, now obviously this is one. The blue is what we call the Bradley Burns sales tax. That's your standard. You get 1% of every taxable sale that comes in the city, along with some stuff that gets shared countywide. And then the red line is Measure N. Now Measure N actually is doing pretty well. And part of that, it allows you to get sales taxes on vehicle sales, that extra 1%. Anybody who lives in San Ramon and buys a vehicle, whether they buy it in San Ramon or somewhere else, pays that 1%. And that kind of bolsters that a little. So it's some value because you're not a town that has a lot of auto sales. And auto sales can be a great source of revenue. if they're in your city. But if they're not, they can be a great source of sucking revenue out of your city. So this allows you to capture a little bit of that. But this is obviously the issue that you've all seen and talked about in terms of what happens in 2036. And April of 35 is when that would stop. So just before the end of the fiscal year if it's not renewed. And then nothing then in 2036. So you see the big drop off. State and federal. So you've had primarily here, this shows the increase from the retail theft grant, and then that has gone down to 1.3 million in 27. That'll go away in 28. But grants come and go. We're not forecasting more grants, but it's... likely or unlikely to get grants. It's hard to judge what's going to happen with the state budget as they're very much under water and looking at deficits, significant deficits of their own, and the federal government is all over the map in terms of where their money is going and how you get it and how you qualify. So we don't assume anything per se more coming on those areas. um hotel tax or tot transient occupancy tax as the term of art and finance is you see the dip in uh for 20 and 21 from the pandemic um and you kind of climb back up and it it just assumes here um you know not the ups and downs because we're not trying to predict when these are going to happen but it predicts kind of a a fairly smooth growth um going out which could change if you get another hotel built, right? That'll take it up. It'll change if you get some kind of recession and that affects tourism, that'll take it down. But we don't have all the different options in there yet. Fees and charges, and so the thing you had here, you see the dips in the recession, of course, and then kind of the ups and downs of the last few years. And this is another one, those accounting changes, is that on the revenue side, and you'll see it on the expense side as well, parks and rec charges for education classes and instructors were done on a net basis. So we showed the net change, right, revenue or expense. And really the proper way to show it is how much revenue you're getting and how much expenses you're getting. So that is being shown now. So you had this jump, which isn't really a jump, in revenues. And then we show that kind of trending up over time. You'll see the same thing on the contract services on the expense side. Transfers, this is another thing where you have this reduction in transfers in, but this also has to do with an accounting thing of monies being transferred in for debt service, which wasn't proper. And so that is also gone from this. And so just, you know, your transfers were a little, just weren't completely correct. The money wasn't moving around improperly, like being used improperly. It just wasn't being accounted for in a way that you should have accounted for it. So it was all there. It was all used properly. It just didn't show up how it should show up on your balance sheets. And it's being corrected at this point. So on the expense growth side, so salaries and overtime, big piece, right? So personnel costs are about 65% of your total general fund budget, so people are an important aspect of what you fund and how you run your government here. You do have some increases between 25 and 26, and some additional increases in 27. You've done some increases for police in your MOUs, and you have some increases for SEIU, I think 3% a year for a few years. So that gets factored in here, and we kind of assume a basic increase based on CPI on the salary side. But what actually happens would depend on what gets negotiated. So it's a combination of your MOUs and what you pay. It's a combination of you have overtime, which isn't a huge part of your budget, but it's also how many people you hire. If you expand staff, that's going to increase it, reduce staff, decrease it, that kind of thing. But this assumes a stable staffing model and a fairly stable funding model that doesn't assume big jumps in spending for salaries. Health and other benefits. This is also another one where we talked about this before, actually, the health cost going up in 25 because it wasn't being funded through the general fund. It was being funded kind of from a reserve fund, but that should have been shown up as an expense here and a revenue coming in. That's the proper way. So now it's been corrected, but that's that big jump. There wasn't necessarily a big jump in health. That's showing a little steeper. We're kind of assuming like a 5% per year, because health has continued to kind of go up. So we're seeing that going up above CPI on a regular basis. It's hard to get really good forecasts for health. But you do look at the last few years, Kaiser Foundation does a lot of analysis on health care trends. And somewhere around 5, 5.5% a year has been common the last few years. We put that out, but that's going to continue to evolve. Other employee benefits are... Just kind of moving along. They're not a huge part of what you're providing, but that's that. Retirement. Retirement's always an interesting one. Again, you have this dip in 23, and that's when the city had taken some money from a retirement stabilization reserve to pay some retirement monies, and it didn't, again, didn't show up as expense money. or revenue. It kind of is off book, so to speak. But you've seen increases here. You're going to see, we talked about that steepening increase through 2029 or so. Part of what's happening is you're There's two aspects, normal cost, what you pay for current employees for their pensions, and those normal costs actually have been going down because you've switched from classic employees to PEPRA, and PEPRA is a lower formula, so it costs a little less, but your unfunded liabilities have gone up a little as people have retired. It's a lot of catch-up, but by 2030, you should see an overall flattening out of growth, and the growth will slow on pension, and I really hope that happens, because pension costs have been growing for a long time, and they're a big piece of the personnel cost budget. Materials and supplies, the red line, the contracts, that's where you're seeing what we talked about with Parks and Rec and just accounting for the expenses and revenues separately rather than netting those out. So it bumps up and these all are just expected to grow pretty much at inflationary rates. transfers out again you're you had some you know some ups and downs here but i think this is a pretty solid um amount for transfers what we expect them to do um and this is money that the general fund sends out to different um to different departments for various things right including debt service and any support to other departments that you may provide that's a so that's this is how what transfer out in the general fund becomes a transfer in in one of your you know in one of your other funds right so It's an expense here, it's a revenue somewhere else. It nets out, it's just a way of moving the money around so you can accurately track how much revenue and expenses you have in every fund, because each fund has a calculation of net revenue, right? And so that's what the transfers out and do. It's just a way of how you're moving money around that's transparent, right? It shows what's happening and you can talk about why you're doing that. And so that's what those are. Capital, this is an interesting one in terms of capital tends to be lumpy, and that really shows up. That lumpiness really shows up over the last six years, and you have some of the complications of the pandemic, of not doing a whole lot, and then I think doing a whole lot more in FY23, and then coming back down. And it tends to be lumpy both from the standpoint of things from capital happen in kind of a lumpy basis. You need something big this year, not something next year. It's also a function that sometimes, depending, and I don't really have an analysis right now of exactly how this works out, but is the capital, and this is vehicle replacement and capital, tend to be areas where if you're, When you're trying to balance your budget and you don't quite have enough in some year, you can say, ah, let's delay capital. So we're not going to spend as much on capital this year. We'll put it off. One of the things that I know you're working on your financial or the staff is working on your financial resiliency plan is some costing of deferred maintenance and capital needs over time so we can better reflect those costs in both your budget and the forecast. So the blue line here on the capital, your CIP ends in 2031. Just, you know, it's their five-year CIPs. And so we kind of took it – I took it down to that level, but that's not completely right. You will have more – likely have more spending there. And the other piece on the deferred maintenance is how much deferred maintenance do you have? How much should that cost? You know, how do we – How do we put that in your budget over time? So that's something for a future iteration of the budget model. Once that is done, you want to add that into the model and look at what the impact of that is on the bottom line for your budget. So this is the baseline forecast. There's kind of a lot going on here. The gray area is what in the forecast, what your forecast funding, I'm sorry, your reserve fund is, your reserve amounts. That's the gray area there. The black dotted line is your target reserve, which is currently 36%. And the dotted blue line is the calculated reserve, so it's the reserve as a percent of expenses that you have over time. And what we can see is that you have more reserves right now percentage-wise, right, on the blue line than you have you're above your target, so you've been accumulating a little more money. But then as we see stuff starts to happen, you remember I talked about you're losing the retail theft grant in 28 of 1.3 million, and so that's where you see this red line. And partly because we don't have anything yet to, any other revenues to replace it. You have expenses that continue to go up. And so if you still have that money, and again the loss of the $1.9 million this year, you have $1.9 million less this year than last year for your franchise fees, that if you had those monies, you wouldn't see red here, right? So that's the impact of those losses. But then over time, because the model shows you should be generating, over time, some additional revenue. You get back in the black, or in this case, the blue. And my little FY35 should be red, but that's blue. But in fiscal year 35, if you don't do something, if you don't ask voters to extend Measure N, or if you ask voters and they reject EXTENDING MEASURE N, THEN IN FY35, YOU'RE GOING TO SEE A DROP IN REVENUES THAT WILL PUT YOU IN A NEGATIVE NET REVENUE POSITION. AND THEN FY36, 37, 38, WE EXTENDED A FEW YEARS BEYOND THAT, TEN YEARS. AND THIS IS THEORETICAL. IF YOU DIDN'T CUT EXPENSES, THIS IS THE WHAT IFS WE CAN DO IN BUDGET FORECAST MODELING, IS THAT YOU WOULD HAVE A NEGATIVE FUND BENTS BY FY37. The reality is you'd cut expenses, right? You wouldn't let that happen, but it would be a very traumatic event for the city. My analysis is the service that you're providing now, the level of staff you have now are very reasonable for a city of your size and you don't have a lot of room especially given where we've seen some of these revenues go, you don't necessarily have a lot of room that we can see right now to, you know, have expense cuts take over Measure N, right, surpass what you're getting from Measure N. And so... Yeah, that's an issue, and I know you've seen this. I know you've talked about it. This is just another way of looking at it in this forum, and something staff will be coming back to and looking at what's happened this year. What are the changes? How is property tax done? How is sales tax done? Where are expenses going? And how do all those things balance? So this takes where you are in the budget. It does look out, Tanner, this is what... 12 years. But it's not trying to say, here's what you need to do in 12 years. It's trying to say, hey, is there something we should do now? So let's talk a little about some just really basic recommendations. And one is, you have this to some extent, but I think it can be helpful to identify what services are supported by Measure N. If you know, it's Measure N is a general tax, right? So it's part of the general revenues of the city. And we can tell how much we use for general revenues and how much we use for one-time monies. But to think about, hey, if we lost Measure N or, you know, how would, what would we, what's being supported by this, right? Is that clearly communicate to voters if you get to that point and decide to do that? You know, what does the loss of Measure N mean in terms of our services? So that's one thing, to start identifying and looking at that. I think it's harder to do than it's easy to say, hard to do, because what is actually, what would you actually cut? That's hard to decide right now if you had to do it. But you want to communicate the importance of Measure N in terms of the services you provide. You talked a lot about the 59 and soon to be 60 parks. And that is amazing. And I come from a city of Roseville that has a similar kind of love of parks and it creates an incredible community. And it's also very expensive, right? And so that's one of the things that, you know, that's one of the things measure and supports. And so you have to think about that kind of thing. The second, you have this, and I know this is something the staff, but continue to implement the financial resiliency framework. This model is a part of that. It can be used as you go forward to look at your financial, the resiliency you have. And then I think everybody, every city needs to continue to reduce costs where possible without significant impact to the community. If something's not working, Why are we doing it? If something doesn't match what people want, why are we doing it? So those are, I think, consistent questions you're always asking. And so I think that's, again, within that framework, you're going to get the information on deferred maintenance and probably a better capital plan. And that can be put in there as well in terms of the model. And then, you know, one thing is that, you know, this will be updated. The plan for finance is to update this at least twice a year prior to budget development because that can be something we can talk about for budget decisions if there's some to be made in any given year. And then after adoption each year to see, hey, after we got what's the adopted – what's our current position – on the budget. So it's a tool. Again, it doesn't say exactly what's going to happen. There's lots of ways to tweak it and look at it, and hopefully it's something that can be useful for, if nothing else, communication of looking past one year, to look forward, especially when you have something like Measure N that you know is an issue that's going to come in the future. keep that in front of you, keep in front of the public, keep in front of staff, understand, you know, kind of figure out what are the different ways we can, that we can deal with that, and what do we, you know, what do we do ultimately? It'll be a decision, you know, this council will make at some point in the future. The last year, you can actually go to avoid the loss of measuring if you decide to go, that would be with 2034. So it's not something immediate, but there's some things you can do now to really make sure you're you have the best budget process you have, you're cutting expenses, you know, so you're appropriately to provide the best services, or maybe you're not cutting expenses at all, but you're moving the money towards needed. I mean, just all the things that any, I think, any proper budget process in any city should be doing, and I think you have a great staff to carry that out. I've been really impressed with all the finance staff people, and I think you'll be positioned well to deal with the finance issues you have coming forward with the staff you have. I'd be happy, I know there's no action on this, but I'd be happy to answer any questions.

And Mayor, if I may, before questions, I would like to add, I'd like to thank Russ for working on this model with the input of Scott, Jennifer, Yulia, and Michelle. They put a lot of work into our finance system as a whole. I am very grateful for this model. It is probably... the most advanced forecast model that we've had in the city. As you may recall, usually our 10-year forecast was conducted at the council workshop, and it was about 20 minutes of the council workshop. We are now treating that differently with a standalone item and a model that can be updated as you know, as conditions change. So I really do appreciate the work that Russ and staff have put into this model. It gives us a better tool to help plan for the future. Okay.

Thank you for that. All right. Thank you, Russ. Thank you, Jennifer. Let's open it up for questions from council before we go to public comment. Questions? Let me start down here. House members run it? House member Burroughs?

Thank you, Russ, for the presentation. This is definitely very important, vital for us. So I have some questions. On the revenue side, you mentioned about different property tax, sales tax, and all that. So did we also, is your model includes about the returns on our investments?

Interest on investments?

Investments, like not on interest, but we do investment in, like through our investor, we do invest in equities and bonds.

No, you don't invest in equities. So, I mean, by state law, you cannot invest in equities. I mean, if you're talking, and equities meaning stocks, right?

Our investor do invest in equities, yeah.

Not for the city money, not the EIDL funds for the city money. That's against the state law. You remember back to the Orange County bankruptcy back in the 90s. After that, the state had laws, and one of the things you cannot invest in is equities for city EIDL funds. I mean, retirement funds, CalPERS does invest in equities, but the city does not invest in equities.

Okay, I'm not talking about CalPERS, but specifically talking about maybe, yeah, so we- Yeah, the investment income is a part of this.

Yeah, and in terms of is investment income is part of your income stream. You do earn interest on your EIDL investments. And so that is part of the money. And how much money you get is dependent on how much is EIDL, what's happening in the markets. And primarily, you can invest in bonds. You can buy treasuries. You can do commercial papers and things like that. There's lots of things you can invest in and do. I JUST WANT TO SAY NOT EQUITIES. THAT CITY IS NOT ALLOWED TO DO THAT. BUT THERE IS INTEREST INCOME, YEAH.

LET'S SAY, LET'S FORGET ABOUT EQUITIES AND ALL THAT, BUT WHAT ABOUT THE INVESTMENT THAT WE ARE DOING? IS THAT PART OF THIS STUDY?

OH, HAVE WE? I DID NOT LOOK AT THE SPECIFIC INVESTMENTS, WHERE THE MONEY FOR THE CITY IS AS PART OF THIS.

OKAY. I'M NOT EVEN WORRIED ABOUT very invested and all that, but is it part of the model? That's what I wanted to make sure.

Yeah, it's not part of the model per se, no.

It's not part of the model.

I mean, the interest, I mean, assumed amount of interest is, but it's not an evaluation of, it's not evaluation. I'm not an asset manager. That is not, that's, they're people, that's all they do is manage assets for cities. I don't know if you have anybody, if you do them internally, but yeah, it's, yeah.

Yeah, we do have asset managers, and they manage our assets, and I definitely want to see how we can include that as part of your model. That will definitely help us on revenue side. So that will be good. Anyway, my next question is regarding you mentioned about per 6% to 9% growth impact overall. Is it possible to find the dollar amount on that? like, instruct percentage when you say 6% to 9%? For me, it's tough to... Yeah.

Yes, it is. Not right now. That's fine. But, yeah, I can tell you, basically, because you can see here, PERS is about, you know, between $8 million and $9 million. So it's probably, you know, 9% would be, you know... $800,000, $900,000 a year. So, I mean, it's a combination, and PERS is set up into two parts, which I don't break out here, which is one is the normal cost, which is the cost for current employees, and then the unfunded liability cost, which is the cost for basically monies that you should have set aside, right? And you didn't, sometimes because, you know, the market wasn't as good as they thought, sometimes because they changed their assumptions, and things like that. So there's those two things that are happening. And there's a lot of different things. So PERS has actuarial studies, which are available online. Anybody can look at those. And they kind of lay out percentage of salaries and then a dollar amount for that. And that just, on average, we're seeing 6% to 9%. But then it goes like 2%, 1.5%, smaller numbers. But I can give the actual numbers to Jennifer.

That will be great, because when we say percentage, it is so tough for me to understand what it means. Now, the next question is regarding the property taxes. You mentioned 2.5% CPI that we were looking at, and 2% could be the one. And does this include all of our new properties that we have?

Yeah, in terms of forecasts, this takes what you're currently getting and forecasts out. So I don't include, and this is always a big question, and I have done this to where you can actually have an alternative, which you lay out. Here's where these things might come in. I have spent a lot of my career doing fiscal studies for new developments, right, and what's the impact. So there's revenues and there's expenses associated with new development. And that can be done, but I don't think typically until, and I don't know how solid future growth is. I would not usually include this in a baseline forecast because we don't know exactly when it's going to come, how it's going to come, what those impacts might be based on what are the value of the homes. So there's a lot of assumptions that go into that. So this just assumes everything kind of how it is. We can do something that would estimate what that might be. It'd be a lot of work, right? And so we'd have to get something, when are those units coming in? When's the actual development going to happen? When are people going to occupy them so then we get property taxes? When do you have to have services for that and what will those services be? It's a really in-depth analysis. Some of the problems that I've looked at some of the fiscal studies for the city and fiscal studies are really, difficult and really based on assumptions. And they are typically in these studies show up pretty good. I don't necessarily agree with all the assumptions that I've seen. But I think you'll probably get a decent balance, right? But I don't think you're necessarily gonna get a huge huge positive net balance. I don't think you're gonna, I don't think the new development's gonna draw the city down in services, but I just don't think it's gonna, you know, I don't know. You have to kind of see what happens and when it goes and how fast it goes and how long it goes. It obviously can be done with a lot of different assumptions. I would not include it in a baseline forecast, but you could, you know, I have done that for cities and looking at, you know, more near-term development. I know there's a lot of development planned in the city, a lot of units, a lot of growth that could come, but there's a revenue side and the expense side. So how do those two match up is always the big question.

Yeah, that we are growing city. And that can have a significant impact on both revenue side as well as expense side. So I would like to see that as part of the model because when I'm telling after 10 years, our city is not going to be the same. It changes. Right. The housing, the demographics, and our A lot of changes will happen, so it will be nice to have that as part of the model.

Yeah, I will say, the other thing I'll say just quickly, because the city of Roseville, I think still is, but has always been a very growth-oriented city. And I was there from 2000 to 2014. A lot of growth happened during that time. What I found is expenses grew with revenues. Yes. And so, yes, it was a different city and it gave us a lot of opportunities and there's a lot of positives to growth. People will have different opinions, can be negatives to growth as well, depending on what you're looking at. But what I found is you always seem to spend the money, right?

We want to know what happens, right? So we want to know whether we are going to get positive or is it going to be negative? If it is negative, how we are going to tackle it? We need to understand that. That's the whole idea of this modeling, right? So let's include that one. That will be great. So also on the sales tax, the same question. I know you don't have a crystal ball to tell all these details, but if we can include whatever the future retail that we are planning to bring into the city, especially with our new growth. I would like to see that if we can add that as part of your model, that would be great.

Yeah, I think, again, it wouldn't be, you know, I wouldn't do it in the baseline, but it's something that could be added to the, as an alternative, you know, to kind of say if you have this growth at this time, you know, what is that balance of revenues and expenses?

That would be awesome. Yeah. And then now... Is it, you shared about all the expenses is going to grow, right? So our staff salaries and pensions and all those things, there's not much option. But is your model help us to see how we can implement technologies and that can help? I'm not saying that we'll decrease the staff or something using technology, but how technology can be augmented so that we can, like, you know, there are a lot of new technologies coming up, how they can help and support our staff

Yeah, and I would say that's not something I do, but I know there's a lot of work out there going in California Society of Municipal Finance Officers, the Government Finance Officers Association, and banks are getting into how you can use AI or whatever else to help, right? to improve productivity. I don't know. I've been around long enough to see lots of stuff. I mean, I learned to type on a manual typewriter, right? And it's just like, it never seems to save money. I don't know. New technology always has these promises, but doesn't seem to, you know, just the job shift, right? So now you have a huge... IT community that you didn't have. We've taken secretaries who made a low amount of money, replaced with IT folks who make probably more money. So yeah, I think technology definitely is moving forward, and there's going to be opportunities to improve staff productivity. I don't know how it fits into the model, and that's not something that I will be helping with the city, but there are a lot of things going on out there of how this can be utilized for local governments.

We're currently underway with an IT strategic plan, a very comprehensive plan for the city to look at everything IT related and also increasing efficiencies. But I'd also like to mention, Russ started out by saying that our total employee size is very good for a city of this size. You could look to neighboring cities that have a smaller budget, provide the same services, and have about 100 more employees than we do. So it will be, we will always be using technology to keep that FTE count down. I believe we're still at our peak, we're about 11 positions lower than we were at our peak. And if you look at our chart with positions for employees, it's relatively flat. where in most cities you do see it as an upward trend, but we've kept it flat pretty historically throughout the city. So technology helps with that because our employees here, we do wear many hats.

Yep, I totally agree. As a technology profession is my profession, so I would say you mentioned that there is a shift in the money moving from work to IT people, but then there is a huge benefit from that where the world is benefiting as of now. But as Steve mentioned, so we are very thin staffed. But then as we keep growing, we need to make sure our staff have the required tools and technology, right? So otherwise you cannot run like this thin as we keep growing. You add more development, and then if you cannot add more FTEs, you're challenged with FTEs. Then we should figure out how we can augment that.

Absolutely.

So that will help us to see the expenses that are growing up and up because salaries, they are continuing to grow. Health benefit, they are going to continue to grow. Pensions are going to grow. So there is... Even, for example, I didn't see anything about, I don't know, what is the impact of the insurance and all utilities on our budget? Is it significant?

Yeah, it's in there, like insurance and supplies. But yeah, I mean, yeah, insurance continues to go up, and yeah.

Okay.

And then, now, my next question is, I want to see from this model what, as a council, what we need to do, what could be a significant impact items that we can work on so that we can make sure our forecast, whatever the forecast you are putting together, can have a significant impact. If staff can share that information, that will be great for us. And, um, yeah, this is a good and great initiative. Thanks for, we have been asking for this for quite some time and, uh, I'm glad that we started doing this one. I appreciate that. Thank you.

All right. Other questions. That's my brother.

Yeah, thanks, Russ, for this enlightening discussion. I'm wondering about the, I see that a lot of new cars are being bought without ever going to the sales room. They're being bought online and they're being delivered The point of sale is the person that buys it and it's in the neighborhood. So it seems like that's going up. And has anybody looked at the increase of that? Because I think if that continues, that trend continues, that could help us. I mean, we always talk about having a Mercedes Benz dealer here. But if we have people that are buying in a different way, they're buying online, that I think could potentially be a nice shot in the arm.

Yeah, and I don't know specifically about online car sellers. And if you buy something through Amazon, then those sales taxes actually come in and go into a county pool, right? So anything you buy on Amazon, you get charged sales tax. They don't charge the use tax, right? But you get charged the sales tax. That goes into a county pool, and then that county pool is divided to all the cities in the county based on total sales tax from everything else. I don't know how cars, because some things actually get, you could have, depending where they're coming from, could be the point of sale could be where it comes from.

I understand it's where it's delivered to.

It's where it's delivered to. So that would be the same thing. It probably goes to a county pool, and you get that, what you get from it is based on how the city is, you know, the city's share of total sales tax revenues within the county relative to everybody else.

For car sales, the majority of our tax comes from the percentage that you get from the zip code where you live. For example, Tesla, their point of sale is Fremont. because of the the factory where it comes from so it's it's it's The buyer picking it up in Fremont or is it well it it Read an article about this a few weeks ago that that Fremont really worked to get that point of sale to be at the factory where it's produced It's we could provide more information but the vast majority of our car sales come from the zip code percentage that we get and And then everything else is diluted out through the mechanism that Russ talked about. Unfortunately, if we receive sales based on point of delivery, this chart would be completely different. But we don't get that. That's a... possibly a California constitutional amendment to change that. So it's been looked into and it's a heavy lift.

Yeah, sales tax is a very political discussion topic on the state and hard to change. And it's now the CDTFA, I can't remember what that stands for, it used to be the... There you go, California Department of Tax and Fee Administration. It used to be the, I'm just blanking. Anyway, they've changed it, but it's very political in terms of how they do all these things. And the city does have, I don't know if HDL ever comes, you do have a sales tax consultant who looks at your sales tax and provides some forecasts for you. And I know when I was a finance director for Roseville, we had them come and They have all this information of what's going on. So I think that just might be something down the road you might, Jennifer. Potentially, I think it could be a good thing.

Also, you know, we are a desirable city. People like to come here. And as some of the earlier... Buyers of homes you know They they're getting older and a lot of people want to invest in their home. You know they want to spend money to upgrade their home and To me that's another potential win with you know the property tax will go up and and people buy Products to make the home hopefully locally, but it seems like that is also a way we could generate money as people invest want to live here and they want to stay longer and they want to, you know, upgrade their property. So that seems like another way they could, we could.

Yeah, if they add square, but you know, it doesn't get reassessed, right? Unless it sells. Yeah. So, or they add, if they add square footage, it could be reassessed for that amount. But just like I just redid my kitchen, I don't think it reassessed, doesn't, my house doesn't get reassessed for that. But there's definitely a lot of sales tax for buying appliances and whatnot.

And the other one was just kind of with the council member Rose's idea of really the AI. I mean, it seems like 10 years from now, that could be a significant influence on our city and how we staff and how many people we need. And you indicate you haven't really looked that much into it, but I would think that would be something that could be also significant influence.

Yeah, I think it will. My guess is you're going to have new positions to deal with AI and using it correctly and people who are trained in that, and you might lose other positions. But I did meet all the staff today who seem very competent, but it just seems small to me for all the things you have going on. So I agree. AI or anything else, any other technologies you can use to help them do their work better will probably be very beneficial. Thank you.

Vice Mayor Rubio.

Okay, thank you for the presentation, by the way, and everyone involved in making that possible. So I'll start with talking about sales, but more from the perspective of rather than us trying to predict how much sales we will get, is there any way to look at it from the other side of asking how much do we need in sales to be solvent in this projected time? And the reason I'm saying that is because it also makes me think that if we had some kind of goal or number that we could theoretically work towards, these are things that our chamber or Discover San Ramon could be thinking about as we build out what kind of, we can't tell them, but if they're aware of it, they're able to think of ways of like what kind of commerce of business we can bring here to help us meet those objectives. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I think there's different ways of approaching that. Typically, it'd be something like an economic development side that you're talking about, whether that's through the chamber or somebody else. Yeah, where can you bolster your retail? It's hard for a model. We have to look at what you have and where might that go. And retail has changed a lot, right, in terms of there's a lot more sales that are online. than there were, and we're seeing stuff, I think, how this will evolve, but more cars being sold online and delivered. It's definitely an evolving area. I will say, to get more taxable sales within a community, it depends on a number of things, and a lot of that is gonna be headcount. So you will get more taxable sales, typically with growth, because you have more people, so more businesses will come in. I don't know in terms of what are the big generators of sales tax revenues, malls, which you don't build anymore really, car dealerships, which you don't have. Then you have a lot of other kinds of So it's a question of, well, what are you short of? What might you need? Who would be wanting to come in here? Because these are corporations that typically do very things very formulaically based on incomes and head counts and where everything else is and who the competition is. So it's, you know, yeah, I think it's very good to look at how can we position ourselves better. I think it's hard to implement, right, because there's a lot of things you don't control. There's more you don't control than you do control. You do control land use zoning, but zoning is something that doesn't necessarily bring people in. You do have some very nice shopping centers, right? And so, yeah, that's always an interesting question. And again, I'll say coming from Roseville, which had... So much shopping. And the unfortunate thing was, and you could see it, that it really stole a lot of revenue from the communities around us, right? And they were always really mad at us because of that. It's like, yeah, you know, it's just, I'm sorry. I don't know what we can do about that because of the way California finance is. But, yeah, you're competing with other cities. You're competing with, you know. What's going on, but definitely something? I think that's that's good to look at and be engaged in how do we how do we make yourselves more attractive? And how do you get new?

Retail in here if you can is very can be very helpful to the future budgets and if I might add to that just to give a sense of scale when you're looking at the drop-off for measure n if we're talking about what kind of retail you would need to avoid that drop-off and An example that I came up with a couple weeks ago, to avoid that drop-off, that'd be equivalent of eight Costco's opening up in San Ramon. and all eight Costco's being just as busy as if there was no other Costco in the area. So just as I've been explaining to residents and those asking, okay, so eight Costco's, where would you put them in San Ramon? So throw out that they would all be busy, that you would get Costco to agree to install eight Costco's, what land do we have available to install those eight Costcos. So that just gives you a general sense of scale of the type of retail. Again, I wish the one city superpower that I would wish for is dictating what retail goes in when we would definitely have an Olive Garden. in San Ramon if that was the case. But that's just not the case, as Russ mentioned. There are so many variables. And we came close. Staff worked for about six months, possibly getting in a big box retailer in San Ramon. We were close. That company changed CEOs, and the new CEO said, no new expansions. So that gives you kind of an idea of how fickle it can be.

Sure. And of course, as you mentioned earlier, the more we develop out, obviously there will be more consumers, right?

Right.

And so where there's more consumers, we're more likely to attract those businesses that we need, but we need businesses that drive good sales but have a small footprint, right? Right.

There you go.

That's what we need.

That is possible. If somebody moves into an office space and they're a point of sale for their company, if they're a international marketing company, they could have a, this is unlikely, but a small 1,000 square foot footprint. If that's their point of sale, we get the sales tax.

That's kind of what I was thinking because when we were talking about the car sales, for example, you know, it could be sort of a pop-up shop where, you know, it's more for where people can come and ask questions and buy like if they already, you know, most people nowadays usually come into a dealership already knowing what they're looking for. So it's just like I'm thinking like, you know, I don't know, like a Rivian or something like that. Those are very popular. Those are really booming, you know? And I'm just thinking, I mean, of course we cannot make them come here, but I think that as we grow, and I think it'd be really important for us to work closely with the chamber, work closely, keeping them abreast to what our needs are, right? And what the goals are financially going out in terms of what we need to bring in. I mean, everybody benefits from that, so.

And we came close to an auto dealership like that. They were looking at a site, and then something happened in the stock market. It went down, and they decided, okay, no expansions. So it's very frustrating. We get close. We'd love to make that announcement, and then they make the decision not to for whatever reason.

Yes, I can understand. So that's something I would like to see, maybe just get a sense of what those goals are, so that that information is available to others who are trying to drive commerce here. The other thing is that a potential recession... When we have a recession is on average somewhere between 10 and 11 months. Right. And so the other thing is, like, I don't know if there could be like some kind of regressive model or something that we could look at to say, OK, what kind of resiliency do we have built? Resiliency or solvency do we have built in to our current, you know, revenues to solve? contend with that and sort of see how we can handle those setbacks, you know? Sort of preparing a little bit ahead. I would like to see something like that if it's possible.

Yeah, that's absolutely the kind of analysis we want to do. And I'll just say if you look at your main primary revenue is property tax. And those are fairly, you know, that's fairly recession-resistant, right? Even in the Great Recession, where that was mainly a housing issue, it did take several years, right? We hope we don't have another one of those. But what's the kind of recession? Who does it hit? How does it hit? It is definitely a question, but you can look at different factors. You know, let's say the pandemic, which was another recessionary event, it did have some impacts on your revenues, but places like San Francisco, San Diego, Anaheim, Los Angeles are very heavy on tourism, saw dramatic drops. where other cities, and I don't know exactly how you fared overall, but your property taxes didn't really go down, right? Those continued to kind of go up. And some cities even got more sales tax because of this whole thing with how we share monies. So yeah, it kind of depends, but you can definitely look at past recessions and how the city fared and what that means now. But yeah, there's some of your revenues are more subject to recession than other, so sales tax versus property tax, TOT, which isn't a big part of your budget, but definitely can have an impact.

Yeah, yeah. I think that would be just kind of us playing, being proactive instead of reactive.

Yeah, absolutely.

And definitely, I'm sure, I think if you include something based on our current, maybe our currently approved projects, And sort of, you know, this is, we're looking at 10 years. So it's kind of hard to assess, and that's another one, because we never know how long it's going to take to finally build something. So I think we, like you said, In every study, you have to make some assumptions in order to get a result. So I'm wondering if maybe we could make just some projections at how that development could look in five versus 10 years and how we're faring potentially at those different points. Does that make sense?

Yeah, yeah, it does. You know, and I think as long as just the only, excuse me, the only thing I might caution you against is not to spend money you don't have in the future. I would look at when this comes or, you know, wait until it gets here and then it's a, but yeah, I think it's definitely something that you could make some assumptions, reasonable assumptions on and put something as an alternative in the model.

Absolutely. So that's pretty much I think all I had. Oh, I was going to say the AI, the new positions, but losing new positions stemming out of that technology while also losing some. The other thing that's unpredictable and it crossed my mind because I know in other countries they're doing this where they're actually laws that are implementing fees to like employers who fire staff in exchange for AI use, right? And so they actually have to continue to sort of pay a stipend still to the employee. I'm not sure the details of all of it, but I think it would be interesting to see 10 years from now, you know, five, 10 years now, like we're talking like, if that were to have, like, we have to have some kind of buffers in there again for something potentially like that. But maybe we could just start by looking at what are these other countries doing? How are the, how much are they assessing in those fees? Um, To sort of build, gather, using that information to sort of have, predict a potential model of what could happen if that should take place.

We could look at that. I'll say one thing that sounds like a federal policy, not a local policy. And two, you don't have an income tax. So income tax, if people are fired, it could affect your housing market, depending who in San Ramon and what happens. But yeah. I mean, I think what you're pointing to is, is there a broader issue that, you know, this is some of the fears of AI, right? It's going to create all this unemployment, and then, you know, that creates its own recession, right? Yeah.

It could, and also it could impact pensions, you know, and things like that. So I think it's important to kind of look at that just so that we're kind of, we're Again, being sort of predictive in that way of potential pitfalls that could come our way. And we're prepared to, at least tentatively, with some recourse for that. Nothing's perfect. We know everything's fluid. I get it. But I just think it's important to think about that because, you know... You know, I know we're a municipality here, but I certainly am also aware very intimately of even a family member who worked 50 years in a finance sector and their whole department got shut down. They were all fired. So I wouldn't be surprised if in the next few years there's going to be a law coming out to protect those workers.

Right.

And so I'm saying I think we should start looking at what some of those other countries have done because I'm pretty sure that those legislators who will bring this forward will likely be relying on that to see what kind of models have been used historically and how it succeeded and help those employers. So just a thought. Thank you. Thank you for everything.

Russ, I just got maybe a couple quick questions. Again, thank you for the presentation and the model. You know, back on your slide where you talked about, we were talking about the organized retail theft, Fed and State. Isn't that just, those are one-time monies. Yeah, it was three years. In a model. How does that work to put that in a model, though?

Well, to work in the model, because it's revenue that you've been using, it's been going down. But what we don't project it out. And that's when I think, when we look at, in this model, we have actually, from the expense side, there's 800 lines of data on the revenue side. There's like 11,000 lines of data. So there's a lot of aggregating. But we can kind of look at, you know, what's happening and the question always is, is this ongoing? So especially grants. It's in the model just because it's something that's been supporting your, you know, what you've been doing and it's been helping pay on the expense side. And so to see when you lose that, if you don't also lose expenses then you start getting negatives right so will you have a negative in 28 i you know i don't know my guess is the staff will work to balance that budget through you know some um either you get more revenues or cost cutting or something like that so the model is just showing hey here's a revenue you've had it's going away we don't include it um the worst thing is to include it and it's not you know but it does go away because we haven't paid attention so There's a lot of detail like that, especially in grants. That's a question you always ask. How long have these been here? How long are they going to be? What's going to happen? That's one that's going away. And it doesn't seem, as far as I know, it's been money to help you do something, but doesn't have expenses that are necessarily going away with it. But maybe it should. I don't know.

Okay. And I didn't hear anything about the implementation of our climate action plan, but what happens to our model if we throw in there our climate action plan and a lot of the measures that- Yeah, I mean, I think the things that you can add, what's the cost of those things?

You could add that in, and this has an ability to add some alternatives in pretty easily. But you also, we talked about capital and deferred maintenance that kind of need to get added in as that is developed. But I think definitely stuff that are major costs, if you have a climate action plan that has significant costs for the city, you should look at that. That is something that's going to have a major impact. And the question is, how are we going to pay for that? You're kind of at the edge right now. And you need to either, you know, probably need to extend measure N. I mean, that's just, that's my, as I look at it, that's my opinion. But you probably need to do that. And then, you know, and then how do you add these other things in, right? So it's a balancing act. And I think cities continually, you know, it does seem to be a continual struggle. And a lot of cities are having these kinds of struggles. Definitely not alone. Yeah.

And I think my next question is really for Jennifer. And that is, you know, you've captured in your model here some of the adjustments, the accounting adjustments that we've made. And we've made quite a few over the last couple of years. Do we have any big adjustments on the horizon, again, that are going to have to play into this model? Or are we done with most of the accounting adjustments, at least that we're aware of at this point?

I believe we are clear of most of the significant ones. If there are any smaller ones, there are probably smaller ones, but they're not going to rise to the level of significance you see in the charts here.

Okay. All right. Thank you. I think that will help maybe stabilize some of the fluctuations that we've seen in the last 18 months or so. And then I guess the other thing, and maybe this is for Jennifer too. I appreciate the model tonight, but all along, over the last couple months, I was kind of expecting financial resiliency framework tonight. When do we see the different options that, you know, we've got a forecast or we've got a model now. When do we start seeing what are some of our revenue options as painful as they might be to ask for those? What are some of the expenditure reduction options as painful as those might be? And things like that because we, as has been said, we're going to have to start making some potentially tough decisions here, and we want to make sure we're the most informed that we can be before we get there.

Yeah, so I think that today with, you know, now we have a solid tool to be using in terms of framing our discussion, and then we'll pursue these recommendations that are outlined on the slide in front of you. And I'll work with the city manager to figure out how we work through the next steps of the framework, specifically how we're going to address the revenue options and the expenditure reductions.

Okay. All right. Thank you. And I had some questions. They were mostly covered on sort of the timing of when developments might kind of be approved and things like that, the impacts. But I don't want to rehash that right now. But I will just say, in the future, can we get the slides like this or, you know, other budget-related slides ahead of time. That will help us to be better prepared to come with some questions, or if we need to, we can get one-on-one with the staff ahead of time and make sure we really understand what we're going to be seeing. It also gives the public the opportunity to see it ahead of time to be able to come a little more prepared to make comments as well. But I think getting any kind of a staff presentation with this level of detail ahead of time would be very helpful, I think, for council and for the public.

No problem.

Okay. All right. May I? Yeah. Another question?

I want to just add one more thing, yes. Okay. A follow-up comment, just a piece of information, because one of the things I think is important as we talk about the cap, I mean, certainly we have, you know, things that are more proximal priorities or long-term priorities. But I think what's important to notice is that, you know, according to the World Economic Forum, as well as the climatechangeresources.org, is that investing in climate resilient infrastructure significantly reduces long term costs. So even though, yes, there's an investment long term, we're actually saving. So I think that I just wanted to make sure that that was clear because it's not just, oh, we're going to spend more. Yes, we're going to spend more up front, but when you make a transition in certain things and you update things, but long term, we're actually saving, which is what we're looking at is long term.

And I think when we have the council strategic planning and goal setting in January, that will be an opportunity to receive from you what your strategic goals are for the year. And then in this item of prior to budget development, checking in with the model, we can do those alternative scenarios at that time that reflect the priorities as you've laid them out for the year. Because I know that there are also, you just adopted a trails master plan that has pieces that may have a financial impact on the forecast. There are lots of plans that have financial pieces that we'll be tracking alongside the long-term financial plan.

And that's a perfect example because the trails, right? So if we get people off out of their cars, that's actually going to reduce the likelihood of how frequently we have to fix our roads, right? So there's so many little elements to all of that, right? So I think it's good to... to kind of look at those sort of what's a cost benefit of it, right? So thank you.

Okay. Looks like that's it for questions from us. I'm going to go ahead and open up public comment. We may have some closing comments from some of us here once we're done with public comment. So please clerk.

So I do have a few speaker cards, but before that if any remote participants on zoom would like to speak, please use the raise your hand feature. So our first speaker card is from freedom by God above America.

This item called long-term financial plan is a joke, when really what it is is a cover your ghost story. Infrastructure money could have gone to refurbish our city's lovely water fountains, which city manager sitting right there wants to bury up and do away with, yet he has no qualms giving our money away to other municipalities. Long-term financial plan must be one that executes the city's fiduciary duty first as why our organization exists such as paving worn roads, fix fixtures at parks and maintain landscape and water fountains instead of giving away our money to Danville or destroy Chevron who established our beautiful city or give money to agencies such as $250,000 a month for animal control or $200,000 for land development review a month or two BMWs motorcycles that could have gone to Mr. License because he drives motorcycle or $4,000 for steady effectiveness of organizational retail theft Those are the money you just blanketly approved, $3 million of them, which you refused to allow me to pull it under consent agenda 5.3. Tonight's 9.2 is supposed to be reported by Ms. Jennifer Wakeman. There is no mention of who this Russ is, and he collaborated with Scott? Isn't he the deputy city manager or assistant? And Yulia, isn't she a treasurer? And Miosha, or now Michelle? Isn't she the one who does the spreadsheets? Oh, and Jennifer. It's all family. Why should I believe him? Who is he? His full name is not disclosed to the public, yet my tax dollar goes to pay for his service tonight, which should have been rendered by Miss Jennifer Wakeman. His firm is not disclosed. Who is he? What is his qualification? Why are you guys sitting there listening to him? You guys must know something that the public doesn't know. This is classic textbook financial corruption by governments. This is what I'm talking about. and yet it is okay. If our city continues to work like this, we're not too far off from filing bankruptcy because we really do not have money to hire another specialist that just recently goes to the city manager's office Hire whoever you guys want and yet you won't pave the roads or fix the water fountains which is really what you are supposed to do and Which professional wouldn't know how to answer? Online purchase of cars and that city manager has to bluff for him. This is a joke of a ghost story Thank you next speaker please Johannes Tillehan

Mr. Mayor, I was trying to take notes. For some reason I missed the PowerPoint presentation on the package that was uploaded, so I didn't see it, so I tried to take as much note as I can. So let me read it. I want to start by generally acknowledging the good work happening here tonight. Finance Director Workman has been here over a year and has already made significant improvements to how the city accounts for and presents its finance, bringing in Russ Brunson, to build this model, the right investment, in my opinion, and good governance. This model will be updated at least twice a year. That is exactly the right approach, the way I see it. Today's presentation raises several important points. One, multiple expenses were not showing up correctly in the general funds for years. Health benefits, retirement costs, transfers, parks and rec revenue, they're now being corrected. That transparency matters and I'm glad that it's happening. Two, pension costs are projected to grow six to nine percent annually through 2029, if I understand you correctly. Sorry, I lost my thoughts. personnel around 65 percent of the general fund that structural pressure that does not go away third the retail theft grant of 1.3 million disappears by 2028 that's a known loss with no replacement identified Yet, what are your thoughts? I also want to acknowledge four gaps the Council raised tonight that are not in the model the way I listed it. One, future development revenue and expenses are not in the baseline of the city growth. Both sides of the equation matters and needs to be modeled. Mr. Branson confirms this tonight. deferred maintenance and capital costs beyond 2031 are not fully reflected. Mr. Branson acknowledged the expense side is likely understated under that analysis is complete. Three, investment income from the city's asset managers is only partially included. The city has professionals managing those assets and their full impact belongs in the model, at least in my opinion. Four, technology and AI are the staffing and efficiency factor was raised tonight but not yet quantified. Staff noted the city is already thin. As the city grows, that pressure needs to be modeled. Now the point I want to leave the council with. Give me 30 seconds more, Mr. Mayor. Over the past decade, Tamra Moon's audited financial statement shows the city's net financial position moved from $39 million positive to negative $10 million. That's a $50 million move. That's a balance sheet. Two, the net financial position is the city's balance sheet. I'll finish quickly, sir. It measures everything the city owns against everything the city owes across the city. Three, the primary driver of this decline is pension and retirement. Let me conclude. I have no issue with the income statement. I think they've done a great job. I have no comment, but the balance sheet needs to be looked at. We've never discussed it. I've added three meetings. It never needs to be linked. I'd like to know what, Mr. Russell, what your thoughts are on that one also. Thank you.

All right, thank you. Next speaker, please.

Brian Swanson.

So yeah, this agenda item has been painful to sit through. It's basically at least been one plus years late. The delay is a slap in the face to generous voters. It's good to hear the recommendations around Measure N, but there should be at least two baselines in the model, without Measure N and with Measure N, and maybe even with Ms. Rubio's suggestion with the recession scenario. Again, Measure N is a life preserver. approved by generous voters. The new context is a multitude of tax measures on the ballot by every level of government and special district imaginable. No guarantees in that environment. That is the existing operating context. It's lawful to recover the two cross to freeze, that is true. But is it or are they reasonable? in the regional or surrounding context? And does that impact the city's competitiveness? Are they ethical? The financial resilience framework is getting tons of hype. I hope this long-term plan and the framework are connected in every possible way. The IT master plan was stated by the city manager. I would encourage you to review the RFP that was published. It's a mess. It's way generic. Similarly, to hear economic and revenue development being deferred to the Chamber and discover San Juan is downright scary. You've dissolved the Economic Development Committee. That is your doing. relative to the AI concerns, realize you are proximate to Silicon Valley, basically one of the strongest players in the AI environment. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker, please.

There are no more speaker cards. However, we do have one remote participant on Zoom, Brian F.

Okay. All right. Brian F., go ahead.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, council members, staff. I appreciate the presentation on the forecast. I would perhaps remark that my understanding of it is as a perhaps midpoint forecast of the most likely future outcome based on recent history. I would perhaps suggest that future planning and presentations also highlight less ideal outcomes economic circumstances or contexts in which the city may find itself to help ensure that the city's planning and financial resiliency framework is prepared for more challenging scenarios than we may have experienced in recent years or decades. Thank you.

All right. Thank you. Any more speakers? Okay. All right. Thank you. I'm going to close public comment then. And, uh, we're back over to the council for any, uh, final comments. This is informational, uh, but, uh, any final comments or direction of staff or requests from council? We'll start down at this end again.

Nothing.

Let me kind of come over this end. Anything else? House member Rose. Vice mayor Rubio. Okay. All right. Well, Again, I want to I want to thank you Jennifer Ross for Presenting this evening. I think it was really very informative for us I look forward to more presentations in the future some refinements of the model maybe a little testing with some of the things that we were talking about this evening and I just just make a final comment that we you know our our residents They did vote for Measure N, and with that, they expect a certain level of service from the city. And with Measure N, we're able to provide that service, not service cuts, but services that they said they wanted and were able to provide because of that. Any future adjustments, whether that's cuts and other expenditure reductions and things like that, are going to have to take into consideration the potential impact to our residents for what they said they wanted to keep because of Measure N. So we don't want to take away the things that they said they wanted in the first place. So we've got to be careful about that as we start looking at some of the expenditures. But I also look forward to seeing some of those options for revenue, some of those options for expenditures, and continue to refine this model as we go along. So, again, thank you, Russ and Jennifer. And with that, that is our final... Final item for the evening, other than we're going to move on to item 10, city managers and city council members' comments and matters initiated.

I will turn it over to our city manager. Great. Thank you, Mayor. Just two quick updates. Our Community Planning Academy will commence in September. Applications are due by July 31st. It'll be four sessions this fall, beginning weekly on Mondays, beginning on September 14th. And also, I would like to note that we won another award for the bridge. It's the American Society of Civil Engineers Outstanding Bridge Award. That is now the eighth award that we've won for the bridge and counting. I think we have a few more that might be coming in. So kudos all around for that bridge project, and we're going to have to build a trophy case. That's my update for the evening. I was going to mention Critter Crossroads, but I'll do it again. Tomorrow, 4 to 6 p.m., ribbon cutting. All right. Very exciting. All right. Thank you.

All right, down to ‑‑ let me start with Councilmember Ernest Wynette. Councilmember Adler.

Yeah, we had a great 4th of July. We started out having run San Ramon race, 5K, 10K, and the fastest mile. And Vice Mayor Rubio did a great job announcing that. And then afterwards we gave a little ‑‑ COINS AWAY TO THE PARTICIPANTS AND THEN WE ACTUALLY HAD SOME PRETTY NICE AWARDS, GOLD, SILVER AND BRONZE MEDALS AND WE HAD AN OVERALL WINNER PLAQUES THAT WERE GIVEN AWAY AND JUST GREAT TO SEE THE CITY OUT THERE, A LOT OF HEALTHY SAN RAMON RESIDENTS HAVING A GOOD TIME AND A BEAUTIFUL DAY. And then later that afternoon, we went to the amphitheater where the mayor wished everybody a happy Fourth of July. We had the traditional patriotic music, and we were able to hand out coins to the service members in the audience before the main music was played by the cheese balls. So... That was great. On Monday, which was just yesterday, the Museum of San Ramon Valley had our meeting. And that is a nonprofit. And even though it's in Danville, it really talks about our history as well. and discussion of the summer fundraiser that took place last month and had a lot of people out there. There is a, and that was in the parking lot next to the depot, and... Had high school bands there. And there's a model train exhibit, Totally Trains, it's called. And it's built on a giant platform, kind of an old Danville with a tunnel and trestle. And that exhibit, I recommend going to see it. It's going to run through August 23rd. There was also mention in that meeting of a pipe leak at the one-room schoolhouse, and we were all concerned when that initially was brought up, but it turned out it only cost about $575 to correct the PVC pipe break, so it could have been a lot worse. And that is a well-funded organization. It has about $1,345,000. And today I went with a number of us here, Vice Mayor and, of course, the Mayor, the State of the County Address by Supervisor Candace Anderson. held at our own San Ramon Marriott, and she talked about operating budget, it's a big budget that they have, it's 7.25 billion, and it encompasses all county departments, and it was adopted partly in response to the federal and state funding shifts, which are going on. And about more than half of it come from state and the federal government. And I want to thank the emcees, Terry Keeney, who's the board chair, communication board chair, and also Donyell Cook of the Chamber of Commerce did a fine job at emceeing that event. Lots of other discussions about street smarts, but it was an informative luncheon today. Thank you.

Okay. Over to Council Member Varese. Vice Mayor Rubio. Might be the shortest report ever.

So on June 24th, I attended the San Ramon Valley Fire Protection Conference, district board meeting. Then on July 4th, as it was mentioned, the 4th of July runs San Ramon in the morning. And it was great to see all of our parks and community services commissioners out there. It was definitely a hot day, but I made it back just in time to catch up with you guys and hand out those medals. So then, and I also attended later in the evening again with THE MAYOR. THE MAYOR AND I WERE AT THE CONCERT IN THE PARK. I HOPE I DIDN'T MISS ANYONE ELSE, SO I APOLOGIZE. WHICH WAS GREAT. WE GOT TO HEAR FROM THE CHEESE BALLS. THAT WAS A LOT OF FUN. 80s, 90s MUSIC, VERY GOOD. THEN JULY 8th, I WENT TO THE CONTRACASTA LAFCO MEETING. NOTHING RELEVANT HERE DIRECTLY, SO I WILL KIND OF SKIP THAT. On July 9th, I went to the Library Advisory Committee meeting. Main item was just this approval of the, hold on, I just want to make sure I get this correct. It's the approval of the Story Walks selection for fall 2026. And then on July 11th, I went to a Bajan clubbing with the Art of Living, which was really, really interesting. It was fun. It was really just kind of a free dancing, like free-form dancing with a lot of our community members and a band, live band was playing. And then on July 14th, I went to, today, I went with, again, as was mentioned earlier, with... Councilmember Adler and the mayor to the state of the county with Candace Anderson. I don't think there was anything too surprising that was reported out. Fortunately, everything looked pretty stable. So that's about it. Thank you.

And they did give an update. She did give an update on the dual tracking project.

That's right. The dual tracking. Thank you. Okay.

I guess it's over to me, right? Nobody else had anything? All right. I attended a ribbon-cutting for a new small business in San Ramon on the 24th. It was over at BR1. It's a FFB bank. It's a community bank. They've got a focus on small business loans, and this is just a satellite office for their main branch, which is in Fresno. On the 4th of July, I was, in addition to the concert, I was able to represent the city of San Ramon in the parade in Danville, the Kiwanis Club-sponsored parade. And on the 8th of July, I attended the Camp Parks Change of Command. The outgoing commander is Lieutenant Colonel Rich King. The incoming commander is Lieutenant Colonel Tony Ibrahim. And I've been working to try to reestablish a relationship with Camp Parks because they're on our border, our southern border, just like Dublin is. And so the mayor of Danville was there, the mayor of Dublin was there, but it was a nice event. And then on the 9th, I attended the CCTA Planning Committee meeting. We were talking about transit a lot today. We did have a discussion on a return-to-source investment plan for the use of the anticipated SB63 funds if that half-cent sales tax goes through. What would we do in terms of the investment for that? That's for transit. We also talked about the Measure J reserve policy, Measure J being, again, another county sales tax that really – fuels all the CCTA projects, but there was a request by two of our transit operators, County Connection and Westcat, to pull a portion of this reserve, Measure J Reserve, out for their use currently because of their current situation. And then at the Contra Costa County Mayor's Conference on the 9th, there was also, in addition to a normal business meeting, there was a presentation by CCTA on their transportation expenditure plan. This is, and they asked the mayors in the different cities for assistance and outreach to share information about the process on the development of the TEP. and encourage participation in planning and to build support for some of the CCTA projects going forward. The Transportation Expenditure Plan is what is developed and used for the implementation of all the projects and programs that CCTA manages with those Measure J funds in the future.

And with that... Mayor, I forgot to ask something. Sure, go ahead. I'm sorry. I just wanted to ask the city manager, just for the benefit of the public, because we've had people showing up asking about a resolution for the Superfund, and I know I've shared our... policy on it, but maybe better so the public can understand what the key requirements are in terms of our policy as it pertains to resolutions and or maybe just explaining what options are available to them. And yeah, I think that that's basically what it is. I think it's important to give people clarity.

Yeah. We have a current Tri-Valley legislative platform and that basically enables cities in the Tri-Valley to follow that legislative platform to support legislation. Outside of that, the council could consider legislation that does not fit within that policy. What they are referring to with the Make Polluters Pay Act That's not a current active piece of legislation. It keeps starting and stopping at different phases because there are a lot of questions behind it. So right now there is currently no bill to support. I would leave it up to the groups asking exactly what they're asking for you to do, maybe to encourage a bill to be written. But one of the reasons why it keeps failing to go through the process is that there are many questions financially, legally, and scientifically with the bill. So right now there is currently nothing proposed and I am not aware of the council ever supporting something that hasn't yet formally been proposed.

Right, and in terms of their ask for a resolution, what are those requirements, like in our policy, like what's required for us to approve a resolution?

So if they're asking for a letter of support, that's one thing. For a proclamation or an actual resolution, proclamations, our practice has been issuing proclamations for groups that have an active presence in San Ramon with the San Ramon community. But resolutions, there really isn't anything to weigh in on because there's no proposed legislation. So typically we would need some type of proposed legislation or something to act on.

And when you mentioned letter of support, would that come from the mayor or would that come from the council?

Well, there's several ways. If the council wanted to speak as a whole body and officially represent the city of San Ramon, then we would need to agendize it, have a discussion, and then a vote by the council. Any one particular council member can write a letter of support as a council member but not representing the city as a whole.

Got it. Okay. Okay. All right. Well, thank you so much. That was helpful.

No problem. All right. Thank you. I just have one final announcement. The city council meeting that was scheduled for July 28th, 2026 has been canceled. We made that decision months ago. So just a reminder, our next regular meeting will be held on August 11th, 2026. Also, beginning with the August 11th meeting, based on recent change that we approved, city council meetings will start at 6.30 p.m. instead of 7 p.m. So, again, our next council meeting, August 11th, will be at 6.30 p.m. And with that, I'm going to adjourn tonight's meeting. Thank you.