City Council - Special Meeting

All right, we are going to go ahead and call this meeting to order. Special meeting of the Leo City Council at 5:06 p.m. And I will ask our city clerk to please conduct a roll call. Mayor Source, present. Vice Mayor Matulic, present. Council members Becker, present. Gordon present. Paul Maris present.

I will note for the record that council members Leedu and Matias are currently absent. All right. Thank you. So we have a special meeting tonight with two items. We're going to be hearing a presentation from our cons our consultants the Roosevelt Group on their maritime revitalization plan. And then we will be doing the study session on the 2627 budget. Uh, so we'll do this item between an hour, we're thinking about an hour and a half. Um, and then by seven we'll be ready to start the budget. We'll take a short recess in between those two items and we will go ahead and proceed right to the action calendar. I'll ask our city clerk to please announce item 3A. Receive and accept a presentation of the city of Vallejo's strategic plan on maritime revitalization and provide feedback.

All right. Thanks. So we will go ahead and open up public comment on this item. We'll hear the presentation and then we'll take public comment after the presentation and I'll turn it over to our acting city manager Connley to introduce our guests this evening.

Yes, thank you so much Nangu Connley, acting city manager. Really happy to bring this item forward. Um it's, you know, something that I know that the city of Valo is very interested in. I know that there's a lot of folks who um weighed in on this strategic plan who the consultants had a chance to talk to. Um but just really wanted to, you know, express my gratitude and appreciation to the Roosevelt group for bringing the strategic plan to fruition. Um as mentioned in the staff report, it's very comprehensive. It's dense. So um we are not going to talk about every uh actionable strategy within the plan. There are 27 of them. What we did was we pulled out the ones um for the the near term to kind of focus on the ones that that um are the most implementable for the short term um because some of the other ones are longer term and will require you know some additional conversation. But this really is a great framework for us to start these conversations. Um, this isn't the end of the conversation. This is just the beginning. So now we have things to actually bring forward to the public to solicit feedback to get your feedback as council. Um, so with that, I'm going to turn this over to Nate Povitz from the Roosevelt Group to start his presentation.

Well, thank you very much. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, council, for having us here tonight and for the really the truly the partnership that has been going on since December of this past year. So, we tried to meet with as many folks as we could throughout that four-month period and apologize to those who we didn't get a chance to meet with, but we we felt we we had a good group of people that were very open and honest with us and appreciate all the local support and helping us really get a vision of where Vallejo wants to be, where you are today. And then we also took kind of what we know about uh the federal environment in DC and tried to merge that together to what um was called the framework for you all to consider and really focus uh your efforts on to see really where you have the resources, where you have the energy, where you have the shared vision to kind of move forward. It is it is somewhat of a menu 27 recommendations but it really is the the full menu for you to choose from and really you know focus in those areas that you think are the highest impact and so with that I'll start the presentation and so the discussion this evening is quick overview for those who we didn't get a chance to meet with I just want to give an overview of our firm and then an overview of the entire effort I'll talk about the on the high level. We we have three distinct pillars in the plan. I'll talk about those. Uh I'll talk about what's going on currently in DC just to again give you a framework of uh what this administration is thinking, where the funding is at, and where things are headed to. And then we'll get into the specific actions and and really bucket them into the near-term, the zero to one-year action items, the one to threeyear action items, and more of the long-term out to 10year type of action items for consideration. and and really the charge forward, what's next? Uh, and then open up for comment and and questions. So, the Roosevelt Group, we're we're a bipartisan firm out of DC. We do national security advocacy. What's

unique about the Roosevelt group is that we we do have a core group of um, like Sierra sitting next to me and myself, uh, full-time staff. But what makes us unique is we do have a hundred subject matter experts that come from government that are retired admirals from the Coast Guard, from the Navy, uh were senior executives for multiple agencies who provided input, not all of them on this report, but a a select few on this report that provided their insights. Those those uh folks who ran shipyards for the Navy provided input to this report. Those who worked in the Coast Guard provided input. So, so we use those subject matter experts and their their backgrounds and their knowledge of past and current environments to help help shape this report. So, moving forward, what what the reality is is is you have a great asset in Mar Island, right? And it's underutilized based on uh inconsistency demand signal um from the commercial sector as as well as the federal government. And what the opportunity is before us is this this effort really started with Rep. Garren Mundy and his ships act proposal where it's really taken a a slight turn. It's a turn but a slight turn is the president released his maritime action plan uh back in February. So it really has the component of where this administration and this Congress in a bipartisan effort is really taking a look at uh ship building in the future and the the maritime industry. So now is the time to take advantage of that that forward momentum that's coming from DC. And so what what again what I'll talk to is that three pillar strategy to uh make Vallejo a west coast uh premier hub for ship repair and basing as well as create an ecosystem for the maritime tech environment. And so for the for the mayor, for you and the council to consider from this plan again is is h how can you best um choose the pathway

that's right for you within the amount of resources that you have that can give you the highest uh return on investment. And and as was mentioned, I'm going to talk about the strategic plan, but I'm not I'm not going to go into a great amount of detail. the I believe the strategic plan was posted and is available for everyone, but it's about 130 pages of of reading, but we we feel we've really captured kind of the current environment and, you know, some really good proposed ways forward. But, uh, getting off with pillar one, I mentioned Mar Island as the, you know, strategic asset, but it is really the epicenter of a maritime environment out here. So the way Mar Island goes for maritime environment is the way the city of Vallejo is going to go. So wi without those key critical assets that are sitting out there really that the maritime revitalization of the area would be really hard to to make it um in that area. For pillar two we looked at hey the finger peers out there that are that are shown in that that beautiful picture of Vallejo. You know at one time they were they were basing naval vessels. Is there another opportunity to to have a long-term investment by a federal entity, whether it's the Coast Guard or the Navy, to to bring ships here, to be to bring families here, to bring jobs here. Uh so we looked at that in pillar two. And then pillar three is really where we really focused on that that more of a human aspect of how do you develop the the K through 12 education in Vallejo? How do you get them to bring how do we bring in um startup companies? How do you create a tech accelerator, etc. So, how do you really create that, you know, start to to finish ecosystem that that is self- sustaining? And with that in the in the bumper sticker on the bottom of the slide, it really takes the economic development tools and the levers of the city to really make some of these things work.

Going into pillar one, we I mentioned uh this is the ship building and ship repair. So, how how do we how do you bring that back? uh the the United States at one time was a leader in this industry and has has fallen off that uh making less than 1% of the commercial ships today. Um so there's a strategic push by this ad administration to bring ship building back uh not only on the commercial side but even on the the federal side with ship building for Navy and Coast Guard vessels behind schedule over budget really how do we create that that maritime industrial base and it really starts with Vallejo sending a demand signal out to the to the market to say hey we are here we're ready we have ready assets. So how do you do that? You know, so we we if you look at the slide in the focus areas, it's really organizing around creating a defense community around national security, around the industrial base and say we have these assets. We want to go here. We're willing to do X Y and Z to get there. Come partner with us. So it's really we talk about in the plan how do you create those different coalitions? some through public private partnerships through some uh mayor could be through a city-led coalition with either task force or steering groups um that can be generated but ultimately you have to show that you have skin in the game that you're organized and you have a clear vision. So part of that skin in the game is you know making some improvements to the dry docks potentially to to attract investors. So it's really where do you want to go? How do you market that and uh what kind of partnerships can you create? The second pillar is is more of a strategic presence and this is really a long-term outlook uh from the Coast Guard and and the Navy. We looked at ship building plans. What what are those um what are those vessels that will have funding that are scheduled to be uh completed in the next decade? Where do they have an over capacity uh of current

homeporting and what would be a good fit for those those finger peers on Mayor Island? And I I really like that picture that you know the historical photo out there because you can really see how many vessels you can get out there that now uh you're not going to do that today. Um but because there's a little bit more stringent restrictions, but um the capability is there. It exists today. Uh with a little bit of dredging and some um TLC, it can come back to be one of those ports. So what we talk about in the plan is the process that the the Coast Guard and the Navy use to to figure out where they're going to station these next ships and and really that there's a differences slight differences in in the two processes but they fund fundamentally are the same in that they they focus on where is that ship going to perform its mission. Is it clo in close proximity? What is the industrial capacity of the area that that ship is homeported? So, can you do the repairs and other availabilities at that location? Uh, the third one is probably the most important one is can you take care of the troops and their families, right? So, that that's all the way from spouse employment to education to medical facilities to birthing for unaccompanied housing and so forth. So, that's really that's a huge factor that the government considers when they determine where are we going to base things. And from our from our research over the last uh several months, it's that that's that's one of the keys that the the birthing and being able to to house service members is one of the factors that Vallejo really needs to consider as as you look at both bringing repair work to Mar Island, but also some uh future homeporting. And ultimately cost is a is a factor. Um, and I think with the Navy in particular where they they invested a lot of money up in the northwest in seismic um, mitigation, I think they would have a a similar concern uh, with this area. Although it it is through our research showed it was

not a concern, but the mindset of the Navy would want to see, hey, and the Coast Guard to say, hey, this is not a concern and here's why. We looked at this and it's not. So, we're ready to be there. So, um really there there is an opportunity here as you see as we'll get further on in the slides when we talk about long-term um goals. This would be a long-term goal. This takes a lot of time to get on the radar of the the federal government as a potential site and then to actually get get those uh targeted to be here and and have the appropriate upgrades made. Moving on to the the final pillar, pillar three, you know, I talked about that workforce that that human capital and how do you how do you create that pathway? Uh when we let met with the Vallejo school district, Calpali's right here, you have all the tools in place and and and what it looked like to us is, you know, starting with creating that career and technical educational pathway uh in the school district to really introduce uh folks to to the maritime industry. And it's a variety of stuff, right? Right now, it's not necessarily that you go into trades, which is a a a great viable uh career that that enhances national security, but it could be in AI and naval architecture. It could be robotics, it's autonomous vehicles. So, it's a it's got a wide range of topics that that our our young kids are kind of thriving for and and and in the midst of right now with technology innovation. So, it's about how how do you educate the the um K through 12 here? How do you how do you launch those tech accelerators? Like I talked about attracting people and potentially becoming a named um California accelerator hub for maritime out here. How do you attract the investors here? How do you create facilities where they can bring their prototypes here or bring their startup here and test those facilities on the water for autonomous or robotic

vehicles? And then once they prove a concept, how do you get them to move their business here? So it's really that whole ecosystem that that we're trying to create and our recommendations are are around and you know to sum it up is kind of on the bottom of the slide is the train the workforce kind of create that accelerator prove a prove a concept and then deploy that concept here and all these things as I mentioned in the beginning cannot be cannot be done without kind of the economic engine of the Vallejo economic development arm. So what we offered was were several recommendations on how that can be enhanced and how to how to market Vallejo in a different way. Uh potentially creating a Vallejo enterprise fund that provides us some additional flexibility in either attracting investors or making sites ready for investors doing environmental work getting things ready to go so things are movein ready but establishing that fund does provide some flexibility. Um then how do you we talk a lot about attracting startups. Uh another key piece of this is really understanding who you have here today and and then um keeping them here and helping them grow which um I know the department's already looking at. We make some recommendations in there as well. But in general, you know, these these fundamental tools are, you know, ways to that you're going to create those incentives to to attract the maritime population. And that's we have a few other sections of the plan that talk about, you know, how to get some federal dollars for dredging, how to remove some uh abandoned vessels, those type of things. And then we provide in the end a laundry list of all the all the federal funding opportunities, grant opportunities, again that that that could be applicable. Not that you'll go go after every one, but I think it's key to understand what's out there and then

focus on some key ones and and do that repetitively. So, I'm going to shift gears now and talk about the the DC landscape just to, you know, show you where we're at today. This is a a current budget cycle of the FY27 appropriations that, you know, start FY27 starts October 1 of this year. So, the president just released his budget uh earlier in April and then the more detailed budget uh April 21st. So, Congress is going through that right now, having hearings on it, and well, ultimately the House and Senate will decide where they take that. It's a historical size budget this year, $1.5 trillion, uh, which is, you know, 441 I think billion higher than last year's uh, was enacted. So, a a huge budget to consider this year and the forecast is is kind of similar size budgets in the in the future to come. So the question is where you know where are they putting that putting that money and this is this is are the key investments strategic priorities and kind of the personal and readiness ones this is specifically for department of war uh that budget that I talked about that 1.5 trillion but as you can see down that one column of key investments it's a it's a focus on ship building in the industrial base and there's also as we mentioned in the report like the unmanned systems is one of those key focus focus areas that we think Vallejo could be extremely su successful with. Um there's a lot of money going into that research and development and and buying those uh assets for the Navy. And then you know you look on the right side strategic priorities. I didn't I didn't circle this but again defense industrial base is just a key component of the plan and will be and it it has bipartisan support in in that aspect. And then just to give you a a concept of the Department of the Navy specifically,

this is just a a snapshot of their 27 budget. And again, talking everything's, you know, when you look at this year's budget is historical. So, you know, some of the things that jump out are 75 vessels, battle force vessels in the in the next five years, next fiveyear budget cycle. So, that that's a huge inventory that they're trying to to bring to fruition. And and one of the key one of the key vessels that we said you could target for homeporting here is that is a new frigot which the Navy's going to use a Coast Guard cutter hull which Mar Island dry dock has always has already serviced. It fits out there. It fits on the peers. You know is the frigot the right platform to advocate for for a home port here? And as you see from that that chart, you know, they'll start ba building the initial frigate in FY29 and then some some follow on in in FY31 later. So when we talk about the long game, that's that's playing the long game getting ready for that kind of time frame. But u again historical budget for Department of War, but also um Department of Transportation and so I mentioned the president's maritime action plan. uh some of the components of that or most of the components of that are focused on commercial ship building where the funding comes down through the department of transportation in MARAD. So with this one part of the the maritime action plan has this creation of a maritime security trust fund. So this this legislation actually creates it and puts $1.4 billion towards those um those key aspects of the maritime action plan. Um, I have up there the port infrastructure development program, 450 million. I know the city is applying for grants currently in that arena. So, that that pot of money is getting bigger. So, the likelihood to get some of those grants improves. Um, the second bullet on there, I'm not going to go through all these, but the second bullet really focuses on the Merchant Marine Academy.

But in the maritime action plan, it it it focus on is on the the federal academy, but it also focuses on the state academy. So, Calpaly Maritime, we can foresee in the in the future budgets that they will be getting uh similar amounts of uh funding to help help those programs. So, more money coming in. What what this what this really just uh shows is that the maritime action plan is out there and now they're starting to put legislation and funding together to actually resource and be able to enact that that plan. So, it's again a a critical time to kind of revitalize the the maritime focus. And lastly, just our recommended action. These aren't all 27 of them. I I grouped many of them together um that were similar in nature, but again wanted to focus on really that that left-hand side and and the most important and we've said it in kind of our our discussions throughout developing this plan, but is that that coalition, the city-led coalition and mayor taking the lead on that is probably one of the the uh fundamental pieces to get going is to establish that organization to create that vision to get the buyin from the local stakeholders and start building that coalition and then going to engage and market and being that person who can go engage in the DC area and and throughout the maritime uh industry itself. So looking really at that near-term I I kind of break those down on this next slide. I talk about the one voice. It's so critical. We work with a lot of defense communities um over 20 defense communities right now. And it's very important that when you go talk to senior leaders that they know who they're talking to and what what they represent. So we've had many cities or or counties try and come in multiple times meeting with senior officials and afterwards you know well well we didn't bring them in but they would meet with senior officials and the official would

say well who do I talk to? you know, which one of them rep truly represents the the community out there and can make decisions and can can be a be a partner. And and that's really where I see the city of Vallejo in this this coalition building is that you've got to be able to create that coalition, be that single voice, that shared vision, and then be the one to help market it, to host industry days, to to go to DC to talk to the congressional delegation and and have that really solid plan as you move out. Um the second one on there, the maritime prosperity zone promotion. There there is currently no this this is again um part of the maritime action plan is the creation of 100 maritime prosperity zones. there. The the individual who wrote the the plan or authored the plan from the National Security Council has also put together six or so legislative proposals that will actually help enact these maritime prosperity zones and they will reveal those in the next month or so. So, it's key to kind of watch to see how that's playing out the nomination process if there is one. It may be driven from a top- down perspective, but really understanding what's going on with that legislation tied to the maritime action plan is critical. And then, you know, the next ones I I pretty much summarized together, but they're summarized on the right hand slide, which is which is the which is really the main takeaway. You've got to be like really aggressive, really organized, and be vocal. You've got to send that demand signal that you're ready to go, which you which you do. That's your that's your strength. May Ireland are ready to go assets with some some minor tweaks. They're they're ready to go. So that's that's the strength. So again, organized market and then kind of engage those leaders. And with that, I hopefully I didn't provide too high of a level of summary, but happy happy to go into some additional areas uh further, but really I just want to kind of show you where

our focus was. But again, just want to thank thank the mayor and and the council and for for all the stakeholders we engage with because I think we got a a really good sense of the community and where where you want to go and and we uh we know you need help getting there and uh we want to help be be part of that solution to get that revitalization. So, thank you. Yeah, thank you so much. Um really really appreciate that like being able to condense that much information um very very clearly. Um, and it's very exciting. Before we get to questions and comments from the council, why don't we go ahead and take public comment on the item? Do we have anyone in person? No one signed up in person, mayor. All right. How about online?

Through the mayor. No members of the public signed up online at this time.

All right. We will go ahead then um and close public comment. Although, if people we might I might do one more round later. It's a big item and and folks might be, you know, getting off work and just not signing on. So um I'm before and I'm happy to to take lights from my colleagues. I do I guess want to start with a a broad question. First of all, this is thank you all for doing this. I think we we sort of as a council knew that we had this opportunity. We were hearing all this buzz. We wanted to to show leadership and we really appreciate the Roosevelt group for taking this on and kind of helping us move through the process. um and our acting city manager at ACM for shephering the city through that that side of the process um after we we took this on. Um the one big stakeholder, probably the biggest stakeholder in all of this other than the city is Mayor Island Company. And one of the things that I've thought about a lot through this process is the fact that, you know, the thing that differs from where we were 30 years ago is that the island is privately owned. And so I'm wondering if you can speak to your experience working with Mir Island Company and the development of this and how you think the partnership looks given that it's their a lot of this is their uh land. No, that's a great question and not one that's normally um this situation is not normal where you have a federal government say we don't need this land and then potentially needing it again um and trying to work and trying to work that out. Um that's why we we haven't seen any future backgrounds um recently. But I think it's a it's a it's a great question because it gets at some of the the comp complexity of this issue. But I think the the coalition where where we've seen the greatest success is when uh whether I mentioned a task force earlier, but we've had we work with communities to build a an alliances. There's different alliances or defense alliances across

the country. And they're typically set up as like a 501c4, I believe it is. Um, but they're set up where there is a there is a board, there's an active board, there's a voting uh group, a steering committee where you have private entities as well as municipalities as board members on those where you have that shared vision. You set up that organization, you're that one voice from the community and you have buyin from everybody, right, on the direction you want to go. So once you get that buy in and especially with Mar Island and I think they're from talking with them is they're they're widely open to um maritime development and and if somebody came and gave him an offer today to to kind of buy that chipyard, you know, they I don't want to speak for them, but you know, they they would they would probably take it. Um but I think it's critical that their their plan as well leaves open the option I think their development plan leaves open the option of redeveloping that waterfront area as the final phase. So allowing time to work with work with the city and others to to really say is there is there a viable platform here to bring maritime development back and you know if if if it does go 10 years 15 years and there's no development then they obviously have as as the owners have to have a off-ramp and a plan B right so so I think I think bringing them into a formalized coalition is is the way to do it um because I I think that they I think you'll find that they support it and you can get buy in on that shared vision statement and shared actions that get you to that that north star or that end state.

Yeah, thank you for that. And so would you say, you know, I think I I think I understand the structure of the public private partnership and that makes a lot of sense, you know, as we think about taking the actions needed to, let's say, um, you know, repair the assets, the the slide with the, you know, 40 million or whatever it was, no, it's on this other sheet, the infrastructure improvements, you know, given that those are on private land, what are the, you know, what are the sort of funding recommendations when you're thinking about putting public money into a private asset. Are there any mechanisms through which we can kind of

get guarantees if we're, you know, if we're working in a in a public private partnership like that, making sure that we're not making investments that's just going to profit a private firm and that we're getting some guarantee on the back end here.

And they're going to want the same thing, right? If there's private money invested in it, they're there's going to be I think throughout the process, you determine whether there's a demand signal, right? you're going to need that predictive maintenance or the predictive um revenue stream, right? I I wouldn't recommend going out and spending $40 million to repair it with the hopes that somebody will come, right? Like so so um in particular, I think one example off the top of my head is down in Mobile, Alabama, um where, you know, the Navy partnered uh another partnership where they invested some funding in. And there was some uh public money and private money I believe to create a shipyard down there, but they had a demand signal. The Navy had the demand signal that there would be work there. So I think it's critical before you you do that is is really figure out where where the strategic priorities of the federal government are and whether you align or not. And if you align, how can you get some of those um guarantees as you as you put it? Am I answering the question? Yeah, I think I think

it's hard because it's it's I know a lot of our conversation was well who's the first one to bite, you know, who's the first one to pull the trigger on the investment and it's got to be a little bit of everybody taking some risk. So, um the the federal government is no longer taking the entire risk, you know, so they want everybody to take a little bit of shared risk, but with the knowledge that everybody is, you know, rowing in the same direction, I guess, right?

Yeah. Yeah, I I appreciate and I appreciate that there aren't any real easy answers to that. I think, you know, what we saw with the dry docks was, you know, when these contracts go for, you know, a year at a time or five years at a time, but the bids don't go out, you know, it's it's difficult to make significant investment in an asset if you don't have a guarantee on the back end. And then from the federal government's perspective, I would imagine they wouldn't want to invest in the asset unless they knew that they would have access. there's almost every stakeholder is going to want to predict that there's yeah

predictability across the nation right now is struggling with all the shipyards. So that's that's what they're asking for from the federal government and and the department of war has responded you know in in changing the acquisition cycle to say these aren't one trying to make more multi-year investments for repair or ship work rather than individual one-offs. So I think I think they're moving the acquisition more towards that. So I think there's a greater opportunity, but I think all these questions, you know, like I said there's there's probably you know a dozen branches these these recommendations can go and that's I think one of the most critical pieces is to understand where you want to be and then to start having these conversations with the senior leaders to see

right see if there is alignment or not or what the possibilities are. Right. I appreciate that. All right. I we have Okay. Yeah. I was just gonna say I've lost my connection. So, do we want to just go down the line? We'll go to Council Member Paul Morris and then Yeah. right now. Okay. We'll go to Council Member Paul.

Thank you. And also thank you for presentation and also thank you for talking to me a lot. Um, so I just want to identify uh a couple of issues and just uh um make sure like we're we're all on the same track for for all these things. So one of the things uh that I think should be a concern is whether uh Mir Island and and Valo in general has the energy infrastructure to meet the needs for advanced manufacturing. Um I'm also representing Valleo uh when it comes to the green uh green empowerment zone and one of the largest issues was the energy infrastructure. Uh if you look at the map of uh just uh megawws and the south bay uh there those sites for those warehouses those boxes um the energy infrastructure is set up for that in the East Bay and this part of Solano County not not so quite set up. So, I think that's one of the things we have to kick the tires on is, you know, if we're really going to be serious about advanced manufacturing, do we first have the energy infrastructure to back that up? Um, I appreciate the, uh, you identifying the housing and birthing for the sailors. I know that was one of the major concerns uh, um, you know, kind of made the news uh, last year or earlier this year. Uh, so definitely I think that needs to be part of our overall housing strategy. uh not to be complacent about but how can we do more to induce some of the the housing for sailors and I me and I mentioned this uh at the last meeting but also be cognizant of uh housing for all the ranks right so in any uh ship or cutter that's going to be junior listed and if they're single they're not going to get a whole lot in BAH and so that means they're not going to be able to that much but they got to stay somewhere so we have to be cognizant of what kind of housing that we provide for uh everyone from uh uh you know an E2 to you know a

four-star. Well maybe not a fourstar but maybe a captain of a ship. So, um, at the last meeting also, um, uh, Council Matias identified, uh, the need for some sort of, uh, uh, tiff, uh, to encourage for whenever there's going to be that big large firm or large employer firm to come to Valo and Tamir Island. if they're going to come there, then that's opportunity to have a tiff and get use th that revenue, their investment to invest back into island. Uh you mentioned this before. I mean, gone are the days that the federal government is going to just pay for everything. You know, we have to kind of meet them in the middle and show that we are serious. And I think part of showing that we're serious is that we are going to find all sorts of financing structure, infrastructure to kind of meet the the the federal government in the middle. Um, another thing that's part of this strategy that I think is really important and not just so much for uh the workforce, but just in general is uh we need to really embrace a cradle to Korea program. uh the mayor and I I uh hunted you at the parking lot last meeting, but I think it's important we need to we need to really embrace that there are a variety of versions of this out there. Um and I know we can't we probably can't afford all the bells and whistles for a creative career program, but what can we do at least show that we're serious and we're and we're helping our youth uh uh not only just get through school, but also prepare them for the workforce. Uh there are examples out there uh but I'm not going to go too deep into that right now. Um and I get into the meteor stuff. I totally agree with the one voice uh governant model. We need to show a concerted effort to uh to show that we are serious and that we have and we're

making a concerted effort uh to work on this. Um you mentioned the 501c4. Uh this sounds very similar to what Vakavville did, the city of Vakavville did where they seated uh a nonprofit and uh that went into their biotech industry. We could do likewise. Um but I will also say that until then we need to start making the initial moves to show that we are serious. So we don't have to wait for 501c3 or C4 or whatever. Um, but we could and should uh establish a steering committee, working group, task force, I don't really care what you call it, but that coalition you mentioned, we could all meet up at any time, city of Lao, Mayor Island Company, so on and so forth, all the all the stakeholders. But to the mayor's point that we need to have a a real uh honest and and dedicated conversation with the Mayor Island company is like, "Okay, do you buy into the strategy? Also, what are you willing to do?" Because it's one thing to say like, "Yeah, this sounds great, but okay, but what does that actually look like right now?" And once we establish that, we establish the vision. we established the mission statement and that leads directly into the uh the the nonprofit. It's important for us to do this kind of work right now because we want to stay ahead of the federal budget cycle, right? So, thinking farther ahead, if we want to if we want that those federal dollars, we have to start signaling right now that we are serious. and it's May uh and so we don't have a lot of time but any kind of uh working group or whatever to show that we're serious and and provide that demand signal uh the better. Um as I mentioned before I'm also representing the city of Leo for the green empowerment zone. So thinking more broadly I think also this working group should and I'm just going to name it.

It's like a merit island maritime and manufacturing uh working group or steering committee. Um because I for me I I think the opportunity is kind of diversary portfolio. Yes, it's ship building. Yes, it's ship repair. Yes, it's it's uh defense manufacturing. But it's also plenty of room for the clean energy manufacturing. And these are the conversations we're having in North Contraosta County and Solano County. And so why not do both? And I think Valo is at a very unique uh position that we can double dip on this. And so why not? Um and yeah and and I look forward to when we actually start meeting and we can actually have a nonprofit or some sort of organization where we can overcommunicate our seriousness and start branding ourselves as uh um the place for ship building repair advanced manufacturing etc. So that's it. Thank you.

Thank you. All right. So folks may have noticed the captioning went in and out and so I'm going to give our IT team We're okay now. All right, we're going to proceed then down the line and I'll just look to it. If we do have issues, we will flag because we want to make sure all of this gets properly recorded with the captions online. We'll just continue down the line. So we'll go to Council Member Gordon.

I don't have any questions right now, but thank you so much for the conversation, the in-depth conversation. Uh just really wanting to know uh from our perspective of what our goals are for the city of Valleo, what we would like to see with partnership in this opportunity. You're both of you, you're very intentional and I appreciate that and um I look forward to continue to learn more and thank you for the correction of the naming. So I appreciate that too. But thank you. You both did amazing job. You should be very proud of yourself. Great. Uh, Vice Mayor Tulik,

thank you and thank you for that presentation. Um, and and listening to the general public out there, there there's a lot of um conversations of competition out there. And for us, the with with the new Collinsville that's coming out there, there there's that competition of how are we better suited versus what Collinsville is doing. So I think from a marketing and from a um development um enhancement type of opportunity, we we need to raise our game from from the from how we're intentional about how we're moving forward and and a lot of the conversations we've had up to this that that people have had with me up in this point spec specifically about the maritime prosperity zone is is is the suggestion of looking um of partnering up. Uh we talked about the public private partnership but there's a lot of other maritime sources around here Benicia um Richmond things of that nature to where pooling our resources may give us a better um talking points so to say if if we're able to uh enhance our um basically infrastructure our capacity of of how maritime works and specifically here in Valo a lot of the conversation I'm talking about and we we've kind of focused on Marine Mar Island specific But um but speaking to the public private partnership um which was done over in Martinez when they started doing their waterfront enhancement there. We've got both two sides that we we that I believe we need to be um talking about is not only the mayor island site but the but the Valo city side also of that waterfront and how can we enhance and and and utilize both sides of of that uh for this potential here. So, this is this is where I I I want to be able to um advance some of these conversations um to to where they haven't gone to in in

in some of these um in the past. Uh and and so this is and part of this comes to where and I go back to um the whole revenue generating type of thing where where developers don't come here because they don't see the reason to there. there's no purpose for or in other words we as a city haven't done enough to to encourage development here and I think once we're able to focus on something like this with the maritime and the ship building that'll definitely kickstart a bunch of stuff. So I think I would like to see for me it's more of a marketing type of enhancement of how do we how do we get our message. It's we always talk about changing our narrative here in Valleo and I think this is the a great starting point or talking point that we can enhance that conversation and it's it's a matter of how we are intentional of how we're doing it and I think util utilizing the ship building is is is a great point but I think we need a little be we need to be a little bit more nuanced a little bit more sophisticated in how we're trying to do that and I think I think utilizing your expertise this you can help lead us in some of those conversations and and getting that out publicly. But I I think that's the start of where I would like to do is how we're actually marketing oursel and and knowing that we're quote unquote in a competition making pointing out that how we are the better choice versus versus others out there and hopefully partnerships with with other um local maritime areas may be able to enhance our ability to to speak to that maritime prosperity zone and things of that nature. So thank you for that.

Yeah, definitely agree. Can you come mind if I comment? Yeah. So I think I think 100% like I don't want to discount um the waterfront on this side, right? You know, it's I think the message as you start looking at you you need to be inclusive of the surrounding environment and utilize all the assets you can to create this ecosystem that's very broad and regional. Um, I think you know what we learned and I I didn't use this term first, but I've kept using it as the hub and spoke model is that Mar Island is the hub. It's ready now. It has ready assets. Now, this side of the waterfront, Collinsville, other places can be many spokes to where that hub is, but it starts with if if somebody wants to act now and has money now, Mar Island is the starting point and just the starting point, right? And I think that doesn't get enough conversation is is that we're more established right now where we have a transportation hub already with our with our ferry system and and where we've had the ports here in and our dry dock right now. So I think that's where hopefully once again that leads to advancing a lot of the conversations out there from a public perception standpoint and from a marketing standpoint that we can take that conversation a little bit further. So thank you for that.

Thanks ACM.

Thank you to the chair. I was just going to comment on that very thing that you know one of the things that this report actually highlights when you when you read the entire thing um is really the emphasis on regionalism um you know as mentioned there's there's a space for Valo there's a space for Valo to go now because we essentially do this work but you know when you look at that sort of um wish list I guess of of of um ships that the government is hoping to get over the next, you know, five, six, seven years. Some of those we just can't build here. Um, and so when you start thinking about the entire landscape, it will have to include Collinsville. It will have to include obviously Valo, Venicia, you know, um, Antioch, Pittsburgh, potentially Sacramento, Stockton, Salelo, Oakland, I mean Richmond, it's the full range, right? So when you when you look at other areas, it's a region. It's not just a city. So, you know, that sort of one place does it all. Isn't really a model that works anymore. So, we're really looking to see what we can do, what we can do now, both on Mayor Island, because to the mayor's point, it's mostly privately owned. And so we want to help attract businesses there because that will help benefit us, but it doesn't all have to be concentrated on Mar Island. So there is obviously space as council member Pomarus mentioned that there housing over here, right? And then different types of housing potentially on Mar Island for homebasing, right? Workforce development is huge. You know, there's there's a lot of potential on mainland Valo's side to build out housing, all levels of housing to support increased workforce demands that this kind of investment will bring. as mentioned the cradle to careers. We need to get into the schools, ensure that there's that

partnership with a lot of the trade organizations that the schools are supported in kind of teaching some of this so that they have that pathway either into trades or universities like Calpali or other places, right? There's also research and development. We're so close to Berkeley, Liverour Lab and, you know, Silicon Valley and there's just this huge opportunity for them to be on mainland Valo side. Not everything has to be located on Mar Island, but also, you know, Benicia has a port. There's opportunities there for expansion. Um, you know, they have a proximity to a railroad over there. So, we have a ton of peers that we can refurbish on our side as well as on Mar Island. So, there's a lot of opportunity. And so, as mentioned, Valo can go now, but really to think about this as a piece of a regional approach. So that that in maritime prosperity zone which is a little bit of a self-d designation right now but I repeat it and we use it in grant applications or when we're speaking about you know um maritime revitalization we just dig into that and so I think that that's important that as we talk about it it's not just us as a solo event because you're right we'll be more attractive if it's us as a group and so I think we just need to figure out what those those formalized partners partnerships look like. And maybe it's not one giant one, but maybe it's one that focuses on the education piece, one that focuses on the legislation DC advocacy piece, one that focuses on, you know, some other aspects, the financial plan. So, there's there's a lot of different ways that we can structure this. Um, just, you know, it's good reading. It's hard, but it's it's good reading when you go through the entire plan, but it does talk about some of this and and and it's flexible enough that we don't really know what the future's going to hold. So, you know,

there's just some some strategies that are presented that are more like theoretical. So, it's kind of like, you know, if we ever end up here, this could potentially be things that we can do. Otherwise, there might be other pieces of this that we want to drill down on, especially the ones that focus on economic development. I mean, homebasing is a potential gamecher for us as a city. So, what if we if that's where we want to focus on in addition to sort of being part of these other conversations, what do we need to do to to make ourselves attractive? What does our downtown need to look like? What do our business centers need to look like? Yes. What do our roads need to look like? You know, what is what do our school systems need to look like? Our parks, our infrastructure. So those are the things that we can really concentrate on on our side of the landscape and then still participate with Mayor Island for the stuff, you know, that involved the the ship assets.

Thank you. Thank you for that. Um yeah, completely agree. And I'll go we'll go over to Council Member Bendzer to finish the the line.

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you for um the presentation and thank you for meeting oneonone with me when you're going through your uh process because it was really informative. Um I had just a lot of my questions were actually as asked by um Council Member Pomeire's but I wanted to get into depth a little bit further. Um you know given that you you know you know our landscape and you know that we have structural deficit in the city and we're working on that. Um where do you think we should invest first to get the biggest bang for the buck if we have limited resources? Where where would you see that investment first and foremost needing to go to as part of this plan? Yes, thanks for that. Very difficult.

You're here to solve all of our problems. I know. So, you

um again, you can only control what you can control. Going back to the point that was just raised with Mayor Island, like you're not going to pump money into Mayor Island right now. Um, going back to the energy problem, like you you would want to partner with Mayor Island to fix the electrical distribution and what are what how are they presenting that platform. Um, I think your energy is focused on on what like those quality of life initiatives that that were mentioned, but also I think the the energy is is is best spent um and I say energy, dollars and time because I think time is probably as much of a limiting factor as as the financial model is is

going back to getting organized and and working with the school districts and working with Calpali because I think you you have you have all the pieces in place like a lot of the stuff we didn't make up you have them in place and there were there there's a lot of tentacles out there of of a lot of great conversations happening with with whether it's Calpali with Solano EDC and industry days you know focus around that that marketing um I think that marketing plan and getting the word out there and being visible um throughout this effort you know particularly on that that that basing side I talked about well you want to be on the menu for somebody to choose you. Um you're not on the menu right now for like the Navy or the Coast Guard to to choose you. So, how do what what are those impact items that that get you out there? It's the um you know, potentially approving if there's maritime um businesses that are trying to get in there now. What What can you do to to remove any barriers from them coming in? Or if there's stuff in the system, how can you help them with permitting? How can you get those across the finish line to show you can do the little things to bring in the the the bigger businesses then? But I think that's

I think really organize the marketing and stuff. That's the low cost but high time. It takes a lot of time and effort to to market and and and do that engagement effort. Thank you. And then um realistically what what do you foresee we should be forecasting budgeting for the next three to five years to be getting us more prepared for this uh realistically because obviously we don't have hundreds of millions of dollars to invest but like what what should we be putting aside or trying to put aside on a three to five year plan? I don't know if I have an answer. I I I don't even think personally I can give you a recommendation. I apologize. Yeah.

Okay. Um, getting a little bit more into the housing just to give us perspective. Um, you know, if if we were to say land the the contract for uh whatever the ship name, I'm sorry, I'm trying to find that page that you talked about the frigot. If we were to if we were to land that, like realistically, how many housing units would you say we need to have available for uh that purpose? Like to have housing for are we talking about 40 families? Are we talking about 400 families? Are we talking about thousands of families? Yeah. So, if you're talking Oh, if if you're when you say land the contract, but to get a home port to get a home port like a frigot. Um,

yeah. I think you're you're looking between 100 and 300 different, you know, folks coming. But, but I'll say this, I the you wouldn't just get one, right? So, so the idea is to get to get multiple. So I don't think they they will the Navy neither the Coast Guard nor the Navy will say just station one. So you're trying you're trying to get get multiple ones. So you have to factor that that in the equation. But I think with the with the frig with the unmanned systems with the three different classes of Coast Guard cutters. Those are all on the smaller side in terms of um ship's personnel.

You know like you're not getting the battle even though a battleship may fit here. I don't think you want that. you don't want uh 700 people per battleship. Um so I think the ones that those ship classes that we recommended are are very viable in terms of the support facilities that are required for them because we we did try and focus on multiple ships with the lower number of personnel on those ships. Okay. Thank you so much. That's all I have. All right. Um, Council Member Matias, are you still good?

All right. Um, well, I'll just kind of add a couple comments to the questions I asked earlier. I think, um, you know, I appreciate the I think part of why this discussion is shorter is because of how thorough this is and how much sense a lot of it makes for Valo. I I think, you know, it's worth saying again that Kalpali, it feels like Kalpali is the key partner here because we have not only are we fortunate enough to have the maritime academy, the only maritime academy on the west coast, but we have this merger that has now an integration that has now put us in a position where when budgets are getting cut and public institutions all over are having to make tough decisions, we have an institution that's ready to expand. hand and you know I think the the stars are really aligning right now for Valo. We don't have a lot to invest but we do have partners that are ready to invest and uh I think Cowpali will be a a willing um an eager partner but also something that will set us apart from the field. The fact that we have that maritime institution here I mean no nobody else has that on the on the West Coast. Um, so I'm I'm very I was out there on Saturday for their their commencement and and I think they're just now a year in to the integration kind of getting settled in and and ready to ready to go. Um, to the point about the the uh industrial-based coalition, I think that's something too that our congressman is has been eager to do. the regional piece that the assistant city manager was talking about. You know, the congressman has been eager for months to kind of look at the regional approach and was almost uh encourage very encouraged by our work here and almost kind of stepped back and said, "Hey, I want the city of Valo to lead this." But I think in partnership with the congressman, you know, we can start building out that coalition um and start

getting momentum and start building those relationships. And if we have a unified vision and particularly again with Mar Island company with the city and our various stakeholders that then makes it easy for somebody like myself to go out and advocate uh which I have expressed already that I'm I'm more than uh more than willing to do in as much as we feel like the right opportunities you know the right return on investment and right opportunities are for for us to build those relationships. And the other thing that I would add about the unified vision is that you know we had a meeting last month not this month well last month technically but last week about Mayor Island and the you know I think finding meaningful ways as well to just ensure that the residents are engaged in the processes also I have yet to see anything really in any of these plans that would fundamentally do anything more than than what's already kind of being done with dry do and the the Coast Guard and things like that but uh just making sure that everybody that's going to be impacted by by this is on the same page that's that's engaged and we do have that that unified front and unified vision when we go out and pursue these these opportunities. So, in terms of the the sort of short-term next steps, I think we have, you know, we're in a position now where time is time is of the essence. We also have a new city manager coming on board. So, I think in the next, you know, month or two, we'll probably be ready to to take some actions. I don't know if it makes sense for us to put have the conversation in the budget process if it makes us convers sense to have the conversation in goal setting. I don't think we should necessarily even really be deciding anything tonight but I don't know like ACM Conley do you have recommendations of when you think a good time to circle back to this is and and

so I would say through the chair probably not necessarily through the budget conversation but shortly thereafter. Um I think budget is one thing but I think you know the incoming city manager has a lot of experience um with sort of different types of financing mechanisms. I think that I read that you know he's done some sever in the billions right so there is opportunities for us to participate in that so you know that that's kind of why you use those mechanisms because you know you may not have a lot of money in the bank but money can make money in various ways so I think that is something that's almost the easier question I think the harder question is where to invest where do you want to invest that money So it would be, you know, is it downtown, is it all through Valo, is it infrastructure? So those probably might be a little bit harder conversations or do you split the difference? So those wouldn't happen through the budget. I'd say you probably touch on it more through your goal setting process. Um, and then simultaneously we could still, you know, look into the different, you know, financing mechanisms that we could potentially tap into to do some of this near-term, midterm work.

Yeah. Thank you for that. Yeah, I'm Yeah, I'll go ahead and do another pass. Then I see Council Member Gordon,

thank you so much. I so I remember uh when I first uh had the honors to serve the VO last year, I did ask to bring this up and so I'm glad that we took this on. Um, and I definitely would like to remind everyone that we do have in my district from the PG uh dock, boat dock launch all the way to Carinus and we have all that valuable land, all that valuable water, you know, and I just want us not to remember I mentioned to you, we have to not only focus on my island, but we have to focus on the inland as well. And the waterfront doesn't just stop right downtown. It goes all the way to the Carinus Bridge. And so as we doing this work, we want to make sure that that partnership is considering that as well. Um yeah, the young man, he does a video for us, you know, uh for Valo and he just shows so much potential off that water, you know, and and I actually talked to both the superintendent uh and the uh CEO president for Mayor Island, I mean, excuse me, Calpali Maritime Academy, and they they will love that part partnership as well. So, um I just don't want us all to forget that important that the reason why I brought this up last year and I'm glad that we're taking it on. Um but we have to remember that this partnership has to be all seven of us, not just only one of us. I feel it's important that I say that. Thank you.

All right. Anyone else? Uh do we want to we'll go council member Paul Mars and then we'll do a pass at public comment again.

Uh I have an idea and maybe you can confirm uh if it it's a good idea or not. So, I think maybe one of the easy lowhanging fruit that we could start to attack would be trying to uh solicit founders and firms uh as part of the uh autonomous uh maritime system uh industry. Uh, as mentioned in the report, um, there's, uh, a good number of them in the Bay Area and we're right next door to Lawrence Livermore and Berkeley Lab. Uh, that just seems like an an easy win for us in the short term. I mean, as we're doing this coalition, but I think that is easier to get to start uh to start to get going as far as like establish ourselves as one of another things, a proving ground. uh establish that in uh Valleo and that could kind of like be the cat callous for all the uh bigger things like ship building. Um but I feel that just just eyeballing it feels like the trying to address u or solicit um those kind of firms for that uh the autonomous robotics maritime industry seems a little bit easier for us to do and just say hey we got a proof of concept right here. So I don't know but what do what do you think? No, I don't disagree or I should say I I agree. You know, it's there's a lot of wickets you have to get through to even do work on Navy ships, right? You have to have certain certifications of the peers and to get those. So, autonomous vehicles are

are the platform now. Small, medium, and large. Pick your size, right? So there's there's many folks out there developing them and and kind of understanding the market in the in this area would be a a great investment in time to see what they need, what capabilities they need because you may have them already and they may not just not know about them.

Yeah, absolutely. And I I don't think we could be the only place for uh manufacturing everything from A to Z as far as like whatever that that platform is going to be, but we could definitely be part of the supply chain, right? it as we mentioned before you know I want us to be the region of choice and maybe we could be really good at making this widget for an autonomous system and meanwhile Fairfield could be this and Bisha could be that you know and so sorry

that's a great point I'm glad you brought that up I I was going to mention it before but supply chain maritime prosperity zones this whole ecosystem it does not have to be building an entire ship you know there's going to be maritime prosperity zones inland that are critical to the supply chain of creating those national security assets. So great. Okay, thank you. All right, we're going to do one more pass of public comment and it sounds like we have someone in person. Yes, it appears that our technology is up and running now. We have one person signed up and it looks like Sherannne Grim

and through the mayor as she approaches the podium, we do have one member of the public signed up online. I um signed up before the mayor spoke. So, first of all, thank you for remembering the resident stakeholders. Um when I read the report, I picked up a lot of the same things that um city manager Connley just mentioned and the more regional nature, but as I was listening to you tonight, um there were a couple comments that really made me wonder as a resident, what what would the impact be? So, when you say things like the federal government, you know, gave away their land and they might want it back, that's a really big um statement for people that are living there that bought into a specific plan 20 years ago that keeps changing and now this plan is significantly um different. So, if you could just speak to that so that residents kind of figure out what that all means to the established neighborhoods out there and and also just remember that the stakeholders are out there and um things go better when things are done with people than to people. So, that would be my point.

No, thank you for bring my statement is completely false. So, the the the federal government does not want the land back. Um, I get my my my point in that is that it's a it's an asset that can enhance national security. Um, that is is vital and can be vital to to the future of our national security in one way or another. Not not going back to the World War II era of stuff. But yes, thank you for bringing that up that there there is no effort from the government to to come back in and make it a public shipyard again. So, I think there's there's plenty of compatible uses and I 100% agree with you too about, you know, it's finding the right um manufacturing, autonomous vehicles, what have you that it fits into the plan out there with the residents in mind as well. and and yeah, this this is created for um again a menu is to kind of voice your opinion and thank you for voicing that because that that's something that's critical in this next phase is to how do you get to the ones that are where the city wants to go and and the the members want to go. So

great. Thank you. Thank you. We took a little liberty with the public comment format that we appreciate the response from you Nate on that. Um and you are all good. Yeah, you are all It worked out. It worked out. There was time remaining on the clock and it worked out perfectly. Why don't we go ahead and call our online speaker? Okay, online speaker and see, please unmute yourself. You have the floor. Steve, hi. Um, can you hear me? Please confirm. Yes, we can. Please.

Okay. Thanks so much. So, um I am glad to hear about the the idea of a plan and I have to say as a native DLEN of a certain age who you know was born and raised here decades ago um I'm skeptical I guess is bottom line. I I would love for us to have some revitalization and to rebuild in any capacity. um this particular discussion would have been great to have like 40 or 50 years ago before the base was shut down. Um but I see some significant obstacles and so I just want to to raise these so that we aren't all stare eyes and stareyed and and the first one is the category of show me the money um because if we had lots of money then all kinds of things would be possible. The second category has to do with very outdated facilities that need both remediation and upgrading and which the Navy itself had not wanted to take on when they decided to close the base. And um as we have seen the sad history for the most part the private sector has not wanted to take on the remediation either because it's cheaper for them to locate and build an a brand new tiltup building than to remediate an upgrade a build building and then customize it for their use. Um the third and fourth things that I worry about are number three the state of partisan politics right now. And frankly what I see is efforts at personal enrichment and re personal retaliation on the part of the

administration which would puts California in a very bad uh situation here with respect to any sort of federal support. And really the feds are going to be the ones largely that have the big money. Um because the big infrastructure kinds of investments are going to be very hard for private sector to take on. And then the last thing I will say is that when the base was really just about naval operation, you didn't have to worry about the intersection and maybe collision between residential needs and industrial needs. And with, you know, tying back to the mayor's comments and Sherannne Grim's comments, um, we now have this uneasy balance. And so the city and Mayor Island company are going to need to be very clear about creating a a buffer zone really between industrial and residential because you have a big residential investment. Thank you.

Thank you. Uh, do we have any other commenters online? Yeah, thank you, mayor. We do have one more speaker. Uh Jay, please unmute yourself. You have the floor. Uh Jay, please unmute yourself. You have the floor. Uh okay. Can you guys hear me now? Can you give me some good confirmation? Yes, we can. Yes. Yes, we can.

Hi. Uh so I'm Jay. I actually ended up moving here ages ago because my father was a part of the military. So, I'm an original Navy brat back from when uh Mayor Island was was active and the other naval bases in the area were here. Uh, and thankfully, a lot of what I was going to say was just said by the woman before me, so I appreciate that. Um, namely the uh conflict that like the federal government isn't really a big fan of California and that a lot of the big money contracts that would revitalize our ship building here probably won't come to us. And then she did also touch on something else about uh when it was purely for the government's need here, we didn't have to worry about public and private usage, but then if we're going to be having a p a private sector ship building, then we have to kind of consider the two sides of that coin. Uh and another thing is that I'm also considering what sort of environmental impacts that would have. Ship building I think has a pretty good impact on the air quality and you know I I love Lao but uh I also like breathing so that would be good to keep being able to do. Um that's really all I've got to say.

All right. Thank you very much. Um anyone else online? All right. We will close public comment and if we don't have any other final comments from council um we will thank again uh Roosevelt group. We will look forward to following up on this in the near future. Um just really appreciate you coming out and and all the work you put into this and all the stakeholders that that contributed to it as well. Great. Thank you so much.

So yeah, thank you very much. So with that, why don't we take a 10 or 15 minute recess and then we will start the budget. Uh do we want to start the budget at 6:30 or do we want a little more time? I'm looking around. Let's start the budget at 6:30. So, we'll come back in just almost exactly 10 minutes.

All right, 30 second warning. We're going to get started. All right, we're almost all back. So, why don't we go ahead and resume um and we're going to head over to our budget item 3B. I'll ask our city clerk to announce item 3B. Presentation of overview of fiscal year 2627 budget development process and baseline budget direction to staff relating to balancing considerations and revenue generation options. All right. Thank you very much. So, we'll open up public comment on this item and we will do it similarly to last time. So, we'll take the staff presentation and then we'll take comments in person and online in this item. Um, and I we'll go ahead. Was hoping we'd have council member Gordon

back. I'm trying to speak slowly. Yeah, I I will speak. We'll just start slowly. Uh, and we'll we'll hopefully not get any to any of the the nitty-gritty until she's back. Um, but I'll go ahead and turn it over to our acting city manager who has relocated and uh will be presenting the budget item along with our finance team.

Yes. Thank you, mayor, city council members. I can do a quick intro to give councilwoman time to get back to her seat. Um, so this evening, um, we'll be going through sort of the first, uh, ever presentation of the fiscal year 2627 budget. Um you've seen most of this information um in different iterations primarily as sort of the add-on to the midyear request that you heard several times. Um this one is a standalone and this also includes a lot of the budget balancing um options that we had previously discussed but it also includes some potential revenue generating options as well. Um, also included you'll see an overview of measure P items and as we get through this we'll we'll walk through the the structure. So I see all of you here. So I think we can start with the presentation. So okay. Yes. So we have a pretty comprehensive presentation. and I'm going to not rush through it, but go through it somewhat timely so we can have a robust discussion as we as we get through. Um, and this is the general outline of the presentation. We're going to go over the budget development process. Um, we're going to talk and present the baseline projection. Um, we're going to review the budget deficit and balancing strategies. And then we're going to go over measure P um the measure P status and then the 2627 your uh staff requests. And one of the things that I like to highlight is this is just really a presentation focused on the general fund. It's not the entirety of our budget primarily because general fund is where we have the most um vulnerability right now and this is where we really have the issues of our structural deficit.

So, our budget policy as per city charter um requires that the city manager submits a proposed budget to council 45 days before the fiscal year begins. Um one of the issues that we're having here is timing. Um so, as you can imagine, today is the 5th and 45 days before the fiscal year begins is the 15th of this month. So, 10 days away. So that's not really enough time for you to really give um feedback per se on the budget balancing options. Um and also considering that we have a new city manager starting in less than two weeks. Um you know he'd also like to weigh in on the budget balancing strategies. So what's going to happen is we are going to present a balanced budget just based on our sort of best estimations of how to address the deficit so that we can actually balance it as were required by charter. And then what we will do is we'll go through the amendment process to then um you know consider any sort of feedback um from the incoming city manager from council. We're going to agendaize the budget on the I'm forgetting the second date, but June 9th and I believe the second date is the 23rd. Um, so that we can have additional opportunities to discuss and get feedback and then we can sort of present on what those amendments will look like. We we had set aside I think June 2nd as a potential special meeting, but I don't think considering the incoming city manager doesn't start until the 18th that we're going to have enough time to get his feedback and direction and then be able to do all those updates and calculations and then bring it back by the 2nd. So, we're just going to stick with those other two dates in June. Um, and if necessary, I think uh the city clerk is going to potentially poll for

June 30th if for some reason we can't adopt the budget at the 23rd meeting in June. Um, so something else to point out is that the general fund proposed expenditures shall not exceed the estimated revenues. So we do have to present a balanced budget. Um, and then as stated here, estimate revenues included include any surpluses from the current year. So we do carry those forward if they exist. So just to go over our traditional budget development process. Um as stated earlier, we established a baseline budget. Um this is what we use to build the foundation. Um we use the prior year ongoing expenditures and revenues as a starting point. Then we incorporate the department budget request. So finance staff does the herculean task of meeting with all the departments. um they submit their requests for new funding needs and or adjustments. Um there was direction to staff to try to cut their their um expenditures as much as possible going forward. Um and then as stated here, we have the proposed budget by May 15th. And so we will publish that and present it to city council. Um, and then hopefully within that time frame, we will, you know, probably use one of the June um, regular meetings to do sort of more of a a workshop, although I think it's just going to be a regular meeting. We're still also looking into potentially having a community budget meeting, but timeline might mean that we actually will have to do something close to budget adoption or maybe in the new fiscal year as we're still going through this process if that's necessary. So, as stated here, it's an iterative refinement and adoption process. Um, and so we'll just keep going at it until we

end up with a budget that, you know, you all agree is um, reflective of your priorities and reflective of what you feel is fiscally responsible for the city. So, as stated today, um, there's a couple things that we like to receive your direction on. Primarily focused on the revenue generating options. um primarily because as stated before, we have a new incoming city manager and he would like to be able to review a lot of the budget balancing options. So, while they're in this proposal and presentation, um we're just sort of go through it because those are the things that we're going to use to balance the budget, but it doesn't mean that these are actually going to be the final adjustments that we make or considerations because he may have some other ideas or approaches. And then as mentioned, we're really working hard to figure out how to schedule this community budget workshop. We've talked to several folks in the community trying to figure out the best way to structure that meeting. So, as soon as we're able to figure out a date that works where we can, you know, potentially have um maybe some some other options for community to make it so that they can they can attend. We'll we'll bring that forward. So, one of the things that we did, our methodology to deal with this baseline budget was that um we started with what was adopted last year for the 26 um I'm sorry, the 2526 budget. Um during that process, I believe um there was a 20% cut for services and supplies. So, just as a starting point, we add that back. We also apply a 3% inflation factor and then we remove all one-time revenues and expenditures. So just keep in mind this is just to start. Um and then what we do

is we'll make any further adjustments based on any potential agreements or inflation or contractual obligations that happen that we have to incorporate. So to go over the baseline budget, first we're going to start with revenue. And so our revenue projections are prepared individually for each revenue source. Um the assumptions and source data vary by category. So we have property tax, sales tax, business license projections which are provided by HDL. That's correct, right? Um, and so the property taxes, which include the motor vehicle license fee, um, includes a 2% increase primarily due to an annual CPI adjustment. Um, sales and transaction use taxes, 1% increase due to ongoing inflation, high interest rates, fuel price volatility, and um, uncertainty in the global economic mar market. But then we do see a 7% decline in business licenses. um you know this is more in alignment with actuals received in fiscal year 2425 and 2526. And we also know that current economic factors are having a uh depreciating impact on people's habits and um the way that they spend money because more money is going to necessities than um discretionary funds. So all other unrestricted revenues are based on average prior year trends, anticipated rate um adjustments and or contractual increases. So something like the UUT, the utility user tax, we're seeing a 9% decline, which is reflecting reduced usage um in electric and gas, as well as a the shift towards a lot of streaming platforms versus

using things like cable or the dish or direct TV. Although I I read somewhere that that trend might be changing because people are tired of being um having too many subscriptions to keep track of. So we'll see if that actually uh bears itself out. Um then there's the toot, the transient occupancy tax. We're seeing a 9% decrease. I think um you know our folks from visit Valo mentioned that they're seeing a a declining um you know market there just because of the ongoing economic uncertainties. The franchise tax there that increased by about 8% um that's just because there's been rate increases on garbage, electric and gas use as I'm sure you have all noticed. And then there's a 16% net decrease on um you know our other revenues primarily due to shifting the OPED trust reimbursement to the retirey health fund um in fiscal year 2627. So, we've also noticed that cannabis tax has declined, real property excise tax has gone down, rentals, investment income, water rights, um Six Flag Park fee, and then some other transfers from other funds have all decreased to um result in that uh number. And program revenues are developed and provided directly by the individual departments based on expected activity levels. So those would be things like fees associated with uh permitting um potential code enforcement. There's fees I believe that are reported through water and public works and fire department. So if if a department actually collects revenue then they work with us and during the budget process they report what their estimated revenues are and we incorporate that into our budget.

So this is our general fund unrestricted revenue for fiscal year 2627. Um as you can see by line item property tax um is up slightly. The property tax in lie for the in lie of the motor vehicle license fee um is up slightly as well. um sales tax, transaction and use tax which is our measure B up very slightly 1% but things like the UUT toot is down as well as business license tax and other as mentioned before. So, the property transfer tax is up slightly, 1%. Um, we're going to actually revisit that later on in this presentation, but as you can see, overall revenues are down by about 1.35 million. So, 1% overall. So, these are the actual program revenues that I mentioned. So, economic development, fire, police, public works. Um, they mention they report their revenues. Um and these are what they estimate for the 26 27 years. So it is slightly up. You'll see that um economic development has reported sort of the largest gain there 18%. Um and then down below we also have measure P revenue which we expect to be up slightly which we account for separately than our general fund revenues that you see that that's up as well. But overall our our program revenues are down slightly by 1%. So this is just showing the trends in revenue um since 201617 fiscal year. Um you'll see that for a number of years from 21 through 2425 we

received several million dollars in ARPA funds. um that finished in 2526. Um and you'll see that measure P revenues have remained somewhat flat. Um and then you know that means that the rest of our revenues sources as well has pretty much remained flat over the last uh year or so down from uh 2425 but that's when we also received um a fairly large portion of ARPA money. So now we go to our expenditures. Um so for the expenditure projections, finance develops the baseline expenditure projections similar to what we do for revenue. We look at labor costs, non- labor costs, including services and supplies as well as debt service um transfers and subsidies. Um we also do um the citywide cost allocation plan which is um our indirect rate which we apply um to all departments to essentially support general services. And then we have the workers compensation rate and general liability contribution. Um public works they do their fleet allocation cost and vehicle replacement schedules. um engineering staff time reimbursements from capital projects and then maintenance division allocation charges to other funds and then all departments verify their baseline assumptions and then they submit requests for modifications and then due to the projected shortfall direct departments were directed not to submit new funding requests for the 2627 budget cycle. So part of what the general fund assumptions are include salaries and benefits. And so salaries here the cost calculated for each position. Obviously overtime um is primarily budgeted for uh

VPOA and IFFF employees. Um with a as we mentioned before a 3% cost allocation. Um, and then the benefits, pension, there's health and welfare benefits, and then other benefits including workers compensation, social security, and Medicare. Um, there's also leave payouts. Um, that's when, you know, someone retires. Um, we have some historical trends, and so we made some adjustments for what we normally budget in that area. And then any potential labor cost increases, we include that as well. So I know that there was some conversation several meetings ago about pension liabilities. So this is our summary as of um June 2024 for evaluation report. Um we have normal costs which is the current year benefit cost and then we have an unfunded acred liability which is what we pay towards our pension obligations. So the miscellaneous plan essentially covers everyone but safety. Um as you can see the employer normal cost is about 10 and a4% before any employee cost sharing and our contribution to that is 11.81 million and our unfunded pension liability for miscellaneous plan is $125.5 million. Um for safety the employer normal cost is 20.67%. We do a $21.1.7 million annual contribution and the unfunded acred liability is $232.8 million and then our PARS pension trust fund is about 25.57 million as of March of this year. So this is a slide that shows our revenues and our expenditures and really

shows what the challenge is when we say we have a structural deficit here. So in this model um we're looking at fund balance carryover and then we're also looking at all of our revenues that we are expecting for 2627 and then our expenditures and this is keep in mind without any adjustments. So this is just baseline. This is without any sort of balancing measures, cost reduction measures. This is just straight up if we just do everything in our budget as usual. So as you can see based on you know our fund incorporating our fund balance with the revenues and expenditures um that's our deficit and if we used our fund balance to b budget we'd have approximately was that $20,000. So we're not recommending that but that's just to show you the the scale of the issue. So, one of the things we also wanted to highlight because this came up I think several meetings ago as well was the board and commission's funding request. So, for those that came before you um and what we've incorporated into the baseline is approximately $82,000 um the full total of the requests by the boards and commissions um with regards to their work plan is about $329,000. So, obviously that's a huge gap. Um, and then there's essentially of the Cultural and Arts Commission's $218,000 ask, $134,000 ask um is made through measure P funds. I don't know. Did they go Did they go Not yet. I believe that might go for the 11th on the 11th. Um, so obviously this is something that council needs to consider because we've not really had or revisited that sort of boards and commissions conversation about providing

them with a budget for their work plan. But we just wanted to give you what the ask is so that you can kind of think about, you know, what potentially you wanted to fund or what you didn't want to fund and then you also know what has potentially been incorporated into baseline. So, as of March 10th, that our estimated budget deficit was $29 million. Um, as of May 5th, we've did a slight revision. It's about $28.5 million. Um, we did have some revenue decreases from that last time. Um we did shift some um cost related to the OPED trust reimbursement to retirey health fund. That was about a $1.3 million shift. Um and then you know there's a $920,000 discount related to a lump sum payment. So rather than reinvesting that I believe we're using that to help balance balance the budget or the deficit I should say. um we removed 1.5 million in services and supplies um because the midyear request was not approved. So um but we also had a transfer increase of about $700,000 for the litigation deposit fund. Um we also made some interfund reimbursement increases of about $1.5 million. So this is just a a broad overview of the balancing strategy. The next slide goes into a little bit more detail. Um let's just go into that. So here we are. Um I'm not going to really spend too much time on the sort of staffing piece of things. um because the the sort of

expenditure control options are the things that the incoming city manager wants to be able to weigh in on. Um just know that you can see it here. These are some of the the things that we had considered. Some of this was presented in prior discussions um at the direction of council. Um but again, as I mentioned, you know, the budget process is iterative. So, this will definitely change um over time, especially once the new city manager comes on board. Um the use of reserves, one-time measures, this may change as well. Um so, I'll just point out that um you know, some of this is, you know, proposing shifting some costs to measure P that are applicable and we can go into that later. the potential use of Monsanto funds, a million dollars for Monsanto funds and then uh using fund balance. So that's less than what we've used in prior years, but that would still be an option. Um but again, you know, that would be about 7 million 7 what $7.3 million um for the use of one-time measures. But again, something that we want to bring before the incoming city manager. So just hold that as a placeholder for right now. Um I think for this evening's conversation to kind of distill it down, we're looking for thoughts and feedback on the revenue enhancement portion. Um so let's get there. But I will just say that if if you are supportive of us looking into the revenue enhancement portion potentially, right, if this is the way forward, we could um more than address the the actual deficit. So there is a way to get there. Um you know and then obviously without the revenue enhancements we can still get there. The revenue enhancements kind of

push us over the top and put us into the black which would be a good place to be. So again, as I mentioned, I'm not going to go into this because again, we were asked to sort of pause this portion of the position reduction strategy um and allow the incoming city manager to weigh in on that strategy when he arrives in about two weeks. So I will go over the participatory budget project um just because it was in the sort of budget balancing piece as potential area to of reduction. And the reason why we bring this forward is because staff went through and balanced and and reconciled um multiple cycles of participatory budgeting and there were several projects that were not greenlighted. they did not they weren't fully funded and so they were not actually able to move forward. And once we reconciled sort of all the different cycles um we realized that there's about $730,000 left that still needs that can be allocated. So it's not necessary to um provide money in the budget um for 2627 to fund participatory budgeting since there's still money in that fund. So something to consider, you know, as we have these conversations moving forward. And it's typically more than what you funded in the past. So I think their funding level has been about $500,000. So that would leave about 200 plus,000 to potentially use elsewhere if council so decides. So, one of the things that we have been thinking and talking about um in terms of generating additional revenue is looking at the property transfer tax.

So, currently as a charter city, we have the ability to raise our property transfer tax rate. Um general law cities have it set at uh I believe it's 1 one is it 1.10 1.10 10 um per,000. Ours currently is set at $3.30 per $1,000 of property value. So for 2627, we're estimating about $2.47 million. Now, there is uh an opportunity to raise the property transfer tax rate. Um and you'll see on the next maybe two slides after um that looks at other charter cities and so we can we can compare some of those rates but we have uh potentially three options to consider. So there's option A, option B, option C. So option A is a moderate increase um between seven and $10. Um option B is a tiered approach. So up to $1 million it would be $5 um per $1,000 property value between a million and 3 million $10 and then 3 million plus it would be 15. Or we could simply go for the option C which is the higher value which is just a flat $15. So that would mean that we have an example at the bottom. If you were looking to purchase a $500,000 home this would be the impact. So the currently you'd pay about $1650 for option A it would be between $3500 and $5,000. Option B the tiered approach it would be $2500 or option C it would be $7,500. So it does add on to the cost of a home but the city of Valo has some of the

cheapest housing prices um in the county and Solano County has some of the cheapest housing prices in the region. So just something to consider in terms of context. So this is potential projected revenue by the rate. So we have the current um rate as mentioned at $3.30 um essentially generating about $2.4 million annually. the sort of moderate increase um would generate for a full year about 5.9 to 7.3 million. Um these won't go into effect until January. So we're really looking at about a half year of it. So for the first year in 2627 it would generate about 1.75 to 2.45. So we don't necessarily see a change from our current rate with the six months. However, for the next full year, you would see that 5.9 to 7.3 range. And then if we go for the higher rate, then we see a big difference. So we would see a big difference from being enacted from January through June. So that would be about 4.25 million. And then over a full year, we see it'd be about $10.9 million. Now there's key deadlines that um you know to put a measure on the ballot because that would this is um what would be required. So you know now through June we'd have to set the rate the structure do the revenue estimates have legal review. Council would have to approve in a pretty tight timeline. You'd have to approve the ordinance do the ballot question vote to place on the ballot. And then we'd have to file by the county by early August, which is a very hard deadline. And then it would need majority vote. So I mean there's no

guarantee, right? Because you leave it up to the voters. But this is, you know, one option to put forward um to consider. So this is what I mentioned before. This is the chart by some of the other charter cities um that have a a structure different than the 1.10 rate um that general law cities adopt. So as you can see it varies. Um what isn't here is the revenue generated. Um I think Los Angeles or was it San Jose? It might have been San Jose was the highest. It's something like 2 to3 billion dollars annually. So, you know, the higher the the home value, it it's a potentially a huge revenue generating source for a lot of cities. So, we're we're, you know, on the on the lower end, well, lower middle end of things. And so, it's not um out of the the range here for us to consider raising our property transfer tax rate. So, there are other things to consider here. Um, the fee schedule was brought before council several months ago. Um, we're still working on some revisions and um plan on bringing bringing that back. And so, with adoption, you know, this has the potential as well as generating some revenue based on those fees. As you can see here, building fees, planning fees, fire prevention fees. um if if implemented they can generate revenue. Um and then there's some other things to consider. Parking enforcement. Um, and then for code enforcement, there's been a lot of movement for cities within our region, San Jose, Berkeley, I think San Francisco already has something adopted,

but Oakland, where they're really trying to change behavior of folks who are allowing their properties, both residential and commercial, to become derelict and become a problem for cities. Um, I believe it's San Jose that just recently implemented something where residential properties, four units or less, are being fined $10,000 a month and commercial between 25 and $30,000 a month um for their derelic buildings just to really prompt a change in behavior because the normal fees and fines that were being assessed weren't doing it. And so people they make the calculation for the benefit that they get, the tax benefit to just not do anything. And the cities have been suffering. So they're looking to prompt a change and generate revenue um at the same time. So that is something that we can look into. We can potentially model what that looks like, bring back an option or two if council so directs. Then there's the parking enforcement. So there's options there. I know it could be simply enforcement of the existing meters or it could be something like you can have residential parking permits um and that just looks different depending on how you want to roll that out. I know Berkeley has something in place where different neighborhoods have residential parking permits. They don't actually pay for them. you're get you're allotted a certain amount for every residential um household and then you can only park for a certain period of time if you don't have that permit and then you are assessed a parking ticket or a fee. Now there is actually another revenue generating option. I'm gonna look at the city attorney because I don't know if you want to weigh in on the UUT piece. I can do that. Um, council, you

did receive um an email about um the option to um collect with no ordinance change um a what I will call utility user tax on streaming services um within the city. Um we are wondering if the council is interested in pursuing that. We have not um looked at what that revenue stream would look like because we don't have the numbers of the number of subscribers at this point. Um we could you know generally estimate it. Um we do have um outside council that um has uh worked on these tax issues before and if the council is interested then when we come back with some of these options we can also come back with sort of that costbenefit analysis of what we think we might be able to collect and then on an ongoing basis what that looks like because obviously the expenditures are one time but the ongoing revenue is ongoing. So, um interested in adding that to the mix of potential revenues. Um it would, you know, go up or down over time depending on the number of streaming subscribers that there are within the city. Thank you. So, onwards. So, the next item is we're going to talk about the measure P fund status. Um and that includes the fiscical year 2627 staff requests. So before I jump into this item um what we what direction was given to all departments was to look at their expenditures and then look to see whether or not they qualify potentially to be funded through measure P. So as you know measure P is obviously separate from the general fund. It has nine priority areas. Um, maintain critical city services, maintain fire protection,

maintain emergency medical response, maintain crime prevention, address homelessness, address blight, address dumping, repair deteriorating neighborhood streets, roads, and sidewalks, and youth priorities. That ninth one was um adopted per resolution um in 22 by city council. So staff was directed to look at all their expenditures and see whether or not those fit um under those guidelines and whether or not they could potentially qualify to be funded by measure P. That resulted in quite a few items being taken to the measure P committee. So they had their first goround on April 30th. There were, I believe, 20 items scheduled to be heard. There were a number um I believe we we got through about half of those items. Um so on this next page, oops, sorry. Um oh, let me go through here first before I get into that. So the estimated beginning balance of measure P um for July 1st is about 7.25 million. That actually might need a little adjusting because I believe some other expenses might have hit since then. However, there is the $1.5 million that was obligated in this current fiscal year um for uh public works items. I believe that was for the Bay Trail Vine Trail maintenance. Um we estimate that the 2627 tax revenues will be approximately 17.9 million. There's about $500,000 of interest that we expect to earn off of that. And so for the 2627 uh fiscal year, we expect the balance of measure P if we don't have any expenditures to be about 247 million. So for the 2627

fiscal year, um these are broadly uh the department requests. So fire has about 5.35 million worth of assets going to measure P. Police about 1.75, human resources about 600,000, economic development about the same, IT about 2.3 million, and public works about 1.5 million. That's actually increased slightly, but to give you a sense, it's about 12 12 to$13 million. So, as I mentioned, there was several items that were taken to the Measure P um oversight committee on April 30th. These were the ones that receive recommendations um to forward to city council by the measure P committee. Um so, it's approximately uh $4.1 million for fire, but for the fiscal 2627 year, it's 1.5 million. So some of these requests are multi-year requests. So we're just indicating what was approved for the 20 26 27 year and then we have the remainder bunched for outy years. Um and so what that will do was it will provide some shift from the general fund to the measure P um the measure P fund. So you can see that over to the far right. So, for the items approved by fire, some of this is deferred maintenance, some of this is ongoing costs um that are applicable. Um and so you'll see that there's a shift from the general fund to measure P of about $750,000. Same thing for police. You'll see that the overall amount that was funded was about 4.6 million. For the 2627 fiscal year, it's about 2.1 million. And then for the remainder of the years, it's about 2.5 million. So these were the two items that were

not funded uh by the measure P oversight committee so far. So you see that um there was a homelessness item that was taken and that was about 400,000 and then we took um an item that asked for funding for executive level recruitment services and that was about 170,000. So the next I believe it's one the next two slides cover most of the remaining asks for the measure B committee. They will be heard on this coming Monday on the 11th. So um we do have several more HR items to go forward. You'll see the totals there. some for economic development, um IT, um public works, police, and fire. So, the total remaining that still need to go forward is approximately $10.31 million. um I sent to the council. It was last minute, but all the items that were previously funded at the last meeting on the 30th, the ones that were not funded, you could see those staff reports and then sent you all the staff reports um for the the items that are going to be heard on the 11th. Um just so that you know, council, if you'd like to provide some feedback, if you feel like some of these things should not be heard by measure P, um we can bring that forward to the chair and vice chair of that committee. I don't know if we can change the agenda, but we can definitely bring that forward and let them know that there's some items that council has pulled for their consideration. So, just wanted to bring that forward and that is the end of this presentation. Um, happy to take any questions. Thank you for your time.

All right. Yeah. Thank you very much for the presentation. Before we get to questions from council, why don't we go ahead and take public comment on the item? We'll start with in person at this moment. Mayor, no one has signed up on this for this through the chair. It seems uh Miss Grim is signing up in the back. If she wants to just come down to the podium. Yeah, why don't you just come down and then do we have anyone online at this time through the chair? We currently do not have any members of the public signed up to speak online at this time. Thank you. Oh, never mind. We do have one.

We will get them after Grim. Um, good evening. I may have missed it, but um when when uh the page on board and commission funding came up, there's no funding for POAC. So, if somebody could could let us know if that's buried in somebody else's budget or uh because that that will be more of a significant budget ask, I think. Thanks. Thank you. Let's go ahead and call the online speaker.

Thank you. Um, our first online speaker, Rebecca Trumper. Uh, allowed to talk. Allow to talk. Oh, okay. Never mind. An car, please click on an car. You have the floor.

Ancar, please unmute yourself. You have the floor. Hello. Okay, there we are. Yep.

Um, so, uh, I understand we have constraints, etc. Um, but I'm I think that one thing I'd like to see the city take a look at is maybe selling off some of its assets. Um, and with this, I'm thinking of property that the city decided to acquire because gosh, it was such a bargain. Uh we went through a couple years there where we were picking up some of the schools from the school district because gee that is just too cheap to resist it. And then it turns out there were all kinds of expenses for safety and security around them. So that's an obvious uh source of property to look at to divest ourselves of that and maybe let the private sector come in on that. And then the big uh item in my mind would be to look at selling 400 Mirror Island Way. Now I understand that it's um used as collateral right now for the city's former bankruptcy loan, but I think you need to look at putting something else on that list for collateral and looking at selling that. I mean, even if we sold it for what we purchased it by, that would be a big swing in the budget of at least 13 million. um even if we had to take a small loss, it could be a significant uptake and certainly that would be more revenue than some of the itty bitty little swings we're looking at at pinching pennies here and there. So, um I hope the city will take a look at that. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you so much. Moving on to our next speaker, Rebecca Trumper. Please unmute yourself. You have the floor. Thank you. This is Rebecca Trumper. Um, District 5 resident, 26-year District 5 resident. Um, I think my comment is about the assumptions going into budgeting that the budgeting again has started with the previous year adopted budget. Um but in order to not continue faulty assumptions or ineffective um spending um it might be more effective to start with zerobased budgeting. So starting with the revenue that's available, not last year's expenditures, and combining that with priority based budgeting, um, which aligns community needs, um, and the higher val value services with the revenue that's available, um, and also combined with outcomebased budgeting. So really deciding at the council and city leadership level and the community level what the desired or expected results are and deciding that first and then deciding um you know which of the which of the budgeting options are going to deliver those outcomes. So I think we have pretty clear idea of what the community's priorities are. Um it sounds like it's roads all the time, but I think it's really about economic development, continuing to invest in public safety. Um dealing decisively with the um issues of why so many people in Valleo are unhoused and what we're going to do about equitable housing going forward. Um, and I also want to comment that um part of the budget um

uh um presentation um was about revenue declines um that that seems to be the trend, but I think that the declines in revenue point to a need for investment in economic development efforts um and not to continue um shortch changing our budget um but instead invest in creating more revenue options for Valleo. Um, thank you for your time. Thanks for listening. Thank you. Do we have anyone else online? Uh, through the mayor. Do not have any other speakers at this time.

Wonderful. All right. With that, we will go through and I think you know we I want to thank again the acting city manager, assistant city manager slash acting finance director uh for the work on this and sort of reinforce um what you said at the beginning which is that we do have an interim city manager coming in who starts in less than two weeks who has expertise in in fiscal management. And so although it is a tight timeline, it is in our best interest to give him an opportunity to look through this. And so I kind of want to name and state that at least from my part to the community that obviously this isn't an ideal budget timeline that any of us would have chosen, but given the situation we're in and given that we do have the new city manager starting, this is going to be our best option to to set us up going forward with the foundation that the time the finance team has already um built. So, given that we're sort of staying put for now and and waiting for the new city manager to to uh weigh in, I feel like we should go down the line as we did before and maybe have council members ask any questions or add any notes that they want to raise at this stage in the process knowing that we're going to be coming back to this again in the in the coming weeks. And since we don't have lights, I will go down whatever line we want to go down. I don't want to call out either of the people at the ends, but if anybody wants to start, we can just start and we can rotate from there. You want to go ahead, council member Banszer.

I thank you. I just have a couple questions. Sorry. The um I just had a question about the 920,000 the discount for the pension uh payment. If we um if we don't reinvest that, does that mean we won't have that discounted uh amount for next year? Is that is that part of that process for getting the discount is reinvesting that discount back into the pension fund? Does that make sense? If we if we don't re you said we're going to take it and not reinvest it into the pension fund like we normally do, will that mean that we won't get the discount next year? No, you get the discount by prepaying. So, if we choose to Yeah, if we choose to I think we So, it's not a certain amount that you have to prepay.

We've been doing that for multiple years. pre prepaying to get the discount. Yes. Yeah. But we're not. So it's not a certain dollar amount that you have to prepay. Like that 920,000 isn't going to affect the total amount we're we're prepaying because didn't we usually calculate that discount back in as part of our prepayment for the next year? That I don't know. I don't think that No, the the amount that that we have to prepay is calculated on the total amount, right? But I think we always calcul I thought we always calculated that. We'll have to check on that discount amount that we reinvest for next year as part of that discounted payment part of that discount. Let me check on that because I'm not sure.

And then the other question is for the U city attorney, the streaming tax. I'm interested in in hearing more about that. I'm wondering though, how and maybe I'm missing something. How is it not double taxation when we're already taxing based on charter or whatever internet service the the resident has and then on top of that you're charging another tax because you have to have the internet in order to stream.

So our ordinance actually provides that the taxes applied to both if someone has streaming services. Those are considered to be video services and those are um taxed separately because they are a separate provider. So their internet service provider is not the provider of the streaming service. We're talking about things like Netflix, Apple TV, etc. How are we have a way of tracking what is there? There are some ways of not not watching, subscribing. Sure.

So it's the subscription service. They don't have to watch it even one time. It's the question of whether they're paying for the subscription. So our ordinance already has that in it. It just has not previously been collected. Um there was a case winding its way through the courts uh language similar to our ordinance. Um that uh case was ultimately resolved in the favor of the city on collection. Um and uh that was a case brought by Disney's streaming service. Um what has happened as a result uh just recently last month um the California Supreme Court denied review of that case letting the lower courts court of appeals stand um which provided the city the opportunity to then collect this and the litigation costs were on a different city. So um that's why we brought that forward because that case came down. Um, we do believe uh and and we would want to dig into it a little bit further, but we do believe that that is a not insignificant source of revenue to the city. Um, but we would want to examine that a little deeper if the council is interested in doing that. We certainly can do it. um the potential upside of that revenue source um unlike increasing the documentary transfer taxes, you don't have to go uh do any changes to your ordinance to accomplish same.

Thank you. Um my last two questions, one is the property transfer tax. Um I know that we have to keep up with the other cities and the going rates and and that type of thing. Um, so I'm not that I'm against it, but I I do want to caution us that, you know, the I I feel like we continuously fund our city on the backs of the residents versus having uh revenue generation. And I think uh the speaker an Carr talked a little bit about that and I agree. I think we need to absolutely um be focused more on uh enhancing revenue rather than putting it on the backs of the residents to support our city. Um, but I also then uh do um think that we need to look at the the um code enforcement tactics about the derelch buildings and properties because I think that is overrunning our city and it's it's like a a plague that we can't seem to get rid of. Um and so I would I would be all in favor of that. Thank you.

Thank you. All right. Thanks, Council Member Letu. Um just to the point that was made, POAX budget isn't here and I have had a discussion with um ACM Conley regarding that and I do expect it to come back before this council and um and I've talked to the city attorney about it as well. So I do it I expect it to come before the council. we've provided that estimated information to the finance department. So,

okay. So, thank you for that. And then, um I agree as it relates to code enforcement. I also think it's important, yes, I agree, in economic development, but I also agree that we do have to consider how we keep pace with changes in our property transfer tax and how long has it been the same, when was the last time that we've made adjustments. So those are things that you still need to look at for consideration. Whether you make the decision or not is one thing, but to understand how long something has been the same is also important to understand. And so today, I don't know how long that h the property transfer tax has remained the same. Additionally, I think something as a city that we need to consider when we think about abandoned buildings as well. It's not just cold enforcement but in that pro process what are we enforcing what is the cost of that enforcement meaning to the individuals who are not taking care of their property and how are we consistently enforcing and collecting and I think that's also sometimes part of the problem is the consistency in enforcement versus you know, do we have the laws or ordinances on the books? Are we doing it consistently? In addition to that, um I think fundamentally for me when I'm this budget pres presentation really is to meet the goal of the charter because there's really not from my

perspective anything that we can truly comment on if in fact we're waiting for the city manager to come in and lend his expertise to this process. So I don't think we need to spend a lot of time belaboring what's in this document. We from my perspective we are meeting the terms of the charter and we are waiting on our city manager to really have a robust discussion around his expertise and guidance to the staff to bring back a budget to this council to make a decision and to have some real dialogue around. So, I'm hoping we don't stay here for the next several hours. I'm just going to be honest about it. Thank you.

All right. I'll I'll just go continuing down the line. Um I would agree with Council Member Allesio. I think that's the direction we're headed. Um is we'll give our comments and then, you know, continue this process in a few weeks. Uh I do just have a few points to note in in what was presented. Completely agree about the issue of the POA. think we need to get that included. The um I'm supportive of updating the property transfer tracks. I would probably go in the direction of a more moderate increase uh because I don't think we want to shock the the system, but you know, looking at the comps, I think there's a there's room for a modest increase that would still keep us very very affordable and competitive. Um, if we had to choose between code enforcement and fees as revenue generating, I would say crack cracking down on code and vacant buildings over increasing fees. I think we had this conversation before about, you know, the risk of increasing fees, particularly for essential items, is that you have folks that then just don't get permits. So I I would want more analysis of that and just I think with affordability issues if we can avoid doing too much um on the on the fee front and going more on code I think that would be preferable um with the utility user tax. I I think that makes a lot of sense. I'm I'm not opposed to exploring that. I would just ask that we think about whether it's if there's a way to do it per user because I think a lot of folks the way that streaming services work a lot of people get Netflix and Hulu and Disney or they bundle or they do this and finding a way to make sure that people aren't getting gouged three times for three services that they have bundled or just making sure that we're considering those aspects that you know if if it was if it used to be you got you got a certain fee for or your cable and now you have three streaming services replacing your cable. Are you

paying three times as much as you would if you paid cable? I think that would be a question we would want to answer through the through the process. Um the just a couple of notes. Um I think for the community, I hear loud and clear every day, streets, streets, streets, streets, streets. I think removing street funding, I think we need to figure out how to keep that in because that is going to send the wrong message to our community. I think especially if we're using P for police and fire and other stuff and not for streets or if we are using I think we just need to make sure we're putting enough into streets. Um our our community wants and needs that and we need to not let that go. Um and then little things the board and commission dinner 19k there has got to be a better way to do that more economically than spend $19,000 on a dinner. So, just stuff like that. If we can start to kind of think, you know, think more economically, um, and and do the types of cuts that we're, you know, our residents are having to do every every day. Um, you know, I I see that as opportunities to just sort of signal that we're taking this seriously. Uh, I think that's what I have now. Um, measure P, you know, I I respect what the committee has said. I would just be very wary of setting any long-term expectation that we're going to fund things like technology, flock, um, iHeart, stuff like that out of P. That makes me uncomfortable. I think those things should probably come out of the general budget. Uh, I would hate to have just P be a crutch for those things. We might consider it for a one-year as we go through this transition. But I just wouldn't want to set the expectation that we're going to, you know, that's going to be the fund, the extension of the general fund where we just put any, you know, any expense to to free up room in the budget. Um, and just to clarify, so Flock and Flock and Axon, are those in the baseline budget? And if they got approved by P, we'd move them out, or are they not in the baseline budget?

No, nothing that is going to measure P is in the baseline budget. Okay, that's important to know. So we don't have right now in the baseline budget we don't have flock and axon. Right. And we don't have iHeart. Okay. Right. I think that's all I've got. Well, iHeart was funded. I heard already. Well, I mean it was recommended to be funded, I should say. And Danny Murphy, but that's ongoing. So that's actually going to u measure P on the 11th. But we already approved that, correct? Or just for this fisc? We just approved it for this fiscal year though. So that would be for next fiscal year. Okay.

Okay. We'll we'll deal with all that on the back end, but I wanted to to raise that. Um and we'll just now continue down the line. I'll go to the vice mayor.

Thank you, mayor. And and not to belleaguer the point and and the fact we're waiting for the important input from our interim um incoming uh city manager. Um but I do I do want to share the thought and the emphasis of revenue generating uh resources. I know especially at our planning commission meeting last night, um the city council will be receiving a comprehensive report of an of um I guess a homework assignment they received um uh and and specifically the the derelict um buildings uh came up things of that nature of of identifying where some of these other funding resources uh that we can come um to identify. Um, so with that being said, I think moving forward is is I think once again the emphasis should be on the revenue generating ideas and and um and being more economical and I and and more I wouldn't say frugal, but more effective with where we're actually spending our monies um especially in our um uh condition that we're in right now and and looking forward to um the the feedback and guidance of of where our interim city manager uh our incoming city manager can can help guide us um through his wealth of experience. So, thank you.

All right, Council Member Gordon.

Good evening. Thank you so much for this uh uh report. Um I do agree. I want to hold property uh owners accountable uh home and commercial. Um the fees is crucial. I do notice that cities that who in uh enforce this have a overall beautiful city. I'm not saying perfect, but and it's all throughout the city. As you know, District 6 is a prime candidate of this issue. Um and also to people who leave their property abandoned, they should be also held accountable. Um because I there is a nasty rumor out there that people buy properties um whether they live within the city or within without the city uh with uh within or without the city. They tend to use these properties as tax write off. especially if it's in a known crime area, whether it is a crime area or not. But just having that stigma connected to it, it gives them an opportunity to use that property as a write-off. I can't get anyone to live in it. I can't get anybody to uh have a business in it because the challenges, which is so incorrect. It's just a gimmick. And so I definitely hope that we can do that because that's all along Sonoma Boulevard. Um, I also would like to ask regarding the code enforcement, I don't know if this is a proper place or not, but hopefully if it's not, you can help direct me future, but could we get a balance of the fees that and fines that has been collected within the last year since

we've been sitting and I just want to make sure if we do go this route of holding these fees and fines accountable that it is consistent and is equaled and I don't care who you know I don't care if it's my mom she owes she pays simple as that um and then I do want to know um selling I had another question here one moment please what maybe I can ask the city attorney city um may I ask you what is this issue about Mar 400 Mar Island Way? Th this has been a selling selling selling conversation since I've lived here and it's I've been inside of it is beautiful. I thought we was the city was going to go there. What is going on with that? Because it is a valuable property and it's just sitting there.

Sure. Um it is it does have some occupancy and um some rental income associated with it. So there are um there are occupants in the building on the ground floor not on the second floor.

Um so um I assume what you're asking is about restrictions on the disposition of that property. Um the city uh during bankruptcy um borrowed a great deal of money and had to pledge assets to the bond repayments um essentially associated with the loans we took um to bridge the city's operations across the bankruptcy. Um the city pledged most of the city's assets um to that this building, other buildings, etc. um to that financing. Um that's fine. That building was purchased after that financing was pledged. However, um when we one of the assets that was pledged was um the golf course, the Blue Rock Springs Golf Course, at the time that we considered selling the Blue Rock Springs Golf Course, the city had virtually no other assets to replace that pledge with that were not already encumbered. And it was determined at that time to replace the pledge with 400 M Island Way. So that building cannot, for lack of a better word, be sold because it is encumbered by the loan pledge. Um the issue surrounding unencumbering it or trying to unencumber it has to do with the very favorable interest rate. um that we have on that money. You could not even possibly touch an interest rate to refinance today and remove some of

the pledged assets. Um when we refinanced previously, it cost us a great deal of money because we have to pay all of the bank's fees and costs associated with looking at another asset. And as I said, it was very hard to find another asset. So, it doesn't look particularly I do you want to say viable? I at this time and and Nolingo has um sorry city manager Connelly has looked at this issue um months ago actually we went through this analysis um she reached out to experts with regard to this issue I'll let her speak to that

yeah through the chair I'll just say this this will be part of a larger larger conversation when we start talking about financing options um there were a number of city properties that Actually, we paid off um quite a bit of our debt that fell off like city hall and other there was a whole list of of other um assets that are now not encumbered under the debt service. Um 400 mayor Island Way is still encumbered as city attorney Neb said. So we have outstanding I think debt somewhere around 2728 million. Um and so that is used as collateral. Um I believe that the purchase price was somewhere around 13 million somewhere around there. It the value has gone up but it's not gone up enough to cover the debt service. So um you know currently we're sort of keeping that agreement in place until we really figure out what we want to do because as Neb said the interest rate is really low. I mean we we we would never get that again. Um, considering interest rates right now, I think it's is it 1.8%? I think it's something around there. Um, I think it's under 2% interest rate. So, it's just everyone would kill for something like that. So, we don't want to necessarily, you know, renegotiate or somehow refinance unless we're really sure that it's to our benefit. Um, so selling 400 Mar Island Way will not generate enough revenue to essentially satisfy that debt.

May I thank you for that. I appreciate it. Why can't we lease it then?

That we can do. Um, it can generate revenue under those circumstances. Um again part of it is leased to the veterans administration I believe at current and then the professional standards division is uh in there um there are some I'll call it challenges um leasing space that is I you there would have to be a conversation about security etc to lease additional space The space that is on the second floor is um has no ten improvements. It's kind of all one space. Uh currently it doesn't have um interior walls, if that makes sense. It's all um

just the exterior walls and then uh it had been cubicles is what it had been uh when um the insurance company was in there, which was the previous tenant to the city. previous that was the previous owner to the city. Sorry. Thank you for that. So I I just examined. I'm not saying it couldn't. I just

Yes. Maybe we council can think of something in the future to see what we could do to make something out of that. Some kind of funding. Um and then regarding the employee situation, I know we're going to revisit that. When you come back with that, I would like to know exactly where you're looking to cut staff. Not just a blanket 50 this, 20 that. I just want to know exactly each department that you're looking into considering cutting. Thank you. Council member Paul Marz.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you for the presentation. U a few comments. So, I'm interested in at least having the conversation about the real property transfer tax. Um, the city of Elsaro a few years ago was on the verge of bankruptcy and terms in charter city did the real property transfer tax and they seem thriving right now. So, I don't think that's the worst option we could consider. Um, yeah, I was thinking about this a few years ago, hesitant to push for it because the way I saw it, I don't think we could credibly evidence that we were being as fiscally responsible as we can and should be, but I think the time to really consider it it might be now. Uh, we got a performance audit that's around the corner. We have a new inter city manager that's also around the corner who's uh going to bring some new tools and skills as far as uh uh financial management. So maybe this is a a good time to have that conversation. Um another thing that we should consider and I noticed probably just a a little blip in terms of like revenue but uh a trench cutting fee. Um look at into the city of Davis. I brought this up to the former um public works or interim public works director but kind of got lost in the shuffle but the way they do their calculation in the city of Davis is different than ours and I think we stand to uh gain a little bit more money especially when it comes to uh PG& uh cutting the road um they they they tend to get compensate a little bit more in Davis so I think that's something worth exploring and putting that into the the master fee Um, I also don't want to get too much in the weeds of some of the stuff that's more in the lane of economic development, but I do want to put it out

there that I I really believe that we should go uh invest more into event making and under no uncert behind uh the Solano County uh uh fairgrounds and uh their event making. um that is an asset most cities do not have and we should really get behind them, maybe get a music festival, but the more we invest and get behind them and they have new leadership right now, uh we could stand to earn a little bit more revenue and also just something to consider, we could also introduce an emissions tax. So on top of everything else and food and beverage and whatnot um because it's not really a sales tax but if we increase an emissions tax that's something we could also get for ourselves uh if we get to the place where we are really cooking with more events going on Salana County Fairgrounds. So just want to put that out there something investigate um since we're looking into all the strategies to to gain more money. Thank you

council member Matias. Uh, thank you, mayor. Um, uh, quick question for city attorney Neb. Uh, there's a $700,000 litigation defense fund request. What, what is the increase, uh, relative to what's in our budget today? Um, I do not know the answer to that question because that fund is managed by risk. So, that's coming from risk.

Mhm. Uh so um city manager uh Connley, I I want more information on that. Um so that's frankly outrageous to me. Um and I want to better understand what's driving that or what the increase is relative to this year.

So it so maybe it might help to know what the fund is for. So that is essentially our fund that pays um deductibles and I'm using that word in a for the public to understand. We has have our self-insured retention. When something goes over our self-insured retention, then it's paid by our insurance carrier, but our self-insured retention is paid out of that fund. I believe that is correct. Longo, right? Or maybe Florida can. No, I believe that's correct, but we'll check with risk to determine and we'll get back to you.

So, you know, when it gets used over the course of the year and is and is depleted, they bring it back up to what is the anticipated level of what might be needed. So, the council isn't hit with an unint unexpected um some years we don't use any of it. Some years we use some of it. Um so I think risk can give you that information but um that's that's tracked in that department. Yeah, we just want to sort of understand the trends and understand what's driving the increase um and if that's necessary to uh support that increase if there is an increase for next year.

That's one. two um on code enforcement. Uh I know I worked with um Mayor McConnell, Council Member Verder Liga, Council Member Brigzer, uh Council Member Matulac just getting additional Oh, and Vice Mayor Lora Diaz. How can I forget? Getting additional staffing into that department. And I think the the the logic or the reasoning at the time um was that if we hired more staff, we would see an increase in revenue. that revenue has been very uneven for that department and I don't really know like what is going on. So, um whether that's if if it's um that we're dropping the ball on compensation for officers, whatever the case is, I think we need to get back to a level where we're getting at least somewhere between 700 and a million two a year, which was before the pandemic where we were. Um and we haven't been there anymore. and I don't know why. Uh so um I would like for I would like more information on that and I want to see us set a target for what we expect to collect and what actions are going to be taken for us to collect that amount in the year ahead. Um and then the last item um has to do with uh an effort that Fairfield um undertook two years ago and Benicia will have it on the ballot this fall and that's uh business modernization tax um city manager Connley. So, uh, Benanisha, for example, put a, um, a freeze on business licenses for, uh, any business that was grossing in under 10,000. Um, they have that exemption in place through 27. Uh, Fairfield, um, and, um, and now, Benicia, they they're sort of going through a process of

restructuring what types of businesses get leveled what fee. We have a lot of um businesses opening up in our community that are more retail, food, hospitality based. And so, are we able to, you know, put something on the ballot that incentivizes more of that because that's what's kind of opening up in our city. Um, knowing that if we do that, we we would be able to collect revenue in other ways. Um, because there's sales tax, there's this, there's that, you know. So, uh, I don't know if if we've missed the boat on a business license modernization effort relative to the November election, but I think if you can just check in with the Fairfield Group and the Benicia Group, we should look into that as a um, not just as a revenue enhancement, but also as a business attraction tool. So, um, that's all I have for this evening. Thank you.

All right. Thank you. We've gotten a couple more um requests for comment. City attorney Deb, did you have something else to add or is that your mic? It's actually a question that is um sort of tagged into council members led question about POAK and the budget for POAC. May I go ahead?

Um uh Miss Connley, um one of the other things that we had sent over and Florida, maybe you can answer this question. um was the need to um replenish the Cal DOJ deposit um funds. Um we are last my calculation for that fund was down to like 32,000 or something like that. And as you know, they when our deposit account with them depletes um below the to the $100,000 mark, um we have to replenish that deposit account up to 300. Um do you know whether or not that is contained within this baseline budget, the money for that fund? Because it we have to do it within 10 days. So there's no time to come back to the council on a basis that asks them for an adjustment to the budget uh to replenish that funds because contractually we're obligated to replenish within 10 days. Can you is the is that money in the baseline?

So that is actually the $700,000 that that's for the Jensen Hughes. So that's um to replenish that fund to bring it up to a million dollars because that's what we received as an estimate for what those expenses would be. So that's that $700,000 litigation fund. It's for the Jensen Hughes DOJ and that is stat well statutory is the wrong word. That is contractually required.

Yeah. And just to address POA, we we it wasn't included on this only because the the timing of creating this and sort of what was happening with midyear, but we do have an estimate of somewhere around $650,000 for POAC. And that does include funds for the independent auditor, the what are you calling the attorney, the assigned attorney, as well as a training budget. All right, we're Go ahead.

I'm sorry. I'm just adding a little more context to that. Um, that number came from us. Um, it was really a thumb in the air. We do not have those proposals back yet for each of those items. that number will tighten uh one direction or the other um when we have those proposals back and then we kind of give an estimate of the number of hours that um each of those um outside people would be um engaged in. So we just we wanted to drop a placeholder so it could happen now but there will be likely an adjustment one way or the other.

All right, we have had requests for a couple more questions from council. So, I'll go quickly to Council Member Gordon and then Council Member Letu and then we'll wrap up. Thank you. Um I I'm not sure who this question should go to, but I'm going to go to you, the city t city attorney. Um Veronica Nav, the Grant School, what is going on with that property that's in district 6. It was said that it was owned by the school and then it said it was owned by the city. Then it said partial of it was owned by the city because the fire department have some of it. But it's just a property that's been sitting there since I've been here and why can't we sell it?

Um I don't think we have it but um ACM Hayne will come up and uh explain what what occurred there

public comment. Um, so what happened with the grant school? At the same time that the city was looking at the Farragate school, we were researching grant school for a potential fire department expansion or future housing project. Um, at that time after we gathered all the information and came to city council, we only moved forward with Farragate. So Grant School was not purchased by the city. So we do not own that. We are not involved in that whatsoever. So the school district owns it still, I believe. I'd have to double check because it's been a couple years, but last I heard maybe a year ago, they still owned it. So, I can check and look into it and get back to you.

Thank you. So, city attorney, do I ask for a request of investigation of to the school district regarding this property because it is becoming a another uh army depot situation. I mean, people are in there and it's considered to be unsafe. We try to clean it and we got a warning not to because it was toxic. That went into the decision not to take it actually. Um that the information you're describing right now. Um what I can say is that um we have developed this um you know task force to look at problem properties. um we can take that up at our next meeting and look at what the options are and then get back to you and to council about.

That's a good fee to think about. Thank you. And my next question to to maybe yourself or to I do know that um Gileian was working on this project. Could we tax the EVs because we have Tesla, we have all these different entities and are we getting monies for that? Especially in my district, we have two that's uh by the new um DDS. Are you talking about the charging stations and charging at the charging stations? Yes. Do we get funding for that? Currently, no. They're free.

So, we'd have to double check with public works and and our contracts on those to see if there's ability to charge for that service. Yes, that's that's a hidden gem. Thank you. That's what my my question was. Thank you. Right, Council Member Letu.

So, again, I know we're waiting for our new city manager, but one of the things that I want to touch on is measure P. And while there are a host of things going to measure P, I understand why and they fall within those guidelines. What I do want to cautious caution us about is if any of those requests are ongoing, how do they get funded from an ongoing perspective? And really at some point if it's a continued expense year overyear, is measure P really the right place? And so that's something that really should be considered even though I know the measure P um commission is looking at each one of those different requests but we need to consider what is the longevity. It's no different than looking at a grant and when that grant ends how those services are going to continue within community. So, I do really want the staff to consider, are these ongoing expenses and where should they really lie in our budget? All right, with that, I will check back in um with ACM Conley quickly. Is there anything else you need from the council this evening? direction on any specific item and if not we will go ahead and close out.

So I think we we have a lot here. I think we have enough direction. We can bring back some strategies you know and some considerations more detail around the revenue generating piece. Um, if no one has any specific items that they wanted to pull for measure P, we can just let that play out because they will all come to you in some way, shape, or form as either recommendations to or recommendations to not um re um move forward. So, that sounds good. Okay. Well, seeing nothing else, thank you again. Thank you everyone um that stayed with us in person and online. We will go ahead and adjourn at 8:03 Yeah.