City Council - Regular Meeting

All right, everyone, I think we're about ready to get started.

I give people a quick minute.

All right, good evening again, everyone. We're going to go ahead and call to order the regular meeting of the Vallejo City Council at 7.14 p.m. And I'll just ask our crowd, the noise does carry, so I'll ask everybody to try to keep it down, and then I'll ask our city clerk to conduct the roll call.

Mayor Source. Present. Vice Mayor Matulik. Present. Council Members Bergenser. Present. Forden. Present. Leiterdue. Matias.

Here. Paul Mayers.

Present.

All right. Thank you. That's going to bring us to Item 3, Pledge of Allegiance. If everyone would please stand and join us for the pledge. All right. Thank you, everyone. That's going to bring us to item four, which is our report out of closed session. And three meetings ago, the council did meet in closed session. So I'll turn it over to our city attorney for that report out.

Thank you, Mayor, Council. Council did meet in a closed session this evening on two items. Item 3A, Conference of Legal Counsel, Existing Litigation, pursuant to California Government Code Section 54956.91, Leitzke v. City of Vallejo, Solano County Superior Court, case number CU2302170. Council gave direction to staff and took no further action. Item 3B, Conference of Legal Counsel, existing litigation pursuant to California Government Code Section 54956.91, Kroll v. City of Vallejo, Solano County Superior Court Case Number CU2510022. Counsel gave direction and took no further action.

All right. Thank you. That's going to bring us to item five, presentations and commendations. And we do have a proclamation this evening. We're going to be presenting a proclamation recognizing the week of June 16th, 2026, which is next week as Juneteenth week in the city of Vallejo. And I believe we have with us our organizers of Vallejo Juneteenth. If you could please join Council Member Gordon at the podium for the presentation of the proclamation.

Hello, everyone. How are you doing today? Good to see you. Likewise. Come closer. I was like, good to see you. You want to hold the flag? Good evening, everyone. This is a wonderful honor. The City of Vallejo of California Proclamation recognizing the week of June 16th, 26th, as the Juneteenth week in the City of Vallejo. Whereas Juneteenth is the oldest known celebration commending the end of slavery in the United States. And whereas on June 19th, 1865, more than two years after President Abraham Lincoln signed the proclamation, freedom was finally announced to the enslaved people in Gavinton, Texas. And whereas on June 18th, 2021, President Joseph R. Biden Jr. proclaimed Juneteenth a federal holiday to observe annually on June 19th, AND WHEREAS SINCE 1889, THE SOLANO COUNTY AFRICAN FAMILY CELEBRATION COMMITTEE HAS RECOGNIZED VALLEO'S ANNUAL JUNETEENTH CELEBRATION AND WHEREAS THE YEAR OF 2026 MARKED THE CENTURY LEGACY OF THE NEGRO HISTORY WEEK FOUNDED BY THE HISTORIAN DR. CARTER G. WOODSON. which later expanded into Black History Month to promote more complete understanding of the United States history and whereas the convenience of the Juneteenth and central legacy of Black History Month and the 250th anniversary of America's independence in 2026 represents a rare and meaningful moment in the nation's history, calling for continuing work requiring to secure freedom and equal rights for all. And whereas Juneteenth is observed THROUGHOUT LONG-STANDING TRADITION AND ENGAGING AND INSPIRING FUTURE GENERATIONS AND WHEREAS EVERYONE IS INVITED TO ATTEND THE 30TH SIXTH ANNUAL JUNETEENTH PARADE AND FESTIVAL VALLEO RISING, HONORING BLACK HISTORY, AND OPPORTUNITY TO PROMOTE AWARENESS AND APPRECIATION FOR ALL CULTURE, DIVERSITY, AND THAT MAKES UP VALLEO A WONDERFUL CITY TO LIVE, WORK, PLAY, AND PROSPEROUS. NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT PROCLAIMED THAT I, ANDREA SOURCE, MAYOR AND THE CITY VALLEO CITY COUNCIL DO HEREBY RECOGNIZE THE WEEK OF JUNE 16, 2026 AS JUNETEENTH WEEK FOR THE CITY OF VALLEO AND INVITE ALL RESIDENTS TO REFLECT ON THIS MOMENT EVENT IN OUR NATION'S HISTORY AND PLEDGE TO WORK TOWARDS CREATING A COMMUNITY WHERE EVERY PERSON FEELS RESPECTED, INCLUDED, AND ABLE TO THRIVE. DATED JUNE 9, 2026. BY THE MAYOR, ANDREA SOURCE, VICE MAYOR, J.R. PETER BEGONZER, HELEN-MARIE GORDON, ALEX MATEAS, AND CHARLES PARMARIS. THANK YOU SO MUCH.

GOOD EVENING, EVERYONE. To our intern city manager, our mayor, vice mayor, city council members, city staff, and members of our community. On behalf of the Solano County African Family Reunion Celebration Committee, I would like to express our sincere gratitude for this proclamation, recognizing Juneteenth and the significance of this important day in our nation's history. Juneteenth is more than just a celebration of freedom. It is a celebration of resilience, perseverance, culture, family, and the continued pursuit of justice and equality. It reminds us of the sacrifices made by those who came before us and the responsibility we have to continue building stronger and more inclusive communities for further generations. We invite everyone throughout Vallejo and Solano County to join us on Saturday, June 20th for our Juneteenth Parade and Festival. This family friendly event will feature live entertainment, community resources, culture presentations, food vendors, youth activities, and opportunities to come together in unity and celebration. And in addition to celebrating freedom, we are also asking a critical community need. On that same day, This committee, along with NAACP and the Red Cross, will be hosting a community blood drive at the JFK Library. We are encouraging everyone who is eligible to consider donating blood do so. Blood donations are especially important within the African American community. Individuals of African descent are more likely to possess unique blood traits that can be life-saving for patients battling sickle cell disease and other conditions. Unfortunately, blood shortages continue to impact hospitals and patients across our region. A single blood donation can save up to three lives. Today, I challenge our community to celebrate Juneteenth, not only by attending the festivities, but also by giving the gift of life. Freedom about uplifting one another, caring for one another, and ensuring that every member of our community has the opportunity to thrive. Again, thank you, the City Council. for this recognition and your continued support of Juneteenth. We look forward to celebrating with you all on June 20th. Thank you, President Gaddis. I would just also like to give a shout out to our event producer. He is here with us, Jeff Traeger. Thank you.

Thank you all so much. If you can come down in front, we'll take a group picture in front of the dais. All right. Thank you all again. We'll see you next Saturday, June 20th, for the Juneteenth Parade and Festival. And with that, we will move to item six, which is our first community forum. This is the opportunity for members of the public to address city council on items not on tonight's agenda. And I will go ahead and note we have our... budget annual budget this evening we're going to be taking a few steps to ensure that we get to the budget in a timely manner when it's accessible to the public and we already have I believe 14 or 15 speakers for this first community forum we're going to take five or six we're going to limit it to 15 minutes because we really do need to get to that budget anyone who isn't able to speak at the first community forum you will have an opportunity later in the meeting at the second community forum BUT AGAIN, WE'RE GOING TO BE PRETTY TIGHT THIS EVENING OUT OF RESPECT FOR THOSE THAT ARE HERE FOR THE BUDGET. SO WITH THAT, LET'S GO AHEAD AND CALL OUR FIRST FIVE SPEAKERS.

THANK YOU, MAYOR. THE FIRST THREE SPEAKERS IN THIS ORDER ARE MARIO SALCEDO, JULIA DEBARTOLO, AND GERRIANNA GUSMAN.

BOTTOM RIGHT, THERE'S A Down and right, yep.

Thank you.

All right, thank you, thank you very much. Good evening, City Councils, Mayor of Vallejo and Resorts. Nice to meet you, Mr. Black. My name is Mario Saucedo. Good evening to all the citizens of Vallejo. My name is Mario Saucedo. I think all of you already know me. And also, you already know the work that I've been doing in the city of Vallejo for the last 24 years, from food drives to toy drives to health fairs to cultural events. The Solano Ice Coalition was the first organization that started creating Latino BIPOC cultural events in the downtown area in Vallejo. Right now, I'm proud to say that the Fiestas Patrias and Dia de los Muertos is a legacy event of the city of Alejo. I'm right here because I received a letter of the Solano escalation and may not be able to get any, or maybe not get funding for these cultural events coming up. This is not my events. This is the community events. This is events that they are, the Solano escalation need the support from the city. the Solano Escalation bring economical uproar and bring diversity to these communities. I know that we have other organizers also of color that they are need the funding. So, cutting all of us from funding that is vital for these communities, it will be wrong. So last year, you guys bought to get me less money when an event produced is around $27,000 to $32,000. And you guys, inside of giving me more money, you decreased my budget to $12,500 when I asked for $20,000. I think that is very important that we bought for you to be there. And I think that it's very important that I have the support because, like I said, every one of you already know. I know I am very transparent and clear in the work that I'm doing right here in Vallejo. And everybody benefits from it. I mean, I am the only one that do HIV education and prevention in this town. I am the only one that is all over carrying these flags. So I need your help. I don't need for you guys to defund me. I need you guys to increase the budget. You know that Dia de los Muertos is an amazing event that is growing every year. You know that Fiestas Patrias is a very good event also for culture, for our community. So please don't defund us. Just help us to get more money. Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker is Julia DeBarlow.

Hi, everybody. OK. So my name is Julia. I am also on the board of the Solano-Weights Coalition. But I'm also an event planner here in Vallejo. I work with Mario. I help him plan these massive and beautiful events that everybody who has been to the events, you guys know, fantastic. Now, this letter about the $29 million shortfall coming and you guys cutting completely events grants. That's kind of crazy, because I was looking at the budget this year, and you guys are going to fund the police department? Needed, but what really have they been doing? You guys want to fund the streets that are filled with potholes, but you guys are cutting that budget down to 50 grand. That is kind of crazy to me, too. Let's see. Sorry, I have it on my phone. We're going to do economic development strategies. What's better to bring economy to the city of Vallejo than supporting the events that bring the people from outside the area to Vallejo? You want to show the beauty of Vallejo. You want to show that we are a community that's worth having children being raised here. Children. But the district is cutting off. You guys are cutting funding to the district. These events show that we are a community that is built around culture, around families, and it's necessary to provide funding to us, not just me, but to all of the organizations that build in the city. You guys have us listed under your community events. How are we supposed to do community events if we're not able to be funded by the city that wants to claim our projects? You guys have multiple projects that are not 100% city funded, but you guys list them and you guys claim them as your own. So then why are you going to take away that from us? It would be very valuable for you guys to really consider what you guys... want to do when it comes to bringing culture and bringing people to the city of Vallejo and the image that you guys want to present? Because at this point, it looks like you're just trying to push everybody out. Unfortunately, very common for Vallejo. Let's make a move to change that. We should, because let's face it, everybody's moving away, and this is the hottest economy and the hottest real estate market in the Bay Area. Bring families here. Bring culture here. Thank you. Oh wait, my son also wanted me to say, can you guys look into putting a speed bump on Fulton Avenue, like right near the fire station, because people come screaming around that corner. Well, if you could send that to us and we'll proceed with the next speaker.

The next speaker is Jerrianne Gussman, and the two speakers after Jerrianne is Eric McGovern and then Ebony Antoine.

Good evening, Madam Mayor and City Council. My name is Jerry Ann Guzman. I am the founder and I am also the executive director of Solano Serenity Center. I am the current president of the Vallejo Museum. I sit on the board of Seven Generations Intertribal Council, Solano AIDS Coalition, and Baked Dog out of Santa Rosa. What I want to discuss with you tonight is along what Mario and Julia were talking about. This city used to be the most diverse city in the United States. We lost that designation to Hayward a few years back. Our community events that all of the groups do bring in sales tax revenue, bring in overnight stays in our hotels, bring in people on the ferry. The reason that we left with seven generations for our powwow was because of excessive expenses here in the city of Vallejo. The money that you have earmarked for these organizations needs to stay at minimum where it's at to bring in people to this city to help try to balance your budget. I was reading earlier in, I believe it was the that it's a $10 million shortfall at this point. We need to bring in people. Solano AIDS Coalition in our events averages 6,000 people per event here in Vallejo. You just had Pista on Mare Island. You have these other organizations that are trying to put Vallejo on the map with these events. And we can't have you guys cut us off at the knees. Because if you do that, what are we gonna do? It hurts all of us in the city. It hurts every one of your constituents sitting behind me. It hurts the people that want to move here. We need to keep this funding at least stable. If not, if we can increase it, bump it up a little bit, great. If we can't, at least keep it stable for this year because that's what's going to draw in revenue. That's what's going to draw in the newspapers. and all the other information that we have. We are not a bedroom community like Benicia, where they have a very small 25,000 population. We have 122,000 here. And we rely on you to make proper judgment calls in what we're doing. But taking funding away from organizations like this and others here in Vallejo hurts. So thank you for your time tonight.

Thank you.

Next speaker is Eric McGovern.

I'm speaking, bringing attention to IM9H5, which is a recommendation from Measure PCMA. The City Council needs to be aware of a video called This Flock Camera Leak is Like Netflix for Stalkers.

I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to pause you real quick. So we're actually going to take public comment when we get to that item, and we'll be happy to take your comment then. We can't take it during community forum because that's for items that aren't on the agenda. But we are moving, proceeding towards the budget as quickly as possible. IT WAS FOR 9H, IT WAS FOR THE BUDGET.

NEXT SPEAKER IS EBONY ANTOINE. THANK YOU. NEXT SPEAKER AFTER EBONY IS CRYSTAL G. SAME THING, SO WE'LL GET YOU ON THE BUDGET. NEXT SPEAKER IS SAL MIRANDA.

All right. Good? Can you hear me? All right.

If you want to raise the mic on your lower right, the other side, there's a little toggle switch you can raise it up.

Yeah.

All right. All right, Council, staff, thank you for your time today. I'm Sal Miranda, General Sales Manager for EcoGreen Solutions. This is Isaac, your local account executive. We are what you call a trade pro with the Utilities Commission and PG&E. we focus on energy efficiency measures for the cities government county state anything that's municipal i'm here today to talk about what we offer and what we do we offer a zero budget impact Zero upfront costs, energy efficiency projects through PG&E at 0% interest paid for on your bill. It's called the PG&E Energy Efficiency On-Bill Financing Program. What that is, is we come in, we do a complimentary energy audit for the city, for all your facilities. We note down what you have. and a suggested replacement with a level three ASHRAE audit to present to your board and your team. Today we're just here to introduce ourselves. We're here to get direction of who we can speak to. We've worked with many of your neighbors, including Calistoga, Davis, Walnut Creek, Lafayette, San Jose, Dixon, Novato, Piedmont, and even your local fairgrounds. Again, we do everything from lighting to HVAC to VFDs to refrigeration, solar, EV, hydrogen fuel cells. You name it, energy efficiency related, that's what we specialize in. We're also registered with the Department of General Services and we're also a federally recognized energy service company by the Department of the United States of America and the DOE. Other than that really we just wanted to share the success we've been having with your local communities again your neighbors that are right down the road and Again, it all starts with the complimentary energy audit of the city Usually we work in tandem with Public Works and city manager We are so abide by all, you know, prevailing wage rates. We carry the C-10 license. We do all the install. We service and manufacture warranties so you guys are not left in the blue. And really from there, our goal is to never to ask for a check to the city. No PO, nothing out of pocket. And our goal is to help reduce your carbon footprint and help you meet your resiliency goals for your community. city and your team. And so again, just would like some direction and who to speak to. We'd love to leave our card if we can and go from there.

We have someone that you can speak to, but we first would need to confirm whether or not we already have an energy performance contract in place. If we don't, the city would need to make the determination that it's something that it wants to pursue, and if the answer is yes to that, then it would be a competitive procurement, and we would welcome your company along with other companies to compete for the opportunity, but someone will give you some basic information. Amazing. Thank you, Mr. Manager.

Thank you very much.

All right. We've had four speakers. We're going to take one more and then we'll close the community forum.

Our last speaker for this 15-minute community forum is William Baker.

Thank you very much for squeezing me in on this very busy evening. Good evening, Mayor and Council. My name is William Baker. Through the Mayor, I would like to direct my comments to City Manager Black. Mr. Black, I want to first thank you for taking this role during an important and challenging time for the City of Vallejo. Fresh leadership brings fresh eyes. Sometimes it takes someone not tied to a history to review the facts objectively and ask questions others may have overlooked. For the past four years, I have closely followed the Broadway project, now known as Broadway Village. I have regularly reported my concerns to this and previous councils regarding the project's finances, compliance, and administration. First, I want to acknowledge something positive. Since the opening, the property's day-to-day operations have been progressively reasonably well. Successful operations today, however, do not resolve historical and unanswered questions from its development. The City now faces important decisions regarding this project, including unpaid contractor bills and an option agreement that expires at the end of this year, with a business that has already announced publicly its intent to wind up. These issues contrary to what you might have been told are very much the responsibility of the city of Vallejo These are not issues of your doing but you must move to rectify them I believe recent developments have only strengthened the case for a thorough financial and compliance audit of the Broadway project development. Only through an independent and thorough audit can the City have confidence that the ownership will transfer cleanly and without unresolved liabilities. City Manager Black, to assist in this effort, I present to you a compilation of more than 300 pages and nearly 100,000 words of reports, correspondence, and research that I have provided city leadership over the past four years. This material, along with related public record requests, reports submitted to government agencies, and supporting documentation is available online to anyone who wishes to review it. Transparency works best when information is accessible, and I am happy to share these materials with you and any member of the public who requests them. City Manager Black, the issues surrounding the Broadway Village deserve your attention now while there is still time to act. Thank you.

Thank you very much. So with that, we will close our community forum. Again, anyone that was not able to, we weren't able to fit in for this forum, you will have an opportunity later in the meeting, but we do want to get to the budget. So we'll move on to item seven. We're going to move to basically our consent calendar and approval of the agenda, and I'm going to open up public comment for all of our consent items at this time. Do we have any in-person comment on the consent calendar?

We have two speakers signed up, Cherianne Grimm and Daniel Boone.

On consent. All right, let's go ahead and call them. BEFORE YOU START, JUST TO CLARIFY, MY PLAN FOR THIS EVENING IS TO, IN THE INTEREST OF GETTING TO THE BUDGET, ANY ITEMS THAT ARE PULLED FROM CONSENT, WE'RE GOING TO MOVE TO THE END OF THE AGENDA, BUT WE WANT TO TAKE THE PUBLIC COMMENT ON CONSENT NOW SO FOLKS DON'T HAVE TO WAIT. SO GO AHEAD AND MAKE YOUR COMMENT NOW, AND THEN IF WE DO PULL ANYTHING AND IT GOES TO THE END, WE'LL DO ANOTHER PUBLIC COMMENT THEN.

Good evening. Mare Island property owners have paid a community facilities district tax to fund police and fire services. The Goodwin formula determines Mare Island's share of those budgets, and as those budgets increase, so does the CFD obligation. While Mare Island residents are already paying the maximum allowed, which results in $3,000 to $4,000 per resident, the commercial properties within the CFD absorb much of the additional cost. The flawed financial structure of this CFD means Maryland taxpayers end up paying the growth due to development occurring elsewhere in Vallejo. As new housing developments and commercial projects are approved throughout the city without comparable CFD obligations, those developments increase demand for police and fire services. I had sent you some correspondence today after we received an email from the Planning Commission. And in response to that email, I would just say that I find it very hard to believe that CFDs were not being discussed and framework not being developed as you've gone through two approval cycles. If we are now approving development projects without knowing things as important as a CFD and the CFD or any other financing mechanism To me, that's a problem. And what I'd like to say is, in reading all of that, having a C of D in another development is not the answer to equity and fairness, and it will not solve the problem that's happening on Mare Island because our CFD holds us responsible for the commercial square footage, even though we own 12% and they own 86%. And we have to pay the maximum tax no matter what. So we don't even get the credit from our ad valorem tax, which means we're being double taxed. So a simple CFD in another development, unless it's going to have that same kind of formula and hold everybody to the same kind of formula we've had, is not equity, and it's not fair. So I hope you'll pull this item tonight and discuss it further. I don't think this is a great... A POLICY MOVE TO FIND OUT AFTER THE FACT, AFTER WE'VE COMPLAINED THAT, OH, YEAH, THERE IS GOING TO BE A CFD, WE JUST HAVEN'T TALKED ABOUT IT YET. I THINK YOU SHOULD KNOW A LITTLE BIT MORE ABOUT THE CFD BEFORE YOU GIVE APPROVAL. AND WE SHOULD KNOW THE SPECIFICS OF THAT AS A PUBLIC. THANK YOU.

THANK YOU. AND FOR CLARITY, THE COUNCIL RECEIVED YOUR E-MAIL, BUT FOR ANYONE THAT WAS WONDERING, THAT IS FOR ITEM C ON THE CONSENT CALENDAR, THE FAIR VIEW NORTHGATE DEVELOPMENT.

DANIEL BOONE.

GOOD EVENING, MAYOR, VICE MAYOR, AND COUNCIL MEMBERS. WELCOME, MR. BLACK. YES, I'D LIKE TO FOLLOW ON. I'M ALSO ADDRESSING CONSENT ITEM C. Up to this point in time, there has never been any mention of a CFD for the Fairview at Northgate project. It was never mentioned until I sent an inquiry to Mr. Orozco asking him if there was going to be a CFD. The initial response was no. It was followed up today by saying, well, after all, there will be one. but it'll be negotiated at some unknown time in the future and the city and the developer are going to try to agree on a reasonable, didn't use police and fire, it said public safety CFD. So I don't know if public safety actually means police and fire but it wasn't specified. Now, the problem with that is there is no timetable for that to happen, and as Cherianne just called to your attention, we are operating under a formula on the Mare Island CFDs that charges police by the number of people that are going to be served and fire by the square footage. Well, in this master plan that you have on the consent calendar for tonight, it says that the dwelling units are going to increase from 178 to 245. There are population estimates for units from which you would know how many people are going to occupy those 245 units. Also, the square footage of those units should be pretty easy to determine at this point. So there's really no reason why the city cannot start talking to the developer right now. Not at some unknown time in the future about what the police and fire burden is going to be. Because it's almost inevitable that a developer is going to want the CFD tax, if there ever is one, to be as low as possible to increase saleability. That's what developers do. They want to sell their units versus what the city might view as a reasonable amount of tax to take on the burden of this police and fire. So if you do adopt this tonight, on the consent calendar, please don't lose sight of the fact that there is a commitment to have a CFD on these Fairview at Northgate units and just don't forget about it and why not start now?

All right.

Thank you very much.

Any other comments on consent?

No public speakers.

Anyone online? All right, so what I'll do at this time is we have a couple of suggestions for amendments to the agenda. There has been a recommendation by staff to continue action item, I believe it's I, which is the CIP, the Capital Improvement Programs, because we'll focus tonight on the budget. So we would move that to the upcoming June 23rd meeting. And...

Consent, oh, we'll also... It's recommended to be continued. That is what it is.

Thank you very much for helping me with that. We are also going to be continuing consent item 080 to... an upcoming meeting. And with that, I'm going to close the vote real quick to just make sure that we get any council requests to pull items from the consent calendar. And I am going to hear these items after our action calendar in the interest of getting to the budget in a timely manner. So I see Council Member Palmares and then Council Member Gordon.

Requesting to pull 8C, Charlie.

all right so we'll pull 8c that'll become 8.1 but we'll take that after the action calendar and councilmember gordon just clarifying this is not the time where i asked to

THIS IS, OKAY. THANK YOU. FOR THE ACTION CALENDAR, I AM ASKING IF WE COULD MOVE ACTION ITEM J, RECONSIDERING ACTION REGARDING THE GVRD GRANT UP TO THE AGENDA SO THAT IT COULD BE VOTED ON TONIGHT AND NOT PUSHED OUT TO ANOTHER MEETING. THE ITEM CANNOT BE DISCUSSED, MERELY VOTED ON WHETHER IT CAN MOVE FORWARD OR NOT. THANK YOU.

WE CAN, SO WE'LL HEAR IT TONIGHT EITHER WAY. I'M FINE WITH MOVING IT UP AND WE CAN JUST TAKE IT FIRST ON THE ACTION CALENDAR BECAUSE THAT WILL BE A QUICK VOTE. SO I BELIEVE WHAT WE HAVE ON THE TABLE IS TO CONTINUE ITEMS 8-0 AND 9-I. HERE ACTION ITEM 9-J FIRST AND POLL ITEM The Vice Mayor and I are both just flipping pages over here. 8C to become 8.1. I'm not seeing anything else, so we're ready for a motion.

So I move that you approve the consent calendar and approval of the agenda with moving item 8-0 and item 9-I to the June 23rd agenda, and then making item 8-C, item 8.1, and that was it. And then moving item 9-J to 9-A on the agenda.

all right we're ready to vote motion carries unanimously all right thank you all that is going to bring us to our action calendar and we are going to We are going to hear that one after. We are going to go through the quick action items so we can get to the budget. And we are going to do what we just said we were going to do, which is to hear 9J first. And I'll ask our city clerk to announce this item. And we'll go ahead and open up public comment on it.

Consider and possibly take action on a motion to reconsider the city council action taken at the May 12, 2026 council meeting regarding adoption of a resolution approving a Measure P grant agreement to Greater Vallejo Recreation District to support public safety and youth priorities in an amount not to exceed $300,000.

All right. Thank you. So this is simply, due to our parliamentary procedure, a vote to reconsider an item we had previously heard. If we vote in the affirmative, that will then be re-agendized for an upcoming meeting. And we will take public comment on the item and then vote. And I believe our city attorney has a clarification. Hi.

I DO. SO THIS ITEM, AS I RECALL, WAS VOTED DOWN THE FIRST TIME IT CAME, AND THE ONLY COUNCIL MEMBERS WHO CAN MAKE A MOTION TO RECONSIDER ARE THE ONES WHO VOTED NO.

AND THE REQUEST TO RECONSIDER CAME FROM COUNCIL MEMBER MATTIAS, SO UNLESS THERE ARE OTHER QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS FROM COUNCIL, LET'S VERIFY AND MAKE SURE WE DON'T HAVE PUBLIC COMMENT. ANYONE IN PERSON OR ONLINE?

MAYOR, WE DO HAVE ONE PERSON ON ZOOM THAT HAS RAISED THEIR HANDS FOR PUBLIC COMMENT.

LET'S CHECK WITH THEM AND SEE IF THEY WANT TO COMMENT ON 9J.

Hi, Crystal, did you want to speak on 9J?

Is this the budget item?

I'm sorry. No, we're getting there as quickly as possible. We will make sure you, we will get you on the budget item. Great, thank you. Yep, no one else? Thank you all. We're really trying to get to the budget quickly, which is why we're bouncing around the agenda. With that, I will turn potentially to Council Member Matias for a motion.

All righty, so... I'm lost here.

You will just move to reconsider.

Yeah, so I move to consider and possibly take action on the motion to reconsider the City Council action taken at the May 12, 2026 Council meeting regarding adoption of a resolution approving a Measure P grant agreement to the Greater Vallejo Recreation District to support public safety and youth priorities in an amount not to exceed $300,000.

All right, thank you. We're ready to vote.

Missing two votes. All right, we're voting.

There we go. motion carries unanimously all right thank you very much will close out that item and we will move back to the beginning of our action calendar items a b c d and e are all related to landscape maintenance districts in various neighborhoods and in order to streamline these items we are going to go ahead and open up public comment for all five of these items so if you anyone in the in the public THAT WOULD LIKE TO ADDRESS THE CITY COUNCIL ON ACTION ITEMS A, B, C, D, OR E. YOU CAN FEEL FREE TO GO AHEAD AND SIGN UP COLLECTIVELY OR ONLINE. WE WILL TAKE YOUR COMMENTS NOW, AND THEN WE WILL DO EACH ITEM INDIVIDUALLY, BECAUSE WE'LL ALSO HAVE SOME COUNCIL RECUSALS, BUT WE'RE JUST HOPING THIS WILL ALLOW US TO MOVE THROUGH THEM MORE QUICKLY. DO WE HAVE ANY MEMBERS OF THE PUBLIC IN PERSON? OR WAIT. YEAH, LET'S DO THIS. DO WE HAVE ANY MEMBERS OF THE PUBLIC IN PERSON ON OUR LMD ITEMS?

NONE SIGNED UP IN PERSON.

Okay, do we have anyone online that has raised their hand thus far?

Through the mayor at this time, we do not.

Okay, so we will really quickly before we vote on each item, we'll double check if anyone wants to speak on the LMD items, please flag us or raise your hand online. But we'll now take them one by one and we will start with item 9A if our clerk can announce item 9A.

Hold a public hearing to consider and adopt a resolution approving the engineer's report and ordering the levy and collection of assessments on properties in the Cimarron Hills, Madigan, College Hills, Costa del Rio, Seaview, Somerset Highlands 1 and 2, Greenmont, Seaport Hills, Monica Place, Somerset Highlands 3, Springtree, Fleming, Summit 2, Town and Country 1, WOODRIDGE, HUNTER RANCH 1 AND 2, AND GLEN COVE 1 AND 2, LANDSCAPE MAINTENANCE DISTRICTS FOR FISCAL YEAR 26-27.

ALL RIGHT. THANK YOU VERY MUCH. I'M GOING TO DO ONE MORE CHECK AND MAKE SURE WE DON'T HAVE ANY COMMENTERS ON THIS ITEM.

THROUGH THE RENEWED SPEAKERS AT THIS TIME.

ALL RIGHT. THEN WE'RE LOOKING FOR A MOTION ON THIS ITEM.

I MOVED IT. I move that we hold a public hearing to consider and adopt a resolution approving the engineer's report. Hold on one second.

Don, could you conf... Oh, no. Yeah, we're good. Council Member Letizianu and I are going Cove 3. Just double checking. Okay.

I MOVE WE HOLD A PUBLIC HEARING TO CONSIDER AND ADOPT A RESOLUTION APPROVING THE ENGINEER'S REPORT AND ORDERING THE LEVY AND COLLECTION OF ASSESSMENTS ON THE PROPERTIES IN THE SIMERON HILLS, MADOGAN COLLEGE HILLS, COASTA DEL RIO SEA VIEW, SOMERSET HIGHLANDS, ONE, TWO, GREENMOND, SEAPORT HILLS, MONICA PLACE, SOMERSET HIGHLANDS, THREE, SPRINGTREE-FLEMING, SUMMIT TWO, TOWN AND COUNTRY ONE, WOOD RIDGE, Hunter Ranch, one, two, and Glen Cove, one, two, landscape maintenance districts for fiscal year 2026, 2027.

All right, we're ready to vote. Motion carries unanimously. All right, thank you. We're going to move to item 9B. I'll have our city clerk announce this item, and then we'll get our recusal.

HOLD A PUBLIC HEARING TO CONSIDER AND ADOPT A RESOLUTION APPROVING THE ENGINEER'S REPORT AND ORDERING THE LEVY AND COLLECTION OF ASSESSMENTS ON PROPERTIES IN THE RICHCREST LANDSCAPE DISTRICT FOR FISCAL YEAR 26-27.

ALL RIGHT. COUNCILMEMBER MATHEAS.

SORRY ABOUT THAT. I WILL BE RECUSING MYSELF BECAUSE I OWN REAL PROPERTY IN THE DISTRICT.

All right, and we'll have you step out. We will double check one more time to see if we have commenters on this item. Anyone in person? And anyone online?

None in person, Mayor. None online, Mayor.

All right, let's look for a motion.

I move we hold a public hearing to consider and adopt a resolution approving the engineer's report and ordering the levy and collection of assessments on properties in the Ridgecrest Landscape Maintenance District for fiscal year 2026 and 2027.

All right, we are ready for a vote.

Motion carries unanimously with the noted abstention from Council Member Matias due to a conflict of interest.

All right. Thank you. That's going to bring us to item 9C.

If we can announce item 9C and we'll retrieve Council Member Matias. Hold a public hearing to consider and adopt a resolution approving the engineer's report and ordering the levy and collection of assessments on properties in the Bordone Ranch, Carriage Oaks, Garth Ranch, Hidden Brook, Hunter Ranch 3, and Marine World Fairgrounds. MARINE VIEW NORTHEAST QUADRANT, SOUTH VALLEO BUSINESS PARK, AND TOWN AND COUNTRY TWO THROUGH FIVE LANDSCAPE MAINTENANCE DISTRICTS FOR FISCAL YEAR 26-27. ALL RIGHT, THANKS. WE DON'T HAVE ANY RECUSES ON THIS ITEM. WE'LL CHECK ONCE FOR PUBLIC COMMENT.

NO ONE ONLINE. WE WILL LOOK FOR A MOTION ON THIS ITEM THEN.

I MOVE WE HOLD A PUBLIC HEARING TO CONSIDER AND ADOPT A RESOLUTION APPROVING THE ENGINEER'S REPORT AND ORDERING THE LEVY AND COLLECTION OF ASSESSMENTS ON PROPERTIES IN THE Borden One Ranch, Carriage Oaks, Garth Ranch, Hidden Brook, Hunter Ranch 3, Marine World Fairgrounds, Marin View, Northeast Quadrant, South Vallejo Business Park, and Town and Country 2 through 5 Landscape Maintenance Districts for fiscal year 2026 through 2027.

All right, we're ready to vote. Motion carries unanimously. All right. Thank you. That is going to bring us to item D. Let's go ahead and announce it, and then we'll do the recusals.

Hold a public hearing to consider and adopt a resolution approving the engineer's report and ordering the levy a collection of assessments on properties in the Glen Cove 3 and Glen Cove 3 2015 landscape maintenance districts for fiscal year 26-27.

Go ahead, Council Member Berlato.

So I'll recuse myself, I own property in that district.

And I too will recuse myself, because I own property in the district, so I will turn the meeting over to the Vice Mayor.

Thank you, Mayor. And seeing how we have no, are there any last calls for in-person speakers? For item 90. Okay, come on up, Pastor Summers.

Good afternoon or evening, everybody. God bless you. Thank you for this time. I just want to make sure I'm clear on hearing the words levy and collections that would be paid to the city FOR RESIDENTS THAT, IS THIS IN REGARDS TO MONIES THAT'S OWED TO THE CITY AND PERSONS BEING LEVIED BASED ON, YOU KNOW, THEIR HOMES AND RESIDENTS? I JUST WANT TO MAKE SURE I'M CLEAR ON THAT.

CITY MANAGER BLACK?

YES. ASSIST ME IF I'M NOT COMPLETE ENOUGH. IN ESSENCE, THESE ARE COMMUNITIES OR GEOGRAPHIC LOCATIONS THAT HAVE AGREED TO BE ASSESSED A FEE FOR THE BENEFIT OF SOMETHING BE IT LANDSCAPING, IT COULD BE SOMETHING WATER RELATED. RIGHT. AND SO IT GOES TO PAY FOR WHATEVER THEY'RE RECEIVING IN TERMS OF THE BENEFIT, BE IT THE BEST EXAMPLE IS LANDSCAPING IS A TYPICAL CLASSIC ONE. RIGHT.

So I guess, and again, is that under the guise of being fined

No, no, that's not a fine. This is all voluntary. This is a community volunteers to be levied this assessment for the betterment of that particular geographic community. Right. Okay.

And I saw it across the city. I just wanted to make sure, because many of you know that I am the founder of Healthy Vallejo Community Support Services, where we do have a youth employment and delinquency prevention program. And we do free artwork working with code enforcement and public works to help beautify and help maintain our city. So that way we do work for seniors and those who are disabled. And I just wanted to make sure I was hearing or gathering the right information. So we want to continue to make our city better. So God bless you. Thank you for your time. I appreciate it.

Thank you for that. Any online speakers? Through the chair, no speakers at this time. Seeing no speakers, could I ask Council Member Brueggeinser, would you like to make a motion?

Sure, I move that we hold a public hearing to consider and adopt a resolution approving the engineers report and ordering the levy and collection of assessments on properties in the Glen Cove three and Glen Cove three 2015 landscape maintenance districts for fiscal year 2026 2027.

Thank you for that please vote.

Motion carries unanimously with the noted abstention due to conflicts of interest from Mayor Source and Council Member Letajew.

And thank you for bringing Mayor Source and Council Member Letajew back. I will go ahead and turn over the meeting back to Mayor Source.

All right, thanks. Let's go ahead and call Item 9E. Thank you. HOLD A PUBLIC HEARING TO CONSIDER AND ADOPT A RESOLUTION APPROVING THE ENGINEER'S REPORT AND ORDERING THE LEVY AND COLLECTION OF ASSESSMENTS ON PROPERTIES IN THE SANDPIPER POINT LANDSCAPE MAINTENANCE DISTRICT FOR FISCAL YEAR 26-27.

ALL RIGHT. AND VICE MAYOR MITULIK.

YES. I WILL HAVE TO REFUSE MYSELF DUE TO MY OWN PROPERTY IN THIS AREA.

ALL RIGHT. THANK YOU. WE WILL GIVE YOU A SECOND. And then we will check for public comment on this item. Anyone, last call, anyone online? All right, then I am looking, I will go back, I guess, to Council Member Bergenzer, if you can make a motion on this item.

Yes, I move that we hold a public hearing to consider and adopt the resolution approving the engineer's report and ordering the levy and collection of assessments on properties in the Sandpiper Point Landscape Maintenance District for fiscal year 2026-2027.

All right, we're ready to vote.

I'm missing one.

There we go.

Motion carries unanimously with a noted abstention due to a conflict of interest with the Vice Mayor Matulik.

All right, thanks. We'll go ahead and bring Vice Mayor back and we will announce item 9F.

Hold a public hearing, consider and adopt a resolution confirming and levying assessments against residential and commercial properties for unpaid garbage bills to collect unpaid sums.

All right, I will open a public comment on this item. And do we have a staff... presentation or a quick note from staff. It looks like we do from our public works team. I'll turn it over to you all whenever you're ready.

Good evening, Mayor, City Council. Um, Derek Crutchfield, Environmental Services Manager for the City of Vallejo and Natasha Galatin for our city's recycling coordinator. Natasha will get the report.

Excuse me. Okay. So in the city of Vallejo, garbage collection service is mandatory to protect public health. Therefore, all occupied residential and commercial properties must subscribe to and pay for garbage collection service that's provided by the city's franchisee, which is Recology of Vallejo. And a property owner may authorize their tenant to pay for their own garbage service. However, the property owner ultimately remains liable should that bill go delinquent. And so Recology Vallejo has provided city staff with a proposed assessment list that contains an accounting and cost report of all delinquent garbage bills through March 31st, 2026. And a courtesy lien notice was mailed by Recology on April 3rd and May 26th. And so for the Vallejo Municipal Code, City Council is required to conduct a public hearing to consider the proposed assessment list. And should there be any inaccuracies or corrections to be made, City Council can direct staff to make those modifications. And just for additional context, the list before the council this evening was generated prior to the second notice being mailed out, which was the week of Memorial Day. Therefore, any property owners who have since paid their dues in full would have been removed from the list. And subsequently, following confirmation, should any property owners pay in full, on or before the July 15th deadline, their name will also be removed from the assessment list. Just for additional clarity, new property owners are not responsible or held liable for the previous property owner's delinquent bill. And so following the public hearing, should there be any members of the public present that need these resolutions, city staff is happy to work with them following the hearing.

All right, thank you very much. We'll go ahead and open up the public hearing, and I believe we do have some speakers in person, so let's go ahead and call them.

Yes, Mayor, we have three people signed up to speak on this item. First is Michael Armstrong. Next would be Gary Falls. And third would be Gwendolyn Davis.

Hi, I'm Michael Armstrong, and I misinterpreted the letter. I received one of your letters and thought I had to present here that I have paid my bill to keep the lien from going forward. So my bill is paid. Thank you for the heads up.

Well, thank you so much for your thoroughness and for joining us this evening. And it's nice to meet you, and we're glad that you were able to get that resolved.

Next speaker is Gary Falls.

Good evening, all. My name's Gary Falls. I'm actually here because I received one of those letters. And I'm actually here because I need to find out just what it's going to take for Recology to get my bill straight. I received this letter this past Saturday. It's dated May 26, even though I just got it on Saturday, the 4th of June. And it states that, you know, some action is going to be taken if the bill isn't satisfied and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Except that... I received this letter, dated March 25th, 2026, that states that we are reaching out to inform you of a technical issue with third party auto pay service, which may have prevented your regular payment from being processed as expected, resulting in an outstanding balance of $928.86. Now, I've been in auto pay since Recology has had auto pay here in Vallejo. So once I set up the auto pay for my bill to be paid automatically, there should not be a problem. But if Recology has a problem like this, and then they send me a threatening letter like this one that says if i don't pay this by july fifteenth an assessment will be made penalties will be made and then my bill billing for recology will be attached to my tax bill which actually would please me because then i guess maybe recology wouldn't have to collect my bill and the county could collect it and maybe do a better job so anyway This letter says I could come here to object to this procedure, so I'm just here to object. That's it.

All right. Thank you very much. What I think I'll do is why don't we take all of our commenters, and then I'll ask our staff to respond, and we'll figure out the appropriate way to follow up.

While my seconds are still ticking away. I may... two automatic payments to my checking account for $709.56 on April 22nd, 26, and then another payment on 5-20 for $246.06. So, you know, with Me making all the efforts to pay my bill on time, I need some help from Recology and maybe Recology needs to get a little boot in the butt from the council to do a better job.

If you can just hang tight, we'll get through the comments and then we'll figure out who can get in touch with you for the next steps. I'm done. Thank you. Yep, thanks.

Next speaker is Gwendolyn Davis.

Good evening.

And you can lower the, on the lower right, you can lower the podium down. There's a little toggle switch.

I already did. Can you hear me better now?

We can't hear you. I was just hoping we could see you. Oh, the podium. Yeah, yeah, just so we can all see each other.

It's my first rodeo here, so I apologize for that. And the reason I'm wearing a mask, I just got off a plane a couple of days ago, and I got real sick, so I didn't want to come in here and spread anything, so... Anyway, my parents were in this community for 60 years. My mom got a bill. Just today I opened it, because I'd been out of the state for about six months because I lost my son. I moved to Utah from California, from . So I opened it today, about two hours before I got here. So I called down to Recology, and I said, OK, look, what do I need to do? Because I've got to be there at 7 o'clock tonight. So I can't make an appointment. Here's the thing. I'm going to pay the bill for my mother. But what gets me is I have been gone almost six months. There was nobody at that house. I have my plane tickets coming and going because I lost my son.

Like I said, I've been out there.

I even have the extra dollars that they take for picking up my mother's garbage. And six months, you mean to tell me the man who come to Her driveway, get her can, can't say, look, I haven't seen any garbage in this for six months. Excuse me? So she's getting stuck with a bill, which I said, I don't mind paying it. But to me, that was elder abuse, not to mention it. And then when I called today, they're like, oh, well, there's nothing I can do. There is something that you... ALL NEED TO PUT IN PLACE FOR SENIOR CITIZENS. THAT COMMUNITY, PEOPLE BEING IN THAT COMMUNITY 60 YEARS, BECAUSE THAT'S WHEN THEY BUILT IT. MY DADDY WAS MILITARY AND HE WORKED HARD. AND THAT WAS A BEAUTIFUL COMMUNITY AT ONE TIME. SO THAT'S A DIFFERENT STORY ABOUT TODAY. I'M GLAD I GOT TO COME TO THE CITY HALL AND MEET WITH YOU ALL. BUT I THINK THAT'S WRONG. AND THEY CLEARLY, IT'S NOT LIKE had a vehicle with an arm putting the garbage in there and then collected, they literally come to the door to collect her garbage and then charge her $8 for something they're not doing. So you tell me why do you want to put a lien on her house today? I want to discuss this with someone, set up a payment plan for her, but going forward, there's a lot of seniors in that community. And there should be some done, even a phone call, because I have her numbers on my phone. Even a phone call would have been nice.

Yeah, thank you so much for coming and sharing that with us. Similarly to the previous speaker, we'll take all the comments and then we'll follow up with that. And sorry to hear about that. Do we have any speakers online?

Do the mayor know speakers online at this time?

Okay, and that was it in person, right?

Okay, I'm going to open it up to any questions and comments from council, and I do want to turn it back over to staff for maybe some very quick responses on how best to resolve the gentleman's complaint that came up. If you're the point of contact or who the point of contact is to have a follow-up conversation with him to make sure we can figure out what that issue was.

Derek Nelson, general manager for Recology, is actually here. He can speak to their billing practices and what's going on with their auto pay. I can't speak to that. Recology is responsible for doing the billing, so Derek can speak to that. As far as the lady, I want to... As far as the lady who did not, her mother's garbage, Recology stops, the truck stops at every place it stops. And if you haven't taken the time to turn off your garbage and let someone know that there's not going to be garbage service at the time, Recology has no way. The drivers are there to pick up garbage and do provide garbage service. And so I can see where there could have been a misstep, but typically their responsibility is to empty garbage and No one's checking to see, maybe they didn't put it out today, maybe she didn't put any garbage today. But it's not typical that a driver's going to report back that no one's putting garbage in. They're going to get out the truck, they're going to walk up and check it, and then they're going to walk and get back in the truck and continue to provide the service that they provide for the whole neighborhood.

Right, and that's understandable. I don't know, thank you for being here. If you have any other comments or if you can let us know if you're able to follow up directly or if there's anything that we need to do to help follow up with these individuals.

Yeah, so good evening. My name is Derek Nelson, general manager for Ecology Vallejo. So thank you for giving us the opportunity to address these questions. To the gentleman with the auto pay, we did switch to a new CRM system a few years ago, and we did have an issue with auto pay. Once we identified it, we sent out notices, such as the one that he had in his hand, to inform the customers of the auto pay issue and ways that we can rectify that situation.

So what would be the follow-up step for him then right now? Is it to connect with you?

Yes, we can have someone from the office reach out if I can get his, I didn't catch his full name, but we can gather it in the back and reach out.

Okay, great. And then my follow-up question for staff is, when this item is approved tonight, does that give our residents here a chance to resolve this before they get, is there a bit of a buffer time where they can resolve this directly before the fees start getting assessed?

Right. If they pay the bill or get in contact with Ecology before July 15th.

July 15th, okay. Yes, that is the deadline. That's a good enough, okay. Yes. That seems to be a good, a little bit over a month then. And then, you know, my, I guess... You know I want to get to the budget tonight, so we don't need to get into an in-depth conversation right now but I've always had questions about the interface between Recology and the City of Vallejo and kind of where complaints come in how complaints come in to the point here it isn't the garbage truck drivers responsibility, but where does that LION HOW DO WE GET THAT I THINK WE DO HAVE A RESPONSIBILITY TO GET INFORMATION OUT TO OUR RESIDENTS OF HOW I KNOW AS A AS A RESIDENT I FIND IT I FIND IT CONFUSING RIGHT EVEN JUST LIKE HOW TO START OR STOP GARBAGE AND KIND OF SO SO IT WOULD BE GOOD FOR US TO GET SOME MORE INFORMATION OUT OFFLINE MAYBE SOME UPDATES AND MORE INFORMATION TO THE COUNCIL

Well, typically when a resident has an issue with Recology, the first thing they do is call the city. And those phone calls are funneled to Natasha or myself. And so we tend to have a really good working relationship with Recology, and we get issues resolved pretty fast.

And in a city of 125,000 people, to have only two here is not bad, but I do want to make sure we do, you know, get their issues resolved. Council Member Gordon, you had something?

Yes, I just wanted to know, why can't you all meet today since they're here?

Oh, we can do that. Absolutely. That's what the plan is.

All right. So I think we have a plan. Any other questions, comments from council? Everybody's good? I think we're ready for a motion. Thank you again. Thank you.

I move we hold a public hearing, consider an adopt a resolution confirming and levying assessments against residential and commercial properties for unpaid garbage bills to collect unpaid sums.

all right we are voting motion carries unanimously all right thanks we're gonna go ahead and move on to the next item I've got my eye out I want to make sure that our other speaker is able to connect great we're gonna I think we're gonna make sure we get connected let's go ahead and call item 9g hold a public hearing to present information on the city's job vacancy status All right, let's open up public comment on this item and I will turn it over to our HR director. Do we have a presentation on this? We do have a presentation on this item because the item is a presentation. So whenever you're ready.

We do. Good evening, Mayor and Council Members. Stephanie C. Fuentes, HR Director. As you may recall, Assembly Bill 2561 went into effect January of last year. So last year was the first time that we did a presentation on this. This will be the second time that we're presenting. AB 2561 added language to the Myers-Millius Brown Act that requires public agencies to assess and address vacancies. Sorry, Manny, can you, or Jason, can you go ahead and move? Yep, that's good. Sorry, I want to try to be able to be fast for you guys. So we're required to assess and address vacancies. There are three things that they want us looking at. So the status of the vacancies, recruitment and retention efforts, and then any obstacles or impediments or necessary changes to policies or procedures or recruitment activities. During this hearing, bargaining units are also afforded an opportunity to speak or present. And so I think we do have, at least Camp will be speaking tonight as well. And then any of our other bargaining units that may desire to do so. We have additional obligations that may apply if the vacancy rate in any bargaining unit exceeds 20%, but we do not have that happening with our vacancies. NEXT SLIDE, PLEASE. OKAY, SO AS OF MAY 22ND, OUR TOTAL NUMBER OF VACANCIES IS 141. FOR CITY MANAGER, WHICH ALSO INCLUDES RISK AND CITY CLERK'S OFFICE, THERE'S FIVE OF THEIR 23 POSITIONS ARE VACANT. 21.74% OF THEIR DEPARTMENT, WHICH IS A TOTAL OF 3.55% OF THE TOTAL FTE CITYWIDE. FOR ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, WE HAVE THREE OF SEVEN ARE VACANT, WHICH IS 42.86% OF THEIR DEPARTMENT. IT'S 2.13% OF THE TOTAL FTE CITYWIDE. FOR THE FINANCE DEPARTMENT, THEY HAVE 10 VACANCIES OUT OF 42 POSITIONS, WHICH IS 23.81% OF THEIR DEPARTMENT, AND THAT IS ABOUT 7.09% OF THE TOTAL FTE CITYWIDE. For fire, they have seven of 93 are vacant, which is 7.53% of their department, which is 4.96% of the total FTE citywide. For housing, we have six out of 17 positions are vacant, which is 35.29% of their department, and about 4.26% of the total FTE citywide. For HR, THERE ARE FOUR OUT OF 15 VACANCIES, WHICH IS 26.67% OF THE DEPARTMENT, AND 2.84% TOTAL FTE CITYWIDE. NEXT SLIDE, THANK YOU. FOR IT, ONE OUT OF 13.5 POSITIONS ARE VACANT. THAT'S 7.41% OF THEIR DEPARTMENT AND .71% OF THE TOTAL FTE'S citywide. Planning and Development Services, they have eight out of their 35 positions are vacant. That's 22.86% of their department and 5.67% of the total FTEs citywide. Police is 52 out of 193 vacancies. That's 26.94% of the department and 36.88% total FTEs citywide. Public Works is 14 out of 89 and a half vacancies out of their positions. That's 15.64% of their department and 9.93% of the total FTEs citywide. And then Water has 31 out of 121 positions that are vacant, which is 25.62% of their department and 21.99% of the total FTEs citywide. So now we look at the vacancies by bargaining unit. We're looking at CAMP, IFF, IBEW, unrepresented and VPOA. So for CAMP, they have 121 positions. Of those, there are 19 that are vacant. THAT'S 2.83% OF THE TOTAL FTEs CITYWIDE. FOR IFF, THAT'S 4 OUT OF 83, WHICH IS .60% OF THE TOTAL FTEs CITYWIDE. IBW is 65 out of 294, which is 9.69% of the total FTEs citywide. Unrepresented is 12 out of 47 vacancies, and that's 1.79% of the total FTEs citywide. And then VPOA, 41 out of 126, which is 6.11% of the total FTEs citywide. So recruitment and retention efforts from July 1st of 2025 through May 22nd of 2026, the following recruitment and selection efforts were accomplished. We participated in 14 career fairs, opened 51 recruitments, processed 3,826 applications, including public safety. Of public safety, we processed 57 applications for police officer lateral, 269 applications for police officer entry, and 934 applications for police officer recruit. We processed approximately 70 new hires, including public safety, and hired 12 police officers, including one lateral, one entry, and 10 recruits. All right, and then the City of L.A. was a competitive civil service system. We're required to post, advertise, and conduct some form of job-relevant testing. For example, a written performance exam or interviews for all classified positions. Candidates selected for unclassified positions through a competitive process must submit to fingerprinting backgrounds and pre-employment physicals. Our goal in human resources is for staff to open at least two recruitments per week. This is dependent upon completion of staff training, HR being fully staffed, and the capacity of HR staff with competing priorities, the capacity of departments to participate in the recruitment and selection process as well, And whether or not departments have operational reasons for not filling their vacancies, for example, if they're planning on doing a reorg or they need class spec revisions or they have space deficiencies, etc. Obstacles, impediments, recommendations. So we're a civil service system. So we're created to ensure that everyone experiences fair and consistent employment practices. To that end, there's nothing in our process that I would recommend changing. So I think we have a civil service system for a reason. And I think that that civil service system has a purpose and should remain intact. Things that I see as impediments to recruitment and retention. So before I get into culture, I think the one thing that I would say right now, HR is one of the current impediments because just our staffing and capacity. So that takes a big hit. When we're doing too many things with not enough staff, it's really difficult to be able to respond to department needs in the way that departments need us to and in the time that departments need us to. So that's a big impediment. Then in addition, I think culture does play into it. So employees need to feel like they're valued and appreciated for their contributions and respected for their expertise. And so I think that in order for us to have a place that everyone wants to be, a great place to live, work, and play, we need to make sure that we're forward thinking and building on history and lessons that we've learned from the past and really focus on building up the culture. Next slide, please. All right, and then total compensation, right? Total compensation includes more than just pay though, and I think that's where sometimes people get a little tunnel visioned. It's more than just pay. It's a lot of different things. Employees need a lot of support in a lot of different ways. Pay is one of them. but there's also incentive and specialty pays, there's health, vision, dental benefits, retirement, paid time off, and other benefits, other perks, such as tuition assistance, gym discounts, pet insurance, daycare, daycare subsidies. There's a whole bunch of stuff out there these days that you can do to really support employees and their well-being, but it takes money, so... That's it. Do you have any questions for me?

All right. Well, before we take any questions from council, why don't we see if we have public commenters on this item? Do we have any in person?

Yes, we have one person signed up, Oni Brown.

All right, and yep.

Good evening, council. I'm Ani Brown. I'm currently the vice president for the Confidential Administrative Managerial and Professional Bargaining Unit. I also have with me Derek Crutchfield, who is the president of CAMP. While CAMP understands the city needs to evaluate vacancies and identify potential cost savings, we believe it is important that the discussion also consider the operational impacts associated with prolonged vacancies. Many CAMP represented positions perform critical administrative, analytical, financial, human resources, payroll, labor relations, compliance, record management, executive support functions. Although these positions may not always be highly visible to the public, they are essential to maintaining city operations, meeting regulatory requirements and supporting departmental services. One concern that we have as a bargaining unit is that when position remains vacant the work itself does not disappear. In many cases, those responsibilities are redistributed to existing employees, which can increase workloads, delay projects, affect service delivery, and contribute to employee burnout and retention challenges. Over time, these impacts can create operational risk that may outweigh the immediate salary savings associated with the vacancies. Kemp would like to know the following. The criteria used to determine which positions are recommended for freezing, whether departments are consulted regarding operational impacts, how will the workload be managed when positions remain vacant, whether compliance reporting and regulatory obligations could be affected, How often are these frozen positions evaluated and re-evaluated? The potential impact on succession planning and promotional opportunity. We believe CAMP can support a balanced approach that recognizes the city's fiscal challenges while also ensuring the staffing decisions are informed by operational needs, compliance requirements, and the well-being of the workforce. I believe Stephanie already has gone over the vacancies, but just to reiterate, we have 19 vacancies out of 121 FTEs. That accounts for about 15.7% of the camp vacancies and a total of about 2.83 of the overall FTEs within the city. Thank you.

Thank you very much. We appreciate it. Do we have any other commenters on the item?

Through the chair, yes, we do have one speaker online. Rebecca Trumper.

All right, let's go ahead and call her.

Please unmute yourself. You have the floor.

Thank you. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. My name is Rebecca. I'm a resident of district 5 and I am really, really fascinated by organizational behavior and organizational culture. I think it's really important that the city's HR lead has um cited culture as the number two reason why there are so many vacancies in the city of Vallejo there are so many studies that show that culture and non-compensation aspects of um of employment are so important in recruitment and retention I wonder if the city has done more of a study into that. The report on this agenda item says under number two culture, employees need to feel like they are valued and appreciated for their contributions and respected for their expertise, which to me implies that HR is saying that employees are not feeling that way in the city of Vallejo. And so I think digging into the causes of that, where that is showing up and looking, identifying with some real ways, real actions that the council and staff and city leadership and the community can take to make staff feel more valued would be the next step. That coupled with the council's calls for accountability for tasks that need to be done, I think would improve success rates in Vallejo tremendously to support our staff and make sure that they're doing the work that needs to be done for all of us in the community. Thank you for your time.

Thank you very much. Any other commenters?

Through the mayor, no other speakers at this time.

All right, I'll open it up to questions and comments from council. Obviously, we're gonna be continuing this very much in the next item, and this is, my understanding, just a presentation, so we won't need a vote. Any questions or comments from council on this particular item? I'm not seeing any, and again, we're gonna be coming back to it for the budget, so I don't believe we need any further action. No vote needed. We'll go ahead and close the item. Thank you, Stephanie. Thank you to our commenters and our camp reps that came here. And with that, we will move on to the item we've been trying to get to this whole time, which is item 9H. And I'm going to have our city clerk announce the item, and then we're going to decide if we want a quick recess. You know what?

I'm hearing that we want to recess.

We've been sitting up here for over two hours straight. So all right, why don't we take a recess? We'll aim to come back 9.50. I'm going to be very firm. 8.50. I'm going to go get a coffee. And we're going to come back at 8.50 for item 9H, which is the budget. All right, it's 8.50. I'm going to encourage everyone to make their way back up here, and I'm going to reconvene us in a minute, if everyone can make their way back. all right we've got four council members at the dais we've got a city manager we've got a city attorney and we've got a clerk we just need to lower the volume in the room and we are going to restart because we need to get to this presentation thank you all all right as soon as we're ready we'll go ahead and have our clerk announce item 9h

Hold a public hearing, review budget scenarios, provide policy direction, and adopt resolutions relating to fiscal year 26-27 budget and any additional actions based on council direction. There are six resolutions before the council this evening and the introduction of an ordinance.

ALL RIGHT, THANK YOU. BEFORE WE TURN IT OVER TO OUR FINANCE TEAM, I THINK OUR CITY MANAGER IS GOING TO INTRODUCE THE ITEM, SO I'LL TURN IT OVER TO YOU, AND WE'LL ALSO OPEN UP PUBLIC COMMENT ON THIS ITEM, WHICH WE'LL TAKE AFTER THE PRESENTATION.

THANK YOU, MAYOR. JUST A FEW INTRODUCTORY REMARKS, AND THEN WE'LL TRANSITION OVER TO THE FINANCE TEAM TO DELIVER This budget process was once described to me as the Super Bowl of local government, so we'll see. So tonight, staff will present the proposed fiscal year 2026-2027 budget. This budget has been developed in accordance with the city charter requirement that the city managers submit a proposed budget to the council. BEFORE THE BEGINNING OF THE FISCAL YEAR AND THAT GENERAL FUND PROPOSED EXPENDITURES DO NOT EXCEED ESTIMATED REVENUES. AT A HIGH LEVEL THIS IS A BALANCED BUDGET But it is important to be clear that balancing the budget for one year does not by itself resolve the city's longer term structural financial challenges. The proposed budget reflects difficult choices, constrained resources, rising personnel and benefit costs, and the need to preserve essential city services while maintaining fiscal discipline. THE CITYWIDE PROPOSED BUDGET INCLUDES ALL FUNDS INCLUDING THE GENERAL FUND, MEASURE P, WATER FUND, HOUSING FUNDS, RISK FUND, CAPITAL AND OTHER SPECIAL FUNDS. THE GENERAL FUND REMAINS THE AREA OF GREATEST POLICY FOCUS BECAUSE IT SUPPORTS CORE MUNICIPAL SERVICES SUCH AS PUBLIC SAFETY, PUBLIC WORKS, GENERAL GOVERNMENT AND OTHER ESSENTIAL OPERATIONS. Staff will walk the council through the budget process, the city-wide budget, the general fund budget, major revenue and expenditure assumptions, Measure P, budget balancing strategies, and the five-year financial forecast. One of the most important parts of tonight's discussion will be the budget balancing scenarios. Staff has identified options for council consideration and direction. These scenarios involve different combinations of staffing reductions, funding shifts, Measure P allocations, investment income transfers, and other balancing tools. Each option has operational, financial, and policy implications. I want to emphasize that this budget is not simply an accounting exercise. It is a policy document. It reflects choices about service levels, public safety, infrastructure, labor costs, organizational capacity, and the city's ability to remain financially sustainable over time. I also want to acknowledge the work of the finance department, the city manager's office, department heads, and staff across the organization. This budget was developed under challenging circumstances and staff has worked hard to present the council. WITH A BALANCED BUDGET AND CLEAR OPTIONS FOR CONSIDERATION. WITH THAT, I WILL NOW TURN IT OVER TO ASSISTANT CITY MANAGER AND ACTING FINANCE DIRECTOR NELUNGO CONLEY AND THE BUDGET TEAM WHO WILL WALK THE COUNCIL THROUGH THE PRESENTATION.

THANK YOU. MAYOR, COUNCIL MEMBERS, IT IS MY PLEASURE TO PRESENT THE FISCAL YEAR 26-27 PROPOSED BUDGET PRESENTATION. YOU HAVE HEARD THIS IN MANY ITERATIONS IN PART OVER THE LAST FIVE MONTHS OR SO. As City Manager Black said, this is the Super Bowl, so this is the final event. I'm going to try to go through the presentation quickly, but not so fast that it doesn't make sense for those who are here in the audience and listening online. So let's see. SO THIS PRESENTATION IS GOING TO JUST GO OVER BRIEFLY THE BUDGET PROCESS, OUR PROPOSED 2627 CITYWIDE BUDGET COVERING ALL FUNDS, NOT JUST THE GENERAL FUND, WHICH IS WHAT WE'VE DONE PREVIOUSLY. IT WILL SPEAK TO ALL THE OTHER FUNDS THAT ARE WITHIN OUR BUDGET, AND THEN WE WILL GET TO THE SORT OF MEET OF THIS, THE PROPOSED 2627 GENERAL FUND BUDGET. WE WILL GO OVER THE BUDGET DEFICIT BALANCING STRATEGIES WHICH FROM THE STAFF REPORT YOU CAN SEE CONTAINS THREE DIFFERENT SCENARIOS. WE WILL COVER THE MEASURE P FUND AND THEN JUST BRIEFLY TOUCH ON THE FIVE YEAR FINANCIAL FORECAST. SO AS MENTIONED, HOW THIS BUDGET DEVELOPMENT PROCESS PROCEEDS IS WE DO OUR BASELINE BUDGET AND THAT IS BASED ON PRIOR YEAR EXPENDITURES. FROM THERE, WE REMOVE ANY PRIOR YEAR ONE-TIME REQUESTS FROM THE DEPARTMENTS. AND THEN WE, FROM THERE, EXERCISE OF SORT OF BALANCING THE REVENUES AND EXPENDITURES WHICH WE PRESENTED TO COUNCIL ON MULTIPLE OCCASIONS AND THEN PER CITY CHARTER WE PROPOSED A BUDGET BY MAY 15TH THAT WAS DELIVERED TO ALL OF YOU, WHICH IS THE PROPOSED BUDGET AS I SAID PER OUR MUNI CODE AND THEN WE DID THE BUDGET PRESENTATION. I THINK IT ACTUALLY PROCEEDED THE ADOPTION OF THE PROPOSED BUDGET, BUT NOW YOU'RE ACTUALLY GETTING THE FULL PRESENTATION OF THE 2627 BUDGET IN WHICH WE WILL DO THE EXERCISE OF THE FINAL BUDGET ADOPTION. NEXT SLIDE, PLEASE. THANK YOU. NEXT SLIDE. OK, SO THIS IS JUST AN OVERVIEW OF THE PROPOSED 2627 CITYWIDE BUDGET. THIS IS ALL FUNDS, SO AS YOU CAN SEE, THE CITYWIDE REVENUE IS PROJECTED TO BE APPROXIMATELY $326.82 MILLION. THAT COVERS GENERAL FUND, THAT DOES INCLUDE MEASURE P, WATER FUND, HOUSING GRANTS, other funds such as fleet, the capital improvement program, and then the LMDs, which you just went through that exercise. And then our expenditures as they stand are approximately $337.59 million from those same funds. So as you can see, we are imbalanced. Next slide, please. So this is just a brief overview of those other funds. We didn't really touch on them too much over the last couple of presentations. As you can see, there's revenues and expenditures as it relates to the planning development services. There's the water fund. We do have our fiber fund, which I'll remind you is our VIP fiber. There's the marina fund, and then we have a golf fund, and then parking fund. So those are all areas where we do expect to receive some revenue. And then there's money from our economic development funds, public works, and then you can see housing, and then there's debt service, other programmatic funds, and then our capital project funds. FOR A FULL TOTAL OF OUR REVENUES BEING 174.3 MILLION AND OUR EXPENDITURES BEING 195.45 MILLION. SO YOU'LL SEE THAT THERE IS A DIFFERENCE THERE. AND THE USE OF RESTRICTIVE RESERVES IS LIMITED TO ABOUT 40,000. AND THEN WE WOULD END FUND BALANCE WITH $148.58 MILLION. KEEP GOING. THANK YOU. SO THE SUBSIDIES FROM THE GENERAL FUND TO THE OTHER FUNDS IS APPROXIMATELY $3.3 MILLION. FOR PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT SERVICES, WE HAVE PROVIDED A SUBSIDY TO SUPPORT OPERATIONAL EXPENDITURES OF APPROXIMATELY $2.2 MILLION. I BELIEVE IN 2022, THE CITY AGREED TO TAKE ON SOME OF THE COST SHARING FOR THE MAYOR ISLAND BRIDGE, APPROXIMATELY $250,000. THEN THERE'S THE MAYOR ISLAND BASE REUSE FUND WHERE WE ESSENTIALLY SPEND APPROXIMATELY $.1 MILLION. And then we have debt service payment for the Marina Fund, and that's approximately $0.7 million, $700,000. And then for the Empress Theater, $0.03 million, approximately $30,000 for ongoing maintenance and repair. SO THE PROPOSED 2627 GENERAL FUND BUDGET, THIS WAS ACTUALLY IN THE BUDGET THAT WAS PROVIDED TO YOU. THAT'S NOT ACTUALLY WHAT WE'RE PRESENTING TODAY, IS THAT WE HAD A BEGINNING FUND BALANCE OF $24.29 MILLION FOR THE 2627 FISCAL YEAR. We have revenues which total $132.77 million. And then our use of surplus is $5.27 million. And I'd like to point out for our charter, that is the... total amount that we are able to essentially use in terms of from our fund balance. So we can't exceed that amount. And so we are using that as I guess it was a reserve for our fund balance. It wasn't transferred in, but we're using it to balance our budget. And so that $5.27 million will count towards our revenues. And then you see our expenditures total $138.04 million. With all of those and then some of our adjustments, our reduction in costs, we essentially zero out. So this is our balanced budget. No surplus, no deficit. And then that means that we end up with a fund balance equal to what we started with, $24.29 million. That does not include the $18.42 million expected from Measure P revenues going forward. Next slide, please. So this is the breakdown of the 26-27 general fund revenues. We've actually gone over this before, but you'll see that there is pretty much slight increases in terms of property tax and then the motor vehicle license fees proposed tax in lieu of. There are small increases across sales tax revenue and then the transaction use tax for Measure B. And then again, there is a decrease in the UUT tax. That's just based on trends of people switching over to streaming sources from, say, more like Comcast or Dish, although there was recently a law that was passed that might allow some taxation for streaming services. We're still looking into that. But as it stands, we expect to have a decrease in the UUT. You see property transfer tax has a slight increase of 1%. The franchise tax has actually gone up a little bit. And then the cannabis tax has decreased with the closure of several... dispensaries. Business tax has gone down as well. The transit occupancy tax, same. So that you'll see from last year's 25-26 adopted budget to the one that was initially proposed, you see a decrease of about $2.4 million. Measure P funds, they've also decreased slightly just from EXCLUDING MEASURE P FUNDS, YOU WILL SEE THERE IS A SLIGHT OVERALL REDUCTION IN OUR REVENUES. MEASURE P FUNDS HAVE GONE UP SLIGHTLY BY $170,000 FROM 17.75 FROM LAST YEAR TO 17.92. And then there's about $500,000 of interest earned from Measure P. So as mentioned, you'll see that our revenues are down slightly. They basically are flat. Next slide, please. So this just, you know, is a little bit more description in terms of the particulars for all of our sales tax revenues, what it actually includes. I'm not going to go into that. But if you have any questions, we're happy to return to this slide later on. Next slide, please. So this is just the trend for our general fund revenue. As you can see, it's essentially flat. We did have some increase from the 23 through the 25 fiscal years. I believe that might have covered some ARPA funds that we received, but those are gone now. And so essentially from last year to this year, you can see that our revenue trend is pretty much flat. Next slide, please. So these next couple of slides will go over our general fund expenditures. As you see, pretty much of note that we spend approximately 80% of basically 80% of our expenditures are spent on salaries and benefits, which is quite a bit. I would say that's not necessarily a normal trend. I would say that most cities our size are probably somewhere around 65, 60 to 65%, so we're trending high. That of course, that number will go down as we increase our revenues. Or of course, we reduce our expenditures. And then we have a chart showing expenditures by department. Next slide please. So essentially for this budget, most of our general fund expenditures are being maintained at status quo levels. We did apply a 3% inflation increase and then a 20% overall reduction in services and supplies. This actually was done for the proposed budget. We can talk about what we've done for some of the scenarios a little bit later on, but essentially this reflects an overall increase of $1.16 million over the 25-26 adopted budget. A lot of that is essentially just natural increases from overtime, but health benefits and pension increases. And then there was also an addition of $2.26 million reflected in services and supplies. Next slide, please. So this is the general fund expenditures broken down by classification. This speaks to that first pie chart where salaries and benefits were 80%. This is how it breaks down in terms of the actual salaries and the benefits. You can see that there is an expenditure for vehicles. There's the maintenance and the replacement. And these have all been adjusted. We spoke with the departments. They did an excellent job of REALLY GOING THROUGH LINE BY LINE OF THEIR INDIVIDUAL DEPARTMENT BUDGETS AND NOTING SAVINGS WHERE THEY COULD AND ALSO REALLY BEING REALISTIC ABOUT WHAT THEY EXPECTED TO EXPEND OVER THE NEXT FISCAL YEAR RATHER THAN JUST SORT OF GIVING US A LARGE NUMBER AND THEN REDUCING IT LATER ON. SO THESE REFLECT, WE BELIEVE, ACCURATE EXPENDAGERS BY CLASSIFICATION. SO AS YOU CAN SEE, UTILITIES, THERE'S A 2% of our overall expenditures. Water was increased, I believe, and same with gas and electric. Service and supplies comprises of 7% of our overall expenditures. As you see there, that 2.9 million police, 2.29 for public works, and .91 for fire. And then $6.48 million for general administration and about $0.71 million overall citywide for services and supplies. And then, of course, there's transfer subsidies and debt payments, and it covers those categories below for a total of $9.71 million of our overall general fund expenditures. Next slide, please. Here is even a further breakdown. I'm not going to go over this. You can read about it if you'd like. But then it's also on the right broken down by department. As you can see, there are some large expenditures on professional services. That tends to be our contracts, about 3.55 million. And then animal services, that's our contract with the county, is quite large. We're looking to potentially see if we can negotiate that down. But as it stands, that's sort of the baseline amount that we pay for animal services with the county. As I said, we're looking to adjust that downward moving forward. Next slide, please. SO THIS IS THE TREND FOR EXPENDITURES AS NOTED WHEN WE HAD AN INCREASE OVER TWO FISCAL YEARS THAT WAS RELATED TO ARPA FUNDING BUT AS YOU SEE FOR THE 2526 AND THEN THE 2627, IT'S DECREASED BUT IT'S PRETTY FLAT OVERALL. EXERCISE QUITE A BIT OF PRUDENCE WITH REGARDS TO DETERMINING THE DEPARTMENT BUDGETS AND REDUCING EXPENDITURES MOVING FORWARD. SO HOPEFULLY THAT WILL CONTINUE TO HOLD. AS YOU CAN SEE IN THE YELLOW, THAT'S MEASURE P EXPENDITURES. There was more obviously I believe in the 25-26 fiscal year that covered the sheriff's contract And then moving forward for the 26-27 year. That's what they've recently approved next slide, please So you've also seen these before these were the budget deficit balancing strategies that we had TOUCHED ON. OVER THE NEXT COUPLE OF SLIDES, I BELIEVE YOU'LL SEE THE THREE SCENARIOS THAT WERE MENTIONED IN THE STAFF REPORT. BUT THIS ESSENTIALLY IS JUST THE OUTLINE, AS MENTIONED BEFORE, WITH REGARDS TO OUR STARTING FUND BALANCE, WHICH YOU'LL SEE FOR 26-27, IS $24.29 MILLION. AND ONCE WE GO THROUGH ALL THREE SCENARIOS, WE ESSENTIALLY ZERO OUT OUR DEFICIT. SO THE DEFICIT, AS NOTED HERE IS APPROXIMATELY 31. THANK YOU. NEXT SLIDE. HERE WE GO. AFTER THE RELEASE OF THE PROPOSED BUDGET, WE DID IDENTIFY ADDITIONAL PRIORITIES. THOSE WERE THE DAN MURPHY CONTRACT, WHICH IS FOR THE REFORM EFFORT. WE NEEDED AN ADDITIONAL $250,000 THERE. We identified that we needed a POAC manager, essentially a position to staff, fully staff the POAC meetings, and we costed that out. And then there's some priorities that the council had identified and the city manager had identified that equal about $3.75 million. And so taking all of that into account, we composed three scenarios for your consideration this evening. Next slide, please. So scenario one, there's a vacancy management and position reduction approach that will net approximately $4.9 million. So this first strategy proposes to reduce staffing by 44 FTEs. Those are vacant positions. So it's a reduction of 44 vacant positions as well as an additional filled 26 FTEs for a total of 70 positions. As I said, that will net $4.9 million. And then there is a savings from the sheriff's contract THEY ARE HOLDING THOSE LEVELS STEADY, SO WE EXPECT TO BE ABLE TO REFUND THE GENERAL FUND, THE GENERAL LIABILITY FUND OF THE $1.93 MILLION THAT WE USED TO PUT TOWARDS THE SHARE OF CONTRACT. SO WE EXPECT FOR THAT TO COME BACK. AND WE TOOK A NUMBER OF ITEMS IN OUR BASELINE PROPOSED BUDGET TO MEASURE P. THEY ONLY RECOMMENDED APPROXIMATELY $760,000 TO BE COMMITTED TO MEASURE P FUNDS. SO THIS SCENARIO IS SIMPLY ACCEPTING THEIR RECOMMENDATION OF THAT $760,000 SHIFT IN MEASURE P FUNDS. AND THEN WE WOULD BE REMOVING THE ADDITIONAL $1.52 MILLION FROM OUR BASELINE BUDGET. NEXT SLIDE, PLEASE. SO SCENARIO TWO, IT'S ACTUALLY THE SAME VACANCY MANAGEMENT AND POSITION REDUCTION APPROACH. SO THIS STILL SCENARIO TWO AS SCENARIO ONE RECOMMENDS A REDUCTION OF 70 TOTAL FTE POSITIONS. THIS ONE ALSO IS LOOKING TO REFUND THE GENERAL LIABILITY FUND, THE ACCESS FROM THE SHERIFF'S CONTRACT OF $1.93 MILLION. THE DIFFERENCE FOR THIS SCENARIO FROM THE FIRST ONE IS THAT IT'S ACTUALLY ASKING COUNCIL TO APPROVE THE ADDITIONAL $1.52 MILLION ASK FROM MEASURE P. SO MEASURE P DID NOT APPROVE THOSE ITEMS WHEN THEY WERE BROUGHT BEFORE THAT COMMITTEE. HOWEVER, AS WITH ALL THE ITEMS THAT WERE BROUGHT FORWARD, THEY DID FALL WITHIN THOSE NINE PRIORITY AREAS. HOWEVER, WE ARE ASKING IN OUR BASELINE BUDGET, WE DID HAVE THE $2.28 MILLION SHIFT FROM THE GENERAL FUND TO MEASURE P. SO THIS SCENARIO IS ASKING FOR THAT ADDITIONAL $1.52 MILLION TO BE SHIFTED OVER. And then finally, we come to the scenario three. So this one, separate from the other two, is simply the elimination of 44 vacant FTEs. It does not include any elimination of any filled positions. However, this one does actually rely on using more Measure P-related funding. So it includes shifting the $2.28 million FROM THE GENERAL FUND TO THE MEASURE P FUND. AND THEN IT'S ALSO LOOKING AT TRANSFERRING THE INVESTMENT INCOME FROM FISCAL YEAR 24-25, 25-26, AND WHAT'S PROJECTED FOR 26-27 FROM THE MEASURE P INTO GENERAL FUND. SO WE ARE PROJECTING, AND WE KNOW AT LEAST FOR 24-25, 25-26, WHAT THAT INVESTMENT INCOME IS AND WHAT WE ARE PROJECTING IN THE FUTURE, WE ARE RECOMMENDING THE TRANSFER OF THE INVESTMENT INCOME OF $3.07 MILLION TO THE GENERAL FUND. WE ARE LOOKING TO SHIFT THE $1.93 MILLION BACK TO THE GENERAL LIABILITY FUND AS THE SAME FOR THE PRIOR TWO SCENARIOS. BUT WE ARE ALSO, RATHER THAN REFUNDING THE MEASURE P COMMITTEE WITH THE REMAINDER, THE $1.7 MILLION, WE ARE ASKING FOR THAT TO ACTUALLY SHIFT BACK TO GENERAL FUND. SO WE'RE LOOKING FOR THE ENTIRETY OF THE $3.6 MILLION OF THE SHARE OF CONTRACT SAVINGS TO GO BACK TO THE GENERAL FUND. SO THE TOTAL FOR THIS IS SAVINGS OF $6.7 MILLION. NEXT SLIDE, PLEASE. So this is the line item for each of the scenarios, as you can see, based on some of the additional priorities that were identified by council and staff in the city manager's office. The projected deficit was $31.28 million. SO THAT'S THE APPROACH THAT WE TOOK FOR ALL THREE SCENARIOS. AS YOU CAN SEE, SCENARIO ONE AND SCENARIO TWO ASSUME A 9% ATTRITION RATE ACROSS THE BOARD, WHICH IS A NORMAL rate that we expect to see when people retire throughout the year, but it also assumes that 70 position FTE reduction, and that is the $9.6 million that you see for that targeted position reduction line. And then there is a reasonable reduction in overtime for both VPOA and IAFF. And then we have the 20% reduction on discretionary services and supplies. There's some other things. ONE OF THE THINGS OF NOTE IS CONSOLIDATING THE COMMUNITY EVENTS BUDGET AND POTENTIALLY PARTICIPATORY BUDGETING TO REALIZE SOME SAVINGS THERE. AND THEN AGAIN, THERE'S THE SHIFT OF $1.2 MILLION FROM THE GENERAL FUND FOR STREET RELATED MEASURES TO MEASURE P. So those things for both Scenario 1 and Scenario 2 will net either $23.35 million or $21.83 million. And then you'll see below the use of Measure P funds. So those three scenarios played out. The first one had just the amount that was approved by the Measure P committee. OF $760,000. THE SECOND SCENARIO ASSUMED THE BASELINE OF $2.28 MILLION. THE THIRD SCENARIO OF $6.98 MILLION INCLUDES THE INTEREST INCOME FROM THE MEASURE P FUND FROM THE FISCAL YEAR 24, 25, 25, 26, AND 26, 27. So as you see, all of those three scenarios do address the deficit completely. As you see, it's essentially a balanced budget. I think the question is, you know, which ones you'd like to discuss or consider or vote on. Next slide, please. And so this would be the result of scenario one, two, and three in terms of the staffing changes. So as you can see here, currently as proposed, we have 463 employees in the general fund. 213 are out of other SO THE SCENARIO ONE AND TWO, WHICH IS THE REDUCTION OF 70 FTEs, WOULD CUT US DOWN FROM 463 STAFF DOWN TO 393 FTEs FUNDED THROUGH THE GENERAL FUND. As you'll see, the other fund number stays the same across because right now the general fund is the one that's suffering the imbalance. So for scenarios one and two, we go from 463 employees down to 393. And then for scenario three, that is the elimination of the 44 vacancies. And so we go from 463 to 419 employees. Next slide, please. So one of the things that council asked in our last couple meetings was to call out sort of the VPD reform efforts as it relates to budget and then the Police Oversight Accountability Committee budget as well. And so for the VPD reform, the current reform budget is shared with the Professional Standards Division. And so here we have about $290,000 EXPENDITURE RELATED TO THE REFORM EFFORT AND THEN THE CONTRACT IS $1 MILLION. WE WILL BE ADDING THE, WHICH YOU FUNDED THROUGH THE MID-YEAR THE ONE PROGRAM AND PERFORMANCE PROJECT MANAGER THAT IS LIMITED TO A FIVE-YEAR TERM. AND THEN THERE IS AN ADDITIONAL EXPENSE FOR THE DAN MURPHY CONTRACT OF ABOUT $250,000. And then for the Police Oversight Accountability Committee, a total funding in this budget is about $500,000, and that's broken down into training of approximately $56,000. That's additional training to what they've already received. This is training that's recommended by the Chief of Police. AND THEN THERE IS A TENTATIVE BUDGET FOR THE INDEPENDENT POLICE AUDITOR AND THE ASSIGNED ATTORNEY OF APPROXIMATELY $440,000. AND THEN THERE'S SOME ADDITIONAL EXPENDITURES OF ABOUT $200,000 THAT HAVE BEEN REQUESTED UNDER THAT. NOW, ONE OTHER THING THAT ACTUALLY DID NOT MAKE IT IN THE BUDGET PRESENTATION, BUT WAS MENTIONED AT THE APRIL 6TH MEETING, I BELIEVE, WHICH WAS YOUR MAYOR ISLAND ALL THINGS MAYOR ISLAND MEETING.

YEAH, APRIL 27TH.

APRIL 27TH, THANK YOU. WAS THAT DURING THE BUDGET YOU WERE GOING TO CONSIDER THE MAYOR ISLAND CFD 2005-1A FOR FACILITIES AND CONSIDER WHETHER OR NOT YOU WANTED TO FREEZE THAT PARTICULAR CFD. SO WE DID NOT INCLUDE IT IN THE BASELINE BUDGET, BUT SINCE WE ARE HAVING THE BUDGET CONVERSATION, NOW IS THE TIME FOR YOU TO DISCUSS AND DIRECT STAFF ON WHETHER OR NOT YOU WOULD LIKE TO FREEZE THAT AS PART OF THE BUDGET PROCESS GOING FORWARD. hundred thousand dollars annually so it's not that large of an impact on the overall budget process just something for your consideration so next slide please so this these next couple slides cover measure p funds um so the estimated balance as of july 1st is approximately 7.25 million dollars we are expecting to receive about 18.42 million over the next fiscal year And so that would bring the total up to about 25.67 million. Next slide, please. So these are all the requests that went to Measure P, what they have approved by department. So for the 26-27 fiscal year, they've approved approximately $7.45 million. There are some asks that went over multiple years. Not forever, I believe. The longest one, though, I believe was eight years. But those total about $4.09 million. Next slide, please. So, as I said, those were what were approved. These were the items that were not recommended by the Measure P Oversight Committee. That total for the 26-27 fiscal year was approximately $3.95 million. Next slide please. So these, I think this might be one of the last slides. This is our five year financial forecast. This is static and it does not necessarily show the impact of the scenarios that you may decide to approve this evening. they will have a marked impact on our five-year financial forecast moving forward because of course the savings realized between either approving the elimination of the 44 vacant positions or the 70 total positions, AS YOU CAN SEE, IF YOU SCROLL DOWN THE GREEN COLUMN RIGHT NOW, WE ARE AT A ZERO MARK BECAUSE WE WANTED TO PROPOSE A BALANCED BUDGET. AS YOU CAN SEE, OUR FUND BALANCE mostly carries forward. At the start, it's pretty much the same amount. But as you see, we project out potentially a deficit of about $4.9 million. However, depending on the scenarios that you choose, that can almost be eliminated moving forward. WE WILL UPDATE THIS AS WE HAVE FURTHER CONVERSATIONS ABOUT THE BUDGET AND DEPENDING ON WHAT YOU DIRECT STAFF TO DO, WE CAN BRING YOU BACK SOME UPDATED NUMBERS THERE. So that concludes the presentation. There's some additional information both in the staff report and I believe on the presentation, but I do want to give you guys time to talk about all the three scenarios and to ask any questions. So just to remind you that the city CONTINUES TO MAINTAIN A BALANCED GENERAL FUND BUDGET PER THE CHARTER. STAFF IS REQUESTING IN SO FAR AS CITY COUNCIL WOULD LIKE TO GIVE DIRECTION ON ANY OF THE SCENARIO SELECTIONS, EITHER IN WHOLE OR IN PART. IF YOU FEEL SO to actually approve a scenario, then we'd be happy to take that and move it forward. Otherwise, we will be potentially bringing this back at the next council meeting, and then we do have a hold for a special meeting on the 30th if we need to bring it back for a third time to finalize the process. And then, of course, this approved budget will go into effect on July 1st. So that concludes the presentation. Happy to answer any questions.

Thank you very much and I'm going to I'll say a couple sentences on framing and then I think I'll take public comment on the item I'll open it up for questions from council and I'm thinking obviously we're not going to be able to solve every issue tonight but we can do a round of questions clarifying questions on the budget and then a round of comments and hopefully by that point we'll have an idea of where we're headed but before I open up to public comment I just want to thank OUR ASSISTANT CITY MANAGER, OUR INTERIM CITY MANAGER, OUR FINANCE STAFF, DEPARTMENT HEADS, EVERYBODY THAT DID THIS. I THINK CITY MANAGER BLACK ALREADY SAID THIS WAS NOT IDEAL BY ANY MEANS. AND I WANT TO KIND OF MESSAGE THE COMMUNITY TO START. I CAN'T SPEAK FOR MY COLLEAGUES, BUT I THINK I CAN KIND OF SAFELY SAY THAT THIS IS THE CULMINATION FOR ALL SEVEN OF US, REALLY, COMING IN NEW OF OUR DESIRE TO take care of these structural issues that have been here now for many years and it started with the three colleagues that came in in 2023 and then it came in with the rest of us that came in in 2025 and this is us you know getting into that work and I I just want to kind of thank and recognize the staff team that got into this work because it to do this We've been at this now for several months, but to try to put this together now during a leadership transition with the finance director vacant, I wanna just commend that effort and kind of frame that for our community that I don't want everyone to feel doom and gloom. I want us to feel really good actually, because we're taking a really important step this year. We're not gonna solve it all tonight, but we have really just rocketed in the right direction. as a city in partnership with our staff team and our finance team. And so I want the community to feel good about the decisions we've all made to kind of get us to this point, even if there might be some painful moments and some difficult decisions. So with that, I'm gonna take public comment again, and then I'll open it up to council comments. Let's go in person first.

Yes, Mayor, we do have seven people signed up for this item. The first three speakers are Abe Navarro, Shay Grove, and RJ C.

Actually, if either of our, I want to make sure we get Eric McGovern and Cristal. I know Cristal moved to Zoom. They're next. You're next. Okay, let's call and order that. I just want to make sure we get the two of them both in from earlier.

Abe Navarro.

Okay, if they moved online, we'll make sure we get them.

Next would be Shea Grove.

Good evening, Mayor Soros, members of the City Council. My name is Shea Grove. I'm a resident here in Vallejo in District 3. I am here to urge you to reject the $302,000 measure P allocations for flock safety. My message tonight is simple. Yes, we can cancel Flock. Other Bay Area cities have already paved the way and shown that it's possible to back out of these invasive systems. Santa Cruz canceled their Flock contract due to community pushback of ALPRs and revelations that neighbors Neighboring Capitola inadvertently shared information with out-of-state law enforcement and immigration agents. Mountain View also canceled theirs after discovering that out-of-state federal agencies, including ATF offices in Kentucky and Langley Air Force Base in Virginia, had been searching the city's camera data. Also, El Cerrito canceled a $315,000 renewal because of data privacy fears, budget consciousness, and a complete breakdown in vendor negotiations. El Cerrito council members cited a lack of trust in FLOC, expressing fears that federal government could not force the company to hand over resident data. and accused the company of negotiating in bad faith by suddenly altering the contract terms right before the meeting. We face those same exact risks right here in Vallejo. Flock tries to claim neutrality, but their patent states that the neural networks in their cameras are capable of categorizing people based on height, weight, race, and gender. We also know that Flock's worldwide rights clause, which has also allowed them to send data abroad to be reviewed by underpaid gig workers in the Philippines. The reality is that judicial subpoenas and federal agencies like DHS will trump any city protections. The only way we can truly stay protected is by keeping out-of-state federal agencies and ICE from accessing our data is by not holding onto it in the first place. Finally, we are discussing the use of Measure P funds for this technology. This money is generated from an aggressive 9.25% sales tax paid by Vallejo residents. It is meant for essential services, not to line the pockets of for-profit corporations. There is so much critical community infrastructure in need of funds, including our incredibly successful iHeart mental health crisis team. Also, our arts commission is in need of $134,000 for a youth asphalt art pilot. Yet the police department wants us to commit $302,000 a year to a for-profit surveillance corporation evaluated against the long-term financial health and municipal investment strategies of our city. blocking ourselves into subscription cycles of planned obsolescent surveillance hardware, simply not the sound use of taxpayer dollars. If Santa Cruz, Mountain View, and El Cerrito can stand up to data privacy violations, budget drain, and bad faith vendors, token Vallejo. Yes, we can, Council Flock, and I urge you to vote against this funding tonight. Thank you for your time.

Thank you very much.

Next speaker is RJC. After RJC would be Crystal Gee, Eric McGovern, and Sparrow Bowman.

Good evening. My name is RJ, and I'm a citizen of District 5. It's my understanding that the Measure P Committee recommended $302,500 unanimously for FLOC and recommended $200,000 for the replacement of Axon equipment, including ALPRs, in-cars, and a 3-to-1 vote, and that this is to be part of the discussion tonight. At the special city council meeting on May 5th, Mayor Soar stated that she was uncomfortable with Measure P funds being used as a crutch for Flock and Axon technology. Citizens of Vallejo are uncomfortable with this as well. We're uncomfortable with a citywide system built to watch us as we go about our daily lives, whether we're suspected of crimes or not. We're uncomfortable with the Assistant City Attorney's claim at the Measure P meeting on May 11th that the flock system is fully vetted when the Surveillance Advisory Board continues to press the Vallejo PD for information on how frequently and how thoroughly the flock system is being audited. And as recently as May 21st, VPD did not have a sufficient answer. We're uncomfortable with our sales tax going toward a system built for law enforcement to watch, monitor, track, and observe the movements of our lives when even the Vallejo Police Department cannot in confidence say they truly know their system is secure. We're uncomfortable with the errors ALPRs are capable of having as nearby as Oakland, leading to wrongful arrests and the human biases and errors that can come after. We're uncomfortable with the way surveillance has been allowed to infiltrate every aspect of our lives, from our phones and computers to the very roads and safety measures we're supposed to be able to count on. In short, we agree with Mayor Source. We're quite uncomfortable with Measure P funds being used as a crutch for Flock and Axon for the upcoming fiscal year. Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker is Eric McGovern.

Hi, I'm speaking to bring attention to IMH, Exhibit 1, Measure P funding. The State Council needs to be aware of the video called This Flock Camera Leak is Like Netflix for Stalkers, published by Ben Jordan and 404 Media. It is an 11-minute video that shows flock safety's security vulnerabilities. In the May 11th measure PR site committee meeting, the Vallejo police representative claimed that the flock safety system was secure. However, the city of Vallejo IT department representative in that meeting admitted that the city's cybersecurity system manager only looks for data breaches for systems owned by the city and within their network. Flock security is an external system that is licensed, not owned by the city, with data stored in the cloud. Fox Safety and other communities has said that the data is stored in Amazon Web Services. In the Measure P discussion, there was no answer from any city official on how security of these external systems are being evaluated. This is not sufficient, and someone in the city needs to be identified to get security audits, and those audits need to be provided to the Surveillance Advisory Board and the City Council. identifying information of the residents of Vallejo stored on the system and it's imperative that the city know that Fox Security and any cloud provider they use is maintaining the highest security standards to prevent disclosure of that information to unauthorized parties. In addition, the city attorney's office and the Vallejo police representative touted provisions in the contract limiting flock safety from using data gathered from the ALPR cameras for other purposes. While this might protect the city from legal liability for security breaches caused by flock security, it does not protect the city of Vallejo from reputational harm if there's a data breach or other misuse of data. In the May 21st SAB meeting, board members discussed an internal audit module currently being used to perform extremely limited random checks of searches in the system. These limited random checks do not ensure whether all users and all searches of the save layout data on the flock safety system are for valid purposes. I am stunned that the City of Leo staff has allowed the implementation of a system without ensuring that such a system is being used only for valid reasons every time. Systems like this should not be in use without ensuring compliance. At minimum, this system should be paused until the following has been completed. One, security odds of flock safety and cloud services are provided to the city council and SAB for review. And two, the internal audit module is fully set up and there are odds of all searches and all accounts logging in and accessing the city of Leo's data. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Is Crystal G back? There she is.

The gentleman came back. I wanna uplift what the previous speaker just commented to all of it. I wanna speak to the legal reality that the city continues to avoid. Vallejo has a very long documented, years long pattern of constitutional violations, failures of internal accountability, and the city has legal obligations under state law to correct it. Fully funding the Police Oversight and Accountability Commission is not optional. It's required to meet these very basic obligations. So let's be really clear about the record. The badge bending ritual, a practice acknowledged by our city, evidence of a department that normalized excessive force and cultural failure of the worst kind. Under Monell versus Department of Social Services, municipalities can be held liable when unconstitutional practices become custom. Vallejo has already paid the price for this and we need to pay attention as it relates to our people and our budget. The killing of Shawn Monterosa resulted in $8.5 million settlement, one of the largest in the city's history, if not the largest. Settlements of this size reflect serious legal exposure and a failure to prevent foreseeable harm. The filing cabinet scandal involving allegations of destroyed or concealed police shooting records directly implicates California's transparency laws, including SB 1421 and the Public Records Act, which required disclosure of officer-related shooting records. The Shaw Group investigation. The fact that the findings have still not been released only deepens the public mistrust and to the flock safety data breach acknowledged by the chief himself at the NAACP meeting I attended, raises serious concerns under state privacy law and the city's own data handling obligations. When a city department is already under scrutiny, mishandles sensitive information, it really exposes a city to further legal and civil rights risk. Repeated failures to discipline officers, even in cases where misconduct was substantiated or the city paid out large settlements, raises serious questions about compliance on every single level. THESE INCIDENTS FORM A VICIOUS PATTERN OF CONSTITUTIONAL VIOLATIONS, TRANSPARENCY FAILURES, AND GOVERNANCE BREAKDOWNS, A PATTERN THAT EXPOSES THE CITY, EXPOSES ALL OF US TO LEGAL LIABILITY AND QUICKLY ERODING PUBLIC TRUST. THIS IS WHY FULLY FUNDING POAC IS A LEGAL AND STRUCTURAL NECESSITY. You know, and oversight doesn't exist if the city refuses to fund independent legal counsel, independent investigative support, community outreach, direct. and the administrative capacity to conduct hearings. Let's address Measure P very quickly. The city has legal obligations under the California Constitution and California Electronic Communications and Privacy Act to ensure that surveillance technologies, including ALRPs, are adopted with transparency safeguards. Vallejo has earned the benefit of the doubt on surveillance. We have not. Measure P funds were approved by voters for essential services. addressing homelessness, repairing infrastructure, and stabilizing our basic operations. Not expanding a policing technology without a civil rights analysis, without a data retention policy, and without demonstrating compliance with basic state privacy laws. So just, I need to ask you, fully fund POAC, stop expanding surveillance while starving accountability, and let's break this constitutional violations that have defined us for the past decades.

Thanks. Thank you.

And Manny, the names that were previously on my list are gone. Did they happen to uncheck themselves for this, or are they online now?

Those were all the speakers, if I'm not mistaken, or in person.

Let's check really quickly. Oh, we see another. Come on up, if you could just let us know your name or what name you want to go by. Sparrow. Okay, Sparrow.

And I see Daniel back there, so.

And you can raise it if you want on the lower right as well.

Hi, my name is Sparrow. I'm 19. When I was 14 years old, my ex-boyfriend strangled and raped me and then proceeded to stalk me for two years afterwards. I start with that violent story to bring you into my lived reality for multiple years and many women's current reality. Did you know that according to worldmetric.org, 9% or nearly 1 in 11 police officers have been arrested on domestic violence charges? Did you know that according to Fox News, between March 26 and May 26, 2025, a Milwaukee police officer used flock cameras to search his current partners and their ex's plates a total of 179 times and that it was caught when the victims reported it, not with an internal audit. Or what about according to the Wichita Eagle, the police chief, not officer, police chief of Sedgwick, Kansas used flock cameras to search for his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend's plates over 200 times in a two-month span and then used that information to follow them out of the city in a police vehicle. Once again, this was missed by an internal audit. Maybe you're thinking, well, our officers won't do that. Putting aside Vallejo PD's notorious reputation for misuse of power, do you know who will misuse these cameras? Flock employees themselves. According to newsbreak.com, in 2025, a flock employee accessed the cameras of a children's gym room playground, school, and pool to demonstrate surveillance capabilities to police departments across the country. Let me ask, if you were doing a sales pitch for an automated license plate reader, why would you pick a sensitive area like a children's gymnasium instead of a busy intersection where it's common for people to run red lights? I'm sure you're already aware of the security issues in flock safety software, like how anyone with a computer, internet access, and brain can hack into any of these cameras within an hour. But I will bring a new point to the security flaw, artificial intelligence. You do not need any hacking skills to do this. Simply upload a video explaining it to a program like ChatGPT 5.5 and you're in with very little tuning. I will also bring to your attention Anthropix Mythos. This is an AI agent that has been able to find zero-day vulnerabilities in every major operating system and web browser it has been tested on. This technology will eventually be released or leaked to the public and Flock as a company has proven that they are not concerned with fixing security flaws. Play information is stored for 30 days, correct? Did you know where these cameras are placed? They are always at choke points like on and off ramps, main roads and parking lots. There's purposefully no way to avoid these things. So I bring you back to my story. Put yourself in the shoes of a domestic violence victim knowing these facts. Police have been shown misusing these cameras to stalk people on multiple occasions. Flock employees can and do use these cameras to watch our children in vulnerable positions. It does not take much time or skill to hack into the Flock software. Location data is typically stored for a month and cameras are strategically placed to create a grid of everywhere you go. Would you feel safe? because I don't. I feel terrified that a man who has put his hands around my throat will finally be able to follow through on his threat to hunt me down.

Thank you.

And I do recall Daniel Boone being on the list, and I see that he is still here.

Is there anyone else in person that had signed up? We lost our list. I just want to make sure we get everybody. I think this might be our last in person speaker.

Good evening. You already voted to freeze Mare Island CFD 2005 1A facilities. And so I have heard council members express in the past the problem with voting on and approving things which then seem to be ignored down the line. So don't ignore that one because you've already approved it. Speaking of Mare Island, there was an item on the presentation about the Blue Bridge for $250,000. I know you're probably not gonna change that in this budget discussion, but it's just insane that Mare Island residents pay $250,000 for the bridge. Just go and watch the traffic back up, people skirting around 37 every morning, every evening. commercial traffic back and forth across the bridge. That makes no sense at all. We also pay for flock cameras out of our CFDs and I don't think I need to add anything about flock cameras and what a waste of money they are and a danger to the community. um speaking of other things that have already been approved i just want you to think about i believe it was february 2025 that this council approved a performance audit i haven't heard anything else about it since is that going to be included in this budget a performance audit could point out a lot of places that the city could save money Other things that you've already approved. In December of 2025, as Crystal Gee mentioned, you approved the Shaw Law Group to do an investigation on whether there should be an investigation into the very serious allegations raised by the ACLU. The public hasn't heard anything about that since, even though the Shaw Group's proposal to the city said that they would supply a written memorandum delivered to council within 30 days. That would have been in January. We're now in June. What has happened to that? Is there going to be money in the budget just in case that memorandum says, yes, there should be an investigation? Are we just going to ignore those serious ACLU allegations and not do that investigation? Number three, I just want to mention something that we have mentioned to you again and again. We have heard over the last year that the city is going to renegotiate all of the Mare Island agreements with Nimitz Mare Island Company. We have urged you again and again to hire professional negotiators to represent the city because the city's in-house negotiators in the past, the disastrous results of those negotiations show why this is an absolute necessity and I hope you will budget money to hire professional negotiators to protect your interest and the interest of everyone here and listening.

Thank you. I believe that was our last in-person speaker unless someone boxed right now. So let's go ahead online and call our online speakers.

Thank you, Mayor. We do have four speakers currently. First speaker, Anne C. Please unmute yourself. You have the floor.

Hi, good evening, Council, and welcome to Mr. Black. I have a lot to say on this topic. It's going to be hard to get through everything in my allotted time here. First of all, I'm kind of discouraged to hear that among the budget saving ideas that staff is putting forward are things that have a big impact in terms of quality of life, attractiveness, creating, drawing visitors to the city and good PR. And with that, I'm talking about both the participatory budgeting and collapsing the events programs that we have. When you think about the events that we have, they literally bring tens of thousands of people to Vallejo and give us good PR. And this is in contrast to the kind of PR we normally get, which is for high crime rates and blah, blah, blah. So I think it's very short-sighted and frankly, kind of miserly to be looking at the small savings we get from those programs and ignoring what I would call big swing items. Big swing items include potentially, have we looked at selling the marina or maybe converting it to houseboat use? I propose again that we sell 400 Mare Island Way and rezone it. Now, Assistant Manager Conley said that we have a very good financing rate, blah, blah for that. But the opportunity cost of having that building not be used for its highest and best purposes is significant. And that could be a $14 million swing, which is significant. Sell Farragut School. I don't know why we bought it to begin with. Rezone and sell the Herbert House. There's, you know, 500 grand there and potentially something that would help tourism along the waterfront if you had a commercial use there, like a cafe or B&B. potentially look at selling some of our extensive water rights. And that may make you clutch your pearls, but we're in big straits here. How about the house that was bought near the water plant? I think that was an $800,000 purchase. To my knowledge, we're still not using it. So what a waste of money there. So I hope the city will consider some of these other things. With respect to participatory budgeting and our events, if I had to choose between, say, the youth coordinator position in that program versus these other things, I would definitely go for the participatory budgeting and the events because I think, frankly, they reach more people. We have kind of an odd elite program with our youth coordinator, sending people to national conferences, I don't see that it reaches enough people. And with that, I will say we need more focus on economic development. My time is running out, but we need the businesses that generate revenue. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Through the mirror, our next speaker is Carol Heap. Please unmute yourself. You have the floor.

Hi, good evening, Council. I'm calling with some thoughts about the budget. First of all, I think that all the police reform line items need to be funded, and all those items should be in the police budget so we can have a clear overview of the police budget. And maybe you already are, but if they aren't, they should be in the police budget It's because of the police department that we are in the position to begin with. So we need to do that. And also there needs to be responsibility coming out of the police department as well. I know you're in contract negotiations. And so you need to very seriously consider how much we can afford for any income in salaries or benefits, any increases that you're discussing about the retired employees, pension benefits, all those things need to be considered and to help cover the costs of all the police reform. Our insurance costs, I'd like to see that line item in the police budget because it's because of the police, a great deal of the increases we saw in our insurance costs are related to police abuse and misconduct that resulted in lawsuits and payouts of millions of dollars. taxpayer money to cover the cost of police abuse, especially all the shootings we had. And then I'd like to say that just not talking about cutting things, I think there needs to be a lot of emphasis on getting departments to look for and apply for grants. Grants may be one time, two year, three year. but they help cover a gap of expenditures that we need covered during this financial difficult time. And so I think there needs to be mandates that each department get out there and apply, look for and apply for grants and try to get some of these positions that we can't afford to fund funded through a grant application. That's all. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Through the mayor, next speaker is Rouge. Please unmute yourself. You have the floor.

Hi, good evening. Since it's late, I'm going to actually keep it short and just say that I wanted to echo the other speakers that are opposing funding the flock system, especially as a femme presenting person in Vallejo. It's a danger that You always think about police having access to this even makes it even more of a danger of them finding people who are vulnerable who need our protection and the city of being responsible for a continued contract that would put our citizens in danger. We deserve to feel safe in the city. So I urge you not to.

fund the system and to actually fund more programs because the safer cities have more programs not more police that's all thank you thank you thank you uh through the mayor next speaker next and final online speaker is sana seti please unmute yourself you have the floor

Hi, my name is Sena. I'm an organizer with the ACLU of Northern California. We want City Council to fully fund the Police Oversight and Accountability Commission, or POAC. POAC needs funding to fill three critical positions, the assigned attorney, independent police auditor and strategist roles, and I encourage city council to think about whether the money in the proposed budget is actually enough to cover all of these costs, considering that the cost of hiring the IPA and assigned attorney will be high. The commission simply cannot be effective without this support. Additionally, the city should not use Measure P funds to pay for Flocker Axon license plate readers that put immigrant communities and communities of color at risk. government agencies can and have used the location information collected by ALPRs to target and deport immigrants, track people exercising their First Amendment rights. We know that ICE and Border Patrol have exploited locally collected ALPR information to target, locate, detain, and deport immigrants as they drive to work, run errands, or drop their children off at school. We should also consider the risk to people seeking reproductive or gender-affirming care in our community if ALPR-collected location information is shared with or demanded by a prosecutor in a state with anti-abortion or anti-LGBTQ laws. And we should generally avoid building a system that could be used to investigate or target someone who visits or travels through our community while seeking refuge and care in California. And for Measure P, we should be saving that money for our top priorities, addressing homelessness, repairing streets, retaining local jobs, not for invasive surveillance technology that harms our communities. Lastly, a previous caller mentioned the funding that went into the Shawah group last year given allegations of misconduct against the city attorney's office. ACLU NorCal submitted a letter to you requesting an independent investigation. On December 9th, the Council voted to contract with the Shaw Law Group to conduct that preliminary inquiry into whether a formal investigation is warranted. The Shaw Law Group estimated a 30 day timeline to make the recommendation on whether or not that formal investigation should proceed. And we're concerned that after five months since Council's vote, there has not been any public updates. The misconduct allegations against the city attorney's office are serious. They include destroying records from multiple police shootings, withholding records of misconduct from public disclosure, suppression of evidence in court cases and more. Police accountability efforts will not be successful in strengthening public trust and accountability unless the work is done in a timely and transparent way. Thank you so much. We urge you to release the findings. or at the very least, give an update to the public on the Shaw Law Group's preliminary inquiry. Thank you for your time.

All right, thank you.

Through the mayor, no other speakers on this item at this time.

All right. With that, we'll close public comment, and I'll thank all of our speakers, both in person and virtually, for staying with us, joining us this evening, and for your really important, important comments. With that, I'm going to turn it over to council, and my suggestion, I'm going to kind of read the room, but my suggestion is that we maybe take a quick round to ask clarifying questions on the budget, and then we can go through and give some comments, and we'll move to a motion. Once we get our questions answered, I'm going to ask clarification from our city manager's team about exactly how we should be approaching these motions depending on what item we choose. So do any council members at this time have just kind of questions to throw out to our finance team and to staff about the budget? It does not appear. So I can go. Oh, go ahead.

Council Member Letta, you go. So I'm curious. We say that we have, I think, based on our HR director's report, 144 vacant positions, yet we offer up 26 filled positions, and the balance of that 70, I think it's 40... plus positions, 44, that we're saying we'd like in scenario one and two, if I'm not mistaken, that we would like to be considered removed from our books. But those numbers don't balance. So I'd like to have an understanding of the total population or the total count VACANT POSITIONS BASED ON OUR HR DIRECTOR'S REPORT IS 144. WE HAVE 70 POSITIONS THAT ARE LISTED IN SCENARIO ONE AND SCENARIO TWO. 26 OF THOSE POSITIONS ARE FILLED. THE REMAINING ARE VACANT. SO WHAT ARE WE DOING?

SO THANK YOU COUNCILMEMBER FOR THE QUESTION. SO THE PREVIOUS PRESENTATION BY THE HR DIRECTOR MENTIONED 141 VACANCIES. THAT'S ALL THE VACANCIES THAT THE CITY HAS BUT THAT'S NOT NECESSARILY THE ONES THAT ARE GENERAL FUNDED.

THAT'S WHY I'M BRINGING THIS FORWARD BECAUSE WHEN YOU LOOK AT THE PRESENTATIONS AND YOU'RE TALKING TO THE PUBLIC, And we're doing these reports together, right? They blend together. So what's the breakdown so that we understand? Because I know some of those positions are enterprise funded, so forth and on. And we really need to understand that when we are talking about making decisions in a public setting for the public to understand, here's the total population of positions vacant. This many are funded through enterprise funds. This many are sitting in the general fund, so forth and on. So what does that breakdown look like?

Yeah, and we can work on, that's a good point. We can work on doing that in future presentations. Again, this is our second one, so I think we're still kind of working the kinks out. But I think for this period of time, we have 141 vacancies total. So that's total citywide vacancies.

uh... what they're looking at in terms of the budget and that forty forty-four vacant positions and the twenty six filled positions those are all general funded those are not funded by any other funds in the city so the breakdown that we were the public doesn't so what i'm trying to get us to understand you're asking the council to make a decision right we foregrounded a whole message that we have a hundred and forty one vacant positions The public at large does not understand the funding mechanism behind these 141 positions, right? And so if I was sitting in the public, and I didn't have understanding of the budget, I would ask the question, why is the council being asked to eliminate 26 positions that are filled? And the remaining are vacant when I've just been told I have 141.

Understood. So the 141, what we're looking at is citywide. And then we're also breaking it down by department. And then we're also breaking it down by bargaining unit. But we're looking at citywide. What they're looking at in the budget and how they're trying to balance the budget, that's a whole separate exercise. What I will say in terms of that as well is that One, they're looking at funding source, so general fund only. But the other thing that they're looking at is there are certain recruitments that we already have in process that are at such a point where they're too far down the road. And so these 44 are free and clear, they're vacant, They're not in any kind of phase of the process, and so that's why we're looking at those. Others are already in some form or another of the recruitment and selection process, and so we haven't tapped into those yet. That's not to say that we couldn't, but we just have not looked at those yet. So those 44 are general fund and currently vacant, meaning they're not in any kind of recruitment and selection process.

No, I was just going to say, you know, very good observation. So moving forward, we'll give the global overview with the breakdown of what is comprised within that global overview in terms of general fund and non-general fund.

so what my next question is the positions that are being stated in scenario one and two those positions are all general fund positions and i'm going to go back to the 141 positions are we clear have we are we sure that the positions that are being stated in scenario one and two are all of the positions that are vacant, that are general funded based on the numbers that are sitting over here, the 141, the positions that are in progress, down the line, all of those things. This is solely what's available.

No. NO, THERE ARE ADDITIONAL POSITIONS. THE REASON WHY THERE ARE ADDITIONAL POSITIONS THAT WERE LEFT VACANT IS BECAUSE THEY WERE DEEMED CRITICAL FOR OPERATIONS.

I WANT TO STOP YOU RIGHT THERE. I'M TALKING NUMBERS, SO THANK YOU. how many critical positions are you holding on to that haven't been stated in your scenario one and two to at least say that as a city manager we have deemed x amount of vacant positions that are generally funded as critical positions let me let me respond to that that's the interesting

part of of where we are today which is why you know as city as as the interim city manager you know i've recommended scenario three for the very reasons that you're bringing up the key is we're trying to present the balanced budget here So the analytical rigor that you are suggesting was not possible to the extent that I believe you're looking for from an expectation which we all should be looking for from an expectation because of time. And that's why scenario three is critical to go through that analytical exercise, that rigor, in terms of really identifying what is actually critical, what is essential, et cetera. So that's why scenario three would allow us that time in conjunction with, moving forward with the development of a long range financial plan, it would just be folded into that overall exercise. To be more thoughtful, more strategic, in terms of making certain that we know we're gonna have to do reductions, but the key is making sure that we do it in the smartest way possible. Right now, this is not necessarily IT'S EXPEDIENT RIGHT NOW BECAUSE WE WANT TO APPROVE A BUDGET, BUT IT'S NOT THE MOST STRATEGIC. IT'S GOING TO BE VERY STRAIGHTFORWARD. THIS IS NOT THE MOST STRATEGIC WAY TO DO THIS, OKAY? WE KNOW THAT WHETHER WE DO THESE REDUCTIONS TODAY OR WE DO THEM AS A PART OF THE NEXT YEAR'S BUDGET, they're gonna have to be reductions, but the key is we would have time to put the rigor into the process to present to you all the smartest approach and strategies that even though we're gonna be reducing the workforce, we have a better idea as to our ability to still operate at a certain level, if that makes sense.

No, it makes sense. I just, you know, when I look at all these numbers IT'S REAL CLEAR TO ME THAT THE FULL COMPOSITION OF THE NUMBERS AVAILABLE AREN'T THERE BECAUSE THEY'RE NOT EVEN IN THE STAFF REPORT HOLISTICALLY BECAUSE I'M LOOKING AT WHAT'S THE TOTAL NUMBERS, WHAT ARE WE HOLDING BACK, LIKE I JUST SAID, AND THEN THE NEXT QUESTION WOULD BE IN SCENARIO ONE AND TWO, AND KNOWING THE NUMBER OF POSITIONS THAT YOU DEEM CRITICAL, WHAT LEVEL OF SERVICES WOULD WE BE REDUCING? SO ALL OF THOSE THINGS ARE NOT THERE WHEN YOU'RE ASKING ME TO MAKE A DECISION. IN ADDITION, I'M GOING TO SAY THERE'S BEEN A REQUEST TO USE MEASURE P DOLLARS. AND I'M GOING TO SAY THIS BECAUSE I BELIEVE FOR THIS CITY eventually move forward, you cannot continue to erode public trust. And that measure was a fight to get done and you have to consider what are those areas that we can use the dollars. When we agreed to use, I think it was 11 million plus dollars for Measure P, THOSE DOLLARS ALIGNED FOR SERVICES, POLICE SERVICES, SHERIFF SERVICES, TO THE GOALS IN MEASURE P. NOW WE'RE SAYING WHATEVER DOLLARS WE DON'T USE FROM THAT PARTICULAR ALLOCATION, WE'RE GOING TO PUT IT IN THE GENERAL FUND. AND I WILL SAY AS A COUNCILMEMBER, that I would disagree with that simply because it's not about me being an elected official. I didn't make any promises. The promises I made was accountability, transparency. And what I'm saying to us is those dollars go back to the same pool that they came from. And so if that is the case, really what is our reduction strategy realistically going to be? And how are we going to truly get there? And I don't expect to resolve a structural budget in one year because we're one year behind. We asked for certain solutions over the year that didn't get done. I'm just going to be real transparent with the last city manager. So now you're tasked with a whole year behind in a current year trying to figure it out. And truthfully, being exactly what you said, I DON'T REALLY HAVE ALL THE DATA TO MAKE A REAL SOLID DECISION THAT SAYS I'M GOING TO MOVE FORWARD. SO IF I AS A COUNCILMEMBER, I'M USING THIS TIME BECAUSE I THINK THIS IS IMPORTANT, IF I AS A COUNCILMEMBER SAID, OH, I UNDERSTAND THAT, I REALIZE THAT, AND IT MAKES SENSE FROM AN ANALYTICAL PERSPECTIVE, BUT WHEN I GET TO MID-YEAR, WHAT ARE THOSE NUMBERS GOING TO LOOK LIKE AGAIN? BECAUSE WHAT I'M EXASPERATING IN THE FOLLOWING YEAR IS THE SAME DEFICIT, EVEN THOUGH WE HAVE TO GET TO LONG RANGE FINANCIAL PLANNING. SO I WOULD LOOK AT WHAT ELSE ARE WE GOING TO DO IF I GAVE YOU AN ADDITIONAL SIX MONTHS WHEN I CAME BACK TO MID-YEAR BUDGET BECAUSE OTHER CITIES ARE HAVING TO OPEN BACK UP THEIR BUDGET YEAR TO DEAL WITH THE DEFICIT. We're no different. We're acting as though we're special. We are not a special city. We are in the same positions many government cities are, and we have not done any work to get us to being more structural and more sound. So that would be my question when you speak about, as you did, based on my question, scenario three, when I got to mid-year, what would I see in mid-year? from you, potentially?

It would just require, as it would under any circumstances, it would require competent, aggressive, alert budget execution monitoring at all levels of the budget. In terms of knowing what the numbers are, tracking those numbers every week, every day and to see what the trends are and catch those trends early to make adjustments. But having more time to go through that rigor that I mentioned could conceivably reduce the need to take certain actions to a certain degree. Like we're identifying numbers here. Going through this long range financial planning process is a rigorous process. We could realize discoveries in terms of dollars that would offset the need to take certain actions to a certain level, if that makes any sense. But that's why the rigor is really critical, because we're going to be more strategic. It's all about strategy.

I'm going to make my last comment and just turn it over. I'm going to be really frank. I'm going to be really frank. And I don't disagree with what you're saying fundamentally, but I'm going to be really frank. And I just said it, we're not any different than any other government. We just made a statement that 80%, and it's not the number that's the big piece here, that 80% of our budget and general fund in particular is salaries, rent and benefits. There are other cities right here in our backyard, who basically are at that same number, but they're not in a structural deficit. That's the difference. And so with that in mind, that tells me clearly there is a need to reduce our workforce and to realign our workforce and our services. And I'm gonna leave it right there because I know enough about budget and government to know that's very factual and very true.

totally agree with you.

Council member Bergenzer.

Thank you. And I'm just this is still the clarifying questions or this is we're just kind of we kind of blended maybe we'll do one round. Okay, so I should just do all of mine?

Maybe just do all of it at this point. I think we've blended.

And I'll try to be quick. If you need, I can. Yes, I will, and I'll be quick. And I want to thank the team because I know that this was a Herculean task, and it's impressive that we got to this point. GIVEN THAT WE DON'T HAVE A FINANCE DIRECTOR AND YOU ARE ALL WORKING VERY HARD SO I APPRECIATE THAT. THE CFD FREEZE THAT WE VOTED ON PREVIOUSLY, I JUST WANT TO HAVE CLARITY ON THAT. THAT WAS FREEZING IT UNTIL IT GOT TO THE BUDGET AND THEN WE WERE GOING TO DECIDE NOW WHETHER WE WERE GOING TO CONTINUE THAT OR NOT OR WAS THAT FROZEN INDEFINITELY? I THOUGHT IT WAS TO GET US THROUGH THE BUDGET.

I THINK WE DIDN'T FREEZE IT EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY. I THINK WE DIRECTED STAFF TO BRING BACK THE FREEZE AS PART OF THE BUDGET SO IT WOULD BE AN OPTION FOR US.

IF WE WERE TO APPROVE THAT FREEZE, THAT IS JUST THE FREEZING IT TO BE WHERE IT'S CURRENTLY AT AND WITHOUT ANY INCREASES OR DOES THAT MEAN IT'S STOPPING THE CFD IN THE

It's stopping the CFD. It's not the 2% escalation. That's the one that was talked about, that legal weighed in on that we didn't have the ability to do that one. This is freezing it.

This is the facilities one, and we're allowed to stop that if we so choose. And you said it was $100,000 per year. And will that escalate and go up over time, or has it stayed around $100,000 for the past few years? IT STAYED THE SAME. FIRST AND FOREMOST, I WANT TO SAY MY COMMENTS ARE, SORRY, THE SECOND QUESTION WAS THE POAC AND THE REQUEST AND THE VPD REFORM PROPOSALS, WAS THAT INCLUDED AS THE TOTAL, SO THOSE ARE PART OF THE OVERALL BUDGET OR DO WE STILL NEED TO WORK ON GETTING THAT FUNDING AVAILABLE?

No, that's included in the budget. That's included, okay.

Correct. Okay. I am not in favor of collapsing the community events and the participated budgeting together. I think that gets to be very messy. I can tell you one of the reasons why my husband and I chose to live in Vallejo was the Pirate Festival was here, even though it's not here anymore. And I think that is the very fabric of our community. And so I'm not in favor of collapsing those two together. I think we need to sharpen our pencils and try to figure out a way to, even if we have to reduce some or whatever, I think that COLLAPSING IT OR ELIMINATING EITHER OF THOSE IS A PROBLEM FOR ME. NEXT, I WANT TO TALK ABOUT THE FIVE-YEAR PROJECTION THAT YOU HAD ON. I THINK IT WAS THE VERY LAST SLIDE. I JUST WANT TO BE VERY CLEAR WITH THE REST OF THE COUNCIL, THIS IS MY LAST BUDGET, BUT IF YOU LOOK AT THAT, IT DOESN'T SHOW AS BEING A VERY UGLY PICTURE NECESSARILY, BUT WHEN YOU LOOK AT THE FUND BALANCE, BY THE END OF YEAR FIVE, YOU'RE DOWN TO UNDER $10 MILLION OF A FUND BALANCE, AND THAT IS VERY SCARY FOR A CITY OF THIS SIZE TO HAVE THAT FUND BALANCE BE THAT LOW. SO THAT'S SOMETHING THAT I THINK WE NEED TO TAKE VERY PROACTIVE STEPS TODAY AND MOVING FORWARD. I'VE BEEN SAYING THIS FOR THE LAST THREE YEARS, BUT THIS IS MY LAST TIME SAYING IT, SO I WILL SAY THAT. I HAVE A QUESTION ABOUT THE 26 FTE THAT ARE CURRENTLY FILLED. THERE IS LIKE MY COLLEAGUE SAID, WHERE IS THE ANALYSIS OF LIKE WHAT PROGRAMS THAT WILL IMPACT OR WHAT SERVICES OR WILL NOT BE ABLE TO PROVIDE IF THOSE 26 FTE ARE ELIMINATED? DO YOU HAVE A PLAN FOR THAT AND THAT'S JUST NOT PART OF THIS YET OR ARE YOU JUST, IS IT JUST A NUMBERS GAME OR ARE YOU JUST TRYING TO PULL SALARIES TOGETHER AND YOU CAME UP WITH 26?

So yes. So we're looking for direction here, right? So this is like the starting point.

Yeah, you're correct. Based on the timing of all of this, it's not based on ideal level of rigor. And so if you were to approve the reduction of 26 positions, we would have to, in a very rushed fashion, we would have to identify specifically which each one of those positions are going to be. and it would have to be done at a minimum within the first 30 days of the fiscal year in order to capture the savings for that fiscal year. So it's not going to necessarily lend itself to much, much more rigor on top of that.

Okay. So it is just basically a numbers game right now and it's not, you don't have slated programs and positions that will be better on the list. Okay. I ALSO AGREE WITH THE MEASURE. IF WE CAN LOOK AT THE SLIDE, I THINK IT'S THE SCENARIO THREE. THIS FIRST COMMENT GOES ACTUALLY FOR ALL THREE OF THE SCENARIOS IN THAT I FEEL THAT THE SAVINGS, I HAVE HEART BURN. THE SHERIFF'S CONTRACT SAVINGS THAT WE DIDN'T HAVE TO SPEND, ALL OF THAT MONEY CAME FROM MEASURE P, AND YET WE'RE REFUNDING THE GENERAL FUND.

THE MAJORITY OF IT CAME FROM MEASURE P, BUT NOT ALL. THE GENERAL LIABILITY FUND DID GIVE $1.9 MILLION, SO THAT'S WHAT WE'RE PROPOSING TO GIVE BACK TO THE GENERAL FUND.

I UNDERSTAND, BUT I FEEL LIKE WE TOOK THAT FROM MEASURE P. THAT WASN'T SOMETHING THAT MEASURE P HAD VOLUNTEERED UP. WE AS A COUNCIL TOOK THAT MONEY FROM MEASURE P, AND THEN WHEN WE HAVE EXTRA SAVINGS, RATHER THAN GIVING IT BACK TO MEASURE P, WE'RE GIVING IT BACK TO OURSELVES. I JUST HAVE A LOT OF HEARTBURN WITH THAT. I DON'T KNOW THE ANSWER. THE TWO MILLION DOLLARS JUST DOESN'T SIT RIGHT FOR ME TO REFUND THAT BACK TO THE GENERAL FUND WHEN IT CAME FROM MEASURE P. THE VERY LAST TWO THINGS, I GUESS I'M CONFUSED. THERE'S TWO SHARE OF CONTRACTS, THE FUNDING SHIFT AND THE CONTRACT SAVINGS. And so with the contract savings, the 1.7, would that go back to Measure P? Or is that, both of them are going back to general fund?

So for 1, 2, and 3, we're proposing to refund the general liability, the 1.93 million. For this particular scenario, Scenario 3, which relies heavily on sort of utilizing Measure P funds, it's, It's both the general liability refund, but it's also, as you mentioned, taking the 1.7 that would go back to measure P to general fund. So both of these refunds are going to measure P. Right, so it's taking the $3.6-plus million from the sheriff's contract to the general fund. To the general fund.

Correct. Yep, so kind of the same comment for that. Okay. I have a heartburn with that. And then the last thing I will speak on behalf of, because I'm the council liaison for the SOB, and I know the surveillance advisory board, and I know that all of the comments that many of the commenters made about the flock system, the SOB has the same concerns and questions uh... uh... and they're they're feeling very hand-tied about this contract and i i you know i i can see from both ends i see that the the utility of it from the police standpoint our statistics have really improved on on uh... capturing solving murder cases and and tracking those things down but at what cost at what cost to our community you know what which which outweighs THE OTHER BETTER. AND I THINK THAT THAT'S SOMETHING THAT WE NEED TO AS A COUNCIL really sit down and talk about flock. I think that we need to hear from the Surveillance Advisory Board as well as probably the POAC. I'm sure they have comments as well, but I know in particular, because I sit on that commission, the SOB has a lot of concerns about flock. And so I think before we agree to fund flock, we need to have that discussion and just determine whether we want to continue funding this and putting our citizens at risk or whether we want to not fund this and cancel the contract. And that's my last comment. Thank you.

Thank you. Vice Mayor.

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you, staff, for all the hard work. And I especially want to thank Harry for coming in when he did to where this is a very difficult time to come in when he did with such a challenging situation. JOB IN FRONT OF YOU RIGHT NOW. AND UNDERSTANDING, ONCE AGAIN, MUNICIPAL CODE REQUIRES US TO SHOW A BALANCED BUDGET AT JUNE 30TH. SO UNDERSTANDING THAT WE'RE GOING TO PUT FORTH A BUDGET THAT LOOKS BALANCED, BUT UNDERSTANDING, AND I WANT TO GIVE CREDIT TO MY COLLEAGUE, COUNCILMEMBER MATTIAS, we're just still playing the voodoo math game at this point to where we're making the numbers look good, but ultimately we need to get to the point to where it actually factually works. And this speaks to Council Member Ledijew and Council Member Regender's points of right now we're just playing with numbers, and the concern or... What I'm hearing a lot these days and what it's been kind of for the past two or three years is the word Measure P to where we've used Measure P to fill a lot of gaps that they weren't necessarily intended to fill when Measure P came into place. For example, We broke it up into several categories, public safety, economic development, youth, and youth. But one of the angst that came out of that was the terminology of salaries. So I know, and there's always been the conversation of, How do you get public safety without salaries being a part of that conversation? And this is where I look to our interim city manager. So obviously coming from a different mindset and different experiences that he's got, I WOULD LIKE TO GET HIS UNDERSTANDING OF WHAT HIS INTERPRETATION OF WHERE WE COULD UTILIZE MEASURE P FROM UNDERSTANDING WHERE IT WAS INITIALLY CAME FROM, BUT ALSO HOW DO WE GET THAT TO WORK WITHIN OUR BUDGET CHALLENGES AT THIS POINT. SO I'M OPEN TO LISTENING TO THAT, BUT WITH THAT BEING SAID, THE ONE THING THAT I KNOW THAT WE NEED TO DO TO GET TO A SUSTAINABLE BUDGET is we need to have that economic development, sustainable funding coming in. So that way we can not have to rely on Measure P. But without that economical driver in there, so this is where my challenge to our interim city manager is to identify what is that economical driver gonna be to be able for us to avoid having to use the Measure P as the continual stopgap measure. for a lot of the issues we've been facing in the city. And so, once again, playing that numbers game, this is where, once again, I'm looking to our interim city manager to help us guide that conversation to where we logically can figure this out. For example, our director of HR, Mr. Fuentes, has mentioned that She is very challenged with her staffing and the lack of broadband. But how do we fill positions without an HR department? So for me, that is a logical step to say, well, we need to put more resources and more focus into that if we want to get to that point of economic development to bring in more people to fill the critical positions. And ultimately, I think this speaks to what Dr. Leatherjew and what the community has been talking about, the performance audit. If we would have had that by this point, we could have identified where are critical places to where we could have filled positions and put our resources. The fact we haven't gotten there yet, I'm looking to our interim city manager to figure out how do we get there sooner rather than later. so that we're not having to play this guessing game and use the voodoo math to make the numbers work. So I think those are my general comments at this point, knowing that we're going to present the balanced budget, but we ultimately need to get to the crux of the problem to figure out How do we figure out which departments are underperforming, which may be overperforming, and where do we need to actually put our resources bandwidth-wise, and how do we get the critical positions filled to ultimately get us to the economic development driver that we need to get our funding established and making it more sustainable? So thank you for that.

Thanks. Council Member Matias.

Thank you, Mayor. I called it kabuki math last year, but you called it voodoo. So we're shifting. We're moving in a different... No, it's fine, man. I'll take voodoo math, too. So I'm going to start out with... Thank you. But, you know, there's already been five thank yous, so thank you guys for all your work on this. I'm going to start out with Measure P. And I'm just going to make a general statement about Measure P. I have a slightly different perspective than my colleagues. And I think it's important for me to make this statement, again, as someone who worked tirelessly to pass the sales tax measure. We have to be very careful. with the words that we use as elected officials and with what statements are being made because then these statements take a life of their own and then they create more problems than what you're intending to address in the moment. Why do I say that? That sales tax measure was passed in 2022. The collection began in April of 2023. And since then, at least 50% of the 17 to 18 million that has been collected by the city has been put into roads. Now, is that happening on a timely basis? It is not. We've had delays because of staffing, because of this, because of that. But for us to say that the fund is being raided, I don't think it's an entirely accurate statement. I think what has been happening is that we've had elected officials here suggesting, and staff, staff and elected officials suggesting the use of Measure P dollars anytime there's been ad hoc requests that have been made. So there's a difference because it's one thing for for someone to suggest that we use something, and then for us as an authorizing body to actually do it. So I just want to correct the record. More than 50%, and you guys can all go check, 50% every year of the money that has been coming in, except for the Broadway project and some of these other interesting projects we've had here, has gone back into community. It's not going back at the speed that it should be going back to, but it has been going back to the areas that the voters approved, which gets me to point number two. I agree with Councilmember Brigenzer. I ALSO WANT TO HAVE A CONVERSATION AROUND FLOCK. I WOULD LOVE TO HEAR FROM THE SURVEILLANCE ADVISORY BOARD, FROM POAC, AND I WANT TO HEAR FROM THOSE TWO BODIES IN PARTICULAR BECAUSE AT THE TIME, I'M GOING TO GO BACK TO MEASURE P, THERE WAS A LOT OF ARGUMENTS BEING MADE ABOUT WHY THAT SALES TAX MEASURE SHOULDN'T PASS, THIS, THAT, THAT. I mean, it was tiring. Six months of arguing, and the voters actually spoke. The sales tax measure passed, despite all the arguments. And the reason why I elevate that is because it's not just important to hear from SAB and from POAC. I think in a lot of these conversations, it's also important to hear from community. Because a lot of stuff was being said, and ultimately the voters came down and said what they really wanted, which was let's pass the sales tax measure to get these things addressed. So yes, let's have that conversation, and let's also hear from community, as we did four years ago. Now, and I have many more things I would love to say about Measure P, but I'm just going to end those things there today, because I hear about Measure P every month. FASCINATING. ANYHOW, ON TO THE BUDGET. I'M GOING TO FOCUS ON THE REVENUE SIDE OF THE HOUSE. HOW MUCH DID WE RAISE FROM CODE ENFORCEMENT IN THE PAST YEAR? HOW MUCH DID WE RAISE FROM FIRE AND THEIR FIRE INSPECTIONS IN THE PAST YEAR? AND FROM PLANNING? AND FROM PARKING? BECAUSE THAT'S NOT ACCOUNTED FOR IN NEXT YEAR'S BUDGET. SO I WANT TO KNOW, HOW MUCH DID WE RAISE? and what are you guys anticipating we're gonna raise next year? Do we have that information available?

So, through the chair, that information actually, so the first thing you asked was code enforcement.

Code enforcement, parking, and fire was doing an assessment last year.

Right, so the fees.

So do we have a budget, do we have this year's budget book close by?

Yes, so the parking is covered in the CIP budget, which was just moved to... next council meeting on the twenty-third, that program, the CIP program.

I think what we should do is, I'm sorry, to ask, to answer his question, let's pull out the budget book, let's go to, let's go to development's budget and find those line items.

So, and where I'm getting at with this very quickly is, you guys put a proposal, three scenarios, right? Put a proposal in place, but there's a few data points that are missing so you guys can probably bring this back i'm not gonna i'm gonna cut to it what we have we have the information

We have it. It's documented.

So how much revenue did we raise for code enforcement in the past year? Same thing for fire.

Somebody's writing these notes down for sure.

For next time.

Yeah.

That's important just to give us a sense of what can we project for 2627. And similarly, I want to know what is going on with code enforcement. uh... vice mayor matulak council member braganza and a whole host of elected officials we work together over many years to get that department staffed back up we need to make sure they're out doing their job so i would like to you know in the coming months it's just a throwaway comment hear from code enforcement and figure out what is going on uh... because we previous councils made investments in that department, and it wasn't just to address blight, beautification, all these other issues. It was also because it was meant to be a revenue generator, and that's not really accounted for. You just got here, so I'm just... I just want to add to that, if I may. Yes, sure.

I know, it's a great question, and again, it feeds directly into the rigor that will... that will be generated as a part of the long-range financial planning process, and it's called revenue optimization. You know, cities don't necessarily look at that, okay? So you're bringing up a great point, and that'll be a part of that whole process.

I've had, like, a fly flying over, a fruit fly flying over since yesterday. It's the same fly, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's a resident fruit fly we have in here. So that's helpful just in terms of getting to a zero. So that's number one. Number two, economic development. So just piggybacking off of what the Vice Mayor said, we need to generate revenue. There's been a lot of things this council has asked for in the past year that have not gotten done. And I'm just going to leave it there because I can't really talk about all the many things we said, all these things need to get done. We had a whole conversation about economic development a year ago and we said we need to you know, address certain areas. We want you to move certain elements forward. And a year later, we're having the same conversation. So to me, it's less about like, I know there's a plan that staff is putting forward around pop-ups and events and activation. I'm talking about the big stuff. And that one of those big things is the marina. So a year ago, I called for a freeze. I also asked for us to cut spending by a million. And I also said part of the cut in spending is a set aside. I want you to put $500,000 to $750,000 into dredging. So right now our dredging account has $800,000 because of that investment we made a year ago. So it's in the CIP. Okay. So the reason why I'm elevating that is because we have 800,000 that the council has set aside. We have almost 2 million that Lori Wilson sent us, Assemblymember Lori Wilson. We need to make an additional investment on the dredging and get that going this year. We gotta get ED going, yes.

We hear you loudly and clearly. I don't have a problem. I'm enjoying serving as the surrogate for the past. But we're going to do all of these things. We're going to get them done. This is the beginning of week number four.

Along with the dredging, I just want to make sure because the key to that is making sure that we have a permit for this active year. And if you don't have the permit, there's nothing you can do with the dredging. So if we don't have a permit already, we should have already applied for it because it's probably too late now for the permit.

I'm hoping that that permit is on the way because that was part of the direction. We said, can we do it now? And they said, no, because it takes some time. So we said, OK, we're going to make the investment. We're going to make this deposit. Let's get this work going, because we have to activate the marina. Absolutely. So as you can see, I'm focusing a lot on the revenue side of the house. Oh, yeah. And then two additional comments. I'm not necessarily sure. I know you guys get your estimates from HDL. I'm not necessarily sure I agree with the sales tax projection for next year. And I'm also not sure I necessarily agree with the property tax line. Yes.

Once again, thank you. You're feeding right into the whole long-range financial planning process. Verification, validation of revenues of all sorts through another independent outside entity to come in and to do the verification and validation for that very reason. So that would be a part of it.

And then my last comment to the council is the following. So a lot of the stuff I focused on tonight was the revenue side of the house, where there are currently missing data points that I would like to see, because I think that that will get us to make some decisions. As a reminder to the council, respectfully, our job is not, we're not part of the management team. We're supposed to set direction. uh... this is where we're headed COLUMBUS PARKWAY OR TO THE MOON, RIGHT? I'VE TALKED ABOUT THIS IN THE PAST. SO WHAT DO I MEAN BY THAT? IF THE CITY STAFF IS PROPOSING DIFFERENT SCENARIOS, IT IS OUR JOB TO SAY YOU EITHER GO WITH SCENARIO ONE OR WITH SCENARIO THREE. HOW WE GET THERE IS CITY MANAGER, INTERIM CITY MANAGER BLACK'S JOB AND HIS TEAM'S JOB TO FIGURE OUT. I DON'T THINK IT'S APPROPRIATE TO GET INTO THAT LEVEL OF DETAIL, ESPECIALLY WITH PERSONNEL. But I do think it's our responsibility if we want to start addressing the structural deficit to say, well, I don't like the 26 fill positions, but how about you start targeting, you do 10 this year, and you have to figure it out. Because what has been happening here, this gentleman, this is his last budget. We're going to miss you. We talk about the same thing every single year. Oh, no, one more year, two more years, three more years. No, no, no, but if we do this plan or that plan or this assessment or that assessment, that is management's job to figure out after we set the direction of where we're headed to. So I am going to tell you guys today, whether we vote on it today or on the 30th, I am ready to make a decision on a direction. It is for them to figure out how to get there. And if they have to come back and say, whoa, too aggressive, council, at mid-year, we think you should do this instead. At least there is some heat on you guys to get it done other than we found Monsanto. Let's use that. Or Measure P. Or Measure AA. You know, we got to stop... TAXING PEOPLE AND WE GOT TO GET THE HOUSE UNDER CONTROL AND WE HAVE TO SET THE DIRECTION FOR THAT. SO I'M GOING TO END MY RANT THERE BECAUSE IT'S LATE. THAT'S ALL I GOT. THANK YOU, MAYOR.

COUNCIL MEMBER PAUL MORRIS.

THAT WAS A GOOD RANT.

SO A FEW THINGS. SCENARIO NUMBER THREE SOUNDS LIKE THE LEAST BAD SCENARIO AND I'LL JUST LEAVE IT AT THAT. I'LL JUST GO OVER SOME OF THE CONSTRAINTS THAT I'M LOOKING AT. SO I ALREADY MENTIONED BEFORE, OFFLINE WITH YOU, CFD 2005 1A FACILITIES, IT'S GOT TO HAPPEN, ONE WAY OR ANOTHER. SO JUST REAFFIRMING MY COMMITMENT TO THAT. THERE'S BEEN SEVERAL CONVERSATIONS ABOUT FLOC. WHAT I'D LIKE TO PROFFER TO THIS CONVERSATION IS WHAT OTHER ALTERNATIVE TECHNOLOGIES ARE OUT THERE that could help the police department do the job with investigations while still protecting civil rights. Got it. There's lots of criticism about flock, but what are the alternatives? And I think that's also, that also needs to be part of the conversation as well. Other points made about events. I think it's, A LITTLE BIT SHORTSIGHTED AND I UNDERSTAND WHAT WE'RE DOING AS FAR AS TRYING TO CUT AS MUCH AS WE CAN, BUT IF DONE CORRECTLY, EVENTS CAN BE, IF THEY'RE AMPLIFIED, CAN BE A REVENUE MULTIPLIER FOR THE CITY. I THINK THERE ARE THINGS THAT WE COULD DO. WE HAVE A NEW INTERIM ECONOMIC, NOT SO MUCH NEW ANYMORE, BUT INTERIM ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR WHO'S ALL ON BOARD, RIGHT? PROBABLY UP RIGHT NOW, BUT you know, we could do a lot more as far as making sure that those events are, I don't want to say it's just about the revenue, but it's a lot of what I'm coming from. So how can we get more bang for our buck for those events? And helping also our brick and mortar businesses. There was a comment about acquiring a professional negotiator for Merrill Island. I'd like to EXPAND THAT A LITTLE BIT MORE, NOT JUST ONLY FOCUS ON THE NEED FOR PROFESSIONAL NEGOTIATION, BUT WHEN I LOOK AT THE HOURS PUT INTO MAYOR ISLAND, AT LEAST FROM ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT DEPARTMENT, THOSE ARE HOURS THAT CAN BE SPENT ON ANYTHING ELSE ON VALLEJO. ANYTHING FROM RECRUITMENT TO RETENTION TO EVENT MAKING, TO ACTIVATION, RIGHT? AND SO FOR ME, TO FOCUS ON JUST MERE ISLAND AND NOTHING ELSE, OR AT LEAST MAYBE A LARGE PART OF IT, SEEMS LIKE A MISSED OPPORTUNITY. SO I THINK THERE'S A REALLY GOOD ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT ARGUMENT TO CROSS-LOAD THOSE EFFORTS TO SOMEONE ELSE. AND I DON'T KNOW IF WE NEED TO FIGURE THAT OUT NOW AS FAR AS A BUDGET IS CONCERNED, BUT I WOULD LIKE TO HEAR YOUR INSIGHT ON THAT FOR A SECOND.

YES, WE'VE GOT at least five, maybe more than five, Mare Island-related agreements that will be coming to fruition in terms of needing an action to be taken to either extend it or to create it over the next 12 or so months. So that's the time horizon for it. And I concur with you. You know, we're trying to negotiate in-house with big business. Yeah. And we're not necessarily fully equipped. Not that what's been done in the past is bad, it's just it may not be adequate for these agreements that are coming up soon for either extension or a brand new agreement. we're not we shouldn't expect the staff person to be to have those competencies to that level to be able to do that because they're doing many other things as a part of their job you need somebody who that's all they do every day uh and and uh when we're going up against big business They don't take prisoners. So you're making a lot of sense with your feedback.

Absolutely. I'm glad we agree. And getting that anchor tenant. I've got a fan.

What's that? I'll take it. Thank you.

Getting that large firm, that first dominant, that large firm anchor tenant, whether we're talking about shipbuilding or manufacturing, these are very exquisite things. industries, right, which requires some exquisite skills. So I agree 100% on that.

Yeah. And so once again, you know, staff's attempted to fulfill the role, but it's probably unrealistic to expect a full-time staff person here, unless that's their full-time job, to be overly effective that way without some support, some external expertise to bring to bear.

Yep. And not a knock on them, but it's just we're looking at effectiveness and efficiency right now.

We're looking at generating dollars.

Yeah, absolutely. So, next point. You know, I've been very concerned about the budget for a while. That's why I was asking for a performance audit. That's why I was asking for a long-range financial plan. It is what it is as far as, like, the timing of it. But, again, reaffirming, hey, I'd love to see that happen sooner than later. A couple asks. Casimir Matias mentioned or had a rant about the revenue side of the house. AGAIN, YOU BROUGHT UP THE LONG RANGE FINANCIAL PLAN, BUT I JUST HAVE TO REITERATE THAT WE HAVE TO ASSESS WHAT ARE THE THINGS THAT ARE MAKING US MONEY. I CAN EYEBALL THESE THINGS. I LIKE TO ADD PLANNING AND BUILDING TO THAT MATTER, BUT AGAIN, JUST A REASSESSMENT OF WHAT THAT IS THAT'S ACTUALLY MAKING US MONEY AND JUST DOUBLING DOWN ON THAT REINVESTMENT. And then lastly, just going forward, and it's too late for this now, but going forward, it will be nice to see some sort of warning lights as far as the direction we're going in terms of budget. Is our budget flexible enough? Are we getting too vulnerable? Is it sustainable? I feel like we want to say something about that.

If I may, I want to thank you again. That comment feeds right directly into the long-range financial plan. Because what I'm envisioning presenting to you all for your approval is not only a long-range financial plan that's going to be paper-based, but it's going to also be electronic, which is going to allow for a lot of scenario analysis, sensitivity analysis, which is what you're referencing. Yes. So that's why this long-range financial plan is – ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL FOR SUSTAINED WINNING AS A CITY. PERFECT.

OKAY.

THANK YOU.

COUNCILMEMBER GORDON.

THANK YOU SO VERY MUCH. I KNOW THAT YOU, THAT'S YOUR SEVENTH THANK YOU. Because it is understandable. You know, when I sat here, you know, 14 months ago, I was nervous. And just, you know, you open up a present box. The box is beautiful, but when you open it up, it's one of them gifts you want to give away quick. But I want to thank you because you accepted the charge, every last one of you, to come up with three scenarios and clarify them. But I do have some concerns, as was mentioned prior to, what sacrifices will be made? How will our residents feel about OUR EMPLOYEES FAIL AND REMEMBER A LOT OF OUR EMPLOYEES LIVE HERE AS WELL SO THEY WILL SUFFER TWICE. I HAVE A QUESTION THAT I WOULD LIKE TO ASK. WHERE ARE WE AT HIRING OUR FINANCIAL DIRECTOR? I AM BATHLED BY THAT. ESPECIALLY IN OTHER CITIES WHEN THIS IS NEEDED. It's like hot commodity. Let's get this together because I do admire you all, but as you just mentioned, sir, um, STAFF HAVE OTHER RESPONSIBILITIES, RIGHT? SO THAT IS LIKE WE'RE ASKING THEM TO WEAR ALL THESE HATS AND NOT GIVING THEM NO TYLENOLS BECAUSE THEIR HEAD HAS TO GET HEAVY WEARING ALL THOSE HATS. I KNOW I DO AS A MOTHER. AND AN ADVOCATE WENT AT THAT FOR MY SONS. SO THAT'S ONE QUESTION. AND IF YOU BEAR WITH ME ONE MORE SECOND BEFORE YOU ANSWER THAT ONE, WHERE ARE WE AT BECAUSE WHAT I DON'T SEE HERE IS HOW MUCH MONEY WE HAVE SPENT OUT THROUGHOUT THE YEAR FOR CONSULTANTS AND SO FORTH. THAT'S ONE I WAS CONCERNED ABOUT. BUT I GET NERVOUS IN A COMMUNITY THAT ALWAYS GETS NEGLECTED WHEN IT TALKS ABOUT BUDGET CUT. BECAUSE MY DISTRICT SEES LIKE IT'S LIKE A STEP CHILD. IT DOESN'T BENEFIT. IT DOESN'T GET ANY ECONOMICS POUR INTO THE COMMUNITY. IT DOESN'T GET ANY BEAUTIFICATION. IT DOESN'T GET ANY JUST HEALTH NECESSITIES, HEALTHY GROCERIES AND WHATNOT. SO I GET NERVOUS WHEN WE TALK ABOUT BUDGET CUT BECAUSE I'M LIKE, WOULD DISTRICT SIX SUFFER? SO THAT'S NUMBER ONE. I MEAN, GO AHEAD.

FOR THE FINANCE DIRECTOR, WE DID RUN IT SOME MONTHS BACK WHEN WE WERE IN THE PROCESS OF DOING MID-YEAR, BUT IT WAS A FAILED RECRUITMENT. IT WAS DURING THE MID-YEAR BUDGET THAT WE WERE GOING TO BE ASKING FOR ADDITIONAL monies to do some of the executive level recruitments. Because remember, in one fiscal year period of time, we had so many executive level vacancies at one time, we don't ever budget for that many. And so mid-year didn't pass, so we didn't have the extra funds to run those additional executive level recruitments yet. So we're hoping that once we have the fiscal year pass, that we will have additional funds to be able to rerun those recruitments so that will be the balance of the rest of our executive level of recruitments that we'll run.

What's the timeline that you're anticipating that? The timeline?

As soon as humanly possible for the finance director.

All of these director positions are hard to fill to varying degrees. The finance director position is is at the upper quadrant of difficult, because everybody's looking for one, because of so many retirements throughout the state. But that's no excuse. As the director has mentioned, I mean, we're already working on it. I'm working my network of people as we speak. But we're going to need to do, we're going to most likely need to do an executive recruitment And we know how to help manage that executive recruitment to manage the executive recruiter as well.

And in addition to that, we already have an executive recruiter that we were working with on it. So it'll be a faster process because they're already.

But I also just want to speak real quick to the timing. So unfortunately what happened is when we had our failed recruitment that I think we did our last round of interviews sometimes in January, end of January. That was our last real window to kind of open it up because that's when budget starts. So one of the issues that we found was that when we failed that recruitment process, we were not going to get a seasoned budget finance manager in place because they were busy doing the budgets at wherever they were at. So the pickings were going to be really slim if we even got anyone to actually respond to the recruitment. And there's always a danger when you have a failed recruitment, you post, you get less RESPONDENTS UNLESS YOU WAIT FOR A PERIOD OF TIME. WE WERE ALREADY IN MID-YEAR AND SHORTLY AFTER MID-YEAR WE HAD THE BUDGET DEFICIT AND THE BALANCING ACT. WE ARE NOW IN A PLACE THAT IS MORE ADVANTAGEOUS IN THE SENSE THAT WE ARE FINALIZING OUR NEXT YEAR'S BUDGET SO THAT ANY POTENTIAL FINANCE DIRECTOR COMING IN CAN START you know, fresh. So our hope is that there's enough time has passed from the last recruitment. So when we put it out, it looks fresh and someone won't have to go through this process. It will mostly be completed and they're able to step in and then look forward.

And thank you for that. And I appreciate you breaking that down because it absolutely makes sense, especially in that in whatever they're located, they're working on the same thing that we're doing. I get that. But my my big concern now would be how will we pay them? So if we're talking about was money set aside for that?

Yes, all director positions. So when we spoke earlier about remaining vacancies, those are some of the critical positions that are still funded. So when we talk about, you know, we went through an exercise with all the department heads that we had. at the time to indicate what were critical positions and what were vacant positions that they were willing to offer up. And so that's why we came to the 44, which, I mean, of course, they would love to keep them, but they understand what the exercise was. And so they offered up those general funded positions, those 44 vacant positions. And that left a number of additional vacancies that they felt were critical. And that was sort of what the directors had indicated. So they made that choice. Now, when we went through the process of figuring out where exactly we were in budget, we realized that that wasn't going to be enough. to get us to where we needed to be. And so we did the exercise of figuring out what that actually looked like, because council also wanted a more permanent reduction in expenditures. So part of the first balancing scenario that we had put forward was more one-time actions, but folks felt like that was kicking the can down the road, so you wanted sort of a more permanent approach. This gets us there. And so unfortunately, You know, it's a little, I think, as Council Member Matias was saying, we will, once you choose a scenario, it is up to us over the next, what is that, six, seven weeks to figure out what the impact is going to bring and bring that back to you so that you really understand what those decisions are, whether it's the 44 vacancies, whether it's the 70, whether it's some sort of number in between there, that's the exercise that we will engage in.

AND GETTING BACK TO YOUR ORIGINAL QUESTION, IN TERMS OF FUNDING FOR THESE DIRECTIVE POSITIONS, THAT FUNDING IS AVAILABLE, WILL BE AVAILABLE. SO THAT WOULDN'T BE AN ISSUE.

THANK YOU FOR THAT. YOU PRESENTED THREE SCENARIOS, AND I GATHER LISTENING TO YOU TOWARDS THE END WITH MY NOTES HERE, AS YOU KNOW I'M GOING TO DO, IT SEEMS LIKE YOU'RE FOCUSING ON SCENARIO THREE. Was scenario one and two allusions that you hope we didn't pick?

No, not at all. Not at all. We are prepared for you to pick either scenario. I'm just suggesting that the more strategic scenario would be scenario three. But we're prepared. We're prepared to do whatever you select. We're just thinking about You know, so we don't have a lot of margin here. I've sent you all a benchmarking exercise. Yes, you did, yes. And so when I see that benchmarking, it tells me that, look, we looked at seven cities, comparable cities, within a 25, 30-mile radius, okay? Of the seven, we have the least number, the second least number of FTEs, okay? We have the... we have the second lowest general fund budget. So it tells me that we're lean, we're lean and mean. So therefore what it tells me is that we want to be very careful, you know, in terms of what we do and how we do it, because we don't have the privilege of a lot of cushion. And so every decision that we make will either have a good consequence or a bad one. That's it.

Well, thank you very much. If we was to select, let's say we went with scenario one, what is the consequences of scenario one?

We would have to, as soon as the budget is approved, right at July 1, we would have to start the process of identifying the 26 people as soon as possible in order to generate the savings benefit that we are anticipating.

And when you say people, you're talking about live jobs.

Absolutely. And so we would not have the sufficient time, in my view, to do it in the smartest way. It would be okay, but it wouldn't be the smartest and most strategic way to do it.

And scenario two, what is the consequences? Same thing.

Same thing.

What's the difference, though? Something's different about it.

What's the difference with scenario two?

Because they're almost the same. Is the amount? It's more Measure P money.

It would be more Measure P. Correct.

So the baseline budget that was proposed that you received copies of assumed the $2.28 million. Yeah, the 2.28 million, that would be funded by Measure P, but they only approve 760,000. That's correct. So the scenario two approves the additional 1.52 million.

So what Measure P did not authorize, we would be making it up? Correct. I got you. I just want to make sure that. Yeah, that's the difference between one and two. So I want to make it clear. I got like two texts about the difference, so I'm just clarifying for the public. And so number three, besides yourself, sir, and I know that is important, did the rest of your team feel that number three would be better?

I think there's consensus that, you know, the more time you have to make these decisions, significant decisions to better off things. So I think there's general consensus among the team. But again, that's just a recommendation. We're prepared to execute whatever you approve at whatever point. We're prepared to enthusiastically execute it for you.

Well, thank you. I appreciate that. I do want to make sure we highlight what my colleague mentioned earlier about what is the consequence, what service will be lacking, what service would be hurting, because we can't say we want the roads fixed, but we don't have nobody to fix it. We can't say we want the roads to be fixed, but we don't have no merchandise or materials to fix it. Thank you.

All right, so my plan was to give my comments and then kind of talk procedurally and maybe recommend an option. I do see a second round of lights from Council Members Matias and Paul Mares, and I want to check in with you. Do you have quick additional questions or comments that you want to throw in now, and then I'll go and then try to set us up for decision? Council Member Paul Mares, go ahead.

Thank you, Mayor, for the latitude. Real quick. I KNOW YOU'RE FAIRLY NEW, BUT IF YOU RECALL, I SENT YOU AN E-MAIL REGARDING CHANNEL 6A, AND I DON'T KNOW HOW FAR ALONG YOU ARE WITH THE ASSESSMENT, BUT ARE YOU FAR ALONG ENOUGH THAT YOU HAVE A COST ASSOCIATED WITH THAT? AND IF SO, DO YOU FEEL THAT NEEDS TO BE INCORPORATED INTO THIS BUDGET?

I think we have a preliminary cost. I don't recall what the number is. Do you recall what the number is?

I think it was about 87. Oh, no, no.

I'm sorry. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

No, no.

It's around what?

Oh, sorry.

This one.

It's on. It's already on.

So the estimate for services was $87,000, but we think there's going to be additional need for some additional permitting because of salt marsh harvest mouse and Ridgeways Rail.

Worst case scenario potential. What's the worst case scenario?

$120,000.

Right.

We think there's room in the CFD budget if that's allowable. So that would not have an impact on the...

The director is suggesting that... The city... Excuse me.

I'm sorry, I didn't hear it. Excuse me. What was the comment? It's city property.

Yeah, I just want to make sure we're maintaining our... Yeah, so the thing is the director is suggesting that the current CIP can absorb that potential expenditure.

We probably have enough flex in our budget to absorb $120,000. So, yeah, that's not on the table for, you know.

Right, right. CIP budget, not CFT?

No, it would be the citywide landscape management crew.

Yeah, okay. Great. I'd love to see that part of that budget. Thank you.

I think we'll be able to make that happen.

Thank you.

Council Member Matias, do you have something to add now, or do you want to wait? I do. Okay, go ahead.

Thank you. So... RESPECTFULLY TO MY COLLEAGUE. MY COLLEAGUE HAS BEEN MAKING A LOT OF ASKS. AND I HAVEN'T ASKED FOR MY DISTRICT. IF WE'RE GOING TO START DOING IT, IF WE'RE GOING TO START DOING THIS, THEN I THINK WE SHOULD ALL, I'M JUST GOING TO BE STRAIGHT UP. BECAUSE OTHERWISE, ALL THESE EXPENSES, THEY NEED TO BE, IF YOU'RE EXPENDING, YOU NEED TO FIGURE OUT HOW YOU'RE GOING TO PAY FOR IT. AND SO, I DON'T KNOW WHAT THE COST OF ALL THESE MAYOR ISLAND ASKS ARE, BUT THAT WOULD BE HELPFUL TO KNOW, ONE. AND TWO, I WILL TELL YOU, THERE'S A ROAD IN MY DISTRICT THAT NEEDS TO BE REPAVED, FOOTHILL DRIVE. IT'S BEEN TAKING A DISPROPORTIONATE AMOUNT OF TRAFFIC BECAUSE OF THE COSTCO CONSTRUCTION, AND IT HAS BEEN TAKING IT FOR WELL OVER A YEAR. SO IF WE'RE GOING TO START ADDING DISTRICT-SPECIFIC ASKS, I WANT THAT TO BE COSTED OUT.

because those residents have been patiently waiting and also dealing with all of that for a long time and you know so i would like for you to come back and let me know how that's going to be paid for too okay well yeah yeah that'll that something so in essence this particular item has some uniqueness to it uh uh it it's it has a environmental implication to it. So that's not just the district. That's more global. But I totally agree with you. I would encourage or suggest us not to go down that road and wait for let's look at that as a part of the long-range financial plan, that kind of stuff. we're responding to that particular situation because of the nature of what it is basically. It's located within a district, but it has more far reaching environmental implications to it. So it's different.

I hear you and also at the same time, if you were to cost out the amount of times that your public works department has gone to fill potholes on that one road over a year, it's a significant amount of money. And so I would at least like to see a cost out or some referral made because there's a huge construction happening and the disproportionate amount of the entire city's traffic is running through that residential neighborhood, which is unacceptable. So, yes.

I thought when we talked with the Costco project, they were willing to review the road previous and post the project to determine if there needed to be things fixed. Was that, because that's the detour, isn't that? part of that project to be reassessed.

Why don't we follow up, because we're pushing it on the budget item, but I think that needs follow-up.

It's a different budget. It's a different budget.

Is it the CIP? It would be the CIP. It would be the CIP. Okay. I think, I mean, I'm going to make a note of it, because I think it does need to come back, but I don't know that this is how it, this is where it's going to go.

No, but I have to ask you, if we're making district-specific requests, why is my request not being allowed? I'm just, it's just a general question. It's the same. I know you're talking about the environment. I hear you. And also that's an issue. That's a huge issue in my district. So I want to know why is my request not being honored?

I don't know that we're voting on any of them in this budget right now. Because I think it's going to come back at another time is what we're saying. They're all going to come back and they're going to come back at another time.

Yeah, I mean, this particular item for you would be a heavy infrastructure investment, which would naturally fall within the CIP budget. So the idea would be to have that conversation when we get to the CIP budget is what we would just suggest. I'm just letting you know it's coming up. Oh, yeah, absolutely. We look forward to it. Yeah, thanks.

all right i'll uh so the advantage of uh waiting till the end is a lot of what i was going to say has been said so the comments i prepared i'll kind of work through and maybe go a little quicker a couple remaining questions that haven't been asked um with respect to the staffing levels uh i i know um acm conley you had compared When we cut the 44 vacant positions, the staffing level I think we'll be at is something like 419. And I think that was comparable to where we were as a city in maybe 2017 or 2018. Would you clarify that? I just want to make sure I'm remembering correctly. Ballpark, we don't have to be precise.

Yeah, I think you're close.

I just want to frame that for the public that when we cut these vacant positions, like there's been some bloat recently. And I think, you know, that gets back to what the interim city manager and kind of all of us have been saying is by doing this analysis, we'll be able to get there. There's not, this is not a doom and gloom scenario. The CFD freezing issue can, I'm thinking that that can probably come back separately, but I wanted to clarify the $100,000 price tag. That's a special fund. and that wouldn't impact the general fund. I just want to make sure that's correct, right? And there's money in that fund. Correct. Correct. So you just wouldn't be putting additional money in that fund.

Correct.

So that, I just want to frame that as we have, this is something related to a special fund, not the general fund. Third question, just to clarify, iHeart, is that fully funded through P in this, or do we need more money for iHeart? I think it's fully funded through P. I just want to make sure that's all it needs. That's full funding for iHeart? Yes.

Fully funded.

Measure P did not recommend the Danny Murphy contract or Axon. Did we put those into the general budget or are they just not in this budget at all? Because we do need Danny Murphy in there. You asked that question. Okay. Sorry. It's all fully. And what about Axon?

Yes. But the Axon and Danny Murphy are part. Yes.

Just making sure. DO WE NEED ANYTHING ELSE FOR THE PERFORMANCE AUDITING OR ARE WE STILL GOOD WITH THE CARRY OVER FUNDING THAT WE APPROVED THE PREVIOUS YEARS?

WE HAVE THE FUNDING FOR THE INTERNAL AUDIT, THE RISK ANALYSIS. IT'S IN PROGRESS.

AND WE DON'T NEED ADDITIONAL FUNDING IN THIS BUDGET. SOME OF THIS IS ALSO JUST FOR THE COMMUNITY BECAUSE FOLKS ARE LIKE, WAIT, WHAT HAPPENED?

THAT IS ACTUALLY ONGOING.

We allocated the funding in previous years and it took forever, which we were not happy about. But it is happening now and we're using the funding that we had previously allocated for it. So we have funding for it and we're good to go. So I don't want the community to be alarmed that we're not putting more funding into it because we already have it.

Correct.

I am I'm good with option three at this point I feel with some I'll add some comments that are not dissimilar to what's already been said it's the right move for us at this time and I think we've had a lot of conversations up here about fiscal responsibility and the big piece of that for me is you know we've got to get to a structurally balanced budget we've had conversations about what it means to have a structurally balanced budget we didn't get as far as we wanted in this past year but That doesn't mean that we should make rash decisions just for the sake of getting there part of the responsibility and fiscal responsibility is doing it responsibly and we have a new interim city manager and that is developing that long-range financial plan, that's looking at the org structure, that's already done some benchmarking. We're already farther along than we were before. We've got the performance audits in progress. Again, took longer than we wanted, but we're gonna have that information. There's additional work that can be done. The interim city manager's working on procurement processes, tightening, overtime some of the issues we identified at mid-year and so just giving those few months is going to give going to give us a lot more information to be able to make responsible decisions that our community wants and deserves and what I'm going to suggest is that we together collectively I'll commit to doing it in collaboration with the city manager's office, but we probably want to do it as a whole council, figuring out that communication and follow-up plan for the public to say, hey, these are the things. We're not going to have a repeat of last year. This is not going to happen. We have a new team. We're not going to repeat the Groundhog Day of previous years. what can you expect in at what stages? You know, in three months, what will the update be? At mid-year, what will the update be? And figuring out how we're going to communicate to the public, either through a periodic community meeting or press release or whatever it may be, so that there's the transparency, the process of, okay, this is when you can expect the update on the audits. This is when you can expect the, whatever it may be, the revenue analysis to come back, the long-range financial plan to come back, so that we're being really clear. We need this time, but we're not just going to, this isn't just going to be the same conveyor belt or whatever we were talking about earlier. The other piece that I wanted to mention is we do have goal setting next month. And that is going to be a very important piece of the conversation as we think about prioritizing. And one of the things that I wrote here is I feel, and I said this last year, we're having, I mean, it feels like deja vu, I'm not going to lie. I can only imagine what Council Member Brigenzer feels because this is his fourth time. This is, for four of us, this is only our second. I want to have a conversation about what we should be using measure P for, not what we shouldn't use it for or these ad hoc requests, but what do we want to be using measure P for? And part of that is going to come from, I think, goal setting. And to the commenter that made the comment about grants, that's also going to empower us. I can go out and try to hustle for funding. We can go to our legislators, our congressmen, and advocate for funding. We can get grants, but we need to have the vision and the goals, and goal setting is going to get us there. I feel, you know, as much as there's frustration, as I said at the beginning, I wanted to kind of bookend frame it because I think we're in a very good position right now. And I think there's a lot of reason for us to feel an optimism, not that it's going to be easy, but that we're finally on that path that we've been try to get on this whole time uh... couple just notes uh... if we i'm i'm kind of torn on making an arbitrary decision on the community events but i would request that we have another conversation about it because i think we should at least talk about alternate models of funding whether it's something that can be funded through pb uh... for clarity on pb there is still money in pb so we're not cutting pb participatory budgeting we are not adding to the fund that hasn't been used we're just pausing it again to give us this time to do this analysis so can we fund the community events through pb can we fund the community events through something else can we use philanthropy do we need to you know do we need to find some funds i think that's a that's a conversation we should have i don't think we need to have it now We've got to have a conversation about flock. I've been concerned about flock for years. When I was on the SAB, since I've been on the SAB, we were raising the reproductive rights concerns. Now we've got the immigration concerns. It feels like every other week there's a new controversy THERE'S VALUE IN THE TECHNOLOGY. WE USE IT TO CATCH STOLEN VEHICLES BUT IT'S LIKE COUNCILMEMBER SAID, AT WHAT COST AND ARE THERE WAYS FOR US TO MITIGATE THAT? ARE THERE WAYS FOR US TO TIGHTEN OUR PRIVACY POLICIES? WE'VE GOT TO GET IN A ROOM WITH THE SAB AND EVERYBODY AND WE'VE GOT TO KNOCK THAT OUT. SO MY RECOMMENDATION WOULD PROBABLY BE TO HOLD OFF, ESPECIALLY BECAUSE IT'S NOT PART OF THE BUDGET BALANCING, HOLD OFF AND PULL FLOCK AND HAVE A SEPARATE CONVERSATION ABOUT FLOCK. I don't want to lay anybody off arbitrarily. So I'm very strongly on option three. I'm not going to support any version of one or two because I think we owe it to our community not to make reckless decisions. And I've thought a lot about the Measure P issues. I think the thing that everybody agreed on, the whole community agreed on, pro, anti, neutral, ambivalent, the one thing people wanted with P was just the responsible stewardship of the funds. that was really the issue at hand and that was why the commission was set up and all these things and so i think we'd do be doing wrong by our residents if we arbitrarily just started asking the city manager to cut staff without doing the analysis and then we've got all this money piling up in measure p and we don't have staff to implement it and we end up hiring consultants and doing exactly what we didn't want to do i i just i think if you think about the sort of the set of values that united everybody in the conversation around measure p it was we want responsible fiscal management and so i think we need to be really thoughtful about what and how we cut because we might actually shoot ourselves in the foot cutting positions and then make p less useful and somebody kind of mentioned that if we don't have the if we don't have the capacity to use the fund then the money, we're gonna be sitting here not providing essential services with tens of millions of dollars piling up in an account that we don't have capacity to use. And that's not what our residents want. They want, frankly, they want road repairs. So that was gonna be another thing I was gonna mention is I think a good chunk of it should be road repair. It's like east, west, north, south Vallejo, Old Young, everyone in the middle. What I hear from folks all over the city is that they want the roads fixed. That is the one thing that unites us. I think we've made a lot of progress on police response and public safety to the point where I am hearing probably 95% of what I'm hearing is fix the roads. So I just want to throw that out there that if we're going to lessen the general fund road repair budget, we need to supplement that MP and we need to put a lot into the roads. SO MY QUESTION FOR THE TEAM, ASSISTANT CITY MANAGER OR CITY MANAGER IS IF WE VOTE NOW ON SOMETHING DIFFERENT THAN THE PROPOSED BUDGET, WHAT DO WE NEED TO VOTE ON TO GIVE YOU THE DIRECTION? SHOULD WE VOTE ON AN OPTION I'M TEMPTED FOR US TO BREAK OUT SOME OF THE INDIVIDUAL ITEMS THAT I JUST RAISED. I THINK WE'RE ALL FAIRLY ALIGNED ON THE BROAD VALUES, BUT WE MIGHT HAVE DIFFERENCES OF OPINION ON LITTLE ITEMS. THE QUESTION I HAVE BASICALLY IS, WHAT WOULD BE THE MOST EFFICIENT WAY FOR US TO GIVE YOU THE MOTIONS NEEDED TO GET THIS DONE RIGHT NOW?

SO I'LL LET THE CITY MANAGER SPEAK TO THE SCENARIO PIECE, BUT I WILL SAY THAT WHAT WOULD BE HELPFUL TO THE FINANCE TEAM IS IF YOU COULD VOTE FOR ALL THE OTHER FUNDS to move forward and essentially, you know, if there's something that you want us to bring back or to the next meeting with regards to the general fund that we kind of separate, we separate those out so we can move forward with sort of the budget prep process for all the other funds and then the general fund is the one, you know, that we can take on.

Yeah, yeah. So with respect to the general fund, you either approve an option as recommended or you direct us to look at specific things related to an option, which means that we would take that back and bring the modified option back to you. So those would be really the two choices.

DO YOU WANT TO JUMP IN WITH QUESTIONS? YOU ARE PUTTING A MOTION OUT ON THE FLOOR FOR NUMBER THREE.

I'm not going to vote for number three without some conditions. And I think that's important. I don't disagree that there needs to be work done. But by the time I get to mid-year, I want to know what the, I want to see, I am not convinced, and I'm going to stand on this. You guys can vote how you want. I am not convinced. And the city manager did agree. I am not convinced that we don't need to do cuts. And I want to come back mid-year because for a full year, I'm going to say this and be very clear. We sat here, we gave directions, and we had a city manager who did nothing regarding the structural budget. And I'm not going to go through another full cycle with getting to the end of the year and then saying this is what we're going to do. cities are having to open up and counties are having to open up their budgets before the end of a budget cycle due to structural deficits, due to funding that's not coming in. By the time I get to mid-year, by the time we get to mid-year, I want to know what cuts need to happen here and what adjustments are we really going to make. And I want that to be a caveat because that's responsible budgeting regardless of the fact of what didn't get done. It is what is going to get done this fiscal year and holding it accountable and everyone being held accountable to that work being done and getting it back here on this dais. So I want to see that done in this budget cycle.

And I think that's the direction we're moving. And just to clarify, I was on more of, from a process standpoint, what do the motions need to look like?

So for the motions, if you could approve resolutions three through seven.

Because those don't impact the general fund.

Right, that don't impact the general fund and then hold off on one and two.

I don't know that we're, I mean.

Can we pull resolutions three through seven back up on the?

They weren't on the screen. They weren't on the.

Okay, so pull back up the data because you presented the data, right?

So the resolution, so it was in the staff report. Resolution 3 is the Blue Rock Springs Golf Course and fee and charge schedule.

It's all the special funds.

Right. Resolution 4 was the marina fee charge schedule. Resolution 5 was authorizing the city manager to purchase vehicles, which were scheduled and funded in the 2026-2027 replacement budget. And then resolution six was to execute purchase orders for the vendors and amounts for the 2627 budget as set forth in attachment G and then the ordinance that ratifies the creation of all the city funds.

So it's not related to the general fund.

The resolution one and two are related to general fund and staffing. And so those are the things I think that you still want to have discussions about.

And the vehicles are not general fund? Enterprise fund.

No, internal service fund.

Yeah, they are general fund, but... It's the, there's a process in terms of how they go through the purchasing of those vehicles.

It's an internal service fund, which means it's an internal business within city government. The way that it operates is departments, they need vehicles. There's a process in place by which they actually pay for their vehicles through this internal services fund. It's designed to take pressure off of the general fund.

But if you're a general fund department, so it's in the internal services fund, but if I'm a general fund department, while it might have been purchased in that internal service fund, When I come and I want that vehicle and it's going to my department, my department has to pay for that, correct? Yes. So the question then becomes, how many general fund departments will be pulling the inventory out of the IS and have to pay for that?

We can hold off on five because it's co-mingled.

Is both general fund and other?

Yeah, it's general fund and other funds, so we can hold off on resolution five.

So, yeah, thank you for the...

I mean, I guess I am... This is why I'm focusing on process, because I think we're figuring it out. But, I mean, I'm not opposed to moving on one and two tonight. And that depends on the council, obviously. But, I mean, I'm not opposed to doing step one of the budget tonight. Okay. I don't personally need to get more and come back on the 23rd. I'm more just asking about the best way to do this because we're going to pick an option, but then we're also going to have some additional things that we need to either clarify, pull, direction of next steps. And so I'm just trying to figure out the sequencing that's going to get us there in the most efficient way.

I think tonight you can... identify an option and provide additional further direction to staff related to that option. And so when we meet on the 23rd, we can come back to you with the results of your, yeah.

The option, so we wouldn't be approving the whole, the budget, but we'd be given the option.

Well, you're not really approving it. You can approve an option tonight, but you could also not approve. You could identify an option for further study in which you would give us additional direction related to that particular option, and then we would come back on the 23rd. Okay.

Or you can approve it tonight.

Oh, that's what I said. They can do it tonight, yes. It's their call. Yeah. Yeah.

I MEAN, I'M COMFORTABLE MOVING IT. I JUST WANT TO MAKE SURE WE GET THE PROPER DIRECTION. I WANT TO MAKE SURE PROPER DIRECTION. RIGHT. I THINK YOU HAVE A MOTION. GO AHEAD, COUNCILMEMBER MATTIES. I CAN MOVE. I JUST WASN'T SURE IF WE SHOULD PIECE MEAL THEM.

I mean, I don't, I'm going to be suggesting an alternative, so you can move with the, with number three. And we'll do an alternative. We'll just do that. Okay. We'll do an alternative.

I'll move, all right, I'll move that we proceed with approval via option three, so no layoffs, and that per council member let us use, and the comments I made about the comms, that we make sure that there's a clear plan of what the next step is with respect to resolving the issues that we're buying more time for. BUT I WOULD LIKE TO PULL FLOCK FOR FURTHER DISCUSSION AND I WOULD LIKE TO ASTERISK THE EVENTS PROGRAM FOR FURTHER DISCUSSION AS WELL. NOT ADD IT TO THE BUDGET BUT JUST HAVE FURTHER DISCUSSION ABOUT IT.

EVENTS IN PB ARE FULLY FUNDED IN THE BUDGET.

If special events are funded in the budget?

They are.

They're just combined. Oh, never mind. We can just end that then. Okay, no need to do that then.

But you can still discuss, but they're funded. You can discuss about the process.

I think I'm fine with that.

It's $1 million, but that was the money that was from last year, and this year's PB combined was supposed to be for PB, and now we're going to take that money and use half of it for special events, right? Correct. So that's... again now taking away money from PB. So it's in there, but we need to decide. I think it should be further discussion because we need to decide whether we want it to be combined or we want to separate it back out.

My motion, and I'm open to friendly amendments, my motion is going to be that we go with option three, that we pull flock out of it for further discussion, and that we go ahead and approve what we have for PB and events, but that we agendize a further discussion of whether we want to add to that, supplement it, separate it. That could be an amendment that we do later. And I think that's it with the plan for next steps in terms of when we're going to anticipate having the organizational assessment and the long-range plan to be able to make some more concrete decisions. And that will be, yeah, can we do all those in one swoop? So that'll be one through seven. So the fiscal year budget, can we do it all at once? Fiscal year budget, positions and salaries. We gotta do them all at once.

We have an ordinance. So the ordinance requires a first reading and it's not agendized that way. So we need to bring that back to you, unfortunately.

Which one's the ordinance? That's number seven. Oh, number seven. Right. All right, I'll move one to six and then we'll deal with seven.

and then you have an alternate motion let's hear it i do um so i am going to uh also propose scenario three uh but with the following changes uh the sheriff's contract savings of 1.7 million um i want that returned back to measure p that's number one number two um i would like um I would like 10 field FTEs to be reduced, and I would like the management team to do that work. So again, number one, I would swap out the sheriff's contract savings that proposal is currently calling for those savings to go into the general fund i'm asking that it be returned to measure p which is where we took the money from number two i would also like um the identification of 10 filled ftes for reduction um by the management team and I'm not telling you guys to do that within 30 days. I would give you until mid-year to do it. I get what you're saying, but this is my proposal. I get what you're saying. This is my proposal. So that's number two. And you would have until mid-year to look into that and make that proposal to the council. And then three... When you return for step two, I want specific revenue targets for code enforcement, planning and fire, and then another $250,000 allocation to the marina for dredging. That's my proposal.

Council Member Letijoux, you have a... Yeah.

Yeah.

SO YOU ARE INCLUDING THE FLOCK AND THE COMMUNITY? YES. SO BASICALLY ON THE SECOND AMENDMENT, WE ARE GOING TO HAVE AT MIDYEAR, AS I STATED, I STAND ON THIS.

we will know what the reduction needs to be outside of 10. I really want to see the workforce right-sized. So I'm going to add that my friendly amendment to that is it can be 10 or more. Because if you go back and look at the trends of maybe three years ago, how we increased our number of staff, It's great, it's significant, especially in the city manager's office. And what I'm asking, there's supposed to be a performance audit. That performance audit should also assess THE ORGANIZATION, IT CAN DO MANY THINGS. YOU ALREADY KNOW THAT. AND WHEN IT COMES, WHEN YOU ARE WORKING THROUGH THIS BY MID-YEAR, I'M EXPECTING THERE TO BE SOME REAL RIGHT SIZING IN THIS BUDGET. AND THAT'S WHAT I'M LOOKING FOR, A REAL HONEST ASSESSMENT OF WHAT THE CITY COMPOSITION NEEDS TO BEGIN TO LOOK LIKE AS WE'RE MOVING FORWARD.

GO AHEAD.

SO I WANT TO MAKE SURE THAT I'M CLEAR. What I'm hearing is filled FTE positions to be reduced to support this proposed budget. Is that what I'm hearing?

Yes. So let me recap it again. So it's number three with everything that the mayor identified in her motion. I'M SWAPPING OUT THE CONTRACT SAVINGS OF 1.7 MILLION. THAT PROPOSAL CALLS FOR IT TO GO INTO THE GENERAL FUND. I FIND THAT INAPPROPRIATE, SO I'M SENDING IT BACK TO MEASURE P. AND TO STILL ACCOUNT FOR THE 1.7 MILLION, I'M ASKING YOU TO IDENTIFY 10 FILLED FTEs FOR REDUCTION BY MID-YEAR. Because that is a prorated account, to account for the argument that you've made, that unless you do that within 30 days, you can't capture the full savings, I am also asking that you set revenue targets for code enforcement, planning and fire, and that you also make an additional down payment of $250,000 for the marina for dredging.

Okay, just if I may, Mayor, to make that happen, We would have to cut those positions as quickly as possible post-July 1 to realize the savings for that fiscal year. Waiting until mid-year would not help us. Secondly, we would need to come up with probably close to another $5 million we would probably need to come up with another four and a half to five million dollars, which would have to come from a combination of Measure P and fund balance, because we're gonna be restricted on fund balance based on the fund balance that we've already taken out. I need to go to staff in terms of whatever the fund balance policy is, but there's a restriction in it in terms of what you can pull out of it. I'm just sharing.

I hear you, interim city manager, and this is step one, right? So you could come back. We have to take votes. So you guys need to come back for a step two and make the math math, depending on which option we go with.

Yes, yes. And I'm going to kind of be a little funny here and say that I'm not Terrence Howard. One plus one, one times one doesn't equal two. It equals one. But anyway.

I get it. I get it.

All right, I see the Vice Mayor and Council Member Gordon. We're going to go clarifying questions because we do need to vote. We've got two motions and we can't have any more. So clarifying questions on the motions. Vice Mayor first and then Council Member Gordon.

The clarifying question I had was to Council Member Matias' point of $250,000 for dredging. The last I checked a couple of years ago, the minimum was $500,000 to even make any substantial or significant change. So I'm not sure if the $250,000...

So we already set aside last year, thanks to the cuts we made. We have $800,000 in the fund account. That came from last year. We also have close to $2 million from Assemblymember Wilson. And we need to start moving on that. So I think the only missing piece is, do we have the permits?

And that's part of the question also. And I think we need to confirm that that's what the current... dredging rate is. Because the rate before was whatever it was. And whether that's changed currently, then...

Okay. Okay.

That was my clarifying question, so thank you.

Council Member Gordon. This is what my ask is. If we could, because a whole bunch of stuff is going around now, and, you know, I JUST WANT TO SAY, CAN WE VOTE, IF WE'RE GOING TO SAY WE VOTE ON THREE, WE VOTE ON THREE. IF YOU DON'T, YOU DON'T. How does that work? Because right now we got five things out there and I'm confused.

I will clarify the difference.

Because some of it, what I heard, I agree. And some of it, I don't agree. I don't agree about staff at all. So how do I not vote for something I'm not agreeing for?

From parliamentary procedure, we have to vote. We'll vote on the alternate motion first. So we'll vote on Council Member Matias' motion. That's the last one. We can only have two. So hers was already included in the motion. So we'll vote for Council Member Matias' first, which is everything I said plus 10 layoffs and the dredging and the... The revenue, the specific revenue options. The measure P, the share of what we're on going back to measure P. If that passes, that's it. We've approved it. If it fails, then we vote on mine. That's how it'll work.

And the revenue pieces. And the revenue pieces, that's right. And the flock.

And the flock was all in, yeah. So I think let's go ahead and vote. We'll just see what happens and we'll go from there. So let's go ahead and vote on Council Member Matias' motion.

Writing feverishly over here.

Motion carries with council members Gordon, Matulik, and Mayor Soros opposed. All right. We have a budget.

Do we need anything else?

I think we're going to have to.

Oh, we need number seven. Oh.

Number seven is an ordinance. Because it's an ordinance, it requires a first reading and a second reading. So we can't adopt that tonight. We didn't agendize it correctly. It should have been agendized as a first reading, but we can do that for the 23rd. And then we can adopt it again on, I think you have a meeting on the 30th.

So we'll have to have a special meeting is what we're hearing.

I think you already have one set for the 30th, if I recall right.

Well, we will have to have one if we have to. Oh, that's right. That's the alternate date. We wouldn't need one otherwise. You're right, Mary. Yeah, but it sounds like we will need to have one. FROM THE STAFF PERSPECTIVE, DO WE HAVE ENOUGH FOR STEP ONE, OR ARE YOU GOING TO HAVE TO BRING BACK STEP ONE? THERE'S ENOUGH IN THERE. IS THAT ENOUGH FOR STEP ONE, OR ARE WE GOING TO NEED TO BRING STEP ONE BACK NEXT MEETING?

I'M GOING TO DEFER TO THE TEAM TO, BASED ON THIS MOTION, WHAT IS IT GOING TO MEAN IN TERMS OF WHAT WE'RE GOING TO NEED TO DO WHEN WE LEAVE THIS ROOM? BECAUSE IN ESSENCE, IN ESSENCE, WE WILL, WE'RE GOING TO COME BACK TO YOU BECAUSE WE'RE GOING TO HAVE FUND BALANCE RESTRICTIONS. AND SO A LOT OF THIS IS GOING TO HAVE TO COME FROM ANOTHER SOURCE BECAUSE OF THOSE RESTRICTIONS. CAN STAFF SORT OF PROVIDE SOME FEEDBACK? I JUST WANT TO SORT OF SET EXPECTATIONS.

FOR THIS SCENARIO.

Yes, or this modified scenario.

Right, so the modified scenario that you just voted on, we are going to come back with the shift in numbers of what that means, right, because the 1.7 will go back to Measure P, the proposed 10 FTE reductions, we will cost that out, and then we'll remove the flock, we'll do the revenue projections for planning, fire, code. We will include those in the full budget scenario and we'll bring that back.

So would it be accurate then to say that we will see the new version of numbers one and two for step one on the 23rd. We've approved three through six and we'll see seven for step one on the 23rd. Would that be accurate? You'll approve one through six

tonight and this is the first reading of number seven because it's an ordinance. We'll do the second reading on the twenty-third.

Actually it's not agendized as the first reading is the problem. It has to be agendized with those words.

So we'll do the first reading on the twenty-third and the second reading on the thirtieth?

Correct. Is it possible to do the reading without having it be on the agenda? Can we It has to be agendized. It has to be agendized, yeah.

All right. It sounds like we have a plan. It sounds like we have a plan. So we're coming back on the 23rd. We'll do step one on the 23rd. We'll do step two on the 30th. And we will move to item K. We have two more items. So we have item K, and then we have item 8.1. Well, I have a question, and I think we need to close this item. Let's announce item 9K, and then I have a clarifying question about it. City Clerk, whenever you're ready, if you could announce item 9K. And just to recap for the record, we continued item 9I, and we reordered item 9J and already heard it, so we are now on K.

Adopted resolution approving $150,000 budget amendment for the city attorney's office for fiscal year 2526 for employee investigation.

So my clarifying question for this is we had done something on this, but normally we see step one or step two because this is a budget amendment.

You did step one already.

We did step one. So the fact that this doesn't say step two... Is that sufficient, or do we need it to come back?

Yes, it's sufficient. Mayor, it does say step two on the resolution, in the title of the resolution.

This is step two? Right, step two. So this could have been on consent. OK.

It could have, but I put it on action. It was kind of.

Let's go ahead and open up public comment on the item then. Is there any presentation we have on it?

I can give you a short presentation if you like.

Only if you had something you wanted to give.

I do not have anything new other than, different than what I told you before.

Right. Do we have any public comment on the item in person?

Yes, we do. Eric Johnson.

Is Mr. Johnson still in the room? Do we have anyone online? Let's see if he's online.

Through the Mayor, no speakers on this item at this time.

Okay, we'll give Mr. Johnson a minute. Actually, I'll go to Council Member Matias, and then we'll see if Mr. Johnson's here.

I just have a quick. I don't know what that was. I just have a quick clarifying question for the city attorney, assistant city attorney, sorry. So we have. So you guys are asking for $150,000 just for the next three weeks?

It's for work that's already been done, Councilmember. There are bills that are outstanding.

So we approved, for the record, we approved. Was it $300,000 for investigations this year?

You raised, well, we increased an existing contract by $150,000 to a total not to exceed price of $350,000 per fiscal year.

$350,000. Correct. So we went from $2,000 to $350,000. Correct. Okay. I just needed to clarify that. Thanks.

All right. Anybody else? If not, let's check one more time for our speaker.

Eric Johnson.

AND JUST TO CLARIFY, YOU'RE WANTING TO SPEAK ON THE ITEM AROUND EMPLOYEE INVESTIGATIONS, THE BUDGET FOR EMPLOYEE INVESTIGATIONS? OKAY. OKAY, SO WE'LL WANT TO GET YOU DURING THE COMMUNITY FORUM THEN. ALL RIGHT, WITH THAT, I THINK WE'RE READY FOR A MOTION.

Yes, I move that we adopt a resolution approving a $150,000 budget amendment for the city attorney's office for fiscal year 2025-2026 for employee investigations.

I'm missing one vote, there we go. Motion carries with Council Member Matias opposed.

All right, that is going to bring us to our continued consent item 8.1, which was pulled, and it was previously item 8C, adopt an ordinance amending the Fairview at Northgate master plan to increase the number of residential dwelling units, amend the zoning map, change the zoning district, and that... is the summary I'll give at this point. And I will turn it over to Councilmember Palmares who pulled the item.

Good evening. Just a general conversation about this project. So can you please clarify if there are CFDs that are being applied to this project?

Good evening, Mayor and members of the City Council. I'm Cesar Roscoe, Planning Manager. I have current development from the Planning Division and also the Project Manager for the Fairview at Northgate amendments. So the original approval back in 2020 did not have conditions of approval to include CFDs. The recent action that City Council took on May 26 also didn't include a condition of approval to include CFDs, but it did have a condition of approval for the developer to form a homeowners association that has a responsibility to maintain like the private alleyways, the paseos, the community park or the neighborhood park, the linear park, the wetlands. and the bioretention basin that's being proposed. At the special city council meeting held on May 27th, there was a question that was asked by a council member and staff responded if any future projects don't have any CFDs. So at the time when I provided a response to the comment that came in, I wasn't aware of conversations having between the developer and the city regarding CFDs, but I would like to refer to Danny Liu from the Lewis Group, but depending on their financial mechanism for the improvement plans, there could be a possibility of forming a CFD after they receive approvals for this second reading of the introduction of the ordinance. Sure.

Thank you.

Good evening. Yeah, so we're not requesting a CFD at this time, and that's not before you today for consideration. That being said, though, CFDs are commonplace for residential developments, and we have conducted preliminary analysis for CFD use for this project. But yeah, that's... Yeah, without a defined project, we're not able to actually finalize that, and we'll present that when it's finalized at a later time.

Okay, and so to sum up, you don't feel there is a need for a CFD to finance this project?

WHERE WE'VE ANALYZED THAT PRELIMINARILY. BUT AT THIS TIME WITHOUT A FINAL DEFINED PROJECT, WE DON'T HAVE THAT INFORMATION.

OKAY. AND THIS ISN'T AT YOU, BUT JUST I THINK THERE'S GOING TO BE A CONVERSATION AS FAR AS WE NEED A POLICY THAT REALLY WRAPS OUR ARMS AROUND SAFETIES AND KIND OF A STANDARDIZATION OF HOW THEY'RE APPLIED FOR DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS. NOT THAT, LIKE, YOU SHOULD BE USING THEM, BUT, YOU KNOW, WHEN SHOULD WE BE USING THEM, WHAT THEY LOOK LIKE, AND BASICALLY HOW ARE WE ENSURING THAT WE ARE NOT GOING TO BE IN THE SAME SITUATION WITH REGARD TO THE RESIDENTS ON MERE ISLAND. So I'm not going to poke holes at this project necessarily, but I really just want us to engage the conversation on a policy regarding CFDs. And just also for clarification as far as whether they're being used for this or not, I think there was a lot of mystery regarding that. But thank you.

All right, we've got a bunch of lights. I'll just remind everyone of the hour and encourage brevity. Council Member Bergenzer.

I agree, and I agree with Council Member Palmares. It's not to the developer because that's not part of this process, but there must be some type of trigger that has the city determined how much can they take on before it triggers that we have to have police paid for and fire paid for as part of a development? Is it 50 houses? Is it 100 houses? Is it 300 houses?

One of the requirements that I mentioned is that the Homeowners Association that's going to be created is going to maintain all of these private facilities that are still going to be available to the public. So that's a mechanism. Sure.