Well, good afternoon, everyone.

I'd like to welcome you to the Alameda County Board of Supervisors Budget Workshop Special Meeting, budget work group special meeting.

The budget work group welcomes you to our meeting.

And members of the public are appreciated for their participation.

In-person and remote participation is allowed at this meeting.

I'll uh ask the clerk to provide brief instructions for those participating remotely.

Thank you.

Detailed instructions are provided in the teleconferencing guidelines.

A link to the document is included in today's agenda to view an automated trans translated transcript or listen to an automated translated audio of the meeting from English into multiple other languages.

Please utilize the wordly link in today's agenda or the QR codes posted throughout the room and select your preferred language from the drop-down menu.

If you are joining the meeting using a computer, use the bottom button at the bottom of the screen to raise your hand to request to speak.

When called to speak, please unmute your microphone and state your name.

If you're calling in, please dial star nine to raise your hand to speak.

When you're called to speak, the host will enable you to speak.

If you decide not to speak, please notify the clerk when your call is unmuted, or you may simply hang up and dial back into the meeting.

As a reminder, you may always just observe the meeting without participating by clicking on the view now link on the county's webpage at acgov.org.

When called, you will have two minutes to speak.

Please limit your remarks to the time allocated.

Public comment will generally alternate between in-person and online speakers and subject to overall time limits.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

And if you are in person, we'd ask that you fill out a speaker slip with the clerk.

And um, we do have item four is for public comment.

So we welcome you to observe the meeting until that point in which time you can make public comment.

I will note that uh we uh welcome you, and I'll start by saying uh I am Alameda County Supervisor from District One, David Halbert.

I'll let my colleague introduce herself.

Good afternoon.

I'm Lena Tam, Al May County Supervisor for District Three.

And we also have our county administrator, and I think we'll introduce staff.

Welcome and introductions is next.

Supervise um county administrator, Susan Moraneshi.

There, there you go.

Uh Rasley Today with the County Administrator's Office.

Amy Shraga with the county administrator's office LD Lewis with the Alameda County District Attorney's Office.

I'm here for District Attorney Ursula Jones Dixon.

Uh Brian Ford, Chief Probation Officer.

Kimberly Gaseray, Director GSA.

Daniel O'Dessenberg, Public Works Director.

Andrea Ford, Director of the Social Services Agency.

Well, we have Jason and Ryan will introduce you in just a little bit.

So we have special guests to remain anonymous for now.

But we're going to go right into a PowerPoint presentation, a special presentation of economic and state budget outlook.

Susan Thank you.

At our work group today, we're going to spend some time talking about the economic outlook as well as some updates on state and federal budget.

And as Supervisor Halbert mentioned, we're joined by a couple of guests from the legislative analysts' office who we will introduce a little bit later to take a deeper dive into some of the issues that we are facing at the state.

And then that will be followed by our own updates on the county budget.

So I'm going to turn it over to Amy Schrego to present the economic outlook and state and federal update.

Good afternoon, everyone.

So just quick uh quick overview of what we're going to review today, as Susan said, and I'm going to start with economic updates, state and federal updates, and then turn it over to our special guests.

So this is a snapshot of Alameda County's unemployment rate going back to July 2019 and pre-pandemic.

As you can see, we had you know, obviously a uh peak of 14% in April of 2020, and it's steadily come down.

And um, you know, uh been a little bit up and down to where we are February 2026 is 4.5%.

The gap in data you see there is October 2025 when the government federal government was shut down and no data was reported.

Um a few key things uh as it relates to our current um job market, the Federal Reserve continues to warn about elevated valuations of um the tech industry, and it could result in losses or a market crash as economic growth slows.

Um the pivot to AI restructuring of the companies and automation continues to drive cutbacks in the technology center, and we continue to see more and more layoff announcements in that sector.

Um here is a snapshot of our real estate trends within our county, which remains one of our most important local economic indicators according to the uh California Association of Realtors in February, the median price in the county was 1.3 million dollars, which is 16% increase from January but flat from a year ago.

And February home sales are up 34% compared to January, but down 2% from a year ago.

And uh the rate of unsold inventory in uh is down 11% compared to January and down 17% compared to a year ago.

Median time on the market was 12 days for the month of February, which is down 30% from the previous month, but an increase of about 9% from a year ago.

Overall, low inventory continues to keep prices high in our area and out of reach for many people trying to enter the market.