Good evening, everybody.

Welcome to our May 5th, Fairview Mac.

Um, let's let's start off with a Pledge of Allegiance, please, Ms.

Farmer.

And can we get a roll call, please?

Councilmember Farmer.

Present.

Councilmember Higgins.

Councilmember Philbin, excused.

Vice Chair Rhodes.

Here.

Chair Anglin.

Here.

We have a quorum.

Thank you.

We'll open it up for public comment.

You have up to three minutes to speak on anything that's not on tonight's agenda.

Do we have any speakers online?

Yes.

Diane, you're on the line.

You have three minutes.

Thank you.

Can you hear me okay?

Yes.

Yes.

Okay, thank you so much.

Yes, my name is Diane Castleberry, and I'm calling from calling.

I'm sorry to join you online versus in person.

I am here to just provide a public service announcement for AC Transit.

It provides bus service in your area, although limited.

We are announcing to everyone that on June 10th, our board will be meeting to provide a presentation on a contingency contingency service plan that may be initiated, depending on whether or not we have new funding that becomes available by the end of this calendar year.

That plan will consider uh reductions that could be up to 16 more than 16 percent plus um up to 300 layoffs.

Um and that's the equivalent, like if in terms of um 16.4 percent um reduction in service would be like 100 buses removed um from service.

And so we are asking people to just kind of be aware that we are having this uh uh board meeting where we'll be presenting a draft plan um for consideration and seeking feedback.

Additionally, um at our offices, we'll have an open house that afternoon um to provide with staff available to kind of walk through what that means for their service.

And we also plan to be out in the community, and so in a couple of weeks, um you'll see um on our website and we'll be sending out like an e newsletter out um to let people know about um where we'll be and what those changes will look like, and then um the earliest that those changes would go into effect would be June of 2027.

Um so there is still time, um, but we just wanted to let people know that on June 10th um this draft contingency plan will be presented to our board, and we will be seeking uh public comment, and we will also have an open house that afternoon um to you know have staff resources to provide people with information, and then of course they can also um reach us, but we'll send out an e-newsletter um in the next couple weeks to let people know what's going on.

So thank you so much for your time.

Kelly, you're on the line, you have three minutes.

Yeah, well, we just heard from AC Transit.

Maybe um we could hear from uh Bart.

You know, BART has a train station, it's not in Fairview, but it's in Castor Valley, and uh it'd be nice if uh if instead of sending out the staff to uh to take the the you know to to bring the bad news, maybe they could send out their politicians to uh to tell you about uh what what shutting down the Castor Valley Bart station would mean for uh for fair for Fairview and for Castor Valley.

Um it's funny how the politicians disappear when uh when there's bad news.

Um in Fairview, um there's this uh, you know, the county administrator's office um has a lot uh a lot of stuff going on inside the county and um they went to all the Macs and said told you that you're gonna have action minutes instead of detailed minutes because video is is record being recorded of all these meetings.

Um they forget that uh the microphones, especially in the in the uh, you know, that uh main uh planning commission uh meeting hall that uh the microphones cut out really often, and that means the video is pretty useless sometimes if you don't hear what anybody's saying uh as the microphone cuts out.

Um and the planning commission when the uh the chair was stood up on uh his hind legs and barked back at the action minutes idea uh yesterday.

Um he expressed disbelief, disagreement, and outright rejected the order that supposedly came from the county administrator.

And he said, quote, we've been hearing this for 15 years, end quote.

So uh he's not buying this at all.

Um he also staff told him that uh staff that the county staff is reports to the big county boss, meaning the county administrator.

Um, and of course, anybody who looks at an org chart chart would realize that that's not really uh correct.

Uh that's like a uh a myth.

That's uh a hundred percent myth.

Um there's they uh don't report to the county administrator.

Um the then also there's remember the grandiose proposal that we're gonna uh set up an office of unincorporated services that sounds like a great thing that could do everything and make everything uh streamlined for everyone.

Uh well that's since been narrowed down now from what what the Macs are hearing.

Um uh they're uh whittled it back to just a couple of strategic initiatives, uh not off uh in core uh services for everything and everyone, and it would just have a handful of staff.

So this uh the the that whole thing is is uh uh being uh shrunk down to be just a tiny sliver of what the title is.

The title is big, but the actual budget, the actual proposal is small.

Thank you.

I have no other speakers for public comment.

Anyone wanting to speak in the room?

Okay, we'll go ahead and close public comment.

Next item is approval minutes from April 7th, 2026.

Any public comments on those?

I have no speakers for that item.

Okay, we'll close public comment to our board.

Any discussion or any movements for approval?

I'll move we approve them.

All second ready for yes, please.

For approval of April 7th minutes.

Councilmember Higgins.

Aye.

Council member Rhodes.

I mean, council member farmer, Abstain.

Council member Rhodes.

Aye, Chair Anglin.

Aye.

Three ayes, uh minutes approved.

Great.

Thank you.

All right, first item on a regular calendar.

We've got updates from CHP.

Officer Jen Pabst with your new bulletproof vest.

Floor is yours.

Hold it like this because I don't want to bend over.

It's nice to see everybody.

I just made it.

I had a apologize for being late.

I had a call for service.

I made it here just in time to give a quick presentation.

It's nice to see you all.

And yes, Todd, thank you for noticing my new vest.

Uh the CHP, we definitely pride ourselves on tradition, but they are helping us out.

And uh just recently we got the wash and wear uniforms, but we've been wearing wool uniforms since 1929.

So we are now in the 21st century wearing uh much better uniforms, and we now have outer carrier vests too.

So if you see some of us wearing them, they've been approved.

We're not just going rogue, but hopefully most of us will start purchasing them, but they are kind of expensive.

All right, so let's get started here.

Uh I hope all of you have just seen that new Dodge Durango and haven't had it behind you with its lights on.

But that's uh one of the Dodge Durangos that we have at our office.

There's a gray one that we have as well.

It's the specially marked patrol vehicles, and those have been great in helping enforce traffic violations, especially on the freeway.

They blend in with traffic a lot better.

So the officers are able to see traffic violations in real time and stop those drivers who are driving reckless, driving at high speeds, making unsafe lane changes, a lot of things that uh in the Bay Area here we see in our own personal cars because everyone's trying to get somewhere in a hurry.

Um those cars blend in with traffic and the officers able to observe the violation and then hopefully prevent some sort of highway violence situation by contacting that driver through an enforcement stop.

Uh next slide.

All right.

Here's some statistics that we have for the Fairview area.

Uh as you can see, our issuing of traffic citations is down.

I compared the first quarter of 2025 to the first quarter of 2026.

Uh, the number is significantly lower for 2026.

That's due in part because officer Barcina Barcini, who is a part of our special enforcement unit, uh, he has a field or he is a field training officer.

So he has new officers riding with him.

And Fairview is very important to us.

However, when we train our new officers, we have to make sure that they can patrol not only a specific community, but the freeway and different areas throughout our jurisdiction.

So he isn't able to dedicate as much time to the Fairview community, but officers are still patrolling through the area as you can see.

Uh, however, one of the things that we like to look at is how many traffic crashes occur within a community and kind of where we emphasize our patrol or where we make sure we are patrolling, and as far as traffic crashes were pretty even.

I know there's two more injury crashes, but non-injury crashes were down, and there were no abandoned vehicles recovered.

So, even though officer Barcini isn't there like he normally is, at least we know that people are somewhat behaving.

Um, but he is back on patrol.

We have some officers on break-in as well.

Um, so we're going to continue to make sure that we show them all as a matter of fact.

I have a trainee as well, and he's learning all about the community.

So let's see.

Uh misdemeanor arrests.

There was three.

We are doing a great job with our homeless enforcement, our community-oriented police services unit.

That is one of our main focuses is making sure that we're providing um outreach to our unhoused community and enforcing the law as necessary.

Key points.

Um, we had our new year's maximum enforcement period.

Again, we led the state in issuing traffic citations during that maximum enforcement period, and we had zero fatal crashes.

And I feel like I'm a broken record when I say that our office leads the state in enforcement contacts.

Uh, it's something it's we are very proud to be able to serve our community and lead the state.

It's all of California from Southern California, the different offices in the Bay Area, a lot of different CHP offices are excuse me, uh, out there enforcing the law, but our command makes sure that everybody is out enforcing the law, and all the way from our captain down to our brand new officers are out there patrolling, and our goal is public safety to make sure that people are getting to their locations safely and reducing the mileage death rate.

Uh, let's see.

Every 15 minutes, um, that we just did that program at Castor Valley High School, and I wanted to make those are not real uh crash scenes.

I put a note in there, but the group at Eden Medical Center does a great job at making those, I don't know, making those injuries look real.

So it's unbelievable.

So um, but those are not real injuries, anyways.

So the every 15 minutes program is designed to bring education to our youth about the dangers of driving under the influence of alcohol, and we like to throw in a little bit of uh distracted driving as well.

A lot of students at Castro Valley High School I do know live in the Fairview area.

So we want to make, I just wanted to bring light to the education that we're doing to our youth to hopefully prevent them from making a poor decision and getting into a vehicle while intoxicated.

Um statewide maximum on April 28th.

Again, we just had another statewide maximum enforcement period, and that was our focus on that 24-hour period was speed.

We our area alone issued 800 speeding citations in a 24-hour period.

And again, we led the state.

The next closest office was Oakland, and they did a great job as well.

But our officers definitely, I don't know if you saw us, but I'm pretty sure it was on social media quite a bit about the efforts that we were making.

Hopefully, we didn't stop you, but if we did, we gave you a fair warning.

Um let's see.

As of right now, we have 18 new officers in field training.

We just got 12 two weeks ago.

So our office, once these trainees are off of their field training, we will be fully staffed, which is 102 officers in our command.

So we are making sure that we are taking care of the community.

I know the Castro Valley office closed and it's still a sore subject for some, but I want to ensure you that we are dedicated to making sure that the Fairview community is safe by creating our cops unit and our special enforcement unit team, we're able to uh tend to the needs of the community.

Next slide.

Ongoing enforcement is our regional side show enforcement task force.

That's where we partner with the Alameda Sheriff's Office, Hayward Police Department, and San Leandro Police Department, where we focus on preventing side shows.

And since its inception, the last two years, we have not had a major side show takeover a community within the area that we patrol, and that's huge.

I know that it was a huge issue.

D Street had a lot of problems, but on those nights when we have a lot of resources available, it's definitely much harder for criminals to evade us.

So it's helping not only to prevent side shows, but a lot of other proactive enforcement has been done with the recovery of stolen vehicles with firearms, arresting DUI drivers.

We're out there proactively patrolling to keep the community safe.

Some current traffic complaints that we have, those are just kind of ongoing.

That's where we definitely know that we still need to give some attention to those areas.

But if you see something that or you know of a traffic complaint that is not up there, please contact us at the 345 Reckless Driving at CHP.ca.gov or call our office during normal business hours at 510 489-1500.

And you can talk to the uh watch officer and give him the details of the traffic complaint, and we'll uh update our SCU units.

Upcoming events national night out.

Well, are we doing a national night out?

Because last year it didn't happen.

So if you guys get word that you're having a national night out, please let me know because I'd like to come out there and see you all.

Um, otherwise, if not, we'll we'll have some officers driving through the neighborhood so you can flag us down.

And we will be at the Lone Tree Fallen Officer Memorial Ceremony on Thursday.

I think that's at 10 a.m.

I'm not sure.

Gotta double check.

Yeah.

We have a lot going on this week.

So my I'm I'm day by day right now, actually hour by hour.

Okay.

And next we have the age well drive smart.

We please call our office for updated classes.

Um, or contact the Castro Valley Library.

I know I think we should be having one coming up here in at the end of May.

But our public information officer has been busy as well.

So just contact our office for that.

And then the next one is our agewall drive smart.

That's for our youth between the ages of 15 and 21.

If you know anyone who needs a little help at driving with some safety reminders that is just starting out driving, please contact our office to sign up for the next class, which is May 14th at 6 o'clock PM at our CHP Hayward office there on Whipple.

And then last but not least, the new office.

The building is complete.

There's an issue with the generator, and so we are not allowed to move in until everything has been signed off.

Currently, they're saying the end of July.

I feel like I tell everybody two months out, and then we get to that two months, and then I continue to say two months out.

So fingers crossed it's July.

And I've reiterated this, but or I spoke about this earlier.

We are doing our best to provide the same service that you saw when the Castor Valley office was open, and we're excited for the future.

We're excited to have a new office that'll be a little bit closer to the Fairview community.

It'll be off of Jackson Street in Santa Clara in Hayward.

So you can kind of go through the city to get to our office.

But once it's open, we're going to have a grand opening celebration, and it'll be open to the public to come check out our new facility once it's open and we're moved in.

All right, that is all I have for you guys.

I hope you have some stuff for me.

Thank you, Officer Pabst.

I'm gonna go to public comment first so they can take over the microphone.

Remember, you can't ask questions.

We can ask questions, but any public comments from you guys or from online.

I have no speakers for this item.

Great.

We will close public comment.

Member Higgins, do you have a list of questions or comments?

A question on the on the injury crashes.

Is there any place in Fairview that is susceptible to more crashes than others?

If you know off the top of your head, I don't know off the top of my head.

When I run the reports for the statistics, they don't show particular streets.

I would have to go into another system, and it takes quite a while to retrieve each crash report.

So I don't know off the top of my head.

Okay.

Oh, you had mentioned second street.

Uh you you mentioned second street.

And it is.

So Officer Barcini goes out there and he patrols the area.

I'm not sure exactly where he sits.

Maybe I shouldn't say or it's probably best I don't mention where he sits.

Um, however, he we continue to get the complaint out on second street when he goes out there.

He's not really observing a lot of violators.

However, he's sometimes when we show up or when we're not there, there will be violators out there speeding.

And then when we're parked monitoring speed, nobody speeds, which is that is the goal.

We don't want people to speed.

Um, so I'm not sure exactly where he sits, but he he goes out there, and sometimes an officer will park in one location and then move to another just to see what's going on.

So I don't have specifically, but I know he's up and down the whole roadway.

Thank you.

Member Farmer.

No questions.

Thank you for your presentation.

Member Rhodes.

First of all, thank you so much for the presentation.

It was really thorough, and I I appreciate the time.

Uh I had a couple of questions.

We had a presentation a couple of months back, um, where and I don't have notes on who the officers were, but we um had some discussion around the um and support that there was a safety team that was providing support for unhoused people in our community.

And there was some comments about the types of resources that were being provided.

And I know you made mention in your report, and I just wanted to see if you had any more details about I know you mentioned that there was some misdemeanors associated, but um, are there also some social support programs that are being offered and what does that look like?

Yes, actually, that's something that that unhoused enforcement has I work with my partner and we go out into the encampments.

And one of the programs that we have now is with the district attorney's office, and it's called CARES.

And it's a fantastic program because that day they will come pick up the individual who is struggling with either mental health issues, drug abuse, um, they have some warrants out for their arrest, and they will have a representative from the CARES team come down and pick up the individual and take them to their facility in Oakland, and it's called a navigation center, and they will get them the resources that they need.

Um, they'll get them into a detox program, they'll get them uh started with housing, because one of the things that the uh the unhoused individuals that we talk to say that they it takes forever to get into housing.

This program here helps them immediately and they have a bed for them that night, and they're great individuals.

The male that comes down to pick them up has been in similar situations and has recovered and got back on his feet and he's giving back to the community.

Um, we've had one success story since we've been referring people to this program.

So we cite and release them and turn them over to the CARES program.

The unfortunate thing is once they go to the program, they're free.

I don't want to say that it's the unfortunate thing.

Um unfortunately, those people leave the program pretty quickly.

Um, and they are not utilizing the resources that are being given to them.

So if we contact them, we're always trying to offer them help, offer them alternatives to get off of the streets, however, some of them just refuse the services.

So our enforcement is if we contact them and they're trespassing on state property.

We're we're our job is to enforce the law.

So that's what we're focused on at if they are committing any other crimes that uh we have to enforce that law too.

So we want to reach out to them the first time we contact them.

Our goal is to never talk to them again.

We meaning we want to make sure that they aren't trespassing and they aren't committing crimes.

And so we offer them the resources.

And if we do want to talk to them if we see them walking down the street and they're having a good day, but if they our goal is to make sure that they are getting in to the resources that will help them.

So we are still continuing that with the three.

I spoke about the three-step process last time, and that is exactly what we're doing still, but the CARES program has been very valuable to us because it's another alternative, as well as to them giving them some sort of hope and something to hopefully get them on the right path.

I appreciate those details.

I have two follow-up questions.

One is a curious about the enforced, um, sorry, the encampment visits, um, wondering whether or not what initiates those visits if they're just patrolling or there's been a complaint or what the reason is.

Um, and then well, I'll I'll hold for my other follow-up question.

So, yes, sometimes we get calls for services for service for encampments.

I know down in San Lorenzo Creek, we've received several calls of fires happening down inside the creek.

Somebody mentioned that it was impacting the air quality in the community.

So if we get a call for service and there's an illegal fire going on, we'll respond down in there.

But our goal, we are the highway patrol, we are the state police.

So our job is to protect people on state property.

So we do homeless or we go through and we sweep the area, meaning we're just walking through, making sure that there's nobody there who's suffered from a drug overdose.

There's no one there who has been a victim of a crime.

We want to make sure that these people are safe as well as making sure that nobody's getting hurt at that time.

So some of these places that we go into, it's a almost a mile hike down into where we're locating these people.

Pretty steep terrain, and we haven't come across anything.

Well, we've come across some things, but we want to make sure that they aren't hurt down there as well.

So those are the main purpose of the camp checks.

My follow- my other follow-up question is just about um kind of the get of us a sense of the numbers.

Like you said that you had one success story in the ref referrals.

How many referrals do you think you do a month or within this last past year?

Well, trying to think, I don't want to state a number that's completely wrong.

I do know that in so when we first contact these individuals, we enter them into a database that we have, which is tracking them in their location.

So we want to know kind of where they hang out in the uh individuals that they associate themselves with in case they are a victim of a crime, then we're able to kind of figure out which who is who, because they they have a lot of nicknames and things like that that sometimes they'll say they'll use a nickname and we don't that's not their real legal name.

So we try to kind of figure get a sense of who they are.

Um we want to know if they use drugs where we're gonna have to utilize Narcan.

So if we come across them and they're completely passed out, we want to know if we're gonna need to Narcan them.

So we kind of try to get to know them as well to make sure that they're okay and their community.

Um so we have a database and it's over 300 people right now within, but that's our whole area because they do move around a lot, they go from different cities and things like that.

So from our patrol jurisdiction in Fremont all the way up to the Oakland city limits and throughout Castor Valley, that's how many people are in our database right now.

Um some people we've only contacted one time and they move along.

Others we've contacted several times.

Again, thank you.

Um the other issue that I just wanted to talk through, which we've spoken about several times is the Fairview Elementary traffic issues, and um they it continues to be a bit of a bottleneck there.

Um I just I think two weeks ago I was coming back from dropping my kids off, and um two cars were basically uh stopped in the middle of the street, blocking both sides, and the parents were like fighting.

It wasn't a physical fight, but it was near to blows.

Um, but it just to paint a picture of kind of the heightened stress that um people are experiencing as they're going through those areas.

Um, and I bring this up um because I want to make sure everyone knows that it's still an issue, um, but also to say that um I have been in conversations with school board member Austin Brecker, Bruckner.

Sorry, Austin.

Um, and um he is working with um with Elise Castro and we're hoping to set a meeting uh where we can have further discussions.

Um and the reason I'm bringing it up in this space is because I know in previous conversations um you've recommended that we could potentially work with the school and try to build some strategies for them to just have better traffic flow.

And that you've worked with other schools in the past.

And so I'm hoping that you all would be able to come to that meeting and continue to have those conversations.

Yeah, absolutely.

You have my email, so reach out to me and we can all set up a meeting together and see what we can do.

Okay.

Thank you.

That's it.

All right.

A few comments and questions.

Let's see.

You asked about national night out, and I know what you were referring to.

That was a whole lot of work.

Yes.

And then last year and this year, we traveled to the East Coast that week.

So finding someone else to do it.

Didn't pan out.

We figured we'd do small groups on that.

Um did you say you had to buy your own vest?

Uh yes, we got some reimbursement on the vest, but yeah, we have to purchase our own.

Out of pocket?

Yes.

Wow.

Okay.

Um I did notice on your stats, tickets were down by one in three, and injury crashes went up a little bit.

So hopefully we'll see Officer Bart uh or she needs to be back out and around.

Um 300 tickets in a quarter, it's 100 a month, around five per day, roughly, he's probably working.

He works very hard.

So when the new officers get through, is he gonna be back out in the area a lot heavier or is this a change?

Uh no, once the new officers get off their or make it off of field training.

Then we will have more officers out on the road, and officer Parcini will back be back on the special enforcement unit.

But it's all hands on deck for field training right now.

Gotcha.

I saw the new grade Durango on driving up Crow Canyon during your maximum enforcement period.

And I'm sure some of the people out there like Peter were wondering like, is that normally on the freeway versus roads or is it all over in your area?

It's pretty much all over.

Uh its main focus is the highway.

However, it can it can patrol just the same as a regular police car.

It's sleek.

Um Bay Bridge got a lot of action a couple days ago with all the bikers on there.

Yes, I saw that.

And then I read in the news that there were reports working on it two months prior.

Do you have any more info on what went down?

Seemed like they shut it down pretty quick, but it was a pretty big takeover.

Yeah, it's interesting.

I know that our division chief just gave a briefing on the partnership with San Francisco PD and Oakland PD, and it was a big operation.

And I think it definitely is sending a message to those who are planning to commit crimes, especially very reckless crimes like that.

Um, and hopefully it'll get people to prevent or prevent people from planning those types of takeovers.

But as for specific information, I don't have any.

Cool.

Okay.

I understand that this group has started um doing their Sunday shenanigans in Lake Merritt.

It's been going on for several years.

So it sounds like they just decided to break out and uh do something bigger.

Yeah.

And then last comment some of us were at the Earth Day event working on cleaning up the BART area.

Yes.

And I had never done that before.

I was kind of laughing inside when I was told don't pick up needles and razor blades.

And then the amount that I actually saw there in all the bushes was kind of surprising to me.

It's alarming, yes.

What do you see as a trend there?

Is it getting worse?

Is it getting cleaner?

I was just surprised how much there was.

You know, we don't do a lot of enforcement in the BART parking lot just because BART PD, that's their jurisdiction.

Um, but people definitely they need to dispose of their needles properly.

So, as far as encampments, there are a lot of needles in the encampments and on state property that we're aware of.

And Caltrans comes out and uh cleans those up as quickly as possible, because we'd hate for them to get into the wrong hands.

Right.

Well, thank you very much for your presentation.

Appreciate it and appreciate your service.

Thank you guys.

Have a great meeting.

You too.

Close item one.

Item number two, we've got some updates from Hard, Jim Wheeler, General Manager.

Uh good evening, Chair Englin, Vice Chair Farmer, and Honorable Council members.

It's very nice to be here tonight.

I thank you for giving us the time to tell you what's going on at the recreation and park district.

I'm Jim Wheeler.

I'm uh general manager for the park district for one of six years now, I think.

Wow, time flies when you're having fun.

Tonight, we're gonna give you a short uh an overview of some of the uh state of the district, but also uh focusing kind of in the Castro Valley Fairview area where you're probably um most interested in, and then uh we have we'll also give you a little update on Lake Ridge Park and the funds that we received last year to do some work there.

So I think you're I don't know if everyone's aware, we're 82 years old, we're established in 1944.

Um I think significant recent events, uh, thanks to the voters of the district.

We passed Measure X F1, which is a 250 million dollar bond measure, 29 uh 29.90 per 100,000 value assessed on homes.

The voters passed that across the district with 78% approval.

So we were pretty excited about that.

I think we've probably touched all but three of our 120 parks with that money over the past uh seven, eight years, nine years.

Um a lot of it is irrigation controllers and smart controllers and water saving measures that touch basically every park.

Um, a lot of parks got bigger improvements depending upon what they needed.

Um, our mission is up there for you.

Uh for me, the mission's pretty simple.

Uh interests of the entire community, health, wellness, learning fund, safe cleaning green parks.

Um, and we've just we've we've come around.

I'm not sure if the public's aware.

I believe that in 1916 or 2016, 1916.

2016 when my predecessor was hired, we were um on the verge of bankruptcy.

We had to borrow a million dollars to make payroll due to some mistakes.

I don't know if anyone ever told that story, but I think when you see our financial position today and what we've done over the last six or seven years, um, it's pretty it's a pretty nice story to tell.

Uh, we're I'm governed.

I worked for five elected board members, the 160 and 56 employees work for me.

Um, our director, our current president, Sarah Laman, current vice president Rick Hatcher, who's in the room with us tonight.

Our current secretary Peter Rosen, who's here tonight, uh, director Paul Hodges and our longest tenured director from Castro Valley is uh Lou Andrade with about 30 years on the board, I believe.

Um, I love my board, they're very diverse.

So uh Rick sells insurance, Peter does landscape and design, Paul Hodges is a realtor, and Lou is a planner for his career.

So it's really a nice board because those are all kinds of issues we deal with all the time.

So um I'm I'm really blessed to have a good board.

We get along, we were criticized for them all, never really fighting with each other and and voting five and oh on everything that I theoretically tell them to do.

Um, but we vet, I meet with each one of these board members for an hour every two weeks.

I meet with the president for an hour every week.

Everything goes to a standing committee before it ever goes to a study session and into the boardroom.

So the perception that we just do, they just do what we ask is really we just communicate a lot and work through all those issues so that by the time we get to the board meeting, um, discussion, public comment, and then we move on.

Uh our thing recently, one of the biggest things is we move to uh by area elections last year or so in the 2028 election.

I believe Director Lamnan and Director Hodges in those two areas will be up for election.

The large green area there is a lot of fairview and some of the pink, right?

I'm right, right?

2026, I mean, sorry, 2020.

I'm thinking down the road because so I guess the gorilla in the room is a lot of people think we're gonna go out for a bond and measure to continue our assessment.

We pulled out, it came back at 51 and 54 percent for two different scenarios, um, mostly due to the cost of living, people being tired of being taxed and the uncertainty of the economy in the war.

Right now, was the main feedback we got from that.

Um, so we won't be going out for a bond.

We have about 50, we have 10 million left in the second series, and one series left to sell for 40 million.

That'll take us for a couple years, and then we'll probably reevaluate in a couple years to see what we're doing.

But I think we we've acquired, I think seven properties.

We've um built parks in Ashland and Cherryland, probably the poorest park poor, most densely populated portion of Alameda County.

We spent about 40 million buying two properties or four properties and developing them as well as a rec center under 74 units of affordable housing with RCD.

We give them five million dollars, got a 15 million dollar rec center.

We're providing free child care for 48 kids a day.

Um we are working on board training and orientation processes, trying to make sure our board members are aware of what's going on, not only in governance, but also in state laws, AB 123, and a lot of the Brown Act stuff.

Um we also developed a strategic, we did our strategic plan about a year and a half ago.

We're going into our second review of that.

It's a three-year plan that's on our website.

Uh let's see.

We have five departments, the general manager's office, uh, pretty much uh park rangers, public safety or public safety, the clerk.

We have an analyst who you'll see the results of some of their work, and then our PIO government relations, administrative services, finance, HR and IT, capital and planning.

There's nine staff members in that unit that are bond funded.

Like I said, working on, I think if we put them all together right now, it's about 82 projects that have been going on or ongoing right now.

Parks and facility maintenance department, that's our largest division.

There's about 80 of our 155 full-time employees work in that, and that's custodial services, park restrooms, facilities maintenance, park maintenance, um, the fleet.

We have about 70 trucks, which is the bane of my existence, cars and trucks.

Um, and then we about three years ago, I started a turf and water crew to focus specifically on irrigation, leaking, smart controllers for water, golf course, turf, uh synthetic turf taking care of that so that it stays in good condition.

So that's worked out pretty good.

And then recreation, arts and community services.

Um, this is where I started as a director of that department about five and a half years ago or four and a half, no, about four and a half years ago, five and a half years ago.

Sorry, it's been a long week, just like the CHB.

Um, they do classes, facility rentals.

Uh we've moved really big into outdoor programming, uh, swim centers, Douglas Morrison Theater, arts, special events, etc.

Um, and we'll tell you a little bit about what they do.

So, this is the district-wide scope of our facilities.

Um, we we have a lot of facilities, about 120 across the 105 square miles that we serve about 300,000 people.

Um, I'll put my glasses on.

I think the most notable to me, we've done a lot of work on basketball courts, tennis courts, and creating pickleball courts across the district.

We're in the middle of a five and a half, six million dollar renovation on the 90-year old plunge, and we're it's like peeling back a rotten onion, but we're getting through it.

Uh, dog parks, playgrounds.

So, right now we're in the middle of replacing a lot of playgrounds.

Do we have a whole playground replacement programs that have been going on?

Um, courts, renovations have been going on, uh picnic area renovations.

So we we continue to work on just trying to improve the assets we have and then taking opportunities to maybe get acquire things for the future when we can.

You can find this map on our website.

This is basically all the amenities we have: parks, facilities, nature centers, swimming pools, courts, and all those things.

I did give you all a copy of a map.

We developed a park facilities, uh park directory and map of all of our facilities.

We also on the back of it has all of our trail systems, um, all the amenities, things you can uh use, rent.

We waive a lot of fees, which we'll talk about in a minute, but we definitely have a lot.

I think one of the things I'm most proud of right now that we're doing, and I've actually had the opportunity to talk at a state and a national conference about this.

Is about three years ago, we implemented a park evaluation system, and we've evaluated every all of our 120 parks about five times now and come up with some scoring data.

Uh, you can see 87% is the average score for our parks on this.

For the first round we did, we came in and the average scores were too high.

So we went back and made them make it a little harder and grade them a little harder, and now two years later, we've got the average backup for those scores.

Our number one problem on park scoring that brings everything down, is graffiti.

Um so we took the park evaluation scores to try to figure out because we had heard oh, parks maybe in South Hayward don't look like parks in Castro Valley or Fairview.

And I'm like, okay, that's kind of typical.

I've I've my last 20 years, Vallejo, Oakland, and San Francisco, and every time you start going uphill, things just get better and people act better, and you know, no offense to anybody, but it's kind of the reality.

My last year in Oakland, 128 people were shot, stabbed or beaten to death, and it was all on the west side of 580.

So there's something to be said for geo, the geography and the relations and how people treat parks, hearing about needles and razor blades, yes, every day in some of our parks.

Um, so we took the park score averages, and then I tried to figure out why are some lower than others.

So we use Placer AI, which uh basically you get uses algorithms based on people's phones.

So if you're using your phone and it says track by location or allow them, if you say yes, then they're selling their data to people like Placer AI, and they're using they're using algorithms to figure out based upon the data they have how many people visit parks.

So we can tell you on the flyer, we put a few on the table over there that 5.9 million people visited our parks last year.

We know that's up two million from the year before where we had 3.9.

Uh, event like downtown streets and downtown Hayward, we can geofence the event.

We could tell you how many people came, uh, how long they stayed, we could tell you ethnicity, age, pretty much, um, and mostly where they went before the event, where they went after the event.

So if we do this like at Kennedy Park on a Saturday, we can figure we felt we find out that people go to Home Depot and Target before after their visits.

But my goal was to figure out are these park scores low?

Because too many people go to these parks.

They have more use.

Um, and we we find that's sort of true.

So then the next piece I grabbed was Verizon Network Fleet.

So all of our vehicles have GPS we can track when they're picked up in the morning, when they're started, where they drive, we can track the routes they go, and the real goal of that was to figure out like is it bad bad behavior in the parks?

Is it a bunch of people going to the parks?

Is it the worker doesn't spend as much time in that park?

And the whole goal of this was to be able to.

I kept hearing we need more gardeners and or park maintenance workers, and I'm like, I'm not sure we do.

How about we make sure we're running really efficiently and effectively, and everybody's giving us their best effort every day, and then we'll look at those needs after we get through that.

So we're we're really close to surmising.

We started meeting with the park workers, talk about the scores and telling them all this stuff, and so we're getting buy-in throughout the organization.

We did do a community survey and needs assessment because the last piece of what I felt like was what do people want?

You know, I have a lot of people that work for me that think they know what we should be doing for the public, but really we wanted to ask the public what we should be doing for them.

So we surveyed about 660 people.

We chopped the district into six sections.

The reliability of the survey was 96.5% with an error of margin of two to three percent.

So we felt it was a pretty good snapshot of what was going on.

What we learned, uh, the number one thing people want in facilities is trails and open space.

Uh, the number one thing people want in programming is not pickleball, believe it or not, um, special events, large special events.

So the um city of Hayward was struggling, and the chamber got a new director, and they had no money for special events.

So we funded all the three downtown street events, the mariachi festival, and we'll be funding uh Juneteenth, because I felt like it would be great.

We could go out and do more special events for the community, but why don't we try to help make the ones that are already there better?

Um, just an easier way in to give the public what they wanted and use our resources how they want it.

Um, and then the needs assessment came out of that.

The needs assessment drives into the park master plan, drives into our strategic plan, drives into our foothill trail master plan.

So we kind of try to put that all together to just be smarter in what we do and make sure we're trying to do what we hear the public wants.

Um, core programming models means basically we look at all of our programs and we decide what are what are really community benefits, such as things like swim lessons and other programs, and then on the there might be things that are individual and community benefits, those could be some of our affordable arts classes or other things, theater, and then on the top of the core program model, might be private golf lessons, and so the cost recovery model for each of those is a little different.

So we've tried to kind of hone in on what we should be subsidizing and what people should help subsidize teens and seniors and tots and stuff.

Uh big focus on equity-based programming, and you'll see some numbers that will show that in a minute.

Um, we are doing updated program evaluations, so everybody who ever pays or gets a scholarship for a class from us gets a survey at the end.

We use that data, it's kind of a program cycle, build a program, put the program out there, evaluate the program, come back, look at that, retool it, put it out just to try to keep working to get the best model for us.

Um asset acquisition and development of the programs were based on the community priorities from the needs assessment.

I kind of already alluded that to you.

I apologize.

Um, so big move on improved accessibility.

We created an inclusion working group, they meet every two to three months.

This is parents of uh children with disabilities.

This is people from our Sorensdale adult development disabled facility where we have 90 adults a day, people from Krill, people from other community organizations, someone from the rec therapy professor up at Cal State's Bay, and all we're trying to do is make sure that we're serving everybody.

Um we've expanded our adaptive programming to include outdoor experiences and aquatics as the first thing.

You'll see some numbers on those programs.

We continue to work on our ADA transition plan.

Oh my gosh, we have this huge ADA transition plan, but we're knocking things off.

Uh, improvements at Sorensdale, parking lots, pathways are one of the first things that when we look at a park and was like, we want to do a new VISA, we need to make sure it's accessible and that it's well lit and that it's safe for people, and then we'll start to talk about amenities and things, and then the growth the access for all program.

This is where we do intakes on kids that sign up for summer camps that may have special needs.

We evaluate them, we figure out do we need to just tell the camp director this child's got some special needs?

Do we tell the counselors?

Do we find them a one-on-one program?

Any to spend the day with them in this camp so that they can have the same camp experience, and that program's grown by 280%.

I think we had like 62 kids that we evaluated and put at camps last year.

Let's see.

Uh, my office, the biggest thing I think happening in my office, there's a couple things.

One of them, though, that I'm proudest of is we have an emergency operations center handbook now, uh, and our ranger unit up in a in the yard is our EOC, um, emergency operation plans that that's how we interact with the county and the city, and we've been working on our shelters across the district.

We've I got them all registered with the Red Cross, so they'll actually be able to open.

And then incident command system training.

That's where we train our staff to basically be able to speak the same language as the city, the county, the police, the fire all the way up to national level.

And then we've been doing a lot of focusing on interagency agreements as part of our big job.

My analyst Thomas Omola, who's responsible for a lot of the data stuff and everything.

Best thing we ever did was find an analyst.

Well, I don't know what he costs, but he saves us a ton of money.

We also did critical communication plans.

We have like about 35 preset scenarios.

So if something goes wrong, my PIO Nicole Roa knows how to go out and stand in front of a camera.

We know how to respond, we know where to send people.

It's all kind of pre-orchestrated, like a kind of goes back to when I was a lifeguard at the pool and the emergency action plan when someone got hurt.

We're gonna go past this one.

I will tell you, this is a video of me walking around talking about how we were selected by the California Special District Association as one of two agencies out of 2000 to talk about our role and our mental health efforts.

This was pretty much due to our work with the County Department of Public Health and our work with Tobasio Vasquez Health Clinics, referring people, giving them recreation prescriptions, doctor might say you need to go get healthy, and they might go, I don't know how to start that.

So we have ways to prescribe things.

You go down, you'll meet the person, they'll introduce you to facilities and stuff.

Um pretty good, pretty good thing.

And the other one that was recognized actually was San Roman Valley Fire District, and it was pretty much about like a CARES type program that they started where the fire and people are responding and being trained to respond.

So they don't have to wait for mental health when they get those kind of issues.

So our funding.

This is our funding pie.

70% of our funding comes from property tax and special assessment revenue.

Uh, about uh 10, 9.5 million come from rents, concessions, and fees for services.

Sounds like a lot, but when I I believe I'm pretty proud of what we're giving away right now.

And then there's other revenue.

I believe maybe that comes from investments, some CDs we have and some other things.

Um the total general fund revenue for last year, because we're in the middle of we're at the last two months of this year, was about 46.6 million.

The last time I came here, someone looked at me and said, I don't get it.

You're telling me 46 million, but I'm looking and the tax assessment roles, and you're getting 68 million.

And I don't know if anyone knows what the education revenue augmentation fund is, but it was implemented as a stop gap for education funding, was supposed to be a temporary measure.

Last year I gave the the state 23 million dollars to give to schools and this and the school system.

Um we're surviving on that.

If I had if I had 22 million dollars more, I'd have eight more rangers and be able to get more open space and build more stuff.

I wouldn't have to pass a bond.

I wouldn't have to assess you more taxes to build things that we could do if we had that revenue.

We don't have it.

Um I'm at the sunset of my career.

I've been to Sacramento three times in the last five months.

It's not a very popular topic, but I'm gonna keep fighting to get a portion of that back at least so that we don't have to keep coming back for bonds and assessments and all those other things.

Uh, stewardship of financial assets, pretty proud of this one.

Um, our reserve targets were met.

Uh, in 2017, in 2017, when we were at the brink of not much good, my predecessor Paul McCreary, God bless him, um, met a plan and we met our reserve targets by 2022.

I won't lie, COVID helped us.

Um there was no expenses to put on a lot of programs, so that money that we could save from that helped us actually get our reserves up to where they should be.

Our reserve target is basically uh 10 million dollars, three three months of operating plus 10 million dollars.

So you can see on there, I don't know, I can't see the numbers over there.

I think we're up at around our target right now is about 23 million, and we're exceeding that.

We've been exceeding that and using that money to put into non-bond capital funds, uh, a pension trust that's that's fully funded now, so that in I think 2032, our pension liability for all of those people who retired and everything will meet with uh new pension systems they put in pace prep or stuff and we'll flatline.

So in about seven or eight years, we'll be able to flatline our pension liability, which right now is about 20 million dollars.

Um, the and the 115 trust is actually generating more money than we planned, so we're we've used that a little bit to help balance budget and buy some equipment and other things that we kind of need for part maintenance.

Uh long range planning, we do a 10-year plan every year.

I think one of the other things I'm proudest of is we moody's and standard and poorers are running around.

I saw an article in the paper today about it's harder for governments to get good ratings.

We actually, I went to we went to Moody's and I actually got our triple A rating extended while they everybody thought they were gonna take it away.

So we are a triple A credit rated agency, which helps us when we go to spend the sell that last round of bonds.

Um, and then we set internal service funds.

The other one is the equipment replacement fund.

Before I was general manager, something would break and we'd have to look and see whose budget we were gonna rob to buy a new mower or to buy.

So the equipment replacement fund basically interdepartmental charges.

I scoop about a million bucks out of everybody combined.

I put it over here.

Right now we're doing about 600,000 a year for equipment replacement, trying to build that fund up so that we'll always be ready to get the tools and things we need.

Should situations change.

Human resources, uh man.

So we use the county uh civil service rules for years and years and years since our inception.

And when we came out of COVID, we went to the county and say, hey, you hire people for us.

I'm 15, I have 15 vacancies, and they said one every six months because we have our own big county vacancies.

I said, I feel that, I'm sure you're bigger than us.

So we made personnel rules, took it in house, and you can see some of the numbers of the full-time people that we have recruited and hired into our positions, uh, people who promoted.

We're working a lot on secession planning right now.

I will not live forever.

Um, and then uh we hire a lot of hourly employees.

We're the largest uh employer of youth within our district boundaries, and we bring about 150 to 200 on every summer.

Um, and our ranger unit, we made a commitment to our ranger unit, our ranger units now.

Um, we're healthy and we're doing okay.

So, all of we couldn't keep rangers, and I and first I created ranger supervisor positions, and I created lead ranger positions, and but what we really found is that as soon as we gave our rangers benefits, medical and dental and vision benefits.

Uh, we have probably the happiest, most productive group of rangers we've had.

My uh Nicole oversees those, Nicole Roa, the assistant to the GM, and she said she had the best, most productive meeting she's had in five years with them last week.

So it's starting to work.

Uh, let's see.

I'm I'm gonna go as fast as I can.

Uh developing and training district employees.

We we started doing coaching for our supervisors, consultants to coach our supervisors and people to prepare them for success.

We got really tired of going into interviews and and having internal candidates lose and going what is going on, and what we realized.

What I realized four or five years ago is we're not, we don't really have a development plan for them.

So safety day, the picture there, everyone's got a bandage on their head.

I taught first day to safety day, took a big picture.

Um, I have a secession planning task force for my job, and then all the director jobs for people potentially could get my job in the future, and we do and we implemented a learning management system so we can track everyone's training state-mandated training, regular training training they do.

Um, workplace engagement, you know.

HR is very proud of Fun Fridays, which happen every six to eight weeks, where we might go have a ping pong tournament or a an over-the-line baseball type tournament, and then we just finished a three-year agreement with SEIU.

So we got through our annual three-year gauntlet with the union, and um the employees, like I said, are happy.

We had retention reporting last night, state management reporting.

Our meeting, our retention rate.

Uh, we have three percent vacancy rate, and we fill our vacancies within 81 days generally.

So, and people aren't leaving now.

So, that's good for us.

Uh oh my gosh, IT.

About five years ago, four years ago.

I hired someone to come in and look at my IT, and I think the night we gave the board that presentation, people were pretty shocked.

We had 57 laptops that were running window systems that were no longer supported.

I was told our servers had more holes than submarines.

We've just been stacking them on top of each other.

So we've made a pretty significant investment in information technology, a disaster recovery, business continuity plans.

I can guarantee we don't have anybody's data in our system on our service, it's all the way in the cloud, secure.

And so we're pretty proud of that.

Enterprise resource planning.

If you're not aware of what that is, that's basically the finance system.

We went with the new finance system.

It's taken us about two years to get it put together, but when we started building our budget this year, the data we can pull, the status of bills, where's the actuals versus projecteds all came out, and so it's been really good for us.

New VOIP phone system.

My phone at my desk was literally 47 years old when I worked there.

And so we now have teams into our phone system, it's voice over internet, saved a ton of money on that too.

Um, and IT recovery, migrating services.

So that's kind of what's going on in IT.

Okay, recreation is pretty exciting.

So over 40,000 people registered in our fee classes, some on scholarships, some not.

5,000 youth went through our summer class year last year.

200,000 people through senior centers, aquatic special events, and more.

Those are drop-in non-fee type stuff where they just come through the door.

And then I think I'm also very proud of the fact that we have waived literally over 200,000 in fees waived for uh our county partners, the city, our city partners, and then about 44 different nonprofits.

This can be anywhere from we need a building every Friday for seniors in Ashland to uh we have an after school graduation program in Kennedy Park.

Um, but I I sign a lot of fee waivers because I can, and we make sure that when we do that, we're working on a positive partnership policy to make sure we're working and waiving fees and doing stuff for the right partners where it's kind of mutually beneficial.

400% increase in scholarships is pretty wild.

Um, and the health equity initiative I was telling you about with the county in Toracio Vasquez and the Hayward Promise neighborhood, 1.2 million in free programs in the last three and a half years, uh, 1400 1400 weeks of free summer camp, 9,000 free swim lessons, and equity and arts access.

Our afterschool arts access program at Weeks Arts Center, just won two statewide awards and is in the running for a national award right now, uh, just after school free arts, and the the stories are so compelling from the people.

And then, of course, mobile recreation, climbing walls, ramps, boards, bikes, trying to introduce kids in neighborhoods that maybe don't get those opportunities into things that they can do so they feel like they're uh get to do what everyone else gets to do.

Significant investment in youth and teens.

In fact, Saturday at the Kenneth Aiken Community Center, we we hosted our first ever youth summit.

We had 45 youth from the Hayward Youth Council, um, local groups, law familiar, our ambassador program to try to figure out and get feedback from them.

I want to do a youth master plan that tells us all throughout the district where youth can go, what we like, what we don't like, what we'd like to have, and try to develop more engagement for them to get them to put the phone down.

Um, after school sports leagues also funded play hard.

We started middle school sports, a monthly series of free teen events.

We had a teen baking event, 40 people showed up.

Um, we do arts, we they do ceramics, painting, all kinds of things, and then outdoor education program.

We hired an actual outdoor education supervisor to be over the nature centers and those programs, and they are just booming.

We have kids biking, hiking, kayaking, doing all kinds of activities, and then arts access.

I told you about a little bit at weeks, big free program, super cool.

So I think looking forward, um, some of these centers, if I tell you, like that's not in Fairview.

A lot of these are regional centers, Kennedy Park's a regional park.

Um, so the Hayward Shoreline Interpretive Center.

We just applied for another grant, but we found the funding.

We're redoing the entire inside, and my goal is to change it from a marsh interpretation center to sea level rise and climate change center right there on the bay at King Tide, the water's slapping the boards under the under those decks.

So it's a really good living laboratory.

And we worked with Hayward Unified School Districts, fifth grade teachers because it's part of their curriculum.

The goal would be free field trips to the shoreline, free field trips to Sulphur Creek, Nature Center, and on the bottom, you see the Alameda County Agricultural History Center.

That's at Meek Park.

We turned the carriage house into an interpretive center where kids can learn about the history of Alameda County, what we grow, Meeks History, Del Monty Canning, all that stuff.

And there's a garden there that can go out and actually grow.

You see the picture on the bottom right.

And you could even go to the community center and cook food that you pick in the garden.

My goal is to have a piece of the first pizza of what we grew that comes out of that garden that some kid makes for me.

Drowning prevention pilot program.

We got a million, a hundred thousand dollar grant from the Center for Disease Control to provide free swim lessons at two schools.

It's a pilot program.

We hope to get all the school, all the pools in use for kids because learning to swim is a vital life skill.

Parks and facility maintenance.

One of our number one park initiatives is just safety in our parks.

It was great to hear Officer Pops talk about the enforcement, a lot of encampments, a lot of unsheltered people, a lot of movement, a lot of work with the city of Hayward or the CHP or whoever's jurisdiction it is.

We spend a lot of time just trying to make everything safer and make people feel like it's their park, not being taken over.

A lot of carbs.

So the California Air Resources Board, a lot of laws and compliance and reporting for clean vehicles.

So we're downsizing big F 350s into right size trucks.

We're working on electric vehicles, charging stations come into our sites.

So we're really trying to meet that demand.

That's a that's a state mandate that Caltrans can't even meet.

So we're trying to figure out how we can.

Okay, new park signs.

So you can see the Palmacia park sign up there.

We're working on that.

I showed you one of the maps that we've worked on.

If you maps want these maps, you can reach out to us and we'll get you one.

You come by the district office where we have them.

The Hayward Garden community gardens, 70, 20 by 20 parts, probably arguably one of the largest community plot holder gardens.

We're working with the city right now for a compost hub in there, and we were working with 100,000 trees for a tree nursery.

We were even going to spend 30 or 40 grand to go pick them up and bring them so they could spread them out, and it all fell apart.

So right now we're working for finding propagate groups that want to propagate, grow crops, community good, uh food production, those kind of things to take the back half of that garden, which is undeveloped right now.

And then, oh FEMA.

So the trail system, I don't know if you heard in 2023, the last day of that three weeks of rain.

We had a hillside slide down, take out a home.

We now own a lot up on Faircliff and or fairway, Faircliff up in up by Tapor Park.

We have to figure out how to run a failed storm drainage system that the developer just pushed a bunch of dirt in and it finally washed it all out.

That was uh 1950 when they did that, so you know.

Um, so we we have a lot of trail mitigation, but we do have the money to do these repairs and get reimbursed by FEMA.

So we're feeling okay about that, even though there's a lot of them.

Okay, capital and planning 2017 after the bond was approved, shows you how much we did.

I think the proudest moment there is that we have literally gotten $55 million dollars in grants to add on to that $250 million through matching grants and new parks and development.

You can see our projects at HaywardRec.org/slash hard at work, project by project.

Uh so what's going on now near you or regionally?

Uh Carroll Pereira Park is right up there on D Street.

It's RE Street and Clay Street.

This is a was a Caltrans property.

We acquired.

We find we think it's an incredible opportunity.

One because our foothill trail plan that's supposed to eventually run from Union City to Groveway.

Connect to the San Lorenzo Creek Trail that'll run from the bay up to the ridge trail.

We hope you can go not only north and south but east and west, which would be novel.

I'm glad to see Bruce here tonight.

He sent me a great email yesterday about how we make sure we protect that creek.

We store the riparian corridor and all the things we really want to do as the park and rec agency.

So it goes through there at undergrounds right after, but it is a pretty neat little piece of creek, and he sent me some fish, some pictures of some fish and some wildlife around there that we're very interested in preserving and helping figure out how to get fish back upstream.

Oh come on.

Oh no.

Can you advance my slide, please?

Oh, there it goes.

It's lagging.

Okay.

Is that the only one?

That's no, there's got to be something I just missed.

It's coming, right?

It'll go backwards.

Okay.

Nope.

I guess we're at uh the next slide.

I apologize.

See, remember I told you I like my clicker.

I'm just kidding.

Okay, so what's that?

Yeah, the oh, did I go right by the plunge here?

No, not yet.

I don't think the plunge is coming.

The plunge right now is in process.

It's a six million dollar process.

We're finally taking an old painted cement pool, we're plastering it, we're putting tile in the deck had this weird red coating.

There was no drain, so the water from the pool basically would go we don't know where when people were done swimming.

Sometimes brushed back into the gutters to go back and get filtered.

I was like, You kidding me?

If you know me, I've been a certified lifeguard literally for 50 years.

I do a lot of quadric consulting and speaking, and I was just like, oh my gosh, you guys.

So uh it's getting new drainage, uh, redoing all the bathrooms downstairs, full new mechanical rooms, full new chemical.

Didn't meet a lot of the fire code, have been sitting there forever.

So uh we redid all the interior ceilings, scaffolding the entire building, redid the roof.

It's it's coming along very well.

Um, Oliver E.

Alden Sports Park is in here because it is definitely a regional park with four ball fields and soccer fields.

In 2025, 932,000 people visited this park, and we figured out of the 5.9 million park visitors, two million are from outside the district boundaries, which means people are coming across the bridge, coming from Fremont all over to play in sports leagues and stuff and tournaments that are in this beautiful park.

Um, soccer fields, all weather soccer fields are definitely high demand, and we're we're working on a couple of those projects now.

We're working to replace the Eden Dill school field for uh San Lorenzo School District.

We're replacing two fields at Stonebury for Hayward Unified District because nobody's got money, and I'm sure you're aware we gave Castle Valley Unified School District 7.5 million for half of the project at Canyon Middle School.

7.9 really, I think.

Uh, the community gardens gets a lot of visitors.

The Hayward Area Senior Center.

Um, we renovated that about in 2019.

One of my favorite renovations that building on the right's a library used to be a deck to nowhere.

So that place, if you haven't been to the senior center, it's quite a sight to see, changed the kitchen, tried to make it more teacher friendly so we could teach seniors and kids about healthy eating and food preparation.

Very nice building.

Me is all ability prayground at Tennyson Park.

This is definitely a regional site.

You can see that we had um a hundred and two or a hundred and twenty-one thousand visitors, interesting.

Um, we get people all the way from Turlock.

The all abilities playground has a swing for for uh kids in wheelchairs and a bunch of other things.

If you've never seen it, it's all it's designed like driving around Hayward.

People come from all over the valley drive hours.

The coolest thing is we redid the phase two, we put in a pump track, our first pump track.

This thing has little kids on it all the time.

Um, and that basketball thing is like an all-access basketball with bank shots, low hoops, high hoops for all abilities.

Uh, another thing I'm very proud of is I went to walk down one of our trails and went.

Holy cow, there's sign pollution at every trailhead.

So we went through, we put in new trailhead signs, new maps for the trails, mile markers, directionals, quarter miles, so you can figure out where you are, how far you walk for all of our 10 miles of trails.

It's pretty cheap too, actually.

Signs are so expensive.

Basketball tennis courses tell you some of the places we've renovated through the basketball tennis court renovation.

Come on.

Okay, more kind of regional projects again.

Um we're gonna get to the one the project in Fairview, right?

I promise you.

My goal there was to level it, keep the slabs, pickleball, tennis, bike riding areas, kids' skills bike riding areas, food trucks, picnic areas, events.

Uh and it's what we might call a temporary development down the road.

If more funds became available, we might put a swim center or a gym or a fitness center or something on this site.

But right now, we did what we could to activate it in a neighborhood that really needed it.

Now I'm pushing it hard enough.

I just think it's pretty, so I keep going.

This is one of the most recent things we did.

We built a high and low ropes challenge course using uh COVID.

So the county got a lot of ARPA money and COVID money, the city got a millions in COVID money, special districts got nothing.

Um, and unless someone passed it through to us, we got nothing.

We find we did get $800,000 passed through the help with the agricultural history address.

From the Alameda County, thanks to Supervisor Miley Ashley.

Thank you.

Um, but uh we got we applied with every other special district in the state.

So they finally set aside a hundred million.

We applied based upon our losses.

We were lined up to get 3.5 million.

They said not enough people applied.

They opened it back up, and in the end, so many people applied.

We actually got a million dollars.

But this is one of the projects from it.

All that million dollars was given back to free programs, neighborhood camps.

Um, the goal, oh, some for our boardroom.

We have we modernized our boardroom finally so we could do the stuff that's required by law now.

But every single thing we did with the million dollars in COVID money, I made sure had to go to community programs and people, not to district or administration.

San Lorenzo Creekway Trail.

We have $27 million in funds secured for this trail.

We're working with the county on some of the final operational considerations.

We're getting very close.

This will start at the bay, run up through the cemented sand loans of creekway, and then either through trails or the creek where we'll get you up to um what is that?

Don Castro up in the corner up there.

I'm sorry, I don't know.

I know Cloakan is out there too.

Okay, our foundation, strategic funding for sustainable growth.

They've done a great job.

We we hired a full-time foundation executive director, and he he's tripled his salary his first year.

I think one of the neatest things is he works out in the gym.

He there, he's practicing for Ninja Warrior along with one of our park workers who just took second at a regional.

So we're hoping we can all go out, you know, with the big green eye heart hard at some ninja thing somewhere and root everybody on.

I think the other great thing they're doing right now, they started a youth ambassador program, but we're we have launched a 10 million dollar campaign to renovate the Sulphur Creek Nature Center and turn it into a discovery museum, uh, widen out the the parking lots, bus turnaround, and then I don't know if you're aware, but 1795 D Street is that blue house next to the water tank.

We bought that property in that house.

We got through the gauntlet of the historical parks, recreation, and historical.

Well, we definitely got the historical side of that one.

Um, but we've gotten through that, and then we hope to be able to take that down eventually, widen the road, make it more accessible and safer off that little turn off, and and get kids to be able to have more place to roam and play.

Thank goodness.

The last thing I'd like to talk to you before I take any questions that you'd like to ask, I gave you a map.

There's a couple on the back.

I'm sorry I didn't bring more.

I didn't we went to meeting the other night, no one came.

So I'm glad you're all engaged.

This is Lakeridge Park.

So if you recall, we came to you in April last year.

We had requested, so we had requested park impact fees, and we're trying to figure out how to get those for the counties for about two and a half years.

And finally, I was just like just write a letter.

There's an ordinance for us to get those fees, but they were supposed to get approved by a subgroup, which was never developed.

And I finally went to planning and said, look, why don't the municipal advisory councils become the subgroups that approve us getting these impact fees for certain projects?

They said okay.

So we went there to do that.

I don't know if you recall, we were at the Cashel Valley Mac, and we went to get those fees, and we got all held up and wait.

You've been holding this money you haven't spent.

I said, No, there was no legal means for me to get that money because the ordinance never got completed from 2009 or something, so maybe even longer.

So we fixed the ordinance so that the Max could approve giving us funds for these projects, and we requested them.

But because some of those funds have been held for more than five years.

The uh planning commissioner Crawford, I think he's the chair now, and um Mr.

Moore, commission council member more were like, Oh no, no, those fees should go back, and we said, You're right, they can go back.

So they went to return 1.3 million in fees.

It took them about nine or months or year to get to the point where they could do that.

Uh, they went to send them back, and um, all the fees weren't collected.

So at the Castro Valley Mac the other night, we were given $992,000 in fees that weren't collected to be able to build the first portion of the park at Laurel School.

We bought Laurel School.

Uh, I was told in two to three years the Montessori school would be moving out.

They gave them a three to five year lease.

So at some point, we'll take that school over, we'll finish purchasing the school.

We bought all the fields, asphalt property all around it.

We're gonna try to develop the north section first, just so that neighborhood that is the last neighborhood in our entire 104 square mile district that does not have a park within 10 minutes walking distance.

So that was our big target.

So we got the money approved to do that project.

The big question they asked was, well, what are you building?

And so I want to reiterate that what we have to do is come to you and say, there's impact fee money, we'd like to use it to develop a park and fix Lake Ridge.

And they say you say, What are you gonna do?

And I say, Well, our concept is this, but until we get the money secured, I can't hire the people to do the community meetings, do designs, give you schematics.

So there's a small element of trust here, which I really appreciate, and I think based upon what we showed you, we're doing okay with the things that the public has entrusted us with.

So at Lakeridge Park, I think.

On the there's a little entrance, and I'm sorry I don't have that street name on my on my Kelly.

That's right.

So there's a little leg that comes up Kelly and then goes into a bunch of open space.

I was trying to ask Director Andrade what happened here, and I think what happened here is that the development and the space was able to do it, but they couldn't do like the hole from the top of this drawing down to the bottom.

So there's open space at the top, and there's a trail and open space going in.

Last time I think we saw you, or no, we were working with Fairview Fire, was to put some ballards in, give the neighbors keys so that you can get out through that park in the event of an emergency.

Um, and that was the last time we really talked about it.

So last year, I think you approved almost $200,000 for us because our goal is to create a better sense of entry down at Kelly Street, a sign for the park, and then work our way up with a pathway that can get people up to the rest of the park.

You'd be surprised.

You think, oh, that should cost about 20 grand.

No, there's nothing that simple, grading permits, everything.

Um, we got that a year ago.

We realized we could probably use a little more money.

Well, lo and behold, the funds that weren't collected from the impact fees, giving back, there's about 72,000 dedicated for Fairview, and we hope to come back to you in about a month and see if we can secure that, and then we'll start the community process and planning for that park.

For me, it's very exciting.

I walked out to that park, I looked down the hill and went, holy cow.

You can see right where the path should go by where everyone walks up there.

And then I think one of the neighbors on the end of the court with the big brown square you see that's adjacent to it.

He'd like to either give us an easement or lop off a chunk of that so people don't have to go through his fence and his property to get into the park.

So that's probably the most exciting thing that we can do in Fairview right now in regards to park updates and park development updates.

And I gave you our annual report, which there's some back there for the public.

If you run out, I'll give you mine.

I gave you one of our summer activity guides and a map.

With that, I will shut up.

Thank you.

Thank you.

A lot of information.

It is.

This is only two-thirds of my life.

I have a I have an attention deficit problem, and if I'm not busy, I get depressed.

So it benefits me, it benefits the district.

It's good, it's very good.

Great.

Do we have any speakers for public comment?

Bruce King.

If we can have you a swap, Jim.

Yeah.

In the podium.

I know.

Hi, uh Bruce King with Friends of St.

Lorenzo Creek.

Uh, one of the things I definitely want to do is uh commend hard for the great job that they do.

They're one of the easiest jurisdictions to interact with and understand and they communicate and uh and they're trying hard and they're getting lots of lots of stuff done.

Um, but of course, I'm gonna always talk about creeks when I when I come up to present.

Um, and uh, you know, one of the things I'm always advocating for is we need to work on habitat and and restoring creeks because humans for the last 50 to 100 years have been destroying their creeks, so uh, like purchase of the Carroll Pereira Park area, which is which is uh a confluence of the southern um fork of Sulphur Creek and the northern more northern fork of Sulphur Creek.

So it's an ideal place.

We've got to cook uh the new foothill trail going through there.

Uh the current project um that uh is in works is to to build out the park to some degree and the trail through through there, but and it doesn't uh necessarily address the restoration of the creek, which is in the future plan for the park is preservation, yes.

So it's not gonna go out.

Yes, so um, so but hard is you know good for saying, Hey, we're gonna do it, it's just gonna take some time.

Um, so I'm always advocating for we need to do restoration, you know.

For example, the the segment of the San Lorenzo Creekway and and uh foothill trail that is near A Street and goes over to the Japanese gardens.

Um, yes, that hard is working on a pocket park for there, and uh one of the things the Friends of St.

Lorenzo Creek is advocating for is you know, we scraped a bunch of that land clean and with all the developments and and and uh demolitions we've done there.

We need to be putting putting trees and and habitat back in as we're doing these these projects.

So thank you, Hart.

You know, with all sincerity.

I always remind Bruce that I have a biology degree, and life science is like, oh yeah.

Caller, you're on the line, you have three minutes.

Hi, um, good evening.

I just wanted to mention um that Lake Ridge Park.

There's an evacuation route for the people that live in that area, and I believe the street um is called Pickford is the street off mod that leads into the park.

Well, there's always people blocking that route.

Um it's uh dead end street.

And I'm assuming is the people that lived in that area.

There's a lot of cars.

They they block that exit.

So if there's ever a need to a fire, we need to use that route.

I'm just wondering how are we supposed to get out?

If there's cars at the exit that are blocking um the route.

That's just one of my comments.

Thank you.

Um we'll look to make sure that no one's blocking the ballers or the path through the park.

I can control that, and then I think we'll maybe we can reach out to the county for you and see if we can get some help with enforcement up there.

I have no more speakers.

Thank you.

We'll start off with member farmer.

That was a lot of information to take in.

That's okay.

You come see me anytime.

We'll sit down, I'll go through it again.

I'm easy to find.

I'm there all day.

Oh, I could just go to the next Mac meeting and hear it, I think, right?

Yeah, okay.

Well, I really don't have any uh questions.

Um, but thank you for the excellent presentation.

Thank you very much, Vice Chair.

Member Higgins.

Microphone, please.

First things first.

You know, we used to we used to hold our Mac meetings in your boardroom, and it was so much more convenient for the people that live in Fairview.

What are the odds?

Uh I we we will work that out with county staff to get you back.

Well, but I I don't think it's as easy as just going, sure, come back next week.

So we're we've had that discussion with um Ashley Strasberg, and we're and we're aware that that's a desire.

So we will figure out how to make that work if it's possible, and the county wants to go with that.

Yeah, or you know, even the uh community center at San Felipe.

No, there's too much wiring and stuff.

You can't be like this.

We need to we would need to put you back in the boardroom and we'd be happy to do that.

But I was told by my government relations person that we have to work through some things to get there with the county and the staff and the logistics and the training on how to use all the IV, but we're committed to doing that.

I was gonna come here and just say when you're gonna come back, but I was told I shouldn't.

I was told that I should just say that uh we're we were happy to look into it and I'm sure we can, and everyone's committed to doing that.

Yeah, that's that that would be won't stop asking.

Yeah, that works with you and us.

I think everyone's committed to that.

So uh that's that that's cool.

Um the Lake Ridge Park.

I I think Yenny uh brought up a good point, and that the the um there might need some commute community outreach.

You know, maybe someone could organize uh like a neighborhood meeting in the park.

Yeah, so we we've had a neighborhood uh meeting.

I I think the the uh fire district held it in that park, you know.

Walked through it with them when we talked about ballard.

So council member, I will tell you that um we follow the same process for every park development project.

The first thing we do is secure funding.

The next thing we do is find someone who we think is a good architect or firm for that.

We have about six on call for all these projects.

And the next thing they do, and the first thing they do is just like Laurel School last weekend and three weeks ago.

We have community meetings at the park, we have community meetings in a place like this.

We send postcards, we have surveys for feedback of what people want.

We do at least three community meetings, and sometimes the first one, you know, just tell us what you like and don't like.

The second one will be based upon what we heard.

Here's some ideas, and then people will look at those ideas and go, maybe we like idea B, and then we'll start to further refine that.

We'll get everybody in the community to be kind of happy with where we are.

We'll take it to the board, the board will look at it, give us their feedback, and then the project goes to design and down the road.

So uh this is this is something we didn't do six or seven years ago.

We do now.

We we did the same thing when I was working in San Francisco with all of our bond dollars and projects.

We never had a project that didn't have at least three community meetings, input feedback, the study session with the board for final feedback.

You know, someone might be like, Well, we don't want that, but someone really does it and come to that study session and continue to advocate for that.

So it will be a robust and healthy community process and include everybody.

Uh, we'll get noticed probably 500 to a thousand feet from the park, and then we'll also have the QR code.

So we we we send mailers out.

We're trying to put a restroom in Parsons Park.

We send mailers out to everybody within a quarter mile saying so they can come and be part of the community process and go to a QR code, see the project.

So well, and it'd be pretty easy to get our fire department involved.

I think I think we have a member of the fire board on our nice.

Todd Todd's a member of the fire board.

Uh Laurel Park.

That was that you covered the plunge.

Well, a few years back, uh you guys updated the strategic plan for Sam San Felipe Park.

Uh we did.

So when we went out for the bond, we did a lot of conceptual projects for a lot of parks, and there's some money left there to do some improvements.

Um, I'm not sure how much we could really we did we did redid the basketball courts.

The park's got so much space that that's not really utilized.

There's a big cement pad down in the middle of the lawn that you can't get to to unload stuff for a picnic.

So it's definitely high on our radar.

For me personally, as I look at the San Felipe Community Center, I believe that the large community room has the potential to blow out about 20 feet towards the side of the hill with the most spectacular views of any center in the East Bay, probably except for maybe Trudeau.

It's got some nice views.

But yeah, so we're we're committed to keeping San uh San Felipe going.

One of the issues we have though is that I was I was figuring you pass a bond at 78%, you build a bunch of really beautiful new parks, you become a responsible agency that the public would be like, heck yeah, we'll we'll extend we won't want to pay more, but we'll extend that TAC measure longer so our assessments don't go up to get another couple hundred million to keep going.

So we're down at the end of the list.

We got about 40 million, we have about 10 million and unfunded in that.

So we're we're looking around, we're moving stuff around, we're starting a non-bond capital fund to try to address that and hopefully San Felipe can get done at least a portion of that park in this cycle.

Yeah, there was some uh uh a lot of good ideas that it came through that.

And I really I commend you and commend your your board having observed a lot of their meetings.

It's really nice to it, it seems like the institutional decision tree is geared towards how do we say yes instead of just oh no, we can't do that.

We don't we don't we don't say no, and I'll tell you that if we don't have to, and I will tell you when I got here, um we weren't in the greatest standing with a lot of the other municipal agencies and people around us, and a lot of people we go into meetings and they'd be like, Why should you give hard money?

You should give it to the Sheriff's League or whatever, because they just charge for everything.

So my I've been very intentional in trying to get away from a pay to pay-to-play model mostly, but we I'm not gonna lie to you until about six months ago when I got through a couple big issues with a couple large agencies that we serve.

Um, I was kind of miserable.

And everybody, I just kept telling my staff, you know, people are throwing rocks at us, catch them, drop them on the ground, stay true, stay pure, you know, to the purpose and what we're trying to do, which is that safe clean and green health wellness learning fund, and everything else will take care of itself.

So thank you for noticing that.

I appreciate that a lot.

Really, I really appreciate it.

So uh that's enough out of me right now.

Thank you.

Member Rhodes.

Member Rhodes, my citizen advisory committee member.

Yes, thank you so much.

I I think I did.

I sat in on my first advisory committee meeting a few months back, and received this amazing presentation about all the things that Hart did.

That was the big one.

What's that?

This was the short version.

This is the short version.

You know, I I have to say that I before seeing that presentation, I already knew some of the fabulous things that you all do because I utilize a lot of the services.

My young daughters go to a lot of the classes, basketball, gymnastics, art, theater.

So, you know, already was a fan, but um after having seen that presentation, um, you know, I'm a newer member here with the Mac, and I hadn't seen that presentation here, and I thought it would be really valuable.

So I really appreciate you coming and sharing all this information.

And I am also really appreciating your energy that like really you know, I keep looking at the finishing.

No notes, it's great.

Um, so I have um I guess I'll I will start with an anecdote.

Um, just to say that um noticed Unity Park um when I saw that presentation and um just yesterday on my uh eldest daughter's birthday.

She turned nine yesterday.

Um both my girls, I also have a seven-year-old, got new roller skates for their birthdays, and we went out there and they learned how to roller skate yesterday.

At that park, and it's fabulous.

It's a really I got what you meant.

Like you all just like you threw some paint on the ground and you put some pickleball, and I can see that there's more potential there, but what you did with that space is fabulous.

It it the girls loved it, it was a great space, and I have to say I I understand that you surveyed people and pickleball might not have been at the top of the list, but it was packed.

It was it was actually on the list higher in basketball, but we had someone from the Eden Mac go to West End zoning and and insist we put a basketball court in there, which is kind of popular, but we can't confused as well yesterday.

We can't build enough pickleball right now.

That's hilarious.

Well, it's the real joke is that nobody knows I'm the president of CAP, Californians against pickleball.

I'm just I'm totally filled with that.

I mean, I don't know.

I was feeling like I should pick it up yesterday because I a lot of people were out there.

Very, very passionate about that.

It's it was great.

Okay, well, that's my anecdote.

Uh Unity Park, it was great.

Um, so I wanted to loop back.

I appreciated you talking a bit about the emergency um route uh through Lake Ridge Park because um that was kind of my uh entry into the community.

Um we did a lot of work to try to establish those emergency evacuation routes, and we're very appreciative that we could collaborate with some of the other agencies in order to create um, you know, be able to drive through Lake Ridge.

So thank you, Hard for that cooperation.

Um, one of the issues that we run up against is sometimes the interagency communication, and so I just wanted to hear from you.

Um, you know, is there like a process put in place if there's an emergency, like you get a call from the sheriff, so there's an employee with a key that goes there, like what does that look like in actual application?

I was under the impression, and if it's not happening, we'll make it happen.

Is that people who live around those bollards have keys?

Do you know if that's true or not?

I do not know that that is true.

I'm gonna verify that for you because the goal would, in my mind, the goal would be hey, like these eight houses on this side and these five houses on this side all have a key to go open that ballard so people can get out.

So I'll look into that for you for sure.

Can you make me a note?

I'm sorry, now I'm asking my director to make notes for me.

This is great.

You got your your folks here to um okay.

So um the next uh question I wanted to ask about was um I appreciated hearing the resources that were being used to provide scholarships for our community members who um may not otherwise have access to the really wonderful programming that HARD provides.

And so I thought it might be a good opportunity, and I know that we're running late, but I would appreciate you sharing with our community via this video conference um how people can access so we have customer service uh counters at the main office or you can go online to register for classes there's a scholarship option in there we scholarship families up to 500 a year that could be full ride or 50% off they can choose um one of the issues where so we have increased that so much that one of the issues we're having now is it's May towards the end of the fiscal year and we're running out of scholarship money but we have COVID relief funds that we had set aside for some neighborhood camps and other stuff so we're rerouting some of those funds into there.

The number one task given to the foundation now they have the Sulphur Creek Nature Center fundraising project and then the other main task is help me find operational money a lot of that free programming we would help Hayward promise neighborhood and other large federal grant organizations I hate to say dispose of funds but but they'd be like we have this money we need to spend so we start a middle sports program that kids love.

So we continue to look into the foundation to help us fund that you can go you can call um 8816700 to speak to a customer service rep about scholarships or you can go down to the office and talk to someone about scholarships or heck you could even email me about a scholarship WHEJ at Hayward Rec.org and we'll figure out how to send you in the right direction and rebuild that so the goal with this 500 I give a family 500 it sits over here we think it's spent but they might only spend 200 we're working on a way to track it and pull the funds that aren't being used back this time of year to give to more people too.

Thank you for sharing question.

Uh I this next uh thing on my list is just a comment around the Lake Ridge Park which is um that is the closest park to my house and um we use it often and we have gone through that route several times and I was um through the Kelly entrance which I was um a bit uh concerned to hear that that is an uh somebody's property because I have been treating it as a as a thoroughfare.

Um so is that so I and I don't know that I'm alone no that I don't believe that the strip from Kelly Street up there that narrow diagonal I don't I do not believe that's a person's property.

I believe that's the park property that runs up there's a corner on the end of one of the streets on that map there's a little brown corner right above the area we're talking about that is someone's property that wants to help us with an easement or some way to get into the park better from there too.

Like it appears to be a driveway possibly kind of big wide brown spot.

Sounds thank you for clarifying um and I just want to say I'm very excited about that development and I think it's great um and that kind of um leads to a question that I have which is um I I was really new on this board when um it came about that we could not access those impact fees is that what they're called I always forget their park impact fees yeah um and I'm happy to hear that we potentially can access that 72k for fairview um and and you did talk a little bit about a process in which Fairview Mac would have the ability to authorize that use.

I don't I'm I'm not sure that that authorizing is the best word we kind of come here looking for a nod because of the status of the Mac as an authorizing or action body um but we come to you to get your approval you know whether they whether that means here you go or whether that means it goes to the planning commission with your nod and the recommendation of the planning director but that system so I think one of the most exciting things for me is that the chairman of the planning commission and I had a conversation, and he believes that those funds should come to us, and then when we're gonna spend them in your area, we'll come and tell you what we think we want to do and see if you're okay with that.

That was the clarification I was looking for.

We'd like to get the straight direct pass through.

Uh, that's the way actually the state the Quimby Act is set up.

If you have an official park and rec service provider, the funds should go to them.

So we're working on that now, and we'll and everybody seems amiable to that idea.

We'd streamline things a lot, and money would never ever get returned to anybody after five years.

Yeah, I can't even tell you how much I agree.

Okay, thank you so much again for and keep up the great work.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Member Farmer.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Um, just a couple quick comments from a business operation standpoint.

Seeing your presentations, very impressive.

So, you the board, I love the fact that you're listening and actually delivering to what the community wants and needs.

So huge plus on that.

Um, I was gonna ask about it makes our job easier when we do what you want, I was gonna ask about the impact of the INLU fees, but we'll save that for another meeting through the sake of time.

Lakeridge Park.

Good to hear that you're still improving that.

There's a lot of space there that could be worked with.

And for Pickford, I see your posts all the time on informational meetings on Facebook, as well as your grand openings and updates.

So great place for people to watch when they want updates as well.

So thank you very much for the presentation.

Appreciate it.

I want to apologize to everybody that came here for something else.

I don't get the I I really mean that.

I I don't get to talk to them very much.

Maybe we should try to come here quarterly or half year, and it could all be shorter, and we would have people who had other interests have to suffer through the sounds great.

Thank you all very much.

We have a request for a five-minute break.

We could take that, please.

All right, welcome back.

Item number three.

We've got Alameda County Unincorporated I have to do a roll call.

Sorry, go ahead.

Councilmember Higgins.

Here.

Council Member Farmer.

Here, Vice Chair Rhodes.

Here, Chair Anglin.

Here, we have a quorum.

Thank you.

Item three, Alameda County Unincorporated Area Budget Updates.

It's an informational item.

And I think it's Melanie.

Yes, that's great.

Thank you.

Good evening, council members.

Melanie Atendito with the County Administrator's Office.

I do have a what is quite a lengthy presentation as well.

I'll try to move through it expeditiously.

It's not quite as long as Hard's, but there is a lot of dense information within the slides.

I appreciate the department heads that serve or provide municipal services in the uh unincorporated areas also being present.

Um, you probably saw the fire chief was also here.

Um, he knows and you all are well aware that Fairview has its own uh fire protection district.

So um his slides are in the deck.

I'll go through I'll go through them quickly when we go over the unincorporated area highlights.

I'll invite the department heads to come up and present their content.

Most of the information in this deck um is information that has already been publicly presented, um, perhaps in a different set of presentations.

Um, and this is uh essentially the the template, if you will, that we plan on using for the the Macroad show that we're doing um with respect to these budget updates.

So here's just an overview of what I'm planning to cover this evening.

Um, as we always do with the county administrator's office, we start with economic updates to set the context for budget development, um, state and federal updates.

I'll then move on to unincorporated area highlights.

These are primarily slides that have been pulled from the department's early budget work session presentations to the board last month.

Uh, and I'll then do an overview of the developing year, fiscal year 26-27 maintenance of effort budget, um, an overview of the funding gap that we've identified.

Uh, the process by which we are hoping to balance the budget, or that we will balance the budget pending factors that we um always keep in mind as we continue to develop the budget, and then some um looking ahead with respect to our long-term um factors.

Uh, so in terms of the economic updates, uh, as we know, artificial intelligence and automation continue to reshape the tech industry, which is a big um big factor in terms of the local economy.

And they have held the interest rates unchanged for a third straight meeting.

I think we were anticipating essentially, there's quite a bit of publicity around dissenting opinions amongst the members on the Fed.

Some of some of them are favoring rate cuts to support employment, while others are more cautious because of persistent inflation, which is also been recently impacted by global events.

And we see that in our oil and energy prices.

So we're continuing to see tech companies scale back after years of rapid growth during the pandemic as investments shift towards AI and automation and away from personnel, leaving tens of thousands of workers searching for limited opportunities and an increasingly competitive job market.

So you can see we've highlighted a number of companies that have been in headlines recently with additional layoffs.

The most recent ones that we've seen in the news are Amazon and Meta with additional rounds of layoffs.

So some of these are, you know, recurring pressures that we deal with as we develop the budget every year.

In general, when we have or anticipating an economic downturn, we're also concerned with a potential increase in the service demand.

Of course, with the current administration and changing federal priorities, we still do not really know the full impacts of federal policy changes like HR1.

And then there are just a number of other factors, some of which are both financial and policy that we have to keep in mind as we're doing budget development.

So more specifically in terms of state and federal updates, the state budget.

I'm showing on the slide here, preliminary data for March and the state general fund.

I think the state may have just released the April numbers and it looks fairly similar from what I've read.

So cash receipts are generally coming in above forecast and above the fiscal year-to-date forecast.

We don't necessarily know how that's going to impact us at a local level.

I think in the governor's January budget, they were projecting some level of surplus, but not we're not necessarily seeing that benefit come down locally.

The state has its own challenges to contend with, and I think they're also still trying to figure out how federal policy changes are going to impact the state budget.

In terms of the impacts of federal policy changes, as I said earlier, these are really yet to be fully understood.

I've highlighted a few programs that we know of that are impacted, namely SNAP and Medi-Cal, where CalFresh in particular, the Social Services Agency, is projecting some impact that we have included in the maintenance of effort budget, but largely the impacts of Medi-Cal policy changes.

We really don't know.

And they can be significant, they could be significant.

So the next few slides are, you know, back to basics, if you will, for folks who may be newer to county financing.

Sorry.

Let me go back here.

The counties fiscal dilemmas essentially, I said this a little bit earlier.

There, that we essentially see an increasing demand for safety net service services during economic downturn.

So that's really challenging because the county's revenue raising authority is limited historically by things like Prop 13, Prop 218, and then ERAF.

We heard the GM from Hard mention the shift of local property taxes to the state to backfill their cut.

The county also has to do that, and I'll share our numbers in a few slides on that.

So historically, we've seen a progressive loss of control over local spending for the county.

Most of the services are mandated by the state and federal government.

Those mandates have continued to increase.

Some are unfunded, to the extent that we have access to reimbursements, those reimbursements are sometimes delayed, especially when there is some other economic pressure that the state is contending with.

Starting with the realignment of the responsibility of the medically indigent, I think back in the 80s, and then there have been a couple of rounds of you know significant realignment of programs where they're transferring quite a bit of responsibility to the local level, and then often we have a concern that there is not enough funding that is coming down to the local level to correspond with that level of responsibility that is shifting.

So just some differences between cities and counties.

I think in a lot of the conversations over the course of time and when unincorporated areas think about doing studies to potentially incorporate.

There's a lot of comparisons that folks like to make between cities and counties.

These are challenging comparisons to make.

Counties generally lack broad powers of self-government in the state that the cities have.

So I already talked about how the state can shift or delegate any functions that belong to the state to the local level.

They can take those back.

The county generally speaking serves a dual role.

It administers services that are mandated by the state and federal government, many of which are safety net services that are best provided on a regional basis.

And then, of course, the county also provides municipal services to unincorporated areas, and the county's power to make and enforce ordinances and regulations is limited to those unincorporated areas.

So the county's budget all funds is 6.1 billion dollars.

In the general fund, it's 4.3 billion, which is an increase of about 300 million from the previous fiscal year, and the budget supports a workforce of nearly 10,500 full-time equivalent positions.

This next pie chart really just illustrates the point that our county budget is really tethered to state and federal funding.

So you can see it's nearly two-thirds of the general fund budget.

This is both by way of state and federal aid, as well as Medi-Cal charges for services.

And in addition, in terms of the property tax dollar that the county collects, the county receives only 15 cents of every property tax dollar collected in the county.

This property tax revenue is the major source of revenue when it comes to the county's discretionary revenue.

Discretionary revenue is only about 31% of the general fund, and the vast majority of it over 75% in the current year budget is property tax-based.

So the next few slides are unincorporated area highlights.

I'd invite the department heads to come up.

This is really their content.

The first up here is the community development agency.

Thanks.

Good evening.

I'm Sandy Rivera, director of community development agency.

And as Melanie said, these are excerpts of presentations that were have been done in the past.

So this is a couple of slides of the community development agency highlights in this previous uh previous fiscal year in terms of some of the projects we've done.

And so the community development agency has a few departments.

Some of them dedicated solely to the unincorporated area, and a few of them that are also dedicated to countywide programs as well.

So this is a slide for the economic and civic development department.

We have some staff here too.

If you haven't met her, it's Marie, she's back there.

And they are largely focused, obviously, on developing small businesses and economic growth and other civic programs that they represent or support.

And it's represented here on a photo uh with the, of course, if you uh if you did go to it anyways, is the Castor Valley Light Parade, and that's well attended, it's become a regional draw.

There's about 15,000 people that do show up for that, but they also support other programs like the Cherry Land Festival, FAMFEST, and other programs.

So that's uh one of the few things that they do.

They also uh handle capital projects in the unincorporated area, and Lorenzo Theater is one of them.

They're they're uh doing a rehabilitation of that theater.

Um, it's iconic, uh it's grand theater, and uh we hope the construction will be completed this year.

So hopefully you'll be getting some invitations to see the marquee light up.

So we're looking forward to that.

They also have the facade improvement program, and that's for small businesses, it improves the physical appearance in the community, as well as gives uh entrepreneurs, you know, funding so that they can create a better identity for the business.

Uh they also have uh program SONOL because uh they're all unincorporated area uh programs, and so they have a SNOL revitalization plan, and the project that they're moving forward uh right now is Wayfinding Signs, so help folks uh businesses in the downtown area.

Uh oh, you're doing it.

Okay.

And so uh some of the other departments that you're more familiar with is the planning department.

They're probably at most every meeting that you have with some projects, and so uh there is an online portal uh that's 24-7.

We've uh enhance that portal, it's in partnership with public works, environmental health, and fire department.

Uh so uh they process uh online permits uh and uh have referrals to each of these other agencies, so it's a coordinated effort to process these development applications.

Uh it's more efficient, and uh as well as the public can track uh cases and applications online.

There's a mapping program as well that uh you can see these permits and the status of it, as well as uh code enforcement and so code enforcement cases can be seen now online.

And there's another photo up on uh the slide there that just shows uh some action done by code enforcement.

Over 1700 cases were managed by them, and they implement the neighborhood preservation ordinance as well as the soil ordinance and and other many other programs.

Uh we also have healthy homes department.

You probably haven't heard too much about them, but they used to be our lead poisoning prevention program, and now they've changed their name to our Healthy Homes because now their programs have expanded beyond just lead abatement, and they have programs like minor home repair, uh they also help uh elderly stay in their homes.

Um, and so there's programs that help with ramps and other improvements like that.

And and they have countywide programs, and minor home program is one of the programs they they implement in the unincorporated area.

Then we also have our housing community development.

You've probably heard some uh some ordinances come to your MAC for uh and you'll be seeing that I guess again this summer as it relates to tenant protections and uh and other uh rental and landlord programs, but um this is just a uh photo of the Ruby Street, which I'm sure you're familiar with, and um that they had a grand opening is now occupied.

There is one more department though that we don't have on this slide that is countywide, and it's our agricultural weights and measures department, and uh the agricultural portion of that department they um handle uh pest detection uh and help um agriculture uh continue their business by removing pests uh even at postal stations and or detecting pests that postal stations and and they have contracts with the state as well as their weights and measures uh division, which they look at scanners, gas pumps, uh, and other measuring devices to make sure that um uh ensuring equity in the marketplace.

And with that, I'll hand it off to Dick.

Public works, yeah, public.

Thank you, Sandy.

I just got one of my trees tagged at home by AG.

Got a notice in my door now, so yeah.

Thank you, Daniel.

I did not know I was going to present today, but you presented these already.

I already presented them, yeah.

So this I think the public works agency, as you know, is a full service agency.

We manage basically all the public infrastructures, including flood control facilities.

Uh we have over 476 miles of roadways that we maintain.

And uh we have about 500 plus miles of open channels and uh drainage system that we actually maintain.

And on a on an annual basis, some of the numbers that's in front of you is some of the accomplishment that was done last year.

Uh, you know, uh road maintenance, our maintenance and operation department has done over 22 miles of road uh rehabilitations, uh doing potholes.

Uh you can see all the numbers uh about 14,000 plus miles of curb swept.

Uh they're out there all the time, primarily the focus being the uh safety of the traveling public.

Uh, we maintain guardrails that are always damaged due to accidents.

Uh, we actually maintain a large number of signals, traffic signals.

Uh, that makes sure that the signals are operating so that uh drivers are operating in a safe fashion.

Uh in addition to that, we do community-related activities such as addressing illegal dumping, which is one of uh the growing challenges that we are facing lately in this area.

Uh we have encampments, uh homeless encampments that we have to deal with on a recurring basis uh between the encampments and the illegal dumping.

Uh we just did a recent study.

We spent in excess of almost 20 million dollars in the last five years just addressing something like this.

So, however, if you don't do them, they become uh a problem for the community.

Uh in addition to that, we implement uh approximately as you can see.

Last year we've done uh 11 transportation projects that are valued at 42 million uh and uh about uh uh 13 projects valued at uh uh flood control project valued at 18 million dollars.

So uh we deliver a large-scale amount of uh uh capital improvement projects throughout the unincorporated area.

Uh you know, we we are actually one of the you know accredited agencies by you know American Public Course Association uh for being one of the most effective uh agencies in nationally speaking.

This is a national certification.

Uh and and we do a large amount of emergency response, and I think I might have shared some before.

Uh some of you are new, I guess, to the committee, but uh one of these days I'll show you the kind of responses that we do during storm times uh when we have a lot of slides and uh washouts throughout the community.

Uh and we literally uh operate uh in an emergency fashion whenever we get in those kind of storms, because we have to keep the roads clean, uh clear for emergency responders as well as uh the community uh at large.

The uh the agency uh you know has I think this year we're requesting approximately 400 million dollars in annual budget.

Uh that includes everything uh from designing uh flood control facilities, roadways, uh, and and maintenance and operation.

The largest operation we have is maintenance and operation that deals with the streetlight outages, uh, you know, like I said, traffic signal maintenance, road maintenance, flood control facilities maintenance.

So uh I don't know this is uh a short blurp of what the agency does, but I think for uh supporting the CAO's budget that just gives you an idea what we do.

And uh a later time I'd be happy to answer any question you may have.

Thank you, Daniel.

Um I'll I'll uh go through the sheriff's content quickly.

I think the under-sheriff is listening online and they have staff here as well but um the sheriff's office uh provides both uh countywide services of of most relevance to the unincorporated area perhaps is the law enforcement services that they provide to the unincorporated area um so this is just uh a snippet from their early budget uh work session presentation to highlight the value of the mandated services that they're providing countywide um I mentioned earlier that the fire chief you can come on up he's graciously joined us tonight even though Fairview has its own fire protection district um so he can share for the benefit of the public what fire does for the unincorporated the rest of the good evening Chair England and members of the Fairview Municipal Advisory Council I'm Willie McDonald the Alameda County Fire Chief and it's a pleasure to be here with you tonight.

We operate we serve uh county residents from uh nine fire stations in the county four of those are in Castro Valley we have one in Cherryland one in Ashland San Lorenzo we have service uh out in the East Valley from one of our fire stations as well as in Sino all uh 11 of the companies that we provide emergency services with or advanced life support they provide have paramedics on them and provide advanced life support services we have special operations that we provide to our communities including our hazard materials response technical rescue response water rescue we have a wild land operation and we also have a fuel mitigation program which is really important in some of the county uh unincorporated areas okay and we are currently uh involved in a uh fire station uh capital improvement project or program where we are okay all right um our capital projects uh we currently have three fire station projects underway we've completed the design uh and programming of those stations and uh we are currently under construction at our fire station in Palomaris Hills um we have um relocated um our fire station that's in uh castro valley on San Miguel um we closed that station and we relocated it to the Castro Valley sanitation sanitary building um and uh move the crews in there so we can operate uh while we tear down uh the San Miguel Fire station in fact it's completely demolished and we're doing some mitigation work uh to uh some environmental uh in mitigation work uh that demo's complete we expect to start uh construction on that station in June and it'll be completed in about 11 months and then we have a San or San Lorenzo fire station is uh completing the design we expect to start uh construction on that station just after beginning of 2027 uh in a second phase of uh capital projects we'll be rebuilding uh in place the Ashland fire station uh in 2027 and we'll get started on the Lake Chabot fire station okay that's all my uh information and thank you for having me here tonight uh then the next couple of slides we have are these great maps from the library hello I'm Deb Sika I'm the county librarian I've been in many rooms with all of you I just haven't had a chance to address you personally so I'm happy to be here tonight um obviously we're sitting in one of our unincorporated areas um resources uh and I won't take personally that you want to be in a hard's boardroom instead of here but you're always welcome here um in fact our A B system was upgraded and everything specifically for for these meetings so um just overall for the library just to have a sense of our service in general because I rarely get to talk to you all is that over the past year we did over 4,130,0 community programs with over 1300 attendees at the library.

So we made over 24,000 new library cards um and um we've had about 1.4 million library visitors.

So that's uh we're not your you know quiet library of the past.

We are robust and having lots of programming.

We had 1.4 million digital items also um borrowed in our collections.

So a lot of times people don't know that, they just think of our brick and mortar sites, but we have an entire collections online.

Um you can read the New York Times every day and you can listen to all kinds of audiobooks and things.

Um, so they're not just our um, this is not just usage members, we also have buildings in the unincorporated area as well.

And I I wanted to scope what I was gonna say to you just a fair view, but I think to understand the the dedication to the unincorporated area here is really important, especially for the library.

We we believe in equity-based models.

We believe in the fact that we are your municipalities in many ways.

Um, we're here to support the the communities here because of the um we are the community centers, we are the town halls, we are all of those things for the unincorporated area, and we take that very seriously, and so um uh some of the things specifically we do.

We have this building here, we have San Lorenzo Library, we have a outlet at Hard with Hard at Cherry Land, we have Reach Ashland Youth Center, and also our mobile and outreach services.

So we have a very large bus that's sometimes hard to navigate, it's called Redwood and pretty brand new new vehicles, and then a smaller vehicle called Poppy that is a little more agile and robust and can get down those streets of the unincorporated areas a little bit better.

So we've done all kinds of uh school visits.

We've worked with HUSD, we've worked with specifically at East Avenue Elementary and Sulfur Creek.

So we do do meetings with all of the schools, and we try to provide supplemental library service to them.

Another thing that we launched recently is um at-home daycare libraries, and that's kind of invisible work to folks.

So we had if you can see in thank you for changing the slide, it's super tiny, but um, you can see some of the dots in the unincorporated area are are those specialized libraries that we go into home daycares and actually bring in furniture shelves, books so that the kids in the daycares have access to library materials.

Um, so we have um 11 of them now.

We're planning on doubling that in size over the next year.

So our mobile and outreach services does that work too.

So I think it's it's just really important to highlight some of the invisible work the library does in these areas because it's people just think about the brick and mortar buildings, but there's um literacy services, there's family literacy days, there's all kinds of other other community um outreach activities that we do.

That's basically it.

So I uh appreciate it.

Let me know if you have any questions and I'll be here.

Thanks.

Thank you, Debbie.

Um the next couple of slides um highlight uh Measure W Essential County Service Fund allocations that have been recommended to the board at its most recent work session.

The board has not taken action on these recommendations yet, and we'll be taking them back up at a later date, but wanted to highlight these for you all for a sense of the uh you know potential investment that could be coming to the unincorporated area funded by Measure W and the Essential County Service bucket, if you will.

Uh so by percentage, you can see here in terms of programmatic investments, um, about 36% recommended uh for the unincorporated area on the capital and major maintenance side.

You can see the vast majority of the recommendations, 71% for the proposed for the unincorporated area.

So in total, about 30% of the Measure W Essential County Service Bucket has been recommended by staff for unincorporated area investment.

Oh sorry, I didn't advance the slide for you.

Um the next series of slides covers the 2627 maintenance of effort budget.

Um, this slide just shows the MOE budget guidelines.

So maintenance of effort uh is the county's budget development policy.

It essentially refers to the funding level that's needed by agencies and departments to continue their existing level of program and uh programs, staffing and service levels.

Um so you can see here the list of bullet points that are included as part of the maintenance of effort policy.

Um, the next slide shows a summary of the net cost change by the county's four major program areas: general government, public protection, public assistance, and health care.

So you can see here the total net cost of those four major programs is over a billion dollars.

It's 1.045.5 billion in net cost.

The notable program changes, actually gonna, these are out of order, I apologize.

Notable program changes highlighted here on this slide include the implementation of Prop 1 and budget changes anticipated related to that.

We're seeing a decline in our statewide public safety sales tax revenue of $33 million.

That is really a large portion of what's driving the net change in the public protection program, reduction in CalFresh revenue in the Social Services Agency, including the impacts of HR1.

And I won't name all of these all in the interest in the interest of time, but these are the major drivers that we're seeing on the program side.

The other slide that I'm gonna show you detail on is this last bullet point, the net salary and benefit adjustments.

And it's important to spend a little bit of time on this detail because we have this unusual net retirement savings of 93.4 million that we're seeing in the developing budget this year.

This is one time net retirement savings that has resulted from the county's prepayments to ASERA.

So we're we've prepaid our pension liability and we're seeing savings as a result.

And so the net salary and benefit adjustment is 41 million, but you could see it would have been much higher, absent that uh retirement savings.

Um, and if I were to advance a couple slides, so this next chart summarizes the net cost change on the non-program side.

This is what we refer to as the other side of the equation, so to speak.

So capital major maintenance, we're seeing increase by 50 million.

Uh, this is a recommendation after years of really underinvestment in terms of maintaining the county's infrastructure.

Um slight increase in contingency and reserves of a half million.

This budget is primarily for our labor agreements that are not yet known.

Our debt service is actually decreasing a little bit.

So we have debt service that's tied to our biggest projects are the um the Highland Hospital Acute Care Acute Tower replacement, as well as the juvenile justice center bond payments.

Um, those are coming down on a budget to budget basis by about 8 million.

Um, and then uh all other non-program expenses and revenue are also down.

So the total net change on the non-program side is 15 million.

So I also have that detailed on this next slide here.

Um, so there's uh you can see some of the same numbers and a little bit more of the detail broken out here.

Um, what I'll point out, you can see on the next slide where we put it all together.

Um, the funding gap for the 26-27 developing budget is 91.4 million.

So this is the amount that we're gonna have to close in order to balance the budget.

Uh this next slide, um, again, we heard the hard GM mention their ERAF shift to the state earlier.

The county's estimated ERAF shift to the state for the next budget year is just under 760 million.

So, what's interesting to note about this number is that it's actually higher than the amount of property tax that the county keeps locally.

Um, so what we're projecting in the budget by way of uh the the main segment of property tax that we keep is about 673 million.

So we're actually shifting more to the state than we're keeping for a general fund.

And then the next slide uh shows the history of the funding gaps that we've had to close since ERAC was implemented in fiscal year 92-93.

Um the bar that you see on the right there, the 91.4 million is the funding gap that we've identified that we're gonna be closing with the agencies and departments before we present a balanced proposed budget to the board.

Absent the one-time retirement savings that we're seeing in or projecting for fiscal year 26-27, the funding gap would have been 184.8 million.

So we've essentially already closed more than half of the gap with the one-time retirement savings.

So the recommended budget balancing approach is for the county administrator to work closely with county agency and department heads to close and address the structural funding gap through a combination of strategies that may include any one of these things that are listed here, or any other ideas that we're able to either independently develop or you know work in collaboration with the departments to develop.

The goal is to identify ongoing strategies as opposed to one-time strategies because the one-time strategies do not help us address the structural funding gap.

They essentially become, you know, the start of our funding gap the next year.

So if you recall and go back to the non-program, you see we're backing out some of the one-time uses of funding from the prior year.

And then this next slide is just our, you know, our long list of pending factors that we consider that may impact the developing budget in future years.

You know, we always have labor negotiations and workforce challenges that can significantly impact our long-term outlook.

Um, a long list of pending litigation and settlements that uh impact our insurance costs, and then the potential of federal and state audit disallowances, uh, notably FEMA.

We have a lot of unfunded capital needs, some of which has been litigation related.

So we're trying to address some of those long-term needs within budget development, but there's still quite a bit that we don't have identified funding for.

And then we always have to contend with the implementation of state programs and policy changes like Prop One.

As I mentioned, the board will be revisiting implementation of Measure W as well as our other priority initiatives, and then we always have to keep in mind concerns at the macroeconomic level and how that can have the potential to do significant economic harm, both globally and locally.

So looking ahead, um, you know, the county, of course, uh is very proud of its triple-triple designation.

This is the highest possible uh ratings from the big three rating agencies.

Um it is uh you know prudent for us to maintain that status as we continue to issue bonds so that we can save taxpayers' money, and then you know, the capital improvement plan.

Of course, we have over a billion of unfunded capital costs over the next five years.

The board has adopted a long-range capital financing plan to help finance some of those needs, but uh, you know, there is a bit that there is quite a bit that is still unidentified and unfunded.

Um, so next steps in terms of the budget development process, we're gonna be reviewing and analyzing the impact of the governor's May revise.

That's due by May 14th.

Um, and then we are gonna continue to update our revenue projections based on additional available data, implement any cost containment and reduction strategies so that uh we can close the funding gap and present a balanced proposed budget to the board by the end of the month.

So we have a very compressed timeline this year.

We have committed to presenting the balanced budget to the board a couple of weeks earlier than we normally do.

Um, and you know, there you can see here on the slide that there are a number of other steps that we typically tape take at this juncture to to close the funding gap.

And then here's a look at the rest of the budget development timeline.

Um we are scheduled to present the proposed budget to the board on May 28th, and the budget hearings and budget adoption will happen from mid to late June.

I'll pause there for any questions.

Thank you for the presentation.

Uh let's start off with opening public comment.

Do we have any callers?

I have no speakers for this item.

Great.

We'll close public comment.

Questions from our board.

Member Farmer, none?

No.

Okay.

Member Higgins.

No.

Member Rhodes.

I hope everybody doesn't hate me.

I know we're trying to get out of here.

I just first and foremost wanted to appreciate you bringing this to the Mac board.

And I just for context, at least in my head, I think there's an interest from this board to have a better understanding of the budget.

And I think this was a great primer for us to understand kind of the bigger picture.

And I think kind of for next steps, I think it would be valuable for us.

I won't speak for everybody for me to have even kind of dig deeper in fair for Fairview in particular.

So just I just wanted to say that.

And then I just wanted to make a comment that props to the library.

Thank you.

Beautiful Hindi collection here.

And we did a field trip with my youngest daughter here, and it was fabulous.

Going to see the behind the scenes is really kind of cool.

So thank you.

And then I just um just one other thought, and and this is more of a comment than anything else, but I just um it was notable to hear from the public um works about um the cost around um dealing with unhoused and some of the illegal dumping.

And I appreciated you listing out some of the um potential ways that you're seeing how to kind of close the gap.

Um, but interested in knowing, and we don't have to go in detail now, but interested in knowing if there are programs that the county is looking at in terms of dealing with the clear housing crisis that we're dealing with here and and some of the implications of that because I'm sure it's a huge budget item.

Um, and it's but it's also really painful for the people who are um unhoused or and are dealing with that.

So that's it for me.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I appreciate the question.

What I didn't, I shared some detail in terms of what the board has proposed out of Measure W on the essential county service fund side.

Um, what I didn't reference is that you know we're we're very fortunate to have measure W.

Um it is a general sales tax that was approved by the voters very narrowly.

Um the majority of it the board has proposed for housing and homelessness.

So 80% of measure W is is proposed to address housing and homelessness needs.

The other 20% that you saw between those two slides is what we refer to as the central county services fund, and then there's the percentage that we highlight that has been uh proposed to be investments in the unincorporated area.

Uh so um the the majority of measure w is uh proposed to support housing and homelessness.

All right, mine's short.

First off, thanks to all the directors for coming down here late on this evening.

It's nice to see you here.

I know our budget transparency process has been all over the place the last few months, and I'm guessing this would be a piece of the transparent portion of it and really working on getting the numbers out there to the public, opening it up for more input.

Um, but I appreciate all of you coming down here.

Um I don't have Vanessa's hand signs for library support, but Don here is awesome at working with the community.

We've done a lot of events through there, so really appreciate that.

And that's all my comments.

Thank you guys for coming down.

It was a very short presentation, but we appreciate you guys being here.

So thank you.

All right, we'll close item three, item number four.

MAC meeting schedule is all we need is a vote to adjust it to the Thursday.

Uh, yes, the ROV needs the room for the election, so we just have to um move it since it's posted as uh Tuesday the second.

So just a little still approval.

Great.

Do we have any public comment?

I have no speakers on this item.

Great.

Close public comment.

Do we have a motion to move the June 2nd date to June 4th?

So moved.

I second it.

Thank you.

Council Member Farmer.

Yes.

Councilmember Higgins.

Yes.

Vice Chair Rose.

Yes.

Chair Anglin.

Yes.

Approved.

Okay, we'll close that.

Move on to the chair's report.

I will do a quick one-line on the fireworks ordinance updates.

Um there were some small changes to it with the appeals and the fines, but it looks like it'll still move through.

Scheduling's gonna be pretty tight.

Last I saw it was scheduled board of supervisors.

They're trying to get on May 12th and June 2nd.

And then again, there's a 30-day review period once that goes through.

So it's gonna be very close to July 4th.

We'll keep our eye on that.

Umtee reports.

Anything from the nothing to report tonight.

Any announcements from our members?

Um we had the um affordable homes um subcommittee ad hoc meeting.

And uh I had a lot of notes here, but I don't think I need to read them all.

But um we're going to be dealing with uh in loo fees, and I think that the biggest issue that uh the ad hoc committee was dealing with, we're thinking about is how are those in loo fees gonna be spent and where uh that's so that the in-loo fees are so that the developer wants to avoid um having a set number of uh low-income housing bill, they pay a fee instead, and then the county I believe has responsibility on what to do with that.

Um both Chris and I uh brought up we really disliked the ministerial approval because um of the issues that we have here in Fairview um about parking and fire safety and repairing um areas.

Um so we expressed our distrust and distaste, but that was about it.

Yeah, thank you.

Any others.

Are we on um reports?

Or are we on subcommittee or are we on council?

Run council announcements.

I would do you have anything okay.

I have a couple of things.

Um just I just I'm gonna piggyback off of um council member farmers' comment.

Um I um just hearing the report out at the beginning of this meeting that BART is planning on reducing services in this area.

I'm um continued to be a bit leery of um the developers' interest in cutting corners um and particularly our need to kind of hold the line and having adequate infrastructure in our communities to deal with increased developments.

And um, so you know, just putting it out there that um transportation is another thing that we should be keeping a close eye on as this unfolds, um, and then a couple of very small things.

Um we have connected with Amberlow in the public works department around um there's a new stop sign on Fairview Avenue going westbound right when it turns into upper D.

The stop sign was placed there without any lines or or uh the writing of the word stop on the um pavement, and so people were unclear on how to use that.

Somebody, we don't we haven't established to put a trash bag over the stop sign so that people wouldn't stop there.

Um we have been assured that um very quickly now they will put the uh word stop on the ground and um align so that people are clear.

It's gonna be an adjustment for all of us that there's a new stop sign there, but I think it's a great addition.

Um, and also um uh council member Higgins was able to um remind Amber Lowe about um painting the um bumps on upper D.

Half of them got painted, half of them didn't, so we're we're getting there, we're getting close.

Um, and then um the last thing I want to just say is um to let everybody know that I will be absent next week or next month due to a vacation.

So peace out.

Member Higgins.

I think uh all my concerns to oh you know what?

Uh Sally isn't here, so I'll make her monthly announcement on the is it the Saturday or Sunday before Veterans Day that uh it's a Saturday afternoon, uh the daughters of the American Revolution hold uh Veterans Day ceremony at Bone Tree Cemetery.

It's usually starts about two o'clock.

We've got a good number of monthly meetings to get it all straight for the community, but she likes to make that announcement.

That's it.

Thank you.

Any staff announcements?

Uh none for me, but thank you, uh, council members Englin and Rhodes for coming to Earth Day Cleanup.

It was enlightening.

And with that, meeting is adjourned, 8:45.

Have a good night