Okay, let me um call this meeting to order.

It's um pretty much right six o'clock.

Trying to looking at my 601.

So can you take the roll, please?

Councilmember Taylor Assid Nielsen.

Here.

Councilmember Ray Maramahoko.

Yes.

Councilmember Menonrol.

President.

Councilmember Elizabeth Stanley, excuse.

Councilmember Warren Cushman.

Councilmember Diane Leitler.

Here.

We have a quorum.

Okay, thank you.

Um can we all stand for a pledge of allegiance, please?

I pledge allegiance.

Under uh visible delivery, and this is for all.

All right, at this time we will be open for um public announcements or comments from the public.

Speakers.

Yes.

Let's start with a joke.

Thank you.

Good afternoon.

My name is Achelke, and I'm a homeowner in San Lorenzo.

And I'm here to see how we can keep our neighborhoods safer during the 4th of July celebrations.

There's been a significant increase and the usage of professional grade, explosives, and fireworks.

And while this may seem like harmless fun, they pose fire risk and cause both physical and mental harm.

These illegal fireworks are incredibly stressful for pets, the elderly, and people dealing with PTSD.

Last year in my neighborhood, they went on well after 12 a.m.

So I think it would be beneficial to everyone if we not only had increased public awareness about the dangers, but also more visible law enforcement regularly patrolling these areas.

And I would also like the council to support the Sheriff's Office efforts to enforce the fireworks and social host ordinance.

Last year I know they were working really hard to keep us safe, but more needs to be done.

And I'd like to know how the residents can help and how we can further support them.

Lastly, residents do need a way to anonymously report illegal fireworks activity violations to avoid potential ill will among residents and neighbors.

Sorry, really quick.

The Board of Supervisors today did pass the first reading of the fireworks ordinance.

Chuck Meadows.

Good evening, members of the board.

My name is Chuck Meadows.

I'm here to actually resurrect an issue that came before you way back when regarding an alcohol uh conditional use permit on 14th Street.

This matter was voted 7-0 by this board against granting a permit.

It was appealed to the Board of Zoning Adjustments where it was approved 5-0, and is now going to the Board of Supervisors this Thursday.

So at 10 o'clock this Thursday, it's the first item on the regular agenda.

There will be public comments, and we're hoping that this time we can get some people that live in near proximity to the actual location.

And he brought up the fact that no one in the immediate area registered a single complaint or objection to introducing I can't remember, it's the fourth or fifth liquor store within a less than a mile radius of that location.

Tyler Dragoni, an ex member of this board has circulated some documents, and I've not been able to verify it independently, but apparently there is a church that shares a common wall with the proposed location.

Now if that is true, then the application should be denied just on that fact alone.

There, but there are other factors including the damage to the potential community from having yet another liquor store.

And if you look at the same materials that Tyler has distributed, I was shocked at how many liquor stores there are in the Ashland area.

Um I live in Fairview and we have just like a handful to cover the entire fair viewer, but Ashland has a huge number.

Just unbelievable.

So I ask that if you can't make it, which I understand people have work schedules to find anyone that is nearby that can say I live near here and I do not want a liquor store in my neighborhood.

Thank you.

Next, Erin Pansilio.

Good afternoon.

Uh just wanted to introduce myself to the group and just to the board just to let you know I'm will be appointed as the new liaison on behalf of Alameda County Fire.

So just here to support and hopefully just if there's any needs requests, I can provide my contact info and email if needed, but just here to support um this community.

Glad to be here.

Thank you.

Officer Pabst.

Hi, good evening.

It's nice to see you all.

I'm gonna move through this pretty quickly.

In April, CHP was very proactive in the Eden area.

We issued 282 traffic citations, towed 32 vehicles.

We had five DUI arrests, one felony arrest, and five misdemeanor arrests.

There were 60 non-injury crashes and 10 injury crashes, which was down from last month.

Uh we did not recover any stolen vehicles, and again, ACSO also recovers stolen vehicles, so they may have some stats for uh those cars.

Let's see, traffic complaints that we've been focusing on this past month.

Speed on Hisparian and the big rigs on Via Ariba, as well as distracted driving, as last month was distracted driving month.

Our previous uh maximum enforcement period was on April 28th.

And again, CHP Hayward led the state in traffic enforcement contacts.

We issued 812 citations in a 24-hour period, with a majority of those citations being for speeding throughout our jurisdiction.

Our next upcoming uh enforcement day will be Memorial Day weekend, and a lot of our officers will be out on patrol, making sure that people are getting to their destination safely, and our goal is to avoid having any fatal traffic collisions.

So, our previous event that we were at was the San Lorenzo Earth Day event.

That was super nice to see everybody.

I actually got some seeds and my son planted them, so thank you for that community event.

And let's see, some upcoming education on March 14th at 6 o'clock.

We will be uh hosting a start smart class for our youth at CHB Hayward.

Sign up online or contact our office during normal business hours.

And May is Child Passenger Safety Technician Month, where we are celebrating over 43,000 certified safety technicians who serve the community daily and educate families about traveling safely.

If you know anyone who needs a car seat installed, you can contact our office during normal business hours and set up an appointment to have a car seat tech install the car seat.

Uh it's a great service that we provide and it's free.

Yeah, you just have to make an appointment and a technician will assist you.

And as always, I'm taking traffic complaints at 345 reckless driving at chp.ca.gov, or call our office at 510 489 1500 during business hours.

Thank you.

Have a good meeting.

I'm sorry, it's been a long day.

It's I was talking I'm only talking about May.

Yes.

May all of May or April, whatever.

March 20.

Which one were you talking about?

The next upcoming class, I'm sorry, is May 14th.

So two days from now, yes.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And now we'll we'll move on to online speakers.

I'll call Diane and then Tyler afterwards.

Diane, you may unmute.

Good evening, Council members.

My name is Diane Castleberry with AC Transit.

I'm here to share and basically a public service announcement regarding the future of our bus service.

On Wednesday, June 10th at 5 p.m.

The AC Transit Board of Directors will consider reducing service due to significant budget shortfalls.

Um a state loan has stabilized next year's budget, but AC Transit still faces a four-year 200 million dollar deficit beginning in 2028.

Without new sustainable revenue, we are facing the possibility of service reductions of over 16% and the loss of up to 300 jobs.

AC Transit has started to prepare for this worst case scenario that um where there would be no new funding is secured, uh, where we will have service reductions that will likely take effect in June of 2027.

Um at this time I want to be clear that there's no decision that has been made yet about which routes will be affected.

However, every bus line in the district is currently under review.

Our priority is to preserve current service levels.

We also want to be transparent about the challenges we face.

So once again, just want to just state that the AC Transit Board of Directors will be considering options to reduce service at their meeting on Wednesday, June 10th at 5 p.m.

It is a hybrid meeting, so you can also find the meeting at ACTransit.org.

Um, we invite the community to attend also.

There will be an open house before that meeting to review possible service changes and to provide feedback.

Um the open house will be held uh immediately or prior to the June 10th board meeting that's located physically at AC Transit's main office at 1600 Franklin Street in downtown Oakland in the lobby.

Um as we have more information, we'll continue to share that with you.

We're expecting to send out an ease e newsletter um within the next couple of weeks to share information on where to go to find out about bus service.

We ask that the council if you can help get the word out to your community um to make sure that um you know no one's caught by surprise.

And um, thank you so much for your time.

Thank you, Diane and Tyler, you may go.

Hello, Eden Mac members.

Um it is good to speak with you uh tonight.

Um like Chuck alluded to um about a year ago when we were discussing the um the conditional use permit for an alcohol outlet uh on East 14th Street.

Um we had really good arguments and unfortunately the BZA um didn't really consider any of them.

Um, and it was a really um let's just say uh we would expect more for um a board that would have to hear an item regarding uh a zoning use that um our neighbors um bear the brunt of so um I invite you all to tomorrow's um planning meeting uh tomorrow at the board of supervisors because I am appealing that decision of um to the board of supervisors.

Um there was just a lot of dismissal at the uh BZA of our environmental justice element, something that we spent many hours workshopping together with staff.

Um staff there were there were a lot of problems with the staff report regarding um the the location of a church there's also the fact that that that it is a predominantly Hispanic church.

They um um, you know, predominantly Spanish speaking, so all of the notices for the alcohol outlet are in English.

So if they wanted to participate and who knows if they even um are aware.

So there's just a lot of different problems.

Um join me um Thursday at 10 a.m.

Thanks.

All right, Chair Whitler.

That was the last public comment.

Okay, thank you.

I'd I'd just like to thank all the um public speakers because I think most of the comments were so relevant, I think, right at this point in time.

And I'd like to thank Ashley for kind of um making us aware that there was a fireworks ordinance um passed recently that is now going before the board.

So just a reminder that people can find um past email and past emac minutes and stuff on the website so you can review these things in case you um forget or weren't aware or want to see the details of them.

So thank you all for uh making your comments.

The next thing on our agenda is um the approval of the minutes from April 14th.

They came out I think today, and they're also we have hard copies of them.

So if you can get to look at them earlier, I'll just give you give us all a few minutes to take a peek at them and see if we have any um comments or updates, or if anyone has a motion to approve or not.

I can make a motion to approve.

Obviously, um allowing space if people have comments still.

Okay, so there's a motion to approve.

Is there a second?

I see people still kind of skimming them.

I s I second.

Thank you, Ray.

Councilmember Assa Nielsen.

Well, let me see.

Is there any discussion?

I see um, are you good?

Okay, all right, thank you.

So any of the discussion?

Yeah, okay, go ahead.

Thank you.

Councilmember Assin Nielsen.

Aye.

Councilmember Marmahooka.

Yes.

Councilmember Roll.

Hi.

Councilmember Stanley?

Yes.

Councilmember Cushman.

Chair Whitler.

Aye.

Motion passed.

All right, thank you.

Okay.

Our first regular calendar um or regular agenda is for conditional use program um permit.

It's this is in San Lorenzo, and the action item is to um approve it.

That's what we're listening for.

And the presenter is Michael Fleming from Anlamita County.

Uh give me uh one second to share my screen.

Hold on.

Okay, uh, this is item number one on the regular calendar.

Uh PLN 2025 00152.

It's a conditional use permit to allow continued operation with no modifications of a telecommunication facility for T Mobile.

Previously permitted under PLN 2012 um 00142.

Um it's located at 16520 Wortley Drive, APN 438-10-4-19.

The sequel exemption is section 15301 class one existing facilities.

Um, this is the subject um property.

Um the tower is right around.

Do you see my mouse?

Yeah, right around right around there.

Um it's uh uh zoned uh M2, which is heavy industrial.

It's in the Eden area general plan is light industrial and research development slash office.

Um the public findings to meet this meet the CUP is um the f as of follows.

Um so it is re it is um a use it is a it is a uh public need for this facility as it provides necessary communication services in the area.

Um it is um the next was um is properly related to land use and transportation services facilities in the vicinity um the third one is basically about safety public health um um there's no reason um to believe that this will affect anyone in uh unsafe uh manner in the area um the last one is if it meets the clauses and performances set s forth in in the development standards um which this does meet it's in uh the zoned area M2 which allows this type of use so as shown on the aerial there's uh a building right here um this is Worthley Drive the cell tower is back here at the back of the property I'd say this distance is at least a football field and a half um it has a small lease area about 14 by four feet it has three antennas at different um sectors so um that would make twelve antennas or nine antennas total um it is approximately well fifty foot five inch uh that's usually fairly accurate um this is the tower um and here's the equipment area pretty small area they do have bowlard so a vehicle can't just drive into it on accident um the area is the whole yard is um that whole property is covered in um barbed wire fencing um the site right there is not surrounded by barbed wire but once the facility is locked up for the day um generally it's gonna be really tough for someone to try to go in there and um this site is used for school buses so um there hasn't been any safety issues to date so um in conclusion um staff recommends the eaton area mutual advisory council recommend approval of conditional use permit PLN twenty twenty five zero supposed to be another zero there 00152 um to the Alamia County Board of Supervisors Planning Department staff will convey the Eden area missile advisory council recommendation to the West County Board of Zoning Adjustments during their deliberations of this item um the item is to allow continued operation with no modifications of a telecommunication facility for team mobile previously permitted under PLN twenty twelve zero zero one four two based on drawings marked exhibit a dated november eleventh twenty twenty five um on file with Alameda County planning department should the Eden area municipal advisory council recommend approval the application um the the following conditions approval in the draft resolution should be considered which is uh was attached in the staff report um if there are any questions staff is available and uh do believe Joshua is it Hernandez um Joshua yes Jessure Hernandez uh should be online and available for other questions.

Okay thank you any uh council members have any questions or thoughts start with you Ray I see head shaking, um Elizabeth.

No?

Taylor, no.

I actually just want to hear from the public first.

Okay.

Just because it's been there since the fifties.

Okay, I'm not seeing anything from us right at this moment um all right I can sit down here.

Do we have some uh questions from the public or comments?

Yes, Chuck Meadows.

Okay.

Let's put this aside.

Thank you, members of the board.

I have no opposition or pros or cons against this specific cell tower.

What I'd like to um make the request is for a review of the process by which these things are approved.

I learned as I saw a cell tower application essentially forced through the system because of a federal rule called the shot clock.

Well, that's the informal name for it.

Which means essentially this the law was passed in order to prevent local bodies such as Board of Zoning Adjustments, including the Board of Supervisors and Macs from unnecessarily delaying the implementation of cell towers.

Good intention.

Problem is you guys only meet once a month.

The shortest time version is a 60 day shot clock, which means if for some reason the application is delayed by one meeting, maybe your agenda was full and it gets pushed out to the next meeting, you're now almost at that sixty-day threshold.

Now, I'm not talking about this particular application, but I have seen a representative from one of the public utilities basically say to the BCA, we're here as a courtesy, but we can ignore you.

And we can ignore your board of supervisors.

We have a federal law that supersedes your local laws, and we're gonna put this cell tower in whether you like it or not.

Now we will make a concession, but it's uh I'm paraphrasing here, out of the goodness of our heart.

I don't think that's the attitude that we really want to have when it comes to implementing or passing permits.

We want a body to be able to have a chance to review, listen to public comment, and if there are valid objections, those should be heard and addressed by the body seeking the permit.

So this really goes to planning in the sense that there should be a special procedure alerting the MAX, the BZA, and the Board of Supervisors that when one of these applications have been submitted, that this is coming to you on a very shortened mandated timeline, and therefore maybe it justifies either a special meeting if these things can be bunched together or some other way to allow sufficient time for adequate review.

Thank you.

Thank you.

There are no other comments.

All right.

Um Megan, did you have anything?

I guess I'm looking at the parcel zoning history.

Um and I know that we've had a couple of these conditional use permits for telecom towers come before us well after their previous permits expired, and so based on what I see here.

It expired May 8th, 2023.

Yeah, okay.

That's the yeah, so the 2012, I think 142.

Yeah.

Uh but it's been operational since for the last three years.

Uh I believe so, yes.

Um so now we're going through a formality of getting the conditional use permit.

Active again.

Um yeah, uh well, I mean, the trouble with these these towers is that when they when they expire, we're our system has been getting better at the planning department where we're issuing notifications of expiration.

But um some towers, and there's so many of them that it some maybe we sent the notice or maybe the notice didn't get sent, or for whatever reason, um this is a uh 2025 application, so it was applied for about a a a year ago, and it it took that much time to get it to hearing.

Now, um that's just the way it goes.

Sometimes there are reasons um that we can't have a go-to hearing right away, or um, in this case, uh I believe it was gonna go to the hearing earlier this year, but uh believe um your agenda was very full and it got bumped a couple times.

So there isn't a good it I'm not trying to make excuses I'm just trying to say these cell towers have a history of going over their expiration date and when they go over the expiration date it's not like someone goes out there and shuts them down.

Right.

You know they're still in operation and so the planning department's trying to tighten up their grip on the expiration dates and making sure that they apply um but um we can only do as best as we can and we're we've been doing better but um it's still not foolproof system yet.

It seems like there's a lot of the burden on our staff as opposed to the applicants to initiate a renewal so is there any thought about revamping or restructuring the process to make them more accountable when their own permits expire um it's funny you say that.

Just last night at CV Mac I had another item but I was listening to the cell tower that was going through and there was two cell towers and they are both expired and Rodrigo Dunya brought up the fact that um we are looking into um drafting an ordinance that would find the cell towers when their permits expire.

Yeah so I mean that's I don't know we can do much more than that but if if we have a pretty a good size fine maybe they'll come in on time.

Right.

You know and um it's sort of like playing departs and kind of taking the the blame for these things expiring but they're not our towers you know and so we can only do as much as we can do if the applicant doesn't renew it then the tower just stays there and keeps getting used and they keep making money and we don't get to put our input in you know yeah it seems like there would be some sort of yeah so um to get the applicant to be in compliance.

So I believe Rodrigo said that we'll probably have to do like a fee study to look at other jurisdictions to see what they're charging for for expired CUPs on telecom towers and then um once that's done it'll probably have to go it'll it'll go to the MAX and then to the plan commission and to the board of supervisors to vote on an ordinance that would essentially try to ring bring these things back in into compliance.

Okay thank you.

Michael I have a question I'm sorry usually I get other members first but this is right along those same lines because I was looking at in like the history and it did say may on May 8th 2013 the CUP was issued with an expiration date of 2023 right so that's what we just talked about but then in 2021 it said it was allowed for some modifications and it when it got modified they didn't set a new it didn't so it didn't they didn't set a new CP C UP date or anything.

So modifications up to a certain extent are allowed on cell towers under 6409 which is very quick process which allows modifications on towers because these things are upgrading all the time um and they don't have to go through a CUP every time as long as the C UP was valid in 2021 then what how it works is when they apply for 6409 the planner checks the C UP.

If the C UP is still valid then they're allowed to do modifications up to there's a there's a set of rules basically says you can do these modifications but you can't do these so the planner follows those and um and as long as their their CP isn't expired yet they're allowed to modify it to an extent under 6409.

Okay so yeah so the modifications were made but this the the deadline the ending date for the CUP just stayed the same at the uh 2023 date.

Okay, thank you.

I was just wondering if we were missing an extra step in there someplace.

Okay.

Warren, do you have anything?

You want to turn that on for me, if it's on.

It's on okay so I I've said I've said this in the in this body before.

I love systemic improvements and systemic thought processes.

And it sounds like planning is looking at a systemic way to deal with this issue.

If we have to deal with it piecemeal, every Mac has to deal with this piecemeal.

It just gets frustrating.

But it sounds like there may be a systemic solution to begin to get at this.

So that's that's my general comment in terms of this particular project.

I don't have a problem with it.

Thank you.

Taylor?

No additional comments.

Okay, Elizabeth.

Nothing came up.

All right.

Um we've already heard from public, right?

All right.

So is there a motion?

Um, anybody like to make a motion?

I'll make a motion to support to approve the conditional use permit for the applicant.

Okay, to recommend the approval of the the CUP.

So we're second.

I can second.

Thank you.

All right.

Any other discussion?

Okay, you can call for a vote, please.

Councilmember Aston Nelson.

Aye.

Councilmember Maramahoko.

Yes.

Councilmember Roll.

Aye.

Councilmember Stanley?

Yes.

Councilmember Cushman.

Aye.

Chair Whitler.

Aye.

Motion passed.

All right, thank you.

Okay.

The next thing on our agenda is um it's actually a report.

From the budget committee.

From the county budget committee.

All right.

Melanie?

Attendee?

That's correct.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening, Council members.

Thank you for having me.

Melanie Atendito with the County Administrator's Office.

I'm here to provide an update on the budget development process and where we are, as we are doing with all of the other uh municipal advisory councils.

I'll note that all of the information in this presentation that you have has already essentially been presented publicly between the board's early budget work session last month in April, as well as the most recent updates to the budget work group.

So if you were engaged at those levels, most of this content will look familiar to you.

As we do with all of our budget presentations, we start with economic updates and the state and federal context given the county's heavy reliance on state and federal aid.

So here's an overview of what we'll be talking about.

What is a little different and tailored specifically for this meeting is these meetings, a series of meetings that the roadshow is actually that Supervisor Miley has asked us to do, um, are we you know we're showing um unincorporated area highlights as they were presented at the early budget work session.

Um, this is a work in progress.

We the county administrator's office is working closely with uh the agencies and departments to continue to work on additional enhancements we can make to the unincorporated area special budget.

Um we did a series of those enhancements and I presented on those previously at the unincorporated services meeting.

Um, and we're hoping, you know, got good feedback on some of the enhancements we already made.

We're hoping to continue to do that and you know continue to improve upon our communication of the service delivery in the unincorporated areas, not only from the departments that provide municipal services, um, but also the the value of the countywide services um that are provided in the unincorporated area.

So to the extent we could better capture that information.

We're hoping to include more of that in the budget document this year.

Um, so what once we get into the unincorporated area highlights, I'll invite uh the department heads and staff that are here to come up and share uh some content based on those slides from based on those snippets from those presentations in April.

Um, and you know, any other relevant information for you all.

Um, and then I'll try to move rather quickly through a budget overview, pending factors and next steps.

Uh to so to start as we always do with the economic context, um the Federal Reserve or the Central bank met again uh at the end of last month, April 28th and 29th, and they left the interest rates unchanged again uh for the third straight meeting.

There have been dissenting options amongst the members in recent meetings, with some favoring rate cuts to support employment, while others are more cautious, data persistent inflation.

So our most recent headlines really note that the war with Iran in particular has driven inflation to its highest levels in three years, with the price of energy accounting for about 40% of the increase in the CPI in April.

We're continuing to see tech companies scale back after years of rapid growth during the pandemic as investments shift towards artificial intelligence and automation.

So that has really reshaped the tech industry.

The Bay Area in particular has, and the state of California, I'll say, has been heavily reliant on the success of the tech industry.

And so anything that is happening within these companies, including its impact on the workforce, has ripple effects on not only the state economy, but also our local economy.

So some of the most recent headlines are reflective of additional rounds of layoffs between all of those companies that you see there, but in particular, Meta and Amazon had additional rounds of layoffs more recently.

So this next slide shows it's a schematic of the pressure environment for counties.

So not only do we have to contend with financial pressures, but there are also policy pressures that we have to keep in mind as we're developing the budget.

You'll notice that some of these are essentially both financial and policy.

So we uh this year in particular, you know, we're really worried about the the federal impacts of policy changes like HR1.

A lot of those are I'll talk a little bit more in a future slide about how we don't really know the full impact of those federal policy changes.

So that's very challenging when your budget, your general fund in particular, is two-thirds state and federal dollars.

Um so we can move on to the next slide.

Um so in terms of the state budget update, um, I'm using the same template that we used for uh the first meeting that we had in the roadshow was the Fairview MAC.

Um the state has since released its April data, it's pretty much the same story.

Their general fund cash receipts um still continue to be above forecast for the month and above the fiscal year to date forecast.

Um if the pattern in uh the May revision that's supposed to come out on Thursday looks anything like what the state did uh what the state uh put out in the governor's January budget, we're not necessarily gonna see the benefits of the surplus at the local level.

So we'll see.

We're hoping for better news.

Um we'll know more by Thursday when uh the governor uh presents on his May revision.

Um the state also has its own challenges that it has to contend with, um, and that's essentially what uh the third bullet point is getting at in terms of approaching the GAM limit.

Uh it restricts their spending growth even when their revenues increase.

So that is a challenge that they're dealing with, in addition to you know them also having to contend with federal policy changes and and those impacts on the state budget.

The legislative analyst office is cautioning that this that state spending has grown at an unsustainable rate.

And so we always look at the opinion that the legislative analyst puts out because it can sometimes either temper what seems to be a very optimistic message that the state or the governor is putting out, or sometimes they have um you know slightly different take on uh what is happening to the finances at the state level.

Um, like I said earlier, the effects of federal policy changes are yet to be fully understood, in particular when it comes to county government, we're um you know, concerned about the impacts on SNAP or food stamps, Medi-Cal, and uh the substantial workload impacts across multiple programs that were anticipating given the proposed federal policy changes.

Um the next few slides are uh, you know, sort of what we consider sort of a primer in terms of how counties are financed.

So the county fiscal dilemma is essentially that there is an increasing demand for safety net services during economic downturns.

So in an economic downturn, we typically don't have as much revenue for service provision, and yet it is when folks rely on safety net services the most.

So that is an unfortunate irony that we have to deal with in county government.

Our revenue raising authority is limited by things like Prop 13, Prop 218, and the Education Revenue Augmentation Fund or ERAF, which I'll talk a little bit more about in a couple of future slides.

So over time we've seen a progressive loss of control over local spending.

A lot of the services that are provided by counties are mandated by the state and federal government, those mandates have continued to increase, and when the state's budget is strained, sometimes we don't get the reimbursements, or sometimes they are delayed.

So that is challenging.

The state continues to do these rounds of shifts of responsibility to the local level.

That started with the transfer of the responsibility for medically indigent adults in the 80s, and then we had a couple of rounds of realignment in 1991 and 2011 that shifted responsibility from the state to the local level.

And the at the local level, we're always concerned that we're absorbing all of this responsibility, not getting enough funding for it.

So that is an ongoing challenge.

And then I'd like to talk about the difference between cities and counties, because I know that is a comparison that often comes up in this context given that county government is responsible for providing municipal services to the unincorporated areas.

There are reasons why the comparison is challenging.

Counties lack broad powers of self-government that cities have.

Cities have broad revenue generating authority that the counties don't have.

And the legislative control over counties is more complete because counties are a subdivision of the state.

So everything that I just talked about in terms of the shifts of responsibility, that happens much more seamlessly between the state and the counties because of how we're structured and because of our function.

So we as a county administer services that are mandated at the state and the federal level.

Many of these are safety net services for vulnerable populations, and they're they work best on a regional basis.

And so I like to say that the services that are provided by counties generally are not as visible as you know what you would imagine come from a city government.

So here in the unincorporated area, you have HARD that's doing Wreck and Park.

The county does not do that.

So a lot of the sort of frontline visible services that folks think about when they think about city government, other than the departments that are providing municipal services, the countywide services are not as visible because generally it's a smaller subsection of the population that is touched by social services that is eligible for benefits, and a smaller subset of the population that is just as impacted and interfacing with our law enforcement or safety partners.

So moving on to our current year budget overview, this is the highest level overview that we have of the current year 2526 final budget that was adopted by the board last June.

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

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

As I was saying earlier, the county's budget in the general fund in particular is heavily reliant on state and federal aid.

So if we include Medi-Cal charges for services, the federal component of that object, if you will, state and federal aid is essentially two-thirds of the county's general fund.

And then this is our dollar bill.

So we like to remind folks that the county only receives 15 cents for every property tax dollar that's collected.

Most of it goes to schools.

There's a portion that goes to the cities and the special districts, like hard.

And then there, that last piece of 15 cents that used to go to redevelopment, comes back and is distributed to the other taxing entities as the former redevelopment agencies are winding down.

So it's essentially shared by all of these other taxing entities.

Okay, so here's the part of the presentation where I'll invite my colleagues to come up, department heads as well as staff to share a little bit more about the services they provide based on information that they presented to the board last month.

Thanks, Melanie.

Good evening, council members.

I'm Sandy Rivera from the Community Development Agency.

And as Melanie had noted, the couple slides that we do have for community development agency is what we presented as some highlights in our early budget work session.

And so I'll just go over a couple of these here.

Is one of the five departments that we have in the community community development agency, and we so we have a diverse array of services that we provide through our agency.

And I know you're pretty familiar with the economic and civic development department through the strategic plans that they're working on and as well as the events that they hold.

So they do have the signature events that you probably in the photo here, you see it's the Cash Valley Light Parade that's well attended.

About 15,000 folks attended this this last one, and uh you know it's become a regional draw.

So it brings in uh folks to partake in some of the businesses as well as enjoy the events.

They also have the Ashland Sherlin FAMFest that you also have in this unincorporated area and San Lorenzo Showtime.

So that's some of the things they do.

They also deal with capital projects, and as you know, the Lorenzo Theater is one of those key projects, and so that's moving along.

It's a photo of the interior.

You probably all took the tour of the theater in terms of its construction.

And so we're looking forward to having that construction completed uh at the end of this year, so um, and the marquee lining should be right around the corner.

Uh they also do the facade improvement program, and that helps uh small businesses uh with their identity as well as as um improving uh the physical appearance of the neighborhood.

Uh and they also work in the East County, and that's the Synol revitalization plan that they're working on right now, and uh they're basically uh using urban design as part of the improvements in the in that downtown area, and uh they'll be putting up wayfinding signs in this uh next couple of months.

So you'll see that.

Or do you just that?

There you go.

Uh, and this uh next slide it's kind of um aggregate of a couple of other departments that we have.

Uh as you know, with uh a Mike Fleming's uh a report on the conditional use permit.

It's uh the planning department is part of the community development agency as well.

Uh the code enforcement is a division in the planning department, and so um they uh in implement many programs, and it just for this photo uh they implement the neighborhood preservation ordinance.

Uh they manage about 1,700 cases uh this last year, and it tends to stay about the same rate, um, but they also take care of other programs like tobacco retail license, the alcohol outlet uh review, as well as and uh I I know I'm gonna say here sidewalk vending, they will, they're one of the partners in that program, so there's a lot of cooperative work with other departments as well, and um other improvements that have taken place when in the planning department is now the online permit uh program that we have, and now it accepts all uh permits through this permit portal.

And so uh the community can actually log into that site and see what permits are active and what status those permits have, and and it you can visualize see that through a mapping program, so you can visualize that with the map.

And we um have this program uh in cooperation with our partners uh, like uh in the development review process, the fire department, public works, or environmental health, and so um a number of departments use this application as well.

So it does help in the referral process and the speed in which um and tracking that that development uh projects can be seen by the public as well as the applicants.

And then we also have our housing community development department.

Uh they deal with the three Ps and housing prevention uh prevention production and um uh okay.

Now I'm I'm blanking.

Uh Warren, you probably can help me there.

Thank you, production, and prevent prevention, okay.

And uh Crescent Grove, we used to be Ruby Street, is uh the most recent uh affordable housing project, uh new housing affordable housing project in the unincorporated area.

We also have our lead hazard uh control program.

Uh I don't know if you're as familiar with them, it's our healthy homes department, and they do projects also in the unincorporated area, and in this case it's a it's a five-unit uh uh five-unit, I guess, uh parcel, five units on a parcel um uh cottages that uh needed some lead um lead control or lead abatement, and uh this is in the Cherryland area, and so they do minor home repair, they also help with aging in place, and so those minor home repair programs are available to folks in the unincorporated area as well.

And with that, um I will pass that on to let's see, public works.

Thank you, good evening.

Daniel Dessenberg, public director.

Uh, was asked to give you a very brief overview of a very large agency, and I'm gonna be very brief.

Uh generally speaking, we are uh maintain and provide the infrastructure in the unincorporated area when it comes to transportation.

A hundred percent of the thing that we do is within unincorporated area.

However, we also have flood control services that uh expand throughout the county that the flood control district as a separate entity governed uh managed through the public force agency does a lot of work throughout uh the county.

Western part of the county actually has about eight different zones, and uh eastern part has one zone and has its own governing body which is separate from separately managed.

So uh we have uh about 470 miles of roadways uh that we maintain uh annually.

Uh we have over 500 miles of uh channels and uh several thousand miles of uh underground systems that we regularly maintain.

Uh and and out of that one you can see some of the stats from last year.

Uh our maintenance and operation folks have done 22.7 miles of road rehabilitation.

Uh I uh typically like to share with uh anybody there.

I'm presenting the the photos so that they actually say a lot more than what I can say in words.

Uh however, I could also also describe them as you can see.

Uh 526 spot holes repaired, uh a lot of guardrails due to accidents that we go out there and repair traffic safety.

We have several signals that we can consistently maintain to make sure that they are operational at all times, ensuring public safety, the driver's safety as well as pedestrians and bicycles.

Uh so that's what our road maintenance folks do.

In addition to that, as you all know, probably we do graffiti abitment.

One of the severely increasing challenges that we're facing right now is illegal dumping uh throughout everywhere uh in the community uh and uh homeless encampments are popping up at different locations, and we get calls from various folks uh asking us to mitigate and the encampments along with the legal dumping, which is generally our correlated, are uh becoming expensive undertaking.

I think recent study that we did over the last four years, we've spent an excess of eighteen million dollars uh handling these kind of uh illegal dumping and uh uh encampment cleanup type of activities.

So those are some of the uh uh services that we provide throughout maintenance and operation group.

Uh let's see.

There you go.

And then we have our building permits and development approval process.

As you can see, we've uh processed over 8,700 permits uh last year of various type electrical building and various, and as Sandy indicated, we've instituted that uh online portal.

So almost all of our permits are done electronically.

Uh that has translated into higher uh responses, higher uh customer service, and a substantial amount of savings for uh developers and people submitting permit applications because they don't have to do these things uh in a manual way, once the metal can be distributed electronically.

Uh where in the old days we used to require people to bring 12 copies of these large set of plans, and uh those things were very expensive.

Uh I've gotten comments from developers where they say that this kind of system of saved them in tens and thousands of dollars just in the permitting process.

So we're very proud of uh all of our partners and our team uh for doing that.

In addition to that, as you can see, we've completed 11 transportation capital improvement projects and uh 13 flood control for a total of about 60 million.

Average annually, we do about 60 to 65 million dollars worth of capital improvement projects.

These are projects that provide you know sidewalk improvements, uh corridor improvements, and various other facilities.

In addition to that, they do create a lot of local jobs uh for construction industry as well as our consulting industry that usually uh do some of these work in collaboration with our staff.

So our agency, like I said, is a fairly uh full-scale uh service provider that provide uh almost all of that incorporated transportation services.

Uh you name it sidewalk, bike lanes, uh payment rehab.

We do about annually about 10 million dollars worth of payment rehabilitation, which you might see some of them now because this is about the time we begin to go out.

The contractors go out, start uh disrupting some of our residents through their uh construction equipment.

Uh, however, you know that that's the price of that we have to pay in conveniences uh to make sure that this public investment in infrastructure are protected and long-lasting.

So uh that's what our agency does, and uh, this is what we have uh uh basically.

This is about two slides out of about 40 slides that I used at the board meeting.

So hopefully that give you just a general idea uh of our uh operations annually.

With that, thanks.

Um, go ahead and speak on behalf of the the sheriff.

I know they had a late item heard at the board meeting today.

So this is just one slide um of a much larger presentation that they had.

Uh it's summarizes their um mandated services, which are valued at uh a little over half million in the budget of that, about 88 million is offset with revenue.

So, what I'll um highlight in particular is law enforcement services.

Um, we know that there's a you know partnership with CHP in terms of the actual law enforcement that's provided in the unincorporated areas, uh, but they provide uh emergency services dispatch investigations within the Eden Township substation, as well as patrol, also at ETS, and then warrants and records.

Most of the other services that are highlighted here are countywide services.

Uh, and then moving on to fire.

Good evening, commissioners.

It's so nice to be here.

Pleasure as always to come and visit.

Just wanted to give a quick update on behalf of fire chief Willie McDonald.

He was unable to make it tonight.

So I'm here for those that don't know.

My name's Eric, and just wanted to give a quick update on what the fire department does here locally.

So, besides responding to fires, medicals, traffic accidents, alarm soundings.

We have a really interesting sort of model where we contract our services with other cities.

So, as you can see up on the board, we actually deliver fire services to five cities.

So, Dublin, Emeryville, Newark, San Leandro, Union City, as well as two national laboratories.

So, what that means is is we as a fire department or as part of the county provide the personnel to staff the stations within other cities.

So we actually are able to be net neutral with our costs.

So we actually have the cities pay for our personnel and they provide the fire apparatus in the station that we actually respond to, much like our friends in the library as well.

They do a very similar model.

So we're really proud to serve those cities, but maybe more importantly, we're super proud to serve our unincorporated areas.

So we operate nine fire stations in the unincorporated area.

So we serve Ashland, Cherryland, San Lorenzo, all of Castro Valley, the unincorporated areas of Livermore, so any anywhere from the boundaries of East Livermore all the way to Tracy, so East County, and then we also provide service in Sonol as well.

So we're about 408 square miles is our response area within our department, so quite a large geographical area.

And then additionally, we also do some special operations.

So we provide hazardous materials response team, the technical rescue team, water rescue team, and our wildland operations.

So as part of our response for those that use the Oakland Airport, we actually provide the water rescue in the event of a plane emergency.

We're responsible for that water as you approach into Oakland Airport.

So we really sort of spread out on a lot of different avenues, and we're really happy to be there.

We've also about two years ago, we stood up a hand crew, which is a crew that goes out and does vegetation management.

So when we look at those wildland fires that we have seen impact our state up and down, we're actually out on the front line ahead of time trying to prevent those wildland fires.

So we have a crew of 18 individuals that contract services to go out and do vegetation management within the county.

So it's a really great partnership.

We've done work in Sunol, we've done work at the Berkeley UC Berkeley campus, Castro Valley Unified School.

So these are the things that we can get out in the community ahead of time and try to prevent fires from happening before they actually start.

So it's a really good program for us.

It actually allows us to recruit firefighters into our paid side as well.

So it's really a good opportunity and sort of a good return on value, in our opinion.

Next slide, please.

And then second, I just want to talk about capital improvement.

I know you've seen me come here and talk a lot about Measure X projects, but I do want to give just a quick update of how we're actually improving our capital.

So you, as everyone recalls, we were a voter-approved Measure X in 2020.

We got 90 million dollars, and I'm happy to sit here tonight to give a quick couple updates on where we're at.

So part of our phase one construction was our fire stations in Castro Valley and actually right here in San Lorenzo.

So it's fire station seven up on Palomares Hills, is under construction.

We have the slab board, we have walls, we have the still superstructure going in this week, and we're expected to actually be in that fire station by January 1st of this count coming up.

So we're really excited to get a new location for our constituents that live up in Palomares Hills.

Moving down to Castro Valley, if you recall, we're gonna demo our old fire station 25.

We um we're gonna pivot our crew to another location.

So we've done that, we've moved to another location.

We have now demoed our old station 25.

So that those that drive by San Miguel Avenue, you'll see a vacant dirt lot.

We're now in soil remediation, and once we get through the soil remediation, we will then start constructing up a two-story fire station.

That picture that you see right there, and then we're supposed to be in that station somewhere right around April of 2027.

So about a year, just so just about um sorry, about a year from now, we should be in that fire station as well.

And then last but not least, maybe most important to this group here is our fire station 22.

As you may recall, there was um some environmental work that had to be done on that site.

So we're working with our partners at environmental health department to remediate those soil.

I actually had a call with Dylan Roe today to sort of talk through our next steps of what it looks like for environmental um cleanup on that site, so we can make sure that we have a clean site not only for our firefighters but for our community here as well.

I'm also working with PGE to get those telephone poles down that might be feeding those street vendors right there.

So hopefully we could get those things out of our way so we can actually have a clean um piece of dirt to build on at station 22.

So we're expected to break ground by January 1st of this coming year.

So I got about six to seven months of cleanup and sort of getting the permitting process going.

The plans have been completed.

We are submitting into our sister agencies to get those permits reviewed, and then we'll be starting ground at here at station 22.

So we're really excited about that.

Then last but not least, we have um two more fire stations that will be phase two of our project.

One of those is in Ashland on 164th, and our other one is on Lake Chabot Road and Castro Valley at station number 26.

So in total, we're gonna have five new fire stations serving the unincorporated areas here by the end of this Measure X4.

So we're really excited about that, and we also have a brand new training center out in the city of Dublin that's um well under its way that we partnered with GSA on that um uh construction project, and we are supposed to be in there right around January 1st of this coming year as well.

So a lot of movement for us um in this calendar year, but we're really excited about serving the community not only of San Lorenzo but also all of Alameda County.

So thank you for being able for us to present a little bit about what the fire department does here locally for this community.

And without further ado, I'll turn it over to our dear friends who is gracious enough to let us use the library almost every once a week here in San Lorenzo, and I'll turn it over to our librarian Deb Sigo.

Eric and I have had a long relationship, and we we figured out that the library and the fire department are very parallel in structure, so it's been a unique understanding of each other's departments in that way.

So, like Eric said, my name is Deb Sika.

I'm the county librarian.

It's so nice to have you here, really nice to see everybody.

Um I was just looking at library history, and we've actually had a San Lorenzo Library since 1910 in this area.

And so I was just uh just fascinated to hear there was a story where there's the the children's room was featured, and one of the opening programs was a Robinson Caruso story time where the kids play and act, and I just thought, you know, that happens in this room all the time too.

Things like that happen in this room all the time.

So not much changes and but a lot changes at the same time.

Um, so just uh just to talk a little bit about um the service map here, much like the fire, we do contract with five cities, but we're um very responsible for all of the unincorporated area in um Alameda County.

We have a little shorter than Eric too.

Um we've got over the last year, we did um 4100 on-site programs.

We've had over 130 attendees in those, and a lot of the lifeblood of what happens in the libraries is our engagement programs.

We feel like that is true service to the community.

We have our collections, we have our digital collections, we have all of those good traditional and important things, but we also have a lot of supplement with our programs and engagement.

Um we issued 24,000 new library cards last year.

Um, 1.4 million visitors, and we've had about 1.5 digital materials followed up um borrowed.

So through all of these sites that you see here.

Um, and I also want to share this map with you.

I can figure it out.

Oh, Lila has it.

There we go.

Oh, thank you, Lila.

Sorry.

Um I always wanted to include this map because there's a lot of invisible services in the unincorporated area.

People often just think of our brick and mortar in the Eden area as this building and our library that's in Cherryland, and also just so you know, Cherry Land Library is going to get a full-time Spanish designated librarian soon.

So we're very excited about that part.

Um, in fact, offers are being drawn up right now, so hopefully they they select us.

Um, but uh there's also a lot of home daycare libraries.

We're going to double the amount of home lake um daycare libraries in the upcoming year.

So we had 11 placed in in individual homes.

Um, so we're gonna um get that to 22.

We also have various outreach libraries, so in community centers um throughout the unincorporated area.

So we will partner with a community based organization that will allocate a little spot for us and so we'll build in what's called an honor library will where and people truly bring the books back and we do programming in those spaces so outside of just the library buildings we engage in that way in different community organizations I say that just you know as I was also just looking at the relativity of the programs for just a week ahead in this building and Cherry Land alone and it's we have music story time we have homework center help we have the little listener story time we have stay in play activity we have um last Saturday we had a 90 people in this room that were talking about the Russell City um concerns in the in the community and so it was a really well attended program and we have one coming up also about healing community trauma the Japanese American World War II story so this this library really does a lot of important social justice race equity based programming and so I think that's one of the flagships of this this particular location and the staff's interests we also have film screenings and all kinds of stuff that happen in this space so other than that um really just happy to serve happy to hear feedback happy with this building I'd love to have more libraries there's never enough but um we we build where we can and we get in where we fit in and we make sure that there's library service for all and that everyone is welcome here and that's the most important thing I just want to take a moment too real quick I know it's this is budget but um some of our departments are working together on asset mapping in this area so I have some flyers for community feedback session that I'll leave over at the table so if you'd like to participate in asset mapping we really want to get together and pull our community resources and make sure that we're all working together in the same area so I'll put that over there I know CDA and public works and a couple other departments are all working together on it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So it's great to be followed up by our subject matter experts in the departments after I just talked about how county services are not as visible and then you hear from like some of our most visible services that are provided there's there's probably nothing more satisfying than an investment in capital and then you see a building all of a sudden stand up so appreciate appreciate everything that all of our department heads and staff have shared.

This next slide is a summary of what has been proposed to the board at its most recent work session.

This is the essential county service fund bucket of Measure W our half central sales tax um so this is 82 million that has been proposed over two years in these various buckets that you see in different colors here.

So housing stability tenant protections and capacity building it's 14 million proposed over two years older adults and senior services for basic needs 3 million over the next two years food security 11 million and then stabilizing the safety nets in anticipation of federal and state policy budget impacts 40 million and then critical county infrastructure one time capital and major maintenance of 14 million.

And then on the next slide you can see the proportion of Measure Wentral County Service Fund investments that are proposed to benefit the unincorporated areas and then countywide investments that are proposed.

So on the programmatic side which is on the left that you see there about 30% 36% of the proposed investments are for the are proposed for the unincorporated area and then for capital and major maintenance on the right side, 71% is proposed for the unincorporated areas.

So the composite in the middle there reflects about 30% of the total proposed to benefit the unincorporated area specifically, and then 70% for countywide.

So again, this is the essential services fund portion of Measure W.

The board's current proposals at 80% of Measure W support homelessness, housing, and homelessness, and then 20% for essential county services.

So the board has not taken action on those proposals.

These were staff recommendations, and the board will take up these recommendations again at a future meeting.

So the next series of slides is a summary of our maintenance of effort process.

Maintenance of effort is the board's budget development policy.

It essentially guides the departmental budget submissions every year.

So what the departments are supposed to submit is the funding level that is needed by their agency or department to continue providing this the existing level of programs, staffing and services.

So though you can see I won't read through all of them, but those with the exception of the 4% COLA for CBOs, most of those other things generally don't change.

The COLA will sometimes adjust based on the state of the economy.

We do try to align the COLA for CBOs with what's happening with our recommended COLAS for staff, in particular the groups that are represented by the labor coalition.

And then this next slide shows our maintenance of effort budget for the developing year for fiscal year 26-27.

You can see the net cost change by program.

So these are our four major program areas: general government, public protection, public assistance, and health care.

So the net cost change on the program side is 76.4 million in the MOE.

It's an increase of about 8%.

This next slide shows, oh sorry, this is out of order.

If you can go to the next slide, Lila, and then we'll come back to this one.

So these are the major components of program changes that were just summarized in the slide that you saw.

So again, I won't read through all of these, but you can see some of the numbers that are driving the 8% increase that you that you just saw on that slide.

And then if I'll call out in particular the last bullet point here, net salary and benefit adjustments of $41 million, because in that the previous slide that you have, Lila, you can go back to that.

It will detail the breakdown.

So you can see staff cost of living and wage adjustments, 71.5 million, health and dental about 9.5 million.

These are adjustments or increases.

We're adjusting overtime costs based on history.

This is primarily in a couple of our public safety departments, and then making an adjustment to the other benefit categories to again align with history.

So our gross salary and benefit adjustment or increase is 134.4 million.

That's offset by one-time net retirement savings of 93.4 million.

So that's that net retirement savings amount is unusual.

We don't usually have that.

The reason why we are showing that this year is because it is the result of the county making prepayments to our retirement system.

And so we have saved, it it has allowed us to essentially save in future years.

So our net salary and benefit adjustment is 41 million as a result of that retirement savings.

And I'll talk a little bit more about that in a future slide.

So this is the uh the net cost change on the non-program side, what we sometimes refer to as the other side of the equation.

So capital and major maintenance, we're recommending an increase of 50 million.

Those of you who have been in our county facilities or our staff working in some of these facilities know that we have a very long list of deferred maintenance.

It's important that we invest to ensure that we're taking care of the infrastructure within which we're providing these services.

We have underinvested really in capital and major maintenance for many years, and so that is a reflection of the board's direction and policy with respect to making sure that we have a long-term plan to address our unfunded capital and major maintenance needs.

Contingency and reserves, a vast majority of what you're seeing in these numbers is really what we set aside, what we estimate we may need to support the outcome of our labor negotiations.

So to the extent that we have an agreement in place that's been ratified by the board and labor, that's already built in to our system.

If we're still in negotiations with various bargaining groups, we have to make our best guess as to how much we need to set aside to pay for those agreements.

So that's what that budget is for, in addition to board policies that dictate how much we need to set aside for our general reserve.

We don't manage a whole lot of debt.

So this is in the general fund and doesn't include the Measure X projects that you heard FIRE present on.

In the general fund, our biggest projects were the um were tied to the QTAR replacement at Highland Hospital and the Juvenile Justice Center, and our debt obligations with respect to those and a couple of other refinancings is decreasing year over year.

So we're seeing a decrease in those costs.

And then non-program expenses and revenues were anticipating a 2.4% change there.

So on the non-program side of the equation, the change is 15 million or 1.5%.

So if we put those two sides of the equation together, sorry, the next slide gives you detail on the non-program side.

So this is the same information, just gives you a little bit more detail.

What I'll point out here is we were seeing in the current year budget, we saw a big contribution for general liability reserves in the prior year.

We're essentially backing that out, increasing workers' comp reserves.

These are budgets that are administered by the county administrator's office.

So these are big numbers because we have a lot of cases and claims that we have to contend with.

So it's it kind of becomes a start to our funding gap for the next year.

So we have to find a replacement for those one-time revenues.

And then the next slide is where we put it together.

So you can see if we put together the program side and the non-program side, the funding gap that we have to close for this next year is 91.4 million dollars.

So here's a look at the county's uh ERAF losses by year since the state implemented ERAF and fiscal year 92, 93.

Um so what the auditor is estimating is that the county is going to have to shift or transfer almost 760 million in local property tax dollars to the state.

That typically happens in the fall.

So the cumulative amount of proper local property tax we've shifted to the state since this uh since ERAF was implemented is 12.3 billion.

And on the next slide, you can see these are the funding gaps that the county has had to close since ERAF has been in place.

So the total in gaps that we've had to close is 2.7 billion.

Um what we're showing in the stacked bar for 26-27 is the 91.4 million that you saw on the most recent slide.

Um, absent then the retirement savings that we're seeing, the funding gap actually would have been 184 million.

So we've essentially closed half of the gap with retirement savings.

Um this is our recommended budget balancing approach.

It's pretty similar to uh the process that we used for the development of the current year budget.

So the county administrators' office is working closely with uh county agency and department heads to close the structural funding gap, which means we're trying to prioritize ongoing strategies rather than one one-time strategies that are just going to add to the funding gap the following year.

So those are a list of the sort of the standard things that we take a look at from year to year.

We always welcome any other creative ideas that agencies and departments or analysts can come up with as we are closing the funding gap.

We have a much shorter tight timeline to get this done.

We're producing and presenting the balance proposed budget to the board a couple weeks earlier than we normally do.

So if your staff is feeling squeezed, that's because we have to work a lot faster this time.

Moving on to the next slide.

This list probably looks familiar if you see me present on the budget before.

We always have a long list of pending factors that we have to keep in mind that can impact the development of the budget.

You know, just based on things that are changing or things, impacts that are not yet known from the state and federal level, things that are impacting our budget more directly at the local level, and then macroeconomic factors that can have a trickle-down effect on our budget.

What's what's newer here that maybe wasn't in the most recent iteration you may have seen of this are special election costs?

So that that's always a challenge that we have to contend with that often there isn't a reimbursement for.

We generally try to develop in parallel with the budget and present to the board around the same time.

We've identified over a billion in unfunded capital costs over the next five years.

The board has adopted a long-range capital financing plan that guides our investments in capital, and has established a special capital construction fund to try and ensure that we have a financing plan for our infrastructure.

And then here are next steps.

We need to review and analyze the impact of the governor's May revision that's going to be out in a couple days.

We're going to continue to update our revenue projections and implement cost containment and reduction strategies, identify any strategies to close the preliminary funding gap and present a balanced proposed budget to the board by May 28th.

That is the date that we are planning on presenting the proposed budget.

Review positions and vacancy factors, consider tech solutions and efficiency initiatives to streamline operations.

As we always do continue to collaborate with labor and our community partners to identify strategies to keep a balanced budget and ensure service provision to our diverse communities, and then as you already heard, we're working closely with our agencies and departments to close the structural funding gap in particular.

So here's a look at what is remaining of our budget development timeline.

You heard me talk about the governors may revise.

Sorry, I know that was a lot of information.

Okay.

Do we have any council members that have any questions or comments?

Right off the top of your heads, Megan.

I thought that we were going to get a budget update about what the county's proposed recommendations were going to be for the fiscal year 2026-27.

I see that you're not potentially even proposing it or it's going to be published until the end of May, but you're in the process of developing, I imagine, and department heads are recommending, you know, what $91 million is still an enormous deficit that you have to close in one and a half months.

So can you speak to any proposed recommended budget items that are going to potentially affect the unincorporated area?

So generally when we're looking at budget balancing strategies, we do try to avoid service impacts to the extent that we can.

So, you know, the best solutions are ongoing ones like additional identified revenue, right?

Where we're we're finding um funding that may not have been known when we were working on the maintenance of effort budget, either by way of the governor's may revise, or you know, we have a few more months of actuals to update our projections.

So those are always the best solutions.

Sometimes there are um savings that the departments can identify.

So for example, if they are administering contracts and uh their history suggests that they're not spending them down fully.

Sometimes they can incorporate some of that savings and adjust what they think they're gonna need for the following year.

Um so there are often a lot of um you know strategies like that that allow us to avoid any potential service impact.

So I can share that at this point we are not anticipating service impacts.

Um specific to the unincorporated area.

What I will say is what is daunting is that we still don't fully know the impact of the federal policy changes in particular.

So while we can't necessarily make assumptions on that for the 26-27 budget year, it could be that the following budget development cycle is is much more challenging.

I mean, we heard Alameda County transit, you know, just come on and talk about how they're having meetings and they're identifying potential service line cuts due to a significant reduction in revenue.

Um, and then also one of your slides showed that in 2025-26 you had a $300 million increase in revenue.

What was that from mainly?

There was a dragging factor.

And is there a I mean, I guess there's no projected um increase of $300 million this year if there's a $91 million deficit.

So we always have a funding gap.

Um, at least what you saw there since fiscal year 9293, it looks cyclical in nature, but there's always a gap.

Um, generally speaking, that's because our costs are increasing at a rate that's faster than our program revenue is increasing.

And so that's part of the challenge.

Um in the county administrator's office.

We're constantly pushing our staff to make sure they're focusing on their revenue projections to ensure that we're not missing anything that can support, because we know the costs are increasing.

So we're often trying to beef up our analysis around the revenue to ensure we're capturing all of those dollars that can offset the costs so that we can avoid service cuts.

Um, going back to the 25-26 slides.

So what I'll say in general about our um discretionary revenue or non-program revenue.

So the most important source of discretionary revenue for the county is is property taxes.

That's the most flexible, um, about the vast majority of our discretionary revenue is property tax-based.

Um, and we haven't seen um the assessor did a presentation along with the other department heads in April and basically said that we're seeing declining growth.

So we usually enjoy, you know, an increase in valuation that can help support and offset the cost of the increase in our programs.

We're not seeing as much of that on the non-program side.

Um, same thing with sales tax.

Um, if anything, our sales tax are so we have um we're fortunate that our um electorate has been generally supportive of uh raising local revenue for for things like measure A or health um funds, uh the hospital, as well as uh 25% of measure a um supports county services.

Um there's uh measure W, which I presented on the half cent general sales tax, which technically can go to anything, um, but the the board has prioritized the majority of it to fund housing and homelessness as well as essential county services, and then measure C, which is primarily going to first five and children's hospital for early childhood and children's health.

Um those are all half cent sales taxes.

Uh but what we're seeing in terms of the trends is declines in the sales taxes that are um that are coming back to the county, um, particularly over the last three years.

So, you know, you can imagine things like inflation or impacting consumer behavior, and so then that impacts the level of revenue we're able to raise as a result of these um taxes that were voter supported.

So at this juncture, a month and a half before the balance budget is due, we're thinking no service line cuts to close the $91 million deficit and no layoffs potentially.

Like how are we going to close it?

How we're when you have declining revenue.

It so it's always the goal to avoid um service impacts and layoffs.

We do have um some of some of the departments have uh a relatively high vacancy rate.

So sometimes we have the ability to make some adjustments to capture savings.

Um it's not always a straightforward calculation because the departments also carry unfunded and filled positions, so we have to dig deeper to understand how much is actually available.

Um and operationally, we like to give the departments the flexibility to staff up over the course of the year.

So we're not gonna just look at their actuals and give them a haircut based on how they're currently staffed.

We want to give them the ability to staff up and continue to do their recruitments.

So we try to work closely with them to come to an agreement on, you know, if we have flexibility to give them a little bit of a haircut, but still, you know, be able to meet their goals with respect to recruitment and you know, frankly, retention, um, then you know, we can we can build in some of those assumed savings to help close the gap.

So, you know, reviewing our vacancy factors was definitely one of the strategies to help close the gap.

Um, like I said, revenue is is always the first place that we're gonna look before we start thinking about uh cuts or efficiencies on the cost side.

Did you delete vacant positions during your mid-year budget?

Um we there were some departments that offered up vacant positions to close the current year funding gap.

Um we don't often do it mid-year because if anything, usually they're at the board is adding positions mid-year for various purposes, justifiable purposes.

Um, so if you know, if we find, for example, that positions that they've added mid-year are not anticipated to be filled in 26-27, then we can capture some of those savings, you know, likely on a one-time basis with the hope that they will fill those positions later.

So there are lots of strategies like that that we look into and uh we try to have every program contribute at a you know a fair, they're a fair share, in addition to us identifying countywide strategies to help offset the increases on the program side.

So it's a collective effort uh to figure out how to close the 91 million.

So when the proposed budget submission comes out on May 28, that will be posted on line.

Yes.

On what website?

Um the document will be posted on budget.acgov.org.

Um it'll also we will be um publishing in the newspaper essentially that the document is available and that the board will be scheduling a hearing in mid to late June to essentially deliberate on the adoption of the final budget.

So the county administrators's office will present a balanced proposed budget to the board on May 28th.

It'll be available online for the budget for the public to review.

Um as we always have in previous years, there's there's always at least 10 days.

In this case, it's gonna be longer between the presentation of the balance proposed budget to the board to the time that budget hearings commence.

So there's always a period of time that the board and the public have to inspect and review the document before they then start budget hearings.

And your budget hearings are they scheduled throughout a week as opposed to at I mean I don't see if there'd be enough time.

So they're scheduled throughout the week.

It's not like a regular, like, oh, we have a board meeting where we do a workshop.

It's like a separate meeting.

A separate meeting.

Yeah.

It's usually a series of meetings that happen over typically three days.

Um we'll do similar to early budget work session.

So early budget work session is sort of the first iteration that the board sees of the developing budget.

That happens in April.

Um and then we come back in June with updated information based on what we know as a result of the governor's May revision, and then you know, we update our projections based on additional data.

Um so typically we have budget hearings on a day, and some years it's over two days.

Uh the board deliberates, and then uh they do adoption on a third day, um, and all of that happens before the end of the fiscal year before June 30th.

I don't know what our um what our next meeting has, but is it possible to get an update for the budget about what's happened since this meeting before I guess the final adoption?

Um your next your next meeting is on June 9th, and it looks like the budget hearingslash adoption meetings are June 23rd to June 26th.

Okay.

Yeah, so we might not have time, and if they came to us, they'd have to come to all the other Macs too, I suppose.

So I know it's a lot to digest.

Um anyone else have something they'd like to ask or make comments?

Um Taylor, I see you reaching, raise reaching too.

Okay, go ahead, Reggie.

Thank you.

Um, thank you, Melanie and your staff.

First question, as an informational item, what are you looking for from us as the Mac and what have you?

I think you we're the last Mac, right?

Uh, we have Castro Valley still to go to, yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

Um really this was just intended to give you an update on where we are in the budget development process.

It was, you know, something that uh Supervisor Miley in particular had asked us to do as a way to increase transparency around our budget development process with the unincorporated areas.

I understood it to be one of the demands of the county that you know we provide more points of engagement for folks.

Um, so you know, happy to hear any feedback that you all have.

I know it's challenging because all of this information is very high level.

Um that is how we, you know, with a six billion dollar budget.

Um, you know, to get into the weeds would really be um, you know, an exercise, I think that's more appropriate with the subject matter experts at the agency and department level.

Um, but this, yeah, every year we have a funding gap that we identify that we have to close in a you know relatively short period of time.

And um, you know, I think the goal is to create multiple points of engagement throughout not only the budget development process but just throughout the fiscal year where you're you know providing feedback not only to the county administrator's office but also to um you know the the agencies and departments that are providing direct municipal services.

I think our hope is that as we improve the communication in the budget document about the other countywide services, that also helps um you know either inspire additional touch points or you know give you all ways to help provide feedback on how we can improve service provision in general.

Uh noted and appreciated.

So to summarize informational and then feedback secondarily, which is great.

I didn't see this document posted on our site.

Can you speak to what happened there and if that'll be the same for Castor Valley as an example?

Yeah, my apologies.

There's a little bit of a miscommunication.

So Fairview also similarly didn't have the document ahead of time, but what you're seeing is pretty much the same content.

Your cover page looks different, obviously, because this is for for you all as opposed to Fairview.

So I uh had let the clerk know that we were planning on the clerk for Fairview, who's not the clerk for Eden Mac, know that we were planning on presenting the same content.

So you should have had it in advance.

Um my apologies, but um Castro Valley, because the clerk who does Fairview also does Cash Ravelli, theirs is posted ahead of time.

So unfortunately for Fairview and Eden Mac, you all didn't get ahead of time.

But like I said, uh the vast majority of the content, if not all of the content has already been presented publicly.

Yeah.

So there's there's really no new information in here.

Okay, yeah, apology accepted, and again, thank you.

It's good information.

Um mistakes happen.

I have, and then maybe this is for you.

I I have most of my questions are actually for the heads of departments, because this is such a unique opportunity to have heard from them.

So how do you want us to ask those questions, if at all in this meeting?

Let me see if I understand your question.

You wanted to address some of the heads of the departments that spoke earlier and asked them some specific questions.

Absolutely.

Some of them we haven't had in over a year, some of them maybe never ever before.

So it's great to have them in the room.

That's why I'm asking the question.

Oh, what did I?

So who is who is here that we didn't hear from?

I saw CDA, I think, but um I I'm not sure.

I know it we went through most of the people the ones that were in the packet.

But so who are you thinking of specifically, right?

Like questions for public works and questions for the library uh heads.

They presented.

I'm just asking you, do we get it as well?

If you can go back to each of them, yeah, yeah.

Let me go through the rest and see what general questions we have, and then we see we can go back to the specific um departments that you might have.

Is that okay?

Perfect.

Thank you.

Okay.

Um, Taylor, what did you have?

I I'm glad that we answered that because I do have some questions to the specific heads too, and it is a wonderful opportunity.

Um, bear with me.

I have a lot of notes.

So it's quite a bit of um thoughts.

Um, first, I'm really glad that we have an opportunity to ask active questions at this space.

I know the budget workshop we haven't had the time allotment to ask as many questions, so that's nice to have this now.

Um, and I'm appreciative of the roadshow opportunity, so glad that we can offer that this time.

Do we know um will there be because um Supervisor Miley's office in particular has made such efforts to engage the community um this year?

Do we know if there will ever or if there's gonna be um any reflection on that integration or where that whole process then integrates into that?

Do you have any visibility into that?

Um so what I will say is I know it's a work in progress a work in progress.

I know you all heard a presentation from uh the consultant that Supervisor Miley's office had retained, um, all in an effort to try and improve service provision for unincorporated communities.

So I think that process um, you know, whatever recommendations result from, you know, the feedback that the Macs are providing, um, and then whatever resulting action the board takes will help guide uh the next steps in the process.

Some of those recommendations, though thoughtful to be minimal um from a cost side or cost perspective, do have a cost component.

Is that currently integrated into this proposal or is that separate?

No, it's it's if the board hasn't approved um the proposal, it's not integrated into the it's not assumed or integrated into the budget.

That's helpful.

So they're running in parallel, but they're not integrated at all currently.

Okay.

Disappointed there's not more public attendance.

I'm so surprised that they've been to a lot of other things, but not here yet.

So hopefully they can watch the recording.

Um would love to hear a little bit more around SNAP and food stamps and Medi-Cal, just because um the speakers at the first workshop uh were very emphatic about the potential impact to that populace.

So we have funding going to housing, but we look like we might have severe impact to mental health support.

So some of the federal policy impacts are contemplated in the social services budget to the extent that they are known.

I would say most of it, especially with respect to Medi-Cal is not yet known, and potentially very significant.

So it's a pretty daunting thing to look forward to.

The board, I think, has tried to anticipate based on what we do know, and some of the staff recommendations within measure W that you saw on those slides, are based on anticipated impacts of how federal policy changes are going to impact the safety net.

So the board has either talked about various programs that they want to invest in, um, as a result of those anticipated impacts.

So you see those buckets on those slides that they've identified.

So even if the impacts are not yet known, they're sort of you know arguably uh taking a proactive step in considering uh these recommended allocations out of our general sales tax that could really go towards anything, but they're prioritizing not only housing and homelessness, but programs that could potentially be impacted specifically within our safety net.

Okay, that's really good to hear actually.

Um I appreciate you adding the dollar sign slide.

When I saw that the first time, I I thought that's very powerful to see where our dollar go.

Um also appreciating the the size of this budget and that it is a high level.

Um I have heard for years though, um, and I'm sure you can respect this that in the unincorporated area there is still the desire to see more granular, specifically where unincorporated tax dollars are going, acknowledging it's a long journey to get there, but just sharing the feedback because it is continual that unincorporated would like to see more of a carve out of where is that going.

Um I know you can't do anything with it now, but that is a continued ask.

How do we demonstrate more of that because our services are different?

Um, even though that's not necessarily the intention.

Um then my last question for you, because we live in a tech bubble, even though some of that labor is going out.

How are we planning to utilize AI?

Um, a lot of businesses right now, um, you know, they're taking like what you're doing right now, um, and maybe not hiring people in certain roles to offset budget limitations, but then using agents where they've got 30 agents replacing one person.

I'm not advocating for that all the time, but um, how is the government or county looking at AI?

Yeah, I would say that's that's probably a high level conversation that's happening, um, you know, maybe starting at the department head level.

Um, typically what we'll see is a recommendation that our board adopt a policy around technology um to guide the use of technology.

Um, you know, I think uh there have been other examples where the board adopts a central policy that then guides the uh the uh programming or the direction um that the departments take as a result.

So I imagine we would do something similar.

Um we have a very good IT department that likes to stay engaged and on top of the most recent technology.

Um we have to contend with uh so they've done some trainings around um AI.

I think they're doing some pilot projects with the departments to adopt new tech technologies.

It hasn't gone so far as contemplating how the technology can impact, you know.

I think we've had like larger visioning conversations in terms of our, you know, strategic vision over the next 10 years, how we can imagine uh these technologies can impact um our long-term planning, um, but nothing in the short term that you know would necessarily impact our projections on what our workforce would look like that I'm aware of.

Um it's more it's more so long term at this point because I think we're still trying to understand and be cautious around, you know, what could potentially be negative impacts of the technology.

And entirely reasonable.

I'm just thinking about that domino effect that was kind of implied about maybe this budget cycle is going to impact the next next budget cycle and you know there'll be long term so as we're thinking about that there might be opportunities there as the gap continues okay thank you i don't have any questions i just want to applaud you for trying to explain this complicated issue to us and um i do like i welcome the opportunity individually all of you guys would be more familiar with us because some of you like I say we have seen maybe once or twice so I do like the idea of you and all of you kind of coming in and not that you have to show us what you're doing but just to refresh everybody you know because we see our money leaving and we're always like well then what what are we getting from it right especially in unincorporated you know we don't have the luxury of having the city and saying so I appreciate all you guys and what you're doing with everyone's money and trying to explain it you know as as best you can since it is complicated but like giving us examples is helpful I think to all of us and anybody who's watching you know so for that it's interesting I've definitely learned I'm thinking about things that I hadn't thought about before so I appreciate all of you.

Yeah Taylor do you had a follow up muting myself that's gonna be effective.

Sorry um one last question you had a slide on ERAF um for losses by year.

I'm less familiar with that can you just explain that a little bit more sure so the um ERAF or the educ education revenue augmentation fund is was implemented by the state in fiscal year 92 93 to backfill the state's cut to schools so what they do is they take local property tax dollars and have us um shift it to the state to fund schools um so what what's interesting I'm thankful that you asked this question because I forgot to um emphasize a point that I had made to Fairview last week so that the 700 uh roughly 760 million that were projected to shift to the state in local property tax dollars is actually more than what we keep and assume in the budget for local property tax.

There are subventions that come back to the county that are property tax related but if you just look at what we have budgeted for the secured property tax rule unsecured and supplemental it's less than the 760 million.

So it's significant what we're shifting.

Is the shift an indefinite proposal?

As fill up as as far as I'm aware until the state changes the policy there they're going to continue to rely on this shift of dollars.

So it's it's not just um the counties that do this the the general manager at Hard also presented to Fairview and talked about their portion that they shift to the state uh as a result of ERAF so it's it's tough for the local jurisdictions that have to shift their share of local property taxes to the state for um funding the schools what is the percentage um so so like I said the 760 million is is larger so it's more than 50% of our local share.

That's why I was just trying to figure out the step system is where's that what's that calculation driver year over year.

I can look it up.

Yeah the the auditors tax analysis division does the the estimate um so I'm not sure all of the components that go into what determines the shift but um I do know what's budgeted and it's less than what we're what we're uh estimated to shift in the fall because I have some research thank you.

I'm sorry I can you I didn't catch this ERAF education and then what's our revenue augmentation fund.

Augmentation fund okay thank you I hate this stuck on this page too okay um Warren let me turn yourself.

Oh, there it is.

Go ahead.

Okay.

So first of all, I just want to say that the unincorporated communities are, I think, unique and diverse um we have a lot of different challenges and our makeup is diverse uh and so it's important to think about that when we think about budgeting.

When we think about county services, it's harder to get at.

Not that we shouldn't do it, but it's harder to get at how a county department like mental health, for example, behavioral health, parcels out what goes in the bucket of unincorporated versus what goes in the bucket of other places.

So when we deal with municipal services, however, it's easier to do.

And so what I hope will happen is that I hope that the CAO's office will look at ways to start with to relate the municipal services to the communities in a way that we can have those discussions in the in the rooms like these.

So with that, I think I will hold my comments to the uh to the uh department heads.

I do will I will have some uh some comments to the department heads, but that's all I have to the CA as all those office.

Thank you.

Thank you for the feedback.

Okay, let me before we go back to the department heads.

I'm sorry, I'm stuck on these these pages with the ERAF.

Um on the on page 37, it says Alameda County funding gaps since ERAF, right?

And there's a whole bunch of little green lines, but there's no legend.

So the green lines I take it are all like significant because they're all the same, but then on like year 2021, it's half green and half yellow.

What's the yellow there and then the yellow and the red on the last one?

What how does it indicate?

Uh so on the last stack bar that you see there, the yellow and the red.

So the red is represents the funding gap that we are in the process of closing, the 91.4 million that you saw on a previous slide.

It would have been 184.8 million without the retirement savings that we've captured as a result of the prepayments to our retirement system that that uh we've made over the last several years.

Okay, and then the yellow, you go back to 2020 2020 and 2021, it's like half anymore.

I think I had to remind myself what this was.

So I think this is when um this is the budget development process that the county went through at the start of the pandemic.

So what we did was we um essentially did a couple rounds.

We closed an initial funding gap of 56.2 million, and then I think we had the department heads come up with strategies of an additional amount, anticipating that the revenue picture was gonna be terrible.

And what we found was that it wasn't that bad.

So the COVID recession was fairly short-lived.

We had the big spike in unemployment and revenues were impacted because of the shutdown, but then what followed was um uh reprieve in terms of consumer spending, so um, and in the economy in general.

Um, so I'm looking at the department heads to see if they remember.

I don't think we actually implemented another round of cuts.

I think we asked them for strategies in the fall, um, but we didn't actually implement them.

Okay, thank you.

I just I don't know why I was stuck on these colors that I didn't know what they meant.

No problem.

Okay, so um thank you.

If we go back to Ray, yes, you had some questions specific to departments.

Just one more for uh Melanie if I could.

Uh the uh you mentioned a few different hospitals.

Are those whether are those county or unincorporated based hospitals?

Uh so um I I think I mentioned Alameda Health System in the context of um maybe measure A so that the half cent sales tax um approved by the voters in the form of measure A, 75% of that goes to the Alameda Health System.

So we are the Alameda County is no longer a traditional hospital county, if you will.

The hospitals are not part of uh legally part of the county structure, uh, but the board does have a relationship with the appoints to the board of trustees to the Alameda Health System.

And we do have the the county's responsibility is um for indigent care.

So we do um have an amount budgeted that we are responsible for um with respect to indigent care, but Alameda Health System is a separate legal entity.

And then are there numbers baked in here or are those separate?

Um to the extent that we have contracts with Alameda Health System, it is it is baked into the budget, yes.

As expenditure only, or is there a revenue side as well?

Uh there there is a revenue component.

Um I I uh the health program is one of the program areas that I've never had, so I can't speak to this with with um, like AB Shrego's in the room and probably knows this better than me, but there there are funding mechanisms that are built into the budget on the revenue side by way of in the form of what we call intergovernmental transfers where we can leverage additional revenue for the hospitals.

Got it.

Okay, thank you for explaining.

Sure.

Did you have others for department heads?

Oh, okay, go ahead.

Okay.

So as I go through my questions, can I go department by department in case others have questions?

Awesome.

Um CDA, uh, the lady's still here.

Take your time, take your time.

So um with the overview that you shared, do you track the revenue that your efforts are bringing in year over year?

Oh, I guess it's on.

Uh yes, uh we do.

I can't say I have the detail right now with me, but but we do track the revenue.

At the highest level, is it going up?

Is it going down?

Is it constant?

It's staying uh uh flat.

And I'll say for there are only a few things that we collect on.

I mean it's either fines from our code enforcement, we have permit application fees, most of that is at cost.

Uh there are some fees that we have.

They tend to be a little uh less than what it actually costs the county uh to process, and that's more of a policy position to incentivize um participation.

That's uh one of the ways that we still collect uh revenue.

Uh there's also uh the hotel tax and utility tax and unclaimed gas tax.

Um that is also part of the revenue for the unincorporated area that our at least our department receives.

So is it fair to assume then that if it's generally flat revenue economic development is steady state, we're not necessarily growing or not shrinking, we're just holding steady.

Correct.

Okay.

I think it's been actually uh fairly consistent, and I'm talking about really net county cost.

Um that it's been been fairly consistent for the last few years.

Um have you thought about doing things differently to try and generate more economic development?

Yeah, so raising fees are are one method as well as fines.

Um there's also been uh bond measure that uh through our our housing community development uh department uh that uh we had measure A one, which has been very effective countywide.

So some of the departments are countywide, and um we we do have um some bond measures that have passed or we have a CSA.

So there are are different methods in which we could increase revenue.

Um I'll say that the unincorporated area, just as I'm thinking about our uh healthy homes department and it's for our lead poison prevention program.

Um that the unincorporated area is part of that CSA, but uh the unincorporated area did not vote to have um taxes, uh property taxes, a ten dollar tax for every property.

And so while it it's not as um uh I guess the unincorporated is not as readily uh tax uh friendly, I'll put it that way, in terms of some of these measures.

Unlike, for instance, City of Oakland, they I think they'll tax themselves to that, but yeah.

And the bond measures are those existing or those proposed new ones you're thinking.

They're existing right now.

But bond measures, of course, there's there's an end to them, and so I I think for measure A1, it it goes out to 2030.

And then of course, uh Melanie had mentioned a couple of the other um uh additional um revenue sources that are also uh available uh to the unincorporated area.

For instance, we had ARPA funding that came in through the COVID times.

Uh there's Measure W and the board is uh fairly positive about um the uh funding that we've we've outlined for the unincorporated area, and I think it's about 25-30 percent of the essential services county fund.

So, okay, thank you.

Sorry.

Uh anyone else specific for CDA as long as as long as she's up here.

Just appreciative of your presentation.

It was very refreshing to see.

So thank you for being here.

I actually have something for Sandy.

Um, Sandy, you uh as I was taking care of something, you mentioned I heard you mentioned tenant protections.

I know that there is a suite of tenant protections that is moving through the process that will head to the board.

Would it be possible once it is more clear exactly what those tenant protections are to roadshow them before they go before the board?

They they will have uh a roadshow.

I think the two that are um I guess first in terms of the array of tenant protections because we can't do it all at once.

That would be nice, but um, you know, we have to go through several roadshows, and it can get complicated when you have too many uh grouped together.

It fair chance is is one.

Uh there's also a rent registry.

Uh and and then there's uh also plan is uh the pilot uh rental inspection, and that would be for Ashland Cherryland and Hayward Acres, terms of that pilot.

Uh now some of these it to in order to implement them, we're looking to measure W to have the funding to get these ordinances uh implemented at least the first couple of years.

Uh and then uh there's also the anti-harassment um ordinance that needs to be developed, but it's in pretty much in that order and and will make its way through the MAX.

Uh there's also uh focus groups or stakeholder meetings that um uh HCD will hold, especially as it relates to some of the um, I guess they've all been contentious, the contentious uh ordinances um between uh between stakeholder means between either their land landowner or property owners and uh tenant advocates.

So uh rather than if a warrant you live through this, that um where we uh some of the supervisors brought uh the stakeholders together and they try to work out some compromise.

In this case, we'll do focus groups, stakeholder groups, and then uh just bring the the everyone's positions uh to each of the the MACs and uh just move them forward in that manner.

That should be an interesting time.

Um the other question I had had to do with measure W and measure A1.

Have your team thought about how that will march towards renewal.

It looks it sounds like both of those bonds will be will be essentially wanting to be renewed essentially at the same time.

In addition to that, there's a regional discussion around a regional housing bond.

Have you all been thinking about how all that fits together and how and how to approach the public with that?

Yeah, I I'll have to say, disappointingly, you know, we had um uh Bafa, the A-bag MTC, they had uh plan to have a uh Bay Area-wide housing affordable housing bond.

And so at the same time, uh our department, the county uh was looking to also um have another housing affordable housing bond, basically to um augment the measure a one bond that we already have in existence but since uh uh BAFA uh BA anyways the A-bag measure was um was moving forward the county had dropped uh our bond measure action and so uh Bafa was moving forward and then by some administrative issue they did not make the ballot in in 2024 and so um the next step was uh whether or not uh the county would continue with another uh bond measure but then there was a citizens group and a citizens initiative only requires uh 51% uh in order fifty one percent of approval in order for it to to pass whereas if it's a county initiative it requires two-thirds and so uh 66.7 percent is that about right and so um uh the citizens initiative was moving forward and then uh we understand earlier this year that uh they the polling wasn't doing well and so they um no longer supported that uh action and um we're hoping you know the next round of uh election or that we can put something on the ballot uh we'll be able to do that either through the county or another citizens initiative so uh yes we're looking for many ways to support affordable housing um and uh so far it's it's been disappointing in the last couple years it has and I will say that what one of the biggest worries I have is that all these efforts will get in each other's way and we're gonna get nothing done so you know I I just hope that the powers that be come together and map out a plan where we can succeed because it does it does feel like there's you know a lot of different things at play and then there's clashing priorities and we just don't move forward so I hope we can get around that and move forward.

Thank you.

Anything else for specific departments yes requirements but uh go ahead Ray I have I had questions for public works I have questions for them and the library okay ask your question Ray for Public Works.

Okay thanks Daniel's on his way up Daniel thank you for coming back I think you were last here last January so thank you for coming back three things three questions.

When you were last here you spoke about the mobile citizen app as a way for people to file tickets file issues do you track response rate in terms of your metrics and your department's effectiveness whether it's phone calls, emails, mobile citizen app requests absolutely because the mobile citizen is handheld for the the citizens but the data goes into our database system and is tracked actually through our uh data management system so we know how many we received how many were responded to uh how many were referred uh you name it so uh the thing about mobile citizen is that people can report from anywhere uh of any jurisdiction so you'll find sometimes about 30% of the request is Alameda county some of it could be other jurisdictions where we refer all those things so it is actually similar to the to the constituents so yeah we do track our performance based on that okay and year over year how's your department doing in terms of responsiveness we are extremely responsive we are actually accredited by American public rules association as one of the best agencies nationally and and uh actually it is a fundamental objective of mine that in fact uh some people sometimes people think I'm a very unreasonable person because response rates are measured in minutes to me, not in days or so.

Usually we try to push the envelope to try to make sure that we respond as soon as possible.

However, some of our responses require additional legwork to be done.

Uh sometimes, you know, fix the power hall.

It might take us a couple of days to fix that.

So the response is uh if they give us their address when they sign up to a mobile citizen, we will acknowledge the seat automatically.

If they don't give us their email address, we don't know who to send it back.

So they're gonna have to check back with us themselves.

Otherwise, it is a seamless system.

Congratulations on the award.

And feel free to publish that as part of your stats next time you come back.

Oh, absolutely.

Great to see.

So then, second question.

Um, street lights.

Any plans for street lights?

And here's an example.

When I drive down mission, and I'm driving, let's say, between downtown Hayward, and then into Cherry Land, and then further north into Ashland at night, it's almost like there are no street lights in the unincorporated district compared to Hayward on the same street, just as an example.

Yeah.

So if there are specific locations, always feel free to send me an email because we do have over 7,000 uh street lights in unincorporated area.

Uh, in fact, we spent, we just finished our debt service.

We spend a lot of money converting them into uh LED lightings and all that stuff.

So uh most of our street lights are done in a manner that actually are uh sensitive to uh not interrupt residents.

Uh and obviously in some of the rural part of the county, the dark sky societies, they don't like to disrupt the habitat was lighting.

But if you know of any street that you feel like there was not enough lighting, you let us know, we will uh do the study, make sure that there is adequate lighting.

Mission Boulevard to start off with.

And then do I send an email?

You can send me an email.

By the way, Mission Boulevard will be under construction.

It's been going through a lot of, you know, we've done the undergrounding.

Yeah, uh, and from we will be doing the actual construction, we've already awarded the contract.

It's gonna be uh but when it's done, I guarantee you'll have enough lighting there.

Wonderful.

And then my last question when I when I just observe the sidewalk work on Lowelling versus I think you were doing similar sidewalk work on Hathaway, it seems like the Hathaway work went a lot faster, and the Lowelling sidewalk sidewalk.

On Hathaway?

I don't think we have any on Hathaway, but the Lowelling project is a corridor improvement, it's a lot more than just sidewalk improvements.

So uh, and we were inconvenienced a little bit by some incidents and stuff like that.

So it took a little longer.

In fact, right now, contractor just restarted doing the work uh uh because of you know legal matters.

So uh, but typically uh our contractors follow a specific timeline based on contract.

Uh I don't recall uh a sidewalk project on Hathaway.

Maybe you and I can connect, you can show me uh whatever.

But if if the welling is uh uh uh if you observe the welling taking time, it is unfortunately because of incidents that happened that actually had legally suspended the work for a while.

So uh, but we are now back at least partially, so we should be moving fairly good once PGE get out of the way.

Okay, and then obviously lessons learned are being applied to the lowelling work, I'm assuming based on what the incidents that have happened in the past.

Yes.

Okay.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Anybody else?

Welcome back.

We missed you.

It's always nice to have you here.

Um, I just wanted to take this opportunity because we have you here.

I know the last time you were here, we were kind of throthing at the bit to have more detail on different topics, some of which I have to reference my notes for.

But I think as I recall, you had said if we give you specific topics that you would come back and do presentations on them.

So I'm saying, yes, we want them, we have them.

I'll go back to my notes, but I know one of them in particular was flood control, because there is the maintenance component, and then I believe there was also some build out on top of that that was happening.

So it would be really nice.

I know we have a very long agenda.

I trust Tona's probably listening in.

Um, but at some point, if we could have that presentation, because it is important in our area, and would like to, I'd like to have more detail on what we're doing to repair, um, maintain what we currently have and any plans for the future.

I think some of that was on us because we are supposed to follow up so we can get Daniel a concise list.

So, Daniel's here.

I'm taking the moment.

I know, but this is just sort of budget stuff.

But it actually does directly affect the budget.

So I think it's quite relevant because if we don't maintain it, we're gonna have budget concerns.

No, I I I appreciate that question.

In fact, we will be back because the last time we tried to raise the assessments, as you know.

Correct, uh, there was a protest, enough protest vote that it did not happen.

So uh I figured maybe we need to educate folks a little more, and this would be a good platform for us to come back and present uh what's been done, and uh I would be happy to do so.

Thank you so much.

Great.

Ma'am.

I'll just say to uh again, I think I said this last time, but you maybe need to promote the app, right?

Because a lot of people see things and they don't know who to call, and they don't, you know.

So maybe just keep raising awareness that that's an option.

You know, you said these people use it, but if you told more people about it, they'd use it, and then we would have less things to complain about constantly.

So that's the goal.

So I would just say again, if you can maybe take some of your money and let us all know that that is an option when you see something, say something kind of a thing.

Oh, absolutely.

We we welcome the complaints, it doesn't bother us by the way.

We consider the complaints as feedbacks.

So feel free to tell us whenever you see because you are the eyes and the voices of the area.

So Elizabeth, the more we know, the more I just want to say I took up Daniel's offer last time to install the app and use it, and I did get a response back.

So to that point, yes.

Thank you.

Before you leave, um, I have only heard about it on maybe no, maybe I got a flyer in the mail about the closure that's gonna take place of the bridge.

Um between Llewellyn.

Yes.

Um, for anyone who's listening, can you just speak to that?

In fact, in fact, for those of you interested on Monday here in Cherry Line Community Center, we'll have a community meeting specifically to talk about the closure.

We did present the project Micklin to the community.

We went through a couple of years of design.

We've had that engagement, but that bridge has to be replaced, which means it has to be demolished.

So you won't be able to go across from Meekland to uh to uh Llewellyn for about a year basically.

So we've sent out that notice to the community.

Uh we are now resending other notices and we've sent other notices to make to remind people to come and uh attend this meeting if they have any questions.

But fundamentally the bridge is uh substandard, it needs to be removed and replaced, and you can't remove a plate, you know, remove a big bridge like that without actually uh closing it.

So safety-wise, that's what we have to do.

So if you are interested, Cherry Line Community at 6 p.m.

on the 18th.

And the construction is set to start when?

Construction has already started, but they're working on the other end coming down uh doing the sidewalks and the various the bike lanes.

But uh I think June, sometime June, early June is when the uh they might close the access to the bridge because the contractor, if they have to demolish it, it has to be done uh uh in a very safe manner.

Thank you.

And then last question, can you speak to um what factors are preventing um I don't know whether it would be public works or another agency from potentially better mitigating traffic control at the intersection of Paseo Grande and Via Granada?

Um that's like a five-way street coming over the overpass just right here.

Accidents there all of the time.

And I know that the county put in a crosswalk and a light button similar to how we have right here, but I don't know if there are other considerations like a stop sign or a light or what the preventative what what's preventing additional steps to be taken.

Yeah, we we continue to study uh, you know, the the dramatic solution would be to kind of shut off one of the legs, the extra legs, but uh a few folks did not appreciate that idea.

So we'll just have to kind of continue to work with the community and if uh the traffic engineering folks are always trying to explore possibilities.

Uh and just coming in here this way, that would that's uh it is not uh very safe in the section, honestly speaking.

Uh so uh we might have to make some dramatic drastic actions.

If that's the case, we'll come to your community here, uh seek feedback, community consensus so that people are on board uh with this.

But generally speaking, safety measures like that that require you know closures usually generate a lot of resistance from uh the patrons that are used to you know accessing their property that way, yeah.

I think thank you, Daniel.

I just we're just this is the budget informational budget thing, so we're not getting an update on everything that's he that public works or anybody else is doing.

So let's see what the do we have some speakers waiting to speak to?

I mean some public members of the public.

Do we not actually get to finish?

What because we still we still had questions on the presentation that was made.

The budget?

Yes.

The budget was a presentation by all different segments, yes, and we not asked questions.

Go ahead then.

I've been sensing resistance.

Okay.

Um I did actually have a question for the library because we are fortunate enough to have the library here for the first time.

Um you had presented about the home daycare library as being um, I believe an offset related to the budget.

Um can you detail more about that?

Because I don't have context to it.

Sure, absolutely.

We have we did an economic overview of some of our areas where that have home daycares inside of them, and we're providing direct library service inside home daycares, which is quite a different um attempt to use, but we we uh partnered with some of the um higher um attended daycares as well and higher need daycares.

So we did specific mapping to see which area daycares um could use our services and which didn't have books in them.

And so the thought of having home day cares without books in it was just kind of too painful for us librarians to think about.

And so we actually got some furniture, we had bookshelves, we had beautiful picture books installed, and um there's reading nooks and and 11 of the home day cares now.

So we hope to we hope to double that next year.

So it's something that you know they may not have resources to buy.

Um people have toys, people have those things, you know.

They they feed the kids, they do all the things, but they may not necessarily build the library out.

And so we want to make sure as part of our early literacy work.

Um that's another thing that is really important in this area that we do is family literacy and early literacy, and so we're really focusing in on it.

So that's one of the efforts to help build out the early literacy effort.

Amazing.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah, I forgot somebody mentioned library.

Any other questions for any range specific departments?

For the right.

Congratulations on hiring a Spanish dedicated person for Cherry Land.

Thank you so much so much.

Thank you.

Yeah, no, thank you.

Um when I when you think about your footprint, do you have other positions like that in other libraries?

Uh Spanish designated, we sure do.

We have them in mobile and outreach services.

We have them because our we also another area service that we provide here is we have two mobile libraries.

One is a small agile band, we call Poppy, and the other one is a big bus that's it takes a CDL to drive, and that's called Redwood.

And so they have Spanish designated staff there.

We also have Spanish designated staff in our jails programs as well.

So we've got the one of the oldest jails programs in any library system.

We've been doing jails work since the 1900s as well, and so um, providing books to inmates.

Yes, and and to the juveniles as well, and to JJC.

And so we have Spanish designated staff there.

This library actually has Spanish designated staff as well.

And with the potentially with the mobile services, do you offer that?

Do you offer other languages besides English?

Yes, we offer many languages and we offer story times in many languages.

So the two forms of Chinese.

We offer um ASL story time, we offer um Russian story time, we offer many languages.

Um is that just out of your regular budget, or do you seek grants from the community when there's a need and you don't potentially have the budget?

We do a little bit of piecemealing sometimes.

We have our regular budget though, but we also get some support from friends of the library.

So those are direct support to branches.

We have a foundation that also helps to support things.

And we're always on the lookout for grants.

And so trying to partner to get grants all the time.

Okay.

Thank you.

Anything else?

Alright.

Thank you.

All right.

Any other departments that we've missed?

Okay.

Do we have questions from the public or comments?

Yes.

We have one person in person, and I did see up to six hands online.

It's five now.

It's back to six.

Alrighty.

Let's start with Anna Rosquisa.

Good evening.

Hi, Anna Rasquiza with Resources for Community Development.

And I wanted to thank the county and the department heads for being here this evening to share their updates.

And I just wanted to name that this has been a long process of dialogue about what the residents would like to see and what the community needs in order to make informed decisions and then to be able to articulate their will in this process or their needs in this process.

Some of the things that there's still a distance to go, right?

And so some of the things that we have heard in the community that residents want to see that we would like to see in the future also are um basically some of the stuff that came up today, more detail specific to the unincorporated communities, specifically economic trends and the landscape in the econom in the economy in the unincorporated community each year.

We saw some of that with the departments this evening, specifically with a focus on municipal services, and to the degree that it's possible.

It's not always possible given the way that the budget's sliced, but with including community specific detail within the unincorporated community.

The unincorporated community is so diverse.

So thinking about the ways that investments are going to each of the communities within the unincorporated would be really helpful and is something that residents are looking for.

Finally, I think something we've heard is just a need for increased context and conversation and understanding at the high level and at the detail level to make this something that's accessible for residents, so that residents are able to participate in this process as part of a dialogue.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Let's move on to online speakers.

I'm going to call on Raimundo Orcholeta first, then Delilah Roscoe, then Matias, Ashley G, Oscar G, Sandra, Ashley Acosta, and then Zoom User.

All right.

Raymond, go ahead.

Raymond, you know, can you hear me?

Yes.

All right.

Um second.

Hello.

Good evening, members of the Mac.

My name is Raymundo Achileta, and I'm a resident leader with San Lorenzo, Hillary Acres Mobile.

I want to I want to uh come here today to thank the county for continuing conversations around the budget and the need of unincorporated communities.

However, residents still, uh residents still need more transparency about how funding decisions are being made locally.

Do often we receive countywide information that does not clearly explain what is happening specifically in our neighborhoods.

Community members want to know how money is being spent in the unincorporated area.

What services could be impacted and what decisions are directly affecting our communities?

Transparency is important because residents cannot participate meaningfully if information is unclear or incomplete.

We need more detailed and accessible reporting that allows residents to understand the real impacts on our community.

Thank you for your time.

Delilah.

Hi, can you hear me?

Yes.

Hi, my name is Delilah with Slam, and I want to thank you guys for continuing these conversations about the county budget and unincorporated communities.

Um, a lot of the residents just want like more clear information about how money is being spent in our neighborhoods and what services or programs could be affected as well.

Um, people also need information earlier when agendas or materials come out last minute.

To be honest, it makes it hard for community members to fully participate or give meaningful input.

Um, so we appreciate the effort being made, and we hope that the county continues working toward a budget process that is more transparent, more accessible, and truly includes the voices of unincorporated residents.

Thank you so much.

Matthias.

Uh, do you guys hear me?

Yes.

Good evening, decision makers.

My name is Matthias, and I'm speaking today as a resident leader with SLAM.

I want to emphasize that unincorporated communities need budget information that is specific to our area.

General accounting presentations are not enough.

Our community faces unique challenges that often feel overlooked in county processes.

Residents deserve to clearly see what investments are being made in the unincorporated area and what services are being prioritized.

When information is too broad, it becomes difficult for residents to understand how decisions affect their daily lives.

Community members should not have to search through complicated reports just to understand what is happening in their own neighborhoods.

I encourage the county to continue developing more detailed reporting and stronger engagement with unincorporated residents.

Thank you for listening.

Thank you, Ashley G.

Hi, can you guys hear me?

Yes.

Um, good evening.

My name is Ashley, and I am a slam youth leader who lives in the unincorporated area.

I appreciate the tentative budget days are being shared earlier than before, but community engagement is still difficult when agendas and materials are released at the last minute.

Um residents need enough time to review information, ask questions, and organize community input before important decisions are made.

Many working families, youth, and seniors cannot participate participate effectually when information comes too late.

We continue to believe that May is too soon for a full community budget process.

Our coalition has advocated for these discussions to begin in the fall so residents have more time to engage in the thoughtful and meaningful way.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next, Oscar G.

Hi.

Uh, I want to talk about accessibility to information on the budget and just information in general.

So, ever since the overhaul of the Hayward website, numerous links to information about legislation and the budget is like unavailable unavailable.

So when I'm trying to access these unavailable links, there's an error message that's hard to see, and the only answer for people who are confused about what this error message means is to just look at more popular articles on the Hayward Stack.

Basically, the message that I'm getting is deal with it because there's just no solution.

There's like months of info just gone, and I would just like a more optimized way to look at information with the website and the app because the app is very lacking.

Words and text collide with each other, so people who don't understand how to navigate that might just delete the app, call it a day.

So even if you do want to see the agenda for meetings on the website, there's a lot of text, and it becomes overwhelming for the everyday person for the everyday adult and youth.

You know, many people keep themselves busy, so reading 85 pages of a slideshow becomes a challenge when you know there isn't enough time to just sift through everything.

So having summaries would be a great way to offer a hand to those in the community who would just want to be informed but may not have the time to just read all of that and just to end it off the uninviting interface is very off putting and it's just not okay that's really what I wanted to say thank you and good night thank you next Sandra hello can you hear me?

Yes.

My name is Sandra I live in Castro Valley and um I really do appreciate the work that went into today's presentation I appreciate having all the folks here to talk about the various um departments how they work how the money flows um it definitely has been a two-year development right um and I really do want to appreciate like how far we've come from when we started this I think in like 2024 to right now and you know everybody coming out here however um we still need to do better right um we still need more detail to understand how things flow how much money is very specific to the unincorporated area which I know is a challenge right like a lot of the stuff that comes in is county wide but that is you know part of why we are advocating for this because we as unincorporated unincorporated area residents really need to understand how money is being spent in our community um we uh the county spends much less per capita on us than our neighbors in Hayward which have a uh comparable population so we are you know facing severe inequities and I think that looking at how unincorporated area spending um happens how those decisions are happening especially right now in a time of austerity is really important so you know definitely some wins but room for improvement and also just a side note um it was really it would be really important for us to um get the presentations I know that you talked about like the Mac members getting the presentation but for us that are you know for me as an organizer that's trying to you know do public comment help kids look you know write their comments try to look at the agenda we monitor this agenda every month it is really important that the community and that the public has access to these slides and this information so we can prepare for these meetings so again thank you for your time thank you ashley acosta hello can you hear me yes good evening my name is Ashley Acosta and I am a youth a slam youth leader as a young person in this community I believe the budget process should be something resident can residents can under actually understand and participate in not something that feels confusing or out of reaching families care about what happens in our city we care about safe neighborhoods mental health support parts transportation and programs that help young people succeed but too often community members are asked for input after major decisions have already been made or the information is shared in ways that are difficult to access and understand if we truly want community engagement it cannot be performative or rushed it needs to happen early consistently and in a way that welcomes all residents especially young people youth voices matter because we are directly affected by the decisions being made today we want a process that is transparent accountable and responsive to the concerns people continue race to raise year after year I appreciate the effort that has been made so far and I hope the city continues building a process where residents feel heard informed and included before decisions are finalized thank you for your time zoom user hello we can hear you okay good evening everyone my name is Samantha and I'm here representing the San Lorenzo Hayward's acres Mobilized, also known as SLAM.

I wanted to take the county for continuously to can uh to kind of discuss the budget transportation and the transparency, sorry, and the community engagement.

At the same time, residents want to see clear follow-up through on the requests community members um have been making for years now.

And people in the unincorporated area want to see more than presentations, at least for me.

They want they want a process that is ongoing, accessible, and responsive and responsive to the community's feedback as well.

Building com building trust requires more than asking for public comment.

It requires sharing information early, at least, providing details of local data, and creating real opportunities for residents to shape discuss uh decisions before they are finalized.

Our community decides our community deserves a budget process that reflects the importance of residents' participation and that values the voices of the unincorporated communities.

Thank you so much for your time.

Good evening.

Thank you.

Um earlier I did not call Michael Freed.

You lowered your hand.

If you want to speak, please raise your hand again.

Thank you.

Okay.

Go ahead.

Okay.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Okay.

I pushed the right button this time.

This is Michael Freed.

I live at uh 855 Hampton Road in Cherryland.

And I've been living here for the last 40 almost 45 years in Hayward and Cherryland.

And I've noticed the redevelopment agencies pros and cons, all the stuff and great stuff they've been doing, and then the loss of funding, and they went ahead and did some really nice things for Cherryland and Ashland, our whole unincorporated communities really have benefited from a lot of what the county's been doing.

That being said, it's been a long time since we've actually uh come up to any kind of parody with the other communities that are municipalities in terms of funding.

And when you're talking about budget for the unincorporated area, I think we have to keep in mind that we're starting from pretty much zero as far as just having county funding, whereas the other incorporated areas, uh municipalities have their own budgets as a city, and they also get county funding.

And I'm just wondering if we can kind of monitor uh what kind of trade-off there is to possibly uplift our needs to having a little more importance and maybe getting a little more funding as a base level, um, since we're sort of we're not double dipping.

We're in a sense the the cities are sort of double dipping as a as long as they're county uh cities where they're getting county support and they're getting um city support for the individual cities.

Uh one thing I was gonna ask about, and I don't know if there's any answer for it uh specifically maybe asking Daniel or somebody who's still there about this uh construction unit that's on the corner of Maddox and uh Mission and Hampton Road intersection, wondering if there can be some mitigation for the trashiness of it and having these folks doing a great job, but then they they have to dump stuff someplace, it should just go directly from the site to the dump rather than being staged on our little corner, which is becoming quite a blight.

And I'm just getting comments from my neighbors.

So what's happening with that?

You know, why isn't the city doing something?

I have to tell them this isn't city property, this is county, you know.

And so that's just my comments, and I'd like to see some action taken on that in the near future.

Otherwise, I really appreciate this meeting and all the speakers that have come forward.

I think have really good points that should be addressed, and uh keep the information flowing.

Thank you very much, and good evening.

Thank you all for your comments, Chair Whitler.

That was the last public comment.

All right, it was pretty complicated subject, and uh to go quietly to get through everything.

Um, but I always thank everyone for their input and for you know their attention to this because there's so much specifics and yet it's so huge at the same time.

So it's a little bit hard to grasp everything, but I think we did a pretty good job of making our way through it.

Any any other last comments from the council regarding this?

Okay, thank you all.

I guess I would just like to again echo what I said in the beginning and some of what the speakers have said is if we're getting a budget update, it would be helpful probably if it was related specifically to the Eden Mack area, or and or in the context of the county making decisions on the fiscal year 26-27 budget, specifically what is going on with that, um, as opposed to just a general overview and like oh, this is what's happening with fire, this is what's happening with public works generally, the services provided.

I think we kind of know that stuff, and then that avenue led us down a path of generalized questions as opposed to budget-related questions.

Um, so I guess it might be the timing that is part of the issue.

Is that I don't know, we don't have a recommended budget to discuss, um, but I do look forward to seeing what the county is going to be um proposing on May 28th because you do have that budget gap to close, and I want to know what services in our area are going to be affected, if any, um, because it seems like inevitably they would be, but TBD on that, apparently.

Okay, thank you, Megan.

Okay.

So if we go on with our agenda, the next thing is um chair's report.

I don't have much of a report, but um, I just want to remind every well, everyone that um my term as chair will be up um next month.

It's it's a like you can do it only two years, so you might just be thinking ahead and thinking of who you might want for the chair or the vice chair for you know the next the next upcoming uh year.

So that's all that I really had.

Are there any oh other council announcements, comments, or reports?

And actually, um I want to ask some of you specifically because we haven't had much time to um get updates from we had a variety of subcommittees, and uh I'm kind of lost track of where they are and who's on them.

So I was gonna ask you specifically for if you uh about the subcommittees and let me just review what I think um we have.

I think Taylor, you were on the like an economic um development subcommittee.

Is that correct?

Economic development committee is myself, Warren, and I believe Elizabeth.

Yeah, the three of us, okay.

Thank you.

Um, also we haven't met recently, so there's not anything to update.

Otherwise, we would update, but it would be nice to meet again.

Okay, so you haven't had you haven't really met.

We had one meeting, maybe six.

Oh, yes, you can, yes, please.

Thank you.

This is on, it's on.

Oh, hi.

Uh Jamie Orfanos with community development agency or economic and civic development department, and we will be contacting you soon, like in the next several weeks because we did send an email update, but I don't know if you reviewed that.

Uh, that we would be coming back to the economic development subcommittee to review the strategic plan, the economic development strategic plan.

And we have a final draft of that.

It will come to the subcommittee for the Eden MAC, and then it will go to the full Eden Mac.

And the same thing will happen with the uh Castor Valley Mac.

So I will be in touch in the next two to three weeks at the latest.

And if not me, we have a new um manager in our division.

Her name is Marie, and so either Marie Suvanson or Jamie Orfanos will be in touch.

Thank you, Jamie.

So let me just verify then.

Um Warren Taylor and Elizabeth.

Is that okay?

All right, so that's what I got.

And then um, we also had um a subcommittee related to um the BART Transit project.

And I have I had Warren, I think on that one.

Is that correct?

That is correct, yes.

Okay, that project has been moving forward.

Um there have been a couple of community uh meetings, and in fact, I think there's one coming up soon.

Um very soon, I believe it's tomorrow, in fact, um, on that on that project.

Um, most of it has been outreach uh to the community.

Um there has been uh some updates just in terms of how how the different uh departments remember the BART project is a the Bayfair BART project is a uh a co-project with BART, uh the county and the city of San Leandro.

So we've been hearing about how they're trying to come together um and share information.

Uh there hasn't been any major decisions as of yet.

Um it's still mostly outreach and thinking about what criteria they have been wanting to come up with for eventual development on the BART site.

Thank you.

Okay, then I think there's a committee on on the the um inclusionary and affording affordable housing, and I thought that Warren and Taylor were you both on that one?

Yes, yeah, yeah.

So I can start and Taylor can certainly can jump in.

There was a meeting, and I'll be general about this.

There was a meeting of representatives from Castro Valley Mac, Fairview Mac, RMAC, and of course, staff, uh, to sort of get to know each other and uh sort of catch priorities from folks uh on the call.

It was a general meeting where people shared their views about affordable housing.

There were some specific questions asked about um how we see uh the uh development of the inclusionary zoning process.

Um I know that there'll be uh at least one, maybe two more meetings of this of this uh committee, and there should be some more iteration of coming back to all the Macs as well as a community meeting.

So this is just the beginning.

This process is gonna take about a year and a half or so before there's a real ordinance that goes before the board.

So this is gonna be this is just the beginning of a of a quite a process that's gonna last a while.

Thank you.

Okay, Taylor, did you have anything to add?

No, I think Warren summarized it perfectly.

Okay, now have I missed any subcommittees or people that were on some.

Somehow I had a question, Megan.

I have a your name with a question mark.

Like, was there a committee that you would want it to be on or volunteered for or something?

No, not all of I'm on plenty of committees, thank you.

Yeah, Megan did you were you're good?

Okay, I haven't missed anybody or any committees or subcommittees.

All right, are there any other um council announcements or comments from any other council members?

Just to repeat our desire to have public works, which is already established, but for the record.

Would you to repeat that we would like public works to come back and do a practice?

Yes.

Um, you I would like all of you to come back at least once a year.

Okay, that would yeah, that's kind of on me to gather up that information.

All right, are there any um staff announcements or comments or reports from Ashley or Tona?

Is Tony here?

Can't tell who's here online.

Anything Tona is online, but she's not raising her hand, so I'm assuming she does not have any.

All right.

Well, thank everyone for attending.

And if nobody has any other any objections here, I think we can adjourn.

Any objections from the council?

All right.

Then we can adjourn at 8 50, it looks like.

Thank you.

Did you say 8 58?

What was the time?

Yeah, eight hours.

8 50.

We did it 10 minutes early