Alright, with that, we are adjourned and we will move to the regular meeting for June 9th.

Please call the roll.

Council members Leary.

Kozlowski and Rachel.

Here.

If you'll please stand with me for the Pledge of Allegiance.

I Pledge Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.

Under God, it's all of liberty and justice law.

And do we have any agenda updates to CV?

No, thank you.

All right, that takes us to business from the floor.

This is a time where anyone can address the council on unagendized items.

We have any requests to speak this evening.

We have two requests to speak this evening under business from the floor.

Our first speaker will be Ashika La, who will then be followed by Mariel Olson.

Good evening.

My name is Asha Galal, and I serve as the Parks Administrator for San Joaquin County Parks and Recreation and as the California Park and Recreation Society's Region One Representative on the State Board of Directors.

The CPRS annual awards program celebrates outstanding examples of quality facility and park design, programming accomplishments, effective communications, community leadership, and professional successes that take place every day throughout California.

Through our awards program, we recognize the people, projects, programs, and stories that strengthen communities through parks and recreation.

Tonight, I am honored to recognize the City of Folsom's Parks and Recreation Department as one of only eight recipients statewide to receive a 2025 CPRS Marketing and Communications Award of Excellence in the print and collateral design category for its Parks and Recreation Annual Report.

For the first time, the department brought together the full story of Folsom's Parks and Recreation into a single cohesive document designed to build trust, increase transparency, and help residents better understand the impact parks and recreation have on community health, connection, and quality of life.

What stood out to the awards judges was not simply the quality of the design, but how effectively the report transformed complex information into a clear and accessible story.

Through compelling photography, thoughtful storytelling, easy to understand visuals, and a transparent look at accomplishments, financial stewardship, and future goals.

The report helped residents and decision makers better understand the value and impact of the department's work.

The annual report also celebrated the people behind the work, recognizing staff, volunteers, partners, commissioners, and community members who helped make Folsom's parks and recreation system so successful.

In doing so, it became more than a report.

It became a tool for building understanding, pride, and trust throughout the community.

The report serves as a reminder that parks and recreation is about more than facilities and programs.

It is an investment in community well-being, public spaces, volunteerism, and quality of life.

This one of a kind award plaque was handcrafted by an artist through CPRS's partnership with Peace by Peace, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit that provides employment opportunities and job training through the creation of artwork made from recycled materials.

Please join me in congratulating the City of Folsom's Parks and Recreation Department on receiving the 2025 CPRS Marketing and Communications Award of Excellence for its Parks and Recreation Annual Report.

Congratulations.

Thank you for your continued commitment to strengthening communities through parks and recreation.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Thank you, Miss Law.

Great work, Parks and Rec.

Okay, our next speaker will be Mariel Olson.

Good evening, Mr.

Mayor, Mayor, Madam, Vice Mayor, and Council members.

Thank you for letting you speak tonight.

And I'm hoping to introduce to you some different kinds of aspects of our zoo and sanctuary that do pertain eventually to our budget.

Here are some attributes that I've observed in my time as a docent in three years.

Many people, as you know, are afraid to speak to strangers these days.

Maybe they've gotten an angry response or even a confrontation once.

But spend some time with us at the zoo, and you'll see we're a zoo sanctuary for people, too.

Someone will make an observation at an enclosure about an animal, and another stranger picks up the conversation.

Someone knows that Pogo, our cockatiel, loves to sing and dance to baby shark.

And once again, I get to hear a baby shark.

But with a chorus of adults who are also flapping their wings and bobbing their heads.

That causes a lot of laughter and a lot of fun.

And a child that I met at our holiday lights, who was a very afraid nonverbal child, was at the zoo one day with his dad, and he was over and he was so happy.

He was signing happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, because the bobcat had finally come out.

Okay.

A stranger signed back happy to him.

And his father, who was beaming, said he's hardly ever signs in public.

So this was a big moment for dad.

The mountain lion jumps 15 feet up to her roost.

And a little shy girl dressed in a beautiful little Disney princess dress said, they can do a running leap 45 feet, and that's why you don't run from a mountain lion.

The adults were very impressed.

First of all, by the fact that she knew 45 foot leap, and secondly, that she was dressed as a princess.

A grandpa is bringing yet another of his grandchildren with him to the zoo.

He says he comes every day, and since in the last three years, I have counted seven times on my answer days when I wander around that I have met him with a different child.

He's either meeting children on the street and dragging them in, or they really are his grandchildren.

But in that same spirit, one day I was uh wandering around as an answer person, and I saw a lady sitting on a bench with tears on her face, and so I came over and asked her if she was okay.

And she said yes, and then she said, and no, she said my mother died just a few days ago, and she used to bring me here when I was a little girl.

So I'm sitting here having happy memories of my mother.

So that grandpa was right, and that grown woman was having a wonderful time remembering to being a child with her mother.

Ms.

Olson, if you could wrap it up.

Okay.

Well, also I wanted you to know that I have had relatives coming from Sweden who drop in without me because I don't want to be associated with them right now.

They're um difficult people.

Could you make your closing comments?

Yes, and but I do want to let you know that all the people that I've met from out of town have either had a lunch before they go back to where they are going, or they're staying in town at a hotel.

So there are actual budget benefits to our zoo.

So please come and see us at the zoo and watch in the sanctuary and participate with Pogo.

Thank you so much.

Okay, you have no further request to speak under business from the floor.

All right, uh, that takes us to our consent calendar.

Uh we have some public comment on item number four.

Oh, and I'll look to my colleagues if we would need to pull anything else.

I can move adoption of one, two, three, five, six, and seven.

Second.

Please call the roll.

Council members Leary.

Yes.

Rorbah, yes, Aquino, yes, Koslowski, yes, and Rachel.

Yes.

Please call item number four.

Okay, item number four is resolution number one one six three seven.

This is a resolution authorizing public fireworks displays during the annual Folsom Pro Rodeo.

You have two requests to speak under this item.

The first request is from it says Janet or Sam Plunk, who will be followed by Sherry Richter.

So Janet or Sam, come on down.

Just wonder this one.

The smaller one here.

This one.

Thank you.

And you can move it around if you want.

Thank you.

I always feel like a deer in the headlights up here.

So thank you all for providing me this opportunity to speak on this item.

So I live in the neighborhood right directly below the fireworks.

There's 12 homes down there.

And the fireworks are both amazing and terrifying.

And the past several years, well, the fire department is always up above on the Johnny Cash Trail to mitigate the fire concerns caused by the fireworks.

And for the last five years, we've had cert volunteers down there to help us out as well because prior to that, my husband and I had put out a few fires on our own with our little fire cans.

Well, more in the neighborhood, but just around our house.

So it's a real imminent danger down there.

And any of the cert volunteers that have been down there are in disbelief if the winds are blowing that way.

Um kind of what's raining on us.

So anyway, I know that we've had some changes in the departments, so I'm just here to um just hope that the city and its departments will continue their efforts and uh to mitigate the imminent fire danger that the fireworks puts on.

Like I said, it's both amazing and terrifying.

So that's it.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for coming out tonight.

Okay, your next speaker will be Sherry Richter.

Good evening, thank you for letting me speak.

As well, fireworks are just like she said, amazing, exciting, and beautiful, but they do come at a cost in an urban environment.

Because the radios, the rodeo is so very close to the zoo.

Every year, several of the animals need to be um sedated for them.

The loud thunder of the fireworks is absolutely terrorizing.

Um, but they don't just affect the zoo animals, but the pets and cats and wildlife that are also in those neighborhoods are also um affected by that.

And in addition, my husband is a cert volunteer, and he has spent the rodeo days um in at the neighbors and making sure that the embers weren't coming down and starting fires in their roofs and gardens.

So something to consider.

I mean, um Rockland just had a celebration, their red, white, and bluegrass um celebration of Rockland, and they used drones this year as a way of entertaining the folks, and so maybe obviously not this year, but um might be something that would be considered in the future.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Excuse me, Mayor, would you mind if our fire chief kind of spoke to this?

If we could have Chief Sol.com and maybe just give a little summary of what the plans are for the rodeo.

That'd be great.

Thank you.

I think he also has some information that he can share with us about the number of fires and the risks there.

We talked a little bit about that in the gender review yesterday.

I'm sorry.

Uh Councilman River.

Is it you had some statistics about the number of small fires that occurred along the parkway last year, I think.

Anecdotal.

Anecdotal.

Just based on my conversations with staff, but um Mr.

Mayor, members of council staff, um, Jason Solak Fire Chief.

Uh I share uh a lot of the concerns with with our community.

Um first year as a fire chief, so there's a lot of asking questions and trying to understand what our uh plan is to help mitigate the fire concern.

Um I will share uh that there is uh a direction for me to have an increased presence uh down in the Leitersorf granite circle, uh, that one of our community members uh lives in.

Um there is a real um potential for the fallout.

Um we're increasing the fallout area to keep folks out of those areas.

We'll have an increased presence.

Um there's a new hydrant that's located on the uh northwest corner of the rodeo grounds, and so we're gonna deploy some additional resources on the trail and monitor and patrol that area, and uh we will also have uh personnel and crew down on Leitersorf and the granite area to um to be patrolling down there as well.

So, so I had some other questions.

You don't mind the answer?

Um I mean, one of the big risks is wind, and that's something that we can't control on the days that the rodeos um taking place.

Um, and that I'm thinking the number of homes in the historic district with wood roofs that aren't as fire resistant as the newer materials or uh tile, um, are also at a higher risk than homes in other areas.

I don't know if there's been an assessment on that, but I certainly think it's a big risk.

I'm sorry, go ahead.

That's okay, go ahead.

Yeah, personally I've not had eyes on the roof structures of those homes, particularly in that area, uh, but it is something that's uh that we'll take into account.

Yeah, I think it's one of our higher risk areas in town, and not just right around the rodeo, the historic district.

Yeah, just in a general, yeah, shake roofs are are certainly more uh prone to fire embers and and hot objects, yes.

Yeah, and and I want to um echo the concerns of the zoo for having to have personnel on during the evening and sedate the animals.

I mean that comes as at a cost to the city, and I got a number of complaints last year for a illegal fireworks in the neighborhoods in my neighborhood, but also concerns about people that live around the um historic district area because I have a number of friends there who and it's a cost to them to have to take their pets to the vet and and get them sedated.

So I would really hope that we can move forward to looking at the cost of uh and switching over to drone shows as well.

Uh Intel did an amazing drone show a few years ago when you know they were here in full force.

Um, but the average cost is somewhere between 15,000 and 50,000.

And I don't know what the cost of fireworks are, but I think people enjoy drone shows as well, and that's probably something we need to work with the chamber on.

I think it's probably the chamber that purchases though, as I know it's not the city, but I just want to bring those things up too because the we're living in a time when you know there's increased fire risk year-round, and having the fireworks where they are next to a state park and um homes is I I think it's unacceptable at this point.

Yeah, um, so just a couple things.

So that the individual, so to your point about illegal fireworks, I know that the city is uh making great efforts to have an increased presence uh and and try to uh detour a lot of those illegal activity fireworks.

Uh they do cause issues within our community, uh, both to the folks that are using them as well as to the wildland vegetation and the homes.

Um as it relates to the specific contractor um for the rodeo, uh it is a it is a professional outfit, they are licensed, uh, they're credentialed through uh ATF, um alcohol tobacco firearms explosives.

Um they are certified through the state fire marshal's office, and uh they do take wind into account um as they set up the the I'm not an explosives expert, but um they do take wind and weather into account.

Uh, there's a minimum height that the mortars have to uh detonate at, but we we have the ability to have a conversation in real time about wind variants and things to try to keep the fallout in a in a in a smallest areas possible.

Um thank you.

Thank you for that.

I'd like for all us, I don't know.

I will explore this with whoever's purchasing the displays, let's say fireworks versus drones see what we can do to minimize the risk going into the future.

Thank you.

Haven't been put on houses in a good long time, and there's an extra really vanishingly small number of those in anywhere that's near rodeo park.

Just so you know.

No, I understand that, but you know, people don't want to place until they have to, right?

Yeah.

Any other questions?

Thank you, Chief.

No question, but just a comment.

I do appreciate the concerns from the residents.

I, you know, um, I also have to I I feel for the zoo animals.

I have to sedate my dog.

Um, he absolutely hates a noise of any kind.

But what's so frustrating to me is when you're gonna do fireworks around the 4th of July, everyone anticipates that, right?

We know that they're gonna happen those three um three nights of the rodeo.

I sent um some messaging to the city manager today for that another city did that I thought was really good, and maybe we have to say, look, this is the fireworks show.

We encourage you to go watch it because if you do anything illegal, we're cracking down this year.

Um what's so frustrating to me is that illegal fireworks happening year round, and you you can't sedate for those because you don't know that it's gonna come.

But maybe three nights ago in Empire Ranch.

All kinds of illegal fireworks in the middle of the night.

Um, so um, you know, I I have faith in the fire chief that he will make sure that conditions are you know are appropriate and that all precautions are taken.

We did um last year, you know, tell the sheriff's department no that they could not have fireworks during their um their rodeo uh in October, I think it was.

Um so again, I I appreciate the comments.

I share the concerns.

I think you know, maybe going forward, yes.

Well, there's always drone shows and things that we can look into, but um people are gonna do things, but I just I just wish that we could just kind of say, hey, you know, if you want to participate in fireworks or enjoy the fireworks show, this is the one to watch and and leave everything else out of it, right?

So I'm looking forward to some um enforcement on the illegal fireworks in our city this year and lots of hefty fines.

Happy to entertain a motion.

I move resolution 11637.

I'll second.

Please call the roll.

Council members Leary.

Yes.

Aquino, yes, Kozlowski, yes, and Rachel.

Yes.

Uh that takes us to new business.

Please call the next item.

All right, new business item number eight.

This is resolution number one one six four four.

This is the resolution authorizing the city manager to execute a construction agreement with consolidated engineering inc for the pavement resurfacing project and appropriation of funds.

There we go.

Uh good evening, uh Mayor Rathel, members of the council.

Uh Ryan Chance, streets operations manager in the public works department.

Uh tonight I'll be presenting on this uh contract um put forth before you for approval.

It's uh a pavement resurfacing project that will be occurring uh if approved uh starting very soon here and continuing through this summer.

Um you know, consolidated engineering did last year's project with us, um, so they have some experience in Folsom, uh, which is which is always good.

So uh just in general, a little over overarching view of our pavement management system, uh Public Works maintains 256 centerline miles of roads, which somewhere roughly is about 700 lane miles.

Um our overall PC uh PCI pavement condition index is 65 currently.

Um so not where we want to be.

We'd like to be up in the 70s, as some of our uh neighboring agencies are.

Uh but with that being said, 84% of our streets are in good or very good condition, but that means that 16% of them are not.

So uh we're we're really stepping up to kind of have open dialogue with our pavement management and trying to push out as many useful and um efficient projects as possible to keep our keep our infrastructure in good condition.

So um this this project before you tonight is a preventative maintenance project, so it's not not really any asphalt overlays, it's uh crack ceiling, slurry seals, and fresh striping.

Um here's here's one map.

This is the first um kind of large area of the project.

Um this is uh what I refer to kind of as like the Willow Creek Island because Willow Creek meanders just across and every through every road in this area.

So although you see three different colors up there, the the final product of the project will be all a consistent aesthetic.

It'll all be slurry seal with fresh striping.

So the only difference you see in the colors up there is uh the treatment type of what we have to do to the road before the slurry seal.

Um so don't think we're gonna end up with three different types of pavement out there.

Um so Glen Drive.

I'll have I have some pictures of these roads that you'll see in a few minutes.

So I don't I don't need to get too far into it here, but um, I think everybody's probably familiar with this area.

You got Glen Drive between Fulsom and Sibley, um Coolidge, Parkshore, Plaza there behind Winco by Goodwill, and the small remainder piece of Natoma Station Drive is also in that area.

Uh this is a this is a picture of the existing pavement condition index of those streets.

So you can see blue is good, uh green is good, yellow and red are not good.

Uh red is uh very poor condition, yellow's uh good, but it's it's got a lot of distresses from uh load failure.

Uh so if I go back, you'll see it correlates with the different treatment types that we're doing on those roads based on the PCI.

Uh the second uh and final area of this project is uh an Empire Ranch.

Um, it it's essentially, I don't know that all the names of all the neighborhoods, but everything in green as well as Empire Ranch Road between the Fulsom Eldorado County line and Iron Point Road will be uh completely resurfaced.

And uh again with all fresh new striping.

I always mention striping because it's really what makes a project.

It doesn't look very good, but once it's striped, it looks great.

Um so everything around the Empire Ranch, uh Empire Ranch golf course.

Uh I just want to make a point.

East and Toma Street is not getting resurfaced.

I just labeled it for reference for anybody who's wondering where this was.

Um our streets crews just finished crack sealing all of these streets, all these residential streets.

Uh they actually just finished today.

Uh so it's ready for the contractor to come in and do some asphalt repairs and slurry seal.

Uh also want to mention there's two schools in this area.

Um, there's an elementary school right here and another elementary school down here, which we have gone to great lengths in the bid docs to require the contractor to finish those before before school starts on August 6th.

So we're we're up against a bit of a time crunch, but we think we could do it.

And um, you know, we'll hold the contractor responsible to doing those areas first before they do the rest of the project.

Uh here's some here's the pavement condition index uh existing on those streets as it is today.

So just want to mention that these are good and very good roads, and the whole science behind pavement resurfacing is to keep them that way, right?

To when they start showing signs of distresses, whether it's cracking, seal those immediately, slurry seal it, and that road is is good, right?

So we we essentially have two types of roads, roads we can um resurface with slurry and roads that need like a lot more work.

And so we're trying to reduce the number that need a lot more work.

Um, but with with this being said, I don't want to make it seem like we're not focusing on the roads that need more work, it's just not part of this project.

So these those areas were all constructed 15-ish years ago, maybe a little longer.

Maybe longer now, yeah.

Yeah, so is that about the cycle that you need to do this sort of?

Yeah, you know, I everybody's got a different opinion, but I think ideally you want to start this process as soon as set cracks start showing up.

Yeah, good.

Uh couple facts about the project: 25,000 pounds of crack seal, uh, 373,000 square yards of slurry, 5,000 tons of asphalt, uh, 4,000 square feet of curb gutter and sidewalk replacement that we've inspected all the sidewalks through these neighborhoods and identified uh what uplifts there are, what distresses need to be replaced.

Reflective roadway striping, I'll say it again.

And then obviously we've taken a fresh look at all the school zones, and they'll be receiving really high visibility yellow ladder style crosswalks at all locations to just increase school safety for uh for all the pedestrians.

In addition, continuing with our theme that you've probably seen around town on Blue Ravine and Greenback and some other roads.

We are uh we have the room to accommodate a buffered bike lane, which is essentially just a small gap between the vehicle cars and the bike, the bicep lists.

These will be two-foot buffers, which is about what we've done on all the other roads, and I we've gotten rave reviews from uh cyclists over the years on these.

I have some renderings I'll show you as well.

Uh so bid results.

Um we got we we advertised this project, we designed it in-house, and we got nine bidders, which is a great turnout.

Uh, the engineers' estimate was 3.73 million.

Um, so we're we're in the range, we're at the high end of the range, which is okay.

Uh I don't want to be the low.

Um, so we we got a really good bid, like as I said before, consolidated engineering did uh work for us last year.

Um project turned out well.

We expect this one to turn out even better.

Um so I just want to say I'm not a graphic artist, so this is all done with the use of AI, but um, I think it I think it really delivers um the point of what we're we're trying to accomplish here, and that's not only keep our roads looking good, but also increase the aesthetics of the city, and with that comes property values and economic development and investments.

So that's always something we're thinking about in pavement maintenance.

Um, so you can see here this is Empire Ranch.

The it's got a lot of cracks, the striping's faded, pretty bad in some areas.

Uh you can see the the buffered bike lane here, uh, just gives that extra bit of space to uh the cyclists.

Um this is Glen Drive between Folsom and Sibley.

Uh this is this was slurry sealed probably 15 years ago now.

Um, so it's it's you know past its useful life.

Uh this this road has already been uh crack sealed by our streets crew and is pretty much ready to go with the exception of some asphalt repairs.

And then we have plaza drive.

Uh the picture on the top left is the uh the section there that's severely distressed, and you can see it in the pavement, and it's um it really needs some work.

Um that's that's all base failure.

That's uh so the plan here is to mill out three inches, put back three inches of asphalt, and cover it with a slurry seal.

Uh so schedule.

So we're here tonight, uh, asking for a ward of this project.

Uh, and if if that's uh approved tonight, which hopefully it is, uh we are fully prepared and been talking with the contractor to have a pre-construction meeting and issue the notice to proceed next week.

Uh everybody knows that school zones are the priority, so that's why we're pushing so hard to get it, get it started ASAP.

Um so essentially, if if everything goes uh as planned, which in construction it always does, right?

Um, you know, asphalt repairs, those are the order of operations that you see up there, asphalt repairs, concrete sidewalks.

Uh so I already mentioned August 5th.

Um we also do mass mailers and notifications to all the affected residents, as you can imagine.

Everybody's got a party or graduation that conflicts with the construction schedule.

So we we work really closely with all the property owners and uh accommodate as much as we can in the schedule in the schedule.

And then beyond this project, we wanted to include a slide just to let everybody know that we you know we see what's going on with our roads, and we have uh a list a mile long essentially, um at least two sides of the page, uh and so these are these are roads that we have our eye on that that really need some work and that we we feel are high priority um roads to resurface and repair.

So you might be thinking that's every road in the in Folsom, and you'd you'd be right.

Yeah, that's that's what we're looking at.

So um, anyhow, that's uh that's the end of my presentation.

I'd be happy to field any uh questions anybody has.

Thanks, Ryan.

Uh councilmember Kino.

This is great news, Ryan.

Thank you very much.

I do have a question.

Uh in Empire Ranch last year, there were some streets that were um crews came in and did something around the manhole covers.

And what we were told was that uh the work was going to be done followed by a slurry seal, but those streets are not on this project.

So is that a future project?

It is, yeah.

It's it's likely gonna be next year.

Uh we went in there and um there was some settlement around the manholes, and so we fixed those just for ride quality issues, and we tried to change ordered in with consolidated last year, but there were some other parts of the change order that were around other schools, so we ended up just pulling it back to not complicate.

I mean, you don't want a slurry seal in front of a school, trust me, right?

Uh not that I've ever done that or would, but uh yeah, I can imagine.

So we pulled that back, so it's still on our radar uh all of Broadstone, all those residential streets off of Broadstone, Iron Point.

Got it.

Okay, thank you.

And Mr.

Mayor, if I I could add, uh, want to uh uh thank uh Mr.

Ryan Chance for his efforts getting this out there.

This I would like to say is kind of our kickoff for renewed focus into our street maintenance programs.

Uh appreciate his leadership in getting our uh street crews out there crack sealing on a regular basis.

Uh we're going to uh he mentioned being done with those neighborhoods.

Every sunny day is our goal to have our crack seal machine out there, you know, uh uh crack sealing the streets throughout town.

Uh this is a big deal, as you mentioned.

Uh you saw in the picture Empire Ranch Road.

You see those kind of linear cracks.

That is uh right now it's it's kind of that um important time to do something because one more wet season is really really a hindrance to the uh uh quality of that roadway because the moisture enters into the base, then you get the expansion and contraction from the heat and then the cold.

And so what we're trying to do is getting uh get ahead of that because this type of project, although this is a three million dollar project, we're literally doing miles of roadway uh at this cost where if if it's a complete grind out and replace, you will get far less coverage.

And so we really want to focus on improving the quality of our pavement, not just the quality of the payment, but just the look and feel of our thoroughfares with the striping, and so this is kind of that that first step.

Uh on there, we we wanted to let the folks know that this will become more of a regular appearance on the city council that we want to have projects like this at least twice a year where uh we're a little late this year.

Normally we would have a kind of a bid coming at you, like the end of the calendar year, so that we start earlier in the spring, and then we have a secondary project that happens you know, late summer, early fall, and so that's going to be the um uh the process.

Uh other neighborhoods that we want to get into, we're on the list like the parkway, for example.

Uh so if you're not on the this project, we're coming as uh uh Mr.

Chancen mentioned.

So we're excited about this, and uh we look forward to seeing uh improved payment conditions going forward.

Thank you.

Yeah, and our crews are out every day crack sealing, and uh the mayor's gonna join us next week.

We're looking forward to it.

Absolutely.

Wear your dirtiest clothes, teach me how to use the crack seal machine.

I appreciate that.

Councilmember Larry, you had a question.

Yeah, I just wanted to follow up um uh councilmember Kozlowski, you know, asked about the probably expected uh life for roads to remain undamaged.

That was about 10 years, and uh my understanding is that it's about 10 years that um for the duration of the slurry and crack ceiling to last once that's completed.

Is that correct?

I mean, yeah, we have a lot of roads in Folsom that we've crack sealed 10 years ago that still look really good.

Um, so you know there's a there's um there's a lot of variables.

How good was the road constructed originally?

Uh you know, was was the base uh sub-base material they built the road on satisfactory.

Um how much traffic does it get?

How was the uh the uh um the craftsmanship during I mean there's there's so many variables, but uh 10 years I think is uh not too far of a stretch to think that slurry seals should last.

So basically it's up to staff to kind of assess the status of the roads throughout town annually.

So you're not like just doing, you know, putting one on the list that doesn't need to be.

Council member, if I could chime in for just a second.

We're in the middle of doing our pavement management program update, and with that effort comes along um a full assessment of the city's roads.

So that report is done every five years, and we're we have a draft report uh for this last iteration of it, but that allows us to look at um how roads are behaving over time.

If we see certain roads deteriorating faster than other roads, then what will happen is we'll advance them in the list of projects to deliver and be a little bit more thoughtful in how we can preserve um those roads uh to prevent those larger expenses for larger efforts later.

Okay, thank you.

When you talk about substrate, I think a lot of this area was cobble, and I don't know how uh well that was graded before they put it in those areas.

We have some really interesting um our our geostratum is really interesting too because we have linear uh linear layers of clay in various parts of town too.

That was actually a contributing factor on what happened with some of the um additional paving work that happened at Sibley and Glen when we had our sinkhole.

Um there's a little linear um uh patch of clay out there.

So we do uh take that into account.

We we you know, luckily we've had geotech reports done over um many many years of different projects and development projects and things like that.

So we do look through those whenever we do an RR, we kind of see how the roads shoving, you know.

Um uh Mr.

Chance Sode showed um the linear cracks, but there's traverse cracks that kind of show if there's a hillside uh shoving, and then that helps alert us if there's a bigger issue or if we need to do a little bit more structural depth reconstruction, too.

Great, thank you.

You're welcome.

All right, I just got two questions for you, sir.

I love your AI images.

Let me start there.

They're beautiful.

Thank you.

Uh we could just show those, you know.

Uh look at a look at all the beautiful work we've done.

That's the goal, right?

Uh, but with the the buffered bike lanes, I'm a big fan.

Uh but does that that's not being taken out of the existing bike lane that that narrows down the existing lanes a little bit?

Is that how the existing travel lanes, yeah?

Okay.

We don't narrow the bike lane typically unless we're really trying to squeeze something in, but not in this case, no.

Oh, excellent.

And then uh I know before when we've come in, significantly under the engineer's estimate.

I know some of that goes to contingency.

Um, but sometimes you guys have added on extra roadway in order to be done.

I'm just kind of curious this time.

Is it because we've got another contract already in the works, or was there some other reason we couldn't add on some roads?

Well, it's it's not a done deal yet, right?

I mean, as as as we're out there doing the work, we can always add on additional roads uh if it'll fit within the contingency, but as Brian said, we are working on another project right now that we're planning to have out to bid uh in the next month or so.

So that'll be that could be constructed this fall.

Um, and one more thing I'd like to chime in on too, if I could please, Mayor.

Um, so the other thing that we look at too when we add in and change order in roads, um, additional paving work, you know, we try to keep it in the same vicinity if there's an opportunity to expand that, but also we're careful about watching the quantities because there's particular rules within public contract code and the specifications themselves where if we get over and above a particular quantity, the contractor's able to renegotiate the unit price.

Okay, and so on that effort we look to see if that's really worth, you know, if the if the juice is worth the squeeze.

Um, but we do have other projects moving forward in the very near future that we can include those additional segments as needed.

Excellent.

I don't think there's ever been a project we haven't added on to, so there's a good chance that something will pop up that we need done.

Yeah, appreciate that.

Sure.

All right, I think that's all of our questions.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Public comment, but we have no public comment on this item.

Okay, I'll move to approve resolution number 11644.

Resolution authorizing city manager execute a construction agreement with consolidated engineering.

Second.

Please call the roll.

Council members Leary.

Yes.

Aquino, Koslowski, and Rachel.

Yes.

That takes us to our public hearing section of the agenda.

Please call the next item.

Yeah, public hearing item number nine.

This is resolution number 11646, a resolution to amend a prior resolution and adopt an amended fee schedule for the ambulance cost recovery program provided by the fire department.

Ryan forgot the rule.

He had to start the next presentation before he walked off.

There we go.

All right, Mr.

Mayor, members of the council staff, community members, Jason Soleck, Fire Chief.

Um tonight I'm here to discuss ambulance cost recovery program.

The recovery program uh for transport services uh is uh authorized in the Folsom Municipal Code as well as the California State Constitution Prop 26 and government code.

Um it allows us to uh essentially implement a fee-based service for providing a service.

Part of that government code uh requires us to conduct a fee study and uh project, if you will, uh what the cost of providing that service is the process that we use to uh put tonight's presentation together and ultimately the um recommendation to uh amend is uh based on about a three-year average, seeing the cost of fee services continue to uh increase, primarily based on employee costs, fuel cost, maintenance cost to the vehicles, the cost of the vehicles, uh, and then supplies.

So, what the fire department is asking council to approve is to adopt the amended fee schedule, pass resolution one one six four six, updating the ambulance transport fees to reflect today's cost of providing the service, set the fees to close the projected funding gap.

And when I when I reference funding gap, it's the difference between what it costs to provide the service and the recovery that we get from billing for the transport fees.

And then lastly, uh, and I'll I'll bring this back at the end is to authorize an annual adjustment.

Um of uh the items that we've identified that will help uh and uh ideally prevent us from coming back to council on a regular basis to ask for amendments is to uh implement what's called an ambulance inflation factor, so much like the CPI that you would uh implement as an ongoing inflationary cost uh adjustment.

Um, this is set by Medicare services uh throughout the country, and so part of the resolution is asking you to uh include that.

Our current model uh versus what I call the single rule model, and um we find ourselves at a crossroads making this presentation because our current model uh is um outlined by using all firefighter paramedics to staff our ambulance companies, and there has been significant process and progress in maybe moving towards the implementation of a single role system, and a single role would replace uh firefighter paramedics on our ambulances with EMTs and paramedics, so much like the private system, and that comes at a cost reduction to personnel based on salary and benefits.

So the box on the left is uh our current model, our estimated annual program costs, uh $8.75 million.

Our average annual revenue at the current fee structure is $6.29 million.

Our three-year blended cost recovery rate is at 38%.

There are four primary factors in that blended uh cost recovery rate.

Um, one is Medicare, one is Medical, one is private insurance, and then one is private pay.

So folks who maybe don't have insurance or uh opt to pay out of pocket expenses.

And when you take those three payer mixes uh in our community, we receive on average 38% of what we bill.

So if we bill $100,000, we get $38,000 from the billing service to provide those services, and so that's the gap that we refer to.

And you can see there at the bottom, we currently use 18 firefighter products to um staff the three ambulances in the city.

The single role uh essentially just lowers uh our personnel costs, uh, which is the primary factor.

Uh so from 8.75 to 8.24, uh, our revenues are predicted to remain the same.

Uh so changing how we deploy the model doesn't change the cost uh revenue generation, but it lowers the overall cost of providing the service.

Our recovery rate blended still at 38%, uh, and then the model would have 20 folks, uh, six firefighter paramedics and then seven EMTs and seven medics working in conjunction as an EMT paramedic that would that would make up the crew on the ambulance.

So, under our current model, our annual general funding gap is 2.46 million dollars uh when compared to what we anticipate on an average recovery rate of 6.29 million.

Again, in in uh in anticipation of moving with this model, as known as the single role in the future, uh you can see that the funding gap significantly reduces to 1.954 from the 2.42.5.

And then again, the revenues recovered would remain consistent for the services billed.

As I mentioned, costs have risen and fees have not kept pace.

Uh, cost of inflation, cost of services, the ambulances, the fuel, um, employee costs.

Uh, we have some tremendous folks, and uh you know, the city really tries to maintain a competitive market with our employees.

Um in August of 23, council did adopt an amendment uh to the fee structure, and at that time, the direction was to adopt the average of the region uh for both the ALS rate and the fees, the independent fees that I'll highlight here in a minute.

Um, it did not include the AIF, uh, and it did not close the funding gap.

So we've seen that gap continue to escalate over the years as our cost for services have increased, but yet we use the average uh in the region.

And then today the general fund uh now uh subsidizes or helps contribute uh the balance of about two to two point four million dollars on average over the last three years.

An example of the reimbursement cap is I talk about the payer mix and and how that works.

Uh transports are billed to Medicare and Medical, which we reimburse far below the build charges.

So there's a contract rate that Medicare pays, and then there's a contract rate that Medical pays.

The city cannot collect above what those federal and state caps are, and and so we're left to supplement, if you will, um, the difference in the fee for uh providing the services and the cost of providing those services.

So as an example, our reimbursement by payers, so private insurance, this would be folks who have Sutter, Dignity, UC Davis, Private Healthcare.

Um, we receive about 81% of all charges billed from our private insurance companies.

Medical, we receive 38%, uh, and that is uh again based on what the state cap rate is, plus an augmentation from the PPGEMT fund, and I'll I'll come back to that if you guys don't remember what that is.

But that's a it's a public funding mechanism to help public providers recover more than the $118 that Medi-Cal would normally uh provide as payment for a transport service.

Yeah.

And then Medicare at 18.5%, and then again private pay uninsured at 9%.

So on average, over the three years, we bill $2,981 for service, and we actually collect $1,099.

And we average $5,290 transports.

And so as we continue to increase the number of transports, that disparity and that gap continues to escalate.

How do we compete or look on a regional basis?

So the red line on the chart is where Folsom currently is.

We currently charge $2,158 as our base ALS rate.

Our folks to the north and South Plaster are at $2294, consumed this at $2,656.

I'm sorry, $55.

SAC City, the City of Sacramento is $3,108, and then SAC Metro is $3,495.

SAC Metro just did a fee study, much like ourselves and came up with that rate.

The bar at the top is what we are recommending as an adoption for our ALS base rate of 3,071.

That will put us right about the middle of our regional partners.

It's important to note that Consumeness has just launched a fee study, and so we're anticipating them increasing their fees in the coming months.

So you can see the current fees there, ALS base rate of $2,158, our average mileage, oxygen, cardiac monitor ALS supplies, what the regional average is at 2888, and then what our proposal is based on our specific fee structure.

And again, as models change with staffing models, number of ambulances, payer mixes in the communities as those change, simply adopting the regional average while gets us in the ballpark, doesn't fill the gap entirely.

And so every community really owes it to themselves to conduct a fee study to determine what those fees actually are in their jurisdiction.

The other question that we get asked a lot is how do we compare it to the private providers?

And as I engage in conversation with our community members, we talk about transport fees, and uh, you know, historically the fire department has always been fired centric, and over the last 30 plus years, we've expanded our services to include a lot of ALS.

And so I share with folks if the fire department doesn't provide the transport fees, a private for-profit provider will, and be that AMR or Medic, and so you can see on the left there what the average private provider is charging at the 4912, what their other uh associated ancillary fees are, and then where our proposed fees will be should you uh approve the recommendation and the resolution, and then the difference.

So it's pretty sub it's pretty substantial.

So what I say is I think we're we're offering an as good, and I would argue maybe uh uh an excellent service to our community.

Um I know the full fire department takes a lot of pride in our paramedicine, um, and we're doing so at a cost that is the best deal around.

So the fee structure again uh just outlining the differences between our current model and uh what we anticipate being the model moving forward with the single role.

Um the way this works is you go through the fee study and you add up all the associated costs, and then you take what you typically receive in terms of reimbursement, and then you have to reverse engineer the number based on the payer mix.

So you have to do some math, uh, and I have a wonderful staff that uh is here tonight and in support.

Um, and I think all of us uh are going cross-eyed looking at numbers, so uh my hat's off to many of those in the room that that look at numbers all day long.

Um, yeah, sometimes it just gets blurry.

So um, so based on our current model, the reverse engineering, if we were trying to fund that gap, that 2.46 million dollar gap, we would have to increase fees twelve hundred and twenty-four dollars and change the base rate to three thousand three hundred and twenty-three dollars.

Again, an anticipation and being an optimist.

Uh, I think that uh we're making really good progress, and so um we felt that it was prudent to do the numbers and run the fee study based on the single rule implementation.

Um, and you can see that there is a pretty significant cost savings there.

So the gap goes from that 2.5 to 1.95.

The increase uh to fill that funding gap is 972 dollars per transport to get us to an ALS base rate of 3,071.

And then there's two things, uh, two items uh budgetary items that that were um anticipating uh remain in place.

One is is that tonight uh through the resolution that you adopt and approve the annual AF AIF adjustment factor, which is the inflationary, and then continue to support as we have for the last several years uh participation in the PPGEMT, which is that public provider um funding mechanism by which we uh provide a large sum of money into a pool.

Uh we get some matching dollars from the state and the feds, and then we increase the recovery rate from the 118 dollars on a medical charge to about 1100 dollars.

So still far short of what the charge rate is, but certainly better than uh the base rate uh for about 118.

So closing the gap beginning in 2026, uh again, should you approve the amendment uh and the resolution?

Um it's our projection that the 1.95 million dollar funding gap uh if we implement the fees effective July 1, 2026, that uh we will cover that gap and eliminate that gap and not have to provide additional funding from the general fund to pay for the transport services in the city of Folsom.

So our recommendation is to pass and adopt resolution 11646, a resolution to amend resolution 11094 and adopt amended fee schedule for the ambulance cost recovery program provided by the fire department.

And with that, I'd be happy to take any questions.

Questions?

Councilmember Kozowski?

Yeah, I have two quick ones.

Um you talked at the beginning about the potential to um change the staffing of the ambulances.

There wasn't a suggestion buried in there that we were going to displace any current firefighters, right?

Great question.

No, sir.

There if if we implement um, provided that we continue to make progress and arrive at a at a full implementation, um, there's absolutely zero change to our current employee structure, their pay, their benefits, or their classification.

Perfect.

And then the closing this gap, is it dependent on making that staffing change or is that uh potentially a little bit of additional it's not exclusively depending on making the change, but the change provides us the opportunity to implement a lower increase.

So rather than the twelve hundred and twenty-three dollar increase, we would see a nine seventy-two.

Got it, okay.

Thank you.

Yes, sir.

Vice Mayor, questions?

No questions.

Just um thank you for doing all this work to close the gap.

I think you know, last year was a struggle for all of us and the things that we had to do to make changes for our financial stability.

Um so I do appreciate all the work and thank you for the number too, showing the difference between the service that we would charge, we charge for to a private company like AMR, because that as I said in our agenda review, that is a question I get all the time as why don't we privatize?

Um so that was a quite a big difference.

So thank you for that.

No, you're absolutely welcome.

And if, well, I'll reserve comment.

Councilmember Larry.

Thank you.

Thank you for putting all that information together.

Um, and this is kind of down in the weeds, but um when you show the um, you know, privately insured patients, they're probably capitated to one of those health care systems, but they have something like Anthem Blue Cross or United Healthcare, is really the funder on those.

But when you put up the numbers about the um payments by those privately funded ones, are you billing Medicare first and then the supplemental?

And I'm just wondering if there's a difference in the cost recovery, because sometimes a supplemental insurance doesn't necessarily cover the ambulance rides.

So I that's a great question.

Uh, and I don't want to misspeak.

Um, if I can answer part two of your question and I'll defer to maybe my my colleague here uh who might be able to give me an answer.

Uh and if we're not, we'll certainly make clarification for you.

But uh it's my understanding that uh our third-party billing company Whitman um makes the initial uh attempt to collect.

Um if there's secondary insurance, they will bill the secondary insurance.

And if the secondary insurance denies the claim, then we would uh send a bill to the individual um and then we start the process of um discussing uh potential um you know compassion billing policies or hardship building policies.

Uh you know, it's not lost on me that um that EMS in this country is expensive.

And uh one thing that um we started to discuss internally, uh, and I'll look to the city manager and council and and many of the staff members here is uh is considering the adoption of a of a policy from council on what our compassion billing policy should be so that we're not the ones on this side making the decision on what we feel is or isn't um a hardship.

Um there's some guidance in the city right now, um, but my personal belief is that it would be great to have some some guidance and policy direction from council.

I appreciate it.

I ask that because patients, you know, or people who are insured will look at you know, like this list and say, oh gee, I have private insurance, so 80% chance it's gonna get fully fully pay for, and that may not be the case, and that it's a confusing process for it can be, yes.

Uh myself included to cover those bills.

The insurance company is is uh complex.

Yeah.

But Whitman, our our party billing agency does make several attempts to collect from the insurance companies before they would send a bill to the individual.

Okay, thank you.

You're welcome.

Councilmember Aquino, any questions?

No question.

Just a comment um to express my frustration.

Um, and maybe this is a conversation we need to have with our state and federal representatives.

But I mean, this is exactly what's wrong with healthcare, right?

Um, that the private payers are subsidizing um the rest of the population that has um you know government insurance.

And you didn't have a slide up there, but it was in your staff report that, for example, Medicare accounts for 60% of our transports, yet they only bring in 18 and a half percent of the fees that we charge.

Um private insurance accounts for 21% of the transports, but they account for 81% of the charges that we collect.

So it's just a microcosm of what is wrong with the insurance industry.

And I say that as a health insurance broker.

So thank you for your work.

You're welcome.

And also how important it is to keep getting young people to move back to full.

So keep the city young because uh Medicare reimbursement is low.

Uh I have no questions.

I think I I just want to express my appreciation.

I know one of the things that comes up uh with my constituents from time to time is is just the assessment it's seen uh when a patient is not transported.

Um I was glad to see before that was increased quite a bit with this increase, it's it's pretty minimal.

So I just want to express my appreciation that we we kept that as as reasonable as possible for folks that are not transported.

So we're not misusing resources by transporting people that don't need to be.

Absolutely, yeah.

Um, yeah, I appreciate that.

Uh a lot of uh compassion went into the the thought of what could we do without using taxpayer money to subsidize or or alternatively fund the transport service for our community.

So appreciate that, sir.

Thank you, Chief.

All right, we're gonna go ahead and open the public hearing.

You have no request to speak into this item.

And we are going to close the public hearing, and I'll entertain a motion.

Mr.

Mayor, I'll move that we approve resolution number one one six four six.

Second, please call the roll.

Council members Leary, yes, Laura, yeah, Aquino.

Yes, Koslowski.

Yes.

And Rachel.

Yes.

And please call the next item.

Okay, item number 10 is the toll brothers at Alder Creek project, and there's a request to continue this item to June 23rd from the developer.

Excellent.

So should we get a motion?

Yes.

I move to continue um the toll brothers item to the June 23rd.

23rd meeting.

Second.

Please call the roll.

Council members Leary.

Yes.

Aquino.

Yes.

Yes.

And wait.

Yes.

Please call the next item.

And it takes us to item 11, resolution number 11642.

This is a resolution adopting the 2025 Urban Water Management Plan and Water Shortage Contingency Plan, and authorizing the city manager to submit the plans to the California Department of Water Resources and to the California State Library.

Thank you, Krista.

Mayor Rathel, members of the Council, Marcus Yasutaki, Utilities Director.

I have a brief presentation, at least by my past history of presentations for the council consideration this evening for the 2025 urban water management plan and water shortage contingency plan.

So just a quick background, last plan was completed in 2020.

This is required by the California Water Code section 10620.

We need to complete these if we do want to get state grants from the Department of Water Resources.

It must be held at a public hearing adopted by city council.

And then in this, we also need to adopt a water shortage contingency plan.

So these are the contents of an urban water management plan.

I'm going to focus on the three that are highlighted in red.

So I won't read them all and get right into it, knowing that we've got our budget discussion this evening.

So just to get people familiar with the city's water service area, you can see on the map here, just where the water served by Folsom.

One is the Ashland area, which is kind of the pinkish area north of the river.

And this pointer I think is out of battery.

And there's not another one here.

Then you've got the purple, the darker pink, the green, and the yellow mustard color.

Those are all what's considered fulsome main.

And this is just part of how our water permits are identified within the city.

So we have an Ashland permit and then a fulsomine.

Just to give you some brief history on water use, you can see from 2021 to 2025, just the total water use uh within the city, a little over 19,000 acre feet in 2021 and a little less than 20,000 acre feet uh this past calendar year.

So uh thank you very much.

Uh so you can see it does trend with uh you know growth within the city, but you can see when we do have some years that are drier, uh we do have reductions in in water use just uh based on customer activity and behavior.

Uh projected water use in the Ashland area.

Uh, this is kind of the important number here is the build-out number that we have to show are the 25 years out in Ashland, about 1,180 acre feet in total amongst those different classifications.

Uh for the Fulsa main system from 2030 to 2050.

Uh, we have about a 3600 acre foot increase in water use, even though the city does project to go by you know many more accounts south of Highway 50, and this does include the area in and around Aerojet.

So even though Easton Place and Glenborough at Easton are not developed, those numbers are factored into our projections.

And this is the total when you add uh Fulsa Maine plus Ashland because that's what's all in the city's water service area, even though it's not um not all areas are within the city's um service boundary as a city, like the the aerojet area.

Uh so just uh a quick update on entitlements and contracts.

These just this table just identifies all the city's water contracts and entitlements that we have, the pre-1914 rights, the CVP repayment contract, the agreement we have with San Juan Water District, and this is for the Ashland service area, and then the get A and Get B supplies, and that's uh groundwater extraction and treatment, which is an agreement we have with Aerojet, so water that they treat currently and you just put on overland.

If we find a purpose and a need for that, we would be able to redevert that and use it for city purposes.

So, in total, uh about 38,350 acre feet per year.

Uh part of what we have to do is a drought risk assessment.

So the plan requires us to look at uh multi-year droughts, and the numbers here are just the reductions we would anticipate uh in each one of the contracts.

The two pre-1914 contracts have a zero percent cut, so we don't anticipate any cuts from the bureau of reclamation.

The repayment contract can have anywhere from zero to twenty-five percent of uh or sorry, seventy-five percent of a reduction.

So in the fifth year of a five-year multi-year drought, we do assume that we'd get seventy-five percent of that contract amount.

Uh, the Ashland contracts is built in, it's got a 35% reduction, and there is no reduction in the groundwater that Aerojet is pumping and treating.

So, when we look at the year types, this is the amount we would reduce the amount of supplies for each one of those contracts.

Uh so just what does this look like?

If you looked at the total contract amount, you would see that we'd maintain the full amount of 22,000 acre feet of pre-1914 here, 5,000.

Uh 75% reduction gets you to 1750 and so on down the list.

And you would look at the total supply for potable water, 29 little less than 29,500 acre feet.

The raw water supply of 3250, so in total, little less than 33,000 acre feet.

And to spoil the the rest of the urban water management plan, that's sufficient for the supplies that we have or the demands we have at 2050.

This table I won't read at all, but sums it up.

But you can see out in 2050, even in the fifth year, we still have a surplus of a little over 11,000 acre feet of water supplies.

So now on to the water shortage contingency plan.

This plan is required to identify how the city would respond to foreseeable and unforeseeable water shortages.

We need to develop procedures to determine what our annual supplies and demands are.

So we have a process we're doing that.

Will there be a supply shortage or a surplus?

And as I showed before, uh our documents show we will always have a surplus unless something drastic changes in the next 25 years.

Uh we have to identify what our response plans are to it, you know, close any gap if our demands were to exceed the supplies, and then we're required to identify any legal authority the city has or the enforcement of any of our response actions.

So the water shortage contingency plan has 12 uh identified requirements.

I'll focus on just those uh four that are highlighted in or identified by red lettering.

So completing an annual water supply, demand and assessment.

Effectively, the utilities director and the treatment plant manager will look at supplies and demands and determine: okay, is there anything we need to discuss with our city manager?

And typically, if we had for some reason a shortage that we were going to see this communication would occur, but because we don't, um we don't have to then go through any of the following items, and and those would be required if we did find a surplus with at least any discussions with this or sorry, a deficit if we had any discussions with the city manager.

Uh, the state does require us to submit an annual water supply and demand assessment report, which we have to do by July 1st, and for the past couple years, and I imagine moving into the future, it's fairly simple, and we're always going to show uh our demands being less than our available uh supplies.

So there are six standard shortage stages, uh, one, two, three, four, five, and six, uh, corresponding to a up to 10%, up to 20, up to 30, up to 40, up to 50, and anything greater than 50%.

And the response actions, they're identified in the plan.

I did not include them in the presentation because there's about four pages worth of response actions.

But if you would like to know what we're doing in each specific stage, it is identified in there.

But some of the main ones are the reduction in the number of days in which you can water, moving to odd even days, uh, et cetera.

Um, you know, washing cars, washing vehicles in certain stages, those then become prohibited.

And so it's all identified in the actual document, which is available online and uh has been available at the city clerk's office.

Uh this may be a little tough to read, but this is our communications and compliance.

So on the left is the process in which we'll work with our communications team for any outreach that's necessary to identify not only which stage we're in, but also any of the prohibitions with each one of those stages.

And then on the enforcement side, if there are things that we see where somebody or a business is in violation of any of the prohibitions in one of those stages, we can then have a tool to uh educate our uh you know public and then issue any potential violations.

Uh in terms of implementation, we do have to conduct a public hearing at the same time as we do the urban water management plan.

Uh the public draft was made up made available on May 7th.

Uh if we need to update this in between today and 2030, we just have to come back and do so in front of city council.

I don't anticipate that that's going to be the case, but if we had to, we would.

Uh and then what we do want to do also is uh probably later this summer is update the municipal code section 13.26 to match the six stages that are identified in the water shortage contingency plan because currently the Folsom Municipal Code has five stages, so we want to just make sure that our plan matches or the municipal code matches the plan.

So in summary, we believe that the urban water management plan meets the requirements by the Department of Water Resources.

We have to adopt the plan by July 1st of this year.

We did have a public meeting on May 7th, a utility commission meeting on May 19th, and then we have the meeting and the public hearing this evening.

Uh the next update will be in 2030, which then would likely be a June of 2031 uh presentation to City Council.

Uh, and with that, we recommend adopting resolution 11642 for the urban water management plan and the water shortage contingency plan, and then thus allowing the city manager submit to the state.

And with that, I will take any questions.

Thank you, Marcus.

Any questions, Councilmember Aquino?

Councilmember Leary.

Flashbacks to the water uh uh visioning uh processes we went through uh this process at that time.

But I'm just wondering, you know, it it looks like we always have plenty of water, you know, year after year after year until what 2050, but that is contingent on compliance with any drought cut packs over that period of time because we basically have one source of storage.

So if that that can get drawn down if people aren't compliant and it can throw these numbers off a certain degree.

I mean, potentially, I I guess I'd like to call it sometimes maybe an operational drought.

So sometimes we've seen it before where um other regulatory requirements that the Bureau of Reclamation is required to operate to within the state requires deliveries to other areas of the state that maybe we don't necessarily agree with uh at the time, and so um while we haven't seen it before, uh we did look at uh the American River Basin study, which identified potential climate change impacts, and even that goes out to 2085, and even in those scenarios, as we talked about even during the water vision process, is uh the city would still have available supplies to meet the demands at build-out.

Now the gap may not be 11,000 acre feet, it may be closer to four to five thousand acre feet just because of how um either precipitation or inflow into Folsom Reservoir or how Folsom Reservoirs actually manage to meet other needs across the state, could potentially impact that number from going from 11,000 acre feet of surplus, maybe to something less just because the physical availability of water that reclamation may keep in the reservoir because they are meeting other purposes across the state, might be lower than what we would anticipate.

So that would be the situation in which you could see the need to use the barge, you know, with lower water intake.

Reclamation would if the lake level got to a certain elevation, which is probably right around elevation 340 feet, which is about a hundred and probably 50 to 160,000 acre feet of you know water in the reservoir, which is about 17-18% of total reservoir capacity.

So we've been there once or very close.

Reclamation has installed the barges before, yes, we haven't had to use them, but they did install them.

Okay, I just I just wanted to be clear because sometimes it seems a little confusing when you're showing, oh, yeah, we've got water, you know, adequate water every year for multiple years, but we've seen these situations during a drought when we we have severe cutbacks.

We've had situations like this.

That is correct.

Um, but the at that time the city implemented those um restrictions based on our municipal code, not because it was a lack of supply that reclamation was giving us, but for a couple different reasons.

One, it was the right thing to do, right thing to do at that time.

But two, then when the state came in and issued an emergency regulation, you did not have a choice as to whether or not you could implement any reductions.

You were told by the state of California, you need to do this.

Here's your number, go forth and implement that.

Even though we were not showing a shortage or a supply deficiency, if the state of California or the state water resources control board issues an emergency uh regulation, then we then fall under that and have to comply.

So we may not issue our own shortage, but the state of California may say, hey, you need to do this even though we have sufficient supply to meet our demands.

Okay.

I guess the lesson is to still stay water wise.

Yeah, we always use one.

Yes, we always want to be efficient with our water use and other resources.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Any questions?

I have one quick one, Marcus.

Just as context, because this is we've talked about this many times before.

Um, in an average rainfall year or snow pack year, what is the total volume of water that flows through Folsom reservoir?

Because people get a little hung up on its volume rather than how much it actually sees go through it.

Probably published numbers, probably anywhere between 2.6 million or 2.7 million acre feet in an average year.

And then in an average year, we're taking 20,000 acre feet, so 0.5% of that volume.

Something like that.

Yeah.

Or less than one percent.

And if Folsom Reservoir was a just a bucket that only filled up once, we would be less than two percent of that entire bucket.

Got it at build out.

Yeah, so okay, thank you.

All right, we're gonna go ahead and open the public hearing.

We have no request to speak on this item.

And we will close the public hearing.

Happy to entertain with.

Second.

Please call the roll.

Council members Leary.

Yes.

A keynote, yes.

Kozlowski?

Yes.

And Rachel.

Yes.

Thank you, Marcus.

Please call the next item.

Okay, your next item is item 12.

This is resolution number 11645 adopting the fiscal year 2627 operating and capital budgets for the city of Folsom, the Successor Agency, the Folsom Public Financing Authority, and the Folsom Ranch Public Financing Authority.

Great.

Thank you, Mayor.

Members of the Council.

I'll get us started just to kind of introduce this item.

As you recall, we uh introduced the preliminary budget at the May 26th meeting, and uh we appreciated the opportunity to have some public input and also to have conversations with the council.

Uh you'll uh notice in the packet that we have taken the questions that we had received and included those in the packet.

So if anyone's interested in those, we have those.

Uh we also included a supplement uh on the table uh questions that we received that we did not have answers to yet um when this uh when the packet was published.

So uh we appreciate the questions and our goal is to get those answers out there so that everyone can see uh some of the things that uh we will go over in our report um are in the staff report uh as well as it relates to some of the questions that were brought up related to CalPARS costs and our uh OPEB liabilities.

But just as a reminder, uh our annual budget budget process is to adopt the preliminary budget for the year that starts July 1st.

Uh, we do that now, May and June.

So this is our first public hearing, and so um the council will have the opportunity if this if they so choose to adopt the budget tonight, if additional time is needed, we can go uh and continue the public hearing to the June uh 23rd meeting.

Uh we will also have uh a plan to have an update on the uh fiscal year 2025-2026 uh close out um in October or November, as well as an update on the fiscal year 26-27.

Uh and then uh in February of next year, we'll have the mid-year budget review uh that will be approved by the city council at that time.

So uh since the meeting, uh we have made some adjustments to the budget.

We work with the parks and recreation department to reduce the operating budget in the general fund for the zoo by about $55,000.

Uh staff now projects that the general fund revenues will exceed expenditures by about $107,000 for fiscal year 26-27.

And then we have listed the revenues in the general fund uh being uh $118,311,724.

When you add that with the transfers in, we have uh uh six million dollar transfer in for a total estimated revenues of $124,353,860.

Our proposed expenditures are $123, uh $366,023.

When you add the transfers out of $880,000, our total expenditures are $124,246,491.

So in with the budget as proposed right now, the general fund, any balance will remain just over the 20% and will comply with the city council's reserve policy.

And with that, I'll turn the time over to our finance director, Stacy Tamani.

Thank you, Brian.

Good evening, Mayor and Council members.

I'm Stacy Tamani, Chief Financial Officer, and tonight I'm happy to just give you a little more information on the city manager's proposed fiscal year 26-27 budget.

Many of these slides were presented on the May 26th meeting, so I'll I'll go over those briefly.

Whoops, back to that one.

So this slide here is the fiscal year 2526 revenue budget compared to the projected figures for fiscal year 26-27.

We're projecting total revenue, including transfers and from other funds to be at the 124.4 million dollar mark.

The biggest increases here are in property tax, intergovernmental revenue, and charges for services.

And as you go down in that list, all other revenue is down slightly from fiscal year 25-26.

And this is mostly due to the loss of about $400,000 in cable TB franchise fees that the city will not be receiving for fiscal year 26-27.

For transfers in from other funds, we're up about $500,000, and that accounts for an additional allocation of overhead to funds that are outside of the general fund.

This slide here displays the general fund appropriations, the direct revenues and the net expenditures for both fiscal year 25-26 and fiscal year 26-27.

When we look at the right side of the slide, the fourth column is the proposed budget.

We're bringing to you tonight totaling the 124.2 million, and that figure includes that reduction of $55,000 to the zoo operating budget.

And you'll see that reduction in the parks and recreation line item.

The fifth column is the estimated 26-27 direct program revenues for each department, and then the sixth column is the estimated net expenditures for fiscal year 26-27 after taking into account those direct revenues.

So our net expenditures are at $101 million.

There were only a few new items added to this budget in the general fund.

For the police department, we had the reclassification of a permanent part-time records technician to full time.

For the library, the implementation of a book locker program in the full sum plan area.

For the fire department, a services contract related to data consulting, and for the city clerk, an increase to account for election costs this year.

In the previous fiscal year, we set up several equipment replacement renovation and maintenance funds.

This slide shows the capital expenditures from those funds that we're proposing for fiscal year 26-27.

At the top there in our fleet fund fund 601, 125,000 for non-safety fleet vehicles.

In our facilities and rehab fund 602, we're proposing 700,000 of ARPA funding.

That'll be transferred into Fund 602 for exterior paint for the city Hall campus and for the fire stations.

$178,000 for electrical and lighting upgrades for the rodeo grounds, $150,000 for the Aquatic Center Water Slide Tower Replacement, and about $90,000 for the City Park Restrooms door auto lock system.

In Fund 603, our IT equipment fund, we're proposing $381,000 for system equipment next year.

The next one, police vehicle and equipment fund $607, $300,000 for police vehicles.

Our fire vehicle and equipment fund fund $608 includes $144,000 for portable radios and $7,500 for rope rescue equipment.

And then the last one there, our park and trail maintenance and rehab fund $609, $925,000 for trail renovations.

Here you have the chart of authorized positions.

This chart compares the total position count for fiscal year 2627 to the fiscal year 2526 count after we made those mid-year budget adjustments.

For fiscal year 26-27, this budget proposes an increase of one and a half positions in the general fund.

That's that half position related to the police department reclass of a permanent part-time records technician to a full-time position.

And the other is one senior HR analyst that'll be paid for by the risk management funding, that's fund 606.

And then it also proposes one solid waste management analyst to be funded from the Solid Waste Fund, Fund 540.

This slide here reflects the city's unassigned fund balance by year in the dark blue columns, and then the unassigned fund balance as a percentage of expenditures displayed by the red line.

Over the past few years, which you can see on the right side of the slide, we've been able to keep the unassigned fund balance at about $25 million.

So those are the blue lines, or 20% of expenditures, which is the red line for the City Council's policy.

We'll do a quick review of the enterprise fund budgets.

For the water enterprise fund, the proposed budget for fiscal year 26-27 includes $22.5 million of program revenues.

And the proposed appropriation for all of their operating expenses is at $19.5 million, and then an additional $7 million for capital expenses there on the bottom line.

For the wastewater fund, we're projecting $13.4 million of program revenues, proposed appropriations at $7.5 million for operations, and $4 million for capital expenses.

And then the proposed budget for the Solid Waste Enterprise Fund includes $29.4 million of program revenues, proposed appropriations at $24.4 million for operations, and $2.6 million for capital expenses for vehicle replacements.

Next up is a review of our proposed capital improvement plan for fiscal year 26-27.

Here we have the same slide as last time, the overview of the major projects.

And again, this isn't everything in the plan, but it captures most of the major projects, and they're just an alphabetical order.

As we go across, we have the project budget that was previously approved for some of these projects.

And then the next column is the current budget request.

So these are the amounts that are either adding to an existing project or proposing a new one.

And then you have your total project budget on the right for each of these.

And then this chart here shows the funding sources for all of the projects in the CIP plan, including the major projects that you just looked at.

And you would be able to see these expenses in your budget book within the funds that are listed in the left-hand column.

The funding for these projects primarily comes from special revenue, capital, or enterprise funds, with some grant funding.

And the total request is just over $39 million.

This table is the proposed appropriations by fund type in total for all city funds.

This includes the operating budget and the capital costs.

The proposed budget includes for the general fund the $124.2 million that we went over in earlier slides, plus the additional $242,000 for our general grants and SPIF fee funds that we combine with the general fund.

We have $22 million for special revenue funds, $17 million for debt service funds, $25.9 million for capital projects funds, $66.6 for enterprise funds, $27.9 million for our internal service funds, and $23.5 million for our fiduciary funds for a total budget of $307.6 million.

So the remainder of the presentation tonight comes from a request of the city council to receive more information on our CalPERS long-term liabilities and also our other post-employment benefits known as OPEB.

And that refers to the city's retiree health benefit program.

We'll start with an overview of the city's CalPurse Pension Program and the pension liability.

The city of Folsom, like most cities, is primarily in the business of providing services such as law enforcement, fire protection, park services, and other municipal services, and it takes personnel to provide those.

So due to this service model within the general fund, salary and benefit costs account for over 70% of annual expenses.

Within the benefits category, payments to CalPERS are their largest expense.

Pension payments are a legal obligation, the city's obligated to pay for the benefits that are earned by employees.

In general, state law prohibits retroactive retroactive reductions in pension benefits, so pension benefits are an expense that the city will continue to pay.

Although CalPERS obligations are a significant expense, the cost is shared.

Each employee contributes a required percentage towards their retirement benefit.

And that currently ranges from 8% to $12.75% of salary, depending on the classification of the employee.

Each employee is required to pay that 8% up to $12.75% of their salary through each paycheck into CalPERS.

After those employee contributions, the city has its required contribution.

And the city's contribution is determined each year through an actuarial study that CalPERS performs, and that determines how much the city is required to pay for current benefits for our current city employees, which they are to paying a part of.

And together that's called the normal cost.

So the city's paying part of the normal cost, and then we also have an annual payment towards the unfunded liability.

And I'll go into exactly what the unfunded liability is in just a minute.

But this graphic here generally shows how this all works.

At the top, with the kind of greenish blue portion, the employee contributions on the left, and then the employer contributions are on the right in the yellow.

And at the bottom, it shows that you have a total required pension contribution.

The two parts to the total required pension contribution is the normal cost for current employees, and then on the right, the payment towards the unfunded liability.

So what this chart is generally showing is that the normal cost, which is on the left, is paid for by both employee contributions and the city's contributions towards towards the current employees.

And then you have the unfunded liability, which is there on the right, and the city pays the entire share of that payment.

And then combined together, the whole thing is considered our total required pension contribution.

So what is an unfunded liability?

An unfunded liability occurs when pension plans have a shortfall in the money that should be available within the plan to earn investment returns and pay benefits.

So in technical terms, it's calculated kind of there in the middle of the slide by taking the accrued liability.

So this is what the actuary estimate estimates is the total obligation that we have to retirees.

And then you subtract the current value of the assets that are held by CalPERS on our behalf.

And that gives us our unfunded accrued liability known as the UAL.

And the city is required to make payments towards this liability.

And then additionally, we often talk about the funded ratio when we're determining the health of our pension plans, and that formula is the market value of the assets divided by the total accrued liability.

So what does this look like for the city of Folsom?

Well, this slide shows the total unfunded liability for each of the city's plans as of the most recent actuarial reports.

For safety on the left, the accrued liability, which is the amount of the future benefits that the pension fund is expected to pay out, is most recently at 290 million dollars.

Then you take into consideration the market value of the assets, so that's the amount that's available right now to earn investment returns and to pay benefits, and that's at 184 million dollars as of the most recent report here.

And so the gap between the two is the unfunded liability at 106 million dollars, and that gives us a funded ratio of 64%.

For miscellaneous, the accrued liability is at $312 million.

You have a market value of the assets at 209 million, and the gap between the two is the unfunded liability at 104 million and a funded ratio of 67%.

So why does the city have an unfunded liability?

Well, the city has always made its full required contributions to CalPERS.

So having an unfunded liability didn't occur because of some lack of city action or missed payments.

In fact, most cities in California have some level of unfunded liability and especially older cities like Folsom, who have been in the CalPERS system for quite a while.

The CalPERS system overall is underfunded.

So if it wasn't something that the city specifically did, then what factors did contribute to the CalPERS unfunded liability?

Well, the League of California Cities performed a retirement system sustainability study and findings in 2018, and it's still very relevant today, and there were several factors that were determined to have the largest impact on the pension system and led to the unfunded liability.

The first factor is an increase to the pension system's cost when enhanced pension benefits were granted by state and local government employers about 25 years ago.

At that time, CalPERS was experiencing exceptionally strong investment returns during the stock market boom.

The pension system appeared to be significantly overfunded.

They even called it superfunded.

And so it was generally accepted that enhanced benefits for employees were something that the plan could afford to provide, and that it would have little or no immediate impact on employer costs because it was expected that investment earnings would be able to cover much of that increased expense.

So as a result, the state and many local agencies, including the city of Folsom, adopted these richer pension formulas for employees.

And when they were negotiated, the statute required that those enhanced benefits apply not only to future, but also to prior service.

So this was a big change in the cost of the total benefit when the new formulas were applied to prior service, and there hadn't been any contributions made to fund those benefits.

The enhanced benefits are the formulas that you hear, such as 3% at 50 for police and fire employees, or 2.7% at 55% for miscellaneous employees.

So these enhanced benefits happened, and then when the dot com bubble burst, and later during the Great Recession, when investment returns declined significantly, agencies were still responsible for these substantially higher pension contributions.

They now had to pay for the prior service as well, without any of the expected offsetting investment gains.

So this wiped out any overfund overfunding or any superfunding that the plan had, and of course, it quickly led to the plan being underfunded, and that has continued since.

The second factor contributing to the growth of the unfunded liabilities across the pension system overall is CalPERS investments investment performance.

As I just mentioned, the Great Recession played a role in CalPERS less than optimal investment returns, but we've seen similar results since then.

In 2008, CalPERS suffered a negative 27% return on investment.

And when you factor in the discount rate back in 2008, they were supposed to earn 7.75%.

So if you add the 7.75% that they were supposed to earn to the negative 27%, that's a 34.75% negative impact on the fund in just one year.

So every year when investment returns do not meet the assumed discount rate, that's the assumed income that the investments will make, the public employers, like the city take on the liability associated with this shortfall in investment returns.

In this chart here, it's showing CalPERS investment returns for the last 10 years.

There have been five out of the 10 years when CalPERS investment returns did not reach the assumed rate of 6.8%.

Luckily, we haven't seen the big double-digit losses lately, but when these shortfalls happen, the market value of the assets decrease.

And like I showed in the calculations on the previous slides, that means that our unfunded liability calculation goes up, and that leads to higher contributions required from the city to make up that difference.

Back to this slide to just quickly go through the numbers three, four, and five.

The third factor that the league indicated as contributing to the growth and unfunded liabilities are automatic cola increases for retirees.

They're automatically added to a retiree's pension benefit, and if the actual COLA exceeds the assumed rate, and CalPERS assumes a rate of 2.3%, then that increases the unfunded liability.

It's not as big as an impact as a big investment loss, but it's still a contributor.

The fourth factor was CalPERS contribution policy, most notably after the Great Recession.

They didn't require agencies to pay interest on the accrued unfunded liability.

This was in an attempt to ease the burden on employers during that time, but the policy resulted in pushing the unfunded liability payments to future years.

So we're paying for that policy decision now.

And the fifth factor is demographics.

The liability for retirees at most cities significantly exceeds that of actives, especially for older cities like the city of Fulsom, who have been in the pension system for a while.

We now have more retirees than we have active employees.

So this creates more volatility, we have less people paying in, and that creates an impact on the funded status and ultimately on our retire our required contributions.

So what has the city done to address pension costs?

Well, first, there were pension formula reductions required by the California Public Employees Pension Reform Act, known as PEPRA.

Those required changes were implemented by the city quite a while ago now.

The new formulas applied to all new employees hired on or after January 1st, 2013.

For public safety, it lowered the calculation to 2.7% at age 57 versus 3% at 50%.

And for miscellaneous employees, it went down to 2% at age 62 versus 2.7% at 55%.

And then the city took pension reform a step further than what was required by PEPRA to create even more cost savings.

Pension benefits for employees new to the city of Folsom, but not new to the CalPERS program, so they were already members of CalPERS prior to January 1st of 2013.

When they come to work for the city of Folsom, they receive a reduced benefit formula for their years working for the city.

Public safety employees are at 2% at age 50 versus 3% at 50%.

And miscellaneous employees are at 2% at age 55 versus 2.7% at 55%.

The new formulas required by PEPRA and by the city are lower than for members under the classic formula.

So over time, this has started to reduce the city's pension costs as employees under the new formula begin to make up the majority of the employee groups.

So we're beginning to see that now.

PEPRA employees now make up about 63% of the safety plan and 65% of the miscellaneous plan.

But the unfunded accrued liability is affected by actuarial assumptions and the performance of the financial markets.

So if in any year CalPERS doesn't earn at least 6.8 on their investments, which is the current discount rate, the city will see an increase in the unfunded liability and we'll see an increase in our required contributions to make up for that lower rate of return.

So although the city has taken pretty significant action to implement the pension reform, there are still factors that are out of our control that impact the city's pension costs.

And the last slide here that I have on the PERS side is to show the projected future PERS contributions for the next five years for both plans.

And the main takeaway from this slide is that the UAL payments, the unfunded liability payments for both safety and miscellaneous plans are expected to peak in fiscal year 3031.

And if all of our CalPERS assumptions are met, the UAL would be fully paid off by fiscal year 2043-44.

To finish this up, I just have a couple slides here on the other post-employment benefits the city provides and that corresponding liability.

This is known as OPEB.

The city's retiree health program falls into the OPEB category, and it's actually the only benefit that we have that falls into this category.

The benefit received by employees is that the city pays a portion of the premiums for health benefits for retirees.

As a savings measure, the city eliminated this benefit for new employees hired after May 8th, 2007.

So this benefit will eventually have an end date since there are no new employees being added into this plan.

The city also established an OPEB trust fund in 2008 to set aside resources to help fund this obligation in the future.

The city's been contributing to the trust fund regularly, and this budget does include a proposal for an additional $500,000 contribution for fiscal year 26-27.

Money in the trust is irrevocably committed for retiree health benefits, so it has to be used for this plan.

And every two years, the city hires an actuary to perform an evaluation of the city's OPEB liability.

The unfunded liability for OPEB is calculated much the same way as the CalPERS unfunded liability.

You have the accrued liability, which is the total amount of the future benefits that the program is expected to pay out.

So we have that at 114 million dollars, then the market value of the assets at 12 million dollars, and that gives us a unfunded liability of about 102 million dollars and a funded ratio of 10.7%.

I do have an updated amount on the market value of the assets because this was back from 2025.

So our trust fund right now is at $13.6 million dollars as of the end of April.

For this plan, the city's contributions are just pay as you go costs for current benefits that we're providing to the retirees, and then the $500,000 contribution to the trust fund each year.

So the only surprises that we really have for OPEB is when health care costs go up or or maybe down, more than anticipated, but we aren't really reliant on investment returns at this time.

This slide is a projection that was created by our actuary showing the projected costs for this plan for the next 30 years.

And you can see that it's anticipated to top out in about 2039, and that topping out is due to no more new members being added to the plan.

Again, like CalPERS, if actual experience is different from the assumptions, then the cost could be higher or lower than projected.

But we hope that we'll see costs starting to decrease after they top out, as there just are less people in the plan.

So this concludes my presentation on the long-term liabilities as far as next steps.

This is your public hearing and opportunity to receive public input and of course your opportunity to adopt the budget.

And I'll turn that back over to the city manager.

Great.

Uh thank you.

Uh Stacy, appreciate that presentation.

Uh so uh I guess in one way I'd like to pause a little bit to see if there were any follow-up questions related to the information specifically related to the CalPERS or or the uh OPEB information.

I gotta, I've got a couple.

Can we bring the presentation back up?

Of course.

Let me start with thank you.

I had asked for this at the last uh council meeting, and I just think it's important that we open this discussion up and have it publicly.

Uh it's something that's been a concern, you know.

One of my primary concerns is this is a this is raised to um based on my rough math, Stacey's is probably better than mine.

You know, 16% of our general fund budget is going uh toward our unfunded liabilities.

So it's it's pretty significant numbers and it's putting a lot of pressure on our budget.

So I just want to have this discussion openly with the public so everyone understands uh, you know, 20 years ago this was two percent of our budget, uh, and now it's sixteen percent of our budget.

Oh, and so it has created significant pressure on the general fund um that's there.

And I do think, you know, if we had a crystal ball, right?

Um, PERS could be set up a different way.

It could have said, hey, we're not gonna play the investment market game and try to go after a large return.

If you were operating a defined benefit pension plan, um, you could have said, I'm gonna go the safe route, right?

I'm gonna put all this money in treasury bills, I'm gonna put it all in something that's a guaranteed rate, and then I would be able to somewhat calculate a little better uh what that employer and employee contribution needs to be in the past.

Um that wasn't done for good reasons.

The investment return is much better on a stock portfolio and bond portfolio than it is if we were to put it in more guaranteed rate uh things.

But but the bottom line to me is we can say that all these things happen, but we didn't set aside the money.

And PERS policy was that everyone did not set aside the money well when the employers were working, and so now we are paying for contributions that were not made in the past, right?

For unfunded liabilities.

We were doing everything we should have, but the system was expecting different results, and we didn't have a crystal ball, nobody had a crystal ball, but but that's kind of what I want to discuss is that these are past obligations that we are passing on.

Uh can you go back to the OPEB thing here?

I just trying to figure out these numbers in my head.

So we stopped uh admitting members in 2007.

How are we still paying $6 million in 2055?

Well, you have current employees that are still eligible.

So it didn't cap it at the current retirees.

If somebody was eligible at that time, they're still working, they're retiring.

So we do have retirees being added into the plan as they retire.

So somebody hires on in 2006.

They retire after they retire in 2046.

But if it's an incredibly long career, right?

Uh somewhere in that middle range, uh, but we only provide benefits for about 10 years then, right?

Don't we we don't we transfer them to Medicare once they turn 65?

And it's supplemented, so the cost doesn't completely go away.

So we keep supplementing until until they pass.

Okay.

So we from 2007, we're basically gonna have like a hundred year obligation.

This this doesn't this keeps carrying on past 2057.

If it keeps going, it just reduces.

Yeah.

Okay.

So that is that's shocking to me, right?

Is sitting here is a program we killed in 2007.

Oh, we are gonna pay for for the next hundred years, and there's nothing we can do about it.

Maybe I'm exaggerating.

It probably won't be in 100.

Probably 57 years.

Uh and and that number isn't dropping very quickly, so it's got to project out quite a bit past that.

Yeah, it's offset by increased health care costs.

So even as we drop off, the costs continue to go up.

So I didn't leave here in 2007.

Um I get it some of these employees are already still here today.

So we're we're some of those are our ones that are are providing services to our residents now.

Um, so I don't want to imply the the wrong thing there, but um to me, uh, we should be making higher contribution.

We make a a very small contribution to OPEB uh right now, we make a half million dollar contribution a year um in order to try to reduce this liability, but trying to get those contributions to match what is the true cost of that employee.

Should that number be closer?

And that's why this plot goes so far out.

Like, why are we not catching up more on the OPEP?

Or should we be?

Like, what's the number that we should be contributing to OPEP?

Because because PERS is saying, hey, we've got a hundred million dollar liability.

OPEP saying, and I'm using rough numbers, we've got a hundred million dollar liability.

PERS is saying you need to contribute 10 million dollars a year to catch that up in 15 years, but we're only charging ourselves a half million dollars.

Like that's a that's a 20 fold difference in those two numbers.

And this one's a little bit different because we aren't subject to the fluctuations in the market.

So this is showing our pay as you go costs.

We are just paying the bills for for those employ those retired employees.

You could decide to invest more in the OPEB trust funds so that when you were pl paying for those employees, you're paying for it out of the trust fund.

But that would take a big uh investment in that trust fund to make enough money out of that to not have the current general fund or the current taxpayers paying for retirees that are no longer serving the city, if that makes sense.

So you'd have you'd have to have that the trust fund being able to pay for these.

And if I could ask a follow-up question to that, just to kind of set the stage.

So as it works currently, I mean, every year we have a bill that's associated with the OPEB uh payment for that year.

Correct.

We're do we're just being annual premiums.

So we pay that payment, and right now we're not necessarily making that payment out of that that OPEB fund.

No, we haven't made any payments out of the fund.

Right.

So that's a little bit of the difference where we're paying as you go out of our normal operating costs, and if things were to fluctuate greatly, then you could pull from that account.

You know, it's almost like a buffer.

But but if eventually, once we have say 2040, right, we have no active employees left in there, right?

Oh, nobody that's in our system, right?

And so at that point on, all of our residents from 2040 on are going to be paying uh for services that they're not receiving, right?

Basically, all those costs going forward, there's no guy there's not gonna be any active contributions right to the plan.

Correct, unless you had enough in the trust fund now to then pay those remaining premiums.

So correct me if I'm wrong, but we are kicking those costs to the next generation of Folsom's residents.

Yeah, well, I would say um I mean effectively, yes, and so but this is something that's important to know, and in all although these numbers are shocking, I think this is uh about the system at large, and it's important for us to recognize that the city of Folsom is not like on an island by itself, this is part of a larger system.

And and so when you talk, I'll talk a little bit about the CalPers obligations where we are in a competitive marketplace.

Our employees are, you know, uh, although they're municipal employees, they are part of a competitive system.

And so when you talk about what happened with CalPERS, is in the late 90s, you know, the CHP implemented the higher classic three at 50 um retirement structure.

And so what that forced other municipalities, pretty much all municipalities to follow suit.

Otherwise, you you risked losing those good employees that you need to provide the service to other entities.

That same thing applied to the institution of kind of the retiree health benefits, right?

That through the negotiation process through collective bargaining agreements, those arrangements were made.

I will give kudos to you know Folsom councils of the past that they were one of the first to kind of adjust, like see that big storm coming.

So in 2007 to make that decision, there's cities out there now that haven't even stopped, right?

I mean, and so in some ways it's like this is not great news, but I want to commend, you know, Folsom and the councils of the past and administrations of the past for reckoning that we can't continue to operate like this.

The same can be said related to in 2013 PEPRA changes uh were occurred where the state base said, hey, we need to change the structure.

Once again, Folsom was ahead of the curve, where I believe it was in 2010 they adopted a second tier where they uh lowered the three at 50 um uh pension to the uh 2% at 55.

And then that was for public safety, and then for uh miscellaneous folks, they uh changed it from 2.7 at 55 to 2% at 55.

So although these these are obligations, I think what's what shouldn't be lost from the council and then the community is steps were taken as soon as those those kind of scenarios were were known.

And I guess in some ways, one of the greatest miscalculations of all was the assumption that hey, the super funded, you know, uh pension uh funds that this would be a no cost item.

I mean, this is how it was sold.

This will be a no-cost item.

One of the negotiations was, you know, hey, we will forego cost of living adjustments, those unions because hey, we'll just accept this no cost benefit, you know.

But what we couldn't have anticipated, right, was the huge revenue increases in those funds had really significant downturns with the dot com bust of the early two thousands where we lost significant amount of revenue, and then PERS and their own investments, you know, invested in things during uh the recession uh that everyone was uh impacted by, you know, they invested in the housing market, and so when they lost significant value, the pension fund lost significant value.

So as Stacy Matt kind of mentioned that that happened, you know, uh related to the OPEB charges, you know, that's something that they adapted to.

So these are, I mean, I think it's important for us to talk about this so that we we get used to understanding what the impacts are, you know.

Because I've I've talked to, you know, I really appreciate having opportunities to meet with our public safety uh employees, and uh the desire like, hey, when are we going to expand our services?

You know, we've grown by X amount.

How can we haven't expanded our services?

Well, when you factor in the cost per employee, you know, I think in in another slide, it it shows that where the cost of employee, you know, back 20 years ago, the the pension factor was like point uh 1.12 or 12%.

Where now the cost per employee because of the pension obligation is uh 1.67, you know, in some cases.

So it's gone up by like 50%, right?

So the cost per employee because of these obligations has put big strains on our ability to increase, you know, um the service levels.

So all this is very complex, and I appreciate having the dialogue about it.

And our goal is to try to uh address those and minimize those impacts as as great as possible going forward.

Yeah, and I I definitely appreciate that.

I think I think really what I wanted to bring it up for during this budget cycle is is for a robust discussion around like do we want to reduce uh our liabilities, right?

We have 300 million plus of liabilities that are out there.

Um we're making a minimum contribution, in my opinion, to OPEB.

We're making uh our unfunded contributions to PERS, but there has been other agencies that have prioritized this, right?

You have agencies that are out there that are at 90% funding levels that are older agencies because they lived with more pain in their their budget, right?

And I think it's worth discussing as a council, uh, whether we want to start playing catch up or whether we want to continue to do the minimum amount possible.

And so I I think, you know, I I understand the budget is tight, uh, but I do think this is a discussion that we should have as a body, uh, and just see like how much priority we want to put on this or if we're comfortable um continuing to operate as we have in the past.

And not saying that we don't eventually I appreciate seeing the kind of light at the end of the tunnel where the unfunded liability stops growing and and knowing what those numbers are, I and I appreciate uh the work that you guys have done to put out these projections because um I'm getting asked that out there in the public, and I really couldn't answer them.

I'm like, well, it seems like it's growing every year to me, right?

When I look at the numbers that I have, uh, and so it's it's nice to understand uh what it is going forward.

So I really just bringing it up as as as a discussion item uh and for us to keep in mind as we're trying to allocate money to different sources going forward.

And mayor, if you don't mind uh me adding a little more to that, one of the suggestions I would make to the city council is to follow kind of the budget process that we've implemented.

Last year was the first time I believe uh we did this in February, where we closed out the books from the previous year, and so you actually know how much money came in above what you were expecting to spend.

And so in that particular case, we assigned the 750,000, I think, to some park maintenance and to some trail maintenance.

I can't remember the exact categories, but we're going to continue that process.

And so that's why we we are not uh sitting idly by.

And in many ways, that's why we're we're gonna continue to have kind of some uncomfortable conversations so that we can, because we will get to that point where, for example, if we look at the beginning of uh February and our expenditures from the current fiscal year that we're in, if we're able to minimize those as much as possible and our revenues stayed where we projected, we will have more than the 750,000 to talk about.

So what I did in our previous jurisdictions is we would create a something like that that 600 series, but it was PERS liability, and so we would you know put that in there almost like in a lockbox, and then we can decide if we want to invest that into a trust fund or something later.

So I guess that process will take some time where to your point we're not going to to solve it overnight, but if we have that continued process where we're able to actually put actual funds into that, um, that would be my recommendation.

Yeah, and and and my goal is to never to question our you know our existing obligations.

You know, my my goal is is really to have the discussion around, you know, what do we want to do with with current funds um and how do we make sure that that the residents of today are paying for the services that they receive today.

I want to try to get that as close as possible um to where we're paying the full cost of an employee that's providing the services today.

I it's it's gonna be expensive enough in the California of tomorrow for our kids to live here.

Um and I don't think it's fair for us to receive services that we expect our kids to and grandkids to pay for, right?

So I that's that's really my intention is just to make sure that we are doing the best we can with not passing down those obligations.

That's all my purse questions, and I I appreciate that I know there's some time that went into this, so I appreciate you.

Thank you.

Oh, that's my work, you know.

Um a couple things.

Um, number one, the way to reduce retiree health care costs is to reduce the health care costs.

And so I'm gonna continue to beat the drum of moving from a fully insured health plan to self-funded health plan using reference-based pricing.

And as I explained at our workshop earlier this year, reference-based pricing is paying for services based on a percentage of the Medicare cost.

Let's say you reimburse it a hundred and twenty percent of the Medicare rate or a hundred and forty percent of the Medicare rate.

And when you go back to Chief Solbach's presentation and you see how much Medicare is reimbursing for something versus how much private pay is right, you can see that there would be a cost savings there.

Stacey, I have a question for you about the um the unfunded pension liability.

So let's just say the 100 million liability for safety.

If I remember correctly, that is made up of multiple.

It's not just a hundred million dollars, it's 20 million dollar bill here.

It's like if you think of multiple credit cards, right?

Or you maybe there's one twenty million dollar liability, there's a fifteen million, there's a forty million, correct?

Correct.

So you could you could if you wanted to kind of do the debt snowball method, you could pay down the smallest one and then move on to the next one.

But once you pay down, let's say you pay down one of those credit cards.

Is that done?

Can they come back and tell you we've changed the the assumptions and you actually are not fully funded on that one anymore.

For that once, that's an additional discretionary payment, it would go away.

But that doesn't mean that in that year they they get maybe a four percent return instead of six point eight, and our unfunded liability goes right back up with now an additional line.

Right.

So which I think is one reason why, and you know, I've kind of always thought that we need to have the trust fund for the pension liability in addition to the OPEP, right?

Where rather than maybe paying PERS, we actually just fund our trust fund so that if they do change the assumptions or whatever on us, we're we're just trying to use it as a buffer against our general fund, right?

Exactly.

And that's what we want to get to, because um as I've described, it was really helpful in my previous jurisdiction where we actually had a trust fund that had a a decent amount of funds that if we got a spike that we wouldn't necessarily impact our services because then we would just say, hey, we need an additional 500,000 this year to feather that expense so that we can continue to operate.

Yeah, you know.

So we're not there yet, but I mean, that's that's kind of what we're trying to systematically do with with everything.

I mean, because this kind of falls in line with our deferred maintenance, right?

I mean, it's a liability that we have to address.

So that 600 series is really important because we're allocating funds for park maintenance for our uh police vehicles, for our fire vehicles, for our uh uh facilities in general, but we also ultimately want to have kind of that PERS liability for a trust fund, some sort of account.

So we're not quite there yet, but as we in as we go forward with this process and stay diligent, and this actually leads once we're done with these questions, we have some presentation about the zoo and our park and recreation cost reductions.

And why is that important?

Because where's the money going to come from to actually make those additional payments?

It can't come from nothing, it has to come from somewhere.

So this is uncomfortable, but I think it's important for us to have.

So just one other comment.

Um, I think you had a slide there that showed that at at some point the unfunded liability will be zero.

Well, in reality, no, probably it won't be because PERS right now is using the discount rate of 6.8%.

Most people think that that is too rosy of a number, it's too optimistic.

And um, I know the city of Palo Alto several years ago, they did their own actuarial study and they they now make contributions, assuming a 6.2% rate of return because they think they think PERS uses too optimistic of a rate.

So probably there will continue to be an unfunded liability.

Yeah.

And I I guess you do bring up a good point, right?

You know, that to them, they've done a different study to change their contribution rate.

So that means that they feel like their employees of today need to contribute more, right?

Or their employer needs to contribute more, doesn't either way, right?

There needs to be some higher contribution rate for today because PERS's assumptions are incorrect, right?

Is it if I'm understanding correctly?

Yeah.

So and and that might be what we need to do is is to change our our, you know, to go out and do a I don't know if we would need to do it.

We could have an independent actuarial.

Yeah, but I I think that would be, you know, that's one way, a different way of skinning the cat that would change the um.

Sorry for all the zoo people, that's probably a bad term.

Oh, that's there.

I won't use the skinning the cat term.

It's probably a different way to look at it.

Uh that we could um it was a bad cat, not use the funds out of the the general fund to do that.

Thank you.

Uh other questions on purse.

All right, thank you.

Okay.

Uh, with that, we'll we'll turn the time over to uh Jameson with our parks and recreation department to kind of talk about uh some of the conversations that we've had related to the zoo and the programs, and this is similar in some ways as we talked about our aquatic center trying to pull out what are the costs for the individual programs, because the the zoo in particular is is a challenge in the sense that um it's not as simple as other things where hey we're going to reduce our operations so we we operate on a six day uh a week basis, so we're gonna cut it down to three days, and then we will have savings.

Because we're dealing with animals, they need to be cared for whether people visit the zoo or not, and so that's where uh some of the challenges is.

So uh Jameson, please proceed.

All right, good evening, Mayor and members of the council, Jameson Larson with Parks and Recreation.

I'm gonna be providing a brief summary of the parks and Recreation department budget as a whole, uh, with main focus being on the zoo sanctuary.

Uh just the zoo is part of the overall parks and recreation, so we'll take a higher level look as well.

Uh so the park and recreation department's core values are integrity, health and wellness, and community, and these are used to guide our decision making on daily basis.

Uh our budget goals for the department in the fiscal year 26-27 were to have an increased focus on infrastructure, our service to the community, strengthening partnerships, improving our long-term sustainability and investment in our employees to ensure we retain a high-skilled high performing workforce.

Uh so we went over this last meeting as well, uh, but some of the efficiencies we've created within the department are we have 31 nonprofit and 105 business organizations that either contribute in kind or do sponsorships with the department.

Uh volunteers have contributed an equivalent to savings of a hundred or one point seven million dollars.

Um, many of those sitting in the room behind me.

Uh, city council approved new fees and fee increases for the community facility rentals and the zoo entry, which have been implemented.

And we've updated our book of fees uh prior, the fees hadn't been updated in quite some time.

In 2025, we created the book of fees, and in 2026, January 1st, uh this year's fees were implemented, which had increases across many different areas.

Uh and also uh activation of the Friends of the Folsom Zoo.

Uh, they've been working on a capital campaign for the bet building.

And so this is just taking Stacey's slides from uh the last two presentations and just showing uh what parks and recreation and facilities facilities is a different line within the budget categories.

However, for all intents and purposes, is run by the parks and recreation department.

So in total, the budget that was presented on May 26th, you had a net expense expenditure reduction of 303,000 for parks and recreation facilities, and the budget proposed today uh with the additional reductions in the zoo sanctuary nets a reduction of uh 359,000.

And so uh the zoo's accomplishments this past year, they built the gift shop and the barn.

This will improve efficiencies and allow people to have the gift shop is the last thing they see on their way out, which should help increase uh concession uh revenue there.

Wild nights and holiday lights had their most successful year yet with 210,000 in revenue brought in.

Uh we've increased the fee at the entry from seven to ten dollars.

Uh that was effective on July 1st of 2025, and we created a new team program focused on responsible behavior towards animals and preparing participants for future careers in animal care.

Uh, they have a couple new community partnerships with local businesses such as Ben and Jerry's, Red Bus Brewery, and Tykert.

They've applied for a thousand dollar or a hundred thousand dollar grant uh for retrofit of their Fox exhibit, and the leadership class has raised 43,000 towards new signage at the Folsom Zoo Sanctuary.

Um, and then the Friends raised over 202,000 to fund the new vet building.

And so this is just giving you a little history on what the policy currently is for the Folsom Zoo Sanctuary.

So this was adopted in 2007, and it notes that the zoo sanctuary is a general fund operation and that there is no real expectation of revenue to offset the general fund.

Um I don't necessarily agree with this policy.

I'm just putting this out there so everyone can see what the policy currently is that was adopted by the council back then.

Um, and so similar to the conversation we had at the last council meeting, we are working on a financial sustainability plan that addresses this policy in its entirety, and we want to come back to you in the fall after we've workshopped that with the commission to bring you a new financial sustainability policy that matches our fiscal realities that we have today.

So I was asked for a budget comparison for the zoo sanctuary, looking back further than what is shown in the budget book.

So one of the problems with the budget book is it starts out as bookended with a COVID year, and so it was hard to use that as a baseline.

So I've highlighted those uh COVID years in yellow, gold, uh, and then 2024 I highlighted in gold as well.

That one included the zoo fence, so it was a large capital project, nearing a million dollars.

Um, and then I just wanted to compare what the minimum wage, because as Stacy said, over 70% of the total general fund cost is wages and salaries benefits.

Um, so I put the minimum wage for California, the CPI for the Bay Area, the general fund expenditures, and the Folsom zoo sanctuary expenditures on this just to see what the growth was of each of those over the same 10-year period, and this current fiscal year, they all converge at that 70% uh increase in costs over that period.

Uh and then next we're uh staff completed a review of the zoo sanctuary's budget with a focus on those lines large enough to make a dent in the overall expenses for the division.

Uh in the next three slides, we will focus on those categories listed in green here.

Um, that's permanent salaries, temporary salaries, veterinary care, departmental, and animal food and supplements.

Those are the largest lines that can uh make that sort of difference.

The other ones that we reviewed as part of this were the gift shops, concessions, building maintenance, maintenance and improvements, and contracts.

Uh we didn't look deeper into contracts or gift shops and concessions because those are revenue positive, and any cuts we make to that would have even more cuts to the revenue side of the equation.

So uh we didn't want to do those.

And then as far as the building maintenance and maintenance and improvements, we left those untouched essentially because the goal is to invest in our infrastructure, and if we're just gonna remove that money and let the facility degrade even further, I don't think that matches the direction that I've been hearing.

So we're gonna look at three sets of animals and the associated costs uh with having these animals in our care.

So uh it should be noted that the animals that I'm showing are our large uh charismatic megafauna and they drive attendance, large cares, black matter, mega fauna.

Yeah, the mega and large probably didn't need to go together, but we're on the same page.

Um the good old LCMs.

Yeah, uh so a loss of these animals would also result in a loss of revenue due to entries to the zoo.

Um we didn't just target these ones because they're you know the most loved animals, they're also some of the most expensive animals that we have at the zoo, and so we wanted to start there because knowing the timeline that we had to put this together, we wanted to start at the biggest, and then uh over time we will get down to the granular detail on all animals within the zoo.

So uh the bears have been reduced in prior years from five down to the current four we have.

We have the three North American black bears, Henry Olive, and Herbie, as well as the Eurasian brown bear Matilda.

So the approximate cost annually to have these bears and our care is 169,000.

That includes our full-time salaries, part-time salaries, vet care, food, chemical costs for the chlorine for their pools, building maintenance for their actual enclosures, as well as departmental supplies.

And so this doesn't include overhead costs.

A lot of costs within the zoo are that overhead portion, it's a very large facility, and to assign those overhead costs to an individual animal is difficult, especially with the timeline.

Um, and then next we're gonna look at our mountain lions.

So previously we had five mountain lions, and we're down to just the two echo and cedar.

The cost for the mountain lions annually is approximately $72,000 in those same categories is where those costs are found.

And then last animal that we're gonna discuss right now on this one is the draft horse, Gus.

So we previously had three draft horses, and we are down to one now.

The annual cost is $33,000 for the draft horse.

And so those three sets of animals combined for approximately $274,000 in annual expenses that can be directly attributed to having those animals.

And then as I said, we have many other animals.

We have 76 total animals.

The invertebrate tanks, that's a bunch of insects and a tank, and so the number goes up, but for all intents and purposes, seven or seventy-six total animals, including our free roaming peacocks.

And so we do want to, we've looked at those seven high-cost animals.

However, we need to look at a granular level at what each animal costs so we can have an understanding.

And then, like I said, the timeline to do 76 animals, figure out what the vet and food costs is for each one of them, is going to be very difficult.

So we started at the high level and then we plan to work from there.

The zoo's goals for fiscal year 26-27 are to complete that comprehensive inventory of all animals to verify the cost by animal.

The zoo, the friends of the zoo have hired a consultant who's been working over the past year on an economic development plan.

And in September, they're going to present to both the Parks and Recreation Commission as well as the city council.

In that plan, they do have some recommendations that we would like to uh move forward with at that time, which would be a fund development position and a program and event position funded through the friends of the zoo.

And so those would help to build that revenue side of the equation.

The costs with the animals that we have currently are what they are.

And if we reduce the expenses on that side, then we are reducing either the number of animals or the care the animals receive.

And so looking at the expense side will definitely or the revenue side as well will be beneficial.

And then we have an additional fee increase planned for January 1st of 2027 with our regular book of fee, and all of our programs will be doing our evaluation and updating of those.

Again, volunteers behind me, they are the ones that are doing this.

So while we have a full-time staff of eight at the zoo and 19.6 full-time equivalents, they punch much higher than their weight, and uh 14,000 hours over 14,000 hours were dedicated by volunteers at the zoo, which gives us an additional seven FTEs without pay.

So we definitely appreciate that.

The vet building construction, they're gonna be breaking ground as soon as the rodeo is over with plans to have that finish in the fall.

And then uh September 10th is the date for the unveiling of the new signage from the Folsom Leadership class.

And then just to wrap up, uh the overall next steps is the department is working on this financial sustainability plan that will address all of our recreation programming, the zoo sanctuary, and all of those things that are wrapped up in that 2007 policy to update those and make sure that we have consensus and buy-in from the council, from the commission, and that we can all agree on the direction moving forward.

So we have good targets in front of us that we can shoot for.

And then we would like to implement those recommendations, whatever ones are feasible at that time.

And then ongoing, we want to complete budget analysis before bringing in any new animals.

So if we're gonna bring in an animal, it will be nice that we'll have that cost list by animal so we can understand what it the uh responsibility is that we're taking on as far as the cost, and then uh the fees.

So we have current capacity to raise the fee from ten to twelve dollars on January first.

Um the consultant has agreed that that is a reasonable rate for the animals that we have available, the length of stay compared to other attractions within the region.

And so that is our target for uh January 1st, 2027.

And then uh we're gonna continue to seek sponsorships, partnerships, and full activation of the friends of the Folsom Zoo, as well as continue to seek expense savings through sound procurement practices and competition among vendors.

So if we've got an invoice coming in and we wanna, you know, we want to make sure that we're reaching out to multiple vendors because a lot of the costs that we have come in, they aren't those big purchases, they're a lot of small purchases, and so paying attention to those small purchases and reducing those costs can add up in a big way at the end of the day.

And so that concludes my presentation, and I'm happy to answer any questions as well as uh Jocelyn is in the crowd.

Questions?

Council Member Kino?

Uh two questions.

This is probably more for Jocelyn.

Um, but do we have any existing partnerships with the Sacramento Zoo?

I mean, you know, we're talking to SAC Metro Fire right now about how we could partner on an academy and maybe some some fleet maintenance.

And I just the Sacramento Zoo has got to have some similar challenges, and so is there any ability to partner on you know veterinarian costs or whatever?

I'm not sure.

Thank you.

Uh good evening, mayor, fellow council members.

Jocelyn Smelzer, Zoo Manager.

That's a great question.

Uh when this was brought up, I believe it was in the fall, I did reach out to the SAC Zoo, and at the time they did not feel there were any partnerships we could do.

I'm always open to those sorts of things.

I think we all sort of want the same thing here.

So happy to try again or with other facilities.

I mean, we certainly have in the past.

Okay, good, thanks.

And then um, city manager, you might know this, but um I don't know exactly how much we spend on the goats and the ladder fuel reduction, but it's like, can't we just have our own goats at the zoo and we just you know, we take five of them, we just have five and we take them around to different places year round, and when they're not working, they're living at the zoo.

I'm sure we can explore that right next to the mountain lane.

I mean, so but that's something that I mean, we're willing to explore any and other options uh related to that.

Um I don't know if we have enough grazing area.

I mean, they can eat a ton.

No, I know.

I mean, I mean, and they would, they would be grazing around the city, but then when they weren't, they could just live at the zoo where you know.

We don't need a habitat for like a thousand goats.

No, we just need like five.

Oh, we're gonna have five really hard working goats.

Okay.

Five very hungry.

Yeah, I'm thinking outside the box here.

Thank you.

All right, Councilmember Aquino gets a goat.

Uh, personal goat she has to bring with her.

I don't think that the goats, uh the five goats would be sustained on the lawn area.

At the zoo or even in the park, in City Park.

Uh yeah.

Um, I was I I think that you and um Kelly had worked on making some of these reductions for this budget presentation.

And can you go into a little more detail about what those reductions are specifically and how that might impact um your revenues?

So just to clarify, are you talking about the 55,000?

Yes.

That we're reducing.

Yes.

Okay.

So I believe that that is a thousand in internet, uh, which shouldn't have a big effect.

And uh 9,000 uh in our vet costs because of the wonderful uh new vet building and vet equipment.

So right now we're having to uh bring out large animal vets for certain procedures with a large portable x-ray, and that's something that will be funded.

So we felt we could save a small amount, even though the cost, as you know, with your own dogs and cats for vet equipment and supplies and procedures goes up every year, and we thought we could do that, and then the rest of it is um in our part-time salaries, and that is unfortunate.

We um we had this wonderful Black Bear weekend this weekend, and uh one of the people there used to have a high-level position at the SAC Zoo, and when she saw me, she said, Hey, I'm so glad to be here doing a table because now she's at a wildlife rescue.

But she said, I do want to apologize that we steal all of your part-time staff, and that's because uh we pay minimum wage for our zookeepers and the SACSU pays more, and so we train them up, and then there's like a little funnel that goes that way.

Uh so we had hoped to be able to um deal with that sort of compaction we've had because we just start at minimum wage for everybody and they stay there a long time.

We won't be able to do that.

We'd hope to do some more trainings for things like uh USDA and safety and things that we'll we'll still do the minimum, but we sort of have a goal to do a bit more, so we'll we'll be losing out on some of that.

And then I love our volunteer docents as Jameson mentioned, they help us with a ton of programs and we're really relying on them a lot because we haven't been able to add the staffing costs in for part-timers to do some of the programs, and they do a great job, um, but sometimes they appreciate a little help from from staff, and we haven't really been able to provide that.

So that was the piece I was wondering about, because I'm not I don't I'm not aware of you charging extra for some of your programs, and I'm wondering if you had staff that could do more programming or volunteers, and you could charge for events, such as you know, I know a lot of wildlife rescue people in this region, you know, teaching people how to deal with wildlife when they come across them on the trails, then you have some of the animals there, and you can you know kind of that was our part of our intention, yes.

Yeah, we'd love to do that because it also goes with our mission, but it does help to have more of that value added programming.

That's what we had hoped if we could have gotten a little more in part-time salaries to be able to do that this year, but with some of our other um revenue increases perhaps in a mid-year or something, we could tackle something like that.

Okay, yeah, I'm not trying to add to your work, I'm just trying to.

No, I agree.

We'd love to spread the word far and wide and just get more revenue for the city, it could help with like the unfunded liability.

Maybe charging for some events like that.

Absolutely.

Okay, um, and then um I know that you know the um friends that have raised a lot of funds to help replace the vet trailer this year.

Are there additional funds that the friends are able to raise?

Um, you know, to support some of these the programming or other um needs.

Absolutely, that's why we really appreciated some of the initial findings from those economic development consultants that I know you've all met with and um they haven't finalized everything, but we're getting really close, and uh we're excited to bring that to you, and so that's why we're really thrilled that the friends were committing to donate more funds towards um high-level person to do like those donors and sponsorships raising large amounts, and then also the programs and events to do some of those things you're talking about.

So we're excited for them to help us with that.

They've committed to that this coming year.

Okay, and I'm wondering, um, Jameson brought this up, but what does full activation of the friends mean to the staff and what is their capacity to meet that request?

And that's I think key to sort of those two positions that they would be funding is to help with that, so that like you've said, if we're short staffed, we want to be able to support them and they have a board of a certain number of volunteers, so sort of adding in that um those funds to pay for the staff to support with that was our plan.

But feel free to say more.

Okay, so and is there an evaluation period for implementing that?

And would the friends be the be directing or working with these new people?

Or would would these be city part-time employees?

The idea was to have the friends fund um highly paid part-timers.

So they would be under the city, but the friends would pay for the exact funding.

We did this model years ago with the friends, and it was really successful.

Um so we're excited to bring that back, but they would be reporting to city staff.

But would they be an employee of the city?

As a part-timer, which is what was done before.

The part-timers are at will employees they can do like go at any time for any reason, but they would be paid at a high level to do what they're to bring those funds in, but the funds to pay them would come from the friends, if that makes sense.

Well, because all donations go through the the friends, correct.

People like the nonprofit 501c3.

Okay.

I can't think of anything uh else to ask you, but if you think of it, I'm still here.

Yeah.

And I'll continue to round up some more.

Okay.

Thank you.

I thanks for the for the help you've already brought us with um some of these great uh grants we've been applying for.

I appreciate it.

Yeah, well, but I can thank uh some of the people I've contacted too.

Thanks.

I just got a quick one on ticket sales.

I wasn't gonna go over here yet.

Um uh can you just go a little bit into I'm looking at I was hoping to see a bigger boost right with the increase.

Um so can you kind of dive into uh has has attendance numbers been impacted by the increase in ticket sale price?

Because I look here, it's it's you know a 10% increase based on that revenue item.

Uh, but it was a much larger increase than 10%, right?

The previous ticket increase.

Are you talking about when we went last July from $7 to $10?

Yeah.

Yes.

So we did not see a huge a impact.

Um, of course there were some people who complained, um, but a lot of people just said we really appreciate the value that that you bring and we're happy to do this, and so that's why the consultants, although they said this July might be a little early since we haven't really made some of their um suggested changes yet, um the earliest they really felt was about a two dollars next January first, which would still give us increased revenue for um half of the budget year.

But if we went from seven to ten dollars and we didn't see an impact in attendance, why are we not seeing like a forty percent increase in the ticket sale revenue?

Uh Mayor Rathel, if I could.

Uh so I have the actuals for this current fiscal year in front of me and the ticket sales were budgeted at five fifty this current fiscal year and are at six eighty-six, six hundred and eighty-six thousand as of this morning.

The total budget revenue for the zoo sanctuary was nine hundred and fifty five six hundred, and the actual revenue as of this morning is one point two three million.

So they are exceeding the revenue in nearly every category by a decent margin.

Okay.

So we just have a reflect of that in our budget that's here.

We updated the budgets in a conservative manner to ensure that we hit that target and uh have additional savings.

Yeah, I mean, um that's that's typically since we haven't had the experience and we don't have the trends.

I mean, typically uh what we do at the beginning of the year is we are very conservative and then when we come and see the actuals like in October and then in February we can adjust accordingly.

And now I understand your question.

I sort of misunderstood it.

So yes, our revenue is up about 129%.

So we hit our revenue goals and have exceeded them.

By 29%, 129%.

We hit our revenue goals and then 29% above it.

Sorry about that.

No problem.

That would match words are hard.

That would match with uh okay.

So that gives us there's more, uh, we're not seeing the impact of the ticket sales yet.

Correct.

From when we turned in the budget, right?

Vice Mayor.

Um, yeah, so I have a question on page thirty-nine.

Um I was trying to find out where the transfer in was from the.

Well, I don't know if this question's for I don't know who this question's for.

So I'm gonna ask Stacey since it's on a um page 39 it says uh friends partnership.

Do you know what this is?

And then the previous years it's all been around a hundred thousand and this year, and this is for revenue.

This year there's a zero.

That's because they'll be giving it after the September fund um the economic development report when we move to hire those positions, that's what those funds will go towards.

Okay, so okay.

So it is to come.

But but it uh is also different because it won't be used for operations.

Right.

Right, it'll be used to pay for those new positions, which we think is a great idea, but in some ways it's not like a uh it doesn't cover costs that it used to, it's covering a new cost.

And that's my concern, actually.

That's my question is now we're gonna add additional costs by these two people that now are gonna be employees of the city, and so what happens in a couple years if the friends cannot fund as much and now we're responsible and we have two more positions, so um if it helps, that's why they were part-time.

We were not going with full-time positions to be able to.

I mean, it's not that I want to hire someone be like, oh, goodbye tomorrow, you're gone, but it gives us that flexibility with the idea that they'd be bringing in more than the cost from the French so that they could continue that, but knowing that the city has no requirement to keep it as like the lifeguards at the pool, if that makes sense, yeah.

And additionally, I would add to that that um the asset that we have, which is the zoo, is a pretty amazing asset.

And so I think there's room for us to get better at utilizing and maximizing the usage of it so that we can increase our revenue.

And so this is in some ways, you know, we're we're taking a risk in it in uh uh having that expenditure, but we appreciate the friends being willing to pay for that so that hopefully we will be able to, although we've seen increas increases in ticket sales, hopefully with special events and other utilization efforts, that those revenues will go up even higher.

Um, I do think you know that I I do want to add that this is our first go of trying to identify what uh an option would be, right?

Because I think this is of paramount importance to at least have a conversation about what are the costs of the zoo and what happens if we were to reduce services at the zoo.

I don't think it's fair to, you know, necessarily produce the the best elements of the zoo, the bears, the mountain lion, and the horse, and say we're gonna reduce those things.

That's not a good thing, but there's I think seventy something other animals that we need to need to go in and say, Hey, is this working out for us, right?

I mean, so those are things that we're gonna have to co contemplate, like what gives us the best opportunity for success.

And I know at least a couple members of the council have mentioned this is what is the future of the zoo look like, and is it in the best interest of the community to have the city continue to operate the zoo, right?

I mean, we have this amenity, and this is not suggesting that the amenity go away, but there are ways and examples out there of operations.

So, how do we reduce the cost to the general fund while still maintaining this asset?

And so that's why, although this may be uncomfortable, it's really important for us to have that conversation because if we don't uh keep talking about it, we will never be able to make appropriate changes that will enable us to be even more successful.

Because our goal is not to diminish the zoo, our our goal is to improve the zoo while reducing the burden on the general fund so that we can reinvest in public safety, we can save up for some of those deferred maintenance or even front fund some of those liabilities that we haven't been able to do so yet.

And thank you to follow up on that.

I believe also in September, the consultants will bring some case studies to speak to some of that.

So another uh uh observation is um when I look at the expenses in the budget, the proposed budget, um, if you look at from 2021 to now, really it's not the cost of the animals that has really increased that much.

It's I mean the vet bill it looks like has gone up around 70,000 food has gone up around 10, 20, so I mean you're looking at increased cost of a hundred thousand in the last six years, um versus the salaries, which you know where I'm going, has gone up seven hundred thousand, and that's the problem.

Are we in the right business?

And you know, I'll I guess do you have a bunch of questions or a question?

I have two softwalls.

Okay, and then I'll I'll make my comments after you.

Your consultant your consultant study, is it considering what other large charismatic megafauna would attract more people?

Not only that, I'm imagining a fifth bear versus four bears doesn't move the needle, but if we found an elephant that needed a home, you know, that kind of thing, a giraffe, yeah.

I mean, is that part of the analysis of what other attractions would make the zoo even more attractive?

Absolutely.

And that may not be animals necessarily, that could be other services.

We're like right on the same page because they definitely when they interviewed all of you heard what you said, and so they also have um recommendations they're working on of things that would be not animals to your point because they do have all these food and vet costs, but what are some things that don't have an expense, but that would help folks to stay longer.

And if you stay longer, as you know, say at Disneyland, you might buy more things or eat more food or whatever.

So how can we increase revenue without having that commensurate expense go up?

Gotcha.

Still waiting on the zoo plug.

It was it was in the report before um waiting on the zipper plug.

We were trying to figure out if it was wise to have it go right over the deer, so perhaps moving better than the tigers, you know, that was what it was supposed to go over.

We used to have Tiger Tug of War listed in there.

Tiger Total War.

That was what's held.

You have questions.

Uh not a core nut for the zoo, yeah.

I think.

I mean, I can make a couple comments, um, which I'm pretty sure all the docents in here know I'm probably gonna make.

Um, you know, I again I'm gonna say I love the Jew when when I toured, I love the zoo.

I mean, I I raised my kids practically in a zoo, um, not this one, but another one.

Um, you know, last fall we had to make some really, you know, difficult decisions.

We, you know, we cut, I think it was 20 positions that we cut.

Um, almost every, you know, mostly public safety actually, but other departments were um um cut as well.

And and that is why we're in a uh financial situation we were where we're truly balancing the budget, but there's a lot of things that we still need to do.

Um we can't, you know, I I asked last year, I was very clear about closing the gap.

So I was disappointed two weeks ago when I saw the gap widen.

And I think, you know, if you look at the financial sustainability of our city, I think most people in our city understand why that was um uh disappointing.

Um we can't continue to go on like this with that with the gap is continuing.

And I'm sorry, I'm not I'm looking at you, I'm not upset at you.

Um, and I know, you know, the people in the audience, I'm you know, I I appreciate all the work and the volunteerism you do, and the reason I'm trying to work so hard at this is that so that we can stabilize this, that the cost escalator doesn't continue to go up $300,000 every year.

We just can't afford to do that.

Is it a direct impact to the general fund?

And there's so many other things that the city provides that are higher priority for our residents, which was very clear in the last um several years.

Um, not that the zoo isn't a priority and important, but we have to look at the priorities of everything as a whole.

Um so it's not sustainable to keep going the way that we're going.

And um, so that's why it was very clear last year about closing the gap.

The previous years I brought up the sustainability as well.

So looking to stabilize this and close the gap.

Um, you know, I think about some of the terms that were used um earlier today.

You know, uh the chief brought up closing the gap.

We talked about reducing expenses, um, you know, sustainability for the sit the city.

Um I wrote down some other notes, but now they're not.

Um, and I appreciate what the goals are for parts and rec too, strengthening partnerships.

I think that's one of the things that we have to look at.

With $700,000 and increased salary expenses in the last five to six years, how can we use the foundation as a way to supplement that?

And maybe maybe we have more volunteers or they're actually stepping into transition into uh a nonprofit.

The reason that the Sacramento Zoo can run so well, I think is because they don't have those PERS costs, which we learned a lot about today.

Um, so we gotta be a little bit more creative.

So, you know, since I've been since I've been studying the budget in 2022 before I was on council, um, this was one of the things that struck out to me is that we were um subsidizing by a million dollars.

And so I questioned people when I doorbelled.

Um, did they know that?

Did they were they supportive of it?

And everyone said how much they love the zoo, but they didn't understand why we were spending a million another extra million dollars on it, right?

Um, and so I thought, okay, well, we need some transparency around that doesn't mean that it's a bad thing, but is it a priority?

And as we continue to go through these struggles financially, um, not one person has brought up the zoo as you know their top priority.

And so it's important to me to really think about what our public wants when in light of they didn't want tax increases, they don't they don't want service to be, you know, sacrificed in public safety.

So I mean, these are not easy decisions or easy discussions.

So all I'm looking at is um giving clear direction.

Our priorities are set in the budget.

There's no way other place to set our clear priorities as a council, which is the representative of our as our of our residents is in the budget.

Um, and so when I look at that last year, you know, the budget went over, um, it was 2.6, the amended budget or the adopted budget was 2.5, 2,541,000.

Um, mid-year budget was um two million five hundred and seventy-five thousand, basically.

Um, and then now we're asking for another two hundred thousand dollars.

That concerns me because I believe that if we pass the budget with that in mind, what we're telling you and your department and Kelly and all the people that work that that's okay.

That's okay.

We don't have to close the gap.

We can continue to go on this route.

And that's not okay with me, especially in alignment with what you just saw fire do.

If you were, you know, I'm you guys were all paying attention.

They're they're trying to close the gap by two million dollars.

You know, their their budget went down by 900,000.

That's not easy, and you know, you the everyone in this room probably knows how much public pushback we got on that.

Um, so we are capable of making really hard decisions.

Um, what I would feel more comfortable doing because I sent the message, we sent the message last year, but we didn't see the results, but we're seeing them, and I appreciate that.

And thank you for having those numbers.

And I think they're really um, you know, that the 1.28 in increase or in revenue, I think is very, very positive.

What I would prefer to see is set a clear priority in our budget now by passing it at 2.0,575,000.

And then you come back in October and then tell us all the work that you're doing and tell them how much more revenue that you have, and then we can adjust and appropriate funds that way, and I feel like that's a much more um financially sustainable and stewardship um on our role.

So that's what I would like to see.

Not because I want to punish anyone, but because I truly mean that we need to close this gap so we can stabilize this and have a sustainable zoo for the long-term future.

If we don't, then that conversation is gonna keep coming up and it's not gonna be good.

So that's that's where I'm at on that.

I think there's really a philosophical difference between what you're saying and what some of the public actually believe, because you know, the the public has had certain amenities available in this town for 50 or more years, and the zoo has been one of them.

And um and it it does operate differently.

Not every other town has a zoo, it's actually fairly rare, but it is something that brings um tourists in, and I think that we have to accept some level of um support will come out of the general fund.

Um I do agree that we need to have uh, you know, greater support from by some of these other income producing or donation producing efforts, but I it I guess you know the question is are you really heading towards okay if they if that can't be fully funded that you know we should eliminate the zoo or drop an animal or two off at a time, because I don't think that's going to go over well.

Well, it was not clear that you were willing to subsidize the zoo in in any way whatsoever.

Um, well, I would you can be more clear on that.

100%.

Are you asking about dropping the um budget for this year below what's been proposed minus the $55,000?

I I'm asking to keep the budget at what we passed last year at adopted budget of $2,575,000.

That's almost a $1.6 million subsidy for the city from the city.

So I'm absolutely not saying that the city is not subsidizing any part of this.

I would absolutely I I forgot already the megafauna.

Um we absolutely cannot, you know, those animals are cherished.

Beautiful pictures, by the way.

Whoever took those, um, I'm not saying reduce um the animals that we have.

I do appreciate Jameson, you're touching on um your creating or your identifying a policy of you know animals that come become available and what would be the cost.

And I I appreciate that forward thinking of really do need to have a policy because it's such an emotional thing, probably.

Um was there a comment you want to say?

Uh no, I didn't have a comment.

I just I thought there was a question comment.

I was guess getting ready.

So Jameson, can you answer the question about um the reduction as proposed by the zoo staff?

What would that number be for the budget for this year?

Uh the reduction proposed in the current budget document is uh 2,753,169.

And so that is the current May 9th version of the budget that I'm looking at.

And so I think what uh council member Rohrbaugh is talking about is the adopted budget from fiscal year 2026.

Is that correct?

Uh and so that doesn't include the mid-year increase or any of the additional increases.

Uh for instance, there's $110,000 between MOU contracts and liability insurance that aren't necessarily adding anything new or uh improving the actual service at the zoo.

It's just the costs have gone up for those this year, and that's included in that 2027 number.

So you're recommending dropping the number from the recommended number of the packet after the reduction.

Is that what you're doing?

Yes, I'm recommending keeping it at the 2.575 of the previous adopted budget.

So, Mayor, if you don't mind me kind of commenting on that.

Sure, I do have one public comment or two.

So this might be an appropriate time to take public comment and then we can continue deliberations.

I think we've gotten our questions answered.

We're gonna go ahead and open the public hearing.

Okay, you have a request to speak from Peggy Plett.

Sorry to make you wait, Peggy.

I got caught up in the discussion while we were answering questions.

Uh the floor is yours.

Thank you.

Um, thank you, Mayor Rathel and members of the council.

I appreciate that you're spending time thinking about this thoughtfully.

I'm Peggy Plett.

I have been a 10-year docent at the Folsom Zoo, and I'm also president of the Friends of the Folsom Zoo Sanctuary, which is the 501c3 nonprofit that helps support and financially sustain the zoo.

And the Friends of the Folsom Zoo is truly committed to supporting the zoo in many and multiple ways, improving our long-term sustainability and reducing reliance on the general fund.

That is one of our objectives.

They're contributing 10% of their Tuesday revenues to the zoo for this fiscal year.

We partnered with Red Bus Brewery in the fall for their wild ones for beer pack.

And we're hoping that we can partner with them again sometime, maybe this fall, maybe not, maybe just a little bit farther in the future for a four bear beer bash at the zoo, since we have four bears and they're very charismatic, as you know.

Um, we are currently partnering with Wonderplay, which is a new business in the Palladio that provides a place for parents to drop their littles, seven and under is their target population, and also potentially work there, and they are donating 50% of their Sunday open play sales for the month of June to the Friends of the Folsom Zoo Sanctuary, and we're actually doing a story time at their facility on June 14th.

So that's coming up.

We've partnered with Leadership Folsom, the class that was uh helping train future leaders in the whole Folsom community.

They chose signage for the front of the zoo as their project, and they have partnered and made um contacts with several local businesses for fundraisers, and they were have been successful in raising over 43,000.

The Friends are also working on some targeted fundraising.

We had a goal this year of re collecting $150,000 to replace our failing vet trailer.

And we have far exceeded that goal.

We've raised over $202,000.

It's now a vet building that will include more specialized equipment, and as you heard, that can also help reduce that cost so we don't have to rent or bring in additional equipment and construction for that is scheduled for this summer.

We're partnering with John Lane from Tykert for some of the materials and labor that are necessary to put the foundation in to that.

So we're trying to reduce costs as much as possible in putting that together.

The lower the cost for construction, the more cost, the more money we have available to buy new equipment that will help us improve the quality of care that is provided to our animals.

Okay, the friends have applied for $100,000 the impact 100,000 grant or impact 100 grant for 100,000 to build a new Fox exhibit in the past 20 years.

We have contributed over 2.5 million, and we've already talked about the economic development plan, which will be providing, we hope, some specialized fundraising development positions to help with philanthropic giving giving opportunities and corporate sponsorships, and also help increase zoo revenue by increasing the number of special events that we have.

There are many other things that the friends have been doing.

I'd be happy to spend more time talking about those, but I appreciate you listening to me tonight.

Thank you so much.

Next speaker will be Lynn LePage.

Hello, Mr.

Mayor, fellow council members, city manager, and his wonderful team of staff that helped make this budget possible.

I think you guys have done a fabulous job.

I've been involved in the budget process for over 40 years.

Every year is a challenge.

Every year is a little different.

But last year was a real challenge.

We had ones that were worse than that.

I laid off 30 employees in a division.

One of the guys that his first child was going to college as I laid them off.

So we've had some tough years.

But what you did last year and the teamwork that came out of that was fantastic, and I still see that teamwork happening, and you're not seeing the fruit of that work yet.

It's to come.

And it certainly is, you know, just amazing the leadership that our city manager has brought, the guidance you guys have given them.

And I think you need to give yourself some space and some time and let your wonderful team do their work.

I think you have a great budget here, and I think that it will just get better.

And again, the partnerships that you're asking for, they're coming.

Friends of Folsom Parkways, go take a look at the work.

Folsom Athletic Association, take a look at the work.

Friends of Folsom Zoo, 50 years of this work.

It was all done by volunteers to start with.

So have a little faith in your people and in your community.

Trust that they can help you and join the team.

You're talking about having tough conversations.

I don't think they're tough.

I think they're great.

I think they're what need to be said.

It's reality, and we just have to live with that.

But the talent that has moved into this community will step up with you.

Now, the poster child for this, I think, is Councilmember Leary's uh Light in Landscape District and her team that she brought together to change a no vote to a yes vote.

That's what we need to do as a community, neighborhood by neighborhood, districts by districts, and you guys are talented enough to do it, and the people will step up to do it, but you gotta show them what you're showing them now.

You gotta balance the budget.

We can't have somebody saying that you have a spending problem, not a budget problem.

Okay, that doesn't help.

That's not gonna get us anywhere.

We have to take this and run with it as you have done and just stay stay the course.

Thanks, Lynn.

If you can make it closing, my favorite my favorite item that you did last year was merging your public works and your parking recreation in the capital area.

The talent that you have there now, and I know the gals that put that together, you guys did it did amazing.

And uh that position is really fantastic.

So I think you're gonna see a lot of fruit come from what you've done.

Keep up the good work.

Thanks, Lynn.

Appreciate you coming out.

And sticking with us until 9:30, 3 p.m.

You have no further request to speak on this item.

All right, thank you.

Can I ask that we uh Jameson maybe go back over what the approved revenue projection was in the budget last year and what we anticipated being this year based on year-to-date information that you have?

Uh yes, let me pull up the year to date information.

So the year-to-date information is the budgeted amount was 955,600, and the actual for this morning was one point uh two three million.

And we have the remainder of June to add to that, yes, which is obviously we're not into the super hot months yet, so it is one of our best revenue months.

Uh so you might expect it to go to one three.

Yeah, I think one three wouldn't be out of the question.

Okay, gotcha.

And what are we projecting as a revenue number for the coming budget?

Uh let me.

But maybe that's a question for Stacy, actually.

Apologize.

I think you had it on your slide.

I was just I was just doing math over here, so I really appreciate these questions.

I was trying to add up some numbers.

I have a 1.15.

Is that okay?

Uh I can pull it up because unfortunately in the document it's not all rolled together in one area.

So uh the revenue is budgeted at uh 1,035,800.

Okay.

So we're tracking right now to exceed that for this current year by 250,000 dollars or thereabouts.

Yes.

Okay.

Um if if I may suggest, and I I don't think your analysis is wrong.

I think that there's a necessity to draw a line, right?

So that we're not shown to be being, I apologize for this word, but a little frivolous in one area and super, you know, super budget conscious conscious in another.

Um, but I think that the to Lynn's point, the trend is improving, and I think that's worth taking us, taking the budget as it's been presented and taking us into that September, October budget, you know, workshop and um see what the um what the um consultants are saying about how we add to that.

So I I based on all of that context.

I think I'd probably be okay with the budget as it is, but recognize that this year's got to be the last year of that kind of latitude.

It's gotta those trends have to continue, and we've got to try and we're reduce that gap as we go.

So, I'd like to hear from you for too, but you know, I I do that does help a lot that those numbers are already solid.

They're almost actuals.

Um you know, we don't know what's gonna happen in the next years, but um, I mean, that does close the gap.

Um, so I think you know, I think my point has been made.

I think you have some points too.

Um that, you know, I want to do everything that we can to stabilize the cost escalation so that we can sustain this for the long term period.

I I agree with uh council member Kozlowski.

Um, especially when since we have no analysis of what dropping the um uh budget 200,000 dollars, what kind of an income uh an impact that that would have on the zoo at this point.

And again, I'm not saying that we should continue to escalate, but I think that we can't drop it off in a after a session one night.

Um, you know, without pushing harder to bring in more income, uh find more uh resources.

Uh and and it's gonna be a big uphill climb.

It really is.

Um I think it can be done.

I'm more optimistic, I think, than some, but um and and yeah, I we can't continue on this same um uphill climb with funding for the zoo and some balance has to be created.

Thank you.

I think I would just caution us um this we have to use the most up-to-date numbers that we have uh in order to do our budget process.

Um being conservative in this situation is making us possibly make a more drastic decision uh because we're off thirty-five percent uh on our budget, right?

We're saying we're gonna bring in one point three and we're at nine fifty, um, and then we're projecting that to be carried forward, even though we've got some assumptions that are there that are already approved that we're gonna increase it another 20%.

So I think we've added conservatism on top of conservatism, uh, and I and I hear this sometimes in our budgeting processes is like well, we can't count on it until it's real.

I I would argue that we really can count on it when we have some good data to argue it and we have some approved policies that are already in place uh that show that if if our attendance numbers weren't impacted by a 40% increase, they're probably not gonna be impacted by a 20% increase.

Or if they are, let's be a little conservative on that, right?

But um I just I struggle sometimes 'cause I I know we've talked about some other things of like w one of the things I'd love to see on the budget is selling off, you know, we don't have a huge number of surplus properties, but we've got a handful of them.

I'd love to put those in the budget and I know they're not reality yet, but if we don't budget for it, then it doesn't happen.

And and I guess I I don't come from uh government world.

I get the conservatism.

Um but if I were to talk to one of my clients and say, well, we're just gonna use last year's budget and to set the next year's budget without looking at the actuals.

Um I wouldn't have a job much longer.

Oh, because my client would go, we'd have to use the actuals, right?

But but we operate in a corporate world, it's a little quicker.

Um and it's smaller companies, right?

I understand we've got a huge number of funds and a lot of line items to go through, so I'm not not trying to cast blame at all.

Um, but I would say that we really need to tighten up those the part of the line item analysis of all of this is so we can dig in as a team and have these collective discussions and when we find, you know, maybe a miss like this, I'd rather see us updated in the budget so it's reflecting reality.

Um I'm I'm all for more frequent uh budget updates, right?

Like that's what that's what I would typically do in a smaller organization is is we would have a Q1 revision, a Q2 revision, a Q3 revision, and we would update those assumptions based on our actual so we're not making those decisions.

So that's that's what I'm pulling out of the discussion.

Uh from the zoo standpoint, um, I'm not sure we have the right structure.

I will go back to kind of the earlier discussions.

Um there are not many municipal zoos out there anymore.

Um I think the SAC zoo is a great example of of what can happen with a transition.

Um there is a there's a big asset there.

Uh and there's a lot of opportunity that's there.

And I'm not sure that we're serving the zoo by keeping it where we're at with the the municipal structure.

Uh but I'm open to having that discussion this fall.

I I don't know if if right now is the right time to have it.

I think probably in the fall once we get the consultant's report.

Um, once we have some more data, like that's more finalized, um, that's there.

And and really I want to look at the opportunities uh that exist um and and keep it a a partnership, uh, but maybe look at at the the structure and whether it's the right fit.

And I'd like to say, like, let's start projecting out for if there is gonna be a transition uh, or if there is gonna be a different partnership, then we start looking at like how do we get there over a number of years, right?

Because what I don't want to do is sudden changes to staffing levels or animal care or things like that, because we've gotten ourselves into a pinch that we just have to make changes, right?

Um, I'd rather say, hey, we're gonna make this transition over five years, or we're gonna all agree to it, and we're we're gonna we're gonna make that happen, or we can balance this out with the revenue to where it doesn't have much of a subsidy on the general fund, and we're fine leaving it like it is uh to where if we you know if we can get to that point, but with that we really have to project out all of those those costs going forward to do that.

I'm just gonna double down on what you said, and I mentioned it earlier, but uh when Jocelyn was up here, um, that it really is not the vet and the food, the vet fees and the food fees that are going up.

It's not the animals that are actually costing us a lot more, it's the um the salary creases, and that that has to do with pay increases and all of that good stuff.

But seven hundred thousand dollars and in five five to six years is a lot.

So speaking of different structures, I mean I think thank you to the f uh friends of uh the friends of Folsom Zoo for everything that you're doing and all of the creative things that you're trying to do and are will continue to do this year, which uh you know is greatly appreciated.

I think the the city also needs to do their job on these cost escalations, which you can't have any effect on.

So that's part of partly the direction that I'm giving as well.

So appreciate all my council members' comments as well.

I just have one quick thing.

Um I mean, I agree.

I I look forward to hearing what the consultant has to say.

It's really tough for me to hear though about saying what our priorities are, what the community's priorities are, um, hearing about salary increases in the zoo.

The reality is the zoo's budget is going up 10.5%.

You don't want to want to know what the city council's budget is going up, forty-seven percent.

Well, I I mean, thank you, Sarah for saying that.

But um, you know, honestly, if you look at this page right here, you can see the cost escalation, you know.

Once again, not based on actuals, unfortunately.

Right?

You decline the salary increase.

Yeah, I'm obviously.

Three people declined the salary increase, right?

So it's not actuals, unfortunately.

I think that's an optional.

That's an optional thing.

I'm just throwing it out there, right?

It's like we're we're talking about budgeted numbers, but we're not getting in.

I know we're budgeting it, but we're being conservative because we've had some commitments under there.

We are.

All right, we have a motion and a second.

I'll open it up for any other further comments this evening.

Yeah, thank you for the discussion though, everyone, and thank you for all the work with uh um Stacy especially and all the departments and all the you know uh the changes the last uh two weeks to Jameson, please reiterate that reiterate that to Kelly too on the 55,000 and cuts.

Um I appreciate that.

So I just want to thank the entire staff and Brian for walking us through your first full budget.

Please call the role.

Council members Leary, yes, Ruarbaugh, yes.

Aquino, yes, Kozlowski, and Rachel.

Yes.

And that takes us to the city manager report.

Great.

Thank you, Mayor, members of the council.

Uh just a couple of updates.

We talked a little bit about this earlier, uh, but with the 4th of July coming up, I just wanted to make some announcements related to fireworks enforcement and public safety.

Uh the Folsom police and fire departments are preparing for the upcoming holiday season with increased enforcement of illegal fireworks.

The city uh will have a zero tolerance policy for illegal fireworks for violations, subject to fines of up to $5,000 per violation.

Uh a city council adopted social host ordinance also imposes a thousand dollar fine on property owners who use or allow illegal fireworks on their property.

Folsom police and fire personnel will be actively patrolling and utilizing drone technology throughout the holiday to support enforcement efforts, reduce injuries, and help prevent fires.

Calls for service uh increase significantly on the fourth.

Residents are encouraged to reserve 911 for true emergencies, such as fires, injuries, or immediate threats to people or property.

Residents can report illegal fireworks by calling the police department's non-emergency line or emailing fireworks at Folsom.ca.us.

Also, this is under construction tonight.

We have White Rock Road Emergency Repairs.

We have a culvert issue on White Rock Road.

So if you can't avoid that area, I would avoid it.

But overnight closures between East Bidwell Street and La Trobe Road are scheduled through June 11th with the roadway reopening each morning.

So this is night work.

Sign-de tours are in place and local access is being maintained during construction.

These repairs will help improve roadway safety and reliability for motorists.

Battle of the badges, blood drive success.

Uh, the annual battle of the badges blood drive resulted in 38 pints of blood donated to support patients throughout the region.

Folsom Police Department reclaimed the battle of the badges trophy this year, but most importantly, community members came together to help save lives through blood donations.

That concludes my report.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Move to council comments.

Councilman, no comment except I'd like to talk to the person who is eager to leave just briefly before you take off.

Yeah, thank you.

Brian, I just have a follow-up question on your city manager report about the increased um presence or I can't even think of the word and fire fireworks and illegal fireworks.

Are we gonna do a communication kind of campaign on that?

Letting people know that we're taking a little bit more seriously.

Yes, we're working with our communications team to get that word out.

Okay, thanks.

That's it.

I don't have anything.

Any other comments?

Other comments?

I just have one.

Tommy Satuno made a presentation last meeting, and I challenged his data a little bit.

Uh I followed up with him by uh via email after the meeting, and he acknowledged that he only looked at each candidate's final report, which would have given the totals that were raised, but it would not have shown all of the contributors, so his data was not correct.

And Councilmember Learn.

I just wanted to mention that I went to the graduation for Folsom Lake College, and I thought it was an amazing event, and uh it's an outstanding institution.

So, in follow-up to that, I um met with uh Dr.

Pimental who leads uh the university and he's got some great plans for expansions there and um diversifying the kind of training that takes place so that not everybody's you know headed for a four year degree sitting at a desk and looking at a computer, uh and um it's impressive.

I'd encourage anyone who has kids that are of college age to consider sending their kids there.

Uh educational programs great, and the universities where a lot of these students will be going are top notch across the country.

So thank you.

Thank you.

No further comments from me.

We're adjourned to 9 48.

Have a nice night.