How do we give us a hug Welcome to our special council meeting today, January 28th, 2026.

We're going to call the meeting to order.

And I'll pass to Clementine for a roll call.

Any other announcements with the public?

Councilmember Barber.

Present.

Council Member Garcia.

Council Member Rash here.

Council Member Smith.

And Mayor Williamson.

And public comment and participation information is provided on this meeting's agenda, which is online at moderate.gov slash agendas.

In-person attendees, please keep your electronic devices muted to prevent audio interference.

Consistent with the First Amendment and the Brown Act, individuals have the right to speak at public meetings, which includes the right to criticize or support city policies or actions.

So I'll do a countdown for folks on Zoom to five, four, three, two, one.

And we have two folks, so we'll go ahead and take those callers.

I have a general public comment, and I don't know if you I think this is the appropriate time to have a general public comment.

No, sir, we'll we'll get to that after our closed session.

Well, that's I want to comment on that.

I want to I want to suggest that you hold the closed session at the end of the agenda.

Um, so no, I'm sorry, that's this isn't the time to provide public comment on process or anything other than the item that's on the closed session agenda.

So it's the I and I and I usually read it so I apologize for not reading it.

It's conference with legal counsel, significant exposure to litigation pursuant to government code section five four nine five six tack ninety two e one, and it's one case.

So if the public comment isn't on that, this is not the time for it.

Did you have anything else, Tom, at this time?

No, I think that's not a good policy, but all right, we'll go ahead and take our next caller.

This one is Lori.

Well, I had kind of the same thing, and I'm just gonna say I know I it sounds like now we speak during a different public comment time, but my comment is I'm sorry, I'm so but I what I need to know is it's not on the agenda.

I don't see where we have general public comment.

So uh nobody knows when to speak.

Larry, I I unfortunately this isn't the time to provide those comments.

Um, I understand, but I don't see it on the agenda when we do provide them.

I don't see general public comment written in the agenda, so I don't know when to call in.

Sorry, hold up, hold tight.

Lori, that's correct, you don't see it.

Um, and that's uh not required when there's a special city council.

General public comment is not a requirement under the Brown Act.

So there need not be a time for general public comment at this meeting, and the agenda does not have that on the agenda.

That's correct.

Okay, so we're going to go ahead and close public comment because there doesn't seem to be any public comment on the closed session item.

And with that, we'll go ahead and recess to the closed session.

Thank you, everybody.

Yes, yes.

How do we give us a h do we give us a h do we give us a h do we give us a h do we give us a h do we give us a h do we give us a h do we give us a h do we give us a hug Welcome everybody to our special council meeting, January twentieth, twenty twenty-six.

We already called the meeting to order.

We just finished closed session.

Um, so we're gonna we're reconvening here.

Um but before we go into the agenda, I just want to do a few things.

Um, first of all, everybody will have there so because this is a special council meeting, there's no general public comment like you would see on a regular council agenda.

So there was some confusion when we were receiving some public comment on the closed session agenda items at the beginning of today's council meeting.

So I just wanted to provide that clarity for everybody.

If you're here to speak about one of the agendized items, there will be a public comment period for you to speak, but there is no general public comment because it is a special council meeting.

Um, and with that, I'm gonna pass it to Clementine to share announcements with the public.gov slash agendas.

In-person attendees, please keep your electronic devices muted to prevent audio interference.

Consistent with the First Amendment and the Brown Act, individuals have the right to speak at public meetings, which includes the right to criticize or support city policies or actions.

The city encourages your uninhibited and robust feedback on public issues affecting the city.

Thank you for participating.

Thank you, Clementine.

And with that, we're going to go ahead and do the Pledge of Allegiance, and I'll ask Council Member Rash to kick us off.

One case, and no reportable action was taken.

Thank you, Nat.

And with that, we'll move on to our consent agenda.

There's been a request to pull item two by a member of the public.

Council, do you wish to pull anything else?

Staff, have we heard anything else since that item?

Anything else that needs to be pulled?

I think we're good.

Okay.

So with that, we will take it out to the public.

I'll just share again how you participate in public comments.

What we do is we identify folks at the beginning of the public comment period.

Once those folks are identified, we close it off, and then only those folks will be able to speak.

So you have to identify yourself at the beginning in order to speak on the item.

So I'll check in with folks on Zoom.

You can use the raise hand function while you're navigating your way there.

I'll check with folks in the chamber.

Anybody in the chamber wishes to speak on consent items?

Polling number two.

Anyone want to speak on consent outside of number two?

All right, we'll go ahead and cut it off in the chamber.

We'll do a countdown for folks on Zoom to five, four, three, two, one.

And we have one on Zoom.

We'll go ahead and take that caller.

You can go ahead and speak.

Yes.

This is Nina Beattie.

I'd like to comment on number two.

Is this the appropriate time?

Nope.

We pulled it.

So we'll have that item addressed separately.

So with that, we'll go ahead and close public comment, bring it back to the council for motion and deliberation.

I'll make a motion to approve item number three on the consent.

Is there a second?

Second.

It's been moved and seconded.

Any other discussion?

All right.

All those in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed?

Motion passes unanimously.

With that, we'll move on to item number two, which is pulled from consent.

It's to accept a grant funds from the State Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, CAL FIRE Authorized Grant Agreement for Implementation of Monterey's citywide fuel reduction project, authorize an increase in FY27 and FY28 annual revenues by 475,000.

Appropriate grant funds and appropriate match funds of 100,000.

With that, I'll pass it to Lou for staff presentation.

Yeah, so we um had a new opportunity to apply for another Calfire grant that was made available to us.

So we were we were successful back in 2023 and acquiring uh the same amount.

So $950,000 from Calfire with us providing um 150,000 matching funds.

And this time we applied for the same grant.

This the mat the maximum was 950, which we got, and with 100,000 of our matching funds, which we can use with the NCIP money that we get for few reduction well.

So we're able to make that NCIP money go that much further that we get from through that program.

So yeah, it's been very worthwhile.

I don't know what you would like me to add, but otherwise, that it's been very effective to help us make this money go further to make our our forests a little bit safer as we go through each area at a time.

So we still have a lot of work to go, but we've so far have done a lot of meaningful work.

Um, as hopefully you've been able to see out there.

Thank you, Tys.

Any questions, please?

Yeah, thank you, Tice.

That's the great uh use of the general fund money to uh trip four uh four times the money.

Yeah.

Um, so couple questions.

Uh, do we know what the total amount in the fuel reduction coupled with the NCIP funding and any of the other general funds that we will be able to execute in FY uh 2627?

Uh total amount for fuel reduction.

Well, we'll definitely max out what is ever is allocated to us through NCIP.

Um, I don't know how much we'll be able to go through uh from the CalFIR money because we still have some from the previous grant that we're still working through.

Um, but and then obviously that's always kind of weather uh contingent on the on the conditions on what our biological surveys tell us, you know, what equipment we can use, what we can't use.

So it depends on a lot of things.

So when the weather is nice like this, we're like right now, we had two projects that we're we're trying to work on.

So for example, try to take advantage of this nice weather.

We're out of nesting season right now.

So um, so we try to take advantage of these type of conditions.

Okay, and and the other part was I had a citizen ask if there's a way to view something on the website that tells them what projects have been accomplished and what projects you're looking at to execute in the fuel reduction.

So, in other words, uh general map that maybe you have, you know, targeted dates or targeted projects or as you make progress through the greatest exposed areas.

You know, what's great is um Pat's crew um is has been doing that for us.

So we we kind of keep them in the loop of what we're doing, and so uh Jen Valdez is uh on uh in fire has been putting together a map of what we've been doing, you know, with with hand crews with equipment.

So we do have a map of what we've accomplished, and we and I think we we in certain cases, depending on where we are, we have put some proposed uh projects on there too.

I'm pretty I'm pretty certain.

I can't try to picture the the map in my head right now, but I'm just wondering if the public has that on the website.

We've put we brought that up.

I know it was at the the um the workshop that we had about a year ago.

We put that out there, but yeah, I might we might have put that out before on like Monterey Matters.

Um, but yeah, we can talk about where we could put that out that's more readily available to the public.

Yeah, great, thank you.

Any other questions at this time?

All right, thank you, Tyson.

Seeing none, we'll go ahead and open it up for public comment.

So for folks on Zoom, you can use the raise hand function while you're navigating your way there.

I'm checking in the chamber.

Anybody in the chamber wish to speak on this item?

I see a taker already.

Anybody else?

So we'll cut it off in the chamber to the one.

I'll do a countdown for folks on Zoom to five, four, three, two, one.

We have two on Zoom.

We'll go ahead and start in the chamber.

Good to see you, Adam.

Good evening, Adam.

On behalf of the Monterey County Association of Realtors, I'll keep this very brief.

Um it's fantastic that we're getting these resources.

It's a significant problem when fuel reduction and uh the ever increasing creep of the fire hazard severity zones are effectively pricing residents out of their homes, particularly residents on fixed income uh or on disability, right?

They may not have the resources necessary to be in compliance, um, but furthermore, that they're probably also facing some pretty significant increases to their insurance rates.

So I would just ask that we could explore ways to one um concentrate uh where strategically it makes sense, and I'm sure our fire department professionals can figure this out better than um than I can uh or any of us here.

Um, but but if we can to find a way to prioritize areas of of res uh residential neighborhoods that are particularly at risk, and if we can create any kind of buffer zones or breaks, and then if we can document that and make the documentation available to homeowners, it's not every time, but in some cases homeowners can get reductions in their insurance rates if they can demonstrate that their risk has been reduced.

So uh I would just plead that to the city uh do what they can to to help folks out.

Thank you.

Thank you.

With that, we'll go to our callers on Zoom.

First, we have a telephone caller who can go ahead.

Good evening.

This is Nina Beattie.

Uh cowfire practices increase fire danger to Monterey, and I ask that you don't take this grant for this purpose because it will not reduce fire potential.

Calfire appears to lack forest uh expertise.

They're taking timber and wood pellet industry harvest protocols and rebranding them as forest and fuel management, which is very dangerous for public safety.

First of all, vegetation is not fuel.

Vegetation is moisture creation, temperature reducing, wind slowing.

Walk into a forest or put your hand even into a clump of dried grass and you can feel the temperature drop.

The Pebble Beach fire happened in 1987, nearly 40 years ago.

The reason dense moist forest with substantial vegetation, but we can have annually recurring fires like they do in LA if that's what you want.

Just keep stripping the vegetation and thinning the forest like Calfire advises.

Calfire's practice is increased the most flammable vegetation, grasses and thistles, as Monterey's already finding.

Calfire practices increase wind access by thinning and limbing and creating roads.

Does they decrease moisture, increase dryness.

This makes winds drier and faster, like Santa Anna's.

It increases erosion and harms the pine forest.

Don't keep making the same mistakes.

Learn from them.

First of all, I've brought other fire issues that the city is not addressing.

You need to ban smart meters.

They are a fire ignition hazard on every building.

Also ban flammable lithium ion battery storage in Monterey.

Allow rooftop sprinklers and high fire hazard zones.

And this week again, planes were overhead, discharging calf and highly flammable aluminum into the air, which falls out coating the leaves and land and is uptaken by plants and trees.

Rhode Island wrote a bill, H5217, banning weather modification and geoengineering aerosols saying environmental accumulation of combustible agents released in atmospheric experiments and or interventions threatens public health and safety with the potential to cause harm, desiccation of all biological life, contributing to drought and the hazard of catastrophic forest fires.

Yet Monterey and Sacramento are silent, as the Navy here does weather modification and aerosol projects.

In addition, MPS microwave radiation stresses trees and vegetation into emitting flammable terpenes, creating fire danger.

The city is blaming the victim.

That's very, very dangerous to real fire prevention.

How about spending money on actual prevention?

Thank you.

Thank you.

And our next speaker is Esther.

Good afternoon, everybody.

I just want to point out I don't want Laguna Grande Park to kind of fall through the cracks when all this fire prevention money is out there because we're going through this whole JPA process.

So I'm not sure how that's distributed or separated out, but this JPA process that we're going through is taking way longer than it should.

We originally had funds set aside for some trail maintenance that was supposed to happen behind residents' homes.

That has been put on hold, and that is in an area where there have been homeless encampments, and that is the area right by the PG and substations.

And it is also where there is dense brush.

So I would like to know what the plan is for that park regarding fire mitigation before this grant money gets distributed so that I can make sure that our our neighborhood is included in that.

Thank you.

Okay.

With that, we'll go ahead and close public comment.

Um hoping staff maybe might be able to respond to a few questions that came up during the public comment.

Um Ms.

Beattie spoke to um, I might be misspeaking for her, but how I interpret it was that there is really no evidence that shows that fuel reduction supports um reduction in fires.

Um not sure if staff could speak to that at all.

And then and then Esther's point at the end in regards to the distribution of funds, is Uguna Grande incorporated into that.

Um mayor counsel um either ties or the fire chief can speak to ladder fuels and the standard practice of Calfire in terms of fire mitigation activities.

Thank you.

I would just say that we go by the guidance of of CalFIR of uh Monterey fire in terms of how we're prioritizing the areas that we see uh that need need attention.

So I don't know what to say other than yeah, we ladder fuels are what we're trying to get after here.

So we're trying to keep a ground fire from getting into uh to turning into a crown fire.

Um that's what uh when it's a crown fire, um, our hands are almost tied behind our back.

I don't know if that's if I'm saying that correctly here, but it's it's a really tough thing to go.

But and Laguna Grande is different.

Um, we have the Monterey side has recently done a lot of work.

Um, I we may actually met um Esther out there and some of the other folks at Laguna Grande, uh, that Monterey has done on our side.

Um we're still waiting for Seaside to take uh to do take some action.

They do have some money set aside for grant work.

They are working with Calfire and the gabbling crew, but um they are running into some um hurdles, if you will, or some roadblocks.

So, so but they will um we are we just had a staff meeting the other day that they're trying to get this off the ground for seaside.

So we're trying to help each other um with getting these resources available to them so they can start this project.

So, yeah.

Okay.

Chief, did you have anything that you wanted to add today?

Uh good evening.

So yeah, we do work uh a lot with Calfire.

They're the experts in this field, um, along with Tice and his staff.

Vegetation management is just one part of fire prevention.

We do defensible space inspections.

We also have early recognition cameras and then the weight of our uh attack and have speed that all plays a part of it.

We actually have a uh report from 2025 that we'll be distributing shortly, showing all the work that we've been done for the defensible space inspections and vegetation management.

So I understand it's very sensitive, but we do work with environmental constraints with um get those studies done, and then we work with Calfire and the and the experts that know the best how to uh manage the vegetation.

So that's how we deal with it.

Awesome.

Thank you for that.

Oh, please, Gene.

Quick question for the captain.

Chief, um would you talk about prioritization?

And I'm sure this is extremely hard and every resident is valuable.

Right.

But I was having a conversation with the interim city manager, noting that how vulnerable is the hospital surrounded by so much forest.

Right.

And then the two nursing homes along skyline.

Right.

And and how do you evaluate that?

What's the mechanism?

So we take the guide.

So I'm sure you you guys uh adopted the Calfire uh severity zones, high fire severity zones.

So we we prioritize the highest severity zones first.

As far as the hospital, um, I know um we had some questions about it, and we did find that there's a lot of uh management that's already been done around it.

Some of that is our property, some of it is not, but there is some uh management that is being vegetation management that's been done around the hospital to protect it.

As far as the care facilities, we do inspections around that too um based on the severity of the zones, and we'd prioritize it that way.

That's how we do it.

Thank you.

You are anybody else have questions while the chief is up here?

No, all right.

Thank you, Chief.

Thank you.

All right, well, it's back to the council for motion and deliberation.

Make a motion that we accept the grant funds from the State Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

Authorized grant agreement for implementation of Monterey Citywide Fuel Reduction Project.

Second.

So moved and seconded.

Any other discussion?

All right, all those in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed?

Motion passes unanimously.

With that, we're gonna move on to our public appearance item number four, and the agenda is to receive a presentation on draft stormwater utility fee study results and authorize staff to initiate the process for fee adoption.

That'll pass it to Lou for staff presentation.

Thank you, Mayor, members of the council.

Um, this evening we have uh two items, number four and five, that are a continuation of the work that your council has been doing over the past several months to begin to identify a number of revenue sources to begin to close your structural budget gap.

And uh item number four is related to stormwater utility um fees, and this evening will have your deputy public works director, city engineer and Andrew Easterling present this item, and following that um your assistant city manager and finance director will present a background on the budget deficit and uh the other items that your council's been considering.

Good evening, and thank you, Lou, for the introduction.

Whoops, this is not on.

Oh, thank you.

All right, so good evening, members of the council.

My name is Andrew Easterling, and I'm here to give a presentation on the draft stormwater utility fee study, survey results.

And this is also a request to provide guidance specifically to authorize staff to proceed uh with the fee approval process.

So if I can, is there a way to make that full screen?

No.

If I can just set the stage of of how we got here.

Uh back in September, City Council had a meeting where you went through an exercise to look through different strategies to help address the structural deficit.

Uh there were a number of considerations, and one of those was to update the stormwater fee.

Um this was an item that the council unanimously supported, five out of five.

There was a hundred percent support for this item.

And um following that's that's um that meeting, uh the council determined to move forward with this process.

So since then, we've been busy trying to develop the fee study for the um stormwater rates, and we've also, as a component of this work, have done a community survey um to survey property owners and get feedback on uh where what their uh feelings are with the stormwater program and uh kind of gauge uh what public support looks like currently.

Uh uh we're the yellow star on that timeline.

So that's uh oh, sorry, we're the the first red star on that timeline.

So this is a presentation on the survey results following this meeting.

If council authorizes staff to proceed with the fee adoption process, we'll be coming back to you with the results of the fee study.

So that'll be another opportunity for council to review this, provide comment to hear from the community from the public.

Uh at that time, we'll be asking council to authorize us to proceed with the 218 process uh and noticing.

We'd go through the noticing period, we come back again to the council again in May for the public hearing for the protest hearing on the notices, and to authorize staff to proceed with the ballot proceeds.

Uh, so that would be another vote that would go out to the community, and that would end in June or July, depending on what we get the ballots out, and we'd come back one last final time uh with the results and to uh adopt the fee study and to approve the fees.

Um so that's a little bit of the timeline.

And we're actually on somewhat of a tight timeline because on the back end of this, um, if we were to move it to the county tax rule, we have an August 1st deadline.

So there's really not a lot of float in this schedule or an opportunity to delay things if we're gonna stick to that uh August 1st deadline.

Um, if we miss it, this pushes us back at least a year, and we'd be going back another year.

And so that is uh at least a year minimum of potential loss revenue if the fees aren't adopted.

So that just to give you a recap of how we got here and kind of looking forward to what's what are our next steps.

And with that, I'm gonna introduce our consultant who's been working on the fee study and the um community survey to go over his results, and I'll be back at the end to give us a conclusion.

Chris, come on up.

Thanks, Andrew.

My name's Chris Colter with SCI Consulting Group.

Uh we're the engineer of the fee study for associated with this project.

Um, so today we're gonna go over the survey results and um and to explain a little bit more detail.

We mailed out 4,100 surveys to the community.

That's to property owners of properties within the city of Monterey.

Uh the purpose of the survey is to test the messaging as well as the community priorities associated with stormwater services.

Want to gauge which projects and which issues are most resonant with the community.

Uh, also test the community's willingness to pay for these services.

And uh these uh these 4,000 surveys were mailed out in November on November 19th of 2025.

We had a 30-day return window there of uh and the surveys were tabulated and analyzed starting on December 19th.

The surveys tested uh stormwater fee rate of 772 per month.

Annually, that adds up to $92.64 per year.

Uh the the survey results uh came in here at the 772 rate came in at 42.9 percent support.

Now that 772 rate is uh the benchmark single family home rate.

These rates are specifically calculated for each property that was uh that are uh each property owner that received a survey received a rate that was specifically tailored to their property, and the majority of the properties received that 772 rate is a benchmark rate.

Most of the properties of the same size single family homes.

Uh the margin of error on our survey was 2.93%.

That's a really strong margin of error.

We had a very high return rate, it was over 20%.

So it was just sort of indicates the community was was um pretty engaged with this survey.

And um, you know, we saw just under 1,000 surveys were returned.

And uh, and and you can see in that white box.

I I'll just read this here.

The main question that's asked on the survey uh went forward as such: in order to protect properties from flood damage, reduce flooding of streets, and prevent pollution of Monterey Bay and our local creeks and channels.

Would you support a monthly fee the amount of 772?

They had four four choices there to gauge their support level.

Definitely, yes, probably yes, probably no, or definitely no.

And we'll look at these now in a little bit more detail here.

Um so this graph shows the the definitely yes, the probably yes, the probably no, and then definitely no on top in the in the dark red.

Uh so the 42.9% of that of the yes votes, most of those were probably yes, whereas uh about you know a little bit of over half of the yes votes were yes, or were definitely yes.

So you had some strong support.

Most most of the support was uh was less was less than what was less than the definitely.

So that softness of support is typical.

You know, it's not it's not abnormal to see that level of softness.

Uh we know that the soft support is a little bit more prone to being influenced by the framing of a potential measure.

So when you look at those probably no's, as you can see, uh you had 15% or so, and and and those folks also are prone to messaging and uh and we look at those as potential swing voters essentially.

So the definities are definitely a little bit harder to change.

Um, and now to to explain a little bit more about what this 42.9 really means.

In this type of ballot measure, a 50% threshold is necessary for approval.

It's one vote per parcel.

Can I just ask a clarified question regarding the threshold?

It's 50% plus one, I'm assuming.

It's actually 50%.

Interesting.

Okay, yeah, we we hope we don't we don't we haven't really seen that right there on the line, but yes.

Um, so uh this this survey also included a questionnaire to gauge the projects and issues which which folks thought were important.

Uh and you can see there the list, the list uh is sorted by the most supported to the least supported.

All of these came in at over 50% support.

So when we add up the very importance and the and the importance, they're all over 50%.

Um the most the most favored was cleaning drains before a storm.

So it's sort of like an operational and maintenance.

Uh that was was that was just about 72 percent uh that people thought that was really important.

The next one was stopping trash inclusion.

So environmental concerns and really just maintenance to prevent those streets from flooding were uh very very resonant within the community.

So we know that those messaging uh that messaging would certainly resonate.

Uh down at the bottom, strengthening infrastructure for extreme weather and using stormwater as a resource came in at bless supported, but again, over 50 percent.

Um, and we'll just talk about the findings here.

What this really means.

So, so the survey results that we have do not show support, not show enough support for a stormwater fee at 772 per month.

Uh, to to give you a little bit more about what that 772 means is that's enough revenue to fully to fully fund the operations and maintenance side of the stormwater system, uh, the stormwater program.

And uh, you know, the the measure P and the measure S sales funds, sales tax funds help fund the capital side of this equation for the for the stormwater services program.

Uh what we looked at with this 772 rate was the amount that would be necessary to fund O and M.

Um and again, say that again from 772 would be enough for ONM.

O and M.

Okay.

So could you tell the public what O and M is?

Yes.

Operations and maintenance.

So that would involve your your uh road crews going out and cleaning the storm drains, uh, routine maintenance of of piping, uh, culverts, you know, sort of the routine day-to-day activities of staff, uh, so you keep the program running.

Could I um ask what you stated in a different way to see if I'm understanding correctly the cost, the the budget that we would get out of a 7072 rate doesn't include capital expenditures so yeah that the capital expenditures are paid for by the mostly by measure p measure s sales tax funds the the amount the the generated revenue from a seven dollar seventy two per uh per month fee would cover just about 1.3 1.4 million dollars which which would fully come fully fund the on m portion of of the stormwater services program okay thank you very well were you thinking equipment well what i heard was that it just like what was rearticulated that the capital expenditures come out of measure p measure s um um mainly and that the 772 would just be for the on but what i heard was mostly and so i didn't know if there was any of that funding that would be used for capital expenditures just as a talking point I just wanted to make sure I understood that clearly yeah that's a good distinction and and you know when when we have a revenue stream obviously uh the funds that are generated by a fee can be used to to pay for O and M and as well and when we look at like uh piping replacement and that kind of thing routine maintenance does sometimes involve uh replacement of some pipes but really these major capital projects that cost millions of dollars that that really requires a different revenue stream obviously measure P enf the measure uh the sales tax measure ends next year in March of 2027 that's that's really the big piece that funds all the the major projects thank you for clarifying that off that so my concern and you can repeat that it's not covered in in this measure is our infrastructure isn't keeping up with the climate change and the atmospheric river deluges that we had a few weeks ago.

So when you walk around um we we need more capital development of our storm system and I don't think that's covered with PRS and it sounds like it's not covered with this so I want to be clear to the public it this is just continuing the management of what we have it's not really improving the whole system that we've been relying on for you know 80 years 100 years that needs restructuring or expansion not repair I I hear that this is going to be repair but there's so much more that's needed that's new.

Absolutely correct um you know a lot of the a lot of the cost of this this 1.3 1.4 million dollar operational budget is just state mandated and just and for the for the city's stormwater permit the the national pollution discharge permit right uh so these costs are really just borne by the city and these these fees uh would substantially cover a lot of that that work that just required to do the O and M and the regulatory work.

That's helpful thank you.

Um and again yeah just to finish off this slide yes so the we saw flood protection and environmental concerns are our primary concerns of the community um we'll try to let you finish your yeah I think I'm I'm up uh to hand it back off to Andrew.

Thank you.

Thank you for the presentation so yes that concludes the uh the presentation on the survey findings I do want to just kind of bring us back to uh really this was a presentation as an informational item to the council as a we are requesting that you guys authorize us for uh to proceed with the uh the fee adoption process.

I do I guess kind of want to shine light on the the survey results.

They would they we did not have majority report in the survey.

So if we decided to to pause or if council decided not to direct us, then given our tight timeline, that would push us back at least a year.

And so we would potentially um miss out on the opportunity for um a year of you know 1.2 to 1.4 of revenue uh for the stormwater program, and there is maybe some consideration to cut services.

However, as Chris mentioned, a lot of the operational costs are state mandates, so we will have to provide a lot of the regulatory compliance work regardless of whether or not this fee is adopted or not.

And if we don't have the dedicated uh stormwater utility fund or the fee for those revenues, that'll have to come out of the general fund for those services.

So there is a lot of work on the OM side, especially in reporting and in pre and post-storm events um inspections that we we do that we're gonna have to continue.

So the option to reduce services, we might have a little wiggle room there, but there is a lot of state uh mandated stuff that we do as part of this program that we'll have to continue to do.

Otherwise, we risk potential issues with our permit notice of violations, which could also come with penalties and um and fines from the state.

So I just want to I guess maybe set the stage and give you kind of the importance of the operations and maintenance.

With that, that concludes it, and I'll open it up to council for comments and questions.

Thank you for the presentation.

Andrew, open up to questions for the council.

Yeah, Andrew, could you just give a thumbnail sketch uh so the public can understand when you say regulatory?

I get that water resources, lots of things in California to make sure sewage does not go into Monterey Bay.

When there is a discharge or when there is an accident, when there is a busted pipe, and we are under the thumb of regulatory agency.

What does that mean for us?

So for specifically like uh sewage leaks or sewer leaks, we uh operate under an MS4 permit, uh, municipal small agency permit.

Uh we have a ton of reporting requirements that also go along with our sewer program.

So when there is a leak, there's four different categories of leak based on spill response.

Uh we monitor and report that to the state differently depending on the size of the leak.

And uh at times we we actually at times annually we'll compile all those those spill reports, we'll send it to the state, and sometimes they request that we have um additional steps to mitigate leaks moving forward, and so those additional requirements kind of continue to build up in perpetuity.

So these programs only kind of get bigger and bigger over time, but we we take action as appropriate.

So whenever we do have spills and there are leaks, we respond to it, uh, we'll mitigate the leak, we'll make the repairs, we'll report it to the state, and the state may come back with additional uh, you know, recommendations that we'll have to comply with.

Did that answer your question?

Yeah, you're spot on.

Uh another area, Oak Grove that's been going under uh significant undergrounding utilities.

Is that one of the areas that is having its storm or having its sewer lines replaced?

Or is that a stormwater project?

Uh so Oak Grove, I believe Calam did quite a bit of water main replacement recently.

That wasn't us, if I recall correctly.

Um I could follow up with you.

I could look into that and follow up with more specific detail.

But I think a lot of the utility work that's been happening in Oak Grove was Calam.

Um, and that was within like last year or so.

Yeah, well, it's still going on.

Yes, yeah.

Oh, is it?

Yeah, yeah.

Thank you very much.

Any of us have questions?

Please, Councilman Garcia.

Thank you, Andrew, for the uh information.

My question was uh around uh fines and non-compliance.

You've touched on it, uh answered a little bit of it, but um for my own education.

Can you give me examples of how well what is non-compliance in this context?

Like what are the things that where we would fall out of compliance?

Well, um, so I'm trying to think of a few different scenarios, but I just know we all kind of fear the NOV letters from the the state.

Um there's a laundry list of regulatory compliance.

If we're not monitoring or reporting to the state properly, uh they can send us an NOV letter that usually gives us an opportunity to take corrective actions.

If we're non-responsive on that, the state has citation authority and can revoke our permit.

I believe uh citations can be up to about 10,000 per day per violation.

So these are things we want to avoid um and definitely revoke, uh having our permit revoked would have other kind of administrative and financial consequences so I'm not thinking of a specific example at the top of my head of what we could miss but and say if we miss anything on the reporting side or any sort of uh required action to the state uh you know the we do run the risk of a notice of violation just to follow up so um and these non-compliance items could come up because funding's not not available to address them is what we're saying.

So if funding's not available I'm gonna say staff's gonna continue to um proceed with our stormwater program or operations and maintenance uh reporting requirements I think that's just gonna come out of the general fund.

If for whatever reason the cuts are so deep to services or or staff that you know we were no longer be able to comply with that then we run the risk but I I think uh you know staff will continue to you know meet the regulatory compliance and we'll continue to operate this program it's just without a stormwater utility fee or fund then you know those expenses are coming out of the general fund.

Any other questions Dr.

Barber did you have anything?

Okay um I so staff handed the presentation and I was floating through the the uh the ones that haven't been showed yet would it the backup slides um and I'm just wondering if maybe we could dive into um the options more um and this kind of vaguely reminds me of the conversation when we first started this conversation and I might be mixing up projects so if I if I am please forgive me but there was this conversation around um sea level rise and impacts of that and including costs associated with the risk of sea level rise and having to move infrastructure is that was that part of this discussion so I'm gonna go to the slide we had these in our back pocket just in case you guys had some questions for us uh so I believe this is the slide you're talking about and uh as we've been developing the fee study we really did consider a few different alternatives and really what's been staff's recommendation would be the the full cost recovery of the OM portion of our stormwater program.

So there's other scenarios in there uh we did consider the potential subsetting of the measure PS scenario next year and then moving some of those uh like uh um capital rehabilitation projects into the fee program but what's been proposed and recommended and was surveyed was uh just the the full cost recovery of the operations of the program.

I'm gonna look to Chris to see if you have anything else to add right okay what so there wasn't any do you recall any discussion that we we had previously around sea level rise or is that something separate I do recall a discussion around sea level rise specifically when we were going through our a um our sewer master plan and rate study there were two scenarios that were proposed to the council and one included the affordable housing scenario and one didn't and I think both included considerations for sea level rise in these sewer rates okay thank you for that clarification because that that does ring a bill and then if I if I also um am stating this correctly I guess I'll ask it in a form of question didn't we as Monterey residents have this charge before but it was dropped when we transitioned to the tax rules.

That is around the time it dropped um we're going through this process this is kind of a restart we've hired a consultant to ensure that um when we're doing the rate study that you know residents are paying just for the cost of services and they're not paying any additional uh costs.

So it's right sizing the fees to the cost of the so just stated another way.

We were paying this before we stopped, we've stopped paying it, and we're just trying to right size it by incorporating the the charge again so that we can pay for the program.

Yes, that's correct.

So it's not like a new thing that we're coming up, it's not a novel thing, it's just trying to reinstitutionalize and right size the ship.

Yes.

Um, okay, and then could you speak to um I understand that the city has a program that residents can volunteer to maintain a storm drain?

I think it's a really important thing to just share to help kind of maybe support the city and managing its costs associated with with the O and M side of it.

Could you speak to that a little bit and share how folks can get involved in that?

Sure.

I wish I had some of my little flyers available.

Adopted catch basin.

So uh one of our newest hires, uh uh Rebecca Baggett had kind of come up with this program, and you can hop on the city's website and volunteer to a catch adopt a catch basin.

And so that delegates a little bit of uh formalizes a little bit of responsibility to you know the adjacent property owner, whoever wants to take ownership of it.

Um so we do have this program.

Once you adopt a catch basin, you can be on the city's website and highlight it as as uh you know the person that's it's taking this responsibility.

Uh and we're doing more outreaches on the way.

I think we're making a video to help promote it and we're talking to some of the business associations.

We've had some success so far, some early adopters.

Awesome.

Uh, but it is on the city website, and I can email out the link or put it in your Friday folders.

Perfect, perfect.

It may be good if we could maybe have Lori include that in the in the e-news blast that we send out.

Um, yeah, please, I don't know, I don't know.

Go ahead and cut it off in the chamber.

I'll do a countdown for folks on Zoom to five, four, three, two, one.

We have two on Zoom, we'll go ahead and take those callers.

Lori, you can go ahead, please.

Good evening.

Um, I just have a quick question, and it may or may not tie into this, but I'm wondering how does uh maybe this fee doesn't tie in the storm drains and stormwater maintenance.

How does this tie into City of Monterey getting the local coastal plan certified?

Um and or maybe it doesn't.

And if this fee and fund doesn't go to it, do we have a plan for that?

Because I know our LCP is we're hopefully gonna get it certified this coming year.

So I'm wondering how we're gonna pay for that.

That's all.

Thank you.

And the next speaker is Tom.

Yeah, the seventy-seventy-two fee, seven dollar seventy-two cent fee.

How does that compare with the fee that we had before the fee was discontinued?

I was just a little surprised of the lackluster support.

If it's at or below what was the old fee, I I honestly don't remember what the fee was uh prior to it going away.

And kind of a follow on to that is if it's at if the 772 is at or below what was being charged.

Couldn't this just be reinitiated without having to go through the whole prop 218 process since it's um within the confines of what was previously approved?

Thank you.

That was it.

Sorry, thank you.

I saw three.

Um okay.

With that, we'll go ahead and close public comment, bring it back to the council.

Um, staff can maybe answer those questions that came up there.

Is one about the LCP, the plan if not funded, and then the previous prop 218.

Yes, um, mayor, we do have Ms.

uh Kim Cole in the audience, so I think she can answer the question regarding the LCP.

Um good afternoon.

There's no direct relationship between the um storm drain current storm drain pipes for ONM and the LCP, ultimately permitting, um, we'll revert to the city of Monterey once we have a certified local coastal program.

We're also working on a sea level rise study.

I feel like that's a little bit off topic, but if you want me to update you on that, I'm happy to do that.

I think we can save that for another day.

Okay.

Yeah.

Thank you, Kim.

Oh, the other question was what was the fee before we ended it?

Yeah, it wasn't 772.

It was good question.

And uh the old fee was 570.

Okay.

And when was that approved?

What was that authorized?

When was it originally authorized?

I don't have that off the top of my head.

Maybe uh precedes my time with the city.

I'd really hate to guess and really misrepresent that.

I'm just I'm I I think contextually that might be helpful and important to the public.

And we don't have to maybe answer it today because this will come back to us again.

Um, but I think it's helpful just to kind of look at inflationary costs associated with where the fee was once it was um authorized.

But um, and then there was the question around plan if not funded.

I think you spoke to that a little bit during the presentation, but I know that question came up during public comment.

Sure.

I and I can maybe try to reiterate.

Yeah, so if this isn't approved, the plan we'd still support our stormwater operations is to ensure we're not at risk of a notice of violation with the the state or missing any regulatory uh requirements.

So we would still proceed with the the OM portion, it would just have to be financed out of the general plan.

Awesome.

Thank you, okay.

Um, so back to the council for motion and deliberation.

I think it was a legal question that I wanted to have.

Please proceed.

Uh so there was a question from one of the callers that wanted to know.

Well, if we had this under 218 before and we paused it, why do we have to go back?

Um and do this like it's new because this is a ballot measure to go for an election uh in November.

So maybe you could answer that question for the problem.

Sure.

The other the other step of that is based on the action tonight from the council, we would then see a ballot measure language, and then we would be voting on the ballot language before it goes further.

So we would have action by the council to execute pushing it forward to a ballot, and we would see a ballot measure language.

I think that was in the schedule for the Prop 218 ballot load okay language to come back to you when our office would review that before it goes out.

There's a lot of technical stuff that has to be in there.

Yeah, and then in terms of going through a prop 218 process for this um implementation of the fee, it it's a requirement of the law.

Um, because we're adjusting the rates and it's just a part of what has to be done.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

Intertain a motion.

Um, I'm gonna make a motion uh that we have motion to keep representation.

Authorized staff to initiate the process for fee adoption.

Yeah do you there was a presentation but then there's that second part.

Thank you so we ready for a motion yeah uh was was there other discussion about the council um why why don't you go ahead and make the motion and then if there's a discussion I'll check in with the council yeah I'll I'll make a motion that we uh direct staff to proceed uh to prepare a ballot measure to execute uh the stormwater utility fee after receiving this report I think the next action is to push towards for ballot.

Could I um check it could could we just make the motion to authorize staff to initiate the process for fee adoption.

I think that way it's nice and clean and in alignment with the language of the of the agenda item uh they want a fee adoption but wasn't that doesn't that require ballot.

It's part of the process yeah yep yeah so for language we can call it a proceed staff proceed for um a fee adoption perfect all right is there a second all right seconded by council McGarcia any other discussion on the on the motion all right we'll go ahead and call the question all those in favor aye any opposed motion passes unanimously thanks again staff for that and um all the work ahead there um with that we will oh I wanted to share one more thing because this doesn't go on the ballot the about the traditional ballot and I just kind of wanted to clarify that for the public this isn't going on like the primary ballot or the November ballot this will be something that's delivered to all residences to their home they have to mail in their vote if they so choose um and then we will count those and um consider that vote in our decision making process in front of the council which that will ultimately lead to either adoption or not so I just wanted wanted to provide that clarity distinction um all right so a direct vote by the each parcel that's right um okay with that we'll move on to item five update on the budget deficit deficit strategies chilled or authorized but unfunded positions and provide direction on whether to place ballot measures on the June 2026 election ballot with that I'll pass it to Lou for staff presentation.

Thank you mayor and council members um as you recall at your last meeting last week um your council provided direction on proceeding with a number of uh tax measures for potentially the June 2026 or the November 2026 um ballots and with that direction there was also some questions regarding uh those ballot measures and a request for staff to identify additional information particularly in relation to the parking tax um staff has evaluated that uh what we intend to do this evening is provide some background on the budget deficit and you may have seen some of this information in prior um presentations the intent is really to show the public of how the city um what were the cost drivers that really drove the budget deficit and will continue to drive it in the years ahead how we got there um some of the issues related to the current budget and then finally um an overview of the ballot measures our intent tonight is to request respectfully that that your council give us clear direction on proceeding with um potentially one or more of the ballot measures as we're very close to the deadline to get these um on the uh June ballot so with that uh miss king your finance director will give an overview of the background how we got there and we'll turn it over to your assistant city manager to talk about some of the deficit measures but again this was not intended to be a budget hearing um we'll come in the coming weeks and give you much more information you can dive in deeper detail in terms of positions cost saving measures and um other initiatives that your council has identified over the past months.

Thank you.

Good evening, Council Mayor.

I always love when the city manager steals my under and does everything for me.

It does.

It does.

Okay, so I'm just gonna dive right into um again.

You will see a lot of these in um slides that you have seen before.

It's for the benefit of the public and a reminder to you.

So really, how do we get here?

We started with the general fund.

She now has a structural deficit in 2526 in this fiscal year, which means that the current year's revenue is not enough to cover the current year's expenses.

And this has been ongoing, it's an ongoing issue as long as the growth in expenses outpaces the growth in um revenue.

So but the 2526 was balanced with one-time um solutions for 2627.

We have very preliminary numbers because we haven't really started the budget process yet.

Um but we are based on our five-year projections that we show when we adopted the 25-26 that we have um it'll be again over 10 million dollars.

We are looking at um 112 million in expenses well in revenue and over 124 million in um in revenues again.

As long as we don't do anything or enough, that number will continue to grow.

So, and recognizing that this is an issue, council and staff, we started discussions early.

We started in June, July and August of last year to determine ways to reduce the ongoing deficit, the balance and balance to 26-27 um budget for by increasing the revenues and decreasing um expenses.

So some of the contributing factors that led up to the structural deficit, we're gonna start with just this one example.

So this is just the difference between fiscal year 24-25 and fiscal year 25 and 26.

So that increase from the adopted budgets for each year is 11.6 million.

So 5.9 of that is related to salary and benefits, is um based into regular salary increases of three million overtime, a million, retirement costs um 400,000.

Umfunded, accrued liability 1.2 million.

Talk more about that a little bit and a couple more slides, and OPEP also 300,000.

We have 2.7 in service and operations, service and supplies, which is your operations and maintenance, then three mil 3 million in um internal service charges, which is made up of technology and 2.3 million, insurance premiums going up, um 500,000 in vehicle replacement at 200,000.

So the rising costs, so the MOU agreements, as you know, we we put in place in 2024, we came to agreements with all agreements with all seven of the labor negotiations at 4% each for each year for those three years.

Those wages for the 25-25 25-26 year is about six million dollars of the general fund for increase over the prior year, and combined with the city's previous agreements for FY22 and 23, that equates to a little more than a 25% increase over the five-year period.

Um compensation study we also did in 2024, um, which was to bring staff into market, which helps with the retention and make sure that we have our staff that are paid within the market for their um areas of employment.

The wage adjustments that related to that exercise is about 1.4 million.

The other thing to keep in mind is the increase in FTEs and RPTs, the full-time employees.

So since 2021, there's been a steady increase in the number of authorized FTEs.

In 2021, the number of FTEs was under 420.

In 2024, when the labor contracts were signed and with the 4% increase, there was 450.

So all the contracts were based on 450 FDEs.

So since that time, um at 2526 fiscal year, that FTE numbers has grown to 485.

So the delta of those 38 positions from signing the contracts to the current fiscal year also contributes to the rise in salaries and benefits.

Then we get to insurance premiums.

So workers' compensation insurance since 2020, and keep in mind with um with the insurance uh workers' comp and property and the liability insurance, those are based on you know head counts personnel payroll costs.

So workers' comp insurance from 2020 has gone up 30% from 511,000 or to 511,000 from 395,000.

It's approximately 80 percent of liability, the liability insurance and also workers' comp is um paid for out of the general fund.

The liability insurance since 2020 has gone up nearly 400% to 3.3 million a year from 850,000 in 2020 up to um 3.3 million.

And unfortunately, with the way that the insurance is going down, the industry we can expect to have that rate continue to increase for the next several years at about rate of about 10% per year.

And believe it or not, we are in a JPA, so which means that our rates are still the most competitive that we can get.

Moving on to retirement costs and benefits, our unfunded actuarial accrued liability.

Um in 2021, those numbers have steadily rise every year in 2026.

Um we projected about 17.6 million dollars that we needed to pay 13.6 of it is in general fund, which is a 23% increase from 20 um above the 2025 and 75% increase since 2021.

Our other OPEP, other post-umployment benefits, 2026 for this year, 1.7 million, of which that 101.4 million is funded by the general fund, 24% increase above FY25, and 55% increase since 2020.

CalPurse contributions, those in, I don't have the numbers there, but those have also increased.

They could increase every year with our contributions, that amount goes up as well.

Another thing is our debt service.

Our debt service for our fire trucks and engines that we've purchased.

So we've purchased since 2020.

We purchased three fire trucks and engines.

The total price for the three is 3.4 million that we paid, or we've finance.

So the debt service has risen.

So I put this chart in here to tell you show you how that's um the amount that's going out the door every year rises.

So from FY 2020, $1,800, um, $55,000 in 2021, and you'll see in 2024 $383,000, 2025, 26, and 27, you'll see as well over 600,000 that goes out the door every year.

That's part that's comes out of the general fund.

That's an increase in rising costs.

So as a reminder, here's our five-year forecast that we um presented when we adopted the budget showing that um, and again, these are straight operations.

This does not include any carryovers from the year before.

So this is the revenues for um that we're projecting each year and expenditures for each year, um, and then the transfers in and out, transfers in and out will include things like um this is where your transfers out will be the debt service that goes out.

Um normally in this particular scenario, we didn't include CIP, CIP would normally be in that area too, and transfers out um about 2.5 million, which is not included.

So just kind of wanted to show you these kind of um numbers, um, the bottom line is where you're looking at 10.5 um for 2026 deficit, 8.4, 5.0, or 5 million the next years, and these are moderate.

We have moderate growth in salaries in these.

So basically in 2027 is our last year, the 4% and 28 and 29 on this um point out there's zero percent increase and for 29 and 30, 30 and 31 is two percent each year.

So again, these are moderate numbers and moderate growth numbers.

So um nothing has been negotiated, of course, because it's not that time, but just showing that there is um a lot of room for um adjusting and tightening belts.

So our structural deficit for 2025, this is just um show you just um show you what we did to balance the budget.

We talked about this before.

Um we didn't fund certain positions, they're still on the list, but we didn't fund them, so that took some about 2.8 million dollars out, also reducing the OM.

We talked, well, all the departments took a 7% cut this fiscal year to help balance the budget, and then we restructured and reduced financial commitments from general fund and kind of move them other ways, and which included decreasing amounts that we would have taken from salary savings and put into our reserves, so things like that are included in that number for the 26-27 projected.

Um again, this scenario includes um continued savings with the frozen or the unfunded positions.

Um there's and again, we have not even discussed any of this, so just telling you what these numbers are looking like.

So by continuing to doing what we're doing, this is no C CIP coming from the general fund, and this is very limited increases in accounts for um other than salaries and billet benefits.

Um so when we start actually working on the budget, which starts in February and March, those numbers are going to change.

We're expecting them to probably go up.

We'll be doing some magic in the back room, trying to make some stuff happen, but we'll bring it back as in the budget primary in April.

So here's one of our backroom tricks that we want to want you to kind of look at.

So we took the same scenario for the five-year forecast and put in there.

If we took if council decided to put the ballot measure 3.75%, 0.375 sales tax on measure.

So what I did here is I took the revenue line and increased it by $3 million for the 26-27, $4.5 million for $28 moving forward.

It also assumes that measure G is renewed because it comes up for renewal.

It also includes that that's still here.

Um, and you'll see that the numbers are looking better, but again, it's looking better.

We're doing we're doing some magic, we're trying to work some things out.

But it also keeps still keep in mind there are there's still very moderate growth, and we have to go to negotiations for salaries.

There's still things that still need to get done.

There's still CIP that needs to get done, there's still other things that has to happen.

So this is just a very, very rough draft for preliminary, but you can tell that the three point um sales tax measure will benefit um as we move forward.

So a quick overview of the authorized and unfunded positions.

So to balance the 25-26 budget, we didn't fund about 14 vacant positions.

And since that budget was adopted, city has the staff has increased the total number of positions to 20, and the value is about 2.8 million.

So we did um to remain flexible.

We've talked about this before to remain flexible enough to satisfy the keep the service needs, and we took those positions um in order to be able to fill whatever is needed during the time and replace them as we could.

So on a monthly basis since July, the city city manager's office, finance and HR, we've met on the monthly basis since the adoption to go over the budget um for the positions and look at what's new, what's coming up, if there's been some um unexpected people leaving or coming in, and how we can services needed in different areas and how we can shift that around.

So that's been done, and just kind of towing the line to make sure that we that 2.8 million that we projected and used to balance the budget still remained the same while keeping services going.

Again, you'll have more detail, more depth, in-depth report at a later council meeting in a few weeks.

So the unassigned fund balance carryover ed.

So you know, um, so the unassigned fund balance is the carryover, and that amount, it amount of budget is the amount of budgeted funds that were unspent at the end of each fiscal year.

So salary savings from unfilled positions are the largest contributor to that account or to that amount with vacancies that range anywhere between 40 and 60 positions each year.

The amount actually varies each year.

So we utilize about a three to four percent range of budgeted positions each year to balance the budget, and the unassigned balance of carryover amount is established is estimated each year, and it's true up at mid year, and then when at mid year, and then again at when at mid-year is when we get our auditive finance audited financial statements.

At that point, we know exactly what the number is that was um available to be carried over.

So that's the number when we take that, and so with that, our contributions to reserve accounts, they're not included in those calculations.

I know some people thought that they were, but they're not included in the operations um deficit that we talked about earlier.

Um it doesn't determine the amount of the structural deficit.

And so the budget amounts are only contributed to the reserve accounts after the audited financial statements come, confirm what that unspent um dollar is, and then that's when we move the money into those reserve accounts.

So with that, I'm gonna turn it over to Nat so he can talk about moving forward with deficit reduction strategies.

Could we ask questions of her on the financials first?

I think so.

I think it might maybe breaking it up her speaker would be helpful.

Yeah.

Uh may I start with the um thank you very much.

It's very helpful, and I appreciate it.

Um can we go to the slide that says overview of authorized and unfunded?

Probably there we go.

So combining the two first bullet points, it says a staff did not fund 14 vacant positions for that budget year, and then since the adopted budget, then you are calculating an additional 20.

No, no, no.

Total.

Total of 20, okay, total of 20, and the total of 20 is the value of 2.8 savings.

So in savings, it's actually gonna be a little bit more.

Um, because sometimes some of the positions that we froze, let's just say I'm just throwing random positions out.

So let's just say it was an administrative assistant that was actually frozen.

Um, and then we had um a higher price position, um, say a manager level position.

Um, at that point, the manager level, and we decided, well, we're not gonna fill they're here for four months, five months, we're not gonna fill this for another several months, or we're not gonna fill it this year, and we can move that position over into the list, so now it would go from 14 to 15, and then whatever the difference between what's already spent for the fiscal year that that right remaining of it could go in here and increase that 2.8.

Okay, and is that what you call salary savings?

No, no, I I know in the accounting terms, no, it wouldn't be.

No, this is um, where do I want to use this is creative, making sure that we can stay flexible um with the positions that we have because we didn't just freeze positions, so but we did have these positions are still on the PCL list, so someone can still um we still have council approval to fill these positions.

We didn't fund them, however, but we also know that we will have salary savings because like I said, those 40 to 50 positions or 40, 60 positions that are throughout the city, we know that there's still money there that we use.

That's the salary savings.

So this part since we never fund it, there's no salary savings that's moving forward because we use this 2.8 to close the gap.

Okay.

So I guess it's a terminology because part of the um staff report includes a figure that's talking about the unfilled, they're funded but unfilled.

Yeah, that would and that was sixty-five.

And I know it it changes, but it's talking about as of December 31st, the city at 65 unfilled positions, and two unfilled part-time positions.

So those unfilled positions is what would be salary savings at the end of the year.

Okay, um, so I'm leading up towards understanding your chart that was later talking about the deficit number in June 30, and then it moved from 10 and change down to five.

And in order to get there, that was in part from the salary savings.

Yes.

If we did not fill the positions, right?

Okay.

And then that was not counting, and you had it on the sidebar.

Pending a passage of a ballot pending in CIP money coming in.

Okay.

Um that's that's good.

I just wanted to cover that in my head.

So I'm in the same terms that you are.

Thanks.

You're good.

Any questions on this side?

Please, Gene.

That was very helpful.

On the liability insurance increases, they've increased by nearly 400% to 3.3 million from 850,000 in 2020.

Is that is that the um aggregate pool that we're in with other cities?

Yes.

Okay.

I would keep in mind too when you're looking at when we started with 2020, also keep in mind that insurance most of our insurance are also based on labor and our payroll costs in 2020 because it was COVID, our number of positions and people payroll went down.

So you'll see that there were the increase is going to be higher too as well from 2020.

So if we started at 2021, it wouldn't be 400%, but it doesn't mean that it wouldn't be 300%.

So the in uh the increase in insurance has steadily going up.

Okay.

That's that's not not good.

But it's not quite as dramatic given the COVID numbers of thank you.

And then um the reserves are we projecting for the 26-27 budget.

Are are we presuming that we're including the six million dollar allocation to reserves?

I'm very hopeful that we're gonna do that.

So when we we look at the proposed deficit, that's incorporating that six million dollars in.

No, what I would be incorporating in that is let's say at the end of this fiscal year, um spending we didn't spend as much money as we budgeted, and we have our we came in with 40 positions um that were not filled, so we have salary savings from there and salary savings from we didn't buy enough widgets.

So we have this, those savings there.

So combining that, that may come up to 7 million.

So if that comes up to 7 million, then the six million that we have in our policies to fund the reserve policies, that's where that comes from.

And then I try and make sure that I do it are you okay?

So it is so it's extra money.

It's it's it's not gonna be in your draft.

I presume you're gonna give us a draft budget for 26, 27.

Yeah, we haven't started the process yet.

I mean, so we always do that the primer in April, so yes, it will be there.

But you're able to project the projection is that we're gonna be off by 10 million, so compare that's compared to last year or your projections for next year.

Your projections for next year.

We are looking at the if I'm just looking at the five-year forecast.

So I'm looking at is it's gonna be eight to ten.

Well, actually, no, right now we're looking at our rough, very, very rough draft of revenues that we're looking at is going to be 112 and then rough draft of expenses for next year's 124.

But again, we have not started out with the departments.

We don't have because we usually don't start until February is when we work with the departments and they start giving us their numbers for expenses and what they have to um run the operations in their departments.

So we really start in um February to start collecting the data.

March is when we start massaging the data and we put it together and say, you know, what is the gap?

So we know what the gap is in March, and then that's when we start working with the departments to make sure that we can try to close that gap as much as possible.

Right.

And that's that's what I thought.

Yeah.

Okay.

So the picture in my brain is right.

I'm still a little confused about the commitment, the hope for commitment to the general reserves of six million.

Um, is that in that 124 million dollars?

No, it's not included in it.

Okay.

And so that's why you said if we have any unspent, and we will, we always have, yes.

That's for exactly.

And that's why when we tried to close the gap for, well, we did close the gap for this fiscal year 2526.

We were able to look at and we reduce the amount that we were putting into the reserves for both um 2526 and 2425, in order to say we don't have enough money to clutch to put in what our policy is and what we want.

So that's what we went to twenty uh 50% of each, except for the economic uncertainty which we have at 20%, that we fully funded the rest of them, we took 50%, and that's why to make sure that we still have money to move forward and stuff and close the funding gap for this fiscal year and move forward.

Okay, great.

Very clear.

Thank you.

Can I make a comment on the reserve piece?

Uh and it might be helpful to understand it.

Councils have always had a policy direction to staff and finance to establish the reserve accounts by policy.

So because it's policy, I think what she's saying is she has to go through the whole budget process before she can come to us and say to comply with the policy that is our policy, she has to have the true up number and the actual numbers, and then she would make a recommendation on the reserve accounts, and then that would come together with the budget based on what council direction would be to execute the policy on reserves to determine whether it's 50% or it's hold.

Exactly.

And then that's kind of the last piece to make the budget makes sense based on what the council would recommend that we modify the policy, or we see the picture looks good enough to keep going to 100% for the reserves.

Thank you, Rafaela, for the uh information.

On one of the first slides, the item that jumped uh out at me was the uh figure for overtime at a million dollars.

Um I'm curious if there is some analysis, periodic analysis, if there is at all, uh if not if it would be helpful, and and if conversations are happening around the positions that are being frozen, right?

And the savings, the salary savings related to that in comparison to the amount of overtime that we're seeing, like are we really saving by freezing those positions if we're seeing a figure of a million dollars in overtime?

I think that for the positions where the overtime is really significant, those are positions that are not frozen or not on the uh unfunded.

So we did not um we did not touch any of the sworn positions, sworn police officers, sworn firefires, and also the engineers.

So we didn't touch those, those are still fully funded.

So an overtime increase of a million dollars is not coming from other departments, um, so thank you for providing um this slide.

And I'm hoping that maybe we could go over it a little bit more because I think particularly for the council.

We're when we're communicating with the public in regards to where did this come from.

Um, I think it's helpful for us to be able to digest and understand this a little bit better.

And so as I look at this, I'm trying to see kind of big picture, what's different than what we've done in the past and the projections in which we started the fiscal year to where now, not now, but in the fall, we came out with 10 million dollar, you know, budget structural budget deficit.

Um, so just to kind of look at this as an example, the salary increase.

We knew the salary increase was gonna happen.

We had already approved the MOUs.

So I don't understand how that led to a surprise.

So move to the next page.

Um again, go to the one where it says increase in FTEs and RPTs.

When I say that we actually when we signed those contracts and negotiated those contracts, it was with 450 at total FTEs.

So since then, we've added an additional 38 positions.

So we fund those 38 positions.

So that's a huge delta of positions, and therefore what we what we projected in 2024 to be this is the number, and this is the 4%, and what it looks like going down the line.

We didn't project or didn't account for 38 new positions on top of that.

So that's part of it.

Okay.

Does that make sense?

Yep.

And then do we have a dollar figure for that those 38 40, 30?

No, sir, because they didn't all come at one time.

Okay.

Go ahead.

Okay.

How many employees did we have before COVID hit?

It's fine if you don't there is a slide in the back pocket somewhere way down yonder.

It's got that graft for the last 10 years.

So it's not on the slide.

It's not under stuff.

Nope.

One moment.

Great.

Is that in the packet that we have here that was printed out for us?

It's not in the packet, no.

It's been in a different package, but I've got this was shown in uh October, but we can print it out and share it with you.

Okay.

So it's roughly where we're at.

We're back where we were.

Okay.

Um could we go back to this the difference between 2425 and 2526, please?

So the next one, and I'm just kind of going through this because I'm trying to understand.

So the next one is overtime.

So again, that was something that was before.

So what's changed in that category that's led to so that I can't tell you.

I what I can do, I don't have it now, but we run a uh every month we run an OT report so we know where the overtime is, what's departments are accumulating over time.

Um I can get that report for you, but I don't have that dollar amount.

So it's what it could be whatever is going on in particular departments where I'm it might be the the um the fires, the floods and whatever that is that will contribute to that.

But the the number that we're seeing on this slide um for overtime a million dollars, that's not saying there's been an increase in overtime a million dollars.

That's total um overtime that we're seeing.

That's this is just no, no, no, this is just the increase from 2025 to 2026.

That's the increase.

Okay, okay.

Um, yeah, it might be helpful to kind of see overtime.

Okay, over the past few fiscal years just to kind of see what is there a trend there that's occurring and and in particular from what departments I can do that, and on the overtime.

The other question is some of its reimbursement if it's deployments for fire.

Yeah, what's coming out of our general funds for what and we have and I can when I when I show that I can give it to you and get that number to you the next time, and I can also net it against the revenues that I'm gonna do.

I think that means it to know the number.

Okay.

Um, and then re retirement costs.

Okay.

Um, I mean, some of this might be helpful to kind of just see some trends in regards to is this normal or is this is it what I'm trying to identify is where are the outliers that led to beginning of fiscal year no 10 million dollar deficit and then and then a few months later 10 million dollar budget and I don't need to go through all of these but I think it's helpful um and maybe we don't have exact numbers like so let me just say this the deficit each year is not new it getting to 10 million is new so that's when I'm ringing the bell but every year because we had say we had some salary statements so maybe this year and if we I went I pulled a report well not a report but I did went through all the um the five year forecast since I've been here since basically since 2021 and kind of looked at the different and how the numbers have changed and so for every every year um or every every time we did a budget it was always um getting into projected a deficit every year so but it was smaller it's small it's small it gets a little bit larger a little bit larger and then since we have the salary savings and we're not spending everything that we budget you know we don't we we still sleep at night but when they get to 10 million dollars I'm like I'm not sleeping anymore.

So I'm here it's like we have to start really looking at this and doing something about it.

So um I think I think what you just said is exactly the piece that I'm trying to figure out that's not clear to me.

Okay.

When we started the fiscal year we didn't have a 10 million dollar uh budget up and I don't have the numbers in front of me so whatever it was million two million whatever somewhere on there but then all of a sudden in I don't know when we started this discussion in November maybe it it came 10 million so I I'm just trying to and I don't know if I'm the only one but I'm just trying to understand like how this appeared all of a sudden and and if we can have something that breaks down specifically not based off of um maybe normal ups and downs of things but what has what has significantly changed that led us to 10 million is a big number and um and I I think the the why is important towards some of the solutions that we use towards addressing the deficit understood.

So I won't belabor the point but I think having a slide kind of spelling some of this out a little bit clearer will be helpful for the council and the public.

I know you said that the the that the amount can vary but when I'm looking at the simple math so we have the 10 point five million deficit for this year.

If you take away the 2.8 that we expect to get from the not the salary savings but the the vacant positions um which might go up but for now let's just say 2.8 so that brings us to 8.7 and then let's take the four three to four million that NCIP is considering which a little bit let me let me help you.

Yep yep so for 25 26 this fiscal year we balance that budget so when we balance this is just the things that we use to balance this budget we had um a commitment of four million to do um the loan for one of the um projects we also had um we took half of the um reserves which was for two years we took half so that's five million there and then four million year that's that's nine that takes that 10 down to nine and then we had some some other the 2.8 so we we might I don't know what you just that was some magic that was I'm good Tyler, I'm good.

That wasn't coming through osmosis.

So she's doing it off of the off of a decimal.

I can see it I I saw it.

She worked off the deficit.

I believe you actually.

So let's just go with it.

Okay.

So let's just say um we start with with 25 26.

We we did our one-time solutions, and therefore we don't have the 10 million for this.

So we knew there were going to be deficits moving forward next year for 26, 27, just preliminary numbers show there's 8.4.

And so we've been looking at 10 million has been more sorry.

Deficit.

So you have the frozen positions.

So when we take away the frozen positions, that's kind of where I was getting to.

So that that delta between 10.5 and 8.4 is the frozen positions.

How do we it's the 20 positions you identified, isn't it?

Um, yes, the yeah, this one takes those positions out, the they actually freeze them for that eight.

Um, for that eight, it actually freezes those positions and completely that takes them out.

These are the assumptions.

We're not expecting these assumptions to stay true.

This is part of this is just preliminary.

Um we're looking at moving forward and how do we how do we reduce that deficit moving forward?

And again, this is just straight operations.

This is just straight revenue coming in, straight expenses and transfers in and out.

What does that look like from a year to year?

This does not take into any in into consideration any savings from the prior year.

Now we will have savings from the prior year, but it does not, it just this is just bare bones.

It's like, so if we um let's just say if this was zero all the way across, then that means that whatever savings that we had that the previous year really is savings, it's not used to fund next year.

So right that's what we've been doing, taking them whatever we had savings from last year, using it to close the gap and fund next year.

So that's what we've been doing, and having those positions that we're not filling or can't fill, we fund them anyway.

So they're part of that number for expenditures because so if that number is there, let's just say um you've got 7 million, if you got 10 million dollars worth of positions that are included in this expenditures, which drives your deficit because we have to fund them until we do tell us not to.

Um I'm gonna jump off of this uh because I we could go into the weeds and and maybe we can have a deeper conversation offline.

I I had one more question um in regards to the five-year forecast for 2526 and through 3031.

Um does the deficit um that we see in a prior year, does that carry over into the following year or not on this chart?

Okay, so we're assuming that that's just purely.

This is one year, one year, one year.

That's it.

Okay, that's it for me.

Thank you for you sure, Tyler.

Can you have something?

For now, yes, please.

I want to highlight something that you well, we all we all kind of got there.

I think at this moment on the topic of funded and unfilled positions, whether it's 62 and we also had an increase of 38 since post-COVID.

To me, that's the lion's share of our problem.

We should get to a point where we don't have so many positions that we're funding that we're not filling.

We need to true up the actual size of the organization.

This is this is laborist for staff, it's laborers for finance, and it's not really an accurate way to reflect what your organization is uh is capable of in its delivery of services execution for 365 days.

To me, that's that's the heart of the matter is to get to the recommended number that we truly know what we're funding each year, so we're not playing the kabuki game where we save five or six million and we save ourselves July 1 with salary savings every year.

I think at some point we need to get there that that number of full-time employees is everything about the budget because it impacts your workers' comp, your benefits, and our future salary negotiations, and our capacity to be treating our employees fairly in their compensation.

We have to have the true number of our full-time staff.

And then of course the part-time staff too.

I agree.

I think that that really is something we have to get back to.

This is something that uh Hans has talked to me about ever since I've been with the city, and it's like every year we see the projected numbers, and it never ends up being what the projection was.

We end up with a surplus, and it's like what how did we get this far removed from what we projected?

And so, how do we fine-tune this a little bit?

And I think you're hitting the nail on the head in regards to the positions.

I think the one thing that we have to be careful of is I my assumption is a lot of the positions that we're freezing right now probably shouldn't be frozen long term.

So, how do we right size that in a way to make sure that we're fully operational so that we're not unduly impacting the rest of our workforce in that duty?

And that's the city manager's assignment that they have to align the work plan with the capacity of the personnel we have to identify the places that are essential that have to be filled, the critical positions that must be filled, and those that we have to say, we're not going to fill that positions because we haven't filled it in four years.

So we've got to ask ourselves, well, we haven't filled it for four years.

What have we not been able to deliver?

Yeah.

That position needs to be identified.

And part of that conversation is is on the table that we're gonna have with all the department heads as well, so that everyone has an opportunity to weigh in on their operations for their departments and take a realistic look at those positions that are vacant.

I'm not talking about anything this field, but the positions that are vacant where um services are not being touched because it's you're already doing a certain level of services at that point.

So, and they're in a position to do that.

I'm I'm gonna pass it to Dr.

Barber, and then we're gonna move on with the presentation so we can get through this.

Uh one quick question.

Thank you for the presentation.

Um, uh not to belabor it, but as you go back and um pull out for next time some of the uh like uh meat from the difference between um FY2425 and FY2526.

I'd like to lean in a little bit more to the 2.7 million and the services and supplies to see is that something that's um being kind of tracked and seeing the difference and seeing that there's the outlier there or what what's going on there with 2.0 million um with uh services and supplies increase.

I'm just curious about that part.

I will just for next time.

I know you're gonna be pulling out some other pieces like the overtime, but if you could pull out that piece too, I I greatly appreciate it.

Okay.

Can I just say in regards to that, that the 2.7 from one year to the next when it's citywide is not that significant when you're looking at a 200 million dollar budget.

It's not and the reason I say that is because most of the departments are running really lean.

Like this past year, we dropped, you know, made everybody kind of give us 7% of their budget.

And the year before, we kind of scrolled through everything, every line by line for every department, every division, and looked at the trends between one year and another.

It's like if you had $50,000 budgeted last year on this line, and you only spent $20 and you asked for $50 again, and we looked back like three or four years, and that was the trend.

We reduced that.

So we've been scrubbing for the last few years, Dad, but I will definitely get you that information.

I appreciate that um contact of understanding that that's probably that you guys have been doing, but I guess that's even more reason why I want to know how do we get to 2.7 million increase from 24 25 and 20 to 2526.

Okay.

All right, thank you.

All right.

Please continue, staff.

Thanks for indulging the council there.

Thank you, Rafela.

And uh the next part of the presentation will focus on the deficit reduction strategies and in particular the items that are more urgent for council to discuss and decide uh tonight.

And uh, those are the items for the June 2026 ballot, uh, council discussed this last week, and uh we're continuing that uh today.

Just as a recap, and we won't go through each of these items, but uh we started to present to all of you the index card exercise list of 24 deficit reduction strategies starting in August of last year.

And council made some decisions about reappropriating NCIP dollars, uh looking into first responder fee, other types of direct revenue generating strategies, some that are ongoing, some that are one-time.

But what we'd like to focus on today and tonight is on the card 13, the additional sales tax, 14, the admissions tax, 15.

Uh, we we talked a little bit about last uh week, uh, the vacancy tax, 16, the parking tax, as uh as core core items.

And uh what we've done is we've put together a table here, and I'll I'll uh we'll go through this in a little bit more detail that highlights the sales tax, parking tax, admissions, vacant home tax, renewing measure P and S and measure G.

The revenue options, revenue options A, B, and uh C are the ones council could potentially discuss for uh the June ballot, uh vacant homes, renewing measure P and S as well as measure G.

Also not listed here, a potential uh ballot measure to have a public safety facility bond measure that uh those items we can discuss as we look into the November 2026 and beyond uh ballot measure uh time frames.

Um we want to do just really quickly and just very very briefly.

I know there are some questions about parking tax.

So before we go into depth here, uh some questions from last week on parking tax about how do we uh what are what are some of the options and what are other cities nearby or in California that have a parking tax.

So we wanted to make sure we shared this with you.

When you look at comparator agencies in the Bay Area, South San Francisco is the lowest at 8%.

Berkeley, Santa Cruz, each at 10%.

Oakland at 20%, San Francisco at 25%, Santa Monica aid at 18%.

Uh parking tax is not a tax that is widespread throughout California, but is targeted towards uh tourist areas and high visitor areas, and uh that's what we have before you here.

We have an estimate uh here in this table that shows the various tax rates as council discussed the uh the feedback from the public on polling shows that there isn't an appetite to go beyond 10%.

And I don't think there's an appetite with this council to move forward beyond 10% with an estimate of 60% occupancy based on the number of private parking lots to a range of 85% occupancy.

You can see where the revenue would land based on the various tax rates.

What staff would recommend if council is interested in moving forward with the parking tax is an 8% rate.

That would be in line with the lowest end of the parking tax rates in those comparator cities and bring in anywhere between 447,000 dollars to 633,000 dollars per year.

We wanted this to bring this forward and share this with you based on questions from last week on Tuesday.

Again, this gives us a review of the tax measures.

Uh, and we're gonna leave this slide up uh for all of you uh to see.

Again, options A, uh B, C, DE, and F.

Uh we heard loud and clear from council wanting to move forward with the 0.375 cent sales tax with a nine-year sunset for this June.

And uh still to be decided is uh whether we're moving forward with the parking tax in June, uh potentially admissions tax and uh and then the other three uh tax measures that we're we're planning on discussing as well.

So council is aware of the timeline.

Uh we we do need to move fairly quickly, which is why this is on tonight's agenda.

The ballot measure timeline is that uh we are looking for your direction to return with the fiscal emergency declaration on any of the proposed measures so that we can place that on the June 2nd, 2026 ballot.

What we would do as early as next week, February 6th, is send the draft sales tax measure to the California Department of Tax and Fee Administration for review and approval.

This is the the state agency that regulates sales tax CDTFA.

At the February 17th meeting, so two weeks from Tuesday, we would ask council to adopt a resolution by unanimous vote of the council to declare a fiscal emergency.

And this is required for us to put the sales tax measure on the June ballot.

And then uh hopefully on February 17th as well, we would adopt a resolution calling an election to ask voters to approve the sales tax measure request that the county consolidate with the established election that is scheduled for June 2nd.

The last absolute last meeting, uh this resolution would come before council would be on March 3rd, but we do uh we are hoping for February 17th in case there are some changes.

March 3rd is cutting it fairly close.

There are some other steps as part of this process, March 7th through the 12th is the period to file the primary ballot arguments in 300 words or less, and then there's of course a maximum of five authors per argument.

March 12th, last day for city attorney to file impartial analysis of the ballot measure showing the effect of the measure on existing law and operation of the law in 500 words or less, and then March 19th, the last day for rebuttal arguments.

Uh, thank you, Chrissy, for putting this ballot measure timeline together for us tonight.

Uh, we again we are looking for council direction on again sales tax, which we received feedback on last week, parking tax, admissions tax, and others open uh to the floor for discussion.

If you have questions, uh we're here to answer any that you might have.

Okay, so we're a little tight on time.

We're we're actually already 40 uh minutes over.

So um let's be diligent here in our uh questions and comments.

Let's leave this part reserved for specifically for questions.

So are there any questions at this point?

Question on the slide for the parking tax.

If you could go back to that, you had a percentage table.

What is the tax rate have to do with this?

You've got two percentages for South San Francisco, it's eight percent.

What's the tax rate of five percent means?

We we only uh we're providing you with a range.

Uh, these are just separate.

So the tax rates uh are if if we were here at the city of Monterey to implement if we adopt it.

If we adopt, I'm sorry, that's to clarify.

Yes, this is these are uh got it.

You got it.

Got it.

Any other questions?

All right, let's open it up for public comment for folks on Zoom.

You can use the raise hand function.

Thank you, Nat for the presentation.

Um, and then for anybody in the chamber, anybody in the chamber, we should speak on this item.

All right, not seeing any takers in the chamber.

So I will uh do a countdown for folks on Zoom to five, four, three, two, one.

And what?

There's nobody on Zoom.

All right, we'll bring it back to the council.

Um, let's try.

Let's go through the order.

Yeah.

Um let's start with the parking, since that we we were just talking about that, and I think that's probably the one that needs the most discussion.

Um, staff is proposing eight percent.

Just doing a quick check-in with the council.

Is the council okay with moving forward with that?

Let's go back to the chart.

That would be helpful.

I rather wonder why we don't go to 10.

Go to nine, split the baby.

The reason why I say nine is because it gets us to at least the 500,000.

So, and maybe it doesn't have that two-digit thing that is a sticker shock to some folks.

I could do nine.

Can I interrupt?

You can absolutely.

Absolutely.

Um, and you're not interrupting, you are you're engaging.

Well, let me engage.

Um, I'm I'm a little confused.

Um, we're talking numbers already of oh, what percentage and what percentage?

When the report came back with 44% yes, 44% no, and the rest of all we need is 50% plus one.

So it it looks like it would be unsuccessful.

So that seems like a lot of time and effort and money that's spent on something that looks like the actual ballot would be unsuccessful.

So I'm confused why that's not the conversation as opposed to what percentage are we going to.

I'll speak for myself.

Um, I mean, I'm gonna be running for re-election this year, and when I'm going out talking to voters, I'm gonna tell them why I think it's a compelling story to support the measure, and having those conversations has an impact on regards to how people feel about it.

So this was polling.

You know, it's a it's a um a shot of a measure in time.

Um, there is the um uh margin of error, and so it's possible that this can pass.

It's possible that it's not, even if it was above 50 percent, there's a it's a possibility that it doesn't pass.

Yeah, so we see that happen, and I think that the opportunity that it creates for the city to generate that additional revenue year over year is worth risking the potential loss.

Um so anyway, that's that's my thoughts.

I don't know.

Yeah, and I concur with the thoughts, and I know the 44% sounds uh scary low, but that's before an education, that's before articles, before a ballot argument for and against, and it's something that a lot of cities do when people travel, it's kind of normal.

Santa Cruz has it at 10%.

Why we're we're as big if not bigger than Santa Cruz and draw more people with more parking.

So I I think that um these are projections that I think are low on 60% lot full if we were at eight or nine percent, because just think of the impact days that we have in the summer where we see standing bumper to bumper cars down foam, down cannery road, trying to get into parking lots.

So I think it's a lost opportunity not to it.

And the other thing is if we did have a ballot and it say it garnered 49%, we might come back and do it a second time.

Measure X through uh Tamsy took five times to pass.

And each time it got better and better and better.

But if this failed, I think the second time we'll have beyond there would be we'd have a barometer, we'd have education, and we would have uh prevailing tax.

So I think it's worth taking the chance at a low polling number because of the margin of error pre-education.

Okay, and I appreciate my colleagues um being able to help me to understand that part because I wanted to have that conversation first.

But for me, if that's the case, because this was something I wasn't for anyway, so just uh be transparent.

Um, but if that's the case, um I would look more at a eight, what the staff has recommended more so than 10 and 12, and you know, that's just not where I'm coming from.

Okay, and I would be comfortable with staff recommendation.

Okay, could we call it eight?

Are we good with that?

Okay.

So I'm gonna try to make a motion here to try to get us to move forward.

Um I'm I'm gonna offer suggestion.

I know that we talked about at the last council meeting the consideration uh to have staff look at um admissions tax.

It was the point three seven five, it was basically a b and c.

Oh, can you go back to that slide, please?

Are we gonna take a motion on each one of these separate?

I'm I'm just gonna try a motion and let's see how this works.

Um, so so what we did at the last council meeting just to refresh people's memory or or make them aware, we basically the council basically gave staff direction to um look at moving forward with A, B, and C.

So the 0.375% sales tax, the parking tax, and the emissions tax.

Um, I I have some concerns um with moving forward with the emissions tax at this time, and I think it's gonna be helpful for us to continue that discussion.

So I would hold off on that at this time, and I would propose that we move forward with the 0.375 sales tax for nine years and the parking tax at 8%.

So that's my motion.

Second, all right.

So it's been moved and seconded.

Any other discussion on the motion?

And the parking tax would be forever.

That's correct.

There's there's no sunset on the parking tax as it as currently proposed.

Okay, yeah.

Right.

And I I think the limit should be two anyway.

Oh, on the ballot, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

No, that's another, that's another reason, absolutely.

Okay.

Any other discussion on the motion?

No.

All right, all those in favor?

Aye, any opposed?

All right, motion passes unanimously.

Yes, council is there any other language that's necessary to initiate.

Is that is that all you need?

Okay.

Um, so I know we wanna staff's got direction because of our our polling before, but on the admissions tax, I think you you said it.

I think we should still keep it alive.

Let's continue to study it, just not for uh June.

But we'd be looking at a November possibility.

Absolutely.

Thanks for helping to reaffirm that.

Um, with that, we'll go ahead and adjourn.

Thank you, everybody.

Have a good evening.

Anticlimatic.