Budget and Audit Committee Meeting Summary, November 1, 2016
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Budget and Audit Committee Meeting Summary, November 1, 2016
The Budget and Audit Committee of the Sacramento City Council met on Tuesday, November 1, 2016, at 2:00 PM in the City Hall Council Chamber. Members present: Mayor Kevin Johnson (Chair), Vice-Chair Rick Jennings, and Member Jay Schenirer. Member Allen Warren was absent. The meeting adjourned at 2:37 PM.
Consent Calendar
- Item 1 – Approval of Minutes: Approved the minutes from the October 4, 2016, Budget and Audit Committee meeting. Motion passed unanimously (3-0).
Discussion Items
- Item 2 – Diverse and Inclusive City Workforce (Oral Report): Assistant City Manager Howard Chan presented an update on the city's diversity efforts following an audit by the City Auditor. Key actions included hiring a Diversity and Equity Manager (target hire date January 2017) and an Organizational Development Manager (Latoya Jackson, already hired). The committee received and filed the report. Vice-Chair Jennings requested that future quarterly reports be provided in advance and that a detailed action plan with timelines be shared. Mayor Johnson asked staff to meet with African American city employees.
- Item 3 – Proposed Fees for Tree Permits, Appeals, and Tree Replacement In-Lieu Fees: Staff proposed a $50 fee for non-development tree permits and a $2,000 flat fee for development-related permits. Member Schenirer moved to forward the item to the City Council with direction to review whether the development fee should be tiered based on project size and complexity. The motion was seconded by Vice-Chair Jennings and passed unanimously.
- Item 4 – City Auditor’s Audit of the City’s Risk Management Division: City Auditor Jorge Oseguera presented audit findings covering Proposition 218 compliance issues, fund underfunding, and program improvements. Nine recommendations were made for the first finding, one for funding levels, and seven for program improvements. The committee voted unanimously to accept the audit and forward it to the City Council for final approval.
Public Comments & Testimony
- Carolyn Cabias and George Raya, representing several Latino organizations (including GI Forum, United Latinos, and LULAC), expressed concern that the new Human Resources Director had not contacted their groups since they testified at the August 2 City Council meeting. They requested inclusion in stakeholder engagement for the diversity initiative and offered to provide a list of contacts. Vice-Chair Jennings suggested they share the contact spreadsheet with the committee.
Key Outcomes
- Approved consent calendar minutes (3-0).
- Received and filed the diverse workforce oral report.
- Forwarded tree permit fee resolutions to City Council with direction to examine tiered development fees (3-0).
- Accepted the Risk Management audit and forwarded to City Council (3-0).
- Staff agreed to reach out to Latino organizations as part of diversity outreach.
Meeting Transcript
Start with the role. We'll start with Member Warren. And Mayor Johnson. We do have a quorum. What was that? So we have a quorum, so we are good. All right. All right. So our first um item then is the consent calendar, one item for the uh minutes from the last meeting. All in favor, signify by aye. No motion passes. Thank you. Okay, we're to our discussion calendar. Item number two, it's the diverse and inclusive city workforce report. Good afternoon. I'm glad to be back here. We have some um updates to actually talk to you guys about today, and then we'll have some additional updates with the next quarterly update when we come back in about three months. So back um over the summer, there were um the the city auditor's office did an audit on the um diversity within the city of Sacramento, and there were four key audit findings. Um, one was the employment gaps for minorities and women, the second was lack of diversity in management, a lack of diversity in public safety and pay equity issues. We came forward to council um with a report later in the summer, a couple months ago, and in that report, council had a few actions that they decided that we needed to move forward with. One was to hire the diversity and equity manager, create a diversity inclusion plan, hire an organizational development manager, and then also use the budget and audit committee as a resource as we move forward through this process. The key is to really be a model city within um California or within the United States, and basically to be a model city, we want to reflect the city's population. Diversity and equity and promotional opportunities should occur. We should have education and management to deal with just any unconscious bias that they may have, or just um get them trained to a level of being the um highest trained managers and supervisors. Public safety diversity is a huge priority both in police and fire, and procedural and cultural changes need to happen within the city, and then we also need to make sure that we have community involvement. The first um action by the council was to hire diversity and equity manager. What we're doing right now is we're working on the flyer because we want to have a nice um color brochure to send out to the community because we want to pull people in from the community or somebody who has experience in this type of um management. We expect the hire date to be January 2017. So you guys should be receiving in the next few weeks drafts of the flyer. Howard's been working with a lot of um with the community groups and with some city employees in order to get input on what we were looking for in this position that we're incorporating into the flyer, then that flyer will go back to those groups and to the budget and audit committee for review before we put it out so that we can um make sure we're incorporating everything in that flyer that everybody's looking for. So it's gonna be a hot lot of employee and stakeholder involvement as we move forward through that process. The diversity and equity managers first task is going to be work to work on the diversity inclusion plan. We have a projected completion date of June of 2017. The key focus areas we'll be working on are staffing, contracting and procurement, boards and commissions, and any other city function that we want to increase diversity. The other action was to hire an organizational development manager, which we actually have hired. She's will be beginning in the next couple of weeks. Um it's a promotion with from a current HR employee. Her name is Latoya Jackson. She'll be at the next update so that you guys can meet her. She's been in labor relations since 2013, has a bachelor's and master's degree in communication, and she's also an adjunct professor at the community college level, teaching both public speaking and group communication. We're really excited to have her on board. She understands many of the issues that we're going through, and I think she's going to be a valued asset as we move forward through this process. The next would be to utilize a budget and audit committee. Like I said, we want to come back quarterly and give you updates, and our next update should actually have quite a few changes that we've made. We want to utilize the um we want you to monitor and then also kind of make sure that we're going in the right direction as we move forward through this process. And then if you guys have any questions, all right. Uh Vice Mayor. Um thank you for the report. Um I know this was an oral report, but as we move for these quarterly meetings that we're going to have, it would be good for me to have that report in advance. Okay.
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