Good morning, everyone.

Um, the Sacramento City Council's budget and audit committee will come to order.

Would the clerk please call the role to establish a quorum?

Thank you.

Mayor Pro Tem Talamantes, Councilmember Gera.

Here.

Council Member Vang and Mayor Steinberg.

I am here.

Good morning again to everybody.

We've got a pretty packed calendar, and so I think we'll get right to it.

We have the meeting minutes from the last meeting.

Very controversial.

I'll move it.

Second.

We didn't second any public testimony.

No public testimony.

All in favor, please say aye.

Aye, oppose abstain.

Very good.

Let's now go to item two, which is the measure you community advisory committee recommendations regarding fiscal year 2425 budget priorities.

I see Chair Dickinson here.

Welcome.

Thank you.

And Mayor and Council members, thank you all for the opportunity to present our recommendations on the 2425 City Budget from the Measure U Community Advisory Committee.

As the Measure U Community Advisory Committee began our development of recommendations for the 2425 budget year, we recognized the seriousness of the budget deficit that you face.

As we note in our letter, the city budgets is an expression of its values.

As you consider the difficult decisions you will be making, we urge you to put equity considerations at the forefront of your choices and to prioritize historically underserved communities.

Consistent with our duty to advise the council on priorities, to review performance measures, and to evaluate city expenditures, the committee offers the following recommendations.

First, align 2425 expenditures with community priorities to fund affordable housing and homelessness.

Second, allocate a mil 1 million dollars to fund a new round of participatory budgeting.

And third, direct the city manager to work with the Measure U Community Advisory Committee on providing metrics on the performance of Measure U funded programs.

I'll go into a bit more detail on each of those, and there's much detail in our letter.

With respect to funding for homelessness and affordable housing, please know that we recognize and appreciate that the city has significantly its increased its spending on homelessness in recent recent years.

However, it has become clear that the number of housed unhoused people in our community continues to increase, and that increasing expenditures on building affordable housing and other efforts to prevent homelessness are critical pieces to a comprehensive effort to solve this humanitarian crisis.

To this end, we urge the city council to make preventing as well as reducing homelessness the top priorities for the 24-25 budget.

In addition to the development of affordable housing, HUD has described a number of shorter term strategies that can be implemented in the interim to reduce the risk of people becoming homelessness, becoming homeless.

Regarding participatory budgeting, last year the committee reported on the progress and evaluation of the initial participatory budgeting budgeting pilot project.

We are pleased with the initial findings and results as well as the lessons learned with a pilot.

The independent evaluation of the pilot found that it met its initial goals of engaging residents, building the city's awareness of residents' priorities and concerns, and advancing equity.

Moreover, the evaluation included a recommendation that participatory budgeting be institutionalized within the city government.

We acknowledge that the positive results from the initial pilots are preliminary given that most of the grants are still underway.

The committee continues to monitor the funded projects and will update the city council on their results.

However, it is critical that the city not lose momentum or the institutional memory of committee members, city staff, and community members who worked on the project.

It is more important than ever for residents to be involved with decision making on how resources are invested, to build trust in their government, and for the city to have another way to gather information about residents' priorities and concerns.

For these reasons, we renew our request for one million dollars to fund another round of participatory budgeting.

Finally, one of the powers and duties of the Measure U Committee Community Advisory Committee is to review performance measures and evaluation of city expenditures.

Since its establishment, the committee has been seeking improved data transparency, tracking of measurable outcomes, outcomes impacts and program effectiveness, as well as district by district information on measure U spending.

We understand that providing such data may be challenging, and request that the city council directs the city manager and staff to work with the committee on identifying sources that will meet our needs and lead to better understanding of how well programs are actually functioning and what their human impact is.

On this topic, we were encouraged by presentations to our committee from the Department of Community Response Response as well as the community engagement team, which in fact included the kinds of outcome and impact data we have requesting.

In addition, we noted that several of the department presentations to the council from earlier this year also included key performance indicators that we had not seen previously.

Knowing that such data is in fact available is an important and essential first step in collecting and reporting it systematically to enable the committee to fill fulfill its obligation to review performance measure measures.

We look forward to working with the city manager and his team on this matter.

By way of action, we urge you to pass a motion to forward the Measure U community Measure U committees of FY 2024 budget priorities and recommendations to the full city council for consideration.

I do want to note that Vice Chair Mar Bay Asala is in the room as well as member Nikki Pascal, and I hope you will join me in thanking them for their efforts on this.

Again, thank you for the opportunity to provide these thoughts so early in the process.

Once we see the city manager's budget proposal in, as I understand late April, we will update these recommendations for your consideration for the council's adoption of the final budget.

Thank you so much, Sure Jickinson, and thank you to the happy to answer questions to the members who are I think we'll take public testimony and then we will uh open it up to the council for questions and our comments.

Okay.

Thank you, Mayor.

I have three speakers.