We will call to order the budget and audit committee meeting for where are we?

We are in February 20th.

Thank you.

We are welcome to all of you who have joined us.

Let's call the roll first to establish a quorum.

Council member Telemontes.

Councillor Maple.

Councillor Maipoulos.

Please rise for the opening acknowledgments and honour Sacramento's Indigenous people and tribal lands.

The southern might you.

The people of the Waltz and Rancheria.

May we acknowledge and honour the native people who came before us and still offer us today on these ancestral lands by choosing to gather today in the active practice of acknowledgement and appreciation for Sacramento's Indigenous people's history, contributions and lives.

Remain standing, salute and pledge.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

We have a light agenda today.

Nothing too significant going on.

I'm going to start with our consent calendar.

If you wish to address the committee on any item in our agenda, please be sure to fill out a speaker form and deliver that to the clerk down front.

We'll make sure to call on you on the appropriate item. I'm taking your job, aren't I?

You are.

It's an old habit.

Take it away. I do have one speaker for the consent calendar.

Mr. Lambert?

Okay.

We have Lambert come forward.

He's getting ready.

I'm going to have to go back to the public.

I'm going to have to go back to the public.

As always, you have two minutes for public comments.

Keep an eye on the clock so you know how your time is running.

Make sure you get everything said you want to get in.

Before your time runs out, good morning.

I've never had a time problem.

I'm going to say that I'm going to have a time problem.

I'm going to have to go back to the public.

But what I wanted to say is number eight.

It talks about budget update and proposed adjustments.

This is something that I'm proposing.

I've been proposing this for a while.

That's actually not on the consent calendar.

That's on the discussion calendar.

Yes.

Go ahead.

Number two, it talks about measure you sales tax performance.

I went to a lot of measure you meetings with Mayor Steinberg.

And it has changed.

And then I went to a lot of measure you committee meetings

where a wonderful person chaired it, Mars Dickerson.

She was outstanding on giving me clarity on what that was.

Measure you has been co-opted to me.

Based on all the meetings I went to,

when you formed and brought it together with the general fund,

I felt like that was a hidden agenda.

They should have been separate.

And our, according to Mayor Steinberg and Mars Dickerson,

measure you should have applied to a small business like us

to the Bay and Back Cheesecakes recently.

And I'll be contacting my city councilman about this.

We just went global.

And the young people in my life showed me global.

And I didn't understand it because I'm a baby boom.

I was trying to figure out what are they talking.

And then when they finally showed it to me, it's really incredible.

I'm saying this to you, chair, because it's not a big deal.

It's going to create jobs in different languages.

It's really an amazing accomplishment.

Just absolutely amazing.

Thank you, Lambert.

Well, I do think we can agree that the former chair of the Measure You Committee

and it is a terrific person.

There's no more speakers, chair.

All right.

Do we have any members who wish to comment on items on the...

I have a motion on the second calendar.

If there's no discussion on all those in favor signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Posts, say no.

And abstentions.

Hearing none, motion carries.

Thank you.

On to our discussion calendar.

You wanted to take the three of these together?

Yes, please.

Why don't we call them all?

789.

789.

All right.

Well, thank you.

Good morning, chair, council members, members of the public.

I'm Pete Coletto, the city's finance director.

You're also going to hear from Osvaldo Lopez, our accounting division manager

and Martha Lassantizo, our budget division manager.

Good morning.

And so in municipal finance, we always live in three years.

So I appreciate us being able to take these together.

We live in the prior year, the current year, and the budget year.

And so today we want to provide an update on our fiscal year 24 year end,

where we are, fiscal year 25 versus our budget, and then an update on our fiscal year 26 budget development process.

So I'm just going to give some kind of introductory remarks and then hand it over to Osvaldo.

I'm going to start with the good news.

And the good news is that we had very positive fiscal year 24 year end results.

And it's broken up into two components in the chart.

And that's because one is kind of our traditional savings, that 14.1.

Those are revenues above budget.

Those are expenses below budget.

But we also wanted to point out this $12.7 million, which, you know, we're saying is our investment market gain.

That's a very unique situation.

And what happened is we invest our treasury pool in very safe assets and safe bonds.

And, you know, about three years ago when the Fed really started aggressively raising interest rates,

that means the value of your bond portfolio goes down when you market to market.

But the great thing about bonds is you don't actually realize the loss unless you sell them.

So if you hold them to maturity, you get all the money back.

That's why municipalities invest in them because they're very safe.

So what happened is in the prior few year end closes, we had to take these unrealized losses.

So governmental accounting standards say, you know, hey, jurisdictions, you can't tell me you're not going to need to sell those bonds and get that cash.

You need to mark that down on your year end results.

But the treasurer's office has done a great job at cash flow management.

We didn't actually sell all of those bonds and take all of those losses.

And now they've matured and we've been able to invest them at market rate securities.

And so we're able to pay ourselves back for these losses we took in prior years.

And that's $12.7 million that gives us the total of $26.8 million of positive year end,

fiscal year 24 results.

I will just point out that $3.3 million of that was in our approved budget.

So we had forecast that we would end with $3.3 million.

So that's kind of baked into the cake, which means there's $23.5 million positive that's available.

And we'll go over that a little bit more later.

But I do want to hand it over to us, Waldo, to provide a little bit more detail on the annual comprehensive financial report.

Thank you. Good morning.

Good morning. My name is Osvaldo Lopez, Finance Manager, Department of Finance.

And today I'm pleased to share with you the year end results and the annual comprehensive financial report, also known as the Act for the fiscal year end of 24.

The Act for present the city's financial conditions and the results of activities for the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2024.

As required by the government of the County and Standard Board or GASB, the city implemented two new accounting financial reporting standards this year.

You can see additional information about these accounting standards on page two of the staff report.

The independent audit firm, Macias Ginia Nucono, have audit or financial statements, as required by the city's charter, and pleased to report that we had a clean audit and receive a modified opinion.

As indicated on pages two and three of the staff report, the combining budgetary result for the general fund, made sure you resulted in 20.26.8 million in a bill of fund balance.

And this is a one time resort that will be used to partially offset the projected fiscal year 2526 budget deficit.

Just to clarify for financial statement purpose, we do break down general fund and make sure you for transparency and we have an independent audit for mature you.

So anyone wants additional detail that's there.

The 26.8 million was mainly due to the things that he mentioned 6.5 million in major tax revenue over budget.

6.7.6 million in department positive results and the 12.7 million in the recovery of one realized for market laws and investments.

I'm also pleased to report that thanks to adopt the console policies, we continue to make progress on setting aside resources to address our identities.

For example, the balance in the cities, other post employment benefit draws as of June 30, 2024 was 84.8 million, which is equivalent to 28.6% of the estimated total other post employment benefit liability of 296.7 million.

The balance in the general fund made sure you economic uncertainty reserve increased from 74.3 million to 76.4 million during fiscal year 24.

I would like to take a moment to recognize the fiscal staff of all our cities department for the good work in closing the books this past year and helping the city to get another clean audit opinion.

In a special I want to say thank you to the staff in the county division for their hard work and long hours to finish that background time.

Finally, I would like to ask the committee to pass a motion forward in this report to or city console. Thank you.

And we're told it's next.

Thank you.

Good morning.

Good morning.

My name is Martha Lassantezo. I'm the budget manager. I'll briefly go over the fiscal year 25 approved budget and then discuss the proposed changes.

The fiscal year 25 approved budget is 1.6 billion in all funds and has about approximately 5,000 full time employees of that 1.6 million, 847 million of that is general fund measure you.

And the fiscal year 25 gap was 66 million, which was balanced without eliminating any filled positions.

Okay. So just to roughly summarize this table that you're seeing here, this is how we balance the fiscal year 25 budget.

We had approximately 55 million in city wide level one and level two reductions and approximately 15 million in revenue enhancements.

And there are also some other various adjustments approximately 63 vacant FTEs were deleted.

As you can see in this chart right here, the reductions were a mix of one time and ongoing reductions.

Approximately 45% of the reductions and revenue strategies were ongoing.

Okay. So on to the budget updates.

We have several adjustments to be made on the fiscal year 25 budget based on the first half performance of fiscal year 25 are general sales tax and measure you sales taxes projected to be below budget.

Overall, there's been a statewide decline in retail purchases, which is due to inflation and purchases shifting from taxable goods to non taxable services.

Specifically in Sacramento, the drop is seen in transportation construction and business to business.

Higher prices and interest rates are the drivers for the decrease.

The good news is property tax transfer tax utility user tax and canvas BOT is projected to be above budget.

The housing market has continued to stay strong, which is allowed for property tax and transfer tax to grow.

The increase in utility user tax or UUT is mostly due to increase in the electricity and gas rates.

However, that increases offset from people continuing to cut landline telephone and also cable.

And finally cannabis BOT over the last six months is coming in higher compared to last fiscal year.

We also have some department revenues which is projected to be higher, which is mostly due to a parking revenues.

And we have a few expenditure adjustments for Yipsey.

We have some current contracts that allow for them to have offsets to existing position costs.

This change will be an expenditure reduction.

There is one expense that we are adding due to the urgent nature of the project, the 911 Communications Center,

which is also serves as the city's emergency operation center, has two critical areas that are beyond their useful life,

A&R, the roof currently leaks when it rains and can no longer be patched.

And they have two power supply units that are that ensures continuous power during an outage that also requires replacement.

So either of these items fail, it would stop operations.

And this table just shows the actual dollar changes that are occurring.

Although there is a large decrease in sales tax for both Bradley Burns and measure you, the other citywide and department revenues make up the difference.

And then the other thing that I didn't mention is that due to the increase in the cannabis BOT, the children's fund is also increased by the 40% that's required.

So I have a few slides here to just kind of show just the trend of revenues.

Property tax continues to grow year-to-year. This is our strongest revenue source, as you can see.

And this is the sales tax projection that we are, I'm sorry, the history of sales tax.

As you can see, there was a huge increase from 20 to 22. And this was due to high inflation, as you can see it increases and then levels often decreases.

And again, this is due to purchase, this ship that purchasing taxable goods and non-taxable services.

I also want to mention that I know there was some inquiries earlier about wanting to get some more details about sales tax.

And do you have our consultant here to answer any questions later after this? So just wanted to mention that to the committee.

And then same thing for measure you, we are seeing the huge increases from fiscal year 20 to 22 before it starts leveling off and decreasing.

And finally for utility user tax, we are seeing we saw growth until 23 when it dropped off in 24 and then increased again in 25.

And for 24, the reason for that was just the decrease in electricity usage.

But again, like I mentioned before, the race is what's driving the increase in 25.

As with all revenue sources, we will continue to monitor them and update our forecast as necessary.

So with that, I'll pass it to Pete.

Thanks, Mark.

So after we update all of our revenues and our expenses, how are we looking for the coming year and the future years of our forecast?

So when we updated our forecast, we're assuming continued growth. We're not forecasting a recession.

We know recessions happen, but we can't predict when they will. We did incorporate the latest labor agreement approved by council.

And so here is another kind of important point that we'll go through in more detail.

We hadn't had our hapsicks allocation yet until really yesterday afternoon.

And so what we did is we took the three-year average to be conservative, the prior three-year average of our haps allocation that we could put towards homelessness services.

And that was $18.3 million.

Unfortunately, our hapsicks allocation came in much lower. It came in at $16.1 million total.

And typically, we're able to use 80% of that for homelessness services.

The other 20% gets used mainly for housing, but also for prevention.

And so overall, we're anticipating around a $5.4 million negative impact versus our forecast assumption.

And we'll show you kind of how that looks in a little bit.

And another important point is we do not include in our forecast the potential loss of federal funding.

I think everyone on the committee and everyone in the public has heard various executive orders, which may impact funding both directly to the city and also funding that the city gets via the state.

So we're closely monitoring that. There's a lot of litigation across the country regarding this funding. And we'll keep you updated as we learn more.

So with that $18.3 million half assumption that the higher half assumption, we had forecasted a budget gap to close for fiscal year 26 of $62.2 million.

This chart just shows the structural nature of our budget deficit. So we just have, it's not that our revenues are dropping. It's that our expenses are growing faster than our revenues.

One important thing to point out about this chart, however, is that fiscal year is 27, 28, and 29.

We do not have any assumption of state homelessness funds until the state appropriates those dollars, then we can put a placeholder in.

But right now it doesn't include that. And if we do get continued state homelessness funding, it would make those deficits lower and make things better.

So how are we going about balancing the budget? We talked a little bit about this at the last committee meeting. Really, we want to focus on defining what our core services are, minimizing impacts on our residents and minimizing impacts on our staff that provide services to our residents versus just saying, hey, we're going to cut everything across the board.

In order to get a menu of options for council to choose from, we had departments develop reduction plans if they had to cut 15%.

So what strategies would you use to get there? And then we're also evaluating citywide strategies. So these are things like unspent project balances because we finished with savings or we haven't started the project yet. And those will be available as well.

And on the right, you can see what departments 15% targets were.

So we're going to give all of the strategies. We will provide them to council. We will provide them to the public by the end of next week.

We're still finalizing some of them with the departments. We wanted to provide an initial financial roll-up of what those strategies look like.

Like last year, we classified the strategies based on their impact to services. So level one being the lowest impact and level four being a severe impact on services.

So so far, we've identified $88 million of strategies, departmental strategies. This excludes the citywide strategies. And you can see the staffing impacts there as well.

And again, these numbers, as we were finding them with the departments, they may change.

So here's our budget development calendar. I apologize to the committee members. Today is going to be a very long budget day. We're going to kick off your departmental presentations at two o'clock with the municipal service departments.

Really, this is to give council both a sense of what is the current level of service so that there's context for reduction options and for departments to tell you some of the things that they're thinking about reducing.

And again, we're going to have that full list for you by the end of next week.

As far as pending factors, the big one on our mind right now is our risks to federal funds. We receive funding for all sorts of projects. Again, both direct and via the state across many different departments.

Along with this is we are also, we also have a lot of federal jobs in our region and we have a lot of state jobs that are supported by federal funding.

So we're also concerned about the potential economic impact of federal layoffs and federal funding cuts to the state.

We've reviewed before our unfunded pension obligations and capital needs those continued away on our long term fiscal stability.

And again, the future of the state's HAP program or a replacement homelessness funding source for localities.

And again, there's always the risk of recession. We don't, we know we have business cycles. A recession would make our problems a lot harder to deal with.

So our recommendations, we're going to recommend forwarding to council approval of the actor, the annual comprehensive financial report which Osvaldo described.

The budget revenue and expense adjustments that Mr Thala outlined. Excuse me and that balance of 23 and a half million of prior year savings that's available to balance the fiscal year 26 budget.

And you can see what that looks like along with our HAP, our negative HAP allocation and actual allocation versus our projection.

So that would leave us with $44.1 million of budget gap to close via the strategies both departmental and citywide.

And that concludes our presentation. I appreciate the chairs taking all three items at once. I know it was long and a lot, but we are available to answer any questions.

That's great. Thanks. Don't leave for a month. Pete, don't leave. Before we get to public comment, council members have any questions or comments you want to make.

I do, Pete, I do have a question. And it relates to the HAP allocation. Help me understand is the HAP allocation from the state's 24 25 budget or is it proposed from the 25 26 state budget?

It is from the current year state budget. So we get it a year in a year.

Okay. And that's what I assume was the case. But one option could be to work with our legislative delegation to try to understand.

I mean, the precarious situation for the state budget as well, although they are projecting a surplus at this point, not a deficit.

At least the last thing I saw. One possibility would be to work with our legislative delegation and with our sister and brother agencies around the state locally to try to plus that up in the current year.

I mean, that would be very welcome from our side. And one thing I just, I forgot to mention, you know, there were some questions yesterday about what was the methodology the state used?

They used the point in time count. And so we were a little bit disappointed that, you know, we were somewhat penalized for success for bringing our relative point in time count down.

That hurt us in the allocation methodology. But certainly chair, you know, we can reach out to our state delegation and any additional funding that we can get would be would be very helpful.

And that was actually that was the other question I had, which really should have been the first question as opposed to the one I asked, which is what opportunity is there if any to discuss adjustments to this?

Obviously the state budget has a total amount and then the administration disperses that by whatever method it chooses. I suppose unless it's guided by legislation.

But do you know to what extent there is an opportunity to discuss what's been released by the state?

You know, I can talk to our housing folks and see if there's any chance for a difference. We just found out yesterday afternoon. And so I don't know that they're going to necessarily look to adjust the methodology.

Okay.

If I may, I'm getting head signals from the back of the room that we don't believe there's a whole lot of opportunity to change it. And in fact, what came with this was a whole lot more strings than the dollars that came before. So we are still in the process of analyzing.

Do we even have access to the 14 million, which was 80% of the 16? Or is it something different based on how they have put this funding availability out? So it really was a curve ball for everybody who was relying on some form of allocation.

And I'm thankful that we did something fairly conservative, but disappointed that it came out worse than we thought. But I don't believe that there is an opportunity and peak crack me if I'm wrong or you're again that there is no funding in the governor's d'Anton proposed budget for local government homelessness at all.

So that means there is no half seven.

Well, it means it's an negotiate and that's what it means in reality. But it does seem to me that it's it's worth.

Especially given what you've just just said about additional conditions or strings.

So we have a discussion with our with our legislative delegation and beyond. Because I imagine this is of a concern to more than just us at the local government level around the state.

Thank you. Any other questions or comments at this point? If not, we'll go to speakers.

Thank you, Chair. I have two speakers. Mac Worthy on item seven and nine and Lambert on item eight. Mr. Worthy?

Good morning.

Morning.

I heard a break into my beauty rest due today. But mainly people, the city councilman go to that neighborhood and discussing in this.

Any city council discussed that anything about what's on the agenda to that constituents.

See people, these are the things that you're making mistakes on. You should talk to them what's going on. Just like you show things or a projection of this and that.

But state grants are those grants going to be paid back tell the people the truth about it. Now when we look at property tax, somebody going to suffer.

Nobody's property in the state of California go up one percent per year. Go downtown and ask for equity alone in the bank or show you that you can't.

This is the time to utilize the equity in your property. But we look at different things that nonprofit organizations.

Nothing is said about how many people that your city council have in that neighborhood. A neighborhood association that they're paying. Now, our rest told me his 3000 in the city of Sacramento.

Now, we don't see it no report on how much that going out. How is that money going out and what they do for the neighborhood.

And then we go to the physical budget. We should see something with your projection of what is what and what going to be.

We know the government going to cut in this short cut. We don't need to lie here. I can do just what you lie doing.

Question the fact of where is the money going. We need an outside audit to come in here and take a look at what you're spending in this city.

And high spend. Because somebody is still there's a money here.

And it no make sense. But I know you against things like that because you can't go against Eli because you can't go against Silicon Valley.

That was. Money that you never gave an account for whose money were that tell the truth people.

Thank you. Your comments Lambert on item eight.

Yeah.

You.

First of all, I would like because it says budget adjustment. I would hope a wonderful person that I always acknowledge in the audience when I see her is because she's helped grant high schools drum.

And her name is Megan of creative arts. That group should not be penalized no matter what kind of budgets you have because the grand drum line is going to Ireland this year.

And I just found that out recently. So shout out to her because she was tremendously helpful in getting them to go where they go.

Now, as a business owner, when I listen to a report like this, there's some mismanagement going on here.

There's tremendous when this federal audit comes in here, it's going to expose it. For instance, I saw it said 5,000 employees have already been approved for their pension.

And get up, go take your children to school, gas. All of that has been eliminated because of remote working. And to me, I think a lot of people should be cut loose.

There's tremendous waste of money. I have a business we've never had a deficit. My family would change me as the CEO. That's how you doing.

And the city manager's office has so much waste there that they even have Howard Chan as an assistant to Laney Milstein.

Thank you for your comments. Chair, I have no more speakers.

All right, back to the thank you for your comments. Back to the committee questions, comments. Mr. Gara.

Thank you very much, Chair. Appreciate that. Appreciate staff's information.

Let me first start off. I want to on the hap allocation here. I want to thank also Yiann for her information.

And of course, obviously, this is one of those where we are being penalized by for the success of actually moving folks off the street and into sustainable housing here.

But what I would ask on this is some direction to our long-ledged committee. And we're fortunate to have our long-ledged chair here to work with our delegation partners.

The cost of the program isn't going to change based on the reduction of our numbers. Our numbers are still out there. So the purpose of the hap money is to cover the cost of those operations.

And so I think we need to lay the case for making sure that if the numbers come down, that at least they constant. And that will give us at least the predictability of out years, what our numbers could be.

The fortunate thing is that staff did take a three-year average knowing that the numbers could go up and down. But I think every city would benefit by knowing, hey, if we do do better and our numbers do go down, we can at least make a realistic assumption of what the cost will be.

So that's the number one piece there. That's more of a direction to our law and ledge committee to see if we can have that be part of our advocacy services that we have on contract for.

The second piece here goes to the issue of business to business transactions and our 1% numbers. And so maybe if our tax folks are available to talk here, my concern that I have is that.

If we if we do nothing, we will continue to see as we saw the cost of our insurance and the cost of just inflation continue to rise.

And from what I understand, we have on the short term and on the long term a reduction in sales tax numbers systemically. And for different reasons, but the concern more is on the long term amount of sales tax revenue that is continuing to decline.

And so one on the Bradley and Burns, but the second on the business to business transaction. So if maybe if I could ask the tax consultant to break down a little bit more on where we see that business to business transaction reduction.

And my understanding is some of that has to do with interest rates, but other that effect that's affecting the construction industry, but can you maybe drill down on where we see the reduction in the business to business transaction that's reducing our sales tax numbers from coming in.

Sure, in the if we're looking back a few years, we did see a bit of a spike during the 2022 year calendar year due to higher prices. So sales tax is a little funny because there's both a push and a pull from higher prices people might spend a little less, but in the short term sometimes you'll see actually a spike from that.

So in terms of business to business, we did see a spike during that that time period for things like energy sales for gasoline sales.

We also saw another transportation elements like use car sales in that sort of thing. Looking forward if we're looking at sort of our overall model, we've had a lot of changes over four years since the pandemic started.

We had sort of an old normal, we haven't quite gotten to our new normal yet. In terms of overall sort of consumption habits, people have changed their consumption, I think it's staff had mentioned.

The overall economy has sort of transitioned from a good space economy to a service-based economy, we're transitioning now to a bit of a digital economy. Services and digital aren't taxed.

So we're having a little bit of an erosion overall statewide in our sales tax base just based upon what people are spending their money on.

There does seem to be some pin-up demand right now, so there are estimates. We've been a little bit behind the curve just because there's sort of, you might look at it almost like a pseudo recession going on right now in the sales tax world.

That's not going to last forever, we will sort of turn the corner out of that, but also just things that had been providing those growth factors in the past may have been things like population increases and those sort of things.

We, California-wide anyways, we're not, you know, those sort of numbers just aren't looking at kind of a five-ten-year sort of time horizon just weren't the same, aren't the same as they were, say, five or ten years ago before the pandemic happened.

So they're kind of a confluence of things going on, but from the business to business side, you know, it's like other parts of the economy we're trying to be a little bit more conservative just reflecting where people are spending their money.

And do you see a, where the next three-year trend line is coming on the, at least on the business to business transactions side?

Is there, is there an opportunity for us to realistically see what is that new normal trend line?

Because if you looked at like 2018 to 2020, there was a big spike some of it had to do with the new measures that we passed, but still that had a lot to do with the activity that was happening in the city.

So what is our better assumption of what that trend line will be?

So I think it's in our current forecast is we're trying to, you know, bring down those growth assumptions that we, you know, is recently, say, as a year or two ago, we thought the new normal would be returning and just seeing the most recent data, seeing, you know, what's happening in the overall economy.

Some things like interest rates remaining sort of higher for longer, you know, overall sort of consumer sentiment may be softer for longer.

We're incorporating those into our forecast.

So the staff had mentioned there's still a lot of uncertainties at the federal level, what's going to happen with tariffs, what's going to happen with taxes, what's going to happen with immigration enforcement.

So those things affect things like inflation, they affect, affect things like interest rates or the ability to change interest rates by the Federal Reserve and others.

So still, some unknowns, but, but I think as I had mentioned, I think we're trying to keep on a little bit more conservative trajectory for the moment until we kind of see where things are headed.

Okay, well, thank you. And then because of the federal government, obviously, then we should make assumptions then that those are going to consistently affect consumer, the consumer's ability, our people's ability to engage in those taxable goods.

That's right.

I have real quick, Mertala just put back up the sales tax slides and we're focusing on the 1% Bradley Burns.

And so what you see is an unfortunate, continued decline.

And that decline reflects sort of that shift to a more service related economy and the loss of one of, you know, you talk about a perverse incentive as we hasten into the electric vehicle.

World, we are losing gas tax at an alarming rate. What's the statistic by 2030 something will have a 50% loss of all of our gas tax revenues.

So that's something that, you know, we as a universal California need to pay attention to because it will hit local government very hard.

And so we will we will continue to watch that very closely in coordination with Tom.

Great. Thank you. And I wanted to make sure that we also we call that out that at these actions at the federal level are affecting our everyday residents ability to make ends meet here.

The last question and it's more of maybe for the general public here, but on the Bradley Burns side.

I mean, there I think folks got used to an amazing rate during the pandemic doing Amazon purchases, but that affected our collection of sales tax as well.

And what used to come to Sacramento no longer comes to Sacramento. And so hence that 27 that you know 27 17 or 2022 curve begins to reduce dramatically.

Can you maybe talk a little bit about that and I think that's an important aspect for the public to understand if you're going to buy try to buy locally, you know, versus buying from Amazon and why they fix Sacramento in general.

So it's a good good good topic. It's the state implemented what was called the wafer agreement back in Q4 of 2019. This was the first instance.

This was based upon a Supreme court case that allowed the state to collect out of state use tax from businesses like Amazon.

So we had kind of a net new increase in sales tax for the first time in many years based upon that decision.

As you know that the pandemic was right on the heels of that sort of the next quarter of the pandemic started.

So it backfilled a little bit of some of those declines from spending at brick and mortar as people were spending.

Fast forward about a year in Amazon changed its operations about 100% of Amazon's sales tax prior to 2021.

Went through the county pools which the city receives that sales tax at that point, but almost half of it started going because they had changed their operations some of the regulations the state has around.

What constitutes a point of sale and kind of how they operate their sales tax.

Almost half of Amazon's sales taxes now going to the warehouse fulfillment center locations and then the city's getting that that other half.

So that that was a significant we had a big ramp up then we had sort of a kind of ramp down with that change and allocation.

So that in those dollars go to the warehouse fulfillment centers like in the unincorporated county.

That not only affects not to get to into the weeds on it, but it also affects then your county pool percentage.

So there's kind of almost like a double whammy the money goes to the county that had been coming here.

Then you're getting less of the overall county pool because the county is getting more of it.

So this has been a hot topic among the league of cities which city manager serves on some of those committees is to win the winner how the state might.

Might work through some of these issues there have been discussions in the past none of them have moved forward today.

I guess the long answer that for that or the short answer is if folks wanted to because I've had constituents say well what can we do?

And I guess the short answer is go walk into your local brick and mortar to actually purchase because all of 100% of that ends up at the city.

Correct and we've seen local business owners come to the mic today.

I think it's always a good thing to support your neighbors and their business enterprises.

So for sure that's that's you know you know where your money's going you know that it's supporting the community and that sort of thing.

So I agree with you 100%.

Mr. Chair I want to spend more time on the revenue side because I feel like if the trajectories are continuing to go lower then then the only solutions for us unfortunately obviously with the efficiencies on the services side means that we have to we have we have a perpetual reduction in services and level of services.

So I think it's incumbent upon us to as a city to start really thinking and spending a lot more time on as well on the revenue side.

I appreciate the staff's recommendations on on the different four tiers and how to identify the one the best method to maintain the level of service for our constituents.

To do that we obviously need you know people to execute that work.

I know there are probably ways to better be efficient on that but if we don't start thinking really the long term way on addressing our revenue side I think we're going to be in this conversation every single year on the reduction of level of services.

So let me let me stop there Mr. Chair I wanted to make sure that we we had a conversation on this because as long as I've been on this committee most of time we only talk about the reduction on services and not on what's really affecting our income revenue side here.

Thank you I think that is worthy of further examination discussion which I'm sure we will have in the in suing months and vice mayor.

Oh I'm sorry Ms. Maple you guys reversed on my screen.

Do you want to go first?

Let's go to council member maple.

Thank you chair and thank you for the presentation I really appreciate it.

Obviously we're in challenging times right now and it's it's really helpful to have the the finance team behind us just helping us think through what are the challenges that we have but what are the strategies that are before us so also appreciate council member

and I think that's the way we are bringing up revenues that's something that does not think it discussed in these spaces as often as we probably should but what do we need to be doing to be increasing revenues in addition to obviously making difficult choices around cuts.

I had a couple specific questions.

One of the things that I had read about on here was the 9-1 communication centers repairs and so I know the funding that we currently have in there is that is that going to cover the totality of our needs for that or other

additional long term investments that we're going to need to do for that if someone has the answer.

I know that that would cover our immediate repairs as far as other deferred maintenance I'd have to at that particular facility I'd have to look into that and get back to you.

And then council member covered a lot of my questions related to the sales tax decline.

The other item of note was I saw that there's a 3.16 million surplus or addition for public works is that something that you all have taken in our incorporating into another plan.

So the increased revenue.

Yes.

Yeah, so that's incorporated into the forecast and kudos to Matt and the team for overperformance but yeah that's baked into the cake now.

That's really helpful. Thank you.

Okay, so those are my questions for now, but I'm I'm punch up again later.

Thank you.

All right, thank you.

Vice mayor.

Thank you, chair.

And the sales tax conversation about Amazon really got my head spinning just because I was texting this morning with my sisters about how we haven't gone a target.

Because of the DI reasons and how we need products and where are we going to go next.

Because also Amazon I don't want to try to shop.

Not trying to shop there anymore.

It's just tough.

You know, I mean, you need these supplies and it's like we need more brick or mortar.

We need our local family shops to pop back up, but I mean the reality of where we're living out today.

So yeah, just it just hadn't me thinking about, you know, my own habits as a person.

And also just the impact of inflation on our families across in Sacramento and across the country.

Price of eggs.

The price of everything has just gone significantly higher while our wages have remained the same.

And people are struggling.

And so, you know, when I think about our sales tax being on the decline, I'm not surprised.

Because people are living paycheck to paycheck across America.

And that's the reality that we live in.

And we need to do better for the people.

I do want to thank you and your team and our intrum city manager, Milstein, Stein like wine.

Stop Milstein.

It's Milstein for everyone to know.

For finding the 26.8 million and available fund balance.

You know, today is like the first day that we have, I mean, a full report of what we can expect.

Not just this year and the years to come.

And knowing that we can start off with minus 26.8, it feels good.

So good work to you and your team.

And like Councilmember Gera, Mayor Prattam Gera said, growing our revenue is the most important thing that we can do.

So for economic development, the greater Sacramento economic council, and all our partners across Sacramento, we need your help.

We're continuing to grow as a city.

And the, I mean, just population wise, area wise, like we need to grow our revenues.

And that's the number one thing that we need to do as a council.

Which, you know, leads me to our BOT tax measure that failed significantly.

At some point, we will have to revisit that cautiously and make sure that we include all the right partners in this and own our mistakes and see if we could put it back on the table at some point.

And I just want to note that I'm just so disappointed in the HHAP funding reduction at 5.4 million.

And the uncertainty of dollars from the state in the future budget succumb.

Homelessness continues to be everyone's number one priority, everyone's number one concern.

And the only way we're going to be able to address this is like to work from the school board level to the local county, state and federal level.

And so I'm just so disappointed in the HHAP funding reduction.

And I look forward to advocating with my council colleagues, the mayors, I know the county executives also put out a statement to lobby our state to make sure that we get our fair share of dollars.

Thank you.

Can I just clarify too, that loss of 5.4 actually if you had based it on the number that we got this past year.

And we had a lot of 5.5 is actually a $7 million loss because we got 20 million.

And we had assumed less trying to be conservative.

So in some ways it's a little bit not as bad, but it's really the actual reduction is a lot worse.

And so we'll make sure that when we do go to advocate, you have those raw numbers because I think the bigger impact is definitely a more important story to us.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

So I want to move this along here.

One, let me start off by doing item number seven first and the approval of the caper.

And then I have a motion for item number eight as well.

Okay. Why don't you just hold those for a moment.

I've got a couple.

Oh, sure. Perfect.

I'm asking questions and then we'll take the motion.

And then I have a specific motion for item number eight.

Okay. Thank you.

First of all, Pete.

Thank you to you and your team for the work you've done to make this presentation to give us some material.

It is the starting place.

It is not the ending place.

And it's important to know where we're starting, what we're facing.

But I also want to underscore that it is the beginning of not for you.

You've been at this for quite a while, you and your team.

But for us in the public in many respects, it's the start of the process.

And it's a process that will lead us to a balanced budget.

We will adopt a balanced budget when this exercise is done.

Because that's our legal responsibility.

So we're going to examine those things that hopefully might generate us some additional revenue.

We're going to examine those things that are going to reduce our expenses.

We're going to examine those things that could lead to greater efficiencies and help us preserve service levels even as we might have to make some budget monetary reductions.

But it's an iterative process.

And so I always want to try to emphasize to people who are concerned about this.

There's certainly justification for concern.

We wish we had more money than we knew what to do with.

When that day comes, I hope I'm still in office somewhere.

But it might be a long time.

But we will find a way to reconcile as we must our revenues and our expenditures to come to balance.

So this is an important work that's been done.

In that regard, I do specifically want to thank you for giving us a list of vacant positions.

And I think that's just one strategy to look at.

But it can be a helpful strategy in my experience to right size our organization as well.

And if we are budgeting money that we have no reasonable expectation that we will spend, that makes our equation harder to balance.

And making sure that we're aligned in terms of our personnel availability and capability along with our financial resources.

I always believe is an important part of the equation as well.

I wanted to come back just with some thoughts, two or three thoughts with respect to some of the things that we've already been talking about.

But I would have a new enhancement.

One of the strategies that's been used by some jurisdictions from time to time under compelling circumstances is to trade property tax or sales tax in effect.

And I don't know if we would have any opportunities to attract sales tax generators to the city that it would make sense to entertain that kind of equation.

Perhaps the most notable example of that in our region is the Roseville Galleria where the city of Roseville gave up 30 years of property tax to get that that mall.

Because they understood that the sales tax generation there would would far exceed the property tax that they received from that property if it were used for another purpose.

I don't know, as I said, if there's anything that available, especially in the short term, but even in the longer term.

And we need to be thinking both, I think, short and long term.

From my standpoint, new to the city in this capacity, sometimes there are opportunities to borrow from special funds in order to preserve something that then becomes a revenue generator.

Obviously, you don't want to trade current capacity for future debt necessarily, but to me it's something at least to take a look at.

I think we need to examine our opportunities to increase our use of technology such things as drones to help us preserve, especially service levels, for things like code enforcement, law enforcement, fire prevention and response.

And other jurisdictions have shown that we can take advantage of technology in ways that both save money, but preserve or even enhance service levels.

And in some cases generate additional revenue, especially on the code enforcement side.

We've talked some about the HAP program, obviously, but in addition to what we said, one of the things that, and I think Councillor Maverick Maple, you were touching on this, one of the things that would be very important to local government is to know where the state is going, especially on sources of revenue, especially in this area.

And I believe that we need to continue on the legislative side to press the state for multi-year commitments on homeless assistance funding for all the reasons that vice mayor and telemantez was referring to a few moments ago.

And I had to question about whether I wanted to dig just a little bit further into your responses related to sales tax, particularly from online sources.

I'm assuming that the, and we talked about the warehouse as the site is, I guess it brings John back, as the site is for distribution of sales tax, but that's something that could be adjusted by state legislation.

Am I right about that?

That's correct. So maybe that ought to be in our legislative platform, and maybe it already is.

I don't know, but if it isn't, I think it probably deserves to be added.

And then I wondered whether we have done or whether it would be even worth doing an audit of whether we're getting our appropriate share of online sales tax remitted to the city.

So that's part of our services is doing audits of of your sales tax, sales tax revenues. So we provide both our sort of forecast and reporting services to city staff as well as miss allocation audits for all sorts of reporting for all of your local businesses as well as online businesses that report through the county pool.

I'm aware that there are firms that will audit and track, for example, utility tax appropriations, whether they're paid to the right jurisdiction, for example.

We do that as well.

Do we do the same thing for online tax?

For everything.

Okay. Okay. Thank you for that.

I think those are the comments I have and questions I have for the moment.

So, Mr. Gatta, we're back to you for.

Yes, thank you. I think let's take the cap for the aquifer now.

The name of the change all the time here. I'll take a move to approve the item number seven, the aquifer and forward it to city council.

Okay. We have a motion of second on item seven to accept the report and forward it onto the full council.

If there's no further comments, all in favor signify by saying aye.

I would say no.

Stention. Thank you very much.

Motion carries.

Item number eight, Mr. Chair.

I'll go ahead and move the proposed adjustments and commitment of two council and that includes moving the fund balance for 23.5 million.

But with that, I would also like for staff to come back to council with any potential revenue generating opportunities for council to consider as part of our policy that we approved recently on item number one if there are any at that point.

But no, we're presented today.

But I'd like to make sure that at the council, if there is anything that we have that available at that point.

And also as indicated in our policy for new revenues that we're going to use them for deferred maintenance and in the staff recommendation included included the 911 centers roof building.

So I'll go ahead and move item number eight as it's presented with the inclusion of staff to come back if there are any any revenue generating opportunities that are one time in nature.

Those discussed today and any others they can think of.

Those discussed today and any others they can think of right as it comes to council.

Okay, second to the motion.

Second by vice mayor Telemontis.

If no further discussion on favor signify by saying aye.

I post a no.

Abstentions hearing none.

Motion carries.

Thank you.

All right. And item nine.

Item nine is received.

It is a receiving file.

And that was the discussion.

So we will without objection we will receive in file item item nine.

We're on to item 10. Thank you all.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Or afternoon.

Right you are.

Good morning.

Just went.

It just flew by.

Right by.

Waiting for my presentation to come up.

It is the active transportation commission and your report.

Well, while we wait for that to come up.

Good afternoon.

Jennifer Donlin.

Why I service the division manager for mobility and sustainability.

And I also serve as staff for the city's active transportation commission.

Today I'm going to go over the active transportation commission 2024 annual report.

I will note that you don't normally see commission reports.

However, at PNPE in January, that committee asks to have this come to this committee.

So I'm going to be giving an overview of the 2024 annual report.

High level overview because I know that you have a very long day today.

The commission, we also have with us today a belief still chair, chair, hotel and vice chair,

Gonzalez for the commission.

The commission develops six recommendations for city council to consider.

And we're going to go through them and they are in priority order.

The first is to increase funding for active transportation specifically to double the estimated or typical annual maps that we have for an additional $3 million and to increase that by 10% every year.

Not 10 million, 10% every year.

The second priority that the commission is recommending to council is to expand the speed management programs beyond the speed lump program that we currently have in the city specifically to focus on equity and to expand the toolbox that is currently used.

The third priority for the ATC is to create a quick build bikeways program similar to some other cities in California.

The fourth priority is to reestablish slow and active streets.

I don't think any of you were council members when we did that pilot back in 2021.

But the committee, the ATC would like to see that move forward again for up to five miles.

The fifth recommendation is to develop a city wide safe routes to school program and specifically for two staff to manage that program in partnership with the school districts within the city.

This would focus on education and encouragement and not infrastructure recommendations.

And the fifth recommendation from the ATC is to finalize the construction due to our policy that we've been working on for a number of years, fingers crossed that we will be bringing that to you this calendar year.

And so with that here is the summary of the recommendations from the commission.

They include the need for additional staff as well as the cost for the first year and increasing cost year after that.

And I'm happy to take any questions as well as the commissioners who are here.

I also have director Eierman and city traffic engineer Megan Carter with me today.

Thank you for the presentation and council member Maiple.

Thank you, chair. I appreciate it. I'm just going to have a couple quick questions.

I know we want to hear from the public as well. So not trying to get ahead of that. But I want to start by saying thank you so much to you and your team, to Matt Eierman, Megan Carter and everyone who's been working on this.

I know we know this is not only a priority for this whole, this entire council of this body as well.

But also the public. We hear often about these recommendations and the need for pedestrian safety and an active transportation infrastructure.

Specifically when I think all the ATC commissioners both current and in the past who've been working on this for many, many, many years long before I was here, our staff that's been working on it for many years.

I know this is long in the making, so just to acknowledge that. So I know that a few of the recommendations that caught my eye were establishing of a quick build by ways program, expanding the speed management program, and then identifying a funding source.

And it's my understanding that the public works team has been working out of proposal for a program that might address these recommendations.

And so I'm just hoping someone can come up and talk about that. Certainly. Thank you.

Hello, everyone. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Yes, the morning did fly by. I'm Megan Carter. I'm the Transportation Division Manager of Public Works and also the city traffic engineer.

I'm new in this position. I started on January 1. So thank you all for one of my first opportunities to speak to one of our committees.

And thank you to Council Member Maple. Thank you to Chair Dickinson, to Vice Mayor Talmontez and to Mayor Protemgera for the opportunity to share our thoughts with you, to share our ideas for addressing some of these safety concerns and the active transportation concerns.

With this committee and then hopefully ultimately with Council. I also want to thank the advocates. I want to let them know that we very much appreciate their support as well as their feedback on our proposal.

So the public works team has put together a proposed program that includes the identification of staff resources as well as a adjustment of existing funding resources, so no new resources to build up a program.

So we are currently calling it the tactical action group, the tag team or the tag initiative and program. That name is flexible. We can certainly take feedback from Council and as well as the community on something that is both catchy and going to be well known throughout the community, but really speaks to the goals of the program.

This program represents a critical step in achieving Sacramento's Vision Zero goals with a dual approach to immediate quick build safety projects, which we are calling the Tier One projects, an interim corridor improvements or two projects, supporting planning work that's already underway with our Vision Zero program.

And the proposal includes funding of essential staff, operational resources and contracting authority to ensure timely and efficient implementation of quick build projects.

And so a couple of key things that we took from the state of emergency proposal. There were four key things there and these key things addressed that as well as some of the recommendations from the ETC.

And those four things are to identify, fund and implement quick build and tactical urbanist solutions to engage with the community and make sure that they are involved in helping to develop the locations and solutions, transparency in the process and timing as well as expediting safety projects in the high risk areas.

I'm going to touch on this really briefly because you guys have a long day. So hopefully I answer enough of your questions about it.

To identify, fund and implement the quick builds and tactical urbanist solutions to address the immediate concern and the immediate needs of traffic safety and traffic fatalities in our community.

I think it's important to dedicate staff resources to that, to have a team that is their sole focus of addressing these needs. So we're proposing six staff resources. It's a series of hierarchy from a supervising engineer that can really speak to that high level importance, speak to the community and guide the team as well as lower level engineers and administrative staff that will help oversee the contracts that we would do, on call contracts to deliver the,

to implement the quick build projects quickly and put them in in a matter of months rather than the years that it takes us typically to address safety needs in our community.

We also want this program to be catered and dictated by the deeper needs of the community. We can certainly look at crash data and use real time and historic crash data to help guide where we focus our time.

But we also know that there are locations within each of your communities and with each of the council districts that the community members tell us,

this is a barrier for us to feel safe walking biking, getting to school, taking our kids to school, getting to the bus stops. And so we want to let those locations that may not be rising to the level of current fatalities and crash locations, but that are barriers to the community and let the community provide input to those locations.

The team would reach out to community organizations, neighbor associations, and as well as the council office to identify more than just hot spots on our crash data.

Also transparency, so we would put together a project dashboard so the community can see the process, they can see the locations that we've identified, the solutions that we're proposing and then ultimately know how quickly we're taking those to the streets and

really making noticeable change in moving that needle out in the streets. And then lastly, is expedite projects in high risk areas. And so this is where calling these our tier two projects, these are existing vision zero corridors where we are working on long term solutions, permanent infrastructure change to those corridors, but those take a long time.

They take years of grant funding applications and years of environmental review and approval, planning all of that stuff to actually make those permanent changes. And so we're proposing to implement quick build solutions to those corridor projects. They will be different than the sort of spot locations, but they will ideally be able to make that noticeable change on those high levels.

On those high high injury network corridors, those high risk corridors and make a change quickly. So that's the high level overview of our proposed program.

Thank you so much, Ms. Carter, and congratulations on your new role. I'm really excited to have you there. I of course want to hear from the public before I go into any deeper comments, but chair, when the time is right, I do have a motion so I can either do it now or I can wait until after public comment.

I'll hold on the motion, but I was remiss in recognizing not to say thank you for your leadership on this issue. I know this has been a very high and significant priority for you for quite some time.

And so hopefully this is a day when you start to see the bearing of fruit of some of that advocacy that you've been so dedicated to.

We obviously don't have a lot of money laying around to throw out new projects, but we can think creatively about what we can do with what already exists within our department and how we can reallocate funds strategically.

And so I'll credit goes to you all. And so, okay, I'll stop my comments there and questions and a hot server service and for later. Thank you.

And Mayor Perth attempted you want to wait as well.

Yes, I'll wait and I'll come on the queue after our house member Mabel.

And let me join in. I think all of us joined welcoming you and have happy to have you on board.

It's fun business being a traffic engineer, isn't it?

It's never boring.

It's never boring.

I do have a question.

Yes.

And where did you go to engineering school?

I went to Chico State.

Chico State.

Yeah, that's CSU.

Yeah.

But you can always go back to Sac State. That's what Mr. Guerra believes.

Certainly. One day I might pursue a master's.

I don't know.

There you go.

All right, let's take public comment and then we'll get back to questions and comments from members.

Thank you, Chair. I have 12 speakers.

First is Cheryl Crochet.

Will Green, Dan Allison, and Mark Harmon.

And let me, let me, excuse me before you start.

Your name has been called if you can start to move toward the center so we can expedite your opportunity to make public comment that will help us all.

Thank you very much.

Okay.

Thank you. My name is Cheryl Crochet.

I'm the executive director of the Sacramento Transportation Management Association, which is a nonprofit organization that helps people walk, bike, carpool, and use transit.

And specifically, we have member organizations that are employers representing about 90,000 employees, mostly in the city of Sacramento, mostly downtown.

And so we're out there every day at these workplaces talking to people about how they get to work, how they commute, and trying to help them explore their options and choose the most sustainable option that works for them.

So every day we hear from people who live, you know, one and a half or two miles from their workplace, but are choosing to drive and park because they don't feel safe riding their bike on city streets.

Or we talk to people who could be taking light rail or the bus to work, but are choosing to drive or feel like they have to spend the money on driving because they don't feel safe doing that first and last mile connection.

I, on behalf of these 90,000 workers that are members of our organization, I urge you to take the Department of Public Works proposal and move forward with it.

I think it is such a creative and important solution to the safety problems that we know exist.

And I think that it's also even more relevant today to demonstrate that municipal government, but also all levels of government is still relevant.

And I think having a fast acting team within public works that can go and address the most critical safety concerns quickly will be a great marketing tool for the city in demonstrating that you are doing what people need.

And you are solving. Thank you for your comments. Your time is complete. Our next speaker is Will Green.

Good morning. My name is Will Green. I'm a retired physician of Sacramento. I've been here for 50 years.

I'm living to see the day that this is really the Wild West. It seems like that we are without law enforcement for our codes, especially when it comes to traffic safety.

The fact that we've had 35 deaths here in Sacramento in this past year is deplorable statistics to realize and to look at.

What is the cost of one life? And morally and ethically, how is the city not responsible in many ways for holding back money or budgetary constraints for creating better safety?

We're looking at deficits in revenues. And yet we don't have enough police on our forces to enforce running of red lights.

Pedestrian gets killed with that. I myself when I'm trying to pull out on 39th Street onto H Street, not only C1, but three cars in the row running the same red light when I'm trying to get out into the street.

So I'm very much in support of what we can do. There's slow Sacramento campaign going on, which I personally have supported. Our neighborhood association, which is East Sacramento Preservation Supports.

We need to be preserving lives in this city so that we have future generations that can enjoy the walkability, the livability of our streets and our neighborhoods.

And I hope that you would start to put a focus on that. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thanks, speakers. Dan Ellison.

Good afternoon. Dan Ellison representing Sacramento Transit Advocates and Riders. We're star.

Star is a transit advocacy organization, but our interest is strongly in favor of these proposals. The annual report and its recommendations for safety and the money requested to be allocated.

And the tag team quick bill program are critically important for people going to and from transit. We know that many potential transit riders and actual riders express concern about their safety.

Walking and bicycling to transit.

By making our streets safer, we can encourage people to use transit by making them feel safe getting there.

I was the Safe Routes to School Coordinator for San Juan Unified for nine years. And I know that the fact that San Juan had a Safe Routes to School program brought in a lot of dollars to the city of Citrus Heights and Sacramento County.

Some of them were ATP grants where the connection was direct. They were for Safe Routes to School programs and others were other infrastructure projects where they were able to compete because of their connection to school safety.

So creating a Safe Routes to School program will in fact increase the amount of money that potentially could come to the city for these safety improvements. Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker is Mark Harmon, the Debinks.

Hello. My name is Mark Harmon. I'm just a private citizen. I live in Land Park. Rick Jennings District District 7. And I'm here to support the Department of Public Works proposal to shift towards quick build projects for ensuring rapid cost effective safety fixes.

Currently, Routes safety projects often install as you know for years or decades in the process. Also, I'm in favor of Crash Response Program to create a system that proactively addresses dangerous locations.

Immediately after the serious crash occurs, we need to learn from all of the crashes and make necessary changes to the streets, intersections to prevent them in the future.

And I want to say thank you for your time.

Thank you for your comments. Deb Banks, then Arlette Hodele.

Good afternoon.

Afternoon everybody. I'm Deb Banks, the executive director of Sabah, the Sacramento area bicycle advocates, and I'm an active transportation commissioner.

I need to just start by saying the public work staff that is sitting over here are total rock stars for them to have figured out a way to implement a quick build program which we've been asking for and pushing for for years without new money associated with it.

But it's really important to be able to get a good start at reallocating some funds is fantastic. They've been creative, innovative, and they are listening to the community and bringing forth to you all.

So it's your job to lead and support this effort. There are over 22 cities in the nation that have implemented quick build programs and guess what?

And the reduction in severe injury and crashes. We should join them in that. It literally is going to be a life saving program for us. Thanks.

Thank you.

Arlette Hodele, then Isaac Gonzalez, then Melissa Ming.

Arlette Hodele, District 1 Chair, Active Transportation Commission.

Thank you in advance for your support for a rapid response seem to quickly assess and to recommend quick build projects.

The Active Transportation Commission has been working hard to advocate for improvements to pedestrian and bicycling infrastructure and a place in the city's budget.

The Tactical Action Group is a great first step.

Thank you for your support.

Thank you for chairing the commission and for the work of the commissioners as well. Thank you.

Isaac and Melissa.

Good afternoon members of the committee. My name is Isaac Gonzalez. I serve as the vice chair of the Active Transportation Commission and I'm the founder of Slowdown Sacramento.

First I want to express my sincere thanks for your time and intention today as you consider the recommendations of the Active Transportation Commission.

I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I

don't know who I was explaining. It's just right. It's just right. It's just right. Okay, so I'm going toDIO

And I'm going to ask just one last question. There's busted a panel in the same mão

says this. Here, and if you want to know about yourself, quickly turn the principal red

the tangible processes towards achieving vision zero goals

and fostering safer environments for all of us.

I'm truly heartened that we're discussing it so quickly

since the launch of slow down Sacramento.

Admittedly, I believe they would take much longer

to arrive at this point.

So I especially want to commend

Council Member Katie Maple for leading this charge.

Her proposal represents what I believe could be

a fundamental shift in how Sacramento

approaches infrastructure improvements.

Slow down Sacramento looks forward to watching

how this program is implemented,

how it engages with our public,

and how it delivers rapid, meaningful changes

to improve safety in our communities.

Thank you all this afternoon for taking bold leadership.

And for us, Dr. Sacramento,

into what I believe will be the beginning

of a new era for safe for streets.

Thank you.

I have three more speakers.

Melissa Meng, Dawn Gibson, and Matt Corby.

Good afternoon.

Thank you so much.

My name is Melissa Meng.

I represent North Atomas Jive.

We are a Transportation Management Association

in the north of Sacramento.

First of all, I want to commend city staff

for coming up with what I think

is a really fantastic proposal

that has been listening to the community

and really taking the importance of the position

that Sacramento is in with the safety of its streets.

Council has over time supported safer streets.

And now with this proposal is a real opportunity

for us to see changes, real changes.

And what really stands out to me with this proposal

is the inclusion of staff time for implementation,

because that really seems like that's been a pinch point

over time.

And so this is just a fantastic opportunity.

People we often gather input from community members.

What would you like to see?

What are changes that would make it easier for you

to walk your children to school, to take a trip to work?

And people often give great comments,

but it takes so long for changes to often happen,

not for lack of trying, but it takes a long time.

And so this will be, people will love this.

Your community was going to love this,

because they're going to see it as the city caring

for the voices that it's giving.

So I urge you to support this, bring it to full council,

and let's make it happen.

Thanks.

Thanks very much.

Dawn Gibson, then Macworthy.

Okay, I have to know who this is.

Oh, hi everybody.

My name's Dawn Gibson.

I'm here with my son, Kyle Lorenzo Gibson.

He's about three months old and I'm on paternity leave.

So we're using our time, great.

I serve on the Active Transpricedity Commission

for Council District three.

And I've been the resident of the South of Natalmus

for 12 years.

I just want to say this tactile action group

sounds like a really great innovation for us

to make our streets safer.

I walk this sun and my other one and dog

daily around our streets.

There are stop signs where cars regularly drive through.

And then fortunately on a stop sign next to my house,

or just a few doors down next to two rivers elementary,

there was a hidden run in 2022 in March of a student leaving

school on a bicycle.

She fortunately didn't have to off-wise, but was injured.

However, this is a site that we regularly see cars roll

through.

And because of the list of tools in our toolbox

is very limited for interventions.

And small interventions such as race crosswalks, rumble

strips, things that are less than $1,000

material costs can make meaningful differences

in our community for safer walking, biking, and rolling.

So thank you all for your leadership, council.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Enjoy paternity leave.

I'm Macworthy.

Is there a final speaker on this item?

I'm going to make this show because I got another meeting

at 1 o'clock.

I rode a bike to school nine miles one way back.

You need some education on how to ride a bike on the street.

Ride the bike facing the traffic, not the traffic behind you.

You can see what a car doing.

You've got to deal with the bike.

You're just going to a lot of money on the streets for bikes.

I recommend that that does must pay a fee to ride the bike.

You've got paint.

You're going to keep doing it on the streets.

J Street.

Oh, going J Street since they put the center lane.

We're lucky for these people to show us how many ricks

have been since the center lane.

Every time you turn around, go teach, tell motor B

to set up something to teach people how to drive.

People are going to run red lights.

People go speed.

This kid talked about a slow down segment.

I never have.

This city wasn't built in the way that big time city was built.

Mass transportation will never be in this time.

Because you don't have the space to put schedule on time.

You can't go nowhere and meet on schedule by riding

mass transportation.

You got to understand that.

Motor B to people to train how to swap a car.

I drove school bus here after I was out of the way

to drive in South Carolina.

People it's a motor.

We just get the $45 and you go put the people out there

and understand how to swivel car.

People the road rains go to get worse here.

Because people go see you got individuality behind it

for you.

You can't do it.

You will never stop the speed.

You will never stop the ricks.

Because people got to use that car.

And people I see people run red lights, specialings, A Street.

I go there every day to play a lot of real estate.

I see it.

And people it's sad to see it.

I have a great nephew who was killed by a hit of.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The time is complete.

Chair, I have no more speakers.

All right.

Thanks to all who have taken the time to come

and address the committee.

We very much appreciate your comments.

And I want to go back to council member Maple.

And then we'll go to council member Gata.

Thank you, Chair.

And I just want to say receiving a shining endorsement

from baby Kylo Renzo is the highlight of my day.

So thank you for being here.

And thank everyone for coming and for sharing your thoughts.

And obviously already said what's been said.

But actually, I have one question.

Did you guys coordinate your outfits today?

All the shades of blue are at this corner of my eye.

I was like, wow, they look just completely coordinate.

But you also are, in at least this respect,

and coming up with this wonderful plan

that's responsive to the desires of this council

that's responsive to the desires of the community

that's committed to constant feedback.

I mean, for those, I'll share with this body

that in advance, even of this conversation

our incredible staff met with the advocacy organizations,

many of which you showed up today,

in order to preview this idea until solicit their feedback.

And I think that that shows the commitment

to bringing the community along with us.

I personally don't believe I'm an expert on anything.

I know that we have many experts in our team,

but we're always made better by a feedback

from community members and the organizations

on the ground that are doing this work every day.

So I just really want to appreciate that.

And then also, of course, our Active Transportation Commission,

members, past and present, the work that you do

is really important.

And I know that we're in a difficult budget situation.

If I could wave a magic wand and fund everything

in its entirety, I would.

But we know that it's not going to be that easy this year.

But it's things like this that are going to make it,

that are, I think, as our chair of the commission

said, this is a good first step.

I think that's the perfect way to characterize this.

And I want to be really clear to those who

care about these issues that this is not

a wholesale replacement of any of the work that's ongoing, right?

When we talk about Broadway complete streaks in Franklin

and eventual work on Stockton and Freeport,

like all of that work is still happening.

This is supplementing that.

And we still have a lot of other work to do.

So you have my commitment and others, I believe,

on this body that we're going to continue to fight for that.

We're going to continue to fight for more resources.

Hopefully, as our outlook increases over the years,

we can continue to do that.

But this is a great first step.

So I just wanted to call that out.

And I wanted to thank everyone for this.

And so with that, I'm going to be making a very specific motion.

So Madam City Clerk, if you don't catch it all,

because I know I talk very fast, I will put this in front of you.

So with that, I'll make a motion that this committee

forward the Actress Transportation Commission 2024

annual report to the full City Council for Consideration

and to direct the City Manager to Work with staff.

Staff to one, establish a dedicated transportation safety

team to implement and quick build safety improvements program

that allows the team to quickly deploy temporary

and adaptable infrastructure solutions

such as enhanced pedestrian crossings, protected bike lanes,

and traffic calming measures.

Three, explore and secure long-term funding

to support the creation and operation of the team.

And lastly, direct the team to implement solutions tailored

to the unique needs of each council district

with an emphasis on addressing urgent needs

in the most vulnerable neighborhoods.

All right, thank you.

Do we have a second to the motion?

Second.

We have a second, Mr. Gara.

Thank you.

And to you.

Thank you, Chair.

First, let me express my gratitude to Council Member Maple

for taking leadership on this and putting together

rallying all of the very interested parties.

And then also, again, as I mentioned last time,

I want to thank all the advocates, my

active transportation commissioner who's here

from District 6.

We have a lot of, you know, from Deb Banks,

from also from Sabo, who's also from District 6.

And Melissa from Jive is also from District 6.

So we also have a lot of District 6 folks here,

as well, we appreciate that.

But also, I want to thank, you know, last week,

we celebrated National Engineers Week.

And I want to thank all of our engineers that, I mean,

that have been-

No, some Chico State.

Definitely.

Well, wasn't, I remember, I think,

Kavon was a faculty at Chico State at some point.

But we studied at UC Davis, you know, our dean.

But yeah, but that's where he got his ITS at the ITS

Institute.

But more importantly, the point that I want to make here,

because this is a budget and not a committee,

and the previous item we talked about, level of service,

we can't deliver services without people.

And so I think the conversation about, you know,

we can, yes, we can be efficient.

We can use, you know, drone technology.

We can use AI tools.

But at the end of the day, a lot of the work

that needs to happen relies on the expertise of staff

that we have to work and engage the public.

And so for us to be able to continue this level of work,

and I want to support this because there

are things that we can do more efficiently and move things

around.

But item number three, exploring the long-term funding.

That's a real serious conversation.

We need to have about our long-term revenues

and how we manage things.

So if we want to continue these efforts.

And then finally, I'll just say that.

You know, I really appreciate Mr. Allison's comments

about the Safe Routes of Schools and managing that.

And if we don't address Safe Routes of Schools

and early on in getting young people feeling comfortable,

and parents feeling comfortable with their kids going

and biking in a walking school, then we're not going

to be able to convince the future folks that culture change

of active transportation.

Because it is a culture change.

So I do think that it's going to take us to be focusing

primarily on the reduction of injury high injury network

locations.

But focusing on the Safe Routes of Schools

where parents can feel comfortable that their kids can.

And I talked to one parent whose child

was hit from someone who ran a stop sign on 21st Avenue.

And could there be rumble strips, lower cost measures

to wake up drivers, to get them to focus, to pay attention.

But they're also one car household.

And they rely also on their student

to be able to go to school on their own.

Because they have to take their other student

to drop them off at another school at the same time.

So the challenges that parents face are real significant

if we don't have multiple ways to get to school.

And so I think the important thing here

is not only is it's not just about biking and whatnot

for health and activity.

But these are real issues that are affecting working families.

So very supportive of moving this.

And I would love, as this moves forward,

to focus on how we focus on the Safe Routes of School.

The Portland bike bus is like something

that pops up on my feet all the time.

And I wish we could fund a bike bus program

that engaged the community early on.

I mean, I would love to be able to see a number of schools

that had an active bike bus program.

Finally, I'll just say that this is one aspect of it.

But we cannot keep our eye off the most significant issue

in that is finding and getting to a viable transportation

measure that could fund the issues of an active bike

program that could fund significant long-term

costs for these high-endary networks.

So again, a budget issue that what staff presented

on the deferred maintenance, we will never

meet that mountain of deferred maintenance

if we don't coalesce and work to get an active transportation

measure that is not only viable but responsible as well.

So glad to second the motion and support this effort.

And we're excited about working forward on this.

So thank you Mr. Chair.

Thanks for those comments, Vice Mayor.

Thank you.

I'm happy to support the motion and kudos to my colleague

and to City staff, the Active Transportation Commission,

on all your work on this.

Isaac, slow down Sacramento.

I mean, we are going to continue to plug away as a city

to make our streets safer with infrastructure

and these quick build programs.

But also at the end of the day, we need parents

after they do drop off to also wait at the stop sign

for the next parent that has to do drop off.

Human behavior and distracted driving people

being on their phones is a huge problem in Sacramento.

And we need to be better for each other.

We need to make sure that we can all get home safely.

And so my ask to Sacramento is to slow down.

Well, thank you.

I have a question for Megan.

But as you come up, I very much appreciate

the comments of my colleagues because I think you really

have covered this spectrum of important elements

that are part of addressing the issue of pedestrian

and bicycle safety and frankly vehicle safety as well.

But my question, Megan is looking at tier one and tier two.

I'm interested in a couple things related to that.

One is looking at the description of what

could be done or what might be done under tier one, tier two.

I don't see an either one traffic circles.

Is that because it's seen as more complicated or complex

than fits in tier one or tier two?

Is that because it just was something that just didn't get

on the list?

I mean, tell me a little bit more about that.

Mostly we kept our potential treatments to as low cost

as we can get them so that they can be delivered quickly.

Traffic circles, we certainly will be looking at expanding

our, one of the items in the Active Transportation

Commission was expanding our toolbox

for speed management throughout the city.

We have speed lumps, but there are other possible tools.

And so we can look at traffic circles.

I would task myself and my team to look

at finding cheaper materials to do that work.

What we know right now is our typical traffic circles,

like we have in downtown, those cost in the $100 to $200,000

or more, a pop depending on the different infrastructure

changes that need to be made to make them fit.

And that's really not cheap enough for the quickness

that we want to deliver these projects with.

So there's potential there.

Absolutely.

We will consider all treatment options.

But that's primarily why it wasn't named.

OK, I appreciate it.

I wouldn't think of pedestrian islands as necessarily

being much cheaper than a traffic circle under certain circumstances.

But when I think of, every one of us,

every one of the nine of us, can cite multiple locations

where we think some kind of physical adjustment

would be beneficial.

And I know you have probably a whole laundry list of those

already in your head too.

But if I think about real into Boulevard in South Avenue,

for example, where we've had traffic, multiple traffic

fatalities, and that street needs much more

in the way of treatment than a traffic circle.

But one traffic circle, I think,

there could make as an example a real difference.

So you all have been very creative in thinking about what you can do

with existing resources and optimizing those for this purpose.

So I think the challenge to you is just keep on thinking about it.

Don't, you've got great laurels, but don't rest on them.

The other question I had in this regard is timing.

Are you thinking of, you do everything you think you can do

with Tier 1 before you move to Tier 2 or these coincidence in time?

How does timing work?

Yeah, they would move forward consecutively.

So Tier 1 projects would primarily be the focus of this new team.

The Tier 2 projects will utilize partial time from this team,

but then also existing staff in our engineering services division

that are already developing the Vision Zero corridor projects

that we've already identified as our highest risk areas

and the highest need.

So it's taking those long-term infrastructure change projects

and finding quick delivery solutions.

So that would be, for instance, doing this is, you know,

to be determined, but doing something like a road diet

on Mary'sville Boulevard or on Fruit Ridge Road using striping

and vertical delineators rather than the more complex and time-intensive

design work that's needed for deeper infrastructure changes.

And those things that we can design and implement within one to two years

rather than the five to 10 years that it often takes us

to deliver the full project.

OK, I appreciate the discussion and the response.

Obviously, from the standpoint, again, of all of us,

we can't do this fast enough.

So there's some elements, say, that are in Tier 2

that one might say not doing something in a Tier 1 application

at the expense of doing something Tier 2 sooner would be a loss.

And so I don't know to the extent that there's some flexibility there.

It seems to me that might be useful.

But I'm sure we'll have a lot more conversation

as you implement this along the way.

And in this regard, I'd be remiss if I didn't underscore my sense of the need

for equity in how you go about this as well.

So thank you very much for that.

Thank you.

I want to add to my colleagues, thanks.

Once again, to the commission members.

This is very timely and terrific work.

Very much appreciated.

And to the staff for being innovative and creative and figuring out ways

to do things that really are a response to a public need,

as I understand it, if there are some other adjustments,

the staff will be back in March for those.

So your motion tees this up nicely.

With respect to the commission's recommendations,

I'm very supportive of all the recommendations.

I just wanted to make a comment or two on a couple of the others.

Besides this that we've been focused on this morning, the quick build,

which certainly we are very pleased to see.

I want to also underscore the safe routes to schools,

component of the recommendations.

I have schools in the district I represent that have no sidewalks to them.

No sidewalks.

Not bad sidewalks.

Not sidewalks and disrepair.

None.

I could take you to show you a school that was a beneficiary of a safe routes

to school grant a few years ago, which is terrific.

And the sidewalk ends at no sidewalk.

So this is profound in the part of the city that I represent.

And I hope we will do whatever we can to maximize what we can achieve

with safe routes to school, including working with the school districts

in that regard as well as obviously the state funding

under the Safe routes to school program.

I also just wanted to note the slow streets recommendation,

which I do think is worth going back and exploring again,

whether it makes sense.

I think something that can be, again, a great benefit to use wisely

in certain neighborhoods and would be well accepted.

I know when it was tried before, there were those who liked it

and those who didn't like it.

So it doesn't come without its own controversy.

But my observation over time has told me that people who often don't like something

initially as they grow to realize how it works and why it works become actually supporters

and not opponents.

So maybe there's a lesson to be applied here.

And traffic management, including enforcement, I think without a doubt,

every one of us is frustrated by people who run red lights, run stop signs,

don't obey basic traffic laws, don't exercise courtesy or thoughtfulness

in the way they drive.

I know in my neighborhood, I am often at intersections

where people routinely run stop signs.

I stand there and stare at them.

And you know what, when I do that, they stop.

But I'm not out there more than a minute or two at a time, not 24 or seven,

that's for sure.

So this is not a good enforcement technique.

But I hope we can also use our sense of community to convey the message

that when people do that, they're not just saving a minute on their travel time.

They're endangering people's lives.

And those are lives that once they are, people are injured or killed, they're not coming back.

So nobody's one minute is that important.

And somehow we need to do a better job of communicating that.

It seems to me that's a responsibility for all of us in our community.

So this is actually a great thing, a great motion.

Thank you for the motion and the second.

And if there's no further comments, all those in favor signify by saying aye.

I'm opposed to saying no.

I have sentions, motion carries.

So I was punched up.

I just had a quick process point that I should have mentioned during my comments.

But so this will now go to the council and will be accompanied by a detailed staff report.

I recognize a lot of what people heard today was a lot of information.

And they may not have caught all of it, had it all right down.

So that will be a staff report and there will be opportunity for full discussion.

And we welcome the community to come to that discussion as well once we have a date, which we will share out.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, we have one more item on our agenda, item 11.

It's like to a vice chair.

Mr. Chair.

We do, Mr. Garret.

I'd like to recommend a vice mayor, council member Maple.

I just moved my address as vice chair.

All right, nominations do not require a second, by the way.

Did you say you have a speaker?

It's you.

I have Mac worthy.

I'd like to speak on this item.

Looks like he vacated chambers.

All right.

Are speakers served?

Are there any comments, nomination speeches?

I have.

Hopefully.

Okay.

All right.

All those favour, signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Opposed, say no.

Any abstentions?

That motion carries.

Thank you very much.

I have three speakers for none on the agenda.

We have some speakers?

I do.

Okay, we have some speakers for items not on the agenda.

Do you want to take council comments, ideas and questions first?

Comments, questions.

Answers.

I have three speakers for not on the agenda.

Lambert.

And then Frank Morgan.

Why we were here.

We were here.

The other side of the subject reductions.

And typically nice and homogenetic.

We got some direction.

We should take those.

Yes.

I hope that people pay attention to what I'm saying because I could definitely be other

places, but I wanted to make sure this happens on the front page and I'm going to leave

this here.

On the front page, I know Mr. Dickinson knows who this is.

and some of the other people in here might too.

This is Dr. Allen Roe and his wife,

usually when people are on the front page

of the Sacramento Bayes scandal.

But in this case, this is a wonderful human being

who's helped youth from Del Paso Heights

go to college for decades.

Him and his wife were two of the first people

that invested with us when we first got started.

And I'll leave this so people up there can read it.

You need to read about somebody like that.

And then I wanna say to Mr. Dickerson

and anybody else who's who really is happy about it,

this group of millennials have rallied around me

in a way that is stunning.

What they've done is they've approached me and they said,

you always say that cheesecake's appeals

to most races, coaches and sexes.

And I said, well, what does that mean to you?

So it's a group of young people in Sacramento

and they speak different languages.

They speak Spanish, French, all kinds of languages.

And I said, well, what are we gonna do with that?

So they came up with an idea and I've already shared it

with your staff, Mr. Dickerson,

because I'm from District 2.

You should know about this.

What they have created is a way to generate income for decades.

And they can work remotely speaking different languages.

It's something that you really should pay attention to

because it's amazing what these youth have created.

And it's behind the cheesecake.

Thank you, Pierre Comments.

I don't see Mr. Morgan here, so I have no more speakers.

All right, we have no one else,

so another business come before the committee.

We are adjourned, thank you.

Have a nice day.

Thank you.

Whew, Bernard,

thank you.

Thank you very much.

Thank you again, sir.