All right, thank you, Madam City Clerk. Good afternoon and welcome to the Sacramento City

Council Budget and Audit Committee meeting. I now call this meeting to order at 11.05 a.m.

Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll? Thank you. Council Member Talamantes? Here. Council Member Gatta? Here. Council Member Dickinson, our chair, is going to be absent today. And Vice Chair Maple? I am here. Thank you. Members of the public who wish to address the committee may do so by submitting a speaker slip. You can find those in the back of the room. Bring them right up front here to our amazing team and they'll have them processed into us. We will no longer accept speaker slips after the item begins.

And then once you submit that slip and we call you up, you'll have two minutes to address the committee. So that everyone has an opportunity to address us. Members of the public are asked to abide by the rules of decorum, which can be found in the Council Rules of Procedure on our website or in copies in the back of the room and summarized on the back of the speaker slip. This meeting is being live streamed and can be viewed on the city's website. With that, Vice Mayor Talamantes, would you please lead us in the land acknowledgement and pledge allegiance? Yep.

Thank you. Please rise for the opening acknowledgments in honor of Sacramento's indigenous people and tribal lands. To the original people of this land, the Nisanom people, the Southern Maidu, Valley and Plains Meenwalk, Patwin-Wintoon peoples, and the people of the Wilton Rancheria, Sacramento's only federally recognized tribe. May we acknowledge and honor the native people who came before us and still walk beside us today on these ancestral lands by choosing to gather together today in the active practice of acknowledgement and appreciation for Sacramento's indigenous peoples' history, contributions, and lives. Thank you.

Okay. Salute 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.

Thank you very much, Madam Vice Mayor.

Okay. With that, we move on to the consent calendar. Do we have any members of this committee who wish to discuss, put on separately, any comments? Seeing none. Madam Clerk, do we have any members of the public who wish to speak?

I have one speaker, Mack Worthy, on item number one on the consent calendar.

Welcome.

This is for you, Roger.

Why we can't get the minutes before we come in here?

Why do you put this on the agenda and nobody speak to it?

This is why this city is dead in now, because you're lying or you don't have the ability to bring that. Wake up, people. We need the federal government to come in here on this shit and destroy it.

You've got to change the trash that's in here, making decisions before you can do anything about your deficit.

Furthermore, I told you years ago, a deficit for a nonprofit organization as a government-run is a gain.

Somebody's going to give you $2 million because you've got people that have head money will up and give you a grant, and you don't have to pay it back.

We should know who got to pay it back and where it come from.

We should know those type of things, because sooner or later, you're going to have to quit lying.

You talk about Trump, but what the hell are you doing?

Stealing.

You are a bunch of thugs.

I have no more comments on the consent calendar.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

I will now take a motion.

Move.

Moved.

And seconded.

All those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed or abstained?

That passes unanimously.

All right.

Now we'll move on to item number two, community advisory commission recommendations.

Welcome.

Hello.

All right.

Happy to be here.

I just want to talk about the letter that we submitted.

First off, I'm going to go through and just say that the letter we submitted is a little bit dated because things are moving really quick.

So two of our suggestions have actually already been done.

One of those was backfilling the $1.3 million for youth programs.

It's fantastic you guys found the funding for that.

Also, keeping the DEI program as sustained is great.

That just leaves three remaining points from us.

So I'll start off with the homelessness one.

I think it's quite obvious that homelessness is still quite a huge problem in our city.

Last city council that we had, the city manager was tasked with finding, I think it was 14 or so plots for safe ground.

We only ended up with one.

I think if people want to see some clean, safe streets, we need to invest in a place for all these people to go.

I think there are options here that the city can look at in more detail.

I think there are two routes that we go here.

As a commission we were talking about, safe grounds don't cost us that much, assuming that there are non-service provided safe grounds.

It's just locations people can go.

Obviously, there's a little bit of funding that goes into finding these locations, staff.

But I think that would be largely, like the return on investment for that would be quite high.

So we look that the committee would push for this.

The next thing would be, our next recommendation would be redirect police vacancies to other forms of enforcement and services.

So budget allocated for FTE that are not yet hired is sort of sitting there as unused capital.

Maybe it gets used as overtime.

But it's clear that we have a hiring issue where it's very difficult to hire new police sworn officers.

Given the sort of negative social view around policing, not for our specific police force, of course,

but just generally sort of like from George Floyd or BLM protests, it's kind of clear why this might be.

So what's the solution to this?

Our recommendation here is to reduce the burden on sworn officers in the police force

and instead delegate to alternative forms of services that sort of overlap.

So we have a 90 to 95 percent success of enforcement with DCR when they go out and do sidewalk enforcements

or something like this.

Having more individuals fill those positions and using the vacancies that we have in order to hire people

for mental health crisis calls, either the gang violence prevention programs, bolstering that up.

Basically just utilizing where people want to go and work in.

I think we can see more impact done with sort of dollars that may be just sort of waiting to hire people.

Next is participatory budgeting.

And I realize that asking for money during a structural deficit may come across as a bit tone deaf,

but if you hear me out, I think it may make sense.

We all sort of have a mutual understanding of why we have a structural deficit.

The cost of hiring people has just gone up too high.

Two years ago, the staff received a 10 to 15 percent,

or they negotiated for a 10 to 15 percent raise to keep up with inflation,

which was 9 percent, I believe, that year during COVID times.

But the city's incomes only went up around 1 percent, not even actually 1 percent that year.

Not to mention the insurance associated with staff, the pension liabilities, I could go on.

Essentially, it's the cost of people.

Participatory budgeting gets services that people are looking for without that cost to the city.

There's a higher return on investment for services provided.

We get better data collection method because we can dictate what data needs to be collected,

and we are not opposed by, say, the union, for example, saying that data can't be used or collected

because it may affect staff evaluation.

And also, from that little 1 million that we spent, businesses were born and are longer lasting,

meaning after we stopped funding them, they kept going.

So it's an ongoing effect that's positive towards the community.

And so services that continue to grow, even though the city's no longer putting money into it,

surely this is something that's valuable, at least considering.

And so we were asking to at least consider this as we move forward.

Lastly, the letter states the reimportance of program goals that measure you funds.

And so as we continue, and we talked about this actually at the last budget and audit meeting that we were here,

which was sort of getting our quarterly program to have stated goals next to every program that we're funding.

And I think we're on the right track with that.

Me and Pete Coleto are working really closely with that,

and we obviously stated that we would wait until after budget time because it would be too expensive during that time.

And so we look forward to, like, in the next month or two, start work on that.

Also, I think I have two members here that will speak on what they also want to raise importance to,

and so I'll let them do that, but I think they were going to do it in public comments.

So, yeah.

Thank you.

All right.

Thank you very much.

I want to thank you not only for your presentation but for your service on the commission.

Thank you so much.

Okay.

With that, Madam Clerk, do we have any public comments on this item?

Yes, Vice Chair.

I have six speakers on this item.

The first is Lambert, then Madeline Noel, Mack Worthy, Jim Randlett, Dr. Fry Lucas, then Marbella Sala.

All right.

Welcome.

I heard the person speak just then, and he said it was public comments.

There's not public comments on this agenda, so hopefully you're going to speak to it while we're here.

Measure U has become very complicated, except to me, because I went to a lot of meetings,

and when they presented Measure U to the voters, they never said they were going to combine it with the general fund.

There's no way.

I don't believe it would have passed.

It should not have been combined.

It actually was for underserved communities, and they used that as a deception to get the voters to vote it,

and then now it's hard to monitor where the money is going once it gets in the general fund.

And I'm like that man, Mr. Worthy.

I'm not really interested in what Trump's doing.

I'm interested in what happened before Trump got here.

That's my focus.

Trump's only been here since January.

So I'll look at him when he's almost out of here.

Measure U, as far as participatory budgeting, you can get money for that.

All you have to do is don't give people who work remotely a raise.

What are they getting a raise for?

They're working remotely.

Look how people from the state reacted when they have to come to work for four days.

That means you have a three-day weekend every day of the year.

Who would complain about that unless they were caught moving away from Sacramento,

and now they're in a crunch because they live too far away?

Participatory budgeting, it was very successful.

However, I went to several meetings, and my paperwork was mishandled by Ash Raghani and some of his staff members,

and we caught them.

To the Bay and Bay cheesecakes is going to be a factor, no matter what the city does.

Thank you for your comments.

Madeline Noel.

Good morning, Vice Chair and members.

I'm Madeline Noel, Policy Manager with the Downtown Sacramento Partnership,

a property-based improvement district serving Sacramento's central neighborhood.

First, I want to acknowledge all the hard work and many hours that have been put into addressing the city's budget so far.

The strong collaboration across all city departments, commissions, community members,

and this committee will be crucial as our city continues to face an ongoing structural deficit.

In regard to the commission's broader goals, we believe all can still be achieved through alternative strategies

without removing police vacancies and eroding the resources that are foundational

to maintaining a safe and welcoming public realm environment.

Our frontline officers and administrative team members are essential,

not just for maintaining public safety, but for parking enforcement, code compliance,

and community response.

Their presence underpins the effectiveness of multiple city departments.

Our central city is home to our region's events, demonstrations, farmers markets, graduations,

and a bustling nightlife, all of which rely on a visible and responsive police force

to ensure safety and continued growth.

These positions, vacant or filled, are essential for the work that they represent.

Thank you for your time, and we stand with you to work together to secure a safe and vibrant future for Sacramento.

Matt Worthy.

Following Mr. Worthy is Jim Randlett.

Welcome.

People, see, if you've got a bill or a budget and you say youth, people will go for it.

That's what happened here.

Measured you coming here for youth, and we ask questions, was that set aside money?

How did it get into general funds?

Those are the lies they bring to the people and misuse the money.

And then we look up at a special manager.

Who in the hell are managing now if you need another special manager?

Then we look at an office of the city management.

Do you know I went to each one of those things to get a manager in here, and a maximum showed up at each one of them with five?

Five people in this larger city?

Somebody playing a role of I pat your back or put you on a little payroll and you vote for me.

That's got to change, people.

Roger, you can't speak out on this.

We'll be behind you if you bring this to the floor on a press conference.

And move that press conference to Washington, D.C., what you are asking for as chair of this budget, and get these liars out of here.

You need to move.

You're lying to the people.

Jim Randlett.

Following Jim is Dr. Fry Lucas.

Welcome.

I'm Jim Randlett.

I'm in Council District 4.

I've handed out a bright blue, so you can't very well ignore it.

But it's very interesting.

It includes in there a Wall Street Journal story on the decline of Portland.

And I think you're all aware of the problem that city has had.

And my wife's from Seattle, and we used to stop at Portland on our way up there when we would drive.

And the downtown area is in shambles as it is related in this story.

And so, in my opinion, public safety and police department is the key to having a safe and vibrant downtown.

And there is no guarantee that Sacramento will not wind up going the way of Portland or other cities that have had problems in public safety areas downtown.

So, I'd encourage you not to make any cuts if they become proposed for the police department.

And keep public safety as number one, which it deserves, as your priority.

I also signed up for item number three, not knowing when this might come up.

So, you can scratch me for that.

Thank you.

Dr. Fry Lucas, then Marbella Sala.

I'm here to talk to you about community investments, and particularly the Hart Center representing community investments.

My concern is that the Hart Center has a trust fund that they operate on every year.

We have seniors and other communities that are underserved that cannot compete with that funding base.

And I would like to encourage you to redistribute the funding to our Oak Park, George Sims, Pinell, North and South Sacramento, and Natomas, where our seniors are and they feel secure.

Our seniors don't like to leave their communities.

They like to work, live, and play in their communities.

I have five years of experience working with adults in the South area, and I've also worked with them down the street from the Hart Center.

And my seniors would come to me down the street from the Hart Center and drive right past it if they had the luxury of being able to drive.

The other issue with the Hart Center is their parking problems, their bus problems.

There are issues where our seniors just do not feel welcome.

Thank you for your time.

Marbella Salva is our final speaker on this item.

Welcome.

Thank you and good morning.

And as the chair of the commission mentioned, we are a little behind in our recommendations because of the timing.

And it's an ongoing issue we've had.

So I was happy to hear that there's a discussion that in the future our budget discussions happen with the finance department much earlier, like January and February.

So we're ready to present our recommendations instead of now we're behind the eight ball.

Two points I want to make.

Participatory budgeting.

I know the reason it's there.

We realize about the money but the importance and what happened in budgetary.

The budget.

Ah.

Participatory budgeting.

It was the process of true engagement with the community.

The community participated in defining what programs, where they would like the money to go and what programs and community-based programs.

And out of that came some funding, funding went to community-based organizations that probably would have never received money, but they were doing good work in the community.

That process is what's really important and we don't want to get lost.

And even though we're going through these structural challenges, we should not lose sight of the importance of getting feedback from the community.

And really engaging in this process that we've had this year, I think it's probably not very good.

It really hasn't involved the community and you've heard it all before.

And then my last point is the importance.

I know that safety is very important, but also prevention is equally important.

And our communities need prevention programs, crime prevention programs.

So we're just saying some of the 17 FTEs that are funded through Measure U, take one of them and add more to the crime prevention programs.

Because those are really important and you know why they're really important.

And they work closely with the police department and they just need more resources.

Thank you for your comments.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

We want to thank all of the public speakers and our commissioners for coming today and sharing your thoughts and for your presentation.

With that, I will move over to Mayor Pro Tem Guerra.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

One, I do want to thank the Measure U Committee for their hard work.

I want to recognize District 6 Measure U Commissioner Connor Johnson for also his time and all of the other commissioners as well.

And for also engaging in this.

And I think, you know, the benefit, what was made mentioned earlier is that the sooner that we have input from the commission, the faster we can work cooperatively.

But I do recognize that their engagement with our offices has led to the development of this budget from the council and the staff to where we are today.

And I want to just recognize that the number one issue that the Measure U Committee put forward was reinstating the $1.3 million in youth funding.

And that, in fact, is in the budget and moving forward in the budget.

So I do want to thank that engagement from the commission.

And sometimes, you know, I think the best way would be is if we can have early hearings where the commission can do that.

But sometimes, you know, what I saw here is that the back and forth with our individual commissioners and working with the staff in our offices is also equally as successful.

So I wanted to highlight that piece as well.

And then and also on the on the points that, you know, while it's not completely reflected in the budget, I think the steps we're making now on on our strategies for housing and homelessness are included in this year's budget and do, in fact, include changes we're going to be making over the next year.

With that, Madam Chair, I just wanted to thank again the Measure U Committee.

And every year we will improve on how we actually do that back and forth with the budget committee.

Absolutely. All right. Thank you.

All right. Anything from this side of the dais?

All right. I'll just briefly say, well, one, oops, I forgot what's something really important.

Our colleague, Council Member Dickinson, unfortunately, was unable to join us today.

And so our clerk will be reading his comments into the record at this time.

Thank you, Vice Chair. So unfortunately, Council Member Dickinson could not be here.

He does apologize for that. He asked that we can face his views and put his email into the public record.

So here are his comments. I'd like to comment on the Measure U Advisory Committee recommendations.

I specifically support restoring the one point three million for youth programs.

I strongly support funding for participatory budgeting.

Well, I would like to include it this year. If that is not possible, I would like to include it.

In budget discussions for next year.

I strongly agree on the need for affordable housing and seeking additional funding from local, state, federal, and private sources.

We need to include seeking new sources of funding from all levels in that effort.

I believe a careful examination of all vacancies in city departments, including enterprise fund departments, needs to be undertaken.

That effort began this year and needs to be an integral part of budget discussions next year.

And lastly, I strongly support preserving the DEI position.

And then finally, it's again disappointing that the committee's recommendations are coming to the council after the council has given significant direction.

I would like to work on the schedule for next year to avoid this problem.

Excellent.

Thank you very much.

And those will be a part of the public record.

Quickly, I just again want to thank everyone for our presenter, members of the commission who came to speak, and the public.

I aligned myself with many of the comments that were made here, including Council Member Dickinson.

And I'd love to see a further conversation happen on participatory budgeting.

As I've told members of the commission before, we saw that there was, you know, this great experiment that happened.

And then, of course, you know, we took some time to take a look at that data and see what worked or not.

But it's my opinion that we're really only going to know what works or not if we have multi-year.

We need to be able to see multiple years in a row.

Where do they go?

What did it look like?

And what does that data show us?

So I'd love to see that come back.

And it's challenging right now with our current budget situation.

But I believe there are ways that we can make that happen, hopefully in the future years.

On safe grounds, that was brought up.

An interesting point.

I know that this body and this mayor has been really keen on how do we take a look and assess the homelessness programs that we have, what's working, what's not, and then constantly redirect what we're doing to make sure that we're aligning ourselves with the programs that are the most effective.

I hear the comments about the cost.

But I will say just my personal belief having a WX shelter in my district, having now hopefully a Project Home Key coming in that we just voted on recently and other programs.

But I do think it's really important that we have other services on site.

Yes, you know, ultimately having a place for people to go is the goal for me.

And I agree with that.

But we also know that when we place people who need a lot of help into one space and we don't provide them the wraparound services that they need, it can lead to even more problems.

And so while I acknowledge that point, I think that what we need, in fact, is greater partnerships to ensure that we can have places for people to go and the services that they need to support them.

And I know that's something we're really committed to.

Our DCR director here in the audience works on this every day of his life and thinks about it deeply.

But I think it's definitely a worthy topic of discussion for the future.

Absolutely.

And so just want to thank you.

This is a receive and follow and provide direction, so we don't need a motion on this.

So just thank you so much to everyone who came out to present.

And with that, we'll move on to item three, adoption of the fiscal year 2025-26 operating budget and capital improvement plan.

Thank you.

So on May 20th, again, council had a pretty in-depth discussion of areas where we would like to restore services as a city.

And so we have them listed up there.

It's a little over $3 million.

One is lowering the fire prevention fee increase for small businesses, funding for the fuel network, reinstating the DEI staff, and providing $1.3 million of youth prevention funding contingent upon council, approving the library allocation for Measure L.

And to restore those $3 million in change, we needed to come up with a financing plan.

And so we tried to capture what we had heard as consensus of council, as well as some other options for where we fell short in funding, specifically the Federal Funding Reserve and the use of our projected fund balance to help cover up the shortfall.

But the others are around appointed office positions and, again, council approving that Measure L allocation for the library project, which would then free up general fund that we had allocated to it to be able to fund the restorations.

There are some other technical adjustments.

These are mainly things that happened after too late in the process to incorporate in the proposed budget.

So one is shifting emergency management from the city manager's office to the fire department.

There are some position ad deletes in fire YPSI and the treasurer's office, the compensation commission action, some various labor and offset adjustments that, again, occurred late in the process.

And then a technical budget fund shift so that we can maintain the mowing service levels and our road medians.

So after we do all of those things, where does that leave us?

So it leaves us with roughly half a million dollars positive forecast for fiscal year 26.

Again, this is an over $850 million general fund budget, so it's a very small margin of error, but it is balanced.

It is positive.

And we have made progress on our structural deficit, but as you can see, we will be in budget balancing mode going into the fiscal year 26-27 budget process.

And, again, this is assuming we do not get another round of state homelessness funding, which is currently being fought.

That's right.

So some additional considerations.

I think, you know, Chair Dickinson's email or comment had mentioned some of these.

But just given the focus on vacancies at the May 20th meeting, what we're proposing is that we come in the lead up to the fiscal year 26-27 budget development process sometime in the fall to budget and audit.

And we just have a very focused discussion on vacancies.

So all positions, you know, that have been vacant for a certain amount of time, six or nine months, and we go position by position and say what the impact would be of eliminating those positions.

And that can really help inform departments as they start looking at their budget balancing plans for the fiscal year 27 budget.

The other thing that we heard from council was, you know, how do we look at future years of our forecast, and do we want to consider policies around tolerance or balancing in some of the out years?

And so we want to have that in-depth discussion in budget and audit, and if there's any appropriate policy that comes out of the committee to then advance that to council.

So those are, you know, kind of outside of the budget, but these are things that we heard and that we want to address.

And with that, we are open to any questions.

Thank you.

We really appreciate, as always, your presentation.

And with that, I'll say, Madam City Clerk, do we have any public comment on this item?

I do.

I have seven speakers on this item.

The first is Lambert.

Following Lambert is Aaron Cardoza, John Frias Morales, Mack Worthy, Nicole Venardi.

Welcome.

Okay.

Okay.

This is a very sensitive topic to me.

As I see Yipsy and also Arts and Cultures, those are two people who think outside the box.

Jackie Beauchamp's group, they've patronized us.

So has Megan with Arts.

And as I look at this, Grant High School's football team, which has won the state championship, the city and the city manager's office has not even given them a parade.

It does not cost much money to give a parade.

But I bet you if it was other teenagers, they would fund them.

It doesn't cost much to have a – and I see the people who I want to pay attention not paying attention.

You should pay attention in the city manager's office.

As a matter of fact, this – there was a guy that was coming into the city hall, and he caused this overhead to be discontinued.

I consider this a freedom of speech issue.

It keeps saying it's out of order.

If a restroom is out of order, you should be able to fix it.

And as I look at the screen, every time somebody puts a laptop, we can see it.

But the public, we can't put on here what we want you to see.

And that is a violation of freedom of speech.

Also, we can't call in anymore.

Some people don't want to come down here.

They should be able to call in.

I think it's intentional because the guy who was coming in here, he shook City Hall up.

And he should have shook them up, just like Mr. Worthy and me shaking it up.

And it says here that the city of Sacramento has received a capital budgeting excellence award.

How can you get an excellence award and you're in a budget deficit, structural deficit?

I've never heard of that phrase.

That's another phrase for Ms.

Thank you for your comments.

Aaron Cardoza?

Welcome.

Good morning.

My name is Aaron Cardoza.

I'm here on behalf of a school called Miracle University.

And I want to talk about the dropout crisis in the city of Sacramento.

So we know dropouts, right, end up on drugs, homeless, or even committing suicide or joining a gang.

I have one of my students here from Miracle University.

We have 200 dropouts that's in our school now.

100% rate of graduating.

Got their grades up.

They had all F's.

Never was going to school.

We're just basically here today to explain how important it is to continue to try and fund us so that we can keep our school up and keep it going.

Because it's going to stop gang and gun violence.

We have so many programs, different mentors like myself.

We have tutors in there.

We have teachers that really can understand our kids and what they're going through and how we can keep them off the streets.

And even the homeless population, we have like six homeless kids that's there that we feed that we're able to be able to try to find them a house and then work with their parents to keep them off the streets.

So today, like I said, we're here to get recognized for Miracle University.

We've been on the news.

We've been talking to a lot of people.

A lot of you guys have came and visited our school.

But I'm just here today to talk about funding and see how we can get some funding to keep what we're doing going so we can stop the dropout rate in the city of Sacramento.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Next speaker is John Frias Morales, then Mac Worthy.

I'm against defunding the police as advocated by a South Sac council member.

The press release said defund 25 positions from the police department.

In June 2023, three council members tried to take six million from police vacancies.

And 10 years ago, the city eliminated specialty units that protect us.

Narcotics, financial crimes, vice and high profile offender teams were eliminated and never restored.

In the past 16 years, Sacramento's population has surged by 11 percent with 67,000 new residents now calling the city home.

But we actually have 7 percent less officers.

Sacramento has 91 sworn police vacancies and 92 professional staff vacancies.

Our safety should never be compromised like this.

We deserve a community where a fully funded police department can respond quickly and thoroughly to every threat.

Despite defunding the police efforts in the last two years, police have taken 3,000 guns from the street gangs.

Out-of-control gangs are causing so much gun violence.

In 2024, there were 19,000 calls for 911 for burglary, narcotics, robbery, shoplifting, theft, and carjacking.

Doesn't the council understand that defunding the police will only lead to more crime, more chaos, more danger for every single resident of Sacramento?

We need more police, not less.

Our officers put their lives on the line for us every single day.

And this is how the city repays them, by leaving them shorthanded and leaving us vulnerable.

Stop defunding the police.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker is Math Worthy.

Then Nicole Zanardi.

Welcome.

A lot of people here don't understand improvement, capital improvement.

The city owns that property.

People that don't pay tax on it, they use the hock for bonds.

Come get educated on what's going on.

Then we look at it.

Every time we go around, look at it, we're going to hire some more people.

Hire some more people for what?

What are they doing now that those people are going to be an expert to come in?

Then we look at the police department.

The police department is pitiful.

I may be in Virginia in a few more weeks, but I'm going with the FBI agent.

The chief is accepting a brother-to-brother shit, what, snitching on the others.

Now, that went on in the last days.

Pin them against each other.

Right?

Land there past hiking, Manifu Boulevard.

They appear in those, and we watch who come in here, and the chief hug.

I've tried to show them something here.

No, they can't come to me because they don't know what I got and know what I'm saying.

That you've been lying for all these years about drugs.

And it's still going to be here.

About guns.

I just dealt with some of them, some guns in my house.

The city police department told me they couldn't pick them up.

I'm dealing with the county now.

That's an Italian friend of mine to change some stuff.

But yet still, these are the people that you've got here saying we are the police.

These people, you've got something going on here.

That FBI agent is soon going to get involved.

Next speaker is Nicole Zanardi, then Jim Porter, and then Kishwer Vicas.

Welcome.

Hi.

Good afternoon.

My name is Nicole Zanardi, and I'm the legal director and a removal defense attorney at California Immigration Project,

which houses and coordinates the Sacramento Family, Unity, Education, and Legal Network, or FUEL.

I've been providing removal defense services through FUEL since 2019,

and I would like to express my strong support for the inclusion of continued funding for the FUEL network in the 2025-2026 budget.

FUEL provides critical education, services, and support to the Sacramento immigrant community,

and over the last eight years, it has developed into a comprehensive and dynamic network that is trusted by the community,

houses extensive institutional knowledge and expertise,

and serves as a central hub for collaboration among Sacramento residents and organizations

with the common goal of protecting the most vulnerable among us.

FUEL and all of its programs and services has been made possible because of this city,

and the funding and support it has provided to FUEL since its inception in 2017.

Without this funding, the FUEL network would disappear,

and that would result in alarmingly harmful consequences for tens of thousands of Sacramento residents.

Continued funding for FUEL is particularly imperative at this moment.

Since February, the Sacramento community has seen dozens of ICE arrests,

which have led to the immediate deportation of our neighbors.

This is compared to only a handful of ICE arrests in our community over the previous four years combined.

Meanwhile, the number of removal cases at the Sacramento Immigration Court

has nearly doubled in the last year from 17,000 to nearly 30,000,

and the need for legal assistance continues to increase.

In this time of crisis, our community relies on FUEL more than ever,

which manages an emergency hotline for the community,

provides imperative legal intervention to stop deportations and reunite families,

and delivers critical education advocacy.

Thank you for including continued funding for the FUEL network in the budget.

This council, where it decides to invest its money, is a reflection of its values,

and this is just a starting point.

Thank you.

Jim Porter, then Kishor.

Welcome.

Thank you.

Good morning.

My name is Jim Porter, and I'm the External Affairs Director at Opening Doors.

We are an agency here in Sacramento serving immigrants, refugees, and survivors of trafficking.

And as part of the FUEL network, we work with our partners to support immigrants

and their families here in Sacramento.

I just want to start by saying thank you for supporting the FUEL funding

and continuing stable funding for it.

This is an important step in continuing the commitment that was made when this program was started,

and it's even more important today against the backdrop of unprecedented funding cuts

and new cruel federal policies.

At Opening Doors and alongside our partners, we've witnessed this network's impact

to ensure that legal, mental health, and education support reach immigrant families across Sacramento.

Here in California, immigrants make up roughly 30% of our population

and harness more than $291 billion in spending power.

In 2019, immigrants right here in Sacramento paid over $300 million in state and local taxes,

and they start businesses at even higher rates than their American-born peers.

I want to conclude by thanking you again for recognizing the importance of the FUEL network

with their incredible contributions to our city, state.

Equipping immigrants for success makes our communities and our economy stronger.

This decision isn't just a symbolic one, but a direct response and action to defend

and more importantly celebrate the immigrants that enrich our community.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Welcome.

Kishwar.

Good morning, everyone.

My name is Kishwar Vikas.

I am an immigration attorney of 12 years and a certified state bar specialist in immigration and nationality.

I am here in support of the FUEL network, which provides vital legal services to Sacramento and its residents.

In my day job, I see hundreds of Sacramento residents, most of whom do not have immigration attorneys,

and most of whom do qualify for legal relief, including a pathway to citizen.

The FUEL network has always helped those Sacramento's.

Before this, I worked at McGeorge Immigration Clinic for five years,

and I worked at Opening Doors, the refugee resettlement agency.

We always worked hand-in-hand with FUEL since 2019.

The latest stats say that 30% of non-citizens do not have an immigration attorney in their pending cases.

30% despite their constitutional right, the Sixth Amendment right to an attorney,

which is not given to our immigrant residents.

Why?

There's simply not enough affordable nonprofits.

There's simply not enough affordable attorneys here in the Sacramento Valley.

The FUEL network has provided Sacramento residents with quality legal services for six years running and filled that gap.

We need them now more than ever.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Vice Chair, I have no more speakers.

Thank you.

And just, again, I want to thank our presenter, Mr. Coleto, and the entire finance team.

I know we had a marathon council meeting that went to almost midnight, for those of you who were not here for that,

that led to a variety of discussions about what we wanted to keep and where we were going to find the money.

And just this presentation is the result of that.

So where we wanted to keep and where we're going to find it.

And so I just want to thank staff for their work on that because it's a hard thing to do,

especially when you have a lot of different opinions.

And I'm so glad to see it.

And I really appreciated how simply it was presented as well.

So thank you for doing that.

And just also wanted to thank the members of the public who came to speak.

I know the members on this dais and our mayor and others are very passionate about making sure that the FUEL network remains funded.

And so we're going to keep fighting for that.

So thank you.

And with that, I'll pass it on over to Mayor Pro Tem Guerra.

Mayor Pro Temer.

I feel comfortable here, not only that, but I'm willing to focus on putting the best energy they have in our own city workforce.

Number two, very glad to see back the parking program in there for a council member that represents an older part of the city,

a part of the city that was built at times where there weren't any driveways.

and the street parking is their only form of parking,

it's critical and I won't repeat why I was extremely opposed to the program going away,

but particularly for those older communities, I'm glad that that's back into the budget

and also the inclusion of the Office of Diversity and Equity having the staffing put back in.

The one area that I still have concern with, and this is more on how the staff report is drafted,

and that's related to the item on the city attorney's budget in the section that says reflect current city attorney staffing.

And some may say that this is semantics, but this is actually very critical.

One of the directions that I had made at the council meeting was that this be a one-time change

and be noted as a one-time change.

Now that would result in the next year's budget deficit or structural deficit to include that growth.

And that's an important thing to note, but that is the tradeoff there.

So one, I think it's important to do that.

One, we need to be able to continue to recruit at a higher level those staffing changes.

So those are my concerns.

And so I will make a motion, Madam Chair, to move the staff report, but with reflecting changes,

and I'm glad to work with the staff on this, on how to identify that this is a one-time change

on the city attorney staffing budget so that the next year budget be presented with the FTEs in there.

Thank you.

All right.

We have a motion on the table.

Do you have any comments from this side of the dais or a second?

I am happy to second Mayor Pro Temgara's motion on the floor.

And I guess a question for our city manager.

I know there's a lot of conversations about the vacancies, and in our staff report,

there's positions that have been open for 1,200 days or 50 days, and there's just a varying number.

So I was wondering if you can just explain to the public what's going on in the back end for the city of Sacramento

and why the reports reflect that.

Sure.

Thank you.

We had not historically tracked vacancies by length of them being vacant by the date they were vacated.

And so this is something new for us, and I think we had departments that were in a practice

of taking the position number that was most recently made available.

And that resulted in, you know, 15 or 20 positions being continually filled and refilled as people came and went.

And then you might have positions further down when there was a lot more turn than just those 15 or 20 positions.

We saw it a lot in the fire department.

We saw it a lot in the police department.

We have talked to our department directors.

I am saying out now to all of our fiscal staff now and our HR staff that please make sure that you're using vacancies from the bottom up

so that we can now begin to track the length, the actual length, that a position is vacant

so that when we report that out, it is accurate and reflective of true length of vacancies.

Okay.

Thank you so much.

And, Pete, can you go back to the slide on our budget projections or deficits for the following years?

Yeah.

Okay.

So I know for myself, we're going into budget, like, labor negotiations here in the next few months with our labor partners.

And one of my ideas was initially, like, okay, how do we project, like, we're going to give, we're going to go through negotiations,

and then people may get increases.

And so how do we reflect that into the budget now so that we're not here back next year?

And so that's something that kind of came up in my train of thought.

And then there's also the conversation on the dais of, like, how do you project for, like, the next two, three years so that we're not back here again?

And we will be back here again in what?

September, you said, I think?

When do you guys go back to the budget start for next year?

It's, like, literally, like, three months.

So we'll probably be coming to the fall both for budget policy and to talk vacancies and talk balancing the out years.

Yeah.

And that's the part where it's, like, how do we as a council become more strategic in this planning?

Because it's not sustainable for you as staff to continue crunching the numbers month after month, month after month.

And then there's fear in city staff of, like, is my position going to be cut?

What does this mean for my department?

And then how do we get creative?

And so for me, throughout this entire budget cycle, it's been let's make the tough cuts now.

Because this golden era of 2008 before the recession is never coming back to the city of Sacramento.

And we have to work with what we have, use technology to the best of our ability, and increase our revenues because our expenditures continue to outpace our revenues.

And that's one thing that for next year, and maybe I'll submit a council member proposal of some sort, because we make a lot of investments as a city of Sacramento into projects through economic development.

And I'd really like to see, like, what's working and what's not working.

If it's not working, it's not generating money in the way that we thought it would, how do we pull it back?

And then continue investing the stuff that is working.

And so we need to have, like, just a strategic conversation about that as a mayor and council.

And I know we're having a retreat at the end of the year, which will be incredibly helpful.

But all of us continue to submit council member proposals throughout the year when it's not budget time.

And sometimes the council member proposals have budgetary restrictions or they, you know, make things more expensive.

And it's like, how do we take that into consideration, too?

There's a lot of, you know, proposals that go through law and ledge, but they don't come through budget and audit.

And I just feel like if anything, any council member proposal has any kind of budget constraint, it should come to budget and audit.

So we can continue to monitor it so that our expenditures don't continue to increase.

So that's just kind of, like, my train of thought right now.

Like, we just, we need to figure it out.

We're going to be back here again next year.

And for the city of Sacramento, we need to get ourselves in, need to find a balance.

It also goes with our reputation.

I mean, we want people to come invest in Sacramento.

We need to make sure that our budget is in line and that we have our ducks covered.

So something for our retreat in the future.

And thank you so much for all your work.

Happy to, you know, second Mayor Pro Temgara's motion and move us to full council.

Thank you very much.

And so to clarify, then now our city manager will take that addition that will now be added for the out years and add that back in.

And that's going to come to council for next week.

Okay, great.

Okay, all those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed or abstain?

That measure passes unanimously.

Okay.

Thank you very much.

We appreciate the presentation.

And with that, this is a special meeting.

So we do not have public comments for matters not on the agenda.

But we do have an item for committee comments, questions, concerns, and reports.

Councilor McGarrow.

Yeah, I have an AV1234 report.

I just wanted to, one, thank the city clerk and the Junon Sister City Association.

I participated in our, for the 40th anniversary of the Junon Sister City.

I had an opportunity to go with the mayor and our assembly member, local assembly member, and a delegation of 18 individuals.

One faculty member from Sac State, a couple local business members, my sister's house executive director.

And to learn about, you know, what, one, the history of our relationship and economic improvements.

We know we've seen some economic investments in Sacramento from the relationship.

It's also exciting to see, you know, the history that Sacramento's had with this.

It's Heather Fargo, Mayor Joe Cerna, our local supervisors over the last 40 years.

And even a photo of our current mayor 18 years ago when he was a council member in Junon.

So I wanted to, again, thank a lot more to unpack that.

But I wanted to do my AV1234 report.

Well, thank you very much.

And also want to thank you for representing the city of Sacramento to our sister city, who I know that always takes part and comes here.

And want to make sure that we're paying it forward and celebrating with them.

So thank you for that.

Seeing no other comments to come before the committee, we are now adjourned at 11.58 a.m.

Thank you.