I don't need to hear that.

Well, motion.

Good afternoon.

Welcome to let's see, Monday, May 18th, 2026, meeting of the Measure U Community Advisory Committee.

The meeting is now called to order.

Will the clerk please call roll to establish a quorum?

Thank you, Chair.

Vice Chair McGee.

Commissioner Smith.

Commissioner Salah.

Here.

Commissioner Cook is absence.

Commissioner Miller.

Commissioner Johnston.

Here.

Commissioner Ruiz Benitez.

Commissioner Noveo.

Here.

Commissioner Jarowski is absent.

Commissioner Pascal is absence.

Commissioner Fry Lucas.

Commissioner Rosa is absent.

And Chair Georgioff.

Here.

Thank you.

We have quorum.

I would like to remind members of the public and chambers that if you would like to speak on an agenda item, please turn in a speaker slip when the item begins.

You'll have two minutes to speak.

Once you are called on after the first speaker, we will no longer accept speaker slips.

We will now proceed with today's agenda.

Please rise for the opening acknowledgements in honor of Sacramento Indigenous people and tribal lands.

Do the original people of this land, the Nissan people, the Southern Mayu, Valley and Plain.

Sacramento's only federally recognized tribe.

May we acknowledge and honor the Native people who come before us and still walk beside us today on these astrial lands by choosing to gather together today in the active practice of acknowledgement and appreciation of Sacramento's indigenous peoples, history, contribution, and lives.

Thank you.

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

All right.

Okay, the first item is to the approval of the consent calendar.

Do I have a motion and a second?

Or any comments on this?

Oh, also, are there any members of the public who wish to speak on this?

Thank you, Chair.

I have no speaker slips for the consent calendar.

Okay.

I'll move.

Member Noveo for first.

Uh all second.

Uh yeah, let's do a voice vote.

All in favor say aye.

Abstain.

Uh decline.

No, okay.

Cool.

Great.

Then we will move on to the discussion calendar.

So I think first we're going to get an overview of the fiscal year 2026-27 and the measure you proposed budget.

Welcome, welcome.

It is not.

Okay.

Oh, okay.

It's all now.

Good evening, Commissioners.

My name is Marfala Santizo.

I am the budget manager, and with me I have Brian Martin.

He's one of our principal budget analysts.

And today we are going to go over the fiscal year 27 Measure U Commission budget along with just the general proposed budget that we submitted and released at the end of April.

Okay.

Okay.

So moving forward, we'll talk about the hearing schedule.

We'll go over the fiscal year 27 budget overview.

We will do an overview of the measure U budget.

We'll talk about closing the gap.

And the fiscal year 27 Measure U reductions and augmentations.

We'll go through the five-year forecast and discuss long-term funding challenges.

Okay.

So here's a budget schedule.

And I do realize that there is a mistake on it.

So we are at the bottom part of the schedule on May 18th here at the Measure U Commission.

What has been changed is that we will no longer have a budget and audit commission meeting.

We will have another meeting with council tomorrow on May 19th at 5 p.m.

And then, of course, we'll come back for June 9th for 5 p.m.

council adoption.

Okay, in regards to budget challenges, we've had um several in the last um three years that we've been discussing and trying to balance the budget.

Um our immediate uh budget, of course, our immediate challenge, of course, was the structural um deficit that we've been balancing since 25.

Um, but for this year we uh had uh also a structural deficit that continues on in our forecast.

In regards to the near-term budget challenges, we have federal funding threats and economic risks uh that could hit us but hasn't hit us yet, and then um long term, we um have quite a bit in unfunded pension liabilities and unfunding capital needs that will be discussed a little later in the presentation.

So for our mid-year budget, we um presented council with this five-year forecast, which shows that fiscal year 27 would have a 66.2 million dollar deficit.

Um, and of course, it continues to increase as we move on to fiscal year 30.

Uh, this deficit is not caused by an economic downturn.

It's uh due to the imbalance of uh our expenses growing much faster than our revenues.

So moving forward, um, any sort of ongoing balancing strategies that we uh keep in our budget will lower the projected deficits in the future fiscal years.

The fiscal year 27 proposed budget for all funds is about 1.7 billion dollars.

It's an increase of about 48 million for general fund, it's an increase of about 26 million and close to 900 million.

Uh for full-time FTEs, we have dropped down to about 4,800, which is a drop of 164 FTEs.

This proposed budget is balanced and closes the at um that 66.2 million funding gap that I showed earlier.

For measure U, uh there was an increase in revenues of about 2.3 million.

Uh, expenditures dropped from 161 from last fiscal year to 145, so it's about a 16.3 million dollar drop.

Um, and the number of employees also dropped from 800 approximately 800 to 700.

All right, so closing the budget gap.

Um, as we have done in the last three fiscal years, the goal for council was to define and preserve core services and advance council priorities, which is economic development, homelessness, and public safety.

The goal also was to minimize the impact to services on the public, and also the impacts on staff uh here in the city.

At the beginning of this budget process, we asked the departments to develop reduction plans to hit a target reduction of 15% of their net general fund measure you fund use.

Uh what we also asked them to do was to define their service and staffing impacts of each strategy so that council and city manager understands what those impacts would be.

Uh the finance department reviewed all of the reductions and presented them to the city manager for review, which is what the proposed budget shows.

Okay.

This is just a summary of what the proposed budget has, but as you can see, the mid-year forecast starts at 66.2 million of a reduction.

We also added some additional additional 11.3 million to that amount for labor contract adjustments.

The mid-year forecast did include some funding for labor contracts, but we knew that it wouldn't be all of it.

It was just what was presented to the unions at the tables at that moment in time.

So this is essentially the number that we know of at this moment in time.

Then we include also the budget balancing strategies of 68.8.

We have some additional funding from the encampment relief funds for 2.3 million, some uh HAP funding for 3.5, and other adjustments, which leaves us with a balanced budget of about 300,000.

We're also showing the fiscal year 28 budget, just so that everybody can understand what this impact has to the next fiscal year.

And so with uh this proposed budget, it will have uh 35.4 million deficit in fiscal year 28.

And here are a few of the budget balancing strategies that equals up to the 68.8.

We have um our treasurer's office did a really good job with um essentially savings from higher interest um earned from the treasury pool investments.

Um you see up there at 4.3 million.

We also refinance um some of the general fund debt, which also created savings.

There was uh renegotiation of contracts with several vendors providing homelessness services such as shelters, and um, while it is a reduction in funding, it doesn't reduce services.

And Brian will go um into a further details of other homelessness reductions, but that's what equals up the 8.9.

We have about 13.6 in departmental revenues, and that is um could be um of various uh fee increases or um departments just realizing revenues that they have increased in previous years.

We also have cost shifts to other funds, and what that means is if there is another funding source that could pay for specific services or staffing.

Uh we have shifted for those funds to pay for those.

We have 11.1 in um project reallocations, which is essentially um reductions of projects that um we have either had some monies left over and they were finished or they never got off the ground.

Um, and then the rest of the other ones are for various uh expense reductions in departments.

The fire department had a single roll implementation savings of about 3.5.

Police department um has expenses of 7.5, which is a reduction of a lot of staffing.

Fire department uh 3.3, again, mostly staffing, and Yipse with 2.9 with staffing and supplies and services, and then various other departmental expense reductions.

Okay, and um with these strategies, we have about three-quarters of it being ongoing, which is why the um amount that you saw if for fiscal year 28 dropped down to about 35 million.

So, okay.

With that, I'm gonna pass it over to Brian.

Thank you.

Uh good evening, Commission members.

Uh Brian Martin from Department of Finance.

In the creation of the proposed budget, there were a number of strategies uh of reductions coming from measure U.

These are listed in detail in attachment three in tonight's item, but some notable reductions include a reduction of funding for the X-Treat Navigation Center in light of a potential Caltrans lease expiration, uh, reducing funding for the city motel program, chipsing to a voucher-based model, uh resulting in 3.2 million, uh one-time reduction to the gang prevention and intervention task force project, uh GPIT for 1.4 uh reduction in operating schedules to three days per week at our neighborhood pools and reducing aquatic staffing for about 460,000 and uh deletions of 12 positions in the police hiring pipeline, uh resulting in a savings.

About 1.2 million.

Uh to get a little deeper into homelessness.

Uh, as you can see for FY27, uh, our total funding going to homeless services is 39.4 million.

Part of the funding that alleviates the cost on the city, we have our state encampment relief funds coming at 2.3 HAPP6 funding, which reduces the city's contribution towards that to 33.6.

In years going forward, our state encampment relief funds run out.

Uh HAP6 has its final year in 28, and HAP 7, we're projecting just the one year.

And then in the out years beyond that, the green row you can see we're going from 30.2 million to 41.7 as the full burden of paying for those services shifts to the city.

And then this is on the Office of Violence Prevention Funding Shift.

This is regarding a new state grant resulting in program delivery adjustments.

This is shifting from the gang prevention and intervention task force as well as the evidence-based community violence interruption, disruption, and suppression funding, and moving to the CalVIP cohort five.

This results in a few changes, shifting to a school-based referral system versus the current law enforcement based referrals, providing consistent pre and post-school community engagement, and moving to prevention focused deployments versus a current law enforcement driven model.

One other thing of note is that youth violence prevention is also an eligible measure L funding category.

In the first round of measure L allocations, approximately 900,000 was awarded.

And then we move on to our staffing impacts for measure U.

In the proposed budget, a total of 91.7 FTE measure U positions are eliminated.

54.6 of these FTE are vacant and 37.1 of the FTE are filled.

As of April 3rd, this affects approximately 34 people who will be subject to being bumped or separated from the city.

The table below is a breakdown of it by classification and department, the majority of which are coming out of UPC from park maintenance workers and program coordinators.

Here's a chart showing the reductions of measure U by program area.

The lion's share of this is between community response and youth funding.

The community response is largely the motel voucher program that discussed earlier and the reduction of funding for the Xtreet Navigation Center, with youth being the one-time reduction in GPIT funding.

Once again, attachment three details all of these reductions.

Next, we go into the uh the augmentations for measure U.

There's approximately 800,000 in augmentations.

The lion's share of that made up from a community response between the language, excuse me, uh the funding spay and neuter clinics, one time, and a new administrative technician for DCR new position.

And then with inclusive economic development, uh the funding of the language access coordinator position.

These are also all detailed in attachment four on the item.

All right, moving to our proposed budget forecast.

Um Marthala discussed this a little bit uh earlier on, but here's our five-year forecast.

Uh, as you can see, this year we started with a 66.2 million dollar deficit we needed to close.

And next year, because of the amount of cuts that were between ongoing and one time, we were able to reduce that in down to uh 35.4 for our starting point next year.

Um, and as you can see, as it continues to go forward, we it continues to climb.

Some of our long-term funding challenges, um, a large one is our unfunded liabilities.

Uh, so in addition to our structural budget concerns, meaning our expenses outpacing our revenues, uh, we have a large number of unfunded liabilities, including a 1.5 billion unfunded pension liability, uh 200 million OPEB liability, and a 2 billion unfunded capital and deferred maintenance needs.

Um, and uh OPEB, excuse me, OPEB is uh other post-employment benefits.

Um, so addressing some of these long-term challenges, uh, council's already taken a few actions.

Um, one of which you see in the first uh the first bullet is to establish a financial policy allowing for our prior year savings to be uh administratively applied to uh current year budget needs, um, and then using our capital plan to identify these unfunded needs, allowing council to adopt priorities around what we're going to prioritize and fund for the year.

Uh staff will continue to support council in addressing these um to ensure the fiscal health and stability of the city.

Some of the pending factors looking forward, um a good number of these are unfortunately are factors beyond our control, the economic uncertainty and a potential risk of recession.

Uh, the future of state homelessness funding.

Uh currently we're able to take advantage of HAP funding from the state, but each year, and as our homelessness count changes, the funding situation for that also changes.

Um, next are unfunded liabilities, and then achieving structural balance, and so that's bringing our expensive growth in line with our revenue growth.

And uh that concludes the presentation.

Happy to take any questions.

Uh speakers, uh go ahead and cue up if you have questions and comments.

Um, member, uh okay.

Let's do the public comment first, then.

Thank you, Chair.

Um, our first our actually, we have one speaker slip for this item, Mr.

Lambert Davis.

Okay, measure U is back to being empty.

Why?

Because the people have already come down here and cut their deals.

Now, one thing that we're gonna be very uh aggressive on, and I went to city council uh twice, because in the last meeting I was here it was crowded, and there was a group that never did uh present it to you in the right manner.

You never got to QA economics and uh can't think of it right now, but economics department was not QA.

I'm uh I wish Mr.

Cook was here because he really was aggressive with that.

You had a decision to make, and that's why I say that most of the problems that City Hall are with the staff, because that decision was made by the staff, it was nine minutes left, and you decided to let a department go.

And we looked at them afterwards, they were like children because they knew they had pulled a fast one because they didn't get QA, but that was a violation of the Brown Act based on what I saw because you didn't follow the rules and procedures of the city hall, which I'm very familiar with.

Not only that, but I was I wanted to speak on them.

So what Mr.

Cook said was true.

Mr.

Rugani should have pulled a plug and said, Hey, we only have nine minutes left.

We need to do the right thing.

You could have had them come back in a special meeting.

They have them all the time.

Now there's no more special meetings, from what I understand.

And if you're gonna stand on it, we're gonna stand on it too.

They should have been questioned as much money as they get from this city.

Thank you for your comments, Chair.

I have no more members of the public sign up to speak.

Uh member Milling.

Yes.

Uh so I wanted to know you you um mentioned that the uh state hat programs are winding down.

Um the state is also you know experiencing some uh financial challenges at the moment, but any I'm sure you communicate quite often with uh staff at the state level.

Um any indication of potential future funding, uh, what that might look like.

We're actually uh good uh good evening, everyone.

Pico, the finance director.

Uh, we were just actually at four o'clock today.

We had a meeting uh internally about that.

So um where we are right now is the state has appropriated a seventh round of HAP funding.

Um so they appropriated that in uh as part of last year's budget adoption.

Um the legislature has wanted to double that to a billion, which would match HAP round six.

Uh, the governor just really released his May revision.

Um, he kept it at half a billion.

Um so they're kind they're fighting a little bit of back and forth now, and uh, with the governor's half billion uh for round seven, there's also a whole slew of new uh what the state is calling accountability measures that they're working on.

So trying to kind of tighten up around that.

But you know, we're really waiting to see how the budget negotiations go.

You know, it was disappointing that he didn't put more funding in.

The big city mayors are all lobbying for not just more funding, but more importantly, ongoing funding because we're scrambling every year.

All of us cities are as they the state kind of considers this on a year-by-year basis.

So there's a lot uh in flux, it's something that we're you know, we're watching and advocating for, but that's that's the latest uh that we know right now.

Thank you.

Uh member Naveo.

Um first I want to start by saying thank you, Commissioner Smith and uh for your presentation um or presenting uh uh in front of uh budget noted.

Uh thank you for the presentation, and whoever helped you create the bishops, definitely.

There were really dumb cool, and for the amount of time that you guys had, quotas to you both and uh commissioner uh Salat also for for being there, um, and for the staff and and probably a general question.

Uh during last uh uh Citicons submitting, there was an exercise of the memos.

I just call it that way.

Um, how much of that conversation are also reflected in this report and how much of those different reallocations or deductions are gonna be impacting uh the measure you funds.

Okay, so yeah, the presentation um so the discussion that occurred on May 12th at the council was not included in this report because this is just a report on the proposed budget.

But there are um definitely uh some changes that council would like to um to uh have uh to reinstate where it will affect measure you funding.

Uh the first one is that they did uh call a motion to um restore uh the violence prevention GPIT grants for 1.3 million and the waiting pools and the recreational swim hours.

So that is approximately 1.9 million, and they'll be funding it with additional HAP funding and parking enforcement vacancies.

The that was agreed upon by all the council members, and they passed a motion to move that forward.

The second part of their discussion was in regards to other restorations, um, and we are actually going to be going back to council tomorrow to discuss um not the restorations but the what we can do to fund those restorations and um the restorations that came about was the North Sacramento Economic Development Project reinstatement for about 260,000, North Sacramento Code Enforcement Project for about 201,000, um re uh instaning the Hart Senior Center staffing for approximately 274,000, uh bringing back the park maintenance workers um so that they do not get cut um for about 567,000.

Some are at city hall and other youth projects as well for about 132,000, an additional 275,000 for that uh the violence prevention grants.

It was the I forgot the long acronym.

The EV bids one, um, and then also um some Yipsey workforce development positions for about a hundred and seven K.

Um I would say that I believe it's the Hart Senior Center, the Park Maintenance Worker, Summer City Hall, the violence prevention grants and the Yipsey workforce development positions, those are all measure you funded programs that will be reinstated.

I'm not sure about the projects, I think they're a general fund, right?

They were general funds okay.

And so um with the discussion that will be held tomorrow will be the funding sources that council directed staff to look into, and we will present that tomorrow.

Thank you.

Vice Chair McGee.

Specific to some of the information on your slide concerning the mobile, the Motel voucher program and that being cut and going away.

I've heard rumblings.

I don't know how true that Sacramento is going to be looking at the um, I looked it up here.

The the income, the earn, not the income stipend model, kind of um matching what Stockton had done.

Um and so I wanted to kind of know if that's a consideration, maybe a swap out sure uh guaranteed income.

I'm sorry, that's what I'm calling for guaranteed income.

So I think uh so thank you, Commissioner.

I think there's uh kind of two things going on.

So the hotel program, uh, they're not looking to cut it, they're looking to um kind of realign who it's serving to be more focused on families.

So we're still going to have a hotel program under the Measure L Children's Fund.

Uh, the city is launching the guaranteed um income uh pilot program for uh foster youth.

Okay, so that is gonna happen, yes.

Okay, thank you.

I have an initial question, I guess maybe it's for the commission.

I just want to make sure I'm understanding the questions we're asking at night.

We can't really incorporate into a recommendation recommendations out, right?

So this is just like for our identification possibly and potentially help us advise down the road, right?

I just want to make sure I'm framing the questions correctly because you know, ultimately it's the city council that passes the budget, and we really I want to emphasize the finance department's always been very, very helpful in coming out and answering our questions.

I just want to make sure I'm utilizing your time the best.

Is that the right understanding?

Is like, however, you want to spend it, okay.

That's a good answer.

Um, so I have a lot of like one little specific questions that I don't think are gonna be useful tonight, but I have just kind of a structural question based upon the note that I saw that the departments were asked to reduce 15%.

General fundslash measure you fund.

So let's say a department comes up with the 15%.

It doesn't really matter where that 15% falls, whether it's measure you or general fund, you just want to make sure that the general fund is balanced.

So that's why I'm trying to send the deficit for the measure you fund.

That's not really the concern, it's the overall general fund and whether that entire budget's budgeted, right?

So if you if you happen to reduce 15%, let's say Yipsey, just throwing it out there, just well, that's a bad one because most of their budget's in on measure you.

Let's find one that has a balance.

It just so happens that 15% of their of their entire reduction happens to be measure you.

You're not gonna necessarily take money from general fund and plug that hole, right?

Or I guess it'd be vice versa, because you're reducing.

Does that make sense?

I'm doing a double negative, I realize because they're talking about reducing and transferring to fill in a reduction.

So let me see if I can say this.

So if you have 15% reduction, and you're only reducing it, uh in you're you're not covering that reduction in the in the measure you, so therefore measure you is now operating at a deficit because the reduction is only being offset or only being recognized in the general fund side of this hypothetical department that covers both.

You're not gonna plug in the measure you to make sure that balances, you're just gonna make sure that the general fund balances is that question hopefully for the love of everything good holding makes sense.

Um, so yeah, so yeah, so um the reductions exercise is for, I mean, most departments um have either they're usually either funded mostly by general fund with some measure you or mostly measure you with some general fund.

So their reductions can come from either one of those funds.

So just kind of to answer that initial question, so yeah, it can come from either one of those funds.

Um if it's a reduction, and the way that we look at the general fund, it's the general fund and measure you included combined.

So in regards to reviewing the um proposals that were submitted by departments, um, we if it was under general fund, whether it was measure you or general fund monies, it didn't matter to us in regards to that.

So if there is a reduction that was done in measure you, it was uh just a reduction.

Like we wouldn't offset it with the general fund.

Now we could offset it with a different fund.

So if like for example, we have the community center fund, right?

And sometimes that could offset the measure you fund, then that would be considered a savings too.

So, and you'll see it in the details and the attachments that Brian has referred to that if it was a funding shift, those um particular services or staffing will continue on it would just be funded by a different funding source but it wouldn't be funded by the general fund per se.

Yes okay that's consistent with my understanding okay and I understand the coming go and that's the difficulty and that's something we've always been struggling with is a little bit of whack a mole because we're looking at the measure you fund but it's also part of the greater general fund so it's um it's the fun of this commission.

So that answers the main question.

I guess the the other one I must have missed too this is unrelated but this is one of the more specific ones is the Xtreet Navigation Center.

Is there uh what's the what what's happening with that because that that supplied a lot of services right is there any any way to plug that hole after so um the way the XTree center is working right now is we are operating it under a lease from Caltrans.

And so that lease is expiring and one of two things will happen when that lease expires so if it expires and it goes away it goes away.

However there is a community organization that would like to run a center there and so if we if the lease does get renewed they would take over the operations of that site.

Okay great.

And then just because it's the largest FT decrease within measure you were there do you know if Yipsey did any um studies of the effect on part maintenance with the cuts of the maintenance workers.

So you know they it would be um you know it would be a a cost savings to contract that out the thing I will say is that council you know passed a motion last week uh looking to restore those positions and keep those services in house.

Okay we uh we already in some of our parks uh especially in newer areas that have uh Mel Roose districts you know we do contract out some of those services um and so that's how you know Yipsey was able to have kind of a cost comparison yeah uh however you know we may be bringing some of those in house as well yeah which also shows the difficulty of having this conversation because I know it's still in flux and the city council might move it I know there's some issues with the pools that people are pushing back and all that stuff so all right thank you so much for time I really appreciate it.

Member Salah thank you and I I do want to thank Commissioner Smith for presenting um last week it was he did your presentation his presentation it was it was well done and I was happy to be there and it was a very good discussion that occurred thoughtful discussion um they they did not like our recommendation not to fund arts and culture and they brought people in they were and and there was no one on the diet that supported reducing that budget on our recommendation everything else they accepted and embraced there was a um participatory budgeting came up and and I know that are you gonna talk later about that I was just gonna say I'm working on a report so it's okay so so what happened is um they want to know what what has been the results of of the impact that that funding went to the um community based organizations and I think maybe I should have spoken up it's not like we haven't done um an analysis we did an upfront analysis of the whole process and the engagement of community and then after that we we invited all of the CBOs that received money from us to come and present some of them did a good job of showing us how many participated and what was the outcome but what didn't happen was get all of that data and put it in a report so I think it was Vice Mayor Talamante said I really want to see that before we decide to go forward and um funding this uh project um participatory budgeting.

There are some members that really want to see it go forward, and I agree that because there was something very valuable in this whole process, but unless we show them the the value, they're not gonna they're not going to entertain um funding maybe next year.

So that'll be really helpful to have that and presented.

Um the other the other thing I'm I'm glad I I see that there's restorations, it's not in here, but if you attended the city council you see were and you mentioned at the restorations, what's not clear is and you didn't mention it, are the so what the mayor said was if you want a program restored, you got to tell me where what you want to have it restored and then how you it's gonna be funded, and each member had to submit a memo to that effect, and that's kind of what was presented last Tuesday.

Um, so the the uh the is it it's not it's the um restoration and what's the other the cut back.

So uh you know they had to say here's what we want to restore here's the financing source.

Finance, yes.

So what's not clear is we know what um they're restoring somewhat mainly, but so how is the how is it going to be financed and recommended for cuts?

Yeah, so council um they passed a motion and they said let's restore that 1.8 million in services that Mirthala uh mentioned before, and they gave us a list of available financing sources and told us to come back with a plan.

And so the financing sources were uh park maintenance savings.

So this is areas where um we're contracting out and we're paying for it with community facilities district funds, trying to institute uh what we're calling dynamic staffing at the parks to be able to serve those parks and and reduce some costs to the general fund, uh freezing the community ambassador stipends, um finding roughly half a million dollars of one time savings in the Department of Community Response, reduction in commission meetings, but not elimination, but accepting the planning or not um impacting the planning and design commission, and then uh the balance being from a reduction in the contribution to the economic uncertainty reserve.

So they said uh with those constraints come back to us with a plan, and that's what council is going to discuss tomorrow.

That's good.

I just have one one concern, and I saw it um last Tuesday, the recommendation of reducing um commission meetings, and um I so we're already short to instead of meeting, I think we meet uh ten times a year, ten times more or less.

And it would be reduced the proposals to reduce it to yeah, so we um we uh the information was just posted this afternoon.

I don't want to get too much in front of council, but I will say, you know, the the plan that we're bringing forward is uh having a maximum of five meetings per year for commissions.

So I'll just give you my opinion.

That is not enough.

Five, we we already struggle with ten and and to um um lambert's point is we ran out of time to have all of the the ones we wanted to present present, and we ran out of time, and there was we couldn't go beyond 8 30.

There was no way, and we couldn't have a special meeting because we needed to present this.

We already had a special meeting, which was a cost to the city, um, and we needed to have this ready to go to present at budget and audit.

So we already ran out of time.

We didn't even have enough time to do every all the work that we wanted to get done.

So five might as well not even have a commission, because we're not gonna be able to to get the work done, and um, so it's either the so that and I'll I will be I will speak to that tomorrow, um, and give my opinion about that, but I I just think five and I can imagine the police.

There's so many commissions that are doing really valuable work.

Um, with the exception, I know they said with the exception the planning commission, which I don't agree.

I think we're either all valuable or we're not valuable.

And pick and choose which ones are more valuable than the others, is not equitable.

So maybe it's not fair, not equitable, it's not fair.

So um other than that, I really appreciate the work that you're doing, and I um, and I'm hopeful that I agree with whoever um spoke about taking the park maintenance off the table because these when I first saw that I I thought um that was these are probably I don't know how much they make an hour, but it's not a lot, and and them being laid off was was the wrong message that we're we're laying off the bottom of the pyramid that are mainly African Americans and Latinos probably in those jobs versus looking at other ways um to do that.

So I'm glad that's off the table, and I hope it stays off the table.

Um, but I know measure that would be part of our measure you funds, right?

That funds park is park maintenance measure you.

It is yeah, it is, yeah.

So I I think since I know that it's general fund, but is if it's measure you funds, I would uh I would have serious concerns that they're being um at the backs of of these low um low earning wage city employees that were balancing the budget.

I don't agree with that.

And then I have one more question.

So I know the heart center is being restored and their staffing, but there are many um community-based uh community centers throughout um Sacramento that have senior programs.

So are they being uh because it wasn't clear to me, I know the heart center, I get that, and they're being restored, but the senior programs in the community centers are they being affected?

So um, you know, originally um back in March, uh that March baseline had closing, you know, reducing community center days open, cutting senior programming, things like that.

Um so those are all those are restored, so we're not closing the community centers.

Um, you know, the city, all the all the senior programs that the city provides, we're gonna continue to provide them.

Um, and you know, at the heart that reduction at the heart center was um to try to preserve the programming, but uh you know, obviously it was gonna have a staffing impact, and council wanted to um restore those people, and they'll be hearing that tomorrow as well.

Okay, I forgot one more comment.

So back to the commission.

Oh yeah, this is one last comment.

Okay, that's it.

Um is the instead of reducing our only meeting five times.

I would so when I first started, I never received a stipend, and I didn't receive a stipend for like five years, and that was okay.

I was surprised to to find out that um we get stipends.

So I I would almost say, and I'll say that tomorrow too, is that instead of doing that is we don't need stipends.

Get rid of the stipend, and if that would be enough to offset um the finance piece, I I would think that that's possible.

That's just my opinion.

I mean, what our stipends, they probably pay for parking.

That's about it.

Okay, I'm done.

Member Jelson.

Yeah, I had a quick question and then your comment added another question real quick, I promise.

Uh so the first one is this reduction to five commission meetings.

What would that miss the number?

What would the savings be?

And what is the the makeup of that?

Is that yeah?

So we're I don't again, I don't want to get understanding.

So overall it's about 35,000.

Um they had we're looking for around 30, so around 35,000 is the savings, and we'll get into more of the detail about that tomorrow with council.

And what is the makeup of that?

Is it is it's stipend's a big part of that?

So the savings uh are it's stipends, it's clerk overtime, so uh our friendly uh clerk folks have to work overtime.

There's other organizational efficiencies that that will occur as well.

There's uh, you know, there's that most of a lot of the city staff from the departments who come are exempt, so it's not over time, but it frees them up to work on other things, and um, you know, it's not again it's council uh directed staff to look at this as uh as an option for them, and they'll debate that and decide uh whether or not they want to use it as an option.

Okay, I'll just say that I'm also agree.

I know I think that if the stipends is the issue.

I know this isn't for you is the city council issue, but I want to say that I'm supportive of that.

My actual question before that topic was brought up is all the pending factors seem to be trending negatively for the long-term outlook.

Are there any other than is it just that we're hoping for like what would be a positive pending factor that we're hopeful for?

Because it's all like unfunded liabilities.

I don't see how that can really change.

Obviously, the future state of homelessness funding, that's so much up in the air.

Do we need like what what is there anything positive, or we just always have to be a uh more in a in a in a in a I don't know what the right term is, but just project gloomy.

When you're the when you talk to the finance team, you're gonna get a lot of doom and gloom.

And I appreciate that's how you budget, right?

You want to be conservative, but yeah, I think you know, um there's kind of a couple things.

So one is you know, as a city, we're partially in the place that we're in because we've tried to do we've tried to be all things to all people, and we've really expanded in a lot of different areas, and I think one of the great good things that the commission has helped us with is looking at performance metrics, looking at things that are working and things that aren't working and and focusing.

And so, you know, one of the positives of going through the budget exercise is it allows us as a f as a city to focus on what is important for us to do as a city and how do we do it well.

Um the other positive area is just technology, right?

So, as technology advances, that gives us a lot more tools to address uh the needs of our community.

Uh, but yeah, when we're when you talk to to the three of us here, um, you know, what what we see are a lot of economic uncertainty.

We see energy prices rising, we see inflation, uh, and we see these other things that we want to address, and we just want to make sure that you know, council and the community is mindful of these longer term things when we're looking at an annual budget.

Got it.

Thank you.

Appreciate that.

Uh Vice Chairman Geek.

Just going on the record to say um it just amazes me that of all the things that they could look to potentially cut, commissions would be it, like the stipend came before my gas tank.

So I mean, you know, of all the things they're looking to cut, you know, it's just really um that they would get that granular and get down to the commissions, right?

And to cut us to five, like if our workers are not valuable, then just cut the commissions altogether, but to cut to five, what impact and what outcome could come from five meetings a year?

How could we truly advise and be a voice to the citizens and really what it is is censorship of voice of the community for which we sit and we stand?

Um, and so I just want to put that on the record because I think that that is the issue.

You know, it's the censoring of the community voice and the community's ability to have people sitting and championing their beliefs because I am embedded in my district one community and I am on the streets, and I am going to all the events, and I'm hearing the various things that are on people's minds.

Coming back to when I first came on this commission, you know, they were talking about um the metrics and how they look at funding in the city, and it was like district one, oh you know, they don't need the money, right?

But I said no, you're not looking at the right metric, because when you look at my daughter's free and reduced lunch through the department of education, it's astronomical how many kids in district one are getting free and reduced lunch, and that is by their tax return, right?

That that's real data that informs that allows them to be eligible for that criteria of getting the free and reduced lunch.

So I just think um it's quite grievous to me.

Like I I am just very appalled, you know, that of all the things they can cut that they would even consider cutting the community voice.

And I just want to put that on the record.

Thank you.

Yeah, I just have a few questions for you guys.

Um, so one of the things that I've heard from uh budget department as well as like I think like the city's general uh position is is that we want to get ahead of this, right?

And it seems like um we're starting to, because you basically were saying that um about 75% of it is long-term savings, and then 25% of these one-off sort of cuts.

Um, but as we hit like 29, we're back to like 63 million in deficit again.

So it still feels like we're staring down that barrel, like we we haven't gotten in front of it.

So I guess what do you feel is remaining in order for us to get ahead of it truly, and like actually look at like, oh wow, we can actually you know stand up a new program now because we have you know five million dollars extra compared to the last year or something like that.

Yeah, I you know, one of the big um when you see that delta from 20 to 29, one big factor in that kind of increase in the projected deficit is the loss of state homelessness funding.

So that's a that's a big factor there, right?

That's that's a big contributor.

Um, you know, I think as far as the longer term planning, one uh very positive thing is, you know, we've been in negotiations with every one of our labor groups.

We're still in negotiations with two, uh, but we've closed the other 11, and we've closed the other 11 with three-year contracts, and we're negotiating three-year contracts with the other two.

So it's gonna give us a bit of a planning window.

Um, you know, the way I look at it is we took a big uh kind of bite of the apple this year, uh especially compared to the last two years where we um we did a little bit, but we kind of kicked the can down the road and we did some of the easier stuff.

Um I think what's what it's gonna take again is that refocusing.

So, you know, what do we want to do for homelessness?

What do we want to do?

What's do, you know, uh and how does that impact the rest of our budget and what we want to spend our our general purpose revenues on.

And so it's still we're in the process of making a lot of those decisions.

I think we made a lot of a lot more of them this year.

Okay.

Um so essentially refocusing is the answer basically meaning more a little bit more cutting, um, trimming the edges wherever we can find them, and then maybe even just solid core programs getting um cut if we if that's you know that's the answer essentially.

So we've we've overexpanded, we've created too many programs, those have become too expensive, and that's the issue that we've faced.

Well, I think it's two things.

So it's uh it's not just investing in the new program areas, and again, that that didn't come out of nowhere, right?

Um we didn't stand up a homelessness services program for no reason.

We did that because you know, we heard from the community there was this need.

We also stood it up with state funding, which has kind of dwindled.

Um, so it's it's it's partly we're doing more things than we can afford.

It's also partly the uh macroeconomic uh situation, right?

So inflation is terrible for California municipal finances.

Our property tax are capped, our taxes are capped by Prop 13.

Uh inflation makes our sales tax revenues flatline, they have not grown since I've been at the city, um, and our costs all go up.

So that it's kind of a combination of things, but you know, the answer is we have to live within our means, and that means we have to choose what we want to do.

Sure.

Okay, um, I guess moving on to the next part.

Um we have 1.5 billion in unfunded pension.

What does this cost us per year?

Can you speak to like how this is funded and like so um the way it works is uh it basically gets amortized over roughly 20 years, and so uh when you make a when we pay the our pension bill every year, it comes in two parts.

So there's the normal quote unquote normal cost, and that's what we would pay if we didn't have any unfunded liabilities.

So that's just to kind of fund our people.

Um that's roughly 60 million in the general fund, just to give you an order of magnitude.

Um our unfunded liability in the budget is uh roughly double that.

Um so it's a big drag on our budget.

Uh it's you know, it's grown 25 years ago, California's pension plans were fully funded, and then the state allowed benefits to be expanded, and the discount rate went down, right?

Uh right.

So that's caused these big unfunded liabilities, and now we're trying to dig ourselves out of it.

Uh the other thing I'll just note is, you know, one way to pay it down is you pay it every year as part of your CalPRS payment.

Uh, council also passed a policy.

Excuse me, my voice is going, also passed a policy for when we do have these one-time surpluses to set part of that aside to start paying down this debt to help our budget get in balance in future years.

Sure.

And so year over year we're paying essentially interest on this amortization schedule of 20 years.

Um and at the end of the 20 years, is it does it go away?

So if all else being equal, yes, but will all else be equal.

And so what do you mean by that?

Can you explain what you mean?

Like, what do you mean by that?

Yeah, so every year um we have an actuarial evaluation of our plan, and what the actuaries say is okay, well, we're expecting people to live this long.

We're expecting um you know raises to be roughly this amount.

We're exp expecting inflation to be this amount, and then one of the more most important uh assumptions assumptions is we're expecting the CalPers fund to return this this much on our investments every year.

Um so you know, if again, if everything stays constant, we we are within all the actuarial assumptions.

Calpers doesn't have the stock market doesn't tank and CalPurst doesn't have a big loss.

Uh then we would pay it off.

But if any of those bad things happen, then we would those bad things generate unfunded liabilities.

Yeah, bad things, people living longer not a bad thing, but that's not a bad thing.

No, no, no, that's a good thing, but the uh the stock market crashing, all those things are bad things.

Sure.

And so this principle that we have the 60 million, or sorry, that's a different word.

We have a principle which we also are paying off, which is this 20 year amortization, but we are adding to that by 60 million every year.

But we're paying off everything that we owe year by year, then so we're not growing that principal.

Yeah, we make our we make our payment every year.

So we're not deferring our payments like you uh hear other jurisdictions elsewhere do, which gets you into really big trouble.

Got it.

And so that's why you're saying everything else equal in 20 years, this will actually go away.

Yes.

Okay.

And then I guess my last question um is sort of uh this idea around uh seeking uh external parties to help.

Uh like we just discussed, like the youth uh or Yipsey program with parks, doing um sort of external vendors to take care of uh parks or various other services.

Can you explain a little bit as to the um like budgetary advantage that you've seen so far in going this route and also quality of service?

If I mean maybe quality service is a little about a bit out of your department, but you know, if you if you have a sense of it, I'd love to hear.

Yeah, so I mean, budgetarily it's it's pretty simple.

It's um you know, for this service, is it is it cheaper to do it in-house, or is it cheaper to um hire somebody else, right?

Um, who doesn't have a pension obligation, who doesn't have some of these other costs, and in some cases it's cheaper to contract out.

Um, in other ch in other cases it's not, right?

So, like for uh the example I'll give where it's not is um for just general legal services, um, you know, angels cheaper than uh then a law firm, um, right?

So to the extent you don't need that special super specialized skill set, you would much rather do it in-house.

There are other areas where um it can be more cost effective to outsource.

But then there are other trade-offs involved with that as well, right?

Sure.

And that those trade-offs generally are like quality of service, or do you find that?

Um they could be.

Uh that it could be that it could be, you know, direction, right?

How much can you direct your employee versus uh an outside contractor?

Those can be some of the the trade-offs.

But yeah, budgetarily it's pretty simple.

If it's cheaper, you get budget savings.

Uh and I think I remember one of our discussions, you were talking about this.

It's actually an advantage to contract out for directing because um you can like request certain metrics get captured that maybe the union wouldn't allow for you.

You would have to um, you know, you negotiate your contract, right?

So you can and you can also uh change easier.

Um you can cancel if your vent if your vendor is not performing, you can cancel your contract, right?

Uh, versus where you know, in other cases, you may have a longer process to to change things.

Right.

So if we're hitting a fiscal year deficit and we need to like shift things around, it generally becomes much simpler to shift around external parties than it would say internal parties, which might have a lot of regulation around it, or is that something that's accurate?

Um, it can be, yeah.

I mean, it's uh it you generally in your contract you have you can terminate it, right?

So um it's it it can be simpler that way.

Sure.

And so my last question around this is like roughly what percent savings do we see without the pension liabilities, without the insurance costs.

Um if we were to say for Ipsy exact as an example maybe um where it feels like oh yeah, we could do an external and it would save us money.

Can you give a rough percentage of like what that looks like?

You know, I'd have to sit down and do a percentage, but I can tell you when we looked at the outsourcing of all of park maintenance, uh, we were projecting roughly a million dollars of savings.

Okay, and that was for a program which cost us that's I just don't have that off the top of my head.

That's why I can't give you the percentage.

Fair enough.

Okay, uh Member Smith.

Um picking up on the pension liability issue.

Um, you know, I just sitting here listening to all of uh uh Commissioner Georgov's questions.

I realized that I could I could probably question you for about an hour, and I'm not gonna go down that road.

Um instead uh for the sake of our time, uh, I think I'll just echo my uh the concerns of my fellow commissioners about um shortening the number of of commission meetings, and I'll also bring this up that as you present the pros and cons of this plan to the city council.

Um one aspect that hasn't been discussed is how it affects the issue of transparency.

People are already complaining, our critics complain, as you heard earlier this evening, um, that we aren't as transparent as we need to be, that deals got cut, and there is a perception that measure the measure you commission and the measure you on the whole isn't doing what the voters voted for all those years ago.

Um the only way that the this commission would be able to get its work done is to assign more work to committees that don't meet um in the public eye.

Um deals will be cut uh simply because they have to, or we'll get our work done, but it won't be as transparent as we would like, and I suspect as the public would like.

And I uh I can't speak for anybody else, but that is my main concern.

So I'll leave it at that.

Thank you.

Uh member Salah.

I want to make a comment.

Um Commissioner Georgeov.

I I respectfully and with um a lot of respect.

I d I didn't appreciate you cutting me off because you said other people had to speak, and then I just heard you ask all your questions, take up the time, but that was okay.

But when I was trying to ask my questions, you said give other people a chance, and I I didn't appreciate that.

Understood.

I think I was just like trying to limit it to around five to eight minutes or something like that.

Yeah.

Um okay, is there anyone else who is uh willing to speak at this time?

No?

Okay, I think that's it.

Then we can move on with the agenda.

Okay, just hand it off to me.

Okay.

Ash, go ahead.

Uh introduce number four, which is the measure you department presentation schedule.

Good evening, commissioners.

Ash Ragani, special projects manager in the city manager's office tonight.

Um, I just kind of want to reflect on our work this year in terms of scheduling presentations and kind of respond to some of the feedback that we had.

Um, I'll kind of rewind a little bit and start with your annual work plan that outlined your meeting schedule for the year.

And that work plan um just kind of had these blank uh department presentation uh placeholders in that work plan.

And so we what we try to do this year was kind of get um kind of a feel for the commission at at one meeting, like who did you want to hear from at the next meeting?

And then at that meeting, who did you want to hear from at the next meeting?

And then we kind of got to a point where we realized there was greater demand and interest in hearing presentations from a larger number of departments than you actually had time for in your meetings, and so um, kind of rewinding back to your April meeting where we tried to cram in four different presentations.

Um this just became a time management issue where we just didn't have enough time.

So want to kind of propose a solution here and get your feedback on it.

In your on agenda item number four, um, it basically outlines a new presentation schedule.

So thinking about where you want to be in April of next year.

So April this year is when you approved your budget recommendations.

Um looking fast forwarding, you know, 12 months from that point, rewinding back and thinking about how do we get to that point given the number of departments you want to hear from.

We're basically proposing this um presentation schedule that would consist of uh a cycle of basically June through April, where you would receive department presentations that allows us to spread them out following a couple of principles.

Number one is just basically budgeting an entire hour per department.

Um I think you know, the budget team just took about an hour, and you know, on average, I think give or take, um, that's many of the departments uh presented for an hour and and took that amount of time, others presented for a little bit less, but not being able to know in advance how long any individual presentation is gonna take, and recognizing you may have other items on your agenda.

I think um an hour or so is good, and then not scheduling more than two of those presentations per meeting.

That gives us, you know, basically two hours worth of presentations per meeting, and then potentially another hour for your other commission business.

Um, I can run through the actual schedule.

I mean, this even starts as early as next month.

So this is not necessarily like the departments you would typically hear from, but um, and I haven't even reached out to the library, so uh, this is pending their willingness to present.

Um, but I would also I want to give you all an update on our strategic plan that we presented a couple of weeks ago to the city council, and then maybe even um share with you a draft of the participatory budgeting report, which I think might be useful.

Um, and so following that, you basically get into uh August would be City Attorney Public Works, uh September Convention on Cultural Services and Community Development, October IT and the Office of Public Safety Accountability, November, Fire Department and Office of Diversity and Equity, January Community Response and Police, March, Youth Parks Community Enrichment and Innovation Economic Development.

No presentations in that April to give you the full time to really deliberate on your budget recommendations, and then in May, again, this is just kind of when finance is able to present the proposed budget.

So that's kind of the idea.

I'm looking to see if I had any other notes here.

Um yeah, just kind of open to your feedback.

I I will just call out, you know, the elephant in the room as of the last presentation was you know, if there's fewer meetings in the year, how are we gonna adapt?

Um, my initial thought on that would be potentially there's more involvement and work within the ad hoc committees, um, but I I don't know how all that's gonna play out.

We just kind of have to see what the council direction is.

Um, but just know, you know, Pete and the team, they're responding to council direction, and so you all definitely ought to consider communicating your um uh I was gonna say feelings, but you know, perspective on this too to um to council, and and you know, ultimately that that's who's gonna decide you know what happens with this.

But um, with that, I'm happy to just take any feedback and uh see what you all think.

Just two things.

One, I think we'll cross that bridge when we get there.

Like if they end up doing it or not, then we can decide then.

Let's just go with the assumption that it's not gonna happen.

Um, and then what do you need to walk away with today?

Like what do we need to provide to you that you're happy essentially at the end of this?

Just some general feedback.

I mean, ultimately, what's gonna happen is you know, we'll kind of know what council decides, and then um we'll kind of have this schedule in place.

So when you go to work on your annual report and work plan for next year, I basically want to be able to take copy and paste what's in the staff report into your work plan.

So we're all on the same page in terms of what we agreed to and committed to, and then if anything falls off track, you can hold us accountable.

All right.

Sounds good.

Uh member Noveo.

Um thank you, and uh thank you for providing such structure.

I I sincerely appreciate it and I hope that um every single one of the departments is gonna you know be willing and able to come and join us, especially because you're giving them so much of a heads up.

Um my question um and directive if possible.

I don't know if I can get directive, but uh we have heard that there's conversations about a strategic plan for the Office of Innovation and Economic Development.

So the what will be the economic strategy for the state of Sacramento.

Would it be possible because of such a uh big department uh gets a lot of our funding, can we listen to uh to that plan or can we be embedded in their strategy so we can provide some sort of feedback as they're developing that strategy, and that you know comes to be or comes to us into after the fact type of situation.

I don't know what the timeline is for that, uh and I would appreciate if you can work with that department, so hopefully, you know, I know that I see it for March, and I don't know what the deadline for that is, but if it would be possible to come to us before it goes to City Council, um, that would be something that we're appreciate.

Sure, and this is actually one thing that um is highly underutilized by the commission.

You have an agenda log, and so I actually want to take this item and add it to the agenda log.

I just um so I'm understanding the request you basically to try to sync up the timing of the development of their strategy before it's completed to the time that they present, so that that gives the commission an opportunity to help um provide feedback on it.

Correct.

Before it's fine, correct.

I will, and I obviously don't have the authority to decide that, but I'm happy to relay the message and do what we can.

And I'll just add it to the agenda logs so we can keep track of it.

Uh member Miller.

Uh I think that's a great strategy, and it sort of aligns with uh what I was going to mention in terms of being more strategic about when we hear from who.

Um, and I don't know if this is even possible, but uh to to characterize an entire department as, you know, more or less predictable in terms of what so I guess what I'm saying is is there any way to kind of some some departments like it's easy for them to anticipate their expenses so they could go uh first, whereas others might have new expenses coming up that they could or or things coming up that they didn't anticipate, and so it would be better for us to hear from them later.

I don't know if that's even possible, but just a thought.

Yeah, I um I'm honestly not aware of that dynamic within departments.

I think largely most departments uh look at the adopted budget is really driving their expenses and their costs for the year, but we can definitely consider that.

And if you have any ideas on that, if you see some sort of pattern or something emerges that um triggers kind of a light bulb, just let us know and we can try and re redo the schedule.

I will say what I really the the order of this schedule is a combination of two things.

One was kind of pass surveys to commissioners to prioritize the departments they wanted to hear from first, and that really led to the departments we heard from this year, kind of the highest priority departments, and then thinking about okay, let's try and space it out to about 12 months from the last time you heard from a department.

So, for example, library is a good example of a department that didn't come in super high in the list of priorities and had last presented, I think in August of last year.

So that's why we're kind of looking at them around this June, uh August kind of time frame.

Um one thing I wanted to note is that we have finance here on here only once.

And um, I think like generally we've had them come like pre-budget finalization, kind of like now as well.

Um I think I would have them on here two or three times because I think they're like the most, they're most closely related to what we do, right?

Which is budget.

Um, so yeah, I would just maybe try to find another spot to put them maybe early this year or early in the year.

I mean, like yeah, I think Pete last came before today.

It was either, yeah, I want to say February.

I think it was February, yeah.

Yep.

Sure.

We can bake that in.

Okay.

Any other commissioner comments?

Uh we have a public speaker, I believe, on this one.

Thank you, Chair.

Uh Mr.

Lambert Davis.

So this is an all-time low to me.

I didn't think you can get it any lower.

Now, here you are discussing five meetings in a 12-month calendar year.

You couldn't get it done in a 12-month calendar year.

And I'm a little disappointed that finance left because we're still talking finance.

Finance is not over yet.

I just heard it.

Now, I I keep hearing about participatory budgeting.

That's a sore spot for me.

Because I, in District 2, I went to about five meetings.

You understand me?

I went to five different meetings, and we were paid for our cheesecakes at two, but they were stunned because that's not why I went.

I went to find out how they did it at different communities.

Who does that?

Even my family was stunned.

But I was the winner because during that time, it was discovered for those of you who are on the rostrum, you should know this.

During that time, there was uh an advantage given to the Asian community, and she was on the rostrum, and we were able to figure it out that there was an advantage.

Now that was just for a million dollars.

So they they disadvantaged uh black and brown.

So if they'll do that for a million dollars, and they won't listen to someone like me who says, Let's cut some of these city attorneys.

There's too many of them.

Cut some of these city managers.

Um don't give people raises that are working remotely.

They're catching people that have sold their homes and they live in another state and they're still receiving money.

I mean, you're gonna have to really think about that in sort of five meetings.

Thank you for your comments.

Your time is complete.

Um Chair, I have no more speakers on this item.

Okay.

Uh there's also no more comments.

I guess the only thing that left out to say is um we have youth parks and community enrichment and then innovation uh and economic development.

We'll probably be trying to make our um plans like finalize by March.

And those are some like pretty, I don't I don't know.

They're all important, but like those are like really hot youth is UFC's like our biggest uh budget element.

So I would put it like a little bit earlier because we'd probably already have a draft by like February.

Um and so I don't know if we can swap that with like maybe something that we have less say in like public works, perhaps like because it's just like one program and I don't think we really have much problem with it in the past.

So, sure.

Was that just for Yipsey or for also innovation and economic development?

Uh I mean I don't I opened up the commission to see what they think, but um Yip C was definitely the one I I noticed.

Um remember respended Benitas?

First time I'm saying that.

Yes.

Um, not it's not on this, it's more about um what you'd mentioned previously about let's go into the impression that the meetings don't get slashed in half in half.

I thought we were done on the sections, that's why.

Quick question.

Is the commission able to submit an official statement on the position of the idea of the slashing of you know the hearings, maybe like a letter, an official letter that we could submit.

Because it sounds like this is like new information for us that we did not incorporate in our previous round of recommendations.

So there's no like official state.

Not sure if that's like even allowed, just putting it out there.

Yeah, so I'll defer to the city attorney if I get any of this incorrect.

But um basically the commission wouldn't be able to formally adopt a position on behalf of the commission, like a formal recommendation because that item wasn't agendized for this meeting.

Um, so you wouldn't be able to take a vote on it and officially represent the commission.

What you can do is as individual commissioners, you can contact the council members directly and or show up to tomorrow's uh 5 p.m.

city council meeting and get and basically voice your opinion.

You can you can basically say that you know, as a commission, we you know had consensus on this idea.

It just wouldn't be an official position of the commission.

So just to clarify, actually, maybe this is another question.

Uh we wouldn't vote on it, but uh like as an off-agenda item, you could form an ad hoc that like went and talked and like gave a statement or something like that, which would be fine.

But not like on, yeah, I guess maybe not.

Because you'd have to vote on it.

I don't know.

Yeah, so I think the issue is that there was no item placed on the agenda for you to have a vote to provide the official recommendation of it.

However, you could form, I suppose an ad hoc, because you can just do that on your own.

Um but I don't think that they wouldn't be able to present the whole measure you they could represent that ad hoc, right?

Like we as an ad hoc of the group are have aligned and whatever.

Correct, yeah.

Um assuming that the ad hoc all agrees with that.

Yeah, sure.

If you know okay.

But yeah, you can always you the chair can always the point uh uh or create an ad hoc.

I don't think it's necessary in this case.

I think people can just show up and state their case.

But yeah, uh member Salah.

Yeah, I was gonna say just show up at the meeting tomorrow, and and you know, you get items not uh you get two minutes and just say um I'm a measure you commissioner for what district, and this is how I feel about this recommendation and just state it.

And the more of us that show up, the better it is.

If you can't show up, you can submit e-comments, and and you can do that as as a citizen.

You even though you're not representing measure you, you can still identify yourself as a measure you commissioner.

So I I think to the extent that any that you have availability show up tomorrow and and give your comments, okay.

Uh anything else you need from us, Ash.

Nope.

Um, I guess I will just I think I said this earlier, but um, in terms of the process, we'll kind of see how this plays out.

But I think this will really be formalized when you start working on your annual report and work plan, and that's where we can kind of revisit and make those like fine-tuning tweaks, like with moving Yipsey further up in the agenda and aligning with the economic development strategy.

So we do have this, we have like library, for example, next.

Yes.

Okay, so that's if they're available, and I this is I probably should have talked to them first.

I haven't talked to the library.

I need to make sure they're available.

I what I'm assuming is like in these early months we have a little bit of wiggle room.

It is uh so we can kind of move move different departments around.

Like, for example, if the library isn't available, I can reach out to city attorney's office, public works, see if either one of them would be able to fill in that slot, and then maybe library can come back in August.

So it's a little fluid at this point, but yeah, hopefully it does become more of a formalized annual schedule where it has predictability and mutual expectations both between the departments and the commission.

Okay, no need for a vote on it on this, we can just move on.

That's that's correct.

Great.

Um okay, so then I guess the next thing is budget recommendations ad hoc.

Really, I just kind of wanted to open up to you, Member Smith.

Like, how did it go?

If you can give a quick quick debrief.

Uh member saw actually already kind of gave a bit of one, but if you have anything to add from your presentation, uh, I thought it went well.

Um by and large, they accepted what uh was in the presentation.

Um, there, you know, uh again.

Um Commissioner Georgeov did a yeoman's effort to pull it together.

Um we had a uh complex discussion around a lot of the ideas that went into that document.

Um he cobbled together all of our comments, took some things out of the draft that he presented, put some other things in, and presented slides, or rather created slides as well as a report in less than I think it was about 10 hours is the work time is what I heard.

Um just big hand uh big hand for our chair.

Um that was that was incredible.

Uh the the slides laid out pretty well.

Um, there was there was one uh grammatical error in the slides, but uh other than that um yeah uh it went incredibly well and and was well received, I think.

Good to hear, and thank you so much for stepping up and presenting that on behalf of all of us.

That's a big deal.

Um okay, anybody else to add anything to this or any last questions?

We can move on.

No, okay, great.

Uh community engagement and outreach ad hoc.

Um I don't know.

Member Saul, if you want to talk on this one for the community outreach, or you know, no, because we haven't met, but now that the this budget piece is over, I'll schedule something with our group, and then also invite community engagement because I think they're they're the partner that we need to really.

So I will I will work on scheduling so that we can pick up.

We we had recommendations of where we wanted to go, but nothing's happened, so that I'll pull everyone together and we'll we'll see what steps we take.

Okay, sounds good.

Um, then the metrics ad hoc.

I don't think there's anything to report.

They also haven't met uh it's mostly all focused on budget, and uh I think both of the budget and the metrics ad hoc will get dissolved.

You said in next meeting.

Um we can remake them if we feel the need.

Um, and then lastly, commissioner comments, ideas and questions.

Um last comments, ideas and questions.

No, then public comments uh matters not on the agenda.

Thank you, Chair.

I have one speaker slip, Mr.

Lambert Davis.

So when you when you study, when you study too long, you're studying wrong.

This is an example of what's the problem down here.

Now, last hired, first fired.

That's a policy of this city, it's mainly black and brown.

So those people from Yipsey, I'll bet you they're of color, last hired, first fired.

That's always been a policy.

Also, I keep hearing about all of these ad hocs and metrics and all of that.

Why can't we see something tonight?

The budget is in uh two weeks.

There it's intentional, and I said that long time ago, it's intentional to hamstring you so you can't reach your goals.

They change it every time.

Mr.

Rogani, I've studied him for a long time, and he knows a lot more after the fact.

But I'm a type of person I want to know.

See, I learned that commissions can only go three hours.

I learned that just watching.

Whereas City Hall, I thought everything goes that long.

No, so now I know, okay, if it's three hours, they know if they bring four departments in here at one hour each, they're not gonna make it.

I learned that just watching it, and then here's the finance people.

They left before we finish with number four, which was talking about finance.

I run a business.

There's no way my family would tolerate me doing what I see here.

Whatever I know, I better put it in writing and show them.

Because we're invested.

See, if this was your money, you would do better.

Not you on the rostrum.

I'm talking about people that are on the payroll.

A lot of people should be brought up, and I've said this, and I'm gonna say it at City Hall tomorrow.

A lot of people at City Hall should be brought up on criminal charges.

Thank you for your comments.

Your time is complete.

Chair, I have no more speakers.

We are adjourned.

There, I did it.

Oh my God.

That's a record, right?

The sun is still up.