Good morning and welcome to the audit committee meeting of March 11th, 2026.

Our committee liaison, Natalie Kessler will go over instructions for today's meeting.

Thank you, Chair.

While members of the public are able to attend the meetings in person, this meeting is being televised and live streamed on the city's website, and council administration will continue to make arrangements for the public to comment using the Zoom webinar platform.

Members of the public who wish to provide virtual testimony must enter the virtual queue by raising their hand before the virtual queue closes.

The queue will close when the last virtual speaker finishes speaking or five minutes after in-person testimony ends, whichever occurs first.

This will allow for better meeting management between the two platforms and ensure the committee is able to manage and conduct city business.

We appreciate the public's cooperation.

Thank you.

Vice Chair Foster.

Committee member Halburn.

Present.

Present.

Committee member Tab Shuri.

Present.

And Chair, Councilmember Marino.

Present and also present.

Jeff Peel, uh Chief Accountant with the Department of Finance.

David Carlin with the City Attorney's Office, Erin Noel with the IBA.

Robert Broomfield is our committee consultant, and Natalie Kessler is our committee liaison.

Natalie, please continue with public comment instructions.

If you're in person, please can complete a speaker slip located at the entrance of chambers and place it in the box near the public comment microphone.

Please do so in a timely manner to ensure proper meeting management.

In-person testimony will conclude before virtual testimony begins.

Members of the public can join the webinar by computer, tablet, or smartphone by accessing the link listed online in the preamble language of the agenda on the city's webpage.

If you need to participate by phone, please dial 1669-2545252.

The webinar ID is 161-22-1114 pound.

Members of the public who wish to provide virtual testimony must enter the virtual queue by raising their hand before the queue closes.

The queue will close when the last virtual speaker finishes speaking or five minutes after in-person testimony ends, whichever occurs first.

Please note that if you are watching via City TV 24 or online, there may be a delay.

Madison, please unmute and begin.

And again.

At the same time, the city often highlights projected cannabis tax revenue as a benefit of expansion.

But revenue should be weighed alongside the broader public costs that may accompany increased commercialization of marijuana.

Research has linked regular cannabis use to higher risks of mental health disorders, emergency room visits, impaired driving, and other health impacts that place demands on healthcare systems, law enforcement, and social services.

If we are evaluating this as an economic development strategy, it's important to ask whether the projected tax revenue truly outweighs the long-term public health and safety costs that cities may ultimately bear.

An independent audit or fiscal review could provide transparency on program costs, realistic tax projections compared with the other California cities that have attempted this type of program and the potential downstream impacts on public systems.

San Diego residents deserve a full and balanced financial picture before policies that expand marijuana retail are implemented.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The next speaker, the original, please unmute and begin.

I'm gonna ask you guys again and probably many other times to audit dreams for change and your safe sleeping sites, even downtown partnership for that matter.

You guys know because time after time I've come to you guys and reported back many things that are very egregious, not just death and sexual assaults, but there are code violations, like I've said the food that these people get is subpar.

It's not even something that you guys would eat.

It's not even healthy to eat.

You know, there's rat infestations, there's many things.

There's fire hazards because there are no fire extinguishers where they're supposed to be, but there is fencing up everywhere that would impede people's ability to get out.

These tents are crap.

The ones that are new are worse than the ones that they had before because the ones that were before were all weather, these ones are not.

And you know, it's sad because people have actually sued the city because of dreams for change at the employees.

And it's like I have a bunch of employees, whether they be current or ex employees, participants of current and ex that have information that you guys should be wanting to get to be able to determine whether or not you're contracting with an entity that is actually helping people because they don't help people.

You need to look at how many people they have actually put into housing or how many people have exited that program because they weren't able to, because of the people that are hired by Dreams for Change.

And you know, there's a lot of people that you guys could be putting the city up for a significant class action lawsuit regarding the homeless and the way that Dreams for Change and Downtown Partnership are treating them and the city.

So it would behoove you to not just say you're gonna do those things and you know, do you know, like nice talk, but let's actually do it and help these people.

Thank you.

Our next speaker, Blair Beekman, please unmute and begin.

Hi, uh Blair Beekman.

Um, everyone, happy auditing meeting today.

Um I guess, you know, uh it's important for me at this time to to offer that we're going through a difficult time of war.

Um there can be many choices uh and how you feel about this current state of war.

Umetheless, it is war and violence, and we have to be cautious here at the local level.

I'm still very hopeful that um we can be making good choices and best practices uh here at the local level uh at this time of war.

And when we do and as we do, we'll simply be giving really good examples to the national and international level.

What is our best and what is ideas of peace and not war?

But when we work towards our best selves, we have a tendency to work in that way.

Um so we're at a time that in 9-11 we had to be scared and and frightened and had to bow down to government, federal government.

We're at a time now where it's the local process that creates the good examples for federal government to understand peace and they want peace.

It's just a matter, you know, we have to really show them.

And so we can't be afraid to move forward with our best practices and good ideas.

Good luck how we can do that at this time uh here in San Diego.

Um I I'm I was really interested in the items yesterday that you you you uh talked much about how to have a long-term view of our issues.

And I'm really looking forward to how the auditing department uh and even in this and in your items today, we can really be talking about issues of uh city concern that it's more difficult for uh city government to talk about.

And I think we can do a good job here in how to talk about things.

Um thanks for your time today.

Good luck to the meeting.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The five minute timer has concluded.

We have two hands remaining in the queue.

We will take no additional callers after these two.

Phone number ending in 870.

Please press star six and begin.

Uh thank you, Natalie.

Joy Sanyata, CD3.

Uh this is for uh the city auditor, Annie Andy, excuse me, Andy, Andy Hannow.

Uh I Googled uh last night, so this is a little bit sketchy, but uh I I think I did pretty good on the point.

Uh I Googled uh and asked the question uh is it feasible to do an audit of the structural budget deficit?

And I was thrilled because it really, really said that's a good idea.

And what it brought up uh city auditor is AAI brought up a lot of your reports, and one of the reports that I really uh, you know, was my favorite was the Gulf Course leases uh and the the millions of dollars that you uncovered.

So I'm going back to my focus on the structural budget deficit, and uh a question could the CIP gap be hardwired to the structural budget deficit.

Now, per Google, hardwired is whether whether in machines or people, hardwired means the function or behavior is built in as a fundamental permanent feature, i.e.

a hardwired structural budget deficit.

City auditor, you have completed many performance audits of the city operations.

Is it possible to do an audit of the audits?

Now that just means that you're so brilliant, you'll be able to go in there and synthesize and bring it together and get some clarity for us on the FDB.

So to this way too, you can expose the wiring, expose the wiring of the structure of the structure, structural budget deficit, expose the wiring of the structure of the structural budget deficit.

Thank you for your consideration, city auditor.

Thank you.

This does conclude your time.

Thank you.

And our final speaker in the queue, Judy Strang, please begin.

Good morning, audit committee.

When I listened to budget yesterday and previous times, I keep wondering if we've carefully examined and audited the role of the leases the city has with some really valuable land, and if we're fairly negotiating those leases.

And the one that I'm more aware of as a grandparent is the one at Fairbanks Ranch, which runs a soccer league meeting out there or soccer tournaments out there, I should say.

Probably from grandparents like me.

And I can't imagine that that lease that we've negotiated with that LLC, which is mysterious, by the way, if you look at some of the lawsuits against it have been going on about who those really are.

But they seem to indicate they might be prominent and powerful San Diegans, so that's already suspicious.

But if we could examine that lease and get a sense of whether we're fairly negotiating on the behalf of the citizens of San Diego.

After all, that was open land that was deeded to the citizens of San Diego for all of our use, not for the profit of an LLC.

So it's questionable to begin with.

But I I feel like our leases need a new examination.

Thank you for your consideration.

Thank you.

And Chair, this concludes non agenda public comment.

Thank you.

Uh, we will now move to committee member, mayoral staff, city attorney, and IBA comments.

And my understanding is that Ms.

Aaron Noel with the IBA has comments.

Yes, thank you.

And good morning, Chair Marino and members of the committee.

I'm providing an update that Mr.

Tabsuri has decided to move forward with reappointment to a second term for its public member seat.

And this item is anticipated to be heard at City Council on April 7th.

We are continuing with our open recruitment to fill the next anticipated open public member seat.

Mr.

Halperton's second term expires on January 5th, 2027.

For anyone who may be interested in serving as a public member to the audit committee, eligible applicants must have at least 10 years of experience as a certified public accountant, a certified internal auditor, or other professional financial or legal experience in audit management.

There is a link on the audit committee website with information and an application.

Anyone interested can reach out to the office of the IBA if you have any questions or would like additional information.

This concludes my comments.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Do we have any requests for continuance?

Hearing none, we are now going to take up our consent agenda.

Do we have any requests to pull any of any of the items from the consent agenda?

Hearing and seeing none, we are going to move forward with public comment on the consent agenda.

Natalie, please proceed.

The public comment period for the consent agenda is now open, and the consent agenda includes item one approval of the committee minutes from February 11th, 2026.

Each speaker will have one minute.

We have not received any speaker slips here in chambers.

We'll move to the virtual queue.

We have two hands raised in the virtual queue.

Blair Beekman, please unmute and begin.

Blair Beekman, I'm gonna have to pass.

Sorry about that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The original, please unmute and begin.

Yeah, I think in your minutes, um, you know, it should be more of a reflection of what really took place.

And you don't really, you know, reflect uh what the people say when they're speaking on non-agenda, it's like your guys' own version of you know what you interpreted these people said or what's gonna look good written down on paper.

Um, because much of the time it's like no one's really gonna reflect the things that I'm saying on those minutes because you guys don't even want to hear it.

So it's like, would you put on there that city needs to be audited?

We'll see.

We'll see.

But it's very interesting the way that you know it's like it paints a different picture than what actually happened.

And you guys are just really good at that, because I mean, you know, we don't want transparency and accountability for anybody.

We just want to pretend like we're doing it.

So we'll see what happens with your minutes, but you should be more, you know, productive with them.

Thank you.

And Chair, this concludes public comment on the consent agenda.

Wonderful.

I will now turn it over to committee members for questions and comments and also to entertain a motion on the consent agenda, if I may have a motion.

Oh, okay.

Move by council member Foster, and if I could have a second.

Second.

Second by committee member Tapsuri.

Uh so Natalie, please call the roll.

Motion passes unanimously.

Thank you.

We will now take up our discussion agenda.

Natalie, please introduce item number two.

Item number two, 2026 high risk re-review performance audit of the fire rescue department's emergency medical response process.

Chair.

Thank you.

Um, staff, if you could please introduce yourselves for the record and also tell us how much time you need and proceed with the presentation.

Uh good morning, uh, Chair Marino, committee members Andy Henous, City Auditor.

Uh, we're here to present our performance audit of the fire rescue department's emergency medical uh dispatch process.

And can we have about 15 minutes, please?

Thank you.

Uh first off, we'd like to thank Fire Rescue for uh their assistance during this audit.

Uh as you might imagine, the emergency response process is a complex topic, and fire rescue uh helped us understand the ins and outs of each process phase and really took the time to uh answer the many questions we had specifically around uh uh the data, and they have really improved their data collection since the last dispatch audit in 2012.

Uh so we really appreciate all the time and feedback that they provided.

This audit focused on the emergency medical dispatch and response process for the most emergent medical incidents classified as level one medical and traffic accidents, which prompt the response of a fire unit.

I want to give a quick shout out to the audit team.

They reviewed over 300,000 level one dispatches that took place from fiscal year 2023 to fiscal year 2025 and identified some low cost ways fire rescue can improve transparency, accountability, and most importantly, response times for residents that are experiencing a medical emergency.

Specifically, we found opportunities for fire rescue to enhance public reporting to include each phase of the emergency response process, which would help city leaders and the public understand how fire rescue is performing and changes that should be made.

For example, we found that fire rescue should establish a metric that measures and tracks turnout time to ensure that crews mobilize to respond to medical emergencies as quickly as possible.

Currently, fire rescue crews take nearly three times longer than national standards to turn out for medical emergencies and also take much longer than fire rescue's own slower standards.

City leaders in the public should also be informed of trade-offs with fire rescue's triage process, which preserves resources but can also slow the response to medical emergencies.

We made three recommendations to address these areas, all of which fire rescue has agreed to implement.

And with that, I'll hand it over to the audit team, which is Principal Performance Auditor Megan Jaffrey, Performance Auditor Nadia Torkman, and Performance Auditor Ruth Martin to go over the details of what we found and recommended.

Thank you, Andy.

Good morning.

My name is Megan Jaffery, Principal Performance Auditor on this project.

The fire rescue department's emergency response process is a critical public safety service.

Each minute of delay and aid for critical emergencies can reduce survival chances by up to 10%.

Therefore, we conducted this re-review of the 2012 performance audit of fire rescue's emergency medical dispatch process.

This audit had two primary objectives, which were to determine whether fire rescue balances its limited resources with the need to respond quickly to high priority calls for service and uses its dispatch data to evaluate its emergency response operations, performance, resource allocation, and assess performance reporting to the public and city leadership.

Fire rescue dispatches resources to all fire and medical incidents in the city from life-threatening incidents like heart attacks to minor injuries like falls.

Over 85% of incidents fire rescue received between fiscal year 23 and through fiscal year 25 were medical in nature.

As shown in the exhibit on the slide, most 911 calls in San Diego are answered by the San Diego Police Department, which then transfers fire and medical calls to fire rescue's emergency command and data center where call takers identify the location and nature of each emergency to send the appropriate resources.

Fire rescue's triage process helps categorize each reported medical incidents into one of three priority levels, which determines the level of response and resources sent.

Fire units respond to the highest priority medical incidents classified as level one medical and traffic accidents, as shown on the right-hand side of this the exhibit on screen.

This audit specifically reviewed the role of the fire units in the emergency response process from the point of dispatch to the point of arrival on scene.

Now I'll hand it over to Nadia to discuss topics one and two.

Thanks, Megan.

Good morning.

My name is Nadia Torkman, performance auditor on this project.

We found that since the last audit, a large part of fire rescue's process has been automated, which has helped streamline emergency response in many ways.

In topic one, we discussed the trade-offs of the current and previous medical dispatch processes as shown on this slide.

To reduce response times, the 2012 OCA audit recommended that fire units should be dispatched immediately alongside ambulances and later canceled if called triage determined if fire unit was not needed.

In fiscal year 2019, fire rescue shifted to its current system, which dispatches ambulance immediately while the call is triaged to determine if a fire unit is needed.

According to fire rescue, this reduces fire unit cancellations by around 10%, mitigates crew fatigue, and keeps units available for more serious emergencies.

However, waiting to dispatch fire units until after triage delays fire unit dispatch by an average of one minute and 26 seconds for the most critical incidents, resulting in a nearly one-minute estimated delay and getting a first responder on scene.

We acknowledge that the emergency response process is complex and it is difficult to precisely predict the impact of operational changes on response times.

We set parameters in our analysis to focus on incidents where both an ambulance and fire unit were dispatched and both arrived.

Our audit compared arrival time performance between the previous audit's recommended process and the one in operation today.

As seen on this slide, we found the current process can add nearly one minute to arrival times for medical emergencies, a key conclusion that fire rescue also determined using a similar analysis.

Both our and fire rescue's analyses highlight that the dispatch delay from the current process is greater than what fire rescue's pilot study determined over seven years ago.

Both analyses point to the importance of reevaluating the dispatch process to identify potential operational changes that would improve response times.

While both dispatch processes require a trade-off, city leaders are not routinely informed on the costs, benefits, and rationale behind the city's emergency response process.

For example, while the key performance indicators in fire rescue's annual budget report include some high-level statistics, they do not capture performance on every phase of the emergency response process.

Additionally, these key performance indicators are not supported with context as to how each goal was chosen and why they differ from national standards and do not provide insight into the reasons behind good or poor outcomes.

We met with fire departments in other cities in California and found that many use data to inform process changes and create reports that summarize response statistics.

The reports are then shared with city leadership to advocate for resources and inform decision makers of fire department's operations.

To ensure transparency and inform city leadership of current processes and associated trade-offs, we recommend fire rescue create an internal policy that requires the production of an annual report, which is then presented to the public safety committee.

The report should include information on several components, including fire unit cancellation rates and performance for each phase of the emergency response process, among other factors.

In topic two of our report, we discuss that while fire rescue now collects data on each phase of its emergency response process, it is not shared with city leadership.

This process consists of several phases as follows.

Incidents begin with call pickup.

If the incident is medical in nature, an ambulance is immediately dispatched.

Then call takers triage the incident on the phone.

If the emergency requires additional resources, a fire unit is then dispatched.

The fire crew receives a dispatch alert and begins getting ready to leave the station.

This is called turnout time.

Travel time begins when the fire unit starts moving in route to the incident and ends when the unit arrives at scene of the emergency, which also marks arrival time.

Currently, there is no requirement for fire rescue to routinely report on each phase of the emergency response process, those standards exist for each.

The exhibit on this slide shows the emergency response phases after dispatch, their response standard, and whether fire rescue reports on it.

Overall, the data that fire rescue currently reports and its key performance indicators and annual incident summaries are not comprehensive enough to understand performance by phase.

Without comprehensive reporting, city leaders make budgetary decisions each year based off an incomplete picture of fire rescue's emergency response performance.

Fire rescue can use the data it already collects to inform city leaders about its emergency response performance and help inform budgetary requests to enhance department operations and provide insight into performance by geographic area.

For example, our analysis of emergency response by council district did not show a correlation between historically underserved council districts and slower response times.

From fiscal year 23 through fiscal year 25, we found that none of the council districts are meeting overall arrival times and performance varies for each district, as shown on the slide.

Therefore, reporting is important to provide a better understanding to city leaders of emergency performance throughout the city.

Now I'll hand it over to Ruth to discuss the emerging issue.

Thanks, Nadia.

Good morning.

My name is Ruth Martin, performance auditor on this project.

For the emerging issue, we found that fire rescue is not meeting its arrival time standard in part due to slow turnout time performance.

Currently, fire rescue reports on arrival time performance in their budgets KPI, which combines turnout time and travel time under one metric, but does not report on each phase independently.

Fire rescue's internal standard for arrival time is up to two minutes longer than industry standards set by the National Fire Protection Association, as seen on this slide.

We found that fire rescue meets its arrival time standard 70% of the time throughout our scope period.

Each year, fire rescue notes in their budget report that the department's inability to meet arrival times goals is heavily influenced by a lack of fire stations across the city.

When analyzing response time, we broke out response times into its two phases and found that fire rescue actually meets its arrival time standard of five minutes, 85% of the time, and the four minute industry standard travel time, 74% of the time across the city.

However, slow turnout times, the time it takes crews to get ready to leave the fire station affect fire rescue's ability to meet its arrival time standard.

From fiscal year 23 through fiscal year 25, fire rescue's internal turnout time standard of one minute and 30 seconds to two minutes, depending on the time of day, was met three to six percent of the time as shown in orange on this slide.

And it met the NFPA standard one to two percent of the time as shown in blue.

According to fire rescue, there are several factors that can impact turn out time performance, including fire station design, technology limitations, as well as assignment and frequency of dispatch.

However, because turnout time is one of the only phases of the emergency response process within fire rescue's control.

We found that improving turnout time performance is the most cost-effective way to enhance overall response times in the short term.

We found that fire crews can turn out faster.

On average, they turn out 11 seconds quicker for fire incidents compared to the highest priority medical emergencies, even though turnout time standards for fires are longer than for medical emergencies.

We found that turnout times are slow across all fire stations.

Specifically, crews took an average of two minutes and 54 seconds from fiscal year 23 to fiscal year 25 to turn out for medical incidents, considerably longer than fire rescue standard.

This lower turnout time combined with fire rescue's average dispatch delay of one minute and 26 seconds means that crews do not leave the fire station to respond to an incident for an average of four minutes and 20 seconds for high priority medical incidents.

While fire rescue collects data to calculate turnout time, we found that the department has not settled on a measure to evaluate turnout time performance.

Fire rescue does not consistently hold crews accountable for turnout times above internal standards and instead relies on dispatch staff to flag prolonged turnout times above four minutes for supervisory review.

To strengthen accountability and improve how turnout time is measured, fire rescue should report on each phase of its emergency response process in its annual report and adopt an internal policy that standardizes how turnout time is tracked and evaluated.

The fire rescue department agreed to all three of our recommendations.

We request the audit committee accept this report and forward it to the city council as an informational item.

This concludes our presentation.

We're happy to answer any questions.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Uh Natalie, please proceed with public comment on item number two.

Thank you, Chair.

The public comment page for item two is now open, and we have not received any speaker slips in chambers, so we will move to the virtual queue.

There are four hands raised in the virtual queue.

Each speaker will have two minutes.

Phone number ending in 870.

Please press star six and begin.

First of all, I have to tell everybody.

And I I cannot tell you how much I love you.

And it's an amazing sacred beautiful experience, the way you treat us.

And I just want to tell you I appreciate it so much.

Now I'm very, very concerned about this audit.

Very.

It just seems like there's too many places it has to go.

Why can't I know this is going to be an ideal, but why can't a call only go to one place?

You know, it targets like a laser beam just to 9-1-1.

And the ambulance goes out immediately.

And I've been confused.

I live downtown for many years.

I've seen the fire trucks and the ambulances together.

I've been confused by that.

But I don't know how we combine the two, but I think we ought to go immediately, like a laser beam to an ambulance.

No other no police, nobody else involved.

Get the ambulance on the road now.

And I don't know how we include the fire trucks.

It's probably necessary, but I don't know how to solve that point.

But I'm just telling you that this doesn't feel good.

And I'm so glad the audit is being done.

They need help.

Everybody in that in the that you know, part of our city, that service needs help to figure this out.

Because we need them so much at the top of our list.

So thank you for listening.

Just know again that I love you.

Thank you.

This does conclude your time.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The original, please unmute and begin.

This is a horrific report.

I mean, four minutes and 20 seconds to leave.

What are they doing?

Like that's a really long time.

We, I mean, that's double over double the time that I get to talk to you guys.

Like that, I just don't even understand what they could possibly be doing for almost five minutes before they leave.

Like, how are you not prepared to just get out the door?

Isn't that the point?

You just like if you have a poll, you go down it, you know what I mean?

Like, wow.

Um, but it's terrifying to think about because of all of the things that are being implemented that are, you know, impeding people's ability to evacuate during a fire, and you're building extremely densely um everywhere.

And you know, not making sure there's evacuation routes, putting in roundabouts, which we already know has been a problem.

And so it's like it you're actually impeding their ability to do their job.

I mean, think about all of the lithium batteries and those types of fires, these vesses that are being put up everywhere.

And it's like there's all of these fire dangers, and then we get a report that they are like slower in a medical emergency, like responding.

That doesn't sound good.

And it doesn't sound good to be like, well, if you wait five minutes, they'll get on their way to you.

If they can get by, because there's probably a bike lane there that they can't, you know, get through.

I mean, because you're more concerned about all these different things, but there are severe um safety hazards going on.

I mean, even Tent City, shit, there's not even fire extinguishers, but that's cool.

I mean, who cares if the homeless die, right?

I mean, they do every every day, uh, right outside your building.

But um, yeah, I'm just wondering like this should really terrify you guys, and you should really be looking into in your auditing whether or not you are the data that shows that you would be able to even get anybody out in all of these densely populated areas that you're creating.

Thank you.

Our next speaker, Kathleen Lippett, please begin.

Thank you.

Good morning, audit committee.

It is not just a lack of fire stations across the city, but the policies that the city has adopted that interfere with their ability to respond.

For instance, in Pacific Beach, a fire truck can no longer access to the northwest and north side of the condo buildings on 710 Garnett because of the streeteries that you allow.

710 Club has a pop-out that precludes not only fire trucks, but pedestrians.

It also makes it unsafe for drivers who are trying to navigate that area.

People have to walk out into the street and around that out that pop-out bar.

And it's hard enough for them to access with cars on both sides of the cul-de-sac.

What is the fire and city's department plan to put out fires on that north side?

And it certainly seems like a potential lawsuit, and it should be.

This does conclude your time.

Thank you.

The five-minute timer concluded.

We have one hand remaining in the virtual queue.

Blair Beekman, please begin.

Hi, Blair Beekman.

Thank you a lot for this item.

Thanks for the words of public comment.

And Joyce Sonata, who's asking about this issue, questioning in a bit.

Uh, in being from the Bay Area, going back and forth.

Both San Jose and Oakland, they're working on response times for their police issues.

But I understand public safety response for police times.

It is an important subject, also.

But it got me thinking that all three of your cities, they've been updating and better developing their domain awareness centers for technology and how it works.

This it seems like it would be fit in nicely.

You mentioned uh you have to question your technology practices, how to speed up times.

Is this a way to be softly introducing how you're better working with your domain awareness centers and coordinating with them?

Um if it is, um, can you make that more clear in these presentations that that is the intention?

And that we're working on this as a community process.

Um, I know we're uncomfortable with the subject matter.

Um, but it's probably better to talk about it than to keep it quiet.

I think it's more important to have the conversations out in the open and that information is shared and that we're clear on the subject matter, uh, even if it's difficult subject matter as this is.

So good luck how we can be doing that uh for this item as needed.

And uh could look on how we can improve our response times uh and that we do a good job together on the issue.

It's it's being informed together that I think is how we uh address our public safety and our community issues.

It's not keeping it secret.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And Chair, this concludes public comment on item two.

Thank you.

I will now turn it over to committee members for any questions or comments on this item.

Committee member Halpern.

Uh thank you, Chair.

Um, you know, first I want to say a big thanks to the team that did the report.

Um, you know, over the years, the office, I think just gets better and better at presenting, particularly use of graphics in a very digestible way, uh complex um data.

And I know that this is a very data intensive report.

Also appreciate that uh fire's um agreement with all the recommendations.

Um my question, I just have a couple of questions which will focus on uh high priority medical incident responses, but I think it should be recognized that across all of its activities, our fire department saves countless lives every day.

And so let's not let this discussion overshadow that important fact.

Um, but with regard to the um high priority medical incidents, exhibit 15 displays the number of the incidents in the aggregate um for fiscal years 23 to 25.

And I'm curious if corresponding data exists on how many lives were saved, and also how many incidents resulted in fatality.

Is there any breakout of that data?

Or is that data kept?

Uh good morning, audit committee, Chair Moreno, uh Chief William Lendez, Assistant Chief of Strategic Operations for Fire Rescue Department.

I'm joined here this morning uh with Deputy Chief Roger Fisher, who oversees our emergency or emergency command and data center and program manager for our CAD system, uh Cody Williams.

So any any very specific questions?

I'm gonna do for the computer audit, I'm gonna reference to Cody to address your question as far as patient outcome with with HIPAA privacy issues.

We don't we don't have correlated data or access to that kind of information as far as patient outcomes.

So when we go look at patient outcomes for certain, we were able to go into certain certain calls on a on like a case-by-case basis based on recommendations, but not an overarching um information.

Got it.

So just out of curiosity.

So would HIPAA prevent uh, and I realize you're not necessarily a HIPAA expert, but just you know, broadly speaking, I'm imagining that you know you deliver um people to medical facilities.

Would there not be any way that the medical facilities would present back in aggregate, not you know, person by person, but just aggregate data that would do would HIPAA be an impediment in getting aggregate data like that, do you know?

Probably not just aggregate data.

Um, I guess that that definitely lives with the hospital and and how with their decision and the impact on them and having them relate that information back to us.

Yeah, I hear you because I guess from my perspective as a decision maker, it would be really helpful context to you know, in framing this question about the one-minute difference between procedure A and procedure B.

Um it would be really helpful to have some perspective on that, because you know, the report alludes to the medical literature, um, and the you didn't use these words, but I'll use them, um, having a um uh sort of a somewhat predictable uh curve of outcome, right?

That for every minute of delay, there's some percentage of likely um increased fatality.

So it would be really helpful in framing this whole question.

And also, by the way, in framing the question about do we need to invest more in assets, whether it's fire stations or whatever assets, um, to have greater understanding of the actual impact of the delay on fatalities in in the actual numbers that we as a city experience it.

So if I understand the limitation that you guys have on collecting that data, and so if that data just isn't available, I'm presuming then it becomes really difficult, although speak up auditors, IBA, if there is any way that you can even on a kind of theoretical basis frame the question about given the number of incidents we have, given some assumption about fatalities, um, what the actual impact of that extra minute delay might be as a way to frame the decision about how to move forward on this.

Um seeing nobody jump in, I'll just I'll I'll move on because I imagine that probably isn't a feasible.

I I do have a few comments to the right.

Yeah, please, yeah, thank you.

Um so just um for an example, our level when when the call comes in, the call determinant it gets to a triage, right?

We used to automatically send an aimless to the to the call right away.

Um and as we go through the triage, we can decide like what how serious this how severe it is, right?

So our level echo is our most severe cardiac arrest, um profuse bleeding.

So if if it's identified right away in the first one or two questions, we dispatch the fire and ambulance, the engine and the fire and the ambulance at the same time.

And that accounts for about 1.6 um percent of our calls.

So it's a very small, very small, but the the ones that are critical, we're sending we're we're punch or dispatching both units at the same time.

One of our biggest focus over the past five or six years has really been sending the correct resource um to the calls to make sure that we're we're cognizant of making maintaining that uh ready force.

And we talked about uh for fires or or any other emergency that breakout.

So when we talk um so that's been our big focus.

Um I think when we look at the data, I think something to really consider is the um the modeling, the modeling of a system where we don't know where the calls are coming from, where geographically they're located, um the order they're coming in, um, the numbers of calls that are coming in every hour at dispatch really fluctuates day to day to day.

Um so being able to manage that to make sure that we're set up to continue coverage throughout the city, um, whether it be up in Rancho Bernardo, down by the um San Isidro, it's that that's kind of that system status that we're it's a constant measure.

Um regard to the fire stations, um at the next three or four weeks, uh we've been working with um local 145 and the International Association of Firefighters.

Um they've been working on a standards of coverage study.

Um so they'll be here um presenting that in probably in the next month or so is just going through the final review stages and to address the um the cons the question about how many more fire stations or what that what that looks like, they'll present a uh uh study that's actually you can you can actually it's a live model basically, so you can plug in certain parameters and and and challenge it to kind of um get kind of deep dive on what that looks like for fire stations and our response times.

Well, just on that last point, that's great, because we were talking about in our briefing the other day that I guess it's been some number of years since uh study has been done, and and so that would be really helpful.

Having said all that, I think it would, you know, if there's a way that you guys can figure out getting aggregate data on outcomes, that would add a lot of power to the discussion because you know, to be crude, if it's framed in the form of X number of lives could be saved a year if we did A, if we did B, if we invested here or there, I think that would be very powerful.

But finally, I'd just say um, you know, given the life and death nature of this, um I don't know if we've um got a motion yet on accepting the report, but I'd like to have a friendly amendment that again, given the life and death nature of this, that the department perhaps come back in April or May with a recommendation implementation plan, just so that there's you know, both full transparency and we can really make sure that the effort to meet the targets, which I appreciate that you've got reasonable targets for implementation, but we can just see that that implementation plan gives everybody confidence that that's gonna get done on time.

Just for clarification, there isn't a motion on the floor if that's the motion that you're proposing.

Then I'll propose that as a motion.

Wonderful.

I'm happy to second the motion.

We do not traditionally meet in May, so maybe we could give them some time and have them come back in June.

Is that okay?

Sure, sure.

That's correct.

Okay, wonderful.

That's it for me.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

Committee member Tapsuri.

Um thank you, Chair.

I just wanted to say that was a really good audit report, and and I'm sure there's a lot of effort that went into it.

And um, you know, there's just no doubt in my mind that the fire department does its best to save lives.

I I think in this case.

Um it's also a good thing that there seems to be a lot of data there and that you guys are in fact analyzing it.

There's just in my mind, what I was trying to hunt in on is those highest of the high priority calls, those level E's.

You know, even if you're not able to get outcome-based data from the hospitals after the fact, but just by coding them, knowing which ones were maybe cardiac arrest related or choking or or such, it I think it would be a little bit informative or give us a better idea to kind of know if we're able to shave off a minute and response time, you know, which would be turnout time plus travel time, how much of a potential impact that would have made on that population in general.

So I guess what I'm asking for is maybe more granular data, you know.

Yeah, and you might have that now, or it might be something later on for you and the auditors, you know, in your response to the recommendations.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Yeah, no, absolutely.

I think with the the recommendations and us uh the management agreement to the recommendations, and I'm excited actually to have that opportunity to present public safety on a regular basis.

Um, to provide I mean, we have a lot of data, a lot of granular data.

Um it's really gonna go into like each fire station um and each kind of apparatus.

So I think there's a lot of good opportunity there.

Um as far as our our our level E calls when uh our CPR, all our high high level um emergencies there are we have our QA QI that we audit all make sure that we have the quality insurance, right?

So those get looked at internally with our department.

Um it's just not not released, but I I will to address both of your um concerns, which is very very valid.

Every minute counts 100 percent.

Um I think there's there's some data or some some information to be able to present so that we can go forward making good decisions.

Wonderful, thank you.

Um council member Foster.

Thank you, Chair.

Um, and thank you for their presentation.

I guess um, and I appreciate the questions um by my colleagues, um and identifying the the level of calls and in the outcome, but um I think I'd like to kind of see if I can kind of better understand um just just focus on turnout time because I feel like that is something that is truly um within the control of San Diego Fire, right?

Because I assume with any call your response time, it can get pretty complex, right?

You don't know what traffic might be, you don't know what certain things might be, and and also it appears um as I look at this that as we talk about travel time, it it looks like we're basing this off of the National Fire Protection Association's standards, right?

And as I listen to and as I listen to this presentation and report and receive my brief, I guess my question is the way that we are currently doing things.

What I'm hearing is in the past five years, we kind of shifted how we receive calls.

We now have per se a triage portion that if I understand what you said earlier in the past five years, you really tried to triage calls a little more to make sure that you were deploying the proper resources apparatuses right in in responding to the call to where sometimes it's not a engine call, but it's this call, you know, this portion.

I I guess was there a look at that standard to see as we are conducting our business, that triage if you understand what I'm saying, that triage portion, the way that we are currently doing it to per se instead of just getting the call rolling out, which may bring things down, um, versus the triage.

So that's question number one.

So that's question number one, but also if you can kind of elaborate how we can make how we have a faster turnout for fire versus medical response.

I'm a little lost because it sounds like we have more to do to prepare for a fire, right?

Which you your uniform, what you got to get into how you how you leave the station.

Can you kind of shed some light on how we can have better time for fire versus a medical?

Okay, I'm so I'll first address the question um the the five years versus the the previous five years.

Um during the during the when we went to a level zero, we dispatched every fire engine and nameless to every call after the 2012 audit.

And I um had the privilege to work at Lincoln Park for two years and station 14 for another year.

So two of the busiest fire stations within our our city.

And I will tell you as far as sending the wrong resources to the calls.

I there was night, there was countless nights where we would wait wake up three or four times just to get canceled.

And that's not including the three or four times to go to the actual emergency that we were needed, right?

So the amount of resources that were placed out of service because they were dispatched incorrectly, um, not appropriately.

Um not only a wear and tear on the on the workforce was I can personally attest to uh the wear and tear on our fire engines and and the increased cost on the maintenance was significant on our on our fleet.

Um so when we went away from that, it was definitely a positive with regard to the turnout time.

There's definitely work to be done, I think more at a more granular level.

Um internally that we internally we've discussed um some technology options as far as really understanding the getting down to the turnout time and what that actually looks like when we get dispatched to actually leaving the stations.

Right now we're challenged with um when you look at um GPS coverage is when I can hit responding and start driving driving my fire apparatus, it won't capture me moving maybe three or four blocks away.

Um, or it might not capture me at all for because it's the internet's down or in a bad bad coverage.

Um so there's a lot of a lot of varieties.

I'll I'll pass it over to Cody here to kind of go into more granular.

Um so we're looking at those those kind of options to really kind of hone in on on reporting and giving you more finite details to make those decisions.

Thank you, Chief.

Uh I'm Cody Williams, I'm the CAD manager, I would see the data analysis team.

So very happy to hear the discussion on response time.

I think response time is one of the most important metrics to hold us to.

I'm very thankful to the auditors.

I've had different teams of outsiders come in and try and understand our data, and they worked harder and closer to understand it well, and we're thankful for that.

That's why we accept all the recommendations.

But even in that, there's hidden complexity.

And numbers like averages average over these things.

I've heard concerns about okay, level one is a big bucket.

Level one is a term we use.

Oh, yeah.

Let me get closer.

So I'll rewind just a moment.

So I'm very thankful for everything the auditors did.

I've had um multiple outside groups come in, like the standards and coverage people come in and try and understand our system.

And I felt no one worked as hard to understand it as they did, so I'm thankful for that, and that's why we accept the recommendations.

From the data side, it's it's very nuanced, and I'm happy to hear those nuanced questions coming out here, and I'm happy to hear the focus on response times because I think it's an important metric to the questions on about those those echo-level incidents, right?

Level one is a big bucket.

When we triage medically, there's over 800 medical things that go to, and those level ones are heart attack, you know, gunshot, very important ones.

And those pop out of the system earlier.

And when you average all level ones together, you hide that.

Because if you average all level ones and say, oh, there's a 56-second increase, okay, that's true.

But the increase, the increase to the echo level calls is only 11 seconds.

So the system has been triaging that to select those calls for faster outcomes, right?

And that's the system working as design that can be hidden in an average.

So those are the little complexities that matter.

Um to the turnout piece, turnout, as you said, is hard to capture because we either capture it, they press a button, they say we are turning out, which you know, maybe they do early, maybe they haven't pulled out yet, they're doing a lot of stuff, or we use a GPS tracker on their car to track it, but that's dependent on cellular coverage and satellites and try being downtown and getting good GPS, right?

So the audit recommendation that we should focus on a turnout, a reliable turnout time is a is a great place to go.

There are some technologies, some new companies out there that have trackers that connect to the engine and stuff, so we can work to get a better number for that accountability.

Um the other interesting piece I'll comment on is hey, hey, what is the outcomes?

You know, what happens at the hospital?

And um, we can see maybe five percent of our calls, the hospital give us data back for a lot they don't.

They're not required to.

And those are partnerships that I've been talking to our medical director of, it would be great to get more and know what that happens.

But we can still treat those echo-level calls as serious than we know they are, and that's why they have an early exit from the system, and they have way faster response times that are hidden in that average.

So I'll I'll stop there for questions.

Thank you for that.

And maybe I'll just ask the auditors if they looked at this.

And again, I'm just going back as we're using national fire standards.

Is our process and like if we added a step in there the way that we are now triaging things to to make sure we're deploying the right resources, are we are we um is that part of the national standard, or did we add a triage step in there that isn't necessarily taken into account to those standards?

That's that's my question.

Are we doing something slightly different as we made the decision on what we're deploying and how we're deploying to work that out versus exhausting resources?

I believe you did interview the other cities.

Yeah, I'll let my team jump in with additional details.

But um, some cities do it the way we do it, some don't.

Um, and then as far as uh that's as far as triage.

Um then as far as turnout time, uh, other cities, you know, they report that they struggle with that as well, but several cities have taken a more proactive approach to monitoring that holding crews accountable, and they've seen improvements in their turnout time.

Um there's a lot of different you know factors that point to the that that point to the fact that we can improve on turnout time, for example, um they the the goal for turnout time is slower for uh fire incidents than medical incidents because of all the additional protective equipment they need and et cetera.

Um but our fire crews actually turn out faster for fire uh emergencies than medical emergencies.

So that's just another piece that shows um you know it it's good that they're working on um you know some better ways to track it.

The way they have it right now is pretty good, um, but there are some better technologies.

I think uh you told us um in an interview that it's maybe one out of ten times the GPS doesn't connect right away, and it usually reconnects within 10 seconds.

So on an individual incident basis, maybe you can't hold the crew accountable for that one.

But if they're but on an average, you know, we came up with two minute and 54 seconds turnout time.

Maybe when you factor in one out of every 10 times, there's a GPS delay of maybe 10 seconds, maybe it's two minutes and 53 seconds, you know, or something like that.

The goal is one minute and 30 to 10 city standard and one minute national standard, so there's obviously room for improvement there.

Correct.

And and just to be clear, I understand where we're at, I understand the report.

My question is to the national standard.

Are we doing something because you said clearly some other agencies and municipalities do something similar to what we do?

I'm going back to the national average.

I would think that there's a manual, a book that says here's the national average, and I'm just asking based on that methodology.

Are we doing something above and beyond based on how we're triaging?

That's as simple as my question.

It's if something we need to look at and find out, good follow up.

If we're not there or no, we're in line, we need to see the improvement.

Chief Logan, let's figure out how we improve, right?

That's where I'm at right now.

Thanks.

I can add some contact to this context to this, Nadia Torkman performance auditor.

Um, so we did initially look at while we were scoping like call processing times, and there are internal and industry standards for like call pickup and call processing, et cetera.

We did not specify looking at this in a report because we found they were doing a pretty good job.

And we also talked to other benchmark agencies um in across California, and we found that they were also for the most part triaging medical incidents prior to dispatching fire resources, and if they weren't, they were looking to do so.

And so um think Sakodi and his team, they have actually kind of broken out the call processing process and um found areas for improvement, and they've automated pieces, and then they're also using uh a fairly high-tech medical triage software to help expedite that process.

So we found as far as call processing, the chunk of that emergency response process they are doing relatively well in that aspect.

And so, yes, they move you know, the dispatch maybe before after that for fire units, um, but the call processing piece is relatively streamlined.

Okay.

I don't want to beat this up anymore.

Uh what I'm hearing is our process is within those standards.

We just need to look at how we can improve and get our turnout time better.

That's what I'm hearing.

I would say that turnout time is more within the realm of control with all of the other um cop caveats in the process.

I'm asking that our process is in line with the national standard, and we just need to see improvements to our turnout time.

So I don't think we came across that national standard on the process, but our process is consistent with many other fire agencies that also triage the calls.

It preserves resources as they pointed out.

It also slows the response to medical emergencies.

Maybe for the most important ones, it's only 12 seconds.

It's for one, it's one minute overall for level one.

Understood.

So people should understand what that trade-off is.

Understood.

Thank you.

That concludes my questions.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Moving on to committee member Mafia.

Thank you for all that you do, and thank you for the fine report.

Just had a quick question on the turnout times.

I think we heard from the audit team that there were some reasons that you know could be leading to slower turnout times, including technology and maybe the design of the firehouse and to make changes like that would be capital intensive.

Just curious as you're going through this process and you think through your the turnout time process.

Are there kind of some low-hanging fruit, some some things that can be done in your mind that aren't redesigning a firehouse that aren't as capital intensive that couldn't really impact the turnout times?

Um absolutely.

So I think one of our first steps is really looking at each fire station, right?

Because each fire station is very different in design.

Um and then we have on each in each station we have three different shifts.

So when we're talking about looking at like granular turnout times and focusing on the areas that maybe need improvement or areas that need to be adjusted to be more reasonable.

Um station one, right down the street here, you'll walk a whole city block in the middle of the night to get to your fire engine.

Um and then if you go to I work in Barrio Logan, I'm working, I'm literally walk out my my my dorm room door and I'm right at the fire engine.

So right there is there's a big impact.

But it's so it's a matter of us really looking at it more and station level and a shift level.

Um as far as accountability part that was just referenced, um, internally in management our policy really to look at um right now there's a there's a there's a policy in place as far as our crews being notified if there's a delay if longer than four minutes um and and what that looks like.

But really, I think there's there's more work to be done internally to as far as management and managing our fire rescue personnel.

So great.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um and first of all, thank you for the presentation.

Um the city auditor's office um just once again, you guys did a wonderful job.

And also thank you uh to the fire rescue department for the work um that you do every day to keep us safe.

Uh I certainly cannot be a firefighter.

Uh so I thank you guys for putting your life um lives on the line for um.

Uh I also want to recognize Chief Logan, he's here.

I appreciate you being here.

I think it's a testament to how um serious this uh audit was and to say that the um emergency response is complex is a understatement.

Uh but I think I saw the light in between all of this because this was a really really really difficult one for me.

Um so let me start off by saying that I appreciate management agreeing to all of the recommendations.

Uh the audit noted an emerging issue with turnout time.

Um turnout time begins with the receipt um of a dispatch alert and ends when the fire crew has loaded into the fire rig and actually begins moving.

Uh for high priority medical incidences, fire rescue average turnout time is nearly two minutes longer than the National Fire Protection Association standards, as was noted in the audit.

Um research shows that for every minute delay and primary response for certain life-threatening medical emergencies, uh, there is a measurable effect on uh mortality.

So any improvements in turnout time can have a meaningful impact for people experience experiencing a medical emergency.

Um the audit did note um in its budget report that the fire rescue states that it's not meeting arrival time standards due to the lack of fire stations.

Um I had to go back into my history brain and um I actually just Googled it.

Citigate 2011.

So we're talking about how many years is that 15 years ago was a was when CityGate uh came out.

Um, can you just briefly, and I know this is going to be difficult, but can you briefly describe the need for additional fire stations?

That is difficult.

Um I and I and I don't want to get ahead of myself because I with the standards of coverage report coming out.

I think that's really gonna lay out more specifics that I that I can I that I know of right now.

So um we've added a we have we've added some fire stations since 2011 um as the population has grown, uh but we do still have challenging areas to get to get to and around.

We have some fire stations um in in the works right now for the next in the next couple years.

Um but again it's just like an audit for a uh the city uh where we don't know them where the emergencies are going to play, and we're moving resources on a on a regular basis, and it's just very dynamic.

Um that being said, I will wait just to get that report out in front of the council to make sure that I'm speak appropriately to it.

Would you say it's high time that we do another um study, such as what was done in 2011?

Um yes.

So I I think after the standards of coverage and report comes out through the IAFF, I think that there's an opportunity um, and it was referenced in public safety a couple weeks ago about another uh City Gate.

There's another another another study internally.

Another study.

Okay.

Um thank you for that.

Um the audit also pointed out several low cost ways to improve response time.

Um just want to point out for the record that um recommendation 2.2 says fire rescue department should establish an internal policy that standardizes a tracking and evaluation measure for turnout time and disseminating it to fire rescue personnel.

Um I think it was pretty clear we talked about this.

You guys are gonna come back in June and give us uh your recommendations for implementation.

Um we recognize the need for fire stations in between funding parks and major roads in Otai Mesa.

Um it's a fire station 49 in no Tai Mesa has been my priority.

Um, and I'm extremely proud to say that recently we purchased the land for the fire station, which um will be located at the intersection of Ocean View Hills Parkway and see fire point.

Um so here we have a set of information.

With an auditor, the auditor, the auditing team did the department.

Now that we as elected officials, or you know, my colleague and I as elected officials, now that we have this information here before us, um it's our responsibility, in my opinion, or let me speak for myself, it's my responsibility to do something about it, right?

Um, and it's difficult because you guys are saving lives and it's very complex, and what I'm hearing from from you guys is that we need more fire stations.

Yet we just had the five-year outlook yesterday, and nowhere in that conversation was the prior what was the priority fire stations, right?

So going back to getting off my tangent and going back the triage that was implemented in 2016 have resulted in better morale, I it sounds like for our um firefighters, but we've added one point one minute and twenty seconds um to the calls, and because of medical um privacy issues, we cannot quantify if this has led to more deaths.

Um, this is where it for me it gets complicated, right?

Because I'm hearing you guys and you guys are saying more fire stations, and the city council is not talking about fire stations, and the mayor is not talking about fire stations.

Um I think I'm happy that the motion was made uh for this to come back in June because now that we have this information, now that it's public um and it should be public.

This is why I love the audit committee.

Um I think it just it it speaks to the amount of uh collaboration and communication that is needed between the city council, the fire rescue department, and also local 145.

We don't live what you guys live on a day-to-day basis.

Um, and so but this is what the numbers are showing us.

Go ahead.

If I may, what uh and again we accept the recommendations, right?

Because this very reason we can do better at showing you, and we're not here to present what we presented in June, our response and our numbers, but um what was measured was the delay between level zero and level one, and when you could dispatch a first responder.

That's what the audit measured.

The audit did not measure response times because the audit had data from 22 to 2025.

They didn't ask for data before 2019.

They estimated it.

So if you go back and analyze that data, it tells a different story.

That we have 20% more 911 calls, 24% more ambulances and fire trucks leaving our station.

So the fact that response times are up 18% would have happened regardless of a process change.

In fact, we've held that to only 4% on our echo level calls by improvements to triage.

Not to say what they measured is what they measured.

The difference between L1 and L0.

But the actual response time is a different thing.

You can't with 100% confidence say that that dispatch order affects thing.

Our dispatchers have a map.

They see every fire unit.

If they wait 30 seconds to select a unit that gets their two minutes faster, the fact that they waited 30 seconds did not add 30 seconds.

You cannot use simple arithmetic to relate the dispatch order to response times.

You should measure the response times.

And that's what I look forward to showing you in June.

Got you.

Do we have 20% more fire stations?

I don't think so.

Okay.

So I think that was the kind of aha moment for me.

Yes, ma'am, was we need more fire stations, just point blank, we need more firefighters, we need more fire stations.

Obviously, we're in 119 million dollar deficit, but that doesn't mean that we stop planning for five years and for 10 years.

So that was my, you know, that was what came through even before walking into this office.

So I appreciate you guys being here and you guys stating what you stated because it is important.

Um I'm sorry, Chair Marino, can I just go ahead and add some?

Yeah, sorry.

Um so what Cody is referring to is uh we estimated what the response time would be under a different process, which is very hard to do, as they point out, uh using the 23 to 25 data.

But we also looked at what happened to response times from 2012 to 2018 when they were dispatching uh right away.

Also during that time, call volumes increased.

Also, I think during that time, that six years they only added one fire station.

Um, and I think they went from 58% uh meeting the uh on time goal to 78%, I believe, team.

Correct me if I'm wrong in the exact numbers.

Um so they showed an improvement during that time, uh, even though um there were additional calls, not at not a lot of additional resources.

Um so again, our point is not uh go back to that system, but that change was made, you know, based on internal analysis, wasn't uh disseminated to decision makers such as yourself.

They both both processes have trade-offs, and so everyone should know what those trade-offs are uh when you're budgeting, you know, for the fire department, when you're budgeting for fire stations and knowing what other opportunities there could be, including turnout times to improve response times, given that as you pointed out, um you know, funding additional fire stations in the near future is gonna be pretty challenging.

Thank you.

Thank you for um for stating that, and as I stated as elected officials, we have this information and we are going to do what we're gonna do with it, but it's good to know.

Um, and I appreciate the audit.

I appreciate you guys being here.

There's a motion on the floor with the second, and it sounds like we're gonna see you guys back in June.

Um, and let's go ahead.

Oh, committee member Halburn.

Hot on the mic.

Thank you.

Just you know, one thing in terms of coming back.

Uh I would appreciate if um perhaps you could just look into a little bit more this notion of how to um get our arms around the outcomes.

And uh did you say that you actually do get reports, aggregate data from some um medical facilities, but not all.

Do you get it from any?

Yeah, so what what happens is when the paramedics are with the patient, they it now becomes a medical incident.

They do a medical report called the EPCR, and that data we get back, and we're actually working with the medical director for doing some new analysis on that for our dispatch process because the dispatch process is based on we haven't met the patient yet, right?

But once we've met them and evaluated them and treated them, we have this extra information, which we should be using to look back at the dispatch process and look for optimizations.

And I'm deep in a project with our medical director doing that right now.

And so we've seen that in that medical system, we can see, and it's a shamefully low amount.

I think it was about five percent last time I checked, that I can actually see in that medical report, oh, they went to the ER.

The patient was discharged three days later, the patient was never discharged because bad outcomes.

So there is some outcome data in there.

It's not enough to make five percent is not enough to make very good uh judgments for.

Uh but there's more cardiac information, right?

Hi, I'm uh Roger Fisherman, deputy chief over the command center.

Um left with the thought that we don't have outcome data.

Um, our emergency medical services uh division has long time long time been participating in what's uh called cardiac arrest survivability data for through the UTSDE process.

I don't know if you're familiar from a clinical perspective, but we do have reports uh long time participating in determining what cardiac risk survivability is out of our system.

Very structured national data that perhaps maybe we can bring in June and provide some comparisons.

Great, because where I was going at this is you actually don't need all of the data to make a statistically significant um estimation of what the variances in these different parts of a response time might lead to, where you just need enough.

So it's great that you get some, and then I guess it's the process of whether that's sufficient or not.

But thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Yeah, and once again, thank you guys for being here.

We really appreciate it.

And we will now take the roll call.

Unless you have anything else to add, you're good.

Okay, wonderful.

Wonderful.

And that motion carries unanimously.

Um this concludes item number two.

We're now going to take up our informational agenda.

Natalie, please introduce item number three.

Item number three, 2025 annual report on internal financial control.

Chair.

Wonderful.

And staff, once again, if you could please introduce yourself for the record and let us know how much time you need and begin your presentation.

Before you begin, um, I just wanted to note for the record that this is an action item.

It's not an informational item.

So we will need a motion on the floor with the second.

Good morning, Committee Chair Moreno and Committee members.

I'm Ben Bitalia, Director of Finance.

With me today is Jeff Peel, our chief accountant.

We're here today to present the city's annual report on internal financial controls for calendar year 2025.

And we'll need about 10 minutes today, please.

This annual report is issued pursuant to the city's municipal code, which was amended by the city council in 2004, and it requires a high standard of quality in and efficacy of the city's financial reporting and disclosure practices.

The municipal code requires that management perform an annual evaluation of the city's internal financial controls, submit a written annual report to the audit committee and the city council, and submit a certification by city management regarding the design, maintenance, and effectiveness of the city's internal financial controls.

And I'll now turn it over to Jeff to discuss the highlights of the report.

The focus of this report is to provide an overview of management's approach to developing and maintaining a strong and effective system of internal control over financial reporting, and to highlight some of the accomplishments of the past year that support those objectives.

The objectives of financial reporting are to produce financial information that is reliable, relevant, and timely.

Management's ability to meet these objectives depends in part on the design and effectiveness of the processes, policies, and procedures, and safeguards it has to in place to reduce or mitigate risks over financial reporting.

Internal controls are important because without such controls, it would be challenging to prepare reliable financial reports that are utilized by management, investors, rating agencies, and other interested parties.

The city's internal control program is based on best practices established by COSO.

COSO is the committee of sponsoring organizations of Treadway Commission.

COSO has developed a conceptual framework to guide businesses and government entities in areas of risk management, internal controls, fraud deterrence, and fraud deterrence.

The framework includes five interrelated components control environment, risk assessment, control activities, information and communication, and monitoring activities.

Within each of each of the components, another layer of 17 principles helps guide as well.

I will describe each one of the components briefly.

Control environment is the organizational attitude towards internal controls.

It starts with the tone at the top.

Management creates an environment where everyone in the organization believes internal controls are important, and each person has a specific role.

Secondly, is risk assessment, which is how management identifies, assesses, evaluates, and managements the amount of risk.

It's always important to note that risk can never be completely eliminated.

Thirdly, control activities.

These are the policies and procedures that help ensure management's objectives are carried out and necessary actions are taken to address risks.

This includes segregation of duties, reviews, and approvals within processes.

The fourth component is information and communication.

This is the distribution of information needed to perform control activities and to understand internal control responsibilities throughout the organization.

And the last component is monitoring activities, which is an evaluation of each of the four components to ensure that they are functioning effectively and the organizational objectives are being met.

The Department of Finance used the management assessment template to help assess the effectiveness of the city's system of internal financial controls as it relates to the five components and seventeen principles of the COSO framework.

This tool helps management analyze and provide the structure of this report.

This assessment can be found in attachment one.

I want to mention a few of the highlights from the report.

First, the city received a clean audit opinion for the fiscal year 2025 annual comprehensive financial report with no significant deficiencies and no material weaknesses in internal controls.

Next, the city received a certificate of achievement of excellence in financial reporting from the government finance officers association, GFOA.

This is the 11th consecutive year the city has received this award.

The city also received the budget presentation award from GFOA for the FY25 adopted budget and budget excellence award from the California Society of Municipal Finance Officers for the FY2425 capital operating budgets.

The Office of the City Treasurer served uh serves as a control point for the city citywide revenue.

The city city's treasurer office accounting program oversees the deposits and financial financials of contract accounts uh receivable FICA module and SAP used for general citywide invoicing now related to grants or donations.

The city's treasurer's office revenue compliance program audits revenue includes revenue of percentage of fixed lease agreements.

The revenue compliance program conducts audits to ensure compliance of the city's contracts and policies as outlined in city charter section 45.

Council Policy 710 mandates audits of a percentage lease leases in the first year of operation and at least every five years thereafter, with additional audits as deemed necessary.

While the accounting and revenue compliance programs were previously identified risks with the economic development department real estate division's invoicing and payment processing, as well as lease audit management.

These le these issues remain immaterial to the city's financial statements.

Nevertheless, the economic development department has prioritized addressing these risks by implementing robust processes and enhancing internal controls to prevent risk escalation.

The progress and the current status include it concluded in April of 2025, the moratorium that was mutually agreed upon that by the economic development department and the city city treasurer for leased audits.

The economic development department has formalized internal processes to timely research and resolve the backlog of invoicing and payment deposit discrepancies.

Significant progress has been made to address the historical backlog.

The department has continued to make improvements to ensure revenue is accurately captured and the report of compliance with the current city policy and documented internal processes to ensure ongoing compliance.

And lastly, to prevent the reoccurrence of invoicing, the payment uh the payment of economic development department is urging its aging software system.

The technology enhancements are intended to reduce human errors, automate workflows, and provide visibility into lease compliance.

And finally, as we stated in last year's report, there are a couple of outstanding audit items related to human capital management.

One is uncompet uncompetitive compensation, which is being resolved with a total compensation strategy.

The other is improving the employee performance processes, which is also being addressed with a series of implementations focused on trends and completion rates.

The human resources department and personnel department are working with City Auditor to close those recommendations.

Based on our evaluation, we have concluded that the internal financial controls are effective.

And that concludes our presentation, and we are happy to answer any questions.

Thank you very much.

Natalie give me a second.

Okay.

Uh Natalie, please proceed with public comment on item number three.

Thank you, Chair.

The public comment for item three is now open.

We have not received any speaker's lips here in chambers, so we'll move to the virtual queue.

I've started the five minute timer.

There are three hands raised in the virtual queue.

Phone number ending in 870.

Please press star six at beginning.

Thank you, Natalie.

Uh Joey Sanyata D three, C D3.

Thank you for the report.

Uh Department of Finance.

And do it without you, thank you for your work.

Uh, I want to quickly say um thank you for yesterday.

I love the hybrid zero-based budget, VBB.

It it's it's just something I'm really, really excited about.

And I'm so glad that IT is bringing the cloud based system on board, and we'll flip the switch in 2030.

In the meantime, we'll struggle a bit.

Uh, and and we'll do the best we can.

Now, uh, from the beginning, we're talking 2005.

I never understood why uh people like Crow and why the best standards practices and all those people don't look at internal controls.

So nobody but all of you can we trust.

Only you know how you're doing.

Uh and uh this culture thing, uh I don't get it.

Management risk control, communication and monitoring.

You know, I I'm gonna look at communication and monitoring.

Everybody's got to be able to talk with each other, collaborate and the departments and everything.

So that's key.

The monitoring aspects, you know, management at the top.

To me, I shine a light on the managers.

And you know, uh I don't know the managers, I know the key top top people, and they're great.

But I I have really concerns about internal controls and the fact that we don't have accountability, transparency.

And I I uh if it's there, great.

Uh some incidents have said that it's not there.

You've improved it.

We've had our audits.

And so thank you.

This does conclude your time.

Thank you.

Thank you, Natalie.

Our next speaker, the original, please unmute and begin.

Yeah, this is I don't know how you're getting awards of excellence and in preventing fraud when we know there's fraud, waste, and abuse happening, and like even Joy saying with the accountability and transparency, I mean, all of those things.

So I don't understand how is it actually working unless it's showing you these things in you know um you're potentially maybe bringing it forward, but how would anybody know?

And you know, you don't audit all the things, and there's a lot of things that come out that the city tries to hide.

So, is that what this is really supposed to do?

Is the question because how can there be so much fraud taking place, and then it just continues like it nothing gets done.

It's as if it's because like just like with the fire department here, you give them recommendations and they can take it or leave it.

And that's the problem is that there's that leaves no, you know, enforcement, like you guys want compliance with this or that, and and you talk about that, but then where's your compliance in you know, making sure that there's accountability and that these things don't continue because like time and again you'll see things that happen on a repeat basis, and it's kind of like it comes to the surface, like evil always has to tell you what it's doing, but it's like nothing ever you know comes to pass about it changing.

That should be mitigated.

So it's like you know, you can sit here all day long and say that it's working, but I mean, not to our benefit because the fraud continues.

So when you're saying preventing fraud, I mean you guys can you know say all this you want, but when you're you know, it's like double speed.

You're not you're not following through with it.

You're saying one thing and doing the complete opposite, and it's just it's unfortunate because you know the people have to pay more money on a regular basis because of all of this negligence.

Thank you.

Our next speaker, Hector, please unmute and begin.

Oh, thanks for taking my call.

Yeah, I think every council person in their own district should like take example in the in district number two when we found out that Mission Bay Park, 30% of the tenants are are behind on the rent on the lease agreement.

So I think every council, how many lease agreements do I have in council one and council five, council two, and 30% guys ain't paying the rent in Mission Bay Park.

So and then also she was on the record saying she wanted to create a city tax.

You know, which is an abomination.

Like a California tax, the federal tax, and now we're having a city tax.

People say no to that.

She has that it's on film if she wants to create, I'd be nice if we have city tax.

Yeah, that's crazy, man.

But anyway, I'll know.

NGO fraud.

That's where we got to focus our attention on with financial controls.

We need to investigate the NGOs that you give money to.

The top 10 day cares, the top 10 hospice guys, the long-term care, the transportation companies, like in Minnesota, where the those guys, the African guys had had scams in everything, and they were doing way much more than anyone.

The normal guys do a normal business and they're legit.

The criminals, these guys are hundred times more than the other guys.

Like we got like 14,000 kids we're feeding here every week, and there's like four kids there.

So we need to take a look at each NGO money and make sure they don't have some wild money going to them, and we know nothing about it.

We'll just play like Sergeant Schultz.

So we don't, we didn't know.

Yeah, even the governor of Minnesota was in on the scam, and he's going, Oh, I didn't know.

I didn't know.

Come on.

Hopefully, the vice president's gonna show up, but the doge team's gonna hit it hard, and it's gonna be a better day for San Diego.

Thanks a lot.

Our next speaker.

Oh, excuse me, the five-minute timer concluded.

We have one hand remaining in the queue.

Blair Beekman, please unmute and begin.

All right, thank you.

Uh Blair Beekman, thanks for this item.

Um, thanks for the words of Joyce again.

Uh, she reminded me of the importance of uh the ZBB work that was mentioned yesterday and the overall, you know, uh long-term goals uh budgeting from yesterday.

Thank you for it.

Uh it relates very nicely to this item today.

Um I think council person El Overa said something incredibly uh interesting about ZBB process yesterday.

That um we want the ZBB to be good, and it seems related to this sort of item.

You know, what can be good house cleaning ideas that we can be in agreement on as how to um manage practices, I guess is how I'm trying to think of it.

Um those agreements that we come upon, I hope can be focused on how they serve community, how uh and social services and needs.

I'm sorry, I just I I want to be thinking and working in those terms, and um council president Elo Vera offered that uh it's an important philosophy in how to view such things.

So with this uh item, uh if you can be viewing your items that have a care for community that want to uh help the the services needed for community and people who especially who have uh they they don't have as many options and availabilities to take those things into account how you work these internal financial uh mechanisms of best practices.

Good luck how you do that, and a real good luck that um I to quickly mention, I hope it can be relevant to this item that as you're working on your five-year capital projects that projects that need to be completed, uh continued work to be completed.

You have a good record in doing that better and better, and we have to continue those good efforts.

Um, all of this is about good auditing skills.

Good luck in our best practices with those efforts.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And Chair, this concludes public comment.

Thank you.

And before we get into our committee member comments, I do want to state that uh we will need a motion for the audit committee to accept the 2025 annual report on internal financial controls and forward it to the city council as an informational item.

Wonderful.

So that's the mo that we do need a motion on the floor just to note for the record, but I'm happy to kick us off.

I don't see anybody else on the lights.

Um, thank you for the presentation.

Uh, strong internal controls are critical in ensuring that our city is effective and transparent in our financial practices and also reporting and uh continually assessing any weaknesses within the system is critical since weaknesses can build up over time.

And if they're not addressed one by one, they will almost certainly lead to material weaknesses that result in inaccurate financial reporting.

Um, I do want to recognize and thank RCFO um Mr.

Rolando Charvel uh that is present here and his team.

Um, you guys constantly are working to improve the system and provide this committee with accurate information, and we appreciate that.

It is encouraging to see that the report uh concludes the city's internal control system is functioning effectively, and that audits um did not identify any material weaknesses in financial reporting controls.

Um at the same time, the report highlighted a few areas that deserve attention that you brought up.

Uh, an example of that is there's still internal control deficiencies related to workforce management, including challenges with employee performance management and uh compensation competitiveness.

Uh, those issues can have a real impact on the city's ability to maintain a strong workforce and deliver high quality public service.

Um, can staff talk about how workforce capacity impacts uh our ability to maintain strong financial oversight and what steps are being taken to address uh those risks moving forward.

Thank thank you for the question.

So, as you noted, the city does have uh strong processes and internal controls, but it is important for uh departmental management to also provide the proper oversight of their staff to ensure those processes are being followed.

Um important is uh staff are all being trained on uh proper internal controls and their responsibilities.

Finally, um, another very um important piece of our internal controls is our segregation of duties, ensuring that you know we don't have uh the same person receiving goods and approving invoices, so those types of things, having different uh people doing that.

Um thank you for the response.

Um I'm gonna move on.

Uh the report also notes a compliance issue related with federal grant reporting timeliness.

Uh I have been a stickler uh to um all the mayors uh that I've served with about um grants.

Uh I'm very happy with the I think we did we had an audit last year on uh the fact that we're doing such a good job.

We're still behind, but we are moving in the right direction.

Um I think this is something that we should uh continue monitor monitoring.

Um, and the compliance issue was related to federal grant reporting timeliness.

Um the city needs to remain in good standing with the federal requirements.

Um can you elaborate as to basically um what this entails and also uh what's being uh the steps that are being taken to strengthen compliance process for federal grant reporting.

Yeah, we have a re representative here from uh economic development that can speak specifically to the uh to the finding in the single audit report.

The grant compliance is within economic development.

Well, the the finding that that that it's referencing was in the single audit and it was it had to deal with the economic development um uh had to do with one grant.

Correct.

Okay, yes, yes.

Go ahead.

I'm sorry for interrupting.

Thank you for the question, Chair Marino.

Monica Hardman, assistant director, economic development department.

Um the audit finding that you're referring to is related to the FAFATA reporting, and this requires for any sub awards or subrecipients receiving more than $30,000 that they report in the system.

Some of the contributions to the timeliness of this factor was that there was a transition from one federal system to another, and then we also have to receive information from our head LA office, the federal field office.

They have to enter in the federal number and the allocation amount, and then communicate to us for us to then go into the system.

So, not gonna place blame on anyone.

There were some transitions and different staffing offices, and again the transition from the system.

Once economic development became aware of this, we quickly um changed our processes.

So we worked to create a process and a procedure where it's in our CDBG um guidelines and our procedures, our guidebook.

We have specific details on who is doing what, who is responsible from what from our community development specialist to to our community development specialist for, up to our CDC, all the way up through me, so that if we are not receiving the communication from HUD, we know how to triage that and make sure that's doing well.

We have since audited all of our awards from FY24, FY25.

Everything is up into compliance, and we have not had any issues since.

Got it.

Thank you for responding.

Um, I'm not familiar with Fafada.

Can you what is the acronym?

Sure, I actually wrote it down because I don't deal with it that often myself.

It's the federal funding accountability and transparency act.

Chair Moreno, if I if I could just a little bit of context.

So this particular item was already heard by the audit committee when we brought forward the single audit that was back uh, I believe around the summertime.

This report that we're presenting today compiles any sort of finding that happened during the year just so that it's all contained in one report.

It also potentially includes any finding that uh Andy and his team found that has that's related to internal control.

So there might be some repeats of information.

So I just wanted to make sure this is not new information.

Um it's been reported and and it's been uh addressed by the thank you.

And I totally missed Fafada over the summer, so this is great.

On this is another example of why um we do what we do right.

So thank you for answering that.

Um I wanted to also get an update regarding the real estate division's invoicing and payment processing and lease audit management, which resulted in the understatement um understatement of revenue andor potential loss of revenue in the city.

Um, what steps has staff taken to strengthen the internal controls when it comes to real estate divisions, invoicing and payment processing and lease audit management?

Thank you for the question, Chair Moreno.

We have been working very diligently to not only deal with the audit compliance with the revenue completion as well as the system.

So we are currently in the process of upgrading our leasing administration software.

Um, when real estate management came into economic development, they were currently utilizing version six.

We are now in the process of upgrading to version 11, which will give us huge enhancements and improvements in that.

So that completion is scheduled for uh later on the summer, so by June the 30th.

Um concurrently, we're also in the process of engaging upon a new request for proposal and RFP for the long-term solution.

So we're working to get us caught up to the current that will give us a lot of enhancements because right now the systems just don't do what we need it to do, and it's economic development does not have the staffing and the manpower to make up for those discrepancies.

So the system improvements will greatly enhance because it's something that the people itself will not be able to do.

And then we're also looking at the long-term solution through the RFP for a leasing administration system that gives us what we need so that we don't have to do so many of those manual adjustments.

And the main issue is between the leasing administration software currently utilizing and its inability to talk to SAP, which is a financial you know record.

So it's the reconciliation issue that we're noticing, whether it's you know um current revenue not being accurately um going to the right account, etc.

So we're very excited about that.

Um it is a huge priority of economic development.

It's a issue with the morale of the team because it's a very heavy workload, not only on our 13 property agents, but also on our very small business operation support services team.

So we look forward to be able to provide updates later this summer.

Wonderful.

So we're gonna get version 11 by June 30th.

Correct.

And the RFP is coming out.

When is that coming out?

Yeah, so we're currently working um with our purchasing and contracting team.

We're anticipating that that will be out um no later than the fall, summer to fall time frame, uh, depending on their capacity.

Wonderful.

Okay, thank you for those answers.

Um, strong internal controls are essential to maintaining public trust and also ensuring that the city's resources are managed responsibly.

So I look forward to continuing uh continued progress in addressing these issues and continuing to strengthen our financial oversight system.

And so with that, I'm happy to um move staff's recommendation and um turn it over to uh council member Foster.

Thank you, Chair, and as always, thank you, uh Rolando to your and you and your team for the presentation.

Um I think I understand the CAFR a little bit.

Um, but I just want to as we're talking about controls.

Um I'm on page 21 of the the CAFER and it says transaction control activities.

And it says the implementation of SAP provides a foundation for well-designed internal control framework.

SAP allows internal controls to be embedded in the system through restricted access, segregation of duties, and authoration authorization workflows.

These controls allow for review, validation, and approval of transactions, not only mitigating the risk of fraud, but also preventing transactions errors or instances of noncompliance with laws and regulations.

I guess my first question would be how much have we invested in the SAP system since we purchased it?

A couple hundred million.

Off the top of my head, I would say probably between 100 and 200 million dollars.

Yeah.

And so as we talk about internal controls, I'm I you know, as I listened to some of the calls, public comment, I I struggle a little bit as we look at the amount of contracts that have expired, that are continuing to move forward, that we're continuing to release payments.

It seems like there's several internal things that take place.

Um how we deal with supplemental positions, what's budgeted, what's not budgeted.

Um these are long-term issues that I'm not necessarily understanding how we continue to have the audit results that we have, where we are doing excellent work and and doing certain things, but as I'm being asked to review contracts or sit in ATI, I have a whole list of contracts that are expired, and I'll put in this what I feel a very, very bad position as we are trying to be responsible stewards of public funds.

And so can you I guess help me to understand and how to square square up the two, right?

Where we're we're flying colors, we're doing a great job, but yet on the dais, I am asked to do things that I think that I feel are are quite problematic.

And and what we're doing to rein those in, uh I've been here 12 years and it's not a new problem, right?

And I just feel like we haven't been able to figure it out.

So can you kind of shed some light and help me to better understand our systems and and our um excellent work that we're doing?

Absolutely.

The the when you talk about internal controls, we're looking it can be the scope can be very large.

So it can be internal controls about you know water quality, it can be internal controls about contract management, it can be internal controls about a number of things that management is responsible for.

What the auditor is looking for is the city following the rules, the accounting rules, right?

The accounting standards.

And are we following them in a way that that's appropriate that's compliant with those rules?

And we have a system of internal controls where we would prevent any material errors from showing up in the financial statements.

So the the scope is much narrower, and that is what the opinion of the auditors, and this is what this specific report is about.

Uh having said that, I think you're uh absolutely right.

I think there are some lapses that have been identified uh on the contract side uh that's been well known, and that's something we are we're look working to address.

Uh and there are other issues uh in the city that uh can be problematic and and we need to address this management.

And and that's in line with the typical answer I get on our our audits as we talk about the CAFR.

Um I I guess one thing in here it's mentioned that there are times where we have to do manual monitoring with the size of our organization and this manual process.

Um can you shed some light on how that's managed?

How does information make its way back to DOF so that you are capturing what needs to be captured?

Um as we are looking at, um, I believe we are in the process now of our SAP system has reached the is what we're told the end of its life, and we're going through a very significant um update.

Are we able to look at our processes citywide and are we able to incorporate some additional standards or or or processes into the system to capture that to remove that manual process so which I think would be um stronger transaction controls and things of that nature?

Absolutely.

We can I can take the stab it in and then I don't know if if Jeff or or Ben would like to add anything.

We can I can take the stab at it, and then I don't know if if Jeff or or Ben would like to add anything included in the report is are any enhancement that we're working through every year, there are a number of enhancements.

Obviously, we have limited number of of folks that are working in the Department of IT and other departments that are in charge of any any system enhancements.

There's always every year, I want to say there's maybe 10, 15, 20 areas that we typically work on to make things better.

There's going to be labor negotiations, there are going to be changes to payroll, there's going to be new tax laws.

So there's always going to be changes in the in the um SAP system, including some that relate to contracts, including some that relate to the purchasing and and contracting side.

And those are reported.

Anytime we introduce change, obviously that's also introduces risk.

So there has to be proper testing to make sure that whatever whatever change we're making, uh whatever enhancement we're making is actually working appropriately.

So there's absolutely work being done every year to make the system better.

Um and that comes also with some a system, a series of controls to make sure that nothing gets missed in terms of you know the system operating the way we're expecting it to.

I think with the SAP modernization, obviously it's gonna be a full uh full-blown enhancement, uh much more user-friendly um we're gonna be able to use data a lot better.

So there's there's gonna be a lot of a whole sale of improvements that come from that.

Uh so we're obviously excited about it.

Um there's definitely work being done on an annual basis to to make improvements to the system.

Okay, thank you for that.

And lastly, just as we talk about these the the work that's being done manually, I guess my question would be how do you know that you are receiving the information you need if they're outside the system?

And is there what's the is there a facilitating document that details how that information is gathered, how it is then you know, conveyed to Department of Finance, is there AR, administrative reg, is there a process narrative?

How is how are we uh communicating that to the various departments so that the information that is coming back to you that you have that that you're receiving what you need to receive?

Yeah, we we work with a number of departments, so we're we're reaching out to all the different finance branch uh uh people that that we're working with, so we're gathering that information, having different meetings with them to be able to make sure that we have anything that potentially might be out there.

Um as Berlando said, we're looking at the audits as well, anything from from city auditor to any uh governmental agencies.

So if DOJ comes in and does it uh does an audit, then we're looking at that as well.

Um and then obviously uh our external uh auditors as well, Crow.

So we're looking at all that information and be able to kind of gather that information and then put it into the report.

Okay.

Uh I'm not hearing that there's a there's a standard in all the departments know what their responsibilities are, they're held to those responsibilities, and there's the appropriate disciplinary disciplinary action that can be taken if things aren't being followed appropriately.

I think I I know where you're going, uh counselor.

So absolutely, there's obviously there's the system component to the controls.

Many of these processes are documented where everybody is clear and should be clear on what they're supposed to be doing.

There's risk assessments that take place where, for example, what we saw with the Hertz audit, the Hertz contract, obviously that's a big red flag.

That's an area that we need to look at and improve on.

What are the what are the steps we need to take?

And and obviously there's a human factor as well.

So I think that's where management needs to uh come in, and there has to be accountability to make sure that the process are being followed.

So the the system, it's not just I take you know technology, it's it's uh it's it's judgment from management to address risk areas.

It's um it's also accountability to the extent there are uh lapses in for the processes.

Uh so it's it's really a comprehensive system, right?

And and that's what what management is there for.

Uh okay.

I I appreciate that.

Um with that, that concludes um my questions.

Um Chair, um again, thank you for the the report as always, and I will second the motion.

Thank you very much.

So we have a motion with the second, and we're gonna turn over to committee member Halpern.

Um thank you, Chair.

My my colleagues questions prompted uh curiosity of my own, because it's been a while since I think the um the contracts issue was been seen by this committee, so maybe this is a memory refresher.

Have you guys identified uh the actual source of the problem?

Because my understanding is the SAP system enables um uh sort of contract expiration um notifications.

And so is it the case that for some reason our configuration has not kind of loaded contract expirations so that red flags are showing up from the system, or is it that the red flags are showing up?

And staff has seen the red flags, but in effect override the um the red flag to process the payments.

I I don't know, Jeff, if you have an answer to that, or my understanding is as some of the issues that we saw with that specific item was that there were a series of contracts, or there was a series of contracts related to um uh vehicle rentals in departments were basically operating in silos in terms of you know uh using the capacity of those contracts when all of the contracts were looked at together, then we were able to identify that uh some of those uh thresholds were uh um were uh reached and exceeded.

Uh so it was a system error or a system limitation.

I want to say system error, and that's an area that we're looking at to ensure that to the extent that there are contracts that are being used by different departments.

We can look at it holistically and address any any type of uh look at it, look at it and make sure that it uh the contract's not exceeded uh from citywide perspective.

Committee member, I'll also add that the purchasing contracting department has um uh established some new processes and procedures as well in reporting out to departments on a monthly basis uh which contracts are coming up to their limit, how much is available in that contract, so that there's a lot more awareness and visibility from the department's perspective.

Committee member helpern, I'll just add to just as a reminder you hear about it next in the activities report.

But we do have the HERC audit underway, so it's looking at some of those controls that that Rolando and and uh Mr.

Bitagli just described.

We'll also look at at uh also looking at um some of the general controls.

So it's specific to that contract, but it gets I think it gets to your question a little bit, so we'll hope to come forward with some details on where they're at in that effort.

Great.

Thanks.

We'll we'll look forward to it.

Thank you.

Seeing nobody else on the lights, we will call the roll.

And the motion passes unanimously.

Thank you very much.

Um let's see where so that concludes item number three.

Natalie, please introduce item number four.

Item four, city auditors monthly activity report.

Wonderful.

And staff, please introduce yourself for the record and tell us how much time you need for your pet presentation and begin when you're ready.

Uh good morning and uh chairman of committee members Andy Hano City Auditor.

I just need about three minutes, please.

Thanks.

Uh so we issued one report since we last met, which is the fire emergency medical dispatch audit you just heard.

We have two audits in report writing, including audits of brush management on private property and an audit of the unsafe camping ordinance, and we plan to issue those both of those audits in April.

We're also working on um our current recommendation follow-up report, um, which we'll also um submit for the April meeting.

We have five audits in the field work stage, including audits of cybersecurity, police internal affairs, arts and culture funding, citywide vehicle rentals, and the street light repair program.

Uh this slide lists the audits that we have not started yet.

Uh and I'll note that the police armory, business tax, and mission bay audits are all scheduled to uh start in the next few weeks.

As far as other activities, we are finishing up negotiations on contract terms uh for independent legal counsel, and we hope to bring uh that contract to our next meeting for your review.

As far as recruitment, we have held interviews for a performance auditor position and an operations assistant position, and we expect to uh fill both of those positions very soon.

And since our last meeting, we made several presentations to various stakeholders, including presenting the key performance indicators audit to the city council and presenting the FY24 mission bay audit to the regional parks and mission bay oversight uh committees, two different committees.

Uh also as you know, audit requests from key stakeholders such as the audit committee, uh, city council management and the public are essential for us to identify the programs that would most benefit from an independent audit.

To that end, our outreach includes an audit request memo to uh city leadership, a public survey that is posted in many city facilities, and is also shared on our social media.

Uh, and we also issued a press release, and we will be presenting our proposed work plan at uh the June meeting uh this year.

Uh so for audit committee members or anyone else uh uh watching, we want to hear from you, so please submit any requests you have by April 10th.

Um, and on that same topic, this slide shows the outreach flyer that is being posted uh in city facilities and on social media uh along with links for members of the public to complete our survey uh and submit audit requests.

And the survey is available in both English and Spanish.

Um I would also um just note that those are those are on our social media.

Um we don't have as many followers as some other people uh in in the room.

So if anyone wanted to share those surveys to get the word out to more uh people, we would appreciate that.

Uh, overall so far in uh fiscal year 26.

We've issued 13 reports that contain 30 recommendations to improve the efficiency, effectiveness, and equity of San Diego City government, and that concludes my presentation.

Thank you.

Wonderful, thank you.

We're happy to, or I'm happy to share it on my social media platforms.

Um Natalie, please proceed with public comment for item number four.

Thank you, Chair.

We have not received any speaker slips in chambers.

We do have five hands raised in the virtual queue.

I've started the five-minute timer.

The original, please unmute and begin.

So it's encouraging to see something about homelessness, but it says return on homelessness investment.

You know, that's I mean, I feel like you're taking the human aspect out of that.

But I think when you're doing that, you need to look at these uh nonprofits that you have um contracted with in your safe sleeping, so you need to be including your safe sleeping sites in that, or do one on that, or do one on dreams for change, and ensure that you are taking into account that they are basically kicking people out before they can even get into housing, or they will change uh caseworkers time and time again and basically start over the process.

So when you're gonna be looking at this and you're gonna be getting data from NGOs or these nonprofits that you have contracted with, don't think that that's necessarily gonna be an accurate reflection of what is truly taking place.

Because I could go around and do a survey and talk to the people that are currently there, people who have been there, and some people who have gotten into housing.

There are people, but you know what?

It's not through Tent City and Dreams for Change.

They have to go outside in there and get help.

So it's like most of the time, people are having to go around about way to get it, not going through the program that's supposed to get them there.

So there is a lot of fraud, waste, and abuse taking place.

And I encourage you to do the right thing and really take in this information that will potentially actually I know it will help you see a bigger picture of what's taking place and how these you know NGOs that you contract with are basically you know engaging in fraud because they're not doing what they're supposed to, and people aren't getting the help that they're supposed to and moving outside of there.

In fact, Teresa Smith said she wanted them to stay there as long as possible.

Thank you.

Our next speaker, Ernie Casco, please unmute and begin.

Yes, uh Ernie Casco, La Jolla resident.

Time to stop the corruption at Tory Pine's glider port.

I should not be forced to buy insurance, not required by law, and sign an illegal access pass and waiver to use a free public park when city liabilities are already covered by California recreational laws.

This is insurance waiver fraud and misappropriation of public funding going into private accounts.

It is well documented on your desk, Jolakava, and demands a full transparent city audit that would end the corruption coming out of your office.

We have a petition.

San Diego recreational waiver that ends the dispute, stops the city leaseholder illegal collection of funds going into private accounts by separating the business out of control business from free public access.

I solace safety concerns, secure city liabilities, restores recreational rights and freedoms back to normal, what it used to be, and addresses the victims and witnesses who have been damaged, assaulted within a timely fashion by your leaseholder.

It is a win for city council liabilities, restores our recreational rights and freedoms for years to come, and is the best decision city council can make, Jillacava.

Unless you have a better plan, it needs to be legal, a legal solution for Tory Pine Slide Aport.

That's what the San Diego recreational waiver is.

So you need to take action as requested by La Jolla Town Council, La Jolla Shores administration, and shortly here, the University Community Planning Group that is writing a recommendation for city council to manage our park free, like it was originally.

Stop the illegal commercialization of Tory Pine Slider Port.

Now this does conclude your time.

Blair Beekman, please unmute and begin.

Hi, thank you, Blair Beekman.

This has got a lot of interesting items that I think is really nice that you do each month.

Thank you.

It gives the community a chance to really look at important practices you're working on.

Thank you.

Uh to try to go try to get through my list.

Thank you for working on breast management issues.

Um the DRA says about how things can be manufactured.

I I hope we can note that in brush management.

Not everything is cleaning up the brush.

We have to note that there is a man-made element to how fires are being started that we have to more regularly talk about.

Um, to also note um uh items.

Oh, Andrea Ebbing yesterday very nicely spoke of accounting uh issues of auditing uh and how uh incomes are being made within the city government that on the previous item I thought would have been really appropriate to talk about an audit committee today.

I I thought I should note what her words that a lot of people are getting income uh and they're not on the payroll.

Uh so what exactly is that mean?

Uh something we may need to look up.

Um there are two items on uh cybersecurity, and um, you know, good luck that if we work on cybersecurity in terms of doing our best practices, we don't give cybersecurity hackers any uh initiative to to want to hurt us.

Uh we practice our best, they give us our best in return.

That's the basic idea.

Um, there are two other issues.

Uh, one is the uh equity uh art funding issues.

You you're developing a new uh uh neighborhood park uh parking process in the East Village.

It's got 700,000 worth of art funding.

Is that going to technology at all?

We should be asking those questions.

Uh I think it's a fair ask.

And about the unhoused ordinance issues.

Um, San Jose, they use uh smaller, smaller amounts of of housing people in the in the camping shelters.

Should San Diego try that?

Thank you.

Thank you.

The five-minute timer has concluded.

We have two hands remaining in the queue.

Phone number ending in 870.

Please press star six and begin.

Uh, thank you so much.

Uh, I have three items.

Uh, first of all, I want to thank you for the FTPD uh internal affairs item.

I believe this will be vital to helping our officers and the public be and feel safer and trust more.

I'm very, very excited that next month in April, the unsafe camping ordinance is coming forward.

Are we ready for that?

We are ready.

Thank you, thank you.

I really look forward to that.

And then lastly, uh citywide cybersecurity defenses.

This is so critical.

And uh on that item just before on the red flags.

I I came up with something very interesting.

Uh, since internally, we can uh excuse me if I say this wrong, we can ignore a flag, or we're in the red flags, or we're in silos, and we don't communicate or whatever that meant.

Um can we build into our metrics that we watch our internal people to see if they're honoring the red flags, and if they're not, then that report goes to management.

So management can say, hey, what's going on here?

So I'm very excited about the Clyde Cloud-based modernization system.

Uh I wish it was coming forward sooner, but uh 2030, the switch will be flipped.

IT, you're great.

Uh, I'm glad though we're having the audits uh for the IT.

Uh I can't remember exactly how you framed it, but anyway, great work uh to all.

Thank you.

Our final speaker in the queue is Hector.

Please unmute and begin.

Uh sector, thanks for taking my call.

Hey, recently I had an experience, you guys are probably experiencing this too, uh, an AI experience with my phone bill and talking to my phone carrier and stuff.

And it was like a total human being.

I had a really complex problem, and that the AI uh took care of it.

It was unbelievable.

So maybe instead of spending all those 300 million dollars on SAP, I think we've already spent it though.

AI is probably coming along.

We could have an AI accountant where we'll go, okay, District 2.

Uh, how many leases are there on uh Mission Bay Park and who are they?

And are they current on their lease?

And please email the information to me.

Boom.

And five seconds later it happened.

I think that's what was happening, man.

It's probably AI is pretty incredible, man.

Plus, we could do an AI on a dam at uh Delmar.

We could do AI, a dam thing to build the dam with AI architecture, just and have a replica of the uh Hoover Dam, uh concrete dam over there.

It's either Earth and Dam or Concrete Dam, but who's gonna design it?

It could be just AI guys could do it.

So it's even all these trying to figure out all these audits, and you could really get really personal with the public and just let the AI guy expose the information right up front, and then everyone could take a look at it and make it super easy to do instead of going through the going through the asking questions to you guys.

But I would like to ask that question to the auditor guy to publish the um the leases at Mission Bay Park and who's current and who's not.

Thanks a lot for your time.

Thanks.

Thank you.

And Chair, this concludes public comment.

Thank you.

I will turn it over to committee members for questions and comments.

Hearing and seeing none.

This concludes item number four, and this brings us to the end of today's agenda.

Uh, thank you to all the members of the public and staff for your participation.

I will now adjourn the meeting of the audit committee to our next regularly scheduled meeting, which is Wednesday April 15th, 2026 at 9 a.m.

We are officially adjourned.