We're going to get started.

We just need a couple more minutes waiting on a staff member from the IBA's office.

Great.

Thank you.

Okay, so morning, and welcome to the budget review committee of June 5th, 2026.

Our committee liaison Sarah Jordan will go over instructions for today's meeting.

Thank you, Chair Foster.

While members of the public are allowed 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.

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

This 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 city can the city council is able to manage and conduct city business.

We appreciate the public's cooperation.

Chair Foster.

I will now call the budget review committee meeting of Friday, June 5th, 2026 to order.

Sarah, please call the role.

Vice Chair, Council President Lakava.

Committee member Campbell.

Here.

Committee member Whitburn.

Here.

Committee member Von Wilpert.

Council President Pro Tem Lee.

Here.

Committee member Campio.

Here.

Committee member Moreno.

Committee member Ilo Rivera.

And Chair, Committee Member Foster.

Also attending the meeting today is Charles Monica from the Independent Budget Analysts Office.

Assistant City Attorney, Leslie Fitzgerald, Chief Financial Officer, Rolanda Charvel, and Coda Zeizer from the Office of the Mayor of Todd Gloria.

If you're in person, please complete a speaker slip located at the entrance of chambers and place it on the top of the box indicated at the speaker's lecture and at the front of the room.

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

Participate by telephone, you may dial 1669-2545252, inputting webinar ID 160-332-690 pound.

This information is also available on the agenda and it will appear on the screen during the public comment period for each agenda item.

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

Please participate via the audio on your phone and mute your TV and or computer when it is your turn to speak.

If you wish to speak to a particular item, please wait for that item to be called and then raise your hand to speak by tapping the raise your hand icon, or if you're calling participant by pressing star nine on your phone.

If you raise your hand during a non-comment period, your hand will be lowered, Chair.

Thank you, Sarah, for reviewing those instructions for the benefit of the public.

A quorum is now present.

As a note to the public, we will be hearing non-agenda public comment at the end of the meeting today.

We will now move to committee members, mayoral staff, city attorney, and independent budget analysts for any comments.

Hearing none, we have one item on the agenda today.

This is an informational item, so no motion is necessary.

Sarah, please introduce item one.

Thank you, Chair Foster.

Information item number one is the informational discussion of recommended City Council modifications to the mayor's proposed fiscal year 2027 budget and review of the May revision.

And again, if you're watching on City TV or the live stream online and you'd like to dial in to speak, please call 1669-2545252, inputting webinar ID 160 332 6900 pound.

Chair.

Staff, please introduce yourselves for the record and let us know how much time you need for your presentation and feel free to begin.

Thank you, Chair Foster.

I will kick us off.

We will need about 30 minutes for this presentation.

So thank you, Chair Foster.

Thank you, Council members.

Uh, we are here this morning to discuss our office's final budget report before it is considered by the council on Tuesday.

I'm joined for this presentation by Noah Fleischmann, Gillian Andalina, and Jordan Moore, although our entire team is here for questions and follow-up and discussion.

I will start with a brief overview of where we are in the budget process and how we got here, and then my team will walk you through the bulk of the presentation.

I will then wrap up with some concluding thoughts.

First, a reminder of the budget timeline.

While the proposed budget was released on April 15th, the mayor released his May revise on May 13th and it was presented to this council at an evening meeting on May 27th.

The May revise identified $13.5 million in additional resources, mainly from stronger hotel tax revenue and transfers to the general fund from the golf course fund.

And the May revised used those resources to fund $13.5 million in expenditure restorations, including library and rec center hours in districts 4, 8, and 9, shoreline restrooms, and funding for use drop-in centers.

On Tuesday, June 2nd, our office released IBA report 26-15.

That report identifies additional resources beyond those in the May revise, and it recommends technical adjustments and corrections, and it incorporates the restoration of programs based on our review of council member budget memos that we received on May 20th.

The item this morning is being presented as an informational item so that we can receive public comment and so that you can all discuss your initial reactions to our recommendations and any changes that you would like to see.

And then final budget adoption is scheduled for Tuesday, June 9th.

Turning to our report itself, it is worth noting at the outset that we were able to identify resources to support the restoration of all items that were included in a majority of council member memos.

This includes partial restoration for arts funding, as well as the child and use success position, the film position, CPPS, and the Small Business Enhancement Program, among others.

At a high level, our report covers five main areas.

First, we recommend modifications that can be implemented with no net impact to the general fund.

These include the restoration of arts and cultural funding and alternative package for homelessness programs and the transfer of the Office of Labor Standards to the City Attorney's Office.

These were all supported by a majority of council member memos, and my team will walk through each of them.

We then identified an additional $6.6 million in net general fund resources based on updated revenue projections, expenditure reductions, and technical corrections of this amount 4.5 million dollars is ongoing.

Those identified resources can support majority supported expenditures and other recommended adjustments, which altogether total $2.9 million in our report.

That leaves $2.6 million remaining in ongoing resources and 1.1 million remaining in one-time resources.

We do recommend that the 1.1 million dollars in one-time resources be set aside into city reserves or held as excess equity to help prevent and protect against upcoming fiscal challenges.

That leaves 2.6 million dollars remaining in ongoing resources that can be put towards city programming.

While we have recommended funding all expenditures that were in a majority of council members' memos, we know that there were also additional priorities that were not in a majority of memos, but were in the memos of four council members.

Our identified resources can cover some but not all of these.

Chief among these requests was an additional library and rec center restorations, along with other potential resources that were noted.

In general, we present each of those without recommendation, though in some cases we recommend against pursuing certain resources.

My team will cover these as well.

Finally, we discuss additional considerations.

The city's structural deficit, the impacts of the trash fee and Balboa Park paid parking settlement, and the city's enormous unfunded infrastructure needs.

Council should consider all of these as it makes its final deliberations on the FY27 budget.

And with that intro over, I will turn this over to Noah to begin walking you through the rest of the presentation.

Thank you very much, Charles.

I'm going to highlight three recommendations to the budget that will have no net impact on the general fund.

First, our office proposes restoration of up to six million for arts and culture grant programs that were eliminated in the proposed budget.

All nine council members supported some type of restoration to these grant programs.

The proposed budget would pay 12.1 million of annual debt service on the 1998 convention center expansion bonds from the special promotional programs budget, which is also where arts and culture is traditionally funded from.

Our office recommends instead using up to six million of Measure C funds to partially pay for the annual debt service in FY 2027.

This would in turn free up six million in the special promotional programs budget that could go towards arts and culture.

While council may free up the full $12.1 million amount by using Measure C convention center funds, we recommend against using more than six million dollars.

The County of San Diego has committed almost $3 million for arts program grants next year, and just this morning, the Preface Foundation announced they would also provide $3 million for arts and culture funding next year.

And while the use of Measure C convention center funds to pay existing convention center debt service is legally permissible, the convention center faces an operating deficit and large capital needs backlog.

The convention center will eventually need significant resources to move forward with the future expansion, which was the primary intent of Measure C.

Regarding the $6 million that we do recommend, we suggest it be allocated to the three grant programs proportional to their FY 2026 budgeted amounts, and we suggest council consider implementing funding caps to ensure more organizations can be supported.

If council members do not support the restoration amount or caps, we recommend having that discussion today on an alternative amount or grant methodology.

Next, on homelessness services, the program reductions in the May revision most closely resemble option A from our office's review of the proposed budget, but also include the closure of Aero Drive Safe Parking.

Our office recommends three modifications to the May revision.

The modifications were developed by the Housing Commission in consultation with HSSD.

Six council members supported these program reductions, and a seventh council member supported three of the alternative reductions.

The recommended alternative reductions include a 1.6 million dollar reduction to the 16th and Newton shelter, 1.3 million less than the May revision.

This would result in the reduction of just 50 beds, which is less than the estimated 200 to 250 beds reduced in the May revision.

Well, 50 beds would still be reduced, they'll be replaced by expanded capacity at another shelter.

Next, we recommend the closure of the 37 bed city-funded lighthouse shelter due to operational challenges running two different service models at the same site.

This would reduce expenditures by 980,000.

However, these beds would continue to operate under a different program just without city funding.

Lastly, we recommend using six $46,000 in state grant funding for the family reunification program.

These three modifications net an additional $42,000 in savings, and we recommend they be used to support additional wind-down funding at the Neil Good Day Center as the program operator transitions to scale-down services to a smaller site.

The elimination of security at Old Town Central Library and safe parking at Arrow Drive and Central Elementary remain unchanged from the May revision.

The last recommended modification with a net general fund impact is to restore one FTE program manager position and the Office of Labor Standards and Enforcement and transfer all OLSE personnel, revenue, and expenditures from the City Treasurer's Office to the City Attorney's Office.

Once in the city attorney's office, grant and penalty funding can be used to offset OLSC general fund costs for net zero impact.

This proposal was supported by seven council members and their budget priority memos.

Now transitioning to our office's recommendations for ongoing and one-time revenue adjustments and resource modifications.

Like Charles previously mentioned, our office identified $4.5 million in ongoing resources and $2.1 million in one-time resources for a total of $6.6 million.

In later slides, Jillian will detail our recommended expenditure modifications, but we are recommending using just $1.9 million in ongoing resources and $980,000 in one-time resources for a total of $2.9 million.

This leaves $2.6 million in ongoing resources and $1.1 million in one-time resources remaining.

Given the structural budget deficit and economic uncertainty, we'd like to stress the importance of not using any ongoing remaining resources for any new ongoing expenditures that could exacerbate the deficit.

Additionally, we recommend leaving one time remaining resources as excess equity or reserve contribution, which may be needed in FY2026.

These tables break down where our office identified ongoing resources based on revenue adjustments, expenditure reductions, and technical adjustments.

We identified additional ongoing revenue from transit occupancy tax, sales tax, and an increased reimbursement amount from the low modern income housing asset fund.

However, these revenue increases are more than offset by decreases to property taxes, cannabis business tax, and reduced transfer from the parking meter operations fund to net $319,000 in reduced revenue.

Our office also identified budgeted expenditure reductions that could be made due to revised November election cost projections, revised property management cost projections for 101 Ash Street, and the reduction of one FTE public affairs program manager in the police department, the latter of which was supported by five council members.

These expenditure reductions net to $3.4 million in ongoing savings.

Lastly, we identified technical corrections to the transnet transfer to the general fund, adjusted the demolition of a building at Liberty Station from ongoing to instead be one time, reversed the errand transfer of one FTE Hazardous Materials Inspector 2 from the refuse disposal fund to the general fund, and corrected the FTE count in personnel expenditures of a recreation center restoration error.

These corrections net to 1.5 million in ongoing savings.

This list breaks down the eight one-time resources our office identified that net to $2.1 million.

Of these one-time resources, we'd like to highlight the $621,000 in savings identified in the performance and analytics department after working with Panda to identify additional savings.

These savings include budgeted personnel expenditure savings from holding three positions vacant and changes to the cost sharing for GIS mapping program licenses.

Excess equity in FY2026 is not proposed as a one-time resource to be used in FY27 because the elevated risks associated with the budget but not yet, but not yet received revenue in FY2026.

Additionally, our office recommends leaving the remaining $1.1 million in unused one-time resources for potential excess equity or reserve contributions in 2027.

Now I'll hand it over to Jillian.

Alright, thank you so much.

Now I'm going to go over the our office's recommended expenditure modifications, which include all majority supported items within the council member budget modification memos.

These items mostly fall within the category of ongoing expenditures, which with seven items totaling 1.9 million.

First is 900,000 for council's community projects, programs, and service grants, or C PPS, so that equates to $100,000 per council office.

We note that this amount could be reduced or made one time to free up ongoing resources for other things.

Next is $336,000 to restore the child and youth success program coordinator with $100,000 for contract youth services.

We also recommend placing this position within the mayor's office to strengthen policy involvement and coordination.

Next is $263,000 to restore the city auditor's budget.

This is partially offset by a $55,000 one-time cut to the office it requested to take instead.

Then there's $215,000 to restore the filming program manager, $165,000 to restore the cut to our office to avoid staffing reductions, $21,000 for the addition of a deputy city clerk to in the clerk's office, which is net of anticipated passport revenue.

And finally, there's $20,000 for ongoing licensing costs for the new case intake and data management software for the ethics commission.

We also have three recommended one-time items totaling $980,000.

The first is restoring the base budget for the small business enhancement program at $750,000.

Second is funding for the Office of the Commission on Police Practices, complaints and investigation management system for $200,000.

This would cover configuration and data migration, so the system is ready when standard operating procedures are approved.

I do want to highlight that this item actually had support from four council members, but we were able to identify savings within the office to offset much of the cost.

And finally is the one-time portion of the new ethics commission software system for $30,000.

That completes our formal recommendations, which again includes all majority supported items.

After funding them, we have $3.7 million in remaining resources, of which $2.6 million is ongoing.

When looking at items supported by four council members, there are an additional there are additional items totaling $4.4 million.

With the resources remaining, only a portion of those items could be funded.

Because of that, we present these items as potential additions and are not part of our recommendation.

Before going into them, we just want to again stress the importance of keeping the city's long-term fiscal stability in mind and constraining the addition of any new ongoing expenditures, especially if it would worsen the structural budget deficit.

First is full restoration of both recreation center and library hours, totaling 2.9 million.

And for both of these, our office includes location by location cost to guide any partial restorations.

Next is $592,000 for the police department front-counter staffing, which would lift the hiring freeze for these positions.

Next is council funding for arts, culture and community festival grants, or ACCF, for $450,000 or $50,000 per office.

There's $222,000 to restore $24-hour security at the Storage Connect Center in line with the initial agreement with the community.

We do want to note that security has been reduced since January and both HSSD and the police department report no operational impacts or security concerns.

However, if there is a break-in and any items are lost, that could have severe impacts on the individuals experiencing homelessness.

Finally, there was support for restoring a chief operating officer by promoting a deputy chief operating officer.

The net cost would be $194,000 based on timing and salary assumptions, which would vary if actually implemented.

Now I will cover additional potential resources supported by several council members or identified by our office.

Some have significant drawbacks, so we recommend against pursuing them as shown in red on the slide.

First is the elimination of Axon My 90 software in the police department.

This doesn't produce general fund savings because it's not budgeted in the general fund.

Next is implementation of two officer units in the police department.

We do recommend against this item as it would result in a 40% reduction in patrol vehicles, which would lead to fuel savings, but would likely have detrimental impacts on response times, especially in divisions with large geographic service areas.

To address response times, it would require an increase in overtime costs, leading likely to no savings and potentially increased costs instead.

Another option is one that we identified in our office is reallocating homelessness state grant funds that support the regional task force on the homeless for its HMIS system used to report program outcomes and service utilization.

However, this would require the task force to find alternative funding for this item.

Four council members supported the exploration of cost savings through reductions to car allowances, cell phones, and non-essential travel expenses.

616,000 is the maximum estimate for this, since it doesn't account for increases related to employees submitting for mileage reimbursements or travel that's likely still necessary.

Eliminat cell phone costs would also require labor discussions and may also have offsetting costs.

So we recommend against this option.

Next is cancellation of the automated license plate reader or ALPR subcontract.

This is a bundled service with ubiquito contract for the use of smart street lights.

To cancel ALPR only would require contract renegotiation to determine savings.

Alternatively, the whole contract could be terminated with 30 days notice, which would lead to two million dollars in savings.

We also raise for consideration an item that would require action to make fees for public safety support at special events organized by nonprofits, 100% cost recoverable, instead of providing existing discounts.

This would generate up to $2.1 million.

And finally, for council members asked our office to identify $3 million in cuts to departments with higher unclassified staff, such as PANA and Communications Department.

We identified $621,000 in one-time savings for PANA, which is included in our recommendations.

Since this falls short of the $3 million target, we provided additional information on the major activities of both departments with associated costs, as well as high-level potential impacts of reducing these functions should council decide they are no longer a priority.

It also should be noted that there are other departments with higher proportion of unclassified staff, including independent or elected offices, elected official offices.

With that, I will hand it off to Jordan.

Thank you, Jill.

So before we conclude today, as Charles mentioned, we believe that there are also additional considerations that the council should keep in mind as it considers its final budget actions as it moves forward until Tuesday.

So again, while some progress has been made on addressing the long-term structural budget deficit, the overall problem remains unsolved in the budget as currently constructed.

The May revision is still structurally imbalanced by around 15.3 million dollars, but that doesn't include the idea the item for contributing to reserves.

If you included reserve contributions, that imbalance grows to $95.4 million.

We know no reserve contributions have been made since fiscal year 2023 and fiscal year 2022 was the last time that the city funded its reserves at the policy targets.

Additionally, while projections in April show the smaller deficit of $32.9 million for fiscal year 2028 and a potential surplus in fiscal year 2029, those projections are no longer viable.

I will discuss the impacts of the recent tentative settlement on trash views in Balboa Park on the next slide, but the bottom line impact of the settlement is that it will result in long-term revenue decreases.

But there are also additional cost pressures of the city, such as both finalized and still to be negotiated labor contracts.

Well, the ones that have been done so far have had limited cost impact in the near term.

They are currently projected to increase costs significantly in fiscal year 2029 and beyond.

There are also cost pressures from litigation and financial exposure due to failing infrastructure, which when combined with everything else suggests that a lot more work will need to be done to improve the city's long-standing financial issues.

It is crucial that the city consider how to right size the organization in order to avoid the perpetuating cycle of annual budget cuts and begin to restore the public confidence that will be needed to address both the city's financial issues as well as other issues.

As mentioned, the tentative agreement on solid waste fees and parking in Balloa Park will not have an impact for the fiscal year 2027 budget, but it will result in ongoing revenue declines beginning in 2028 and thereafter.

On the trash fees, the rates are now reduced from previously approved rates for fiscal year 28 and 29, which combined with some mitigating actions will currently result in projected general fund increase of about $10.8 million dollars in 28 and 10 million dollars in 2029 and every year thereafter.

We note that the mitigating actions mostly include lower service levels, such as the elimination of the bulky item pickup and weekly recycling, which, if maintained, would require additional general fund contributions among above the numbers I just mentioned.

Additionally, with these fees now locked in place, any unattended costs increase any unanticipated cost increases for waste collection, including labor cost, vehicle maintenance and acquisition, or disposal fees will require additional general fund resources to fund a service that is only provided to a portion of the city's residences.

Given this general fund exposure, our office recommends that the environmental services department develop and produce a five-year financial outlook that covers their operations, particularly but not exclusively operations funded by the Solid Waste Management Fund that can be presented alongside the general fund and public utilities outlooks now every year.

We would note that this would require an update to the council policy, and we're happy to work on that update.

On Balboa Park Parking, again, there is no anticipated impact to 2027, as long as parking remains in place through the end of this calendar year.

Revenue from the zoo would remain at $3 million as long as the paid parking remains in place through the end of the year.

And for the non-zoo parking lots, updated revenue projections from these lots based on recent experience indicates that overall revenues, if paid parking were not eliminated, would currently come in above the current budget.

Based on a half year's worth of revenue combined with the reduction of expenses in the non-zoo lots, results in a net zero budget impact for the general fund for fiscal year 2027.

However, this would lower ongoing net revenue by $9.4 million beginning in fiscal year 2028 and continuing thereafter.

Lastly, even if it is possible to right-size the city's day-to-day operations with ongoing revenue, this would still not resolve the ongoing infrastructure funding deficit, which as of the last CIP outlook was around $7.8 billion over the next five years.

As is usual, stormwater remains the driving force behind this ever-increasing deficit, with current capital budgets mostly relying on reactive needs and emergency funding.

However, stormwater is not the only major asset with a deficit, as there are also large ones for streets, street lights, sidewalks, parks, and public safety assets such as police and fire stations.

Without funding for mainly capital renewal of existing infrastructure or funding to add new infrastructure called for in community plans or other documents, the city's current infrastructure is basically set to go in a run to fail mode, which as mentioned will increase financial liabilities for the city, reducing resources for other operating services.

Additionally, maintenance of existing infrastructure continues to be underfunded, quickening the run-to-failure cycle.

While the May revision and budget modifications presented do return some service levels, facility maintenance, which ensures that services have a place to happen is still being cut.

This is an issue that due to its magnitude will require significant new revenue, as even the wholesale elimination of some current city services would not generate the savings necessary to address this funding gap.

And now I'll turn it back to Charles.

Thank you, Jordan.

So with that, I will wrap up with a few observations.

First, there is some good news here.

Adopting a balanced budget for FY27 that includes meaningful majority supported service restorations is possible.

Our office identified sufficient resources to fund all modifications that were supported by a majority of council members.

The arts and culture restorations, the alternative homelessness package, and the OLSE transfer can also all be done with no net impact to the general fund.

That is a real achievement given the fiscal environment that we are working in.

But I also want to be direct about what adopting a balanced budget on Tuesday will not accomplish.

It will not solve our structural fiscal issues.

The structural deficit will persist into FY2028 with a gap of 32.9 million dollars projected as of the proposed budget that will likely grow.

The small surplus that was once projected in FY 2029 is also unlikely given the settlement impacts and labor costs that we discussed, and the city's unfunded infrastructure backlog at nearly $8 billion over the next five years alone will continue to compound every year that it goes unaddressed.

The ongoing misalignment between the city's revenues and the cost of city services that our residents expect, particularly around infrastructure, cannot be solved through cuts and efficiencies alone.

We have stated this before, the numbers continue to bear this out.

Addressing this misalignment will ultimately require significant new revenue, and securing that revenue will require a future public vote.

To that end, building and maintaining public trust cannot just be a political consideration, it must also be a fiscal one.

And so as you consider any additional modifications beyond those that are offices recommended, I urge each council member to weigh this reality against your final budget decisions.

The decisions that are made on Tuesday will either strengthen or weaken the foundation for the conversation that this city needs to have with its residents about the true cost of city services and the revenues that are actually needed to provide them sustainably.

With that, my team and I are available for questions today, and we will continue to be available to support you up through Tuesday's deliberations and actions.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you for your presentation.

Sarah, please proceed with public comment.

Thank you, Chair.

We've received 16 slips here in chambers, and when we are done with the public speakers here in chambers, we currently have 12 hands raised in the virtual queue.

We will begin with Josh Vonham.

If you can please come to the lecture and if these other individuals can please move to the reserve seats at the front of the room, Guthard Leonard, Joy Sanyata, Simon Andrews, and Maximilian Schmidt.

You will be the next group of speakers.

And Mr.

Bonham, please begin.

Hi, Council Josh Bohannon with Father Joe's Villages, San Diego's oldest and largest homeless services provider.

First, I want to say thank you to the seven council members that put forward a recommendation to not close the day center until the end of the year and to do partial funding for it.

Father Joe's Villages, we are going to take on the responsibility of operating and building our own day center.

And that's going to cost us about $150,000 we have to raise this year to renovate existing space.

But it's going to save the city a million dollars, near a million dollars a year because you no longer have the responsibility of operating the day center because we'll we will take it on with our philanthropic endeavors.

However, I bring forward that the proposed budget to restore some funding has about $237,000, which is half the amount we need to operate at full capacity for the remainder of this year.

So I ask, in consideration of us taking on the responsibility, having to fundraise for next year and for infrastructure costs this year that you fully fund us at $4.25 for the remainder.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Ether Leonard.

Hi, Council President, Council members.

In 2017, an SUV driver turned in front of my dad when he was riding his bike down a hill, and his lifelong injuries prevent him from sitting up for more than two hours, walking without a walking stick and using the restroom without a single use catheter.

I don't need to explain the emotional recreational and time consequences this has had on my whole family, but I will explain the opportunity that you have today to prevent similar suffering.

So, yeah, please consider my family today.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Joyce and Yada.

Three items.

First, commission on police practices.

Please hold off on the $200,000 hit to the general fund.

We need more clarity, and there are too many moving parts not in place yet.

Plus, this is not a stable figure cost-wise.

Office of IBA and the DRE.

Reduction of resources will lead to less equity work being done.

A big thank you to Kim Desman's team for the work of equity related to the FY27 budget processes.

And lastly, on the city auditor.

No, please, no reduction impact on training related to regulations by the government auditing standards.

It's very critical.

Thank you.

And one more thing.

Everybody did such a great job.

You get five stars.

IBA.

Way to go.

Thank you.

Thank you for your concluding remark.

Simon Andrews.

Thank you.

Good morning.

This is not a general fund issue.

I'm here speaking about the West Valley River Crossing opportunity.

Um really an opportunity to invest in our community in our future using restricted uh developer impact fees, not general funds, and not impacting other city staff or services.

Funding a 30% design study will open up the possibility of future outside infrastructure funding.

Restoring the West Valley River Crossing will close a hazardous gap in the San Diego River Trail.

It'll enhance safer and more economical and more climate-friendly transportation options in our community, especially in Mission Valley, rapidly expanding and continue to grow in area.

I'm thinking not only myself, I've used the trail out on the mountain.

But it's a beautiful place and opportunity to not to be missed.

Thank you.

Thank you, Maximilian Schmidt.

And before you begin, I'm going to invite the next speakers up to come to the reserve seats at the front of the room.

Joe Mark Marchish, Arya Grossman, Ian Embry, Harley Geisler, and Madeline Williams.

Thank you for your patience.

Please begin.

Hello, my name is Max Schmidt.

We need a protectionist Christian and nationalist revolution SD.

We need less spending and more transparency.

I'm in a spiritual war progressives, better known as communist, and I'm strongly opposed to $13.5 million net increase in general resources.

The SD City budget needs to be smaller.

Half these communist Masons openly identify as progressives.

Again, literally half of the SD City Council, including Mayor Gloria, identify as progressives.

This is extremely, extremely shameful.

We don't need big brother to tell us how to spend our hard-earned money.

Taxation is theft.

And what exactly are these communist Masons doing with our tax dollars?

SD is allocating millions of dollars for a skate park.

I've been skateboarding my whole life, and I went to the skate park, and there's no way it costs more than $500,000.

So where are all the tax dollars going?

Are they going to big pharma under the table to promote addictive drugs and harmful vaccines?

Are they going to the Masonic Lodge to better cover up their satanic devil ceremonies and pagan cult rituals, allowing them to reincarnate and teleport?

When the world are the so-called progressives actually doing for tax dollars.

Thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to speak here.

I'm just worried about the curtailing of hours and the closing of branches of the library in San Diego.

The Pew Research Report, which is a survey of Americans across the country, in 2016, they reported that 66%, two-thirds of Americans are strongly opposed to the closing of libraries because it has a major impact on communities.

Of those that were surveyed, the 66% who responded that it would have a major impact on communities were mostly the older Americans, those ages of 50 to 64, and college graduates.

The other remaining people that were less likely to respond in that manner were those that were earning less than $30,000 a year, and had major, major issues with education, and they were exempt, did not have a high school diploma.

So I'm thank you.

This does conclude your time.

I'm urging you to not close libraries and not have a major impact on the community.

Thank you.

Arya Grossman.

Good morning.

My name is Arya Grossman.

I'm the policy manager at Circulate Planning and Policy, and I'm here to urge you to fund the multimodal team in the final budget.

First off, I want to thank council members Lakava, Whitburn, and Kempio for making this a priority, both in your words, but also in your formal official priority memos.

I think this reflects an accurate assessment of the public safety crisis that is traffic violence and a real commitment to actually do something about it.

And I urge the rest of you on the dais to support them.

Thankfully, there is a way to fund the street safety team without touching anyone else's general fund priorities.

Flexible state RMRA funding can be reallocated from this team.

The only trade-off we would have to face is a slight reduction in slurry overlay.

So fully funding this team would cost 12 miles of new overlay.

Partially funding it would cost six miles.

I think that 12 fewer miles and new overlay is worth making the remaining over 250 miles safer as we repave.

I think this is a no-brainer, and I urge you to support this critical function.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Ian Hembry.

Good morning, budget review committee and chair.

My name is Ian Henry, and I am the advocacy and community manager for the San Diego County Bicchool Coalition.

I want to begin by thanking Council Members Campillo, Whitburn, and Council President LaCava for including the multimodal team in their most recent budget memo.

I'm disappointed that some members who have made amazing comments about street safety and protecting this team did not include safe streets as a priority in your budget memos.

I urge you to pass a budget that protects this team through either RMRA funding or by utilizing reductions, the transportation department originally identified.

For RMRA, we can save this team by reducing our slurry CO by 12 miles.

This recognizes that the city must have a forward-thinking approach on road repair.

We have a funding source starting in five years that will allow us to substantially increase our paving capacity, and we need to repave our streets with safety in mind.

We can't do that without this team, and I urge you to pass a budget that includes this team.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Harlan Geisler.

Good morning.

I'm 75 years old.

My earliest memory is going to the library to do to take part in a preschool story hour.

Today, the first thing that I do in the morning is I listen to audiobooks from the library on my phone.

I also listen to them while I go to sleep.

I go to the library to listen to lectures on all kinds of different programs, arts, nature, and other things.

And I know that as it gets hotter, that having the library open every single day for somebody like me who lives in non-air conditioned housing would be a very helpful thing so that I could go and it's a cool zone.

I appreciate everything that you guys have done, and I ask as as a senior that you continue to support me and my great grandchildren.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Madeline Williams.

And it before you begin, if I can invite the final group of speakers down to the front of the room, Gillian Quint, Caitlin, Patrick Stewart, Jackson, Marcia, and Kate.

Thank you for your patience.

Please begin.

Good morning, Council.

I support the San Diego River Parks Foundation's request to restore the West Valley River Crossing.

San Diego River Trail is both a premier recreational asset and a class one mobility trail.

Closing this gap eliminates the missing link that currently forces vulnerable road users into high stress conflict points.

It transforms a known uh hazard zone into a safe and connected asset and aligns with the city's Vision Zero goals by creating a protected class one facility that separates vulnerable road users from high speed traffic.

It also does not compete with the general fund, which makes it in my mind a no-brainer.

And then I also want to speak in support of the multimodal team, which provides the technical expertise necessary to prioritize the safety of neighbors walking, biking, and rolling through complex intersections.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Jillian.

Morning, Council.

I'm the Trail Manager at the San Diego River Park Foundation.

And we are at a pivotal moment here for regional infrastructure.

The West Valley River Crossing has basically sat dormant since the 2009 study.

We cannot afford to keep delaying this project while the population in Mission Valley Corridor is set to triple by the year 2050.

The project serves as a critical link between districts two, three, seven, and nine directly to a regional greenway, offering a safe dedicated alternative trail route along the San Diego River Trail that will significantly reduce east-west traffic and coastal congestion.

We want to thank Council President Lacaba for seeing and understanding the importance of this and including in his budget a priority memo.

It would be a mistake to overlook this opportunity at this time.

This is not a general fund request.

There is available Mission Valley diff that is legally restricted for this project and is specific specifically listed in the Nexus plan.

Street safety is public safety and completing this missing link as a high leverage move for our climate action plan and communities.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Caitlin.

Good morning.

My name is Caitlin Kuroji.

I live in District 8.

I'm a doctoral candidate in organizational leadership and have spent my career in arts education and creative youth development.

I'm here to show my support for the near restoration of the arts and culture budget proposed in this morning's press conference.

Thank you to those of you who were part of making that happen.

I also ask the council to cancel a LPR contract and fully restore OCYS and library funding.

I call on our community to vote on measures that bring equitable revenue strategies to the city without hurting working people and families.

I also want to push us as a city to make a paradigm shift around public safety, as that seemed to be a large part of the mayor's argument for identifying as priorities in the uh in the original and May revision of the budget that prevented the arts from being a big part of it.

We make each other, I said this last week, we make each other safer uh through connection, creativity, and radical acceptance.

Cameras and all okay.

Thank you.

That does conclude your time.

Thank you for your comment.

Our next speaker is Patrick Stewart.

And Patrick, you have been seated time by Jenny.

If Jenny, please raise our hand.

Thank you.

So I will place two minutes on the clock.

Thank you.

And I don't think that I'll need all of that.

I'll be much briefer than I intended to be.

First, I want to say thank you to districts uh four, six, eight, and nine for recommending full restoration of the uh cuts to the library and rec center hours.

And then I also want to extend some gratitude to districts four and six for their leadership uh shown this morning in trying to restore those uh arts funding uh that was uh taken away.

I want to remind us briefly that the San Diego public library system is the largest provider of free cultural programming in our region.

And cuts to the library and cuts to library hours are cuts to the arts and cuts to the arts are cuts to the library's ability to be able to provide these free services across the city.

Um so fully restoring uh the arts budget and restoring our library hours are going to be paramount to our ability to be able to continue to provide these kinds of resources.

I do want to remind us also that uh later on this summer, uh, we will be opening the newly restored and renovated uh City Heights uh performing arts annex with a perfect, perfect uh assemblance of public-private partnership, money from the foundation, money from the state, money from the feds, and then approved by you all last November, money from the city of San Diego.

And so wanting to make sure that this is a vibrant um city resource on library property in our uh park there in City Heights, and seeing that filled with arts and culture is going to be very, very exciting.

Um, so I want to encourage you to consider joining uh your colleagues in recommending full restoration of Library and Rec Center hours, recommend and restoring cuts to uh the arts and culture budget.

And then I also want to encourage us to continue to have conversations ongoing over the course of the next year or two to ensure that we do not continue to find ourselves in this situation.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Jackson.

Okay, good morning, Council, and uh congratulations to Councilmember von Wolpert on the results of the primary election this week.

Uh you guys have a lot of difficult things to consider today, even more than usual, so I'm glad to be here supporting an easy win.

Uh, there's very little that Sandy again's can't agree on.

Uh, but one thing we all know is that we are better than LA.

Sandy River not being paved over, like the LA River is one of the many ways in which we are better than LA.

And it's one of the easiest and most critical ways we can continue to crush LA is by continuing the Sindy River Park Foundation's West Valley River Crossing Expansion.

This is a public good, uses restricted mission valley diff funds, the developer impact fees, doesn't compete with the general fund, it doesn't require any land acquisition, it doesn't require the removal of any existing parking.

Residents of Mission Valley and the neighboring communities have made it clear that they will drive less if the opportunity for multimodal transit is available, and this project is a necessary step now to keep making meaningful progress toward a carbon emission and public safety goals.

Keep eating LA and keep investing in one of San Diego's most beautiful and precious natural resources.

Thank you, Marcia.

Good morning, City Council.

I am 74 and a half years old, and I've been a professional cellist for 65 of those years.

Not professional, but a practicing cellist for 65 of those years.

There are no half measures when you're a musician.

It's got to be perfection.

And 50% of a cut to the arts is not okay with me.

I want it fully funded.

And by the way, my daughter is a founder of Mockingbird Improv, and she has offered to give you a session on creativity and helping you with your budget.

So that is an offer that is ongoing.

Thank you.

I'm actually done.

I want the arts fully funded.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

And the final speaker here in Chambers is Kate.

Hi, thank you.

My name is Kate Burnight.

Uh, good to see you all again.

I'm from the San Diego Museum of Arts, and we are we just want to thank the IBA and the City Council for finding even partial restorations of arts and culture funding.

Um we have explained over the last few months how critical in such myriad ways these funds are, and this even a partial restoration is such a good faith signal to the community um to reify your support for arts and culture.

Um, one final consideration for you uh whether you restore six million or twelve million or somewhere in between, um, we ask you to maintain the existing grant allocation um structure.

Uh we will have conversations all of next year and the year after that to uh build intentional, um well-funded uh futures for arts and culture organizations.

Um we will build an equitable and enhanced funding model with you all over the next year.

Um so we want to maintain this model just for one more year uh with any restorations that you do put forward.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And that concludes testimony here in chambers.

So I will begin the five-minute timer for all those in the virtual queue to indicate if they wish to provide comment on item number one.

Each speaker will have one minute.

We currently have 22 hands raised at the start of the five minutes, and we will begin with Jill Green.

Please unmute and begin.

When difficult budget choices must be made, the council should prioritize investments that directly save lives.

The multimodal team embeds safety improvements, protected bike lines, better crosswalks, ADA infrastructure into street paving projects as they happen, increasing the value of every repainting project when the cost is a fraction of doing them later as standalone projects.

Without this team, repainting projects will simply recreate the same unsafe streets that existed before.

More people will die in preventable crashes.

Like my son-in-law, Matt Keenan, who was killed by a wrongway driver while riding his bike.

This team gets all of us, especially our children, to schools, libraries, parks, rec centers, and back home safely.

Include the multimodal team in the final version of the budget.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Alan Dolgergov.

Please unmute and begin.

Good to speak with you again.

I'm Alan Dolderoff for recreation center board president.

Thank you for eliminating any center closures.

Now could you please finish the job and restore all hours to all centers?

Thank you to the leadership of four of you for recommending this, and I'm optimistic the other council members will join.

What analysis went into the seemingly arbitrary reduction of 60 to 40 hours?

Why not 50 or the full 60?

Please quickly take a look at the de minimis eighty thousand dollars identified per center.

This is a cut of one-third while other more expensive areas of the budget are taking much smaller proportional cuts.

Some cuts in hours will eliminate revenue producing programs at centers.

So the very small appearance savings may actually cause upward pressures to the budget.

Centers are active in enriching places, ultimately driving down future costs, such as in homelessness and health care.

Even this latest IBA report suggested that fully restoring center hours is a priority.

We still have time.

Thank you very much for listening and your thoughtful consideration and action.

Thank you for your testimony.

Our next speaker is Jen Boynton.

Please unmute and begin.

Hi, thank you for having me here.

I'm a resident of Claremont, and I'm coming to urge the city council to fund the multimodal team.

I'm mom of two daughters who are nine and twelve who love to bike, and the multimodal team is critical to keeping our safe our streets safe for our community members and our children.

My older daughter bikes to school.

Her short route is really dangerous.

She's got zero bike lanes, and she has a trip through an alleyway that's similar to the one where Hudson O'Laughlin was biking when he lost his life.

Every day I worry about our safety and the balance of offering her freedom and the risks that come with biking in a community that doesn't prioritize safety for uh multimodal travel.

I urge the council to prioritize safety over less critical transportation cuts.

We have the budget identified for tree maintenance, weed and abate weed abatement and bush abatement.

We should be prioritizing investments that directly save lives.

I urge the council to continue funding the multimodal team.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Jason B.

Please unmute and begin.

Hi.

Uh my name is Jason.

I urge you to keep the multimodal traffic safety team funded, at least partially.

This would have no net impact to the general fund because the transportation department is already funded.

This is about priorities within transportation.

I was in chambers when this council declared safety as transportation's highest priority.

The multimodal team is only two percent of the transportation budget.

If safety is the highest priority, we can certainly dedicate 2% of the transportation budget to it, even if it means slightly fewer potholes filled or less graffiti removed.

Two months ago, we also had here in chambers a presentation about children and e-bike safety.

Without the multimodal team, there will be no safe place for kids to ride e-bikes because the bicycle master plan won't get implemented.

So please fund the multimodal traffic safety team, even partially, because not funding them would be a huge setback to public safety.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Catherine Rhodes, please unmute and begin.

Hi, this is Katherine Randson, I want to talk about page 15 of the IBA report, where you say that you're not going to, you might have one ballot measure on the ballot.

And all the ballot measures, like the two that I put forward regarding the TOT reform that could solve the structural budget deficit, seems to be erased from this when we never even had a rules committee hearing to do that.

And then also all the other um city council members who had their ballot measures um put forward.

Um, it seems like you're just going to try to make changes to the municipal code instead of going through an actual um uh rules committee hearing so they could so you guys could actually discuss this.

I think that you are um violating the law of the municipal code, and I would ask that um a city council member um asked for the city attorney to opine on the issue.

If um Joe Lakava can just erase the um, thank you.

This does conclude your time.

Thank you for your comment.

The five-minute timer has concluded with 21 hands remaining in the virtual queue.

We will take no other callers beyond these 21 hands raised.

Catherine Douglas, please unmute and begin.

Good morning.

No council members should consider cutting APLRs.

They are game changers and force multipliers for chronically understaffed police department trying desperately to keep all of us safe.

We are just coming off of a terrible incident at a nearby mosque where ALPRs were key.

They've been key in many cases, kidnappings, etc.

So that is something that without doubt needs to remain in the budget.

Thank you.

Thank you for your testimony.

Our next speaker is Janie Emerson.

Please unmute and begin.

Good morning, Janie Emerson.

Safety is a responsibility number one.

If citizens are not stay safe, nothing else in this budget matters.

Our San Diego police department works valiantly with reduced staff.

Any force multiplier is needed to keep all of us safe.

Keep the ALPRs.

They were key in locating the two Islamic Center shooters, and response time was four minutes.

Without that, many innocent children would have been killed.

Keep the ALPR.

Any of you who have a smartphone, a smartwatch, or a Lexus device in your house, are being tracked worldwide 24-7-365.

The ALPRs only read license plates and solve crimes.

Keep San Diegans safe.

Keep the ALPR.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Harry Bobbins, please unmute and begin.

Good morning.

I'm Harry Bubins from Respect Bird Rock.

Thank you to our council member Lacava for including the multimodal team in your budget memo.

This team is one of the most cost-effective ways to improve safety citywide.

In 2024, traffic killed three times more San Diegans than homicides.

This team doesn't just save lives, it saves money.

They capture state and federal grants, cut them, and we could lose millions in funding.

Now consider our national priorities.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Kathy, please unmute and begin.

Hi, my name is Kathy Van and Uval.

I'm from Greater Golden Hill, and I've spent a lot of time volunteering for Golden Hill and Balboa Park.

And I'd really like to request that you restore funding for the comfort stations and restrooms in Balboa Park.

We heard the IBA talk a lot about public trust.

And you know, even though the paid parking is going to be ending in Balboa Park, there were millions of dollars that the city gained from that paid parking at a detriment to the park.

And I feel that it's going back on our public trust if you don't fund at least the restrooms.

Seeing more restrooms close while millions of dollars are taken from parking is terrible.

Um you could easily cut the 16 to 17 new parking enforcement officers that are in the budget for a total of 1.4 million to more than cover the expense of these restrooms.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Jared Wilson, please unmute and begin.

Good morning, Council President and Council members.

My name is Jared Wilson.

I'm the president of the San Diego Police Officers Association.

I want to thank the council members who supported restoring some of our sworn police officer positions that are being cut in their budget memos.

Specifically, there are two critical roles we believe need to be restored in this budget: a sex crime sergeant and a sergeant in the graffiti and emerging gangs unit.

These positions provide direct operational value to both the department and the public.

Both of these positions are currently filled by senior sergeants.

The sex crime sergeant oversees some of the most sensitive investigations we handle in ensuring the already convicted sex offenders maintain registration in the city.

If this position is cut the duties will fall onto an already overworked sex crimes unit.

The graffiti sergeant helps address quality of life issues and emerging gang trends throughout the city.

Additionally four police officer positions are being cut at a time when response times are rising we ask that these positions be restored which are target investments which will help protect our community thank you.

Thank you.

Blair Beekman please unmute and beginning Blair Beekman happy June and happy election time to everyone thank you that there was a very nice public speaker at the beginning about Father Joe's village's items budgeting.

I really really rely on the Neil Good Day Center for things like my mail I couldn't have possibly voted in the election without mail service that I can get a mail address.

That's one of the many services that I hope what the speaker said that uh can be negotiated for like an additional day uh not cut services on the weekends and that can be uh for for rec centers and other issues whatever you want to now try to add one more day uh please uh I also wanted to comment that um please I sent you guys a letter that uh I know you have to reallocate uh law enforcement money because of the uh shooting incidents please don't over go overboard on that and start dumping in a ton of new ALPR stuff we've been working on that stuff allow longtime dialogue to continue to work on issues please thank you for your concluding remark Judy Strang please unmute and beginning good morning thank you for this opportunity and thank you to the speaker who spoke about her earliest memory happened at the library and that's true for me as well also an early memory these are before I started school was programs that I took through our park and rec center.

Some of those programs changed the good the decisions that I made and they were good decisions that were the product of this opportunity and thank you for understanding this by restoring the hours of the library and park and recs.

I would ask you also to take a look around our community and look at those things that would make it more gracious and more clean and more organized and more safe because that's what children see and that's what they benefit from.

And I would certainly start with again the parks our parks need better upkeep we need our public restrooms open.

We need to make sure that our street lights are repaired so our children see that we care about their safety and care about gracious and clean neighborhoods.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Andrew Hollingworth please unmute and beginning I'm Andrew Hollingworth representing the peninsula community planning board.

We want to thank you for restoring some of the uh cuts to the arts and culture without a tax and fee increase.

However we are concerned about the ongoing structural budget deficit and recommend that you take more action to uh address that you have a 2.4 million uh suggestion by several council members to cut highly paid staff and we recommend that you do that thank you for your consideration council members.

Thank you Laura Keenan please unmute and begin hello I'm Laura Keenan co-founder of Family for Safe Street San Diego a group of families who have lost lines or thrive various traffic crashes I'm here to urge you to fund the multimodal team the city street safety team.

I lost my husband Matt to a preventable crash.

Just two weeks ago, my five-year old son and I witnessed one of his classmates get hit by a driver while riding his scooter to school.

I was the one who had to tell his dad that his child had been hit.

Thankfully, he survived.

The circumstances are strikingly similar to the crash that killed Hudson O'Laughlin.

Last week I attended Hudson's preliminary hearing and listened to Hudson's parents described the day they witnessed their son being killed.

Unsafe street shatter families.

This team exists to prevent that.

The multimodal team designed safer crossings, slower speeds, and street improvements that protect people every day.

Please refer funding to this team.

Thank you.

Thank you for your testimony.

Madeline Tyson, please unmute and begin.

Thank you.

My name is Maddie Tyson, and I'm a board member for Bike SD.

Even as the transportation budget is increasing, the multimodal team has been cut.

By using flexible RMRA funds, we can maximize state investments.

At the cost of 12 miles of Slurry SEAL, we can keep the entire team.

For six miles of slurry team, we can preserve half the team.

This team makes the other hundred miles of street resurfacing and seal and slurry seal safer and is a value multiplier for every mile of repaving.

Walking, biking, and biking have less structural infrastructure costs than car dependency.

As we heard earlier, this budget doesn't have a plan for fixing the structural costs.

This team can literally help pay the way towards that.

My dad was killed here by a car in San Diego.

I will never get to see him again.

I asked the council members and everyone in the mayor's office to consider this.

The next time someone is hurt or killed, it would be better to know you did what you could.

It is worth a couple miles of slurry.

Please fund the multimodal team.

Thank you.

Juliana Kopovich, please unmute and begin.

Good morning, council.

I am Hudson O.

Lachland's mother.

Hudson was just six years old when he was killed while riding his bike in our Pacific Beach neighborhood.

Just five months ago.

We were doing everything right.

We were riding together as a family, wearing helmets, enjoying a beautiful afternoon.

And then in a matter of seconds, everything changed.

A driver making a right turn into an alley which intersected the sidewalk we were riding on collided with Hudson and took his life.

We didn't know it at the time, but this alley was commonly used to evade the light at the intersection, and several other crashes had occurred here.

In one unimaginable moment, our son was gone.

Now instead of watching our beautiful boy grow up, instead of seeing him ride to school, celebrate birthdays, and become the person he was meant to be.

We stand here before you asking for change.

Please honor Hudson's memory by continuing the work that makes our streets safer and helps prevent future tragedies.

Please fund the city's multimodal team.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Becky Rapp, please unmute and begin.

Good morning.

My name is Becky Rapp, and it's obvious we need more funding for the basic necessities needed to make our city safe.

So why are we leaving millions of dollars in potential enforcement revenue on the table while illegal products continue to be sold openly in smoke and tobacco shops?

Stores are blatantly selling flavored tobacco craton products and intoxicating him products that appeal to youth and violate state and local laws.

Nearby cities are increasing enforcement and issuing major penalties.

Recently, a smoke shop in Incinitas received a reported multi-million dollar fine, and the owner paid it.

Why is San Diego not taking the same aggressive enforcement approach?

Bottom line is we need more funding for parks, rec, arts, public safety, and youth programs.

Yet illegal sales continue in plain sight with little visible consequence.

Strong enforcement would protect public health and generate significant revenue through fines, penalties, and permits.

Thank you for your comment.

We have 10 hands remaining in the queue.

We will take no other callers beyond these remaining 10 individuals.

Jaden Bankhead, please unmute and begin.

Hi there.

Uh I'm uh calling in from uh Normal Heights District 9.

I wanted to echo the comments of others to uh restore funding to the multimodal team as well as fund the West Valley Crossing projects.

Um, the the presentation at the beginning wasn't was insightful when we talked about uh infrastructure backlog and and how we uh structurally don't address uh the biggest problems in the city.

Um, our roads are our infrastructure.

Um, and the multimodal team is a huge part of investing in safer streets and problems we need to solve.

Um, making it easier to get around on bikes and uh other micromobility like scooters and e-bikes that we see our kids riding.

They're not gonna stop riding those bikes when they become adults.

I'll tell you that.

Um we need to keep investing in the future, and it's such a no-brainer to to do this with the multimodal team.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Rosalia, please unmute and begin.

Good morning, uh council president and council members.

My name is Rosalia Ariano, District 7, and I'm a neurologic physical therapist who has spent more than two decades treating San Diegans living with the lifelong consequences of traffic violence.

I want to speak very plainly today.

I've seen too many people whose lives were permanently changed because our streets failed them.

I've treated survivors of traumatic brain injuries, spinal cord injuries, amputations, and devastating orthopedic trauma.

I've watched families reorganize their entire lives around a single preventable crash and absorb millions of dollars in medical cost, lost wages, caregiving, and lifelong aftercare.

These are not numbers.

These are people who will never return to the life they had before.

That is why eliminating the multimodal team is not just a budget decision.

It truly is a public safety decision with a real human cost.

This team makes sure that repaving projects actually make streets safer.

Without them, we simply recreate the.

So this does conclude your time.

Thank you for your comment.

Our next speaker is Kathleen Lippett.

Please unmute and begin.

Thank you, good morning.

Uh, thank you for some of the encouraging items that are on this budget.

Restoration of recreation centers, library arts, culture, community festivals, child and youth success programs, police department front desk staff, car allowances, uh, cell phones and non-essentials and travel savings were taken out.

That's good.

Respectfully, please look at how much more money the city unnecessarily spends by focusing and uh bias on union labor, especially when the bloated pensions that result from union lobbying and influence occur, even at the city staff level.

Some of the uh concerning budget items are eliminating the old library security.

Security is essential in public spaces.

Revise cannabis business tax revenue.

It appears that that was a loss of seven seven thousand seven hundred and twenty-one thousand.

This does conclude your time.

Thank you for your comment.

David, please unmute and begin.

Good morning.

My name is David Cathol, and I'm the co-president of Beautiful PB and Neighborhood Nonprofit and Pacific Beach.

Thank you to the council members who have expressed their support for the multimodal team.

For those who have not, please understand that in failing to fund the multimodal team in this budget.

You are failing to invest in the safety and well-being of the people of San Diego.

The $2.7 million to fund this team has a real return on investment that exceeds many of the items that are included in this budget.

People who are able to walk, bike, or roll instead of drive are improving their own health, helping the environment, and reducing the demand for shared resources like neighborhood street parking.

Being able to make that choice is dependent on one's ability to feel safe.

Right now, people are quite literally dying in the streets.

By not funding this team, you are endorsing the status quo and accepting a couple million dollars as an acceptable cost for future injury and death.

Whether the money comes from the city's general fund or is found elsewhere, please fund this team.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Lojoya Town Council, please unmute and begin.

Good morning, Mary Seriano, President La Jolla Town Council.

We support community recreation group on restoring remaining 20 hours for the La Jolla Rec Center.

Reevaluate city vendor contracts.

Consider vetted small businesses and environmental nonprofit organizations for the recycling bins, pickup, and large furniture pickup.

La Jolla Town Council participated in AARP quick build for RAD North Park, specifically focused on street calming that would save hundreds and thousands of dollars on research and mistakes.

Please listen to the fire department on their needs.

We don't want what happened to LA when Mayor Bass didn't heed the fire department needs request.

Thank you.

Thank you.

With five hands remaining in the queue, we will continue testimony with Liliana.

Please unmute and begin.

Good morning, budgetary review committee.

My name is Juliana, policy director at EFLA, where you've had with this organization.

And I want to publicly thank the six council members that supported at least funding one full-time employee for the Office of Child and Youth Success.

So today I urge that the other three remaining council members do the same.

Council member Whitburn, Von Wilper, and Campbell.

Please support young people.

They live in your districts.

Thank you.

Thank you for your testimony.

Carmen, please unmute and begin.

Good morning.

My name is Carmen and I'm a resident of District 9.

I serve as the policy and research intern at Youth Will.

I also wanted to publicly thank the six council members that are currently supporting the funding for Office of Child and Youth Success.

And I also want to urge the three remaining council members, Councilmember Whipper and Councilmember Von Wilper and Camp Campbell to put their support behind youth and to actually support funding the Office of Child and Youth Success.

So yeah, please keep in mind the youth that live in your district and also all over the city of San Diego.

So yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you for your testimony.

Megan, please unmute and begin.

Good afternoon.

My condolences for any of those who have lost family members in the room today.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak.

I'm speaking in proposition of continuing to increase the budget for libraries and arts and cultures, as well as the impact for summer to keep as many offices open as possible.

Last time there was a gentleman who talked about the ADA compliance for the rights.

That was something new to me, but I'm learning what it looks like to hear about the needs of our community and to speak up for them.

And also the access to bathrooms.

It's thankful that we've made changes, but it saddens me that this is where we're at, where students are asking for bathrooms and libraries.

So please thank you to the council members who have helped.

And I just urge each one of you to take the option to make a difference and to care about yourselves and to care about people in this great city because it makes us who we are.

So thank you all for being there.

Take time today to enjoy yourself and to enjoy your city and make it make it safer for bikers.

Thank you.

This does conclude your time.

Thank you.

Kim, please unmute and begin.

Hello, thank you so much.

I'm Kim Phillips P with Southeast Art Team from District 4.

Um, thank you to the council members who have supported the restoration of the arts funding.

Um if San Diego had fully funded Penny for the Arts, the arts culture budget would be at approximately 32 million.

So one question is why wasn't it prioritized all these years?

Um do city officials think about the impact of the mental health of the thousands of families this affects when you cut the arts annually and when we have to show up every year.

Our city needs the arts.

We can't ever let this happen again.

Uh let's put penny for the arts on the ballot and increase the programming to include housing, health care, transportation, and a citywide incubator to ensure every artist is connected to city funds.

Let's take on a no artist left behind mentality.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And our final virtual speaker is Zach Sturgeon.

Please unmute and begin.

Thank you.

Uh, I am calling in to urge the city restore the funds to the multimodal team.

Uh, this team does important work in helping the city reduce vehicle miles traveled, which helps us reach and meet our climate goals.

This team helps close the gaps in our bike network that currently make it impossible to bike from one place to another in many places.

My ride downtown from where I am would take 30 miles, even though I'm 15 miles away because that 15-mile trip would require me going a very unsafe route.

It's also worth noting that about 30% of Americans, if you include children, cannot drive.

And there are reasons that it's very important to take their safety into consideration to take the children's need of children's safety into consideration when planning our transportation network.

Please restore this team.

It can be restored without taking money from any other team.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comment.

And Chair, this concludes testimony on item one.

Thank you, Sarah, and thank you to all the members of the public for participating.

We will now move to council member questions and comments.

As a reminder, this is an information item, so no motion is necessary.

We will start with Council President Pro Tem Lee.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

And I'll get us started knowing that perhaps there'll be other conversations with colleagues, and that we'll get a chance to chime in again.

Um, first off, I want to thank the independent budget analysts and the entire office for their tremendous work, um, especially in piecing together all nine of our district priorities, going through the proposed budget as well as may revision thoroughly to identify every opportunity for both ongoing and one-time funding and for putting forward a recommendation that I believe reflects many of the priorities my colleagues and I have shared and that reflect the needs of our city.

I'll start by sharing my support for the IBA's recommendations, including allocating, sorry, thank you, including allocating ongoing funding for CPPS, something that this council has fought to restore in every budget cycle the last couple of years, and to have that placed in as ongoing, recognizing that that should not have to be a fight every single year.

Um, I also want to recognize the recommendation to restore the filming program manager, uh support for small businesses to our small business enhancement program, the Office of Child Youth Youth Success, and finally funding to help restore our city's independent oversight bodies, the auditor ethics, the IBA itself, as well as our city clerk.

Uh moving on to arts and culture, uh it is absolutely critical that we adopt the IBA's recommendation to allocate six million dollars of TOT to arts and culture.

Uh let me share why.

Uh, this morning, Chair Foster and I were excited to announce a commitment of $3 million by the Previce Foundation to support arts and culture as a companion match to the city's commitment of six million dollars, along with our opportunity to adopt the IBA's recommendations for $900,000 in CPPS, as well as to restore a our opportunity to restore ACCF funding next week for another $450,000.

This council has a chance to reinvest over 10.3 million dollars back into the arts and culture and our communities.

This opportunity is much more than just a chance to restore arts and culture funding.

It is a chance to step up at a time when our local and federal administrations have chosen to withdraw from this critical cultural and economic sector.

Chair Foster and I have engaged in many discussions with stakeholders across philanthropy, the arts and culture community, our key tourism sector, and more.

And we recognize that today's announcement is just the start of what we believe should be a new vision to reimagine regional collaboration when it comes to arts and culture support.

We especially want to thank County Vice Chair Supervisor Montgomery Step for joining us this morning and for the work that she has had alongside uh Chair Lassen Weimer and Supervisor Aguerrey to share how the county of San Diego is playing their own unique and critical role in supporting the sector.

Not in replacement of the city, but on top of it.

Uh, next, I want to repeat what I have stated throughout this budget process, and that is that we ultimately seek to balance a budget that is not just on the financial numbers, that we do so by truly delivering a balance of services and resources and programs that match the needs of each of our communities.

So, in addition to that funding for arts and culture, that's why I continue to believe in doing everything that we can to support libraries and recreation center hours across the city, as they continue to be the most critical resources and services that our constituents utilize every day.

And in particular, I want to note that despite all of the data that was put together in the process of formulating the budget, the May revision simply treated equity as a series of geographical lines as opposed to referencing our own data that we had collected in showing usage and needs.

I think the top example of that, unfortunately, is in my own district, where the Mira Mesa Library was ranked by our performance and analytics department's analysis as the fourth highest ranking across the entire city.

It's also the closest library to both Penasquitos and Scripps Ranch, which will both be closed for the next year for restorations.

In fact, just being on the library this last week for the Mare Mason Town Council, we heard feedback from staff there that since Scripps Ranch closed in that first week alone, they saw significant increases in utilization in Mary Mesa's library, where every single seat throughout the entire facility was full.

So for it to be left off of a restoration, something's missing.

But I would argue that if we can and we have the opportunity to restore every library and every rec center throughout the city, we should make every effort to do so.

And then finally, I I don't want to pretend that our budget memos capture everything that is important and critical.

I think there are many other items that I will let my colleagues speak to.

I do want to appreciate the commentary from the public.

I'll take my three minutes, specifically around multimodal uh team and the support for that as well.

Um, and that is something that I think we have engaged in some conversations with the IBA.

I know others on this dais have engaged with the department itself to try to understand the complete elimination of that team, but also what the department's vision is because that work can't simply just go away.

So I think I I will at least turn to the IBA for a moment because I know we've had a little bit of discussion about where you think some of that work has been identified to go, if there are maybe some opportunities or needs to see some restoration, as we're hearing from the community, and for your feedback on that front.

Sure.

I would note that the uh that group was in transportation logic, just the traffic engineers or traffic engineers in other divisions in transportation as well.

Um, so to the extent that that work is necessary and a chunk of it is, they presumably will be reallocated to other positions in the department.

Uh, in terms of where that might be, other potential resources.

I mean, we've got the discussion this morning where the total amount of resources that we identified, there is some left over that you can use to restore other functions.

This could be one of them.

Um, for particulars, I'll probably turn this over to Jordan Moore who covers transportation in my office.

So go ahead, Jordan.

Yeah.

I mean, there are ways that you could improve processes in the transportation department in order for their regular traffic engineers to be more cognizant of the safety, right?

Basically, you have traffic engineers doing all sorts of different work across all sorts of different facets.

The city has been trying to do policies such as a complete streets policy, there's a street design manual that's still in place that could start to integrate those safety concerns into your basic traffic engineering designs.

But without that team, you are going to see a gap that's going to form around safety when transportation is covering streets.

I would leave it to transportation.

I know we've heard that there could be options.

Transportation has lots of different funding sources that are available.

There are RMRA, through our transnet funds.

Many of those funding sources will require trade-offs if that multimodal team was to be brought back in.

And if there's anything else, I would leave it to the transportation department to discuss any other ways that they would have to make up for the loss of those traffic engineers.

I guess I will turn to the team to to at least ask.

I think some of the commentary that we've heard from the public is the consideration of using RMRA for RMRA funds, which of course would directly take away from Slurry SEAL opportunities.

I don't know if the numbers that we're hearing from folks match up with what the department has estimated, but I think this is also an opportunity for us to pointedly ask.

I mean, it has been said many times in this budget process that streets is one of the highest priorities being presented by the mayor.

And I don't think when people think of just streets, they think of just filling potholes or paving.

They also think about the ultimate safety of the people who travel on them across all modes of transportation.

So just trying to look to you to see what the recommended balance ultimately is.

Yes, absolutely.

Bethany Bizak, Chief Performance and Logistics Officer.

For next year, the state is funding the City of San Diego with 39 and a half million dollars with RMRA funding.

That's associated with 275 slurry seal miles.

The multimodal team consists of 14 FTEs, approximately 2.6 million dollars, and they deliver 40 lane miles of bike infrastructure per year.

A scaled approach is viable to use RMRA funding.

Either the entire multimodal team could be restored through the use of RMRA funding or even partially funded through the use of RMRE funding.

What that looks like is if you were to fully fund the RMRA team, approximately uh 20 lane miles of slurry seal would be reduced next year, half of that team would be about 10 lane miles of slurry seal next year.

So there's absolutely a viable option to use RMRA financially, and a scaled approach depending on what the desire is understood.

So when the department's budget was formulated for RMRA, the decision was made at some point to put that only to slurry seal, correct?

Or is this discussion about the team had at that point?

And then I guess the real question is that the suggestion seems to be that without that team that all those lame miles that they've worked on might not happen moving forward, or is there an effort to absorb that into other work?

I think that's one piece that has not still not been made fully clear.

Sure, understood.

Uh traditionally RMRA funding has been used for the slurry seal approach to keep our PCI and the road condition in the best position possible.

So that was still generally the approach that was used for next year.

Uh there are other funding sources, transcent and some other things, but that would mean if we were to reduce those areas that safety would be reduced in terms of the projects that have been allocated for next year.

Uh so there are a few different options.

But but the recommendation is, of course, we always have to balance uh road paving and uh safety concerns with the degradation of our streets as well.

Okay, I'll let my colleagues follow up further as uh necessary.

Um, on my end, I recognize and thank the IBA for their caution every time, even if we don't always land at the same exact spot, but I do think the reality is that next year is going to be just as challenging by year in many ways.

We do recognize that.

Um, and so one of the items that you had discussed in your memo was even looking at how we utilize excess equity, how we consider any funding for the reserve, and those are all things that I'll be keeping in mind as well as we uh move to a final vote on Tuesday.

Thank you.

Thank you for that.

We will now go to council president Joe Lacabo.

All right, thank you, Chair.

Uh thank you, Charles, and to your entire team for your work for digging in on council member priorities, validating assumptions, correcting misunderstandings, and putting together a series of recommendations that we know have been vetted and are a solid basis for the council to restore city services.

Thank you to the members of the public for participating today and throughout this robust budget process.

And thank you to Chair Foster for your leadership throughout this challenging budget conversations.

This year's budget conversations have focused on a number of areas funding for parks and recreation, libraries and the arts, the looming questions of ballot measures for trash fees and bellboard park with the federal med agreement and implement uh implementing actions doed for Monday and with substantial funding restorations and the May revised, the conversation today is more narrowly focused.

I appreciate the IBA and my colleagues' focus on approaches that will not have a general fund impact.

I'm supportive of the recommendations and tables one and two of the IBA report.

The IBA's analysis and confirmation allows the council to thoughtfully make adjustments identified by HSSD, the Housing Commission, and the City Attorney's Office for effective implementation of limited resources.

I supported HSSD and San Diego Housing Commission's modifications, as well as the transfer of the Office of Labor Standards and Enforcement to the City Attorney's Office on my final memo.

I'm also glad, and I'll speak more about it later to this to the identifications of resources for arts and culture funding.

I, along with all of my colleagues, have heard the passionate advocacy for in from individuals and organizations to restore this funding.

And while we must weigh the importance of the convention center to our local economy, the impact of the draft budget to arts and culture organizations are substantial and cannot be ignored.

I support Council President Pro Tam Lee and Councilmember Foster's approach to a one-time funding approach.

However, I am not prepared to discuss today how grants should be programmed.

I know that was a question that was being asked.

Beyond these substantial and important modifications, the IBA has identified two and a half million in ongoing resources and one million in one-time resources.

A significant number of my priorities were included in the IBA's recommended restorations.

CPPS funding, child and youth success program manager, filming program manager, ethics commission software, small business enhancement program, to name a few.

There are, however, priorities of mine and priorities of District One and Citywide that remain unfunded in the IBA's recommendations.

I am heartened that stormwater continues to be a vibrant part of these budget hearings, something we did not hear in the past.

And I give want to give a special shout out to Fire Chief Logan, who has the Office of Emergency Services and Lifeguards under his watch for recognizing why ongoing funding and clearing of channels is so important, especially as we face a predicted El Nino.

This is a critical city service that affects lives and property that does not have nor has ever had an advocacy group.

It is up to the council to lead on this priority of stormwater.

I want to take a moment to recognize the work by the mayor, council, city departments, and public over the past few years, who have shown the leadership and the transparency that was so lacking in the past.

I reflect on Measure B, the recent settlement agreement with Council Member Whitburn, strategic and limited use of golf funds by Councilmember Ilo Rivera to name just a few.

And today we are hearing a novel approach to restoring arts and culture funding by Council President Pro Dem Lee and Chair Foster.

I thank them all.

In that vein, I continue to advocate for restoring half of the multimodal team by tapping RMRA funds.

I am satisfied with the explanations of how we would do that and what that would mean.

More importantly, it would not create an impact to the general fund.

The small reduction in slurry seal funding to me is well worth restoring this final team that helps us meet our vision zero goals.

And with three traffic related fatalities on Pacific Beach this year alone, we can do no less.

On May 20th, the community and neighborhood services committee heard the annual consideration of the recreation center fund, and the item will be heard at council on June 16th.

Thanks to my staff looking at a routine item in a new way under well-understood guidelines and limitations.

If our approach is validated and with council support, this would restore recreation center hours, leaving the general fund to restoring library hours and other priorities.

And I'll close there again.

Thank you to everybody in the entire budget process, especially the Office of the IBA, the mayor's office, the various department heads that really dug in, as well as Chair Foster and his leadership and my council colleagues for their creativity along the way.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council President.

We will now go to Councilmember Campbell.

Thank you, Chair.

And thank you for the presentations and the IBA and your staff for all the hard work you've done.

Thank you to the mayor's office for the revise and uh thank you to everyone for all their suggestions and the work they've done on this.

Today's discussion on the recommended City Council modifications to the mayor's proposed fiscal 27 budget provides an opportunity to review how our budget priorities align with the services that our residents expect and rely upon.

As we consider these recommendations, I believe it's important to focus and remain focused on protecting our core city services.

Public safety is the city's primary responsibility.

Our budget decision should continue to support the personnel and resources necessary to maintain police, fire rescue, and lifeguards.

San Diego's smart streetlights and license plate readers have helped SDPD identify and arrest suspects in attempted child kidnapping cases, locate missing elderly residents, safely reunite people with their families who are lost, and solve hundreds of criminal investigations and arrests across the city while continuing to be subject to privacy and accountability safeguards.

These tools are essential to keeping our communities safe.

And at a time when our police department remains severely understaffed, smart street lights and license plate readers help officers respond more quickly, solve crimes more effectively, and locate missing and vulnerable individuals.

I do not support cutting tools that have helped find people who are missing and identify suspects in serious crimes.

We must support arts and culture while also fulfilling our fundamental city charter responsibility to protect public safety.

This is not an either or or choice.

We must do both, and we can do both.

We must restore funding of 430,000 for storm channel maintenance, as mentioned by Council President.

This is fundamentally a public safety issue.

We have a potential for stronger El Niño-driven storms this year, increasing frequency of extreme weather events due to climate change.

We cannot afford a repeat of the devastating floods of our communities that they experienced in 2024.

This past year, with all the work that the city has done, the storm of 2025, January 2026, did not provide devastation, as did the storm of 2024.

And this is because we have kept up and finally helped with the maintenance of those storm drains and those places that need to have full flow so that people don't flood.

This will reduce risk to home and business and helps ensure communities are prepared when the next major storm arrives.

Development Services Department, DSD, is an important part of safety in this city because it provides code enforcers who make sure that construction safety rules are followed.

Now I don't know about you, but in our neighborhood, we often see people building additions, doing things to their homes without permits.

We need to have the code enforcers so that the law is followed and everything that's built is done so safely and to code.

And so I believe we should restore the DSD building code enforcers who respond to construction violations.

Infrastructure maintenance is a priority for all of District 2 and all the other citizens of our city, and I know that we will continue to work as hard as we can to improve on that.

We must continue supporting the arts and culture as mentioned previously.

These investments support local jobs, help drive tourism and economic activity across the city.

We must not cut those items that bring us revenue.

The arts and culture bring us revenue.

They bring us tourists, they bring us TOT money and sales tax, besides all the good other things that it does.

So we must continue to do that, and I agree completely that arts and culture should be funded.

If we have to lower it a little bit from the 10.3 million suggested by my colleague, Councilmember Lee.

Okay, a little bit, but let's do the best we can for them.

I look forward to continuing to hear our discussion of these recommendations and evaluating how they fit within the city's overall fiscal framework.

And as I have said in the past, we have to look at how do cities in California get revenue.

Now that's a whole different subject, but we must consider it because our cities are starving for funds.

Thank you.

Thank you for that.

We will now go to Councilmember Campill.

Thank you, Chair Foster.

Uh, thank you to members of the public who's spoken today and throughout the process, and of course, uh the arts and culture community for their uh advocacy.

Uh, as my colleagues have stated, the office of the IBA has done some very good work uh with these recommendations to reflect what the community needs.

Uh, and while I'm glad to see options for restorations in arts and culture funding and parks and rec and child and use success, uh, these options that are before us give us uh give us a path forward.

Um, the uncertainty this budget has caused is sending waves throughout the city.

As we saw in one fell swoop, we saw the budget propose a 100% essentially a 100% gutting of arts and culture infrastructure, uh, sent the commitment that children and youth and seniors uh having a safe place to gather was an expendable expendable line item, and it's signaled to our residents and visitors from around the world that we weren't prepared to invest in the culture that makes San Diego the remarkable city that it is.

As we see to partially restore these cuts, our most viable option is using Measure C funding.

Uh to the most viable option to restore parks and rec was to increase the golf fee, uh, and the idea of aligning our city's cultural assets to support critical investments.

It's urgent and necessary.

Uh, and um I think at this point we have some thoughtful ideas, uh, but we have more thought to put into it because these priorities are not oppositional, they're intertwined.

Uh, I do have a few questions uh to see how a lot of these assets that we're relying on serve residents, uh, and if we're doing it in the right way.

Um, question for the IBA.

Um, one-time resources.

A lot of the restorations do rely on one-term resources.

What is the, I guess, the dollar figure that we're looking at for the restorations and the recommendation that are one-time resource as opposed to recurring.

Sure.

So we identified just over two million dollars in one-time resources that weren't accounted for than the budget of the May revised.

We are recommending the use of 980,000 of that amount.

That consists of 750,000 for the small business enhancement program, uh, 200,000 for the Office of Commission on Police Practices, kind of complaint management system, and then a very small, I think it's $30,000 for the Essex Commission's similar intake management system.

Okay, thank you for that.

I noted on slide 19 of the presentation that the recommendation on the table still leaves a structural budget deficit of 15.3 million.

Is that correct?

Uh that is correct.

There's still a structural budget deficit in the budget that was proposed.

That was not resolved in the May revise.

It is not resolved entirely in our recommendations either.

Okay.

Essentially, you're saying that right now, well, you mentioned earlier that we have two million in one-time resources to backfill the priorities in the recommendation.

But overall, 15.3 million dollars of recurring funding is what is absolutely necessary so that we next year don't face a lot of the same problems.

Because I note that I think the most recurring phrase from the city council this this last month was we're having this debate again.

And that was the re most recurring phrase from last year as well.

So at this point, we're gonna have 15.3 million dollars of conversation again next year.

To an extent, yes, but it will be more than that.

15-ish is around what this budget's presented before you right now.

That is the structural imbalance of this budget.

Next year we know that there are some baked in cost to contract increases, baked-in costs to employ compensation increases as of the proposed budget.

What we were looking at next year would be around a $30 million deficit.

$30 million would need to be found in either cuts or new revenues.

That amount, as you heard, is likely to expand because you will have the additional need to further subsidize trash collection for single family homes, and you will no longer be having revenue coming in from paid parking at Balboa Park, provided that the action on Monday is consistent with the tentative settlement agreement that was reached.

Understood.

If we close that 15.3, then that 30 that you talked about next year drops to 14.7.

Plus the additional costs are just.

Got it.

Okay.

With the use of the golf enterprise funds to support parks and rec restoration, is this assumed as an ongoing revenue source or one-time?

Ongoing.

Okay.

Um do we plan to evaluate the fund's performance to determine if it's capable of handling that so that we can call it an ongoing as opposed to a one-time.

So there's been initial work done, largely by parking rec and the Department of Finance to determine what the actual needs for capital reinvestment into the golf courses is.

The amount that is proposed for transfer to the general fund can be supported with existing green street revenue and the overall expectation of capital needs for our golf courses.

You can eventually go farther and look at reevaluating green trees are appropriate and whether or not there's the opportunity for an additional transfer through a land use payment to the city's general fund.

Um but that's work that will have to be done moving forward.

I might turn the department of finance to ask if they've got any additional updates on that.

That's correct, Councilmember.

The uh the analysis basically included really trying to optimize the the assets and the funds that are currently available.

We had seen a surplus of about fourteen million dollars a year in the golf fund that was supposed to be accumulated to invest in the CIP.

If we move to a financing mechanism, we can accelerate some of the CIP uh projects and at the same time have this revenue stream flow back to the general fund.

We're comfortable with the the amount we identified on an ongoing basis.

And but you're right, we would need to continue to evaluate the fund uh as we go and see potentially there could be more or there could be less, and there could be other um priorities in terms of the CIP projects that are approved by council for the golf.

Understood.

Um for the Department of Finance and for the mayor's office.

Um, is there is there a timeline on revealing a plan for uh what when those CIPs will be funded and when we plan to get construction going on those?

I know that um you know, some dollars being used from the surplus, you know, being utilized for other purposes.

I understand the virtue of that.

Um I know that stakeholders in the golf world are wondering when they can expect uh those improvements.

Um, it's an important part of the narrative to know it's not just removing money from one pot.

It's actually spending the money that's in that pot for good reason.

So do we have a timeline on that?

Absolutely.

The really the when we looked at the CIP projects, we did not impact the timeline of what was already planned.

So we'd be happy to share that with with you or any of the other council members that would be interested.

Okay, the timeline exists is what I'm hearing.

Absolutely, very good.

Okay.

Um public safety issues, particularly about the multimodal team back for the IBA.

Would including the transportation department's recommended six hundred thousand dollar budget mitigation option that was about graffiti abatement be eligible to be used for restoration of the multimodal team.

Uh I will turn that over to Jordan.

Um don't know off the top of my head where that was being funded from.

If it was being funded from the general fund, absolutely.

You could pull that out of graffiti abatement and put it towards anything else that's a general city service.

Uh, but I'd want confirmation of that, and then obviously there are drawbacks to cutting graffiti abatement as well.

So it's pick your poison to a certain extent.

Yes.

No, that's in the general fund.

So the reduction of six hundred thousand dollars would free up general fund resources to pay for.

Multimodal team being in the general fund.

Okay.

Um I guess one of the clarifications about the multimodal team since it's was one of the most discussed issues from the public, the Department of Finance, Mayor's Office.

The multimodal team, do they simply design the safer roads and walkways and crosswalks and then funding to actually construct and pave those items is additional funding, or is that 2.7 million dollars include the construction funding, or is it just for the staffing of that team?

I'll I'll defer to Bethany or Naomi who are here in the the audience.

That's associated with a staffing for them to perform the design work associated with it.

Then projects are further funded associated with a construction contract, which is where we typically would pull RMRA funding for.

In this case, RMA could cover both the design costs as well as the construction costs.

Okay.

Um so like a CIP will have a baked-in design and a baked in construction, and the multimodal team will be a portion of the design fee.

Correct.

Okay.

Understood.

Um are there any legal or contractual issues with the pavement condition assessment?

It looks like it's currently budgeted a million.

We just did one in 2023.

Uh is there any reason that one million that's set to go out this year can't be used to fund a multimodal team.

I don't know if there are any legal issues with that, but there are certainly practical issues in terms of knowing the overall condition of city streets and where uh repaving and improvements will need to happen.

We need to have the data to know that um and having that condition assessment, I think is essential for the city knowing really the overall status of street if the repairs that we are making are actually having an impact uh and where future repairs would be needed, but I'll defer to def Bethany on the operational side.

That's correct.

It essentially deferring that work would just mean that we don't have an updated assessment about the condition of our roads, but there's no reason that that funding could not be repurposed.

That's been identified for the condition assessment.

Okay.

I would note just really quick, there is a potential mismatch between one-time and ongoing.

So slurry seal funding is an ongoing thing.

We need the fund slurry seal at whatever amount, but there's an ongoing demand for slurry seal funding every single year.

The uh street condition assessment is being funded through available fund balance from RMRA.

Fund balance is a one-time resource, street condition assessment is a one-time ask.

The multimodal team because it is staffed would necessarily be an ongoing draw on RMRA.

So that is why there's a slurry seal there.

I mean, you could fund some of the multimodal team with a one-time resource, but that will just it next year it'll create the similar gap within the RMRA funding that you would have anyway.

Okay.

Well, it sounds like Jordan, what you just described is that it's a one-time fund, but if we did it every year, it would be an ongoing fund.

So, we don't do the street condition and every assessment every year, though we do it every four is the recommendation.

Okay.

Last time we waited what, eight or nine years between condition assessments before is a recommendation.

This would be the four.

You'd be pushing that one time ask out into a future year.

If you decided to do it that way, but it would be using one-time resources in RMRA to fund an ongoing uh expenditure.

Okay.

Just to tie this back to one of my first questions.

If we did that swap, would it is it made does it make the structural budget deficit go up, or is it essentially almost sounded like Jordan was saying, depends how you look at it.

No, it makes your threshold deficit goes up.

It doesn't make your structural deficit in the general fund go up, but it does make a structural deficit in your RMRA revenue go up.

I see, okay.

Alright, thank you for answering those questions, just so we're very clear.

Um if we did what is the cost of just so it's very clear, one mile of RMRA funding for pavement.

Jordan's looking pensively.

Uh yes, our contracts have generally run for slurry, so around two hundred and twenty-five to up to two hundred and seventy thousand dollars per mile, depending on uh the contract, et cetera.

Cost of ASPL, those types of things.

Okay.

So the public's comment about 10 miles roughly to fund the multimodal team.

That was that would that seem to be pretty spot on.

So I appreciate that.

Um, last question before I close.

Uh I know that facilities maintenance has fourteen fourteen um FTEs being reduced, roughly one point four eight million dollars.

Um, Bethany, it's my understanding that reduction was because the original budget had a reduction in libraries and park and rec uh t hours, and that therefore the maintenance requirement or the maintenance um needs would have been reduced, and but now it looks like we're based on the recommendation, we're gonna be increasing the number of hours at park and rec centers and at libraries, and so the maintenance budget, but the butt maintenance budget isn't going up commensurate with that.

Am I interpreting that problem correctly?

That's correct.

Okay, so we're opening the spaces, but we're also not going to be keeping them in as good a shape.

Jordan, you're nodding your head.

Um you have something to say.

Thank you, Bethany.

Appreciate your help.

No, I was nodding because that is correct.

So even if we're adding new facilities right now where facilities budget is projected to go down, the facilities department as it currently exists is in a mostly reactive maintenance structure, so they wait for things to break, and that's what determines what their work is.

They do not do proactive maintenance, they do not do it at a level that would be recommended to be proactive maintenance.

City auditors pointed this out before.

So, really, what the reduction of the facilities is doing is putting the city further behind what those goals would be and making them move into an even more reactive footing.

Okay.

We want and need the spaces open.

The community needs those spaces open, but they also need them to be operable, right?

Otherwise, they just close and or are covered in tape, uh yellow tape to tell them not to use uh swing sets and slides and rooms within a library where the ceiling might be falling in.

Thank you for elucidating that for me.

Um further questions this time, Chair.

Just want to make one final point on the arts funding, noticing that there's a notion about capping grants, particularly at a low level.

I think that uh we should let the arts and culture commission uh do what it has done well, which is review applications that come in, make the decisions what's best for their organizations and the art ecosystem as a whole, uh, instead of the city council putting a cap on uh what we think would be an appropriate amount.

Um we certainly don't do that with CPPS grants.

If anything, we set a floor for CPPS grants.

So uh it would be my preference that we not put a cap grant uh on what that commission does so well.

Thank you.

Thank you for that.

We will now go to council member Whitburn.

Thank you, Chair.

Uh, thank you to the Office of the Independent Budget Analyst for your review.

Uh to my colleagues for all of their efforts to find solutions uh to these budget challenges and to everybody who offered comments on the budget proposal today.

I'll offer several brief comments on several aspects of the recommendations that are in front of us.

On arts funding, I want to thank Council President Proteb Lee and Budget Chair Foster for their leadership in seeking to restore funding for the arts.

Uh I also want to thank the Premise Foundation for its leadership in supporting the arts and culture community with the three billion dollar pledge that was announced today.

I do want to say this.

If we are going to use Measure C funds for convention centered debt service to free up funding for the arts, I would ask that that be a solution for this year only.

Given the circumstances, I think it is a viable solution for this year, but I do not want to do that again next year uh for two reasons.

First, we need to expand the convention center.

Expanding the convention center and generating additional revenue from visitors to San Diego will benefit everybody who lives here.

We are going to need those Measure C funds to expand the center.

And second, we need to go into next year's budget cycle with the plan for funding the arts so that we're not scrambling to find solutions at the last minute.

Also related to arts funding, I too do not support capping the grants to arts organizations.

I understand the idea behind that.

However, it would have the unintended consequence of negative negatively impacting the institutions that invest the most in the free programming for youth and underrepresented communities.

And that is one of the most important things that we can fund with these arts grants.

Two funding opportunities that would not further impact the general fund.

First on the multimodal team.

I support the use of RMRA funds to restore the multimodal team.

All of us up here have been to too many memorials altering the lives of San Diegans who have been killed while biking or walking.

And I support restoring that funding, even if it means slurry sealing fewer miles of roads.

After all, if you're hit by a car and killed, it doesn't matter how nice the street looks.

Second, I support funding for the West Valley River Crossing, and I support using Mission Valley diffunds to do that.

Additional resource opportunities that four of my colleagues supported in their budget memos.

I would be a fifth vote and support two of those if the additional resources were allocated to excess equity to help us prepare for next year's budget needs.

I do think that we need to be thinking ahead to next year's budget today, so that we are in better financial shape next year.

I would support reallocating the HAP 5 SLIS set aside if we reallocate that 299,000 to excess equity.

I would suggest we consider eliminating this code for out-of-town dog profits, and perhaps setting the discount for city nod profits to 25%.

That would still provide a significant discount for city dog profits.

It would not bring in the full 2.1 million that complete elimination of the discount would bring in, but it would be a meaningful amount that we could put into excess equity to prepare for next year.

Again, as I said, we need that excess equity to position us to deal with next year's projected budget deficit and any unexpected expenses that come up.

Again, uh thinking about next year's budget today will put us in a better financial situation for next year.

Thank you, Chair.

Councilor Robert Nocker, just to respond very quickly.

One appreciate your comments.

I just want to be clear on the suggested potential increase to uh nonprofit special event fees for out of town folks.

Um while that isn't our report, you wouldn't necessarily be a fifth vote on it.

That was a potential resource that my office identified independently.

So just want to be clear that that wasn't included in memos.

It is an option for council, um, but don't want to uh overstate the initial support for it.

Well, I will be one vote then.

I appreciate it.

If anybody else wants to consider that.

Okay, thank you for that clarification.

All righty, thank you for that.

We will now go to council member Von Wilper.

Thank you very much, uh Chair, and thank you to Charles and your entire team in the IBA for your incredibly hard work on this budget cycle.

Um I'm uh and thank you to the public for coming in and continuing to participate, and a city staff for being here in the mayor's team and everybody in Rolando.

Um, I'm very pleased to see the recommendation that we are going to allow for the funding for arts and culture programs and FY 2027.

Arts and culture plays such a huge role in our city, including being economic generators.

So I'm very glad to see that done.

Thank you also to the Prebis Foundation for helping to step up and match that's fantastic.

Um I'm also very glad to see that we're moving over the Office of Labor Standards Enforcement position to the city attorney's office.

We cannot allow wage theft in our city.

If people work eight hours a day, they deserve to be paid for eight hours a day.

Um, and so I'm very glad to see we're going to step up and enforcing wage theft uh in in our city.

Um I also want to um I'm gonna call Chief Logan up here if that's okay since uh he's here.

I want to ask about a couple of things.

Um, I'm glad to see that the front counter staffing of the police department is a priority.

I know, Chief, we've talked about this a lot, making sure that if somebody walks into a police station, they're able to either have a police officer come and take a report or see someone at the door.

That's critically important for me, especially because often victims of domestic violence are fleeing their abuser and show up at a station, that's when they can report.

Um, but Chief, I want to ask you about the storm uh stormwater funding.

So please tell us what the request is and what's happening right now.

Uh the request was quite simple.

We just put the responsibility on the council to work together to find some type of funding for stormwater or drain uh issue related issues in it in anticipation of our Supero Nino that's coming later this year.

Um, when you look at the map for Supero Niño, it's all red, all red, it's bad.

So when you look at the verbiage, it states that it's gonna be roughly 150% to 200% almost of our normal rainfall.

So now that I'm in charge of OES, we're partners in all this.

I can control the plan, but I can't control the infrastructure.

So I'm asking for help.

Okay.

So is the ask for $841,000 in one FTE in the stormwater clearing channel department.

That sounds fair.

Okay.

All right.

Well, I'm happy to work with the IBA on this to make sure we have, because we can't we can't have another flood, catastrophic flood.

Obviously, we can't control how much rainwater there is, but I'd be happy to work with that to restore that.

And Chief, my other question is Is our wildfire helicopter program ready for the summer fire season?

Yes.

We have three copters fully ready to go respond.

And we also have support from Calfire.

Um, that has staffed extra helicopters in our region along with uh C 130.

Okay, thank you.

I appreciate you very much.

Um in addition, uh, I I'm kind of all over the place, but I would love for us to think about restoring restroom facilities as needs arise throughout the year, especially in some of our more popular areas like Mission Beach.

We cannot have another hepatitis A outbreak on our hands.

And finally, I want to uh end on more public safety since I am the chair of public safety.

I do want to thank the POE for calling in about the sex crime sergeant, graffiti, and emerging gangs.

Um, Chief, um, while I'd like to talk about that offline to make sure that that is fully staffed.

I know that there's debates about how and when to do that, but those are important to me.

So I do want to thank them for calling in and making sure those are fully staffed.

Um, and in terms of public safety, I do believe that we have to have a holistic approach to public safety in this city.

And I agree we should be funding uh the services provided by the Office of Child and Use Success, whether they have their own office or whether they, you know, disappear into other offices and they still do the services.

Either way, we need to be focusing on child new success.

We need to have rec centers and libraries where we have opportunities for people to get off the street and out of violence.

Um, thank you to the library department for working with us on Rancho Penosquitos.

We're trying to keep that open as long as possible before construction.

Um we also though need a fully funded San Diego police department as a critical part of this public safety puzzle in San Diego.

Uh, in terms of traffic safety on our streets, I agree that we need to support our traffic department or transportation department in planning for this, but we also need uh the police department for bicycling and pedestrian safety.

Uh part of this is the use of automated license plate readers, and we've had this debate many, many times.

We are protecting civil liberties and privacy and preventing the federal government from ever using this data through public transparency.

But these are some of the things that we will lose if we turn these off, which we can.

We can make that choice.

Uh, in September 2025, a suspect was convicted and sentenced to prison after hitting and dragging a man from his van on the street and fleeing the scene.

The victim was a 64-year-old homeless man standing in a center median seeking donations.

The ALPR system was the only evidence used to identify the suspect and capture the vehicle.

In May 2025, SCPD detectives used the ALPR system to help locate a suspect in a child molestation case.

The suspect was wanted in additional cases in Los Angeles and has now been arrested on nine counts of lewd and levacious acts against a child in San Diego.

In March of 2025, a bicyclist was struck and killed by two vehicles.

No witnesses.

Both drivers fled the scene.

The only evidence available was using smart streetlight video cameras and ALPR data.

The investigators located the vehicles.

The drivers were later apprehended in their homes and arrested for felony hit and run.

We never would have caught that drivers without these tools.

Many of us might have gotten an amber alert on our phones this weekend.

On my phone blew up the amber alert list.

That is the old way of trying to catch kidnapping victims.

Do you see this car anywhere?

And you hope someone repeats or calls in.

We've used our ALPR system to actually find the car and get the suspect who has a kidnapping victim.

In March 2026, I'm gonna mute me my three minutes, please.

A suspect was arrested in condition with a kidnapping and sexual assault of a 12-year-old girl here in San Diego.

After the victim was coerced into the vehicle, the suspect drove her around for several hours, and it was only using ALPR data to identify the tool, the car and arrest the suspect.

He was both booked on multiple felony charges, including kidnapping and loot act with a child.

He's still awaiting prosecution.

Just a week ago, officers responded to a felony hit and run in which a pedestrian was killed by a car that went off the road into a bus stop, completely destroyed the bus stop, and killed the victim standing at the bus stop.

The driver fled the scene.

Witnesses who saw it were only able to give a partial license plate number to the police department.

They put it into the ALPR system, and when 26 minutes of the initial call, officers located the vehicle and they arrested the suspect before she could hit and kill anyone else on the road.

She was still driving.

So Charles, I don't, I have a question for you.

I don't know how much money we would save by just canceling the ALPR subcontract.

Do we know that yet?

Or to get the full two million, we'd have to turn off all the cameras.

So I'll start with the second question.

To get the full two million, yes, you would have to cancel the contract entirely.

The first question is next to impossible for us to answer right now because the contract that we have with Ubiquia provides for both Smart Streetlights and ALPR.

Those are not separated out as separate technologies in that contract.

If you wanted to just pull out the ALPR part, but keep the smart camera part, that would require renegotiating the contract, which would mean you would need a willing vendor to renegotiate on the ubiquity side and a willing partner in either the purchasing and contracting department or the police department to negotiate it on the city side.

This council, I understand, has the authority to cancel the contract, but renegotiation is ultimately up to the administration.

So while you could request that, it would be up to the administration to actually proceed with it.

Okay, thank you.

I mean, this I may be on the losing end of this fight.

I'm honestly quite exhausted by this fight.

Um, but if we do turn them off, there will be consequences in lives in property, and I don't know how we get that back.

So finally, in closing on public safety, um, we talk about this often on spreadsheets and numbers and police overtime and special events, but I want to talk about what it means to the people we asked to go out on the front lines.

On December 27th, or December 7, 2023, officer Anthony Elliott was shot point blank in the head in my district, responding to a domestic violence incident.

He walked into a Ralph's grocery store in the Forest Ranch area trying to apprehend a suspect who had threatened his domestic violence victim with a gun.

He turned around before Anthony Elliott could even identify himself as police and shot him point blank in the head.

When he was at the hospital, a doctor told his wife that Anthony will probably never walk again.

He may not speak again.

He went on underwent brain surgery and was partially paralyzed, transferred to a rehabilitation facility in Colorado, returned home to learn every single part of daily living again, from brushing his teeth to walking.

He is not only walking again, he returned to work for our San Diego police department in 2024.

He's now a sergeant on our SWAT team.

I bring him up because this past Saturday was one of the most violent weekends we saw in San Diego.

Today is actually gun violence awareness day.

I forgot to wear orange.

I'm a little tired.

But this past Saturday, a 20-year-old, 21-year-old man from Arizona took a five-hour lift ride to San Diego to follow his girlfriend whom he had been violently abusing for years.

She was 17 years old.

He waited outside the Airbnb where her family had whisked her away to a vacation to be away from him, coaxed her outside on the auspices.

He was delivering flowers to her, and shot her point blank in the head and killed her.

She was pregnant with their child.

She died on the scene.

They were able to deliver their baby through a C-section, who was then transported in the ambulance to the Rady Children's NICU in critical condition.

The shooter, I'm can I just finish this story, please, budget chair, if you would give me one more minute.

The shooter then fled.

He changed clothes and he ran into a canyon nearby under the cover of darkness.

The police officers were able to locate him using Abel, our police helicopter, which has a heat sensing technology to find the heat sense of where he was in the brush.

But our police officers had to get out of their cars and go on foot into the deep brush under the cover of darkness, knowing that the suspect still had his gun.

They told me that they would have to hit the ground if they heard bullets because they didn't know exactly where he was in the brush.

One of the officers that got out of the car and ran to the brush was Sergeant Anthony Elliott, who had already been shot in the head once chasing a domestic violence suspect.

And he ran once again to get this young man who had just shot and killed his pregnant girlfriend.

He could have stepped away from danger.

Nobody would have blamed him for retiring early, but he didn't.

Every day he gets up and he goes and he's a powerful testament to an extraordinary courage, self-assisting sacrifice that define those who dedicate their lives to this.

So their numbers are not simply budgets on a spreadsheet.

These are people who do this every day.

Thank you.

Thank you for that.

We will now go to Councilmember Ilo Rivera.

All right.

Thank you, Chair Foster.

Um, thank you, Charles, to you and the team as always for all the work that you did to take um the recommendations from uh my colleagues and I and turn those into the memo that you produced.

Um and I appreciate my colleagues' comments um this morning as well.

Um I want to start by saying how appreciative I am uh to Council President Pro Tem Lee and Budget Chair Foster, thank you both of you for the work to um to identify resources to mostly um account for the significant reduction in arts and culture funding that uh was in the proposed and revised budget.

I think I think that um demonstrates a lot of what I would have I wish we would have seen earlier in the process, which was um the attempt to be creative um through the use of measure C dollars, um the willingness to collaborate, which you all demonstrated with um the not just previous foundation but with the county, and far too often we've heard an adversarial relationship between the city and the county, and that is uh overwhelmingly unnecessary, and this is an example of the good things that can come when we're working together.

Uh and the product of that is that the um these the obliteration of of funding for arts and culture um is now in position to be largely avoided, and um that's a very good thing, and I'm I'm appreciative of your work on that.

I think the recommendations that we see uh from the IBA uh I am I'm overwhelmingly in support of there.

I did have uh I want to say thank you to uh my colleagues for for cleaning up or following up with some questions about uh RMA RMR, RMRA funding, and uh the ability to use that um to fund uh at least in part the multimodal team.

Um I will continue to say I think we need to do a much better job of explaining how it is uh that we approach street safety, and I think sometimes we we have that conversation in in too narrow of terms.

I appreciate the advocates, and I'll also just say I think one of the the challenges that I wrestle with, um, and I say this as a person who puts the most treasured thing in my life on my bike two to three times a week to take him to school, and then I ride to work, is trying to square um the wrestling match that we're having to properly fund this city.

And and it's so easy to tell you all we support what you're advocating for.

I do, of course we do.

But then we have a conversation about how that gets paid for, and there's a lot of silence, and if not silence, there's a lot of opposition, and and so what what you're you're seeing is the the struggle to make good on the commitments we're making.

And if we don't identify resources, it's really hard to do that.

And so I appreciate the the creativity to go and identify other ways to pay for something that is being advocated for, but it still doesn't get us to close the gap that that Charles and his team are talking about.

We have a massive structural budget deficit, and that doesn't even scratch the surface on the infrastructure that this city should be maintaining and fixing and building.

So, again, I appreciate the advocacy, and um we're just we're going to need to better resource this city, and there's no magic tricks, there's no waving of the wand or or demonizing of a particular segment of politic uh of city employees, or uh a vague reference to efficiency that's going to get us there.

It's going to require more dollars in this city to do good work.

Um moving on from there.

Um, thank you to Father Joe's.

Um Josh, thank you, and and for Father Joe's in general for figuring out how it is that we're going to avoid the most catastrophic impacts of the cuts that were proposed.

Uh Noah, I very much appreciate you walking through what the council, well, at least our memo and other and a few other memos were getting at in terms of how we address homelessness.

There's the reductions that were proposed, the reductions that were included in the revised budget, and then our attempt to modify the impacts and and and mitigate the impacts, I should say, uh of that by work with the housing commission and uh chair, if I could have the additional three minutes.

Um speaking for myself, I want us to continue to lean into the most proven ways of minimizing homelessness, that's prevention and diversion, and ensure that the shelters that are being operated are being operated uh in a way that puts people on a path to permanent housing.

And I think that by continuing to work closely with the housing commission on obviously HSSD and our partners at the uh regional task force on homelessness, we can get ourselves pointing in a better direction and make better use of our existing resources, with again the recognition that we should be better resourced and we could do more good work.

We could expand our homelessness prevention, we could keep more seniors housed, we could be even better at diversion with those additional resources there, but that that's got to come from somewhere.

Um, and then last but not least, um I want to say how glad I am to see that the Office of Child and Youth Success is uh is seems to be positioned to be restored.

On Wednesday morning, uh I had a chance to stop by uh the the youth summit that the Office of Child and Youth Success uh put on with a variety of of uh of youth serving and youth-led nonprofit organizations.

Uh that event took place at Balboa Park, and it was a perfect example of why that office is so important and how we're just scratching the surface surface of its potential.

There were young people there who were not just enjoying themselves and feeling seen and supported by their city, but connecting to really important resources, whether that means career opportunities or educational opportunities or access to mental health care, which is so important, or just being in a physical space with other young people in a time where isolation is through the roof and our young people are really struggling, and all of that was done with the office being not supported in the way that it could or should be, and so what we have, if we can get to the finish line here is an opportunity to not just keep the office alive, but to give it a second chance to be supported in the way that it should, and I hope we do that.

Uh last thing I want to touch on, and it happened it wasn't anyone on this diets, but it happened from member of the public, and I want to make sure I address two members of the public.

The Islamic Center shooting is not anyone else's to utilize for to score political points.

A specific community in this city was terrorized, is still traumatized, and it is not appropriate in any way whatsoever for others who are not members of that community to think that that makes the case for something that they want to see continue funding, funded, especially if that community is not asking for that.

Um so again, I appreciate my colleagues not doing that, but I did not want to leave that unaddressed.

Uh thank you, uh Chair Foster.

Alrighty, thank you.

Seeing um no other members on the lights, um, I guess I will just take a few moments to close this out before we go to non-agenda public comment.

One, thank you to the IBA for all of the work that you have put into this.

Um thank you to the mayor and his team for working with the IBA to assist in developing the materials that help to make this a transparent conversation.

I think in regards to the budget, and I said this early on as we started this process, regardless of the structural deficit that's in front of us, the conversation of the budget has always been about priorities, and I think that's what makes this even more challenging as we are trying to deal with the structural deficit.

But one thing that I cannot do, I cannot put a structural deficit in front of my community in front or ahead of my community, District 4.

And I've said this time and time again, we cannot continue to balance the budget and to give others their wants while we have underserved communities that have consistently been without for decades.

That is unacceptable, and we can no longer move in that direction.

One of the terms that I typically hear at the city of San Diego is we do this because this is the way we have always done it, and I hope just as we talk about arts and culture, Council President Pro Tem and myself, the conversation that we have had is simply the start of a conversation, and there's a long road to go as we talk about how are we going to meet the call for arts and culture long term, and I think the key word is ongoing.

That is the key word.

I think we have all said that it is vital to the city of San Diego, not only for economics, but it's about culture, it's about the diversity of our communities.

It's about what type of San Diego do we want to be?

And I said this earlier, and I feel that this deficit is really making us really really evaluate that question.

What type of city do we want to be?

And I will say this, it's very easy to sit here on this dais.

Every time someone comes up and says and they have a concern, and someone says, We got you, we hear you, we're going to take care of it.

But I ask the public to really look at the actions of individuals.

Look at the discussion.

So as we talk about public safety, because that seems to be an ongoing conversation as we talk about public safety, and how do we balance this budget?

And how do we make sure that we are meeting the needs of all of our residents?

We cannot talk about public safety and not talk about arts and culture.

We cannot talk about public safety and not talk about our libraries and our parks.

I don't know if we are trying to fool ourselves or if we are trying to fool the public.

But at some point in time, we need to do the best that we can do to make sure as we are talking about public safety.

It is just not the obligation of the police department.

If it's one thing that we haven't shown since the foundation of policing, I haven't seen crime stop.

I must say, I haven't seen the lack of development and construction of prisons.

So we must do more.

And I think the best way that we can assist our police officers as we talk about the deficiency in numbers, which I think is a national issue.

It's not isolated to the city of San Diego.

And that's where I say we cannot do things the way that we have always done them.

And we have to lean in with the community and ask the community to meet us where we are at.

One of the most critical things that I always bring up is graffiti abatement.

Most of our graffiti abatement calls come from three districts: four, eight, and nine.

And they are life safety issues.

We approve the budget.

We carry graffiti dollars.

We just received a memo from the Transportation Department saying that as of May the 15th, I believe is what was noted, that they were halting graffiti abatement and associated dollars.

I don't know the last time you drove District 4, but I can take you today.

Graffiti is up, and it is gang graffiti as we are heading to the summertime.

And I am deeply concerned as to how the mayor and his transportation department constantly make the decision to make those types of cuts and to say we are not doing it.

I appreciate the memorandum.

I appreciate you following the budget principles.

But you know what?

Someone needs to get up, and they need to go stand in district four and look my community in the face and say, we made a decision not to do this.

And those decisions are being made by the mayor and city staff.

And so I would ask everyone, the directors and folks that sit in this room, go out to the other districts.

Don't spend your time in Northern County.

Come down and see what's happening in District 4 in District 8 in District 9.

I look forward to the conversation at the budget committee.

So I can truly understand.

Why are we cutting graffiti abatement?

It makes absolutely no sense.

And as we sit in this room and we make and we want to say public safety is our number one priority.

Number one priority for who?

For what community?

The conversation that took place, there was a gentleman that made a comment from our commission in the press conference this morning and made a comment and said it's about feeling valued.

And I tell you what, District 4, we are a value.

And mayor, staff, I will fight you every day.

IBA, I don't pull any punches.

Every day.

You tell me no, I don't accept that.

Just as we got together to figure out arts and culture.

And I plan to keep moving and to keep finding a way to address the structural deficit and to make sure that we can address the needs of every single community member.

The other thing I will say, in regards to the multimodal team, and I appreciate the conversation and I appreciate the concern.

But I'm not understanding how we have a transportation department, how we have transportation engineers, and yet we are reliant totally upon this one team where we are obligated to design our streets to very specific standards.

And so that's where I say we need to look at our departments and understand how we are structured to make sure that we can meet the obligations that are in front of us.

To come here and say, because we don't have a multimodal team, that we are impacting street safety, totally unacceptable.

And as someone that spent 25 years in the construction industry, I don't buy that.

That's where I have to look at the leadership on the operation side and say, get it done.

Figure it out.

Because if you can't, this may not be the place for you any longer.

I'm not the one that's hung up on institutional knowledge.

Change is good.

And I'm here to bring change.

Arts and culture, one thing I do want to say, as we have had our conversations, we did proceed with the understanding that from a process perspective that certain things have taken place.

Organizations have gone through the process, the prescribed process, the city process, the commission has done their job.

So at this point in time, I am not open to any type of cap conversation at this time.

I think for this current budget cycle, we continue to move forward with the process that's in place, and we expend the dollars in the best way that we can.

Libraries and parks are essential services that we provide, and as I said this morning, I feel like we are continuing to be at the crossroads of the city of San Diego.

And what type of city do we want to be?

Because we are looking at potentially 30 million to 50 million dollar deficit for next year.

So our work is not done.

I think we talked about a $15 million deficit we're looking at now, right?

But see increase to PD.

About $15 million or so.

But this is where I talk about crossroads.

We had a conversation from one of my colleagues about license plate readers.

The conversation that we're going to have on Tuesday, I'm going to be honest with you.

Do we want license plate readers?

Or do we want parks and libraries?

That's what this conversation is going to be on Tuesday.

I want to be up front about it.

Are we going to look our communities in the face and say that this piece of technology is more important than our libraries and our parking racks and what it means to our families, what it means to our young kids, what it means to have somebody have the ability to go to a computer when they need to fill out or do a resume for a job.

I can't tell you what my colleagues, what their use of their facilities are.

But I know what the use of the facilities are in District 4, and they are needed, much needed.

And I will not stop if we are just simply cutting parks and libraries.

I am appreciative to the equity that was looked at in this budget cycle.

District 4889 did pretty well when it comes to the libraries, parks and recs.

But again, I think this is a citywide issue.

I don't think violence knows any boundaries.

I don't think crime, they don't pay attention to the lines.

I always tell everyone, for some reason District 4 is referred to as one of the most unsafe districts in the city.

But I think as we look at the crime stats, we are actually one of the safest districts in the city.

But that comes with work, that comes with consistency.

That comes with me sitting here not accepting those.

And I won't start.

And I said this, and this is personal for me.

My families, my aunts and uncles, my aunts, their first job was at park and rec.

And so I just want to make sure that we understand what we are walking into on Tuesday.

And the ultimate question is what type of city do we want to be?

And so I will end there.

I think I have covered everything that I wanted that I need to cover.

I think one last thing.

And how we are improving to make sure that certain things are not happening.

And we have work to do.

Yeah, uh, thank you, uh, council member.

Uh, we are targeting uh the June 17th budget committee for that info item.

Uh, both PD and RISC are ready uh, we'll be there to have that discussion.

I appreciate that.

Um, so with that, I will um end here again.

Charles, I appreciate the work that you have done.

Um, I am very supportive of quite a few things that you have, I guess, set the path for.

We will have more conversations as we prepare for Tuesday.

Um, so with that, I'd like to thank all of my colleagues for their comments.

Um, again, thank staff.

Um, we look forward to seeing everyone on June 9th as we continue to have the budget conversation and vote on a budget resolution.

So, with that, we will now take up non-agenda public comment.

The council members respect and appreciate the public's input and are fully committed to protecting every participant's free speech rights at council and committee meetings.

Sarah, please proceed with instructions for non agenda public comment.

Thank you, Chair Foster.

Parole 2.7 non-agenda public comment as an opportunity for members of the public to comment on items that are not on the agenda but are within the subject matter jurisdiction of this committee.

Each speaker will have two minutes.

And if you're watching on City TV, the live stream online and you'd like to call into the meeting to provide non-agenda public comment at this time.

Please dial 1669-2545252.

Inputting webinar ID 160 332 6900 pound.

We will begin with in-person speakers here in chambers.

We have received two slips.

We will begin with Joy Sanyata.

If you'll please approach the lecture, and you will be followed by Maximilian Schmidt.

Our city needs a new vision that fosters all components of our budget.

Dear public, all of you are at the very top of our city's organization chart.

Our city has a structural budget deficit.

Dear Mayor, thank you for your vision and your mission statement at the top of your proposed budget for FY27.

They are both very good.

Yet for our city to become the great city, we strive for so we can all thrive.

A noble vision, a noble vision.

Dear public, that's all of us.

That's all of you.

What vision would you fight for?

What are we fighting for?

Can we even answer that?

In my opinion, a new vision is the kick start.

We need for the boldness we need to unravel and solve our structural budget deficit.

Let's do it, please.

All of us work together.

Thank you for listening.

A great another great day.

And and the budget is going absolutely.

I'd give it five stars.

Thank you, love to all.

Thank you.

Our next speaker here in chambers is Max Schmidt.

Hello.

Um, first off, I want to say I've been here for three hours, waiting to speak two minutes, and I've never heard such progressive rhetoric in BS in my entire life.

The people who sit behind these desks here to me are no better than the Chinese Communist Party.

And it's very heartbreaking to see that San Diego is becoming worse than the city of Seattle.

And that's truly what's happening here.

And um taxation is theft, period.

And I just wanted to go fast here.

Um, these pure evil progressives at City Hall are devil-possessed, communion free, devil possessed communist Freemasons.

I know all about the occult and believe no possessed reincarnating and teleporting person should be in the government.

Did you know the vast majority of Americans are in the occult and insane progressive ones hate whistleblowers and patriots like myself?

There is an emergency in America.

Pure evil occult group rituals and grotesque devil ceremonies involving human sacrifices and cannibalism have become the norm inside America's Masonic lodges.

As a Christian, this is shameful.

Supernaturally possessed telepaths far outnumber the common man, especially on the West Coast.

And many feel as if we're living revelations, and I'm sadly even witnessing people teleporting SD or walking down the street.

I often see occultists appearing and vanishing into thin air.

Also, statues of reincarnation, like the one at Cancer Park on embarcadero, as well as stair step style architecture representing reincarnation are becoming more common, as well as the disgusting image of the owl.

Tons of people have reincarnated more than 10 times.

Did you know the word pagan as the word again in it because they reincarnate and live life over again?

And pagan rituals have existed before the time of Christ in English language, and some people walking around the US have reincarnated more than 30 times.

It should be public knowledge, human sacrifices and volume and capitalism are inside or happening inside America's Masonic Lodges.

Cops and doctors are trying to silence my voice and pathetically accusing me of mental illness, handcuffing me and keeping me in bizarre jail like private psychoards forcing harmful experimental and psychotic drugs on me over communist 5150 laws and all for telling the truth about reincarnating teleporting mind control.

I'm not crazy down with the occult.

I'm not crazy down with the occult.

Thank you for your testimony.

This concludes comment here in chambers.

So I'll begin the five-minute timer for all those in the virtual queue to indicate if they wish to provide non-agenda public comment at this time.

As a reminder, each speaker will have two minutes, and we will begin testimony with Marco Espinosa.

Please unmute and begin.

Hello, good morning.

Can you hear me?

We can hear you.

Please proceed.

Thank you.

Um, for I really should be doing this in person.

I'm so sorry.

Um, I wanted to you could use the screen that's there in chambers um to ask to bring up Google Maps, and then I was gonna bring a laser pointer.

Um uh to make this uh far easier to understand.

Um, but anyways, um uh from what I can convey to the best of my time over virtual, um I'm gonna ask.

Um for the Boston Street, um, if it does get turned into a park, um, uh, and I'm not including the land that is currently uh the recycle center, um uh just this portion at the long freeway, is um uh I'll first all along the entire length of the park along Boston Avenue along the sidewalk.

I was thinking that there could be like four or five, six feet of um like trail, um uh like a like a dirt path, sort of, um, like a man-made one, yeah.

Um uh I think it'd be open it up really nice, really good for running.

Um, it's a really good, nice long stretch park.

Um, uh, because I was actually thinking about doing um uh uh like a whole like soft track kind of thing um uh along the wall, but then I ended up realizing that it's not gonna work out.

Um anyway.

Um, and then the like official like sign of the park.

Um, well, I'm sure you'll have like two on either end, but um I was thinking if you were just to have one, um, I would say do it on the corner of 32nd Boston.

Um, because there's like a small little space right there, um, that really isn't like useful for anything other than like us like uh on the out wall of the name of the park, and then lighting on it and something decorative, anyways, underneath.

Um, anyway, uh that is what I can do with time I have.

Thank you very much.

Have a good nice day bye.

Thank you for your testimony.

Our next speaker is Francine Maxwell.

Please unmute and begin.

Good morning, Francine Maxwell, Southeastern San Diego resident.

Thank you so much for the presentation.

I'm concerned about um the conversation when the diocese should have been educating the community, especially as it pertains to the voting that took prior years on why the police department is getting certain money because of the different increases that were voted on by the elected officials that sat there on the diocese.

It would be nice to carve out just a few minutes next week as we say parks versus something.

Um parks are extremely important for the children, for families, for free fun, connecting with the community, but also no one on the diocese is looking at the lack of hiring for African and African American people, the um the cuts that come so quickly, and how people still can't get in.

And yes, Park and Rick used to be.

It is not current.

Ask race and equity on the complaints that have yet to be um investigated, the lack of pathways for African-American employees for the city of San Diego.

So let's have some real unpacking dialogue before we do an and or let's do an all-in in addition to, especially with the other departments that are making extremely exuberant amounts of money for their camping contributions as well.

Not that they are not due, they work triple time, but again, educate the constituents fully, not so much uh heart tug with different stories, but factual things on what happened to the diocese and why things are occurring.

Looking forward to next um a couple weeks for the risk management, because again, recently someone just got 250,000 yes from the SDPD, but we need to unpack and we need to have full context that is given to the constituents, less sound biting, less performative, but more factual training for districts four, eight, and nine, the areas of concern.

Thank you for your testimony.

Hakeem, please unmute and begin.

You will have two minutes.

All right, thanks.

Yeah, I got some good news this morning for you guys.

There's gonna be 20,000 people having to work uh 20 hours a week from the food stamps program, and they have to work.

They could be cleaning up our parks, they could clean all the bathrooms in the park, they could clean the bathrooms in the libraries, they can clean the beaches, all the boardwalks, pick up trash.

There's gonna be at least twenty thousand,000.

They have to work twenty hours a week.

We could put a removing graffiti right in their own neighborhood.

Say, come down here, you gotta maybe get a city employee and train five of them, remove graffiti twenty hours a week till they get off food stamps.

So there's gonna be a lot of people, and it's gonna be a great opportunity to work with the county, and that's what it says, so there could be even more than twenty thousand.

So that'd be a great thing.

And then just a heads up, you guys.

Okay, I know there's a race thing going on with us with black and white.

There's that trial coming up and the kids guilty, the black kids stab that white kid.

And the the evidence is showing he's guilty as hell.

But if he's if he's if he the jury says guilty, it could be an OJ Simpson riot coming up.

So get your don't have the mayor talk.

How have the district four guy talk?

Try to calm everybody down, and not I wouldn't have the mayor talk anymore.

Just have you guys do it, Matt.

You guys are in tune to the communities.

But that could be a major thing.

Maybe it's not as mi in some cities, you know it's gonna be major if the kid's found guilty.

Even if he's found innocent.

But I think it's more if he's he's guilty as hell.

So anyway, what's coming up is it's gonna be in a few days, so work on your speeches and pray and uh get those free labor for clean up the bathrooms and stuff.

The time has expired.

The five minute timer has also expired.

We have five hands remaining in the queue.

We will take no other callers beyond these remaining five hands raised.

Phone number ending in seven two three four.

Please unmute and begin.

Good morning.

And thank you for considering for the budget those items that mean a great deal to the planning groups, libraries, community parks, and the rec centers.

As a source of revenue, I support comprehensive enforcement and levying of fines against the smoke and vape shops that sell illegal flavored tobacco products, freedom, magic mushrooms, nitrous oxide, and CBD products masquerading their true THC content.

These products attract young adults and their availability signals that they are safe, but they're not.

This is a golden financial opportunity to bring in revenue to the city, mitigate the persuasiveness to these products, and improve the health and safety of our residents.

And this would be a big win for everyone.

Thank you for hearing my concerns this morning.

Thank you.

Katherine Rhodes, please unmute and begin.

Hello, this is Catherine Rhodes.

First on the Neil Good Day Center.

You know, I know that Mayor Gloria has been trying to close it down and give it to the police department, but that's illegal.

It can only be used for homeless.

So if it's gonna be closed, um, I don't know, it cannot um still be used for the police.

And now I want to talk about my transit occupancy tax measure.

Um, especially uh the measure one that all it does is add the um the words online travel agency to the municipal code.

Just those words alone could bring in seventy-seven to 144 million and could solve the city of San Diego's structural budget deficit, but for some reason the IBA refused to analyze exactly how much money it will be.

Um just uh Tuesday, the city of Los Angeles did the same thing um with the same people from booking holdings, the online travel companies that came here um to the March eighteenth rules committee hearing and said that they were supportive of it, as were the San Diego County lodging industry.

And so um the city of San Diego, excuse me, the city of Los Angeles just passed their ballot measures to have online travel agencies um remit any of the money that they receive, and the city is not doing it.

I don't understand why.

I don't understand why how um Joe Lakov can um not have a rules committee hearing on all five of the ballot measures including the ballot measures that were from um other city council members and just say that there they won't even be discussed for the for the November election this is an opportunity to solve everything I don't understand why not one of you want to solve the structural budget deficit when you have the opportunity thank you thank you Blair Beakman please unmute and begin hi uh Blair Beakman uh thanks for this final uh budget meeting today um it was hopeful um I I've been talking this whole budget time the importance uh I the lessons that I'm learning uh from council uh have been incredible for myself uh I can't thank you enough thank you immensely um I'm surprised this is coming out of me at this time but uh a real thank you uh I've learned really important things about care and and life and um that uh it's care that comes first and how we have to be addressing our budget issues I've given examples of Oakland and what they've been trying to do for years now with their budget concerns it's social services that comes first it's human beings and we're learning to do that in San Diego and hopefully we bring that back next year in how we will be better defining our budget and hopefully we're learning those lessons I'm really surprised that um you're talking about possibly uh ending uh AOPRs altogether um thank you for explanations from council president that we are actually um isolating the uh events uh at the Islamic center the the SAT events as a as an isolated incident and that it doesn't have to be affecting uh our full community process and uh good luck how we can do that um I think it's a noble effort to want to end AOPRs altogether and to leave the surveillance state as much as we can I've suggested often of compromise measures that Oakland is working on of a community effort to to define the future of our surveillance tech use in communities and neighborhoods that has to be uh acknowledged and can be helpful uh in these upcoming ALPR questions uh as necessary uh good luck in leaving things uh all together and that we build uh we were living lives without all the technology and doing a good job previously uh good luck what we can continue doing thank you.

Thank you for your concluding remark Kathleen Lippett please unmute and begin.

Thank you the city should recognize the increased revenues have continued year to year that they do have a spending problem continuation of zero uh carbon futures for instance and those green energy policies that are devastating the economics of family members should be considered if it's causing economic problems to those degrees then that is not a requirement of city council or the mayor policies that should be looked at are also comparing the cities' salaries uh pensions and their benefits compared to the residents of this city they are bloated and they the residents of this city don't have nearly the benefits or the ability to be able to make the kind of money the city city staff and department staff have another focus should be to look at policies or absence of policies that result in decreasing public safety and increase city costs such as ensuring and requiring that there is no public drunkenness public drug consumption that will contribute to a better standard of sobriety previously mentioned was to look at the tolerance of smoke shops that who are illegally selling uh illegal products, and that's important as well.

Another policy that should have been implemented is to hold responsible, irresponsible bar of operators and restaurants that morph into bars.

They continue to operate and become neighborhood nuisances decade after decade.

And Pacific Beach, one of the most uh there was a they still have bar crawls.

What on earth would the city tolerate bar crawls?

Where you've got drunken people that over a three-day period.

Thank you.

This does conclude your time.

And the final speaker in our queue this afternoon is Madison.

Please unmute and begin.

Hi, thank you.

Good afternoon, City Council members.

I'm here as both a public health advocate and a parent to urge you to make smoke-free multi-unit housing a priority in the city of San Diego.

For families living in apartments, condos, and other shared housing, there is often no way to control the air inside their own home.

Smoke travels through walls, vents, hallways, balconies, and shared spaces.

Children can be exposed while sleeping in their bedrooms or playing in their living rooms.

This is also an equity issue because people living in poverty are more than twice as likely to smoke, and lower income renters are far more likely to be exposed to second-hand smoke because they are more likely to live in multi-unit housing.

Clean indoor air should not be a privilege only available to people who can afford single family homes.

Tobacco remains the leading cause of preventable death in our country, claiming nearly 490,000 lives each year.

And today exposure is no longer limited to traditional cigarettes.

Families are increasingly dealing with indoor vaping and cannabis smoke as well, both of which release harmful particles into shared indoor air.

As San Diego continues to build and plan for more housing density, we also need policies that protect residents' quality of life and health.

Smoke-free multi-unit housing is a proven practical policy that protects children, reduces fire risk, lowers maintenance costs, and helps create healthier communities.

As a mother raising young children in multi-unit housing, I can tell you this issue is deeply personal for many families.

I encourage this committee to support housing policies that ensure every renter has the basic right to breathe clean air in their own home.

Thank you.

Thank you for your testimony.

And Chair, this concludes non-agenda public comment.

Thank you, Sarah, and thank you to the members of the public for your comments.

In closing, this brings the fiscal year 2027 budget review committee to a close.

I do want to thank Council Admin for their tremendous work in putting together this year's budget review committee meetings.

You are greatly appreciated, and thank you so much.

I look forward to working with my council colleagues between now and June 9th to make final decisions that reflect our morals and values and the concerns from our city residents.

Thank you.