The San Leandro City Council held a work session on April 14, 2026, to review proposed changes for the Fiscal Year 2027 mid-cycle budget update. Finance Director Nicole Gonzalez presented the recommended expenditure reductions, general fund transfer reductions, a funding plan to avoid critical infrastructure failures, and a discussion on council compensation. After public testimony and extensive council deliberation, the council provided direction to staff for adoption.
Okay, so it's seven oh two, and I'm calling this meeting of the San Landro City Council to order. Today is a work session. It is April thirteenth, twenty twenty six. This point in time, Madam Clerk, would you please take a roll. Councilmember James Aguilar. Present. Council Member Victor Aguilar. Present. Councilmember Fred Simon is currently absent. Councilmember Bowen. Present. Vice Mayor Vivero Swalton. Present. Present. Councilmember Bolt. Present. And Mayor Gonzalez. Present. Please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. I will start with my announcement. The City of San Leandro conducts orderly meetings to fulfill its mandate. Discriminatory statements of conduct that would potentially violate the Federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 and or the California Federal Employment and Housing Act, California Penal Code Sections Four Three or Four Fifteen are per se disruptive to a meeting and will not be tolerated. If you would like to make a public comment during the meeting, you can do so in person or via Zoom. If you are present at the meeting, please complete a speaker card and submit it to the city clerk before the item is presented. If you wish to participate in public comment via Zoom, you can use the raise your hand tool when the item is called. More information may be forthcoming in the coming weeks related to the same. More generally direction provided to staff. Thank you. All right. Here we go. Thank you so much for that. We will move to item 4A. This is our item for today's agenda. Um I'll just very begin. I'll begin briefly by just reminding council that uh we are in a difficult situation with our budget. Each of you has uh expressed concerns, and I'm very grateful for all the work that you have done in recognizing the gravity of our situation and the work that has gone thus far into proposing some solutions to the challenges that we face. With that being said, I will introduce Finance Director Nicole Gonzalez to take us through what we need to achieve today. Great, thank you. Um good evening, Mayor, members of the city council, Nicole Gonzalez from the city's finance director. Um today is a work session, which will review proposed changes for the fiscal year 27 mid-cycle update. So, in way of background, um really wanting to focus on the bottom half of the uh slide here, which is why we're here this evening. So in June of 2025, we adopted a budget that was balanced for fiscal year 26. Um, for 2027, the city uh did not present a balanced budget. It did project a use of reserves to balance that budget. Council granted staff more time to close that structural deficit in 27 and beyond in a meaningful way that was much more um clearly understanding the impacts for both the organization and the community. And so the direction at that time was um our expenses uh should equal our revenues for fiscal year 26 and 27, not including transfers, and then in 28 and beyond, all of our expenditures plus our transfers should equal revenue. Um I will pause for a second here. This is just a roadmap of where we've been and and where we're headed. Um a lot of the slides that you will see tonight have been presented in a number of uh different council settings of the last several months. So I will not be spending great detail on every slide, um, but did want to provide a snapshot on where we're at.