Speaker 11: Everyone there. Okay. So I know this has come up in a number of questions that I've received from the council, and I'll read it as follows. The current annual cost of adding a fire marshal at the division chief level is estimated at 300.
Speaker 0: I'm sorry, I don't. Hey, we're. We're lost. Okay. Where is it? Is it Page? It says page four at the bottom of the page.
Speaker 11: No, it says page four or five at the top. It's the staff report. So if everyone's on the staff report.
Speaker 7: Okay.
Speaker 9: Oh, it's page eight.
Speaker 5: Sorry.
Speaker 11: Okay. I'm sorry. I guess my copy is different.
Speaker 5: That's okay. We have the.
Speaker 11: That's right. So the top of page eight, it sounds like just below the top bullet points. That should be the sentence reading the current. Okay, these are perfect.
Speaker 0: Thank you. We are literally on the scene.
Speaker 11: No problem. Now we're on the same page, kid. So it says the current annual cost of adding a fire marshal. The division chief level is estimated at 355,000. That is a true statement, and I'll expand on that with the next sentence. This includes salary and benefits, but does not include long term powers increases. The direction I received from council last July was to come back full four fold with what we have for you tonight. Look at a fire marshal position that's fully paid by a fee increase. Conductor fee increase on our fire prevention fees. Look at two new EMS fees for your consideration and also make some edification to our fire code analysis. That's what we're presenting for you tonight. I want to say that that figure of 355,000 does include, with all of our benefits, with all of our positions, doesn't include the current OPEB and PERS unfunded liability costs when we talk about this, don't include long term personnel increases. As you know, every one or two years we go through another actuarial recurs and sometimes those costs rise. So if they do rise in the future, I think you'll see through this presentation that we have a number of cost of living increases and also fee increases to cover proposed additional costs. So that as your chief, I'm saying that in the future and today, if this is approved this evening, there will be no impact to the general fund to add this position. So I just wanted to be upfront and clarify that if I could before I started our presentation.
Speaker 0: Mayor So you said there would be no impact to the general fund, but it doesn't include the increased cost of PERS.
Speaker 11: No, no position today knows or has the increase in PERS costs. We would come back to you and adjust the rates or the fees based on those in the future.
Speaker 0: So what you're saying is at this point in time, it is a true and correct view of the cost with the current PERS obligations.
Speaker 11: Exactly. Okay. Thank you.
Speaker 0: Thank you, Chief.
Speaker 11: So we have a very brief PowerPoint presentation for you this evening. Again, I want to get into kind of our study and we have NBC's representatives in the audience today. NBC was the firm that we've been working with. You'll see a lot of them. They're actually doing a study of all city fees. So when Public Works comes back, Parks and Rec, the police department, building, community development, they're also doing their fee studies. Our fees were last study in 2013. And as we know, our cost to provide services have increased significantly over that time period. We needed to utilize an outside study firm. Staff doesn't have the capacity to do it. We did internalize and study some of our fees we're going to propose tonight, but the fire prevention fees were all done by our consultant. We also wanted to look at our 2016, which is our most current California fire code, to make sure that as we develop and as Alameda grows, that we capture systems or programs to inspect and have fees aside for those that we don't have today. So we wanted to be as comprehensive and forward looking for you as we could. We want to improve our false alarm, fire response and fees. Right now we have a six month rotation and our recommendation is to go to an annual basis, as we do every fee based on an annual basis. We'll talk more about that. We also have fee changes that cover the full cost, as we talked about, of the fire marshal position and that we're going to propose to you to increase the division's entire division's cost recovery rate from its current 24% to 48%, starting very shortly to 59% in year four. And we'll talk about that. Also would like the authorization for my office to handle fee increase and code exceptions when you deal with the fire code. There's a number of exceptions that come up with different codes. And we're asking you for the authorization to have my office and the chief the chief officer assigned as a fire marshal to deal with those in the future. So we have again four recommendations for this tonight. Mayor and council adopt the proposed annual fire prevention fees as we discussed and the implementation schedule. Add one full time equivalent division chief to the Fire Prevention Staffing. Adopt the proposed new cost recovery fees, emergency medical services and vehicle accident cost recovery that we'll talk more about. Authorize the fire chief and my designee to administer the fee increase and code exceptions and modify the false warrant fee schedule from a six month rotation to annual based on all the other fees to be consistent. So when you look at our fee charges right now, our current hourly rates averages about $105 an hour to conduct an inspection. That's all staff time, preparation, building code research, walking on premise. That's kind of our standard fee, and that was the basis for doing the study. We're proposing that beginning very shortly after your approval tonight, that that rate increase to $150 per hour, which would increase our collection rate overall to 48%, followed by another increase next fiscal year in 2021, $280 an hour increase in the collection percentage rate to 57%. And then remaining kind of a just a cost neutral at that one year period for $180. Still maintaining 50% cost recovery. But then in 2022, 23, upping the fee to $200 to maintain a 59% cost recovery rate. Mayor, at your suggestion, when we met first to talk about this, you asked me to meet with our business community . So myself and our deputy chief met with our Chamber of Commerce, Waba Dhaba, all the associations who have written letters of support saying that they were very nice, that we stopped by the we told them the fee structure proposals that we have before you. We do have a smoothing out. We're increasing this over a four year period. It was very powerful to businesses and they were very thankful for that. So I believe the clerics provided you with that support letter also from the chamber. Again, we talk about the full cost of the fire marshals, 355,000 to pay for that, we have kind of the rate proposal below you. We know how many billable hours of work we can do in a year with our current staff, with the proposed increase before you and the additional proposed increases in reinspection fees will more than cover the first year. Total compensation and benefits of the fire marshal positions we talked about. So we always want to look at how our fees compare to other East Bay communities. And again, with the first proposed increase of $150 an hour, if you look at the graph before you, you can see that we're still well below the medium of what most communities in the East Bay charge a high would be Hayward, which is and these are hourly rates. So here we're designing an $85 an hour, followed by Walnut Creek at 837, the lowest there is, obviously San Leandro at 120 currently and then plan reviews and both inspections. We charge the same per hour. And because it's one hour staff time for those even after the the average they're excluding Alameda is $440 an hour so 150. When we show this to our business community there are gracious and obviously we're trying to recover more cost but obviously mindful of the cost to businesses and we want to be competitive in our region and I think still maintain that we do have that competitive service for you tonight. Even after the rates are all set at $200 an hour, we're still really well below what most East Bay cities charge for similar services. So again, as we move forward in that fourth year. So I want to talk about the two new fees before you, the proposed TMS cost recovery fee. Emir staff did a comprehensive three and five year time task in response time study to develop. What does it cost us to provide service on an EMS call, a medical call? And is that is that amount fully cost recoverable? And there are some instances where it is and we'll talk about that tonight and ultimately ask for your approval of that. So when you look at what it costs to run in an emergency, obviously we look at the crew costs. We look at dispatch costs of supplies used. There's a vehicle excuse me, a vehicle involved. And we have the city's administrative rate, which fluctuates every year. So we know now that a three person crew for an hour of time, which is our standard, including all benefits, including, again, OPEB in long term PERS, it's about $223 an hour. Our dispatch cost currently this year, it's about $42 per call. We pay a flat rate every year, but if you break it down into a per call charge, it comes out to $42. We use an average of about $20 in medical supplies, gloves, I.V. supplies, bandages on a medical call. Our Cities City's having rate at that current rate is $50. So it gives us an accurate picture that it costs us about $380 to run a single EMS incident. So with that, that was our basis for developing the true cost recovery amount or factor to determine what those costs are and how we would propose moving forward. So when we look at our proposed EMS cost recovery and the process, what we're proposing to do is include this as a bundled charge within our ambulance transport invoice. We have a third party biller that can do that. And even though we're building every patients that we transport, we will not collect those funds from every patient. And I'll kind of speak to that a little bit. Currently, right now, under state and federal law, only the private health insurers, Kaiser Blue Shield, Aetna, will pay a fire department for the first responder costs. That makes up of our total patients transported about 19%. So we use that 19% factor in developing of 100% billing out. We're really only going to recover about 19% of the bills that are out there. What this does mirror and counsel that protects our elderly who are on Medicare primarily and are indigent, who are on Medi-Cal. Those two health care coverages do not pay for the first responder fees. So even though we include them with the bill, they're not going to provide us coverage or funding back for that. They both have pre-defined already agreed to amounts of reimbursement. So there's no haggling with Medicare Medi-Cal. We can send them a bill for any amount. They're still only going to give us X, Y, Z back for that transport. So again, this does not affect our elderly, our most vulnerable in our community. We're really going after the dollars that the private health insurers have set aside for this and trying to collect that. Right now, we have close to 5000 billable EMS responses every year. That number grows every year. So our estimated annual cost recovery, again, of only the insured patients, is an additional revenue to the city of $332,000 per year. So we're proposing to enact that this evening before you. The next cost recovery that we'd ask you to consider. The saving, too, is for everyone that has general vehicle insurance. There is a small fee set aside within your insurance coverage that covers the event if you were to be involved in a vehicle accident. And when you think about it, that makes sense. If you're involved in a vehicle accident, you're going to have a large response. More than likely, you may be injured, which would promulgate a response from the fire department or an ambulance. You may need medical transportation. You may be trapped. You may need the jaws of life extrication equipment. So there is a portion of your overall medical coverage that reimburses first responder agencies, ambulance companies, even police departments for the cost of providing that service. Mayor and Council. When we look at what it takes us to run a vehicle accident response, it's identical to the same time, the same crew size, the same response, the same dispatch costs. They're identical to what our EMS cost recovery fee is. So the methodologies are identical. And when we look at the two fees, one, we're building health insurance companies. This one, we will actually build someone's auto insurance company. So we would collect what the auto insurance pays us. Right now, we average a five year study, about 200 vehicle accidents a year here in Alameda. We don't have a very high volume. We don't have freeway systems. But that's that's a good average that we went with. And we estimate our annual cost recovery could be about $70,000 with that fee once instituted. So again, I want to give you a cost recovery comparison of what other East Bay communities are doing. There's a number of them up and down the state, including those locally that have adopted EMS cost recovery fees. You can see the high would probably the Central Valley Fire District at just under $500. City Berkeley's about 425. Our proposed is 388. If you do an average of the fees, an average of about $383. So our fee cost recovery is is about the median of what most East Bay communities charge. Again, I can't speak to the studies that these other departments did, but I know that these are hard and fast and true costs for recovery that we can obviously stand by. Mm hmm. I want to talk, mayor and council about what the future of EMS cost recovery looks like, because I think it's important to understand from what your fire chief is looking at, not only locally, but statewide, but also what I ask my staff on a daily basis to look at. So looking at this, we're going to see some significant changes from the Medicare health care program. When you look at the patients we transport, and this is true for almost every public agency that provides ambulance transportation like the city of Alameda. Medicare is always the number one provider of our insured dollars. As we grow older and we get on Medicare, that's what we tend to have the most health problems and the probable need for ambulance services. So it makes sense that the majority of our patients are over 65 and those are who we transport. So Medicare is looking to do a roll out next year. And this is a combination fee structure that's been developed and been in the process for a number of years by the Association of Fire Chiefs, International Association of Firefighters. And really this was actually going to be implemented two years ago. But what stopped it was a simple nomenclature to the service. Medicare provides reimbursement to two types of entities a provider and a supplier. Right now for ambulance transport, we're considered a provider. A provider has a designated cost that's non-negotiable. And it's a take it or leave it. So when we build Medicare, even though our average bill may be 2000, we're going to recoup about $627. That's just what Medicare pays. They only pay for the base rate. They pay for the administration of oxygen and they pay us a nominal fee to transport per mile to a hospital. What this does now is make us a supplier of health care where we're now able to negotiate what our true costs are. Now, they're not going to take a makeup number, and we can't say it costs us $6 million for every transport or something like that, as you can imagine. But by adopting these fees and having done this study and knowing that our costs are 388 per call, I'll give you a snapshot of where these fees potentially could go . So if you looked at the other slide, we proposed about 350 something thousand dollars as an average. You could see that almost doubling because this would pay us for a higher rate of reimbursement on top of transport. So you're looking at almost a quarter of three quarters of $1,000,000 of additional revenue. So we're closely monitoring that. It looks like we're going to see a roll out of that in 2020. So as we know, we'll bring this back to you and certainly ask you to implement it because that's obviously less of a general fund impact that the fire department can contribute back for the services that we provide that are crucial to our community. One big thing I want to discuss that just came up this year that was actually stopped last year is if you look at the center of this slide, have initials called IGT. IGT stands for intergovernmental transfer. That is a process where most counties and county hospital systems derive their additional funding through both Medicare and Medicare. Essentially, it pays them for costs that just like us as a provider of health care. We were only given so much back, but at the end of the day, we look at our true cost. We send in an audit sheet and they provide us additional funding that is going to be made available to public transport agencies in California. I'm proud to say that that bill is an assembly bill is actually being sponsored, authored by Assemblymember Bonta. So we're very happy that Rob jumped on that as assisting us moving that forward. Now, what that does is right now we're in part of a program called the G EMT program. GMT is an acronym for Ground Emergency Medical Transport. That gives us annually about another $240,000 average over the last five years. That pays for additional transport costs for Medi-Cal patients. We're fortunate that we don't have a lot of Medi-Cal patients here in Alameda. We have a pretty good payer mix as opposed to more most cities in the East Bay. But we do have a fair amount of Medi-Cal that additional revenue does help offset our costs. What this would do would take us out. This bill would take us out of that GMT program and put us into an IGT program. So if we look at right now, Medicare pays us about $357 per transport on the formula here. That makes up about half of our transports, which are about 2000 average per year, and that's the cost of our transport. Our loss per transport is 1600 dollars. 1643 IGT would cover that loss in addition to what we originally received, so we could look at potentially another $3.3 million in revenue to the city starting in 2020, maybe early 2021. I'll give you an idea. Statewide, the GMT program right now reimburses public agencies. It's about 105 to $110 million program. Switching to an IGT would make that statewide a $1.5 billion program. So you can see the significant amount of additional potential revenue down the road. So we're fortunate that we are a transport history. We have tours and rights to that. We certainly have your supported council to continue that. But I think you see there's a significant amount of future revenue associated with that that we'll keep our eye on. And as soon as we can definitely catch that, we'll bring it back to council for your edification and ultimate support and review. So I wanted to give you kind of where we're looking at what the future of EMS cost recovery. And I think you'll see that by knowing what our fees are today, by having done this study on what our true costs are to respond. We're well set up to be that supplier of health care because we've done the study and we can quantify what it costs us to go to a medical call. And we're probably much more positioned in many communities to to be at the forefront of collecting those additional reimbursements in the future. Mayor and council. With that again, I'll leave you with our recommendations tonight for your hopeful support. We're asking that you implement the proposed fire prevention fees incrementally over the next four years. We, as we proposed, add one full time division fire chief marshal position to the Fire Prevention Bureau, implement the two new cost recovery fees. I spoke about EMS and vehicle action cost recovery authorize the fire chief on the code exceptions we talked earlier and make it a small change in our fee schedule to reflect that we monitor fire false alarms going from a six month rotation to an annual rotation. If you look at how the fee structures are laid out before you council, you'll know that, yes, we don't know what future long term PERS increases are OPEB liabilities, but we have some natural increases to the hourly rates that continue to build that cost recovery factor and add additional revenue over that four year period. In addition, in your resolution, we also can enact a you're at your approval cost of living increases if our costs accelerate beyond that. So what I'm specifying to you this evening is we're always going to keep those cost recovery numbers at the same and ensure that the addition of the fire marshal position has no impact in the future to the general fund. So with that Mayor Council, I'd be happy to answer any questions you have or the public council members.
Speaker 0: Do we have any clarifying questions about this staff report? Not this time. I think they have a couple. See here, Chief Rodriguez, the on page three of my my staff report. This is the section that says phe study results.
Speaker 7: Okay.
Speaker 0: Are you there? Okay. So in the.
Speaker 7: Uh.
Speaker 0: In the second paragraph, it says the fire department staff recommends recovering additional costs in phases over the course of a four year period. The second sentence is what I wanted to ask about where individual current fees are recovering greater than 100% of the calculated full cost outcome. These fees are recommended to be reduced to no more than 100% cost recovery. So my question is, which fees are those?
Speaker 11: There was a few fees in our overall fees which are attached to this report that actually were probably calculated at a higher rate. In the past, above what our current costs are. So under the state law of cost recovery, we can recover our costs, but only up to what our costs are.
Speaker 0: So call off hand.
Speaker 11: Which I can't recall offhand. I know there is only just a handful of them, just some small things that, you know are probably fees we hardly ever charge. But to be consistent with state law. Yeah, she measures in mind there's probably like four small ones that were captured in there. So. Offhand. I apologize. I don't remember what they were, but the majority of our fees did go up significantly with that increase that we proposed because we do have a number of fees in there. If you look at the overall fee index.
Speaker 0: I did, but I did always catches my attention when it says that some fees will be reduced. And I'm sure the business you're interested to. And by the way, you were very well received by all you and Deputy Chief John Beck were well received by the business associations because I heard back from them. And thank you for doing that at my request. Thank you. Another question I have on page four, this has two tables to provide a comparison of the recommended city of Alameda. It it's the second table, the recommended city of Alameda Fire Department fees staff provides the below table of similar communities and their associated fee structures. I'm still trying to figure out Hayward, but I'll ask one of my friends on the Hayward Council about that another time, Walnut Creek. I kind of get that. But Fremont, can you help me understand why is Fremont's inspection hourly rate $192 in their plan review? $95? If you know.
Speaker 11: As my understanding with Fremont, because they had Fremont went through an incredible growth spurt probably in the last ten years, I think their council made a decision to keep their fees as low as possible. So that reflects in what they're actually charging you as a council. Set the policy on what you want to collect, what percentage. So the proposals before you without you giving staff direction. I spent a lot of time with our finance director and our city manager. And if you read the NBC study, if we were to do a 100% cost recovery for fire prevention, our average hourly rate would be $300 an hour. I think that's a little egregious. If we were to inspect a barbershop, a small hair salon, you know, $300, that's a pretty high fee. And if you look at like Hayward of Walnut Creek, they made the decision, no, we're going to recover 100% of our cost. That's the council direction in those communities. The manager and I felt that and the business community was very supportive of it. If we kind of quantitative the fees at a nominal increase the first year, a nominal increase, the second year kind of a reprieve period, and then another increase to get it up to $200 an hour and not the 300 we're doing. We're obviously recovering the fire marshal costs totally, but we're also taking away from the general fund its fuller impact instead of the general fund paying 100% of the total cost of fire prevention bureau in the fourth year, they would pay the fees would recover 59%. So the general fund would be reduced liability down to 41%. We felt that that was a more kind of smoothing, an easy way to implement these fees. We recognize that costs will accelerate and go up in the future and we have those automatic increases in there to deal with those if we need to. So I think that gives you a little background on Fremont, some of the other cities. It's really the council's decision. Do you want to if you want us to charge $300 an hour as mayor and that's your wish this evening, we'll certainly comply with that. But I think after speaking with our business community, they were very supportive of how we said thank you.
Speaker 0: I don't think I heard myself say that, but I was just questioning if you knew and perhaps you don't. But that's interesting. So that Fremont might have decided not to burden their development community with fees. Then the other question I wanted to ask you is that the top of my page five, which talks about maybe it's um , somewhere I guess is just a footnote that as far as the billing for these fees that Berkeley city of Berkeley pro rates their fee by the the quarter hour. Is there some thought to doing that for Alameda.
Speaker 11: I believe we included in the master fee schedule both a quarter and half hour.
Speaker 4: Increments to match that.
Speaker 0: And so if you went, say, by four waiting by the quarter hour, but that changed the revenue assumptions that the billing structure is based on. You know, if you're not, any visit that you walk into is going to be minimum of one hour charge, but instead it's decided to be one quarter hour. Is there don't we have.
Speaker 11: To know if you actually look at if you actually look at the master fee schedule, mayor, it'll say we'll give you example, pick a supermarket, it'll say the occupancy type in the square footage. It already has pre-established how long it takes us so that one could be a 2 to 2 and a half hour. So the hourly rates and the inspection cost would be based on that amount of time. A barbershop very small. The. You only have a few things to look at. Maybe an hour and maybe half an hour. So it gives us flexibility in the actual fee study or the fee lines now to do that. So but it doesn't impact the overall fee, the fee amounts, if you look in the table of our step stepped cost recovery are extremely conservative. We only looked at revenue in the future from one source that the Fire Prevention Bureau does, and that's mercantile inspections, business inspections. There will be an incredible amount more of revenue because we also do residential inspections, apartment buildings, anything more than three units. We also do code enforcement and code compliance, which has its own set of revenue sources. And we also do reinspection fees. I really can't tell you, and I wish that every business didn't need a re-inspection. But as you go through more inspections and some businesses are more problematic than others, the reinspection costs go up considerably, too. So we can kind of quantify and maybe give an estimate to those. But the numbers you see here are very conservative. So I'm going to I'm going to say to council that we're trying to obviously under-promise and overdeliver.
Speaker 0: Thank you.
Speaker 10: I have a question.
Speaker 0: Okay. Councilmember Desai. Thank you, Chief.
Speaker 10: Thank you. Now, currently, is it correct that any kind of fire prevention or any kind of services that are being offered that are similar to what what's contemplated under tonight's discussion? Is it correct that we're doing it through non sworn fire personnel?
Speaker 11: No. The current staffing in the bureau is three personnel currently. All three are sworn. We do have one civilian inspection person. That's our senior code compliance officer. That's been vacant for some time. That is a non sworn position. Unfortunately, we're going out for the fourth time to try and recruit a replacement for that. But we it's been vacant for some time and we're having extreme difficulties trying to recruit the civilian position for that.
Speaker 10: Is it correct to say that there was a point in time when it was done by non sworn personnel?
Speaker 11: No. If you go back to when the bureau was shuttered in 2009, there was a staff of seven there and five of the seven were sworn positions, two were non sworn and it dropped out. Actually the one non sworn position that recently retired that we have to fill and council made a decision back, I believe in May of 17 to bring a smaller version of the Bureau back and that included the three non three sworn positions that I spoke of earlier.
Speaker 10: And do other CIT, do other cities do use non sworn or is the majority use sworn? What's the mix?
Speaker 11: It really depends on the city. If I had to take a pulse of comparable agencies, most agencies use sworn primarily for a couple of reasons. Non sworn fire inspectors. The positions generally don't pay very well and there's no chance for promotion. So they're considered kind of a dead end job. Most people take them to get some experience to go on and to become a firefighter or some other, you know, public safety professional. So we're finding that now with trying to recruit the sworn, the non sworn position that we lost. So most of my fire chief friends that I talked to are going if they do have non sworn as non sworn leave, they're replacing them with sworn because they just can't get non sworn because we can't maintain a salary that's competitive. And obviously people know going into it there's no chance for promotion. It's pretty much, I hate to say it, it's pretty much regarded as a dead end job.
Speaker 10: And final question, the discussion regarding the extent to which we utilize non sworn versus sworn. Is it correct to say that that was a council discussion that occurred robustly in 2017.
Speaker 11: From my from my information on the history of it? Yes. I think there was quite a bit of discussion on sworn versus non sworn and looking at everything. And I think I think options were presented on both.
Speaker 10: Thank you.
Speaker 11: Thank you.
Speaker 5: Questions.
Speaker 0: Counselor.
Speaker 3: Over.
Speaker 5: Thank you. Just a question of the city attorney. I mean, that's not an issue that we're allowed to be really discussing today, right? The issue of sworn versus non sworn. It's not on the agenda. It's not in the staff report. Well, I just want to I don't want to get shut up.
Speaker 7: I think you can probably if it relates to the fee study, if it relates to, you know, establishing the amount of the fees, then it would be something that would be appropriate for discussion point made.
Speaker 5: So Chief, thanks for that presentation. I just wanted to ask a few questions on the fire marshal position so we don't have that position today, right?
Speaker 11: Correct.
Speaker 5: So who's who's doing that job?
Speaker 11: Primarily myself and what little staff we do have assigned to the Fire Prevention Division currently.
Speaker 5: So what things? I mean, you only have limited number of hours in the week, right?
Speaker 7: Yes.
Speaker 5: So by having you do that and not having a full time fire marshal, I mean, what are we what are we losing? I mean, what are we not getting? What things are going undone?
Speaker 11: Well, if you look at the staff report and again, I don't want to hear what page it is because my pages are different. We really talk about the duties of a fire marshal and that's also what's really not getting done there. Bullet points I should at the bottom of my page three, it may be different than yours. That's really what's not getting done. We don't have the daily management and oversight of that division. It's the only division that doesn't have daily management and oversight in the form of a chief officer. Every other division does. Prior to 2009, we had a full time fire marshal that was a chief officer. And most communities, with rare exception, have a full time fire marshal, i.e. chief officer assigned. The fire marshal is critical and it's going to be more critical in the very near future. As this counsel knows, there's an incredible amount of pent up development on the island that's about to occur and we're trying to balance keeping new construction moving and also the existing problems in buildings today. The city manager and I have come up with some contingency plans. And if the fire marshal position doesn't get approved, well, I'm going to have to step back as fire chief and really make a decision on what we can do moving forward. And something has to give and I have to have a more higher priority with the existing buildings because people are in them. We have existing life support. Issues. Whereas a building that's being built is no hazard today because it's not being constructed. So it's imperative, you know, to keep our community moving forward. This is a mission critical position, and I probably said that in my report several times. So hopefully that answers your question, Councilmember.
Speaker 5: Okay. And by you doing double duty and only getting paid one one for one job, I mean, what duties of yours are are we potentially sacrificing by you continuing to be the fire marshal?
Speaker 11: Well, I think my staff would probably say they're hopeful that we get a fire marshal because I have to rely on them more. And there's a lot of things we're not getting done. We have an incredible recruit issue we have to deal with coming up because of our vacancies. We have succession planning. We have new company officers, new chief officers. I wish I had one on one time for the succession planning and mentoring. I can't find the time. And that's one of the things. And to me, those are incredibly important because we need to build our next future leaders. Summer in this room today, and that's imperative. And that's my job. But I can't find time to do that. So that does suffer greatly. And it's sad that it does.
Speaker 5: Thank you. And you mentioned the development. I talked to Andrew Thomas, and I think the number he gave me was between 29, 49 and 30, 49 in the pipeline. I mean, what happens to those if we don't have a robust.
Speaker 11: I'm going to have I'm going to have to make some hard decisions that the there's going to be significant delays in getting development off and up and running and construction. No development can proceed without the review of built in fire protection systems. The the lot plans, access points, fire hydrants on scene, on location, etc. There's a lot of different things that building and fire prevention work hand in hand on to make sure building safe building could be occupied and that without the two working cohesively, things get bogged down. Things will all slow down considerably.
Speaker 5: And this is a chief position, not irf 689 position. Right.
Speaker 11: I know this, this position would be part of our chief officer bargaining group.
Speaker 5: So not 689. Correct. Okay. And then should I forget the last question? But I think you've answered my questions. Thank you.
Speaker 11: Thank you, Councilmember.
Speaker 0: Councilmember.
Speaker 10: So just a quick question on the issue of if that there is there's a risk of development projects getting slowed down, but even if development projects get slowed down, is it correct to say that the end result is still an evaluation as to the fire readiness of of whatever project? So whether you do it under the current proposed scenario or you do it under the what we're doing right now. It's just that one's going to happen faster. But at the end of the day, both are going to have a sign off as to something as to whether a project is fire ready or whatever.
Speaker 11: It's not that easy to answer in that fashion. Councilmember de Saag. It really has to do with the project and the time management of existing people. One thing Council has to understand is when we initiated the Fire Prevention Bureau almost two years ago now, all those personnel needed training and significant training to get up to speed, to be able to do inspections legally, site people legally for code violations, but also to do some basic plan reviews and checks. The overall signing off of a development is really between the office of the Fire Marshal, meaning me now and the building official. And it really boils down to a time management thing. I'm not here to make an envelope threat of a work stoppage or anything that to the council. I'm just trying to edify for the council that this position is critical. And we want to support development. We want to support an expanded housing stock for our residents. We obviously want to support more economic development for for us as a community. But we've got to have the people in place and the tools needed for that. This should have had a fire marshal assigned to it two years ago. Tonight, I'm before you because I was asked to come back from this past July and do two more things. One, do a few study to look at our fees and increase them as needed. That's before you, but also pay for the position. So tonight I'm coming to you with a fully paid position with no impact to our general fund. And we're getting the benefit of having no future work stoppages and no issues with continuing providing great service that ultimately I believe our community deserves. Thank you.
Speaker 0: Thank you. Any further clarifying questions before we go to our public speakers? Okay. Seeing that I've got two public speakers, the first is Paul Muller and the second is Edward Hirschberg. And you'll each have 3 minutes to speak. Mr. Mueller.
Speaker 7: Sorry. Been sitting for a while. A little stiff.
Speaker 0: Me too.
Speaker 7: No, I know. I feel for you. Mayor Ashcroft. City Council members. Community. I'm an Alameda resident. I mean, Alameda business owner. I am a. Business Transactions attorney with an office over in Mariner Square. My wife shares our office. She's an educational therapist. She also lives and work there in Alameda in 2007.
Speaker 0: And Mr. Mueller, to be sure, you're directing. Oh, I'm.
Speaker 7: Sorry. In 2017, a fire inspector came to our 800 square foot office for three offices and a meeting, you know, an entry area. He was very nice, introduced himself, looked around, poked his head into each of our offices, said everything, looked fine and walked out. He about two weeks later, we then got a bill for his inspection and the bill was $402 a one hour minimum charge. So my request, I find that unacceptable. So whatever the business community meetings have had with the fire chief and I certainly, you know, respect that and understand that for me, $102 charge for what was essentially a five minute inspection works out to 1200 dollars an hour. I build by the hour, I don't know, 1200 dollars an hour. And I have 40 years experience as an attorney. My wife bills by the hour. She's a well respected educational therapist. She doesn't bill 1200 dollars an hour. So my request is that if you approve these fees and I certainly don't see any reason why you shouldn't, that you also direct the fire department to bill in some increments. That's less than an hour. It does not take an hour to review my office. The gentleman was there for 5 minutes max, so actually that's it. My request is, is that if you approve the fees, that you also approve or require a request that the fire department do it in increments of less than a full hour.
Speaker 0: Thank you. Thank you. I'm Evan Herzberg.
Speaker 4: Good evening, Madam Mayor. Members of City Council. I'd like to discuss the issue we had last year. The fire inspector came through our building over in Oak Street and in the space of an hour, went through ten or more.
Speaker 7: Officers building $102 for each and $102 for us for inspecting the building. Coming out to a bit over $1,000 for an hour's worth of work. We had an office building full of angry tenants.
Speaker 11: On our hands.
Speaker 4: So I made an appointment and I met with the fire chief and he says, Well, this is out of my hands. You need to take it up with the city council. So that's why I'm here tonight.
Speaker 7: We don't believe that it's fair to build.
Speaker 4: More than one person for the same man hour. If I did it in my.
Speaker 7: Business, I'd lose my license and probably be sued for fraud. So I think you need to you need to start building in increments.
Speaker 4: Not be building two people at the same time. And when you have an office building, why is it sliced and diced into individual offices for building? Why not simply build look at the entire building as a whole, as one business in two, 3 hours max. Fire inspector could inspect the entire building and issue a bill for it rather than.
Speaker 7: If they go to their current fee schedule.
Speaker 4: And their current way of doing it. It's going to cost $10,000 to inspect the building, which is entirely unreasonable. Thank you very much.
Speaker 0: Thank you. Okay. We have no further public comments, so we will close public comment. Councilmember Ody.
Speaker 5: Thank you, Madam Mayor. So just a couple of quick comments on this item. You know, I think for people's memories, if they if they don't remember the impetus for this, this was when we had the ghost ship fire over in Oakland and some 30 odd folks died because the place was not inspected. And even if it would have been inspected, you know, it wasn't it wouldn't have been inspected with people that really have knowledge of, you know, egress and ingress and, you know, all of those things that it's important that that a fire person, you know, has knowledge of. So last year we had this discussion during the budget and we decided to bring it back. And I think Deputy Deputy Chief Ziemba came back. And then I think you and I had a chicken and egg discussion about, you know, should we do that? Do we have to do the approval of the position before we approve the cost study? And now we're here today? So I appreciate that you were able to get this done and brought back to us in a timely manner. You know, I could sit here and discuss about, you know, the benefits of, you know, having a fire marshal versus not having a fire marshal. The the impact on the chief's work life balance. I mean, the impact on the 2900 homes that we are trying to build to meet the housing crisis that could be delayed if we don't fully fund this position, which, by the way, is really paid for. So I thank you for bringing that that back to us. But I think I want to talk about, you know, basic values and basic values of the city. And what I see my position here as a city councilmember is to provide basic services to our city. And to me, those services, our police and fire, you know, and to a lesser extent, you know, public works. So while I I don't think that, you know, we should be charging people to provide those basic services because that's part of our our duty. But be that as it may, I appreciate that our chief has taken out taking a hard look at this and find ways where our our fire department can be more than just a cost center, that it can actually be a revenue generator. And that $4 million that you found, I mean, that's the equivalent of 80% of our sales tax that we just passed. So I appreciate that and I appreciate the work of our police chief also to try to find grant money to do what I think our core basic services because I don't want to get to a position where somebody doesn't pick up the phone and call 911 because they think they're going to get billed for, you know, getting robbed or get billed for, you know, their house being on fire. We get billed because the power line is down or bill because a water main broke. So, I mean, that's my basic philosophy. But, you know, I appreciate that you've done this and we've asked you to do this and find a way to fund this position. I appreciate that. And I really want to commend our safety chiefs for, you know, what they do sometimes. It's it's disappointing to me that, you know, whenever safety, especially fire, asks for something that improves the safety and protects the lives of our citizens, which is your sworn obligation and you do it well, that is generate so much controversy and it shouldn't, because that is our number one priority as council members. Our number one priority as the city is to keep our people safe. It's to make sure that people live here, know that they're free from crime, and they know if they get sick and they know that their house is on fire, that we're going to take care of them. Because if we don't, our. Property values plummet. And then it doesn't really matter about infrastructure, it doesn't really matter about schools, it doesn't really matter about public works because we won't have any of that because we won't have a high property tax base. So, again, I don't think I think what's lost here is that our chiefs are charged with protecting our citizens and our fire chief. And those that came before him have made us a Class one fire department. I don't know if people understand what that is, but I think we're one of the only, if not the only class one fire department here in the Bay Area. I think there's maybe 18 statewide and like about 200 now nationwide. So what does that mean for us? I mean, if you look at your bottom line, you know, it means your fire insurance is going to be less. Everyone loves that. So I think that's a good thing. But what it really means for everyone's day to day lives is that if you pick up the phone and you call 911 and your grandmother is having a stroke, that somebody is going to be there, somebody is going to be there quickly, and they're going to be able to take care of her and get her to the hospital. If your kid is choking or having a breathing problem that a fireman and a fire woman are going to get there and they're going to take care of your kid. That's what that means. That means if your husband or wife is sick. That a fireman and a fire woman are going to get there and take care of that person. And those are the things that our firemen and our fire women and our fire chief and our fire management are fighting for every day. It's not political is to make sure that our people that live here are safe. And that is our number one priority. And as long as I am sitting here, that is going to be my number one priority. I am honored to vote for all of these things. I think it's a great thing that you're doing, Chief, and I applaud you for finding ways to find more ways to raise money and find ways to pay for these services. But at the bottom line, to me, this is a core service that we need to be providing. And I applaud you for bringing it forward.
Speaker 0: Thank you. Actually, Councilmember Vela had her hand up a little earlier. She had some, I think, unanswered questions. Councilmember Vella.
Speaker 8: So there were a couple questions that got raised by the speakers and and Chief, actually, I don't know if these questions some of them might be for you and some of them might be for our city manager or our interim city manager, but for building and our building and planning department. Do you know what increments we build for them? Do we?
Speaker 4: I'm sorry. I do not. As the chief said in this study, they are broken down into quarter and half hour and one hour increments. But sometimes on these types of inspections, I should leave that to the chief. And it's customary here. Is that a a building or an office is charged, an individual inspection, if it has an individual business license. So you may have an office building that has a dozen offices in it, and each one of those would be filled individually. The firefighter or the code enforcement officer comes there and then they have to go back and they've got to do paperwork. So it's just not time on scene. It's time completing the necessary documents and then the filing and the clerk portion of it and the bookkeeping portion of it.
Speaker 8: But that's so so to clarify, Chief, there might be the individual face time of the inspection itself, and then there's additional there's additional paperwork on the back end and ahead of time in terms of scheduling or how does that work?
Speaker 11: Correct. When NBC met with our staff, we looked at every possible occupancy that would need to be inspected. How much time it takes. Looking at travel time, preparation, reading the code, doing a reference check on the business, the history of that business. As Mr. Reid had alluded to, there's also travel time back. There's an incredible amount of paperwork to make sure they're safe. There's a we now that we bill, we have those building costs built in. We have clerical support, there's vehicles, radios, etc., etc., all go in and to make it up that cost to the two speakers that I haven't talked to personally but have dealt with on correspondence. We do now have the mechanism before you for small businesses to look at a half hour raid or if we're there for an hour and a quarter, we can do that. Whereas the passed fee schedule, we did not have that option. So that's one thing that we did built in because, you know, we want to be cognizant of our community and we want to be fair and certainly provide a good service, but a service that's meaningful and meant and obviously responsible.
Speaker 8: Okay. And then my second question, Chief, is and this was briefly touched upon, but for for an individual building. So that would be if there's different sub tenants or different sub businesses or business license holders within a singular building, they would each have to have their own inspection.
Speaker 11: Correct. It really depends on not so much their business license, but the type of occupancy that they are. Every business is expectable under the fire code. Some are mandated, some aren't. So we really try and do the ones that have the most risk to a life first and then kind of work backwards from there.
Speaker 8: How often are they inspected?
Speaker 11: It really depends. We're trying to get to an annual inspection rotation, but with limited staff it's been difficult. I don't know the exact amounts, but you know, the ones that are state mandated, like a care facility for the elderly, those type of things, we do those annually, but the rest we have to really just kind of stagger based on the personnel needs that we have assigned.
Speaker 8: So like a law office or an office for an insurance company or somebody who sells insurance or something like that, they they wouldn't have an annual inspection requirement.
Speaker 11: They would under the code. It's really up to us to we have that time management capacity to do that. Okay. So and it's a yes and no answer. I wish I had more info for you, but.
Speaker 1: No, it's helpful.
Speaker 11: Thank you. Thank you.
Speaker 8: And I did so since this also is council discussion. Thank you, chief. Those questions and I and I do appreciate the thorough report and especially the follow up. I know we had a lot of questions in our work session that we had and it required a lot of work. So I appreciate that. I do work in my day job in the city of Fremont. And there was a question raised earlier about Fremont, and they actually just published their fiscal year 2018, 2019, proposed operating budget and budget updates. And I have already reviewed them because I have to go there for a meeting next week. But so for the city of Fremont, they do a little a couple of things a little differently. First of all, they have they maintain a general fund primary reserve of 15%. And when you count the budget uncertainty reserve, it goes to 16.8%. It's significantly different from how we try to keep our general fund, and I want to keep it that way. And the other thing is, is that they have significant so they're a population of about a quarter million and they have significant revenue sources from property tax , about $92 million. This past fiscal year, it's projected to go up another 6 to 7% to about 97.5 million. And then sales tax, which they're on track for, and sales tax is about 51 million. A year and it's projected actually to go up to 7.1% and that's on track to about 55 million. I think the question for me is, you know, and really the question before the council is how much do we want to subsidize these fees? And we've been heavily subsidizing them essentially by not really charging the the kind of the actual for the for the actual time involved. And that has meant that we don't have the personnel involved. And Councilmember Odie alluded to this whole chicken and the egg conversation, and we spent a lot of time at the work session kind of figuring out why can't we charge the fees and then fill the position? And part of it is the state of California says you can't just charge the fees without actually having the position and filling it. So you have to you have to create the position in order to charge the fees. And then you actually have to work at filling the position and making sure that we're actually out doing that work. And I guess the question is, how much do we want to subsidize this? I think there is no doubt in my mind that we have to get this work done. It's part of helping Alameda kind of continue to move forward with some of these things that we have lined up. And I certainly don't want to change how we go about. I think the failure has been that we've said we are going to subsidize it and then we actually don't plan for the position and then the work doesn't get done. So I don't think that that system has actually worked for us. And I think if we actually did start subsidizing it with general fund money, then where does the money come from? And I want to continue to be, you know, doing what we're doing to do these set asides with our general fund. So I do think that really for me, the compromise is this kind of fee structure that's gradual and that is, you know, looking at increments of time that are smaller than what's existed, which is what one of the speaker's concerns were. We're not trying to overbuild. We're not trying to price gouge, but we are trying to cover costs. And I think that that's the responsible thing to do. And we do this occasionally where we have to adjust our fees. We did it last year with the parks. So so, you know, in light of that, I'm happy to hear from my colleagues. But for those reasons, I'm supportive of making sure that we create these positions and get the work done and and actually collect the fees for the work that we're doing, which we have not been doing
Speaker 0: . Thank you. And councilmember members like you had your hand up.
Speaker 10: Thank you. I believe that the role of the city council is to provide basic services in a cost effective manner. And I think the reason why we are striving to increase fees in an effort to recover costs is because the underlying workforce that's delivering this service, it's the cost is quite high. But the reality, though, is that unfortunately, the conversation about whether or not to have non sworn persons do the fire prevention type of building inspection type of activities, that conversation between having non sworn or sworn is a conversation that happened in 2017 and as a result the fire chief is following through on the directions there. So he cannot be he or his staff cannot be deemed for that. But I did run in 2018 looking to non sworn to provide the fire prevention services, the building inspections. And and so that was a point that I had raised with the public in the run up to November 2018. And I recognize that, you know, that that we are not going to revisit that. But that's also a truth that, you know, I had conveyed a perspective that I had conveyed to the public. And so I will be hard pressed to support this. I also recognize though that if we go with the non sworn civilian, had we had we done that. I also recognize that there might be some downsides and the downsides might be, you know, for example, delayed in development. But at the end of the day and that was the question I was getting at the end of the day, whosoever provides the service, we have to believe that at the end of the day, whether it takes, you know, three weeks to complete tasks or whether it takes six weeks to complete tasks, at the end of the time that the service that will have been rendered is an evaluation as to whether or not a business or a property that's being developed is fire, preventive, safe? So from my perspective, I'm willing to go with that tradeoff of having delayed development with non sworn. But I recognize though that that was a conversation that really happened in 2017.
Speaker 0: Okay. I'm going to go next. Thank you. And also, I did note to the clerk that I thought I was having time saved after clerk every time I called on speakers. And that is not the intent. So stop doing that. Please give me a little extra time, but I'll try to talk fast. Thank you, Chief Rodriguez. Good, thorough report. And and also Deputy Chief is on back who was kind enough to meet with me last week and answer my Brazilian questions on this particular item. I asked the interim city manager, Mr. Ruda, not to bring the authorization for the $355,000 fire marshal position and the $70,000 vehicle request to the Council. At this particular point in time, I explained that we are two months away from budget hearings and we also have a new city manager coming in about six weeks. But every other department in this city is currently preparing their requests for increased staffing expenditures and so forth. For the budget process, it is more prudent to consider all budget requests at the same time to give the Council and also the public a more realistic view of city finances. Mr. Rouda told me that to not fill this position now would delay development projects and construction of new residential housing. So I'm always one who likes to do my homework. I reached out to Andrew Thomas, our planning director, and Greg McFadden, our city building official, and asked them, Have you run into delays in our our development? New development, new residential. And they both looked at me and said, what? No. And Mr. McFadden even checked with all his business building inspectors. And that isn't happening. I mean, I love hearing the number of 2949 housing units in the pipeline. We should be so lucky to see these in the next decade. I mean, we just broke ground yesterday on the first residential development at Alameda Point. It's 66 oh, senior affordable apartments. That's wonderful. My point is, in California, for many reasons, residential development, commercial development is just not happening fast and furiously. I do have concerns that this funding, funding this position with inspection fees, fee increases and other fees is a risky proposition, given that we have to anticipate an economic downturn sometime in our future, which could result in businesses closing or leaving Alameda and therefore reducing the amount of inspection fee revenue. And indeed, the last time there was a Fire Protection Bureau and it got closed down, it was in during the downturn in the economy 2008, 2009. We also know, and it's my duty as an elected official to deal with this we have a growing pension and OPEB liability that we must address because I want all of you folks in the front rows to have your pensions in your retirement because you have earned them. You have worked hard, you have risked your lives. But I can't do that if this city doesn't stay solvent. And we don't have to look too far from Alameda to see examples where cities went bankrupt and the obligations to the retirees could not be met. I take that extremely seriously. We have also identified more than $300 million in infrastructure needs in our city, and that was a year ago when we were looking at but.
Speaker 3: Didn't.
Speaker 0: Manage to put an infrastructure bond on the the ballot to take to the voters. And I would just add that it didn't include a swimming pool at that time. And so those needs still exist with no funding source, better general fund to pay for them. We need to keep that in mind. Of course, I want our city to be safe for those who live, work and play here. And in 2017, shortly after the tragic ghost ship fire in Oakland, at my request, I met with then fire chief Doug Long. I wanted to know how many uninspected buildings do we have in my city? And he gave me a printout of over 3000 commercial buildings that were overdue for annual fire inspections, some going back as long as 25. Based on that information and his insistence that only sworn firefighters could adequately staff this bureau, I voted for those sworn positions. Later, I learned that many other fire departments in Oakland is one of them staff their fire protection bureaus with civilian personnel, but at the head they use sworn personnel. Chief Rodriguez was unable at short notice to provide me with an updated version of this inspection list. But I would like to know what has the Fire Protection Bureau accomplished in the comparison of when I saw the list in 2017 until now, with the sworn positions that we did at Metrics are important. Recently, this Council voted to approve funding from the General Fund for the Community Peer Medicine Program. It was to be a one third, one third, one third split with Alameda County Emergency Services, Alameda Hospital and the city. But last week, when I met with the chief operating officer of the county health systems and said, So when can we expect our money? He said, No, we turned down that request. We didn't see that it was that much of a cost savings to the hospital. So right now the city is burying two thirds instead of one third of the cost, a little over $200,000. Anyway, to wrap up, it is crucial for the Council to consider actions that further burden our general fund very carefully and logically. I reiterate my request that the approval of this Fire Marshal position for an annual cost of $355,000 and the purchase of a vehicle for $70,000 be considered during the upcoming budget workshops rather than this evening . I am fully supportive of the fee increase and I would say we don't have to create the positions to justify the fee increases. We have to show the nexus to the activity. And I think the chief and the folks who put the report together did a very good job. But I think as a council, we have a greater responsibility to look out for the the good of the entire city, which is made up of many valuable departments. Thank you OC Vice Mayor, we haven't heard from you.
Speaker 9: Thank you. So I'd like to thank. Chief Rodriguez, budget director there, and the city manager for spending a lot of time talking to me, asking, answering a lot of questions. I am thankful and supportive of the fee structure that that has been a lot of feedback here that's been proposed tonight. I do have one issue that I would like to address as we as we approve this. And it's that when you look at.
Speaker 3: Florida and you don't think you're fine.
Speaker 0: Just don't get points because maybe. They'll turn you down. Go ahead.
Speaker 4: Sorry. We're good. Yeah. Okay.
Speaker 9: When you look at the cost recovery chart, it assumes that there's no increase in the actual expenditures of this program over the four years, despite the fact that we know the contracts are going to are going to increase cost of living increases every single year. And so in approving this, I'm going to ask that we approved this in $2,018 with an expectation that every year this fee is increased, according to the COLA for the state, for the staff covered by the memo use that provide these services. In that way we will make sure that the that the 59% actually is covering the costs that in 2019 it is covering. If you actually adjust and look at it, it actually, under the current proposal would actually have a general general fund impact. When I spoke to Chief Long Chief Rodriguez in January about the fact that this issue would be coming forward, because I had heard it discussed at the workshop last spring and again during the budget, and as has been mentioned by many people, a number of people beginning in 2017, I did ask the question about why is this coming ahead of the budget? And the response was, since it doesn't, since it will have a net zero impact on the general fund, it would be and it had been asked for for two years that they would like to move it forward. And I told him at that point in time that as long as they could bring forward something that provided a needed service, that had a net zero impact on the general fund, that I would be open to supporting it. So tonight, I think if we can if we can approve the approve the cost recovery fee schedule, which includes the cost for this position, along with the position which I would like to condition, will be cost neutral over its lifetime. So as this goes forward, if the costs go up for this position, we will need to make sure that it is recovering those costs. This costs, this disposition as it has happened in 2008 and other times can be removed if necessary if we are in budget issues. But I would like would like to see it as a cost neutral because we are proposing it outside of the budget. If at some point in time we want to put it into the budget and have it be a budgeted general fund costs, I am open to that, but that should be done during the budget. Additionally, I would like to have a report, a six month report on the both the billing and collection of fees. In speaking to the Chief, it is my understanding that the $499,000 in fees that we are estimating in revenues is not the amount we're billing, it's the amount we're collecting, and that there is a lot of billing that is happening out there that is not being collected right now. I will hope that the Council will be working with our city manager to identify how we can also increase the collection of these fees to make sure that we are indeed having this be a conservative budget request. As the last speaker, I would be more than happy to make that into a motion.
Speaker 0: If we have another councilmember de SAC has something else to say.
Speaker 7: A question. Okay.
Speaker 0: I get that off the table first. Councilmember de Desai.
Speaker 10: The question towards legal staff. Would the use of a CPI factor to increase the NOM in nominal sense to increase the rate, recognizing that in real inflation adjusted terms it doesn't. Recognizing that. Would that trigger a need for a whole new Nexus study? Or is there some kind of language that says that that because the next study is predicated on the course of today.
Speaker 9: So I did I did ask that question. And just to quickly address addressed it, since we are not claiming 100% of the fees, that that increase would still keep us within the costs that are very I mean, it's like a $12 a year increase. It would keep us well within the costs that have already been identified in this study.
Speaker 11: Maybe if I could address a couple of questions, I might have a little bit more information than our city attorney.
Speaker 7: You know, I'll just say next.
Speaker 0: Let's start with this issue and then your next she wrote.
Speaker 7: I will just say that the Nexus study in terms of its legal validity, it's the assumptions are based upon what's before the council tonight it's not going to trigger a new Nexus study so long as we are as the chief has already said, we're not meeting our cost of service. So the council could direct staff to come back or could direct staff to if the council chose to adopt this matter. The Council could include a provision in the fee schedule that would require that the fees. Increase based upon the cost of living increases in the.
Speaker 0: Chief Harris.
Speaker 11: Yeah. Mayor, if I could just answer, probably Councilmember De Saag and Vice Mayor Knox White's question. If you look at resolution number one, 2191, the very last, whereas in that is currently allowing the council to further increase these fees annually by the consumer and or construct excuse me, construction price indices. So we already have that factor built in. But if you wanted to modify it to match a more you percentage, we can certainly do that too. There are nominal increases built in already which you know, will still keep us with higher amounts as the years go by. But we've already included that in here for your consideration tonight. So I'll leave it up to you with accounts discretion. But I believe that should answer the majority of what you're speaking of.
Speaker 0: Thank you. Did that answer your question, Mr. De sir?
Speaker 10: I think, one I just want to put on record. My worry is that recognizing that, you know, it's in the resolution and everything is all one thing. You know, us doing internal analytics, you know, it's to say that it passes analytic and legal muster. It's all good within City Hall. But I wonder if we're making ourselves vulnerable to a lawsuit by someone who might say, wait, wait, wait, if you're going to even if you're going to increase it by a CPI factor, and even if that, you know, the rate is under whatever threshold it is now, could someone say, hey, you need a whole new study? Every time you change it, change the number. I don't know. That's all I'm saying. Okay.
Speaker 9: So I hear the I hear the concern and I think we can.
Speaker 0: Do this Mary Knox way.
Speaker 9: I think we can just we can direct the staff to just increase the costs that are currently here by 3% each year, assuming a 3% CPI, assuming that that's going to be the highest that any of the COLAs that are that that the staff is going to get. It's well within the next study. So if the concern is in the future, we might increase it and get trapped. Get get caught by somebody saying, oh, you didn't do a new study before raising the fee. Then we can just direct staff to include a specific cost today that is well within the cost identified in the fee
Speaker 0: . Okay. Councilmember, will you want to comment or ask a question?
Speaker 8: I'm just looking at the city attorney here. Can you. The answer that.
Speaker 7: I. The problem. Okay. First of all, you know, to try and opine on whether or not we're going to be exposed to litigation every time the staff comes forward with the next study that that's that's a little difficult. You're always exposed to litigation. Every time you adopt a next study, I think we'd have to hear from NBC in terms of what the underlying assumptions are in the Nexis study. I've I've reviewed the Nexus study. I didn't see anything specifically that talked about personnel costs. I mean, I'd have to I'd have to look there. There is. Let me invite my my colleague as well, Lisa maxwell, who's got some more familiarity with the Nexus study, too.
Speaker 0: Okay. Would you please wait until you're at the microphone, Ms.. Maxwell. And whoever is speaking, introduce yourself. Please use the microphone.
Speaker 3: Who would you like to speak?
Speaker 7: All right. The point I'm trying to get to and I'll. I'll I can ask, please, is, is the Nexus study establishes the fees, but I don't know what the underlying assumptions are because. You know, we didn't review the backup documentation, but I think that that the vice mayor's proposal would not trigger a a new Nexus study.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 0: Okay. So did we have a question for the maker of the study?
Speaker 3: Well, the only comment I would give you.
Speaker 0: Guys could introduce yourself.
Speaker 3: Please. Nicole Casey, I'm from NBC and I helped with the study. The only comment I would provide you guys is that CPI or Labor cost increase in between study years, which is every 3 to 5 years, would be a very common industry standard. It all comes back to the language in the Constitution and other government codes that we are working with the estimated reasonable cost of providing the service.
Speaker 10: Councilmember DE So I can just ask questions. Is the proposal that Vice Mayor Knox White is raising, is that. Something that happens all the time across the cities that you work with.
Speaker 3: So I believe you mentioned COLA in between years, which is different than CPI. That has to do more with labor cost increase or analyzed in the budget to see what that is for Alameda. And that is one very common methodology of it. Okay.
Speaker 0: Okay. So did you have a question?
Speaker 5: Yes. I'm sorry. Through the.
Speaker 0: Church and through the chair.
Speaker 5: To the vice mayor. So is your proposal to increase it with COLA, increase it with CPI, increase it with the contract?
Speaker 9: I would I would say based based on that. Based on the contract, because we actually may change contracts in the middle tier. We would use the COLA that is provided in this state. It's almost entirely staff cost. So I reduce the staff costs, increase annual staff cost, increases the the metric because I think that would capture them
Speaker 5: . And I imagine that if for some reason legal staff analyze this and says that was something we couldn't do, you could come back to us and we could amend a resolution or something.
Speaker 7: That's correct.
Speaker 0: All right. I'm sorry, Mr. Mueller, but I've closed public comment. Okay. We have three resolutions to vote on. So the first one is the. Resolution number 1 to 1 nine one, amending the resolution, amending M.P. resolution number 1 to 1 nine one and revised fees. Does someone want to make a motion on that?
Speaker 9: I would like to I would like to move approval of that ordinance with the language that includes an annual call up. Sorry. It's just staff.
Speaker 0: Actually. Why don't we hold on for just a minute while we have a little say? But now I would rather have you be. Yeah, let's. Okay. We're going to take a five minute break, everyone. Yeah, you got 5 minutes.
Speaker 3: Wait. Now you need brownies.
Speaker 10: They just remembered.
Speaker 0: Okay. Yes, we. We're back. Okay. Vice Mayor, next week you have the floor.
Speaker 9: So at the at the direction or with input from this, the city attorney, the budget director and the city manager, there are some issues, including that language. So we're going to approve the ordinance as written with direction to staff that when you bring back the master fee schedule each year, we should make sure that we have increased the fees that are in this schedule. We are approving by the court, by, by COLA or, you know, whatever is the appropriate, whatever it.
Speaker 0: Doesn't say COLA, but it does say the consumer and or construction price.
Speaker 9: Indices, right? That's right. Mm hmm.
Speaker 0: Okay. So we have it. We have a motion.
Speaker 9: So I want to. I almost forgot something, and I want to increase I want to include ensure that we are also billing in incremental. Time increments, not hours as as was.
Speaker 11: So that's included in the master.
Speaker 9: Okay. Just want to make sure. Thank you.
Speaker 0: Okay. So we have a motion to have a second.
Speaker 3: Second.
Speaker 0: All in favor. I opposed. Okay. When oppose the motion carries 4 to 1.
Speaker 3: And Mayor?
Speaker 0: Yes?
Speaker 5: I'd like to move. Adoption of the resolution approving workforce changes to add one division chief position to the fire department. Fire Prevention Services Division effective three 619 for an annual cost of 355. Okay.
Speaker 0: I have a motion to have a second, second and discussion. There is a 70,000 vehicle expenditure and there is that next item.
Speaker 3: Item.
Speaker 0: That's the next. I'm sorry. That is the modification. Okay. We have a motion in a second on favor. I opposed. No. Okay. The motion passes. 3 to 2. Okay. Now we move on to the third resolution. Who wants to take that? So we there is a there's a residual.
Speaker 5: I will if no one else does.
Speaker 0: All right.
Speaker 5: Move approval of the third resolution. Do I have to read it or do you got it?
Speaker 0: Okay. I think we've got that. Yeah. All right. Is there a second? Second all in favor?
Speaker 8: I, i.
Speaker 0: Opposed. No. Right. The motion carries 3 to 2. Okay. And I think, Madam Vice Mayor. Nuts. Wait.
Speaker 9: I would like us to give direction to bring back on a six month basis a an off agenda billing and collection fees report for these new fees so that we can actually monitor that we're collecting the fees that we say that we in the amounts that we are saying that we will.
Speaker 0: And you want this to be.
Speaker 9: If I don't know what the will of this board is, is to actually vote to give direction on that. Right.
Speaker 0: Or you think we have to vote? I think we give staff direction. But I'm trying to get clarity on what the direction is.
Speaker 9: To bring to bring it to provide an off agenda report on the collection sorry, the billing and collection of all these fees on a six month basis to the Council.
Speaker 8: Councilmember Vela So on a six month basis, for how long?
Speaker 9: I would say until we decide we don't need it anymore. I'd like to say we haven't. We have a four year roll out. I'd like to see it over the next year.
Speaker 8: Is it possible at some point to sync it up with when we're doing mid-year? I mean, I, I think I guess my question is, in the first year, I can understand since we're starting it kind of close to the mid budget cycle, is there any way we can, we can coordinate some of these meetings with some of the other report backs that we're getting?
Speaker 0: And I want to interrupt. The question is, did we lose Elaina Adair? Did we send her home? She did okay, because I was going to she's the finance director and has to. That's okay. We she has a long commute. Um, I well, I okay. So I'm hearing of some concern on the part of Councilmember Village. You want to.
Speaker 8: I hear, I hear what the vice mayor is saying and I'm supportive of what he's proposing. I don't have a problem with it. I just I think maybe if we can coordinate it with the scheduling of other things, then we can actually get the report back when we're actually collecting all of that data at some point. So rather than doing it every six months, if we can in the first year, I can understand it being a little different from.
Speaker 0: What if I think I'm supportive of the vice mayor because we are staking a lot on this. This is paying a position set to not impact the general fund. What if six month intervals for the first year and then after that to sync it up.
Speaker 3: With other.
Speaker 0: Fee reporting?
Speaker 8: Yeah, that's what I'm proposing.
Speaker 11: Understood. Thank you.
Speaker 0: Well, I will communicate that to the finance director, but the clerk, I'm sure.
Speaker 1: Has got it in them and.
Speaker 0: Is brilliant and got that all.
Speaker 7: You're actually just directing.
Speaker 0: I Interim City Manager Mr. Reid.
Speaker 7: Yeah. You're actually directing the interim city manager, too.
Speaker 3: Right? She's back. Sorry.
Speaker 0: That's okay. I'm sorry. We're. Yes.
Speaker 7: You're actually directing the interim city manager to request the.
Speaker 3: Right from the financial a.
Speaker 7: Report. Right back in six months on collection of the.
Speaker 0: Right.
Speaker 9: Budget up agenda opportunities to be. I've got a report that they sent to us it does not have to be a presentation. That was my direct.
Speaker 4: Got it. We'll take those minutes and formulate it and get passed on to the finance director as well as to Eric Leavitt, your new city manager.
Speaker 9: Okay.
Speaker 0: Okay. Any further, folks? All right. With that, we will close. Item 60. Thanks, everyone. Okay, moving on. You know, my goal is to get us out on the same day that we started. City Manager Communications. Mr. Ruda.
Speaker 4: No, I'm good tonight. Thank you.
Speaker 0: I know no city manager, communications or communications. Not agenda. Public comment. We have one. We have one. And that is Joe La Parra. Mr. La Parra. Come on at.
Public Hearing to Consider Adoption of  Resolution Amending Master Fee Resolution No. 12191 to Add New and Revise Existing Fire Department Fees; and 

Adoption of  Resolution Approving Workforce Changes to Add One Division Chief Position to the Fire Department Fire Prevention Services Division Effective March 6, 2019, for an Annual Cost of $355,000; and

Adoption of Resolution Amending the General Fund Budget for Fiscal Year 2018-19 by $188,000 for Costs Associated with the Purchase of a Vehicle and the Addition of One Fire Marshal Position at the Division Chief Rank in the Fire Prevention Services Division. (Fire 3200)