g at about a hundred and five thousand dollars in cuts there um under this scenario and that's about a 32 percent reduction with about 220 000 dollars remaining um these folks provide really um both day to day and technical support um whether it's um compliance uh with uh accessibility provisions or whether it's uh the the plan checks or the inspections we have teams of people who come in on a daily basis oftentimes and supplement our uh our staff efforts and um we send plans out when they come in so that um you know our our two plus our we have got two plan checkers for example plus a green building plan checker and so you know if we get a lot of projects in at one time we are committing to timelines that we provide comments on those plans and so we send a lot of those out or we bring outside consultants and we've had some substantial challenges with recruiting qualified individuals and so some of that workload um has gone to our outside consultants as well if we're cutting that then right now we do have some um some really valuable services where we have inspectors who are on the counter for example during certain portions of our um our counter hours and our ability to provide those services um would be limited if more of that workload of the plan checks and inspections are falling on to our um our regular staff um so you know if a business is looking to come in and say hey i'm looking to open my business or a homeowner comes in and want some technical information up front um the technical experts may have a smaller amount of availability there as a result um there's some smaller um reductions in um some of our legal support we've been looking about uh $10,000 in reduction that's about a 10 percent reduction and that's for some of the things like um looking at specialized CEQA assistance or looking at um the estate density bonus and getting legal support on those items um so that the the majority of it would um come out of consultant contracts those would be the the primary impacts that our customer base would see and i'm happy to answer any questions that you may have thank you for providing the context we'll start to my right this this time councillor mercury thank you very much um appreciate it uh i'm interested in the um rental inspection uh ordinance i i have um well first i wanted to ask you about reducing public counter email and phone support when you just um kind of showed me this the new counters and yesterday that's kind of a disappointment i mean is that it's it's absolutely a disappointment i think the the reality is that um you know if we've got less consultant support then some of our technical team isn't going to be able to so right now we've got varying levels of um of service that we provide sometimes it's just someone submitting an application we're taking that in we're making sure that yes you've got all the plan sheets and we'll take it in and provide it to those technical experts to review we also have services where um someone comes in and we actually have the technical experts out there so they're saying oh you know what you need to think about your mechanical ventilation in this particular project and i've done these before and this is the challenge that you'll want to look at when you hire a designer when you hire an engineer talk to them about that so that you're addressing this issue up front so it's a really great service that we provide um and they're with with fewer consultants to assist with the plan check and inspections you know there can be um some implications for um the ability of that those technical staff to always be available but certainly you know we want to minimize the impact on our customers that's one of the primary um objectives that we have we just want to also be realistic and know that we may not be able to provide the level of service that we hope to and strive to provide in all instances thanks um what i really wanted to do also was look at i think that there's a lot of hardships going on with the um rental inspection program and code enforcement um and we might disagree on that but i've seen it close up with many students that i work with and other folks in town and i just would like to see a revamping of that program where it actually um can can assist tenants um and i know you and i talked about this a bit and i don't know if um council is could would consent on this but i'm would love to see the staff come back to us um when if we could shift the program to a complaint based only um and we could codify 12 sp 12 22 which is grandfathering in um units from like the codes of that year that the units were built um as long as um health and safety aren't at issue maintaining the landlord fees that fund the program and um with structures uh being brought up to code at the point of sale which would which i think would be have a huge impact on on the sales market it would be you know uh people wouldn't be flipping home so quickly and or or possibly well we're gonna i'm gonna go down the line here okay cool councilmember clever thank you uh good afternoon lee hey so um i would love to just see more of the physical data on the reduction of contracted supporting staff and the reduction of programs that trigger specialized legal support just so that i can make an informed decision i let thank you for the brief breakdown in the beginning of the explanation but just so i can see it and have a chance to look at it i was resistant to the reduction to public counter email and phone support because every time i call the planning department on the main desk it goes to a voicemail and i can only imagine as a community member wanting to get in touch with someone having to wait through that process every time it could be frustrating um also one of the things that i've spoken with marcus about and wanted to get and i'm in this kind of more long-term thinking but additional ways that we can generate revenue through things like vacant house fees and other kinds of stuff like that uh what's the feasibility from your perspective on exploring those options of a generate more revenue that way so that is certainly an opportunity for us to explore that was something that came out of the housing voices report so that community generated process that community process generated a wide variety of recommendations and a vacancy tax as well as a out of area purchase um uh surcharge both of those were identified there is a potential for those um and it's certainly something that we could look at um i know that uh we're looking at a variety of things through the um action labs i don't believe at this point that was one of the things that was identified but it's certainly on the the longer list and it wasn't um if i recall correctly and council member browner may or walk into maybe able to jar my memory here but i don't think that uh that vacancy tax made the first cut of top priorities in the housing blueprints subcommittee recommendations but it was certainly discussed and um was um uh consideration as part of the voices report i don't remember exactly but i i do recall discussing it and i think part of the kind of discussing it as maybe not first priority for um moving forward was related to the timeline because we were talking about likely 2020 revenue but we're getting there now so i'd move it up the list you could revisit that yeah thank you and um i don't know if you have it because i i know that's on the list of recommendations but any analysis from your team as far as additional revenue that could be generated through levied fees now not taxes because taxes of course have to go through the voter process but other potential revenues um opportunities through planning that could be uh policy driven from the council it'd be great to see absolutely and uh one of the action lab items is looking at a um impact fee for um for public services uh emergency services fire and police for example and also we do at some point want to revisit our our building fees and update a fee study have an updated fee study there we did that um several years ago i think about three years ago now for the planning side of things um we also i want to remind the council because i think this was a great thing last year the council approved uh cost recovery provisions for our code enforcement division and so if folks work with us and correct violations they um do not get charged time and materials but if we get to the point where we're um requiring a notice of violation those individuals start getting charged time and materials and um in june you'll be seeing the first round of those um where council's asked to put that on the tax assessment to collect those bills for those who haven't paid so i think that was a great step in the right direction so that the people who are doing the violations are um actually paying for that service rather than the general public paying for it wonderful thank you just in the interest of time to try to get us over the finish line here um i think i'll just reach out the with my specific questions i understand um certainly where you've tried to um make the cuts um probably my biggest concern is the public counter service um you know i think uh it's important for people when they're taken alone out to do a remodel or uh you know or somehow financing um it's really important for people to be able to um access our planning department and and get decisions in a timely manner because that really impacts people's ability to uh to uh to handle that risk financially so that would be my main comment thanks thank you i would just i would just share i would share i i share the same concerns around the public counter you know impacts that could have for our community and then um i think i heard you mentioned the cpp could you explain more that's um dave seppos and the work that he's doing um to evaluate um and provide a recommendation on the rental housing task force um so as council looks at sort of long-range plans and long-range planning activities um that uh consultant budget is what we draw on for some of the priorities that the council provides and that was just an example of a recent one where we used that same fund that we're now proposing to cut and and so um in certain instances if the council says we'd like to go and do this we've been able to say all right you know we didn't get to the sea bright area plan this year and so we can fund that but as we continue year after year to draw down on that fund we'll have less of an ability to respond and particularly if there's a big project um at any one big project at the the proposed funding rate any one big project could um could use that entire amount of funding and more so it's just something for the council to be aware if there is um a desire for the beach south of laurel plan for example um is supposed to be updated if if you wanted to provide that direction we would then be asking you um where is that funding coming from if we've we've drawn down on those consultant funds and just if i if i can remember quickly did you did we um do we have a specific amount set aside for that one project at this time in this budget or is that just sort of overall for cpp um for cpp that's under the current fiscal year and we're able to that'll be completed under this current fiscal year it's about uh 40 000 dollars we're um we're evaluating yeah depending on what comes out of that um and that is expected to come back to you on june 11th um but depending on what comes out of that and the recommendations from the council that could be you know anywhere from i would say um you could say let's not do anything and that wouldn't have a budget impact or you could say let's go do a task force and have a consultant lead that and that could be you know in the range of 250 000 um that would be more than what we have um allocated in this fund and so then we would be looking to see where does that uh funding come from gotcha thank you okay just wanted to know if you could provide when when you have this the item that's reduced programs that trigger specialized legal support legal support can you just provide a little clarity around that sure so um and looking at the past five years or so we've spent between roughly about 30 000 and about 90 000 about 35 000 i think was the low end and about 90 000 on things like a big part of that is our sequel review so we have a contract with remy moose manly out of sacramento and they supplement the work that we have with our city attorney's office and um provide some of that technical expertise in review of um the um technical reports or the environmental impact reports or mitigating negative declarations and so forth so they provide consulting services um in that regard we also um work with our economic development department to um review proposals for example um we've got a number of projects coming in right now that are proposing state density bonus and um use of the state density bonus in ways that um uh we haven't um uh necessarily had here before for example in the downtown there's a floor area ratio cap instead of a dwelling unit per acre cap and the state density bonus is um used primarily typically to increase the number of dwelling units per acre and so that that account would allow us flexibility to consult with some of those experts um that um we work with through our economic development department to say all right um how do we apply this and what are the different ways that uh that this is applied um in different jurisdictions throughout the state so that we can have the best set of information that's one legally defensible and that two provides the council with a fair amount of information on the options for how they can approach those situations so those are just a couple of examples of the kind of work that we do the vast majority of it is that CEQA review um so when projects come in and we've got um questions we can ship that out and say hey can you help us out with this technical analysis thanks yeah and then I just also like to um kind of reiterate or or also agree with what councilmember crown said around the rental inspection program and trying to think about ways that we can cut costs around that if it can go to a complaint based whether that will help shift some of the costs with that program because I know I notice there's a number of different line items um for different levels of funding and the one that's under expenditures by activity the the inspection services is around two million and so just wondering and then code enforcement um also comes in almost at a million across two different fund types so it would be interesting to see whether or not that might be an area where we can see some cost savings so um just a couple comments on that um one um we are happy to look at um how that program could evolve I think you know there are some pros and cons of going different ways um and um we can discuss those further at a later time I just want to um to articulate that the rental inspection program the rental inspection service does um it's cost recovery so all of the participants in all of the rental owners pay an annual fee and that goes to fund the costs of the services that we provide so we've got two inspectors and one technician and so those um those costs are all offset by revenues that are brought in by that rental inspection service um annual fee so if we so I just want to be clear there there wouldn't necessarily be a savings even if we cut like you know if we approach that program differently and there were fewer costs that would just mean fewer costs going to the um the rental owners and and right now a single family home I believe is around $68 a year something along those lines um and then if you've got multiple units it actually scales down from there so the first one is larger and then each one is is substantially smaller following that and we've got Sarah like to clarify one thing sorry I just want to clarify for a council member coming's last comment the inspection services is building and safety at two million and then rentals to 2304 which is for next fiscal year about 401,000 the name's a little confusing so just want to clarify that and you got to do building inspection for buildings under construction you got to go do those so your reduction there is really in well I guess you ask questions about rental inspection that's self funding anyway the rental inspection is self funding us by and large I share others concerns with um protecting to the greatest extent possible customer service for projects in the works and my one question is um I understand we're moving incrementally to uh online plan check and so forth do you see that contributing some efficiencies that free up staff for more personal interactions you're smiling I'm smiling it's a great question because we're we're actually going through a lot of that analysis right now and what I'm hearing from our team is that um they may need a dedicated person to sort of manage that intake and so it may shift some resources from the counter to reviewing those plans as they come in electronically to to having some of the services that we currently provided the counter where you know we're flipping through and making sure an application is complete and able to be submitted that that would have to actually be back of house where you know we're getting those in and they're reviewing those electronically it's certainly something that we want to do both from an environmental perspective and from a customer convenience perspective and so we're working on that but um there are there are some efficiencies like routing plans will be substantially easier but um we are going to have the same amount of work in terms of reviewing and sort of the gatekeeper exercise of reviewing plans up front and making sure that yes you've got everything um in order to go ahead and accept that plan nonetheless it does seem like long run there's a improvement in customer service they don't have to drive down absolutely wait around for an hour or whatever and and huge printing costs I mean some of these plan sets are hundreds of pages when you're when you're looking at big buildings in the downtown you know you could easily have a hundred plus pages of a plan set and so that adds up really quickly at four or five six dollars a sheet so this sounds like a work in progress yes yes the move to online it is and we're starting small looking at um some of the the small applications in planning which have you know fewer reviews and then moving to the smaller applications in building and something I remember from a previous era was um when the economy slowed less building was going on and there was that was an opportunity to reduce some staff it seems to me the building scene is pretty busy right now um how how is your staffing my question there is um when the building rate picked up in the past and we didn't have the staff and currently hired we had to bring in outside plan checkers and so just in order to move things in a timely fashion so do you have the staffing now are you fully staffed you see part of this contracted staffing support was to fill gaps or do special projects I guess my question is um what are your predicted needs or your special project needs how do those things weigh in sure so we are extremely busy right now in both the planning project review and the building plan check and inspection worlds we have a significant number of vacancies in our building division we've been unsuccessful at getting candidates for a wide variety of reasons um you know the um competitiveness with the public sector and private sector and just the industry itself is experiencing challenges all of those are contributing to us you know I think we had we had three applicants for one of our recent recruitment and none of them met the minimum qualifications um so that gives you an idea of why we're actually bringing in even more consultants than we would otherwise be bringing in um what it amounts to is you know an inspector out there who um probably you know would need an hour to be doing a really incredible job they're out there and they're they're moving fast they're out there for 45 minutes um and rather than being able to to say you know what this is this is what you need to do to get this to meet the to conform this is how you need to construct it they say you know follow the plans call me when it's ready not not bad service just not the level of service that we would hope to have if we were able to get fully staffed um so um we do have some of those vacancies right now there are ups and downs and um and that's one of the reasons why it's good to keep some contractual support in our budget is because uh if if there is a downturn in the economy then we're not having to cut our actual positions we can cut the consultant budget and still keep our people on board and also to the extent you have three vacancies you absolutely need the contract and staff in order to get the work done but you've got salary savings to cover that's that's exactly what we're doing now is we're using that salary savings and we've come back with a budget adjustment to to switch those from one account to another okay and then um just in general I do uh in general support the rental inspection program it's it's self-funding and my own experience with it has been helpful and reasonable official okay councilmember brown do you have any yeah I just uh concur with my colleagues about uh my opposition to reducing public counter support and phone and email support the public I think you know having had enough messaging from constituents who and generally the the ones that we hear there's concern about non-responsiveness it comes from planning and I know there's probably a lot of reasons for that so I'm no judgment there it's just to say I think that's an important service and we don't want to reduce it any further so agreed and then I also agree about a longer term conversation about the rental inspection program given that it's not necessary to get a trigger any budget cherry changes right now I just I just want to say I support that conversation and want to flag that for the future so we have one last comment yes uh I think we're not talking about eliminating staff support you've talked about some pucks and that's what I want to get a better idea sure how much pain can we stand so I I think that's it's it's a very valid question I think what we would be doing is you know the amount of time that we have dedicated to inspectors what we the primary implication here for our customers with the amount of time that we have inspectors dedicated to the counter may need to be reduced and so if people are looking for that technical expertise that's where the the folks who are on the counter may have a limited amount of time they could still come in and get some of their questions answered but if they had highly technical questions if we were cutting back substantially on consultants those folks may need to be working on some of the paying customers requests as opposed to the free services that we provide at the counter we can certainly do a closer evaluation of that and give you some more specifics and in terms of how many hours we currently have that service available and the types of reductions that may be resulting from cuts to the consultant's budget and just the final follow-up in looking at ways to to make it more efficient something like just booking a half hour appointment I mean for consultations I mean I appreciate the that suggestion and I think you know it's it's a concern of ours as well and as we take a closer look we can see you know are there opportunities to cut elsewhere such that you know there are even fewer impacts to the customers thanks I'm Lee I was just wondering about the reduction of programs that trigger specialized legal support how does that play itself out if we're not going to go out and get the extra sequa and environmental review that we need are we going to get it in in-house some of that could be in-house the other thing that could happen with that is you know we may need to come back to the council if and as I mentioned there's been a big range it depends on the project so we spent 35,000 three years ago and got it 90 so we may need to come back if we say hey we've got these things and we need that legal support with respect to the rental inspection ordinance I'm looking for a shift of focus I'm looking for it to be pro tenant and I think we can still collect fees and still support the program but a different orientation that that isn't the way it's been going for for tenants because it's not been going well for tenants so I'm just that again I would how do we want to do this I put out four points that I would like to pursue that I would like the staff to come back to us on and say you know to revamp to relook at the rental inspection ordinance is that consensus or do I need to make a motion or how does that go I think that you know in regards to the purpose of today I think it could come back at a future time for a policy discussion but for today we're looking at specific things I don't know Marcus or for my lens I'm trying to differentiate between is there a budget difference or is that a policy change well I don't see the 40,000 that cdbg it's missing here on the budget did didn't we leave 40,000 for code compliance from cdbg yes it's not in the planning that would be in the cdbg funding economic development so would so I mean that that would be a savings if we move some of the code enforcement from the above column where it says code enforcement 71,000 and we took the 40,000 would be a savings okay I think okay so in for today's purposes it sounds like you know if we could maybe reserve some of the policy discussion or direction I guess you could do a motion if you wanted to get direction at this time but I think or you could work with staff and with other council members at a future time to bring an item forward but to get us through an additional four departments proposed cuts as well as some ideas for our staff for today's purposes of the budget hearing I think I'd like to keep us oriented on that personally then I'll just make a quick motion then and have and it's for staff to come back to us for information and if there's a potential savings at all in any of the rental inspection stuff and it would be to shift the program to complaint based only to codify SB 1226 that was adopted last year allowing the enforcement of codes in effect at time of construction maintain landlord fees to fund the program and structures should be brought up to code at the point of sale okay okay so there's a motion by council member crone okay is there a second at this time a second second by council member clever all right any further this is asking staff for direction okay council myer council for myers so staff would come back with with the report on all of those savings to be had okay so it's not a it's the motion is not directing the changes in the program it's no that we come come back to us and then if that time if the council wished we could change it okay does that feel something that you could research for us and yes absolutely I appreciate that it's it's request for an analysis because we've got lots of thoughts to share on that we've talked about yeah okay so yeah if there's any savings you can report back okay so we have emotions that councilman just clarity it's not a specific direction it's just direction for information right okay any further discussion okay all those in favor please say aye all right any opposed no I'm sorry I meant to say all at the time okay so that passes unanimously okay thank you Lee I think we'll take a five minute transition break before we get into parks and recreation so we have parks and rec finance HR and IT community support and then council so we have a lot of discussion still ahead of us so hopefully we can continue to power through maybe about a five minute break and recreation superintendent back in the back as well to answer any questions so wanted to kick this off really quickly in terms of our process and putting these together this was a obviously I think to echo a sentiment from other departments a very challenging exercise to go to I think we all feel very lean and efficient in what we do so going through this exercise certainly was a challenge to do but I wanted to recognize our staff that went through this process this was not simply our administrative staff bringing these recommendations this was our full parks and recreation team operations team that really kind of weighed in on these items to bring them to you so this is kind of a full team effort in terms of what is in front of you all today so I will really just start to kind of go through the list the finance department did a really great job sort of condensing and summarizing a lot of these points that you see on the slide in front of you in terms of our reductions of middle we actually have a number of additional items beyond just these here and I'll reference those after I go through these as well and I'll try to reference some of the numbers as as I go through here so I'll try to move relatively quickly but happy to open it up to any questions that you all might have so on the first one here the delay wharf and museum maintenance this is really a couple items that are kind of combined on the full detail to the middle that you all see the total there between the two is approximately $70,000 between wharf maintenance and that includes the surfing museum maintenance as well on the reduction of parks fencing support and maintenance that really comes from our central zone so we're broken up into geographic zones and this really pertains most appropriately to ball field fencing Harvey West for example so that the portion of fencing that's represented on the slide here that's about $15,000 but that comes from a broader item that's from professional and technical services which is 52,300 is what we've shown in our reduction submittal so that includes fencing but also irrigation tree work park improvements a whole slew of of things in the professional and technical services components within our budget reduce water and until brown out areas so this really pertains to our golf course in particular we in our submittal included golf course water reductions of $40,000 and that literally just means not watering not irrigating certain areas letting those areas brown out in terms of the turf so it's a $40,000 proposed reduction elimination of youth museum programs this is really toward let's see funds appropriated toward the natural history museum this is essentially a grant that we provide the natural history museum to provide education environmental education and youth programs in pogo nip so this amount is $20,000 so we included that again very tough one for us to to sort of reconcile with cutting but I think in all things considered one where we would need to rely on the museum to raise that money to offer those programs up in pogo nip the next one reduce staff and temps for trail sports official summer camp this again is kind of a combined item um from a couple areas so this includes our trails crew our youth trails crew in interns so that item is about 40 a little over $40,000 it would be a cut which represents about 50 percent of that program so we would reduce our youth trails in interns program by about 50 percent which is $40,000 this also includes our sports officials and summer camp temporary staff that amount is about $27,000 and what that means is that that would be a really a staff reduction so that we potentially would reduce one week of our summer camp we would also reduce the number of officials that we have assigned to like adult softball leagues for example so down from two officials to one official per game that would also reduce some of the staff that we have at those adult and youth athletic events so from kind of again a customer service standpoint from a safety standpoint and just kind of the user experience again fewer staff fewer officials in terms of adult sports and temp staff let's see you go down a reduced trail and related cleanup so this encompasses a couple different items this is vegetation management so $30,000 reduced resource management for green belts trails stormwater watersheds erosion control and invasive plant removal this would also reduce our camp cleanup budget by $7,500 that's a reduction in resources available for camp cleanups and parks and open spaces and I believe that's the the total total representative amount from the trail and related cleanup items the last one here eliminates summer ads that's advertising and bus trips this falls under our events and youth category this is about $13,000 and this eliminates commercial advertising for a lot of our summer events July is parks and rec month and it eliminates one of our summer bus trips as well so as I mentioned we have a number of items beyond what is shown here as well so I just wanted to highlight a couple of those and the dollar amounts tied to those consultants and technical services so this amount is approximately $55,000 this is a reduction in consultant services so it reduces our opportunities for hiring grant application writers biologists for environmental review in our parks and things like that so that's consultants and technical services class reductions we have a budgeted amount to essentially to pay our class instructors and educators that amount is about $14,000 and so our class reductions we proposed that as well we would reduce the number of total classes that we offer many of which are at the Loudon Nelson Community Center going down the list repair services and materials 24,000 this is a reduction of repair services operational equipment maintenance construction facility materials park signage and things like that and then finally landscape materials and you could really probably group this into the reduced trail and related cleanup item this is an additional 22,000 and this is just a reduction in budget for our ability to maintain and upgrade park landscapes at kind of natural areas within parks so very quick summary there thank you for kind of listening to that that quick summary but happy to answer any questions you might have thank you okay so we'll go ahead and maybe go down the line again but maybe we'll start here in that way and then there in that way to mix it up a bit so vice mayor Cummings if you have any at this time if you don't that's okay we can come back to you please come back I guess I can just say for now that it's I think this is one of the areas that I care a lot about and so seeing reductions in programs for youth and programs that help maintain our environment our reductions that I don't really want to see happen so I'm hoping that we can look into other areas to find places where we can make further reductions to try to maintain as many of these as possible but thank you for bringing forward all these proposals I just mentioned really quickly these are again this is a challenging process to go through I think these are sort of the lowest hanging fruit if you will in terms of opportunities for us without just completely shutting down operations closing facilities closing parks are just shutting down programs so that we this was our best effort in sort of forgive the phrase sort of nickel and diming where we could to reach the target I'll ask a couple questions real quick actually with regards to the the wharf maintenance and the museum what are those what were those maintenance items be yeah I may rely on our park superintendent here the wharf maintenance is just deferred facility maintenance so a lot of the buildings that we own the restaurants and so forth but also the public restrooms and things like that it would probably just be deferred maintenance on on those type of facilities that's the bulk of this number that's 67 000 of the approximately 70 000 that I referenced the surfing museum is much smaller I think that overall budget is probably in the ballpark of seven or eight thousand or I'm sorry I actually shouldn't say that because I don't want to I don't want to make a mistake there but the amount that we propose cutting is 1700 so a very small amount 50 000 total yeah so just a small reduction about 1700 is what we propose I think with one of the things that I would want to see is potentially at a minimum keeping the funding and for the surf museum because it seems like it's such a small amount and then you know going through and kind of looking at some of these other items as well with regards to the golf course and the brownout given that we've gotten we've had you know an incredible amount of rain this year do you have any sense in terms of like time to brown out of the golf course and what the timing might be that's got park superintendent Travis back to come up any um so within the overall golf budget we have close to three quarters of a million dollars budgeted for water and that is due to the really the increased water rates that we've experienced in recent years that's a high end estimate which would allow us to fully irrigate the course in normal or you know somewhat droughty conditions not a drought emergency so the reductions we're proposing of 40 000 to that amount really come with somewhat of a gamble if we have a wet year as we did this year then we wouldn't be spending that full amount anyway and the reductions would be actually not noticeable if however we got into that you know dryish sort of year then we would be sort of expanding the areas that we already brown out which are sort of in the fairways and non-playable areas or allowing the course to go dormant potentially at a point in the dry season also another question with regards to the golf course when do you when do you all actually water the greens or the the course itself like do you do it during the day do you do it during the night we do it in off hours when people aren't playing there i just want to reference the question about the surfing museum so if i understand you what you're proposing is it has in the budget i i'm not open to the budget page and i'll find it but a budget of 50 000 you're suggesting a cut of 1700 that's correct so again you said you wanted to preserve the surfing museum it's there and this is just for the maintenance of it so and that's i believe staff largely by volunteers isn't it uh city staff and volunteers yeah combination um so i there that's why it's i keep raising the question it's how much money out of how much total and i will find the page and reference it um page i'll find it um and i appreciate the statement that this is these are the nibbles around the edges that you think you can achieve i don't think any of us want to do so i'll learn more but it seems to be these are none of these are a huge item in and of themselves but they will add up your share of it there'll be some tweaking one of the questions i have when you talk about reducing sports officials and summer camp staff and and other things too i know this is of interest to you but the um potential for really increasing our use of volunteers well of interest and support for parks and rec so any comments on on how that might offset a bit of this it couldn't offset all of it yeah it's a good question i think that's a big priority for us as well i i'm not familiar historically with how we've engaged volunteers for officials and support at these type of things i know rachel if our recreation superintendent wants to chime in but i think that's a big priority for us on the recreation side but potentially on the park side as well and what i mean by that is uh like our adopt a park program so can we help support with maintenance and some of these things with those sort of programmatic elements but of rachel chime in on the on the athletic side i don't want to sit on realistic expectations for anyone yes rachel koffman recreation superintendent so as far as the summer camp programs you're probably familiar with we do have a junior leader volunteer program that does utilize volunteers that's a kind of lower level of um support where uh so for our temporary staff or paid staff we want people that do have experience working with children as that's really important to keep those numbers i think with sports officials that's something we could explore but again you just want to make sure you have qualified people that um have uh that background so but we do for that junior leader program have volunteers and then again for the uh i'm just thinking of ways to offset um for the adult leagues have you recently looked at fees adjusting fees in order to be able to cover those yeah hi angeli gray we're getting the whole team up here the analyst um we did look at fees in 2017 across the board and the um sports supervisor who's in tune with all the neighboring league fees and all those sorts of things we made sure that we were in line with all the other neighboring agencies so we have looked at that recently look again thanks councilman thank you and the museum just for references in the parks and rec it's um pk page 10 in the parks and rec i just have to get there there it's just for it's there under museum it doesn't say surfing museum so if you want to find it it's just below aquatics pool programs and i did have that question because the city owns the museum of natural history as well so i assumed that that was in reference to the surfing museum it says yeah yeah the 50 49 182 so i think that's it anyway um yeah don't make me just clarify the museum budget it might help if everyone's gonna have questions on and i can just go over it really quickly um yes the museum budget is a surfing museum um the natural history museum is um they have their own thing going on but just to kind of touch on what's in the surfing museum budget um it's primarily uh there's some temporary staff hours in there those are the people that actually open and close the surfing museum that's the temporary staff budget makes up uh just over half of the museum budget and then the rest is really um water sewer and refuse um electricity for the building some alarm monitoring we have an alarm out there and that's pretty much the entire budget um there's just a very small amount for miscellaneous supplies um and services things that might come up that are unexpected we have about four thousand dollars so it's one of those ones um like i think we're doing across the department is sort of hoping that something doesn't go terribly wrong when we're chipping away at these budgets but that's what's in there is that helpful yeah so yeah thank you i um i don't really have questions about that i just wanted to clarify where it is um so i'll just say as a general comment i i don't it's really hard for me to support any cuts in parks and rec budget as we know parks and rec in tough times is the first to get cut um and you know and often we we don't make up those um those cuts in the when times are better so i have a really hard time cutting anything from parks and rec and particularly when we're talking about youth employment and you know small amounts that actually um put uh youth to work i mean they spend that money in the community there's sales tax etc there's other benefits um that can't be quantified for for they're having um access to those programs so i just really have a hard time supporting any cuts with the exception of the golf course um so um i did owe the comments that have been made by my colleagues um with respect to looking at the fee structure for um for leagues and all of that i i mean i just think given that we subsidize the dale aviega golf course i'm real okay with uh the water the proposal for brownouts um but i also think it's time to reevaluate the fee structure for the golf course we subsidize at the tune to the tune of three hundred thousand dollars that go a long way to plugging the the hole in our budget right now in the general fund um so i'm you know i'd like to see if others would would consent or and or if a majority of my colleagues would like to see that come back to us relatively soon because i think that um will help um buffer the parks interact budget for this year it just needs to happen i think um so um i i think that's all i have for now yep i think on the golf course really quickly and again happy to dive into that answer more questions either now or later this evening however that works out best one thing i think that's really important to us that we've talked about internally is is really creating essentially like a five-year business plan on the golf course a lot of different uh a lot of different pieces to that puzzle um and so i think um that that subsidy is a big chunk certainly um water is uh the park superintendent mentioned is a huge component to that but i think kind of the most comprehensive uh sort of view of the golf course and kind of where we're headed and what that could look like we think could be in the form of like a business plan that we could bring back to the the city council um in terms of sort of cost recovery targets and really what the numbers look like and what that means i appreciate that and that's great i just at the same time that we're talking about cutting youth employment positions right here and now thinking about you know five years down the road um it's for the golf course to get um subsidy free it's just hard to for me to think about in terms of the values that that i hold and the public i represent can you speak i guess a little more to that subsidy so i'm just trying to understand a little more i know that i know there is you know the parks commission so i'm just trying you know but i know we were renegotiating leases and some other agreements as well as shakespeare and just trying to understand a little bit more broadly what when we we talk about that subsidy yeah and i'll ask the team here to jump in if i make any errors here i know some of its water so yeah so a big a big chunk is water three quarters of a million dollars um annually is water out of that budget but um so in the budget you'll see um really our annual our annual budget for the golf course is approximately two million it's a little over two million dollars the the revenue that comes in from the golf course which really is one of our larger revenue generators of any of our operations within parks and recreation um there are a lot of opportunities with that and so you'll see the trends over time over the past five or six years that that subsidy has been anywhere from 300 000 to um what we put in the budget the proposed budget for 2020 is up to a million dollar subsidy and so i i want to just kind of pull that out and hit that head on and the reason i say that or want to recognize that is because that that is the um that's sort of the fail safe number that's the that's the very conservative number that we put in there that we could subsidize it to that degree now if you look at last year the actuals the uh so not the budget but the actual expenditure and the actual revenue that spread is about 300 000 and if you look at the years previous to that it's in that same ballpark 342 000 359 000 um so that's that's the approximate subsidy um uh in those years between the actual expenditure and actual revenue now when we're looking at revenues we're that's the golf course but that's also um kind of the sum of the of the revenues that we bring in from the golf course so that's disc golf um and other sources of revenue from the golf course and kind of the multi-use nature of the golf course what i would say i think in terms of the golf course again being a revenue generator is if we didn't operate it as a golf course we wouldn't necessarily have that source of revenue so when we're bringing in a you know million and a half dollars in revenue per year now i think we have a lot of opportunities to increase that if we didn't operate it as a golf course i think we would still have very high budget dollars to maintain that property to preserve that property um without the revenue side of it so my concern in talking kind of long term sustainable financial sustainability uh my uh my fear my red flag if you will is not having that revenue but still a big expenditure and my concern is that we would subsidize it by far beyond three to five hundred or more thousand dollars per year just by maintain having to maintain that property um so that's a couple details there happy to yeah defer to the city manager on this as well just to add a little bit too i mean the the other approach that we've used we've had a plan to uh and a goal to make the golf course self-sufficient for some time and it's been you know that subsidy has been reduced you know somewhat over the years there are a number of factors that play into that um and we've done some work uh in terms of the fee structure in terms of the we've actually cut the maintenance staff in the golf course in the past um and so uh and we expect to have some debt service it'll be paid off and said the parks department has this plan to try to eliminate it uh here and i think the challenge is that it can't be done you know in one year overnight without some dramatic risks and or cuts so for example if you wanted to do it on the expenditure side you'd have to cut and lay off maintenance workers um would be because that's the really where the cost are on the city side um and then uh alternatively you could raise uh the fees but that doesn't mean that people would pay them and necessarily that would increase revenue you the concern is i think is the fees are raised in a way that's not competitive it actually wouldn't result in increased revenue so that's that's the challenge with respect to to to the golf course again i think everybody agrees that to the extent that it could be self-supporting we should do it it's one of those that we have the opportunity to do that but it's not something that could be done you know in one year necessarily i think quickly to build on that too i think on the expenditure side so water is a big is almost half of the the budget uh for the golf course so we're taking steps currently so i'll say that our water consumption has not increased uh but the water rates have increased which is the result uh in that high budget number but what we're doing is actually working very closely with the water department to find ways to save water so we have the a well project going in very soon um and that's a project that pays for itself in in about 14 months so i think there are a lot of opportunities for us to reduce water consumption and therefore reduce cost on this getting getting us much closer uh to that break even yeah i just um i guess i would just state that um having uh recovered another museum in the community that was literally um the the lights were turned off and we were left on our own and we now have built the organization back to a million dollars it is not easy to to recover from just shutting a facility down there's a lot of services lost i understand golf may not be for everyone but there is a golf um constituency i think in santa cruz uh that is one of the few public golf courses left on the central coast um and so i understand it's expensive and there's there's certainly subsidy and i'd like to just see a creative approach before we sort of say and and i frankly i'm also worried about losing jobs there um so um and then just in terms of my other so i just just slow as we go um it's a big target but i think i think it's important to really understand the business uh planned side of it um overall um coming from a parks commissioner perspective i know how much the department has worked on its budget cutting costs um trying to get things um as lean and mean as possible i share your frustration this is not the department that i want to see having to do cuts um and according to this chart we got you are cutting the most because you're the most um supported by our general fund so again when people are paying their taxes and being here as residents um this is one of this is one of the places this is the department nearest and nearest to everyone's hearts and um you know i'd love to you know personally i'd love the idea of trying to get our pool back i mean we're losing these public facilities that are really important to our youth they're important to wellness they're important to our community and um so i'll let it go at that today but um uh i i would like to relook at some of some of what you've come up with because i'm not completely sure that's where i want all the cuts to come from thank you hello tony uh so a lot of interesting things to look into here um some notes that i put on my page is that uh so for the wharf maintenance can you talk about that last trev's come back up thank you as uh as dr elli alluded to the budget that would be cut is the materials that we use for ongoing maintenance projects so that includes everything from the actual structure of the wharf with the the pilings the uh the decking that goes on top of it money that we use for paving projects for repair projects to the the buildings roofing the restrooms that are mentioned the the fencing that surrounds the wharf really the whole physical structure of the wharf itself and then the adjacent beach areas okay thank you uh and with the reduced parks fencing support and maintenance could you just talk a little about that because fencing of parks is an issue that i have in general um and so fencing support what does that look like and yes so the $15,000 figure is not entirely for fencing that's uh one of the items that would be affected and those are fencing contractors that we hire in the central zone primarily to maintain our ballfield fencing at harvey west park okay thank you um and i was just doing some research a little earlier with regards to brown out of the golf courses in just different areas of california do you see any drawback as the parks department to having a brown golf course i think it's largely an aesthetic item uh i think to some degree you know as travis mentioned we'll look to do that in areas that are you know non-greens non-fairways kind of off toward the the woods edge if you will i think i mean the only thing i could think of is potential fire risk but i don't even want to be careful about overstating that i just think um that could be a small piece of it but i think primarily it's just aesthetics okay yeah thanks because uh and the research that i did it doesn't show any negative aspects per se as both sides what you mentioned the aesthetics that go along with it and that balls actually get a little bit longer roll on the fairway if it's brown so that might help some people's games uh so i definitely support um reducing water and looking at how we can do that especially knowing that there's 750 thousand dollars approximately every year that's spent on water and our desire to conserve water and uh my concerns about the golf course not being the most equitable way to distribute those funds um definitely not down for eliminating youth museum programs we need to get people involved i did want to know the cost and impact associated with that i'm sure that'll be in the report we get for the second uh meeting um the reduce trails and related cleanups what kind of volunteerism do you all implement with that work thinking more about the trails or the cleanup both uh for the cleanup work we have engaged a number of community partners in volunteering for example in sycamore grove we held a large cleanup this fall that was largely volunteer-based so it is an element but we don't do the majority of the work that way we do it in-house or with contracted services um and just really quick and i mentioned it before i believe that this is specifically for camp cleanups or is it cleanups for the community like you know like walking around and picking up trash or cleaning up trails so that they're more accessible and there's no debris or fallen wood or all that kind of stuff yeah the the the volunteer project that i referenced was a camp cleanup in sycamore grove so where we have a concentrated area of debris then we can schedule a you know one day team project to take care of that do you have volunteerism for uh and do it does any of this money i guess is a better way to phrase it is does any of this money go to maintaining trails and cleaning up parks as opposed to just camp destruction yeah the uh the other piece is the uh the trail work which we do again through a variety of means contracted services in housework and then volunteer work that's conducted for example we work with the mountain bikers of Santa Cruz who have regular dig days in our open spaces where they'll bring in you know anywhere from 10 to 50 volunteers to do trail improvements on the hiking as well as mountain biking trails in the open spaces great i i'm always and i say this to every department where i think it's relevant is the input in corporation of community members in that volunteers uh to bring down those costs associated with stuff um that's it for now thank you thank you councilmember thank you um i was wondering about the reducing uh the for trails what is that that's not maintaining the trails or or what does that mean uh let's see i'm trying to see how these are combined if you're reduced trail and related cleanup i believe so that is the trails crew that's our youth trails crew um and that is summer jobs basically or just correct yeah yeah so essentially it's our our teen intern program trail maintenance program um uh that are really staffed by by youth and and um yeah teen interns in the summer yeah um the uh supposedly parks and rec had a heritage tree fund letter from uh commissioner brown did that get to us i i believe so yeah we get it well i'm sorry i didn't see it okay thank you um uh is that how does that deal with the budget is that in there or yeah so this is a good question so the parks and recreation commission uh we did a budget uh review in the month of april or april meeting uh the commission decided to make a recommendation to city council to double our current heritage tree uh grant program budget from 25 000 to 50 000 um that was just sort of a a broad recommendation from the commission that did not we didn't factor that into do we need to cut somewhere else or where would that additional cut come from but i think just a broad statement uh from the commission in terms of a recommendation to council to consider doubling that budget so that's not in this budget right now that is not 25 no and um as far as street trees go i heard there was some idea about planting a bunch of trees up bay street um we we've got a program ongoing yeah we've planted i don't know the number on bay street specifically probably 70 or 80 more trees 500 redwood trees up bay street is that true 500 total for the for the city this year is that included in the 15 000 in the budget yeah those are already yeah in progress i believe that's from i think that's a grant funded yeah is that a cal trance cal fire and we were gonna do a like sort of like gis uh tree count how's that going and where is it at i've never seen the results of it or is it over or is it still happening it's it's just getting started which is why you haven't seen the results yet so that was also funded through this cal fire grant we received to uh conduct a whole inventory so we have finalized the rfp and that'll be going out shortly and uh the timeline would be ended this year great thanks and i um want to underline what councilmember mayer said about the pool i think that we really i really want to see that something move forward and and get the pool you know much you know extended hours um it's you know it's it's there it's maintained but um you know people aren't using it uh or can't use it um now i want to really dig into could you put that um uh thing up i want to dig into the golf course a little bit um because i just i just don't uh it just defies you know maybe we'll have to vote on this or something but you know why the golf course can't pay for itself and here's our fee structure right here um and why can't we you know rearrange some of these fees and cover the the you said 300 000 although you said revenue 1.5 and i see 2.3 and expenditures that's 800 000 not 300 000 yes so a couple questions there so i think in 2018 the actuals let me pull this up really quickly um let's see 2018 actuals actual expenditure uh at the golf course was one million eight hundred and ten thousand uh actual revenues in 2018 1.468 1.468 um so a difference of 342 000 was that that net so we we so this new fees haven't taken effect yet is that it that's correct so on this screen here the utility fees have taken effect so the four dollar utility fee uh and the two dollar utility fee for disc golf and for junior golfers uh otherwise the the new rates have not taken effect and what is that what's uh how's that been have we taken in more a bunch of revenue or what does it look like we project out yeah from the utility fee this year we've brought in approximately 96 000 from the rounds played and it has not impacted our numbers negatively and um the city manager mentioned about competitive you know who we competing with with this golf course where are people going to go yeah it's a good question i think pasta tmpo is obviously our closest uh neighbor um not a public course what's around cost of pasta tmpo i think approximately 275 275 yeah i was gonna say 250 what's around cost here for us 35 is that what am i reading that right it ranges yeah 45 for a non-member mm-hmm i just don't see not getting that up higher uh i i'm all for maintaining the the junior card you know i don't think we should raise that at all actually um because i don't think two dollars is you know i'm all for young people playing golf but i think people who can pay for it should pay for it and i would love to see this these fees up some more to cover the 342 000 that we're in the hole last year um respectfully disagree with uh my friend martin Bernal about uh you know five years no we cannot wait five years we we need to do it in one to two years we need to like make this money up because um i don't support any of the cuts to the programs that you have come up with and you know and i i appreciate the work that you've done and i'm sure you've you know wrestled with this quite a bit but some of those affecting the young people i would prefer the the golf course um paying its its way and it hasn't for a long time and i think something dramatic i mean if there's a risk involved let us know what the risk is but i mean it'd be up to the council to say yes let's get those fees up some more and cover that 342 000 or whatever we're projecting it seems like we might be projecting more because of the the water rates it seems like this is the first year we're really carrying the water right carrying the water okay uh under the new water rate the full the full cost yeah uh i don't believe so i think it's been 30 30 okay so we do have a good idea of what and and so if we project out the four dollar utility thing does it seem like we're going to cover that 750 not 30 utility fee not just from the utility fee uh from an increased rate potentially assuming that that uh our number of rounds which were 50 000 uh last year uh stay consistent well i would definitely ask to go back and and for this come back to us and take another look at the golf course fees and if we can um deal with those numbers and and get them up a little more and see how much we're talking about uh we might lose a few rounds but also we might gain some some money to pay for itself so the city attorney kandahi did you have something i was just going to say that i think that i'm perfectly appropriate discussion and and for the council's consideration but that feels to me like a separate agenda item specifically relating to golf course fees as opposed to adjustments of the budget i suppose you could also make adjustments to the budget as to the level of subsidizing the golf course but what you're proposing sounds to me like a separate agenda item okay because i would propose that we don't um unless unless the the golf course is is balanced i wouldn't uh want to even tip to fund this i'd put it on hold and let's let's let's let's get it balanced so so if i'm hearing you correctly tony um proceed with caution in regards to how to move forward with this specific component of this agenda conversation in regards to the financial kind of well i i just see um setting of the amounts of fees or rates or charges as as sort of a separate uh discussion from you know an overall budget funding discussion um i think it's it's fine in the context of the budget discussion i don't i don't have any problem with that at all um but i think if that's the the direction that the council is interested in going it it ought to agendize that as a separate discussion okay yeah i would i would prefer that too okay my last question has to do with vehicles i don't see anything in the uh in the capital outlay is there no public are you not buying any vehicles this year that's a good question it'd be through the public works department uh through their fleet program in terms of those recommendations uh that my copper and mark deadl referenced earlier i don't know off hand travest you know i think there are three or four uh pickup trucks that were scheduled for yeah placement can you get us just a list of those pickups thanks yeah any vehicles actually sure thanks yeah thank you so i just had a few comments myself um one i just want to echo council member mires and council member crowns um interest in supporting the pool and i think every budget hearing since i've been on council i've been wanting to see how we can go about trying to get creative about that so i think there's work to be done there um it's hard to also say that at the same time of having to cut in you know services and programs um i will just also share um sort of the sentiment by council member mires that sometimes when you do eliminate a program completely it's really hard to get that back up and going um and then in regards to just all programming um i you know i appreciate the trimming here and there just to be mindful about trying i mean my interest just to kind of keep it broad would be to do as little as we can to um not have an impact on programs um and then kind of work around the edges in terms of the other stuff and i know it's really difficult and um your you know parks and rec is does incredible things for our community um so i mean i guess i'll just leave it at that for now in the interest of time i know that we have a couple other council members with interest so council member brown vice mayor coming to then council member mires i know this is tedious um to continue to be talking about the golf course i'm so looking forward to the day when um i don't feel like talking about it every time we have these kinds of budget discussions i'm just going to express my frustration that anytime we raise the concept of the golf course becoming self-sustaining or um not wanting to subsidize it that the immediate reaction there is there replies we get uh tend to tend towards oh well if you want to close the golf course and that is with all due respect to council member crown it sounded like you said it will so be it but that is not my intention at all so be it i i said on hold until we get a balanced budget so i have no interest in closing our public golf course it is one is a beautiful golf course you know golfing for the people i absolutely support it i just think that it's given that we subsidize it we don't subsidize a whole lot of other parks and rec functions in the same way to the same tune and so i i just i want to say you know i mean i'd i'd be willing to make the motion if no one else is going to make it that we direct staff to come back with um an analysis of of increased green fees uh or you know increasing uh the share of cost uh for maintaining daylight via a golf course um from the the consumer so i'm not sure if i i'm gonna get any support for that but i want to just make it as a motion i'd like to see that come back as an agenda and i'm to have a full discussion um because i think there's uh some real opportunity there and i don't want to wait five years um either i'll second at least a motion by council member brown seconded by vice mayor Cummings i know um council member Myers had an additional comment i did too okay i just wondered um council member brown in the kind of the interest of sort of more of the global approach would you accept a friendly amendment that fee structure and business plan comes back so that we sort of get that global sort of evaluation okay sure uh yes absolutely um i'll just add because i you know again i just want to get this out there um you know uh um our city manager martin you suggested that this is something that can't be addressed in that's something not something that can be done within one year the subsidy has been reduced we're hearing it actually has increased for this fiscal year um and it's not something that can be done in one year this is something that has been talked about every year i've been on the council and nothing has been done that's why i'm trying to get a little bit more aggressive in um demonstrating how interested i am in seeing this happen and hope that we can get support um on the council to to come back for that discussion thank you um just really quickly uh just to be clear you know from the staff perspective we we want this to be self-supporting too and if it could be done tomorrow that would be incredible that would be awesome no one is opposed to making this be self-supporting as quickly as possible um i'm just trying to relay the staff work that's been done with the fee analysis and we did a fee study and what i'm hearing is what can reasonably be done but we can look at that certainly again that would be wonderful no one is opposed to doing that um and so our goal is to make this self-supporting as quickly as possible we'll go back and do the analysis on the numbers and i'm just hearing that it you know it's just something that's not going to happen so i'm just relaying that so just to be clear it sounds like you've been working on it and you're thinking maybe it would just be accelerating that process yeah that's right and just to be clear i think on the and uh angel is digging into this to be very specific but in terms of i just want to be clear in terms of the the budgeted numbers and then the actual numbers so 2018 which is what we're looking up right now the 2018 budgeted numbers showed probably an 800 000 to a million dollar subsidy that's what we planned for in the budget to be safe but the actuals it was a 300 000 spread so we saved a half million dollars so even though for 19 fiscal year 19 and fiscal year 20 we're showing in the budget uh a million dollar spread a million dollar subsidy that very well may come in again like 300 000 or something like that so we're finding uh these savings any way we can with um really any way we can water savings to uh personnel savings so on and so forth so the other thing i want to mention too is with with the golf course discussion obviously this is one operation within parks and recreation and i think a little bit i don't want to throw the pool under the bus here but i think as we're looking at the broader parks and rec budget i would almost um uh recommend if i may respectfully that that we look at sort of a business plan if you will at a variety of our different enterprises um uh within parks and recreation because really we subsidize everything within parks and recreation um in the subsidy that we provide at the golf course is actually one of the lower subsidies uh that we provide the pool uh if we ran the pool year round it would be um nearly a double uh double the amount of of our actual subsidy of what we've provided um at the golf course now again we've got some work to do and we can come up with some creative ideas but i want to bring that broad context to the council so that we're not just looking at the golf course in a vacuum but looking at everything different areas that we subsidize and where we can diversify revenue within the department as a whole wonderful i look forward to learning more about that okay by some aircomings and then council member matthews just one more comment with regards to the golf course i think it'd be really good um to also because one of the things i heard earlier was that you all water when the golf course is not in use but specifically is that during time is that generally during the night or twilight or dusk hours yeah i think early early morning and then twilight probably overnight okay great i was just curious because i know that a lot of water can be lost if we're watering during the day to evaporation and so just making sure that that's also you know incorporated into how we're cutting costs and saving water um additionally i wanted to one more question i had was the urgency with replacing the ball field lights and whether or not that could be something that could wait potentially a little bit longer he has a good question so this pertains to our capital improvement budget i believe the the harvey west ball field lights that are 30 years old or so they we worry about the safety of those lights and then talking about an environmental impact and energy use impact those lights are kind of their old school light bulbs essentially burning coal and so what we hope to do with those lights is get replace those lights with new led lights that are much more energy efficient but also get them into a condition that's much safer their old wooden poles that that we would just worry about the general safety of those so that's a big chunk within the the capital improvement program i think it's approximately i think between seven and eight hundred thousand dollars to replace those lights but we would get some return on that with energy savings and so forth so can we wait possibly but it's a really critical item for us it'd be also really good to understand what those cost savings would be with regards to energy savings by converting those now versus waiting thanks thanks council member meyers and then council member brown and then council member crown director leid i believe that you mentioned that you mentioned something about grant writing so i just wanted to double back on that did you mention that these cuts that are outlined would include removing the grant writing contract that i know you've been trying to get for three years that's correct correct okay so so just a statement in that there is billions of dollars that were approved by the voters of california that are for parks and open space and environmental without a grant writer it's very unlikely that we're going to receive those funds i know we get some per capita funds but i just again again when we're looking at your department in particular those resources actually can be uh a cost savings for some of the things like trails and other things that we're talking about today so i'd hate to see that hate to see that good cut thanks council member crown and then council i think i believe council member bink yeah i want to follow up on uh vice mayor comings uh really would like to see those stats on what the new lights would show us versus the current bill that we get for electricity and also what would it take to do that project over a couple of years could you do half could you spend half that money um this time and do and the other half next year um the other thing is where's the the quimby funds where are they located in this budget uh it's a good question i may rely on angela for the quimby funds um in terms of actual page in detail uh funding source for capital projects but there's two cp projects for parks and rec about 95 000 in total using quimby funds they've already got some existing projects that are balls got quimby allocations so is all that money the quimby 95 000 already spent or can we backfill some of this uh instead of during these new 95 000 allocation recommended so that can certainly be reallocated but is it spoken for already or yes it's already for 2020 capital projects correct it's for proposed new projects what's that new project going to be what is the cliff street walkway uh so there's kind of the the wall that's collapsing on cliff street where that tree sits so it's uh replacing that item and then skate park coping hit mike fox council member brown yeah um so with my my zeal to discuss the golf course i um i forgot to mention i also am very much interested i agree with uh council member mires point about grant writers and the possible funding available out there um really important so i just want to um support that and then also my interest in uh trying to reopen the pool i think we now i've heard from four council members here who have said as much um so i'm maybe perhaps i was a little premature in the motion i made i'd like to um i don't know if the best way to do that would be to withdraw and read why don't you withdraw to withdraw and i'll make a new motion okay so we have the withdrawal by council member i would suggest that you make a motion for reconsideration and uh adoption of new a new motion language in one motion and we didn't vote on the matter that there we haven't voted there was not a vote on the vote no we haven't voted my apologies yeah feel free to withdraw the motion every day i just want to i'll just so with that um so i'd like to make a motion to direct staff to return uh tony what would be a reasonable amount of time for this kind of i'm adding the pool so um what would be a reasonable amount of time to return by a couple of months probably yes 60 days or so so um so probably not before our uh break august um return in august my august like that first meeting in august maybe okay yeah that'd be great okay thank you so motion should accept your return by the august 13th with one an analysis of the fee structure and business plan for the dale aviega golf course with an eye towards self-sufficiency and two um uh explore options for returning the harby west pool as a year on facility for our community um this exploration may include new operational models new programming infrastructure modernization and community investment and i'm actually stealing that from council member mires who sent it to me but i thought maybe we could just add them together and and get this moving okay so okay so we have motion by council member brown seconded by vice mayor okay um thank you for your presentation all those in favor please say aye any opposed okay that passes unanimously okay we look forward to hearing more in august so we'll go ahead and move right along to um our next bucket of uh reductions which is finance hr and it there were no reductions that we uh clearly are having a hard time here with okay revenue enhancement through yeah all right who wants to kick us off for uh some of the context and or uh is there another way you'd like to present the information i'm looking to you marcus we rosham boat and i'm bigger so i won all right so my list of reductions so uh i am not entirely general fund so my my target goal was uh about 81 thousand dollars um and so all of that though comes from the administration side so not workers comp not benefits or anybody who's affiliated with working in that division so the things that come from my budget are all of our training programs all of our professional development most of my the majority of my staff uh all of my recruitment team and all of our efforts to do recruitment all of our labor relations so anything related to negotiations uh investigations compensation studies uh any legal advice that we seek outside um when we have grievances or arbitrations that requires outside attorneys as well so the the international that's and professional development for my my employees so um what i propose to put up is approximately we'll actually have to just say when i first came here we did a really thorough job of reducing our consultant agreements almost to the tune of about 250 thousand dollars over my first year here and we went bare bare bones so i'm really at the extreme bare bones when i talk about any of the consultant fees um that i'm trying to cut so approximately 71 thousand is going to be for anything that relates to if i have an investigation that will come up that i can't um that i need to farm out we're going to have to figure out how we're going to pay for that whether it's charging the department that that generates from because usually uh my my department of there are some things that we can do internally i've that i'm able to conduct those investigations but some things we need to farm out larger uh we also will get reduce our budget in terms of any type of high level recruitment we like i said we had 122 recruitments uh last year so sometimes we need to farm some out so we can get caught up particularly when it's a mid-management level recruitment sometimes we need outside resources where a consultant may already know who to tap into and have a wider network so we'll reduce that or ask the department if they really want that route to pay for it themselves and sometimes we also have special studies that are requested by the departments for classification analysis that might be far reaching that's much larger than what my staff can do with our bandwidth so we'll we'll utilize outside help so those are going to have to be reduced and those requests will have to be minimized and they happen quite often you know whether a particular position to be in a unit or whether we need a new classification um we get those requests quite frequently and then also within terms of individual staff training within my staff department what i'm proposing is to eliminate $10,000 and what i'd like to do is eliminate the conference trainings attendance and so forth from my my leadership team and but still have my technical staff attend because that's important for them so that's my uh total of my reductions thank you i think we'll have isn't you're all bucketed together do you want to do your presentation then we'll ask questions individually do you want to hold your just two questions of hr it would be helpful for me if it just did i'm on a roll let's go okay great yeah okay so um anybody have questions instead of going down the line maybe we'll just see if there's any questions specifically comes from Matthew similarly to others so you're suggesting a 71 thousand dollar reduction in your department 81 81 excuse me um that would encompass activities including some recruitment some consulting some classification studies and some whatever the other thing uh some individual for my my staff but what i would look at is the my uh leadership team and rather than us attending or going to training either utilize um local resources sometimes i can get others to help pay for attendance but it's more important i think for the other staff members to attend and then leadership actually leadership Santa Cruz which is interesting is i pay for that at my budget for others to attend i won't i won't do that anymore um i love leadership Santa Cruz for our city staff and i know staff from many different departments have a pay have and i'm on the board so it pains me to say that i didn't realize it always came out of your budget um but i i think to the extent we can continue to invest annually and it usually it's a couple of city staff a year i think um dissipate that's that's really good um but it can come out of your budget so what i'm looking for so that's 71 or 81 000 out of out of a total of what uh my um some my gosh actually what part is general fund funded i don't have that breakout Marcus do you have that off the top of your head my total budget is seven million pretty it's a pretty two million that's a pretty tiny amount out of your total general fund it's still it still hurts because i'm two million yeah yeah but i would say anything from here going forward if we have to go deeper i'm looking at bodies that was the question and i'll just echo that maybe not the elimination of leadership santa Cruz but if maybe the reduction so that i don't know if that's possible to have you know if there was a whole bunch of folks but a couple can apply or something like that what i was going to propose is that each department rather than my department pay for it that if you want to send somebody you your department actually has to propose in the structure i okay i support because every department has a training and that would i would suggest you allocate it for that program and very very reasonable and appropriate okay is that what you were suggesting also yeah and then i think in the past a couple of year is a good rate and many institutions do that congratulations for being on the board thank you and soon you'll hear our announcement from your executive director i ran into that person okay is there any other questions for lisa at this time thank you very much okay you got it here for Laura is already there go Laura hi Laura Schmidt with information technology so our 134 thousand dollars that you see on our line item for it is four percent of our budget so that was the requested scenario for us to come up with marcus had to summarize three departments in one so we only have one line item up there but the first reduction that we would take should we have to is reducing the number of pcs and laptops that we replace next fiscal year so that's around 83 84 thousand dollar reduction citywide so it would come out proportionately out of various departments the risk there is this year was the last year to remove windows 7 from our environment because microsoft is end of life in that operating system and when they end of life they don't give security patches for it anymore so this set of pcs and laptops for this fiscal year were to put windows 10 throughout the city we can mitigate the risk by choosing which laptops and which desktops that we leave on windows 7 and target ones that are of lower use and what we believe is a lower risk to leave at windows 7 the other elimination that we would do is there are uninterruptible power supplies of a smaller form factor throughout the city so these are key work stations our servers where if the electricity goes down the ups sits there as like battery backup so we would eliminate preventative maintenance on the smaller form factor ups is scattered throughout the city we would still maintain the maintenance on the large ups is so the big one downstairs for the data center here the data center at the police department at the water plant that type of things that would maintain so it would be the smaller form factor ones that we would eliminate preventative maintenance on and then the third possible cut would be a reduction in our contract for professional services for the people that man the phones for our help desk so that would be the phone responsibility of our technical support services side we would still have the internal staff on the technical and the field service side but somebody being there from the hours of 730 to 438 to 4 to answer the phone we would stop that probably around mid-year to meet the rest of the reduction to get to the 134 that's the summary okay thank you comes friend so just want to ask the question so there would be no phone technical support you would still be able to so we would still have our field so we have a first tier of call to the 555 number now and that is a person that just does phone work and they are there on a pretty constant basis sitting somewhere answering the phone and then at the second then if they can't immediately answer the question and resolve it on the phone it goes to our next level to your support and those are our it tech specialists one twos and threes and they have a deeper level of knowledge and troubleshooting skills and we have those people assigned by departments so robert ran our is the one that covers the city council he also covers finance administration hrit city clerk city managers so he's your field tech in that sense and then he has a backup to him as well those people would still be available and you could still call a phone number you're not going to get a live body the ticket would go into the queue on the phone number or the ticket could come into the queue through email or what employees are likely to do because we very organically are able to find people to help us is you would probably call your field tech that's been assigned to your department so there's still going to be help but the wonderful compliments that you guys gave us of our you know immediate response there's going to be a service level impact to this level of cut for our department and you won't get as immediate of an online actual person to respond to you but we will still have our field technical professional deep knowledge support to be able to give you so it will be impactful to the employees though and we recognize that but um we we don't have a lot of other fat in the budget to be able to trim because we have a lot of operational overhead in our licenses our hardware contracts and our software contracts so thank you laura thank you okay i apologize council but i have another meeting i have to attend this evening so i'm gonna have to leave now okay we'll behave you're all in good hands okay marcus thank you so our our biggest proposal is to further expand credit card recovery fees we feel this is again i've probably been more of the road block because we see the internal control process of allowing more people to pay back credit cards and not discouraging it creates a lot of efficiencies in our operation we're at that point now where we've just got to gamble and see if it impacts consumer choices we don't want to go back to cash and checks but we realize covering a three percent cost on all these transactions is not the best thing to do anymore and most government agencies already passed this cost on we're more on the smaller end of the few agencies that don't fully do that across the board so places where this would touch is business license emissions tax payments parking lots tax payments some counter payments such as planning parks and recreation where we're where people are touching our fees in those places at counters there'll be a convenience fee attitude that would be our biggest expansion it would could yield about 140 hundred fifty thousand dollars annually in cost recovery that we're paying now two other proposals that we have is reducing courier pickup and i won't say which sites because there's custodial and risk things about the thing where our armored cars show up but we have armored cars that comes a couple different spots uh different times during the day every day and so we might look at reducing one or two of those sites and consolidating where somebody would walk across the street and we'd have a consolidated pickup we still have i still need to do some further analysis on that it's not a place that i feel great about doing this was an expanded service we did years ago from a employee safety and customer safety perspective there is there might be some opportunity they're reducing the site are doing it every other day pickup type schedule the last one is relocating finance so we're we moved offsite um years back to make way for a consolidated payment counter center our eventual come home is is library admin space the library is always looking for a new place to go and there's other big projects that we've talked about in reference today earlier today but we're we're waiting for that space to open up that's our return home in the meantime we're downtown at high rent space so there's an opportunity for us to relocate and move somewhere else around the city a couple blocks away or a couple miles away a couple miles away is where you get a real savings a couple blocks away you're paying a a lot of times around the same rates but there are still a few sites so it's it would be us prioritizing really looking to find a new location and candidly we we need to do that anyways we're out of space we moved in with the idea of having a split department for a couple years and it's taking a little bit longer to get back to our our home with library so we've brought everybody together now we've got everybody squeezed in and so we don't really fit and we've got about eight vacancies we need to fill and we don't have we have place for two not eight so we've got some spacing challenges anyways so our priority would be find a location that's a lower cost to provide some savings so that's that's the impact so moving for low cost that sounds good moving for space sounds good but to get a lower cost means further away from city hall and there it's the that's the impact we're assessing okay thank you for the clarification i mean i'll just briefly say i think for the credit card cost recovery i think that is the trend and it's the convenience and you kind of make that choice in terms as a consumer of how you want to move forward with that so i'm i'm supportive of that and uh yeah i appreciate the work any other council members by smear coming i had a quick question about the credit card cost recovery or the recovery fee is that a flat rate or is that a percentage of it's generally a percent every now and then depending on the transaction there's some nuance to it but it's generally a percent and almost always around three percent utilities have a lower rate so utilities are about one percent okay i've councilor crown and then councilor mafios just a quick question on the business license tax you and i have talked may be ripe to raise that i don't know if it's a subject for the revenue committee but um is that something the voters don't have to go through that we can we can raise that ourselves and the tax it require voter approval it would okay it would thanks okay i support the ones that you've laid out here okay thank you okay we'll keep moving so community re support i'm not sure who will be presenting on that is that you city manager well i i mean i i think i could speak to it okay okay i'm passing out my okay i'm wanting to request that i've already discussed here we go okay markis and martin okay well she said i was down i'm going to go hi good afternoon council members i'm sorry so you just called on me to dressies okay i was en route um so i guess i'm here to speak to the community support column as well as is the council clerk and city manager column all right so we have a number of things in here and i do want to say that as you've been going through all day these are all varying degrees of pain and difficult choices and they don't feel good to anyone so i just want to state that out and i know particularly these topics which really resonate with you in the community are especially hard to tackle so i just want to acknowledge that um as you work through this process so there are a number of reductions we have identified for your consideration to meet this first tier of cuts and they range from some contracts we support externally as well as other things we fund internally and some internal support so first we have reducing community programs funding this is something that was also brought up last year on the community programs budget is about one point one eight million dollars this is the city has a long history of providing these grants to a variety of programs um the proposed reduction i think would be commensurate with what is being proposed for reductions across the organization about four percent which is about forty five forty six thousand dollars across the board and that is not uncommon to how we as the city have dealt with reductions in the past when we've had to make contractions to our budget typically there's been a corresponding reduction in the community programs budget so that was put forward for your consideration um the next one is reducing the CPA VAW budget they have about thirty thousand dollars annually and um it's a minor reduction being proposed maybe five thousand dollars i know councilmember brown this is an issue of particular importance to you what that wouldn't do is that would not compromise the city schools training that we partner with to provide the training in middle schools what it would do though is absolutely limit the ability to do special events they like to do some end of year grants when they have some extra resources and so it certainly impairs some of their activities but it would not um it would not compromise the ability to have that program in the middle schools the next one is reducing the homelessness coordinating committee funding so that is about a fifty thousand dollar reduction and what that is is is you recall in twenty seventeen when the council adopted the homelessness coordinating committee recommendations at that budget hearing council said let's actually invest in this if we want to do if we want to implement these recommendations we need to have funding so council allocated a few pots of money to advance these recommendations you set aside a hundred thousand dollars to help do shelter and you also set aside fifty thousand dollars for just the general recommendations implementation so the recommendation here would be to eliminate the fifty thousand dollars that we would use not for a designated purpose but forever um is is needed in 2020 to help advance those recommendations now reducing any homelessness funding is of course fraught with some peril because need could dictate what has to happen so it could be a real cut or not a real cut but it is something we put forward as an option for you to consider um we still do retain about a hundred and seventy thousand dollars for winter shelter and that's our jurisdictional share of the hap funding as well as another hundred thousand dollars so the budget isn't free of homelessness funding but it just that's a reduction of fifty thousand dollars uh the next the next line is for the hopes program and many of you may not have the a lot of history with this but this is a program that's evolved from the downtown accountability program which was a meshing of the city the county the courts in the da's office to try to get to low-level recidivist offenders in our downtown in particular move those people into a place where they have an alternative to um to jail get them into shelter and treatment programs and that program evolved from DAP the downtown accountability program into PACT and then the most recent evolution is the hopes program and that is mostly a county program we help fund it and a lot of our contribution helps fund substance abuse treatment and right now the current budget is about three hundred thousand dollars the proposal here would reduce that by a hundred thousand dollars and the good news on that is that you might recall the county was very aggressive a few years ago in being one of the first in the state to apply for expanded drug medical and we were successful so what it means now is that if you are an indigent person in our community you're receiving medical you we the county can get reimbursed for drug treatment programs whereas before that was not an eligible reimbursement expense it now is and so this is wonderful because we're seeing that the necessary investment in substance use disorder can go down because the state is paying for that so this hundred thousand dollars and I did confer with the county on this so I'm not surprising them right now we think is is doable and they could still affect their mission and it won't impair the program too much that the next one I know will be difficult and this is a suggestion the open streets donation currently that's in your budget so councilmember crone you asked earlier about the council budget this is one component of it it'd be an eight thousand dollar reduction from the fifteen thousand dollar budget and then moving over to the if there are questions I'm happy to answer them councilmember Matthews yeah could you just go over the amount reductions in this column again because I wasn't writing fast absolutely and I talk fast so the first one the community programs that was about a four percent reduction which is about forty seven thousand dollars off of the base budget of one point one eight million dollars cpva delby was about five thousand and their base budget is thirty thousand dollars can you get these written out for us or something I mean you're saying all these things and I don't I'm not following okay I'm trying to find them in sure are you um councilmember crone difficulty with the program description or the numbers you say you're reducing homelessness funding reducing cpva delby hopes program 300 to 100 open streets 8k comes from the council but I missed some things in between okay so I'll maybe start all over yeah I don't see that I don't see that those numbers that you're saying up there just saying reduce right and we and I'm providing more context I've been hearing your questions this afternoon about wanting more context so I'm trying to provide a little bit more of that so you can assess the impact of it do you want to just go through them one by one and state the amount I'm happy to do that yeah absolutely okay so then starting at the top the community programs funding that proposed reduction the percentage of that was about four percent again being commensurate with what we're proposing right now with this this current round of cuts that's about forty seven thousand dollars the cpva delby that was about five thousand dollars a homelessness coordinating committee funding was fifty thousand we're what page is that on yeah so the that the homelessness coordinating committee budget is found within the city manager's budget um so what you will see is you will see a master roll-up and it will be within you're not seeing a line item budget but what you would find that in community programs and services I stand corrected it's it's in our non-departmental budget so I don't know exactly where that is in the larger budget document so I will have to follow up with that I'm very happy to do that compared to what absolutely and actually something I can provide to you that might be helpful is I have um a summary of all of your social services investment I printed out for you so this might help as you're talking about all of these so as that goes around I'll kind of describe what you'll see the information first you'll see the table that looks like this and this is um the social services investment in total so you can see everything that ranges from the community programs grants at the very bottom to external contracts to our investment in the homeless action partnership and other things so this is a nice summary sheet of your total social services investment so that's the first sheet the second sheet is a line item budget for the community programs so you can see what every program received from the city and that has like the blue um blue top on that as well as on the back the set aside funding that was approved for fiscal year 19 and then the final sheet is just a greater description of the set aside funding in case you wanted to look at that so maybe that helps um a little bit because I know there um what's difficult about these is some items are in the city manager's budget some are in a non-departmental budget so that can be difficult to track so I thought like this master summary would be useful to you okay so I think where I was is I'm on hopes again so councilmember crone going back through the numbers that you were requesting um the the hopes was one hundred thousand dollars is the cut is the reduction yes the open streets eight thousand all right good okay so then I'll move on and thank you for and just please do interrupt me if it's going fast it's a lot of detail and so moving on to the final column of your afternoon looking at the council clerk and city manager reductions the first one is reducing the state legislative strategist and I was mentioned earlier by the finance director we have a citywide contract to have legislative advocacy in Sacramento so this is a firm that we can call upon to track bills to attend committee meetings to share information to set up meetings for us and legislators offices or help to advance whatever legislative agenda would benefit the city and what we're suggesting here is that we do an rfp we renegotiate that contract and get those costs down we think this is very doable this would be a savings of about 15 000 dollars uh then the next one we lose in that like what what kind of information have been getting maybe it's worth more than 15 000 absolutely and so this is where the rfp I think will be very helpful we it's good general best practice to bid rebid these every five years and I think we're on the eight or nine-year mark so it's just a good practice just to say just to reassess what do we need what level of service do we need do we need an on-demand retainer is there another financial arrangement so we would want to try to retain as much as we can but get a better price thanks for coming I would also like to know um whether or not we get reports from this individual how often because I don't I don't think I've received any information um regarding this person and the work that they're doing and so you know I think that the idea that we're going to go back and look at this contract as it could because um if having not received any information at this point it makes me wonder you know is this what's this person's role and is it worth keeping absolutely the wonderful question and and staff use it kind of on-demand and sometimes we have very intensive periods like when we were working on especially flooding and river levy issues a lot of intense work sometimes very little work and also what is the information flow from the strategist into my office and across the city that gets harder to manage too so I completely agree ask what is what's that overall budget currently right for that contract it's uh citywide I think it's about 80 something thousand dollars that's where Matthews and is some of that a portion to across it is yes um the majority of it is uh enterprise funds so I think there's about 30 000 dollars in the general fund of this so I I'm suggesting a cut in the general fund portion of about 50 thousand $15 000 but there would be a corresponding reduction across the other funds too through through if I'm hearing yeah okay great okay okay continue on okay the next line is reducing our communications and outreach budget so we do have a budget that exists for us to do work such as producing events producing collateral materials creating information it's also helpful for consulting work like right now I'm very delighted we're embarking upon a social media consultant to have us do an assessment of our social media presence um and the the over 40 different uh social media channels channels that we work within and a priority of this council has been to speak in a more unified voice across the city and so this is work toward that so that consultant will be paid out of that it helps produce like the city hall to you events the state of city events which we did not do this year and other things so what I'm recommending here is or suggesting here is we could reduce that by about 20 000 that would leave us with 30 so there's still funds there because there there is important communications work that we need to do in our community our issues are enormous our community wants to know more we need to do a better job here and so I would like to preserve funding here so that we can do do better work on that um the next one is reducing travel and training and this is a small amount um I think it's mostly in the council budget um again to councilmember crowns question from earlier what's in the council reductions I was 24 000 so eight from open streets I think eight from this the travel and training which leaves about a balance of seven um thousand dollars there and then the next line item is another eight thousand dollars out of the council account and that leaves you about five thousand five hundred thank you um so we can go ahead and hear where sort of council members are on everything and I know council around you have a proposal um I don't know if you want to kick us off but before maybe if you can before you do just I want to sort of briefly speak to the communication strategy and I appreciate the um insights into the importance of it I think that's uh something we've talked about as long as I've been on council in regards to the high need here in our community um and how we are interfacing with not only immediate kind of crisis type situations but also really thinking about our strategy citywide in terms of how we're communicating our um efforts and hopefully preventing any kind of uh miscommunication or misinformation so I would like to see that as a priority personally in terms of what that could look like in terms of an investment at the city level in terms of um communications so I'll just sort of I'll say sort of just say say that um I don't know martin uh city manager Bernal did you want to say anything here uh yeah only that uh you know it is it is correct that uh based on kind of the scope and size of our community that our communications function is is very under resourced uh comparatively speaking uh and it has been an ongoing challenge uh for us uh you know um a year or so ago we did do an analysis sort of comparing how other communities like us like Berkeley for example Santa Barbara and others how they staff up uh and they certainly have uh a communications uh group uh within the city manager's office typically is what they do so we are underfunded there and uh it's definitely an area that we can do a lot more work in and if the council is interested in us looking at uh sort of creative ways to try to boost that up and uh within the overall resources of the city we can we can do more of more of that work if there's an interest in doing that I'm interested in that and I hear what other council members have to say okay council member brown did you want to share your proposal or yeah thank you um Tina if you're still here for um for walking us through those uh proposed cuts and to understand where they're at and also providing the additional information on community programs this is not really a proposal this is just as I was kind of walking through the budget and thinking about my priorities that I really want to make sure get funded I put together this list and I fired it off this morning so you can see foster grandparent there twice in my because it was a pretty quick so you can cut one of those off but in addition now I see based upon um the additional documentation that we've been given that foster grandparent actually is in the budget and I didn't know that so um you can just cross them both off because sorry foster foster grandparents funded so let's just we can cross both of those off women's self-defense it wasn't clear to me that that was still in the budget you can cross that one off and open streets it wasn't clear to me that that was still in the budget I um personally don't support the reduction so I'd like to maintain that at the full funding um we'll see where we get so that and then meals on wheels feel uh is in for 4600 also and again we didn't see these before now um my proposal was um $12,000 which um based on my conversations with their director would um help that would cover their rent their cost to rent loud nelson for the congregate meal program this is something they struggle with and um the county is now uh the the big funder of meals on wheels our share at 4600 it was zero but at 4600 is really limited and given that we receive rent from them and for the service they provide I mean it's just so critical I think it would be really important to support them um through that uh either elimination of their rent costs I mean I think it's in my you know in theory two transaction costs you know if we just eliminated their rent it would be no transaction you know we there's a way to do that that might even be some additional savings that was my thinking um new wave of vista center I'm not sure because it's not clear to me if the cdbg um changes that we made because those weren't have not been finally approved are in this budget but I do want to make sure that that is there um when the final budget comes back to us and so now so and then I'll just make if I if I could make a couple of comments about the other the additional um items so um tenants legal services I passed out along with this draft draft of my priorities uh the scope of services that the long-awaited scope of services we do have it uh to release the funding that we've already allocated and uh it's regrettable that um this has taken so long and they are um have already started work as a member of the public suggested this morning and they're paying out of their pockets to have the phone line to answer the phone line to print materials community printers provided in kind for them to print materials you know they're really struggling to get up and going without any money um the of the person who will hopefully get paid to be a staff for this program is currently I believe working one of her many other jobs so couldn't be here I with this scope of services hope we can really get that money released um ASAP um and I would like to put a placeholder to fund that project um in the new fiscal year as well for 60 000 um and so I'm putting it out there I think it's a very critical service uh we've heard so much about the struggles that that tenants face renters face in this community um we have uh discussed and discussed and studied and uh you know brought it to the ballot ways to provide some relief to tenants this is just a really concrete immediate way that that tenants who are actually um needing assistant legal assistance can get help in the immediate um to provide them with some relief I find I feel very strongly about this this is a way to fund as um CRLA or um California Rural Legal Assistance community partners have suggested to also be able to provide assistance to tenants who may not be served um because of their program guidelines um Project Homeless Connect is like this amazing program that I'm you know I've learned about because we have a volunteer you know a day an event in the city it used to be at the um Civic Center it was at the Warrior Stadium they've now moved to the Portuguese Hall because we don't provide them a rent-free space to do that it's an amazing um event where um all kinds of programs come together I mean we talk about a navigation center and wanting to have that as a year-round service um this is like navigation day and if you go and you see it happen it's amazing what you know individuals get walked through and and uh uh connected to all of these services dental I mean it every I could go on but it's just this really amazing thing and I think we should be supporting them they've been creative in how to continue to make this happen with reduced support from the city um and so I'd like to fund them as well I'm suggesting 5k but they have said that they'd be willing to accept anything we might contribute for this coming year and I think it should be an ongoing priority for us we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on homeless services some of which um questionable uh results this is a proven demonstrated results and it's a small ask Janice of Santa Cruz I'm raising this now because it is um you know it's an issue that or this is a program in our community that kind of speaks to this broader I mean we we continue to get constituents saying you know when with respect to the Ross camp for example the you know all these people need what they need is to you know they all need to go and get um you know the the percentage of whatever the percentage is of people in the Ross camp who need drug and alcohol um substance use disorder services well when I talk to Janice workers um they say they are they turn people away every single day from the Ross camp people who are indigent it is one of the only programs in our community that provides substance abuse services counseling services to indigent our indigent community they are in a major struggle which you'll be hearing about I am hoping to bring an agenda item um later this month to discuss the how to support the workers there they have requested um actually a $5400 increase which is a 15 percent increase over the current portion of funding that's allocated um in the the hopes for for the hopes funding um so I think that's a reasonable ask it kind of raises uh just it's a small commitment that the city can make to a program that is vital to achieving the the kinds of outcomes that we talk about and talk about at the city and um and really don't support financially I know this is not the city's traditional role the county provides a significant amount of funding for Janice um but I think it's time that we make some kind of commitment uh to that program they also are just for the record very low paid pretty close to minimum wage for critical counseling services um so in terms of the you know bang for the buck I mean I hate to I think these workers are exploited I'd like to see them get paid more that's an issue a broader issue community conversation but at least we could support them and and let them know that that the services they provide are um you know respected and acknowledged in our community um and the last one that I'm going to highlight here is um and I've been working with um council member Matthews on this um UCSC long-range development plan county city committee um with uh with the county supervisor Ryan Coonerty and his staff this is something that um came out of the measure you vote um close to 80 percent of the voters in the city um supported an advisory measure regarding UCSC growth and we think it's very important to um to try to invest in some an advocate position to and it would be a one-time um funding allocation to um be more directly involved in uh the long-range development plan um discussion moving forward so I'll just I'll leave it there um thank you for letting me take the time to hold forth um and we'll see if there's support for me or all of these moving forward thank you and I I'll just to conclude I understand that we're talking about cuts today and so I want you all to know that I take that very seriously um I'm not I've not ignored the the financial reality um I I believe there are other places that we can cut in our budget um and there are significant revenue enhancements that we can consider that won't solve our problem for this um fiscal year but um we I'm not going to do any more coulda shoulda woulda but I think that that's it's very important that we consider those revenue enhancements um and put that on the agenda and I have a motion to make or actually I think my colleague the vice mayor has a motion to make regarding that a little bit thanks do you want to go ahead and do that now okay vice mayor coming I think one of the things that we've um been discussing today around cuts is the need and just throughout this whole um budget hearing process and learning more about the current state uh status of the city's finances is that um there is a need to increase sources of revenue um within the city and so I'm going to make the following motion to establish an ad hoc revenue council subcommittee for the purpose of exploring and recommending revenue enhancing options for city council action with the subcommittee members to be recommended by the current budget subcommittee with the subcommittee members to be appointed by the mayor I'll second that okay thank you we can go ahead and vote on that now and discuss that if if you'd like for for the purposes of moving forward in terms of other actions do we have any further discussion on forming a revenue committee sounds member chrome can we add to the charge of the revenue committee and what you're going to look at as part of the motion because I was uh would like to um the revenue committee to consider uh raising the hotel tax taxing vacant units a real estate transfer tax looking at the business license tax looking at an uber lift tax uh and also taking up the golf course and making it you know being part of that discussion and making it revenue uh really returning it to an enterprise fund it should be if I could just um for sort of um the interest in how this has gone before is that there will be an opportunity to explore all types of revenue measures and I'm I believe city manager Bernal we've done polling and all of those types of things come in come into place I don't think this will have to be the opportunity for council members to express what their interest is in terms of a revenue measure but I think we're going to that will be all encompassing as the as the committee moves forward is that it's feel accurate yeah correct typically the the committee explores all the various options uh by doing some research and analysis we'll do some typically do some polling so yeah so it's not limited to anything it's really looking at all the various options and doing some analysis and coming back with recommendations okay I'm not limiting it I'm just making sure that I'd like to make sure that these are all considered by the committee and I see he's accepting my um I just I'm not sure if it's appropriate at this time in terms of what and I know that our city attorney isn't here in terms of the specificity in regards to how we're kind of um convened in terms of our budget process so I think the it's appropriate if if I may for a revenue committee to be formed and I think it's won't be that will be the beginning of the conversation of what they could pursue that would be sort of just my instincts personally council member bram and then councilor matthew just a quick comment on that I agree with the mayor um however I I do want to stress that um some of these actually were not pursued some of these suggestions being made by council member crone were discussed at the revenue enhancement committee and they were not pursued they were not pulled for they they were not pursued and um I think I've been very clear um over the during these discussions that progressive um revenue enhancements measures um are a priority for me I'm I'm sensing that there are priority for other council members and staff and I so I just however we make sure that those get considered this year I want to make sure that happens if and if it doesn't happen in a motion and then it just gets ignored I'm going to come back again and um you're going to hear about it again and I really would love to stop talking about it I think this this there will be opportunity for council members to weigh in on what they'd like the revenue committee to explore I think that's totally appropriate I don't think that that has to happen right now what the proposal is is to explore forming a revenue committee so when that comes back I think it'd be very appropriate for council members to express what their interests are at that time so councilor matthews and then council member glover a question about the intention is the revenue committee intended to focus on a revenue measure for voters or fee increases and other ways of if I could I would this is just a question yeah I think you know in the past if I recall correctly the revenue committee was primarily focused on what it could be for voters but if the um interest of the council is to also look at other fees and increases I think that's certainly appropriate as well um city manager pronounce yeah I mean it's it's uh whatever is the pleasure of the council but typically it's focused on um revenue measures about measure but but we could do both if that's what the council wishes okay so to my mind it'd be clearer to keep it restricted to that because my understanding is there's work in progress right now in different departments about examining different fees so I have no idea specifically what's in the pipeline on that score I look to Marcus is that correct that there's still some fee adjustment yes I mean you heard fire's concept today there's three other fees being looked at there's uh concepts around the action labs there's several revenue ideas there it could be totally appropriate for the revenue committee to you know get a report out of all those ideas so comes into that place that makes sense then if that feels but in terms of the purpose and focus your look at both revenue measures and potential fee increases well if I'm hearing if I'm hearing you correctly you're if I'm hearing you correctly councilor matthews you're really saying um the revenue committee could be um really purposeful in trying to look at what type of revenue measures they'd like to bring forward their hands full on that and I think these others may be on different timelines and so maybe just working in concert with knowing more about what's happening for fee revenue as well I'm not necessarily making that the priority but staying in line with that as a as a revenue option and in any event I think the language could just say including but not limited to and then open book there okay okay I think it's okay councilmember Glover um so it's been mentioned a couple times in response to councilmember Crohn's request uh but when is this time that council members will have an opportunity to weigh in on the committee because is the motion right now to explore the creation of a committee or is it to form a committee because it was to form a committee because if it's to form a committee then there needs to in my opinion to be some very specific outlines as to what the committee is going to go on otherwise I can't support voting for a committee that's doing unknown work so uh one solution if there's some conflict because it seems like we're talking about it in great depth even though we were supposedly not able to do that because it's not on the agenda and the city attorney is not here so to avoid there being any continued conversation about a revenue committee and the structure I would advocate that we make a motion to explore the creation of the committee and then prioritize it for a short agenda item on the next-age city council agenda so that we can uh have an open transparent conversation so and I'll be able to provide our input as to what we'd like to see the committee function on uh because I think that that has continuously been overlooked or pushed to the side even though there's been requested if I understand quickly the motion before us is to have the budget committee look at this process is that correct so perhaps one of the solutions could be that any council member who is interested in expressing what they hope the budget committee set forth in their recommendation for the revenue committee take that into consideration at their next budget committee meeting I I think that would appropriately get to what I believe is the broader interest from uh outlined by council member cro