City Council
City Council
mié, 6 de mayo de 2026
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Resumen del debate
Transcripción
RESUMEN DE REUNIÓNGenerado por IA
Concejo Municipal de Santa Rosa — 6 de mayo de 2026
Esta fue la segunda jornada de una sesión de estudio presupuestario de dos días (continuación del 5 de mayo), que abarcó el Presupuesto de Operaciones y Mantenimiento y el Programa de Mejoras de Capital propuestos por la Ciudad para el Año Fiscal 2026-27. No se tomaron votaciones vinculantes; la sesión fue informativa, con el Concejo brindando orientación al personal antes de la aprobación del presupuesto en junio. Los concejales Alvarez y Fleming estuvieron ausentes durante partes de la reunión.
Resumen del Presupuesto de la Autoridad de Vivienda
La Directora de Vivienda y Servicios Comunitarios Megan Passenger presentó el presupuesto de la Housing Authority, que abarca aproximadamente 20 fondos separados que cubren la estabilización del alquiler en parques de casas móviles, la administración general, la asistencia para el alquiler y una cartera de fideicomiso de vivienda. El programa de asistencia para el alquiler apoya a aproximadamente 1,700 hogares mediante vouchers de elección de vivienda reembolsados por HUD. Los cambios clave para el AF 2026-27 incluyen la eliminación de un puesto vinculado a un programa de alivio de alquiler de la era COVID que expira a finales de 2026, un modesto aumento en los costos de asistencia para el alquiler debido al alza de los alquileres, y una reducción en el Fondo Fiduciario de Vivienda porque HUD ha redirigido el financiamiento de Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS (HOPWA) al Estado de California, ya que el número local de casos de SIDA ha caído por debajo del umbral federal.
Fondos de Servicios Internos: TI, Recursos Humanos, Riesgo y Flota
El Director de Finanzas Scott Wagner explicó los fondos de servicios internos compartidos de la ciudad. El presupuesto del Departamento de TI aumentó un 7.4%, principalmente debido a un contrato de software plurianual con Accela que genera un calendario de pagos irregular. Wagner señaló que la ciudad destina apenas el 2% de su presupuesto total a TI, muy por debajo del referente sectorial del 3.5–4% para agencias de tamaño similar, y estimó una brecha de inversión de $6 millones. No se propusieron cambios en la dotación de personal del equipo de 33 personas del área de TI.
Recursos Humanos registró un incremento general del 9.4%, impulsado principalmente por el fondo de Gestión de Riesgos. Un empleado de RH fue transferido del Fondo General a la función de riesgo/RH para alinearse mejor con las tareas de beneficios. El fondo de riesgo —que cubre compensación laboral, responsabilidad general, seguro de propiedad y el plan de salud de los empleados de la ciudad— enfrenta un aumento del 30% en los costos del plan de salud municipal, en parte como ajuste por haber subestimado las primas del año anterior, y en parte como reflejo de un cambio demográfico, ya que más empleados han migrado de planes de salud individuales a planes familiares. Los costos de compensación laboral registraron una ligera disminución tras un esfuerzo deliberado por reforzar las reservas el año pasado. Wagner indicó que las reservas del fondo de riesgo se encuentran actualmente en los niveles recomendados por los actuarios.
La división de Flota reportó modestas reducciones de costos dentro del fondo de servicios internos, aunque los costos a nivel departamental continúan aumentando. Los costos de reemplazo de vehículos —especialmente los patrulleros de la policía— siguen siendo una presión significativa. El personal continúa ajustando el tamaño de la flota para reducir los costos de mantenimiento.
Fondo Empresarial de Tránsito
El Director de Transporte y Obras Públicas Dan Hennessey presentó el presupuesto de tránsito, enfatizando que este tema merecía mucho más tiempo del que permite una sola diapositiva, y que el Concejo debería esperar discusiones más detalladas en los próximos 6 a 12 meses.
Las principales fuentes de ingresos del sistema de tránsito —impuestos al diésel y la gasolina, impuesto de ventas local e ingresos de taquilla (menos del 10% de los ingresos)— no están siguiendo el ritmo del aumento de costos, un problema que Hennessey describió como de alcance estatal y nacional. El sistema le paga a la ciudad aproximadamente $1.5 millones anuales por servicios administrativos compartidos (RH, finanzas, legal), lo que consume cerca del 10% del presupuesto sin beneficiar directamente a los pasajeros.
Por segundo año consecutivo, la ciudad no acumulará su meta de $1 millón anuales para futuras compras de autobuses, optando en cambio por mantener los niveles de servicio actuales. El sistema de tránsito está retirando $1.3 millones de las reservas depositadas en la Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) para equilibrar el presupuesto, dejando aproximadamente $8–10 millones en reservas totales. De los 30 autobuses de la flota municipal, 12 ya fueron reemplazados este año, con 6 nuevos autobuses en servicio y 6 más que llegarán en las próximas semanas. Una subvención federal pendiente para 6 autobuses eléctricos e infraestructura de carga ha estado paralizada durante 18 meses; el Alcalde Stapp y el Vicealcalde Okrepkie recientemente abogaron por ella en Washington, D.C.
Las estadísticas de mantenimiento preventivo han mejorado notablemente tras una revisión trienal de la Federal Transit Administration que señaló deficiencias. Hennessey reconoció que el sistema enfrenta un déficit estructural y se comprometió a presentar recomendaciones de cambios en el servicio en un plazo de 6 meses, incluyendo una revisión de la optimización de rutas y mejoras en la puntualidad.
Fondo Empresarial de Estacionamiento
Se proyecta que el fondo de estacionamiento, que opera los garajes de la ciudad y los estacionamientos de superficie del centro, reducirá sus reservas en $812,000. El Director de Finanzas Wagner señaló que esta estimación es conservadora porque no refleja plenamente un reciente aumento en las tarifas de estacionamiento, el cual el personal espera que mejore la posición del fondo. La ciudad también está implementando una estrategia para incorporar puestos no permanentes de vigilancia de estacionamiento con el fin de atender una brecha de personal que en años recientes ha llevado al Fondo General a subsidiar parcialmente la vigilancia de estacionamiento —un déficit estimado en $200,000 que la nueva estrategia busca subsanar. El fondo cuenta con una saludable reserva de $5 millones. Una contribución anual separada de $121,000 proveniente del fondo de estacionamiento apoya a la Downtown Association y al Downtown Betterment District.
El concejal MacDonald preguntó sobre el destino a largo plazo del mantenimiento diferido en los garajes de estacionamiento, que asciende a decenas de millones de dólares. El Director de Finanzas Wagner confirmó que los ingresos de cualquier futura venta de activos de estacionamiento excedentes permanecerían legalmente en el fondo de estacionamiento y se destinarían a necesidades de infraestructura de capital.
Bennett Valley Golf Course
El subsidio del Fondo General para el campo de golf se mantiene en $500,000 para el próximo año. Las mejoras de capital propuestas son necesidades de mantenimiento básico: reparaciones de techos, reemplazo de equipos de cocina averiados, mejoras de ventilación y un carrito de bebidas. El servicio de la deuda sobre los bonos vinculados al restaurante y el club de campo, junto con un préstamo del Parks Development Fund, sigue en camino de liquidarse en 2031. Sin embargo, Wagner advirtió que el pago de la deuda no resuelve las necesidades de infraestructura a largo plazo del campo de golf, entre ellas una necesidad identificada en un estudio para el reemplazo mayor del sistema de riego, estimada en aproximadamente $10 millones. El personal indicó que se requiere emitir una nueva Solicitud de Propuestas para un operador privado en un plazo de 12 a 18 meses, con la intención de negociar condiciones más favorables que atraigan mayor inversión de capital privado. Se mencionó la posible incorporación de un recorrido de par 3 como una oportunidad de ingresos a corto plazo.
Fondo Empresarial de Santa Rosa Water
La Directora de Agua Jennifer Burke presentó el presupuesto del departamento, que totaliza aproximadamente $57.5 millones en costos operativos más $19.5 millones en capital, con el resto destinado al servicio de la deuda y gastos generales —una operación de aproximadamente $200 millones en total. El Gerente Municipal Farrell reconoció expresamente a Burke y su equipo por administrar una empresa de una escala comparable a la del Fondo General en su totalidad.
Los principales factores presupuestarios incluyen un aumento del 8.21% en la tarifa mayorista de Sonoma Water (que agrega aproximadamente $2 millones), un crecimiento moderado en las compras proyectadas de agua, y un proyecto de aguas pluviales de $156,000 financiado mediante tarifas de instalaciones de capital para reparaciones de emergencia en drenajes pluviales. Un aumento del 6% en las tarifas de agua y un aumento del 5% en las tarifas de aguas residuales, previamente aprobados por el Concejo, están incorporados en las proyecciones de ingresos. También se propone un incremento del IPC del 2.49% en la evaluación de aguas pluviales. Se espera que la planta regional de tratamiento de aguas residuales en la Laguna —el mayor consumidor de electricidad del condado— reduzca su demanda energética una vez que entre en funcionamiento un nuevo proyecto de desinfección por luz ultravioleta. No se propusieron cambios en la dotación de personal.
Programa de Mejoras de Capital
El Director Hennessey presentó un presupuesto del CIP a nivel municipal de aproximadamente $76.5 millones, prácticamente idéntico al del año anterior. Aproximadamente el 60% proviene de los cuatro fondos de agua; transporte y obras públicas representa cerca del 30%; parques, aproximadamente el 10%; e incendios, alrededor del 1%.
Agua/Aguas residuales: Aproximadamente el 65–73% de los fondos locales del CIP para agua y aguas residuales ya están en construcción o lo estarán en un plazo de 12 meses. Un importante proyecto de mejora eléctrica en la planta de tratamiento regional, estimado en casi $35 millones, está casi completamente diseñado y será financiado mediante una emisión de bonos de agua; aún no estaba reflejado en las cifras del CIP presentadas.
Parques: La ciudad dispone de aproximadamente $9 millones en el CIP de parques para el próximo año, provenientes en gran parte de las Tarifas de Impacto al Desarrollo de Parques distribuidas entre los cuatro cuadrantes de la ciudad. El Director Hennessey propuso tomar fondos prestados de los cuadrantes Noroeste y Suroeste para acelerar la construcción en Martin Luther King Jr. Park y Kiwanis Springs Community Park, en el cuadrante Sureste con escasa cobertura de servicios, con el compromiso de reintegrar esos fondos a los cuadrantes correspondientes el año siguiente. Desde el inicio del año fiscal anterior, casi $55 millones de un atraso de $65 millones han pasado a construcción activa. Los proyectos próximos a iniciar construcción incluyen Rincon Valley Community Park, Fair Park y MLK Park. Los proyectos aún en diseño para años futuros incluyen Rosen Creek Park, Laura Colgan Creek Park, Fremont Park y el Southeast Greenway. Se ha completado una evaluación del estado de los más de 50 parques de la ciudad, la cual será presentada al Concejo para su retroalimentación antes del próximo ciclo presupuestario.
Transporte/Obras Públicas: La ciudad está comprometiendo aproximadamente $12.8 millones al mantenimiento del pavimento —un nivel que el personal tiene la intención de establecer como piso en adelante, con una meta mínima interna de $11 millones anuales. El proyecto de pavimentación del vecindario de Oakmont (diseño-construcción) es el proyecto central, estimado en $10.5 millones y con inicio de construcción previsto para este otoño. Un proyecto de mantenimiento de pavimento en el Valle resultó en $1.4 millones —$600,000 por debajo del estimado—, con posible inicio de construcción tan pronto como el 1 de julio. La repavimentación con financiamiento de subvenciones de las calles del centro (Brookwood, College Avenue, corredor de Fourth Street) se espera que comience a finales de este verano.
Hennessey reportó un notable resultado en materia de seguridad pública: la ciudad promedió 40 accidentes fatales o con lesiones graves por año durante la última década; en 2025, esa cifra fue de 15 —una reducción de aproximadamente el 60%. Atribuyó esto en parte a la reducción de carriles, las inversiones en medidas de calmado del tráfico y la colaboración interdepartamental con policía y bomberos, reconociendo al mismo tiempo cierta aleatoriedad estadística.
La presentación también abordó la crisis de financiamiento de calles a largo plazo. Aproximadamente el 8% de las calles de la ciudad (44 millas de línea central) se encuentran en condición muy deficiente o en estado de falla, y requieren un estimado de $42 millones para su reparación —equivalente a dos proyectos de la escala de Coffey Park/Fountain Grove. El número de vías en muy mal estado se ha duplicado en cinco años, ya que la ciudad enfoca intencionalmente el mantenimiento preventivo en las calles que aún pueden ser rescatadas. Wagner y Hennessey discutieron la posibilidad de una medida de bonos o una fuente de ingresos dedicada (citando el bono de $600 millones de Oakland en 2016 y el impuesto de ventas dedicado de Petaluma como ejemplos), con miembros del Concejo expresando interés en explorar esa opción. Una discusión más detallada fue diferida para una sesión próxima.
El nuevo Affordable Facilities District (AFD) de la ciudad fue señalado como una futura fuente de ingresos, aunque no se espera que genere fondos utilizables durante al menos cinco años y está concebido como un recurso adicional —no como reemplazo de las funciones del Fondo General.
Déficit Estructural del Año 2 y Perspectivas de Ingresos
El Director de Finanzas Wagner cerró la sesión de dos días con un resumen franco de la trayectoria financiera de la ciudad. A pesar de haber logrado cerrar el déficit del año en curso mediante consolidaciones, reestructuraciones creativas y recortes focalizados, la ciudad enfrenta un déficit estructural proyectado de aproximadamente $13.8 millones para el AF 2029-30. La dotación de personal del Fondo General se encuentra ahora en los niveles de la Gran Recesión, y Wagner declaró sin ambigüedades que los recortes adicionales tendrían que provenir de los programas operativos en lugar de la administración —la cual ya ha sido reducida al mínimo.
Sin nuevos ingresos, la corrección del segundo año probablemente requeriría eliminar cerca de 60 puestos en distintos departamentos. Entre los impactos específicos en los servicios descritos se incluyen: dejar inoperativa una compañía de camiones de bomberos (eliminando la mitad de la capacidad de camiones de la ciudad); consolidar o eliminar unidades especializadas de la policía (pandillas, narcóticos, tránsito, patrullaje del centro, SWAT); recortes profundos a los programas recreativos para adultos; reducciones importantes en el mantenimiento proactivo de calles y parques; procesamiento más lento de permisos; y menor inversión en ciberseguridad.
El impuesto de ventas de medio centavo de Measure Q expira en 2030-31, eliminando $25 millones en ingresos anuales recurrentes exactamente en el momento en que se proyecta que el déficit estructural será más agudo.
El Gerente Municipal Farrell se comprometió a presentar el presupuesto completo del AF 2026-27 para su aprobación el 16 de junio, seguido de sesiones de estudio en julio enfocadas en los impactos al servicio del segundo año y posibles opciones para aumentar los ingresos —entre las que podría incluirse una medida de votación.
Los miembros del Concejo expresaron en términos generales su apoyo a la transparencia, elogiaron el trabajo del personal y señalaron su disposición a impulsar una medida de ingresos. Varios miembros —entre ellos los concejales Fleming, MacDonald, Ben-Mizrahi (mencionado en la transcripción de diversas formas como "Ben Milos" o "Ben Wallace"), y el Vicealcalde Okrepkie— señalaron la imposibilidad de realizar más recortes sin causar un daño inaceptable a los servicios esenciales, y enfatizaron la necesidad de actuar con decisión en materia de ingresos en el corto plazo.
No se recibieron comentarios del público.
Puntos clave
El déficit estructural de aproximadamente $14 millones para el AF 2029-30 no puede resolverse únicamente con recortes; el personal nombró explícitamente una posible medida de ingresos en las urnas como probablemente necesaria, con una sesión de estudio en julio planificada para analizar las opciones.
El tránsito tiene un déficit estructural y retirará $1.3 millones de las reservas para equilibrar el presupuesto del próximo año; una discusión sobre la reestructuración del servicio tendrá lugar en un plazo de seis meses.
El CIP de $76.5 millones prioriza llevar a la fase de construcción proyectos largamente prometidos, entre ellos MLK Park y Kiwanis Springs en el cuadrante Sureste con escasa cobertura de servicios, con un piso anual de $11 millones para el mantenimiento del pavimento.
Los accidentes fatales y con lesiones graves cayeron aproximadamente un 60% en 2025 (de un promedio de 40 en 10 años a solo 15), atribuidos en parte a la conversión de carriles y a las inversiones en calmado del tráfico —un dato que el personal y el Concejo citaron como justificación para continuar con las inversiones en seguridad vial.
Las calles residenciales enfrentan un atraso de reparaciones de $42 millones que la ciudad actualmente no puede financiar; el personal regresará con opciones que incluyen posible financiamiento mediante bonos, para ser discutidas junto con la estrategia de ingresos más amplia este verano.
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Qué ocurrió en esta reunión
REVIEW OF FISCAL YEAR 2026-27 OPERATIONS AND MAINTENANCE BUDGET AND CAPITAL IMPROVEMENT PROGRAM
# FISCAL YEAR 2026-27 OPERATIONS AND MAINTENANCE BUDGET AND CAPITAL IMPROVEMENT PROGRAM SUMMARY
During the second day of budget review, city staff presented a comprehensive overview of the FY 2026-27 Operations and Maintenance Budget and Capital Improvement Program totaling approximately $76.5 million, with Director Megan Passenger (Housing and Community Services) detailing the Housing Authority's four main fund components and Director Jennifer Burke (Santa Rosa Water) presenting the $57.5 million water budget featuring an 8.21% wholesale rate increase. Director Dan (Transportation and Public Works) highlighted structural deficits across enterprise funds—transit revenues are not keeping pace with costs, the parking fund faces an $812,000 reserve drawdown, and golf course operations require ongoing general fund subsidies—while Director Hennessey outlined significant Capital Improvement Program challenges, particularly a stagnant pavement condition index at 61 with 44 centerline miles in very poor condition requiring approximately $42 million in repairs. CFO Wagner presented critical long-term fiscal constraints, warning of a projected $13.8-14 million general fund deficit by FY 2029-30 that cannot be addressed through staffing cuts alone, as 77% of city costs are tied to salaries and benefits, requiring either elimination of approximately 60 positions (potentially impacting fire services and street maintenance) or revenue enhancement measures such as sales tax increases before Measure Q sunsets in 2030-31. City Manager Farrell recommended adopting the budget in June with study sessions in July to discuss potential service impacts and revenue options, acknowledging that the two-year budget approach would result in approximately 75 position cuts while attempting to maintain quality operations and essential public services across departments.
During the second day of budget review, city staff presented a comprehensive overview of the FY 2026-27 Operations and Maintenance Budget and Capital Improvement Program totaling approximately $76.5 million, with Director Megan Passenger (Housing and Community Services) detailing the Housing Authority's four main fund components and Director Jennifer Burke (Santa Rosa Water) presenting the $57.5 million water budget featuring an 8.21% wholesale rate increase. Director Dan (Transportation and Public Works) highlighted structural deficits across enterprise funds—transit revenues are not keeping pace with costs, the parking fund faces an $812,000 reserve drawdown, and golf course operations require ongoing general fund subsidies—while Director Hennessey outlined significant Capital Improvement Program challenges, particularly a stagnant pavement condition index at 61 with 44 centerline miles in very poor condition requiring approximately $42 million in repairs. CFO Wagner presented critical long-term fiscal constraints, warning of a projected $13.8-14 million general fund deficit by FY 2029-30 that cannot be addressed through staffing cuts alone, as 77% of city costs are tied to salaries and benefits, requiring either elimination of approximately 60 positions (potentially impacting fire services and street maintenance) or revenue enhancement measures such as sales tax increases before Measure Q sunsets in 2030-31. City Manager Farrell recommended adopting the budget in June with study sessions in July to discuss potential service impacts and revenue options, acknowledging that the two-year budget approach would result in approximately 75 position cuts while attempting to maintain quality operations and essential public services across departments.
Puntos de agenda (5)
Procedural (4)
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General Business
3.1General BusinessREVIEW OF FISCAL YEAR 2026-27 OPERATIONS AND MAINTENANCE BUDGET AND CAPITAL IMPROVEMENT PROGRAM
The city council will review and discuss the budget plan for operations, maintenance, and capital improvement projects for fiscal year 2026-27.
Qué ocurrió
# FISCAL YEAR 2026-27 OPERATIONS AND MAINTENANCE BUDGET AND CAPITAL IMPROVEMENT PROGRAM SUMMARYDuring the second day of budget review, city staff presented a comprehensive overview of the FY 2026-27 Operations and Maintenance Budget and Capital Improvement Program totaling approximately $76.5 million, with Director Megan Passenger (Housing and Community Services) detailing the Housing Authority's four main fund components and Director Jennifer Burke (Santa Rosa Water) presenting the $57.5 million water budget featuring an 8.21% wholesale rate increase. Director Dan (Transportation and Public Works) highlighted structural deficits across enterprise funds—transit revenues are not keeping pace with costs, the parking fund faces an $812,000 reserve drawdown, and golf course operations require ongoing general fund subsidies—while Director Hennessey outlined significant Capital Improvement Program challenges, particularly a stagnant pavement condition index at 61 with 44 centerline miles in very poor condition requiring approximately $42 million in repairs. CFO Wagner presented critical long-term fiscal constraints, warning of a projected $13.8-14 million general fund deficit by FY 2029-30 that cannot be addressed through staffing cuts alone, as 77% of city costs are tied to salaries and benefits, requiring either elimination of approximately 60 positions (potentially impacting fire services and street maintenance) or revenue enhancement measures such as sales tax increases before Measure Q sunsets in 2030-31. City Manager Farrell recommended adopting the budget in June with study sessions in July to discuss potential service impacts and revenue options, acknowledging that the two-year budget approach would result in approximately 75 position cuts while attempting to maintain quality operations and essential public services across departments.
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Good morning. >> Francisco, will you please go ahead and commence interpretation of the meeting. >> For those just joining the meeting, live interpretation in Spanish is available and members of the public or staff wishing to listen in. Spanish can join the Spanish channel by clicking on the interpretation icon in the Zoom toolbar, it looks like a glow. If you are on your cell phone or tablet locate the 3 dots, tap them lightly and put a check mark on your preferred language. Click done to activate and begin the interpretation. Won't you join the Spanish Channel? We recommend you shut off the main audio. So you only hear the Spanish interpretation. Claudia, you please restate this in Spanish? Claudia? >> Sorry about that. Didn't get myself. Apologize saying when acs at those being bunny, and person kind of ice to cook and a machine that but that's and be able explain display name it. But honestly, because it will be going person to the is coach at most in this backyard within a new and expecting of us in the any The thing see water, they swim mobile You will see one of them She says take what the National Center debate that will iPad with a look of the second to this point. The coast. But got loose. We hit a month that people own up and admit that into the might. But if it With a clinic. Them to the out well for now, he said,
but to come in satellite. That profession you can use to 2 and that I can and explain, you know, come most kcna based on the what he meant. But I could put their school tracks when I mean like that. But that's unexplained, which good. Ask is to most Thank you very much. Back to you. And we're back. >> It's nice to be spending so much time with everyone in time is 9 month 902. And will cause meaning or MADAM City clerk. Would you please call the roll? >> Thank you. Mayor Councilmember Councilmember MacDonald here, Councilmember Fleming. Councilmember Ben Willows, for us. Vice Mayor Okrepkie. Mayor step here. Let the record show that all councilmembers are present with the exception of council members, Alvarez and Fleming. >> Perfect. Thank you. All right. We'll move on to item 3.1, our 2nd half of our fiscal year budget review, MADAM City manager. Any any words of introduction today? Are we just going jump right into it? We're going jump right in. All right, Scott and Megan, over to you. Good morning. Mayor members of council, we're pleased to bring this second day of our study session forward. The great news is that we were able to cover so much ground in a today should be a very efficient and productive day to run to the >> remainder of our departments. That's going to begin get a brief overview of what will be covering today. But we'll start out with our housing authority. We're director passenger. We giving us a brief overview of their proposed budget for 26 27. We're going to go through the city's internal service funds and then we're going to shift gears into our enterprise funds. We'll be covering parking in Bennett Valley,
Golf Course. But transit division as along with our sun rose water will run us through our larger enterprises here at the city and then we'll end with the Capital improvement program discussion led by director Hennessey and will end our conversation today really, with the final part of our multi fees, multi-year strategy going forward with what you're too impacts are looking like going forward. So with that, I will kick us right off into housing communities or Housing Authority with director passenger. >> Good morning meant mayor stop and members of council. I'm Megan passenger director housing and Community Services. So I'll be reviewing the housing authority component of the housing and Community Services budget. As you can see on the slide is broken into 4 main areas. The housing authority has about 20 separate funds that we used to administer programs. The first one is the mobile home rent Stabilization Fund. This is the fee that is collected for administration of our mobile home Rent Control program, staff charges to it. And we also use it for at potential arbitrations that we MAY need to pursue. Second, we have our admin fun. This is what general catch-all for the Housing Authority's 20 plus funds insurance. It costs and other department level expenses flow into this particular area. The largest is rental assistance is funding. That comes directly from high for the administration of the housing choice voucher program. The supports approximately 1700 households, the payment of their monthly rent. And it is reimbursed by hud. So this is our best estimate funding in the coming fiscal year. And then finally, we have the
trust and this itself is about 15 separate funds that come into the organization. We use this to support our affordable housing production rehabilitation and compliance. So this is where will find cdbg home and other resources that we use to provide loans to developers to sir, for new affordable housing units in support of Army Nichols. The highlights for the housing authority in the coming year is will be reducing one position within the housing authority funds. And this was a position that was added several years ago to support a covid year rent program. That is sunsetting the end of 2026. So that's the reduction of one fte. And then know where the increase in rental assistance programs is due to increasing rent costs throughout our about your program. And then as you can see, the reduction in our housing trust is because hud has reallocated the way they provide one of the funding sources, housing opportunity for persons with aids, this funding because our aids cases are lower than the federal threshold will be moving to the state of California. And so that is a quick overview of housing authority funds. Thank you. Will be moving on now to our internal service funds. And far too early for a government finance lesson that I cover briefly. What an internal service fund is and how it works. >> So there's many services of the city that are shared amongst all of our departments. The best examples would be our risk fund, which we'll talk about detail in a moment along with our fleet and repair funds that cover the city's vehicles. And then lastly is our it fun so on on
accounting basis, if you think about it, these costs live in 2 different places. They live within our internal service funds on one in which we're going to cover here as part of the slides. But you've already seen these expenses within our departments as well. So those expenses from our internal service funds allocated to our departments. They create what's not exactly a one to one because we use reserves to smooth out those collections. But this is a good opportunity for us to talk about how we've seen movement within these funds. First, we'll start with our it fun. This was one of the more informative, detailed presentations that was given where finance subcommittee him. And before we get into numbers, all summarize by saying that we this is easy area for us to look at how we compare to a different agencies. And overall the city of Santa Rosa within our total budget spends send spends 2.1 2% or 2% of our total budget on it. That is low. We would expect an agency like ours to be much closer to 4% or 3 and a half percent. So really, Chief Information Officer Ticker and his team again, this is another great example of doing a lot with a little. Frankly, the investment within our it fund. We would love to see more. This is another area where the city I think is under invested due to a lack of funding that we could invest and get some positive. Our allies out of it. When we do analysis, I mean, we could pursue an additional 6 million dollars within our it funded its that dramatic. And again, that follows in line with the 2% versus 4% investment going
forward. We'll see more strain in this area. Technology will continue to be a growth area. Officials. He's within the city. And therefore, as you've seen within our departments, are it costs continue to go up? But that is really a recognition of the demand in need for those services going up more than anything else. Overall, the department's budget increased by 7.4% and a big blip. And that was our accela software excel as one of our main software programs here at the city used by multiple departments and often what happens with the software companies is their agreements can be a little can join in on a on a time on a time basis. So we had to be a couple of years as an upfront cost. We begin the contract. Then we nothing the prior year and now we're catching up on annual schedule going forward. It's a little bit of a blip. Big picture. We did not propose any staffing changes to the it Department for the next coming year. They remained constant at a 33 staff to revive the it services for all of our departments. Will shift gears now and I needed no very quickly that as we covered our general fund apartments yesterday, we skipped chart. So I'm I'm so sorry, hr. We will. We will. We will catch up right now. I promise. Big picture is not not a lot of change in hr know proposed staffing reductions for the current year within our hr group. We did shift in employee, though we shifted employee from our General fund hr function to our risk. Hr functions way net still 0. And that's really to better align that employees with greater benefits work that's coming
out of a chart. But overall, a 9.4% increase 2 hr as a whole. That is mostly driven by our risk management fund, which I'll talk about now. Due to some context. I think one of the first questions that our city manager asked when when when she came on was tell me about the risk fund and for finance person, you really spend a lot of focus on this area. It's big dollars in overall 50 million dollar annual budget along with very large reserves that are corresponding with the programs. I think our name here for risk management or risk fund misleading when I would actually call it is our workers comp general liability benefits property insurance and city health plan. Out that they won't let me call it that. So we just call it risk. Fund. But that risk on to something different, right risk. You think to yourself? Well, that's how the city mitigates just risk. This is again, kind of a catchall for all those programs that I just named often how they work mentioned some highlights and that programming for health care plans is is challenging on a budgetary pieces. And that's a purely based on timing. We find out what our premiums for the year going to be in JANUARY. It is on a calendar year basis and we work off of the fiscal year basis. What's happened within our budget and you'll see there that our city health plans within the risk fund are taking an extremely large jump of 30%. That is less corresponding with the increase that we're seeing on a one-year basis versus us being a little short last year on what we thought our
estimate was going to be. And this year we feel is coming in higher. This is a catch up. Overall, though, we still continue to see a large increase in our health premiums. Demographically, we've noticed within the city that we have more employees that have moved from a single player plan. 2 family plans. That's great. We love that here at the city. That's awesome. It does just come with greater increase cost. Overall. We're still seeing around 89% growth rate in health premiums. We're all experiencing this in multiple ways. Health care's continues to be more and more expensive. Now over the past very long time. And that's continuing other things. I would point out is is a slight decrease in our workers. Compensation. That's something that last year we made a concerted effort to shore up our reserve west. And I would say what's unique with our risk fund is that it? It's it's all about reserves. This is how we build reserves for workers comp or build reserves for general liability. Our risk fund as a whole is right at our recommended levels per our actuary and each program. So so we are healthy when we have a healthy risk reserve. That's neither over funded or underfunded. Laurean coming in as a as a prior cfo. This was one of her first questions. It would be my first question walking in organization because often what you'll see is that these reserves can be very short very over. You want to make sure they're just right to critical for the risk portfolio of the city. Moving on the fleet. And there's 2 separate functions within our
fleet program. There is what we call replacement. And there's what we call repair so repair is our folks down at at the shop that are repairing our vehicles and running work orders through our departments and then our replacement fund the piggy bank that we send each each month from the departments to build even to replace our vehicles. Over the past 15 years, there's been a concerted effort to ensure that we're replacing our vehicles on a better economic basis, meaning that it's frankly doesn't make a lot of economic sense to have really, really old vehicles that breakdown a lot. It costs more to repair them, cost more to maintain them and ensuring that we're getting the vehicles that are properly running. We've also had a focus on right-sizing our We have had flight reductions over the past couple years to mitigate budgetary impacts and that's an activity that will be continuing on with. The last note I would add is that they're This has gone down within the internal Service fund, but within our departments, the costs are going up. That's again, this this accounting complexity of how an internal service fund. This is more recognition of what our fleet superintendent plans to replace over the next year being less costly vehicles. Dana was replaced the prior year. So it's not necessarily a reflection of costs going down. It's a reflection of the schedule changing for this current year. This could flop in the exactly the other direction year after that. But should mention. This is an area when we talk about vehicles and we
talk about cost that we are strained, we deliver a lot of our services through vehicles. Purchase a lot of gasoline that's within tw budget. Parts continue to be more and more expensive for auto parts. We continue to to be too shocked. We continue to be shocked on how expensive it is to replace our black and whites are are are police vehicles. These costs continue to go up and up and again, we're seeing those costs here, but it's just a stark reality of our of our fleet next. Next, we'll move on enterprise funds and we will start with transit enterprise funds and the best person to talk about transit. Is Dan. And so we're bringing him on down. Morning Mayor Council. Then a sea transportation and public works. Director. We have just a couple slides here about budget highlights for transit. But before we start, one thing I want to note is that. >> One side really not enough to talk about what's going on in transit right now. And that's my fault. That will be back more over the next 6.12 months to discuss this more and the first bullet up their notes that are major revenue. Sources are not keeping up with costs. That is not a problem that is isolated to Santa Rosa. This is a state and frankly a nationwide issue with our funding transit. >> great deal of our funding sources come from sales tax base. Revenue both diesel and gas taxes, but also local sales tax. >> that >> 70%. So is the vast
majority of our operating budget. We also have funds from couple >> from fare box, which is typically less than 10% of our revenues are actual fares from transit. And then we have some direct apportionment from federal sources that also helps provide transit service for the city. Mike Scott has been saying for others, the vast majority of our cost increases are due to salary benefits and actual providing the service with respect to vehicles. So controllable cost increases. We also the transit enterprise pays a little over million a half dollars back to the city for services. So for all of the administrative help that we get from human resources and finance and city attorney's office, So, you close to 10% of the budget is coming back to the city to pay for that and not directly providing service to riders. And there's a number of things like that. But like an enterprise fund were not and are only operating for the purpose or only paying for the purpose of providing service to constituents. The 3rd bullet is really important. We. >> Have a goal to bank roughly 1 million dollars a year of our revenues for future bust purchases. This is the second year in a row that we're not doing that. We're not doing that because banking that money would results in a reduction of service right now. Our bus fleet is about 30 buses. We have replaced 12 of them this year. You see 6 of them out on the roads already in next 6 will be out on the
roads in the next 4 to 6 weeks or so. We also have an outstanding grants from the federal government through the lower no admissions grant program for additional 6 electric buses and associated charging infrastructure. We have been trying for the last 18 months to get that obligated so that we can make a bus purchase. We have been in discussions with more fda staff and you can count. We appreciate the mayor and vice mayor support and recent trips to Washington, D.C., to help advocate for those we have made progress in terms of how to actually move forward with that. But we are still knocking on wood to make sure that that happens. Happens. We will have replaced nearly two-thirds of our fleet within a couple year period. And we will be in good shape. So while of the bullet up there might cause some reservations we're in and okay, spot in the short term. If we can get that grant obligated earlier this year, we had buses running from as early as 2002. 25 year old buses really should be on the streets. Once you're past 12 to 15 years, exceeded their useful life they should be replaced. We're now up to 20 thirteen's as our oldest bus in the fleet. We have a least a few from Golden Gate Transit as service has decreased to have buses sitting around doing nothing. And they've been a willing partner to help us. Deal with our issues as a result of these bus purchases and lease agreement. I'm also happy to share that are preventative maintenance.
Statistics have improved drastically. We had our triennial review from the Federal Transit Administration last year. That was one of our findings from them is that we were not meeting federal standards for preventative maintenance. And as part of that was because our bus is needed so much service that we could not staff our garage appropriately to get of those buses out every day. Every morning was a panic as to whether or not we would have enough buses. That has not been the case for the last 6 months or so. We're meeting and exceeding all the standards now. So the temperatures down with respect to quality and availability of our buses. And of the much better place than we were this time last year. To provide a balanced budget and make sure that we're continuing to bribe the service that we are. We are pulling 1.3 million from rta reserves for next year. Those reserves are held at mtc. That is the city's money, though. It's not showing up in the city's bank account until we actually draw it from mtc. That 1.3 is a conservative estimate of what we will The city has 58 positions for bus operators. We did not have enough. Money to actually operate a service at that level at this point, we have a number of vacant positions that we keep intentionally because we are always recruiting bus drivers. We have people come. We have people go right now. We have 10 filled positions of bus drivers who are not driving for due to different types of medical and family leave where always recruiting we have for right now that have in background checks trying to hire is routine that those 4 do not make it through background checks and
training. That is just kind of part of the cycle. The the bus operator posting is always up always recruiting, knowing that people come and go. So we expect we had the budget is programs to fully fund all of those positions. We almost certainly will not use all of them. We know you know, at least 5 of those positions will remain vacant throughout the year. And so we don't expect use all of that transit fund reserve, but we will and we're in a position where the reserves are in good shape right now, both like the city's general fund. We are in a position of a structural deficit. We need to either increase revenues which are largely out of our control or your decrease costs. And decrease costs means decrease service we based on where we're at right now. We'll have about 8 million dollars at the end of the fiscal year in reserves. If we change nothing, which is an ok place to be again. Using looking forward to seeing the projections. We will be talking about service changes this time next year. If in the same place. So with that, we have started a review of our short range transit plan to determine which services are the most efficient in terms of serving riders which are costing the most in terms of actually delivering the service we know that based on new travel patterns, additional development throughout the city. Our routes are not optimized. Right now, there are things that could be improving the system even in terms of on-time performance where we have started to lag behind in terms of actually making sure the buses are on time. There are some tweaks to our schedule that we are looking at to make that and prove that
that metric. But we will be coming to you sometime in the next 6 months or so to have a discussion about what some of the service changes might look like. So that either we can have short term implementation of that for things that need to get fixed now or if we need to address this next year during the budget cycle, there will you know, we won't catch you off There will opportunity for some dialogue about that and some community engagement. If you go to the next side cent. So to showing the budget for next year. This is very similar to last year's. That's a little bit Most of the revenue is from those outside sources from state, local and regional funding there about 20 sources of revenue and total that make up the transit enterprises. Revenue total the $30,000 of transfer in from the general fund. That is for the Veterans Ride free program that has been paid for by the city for a number of years. And that is continuing. We are showing on here no use of fund balance again. That is because the city is not in money is not in the city's bank account. It is in a dedicated city of Santa Rosa Calif mtc. So we are at that Astros at the bottom. The showing that to make this a balanced budget. We are pulling 1.3 million dollars of transit tva reserves to balance the budget. With that, I can answer any questions about that talk later. We want to pause for questions right now. Director. Ok, my colleagues, any questions the moment. And just just bands at the moment. Anything Korea, actually just 2 quick ones for me. As long as we're was that was reserve
amount. >> For transit. >> Right now we have a little under 10 million dollars and reserves across the number of different funding sources. >> ok, thank you. Actually. That's my only question right now. Thank you. Back to you, MR. Wagner. Thank you very much. Thank >> Will shift gears back into moving on to the parking Enterprise fund. Well, you'll notice from our parking Enterprise Fund is this is the enterprise from that operates the city's garages and surface lots throughout downtown. And we notice is that proposed budget does have a use of reserves and drawing down dirt reserves of $812,000. I will say all the areas within our budget. This is this might be the one that we did. But as conservative, this really does not factor in fully the increase in rates that came forward to council a couple months ago. And really that's a function of this is this is how we always do it. And were very hopeful about those rates correcting this. We believe they will, but it's a matter of of being conservative in basing our revenue estimates off of what we've seen from Actuals. Furthermore, we believe that over the next few years and not only with the fund become, I saw but will be positive to be able to make the deferred maintenance investments needed currently within judge and some lower hanging fruit areas. Overall, the very, very large infrastructure issues within our parking garages that are in the tens of millions of dollars. We do not currently have a funding source to address. I will point out the bottom line number of $121,000 to call out this is
specifically for support for the d a o and the downtown Betterment District Parking fund supports that group by the tune of $121,000 a year. And overall budget highlights much like the scene. We've seen salaries, you know, fire an earthquake insurance increase along with it costs. Additionally, we are proposing a strategy of looking at some non permanent positions to assist parking enforcement. We've seen that our parking enforcement staffing is short of what it should be to ensure that we remain break even within our parking enforcement structure. I mentioned yesterday that we've seen the general fund subsidize parking enforcement for a couple of years. This is our strategy moving forward to try to address that, which impacts the parking fund overall. The parking funds Reserve is healthy at a 5 million Dollar Reserve has of JUNE 30th. Next up is our Bennett Valley. Golf Course. A few things to highlight in that kept our general fund subsidy of $500,000 the same year over year. We have are we are not proposing to change that. What is going to be changes that we've directed the we're directing our golf course to make some very needed equipment replacements that are required at the golf course to maintain operations. These are. I mean, let me get it right. Roof repairs, broken kitchen equipment, ventilation, and then a club beverage cart. These are all things that they need. This is not fancy investments in the golf course. This is just to keep keep folks come in and keep a roof. I'm not leaking.
It's not not much better than that. We are hopeful in the next year and in talking with our vendor b# # # # # that they MAY be able to launch a a par 3 course on the golf course, which would be really great and be able to utilize the course during some periods where right now we can't due to rain. And with that, we'll shift gears and or water enterprise fund and welcome Director Burke. Down a set table. Thank you. Good morning, Mayor. Stop. >> Vice Mayor Crappie members of Jennifer Burke. >> Director Santa Rosa water here to give you a. >> Overview of our budget for fiscal year 26. 27 if given the next slide, please. First, I just wanted to take a moment to let you know and thank your board of public utilities. They did and accepts tunnel amount of work on our budget. This year. We had 2 budget subcommittee meetings with our board. We have full study session and then we had a recommendation for the budget before you today is fully recommended by the board of Public Utilities. We also met with our sub-regional technical advisory committee and they recommend the budget that's before you today. So you'll hurting my We'll see. This is a snapshot of our budget. Approximately 57 and a half is operating costs department wide about 19 and-a-half is capital. And the remainder is allocated to that
service and overhead. If we go to the next slide. Some of our major budget changes. We are looking in our stormwater fund to have a project to address emergency storm drain repair. This is the $156,000 that we're putting into that program. We didn't find that last year because we had a lot of carryover budget and this year we are utilizing capital facility. Fee funds for this budget. You'll also see the water funds. There's an increase roughly 3.7 million. And this is mostly due to Sonoma. Water's 8 point to one percent wholesale rate increase as well as an estimate of modest growth in how much water we think will be purchasing next year. And then last we have about 600,000 increase and water cip project funding. We went up in all of our cip plan, funding for water, wastewater and regional and had a reduction in storm water. So that's why the net is about 600,000. And we are not proposing any changes to staffing levels. Go to the next slide. Please. Here's a breakdown of water budget by fund all just caught a couple of different things. The general fund portion that is general fund portion of our storm, water and creeks, budget that increase is strictly due to labor costs and it allocation cost increases. In our water fund. You'll about a 3.6 million dollar increase again, a lot of that is due to the
2 million dollars of increased costs from Sonoma water for purchases water. And then also just call out again that Capital improvement fund citywide looks like a big percentage, but that's that additional 156,000 that we're putting in for the storm drain improvements that we need to make becoming the next slide. Please. Here is a breakdown of our budget by program. The administration covers sort of the administrative support to all of the operations of 4 different operations. We house and water. Calling out a couple of the pieces. If we look at the local wastewater, oh, 01:00am. That me. That's our sewer collection. That's a very modest increase. If you look at our wastewater resource distribution increased, there's about a 9.9% increase about $173,000. That's due to a rise and bio solids disposal. So we have to deal with some increases and costs and also making sure we're budgeting appropriately for that disposal on the waste water resource recovery. Again, that's our regional system. And that 6.2% or 2.4 million dollar increase is due to labor as well as increased electricity charges. And as you MAY know right now, we are believe the largest electricity user the county at the Laguna Treatment plant. We talked previously about purchase of water and our engineering resources fund. We are anticipating that we MAY have some folks who are choosing to retire. So we're planning appropriately for that. Then we have a decrease in projects, mostly because we have significant carry over from the previous year. So
we're not adding funds to that. If we go to the next slide, you'll see here is the fund summary. Our revenues. We're incorporating the 6% rate increase that was adopted by this council last year. For next fiscal year. We talked about our expenditures. We have about 16 million $1.16 million that we're spending on. Cip projects are planned to people cip projects. That's about $500,000. More than our current budget. And then we have a small amount in the transfers out for some debt service as well as utility impact fees that we pay for cip projects. We go to the next slide. Please on our local wastewater slide. Again on revenues where including 5% rate increase that was adopted by council for next fiscal year. We have our expenditures for our cip. We're again increasing a minimal amount about 300,000 compared to this fiscal year as we're slowly building up building up over the next few years of our rates are capital investment, which is really good. On transfers out. We have a small amount again for debt service and a large portion for utility impact fees that we pain related to our cip projects. And then also in transfers out is our portion of the regional budget which were at that Lime. Thank you, Scott. As you MAY recall, this is split between Santa Rosa, which is where roughly about 74% of the funding that goes for the regional enterprise. Our 4 other partners make up
the remainder. That split is based on the amount of flow that goes into the treatment plant. So Santa Rosa's, about three-quarters of the flow that goes into the treatment plant. We also have miscellaneous revenue. We have a really good trucked waste program. We're we're able to serve the community and have tracked waste, brought to our treatment plant and then we're able to turn it into energy. We're continuing to see good revenue and growth with that program. So that is a lot of the increase in the miscellaneous are venues that you see before you. I mean, you just saw a pretty detailed breakdown of this budget on APRIL. 21st, when you approved our preliminary recommendation. But that included all the expenditures in front of you. I will note there's just a slight error on this slide. The cea's p expenditures are 13 Million. 2.3 million of that was captured in nm expenditures line by mistake. When the budget was rolled up. But it doesn't change the bottom line, the total or the capital spending. So. And then if we go to our last line on our storm, water enterprise fund again, you MAY recall we have an assessment that provides revenue for our storm, water and creeks program about 53% of that goes to creeks. 47% to storm drain. We are going to be proposing as as per the resolution r cpi increase of 2.4 9%. So that was included in the revenue projections for next year. And we are continuing to have just a small amount that we're spending to make sure that we're complying with our MPs, regulations for our storm, permit. And that is the water
Department budget. And go Thank you, Jennifer. Thank mayor. Suggestive. We take questions now on either our enterprise funds or internal service funds. Before we get in the capital program, we'd be happy receive any questions from council. >> Perfect looking my colleagues Rogers. >> I had a question about parking. Are we having a hard time attracting retaining or just that there were no. >> And t e's Open for enforcement. >> And how much? >> About her fte and how much are we looking? >> revenue, her Ft. >> Thank you for your >> Chad, trying to hide back there. >> He knows these questions or for him. Good morning. No, there's there's not at this point to an issue with 3 hiring new enforcement staff. Going through the steps to try to address how we can backfill some positions and then having folks that couldn't be contributing to the fund it at this point. But come JULY one, we should be back on track with fully staffed and then also be able expand what we're doing is sars, inforcement concern. >> All operate a little bit more and saying that given the size of that staff, which is how many total enforcement officers. So we 4 and a half and enforcement officers. So if we end up in situations where a couple of them MAY need to be on leave for various reasons, that's a pretty dramatic impact, our revenue. And again, our strategy is really to try to
smooth out that impact. When we're seeing those types of personal actions within that group. So roughly $200,000, we believe will be able to make up through this strategy. So we're feeling good about Sorry, the next one. It's about Valley golf course. Thank you. Chair. >> What are we looking at? >> Projection as far as how long, how much longer we're going to be subsidizing the golf course. >> And where are we at >> The loan that was provided from. Help me out. One of the grids where we at with the loan payback. I think I asked the same questions every year. So there we go. Thank you for your question. >> the what I would boil down our our golf course city with his Israeli right on pace with what the total debt service for the fund is. So paying off the bonds which are associated with with building the restaurant in the clubhouse, along with the loan from our park development quadrant that happened. Those are online to pay off in 2031. What I would hope. Is that by 2031 win, that falls off the books. Now the funds on an operating basis more stable. Now, I really want to provide some caution towards thinking that come 2031, the financial issues of the cough cars are over because those ponds paid off. They're not because within our budget still does
not address the major infrastructure issues that we have about the course. We, again, are trying to properly invest to keep the operating function, the best it can with those things that I mentioned earlier, whether those you know, mowers roof repairs that really is not to speak to the greater spend that needs to happen per this study that's needed at to, course. So the good news is that we're almost towards the end of that debt schedule and that's going to help. So I don't want to discount we'll see in 5 years health. True that projection ends up paying. Does that help? It helps. >> in my brain. What I heard was where p de and subsidizing the golf course. And I don't think that is what. If I recall correctly or what I believed council would be doing for a very long term. It felt when it was proposed to us that it was going to be more of a short-term Forever in perpetuity. Yeah. Thank you for that comment. Address that. Here's the way I would put it. I think that if our debt service was 0 this year and we do, paying for those ponds. >> We wouldn't have a subsidy for budget in this current year for the golf course. And that's just a function of. Funding to the necessary level right now, the necessary level is to keep operating function and that requires a $500,000 investment. What I think was a little bit. Confusing or maybe
just a little more detail was needed around the golf course conversations when the study came forward at that time. Was that the and let Jesus Jason? >> Thanks, thanks. S cfo Wagner and and Councilmember Jason, that assistant city manager. I'm just going to step in a little bit say, as you recall, when we went out and did the rfp to try to identify an operation and maintenance contractor, we had a national from come out and do an evaluation for us. We knew that over the term of that contract we MAY or MAY not see additional relief based on the general fund subsidy. It was it looked good based on the curve quite frankly, golf is an industry is doing just fine right now. If you take separate out the debt service from the Gulf operations, we're doing good. That doesn't mean we're we're not still subsidizing to. Your question is what do we do moving forward? We have exercised 2 options in order to extend the contract of the existing lender that's doing the operation and maintenance. However, we have to go out with a new requests for proposals over the course of the next 12 to 18 months. Within that we've learned a lot about what this operation and maintenance program looks like. And we intend to strengthen that in an effort to better capitalize private dollars on the golf course to reduce our general fund investment moving forward. That doesn't mean we might not have to help, especially when we're talking about a 10 million dollar irrigation
system replacement for 150 acre park utilizing the contract's terms to you to incorporate that public-private partnership. Those private dollars is going to be huge. And that's going to be a shift in how we do that request for proposals and how that contract is going to look moving forward. We have to start small now we understand and we're going to start to build into a much bigger, stronger program that we think is going to provide that long-term stability. >> Thank you. Assistant city manager that. >> other questions, Rogers? MR. Donald. >> Have a couple questions for you today. >> Sample Wagner. Sorry. The copy is not content. My first question actually, maybe for you or Megan. I get a lot of inquiries about to mean a senior zoning overlay for mobile home parks. And I didn't see I don't know the work plan. I don't know if that's something we're looking Know. We've done rent stabilization, stabilization and I see the cost to that. >> Could you give me a projection of how much that would cost to the city to do that type of steadier? Look into that. Good morning and thank you for your questions. So if the city was to look into that, that would be a joint project with planning and economic development. >> As it is a zoning effort. So the mobile home parks would need to have a zoning overlay applied to them. That would restrict the occupancy for 80% of the households in those
parks to 55 or older. Unfortunately, do not have a cost for what that effort would would But there would be if it was approved by council and implemented, there would be a compliance effort on the part of housing and community services. And I anticipate that would be paid for out of the mobile home stabilization fund that was referenced in the first light this morning. >> And in that friend, Megan, would there be money that is appropriated or enough money to cover those types of costs? Part of our compliance team, which is to f to ease that review. >> Age limits, affordability and other restrictions we have on housing are paid from that side. So yes, it would cover cover that staffing cost. Thank you for that. Appreciate that. And also knowing that we would need to be working something like that. I appreciate that very much. >> You brought up it in our lack of investment in it from 2%. That would need to go to 4%. What type of efficiency return on investment. Will we see if we were able to increase that and would it be a one-time investment and equipment or those types of things that would be an ongoing program that need to eat. >> Yeah, I think you and I would describe them is ongoing. And really this is how it costs grow. And this is what we're seeing through. Our department says that each department is doing an analysis of the tools that they have and the tools that are available to understand. Well, how can we better our process and make it more
efficient? One example that move forward of the past year, the council saw sorry, Discovery software, right? That's an increase cost to us. But it's alleviating work amongst all of our departments. We're sometimes return on investment can be tricky my world because savings means that I can point to somewhere on a budget and say something cost less. But an overall return on investment in new efficiency is much harder to put a dollar basis too. So we know that that investments with our it department and that way have a positive return to us. It's just a lot of times that's around efficiency with our departments giving the ability to work on more things. >> Okay. Thank you for that. We brought up workers compensation and we saw a slight drop in that. I know some of our departments have been cut down to the minimum staffing levels like we heard yesterday from 1982, or 1999, do we see in specific departments that we have a higher increase in workers, compensation issues and cannot be attributed to under staffing for specific jobs that we have in the city. And is there any are have we done in crosswalk to see that if we did staff up, actually see a lower amount need to go into workers. Compensation in the risk or actually people being out on injury. >> think question dominant on human resources director i would say that the trending has actually spend pretty stable. The you see the higher workers comp claims are your safety. And I don't I haven't seen any outliers in terms of with us reducing staffing that the workers comp rates have
gone up or that there's been a well, an increase in claims. >> Thank Thank you for that. For the parking fund. I know that we have talked about our surplus and what we specifically on garages and we have a large deferred maintenance need for the parking garages when we sell those garages, does that money go back into the parking fund and then could be reinvested in that deferred maintenance that we have on those. Is there any plan for that? >> that's spot on. That's that's exactly the the core of governmental counties is it separated by fun? Because that is the parking funds asset. So when that gets sold through surplus, cetera, those funds are going to go back to the parking fund. And you're exactly right in saying that our long-term vision for that is as we're able to a teen funding through any potential sale of without those assets that they're going to be reinvested into some of these larger capital needs that we have. Frankly, that's our one chance there within the in the parking fund to get that level of funding to be able to accomplish some larger infrastructure needs. I think that's important because often it will come to me is a question of selling a parking garage. We're going to do x with it. And he's like, well, no, we we legally can't do something outside of the purpose of that fund. So thank you for your question. Thank you. >> For the Mina Valley concourse, Councilmember
Rogers what my question was is to what end do we continue to back Enterprise Fund and it's I'm happy to hear what we're back feeling as late. However, I heard also that we have about a 10 million dollar investment that we need to invest in irrigation or watering the golf course appropriately. Could you tell me? Does that money need to come from that Enterprise fund is to have to come in the form of a bond or are we able to use a p money to appropriate working on something life that I wasn't sure because it is an enterprise fund where the money had to come from. That's a great question. And in the quarter of our Enterprise Fund works, is that? >> Anything or any any funding source can contribute to it. But you can take the money driven by that fund and send it somewhere else. So certainly general fund, we are looking at if there's any other funding sources that can be applied. Couple towards those areas. But as we all know, most of our funding sources are very restricted, right? The funding source that is not restricted as the general fund. And this is our challenge is that our general fund is is so strained at the moment, fiscally that this is where those investments are challenged. And overall, what I would I would add around this golf course conversation which I haven't heard. Yet get talked about very frequently is that not only seize have a their golf course pond in in an enterprise fund. They can live within the general fund.
So this is not a unique thing for the city of City of Santa Rosa. But the same time it's very not unique for the general fund to have a permanent subsidy around the Gulf. Within other agencies. Now, we have not had that here. >> then just ask a clarifying question on that. When you talked about the fund for the pond, that could come out of it. Enterprise fund such as water investment in the pond or does that have to come out of? Cip or generals? And I'm sorry, I heard Enterprise fund and I went right to water. Has money. So I was I know in Jennifer Brooks, like we don't have any money for that. >> But I just want just know where the buckets could come from on that specifically. >> That's a very helpful clarifying question and a great example to talk about how funding sources mix. So we are we are building a water storage solution at Bennett Valley. Golf course. That impacts other types of restricted funding sources. For example, there is a small component that's tied to creeks. All right. So now you're talking about the creek now you're talking about, well, ok, we can we can use some form of that creek funding for an aspect of this project. But again, we are we are very strict and mindful with the restrictions against funding sources. So in other words, just because there's water in something doesn't mean that we make the water enterprise pay for it. Unfortunately. And we are very strict about for up to 18 here, not just Jennifer, about myself to ensure that that
we're not we're not doing that. It's it's it's critical for So we look at any project across any function of the city, whether it's parking or the golf course or or the general fund or any of the fire stations. Any any type of project we have of the city we're looking at across all of our 128 funds, which I mentioned yesterday to understand how can we utilize different aspects of a project to make it happen? The water storage solution at Bennett Valley offers actually a really good example of that. >> Great thanks for the clarification. And for ability to do high financing and see how we can use that gray area to find a project that needs to be completed. I appreciate that. You so many questions for an q any other questions. Just quick one from a and Jennifer, you can shout out from the from the from the stands. >> Is it true at our Wastewater Treatment Plant is the largest electricity unit is the county. I hear that correctly. Didn't mean to make you mark down just for that. >> Yes, mayor snap. I believe we're the largest electricity user and the county. We do produce a lot of electricity on site as well. And we're hoping to the less abuser once or new ultraviolet disinfection project goes online, but we're not quite there yet. It's interesting more than case saying more than one of the hospitals. >> Use that much. MAY be even mostly due to current uv system we have, which >> We're 20 Think 5 years old now. So it is very much an energy demand. All right.
Perfect. Thank you, sir. To make you walk down. That's it for me. Thank you Thank you. All. The Enterprise directors, department directors and with that man right >> Mayor just wanted to add one reason here. In terms of perspective, I wanted to really recognize Jennifer Burke. >> Because the water's department that we have in terms of its scale and scope is unprecedented from anything that I've experienced in terms of my career, it's a 200 million dollar operation. The infrastructure is massive. It's an enormous responsibility. It could easily be it on separate stand-alone water entity. And it's just spectacular in terms of the leadership that she's shown her entire team. It's it's very impressive. It's a 200 million dollar operation all by itself. Almost very close to the amount of the general fund and just really wanted to acknowledge the scale of the operation that she's managing and the complexity of it. And we, you know, it's that. Finance conversation. And so it's by fund and its explaining, you know, the major assets. But it really is just for a sense of, you know, depth here and scope. It is very, very significant. And so just lucky to have her. Entire team. Thank you. Thank you for underlining that city manager Farrell on. That's not that's all there is. Anyone here on the day are actors. All of our directors. >> But just when it says you just mentioned, the scale of this operation is pretty impressive. Indeed. Thank you. Thank you again and thanks to
all the directors and with that back to you, MR. Wagner. >> Thank you, mayor now it's time for the the big show today, which is of the Capital Improvement program led by director Hennessey. >> Thank you, It's not much of a show you've heard about just about all of these projects before we talked in FEBRUARY around the bicycle pedestrian overcrossing about our cip situation to make that project come to fruition. What that mean for this fiscal year. We talked at the following council meeting around mlk Park around the parks, fiscal situation and making that project come to fruition. So number of these decisions have been baked for for months. But here today to outline everything that's moving forward next slide, please. The total citywide budget for capital improvements next year is 76 and a half million dollars. 60% of that comes from the 3 water funds that for water finds that Jennifer discussed earlier, the numbers on the slide match. What she show shared earlier dpw portion of this is just under 30% of the park's portion is about 10% and then the fire and is about one percent of the budget. And I walk through each of those funding programs and individually and just as a reference saying this is number last year was 76.0 million dollars. Just about the same this year as dedicated last year. For the fire department. Most of this is a cff funds that are
dedicated to fire facilities. They are split by the fire staff to facility improvements that. >> They'll be making in the future, perhaps obviously $600,000 isn't enough to build fire facilities even over and a period of time. These sources are combined with Measure h and other sources for and treatments that are needed. But the 2 projects that you see on there for a new fire station, a fire station 9 and southeast Santa Rosa for to serve. The class brings area. Portion of their budget. And then the other is the fire station 11. That's a temporary facility on Lewis Road is dedicated to move that towards a more permanent facility. Next slide. Please. For the water Department. These again are summaries of the numbers that Jennifer share just a few minutes ago. in total U.S. A little more than 44 million dollars. Plus additional funding from transportation and public works and the amount of $675,000 towards stormwater and creeks improvements and then the storm water increase enterprise and Cff is another just over $400,000. Next slide. Please. The question I get most often is not what projects are they doing? But where is the money? Because it it seems to build up. And so I put the sides together. This year is the way to explain this a little bit differently. That also helped me make sense of exactly what the money is
doing. First column of numbers is where the existing money previously allocated funds that are in the bank right now. What those funds are doing, the second column shows what they're going to what the proposal is for next year. So under that dotted line or that thick black line is money that you will see in construction projects this So more than 20 or just under 23 million dollars is for is dedicated for projects that are currently being designed and are either fully funded or are now fully funded with an additional 11.9 million dollars from this year's 16 million dollars below that dotted line represents almost 65% of the water. Local water service cip budget means 65% of that money is something that will be in construction in the next 12 months above that line is projects that are in design but are not fully funded or new projects that the water department has brought to capital projects for engineering or work for the water department to do master plans and studies in terms of prepare preparation of the next set of projects. So again, like above that down line is projects is is the amount of money that is not going to be seen and construction. And you know, that first line is is money that the capital projects team will never see directly. But it's also worked on by water Department staff in terms of understanding what needs to be done and making sure that there's a coherent and cohesive plan for
infrastructure improvements. Next slide, please. This is the same for the wastewater. This is even more drastic. 73 1% of the funds, our for projects that are in construction or will be in the next 12 months we have a couple of major projects in local throughout the scattered throughout the city. If you go to the next slide for the regional shows, a little bit different story and part of that is due to the way that the treatment improvements that have been under construction now and the next project that's coming. We have a major electrical improvement project that's not reflected on here. That will be funded through a a a bond issued by water. Project is anticipated to be almost 35 million dollars. And is close to being finalized for design. And so that's not shown on here. But he's been a major source of work and effort from both water ltp staff and capital projects, staff to get that ready for construction. So what you see on here is only just under half of the regional proposed budget, but including that 35 million dollars, it would be nearly 80% would be for projects that will be in construction next year. And last one for a storm. Water increase enterprise, similar story. Three-quarters of the money for something that will be constructed next year. And I did just want to highlight again that the funding sources for this coming from a number of different places. This is not strictly water finds. This is also the Stormwater Creek Enterprise and then gas tax contributions from transportation and public works. I like that specifically because that'll
show from our budget in terms of why the numbers change. That's not reflected in later slides. Okay. For parks. We had nearly 9 million dollars for this coming fiscal year for park improvements. 7.1 of that is part development impact fees which are split across the 4 quadrants of the city. We also have some of the district in the downtown that is again, divided by those quadrants where they exist in zones. 1, 2, 3, So numbers on on the slide show where where the dollars are allocated. The ordinance that was passed adopting this measure by the council allows us to not spend it directly in those quadrants but to move money between them also to provide flexibility for significant projects for the community. That level of flexibility has not been used in recent years. But I am proposing to use at this year. Scott, the blue that you see on the slide right now are projects that have these are either recently been completed or are under construction. And the northwest quadrant is Dutch for park in the Family Aquatic Center under construction in the southwest quadrant. School Park and South Davis Park. We have the Kiwanis Springs Community Garden Project that has been bid and will start construction later this year. We have work going on right now at how Earth and Alvin Parks. Again, those stars that you see on the map are projects that are ready. We'll be ready shortly. These are the things that we can spend money on. We'll have a project ready in the northeast quadrant in Rincon Valley for Rican Valley Community Park later this year will have work to be done at Fair Park will
have a project at Martin Luther King and then we'll have another Kiwanis Springs, a community park. You'll notice that 2 of the stars are in the southeast quadrant where we have the least amount of money. So our money does not line up with where we are ready to do work well, welcome back to that in just a moment. Last set of yellow stars are projects that we're working on that are not going to be ready this fiscal year. So we could allocate money to them. But that money is going to set tell at least JULY 1st of 2027 when these projects will be ready to bid and construct. That includes a place to play Rosen Creek Park, Laura Colvin Creek Park, Fremont Park and the Southeast Greenway. These are all projects that this council has previously funded. All we are proposing to do is finish them. We so again are 2 strategies. Are we can either. Fund projects that will not be ready and stay keep that money within the quadrants that they belong to or we can move the money between quadrants and build stuff that is ready to be built right now. There's no requirement that we track that overtime pay back. Other quadrants. However, I am proposing to do that, that we will be borrowing from the Northwest and Southwest Conference this year to finish Martin Luther King Park and other projects in the southeast quadrant. And we will come back next year and pay that back so that we can finish the Rosen Creek, Colgan Creek and a place to play projects. Based on what we know right now, we anticipate about 50 to 60% of next year's fiscal year. Budget will be required to finish the projects that were on the books. And then we will be
able to start a new batch of projects to begin preparing. But this will again, clear out everything that was on the books. We add 1, 1, We inherited this Parks Capital improvement program. At the beginning of last fiscal year, we had almost 65 million dollars of capital improvement funds available to us. With this proposal. Nearly 55 million of that will be in construction by next spring. So we have we have moved everything forward as fast as we can. Park staff is itching to start a new projects. And I keep telling them note, please finish what we've got. I know it's driving them crazy and I apologize to them in front of all of you right now for having say no to them. But we just got to get this stuff that has been promised to the community for a long time. So your support and I look forward bringing more construction contracts and getting some of these projects on the ground available to enjoy for the community. All of that is summarized on the next slide where we see a much simpler distribution of funds this year again, crossing those quadrant boundaries and putting a vast majority of money towards the southeast quadrant where we have the mlk Park project that we reviewed in FEBRUARY and the Kiwanis Springs Community Park. Well, also have this fully funds the Rincon Valley Park and the Fair Play area. Innovation. We have small, dedicated amounts for improving some of the landscaping work that was done on Fountain Grove last year and then cleaning up a budget discrepancy from the South Davis Park project that's under construction right now that $50,000 might not be necessary, but it's there just
to cover just in case we do need it. And of course, we have the downtown parks. 2 accounts, downtown Parks zone one. This is the first time that payment has been allocated in that quadrant for portions of northwest side of downtown west of the freeway and north of Highway 12, the parks that are eligible for improvements in that area are the male park to Turk Depot Park. And we're talking right now with the Railroad Square district about potential improvements to the park. Similarly working with the with our planning and economic development team on downtown Park improvements in zone 3. You've seen some of that in courthouse square. You've seen some of that in Comstock Mall and jg way and more small-scale improvements that respond to this funding source are coming and those areas. So and this. Yeah, we could allocate the funds as we always have. Nothing additional gets done this year or we could be a little bit creative and try to build some stuff. Next slide. Please. Alright, to close out for transportation. Public on a slide. Initially signed about 22 million dollars of funding for transportation. Public works. This is excluding the 675,000 that has been moved towards stormwater and creek improvements. Much of that is for operational needs things come up. But their failures throughout the year and this gives Stormwater Creek staff an opportunity to make small-scale fix us. Almost 9 million dollars of our funding is from gas taxes. We also announced transitioning from measure m to measure Dd or otherwise known as Ghost Cinema. That fund has actually
increased this year. So we would look forward to that continuing also and the additional flexibility about how we can spend that funds. Next slide. Please. The 21.3 million dollars that you see is spent on a little bit differently than what we had shown the last couple years as we determine how to dedicate our funding. But that comes from the discussions that we had in the winter around the bicycle pedestrian overcrossing and the Jennings crossing. We had allocate nearly 6 and a half million dollars to finish those projects. We've gotten funding for both of them to be off the ground and moving. We need to clean that up on a bicycle pedestrian overcrossing and then sometime this summer, we're going smart check as I currently have a bid opportunity out on the street request for qualifications for crossings and center as a both at to construct 3rd street improvements with the signal and the crosswalk there and the connection to the jury that trail and the Jennings crossing. I would anticipate that both of those projects begin construction in 2027 given the timelines and where smart is currently at with their solicitation efforts. We have maintained the commitment to pavement maintenance that I made 2 last year in fact, strengthen that with nearly 12.8 million dollars towards improving streets. Talk a little bit about where that money is going. Just a moment. The vast majority of it is going towards the Oakmont paving project. We have put some seed funding towards this in the past to begin design and preparation of the documents. We are well on our way terse soliciting that
design. Build. This would fund the project. What's so that such that work could begin later this year, continuing through summer of next year. But you would began. In earnest this fall. We did come to you and believe in MARCH with a proposal for a design, build effort so that we could start faster. Those solicitation documents will be out shortly. Again, that project estimate now is about 10 and a half million dollars. We are just short of fully funding that with this proposal. But there are a couple of strategies we have to get that actually will be able to talk about on the next slide. Because of the way that we have 3 oriented ourselves around pavement maintenance. We actually bid the Valley pavement maintenance project before we had the funding to do We designed it. We know that it could start this summer. This funding would be if approved would be available on JULY. 1st. And contractors could be out there as soon as this JULY to do this project instead of waiting until next year. So this is just getting money out on the street as fast as we can. The other benefit to that is that we had estimated this projects to cost a little over 2 million dollars. The bid we got last week has changed that cost estimate to be 1.4 million dollars. So I know right now that there's $800,000 available, another benefit to trying to speed up this process and time our projects to when the funding is available. Also have grant funded project that is finally
coming to fruition. We have gotten all but won approval from Caltrans to be able to implement this. This is tied to affordable housing grant that will be repaving a number of streets in the downtown Brookwood College Avenue 4th Street. And then if use small segments on the west side of the freeway, also, but that work, I anticipate starting later this summer. Also next slide, please. Before we talk a little bit about payment commission, I did want to also remind that we have under construction projects on Hopper Avenue right now we have already funded improvements for bicentennial and found growth that will be did this summer. We will have a final rose and paving project from the $662,000 contribution from the county next year we constructed has begun on the Pearson Street reconstruction and paving project and construction is ongoing and should be completed Memorial Day on Sonoma Avenue at Montgomery Village. So a lot of work going on and despite all that, despite this renewed focus on pavement maintenance, my inbox is not short on complaints about the state of our streets. We have. Nearly 65% of our streets are. Have a pavement condition index over 50, which is where we want them to be wanted to keep in that cycle. So that as we get down to 50, those are the ones that were repairing bringing back up to 100 keeping investing in that cycle. That's where we get the most bang for our buck. We have almost 3rd of our streets,
though, are poor or failed conditions. The vast vast majority of those are in our residential neighborhoods because they get ignored to have lower usage for as many complaints as we get about those. If we left the center is avenues and colleges and other arterial streets. You know, we would see far more complaints about the streets. And so we have a decision to make. Do we invest in our very worst streets or do we keep the good streets? Good right now, the only decision are the only way the streets get funded is through Cip decision and because it's cip funding your left of little bit to the whims of, you know, staffing decisions, direction from city manager's direction from council. But you've also, you know, we have other needs we have to build a 20 year bridge. We have to get a crossing across train tracks and so this becomes a real challenge in terms of prioritizing these projects. Next slide, please. If we look overall at the city, we have been fairly stable with respect to our pci over the next over the last few years on a citywide basis are good. Streets are remaining good are okay. Streets are remaining. Okay. Where we're seeing a problem is that our we're not making any investment in the poor streets. And so we're seeing that degradation of streets that need help could still be saved, but are not our most important streets in terms of serving volumes dropping to a place where they need to totally be reconstructed. So the biggest change, one more shot is that you see that levels continue to tick up. And so the number of roads in very poor
condition has doubled in the last 5 years. You that that is an intentional decision. We are focusing on preventative maintenance on keeping the good streets. Good on the best value for our money. And frankly, we are ignoring the failing roads just because of how much they would cost effects. Addressing the failures is almost certainly going to be get more failures because we won't be investing in the streets that we could save and bring back up given our far funding levels. And so as a result of that are our citywide pci is not going any higher, right? The number, right? All of the streets averaged together to create that number at 61. The night, not investing in the streets that rate from 0 to 40. We have this weight that just keeps dragging us down and we're never going to increase that number without a real investment. Next slide. Please. Just as a reminder you've seen the slide before in past presentations. But it's so much cheaper to keep streets good than to reconstruct poor streets and the typical lifecycle somewhere in the order of about 20 years, we actually do get longer lifespans on our streets. We find our requirements are the highest in the county in terms of the quality of pavement and the materials that we require. But that. Really you see that most in our our heroes and collectors, where we invest. However, 55% of our streets, our residential and local streets. They serve far volume
individually, but collectively, they are the streets that many residents experience every day. You're going to the next on police This is a graph of our network condition by street. We know the condition of every street. I think people sometimes frequently right in and suggest that we don't know. We know we just can't get to If we look at if you'll my time. So this is now just a subset of the residential streets. Still lots and lots of green on there. There's been huge investment. I mean, you see what happened has happened in the founder of Coffey Park areas where we've just put. 20 million dollars of investment. Those are green. Those streets are not going need to be touched for a long time, but it took 20 million dollars to be able to do that. Mostly of of recovery funds. If you have one more time. This is what it looks like when we've got isolated just to the very poor streets. This represents about 44 centerline Miles, which is about 8% of our network. We estimate that would take about 42 million dollars to repair all of those streets. So that's 42 million dollars. In addition to our ongoing investments to keep the streets that are good or very good from from failing to keep those in the green and the blue portion of the chart so that we don't lose this. How do? >> There are a number of different ways for jurisdictions to fund things like this one is to cross our fingers and hope capital improvement. Dollars go up. I
don't think that's happened in time soon. In 2015, the city of Oakland had the worst streets the 9 County Bay Area in 2016. Their voters approved a 600 million dollar bond with nearly half of that money going specifically to paving streets. Created a new departments reoriented their transportation public works to create the Oakland Department of Transportation created an entire division with a transportation planner at the front of it. But the explicit purpose of paving as many streets that she could figure out how to pave to be able to do that as a kind of capital investment that was required for them. Program has proven so popular that they're putting it back on the ballot this year to reauthorize that. Petaluma is the worst in Sonoma County. They're one of the worst in the Bay Area. Now in Twenty-twenty they put a one cent sales tax on the ballot to create a dedicated funding source for paving streets. That's the kind of capital influx that's necessary to make improvements in. And they are making huge improvements. Those are just now hitting the road. But their construction dollars are going way up as a result of that, that dedicated funding source. The 42 million dollars that you see on there is essentially to Coffey Park Fountain Grove projects that that is, you know, that is 2 years of fully dedicating our capital improvement program just to paving residential streets. So frankly beyond our means to be able to do that. Next slide. Please. We have we have made those decisions. You know, that. To the frustration of many. One of my I have
continued to talk about the need to make changes with respect to our transportation safety statistics to invest in yeah. The broader maintenance of our infrastructure rather than building new stuff that we need to maintain yet. This budget reflects trying to balance those needs as much a camp finishing the stuff that people have been counting on for a long time while not drastically changing the maintenance of our infrastructure as a result of that, we are not making those smaller scale improvement. Said I, you know, again, have been harping on to the annoyance of many people. This does close out all of those ongoing commitment. So next year we will have a clean set of books to bring to you for a new set of projects. I do also want to highlight just before I close out here that. Though, while those improvements are being delayed a year, we have made a great deal of progress. We have been the last 10 years averaged 40 fatal or serious injury crashes in the city. In 2025. We had 15. Do I think that we did enough to reduce fatal and serious injury crashes by 60%. Now like there's some fluke and some randomness and that. But we all of our actions are
pointing in that direction. We are making progress. And frankly, I want to think. The police department, the fire department for their support in these efforts. None of these changes happen without them to capital projects. Team of redesign projects to their frustration to make them safer. We've we've done so much work to focus on that that I feel. I don't want to lose the momentum of what we're doing, but it's necessary to get done and, you know, I look forward to bringing those types of investments back next year even trying to orient these projects that we're working on towards towards those improvements. And so, you know, we haven't done enough yeah to feel like those are. Systemic and are going to be continued. But if nothing else we can celebrate that. At the beginning of last year, I would have told you that we would have had 40 fatal and serious injury crashes and 25 people didn't experience that last year. And the other people involved in those crashes and their friends and family. Whether that was anything we did or just the randomness of. 2025. Those crashes that happen and down. Yeah, that's not something that I wanted to get swept under the rug. That's something to celebrate. So. Thank you and happy to answer any questions. Great presentation is always Director looking. My colleagues are questions fine. >> I have some questions you know, just going directly to what you were just talking about. A 60% reduction. It's hard to imagine that it's
entirely fluke. >> I know that when my kid process 4th street to get to school on a regular basis, that, >> you know, my comfort level is changed drastically with that. And see a lot more people on there on foot and on bikes and what I want to uses that take that as a segue to talk about the low that we put on our roads and use this as an opportunity for you to talk about. The improvements. You know, we do get complaints about improvement. I see the letters to the editor. About improvements. And I'm always happy to let people know that while it is frustrating across these these intersections that have gone are these rovers that have gone from from 2 lanes in each direction to one lane with the the median lane that I'm happy to to take the heat for it at the ballot box. When when I see numbers like 25 fewer family individuals and families are impacted here alive with us well. Like if you want to throw me out of office for that, like let's look, let's go so so what I wanted to ask you is whether relationship between making streets safer and having later use on them is and our long-term pavement maintenance plan and how those things that are set be an opportunity to speak to that. Yeah, appreciate the opportunity. >> You know, the the demands are different. We are shifting where vehicles are on the street. But in terms of the >> how the streets operate when we change the conditions. We're watching that very closely because what we don't want from these changes is people making different decisions, right? We're changing college avenue from 4
lanes to 3 because we think we can serve everybody with 3 lights, right? That has been proven out. Those volumes have not changed all that changes at the speeds have come down is exactly what we wanted we want operating speed to come down. But we want everybody who's using College Avenue and to continue to use it. >> We that that leads into the maintenance aspect of it, too, right? The that additional space we're using for bike lanes and barriers because it's available. I frankly don't care what it's used for, right? It's not necessary for drivers. All right. The streets are safer with that space being blocked off with barricades and nobody ever using it again. That also means that we will not have to maintain as much of the of the street. The segments in the middle might be used more heavily. But there's now half of the street on the outside that is not being used by private vehicles. So, you know, those types of changes are will be reflected. Probably not in my tenure here, but when they come to the end of their life cycle, there's going to be a different set of decisions made for pavement maintenance on the streets because of the condition of the roads. Outside segments are going to be in much better condition and are not going need treatment. And we we can focus
on the parts that are actually serving load-bearing traffic. >> That's helpful in little bit different than what I was trying to get out, which is my question is if we end up having more folks convert pedestrian and or bicycles as a result of safer thoroughfares, then we end up having fewer private vehicles potentially and then less not fewer people but less weight on the streets. Obviously it's distributed differently. It's probably pretty hard to measure for that. But is that something that we hope is an outcome of this? Yes, well. >> It would be a, you know. >> There's a long list of positive benefits of. >> Changing streets to their safest orientation and making them more multi-modal in nature and just giving people choices to do it. I would say that. But you're right direction. Only this is an added benefit and the scale of the quality of street. I don't know that it's huge, but it's it's in the right direction. And as any of those like incremental changes, as we can make in the correct direction, important to know that we're
not swim against ourselves to you know, respond to a resurgence. >> And who picks the color? These bollards? >> The National Committee on uniform Traffic Control devices. Fantastic. And is not because they >> Really not very attractive. >> But they are noticeable that I suppose is the point. I was wondering if we could go back briefly to the park Would it be possible to pull slide that shows the quadrants? This is a topic of perennial interest in particular with the and the chamber and always some they were trying to get to the bottom of which is how we allocate funds between the quadrants. And I see downtown as part of >> my district, all of the downtown zone is part of zone 3. And so what I heard you say today is that there's no statute that requires the funding, the spend only in the water and that it's located. And it's just that it's a council priority. But overall, we distribute park from the evenly across the city. Is that one? >> ordinance that established the Pdi says that. >> Money is to be allocated to the zones. But up to 50% of it can be distributed across boundaries for projects. Think the term is projects of
community significance. >> There's no definition of that. Suppose that we define that here. Okay. >> Well, getting out what this is and Willie Brown, seminal 2008 Auto biography. I Don't know how much of it I do in terms of he wrote it himself. But in biography, he writes about how Francisco under his leadership. Yeah. Funding projects based on. Deliver ability rather than based on like district based. Allocations. And I'm just wondering if there's anything that you need from the city council decides our support to just build things as they're ready and make it right over time. In order to get things moving. So aside from the I don't think so, frankly, every discussion we've had. We've either been on the same page or you've provided very clear direction about and the direction has always been just please get things done, right? We've been telling people that things would be ready for a long time. The national. We're at that stage through this fiscal year and next fiscal year that for transportation, public works and parks. We're gonna the books off. So if there's a discussion to be had about, Brie are ranting, how you how we should be prioritizing projects the next 6 to 12 months is an opportune time to rethink that. But there's nothing prohibiting us from from delivering other than over committing and splitting ourselves too thin. >> Ok, well to to that. And I'll just say that is not one of my priorities that we have all these bank accounts across the city for her hopes and dreams. I'd love to. >> To make sure that we give
you whatever you need to to make the projects that are ready to go ready to go. Thank you. I was going to spend well us next. Thank you, Mayor thank you for the presentation you think when you spoke earlier about transportation is like, oh, my gosh, we just think about it. You know where we're going with transportation. And now I look at this and it's like a whole nother can of But I thank you for it because they think their conversations that we need to have. And I the some of the things Councilmember Fleming brought You know, I especially about where you want to focus on some of the projects that are not quite ready. And all of that that you talked about earlier, I agree, you know, let's just move forward. But the only thing I wanted to ask you about was you made some suggestions about possibly maybe a bond measure or have which I and I just wanted more. If you would talk a little bit more about that because I think that would go toward the priority pavements painting. And I know I think is councilmembers we to get lots of e-mails about. We love college and which I love. I think it's great. And then the folks that complaint. In my, you know, try address both. But I am interested it especially when you talked about some of the roads are not being paid attention to because perhaps, you know, they're less volume and all of that. And I just wondered around what what is your vision or thought little bit more about address that last part of that question first the roads. I think, you know,
they're not just. How people get to and from staff, right? There are a function of >> here. Communities, investment itself very kind of qualitative metric quality of life. And it's it's a signal to the community about the investment itself and how they're taking care of. So, you know, then there is a lot to do. And I don't mean to suggest that residential streets aren't, you know, worthy of every painting is just. Given resource allocation. We have to make hard decisions. And I know, but the wrong answer isn't that sledding? The streets carrying 15, 20 25,000 people a day. But a poor condition. You know what you said about the the decisions we make with the transportation system. Now that that's kind of left to every individual jurisdiction to prioritize. I've heard loud and clear from from you guys from city manager from the previous city manager, from the community that pavement maintenance is important. My real passion is transportation safety. I you know, you're stuck with me on Councilmember fundings plant. Like if you don't want to do that anymore, that's ok, but you probably should find somebody else. So so like we know where we're balancing all of that to try to make the investments where appropriate and make the biggest impact. And and we're doing that in a way that we know is right. And just just as a point to highlight later this summer, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety is going to come out with a
series of case studies about how to Orient Transportation and public works. Departments around. You know, making safety improvements. But strategically within public works aspects, maintenance aspects and capital projects. They're highlighting number of very big cities, Seattle, Austin, Philadelphia and New York, Cleveland. And Santa Rosa. Michael Ware was looked at now like we know what we're doing. We're promoting that and other communities are asking us. How did you do this? What are what is it that you did? And frankly, a lot of that is pointing back at the 7 at you and saying, this is what we want to do and we have support to do it. And so I'm just really, really grateful to have you noticed this partnership in this project. Ad. Thank you for your question. Councilmember Ben was and from from our perspective, we're committed to bringing solutions forward. >> This is the dance conversation today around pay. The maintenance is one of the solutions that's going to be for parts of this conversation that's going to be in her role primary to solutions moving forward. Dan very well describes are challenges around funding and looking at ways to be creative. See that as we move forward and even in our year to conversation that can happen in a few moments. This is something we can't lose and that conversation we know even just from early on some of the feedback we're getting from the community, this is one of their highest priorities. And therefore, it needs to be one of our highest
priorities. I since I'm speaking on this, I will take advantage of it. I want to address Kuzma Flemings question as well in that. I have found with in my career that finance and the creator goods conversation align very, very, very well. This is a great example and street safety and that when we've made the decision to make streets safer, that has also come with the financial reality. We could never afford that giant lanes and giant streets the way they were financially we needed to reduce those. So to be able to reduce them and make them safe for this is where your budget and your priorities and your. Your vision of of a safe city. They all of line. And that's I think the very first conversation that and I ever had. And it was like, oh, we're going to get along great because you're exactly right. We're addressing these street issues from a broader perspective that has a dollars and cents tied to it, which is a reality. I just want to say that. I you know that we want things to be safe for we're I think I think I can speak for the council kind of chance. >> Say I think we're on board with safety and you're in the right place. And, you know, most of the time of the feedback that I get particularly about you as always, spirit positive, everyone is so impressed with what you've done. So so, yeah, you're the right place I think we're in that we are looking at this in the same way. It's just a question of how we pay for everything. >> All right. So thank you so
much. Thank Manuel. Rogers. >> Thank you, mayor. So I did want to take this opportunity for ask my questions on since we're talking about pci to give a shout out the materials lab because they're working very hard to ensure that our streets can stay in good condition for a longer amount of time. So thank you very much to them. >> I wanted to go to this lie one 30 in say that I'm all about getting projects over the finish line. We've had these conversations, but I do like the idea tracking it. And the reason why I think that that is important is because those funds come from development within that particular quadrant. We know historically that they have not always been spread out over the city. So it sounds great and I am all for Santa Rosa Councilmember for Santa Rosa. All right. Now I'm going to be a council member for District 7 and say that we have a lot of development going on and that part of the city. And I want to ensure that my constituents who live within my district are able to see the benefits from that. Not just the traffic in the congestion, but that we actually have parts that we can walk to and that they're maintaining that they're doing well and we're keeping up with them. So I am all for For
tracking. And and I I think I like that. We look like we know what we're doing. So thank you. And just to just that comment on the tracking counselor, I agree with you. And in part, this is should be a very, you know, that we could track over a number of years, but based on the timing of where we're at, this actually makes sense and that we're advancing one year and we be paying it back next year. So we should have. >> a similar conversation next. MAY I tell you that everything's been paid back. All projects are moving forward and we start again. So this is not something that's going to linger 5.10, years. This is today and next MAY and done. >> Are we looking having any additional community parks South West Zone? 2? Because I know that we have talked about it >> yeah. So the lower Colon Creek but very bottom star will be complementary to the recent trail Creek improvement project there. There are also a number of developments happening there that are actually including Park Park space within they're so there's small park happening just to the west of there off of got Meadow near Elsie Allen High School and and then other than af, the park space will come in as Parkland is actually dedicated through development agreements. But the and vestments there are actually disproportionately high in terms of the rest of the city because there are clearly identified needs in those areas. So it might be
reinvestment and existing park spaces to make them better rather than new park spaces. That's just a question of land acquisition and management getting back to the discussion that we had or that Scott percent yesterday. I don't have enough people to take care of more parks again to make the existing parks that we have better because otherwise we're just setting ourselves up for maintenance failures. Thank you. Thank you, MR. Donald. Thank you so much for the presentation. So I have a couple of questions just wanted to say thanks for being a change maker. >> And challenging the status quo on how we do see a p and that you're willing to be brave and get projects across the line versus these earmarks had gone on for years where we have 55 million dollars or, you know, 30 years, a project set won't be able to be accomplished because of the high cost of construction in the out years. So I appreciate you getting shovels in the ground and the cross between what we're going to save on our budget in the long term and we go to the safer streets. And I love that that you've been able to tie that together for council today because sometimes we get complaints that they don't like that. Now there's just one lane. To be able to say that we not only reduce injuries, but also the cost replacing those streets in the long term, I think is a really good thing for us to able to have as a talking punch. A talking point today. So I'm all for getting the projects across the street is across the so to speak. But I definitely appreciate that. You brought it forward to us. I agree with Councilmember Rogers that sometimes it's
been dissed and not sometimes that it really was disproportionate of how we saw Kwity in distributions of what needs to be done across the city. So wherever money needs to be shifted, to get those projects done. I all for I do have a question. I know we recently put in place the eia Ft. >> And I just have a question around how that's funded. And does that go to any portion of maintaining our downtown corridor, how they can use that specific money in the future. As that starts to build that. >> So great question. As a matter of we've been working on the ft this last week with the county. The big picture with the Afd is that the Afd will not address existing infrastructure needs within the city. 3rd, there is the way put it is it's not to supplant existing levels of infrastructure and he's going to move forward eventually to the public financing authority. This is there's going to be a intersection between council in that body to talk about the projects that ultimately end up moving forward. But I think the way I would put it is that it's not there to just repave our streets is to create an enhanced level of infrastructure. Doesn't make sense. And so it's the Afd is not something that would just fix the things that we have. It's is there to be additive and not to supplant general fund functions. I'm looking forward to seeing how that develops really over over time. The 2 things I always bring up with the fda is that it is funded with with tax increment. So it comes off of
our property taxes so will receive a little less property tax or general fund over the next period when we can actually issue bonds or make payments. And I'm not really anticipating funding or movement on the fdr project for at least 5 years. Given the consultants projections. That's very helpful. I just have a quick question about the developer fees. >> Is there any restrictions on I what I see is doing is putting in new infrastructure. Is there any restrictions on how we use developer fees to do infrastructure in the city? They are restricted in terms of the. >> With respect to this study that adopted the fees, they are split into different categories. So there are some subset of fees that are dedicated to road infrastructure. There's another subset that's for transit. There's another subset that is for pedestrian bicycle. That is just part of the adopted nature. But within those categories, there's not really much restriction in terms of how we use as similarly. They are supposed to be used for new or enhanced months, not replacing >> the existing condition are supplementing ongoing maintenance funds and things like that. But, you know, basically every time we do some type of roadway maintenance project, we're also making complimentary improvements with that we can work within the definitions
allowed by the lawn, essentially do pretty much anything that we would want to do with those funds. >> Great. Thank I want to go back to the pavement project that you're doing in Oakmont and, you know, on behalf of the constituents that I represent out there. Thank you for doing that. I know it's been a much needed project. How much of the ada funds that we have? I think it's 1.2 million dollars. We have allocated to use a portion that to address ada needs at that time as well. Or how does that normally work? Yeah, annually funding has been a bit of a black box for last couple years and trying understand exactly who's organizing that spending and what it's being spent on. >> Now, I can give you an answer. It's I'm a that funding source is being allocated and distributed to support city facility improvements, but also projects and the ada portions of that portion of the funding this year is going to go to Oakmont. A portion of it is going to go to support the Jennings crossing portion of the existing funding went to build the sidewalks and curb ramps on Pearson Street. We're looking to not try to segment that fund so much but use it as a compliment to expand our funding sources and just get more done. So, yeah, significant chunk of that 1.2 million this year will be dedicated to curb ramps and ada improvements in Oakmont
and significant portion of the previously allocated funds. To 1.2 that had built up over a couple years. Is being used to complement Oakmont. Also, providers help provide a little context in that. The ada funding is a great example of how the changes at the same structure earlier with staffing. >> Have also changed to where, you know, specific funds have been directed. And that's something that the Finance Department has worked with. Public works. You know, again, history is important and I will go through that. He is history of how these funds have been allocated over the past few decades. But where we are at now is activating them within specific projects to meet specific ada requirements of those projects. It's a nice shift of of of funding that has moved away from an ongoing specific team and how they used it more Let's let's focus specific projects. A specific ada needs. >> And what I heard from this would yesterday was we had about 1800 replies to him. Our poll online and what's tracking sounds to me like streets, roads, potholes, those types of things. We didn't get any context of what we've been seeing it for this meeting which MAY have been helpful. I don't know, but it would probably be great to have at least by JUNE as we finalize the budget. >> cfo >> Wagner, you talked a little bit about bond for infrastructure. And I know our bond debt is actually fairly low right now. I think is the city.
>> So what would be the benefit to going out for a bond for specifically roads or infrastructure? >> What's the rate on something like that? As we look at that, and how much would that actually result in saving taxpayers if we were able to go out for something like that addresses poor roads, that 42 million dollars and then see, is there any desire to look at that type of model. >> There there is a desire and >> issuing to a local agency comes a lot of restrictions >> really when we get to that of understanding what's possible from up for us from additional revenue perspective, working with our financial advisor. But the core of your question is spot on, meaning that. We one of the benefits of issuing debt, is that it dedicates a portion of your budget towards that function. Right? As that concept. We talked about pension funding of established budget by selling by something that you establish budget towards the specific in for for infrastructure needs of the city, the additional benefit that you mentioned is cash funding. Is expensive because you build it over time and over time, a dollar is worth less and less and less. And what makes add more powerful is not just the. Time cost of of of money, but it is the fact that we know that construction cost goes up faster than inflation, especially with the Northern California year after year. So we lose dollars on the back
into that structure. What I'm what I'm saying is that we would be a very aggressive in trying to understand those aspects and understand its return for the community. We feel that there would be a very strong one, but that takes a commitment outside of just what we can commit currently within our and our budget comes back to that return on investment. We want to ensure that any proposals that we bring forward have that meaningful return to the community that they're gonna be able to see with an infrastructure of our city. >> So if we were able to issue bond debt to be able to do some of these streets, can some of the money that's comes into cip help pay back that bond debt so that we're able to capitalize on the current taxes that are in place. >> Most of the time the answer is no, because the city is not the bonding authority of those special tax base, meaning that we do not have the bonding authority to go out and bought again. Something like gas tax. You can't do that. >> I think I missed the part of your question. That's very important in that both Director Hennessy and myself have been looking at. Well, what's the bang for buck in any action? Had it on the slide and earring it up. But really those neighborhood streets that are at a poor or failing level if we could make the proper investment in those we see her overall citywide pci go from in the low 60's are 60 to 70 right? And then that guy is Director Hennessy, the ability and his team, the ability to start maintaining those streets versus reconstruction reconstruction is wildly expensive of our
streets. And this team, this public course team has done a great job in their philosophy of maintaining well maintain streets because that's where the return on the investment is. We need to come up with the strategy that we can be diligent around our failing and poor condition dredges streets. >> we look which I appreciate that there's a two-year budget process happening right now and that we're looking in the out years. But I think that that's potentially a conversation. I know it's know that talking up on debt and how that all works and what we can pay back and how we can strategize on that is it's a bigger conversation. Then what we're going to have today. But I'd be interested in that city specifically after we see the numbers that would be involved in our current poor streets and how much that's going to cost us because we simply just don't have the money currently to invest in that. So if that can come back at another time, if that's appropriate, I think that that would these be something I'm interested in. But by the sound of what's happening in council today, I think everybody's interested in seeing what we can do to save and strategize in the out years. Many cars, current streets safer and better for our community. And it sounds like it's pulling quite high on on our response is on the survey. So thank you so much. >> Councilmember Macdonald, I also wanted if you could put back up slide one. 38. Just to focus on the stark discrepancy and the massive increase in costs as the streets fall into disrepair. We're talking $7 is as per square. Yard. From good to fair. It's 7 times higher fifty-two dollars per square yard.
>> And poor at this point with 300 times as expensive. And so we will be coming back with further recommendations on how to address this yesterday. You mentioned pensions moving that drop off and 2041. And some recommendations. I'm really excited about that. I think we can try to push to come up with a framework, at least a starting point. We can't wait till 2041, but at least we can start thinking about ways to reinvest and we'll have some recommendations on how to reinvest even sooner if there were a bond measure or other type of measure that could come to the voters. But for certain we do have pavement condition index situation that needs to be addressed just as Dan mentioned, for transportation purposes because every time that we fix this street, we can do transportation improvements, create complete streets and then also show that we're reinvesting in ourselves and maximizing the use of our dollars in that entire a 75 million or so cip. Only 1.9 million is from the general fund and all of the restricted funds for streets are mostly for arterials. So there really is little opportunity currently in the budget to invest in our residential streets will be making more recommendations as we bring the budget forward. Thank you. City manager Farrell, thank you, MR. Donald, let's go to Hawaii with the vice mayor. Creepy.
>> Thank you, MR. Just a couple quick as one of the larger funding sources. Do we have any historical context on the for gas taxes have been purses where they are today? >> Yeah, we are a stable ish. I would say we are tracking close to where we were. 2022. 2023 coming back up from about Depp's the last couple Projections for next year are very questionable given. So the gas tax, this is a reminder is a flat tax on top of a gallon of gas. As people drive last or pay for less gasoline, that's less gas tax available to the state that then gets distributed. So with 6, 7, gallons of gas people making different choices about how they move around or choosing not to move around. That is very uncertain right now. Everyone's aware of that. The gas tax is a much bigger problem than any of us can solve both state and federal level. And frankly, we're doing far better at a state level. Then the nation is as a whole with a gas tax. That hasn't changed 35 years. >> So if you were to look forward and how could the changes? I mean, whether be remote work for alternative fuels you know? What? I'm a little transportation how this impacts going forward. >> Yeah, the state actually has started a program to re-evaluate the gas tax and move it to something more akin to a usage tax based on how many miles are driven in a vehicle year. Think one of the driving mechanisms for that is that conversion to electric vehicles wish solve so many
problems, but create new ones that were not addressing right. We those in addition to not using gas are very frequently, 20 to 30% heavier than their internal combustion engine. A quick glance accelerate faster and they tear up the roads much faster while not contributing and in the same way to maintenance. That is a huge uphill battle with who knows how many different advocacy advocacy groups that are in Sacramento talking to all the legislators about what's good and what's not. And, you know, that change at that level is very difficult. But especially with state mandates to move away from internal combustion engine vehicles. Well, there's gonna be a real problem on our hands and the next 5 to 10 years as gas taxes continue to dep and we don't have an alternative funding source for transportation. >> And then he said, presumably the conditions of the roads will get worse while we're losing putting yes, almost certainly true. Thank you. And I know we're just looking forward to this next fiscal year's budget. But part of the work that will be done with the planning for the future summit. Take this opportunity to do that when it comes to parks. What is park's planning? Mean, like the actual technical aspects of planning. But like the strategy behind what we do and where we do it, what what are we looking at in terms of the next? One to 3 years and then beyond that from 3 to 5 and going forward to serve our community. >> Yeah, we have just
completed a parks condition assessment with a review of all 50 or so parks. And the couple doesn't open spaces and other park responsible spaces that we that we maintain. We're going to bring that to this council for review and adoption just to make sure that we're on same page. And part of that will be to get your feedback on the focus on community parks for says neighborhood parks, the investments for different user groups, whether that's children, senior citizens, you know, we hear from everybody that their needs are great. We don't dispute that. But again, will need to make choices. And frankly, we're going to need your help to do with this study. We have. 500 pages of data that tell us the condition of the playgrounds and the fields and everything. And especially there are some really good graphics and tables helping to show us how those are geographically distributed across the city that will help us make those decisions. We will probably bring a recommendation to you. But that will be a discussion for feedback and making sure, you know, all of the projects that use on the list this year are things you've already approved funding for. So we have made the general assumption that you'd like to see those finished next year will be a handful of new projects on the list. And we don't want to catch anybody off guard with that. So we'll be making sure that we get your feedback ahead of next year's budget cycle. >> Okay. It is part of that needs assessment of where we
have gaps for certain kinds of activities or or needs for those community groups or is it just a general overall view have to determine what we want to plan for the future. >> So every park, every existing park has a 2 page summary of what's good, what's bad? What's needed? Those combined to create some additional summaries around. Not just the individual park itself, but the people that they serve, the communities they serve and, you know, there might be a park in desperate need of improvements, but there's also 4 good ones around it that might not be as high a priority as a park that maybe isn't a little bit better shape. But serves a wider number of people are there aren't as many nearby alternatives for We're not. This is not going to be a worst of the worst type scenario. But in terms of how do we help as many people as we can and making sure that we understand based You all know your constituencies better than we do responding to their needs and making sure that we're we're putting those investments in the right place. Thank you, Vice I thought it was uncovered my colleagues. 1, one small question honors Senate measure Dd one up to about 2.9 million this year. >> Do recall it was closer to 2 million in past years. >> Yeah. We had both a close out of measure m this fiscal year then beginning of measure Dee Dee. So those revenues that we get are partially collected and partially estimated and updated throughout the year. But we do expect measure dd to be higher because a portion of the
previous measure am went to funding highway 101 improvements. That is not happening anymore. Some more of that money is coming back to the city that even though the sales tax itself didn't change, more of it is ours to spend. Now that's great. Will take and then related question. So we're we're going to put about 12.8 million dollars toward pavement maintenance. >> I suppose I should do is figure out the top of my head but wasn't real last year. What's been the trend line for pavement maintenance at the last. 3 years, we have been over 10 million dollars previous to that. It had been up and down ranging from as much as 10 million dollars to as little as 2 or 3. >> Just depending on the projects. And you had the number of other high-profile projects on Stony Point Road and Fulton Road and, you minor smaller contributions to longer-term projects, including the interchange, the bike ped Overcrossing that was funding specific to activities are starting to generate matching funds for all the different grants we have for those programs. So there was a lot of up and over the previous 10 years, depending on the needs of any specific year. Now that we have plush most of those major capital investments off. I think there's no there's nothing stopping us from being much more consistent with that investment going forward. That's great think that will stay in that to 12 million goal is that we have now dedicated to funding and are developing our plans into the
future based on the number of 11 million dollars as the minimum. No, it with that 20 million dollar overall capital improvement budget and the extra is going back to that pavement maintenance. So the commitment is that every year you will see a number that is at least 11 million dollars. Wonderful, especially over the next couple of years. When we're asking. We're asking for our community's trust in patients as we as we reorganize within the city. >> To have that to have the the significant construction projects out there, whether it's the roads. But there's the new bridge is whether fire stations. You had the phrase or use the phrase Dan testing ourselves. And that really is the case. And that's really mean that that that this is meaningful for the community. For all of us who live here. So thank you so much for changing the way they were betting. Improving the way that we're getting these projects out the door. The it has been noticed. It's been it's gonna be noticed even more in in the in the next years and on that subject with respect to parks, by all means, let's get projects out the door, especially with those specific projects. I mean, mlk is such such a visible project. Anything we do to get that project started along with one with Corona Springs. All right. We come back here next. Next spring evaluate how are you know how we're handling that quadrant quadrant system. As we discussed on at this stage before, there are the intention behind water system
is is admirable. But even if you just look at the downtown area were to my colleagues are focused. Fact, I'm not calling out the downtown is being a specific area investment. There are ways that we could, but that aren't that council could probably look at that quadrant system again to to to make sure it's still it's still serving us. With that, I think I think that's I think that's it for me other than final compliments. Thank you. With respect to detailed fatality number, I have not heard that statistic and meant to let let's hope that's a continuing trend. But even just even some movement in that direction wonderful. So thank you for highlighting that today. Again, thanks to both of you. Looking looking at the fact we've been at it for a couple hours now. When we take. But I mean it now 15 minutes, 15 minutes for starting back up here at what would that be? 11 11. 25 let's recess until that. All right. Welcome back. Everyone to time is unfortunately the Times 11, 27. So we weren't warned. Quinn quite make it. But if you want to call, the role will get started again. >> Thank you. Mayor Councilmember Rogers Councilmember MacDonald. Yeah. Councilmember Fleming Councilmember Ben Willows here, Councilmember Alvarez.
Vice Mayor Okrepkie. Let the record show that councilmembers are present with the exception of Bres. >> Thank you very right, MR. Wagner, back to you. Thank you, mayor. >> So we would like to conclude the budget study sessions today. And what we discuss are the past couple days with a brief conclusion. And I would start that with this. And that. Each year really from finance perspective. We're working on 3 different years working on the current year were in working on the future budget. And they were really always have our eye on that next coming year. >> As discussed yesterday, the city's been focused on a multi pronged approach for the current year to address our deficit. We feel very proud and we've been successful move moving solutions forward. That mitigated impact to our employees mitigated impact our community, the services we provided for the for the to the services we provide. All of the solutions that are before you here on this slide. We discussed at length yesterday, but but it is it is a matter of what I would say is is is improvement some creativity and innovation that that again, we he's going to a real big difference in our current year. While that success is is very good what we don't want to have happen. Is that to cloud the fact that we are still in a structural deficit within the city? And now we're going to be looking at the 4th year of this process. That is a very long period for us to be experiencing the financial trouble that we've been experiencing. One of the sides that all remark on from yesterday is a recognition
that the general fund staffing level is at the bottom of the Great Recession level. While that's true. Want to staffing level from someone who experienced the city coming out of the Great Recession in staff. I will say that our impacts to service have not been felt at the same level of the Great Recession. That runway that's been created over the past few years has been focused on maintaining those services and impacts the community. And we've been successful doing so. But that runway ultimately is is running out. And what we've done is we've gone to our departments. Explain that. We have at this 13.8 million dollar will call it 14 million dollar deficit in 29, 30. That still needs to be addressed. That at this point, our reserves are not going to be able to get us through toll that period the city is going to need to have revenue enhancement. We're going to need to improve. Ultimately the revenue mix of the city to be able to maintain the services that the community deserves and has received over time. One thing I would like to point out is is that our current measure q sales tax, which is a half cent sunsets in 2030 31 and then will create an additional 25 million dollars with of ongoing revenue. That is discontinued. Our current path way within the city is on sustainable. I will add as part of our conversations from yesterday that again coming back to when I first started at the city coming out of the Great Recession and and The
level of impact to the community point was still great. The lights were off in the city of Santa Rosa. Are street lights were off? Our parks. We're not getting water to the level that they should have been watered. We had impacts during the Great Recession, including brownouts to our fire stations and including greater reductions to sworn staff than we've seen at the current moment. These are the realities of our of our situation currently. And so what we've directed our departments to do is to understand what the Dick's towards this issue would be on a year to the correction. We've talked about this in our analysis yesterday on how 77% of our costs are tied with salaries and benefit. And therefore, we would expect to see a much greater level of reduction to our staffing levels to be able to make up our deficit. Overall if we needed to make up a 13.8 million dollar deficit, we would anticipate losing close to 60 employees amongst other departments listed above. Again to give a stark reality, though, against how this is apply. It is that this is applied on in across the board basis. Our cuts have been focused against areas that were not public safety or impact in the community up until this point on an fte basis, they have been born mostly by administration and other administrative throughout our departments. Frankly, all these myself finance as an example, I I I don't know how I would cut 5 employees at this point. It my
core functions are are managing on staffing levels that some of them half of what they were. Even when I started at the city 10 years ago, there's a reality towards what else is there to cut. And frankly, the cuts would probably now. Shift more towards operating. Then the non-operating parts of the city to balance things out. What we did is we asked our departments to come up with those cuts, though and help us understand at that level. What would be the impact of service and how can we understand what would likely move forward as part of the year? 2 implementation to solve the city's budget deficit. The public safety impacts would be great. This would include likely black out of the truck company. I like to define both of those terms. A plaque out as a way of seeing closing. So we would need to close out one our one of our truck companies. Again, a define that term. There's different services that have been through far fire service. We have engines which are the ones that most folks see on the street the most. And then we have trucks. The trucks are the ones with the really big letters on them. This would be losing half of our truck resource within the city of Santa Rosa. Again, as chief Westrope talked about our staffing levels for fire. Ultimately the general fund have remained constant over almost the 40 year period. We've also noticed, as you drive around town that are development gotten larger, losing a truck dramatically impact public service public safety in that way. Additionally, Chief Korean
talked about how the he's required to use or or he staff says is be units versus his specialty units and how impacts to staffing ultimately was going to trickle down into the special a specialized units that he has within the city. We would anticipate the police department to need to move forward with either consolidation or elimination of these special units. This will impact our gangs team, our narcotics team, our traffic team, our downtown enforcement team and set teams. This would be deep challenge for us and our ability to continue to address violent crime and continue to address 9-1-1. Response times within our community. On the recreations side, we've looked how to impact youth services last. This would really come with a very hard reality around the adult recreation services provided by the city. We would first be looking at things like the adult softball league along with other adult recreation programs. Director he talked about the challenge is within our public works department, but where this would come down to use a significant reduction in proactive in response of Minas throughout the city. Our public works teams in our street. Teams have never recovered anywhere close to what their responsiveness was and staffing levels prior to the Great Recession. This would really indicate a feeling of this area to be able to proactively address maintenance issues throughout the city. It was very much Detrimentally Impact Street and road repair, our park maintenance would take a significant reduction. We are already deeply challenge in this area. I often heard
before is that quadrants typically will only have maybe one person working within a day currently to serve many, many parks and our role bucks robust park program. Additional slowing. Would not just be for operations, but they would impact our planning and economic development slowed and delayed permit process to get permits to our city. All. The elimination of community promotion programs that are very popular and also when we look at other areas. A reduction of cybersecurity MAY be necessary given the structure of our budget, you will hear me say is the cfo of the city those are good investments. Those are investing in things like cybersecurity, the proper community for motions and planning and permits that ultimately flow through our city efficiently. Those are areas where we need to spend money to have the proper return on the back and the and the proper risk mitigation on the back end as well. This is the challenge that the city will see going forward and that we're not able to make the strategic investments to enhance the city on a revenue basis to enhance the city on a performance basis. And we will be assuming greater levels of risk that we should not. With that. I will. I will. And by by saying that currently we are as staff moving everything forward to understand the needs of the community, the best we can as the dif difficult conversations go forward. There's currently a survery survey on sr City Dot Org. It's our let's talk campaign. Encourage members of the community to help us
better understand the services that are critical to them. We have over all heard the message, though, from council as well as the community as we've fielded public comments that 9-1-1 response time. Responding to violent crime within our community and the streets conversation and the tractor Hennessy route forward. Our top of the list. I will add that as we move forward, it's important to us as a city that as we rebuild the organization that we do so and an efficient and better way, we want to be the best city moving forward that we can and that really comes along with addressing those areas of the community's needs that they have expressed the most. The are reality and is is is we have a stark and sobering situation here financially at the city. Over the past 3 years as counsel has made every action possible to mitigate impacts to the community. And that is commendable and should be supported. I don't want that to. She the reality of our situation and that was moving forward is going to be the hardest choice is possible. We have duty to commitment to be transparent about this moving forward. And this conversation around year 2 and explaining what these impacts are going to be is one of the first steps towards that process. There needs to be a realization that going forward. We are impacting operating. We've made the cut administration administratively that we had to. We've made efficiencies
that we've had to. We've consolidated multiple departments of the city in 2 more functioning and efficient ways. We've looked at ways of restructuring our major financial issues, whether that's pension or vehicle funding. We've made the efforts at this city that the community and we all should expect. And unfortunately, this isn't where we've landed. We've landed at the end of this runway. Now where we need to take more program, proactive approaches towards fixing our structural deficit. Moving forward. With that, I want to thank council for the past 2 days of reviewing budget with us. I'd like to thank our departments and without would welcome any questions or comments guidance for council as we return on JANUARY 16th for adoption based on discussions over the past couple days. Thank you, MR. Wagner, what? We're not ending on a high note, but we're ending on a very important note. >> Thank you again for thank you. For 2 days of of discussion for all the work went into these presentations. Let's talk about our year year 2 looking to council for thoughts or questions right now. MR. Donald. >> Thank you, Mayor. Yeah, thanks for the doom and gloom. I was feeling really good about the work we've done a days. But I think one I want to say thank you for being transparent about the need for enhancement to our budget that
we can't just do this by cuts that no amount of forecasting that you can do. Whether we're redoing Calpers are redoing our streets that going to meet media enough to be able to address the deficit. We see. And I think also showing where the cuts could potentially be and how that would directly impact the community on our a service or core services is critical thing to do is we going and conversations in the very near future about potential enhancements. I do want to at. >> Make sure that we are bringing not to the table soon that we talk about some of the strategies or thoughts. >> And I know it's been floated in the press Democrat. When we look at sales tax, when we look at the need for those types of things. But I think it's also really important to show why that would be needed and what we're already cut down into as far as our staffing levels and what we're delivering for services right now. And we hear the stark numbers of not in creating increasing staffs from the 80's or the 90's. That's that's really important for us to talk about. So I'm glad that we're looking at it as a two-year system. Sometimes I feel like we get through this budget and it's almost we got to that one. But I think it's important to keep our eye on that on the ball when it comes to that. Yeah, I just want to say I look forward to those conversations. I know they're not fun. Conversations for us to know that there's concerns from the community that yeah, at the thought of blacking out a fire station are rounding
out fire stations. When we look at you know the emergencies we've had specifically in Sonoma County are just not something that I think anyone could tolerate, whether it's appear on the dais or or in our community. So I appreciate you being so stark about what we have and pending in our future. And again, thank you to you. City manager Farrell add host after all they've done and that's far to get us through. Thank you. Other thoughts or questions. Ms Rogers. >> So I just want to city the department's exec staff. I think at this point continues to be key. >> For not only council, but for also the community so that we can make informed. >> Decisions. >> And I've said it before, but the trust that I have in our exec staff. Means a lot to me because I feel like you guys are looking at all the different avenues of ways that we can go about this and you give us the information and say this is what it is and we're able to make those those decisions. But most of my I want even Colin concerns, some of the things that we're going through my mind is you are giving the presentation have already been and certain, I think hopefully gave direction with those questions about what my priorities are. The things that I'm looking and as we move forward. But a sincere, thank you for all the time and your commitment and going through this process.
Thank you, Victoria. Yes, thank >> I wanted to just sum up by reflecting back to use something that you mentioned earlier today, which is about the confluence of the public. Good and good policy in terms of meeting our financial goals for a long time. Santa Rosa has been a city that is to come to a poor planning in terms of sprawl and not had a good urban ethic around building up in our downtown and ways that reduce demand for it. Sewer line in ways that reduce demand for roads that reduce demand for fire units and far from plant far flung places that I hope that our community really clearly hears that we are operating with a larger population and a staff of size that we did many, many years ago decades ago. And that. We can do all the best planning we can capitalize or downtown. We can capitalize our e eye at the with housing that doesn't qualify for welfare exemptions wherever possible. We can try to be smart financially. And I and I do believe we're really committed to that. But at some point, I think the council needs to be pulled and helping the public to really understand that our infrastructure, public safety are poor. Our core needs in the city and that we we have
been. We have shown a lack of leadership in the past by doing half measures when it comes to revenue measures and that really what we have to do is we have to be pulled and we have to be future oriented both with our planning and with our revenue and that we just simply we can't cut any more. The city demands and deserves at least the services that we're getting. Now, if not more, frankly, we deserve more. People come to our town and they see all that's going on. And they know that we we do need to do more. And I think that when the public asked where we could cut staff, I think that. There's no way we can reduce services really easily. And also, you know, we have over 700 families in the city that benefit from the stability. That is the economic engine and the the continuity that employment here at the city provides people. So as we go forward, I'll be looking for how we make cuts in a way that not painful as possible, that I don't think that that's possible. I think that we can say all that, but that the public hopefully hears from me that we are now paying for the cost of the Great recession. That MAY seem really far in hindsight for folks. But these are the costs that we're bearing now. When it comes, our pension liabilities and taking care of Tyrese is a core who are part of our commitment here to our employees and to the economic well-being of the city and the region. And so as we move forward, be looking for good urban planning, good policy. Density in the downtown smart locations around affordable housing. Really good policy around density they are in the
downtown after the bringing in good opportunities around economic development and also making difficult calls around revenue measures going forward. Thank you spend Wheeless. Thank >> Thank you so much for everything. Cfo Wagner and in all of the directors and every everyone that's been involved in this process. Really appreciate not just the transparency but the detail so that we can release that really make informed decisions going forward. I think one of the key things that you just said a little while ago for me was revenue enhancement that we need to look further at risk a new enhancement. And I think that's why I was so pleased with the solutions that I saw yesterday. But I know that's only at a drop in the bucket. I understand that there ideas, though, that people are thinking about and that I think that's a good thing. I agree with my colleagues that. You know, I think really cut staff to the bone right now. And I feel going in that direction further is going to cause burnout and Raul and all those things. And I don't want to see that happen. I think everyone deserves not to live in fear of losing jobs. I'm the one side but also are the people of our city deserve the services that they've been asking for and that they people pay taxes for and they pay into our current sales tax for. So I think I'm gonna look forward to the year 2 and also whatever proposals come forward because because I agree with councilmember
funny, especially that we need to do more and we need to be bold. And I and I think that's and as we let community that we've done a lot that we need to do more and we need, unfortunately for them to help us and to be a part of the solution. So I look forward to those conversations and I know they're hard. They're going to be hard for as elected folks. But I ate a sink in the long run. Future councils and our children and grandchildren are going to think is for us in the long run. We MAY not be here for it, but it will. It will be better for the city of senator us. So thank you for everything. Thank you, MISS Manuel, all just a few thoughts before turning over to our city manager for a single remarks. >> I think the city has done 3 things really well over the past few years. I just got you a them out in your in your remarks to open the section. We've done it. We've done significant reorganization within city we made. We made painful cuts. So we brought our we brought our own books into orders. But as best we can and that that has been recognized. At the same time, there's been a significant internal education campaign. So we talked about the fact on our long-term finance committee, we've got department by department over the course of the last year here on the here at counts. So we have had numerous detailed budget discussions, including operational discussions so that everyone and everyone is now well versed on where the city stands, then there's been significant discussions with
all of that with all staff, all labor groups. So everyone is everyone's looking at the same set of numbers right now. And as it has a clear sense of what the strategy, what our strategies are, that those 2 are big steps. The fact that we have taken a hard we made the difficult decisions internally and on the education for all staff and for council in addition. And this is the 3rd thing I think the city has done well. We've been out over the course of the last 24 months, really in front of the public, whether it's in large group meetings or an individual stakeholder meetings, having the conversation about where we stand city right now. Those 3 things together from my vantage point have paid big dividends and are paying big dividends right now. When I have conversations with residents in the community, including people who are very skeptical about municipal governance. They are up to speed in many cases with where where we are and respected the process that we've gone through. We have socialized this correctly effective way. And so, yes, we've got more. We have difficult conversations to come. We've got maybe got some projects that we're going to have to convince to community to support us on. But the groundwork has been laid in a really good way. And this and your team and the city manager and city staff deserve deserve compliments for how we brought ourselves to this point or at least we give the city a chance to continue to push this strategy forward. I'm going I'm going to leave it there and in turn over to the city manager. But I didn't want to. And on a slightly more positive note and again, underlined for us and for the
community. How much work is taking place and the fact that this is Lee, that this is likely to for good. Thanks. I I remain optimistic. And again, that's thanks to the work of your team, MR. Wagner and and all staff. City manager Farrell. >> Thank you, mayor and I I really appreciate your optimism because I do think that the budget that we prepared does create a glide path for success. It's a measured approach to deal with the deficit without. Grossly decimating the public services that we need so much for this community. That is so entirely special and a lot of it. The year 2 service impacts conversation will happen in JULY. And so in terms of next steps, first again, want to thank you for your direction and your support of the new structure and format of that presentations. It's really helped us to get detailed information back from you and guidance and direction on the budget that will bring forth in JUNE. So 16th will bring forth the budget with the recommendations and input that you've given today. And yesterday for adoption that will take care of your one. Our recommendation is that in JULY we have a couple of study sessions or at least one study session to discuss potential your to impacts in greater detail but also discussed potential revenue options, revenue measures that could help to get us through the next several years. Without further impacts to our services, especially in the areas of public safety and recreation, all the programs that we need for a healthy, thriving, vibrant community and to ensure quality of life. We've also heard a lot about
your feedback on infrastructure. We'll take a look at that will also present additional recommendations about how to put more funding towards the vast infrastructure that we have, the support the community and our facilities, whether it's the golf course or it's our streets, just making sure that we have plans for that. And then ultimately you can make a decision in JULY about, you know, next steps on revenue options. And so that's what the recommendation is in terms of staff in the next few months. In JUNE adopt the budget. But the conversation will continue, as we've discussed, especially for the year to strategy to get the deficit handled once and for all. Hopefully and just wanted to again. Thank everybody that's participate in this process. You have been instrumental in making cuts in the past that have gotten us to this point where we are more financially stable. So thank you for your leadership in that regard. I know those decisions are not easy. Combined over the 2 years. If this budget adopted in JUNE as presented, we will have cut about 75 positions and we will be back down to recession levels of of service, which this team is doing remarkably and all employees and all the various departments. So thanks again for the feedback. We will come back to you in JUNE and then half of the discussion in JULY. And thanks to that. I think we have one
public comment. Yesterday for the the input from from Jalen. And we appreciate that. But thank you. And with that, I'll turn it back to Mayor. Thank you very much. Speaking of public comment, let's open it up for public comment. Are there are are there any members of the public here? Wish to comment. Seeing none. We'll bring it back to I will close public comment to bring back to the days for any final thoughts or questions. Looking to my colleagues. >> Thank you again. Thank you again to the entire finance department and city manager. And with that, we're adjourned.