Budget Hearings - 5/2/25

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Summary

The Budget Hearings on May 2, 2025, focused on discussions with various city departments, including the Department of Recreation and Parks, Department of Building and Safety, Department of Cannabis Regulation, and the Department on Disability. Key highlights included concerns over budget cuts impacting crucial services, strategies for the upcoming World Cup and Olympic events, enforcement of legal cannabis operations, and ADA compliance initiatives. The departments provided insights into challenges posed by funding limitations and proposed potential solutions to ensure minimal disruption to essential city services.

Highlights

Planning department struggles with staffing cuts affecting city development. 🚧
Cannabis regulation efforts focus on ensuring legal operations amidst high competition. 🌱
World Cup and Olympic preparations are hindered by budget and resource challenges. 🔍
ADA compliance demands urgent attention to avoid legal and financial liabilities. ⚖️
Continued efforts to manage enforcement and compliance in various departments. 👮

Key Takeaways

Departments face significant budget cuts impacting essential services and staffing. 💡
Strategizing for World Cup and Olympics is crucial for city preparedness. 🏆
Planning department's role is critical in city development and must navigate various challenges. 🏗️
Cannabis regulation is pivotal for maintaining legal operations and requires adaptive strategies. 🌿
ADA compliance is at risk without sufficient staffing and planning. ♿

Overview

The recent budget hearings shed light on the critical financial challenges faced by several Los Angeles city departments due to proposed budget cuts. Key departments such as Recreation and Parks, Building and Safety, Cannabis Regulation, and Disability, presented their concerns and potential strategies to cope with reduced resources while maintaining essential services.

A significant focus of the discussions was on preparing the city for upcoming major events like the World Cup and the Olympics. Departments voiced the need for adequate resources and strategic planning to ensure successful execution and compliance with international standards, particularly in terms of accessibility and infrastructure.

Cannabis regulation remains a pressing issue, with discussions revolving around enforcing legal operations, navigating the complexities of taxation, and integrating non-compliant businesses into the legal framework. Additionally, the emphasis on maintaining ADA compliance highlighted the urgency for dedicated resources to meet legal obligations and prevent potential fines.

Chapters

00:00 - 02:00: Announcement of Upcoming Community Events The chapter announces upcoming community events. It highlights a nature hike at Malloy Harbor Regional Park with an urban ecologist scheduled for Saturday, May 10th, at 8:00 a.m., encouraging participants to wear comfortable shoes and bring water. More details can be found under the events tab at lap parks.org. Additionally, it announces a Board Game Day at the downtown central library on the same day, inviting individuals to bring their favorite board games and connect with fellow community members. The meetup is open to both new and experienced players, and even those without a game can join in.
02:00 - 32:00: Budget Committee Deliberations on Mayor's Proposed Budget In this chapter, discussions are centered around the budget committee’s examination of the Mayor's proposed budget. The transcript reveals a variety of community activities and events, such as a board game day at LA's public library and a Mother’s Day brunch at Green Meadows Recreation Center, which are potentially under consideration or influence by the proposed budget. These events indicate community engagement and public resource utilization, which may be relevant to the committee's deliberations on funding allocations and budget priorities.
32:00 - 59:00: Department of Recreation and Parks Budget Discussion The chapter titled 'Department of Recreation and Parks Budget Discussion' is brief and lacks details. It mentions the city's Department of Recreation, Parks, and a Council Member Curran Price for recognizing mothers at an annual community luncheon. This event includes music, food, entertainment, and serves as an occasion to celebrate and appreciate mothers and mother figures. This Mother's Day brunch is scheduled for May 10th, starting at 10:00 a.m., with more details available on the calendar.
59:00 - 66:00: Department of Building and Safety Budget Discussion The chapter briefly mentions ways to engage with Los Angeles city government and media. Natalyia Belva signs off from an episode of LA This Week, highlighting the availability of the show across various online platforms including their website, Instagram, Facebook, X, and YouTube. The chapter concludes with a sign-off music.
66:00 - 82:00: Department of City Planning Budget Discussion This chapter is titled 'Department of City Planning Budget Discussion'. The transcript suggests there is music indicating either an introduction or an intermission, but no specific dialogue or discussion is provided in the text excerpt. Therefore, the chapter possibly discusses budget matters related to city planning, but no specific details are available within the text.
82:00 - 100:30: Department of Cannabis Regulation Budget Discussion The chapter, titled 'Department of Cannabis Regulation Budget Discussion,' contains no relevant information or dialogue related to the topic other than repetitive 'Hey' and '[Music]' indications, suggesting it may be a placeholder or incomplete section in the transcript.
100:30 - 110:00: Department on Disability Budget Discussion This chapter discusses the budget considerations for the Department on Disability. Although the transcript provided does not contain specific content from the budget discussion, it typically involves covering topics like funding allocation, program costs, resource management, and financial challenges faced by the department. The summary is inferred based on the chapter title.
110:00 - 113:00: Closing Remarks and Future Meetings The chapter titled 'Closing Remarks and Future Meetings' features the conclusion of the meeting, where participants likely discussed the outcomes and next steps for future gatherings. The music provides a backdrop, indicating the end of the session.

Budget Hearings - 5/2/25 Transcription

00:00 - 00:30 Malloy Harbor Regional Park. Wear comfortable shoes and bring water for this nature hike with urban ecologist on Saturday, May 10th at 8:00 a.m. Learn more under the events tab at lap parks.org. Saturday, May 10th is Board Game Day at the downtown central library. Bring your favorite board game and connect with community members at this monthly meetup which welcomes new and experienced players. Don't worry if you don't have a game. Join a gaming
00:30 - 01:00 group as it forms or borrow a game from the library's welcome table in the rotunda. Whether you bluff, strategize, or simply want to roll the dice. Join LA's public library at the central library for board game day on Saturday, May 10th at 12:00 p.m. Learn more at lapl.org/events. Mother's Day is coming and Green Meadows Recreation Center presents its Mother's Day brunch on Saturday, May 10th. LA
01:00 - 01:30 City's Department of Recreation, Parks, and Council Member Curran Price for making sure that moms get the honors they deserve at this annual community lunchon. The event will have music, food, entertainment, and an opportunity to celebrate and thank moms and mother figures. The Green Meadows Mother's Day brunch takes place on Saturday, May 10th, beginning at 10:00 a.m. For more information, see the calendar at
01:30 - 02:00 cd9.lacity.gov. And that's a look at some things to do. And that's all for this week. I'm Natalyia Belva. And from all of us here at LA this week, thank you so much for joining us. Remember that you can watch us online anytime at lacityview.org and we're also on Instagram, Facebook, X, and YouTube. See you next time for more LA this week. [Music]
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12:30 - 13:00 Good afternoon everyone.
13:00 - 13:30 Welcome to day six of the budget committee's deliberations on the mayor's proposed budget for fiscal year 2025 to 2026.
13:30 - 14:00 Will the clerk please call the role? Yes, ma'am. Yoslovski here. Bloomfield Hut here. McCusker here. Hernandez present. Five members present and a quorum. Thank you very much. Uh before we begin today's hearing, I want to first briefly speak to the release of President Trump's proposed federal budget earlier this morning. This proposal is absolutely insane. Uh it slashes domestic spending to levels we haven't seen in
14:00 - 14:30 generations. Americans, especially our most vulnerable in both urban and rural areas, will suffer. For Los Angeles, the consequences would be devastating. We rely on federal partnerships to deliver housing, homeless services, and basic support for our most vulnerable. Among us, Trump's budget eliminates community development block grants, cuts section 8 rental assistance, and guts core investments in education, healthcare, housing, and environmental protection. These proposed cut, federal cuts are
14:30 - 15:00 especially alarming given that just yesterday uh we spent hours here reviewing our own homelessness and housing budget. Uh much of which directly or indirectly depends on the very programs this federal budget would eliminate. Uh I raised this not to distract us but because this propos proposal is real uh and it's dangerous. Congress still has to weigh in, of course, and there will be a time for us to push for changes with our federal partners. Uh but if we're being honest, the political reality is that many of
15:00 - 15:30 these cuts will likely go through. There will come a time when the federal government steps up as a real partner again. Uh but until then, we have to be cleareyed about where we are, and we can't afford to take anything for granted. So, on that cheerful note, uh let's get to work. Uh colleagues, we should all have received a draft memo list earlier. Do we have any edits to the memo list? Council member Blumenfield. Okay.
15:30 - 16:00 Um a couple of edits. First one would be on page eight under public works engineering uh memo number 733. It should read report with an updated building decarbonization plan as as to opposed to the way it is. Okay. Then on page nine under public works sanitation
16:00 - 16:30 uh six number 697 it says civil engineering associate 2 environmental engineering 2 and then it should also read or other options for retaining those positions. Okay. And then on page 11 under public works street services, I'm going to recommend that we change 774 from a budget impact to a special study. Um and the same thing with Yeah. with
16:30 - 17:00 7104 and [Music] then there was one more similarly uh under transportation memo 659 it's a budget listed as a budget impact but really it could be a special study so to change it to say report by July 1st 2025 on the list of grants that so I'm inserting by July 1st 2025 and I'm changing it from budget
17:00 - 17:30 to special and same date for the other two to put July 1st 2025 to make sure that we get the reports in. But that but I think we can make them special studies because I don't think they're going to impact the budget. The last one was number 659.
17:30 - 18:00 I'd asked for the list of grants and I think it's important that we go through that but realistically it's more of a a longer term thing than than a budget impact. Okay. Uh Council Member Mccuscer, you raised your hand. Yes. Thank you. Um I have one note change. It's on page 10 under public works street services. It's denoted as a number 782. And I just want to add language to say
18:00 - 18:30 include an instruction in exhibit H2 colon and then report on the opportunity to include a fee structure. Taking it really out of a special study. Taking a step out speeding it up. Is that the only one? That's it. Councilwoman Hut. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'd like to request a budget memo for the CAO and CIFD to report back with funding options
18:30 - 19:00 for the uh TGI wellness and equity initiative. Uh I realized I wanted to make that request and they left the room already. So Okay. Need to add. Thank you. So it's a new one. Yes. For for CFD and CO. Mhm. Okay. Was that okay? I have it in writing. If I need to turn I think that would be helpful. Maybe give that to the clerk. Okay. CIO. Okay, great. Uh, seeing no more, I move that we adopt this list as
19:00 - 19:30 edited just now. Okay, one more administrative item. We have the office of public accountability slated for today. The OPA is in the middle of a director transition and submitted no letter with requests related to the proposed budget. Also, their entire budget is reimbursed by LWP. Uh, do members have questions for OPA or can we release them? Okay. Uh, then we're going to skip
19:30 - 20:00 OPA later. First up, we have the Bureau of Street Lighting.
20:00 - 20:30 Welcome. If you could go ahead and introduce yourself and have your team do the same. Good afternoon, members. Uh my name is Miguel Sangalan. the director of the Bureau of Street Lighting. Had a couple things if that was okay to Sure. Do you want to intro your team too? Yes. I'm joined by Mark Yamamura, our chief of administration, and also Fabian Chang, our chief engineer. Uh, and I can go
20:30 - 21:00 into it now if you'd like. Yes. Um, first to my my gratitude to the mayor and her office for preserving as many positions as possible in the bureau. Um, I'd also like to say three facts in order to set the table. And fact one is that our repair times are now between 8 and n months uh between the generation of a service request and our crews actually fixing the problem that was identified. I expect it to reach one
21:00 - 21:30 year by the fall. Mostly when I interact with residents about what I've just spoke about, it's sheer disbelief on at the levels that we're actually repairing. Fact two, despite the long repair times, the bureau today is incredibly well tuned and an efficient machine. We have 99% LED street lights that save $10 million annually on our power bill. We have essentially created an in-house forge that uses plasma cutters and soon 3D printers that'll
21:30 - 22:00 reduce our materials expenditures between 70 and 80% for products. And we're actually a model organization for other US cities. Others look to us and call us to learn about our suite of solutions for theft and vandalism which actually work and how to learn and and learn about how we've become an innovative platform that supports many different civ services. Fact three, this machine unfortunately is in dire need of refueling as the
22:00 - 22:30 assessment, our main source of revenue, does not cover operations. My 2022 analysis of needs and a recent third party analysis commissioned by the CEO both show the bureau needing over hund00 million annually in assessment revenues. We collect 45. And so we are unable to keep up with the impacts of theft and vandalism, let alone the basics of replacing end of life poles, bulbs, and conduit. We're now at a critical juncture. The proposed budget saves
22:30 - 23:00 lives uh saves jobs, but does not necessarily save street lighting service, and I estimate that repairs given the budget may lengthen to two to three years. As I mentioned in our letter, we are planning to present to the mayor and council a ballot proposal for a new assessment later this summer that would allow us to return to fixing lights most likely the following fiscal year. And with that, I'm open to answering any questions you may have. Thank you very much. Appreciate how concise you were uh and to the point. Uh
23:00 - 23:30 Councilwoman Hernandez is going to lead us off. Thank you so much, Chairwoman. Um thank you so much for being here with us today. Uh, I have a handful of questions on operations and core services, fiscal sustainability, street light repairs, streeting outages, conduit and fiber build, capital expenditures and replacement programs, but I'm just going to go through a handful of them and pass it back to the chairwoman. Can you please provide us an overview of your divisions and their services and the offset proposal you outlined in your letter, please? Sure.
23:30 - 24:00 Generally speaking, the Bureau of Street Lighting has kind of three main groups. Support that include IT and administrative services. Um a larger section which is our engineering group headed by Fabian. Um that have many different different divisions that are underneath it that help with metro projects. Um the assessment itself design for uh DOT and Bureau of Sheet Services. Uh and then finally we go to the largest portion of our bureau more
24:00 - 24:30 than half uh that is field forces. Um that constitutes probably around a hund 150 or so staff that we have uh in the field right now. The uh offset proposals that I have written in my letter predominantly try and preserve the administrative positions within the bureau uh precisely for a couple things. We we have uh we have converted a significant amount of our work to digital. We have been doing increased efficiencies. We
24:30 - 25:00 have been trying to purchase uh different products uh that help us within our job. That is a lot of the support function. Uh we'd lose tremendous amounts of efficiency were we to lose that. So it's actually incredibly valuable in comparison to just the onetoone field jobs to the back office support that we have. So that's that's the core of that. Great. Thank you. So you talked about the different departments in the different bureaus within your departments, right? But can you give us like real life examples of what those teams are doing? Yeah, sure.
25:00 - 25:30 Um, real life examples and again I mentioned that the the the bulk of the staff that I have is field forces. Those are the people that fix lights. Great. Talk about that please. Yeah. Right. Uh and so um I have uh probably around a hundred uh personnel uh 30 or so that are focused on restoration and fortification. Those are new programs that we stood up in the last few years to combat theft and and vandalism around another 70 or so in our maintenance
25:30 - 26:00 divisions. Those are the people that replace bulbs that have burned out. Um look to maintain conduit etc. uh the the impacts based on uh and if I'm understanding the question correct the impacts based on the budget um would see the uh core kind of repair functions of the bureau slow down considerably. Uh we are we would be focused on trying to do as many projects that we we can do. It
26:00 - 26:30 would just be unfortunately separate from our normal day-to-day functions of the street lighting service itself. Luckily again the budget itself preserves jobs. It does not preserve the lighting the service of street lighting itself. Got it. So doesn't preserve keeping our street lights on and maintained. Correct. The jobs will exist because we will shift them over to doing some other work. That's correct. Got it. Um, I want to put a budget memo in for CEO to work with BSL on the feasibility of implementing the offset proposal as
26:30 - 27:00 well as any additional offsets that can be found, please. And then, um, if the bureau does not meet its revenue targets in the budget, what will happen? Uh, if we're unable to meet our revenue targets, I I um presume that we are actually then going to be discussing additional position cuts. uh unless there's an alternative either increased revenue or some alternative fund that can do it, we we would be at that point where we have very little um
27:00 - 27:30 offsets to provide $7.7 million. Uh if we're talking about that in context of the number of employees, that would be about 80 to 100 positions within the Bureau of Street Lighting be about a third of the bureau itself. Got it. Thank you. You're talking about the DWP offset plan, part of the part of what the CEO proposed that and any other revenues that we may miss. Thank you. Um, you mentioned the public works uh well in in public in our public works committee, you mentioned that the bureau will be presenting a new assessment
27:30 - 28:00 ballot for the council and mayor's consideration. I I want us to talk a little bit about that because you all get in this proposed budget 0.4% of the entire bucket of the general funds, right? These are locally generated tax dollars. You don't even get 1% of of some of those tax dollars, which is wild to me, but also doesn't surprise me seeing the conditions of our lights, right? Like you can see that on investment. But a part of that is also because we haven't redone our assessments fees to fund this
28:00 - 28:30 department. Can you give us the year the the the the year when was the last time that some of these fees were assessed to support the Bureau of Street Lighting? It it was the year Independence Day came out. So 1996. So 1996 we're almost 20 years 30 many years of u after that I was six years old at that time and so um it's just it's one of those things when we think about efficiency of the department right but we're on the precipice of actually be
28:30 - 29:00 getting this assessment done right so that we can bring that structure to the 21st century can you talk a bit little bit about that because colleagues when we talk about the structure of the department like re restructuring considering redesign and considering the recession, considering other pieces. This is one of those big ticket items that we need to consider in our assessment because implementing the recommendations in this assessment to fund could fund the materials and the staff to do the job of fixing our lights in record speed. Right. So, can you talk
29:00 - 29:30 a little bit about that and then I'll pass it back to the chairwoman. Sure. Sure. Um, so the the bureau itself is funded by an assessment as you pointed out. the the assessment is a levy on properties. So it is is not direct uh it is different from business tax or any of the other general fund taxes that we may have. Uh because of that we collect money for a very specific purpose which is providing street light service. Right. Um 1996 when Prop 218 was Zen passed and and
29:30 - 30:00 uh enshrined in in California um that froze most of our rates for for the for the bureau. 90% of the bureau is stuck in 1996 levels. Um so our our revenue has remained around $45 million or so for the for uh the several years. Um it it has not moved. Uh it it reflects nothing about the price increases that we've had just the last year alone. 30%
30:00 - 30:30 in materials right purchases for us. Um obviously uh cost increase you mean? Uh yes. So for instance, one of the things that we purchase on the regular pull boxes, that's the things that junk uh that hold kind of uh uh connections between electrical systems for us between the pole and larger systems. Uh it was 30% more that can drive up costs by hundreds of thousands of dollars on our side. So all these factors that have
30:30 - 31:00 been increasing for us, our revenue sources have been frozen in time. uh that makes it difficult for us to then try and figure out how to field the staff that are necessary in order to do the repairs. We've done many things. I've mentioned the LED replacement program that have driven down costs. If I did not do that, if the bureau did not do that uh 15 years ago, we would be paying $25 million in power bills. Right now, we're 15 paying around 15 or so. So, those are some of the things that would be uh then affected. The what
31:00 - 31:30 we're looking to do is reflect the new realities of the bureau. There has been a a considerable change in the environment. One, um there has been increased theft and vandalism. Two, deferred maintenance. We cut the pole replacement program of the bureau in the last recession and it has not surfaced yet. Right? That is increasing liabilities for us. So many of the things that were supposed to do bread and butter that have been squeezed out because of uh uh inflation forces uh and
31:30 - 32:00 the fact that things just have gotten more expensive. Those are the things that we're starting to lose out. And so the assessment uh one of the options in the assessment uh or the third stud the third party study that was done on this says that redoing the assessment and bringing it to the 21st century would cover our materials and our staff and our repair programs. Correct. That's correct. And um can you two last things is can you is it more expensive to do electrical work with your team or DWP's
32:00 - 32:30 team? I would say that uh Bureau of Street Lighting follows what we have on our side with in terms of the classifications. Generally speaking, DWP has their own. It's separate. Uh I think I'll probably look to the CEO's office to help me answer that one. Look, and if we don't have an answer right now, that's okay. Um, but I would love to explore what that looks like in the future as, you know, we consider moving our city forward, right? Um, because we
32:30 - 33:00 want to be fiscally efficient. Um, I'll pass it back to the chairwoman. Thank you. Thank you, colleagues. Council member McCusker. Um, thank you very much. I I uh uh Council Member Hernandez, I loved your first memo. I just want to be really clear. Were we talking about all of the alternatives that were all the offsets that were proposed by the department uh to be analyzed by the CIO? I think they all
33:00 - 33:30 should I think all of them should be analyzed. I I think we have we have the option of adopting though, right, as they come forward. Right. Right. I just had the analysis come back, but I want to be super clear that that would include that you point out in your letter, thank you very much for your letter, um, a joint build agreement with the state of California on its middle mile broadband initiative. Um, you're excited about it. I am too because it's 13.3 miles going up the 110, which includes a lot of the 15, not to be confused, 110 and the 15.
33:30 - 34:00 Um, are there ways are there ways that we can maximize that uh cooperative agreement to benefit the the budget of the department of the bureau? I believe we can uh for instance, some of the things that are intended from that agreement is to pay for hiring hall. That's one of the things that we could put we could probably work with the CEO's office to see what else we can offset. There's also positions that are related to our our fiber and conduit
34:00 - 34:30 build. Uh I think we lost one position there and there's a couple others in maintenance helpers that would be would be useful. So something that we can look at as an offset. Okay. I just so I just want to be clear that um council member Hernandez's um budget memo also includes that uh broadband initiative. Probably have a couple of others. Um one of the things you describe is discrepancy in the DWP bill. Um can you give us a little more information on that?
34:30 - 35:00 What we estimate for our power bill uh for the bureau is around $20 million uh all in around $15 million of that would be just staff costs. That's street lighting uh maintenance costs that we would have to pay department of water and power. The other balance are telecommunications infrastructure attachments that we have to pay carriers have that we have charged to carriers that we are going to then pay DDP uh on their behalf. So that is the the totality of the $20 million that we
35:00 - 35:30 estimate. Um we do I believe it's about 12.9 12.9 million. So we believe it to be a little bit short on that end. Again I have no offsets for that one. But if there wasn't a there was a possibility to then have it uh if the new assessment was in place, we would be able to pay down some of the debt that we owe DBP. Okay. Well, can I I'd like to get a budget memo to an analysis of how we can reduce the energy line item down to $10
35:30 - 36:00 million and use the savings to preserve BSL's fortification program. Okay. Council member Blumenfield or Hut. Okay. Well, you councilwoman. Yeah. Is it better? Okay. Hi. Hi. How are you guys? Very good. Thanks for being here. Um, with the reduction in hiring hall
36:00 - 36:30 and overtime, you've indicated that the bureau's response time may double to more than two years. Is that separate from the repair time increase from eight months to nearly a year expected by fall 25? To be to be clear, we expect the time to reach a year based off of the resources we have even today. So the reductions that we see in the budget
36:30 - 37:00 from what you've mentioned in addition to that the about $7.7 million in projects we would have to um fulfill uh with the theou um that would be further reductions. Uh in total all of those look to be around again 80 to 100 staff members that I would have to try and redeploy within the bureau. that is essentially, as I mentioned before, I have 30 um 30 employees in our field office that
37:00 - 37:30 are focused on restoration and fortification, and I have about 70 or so that are in just my plane maintenance uh breadandbut maintenance groups. Uh it can conceivably re reassign the entirety of uh all the forces that I use to fix light. Therefore, I'm saying uh next year's budget will actually result in probably two to three years uh in um two to three years in repair times. Thank you for that answer. Um what I
37:30 - 38:00 asked general services if they needed to support BSL and BSS operations given the DWPOU and exhibit H. How does theou contemplate your materials and um equipment use? Uh theouou itself is still in negotiation. So I'd probably have to uh wait to see that and defer to the CEO on U. But I believe that when we're talking about the $7.7 million, it's specifically for DDP salaries themselves in order to offset in order
38:00 - 38:30 to create offsets for in instead of layoffs. So we'd have to to talk about what the materials and what other support services would look like. So therefore, I'd like to request a budget memo that has the CAO look at incorporating the necessary GSD support and or materials costs into theou. Thank you. I have a couple more questions, Madam Chair. I have a follow up to that. Follow up. Yeah, thank you.
38:30 - 39:00 Um, and from from my understanding, Miguel, you're saying that um even let's say we didn't adopt the proposed budget and you just had the same resources next fiscal year that you got this fiscal year. With that, you're saying that it would take us up to a year to fix a street light. That's correct. Wonderful. And and and let me make sure I heard you correctly. You're saying that by entering with this into thisou with DWP
39:00 - 39:30 at $7.7 million that that money is only to execute LWP projects which means that it would take you closer to two to three years to fix our street lights because thatou is only again for LWP projects. no city projects for our districts to fix and repair street lights. Is that correct?
39:30 - 40:00 I I would say that is correct. Got it. We we would not be able to co-mingle or crosspurpose any of the uses of funds. We would have to keep them separate. When we work on DWP work, we do DP work. When we work on street lighting, we do street lighting work. Got it. We have a follow. So, go ahead. So, I just Yeah, just want to clear that up. one year later this year if your budget does not change if you enter the into thisou for with DWP we could see we could expect that our street lights will take two to
40:00 - 40:30 three years to fix just I'm sorry may I add just a little bit more please I I'm saying one year given the resources of course of course uh I I will say this though um the march of time and the fact that we still have poles that I have not been able to replace nor an LED replacement program, nor a conduit replacement program. All of those are also impacting it. Therefore, it is at least a year. I actually expect it to then start going up regardless of whether we had today's
40:30 - 41:00 uh today's current budget. Right. I um as I mentioned, we are at a point where there is a structural issue on our end. The fiscal model itself does not work. We are we are repairing we are not maintaining the street lighting system, right? We are losing the value. It is degrading itself. Got it. And because of that, we see liability payouts. For example, like one case where a piece of a light pole fell on somebody and we paid $21 million. Which $21 million?
41:00 - 41:30 Isn't that the entire bureau within your department that handles the anti- copper wire theft? That Yes. Got it. Thank you. Or about that price, right? I I mean price-wise. Yeah. The Right. Instead of doing that work, we had to spend it on one case. Uh, last year we spent $27 million in repair total. So 21 would be a a large chunk of it. Beautiful. Thank you. Thank you, gentlemen. Do you have a follow-up to that? Just a follow-up thought or concern, which is at some
41:30 - 42:00 point um how can we continue to assess somebody if their light hasn't worked for the entire year legally? I mean like if if if we're assessing a particular light and the light isn't isn't functioning, don't do we owe them a refund or how does that work? What the bureau does is it sets a service level. So in this budget I am saying out loud that our service level would be between two to three years. At some point again we do have to then think whether it is still
42:00 - 42:30 possible to maintain the street lighting system itself at that level. Can I ask a followup? So, the proposed fee increase, when is when is it going to come for a vote? Uh, and when would it uh start saving when would it start bringing in extra revenue? And how do you see us bridging so that we don't have to lay people off? Do we move them over to DW
42:30 - 43:00 DWP in the short term and then move them back once the assessment comes in or I think maybe a a memo back on what that might look like and the timing of of and maybe this is part of an assessment that's already been asked for but you know the time what's the timeline and and and work plan so that we avoid layoffs when we know or hope that a fee will come in an increased fee that would support this work so that we wouldn't have to move it over. Yes, I I can start talking about that now and then we can also come back if that if that's okay. So, we are our intent is to
43:00 - 43:30 present to the mayor and council uh a new assessment ballot sometime in the summer time frame. So, uh June, July, August time frame, we would we would come back with a new engineering report with a new uh ordinance of intention and the timeline for the ballot for the consideration of of this body. We are currently working this isn't go this isn't something that's put on the ballot. This is something that's mailed out to people because it's a fee assessment increase. Correct. Correct.
43:30 - 44:00 So, okay. Uh, so let me let me talk about that separately. We do not follow regular electorate votes. We are a separate vote. It happens when the city uh authorizes us to go for a vote. Um, for the process that we're talking about, we are going to be presenting a timeline this summer for mayor and council to consider the the the ballot timeline. Our hope, and I'm trying to be as transparent as possible, our hope is
44:00 - 44:30 to have a vote timeline that is in the fall. We would be sending out ballots according to the the Prop 218 and other um things that we follow for administrative purposes. There would be 45 days um for that ballot to go through and then when we came back the city um clerk would ratify the elections and then it would go into effect. We are hoping for a uh January 1. Essentially, what we're we're considering to propose
44:30 - 45:00 to the council is hoping for a January 1st uh effective date of the new assessment. That would essentially mean that you're going to be getting a halfyear assessment. So, the first half of the fiscal year would be at the current rate. The second half of the fiscal year would be at the new rates. You will, however, Can I ask stop you for a second to ask a clarifying question? Is this an assessment that's paid annually or is it paid monthly? How is it paid? Right now, the assessment is tied to people's uh property taxes. We
45:00 - 45:30 are part of the county role. So, so people see a a bill that is in the property tax bill. Um it is paid twice a year. So, the total assessment amount is divided by two and then so we'll get half if it comes into effect on your timeline. Is there any way to accelerate the study so that it's coming earlier than the summer and accelerate this process a little bit to try and get it on the fall role? We're we're working on that right now. We're working to um have the a contractor in place to help us
45:30 - 46:00 with the ballot, ballot mailings, and other things. Um unfortunately, I don't think that there's space for us to accelerate faster than we have right now. Okay. Um I will also say that a a consideration I'm sorry, go ahead. Well, I want to provide some clarification when he's done. Okay. And I would I would just add for when I'm talking about the assessment itself, um even if we have a January 1st U effective date, u we will still not be
46:00 - 46:30 able to collect any of the revenues until the following fiscal year. It would not be considered part of the 2526 year. And that is because we are tied to the the county role. Yeah. Okay. Uh, Council Member McCosky, you had a follow-up. Um, yes. Uh, thanks very much. So, while the 218 process is pending and when it's heading and well, actually, let me say after it passes and before we collect, we could always
46:30 - 47:00 consider a tax anticipation note of some sort. But I'm going to dial back from that and say and ask whether it would make sense for us to anticipate that this thing will pass and do some of that internal borrowing we talked about a couple of days ago to see if we could borrow against the anticipated amounts. Pay back and consider that consider that we are going to doing such a thing as we put together the assessment. Borrow against what will be the assessment and when it's collected pay it back in
47:00 - 47:30 interest. uh but then be able to realize some of this cash earlier. Um and that's really for CIO CLA. We can certainly look at that, council member, but I I do want to be clear that we cannot start collecting it until really 2627 because it has to go onto the tax role so that it's on the bill that is sent to the property owner to pay and
47:30 - 48:00 there's no way to do that for 2526 on the timeline. And I I don't know the answer to this, but with the January 1st implementation date that that um has been proposed, I honestly cannot tell and I think we have to talk to the county assessor whether they would bill that amount retroactively on the future bill. I just don't know that answer. I would be happy for it to be build as quickly as possible, but what I'm
48:00 - 48:30 talking about is basically doing an internal lend borrow from our investment funds, say, and put ourselves in a position where we can realize the cash and the expenditures early and then pay it back to ourselves, not going out to the market. I realize what the problem would be going out to the market giving the 218 prop 218 problem. I I think we're going to have to look at that and maybe talk to the city attorney
48:30 - 49:00 and that on how that might work or if it it's workable because Do you want to ask for a memo on that? Yeah, I like I like a memo on that. To say it's a Prop 218 problem is to say that we're not I mean the 218 issue is you tell folks what you're going to do. We tell them this is what we're going to do. This is and and that folks what folks are paying for is their lights and we describe all of the all of the the financial considerations. So, I'd like a memo on that. Yeah, maybe you
49:00 - 49:30 can put your questions in the memo if you have concerns. Yeah, we'll we'll be happy to look at it. Um but I haven't said very much to um this budget season, but that kind of proposal I think needs to be looked at really really carefully. And yeah, it kind of scares me a bit because what you're doing is anticipating really truly truly anticipating revenue. Um, and the flip side is if it doesn't pass then now you've incurred a debt. You've got a
49:30 - 50:00 credit card debt that you can't pay for. So that would be a real consideration as you move forward if we can even do this. Yeah. Because I think we really have to understand this concept of saying we're implementing it in January, but we're it's not on a bill for that time period and how that would roll out. We just have to think it through.
50:00 - 50:30 Madam Chair, the Okay. Oh, yeah. Councilwoman Hut. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. Um, I had a a question to go along with uh Mr. McCoscer's last statement is, have we ever seen that a ballot like this not pass?
50:30 - 51:00 Have we ever sent out a ballot to our to our uh homeowners asking for this type of increase in assessment on their taxes and they said no? If you're asking me I would have to come back with that answer if that's okay. CLA have you have you ever seen any ballot like this go out and and they say no no don't assess it. I I have not seen where we go out to b spend money and go
51:00 - 51:30 out to a ballot with the expectation that we would collect that revenue. Um I have never seen that. Thank you. Um I'd like to um ask my next question. Go ahead. Thank you. Um solar and battery and enabled street lights have been a big push of the bureau and the city council and folks all over. How are you using the technology as a strategy to keep lights on instead of the
51:30 - 52:00 traditional uh repairs that we've been talking about in public works? Right. As I mentioned, we're doing a whole suite of uh solutions in order to make sure that we keep the lights on. We are embracing solar and battery enabled street lights. That is uh one of the things that we're focused on as well. Our issue around it is the upfront cost. So, the battery and solar installations themselves are um considerably more expensive than what our breadandbut repairs are. For for context, if we were
52:00 - 52:30 to proactively repair uh repair a uh street lighting outage, so life cycle, it's around $300 to $400. If we're going to uh repair it outside of its cycle, more reactive, about $5 to $700. If you're going to start fortifying uh street lights, it's $1,500 on average per the light itself. Solar is about 4,000 to 4,500. So, you
52:30 - 53:00 know, you're either choosing to uh replace one light versus eight if you're doing the the regular pairs or three other lights if we're fortifying. So, um if if we're looking at replacing 5% of the system, it'd probably be around $40 million for us. Thank you. Um, one service of the bureau is the banner program and it allows attachment of banner to the street lights and promotes nonprofit
53:00 - 53:30 uh events in our communities. Right. Conceiv conceivably this could be a revenue source for the city and the bureau to offset its operations. What would be required in order for you to make it a revenue generating program? Um, so it's a very popular program within the bureau. Uh, what would be required would be an ordinance change in order for us to allow um a a revenue generating model there.
53:30 - 54:00 Okay. Then I'd like to request a special study to request street lighting with the assistance of the city attorney's office to look at updating the street banner ordinance to expand the options of attachments and allow the bureau to seek revenue generating options. And and next, as a note, um, in the bureau's letter, the proposed budget only partially funds expected electricity costs with a gap of
54:00 - 54:30 approximately 7.3 million. I'd like to request a budget memo identifying a flexible funding source to meet these obligations so that we don't begin the fiscal year planning for a deficit. Understood. And then I'd also like to request a budget memo on the Bureau of Street Lighting permitting process and fees for attachment and services with the intent to ensure full cost recovery or the creation of other revenue
54:30 - 55:00 generating opportunities. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Councilwoman Hernandez, did you have a follow-up to any of that? Saw your hands raised. Hand raised. Um, yes. I had a follow up to the solar question I believe that councilwoman had asked around the cost. Um it does seem that there is like a upfront cost right like one versus three. Um but in the long term is it a cost savings because you don't have to fix it so frequently in certain areas. Yes. And I know I'm
55:00 - 55:30 qualifying my statement. Again, we embrace it wholly um and we like the the solar enabled battery um street lights in places where we've had repeated theft and vandalism. It has been a boon. We replace it. Yes, it is an upfront cost on materials, but the labor savings by not having to go there two, three, four times in a year, that has been tremendous. So, just avoiding two repairs in the same spot, it it
55:30 - 56:00 makes it worth it. Um the trade-offs are you you then you're essentially abandoning the electrical system, right? And the electrical system is is highly valuable. That is that is a piece where if you're trying to do other things within the community, for instance, air quality sensors to to make sure you know the quality of air around there. EV chargers, that's one of our most popular programs as well. All of those are then options that are off the table if we start going that place. I do see that there is going to be a balance. There
56:00 - 56:30 are some places of the city that can do solar very easily versus others you cannot it's very hard to do solar in in downtown with all the tall buildings for instance right uh so so we're trying to work out on our end uh what is the best kind of citywide plan on solar beautiful thank you I also have some new questions but I'll pass it to you okay you have a question go ahead sure a couple questions um well first we're talking about the ballot measure. Do we have the
56:30 - 57:00 funds? I know it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to do the mailers and do do all all of that. Are the funds for that in the budget? I I believe Mark, we still have those that are still available. So, we're planning to use current existing resources for that right now that have been identified. Correct. Yeah, we have an appropriation uh for that work. So, uh we have it uh uh free and ready to go. Great. Um wanted to ask about the STAP program. Um, you support implementation of the of
57:00 - 57:30 the street the street transit amenities program. What does the resources in the budget cover? What staffing and equipment resources might be needed for repair or maintenance? Are we able to to do what we need to do uh visav the staff program which is a revenue generating program? So the um the the the budget that's provided uh uh for the bureau covers essentially the
57:30 - 58:00 all the startup costs. So we have the engineers, we have the field staff to help with the engineering and the installation of the of the uh bus stop shelter. Uh what we are unable to do uh is u repair cycles essentially. So once it goes out, like it would fall under the same kind of repair schedule that we would have a year or so um with regards to repairing staff areas, right? The only difference though in in these we would be once they're out,
58:00 - 58:30 we're not generating any revenue. So I I would ask the CEO to look into using revenue from the staff program as an offset to pay for the necessary maintenance crew that would respond to outages to keep the staff amenities and infrastructure on and producing revenue. I know the budget sets aside some of that money, but um makes sense to me that, you know, to make money, we got to be able to take some of those revenues to keep the program going. Uh wanted to also ask
58:30 - 59:00 about the um the EV charging network. Are you going to be able to continue? you know, you guys have a great network out there for for EVs. Will this budget uh prohibit you from being able to continue maintaining the uh the EV charging network? Uh what's provided in the budget right now is still an expansion of the program. So, um we we have, I believe, $ 1.5 million or so in CTIP
59:00 - 59:30 that's that's provisioned for it. Um we do expect ourselves to be able to at least do the 75 um 75 EV chargers for the upcoming year. uh with the the single engineering resource we have, we're we're going to see if we can bump it up to 100. Uh and then we're we're looking to um replace some uh damaged EV chargers with the balance of it. So that would not require then the uh engineering resources in order to create new installations. And
59:30 - 60:00 the revenues from the EV program, they don't cover all the costs, right? It is barely on the line. So, one of the things that we still have to work on is um for every EV spot, right, we're we're obviously using a also DOT parking spot, right? So, there's some of those considerations that we still have to work through, right? But but I mean, the ultimate goal is to have EV charging that can actually pay for the maintenance as well as the capital cost for the for the EV itself. And then it'll be a no-brainer to put them out
60:00 - 60:30 there. Um, but we're not there yet. We're not there yet. one of the, you know, we don't charge for icing or or, you know, when idling in the parking spot. Are there are there ways to do um charges like that that could that could help raise revenue, prevent folks from just camping out in those spots? So, icing or um essentially when a regular combustion engine car takes up a a parking spot for
60:30 - 61:00 a charger, yes, that prevents us from actually u uh creating any revenue on that. It also is a public nuisance where someone cannot refuel their vehicle. Uh so, so that's a possibility. We would have to work with DOT on that if that was uh something that the council would like us to look at. Okay. So, definitely would like it. I'll request a budget memo uh for the department to pursue parking fines and fees for vehicle icing, EV charges, which create transportation, electrification issues, and public nuisance as you mentioned. Uh basically,
61:00 - 61:30 and anything else you can think of uh in order to to get us closer to being cost neutral on that program. Understood. Okay. Thank you, Council Member Costk. You had a clarification to your memo. Yes. on the memo. I want to go back to 218. So, just to be clear, a really rough outline of how how the the life span of a 218 question. You come up with the analysis of what the fee would be.
61:30 - 62:00 You submit that. A notice goes out to the affected world. A period of time is goes for the affected world to be able to protest. It goes up to a hearing. At that moment of the hearing, folks either show up live or in written protest. After the hearing, we the government governmental agency calculates whether or not the protest was successful or not successful. If it's not successful, the assessment is set. That is sent over to
62:00 - 62:30 the assessor. The assessor puts it on the rolls. The assessor puts out a bill. Folks have a time to pay the bill. The bill is collected. The assessor then subvents the money appropriately back to the jurisdiction. What I want in my memo is the moment in that timeline, which is not completely accurate. I mean, there's other steps. The moment that we would not be afraid to securitize the amount of money that we believe we get from the
62:30 - 63:00 assessment. That's what I'm looking for. It's not going to be after we have the money sent to us and it's not going to be the day that we decide that we want to do an assessment, but it's going to be somewhere in the middle and it's going to be faster than us waiting for the assessor to send us the money. That's what I'm looking for. And unless we are creative about this, we are not going to get out of this mess. So, that's what I'm looking for. The moment at which we would not be afraid to say we could securitize the money. What is that
63:00 - 63:30 date? Thank you. new question. Okay. Can I ask let me ask one and then I'll go to you. Uh so the letter proposes eliminating or the the me uh proposed budget uh proposes eliminating number of positions in the metro annual work program and colllocation program which I understand are fully reimburseable by metro um and telecom companies respectively.
63:30 - 64:00 Are these positions fully reimbured? The the uh metro? Yes. The um the collocation program? Yes. If there is the output that we or the input that we expect from the telecom carriers as well. Sorry, say that last sentence again. If if the the expected projects come in on the telecom side, yes, then that those are also reimbursed as well. Could staff from the eliminated positions be reassigned to reimburseable positions? That's conceivable.
64:00 - 64:30 Okay. Would I need a memo on that? We We would probably have to look at it with the CEO's office. Okay. All right. Let us know. Okay. Okay. Councilwoman Hernandez. Thank you. Thank you. Are there other partnerships or opportunities for the bureau to generate revenue or save money? For instance, additional collocation opportunities or permitting opportunities, places with solar lights like Westlake, Filipino
64:30 - 65:00 Town are opportunities to repurpose conduit for communications. The short answer is yes. And and as council member Hut had brought up with regards to the um banner program, that's an opportunity. uh with what you're pointing out for um historic Filipino town, the fact that we now then have just empty or uh abandoned conduit essentially there, that is an opportunity for us to look at. It would require master permit agreements and u us going out there. However, I did
65:00 - 65:30 submit some reports to council where we did do at least some type of preliminary market analysis. There was interest in in that as well. Uh so that's something that we can look into. Great. And when we talk about this h how um we're talking about like more access to internet right more access to Wi-Fi for our communities that is that is the work that that I'm talking about correct when I ask about that uh to to be clear when I'm uh speaking about the connectivity I would be talking about purely the
65:30 - 66:00 infrastructure I I am not proposing uh ISP or enduser services on on our end that would require a much different structure of a bureau um but like for buildings for example to have access to the internet and things like that. You you would what it would be enabled and it would be further enabled and you would have the options then of either incumbent carriers that can rent out the the fiber or space or even new ISPs that would come into the market because of the available public infrastructure that
66:00 - 66:30 we would have. Great. So we could generate revenue off of that. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Um you talked a little bit about fortification. Can you talk about what that actually means? uh fortification. I I call it castle building for us. That is when we take cement and steel and we take the entirety of our electrical circuit from the uh DP service point all the way to the last light and we um we essentially seal every uh pullbox, every hand hole
66:30 - 67:00 uh we we attempt to camouflage it as well. Uh it is labor intensive. It is the one where we use also the most amount of perial material. It is also very effective. So we actually keep the electrical system intact. We've only had about 10% of them fail for for different reasons. So what I'm saying is 90% of all the fortification that we've done actually hold up. Uh and so so it is a a good strategy for us to try and keep the
67:00 - 67:30 electrical system in place and also keeping the lights on. Thank you. I'd like to request a budget memo and request the CEO to seek alternative funding sources to cover the bureau's fortification program to protect against future vandalism and theft. Okay. It might it might be tied to Council Member McCosker's motion, but that's okay. It could be a separate one. We'll we'll assess. Um I have a couple more questions if that's okay. Sure. Colleagues, anybody else are okay.
67:30 - 68:00 Great. Thank Thank you so much. Um, last budget, BSL was allocated 1 million to repair 3,700 LED fixtures. You've also stated that 60,000 LEDs are at the end of life and in need of replacement. What would be needed to maintain maintenance life cycle requirements, meet maintenance life cycle requirements? uh our estimates on that uh
68:00 - 68:30 are broadly speaking on an annual basis we look to replace 10% of the the the system uh in order to keep up and and not create um spikes and and and valleys. Um that essentially equates to around uh 20,000 lights or so. Broadly speaking, that would be around4 to5 million. Now, although I would probably have to figure out if there's been any changes with the the procurement or
68:30 - 69:00 anything. Um, the only change is that now the the fixtures that need replacement are higher wattage that are they going to the major streets. So, they're a little bit more expensive than the local streets. Also, keep in mind that we do add a remote monitoring unit to each of those fixers to be able to capture the the energy usage and be able to uh flag when there's an issue with the with the street lights. Broadly speaking though, if we're talking about an annual actual LED replacement program, it's probably around four to uh
69:00 - 69:30 $5 million. Great. Thank you. What are some of the basic lighting system materials needed, the average lifespan of each and our current replacement timelines for these items? What's the risk and liability we have experienced when not maintained? The the let's start with poles. That's our bread and butter. Um poles for us have a an expected lif span useful life of about 75 years. As I mentioned the pole replacement program was eliminated back
69:30 - 70:00 in I believe it was 2010 during the great recession. So our replacement program right now is zero. Um LED replacement zero you said yes ma'am. Zero. Okay good. Thank you. Um the LED replacement program, as I mentioned, we look to try and replace around 20,000 or so a year. This year, um we did around 4,000. Um in in the budget, we will be at zero. Conduit, it's around 50 years or
70:00 - 70:30 so for for us with their useful life. Um that is also at zero. So, no conduit resources, no LED resources, and no pole resources. And no pole resources. Yes. Got it. What's the What's the risk on liabilities on not maintaining those things? We are getting to the point where, again, I mentioned we're we're doing repairs. We're not necessarily maintaining a system. At at some point in the near future, um I I will probably
70:30 - 71:00 have recommendations to figure out how to shrink our service territory so that we can avoid liabilities of poles that are electrified poles, right? So these are, you know, 3 400 pound um structures in our sidewalk with dangerous currents. Um and and I want them to be, you know, within useful life. So if we get to the point where we reach some of those end of useful life, I will be recommending that we actually start breaking down
71:00 - 71:30 some of those systems. Great. Thank you. And please um please correct me if I'm wrong, but this assessment that we've all talked about when approved would cover these costs, right? So that we could replace our poles, we can replace our LEDs, we have the materials to do that and the staffing to do that. I will say yes. And it would allow us to do all of the ba basics that we're supposed to do. It would also allow the
71:30 - 72:00 city to have infrastructure that many other departments use too. So for instance, one of the things that we're doing with some of our infrastructure is attaching cameras to try and force against uh theft and vandalism. Uh Ms. Romero for uh Bureau of Street uh Bureau of Sanitation uses those same cameras to enforce against illegal dumping. So there's going to be new things that we can do by having the right infrastructure in place. Wonderful. Thank you. Uh thank you so
72:00 - 72:30 much, Chairwoman. Uh just want to emphasize again we have to be surgical moving forward and it seems uh work like we're working against us to shrink this department or redirect this department when very soon we could have enough resources for this department to thrive and do the work that it's been tasked to doing. Um thank you so much chairwoman. Thank you. Uh Councilwoman Hut, you have a followup to that? Yeah, just a a follow up on one of your statements. When when you're saying
72:30 - 73:00 other departments would use the pole or the cameras, would they be renting that space? They would essentially be renting that space, too. Uh but in in some of the partnerships that we would be looking for either some type of cost sharing or structure so that we can maintain a system that can be used by multiple city departments. Thank you. Okay, questions, memos? All right. Thank you very much. We appreciate the time, all the work.
73:00 - 73:30 Okay. Uh colleagues, just a reminder, we have many more uh departments to get through seven more. So, we're going to try and pick up the pace a little bit. Uh limit our memos a little bit. We're going to move on to the Bureau of Contract Administration.
73:30 - 74:00 Hello. Welcome. Do you want to go ahead and introduce yourself and your team? Yes. Uh, good afternoon, Chairwoman Yaruslowski, committee members. Um, I am John El Reamer Jr., your inspector of public works, the director of the Bureau of
74:00 - 74:30 Contract Administration. To my right, I have Rah Mendoza, our assistant general manager, and to my left, I have Helica Samoya, um, our division manager, chief management analyst over our admin and support services. Um, thank you for this opportunity. On behalf of those who serve in the Bureau of Contract Administration, I I want to thank Mayor Bass and her team um for their leadership throughout this process. And I also want to thank Matt
74:30 - 75:00 um for his extended partnership, the CEO and and their staff. It's it's been very helpful in the midst of the economic challenges that we face. I also want to thank you for the opportunity to communicate our thoughts on this fiscal year 202526 budget and declare our commitment to in the same way as other departments protect and serve the citizens of this city with the passion
75:00 - 75:30 and professionalism needed and deserved. The Bureau of Contract Administration, we serve as your eyes and ears in maintaining a transparent and consistent contracting environment through protecting protecting the public from inferior and unsafe construction, protecting the worker from wage theft, and protecting business from inequitable inequitable procurement practices. So, I
75:30 - 76:00 want to I want to pause and applaud the staff of the Bureau of Contract Administration, many of which are watching right now, many of which dare I say are concerned as many of um our bureau family and our city family over how this will go. And just thank them for being patient and persevering and understanding that the city family wants the best for all. And so, I appreciate that. Our letter to you acknowledges that we um had presented to us a
76:00 - 76:30 reduction of 53 positions and we proposed restoring 30 positions, 27 filled and three vacant. This letter reflects our commitment to names and not numbers. And I say that in this light. I I so appreciate the fact that our greatest asset are our employees. Those who serve each and every day. they make the city of Los Angeles and our efforts to serve the constituents and those who
76:30 - 77:00 visit here with the environment that they receive. And so it it communicates our desire to protect the bureau and the city's greatest asset, quite frankly, those who serve. In our letter, we identified two areas. one being labor standards and business outreach. 21 positions, 14 of which primarily in our office of wage standards, seven of which are in our office of contract compliance and then in our internal infrastructure
77:00 - 77:30 support, nine positions. We believe that in our letter we identified offsets that align with that which the CEO has identified. We've shifted employees from general fund reliant positions to healthy special funds. We've provided ongoing expenses, um, account reductions, um, and we've covered both direct and indirect costs for those positions. Now, the one thing that our proposal does not do, however, it does not address all of
77:30 - 78:00 wage enforcement, uh, specifically fair work week. But what it does do is it stabilizes us where we are right now, enabling us to maintain and preserve to a certain level. So once again, um, to the BCA family, uh, thank you for all that you do and and to you. Thank you for this opportunity and I am happy to answer any questions that you might have. Thank you very much. Uh, we're going to start with Councilwoman Hernandez. Thank you. Thank you, Chairwoman. And, uh, just be advised, I have one budget
78:00 - 78:30 memo and two special study requests in my question. Thank you. Um, thank you for your very thoughtful proposal on offsets. I'd like to have the CEO report back on the feasibility of BCA's offset proposal totaling 2.5 million and ask the CEO to work with BCA on any adjustments that may be needed to make the proposal work. Um, now around the special study, we've been looking at various outdated fees in the city. Uh, it's like to get a
78:30 - 79:00 permit to use a crane is less than $200. It's so many updates that need to happen. Um, do you also have inspection fees for your permits and when were they last updated? We do have fees that are associated with the various permits that we inspect, be it utility permits or permits for work that's done by a homeowner um or a small business um or a large business and they were last updated in 2012. We are in the
79:00 - 79:30 process of having them updated. um we have identified a consultant to work with and we would love um your blessing to be able to move forward with that. Um again it's been roughly 13 years since we have increased our fees. A lot has happened since then. We definitely believe that it would be a benefit. We are one of the few departments that um can provide revenue to the city because of the services that we provide and so we welcome the opportunity to move forward with that. Great. Thank you. Um,
79:30 - 80:00 so I'd like to request a special study to ask BCA to report back on bringing permanent inspection fees up to date to fully capture the cost of staff and maintaining necessary systems such as their dispatch and inspection scheduling system. And I know there's uh different different definitions of whether it's a budget memo or whether it's a special study, what's the urgency, what lives and what doesn't. I just want to let you know that me and my team are very much uh invested in seeing this through. So, it is a special study, but we're going
80:00 - 80:30 to follow it all the way through. Um, so I just wanted to say that. Thank you. And the last um the last piece, we have a couple questions around, for example, you know, you have you're getting cuts to your department, right? But what do these cuts how do these cuts impact your ability to implement the new hotel worker minimum wage ordinance when it goes into effect in light of the fact that the city will not be in a position to allocate additional resources for this new work program? Of the 53 positions that were
80:30 - 81:00 eliminated, half of them came from our efforts, the bureau's efforts to protect workers and interface with businesses. The majority of them came from our office of wage standards, um, wage theft enforcement. Um, if these if this proposal is not met, um, I can't even begin to say how devastating it would be with respect to the city's
81:00 - 81:30 commitment to protecting those who cannot protect themselves. Um, many have stated how important it is for us to define who we are in difficult economic times. And I I would argue one place that we definitely should stand strong and proud is as a city, we make sure that no one is taken advantage of. um over 60 70% of the pos the positions that we lost came from our wage theft enforcement. We would not be able to enforce minimum wage as we currently have been. Right now when we're fully
81:30 - 82:00 staffed, it would take us about a year to carry out an investigation. This would move anywhere to the neighborhood of 3 to four years before we would be able to even begin an investigation. We currently have 188 open cases. Part of that is due to the fact that when we went through COVID and we experienced the hiring freeze here, um our vacancy rate in our office of wage standards was as high as 60%. And we just did not have the ability to respond to the to the u
82:00 - 82:30 complaints that come. You might say, well, how many complaints could you be getting? On average, in the neighborhood of 120 complaints a year. Now, I just think that through 120 real complaints and it's on a good day when we're fully staffed, it's going to take us maybe 120 130 days, working days to to to resolve one. So, if we don't have these positions, wage theft would for intents and purposes not happen, not just for minimum wage, but also for fair work week, for the hotel worker protection.
82:30 - 83:00 the number of ordinances that protect those individuals that come to work every day and one could argue they're just a paycheck away from experiencing homelessness because they're the lowest work wage earners in our city. Um they definitely need our protection. We're very proud of the fact that we're able to afford that and that's why we worked so hard to present in our proposal something that would preserve where we are just to keep us afloat. Can I add um councilwoman the uh for the hotel worker minimum wage that you asked
83:00 - 83:30 about, there are a couple components there that would be new for us that would be very difficult for us to absorb without the new without new positions. That includes just enforcing the wage itself, but also the hardship waivers. So those business or those hotels who believe they can't comply with the higher wage amount, they will submit waiver requests or hardship waiverss to us. So are not getting new positions for that would mean we may take a while to
83:30 - 84:00 be able to review those. Uh and also the housekeeping pro uh training program would probably take us a little longer to be able to implement and get off the ground. Great. Thank you. Um my last question is um what opportunities for alignment do you see in your consolidation? Um where are you seeing shortfalls and how do you plan to strengthen policies that ensure small, local and minority owned businesses have equitable access to city contracts?
84:00 - 84:30 Wow, that's a great question. Um, let me use our work with LA28 and not to get ahead of that conversation because I recognize LA28 is still going to be presenting to the council their plans for procurement and outreach opportunities. Um, but the big thing that we found for many of our small businesses is they don't have access to information. and the Bureau of
84:30 - 85:00 Contract Administration for many years, um, we've made it our point to ensure that those businesses that do not have access, they have not been around, they're not quote unquote legacy businesses, they they have access to that. Um, we started back in 2014 the Small Business Academy. and and since then um we've had over 200 graduates, 250 graduates, small businesses that not just are able to take advantage of and
85:00 - 85:30 engage in the procurement process in the city of Los Angeles, but the county, the state, private entities. Um and our goal has been to ensure that they have what it takes to be able to compete. When we looked at LA28 and they're trying to come up with their plan, we focused on four areas. One, identify not just for us but also for the business marketplace. What is needed? An inquiry with respect to what do we have to offer and what does LA28 want to offer? An
85:30 - 86:00 investment from the standpoint of preparing them to do and respond so that they are quote unquote blue ribbon contractors. and then an implementation piece. Procurement is not just a tool. It's it's an environment that transforms the city and the economy. And when we coined Bobin many years ago, we did it under the standard of business assistance, reaching out and making sure that businesses have an opportunity to
86:00 - 86:30 work. Another flagship program that we have is our accessing LA three-fold program with respect to our build with our rise with and our team with focusing on construction personal services and small businesses. That operation was also impacted in this budget. Our division manager over the office of contract compliance was identified as being eliminated. Many of the support staff were identified as being eliminated. So, our being able to identify businesses,
86:30 - 87:00 one of the roles that I also have, many may not realize that, is I'm also the city's designated um business enterprise leazison officer, meaning that any federal monies that come here, I'm responsible for making sure that we follow the process and we make sure that opportunities exist. So, it's critical for us to also stay fixed and focused on that effort. That is why we ask for those positions back to not lose ground. Not gain as much but not lose ground. In our efforts with LA28, we sent out over
87:00 - 87:30 20,000 letters to businesses to let them know about opportunities. We had about 600 respond back. We're in the process now of preparing for that investment piece where we train them and get them ready so that they can go and compete when LA28 lets us know what opportunities will be existing so that our small businesses will be able to engage. not just LA28, the Olympics, but the World Cup, the NBA Allstar, the Super Bowl that's coming back, and many
87:30 - 88:00 other procurement opportunities both internally and externally. Thank you so much. Thank you for that information. I'd like to end it by asking for a special study. I'd like to have BCA in consultation with CEO report back on the benefits and opportunities in consol in consolidating the office of procurement within BCA specifically as it relates to policy development outreach and education and leveraging RAMP to identify and prepare businesses in advance of the 2028 games. Thank you. Thank you, Chairwoman. Thank you,
88:00 - 88:30 colleagues, Councilwoman Hut. Thank you. Thank you for being here. The the proposed bud budget eliminates 85% of staff in the CEO's office of procurement and proposes relocating the office within the Bureau of Contract Administration. Uh in in Tuesday's hearings, we were told that this would impact ramp significantly along with other critical procurement functions.
88:30 - 89:00 what is uh BCA's framework for bringing these functions into the bureau and what opportunities are there to ensure that they're able to continue to expand their work in supporting our small businesses as well as our city departments. So, I just heard you say what you know part of what you're doing for our our small businesses, but yes, if you could elaborate. Yes. Um thank you for the question. You know, the one thing that these harsh economic times have done is they've made it um challenging for us to
89:00 - 89:30 stay the way we are and and change how we look. Um first of all, kudos to the um office of procurement and what they've done. We've worked with them since their inception. We being the Bureau of Contract Administration. As I stated, um, when 209 hit the city of Los Angeles, the state of California, um, back in 1996, we responded then recognizing how important it was in the
89:30 - 90:00 midst of an environment, and I think you all can appreciate where I'm going with this, where there was not a desire to have a type of DEI, not a desire to make sure that those underrepresented workers had a place. Um, we had already responded and we have already succeeded in being able to defend against lawsuits against our approach to how we engage the marketplace. And and I want to frame it that way. RAMP is a tool, an extension of BAV that creates, as I like
90:00 - 90:30 to term it, an electronic marketplace where businesses can come and they can give and receive information. Um, does it need more? Most certainly it does. Will it be hampered by cuts? Absolutely it will. Does it mean that it should stop? Absolutely it should not. Um I can't speak to whether or not it does come to BCA or not. We did respond um to the report back and and in that report we shared a number of things that the bureau is doing and ultimately the
90:30 - 91:00 policy decision will be made and I don't mean to duck your question but I recognize that that will happen. Um but if it does come to us, if that indeed is the case, I think it will be in good hands. I think that we can and will continue to work as we do now um with with that office and its staff to move forward what we all want to see opportunities for those underrepresented businesses making sure that they receive the proper training that they need so that they can do what they do also well. I'm back to my um identify and inquire and invest and ultimately
91:00 - 91:30 implement. RAMP can do some of that but ramp won't do all of that. ramp helps set the stage, but the entire environment is going to involve that thing that we all know so well, that partnering and that working together. And that's what the Bureau of Contract Administration will bring to this if it is determined for it to come to us. our continuation to work with businesses, preparing them, informing them, investing in them, and then implementing our our plans and our requirements and our um specifications, be it in private
91:30 - 92:00 or public contracting to ensure that they are not mistreated. It's back to the protection piece again. Again, we believe that our role is to protect the environment to make sure businesses can thrive. Thank you. Um, I I'd like to request a budget memo on the Bureau of Contract Administration's proposed off offsets as uh outlined in your budget letter.
92:00 - 92:30 Thank you. That's all for me, Madam Chair. Thank you, Councilwoman. Uh, Council Member McCoscer, followed by Council Member Blumenfield. Uh, thank you very much u again for all of these responses. Have you seen the letter of April 28th from our colleagues um Price Har and Sto Martinez? I have. Um just to thank you. I'm glad you have. Um it talks about the cuts in our combating of wage theft and protecting
92:30 - 93:00 folks which you've spoken about. Something really really is compelling and jumps out at to me on the second page. The impact is especially severe for minimum wage citywide minimum wage investigations. 13 out of 20 positions, 65% of the entire investigative team being proposed for elimination and the assertion such a drastic reduction would critically impair BCA's ability to accept and resolve wage theft complaints. Agree or disagree? And can you amplify on that? I
93:00 - 93:30 100% I 100% agree that if we were to lose the 13 out of 20, it it would it would hamper our ability to not even adequately perform wage theft enforcement. As I alluded to, we currently have 188 open investigations. Says if enacted, the city would be forced to turn away cases altogether and workers may face delays for three or four years before their claims are addressed. I agree with that statement as well. Absolutely I do. And that's one of
93:30 - 94:00 the reasons why we worked as hard as we did in our proposal to you to find the necessary resources to keep those 13. It does not in any way prepare us for what's coming our way with respect to again the hotel minimum wage increase and the fair very familiar with the letter then because it says furthermore these cuts would significantly weaken Los Angeles's ability to take over new enforcement responsibilities including the citywide
94:00 - 94:30 I'm sorry to interrupt you but um citywide hotel worker minimum wage ordinance. Those are true statements. Those are very true statements. And the city has come a long way. A long way. The city has come a long way both in ordinance um and and staffing our office to get to where we are. And I would hate for us to not slide but just fall backwards. And again to repeat, that's
94:30 - 95:00 why we did what we did to preserve those positions that we have that are filled. um it it doesn't again prepare us for what's coming but it allows us to hold. Now with that said, with the positions that are the erase that the requests that are coming our way, that being fair work week for fast food, that being hotel minimum wage, as Ro Mendoza
95:00 - 95:30 alluded to with respect to the waiver review for businesses or hotels that believe that they should be exempt um or the training piece, training component um that for the state has allowed cities to enforce rest pay, meal break, overtime or minimum wage. Those items coming our way, we don't have the staff for that. So, we would need additional staff. I'm not saying that we can't absorb to some extent. It will
95:30 - 96:00 impact the length of an investigation, but if we don't have the 13, there there will be no investigation. We will rely solely on private right of action. And now we're asking those who are the least of us, who do not have the resources to try to go through a private right of action to get back what they should have received for a business that's headquartered or located geographically in the city of
96:00 - 96:30 Los Angeles. We've prided ourselves in the office of wage standards and office of contract compliance on the three wages that this city has identified are important be prevailing living and minimum wage to make sure that those who work here are treated fairly and they are paid properly. We are dealing with homelessness right now and I would argue that one of the reasons why what one of the contributing factors to that is individuals who are not getting paid. I could tell you story after story after story that many would not believe it to
96:30 - 97:00 be true of contractors who will give an employee a check, walk with them over to a liquor store, have them cash that check and give the money back to that employer. We've seen those things happen. Council member Blumenfield asked for us to engage in on our prevailing wage side a strategic enforcement effort to ensure that we're able to get in front of these elements and catch them before they happen. We've partnered with the building trades on the prevailing wage side and we are partnering with
97:00 - 97:30 those on the labor side, service related labor side for a type of um partnership what we refer to as a joint labor compliance monitoring approach to bring as many people as we can into this because the city of LA it outpaces Chicago, New York when it comes to wage theft and it is it's unfair and it's unfortunate and it's it's a shameful. So that letter that you received is absolutely correct. It's unfortunate for me to have to tell you that. That's
97:30 - 98:00 where we are. But that is also why we put as much energy as we did. And I request to you because we definitely understand and appreciate how our greatest asset are our people here and the people that we serve. Thank you. I've heard this from you personally oneonone. I'm appreciate you repeating that for the public that's watching. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Blumenfield. Thank you. Um, always appreciated the
98:00 - 98:30 great work that you do and the partnership that we've had over over many years. Uh, very concerned about the proposed budget. I certainly support the the all the efforts you're putting forward in terms of the swaps to try to make things happen. I did want to ask though about, you know, to restore the general fund positions. We're doing the the shifting staff from general fund to special fund. Is there something that we will no longer be able to do that those folks were previously uh you know inspecting that because
98:30 - 99:00 they're on the special funds that they will no longer be able to do that they were doing because they were on general funds you know even though we need to do it to save the folks I want to have eyes wide open in terms of what we're uh what we're giving up. No, I thank you and I appreciate the question and I I I go back to the protect and serve. Um our our investigators and our inspectors don't have badges and they don't have guns, but they still protect and they still serve. And so the last thing we would do is walk away from any
99:00 - 99:30 construction project. Um every year we we make it not only a practice, but we're quite proud of the fact that we zerobased budget. We take our cup, we turn it upside down, and then we work on how much are we going to fill it with? And we do that by working with our partners. We have a construction workforce schedule that outlines and identifies all of our programs and all of our projects. And we're monitoring them on a regular basis on a revolving 24 month cycle to see what projects are sliding and and what projects are
99:30 - 100:00 working in the budget. The C also identified in its capital improvement uh program or projects a list of projects that we have also identified as as as sliding. So, we are not abandoning anything, but we're able to move um inspectors onto programs that are special funded, fully funded, um or healthy funds as one would allude to such as Measure M or wastewater type projects. So, we are not in any way compromising. We are not removing from an active project, but we're able to um
100:00 - 100:30 that's one of the benefits of our bureau. Um our inspectors are well trained to move from project to project. Um and you need not worry about that. We're not compromising at all. Well, that's that's that's good to hear. Um, also wanted to ask about the ways to make the inspections more efficient. I I'm I'm told that different inspectors are responsible for for overseeing the work of U permits uh where the rightway needs to be cut into for utility work and B permits such as sidewalk.
100:30 - 101:00 Similarly, you know, are there ways to make that more efficient? Maybe also with virtual inspections. I know we've started that uh in certain areas in in home inspections and some of of those kinds of things, but are there other opportunities to work smarter? Are there things that we could do as a council authorities that we can give you that may be holding back uh these kinds of efficiencies or, you know, technological ways to to do inspections faster and more efficiently? The easy answer would
101:00 - 101:30 be to say, give me more inspectors. Um but but I but I I won't say that especially in times like these. I do appreciate the question in that one of the things that we um have recently done is we've created what we refer to as PA, our project assistance um meeting place where virtually we're able to meet with developers. And this is in support of the mayor's efforts to bring about
101:30 - 102:00 affordable housing. and we wanted to expedite um the ability to have a developer obtain a certificate of occupancy. Sometimes they wait until the last minute to call our inspectors out and many times they act as though they don't know what they're doing. I can appreciate consistency and there are many developers that want to see the same inspector. Unfortunately, we don't have enough inspectors for that always to happen. So, what have we done? Um, in our PAM, we've stood up um, virtual videos or videos quite frankly that give
102:00 - 102:30 information with respect to what to expect when your inspector comes out. And most recently, we posted one that shows an inspector going through the process of how we're going to meet with you, how we're going to check your grade, what we're going to look for when it comes to do your removal. So that way what we want to ultimately have happen is for every contractor, every developer when they take a look at this, they will already know what to expect from our inspector when he or she comes out there. And we that way we're trying to
102:30 - 103:00 make it easier and bring about that consistency using technology to do that. Um it it beats having to necessarily meet with us right away in the field. They can already have an idea of what to expect. So we agree with you. We've provided our inspectors with both laptop and a a upgraded cell phone. Um because we also are trying to move away from paperbased
103:00 - 103:30 um communication to electronically communicating as soon as we can the acceptance of work and interfacing back and forth with project developers or their superintendent or foremen or for women to make sure that whatever they need we're able to provide them. So, I do appreciate the concern over seeing different faces. Um, and we're working to make sure that we get as much information to the marketplace as we can. Okay. Thank you. Um, the how many employees are there in
103:30 - 104:00 the construction inspection side of of BCA and and what and related to that is what challenges will BCA face without an assistant director over the four functional inspection branches? We have four divisions on our inspection side. to answer your question, 239 currently inspection positions. Um, and it's it's it's varied with respect to the responsibilities they have. A lot of it is is district work. Um, with respect to
104:00 - 104:30 the permits that were alluded to earlier, some of it is for proprietaries, be it DWP, the airport or or PA. Um, what does the assistant general manager do? the assistant general manager brings about consistency where you have four division managers that one person is important to make sure that when we look at this one could argue um 470 square mile area of city Los Angeles how do we make sure that whether you are in Silar
104:30 - 105:00 or San Pedro that the inspection is going to be the same and that person that pivotal person for lack of a better way of saying it the one who's at the front of the ship telling everybody row row row and rowing all at the same time to make sure that we have harmony so that we're going straight and now we're going in a circle. Critically important on all of our projects that are awarded by the Board of Public Works. Um we ensure that we partner. Uh it's important for us to make sure that we have a close relationship with our
105:00 - 105:30 contractors and in that partnering effort we establish what we refer to as a issue resolution ladder so that things just don't fester from the lowest level that contractor and our inspector. It moves up to this supervisor and then ultimately to that assistant general manager before it gets to me. And this is to resolve issues so that we can minimize any delays that might happen because any delay that happens, it
105:30 - 106:00 doesn't just happen to that contractor. It happens to the community that will be impacted by this work not happening or this work stopping. So, it's a critical part of who we are and what we do. Thank you. Thank you. I just have one question. Um, will elimination of filled positions prevent BCA from meeting statemandated 30-day construction invoice processing deadlines? Should be a quick quick one. And are there fines that the city would incur if we weren't compliant?
106:00 - 106:30 Well, let me ask it this way. Answer it this way. Um, we do have payment positions that have been identified. Um, and we address those in our proposal. They're part of our infrastructure. Um, our systems team, part of our infrastructure. All of this plays into our ability to make sure that our contractors are compensated within 30 days. Um, we're going to do everything we can to make sure that
106:30 - 107:00 happens. If we do not get these positions, yes, it could impact that. It definitely could. Um there is a state mandate with respect to for construction that a contractor is compensated within 30 days from our receiving an acceptable invoice. And our process is that we meet with our contractor in the field and discuss to make sure whether or not it's accurate. And once it is identified to be an accurate request, the clock starts. When we don't have that system support for our electronic means and our
107:00 - 107:30 accounting clerks, it will impact our ability to deliver that payment within 30 days. So, another reason why I so appreciate your accepting this proposal so that we can make sure that our contractors are compensated. And you're saying that accepting this proposal will provide for that and ensure it. Yes. Okay. I have no more questions. colleagues questions. Okay. Thank you so much. We
107:30 - 108:00 appreciate Thank you very much. You and your team and your time. Thank you. All right. We're going to go out of order here. Uh and take DWP next. I understand the general manager has a hard out of four. So colleagues, we're going to need to go fast and then we'll hear from Reck and Parks right afterwards. Thank you, Reck
108:00 - 108:30 and Parks for being flexible. Uh, welcome. Please go ahead and introduce yourself and your team. Yeah. Uh good afternoon and thank you to the budget and finance committee and church general sloowski for the opportunity to share the WP preliminary budget for 25 and 26. It is preliminary. We have now presented the final budget to our commission and that's coming in the next couple of weeks. I am Janice Kyones the CEO and
108:30 - 109:00 chief engineer of LWP. I've been here almost a year. May 14 will be my first anniversary in the department and I'm very honored to lead this organization of over 11,000 employees that keep water and um water and power flowing 247 and I'm very very honored to be here and share our 2526 budget with my colleagues here Brian Wilbur the interim AGM for power uh and Samo Collins senior AGM for
109:00 - 109:30 water and Anson Tilly our CFO. Just a high level on our budget, our finances continue to remain strong while we're supporting the city. We have a separate budget funded by our rates and our rate payers. And for 2526, our preliminary budget is about 9.291 billion. Uh and for staffing, we have approximately 12,83 funded positions. Uh we will get into more detail and we'll
109:30 - 110:00 get into more detail on the numbers of the positions in the preliminary budget. But I also want to emphasize that this budget shows our commitment to strengthening LWP resiliency, reliability, and sustainability and continue to plan for our LA 100, LA28, and other major initiatives. With that, I'm gonna pass it to an Good afternoon committee. I'm Ann Santilli and we do have a short presentation for you to walk through our
110:00 - 110:30 budget. So for fiscal year 2526, the department has a preliminary net appropriations budget of 9,291 million. 50% of this proposed budget is to support the power system capital expenditures and operating and maintenance costs. 21% of the proposed expenditures are for water capital expenditures and operating and maintenance costs. 18% of the budget is for fuel and purchased power which is
110:30 - 111:00 expected to support 52% of our renewable energy for fiscal year 2526. 3% of the budget is for purchased water and the remaining 8% is for bond interest redemption and other costs net of capital contributions and other miscellaneous revenues anticipated. The budget is the preliminary budget has a total compensation amount of $3.1 billion with regular labor of 1.9 billion roughly 400
111:00 - 111:30 million for overtime and 850 million in benefits. This represents a $163 million increase over last year's budget of of which 88% is attributable to 765 new budgeted positions. LWP strategic transformation includes creating a more sustainable power supply, a more sustainable water supply,
111:30 - 112:00 maintaining high water quality, high power reliability, all while minimizing rate impacts. For fiscal year 2526, the proposed budget to support the power system strategic investments is 4,666 million. This is broken up into five categories that help the department meet its strategic goals. Power reliability spending, which supports mostly our transmission and distribution assets, is
112:00 - 112:30 1,917 million. Renewable portfolio standard spending of 542 million, which supports generation and transmission to support renewable energy. infrastructure spending of 918 million, energy efficiency of 159 million, and operating support, which includes power system share of customer service, information technology, and other joint operation costs, is 1,124 million. Let's look at power system
112:30 - 113:00 reliability. Power system reliability programs aim to replace key assets in an effort to maintain reliability for energy services. LWP has about 320,000 poles. They require inspection, maintenance, and replacement and support pole top transformers. And in some cases, uh uh they have um they have light fixtures on them as well. Our goal is to replace
113:00 - 113:30 4,000 poles next year and 13,900 crossarms. Power system maintains more than 17 26,000 distribution transformers. Replacing or upgrading existing transformers to account for increasing load is required to provide customers with reliable power and a better customer experience. Our goal is to replace 1,340 transformers. We also have metrics that measure the average outage of frequency and duration
113:30 - 114:00 our customers have. Our goal for customers is to have an average outage of less than once per year and on average have less than a a disruption of 115 minutes. Power reliability spending is 41% of power capital on&m budget. On the energy transmission front, power supply sustainability has three parts. Renewable energy, infrastructure, and energy efficiency.
114:00 - 114:30 Under renewable energy portfolio, DWP is investing in wind, solar and storage, and geothermal projects to further its renewable energy portfolio. Elen's solar and storage was the most recent project that was placed into service. Transmission upgrades play a large role in this area. for this fiscal year's budget. One of the large ones is the Makulla Victorville transmission line project which is expected to add 475 megawatt hours of renewable energy sources. Infrastructure and energy
114:30 - 115:00 efficiency are also components of this. Under the infrastructure side, we are replacing um unit 8 at Hannes generating station to take it off of ocean water or cooling. And we also have energy efficiency projects since 2010 that have a wide variety of programs that have budgeted for $159 million. Looking at the water side for next fiscal year, the proposed budget to support the water system strategic
115:00 - 115:30 initiatives is 1,938 million. This spending is also in five categories that help the department meet its goals. Infrastructure spending which supports distribution mains, trunk lines and other assets is 738 million. Water supply of 354 million which supports storm water capture, water conservation spending and LA aqueduct additions and betterments. Water quality spending of 425 million supports water reuse, water treatment and some distribution.
115:30 - 116:00 Owens Valley Regulatory which includes Owens Lake operation and maintenance is 75 million and operating support which is water's share of customer service information technology and joint costs of 345 million. We'll look at water supply sustainability for our next program year budget. Our goal is to have 240,000 ft of mainline replacement installed and
116:00 - 116:30 trunk line installation of 13,320 ft. Trunk lines provide the transmission capacity to move large amounts of water across the city from reservoirs and small and tanks to smaller distribution main lines. Prioritizing this spending will help us maintain uh our service and reduce the amount of leaks in other areas. We also have two parts of this which is storm water capture that we plan to do. This budget has 97.2 million and we have
116:30 - 117:00 investments for our North Hy dam of $41.4 million. Looking at our water supply, if you look at the graph on the left, you can see our average for the last four years had MWD purchases of 50% local water supply of 9% and our LA Aqueduct was 41%. Based on the current fiscal year and average hydrarology, we believe we'll have um fewer MWD purchases at 35%,
117:00 - 117:30 local groundwater supply of 22% and LA aqueduct of 43%. Looking at water quality, two main projects that are in our water quality budget for this Fiska year is our Fairmount sedimentation plant of 42 point uh 46.2 2 million. This project will improve raw water coming through and reduce sediment and water delivered to the LA aqueduct and also the state water project east. This
117:30 - 118:00 is a multi-year project that is expected to be completed in 2031. We also have our groundwater replenishment project also known as the Donald C. Tilman uh project. This project is underway. A for this program year we have $88 million budgeted for our spending on this. It is a joint project with the Bureau of Sanitation and the Environment and we expect to complete this by 2027. And as all we have our joint, our back office operations. A lot of our
118:00 - 118:30 spending for this year that we wanted to highlight was on our IT, our infrastructure replacement. We are doing our enterprise resource planning solution workday. We have 78 million planned for this year. Our customer care and billing system will be migrating to the cloud and we have 43.9 million. On our GIS system, we have 12.3 million planned. And then for cyber security investments, we have 37.9 million. Based on our current spending
118:30 - 119:00 and proposed budget, our residential power bill on average is competitive. We maintain financial metrics. We develop long-term financial plans and we proactively manage our costs uh to maintain rates. Also based on this budget, we do have a preliminary proposed city transfer of 227.9 million. On the water side, based on our current spending and proposed budgets, our residential water bill on average is aligned with
119:00 - 119:30 similarly situated water utilities. customers have embraced conservation and over 50% of our water customers use less than eight billing units per month. On the water side, we maintain our financial metrics, we develop long-term plans, and we proactively manage costs. This budget was submitted to our board on March 11th uh for uh approval to uh share with others. We plan to go back to the board on May 13th with our final budget and we will have that
119:30 - 120:00 transmitted um before May 31st in accordance with the city charter and and that concludes my presentation. Wonderful. Thank you so much. I I just have a question unrelated to the budget but you note that in um past year's uh the percentage of local water was at 8 or 9% and for 2526 it's going to jump to 22. Is that because of Tilman or some other project coming online? What accounts for that big jump? The the biggest increase will be with Tillman.
120:00 - 120:30 Tilman is going to produce 22,000 acre feet of water per year. Okay. Thank you. I just I was very curious. Um first of all, thank you for being here. I know that this is not something the DWP usually does comes and presents to this body during this process. So, we really appreciate your time and the presentation. Super helpful. Um I have a couple of budget related questions and then I'll turn it over to colleagues. Uh, so the mayor's proposed budget notes twous proposed with DWP, one with BSS and one with street services. Can you
120:30 - 121:00 describe briefly the work that DWP needs performed under theseus? What what are folks moving over there to do? And someone you want to talk about the first one? Sure. So, uh, we actually have an MOU that we established back in 2020. Uh it's an MOU with the CEO but also with seven other uh city departments and bureaus. Uh it was anou for $40 uh million. It expires later this year. Currently what we're doing is talking to
121:00 - 121:30 the CEO's office to extend that by at least another two years. There's still around $21.6 million left in thatou. So the idea is to extend the duration of theou and use the funds that are remaining there. Uh we have uh a variety of different things that or projects potentially that could be used uh to use this funding. A lot of it is paving. Uh we have a lot of needs for pay paving in some of our reservoir properties and some of our jobs as well. Uh so that will be obviously work that can be done
121:30 - 122:00 by uh street services. We always have needs for inspection especially specialized inspection where uh if it exceeds our capacity we could use uh contract administration to do that work as well. Okay, great. Um, one more question. It's sort of a macro question. Um, how do you see macroeconomic trends impacting your work in the coming year? I'm thinking about wildfires, the push for undergrounding, tariffs, federal roll back of major energy investments, etc.
122:00 - 122:30 It's kind of a just a bigger question. How are you going to manage for all this risk and uncertainty? Yeah, I I think that's the that's the question that everybody's asking is how they're all coming together at the same time between tariffs, uh workforce, uh wildfire, uh a need for uh in infrastructure investment. Um I I think it's going to be a a changing environment for the industry in general. There's a lot of conversations in Sacramento and the federal government about what is the the
122:30 - 123:00 future of utilities? um how is the federal government and the state supporting that? What is going to be the code changes and enhancements? And so we're in deep conversations now to understand what the financial position will be for us in the next couple of years. We don't have a a concrete answer on all the cost of the wildfire, especially with litigation coming on. Um, but we are very proactive in having this conversations in the federal government and in Sacramento and with FEMA and Caloas to ensure that we
123:00 - 123:30 optimize all the availability of funding so that we don't impact our rateayers as as much as they could be impacted, right? A lot to consider. Okay, colleagues, questions. Councilwoman Hut. Thank you so much. Thank you. Um, when do you expect DWP to begin to look at rate increases for uh power and water? So, we have uh a consulting
123:30 - 124:00 uh RFP coming to the board in the next couple of months to start looking at our water rates. So, I'll pass it out to an for the details. Yes, we are we do have an RFP out. We expect to bring it in the next few months. Our plan is to do water rates first and then after that's completed then we would go to power rates. I think it's important to note though that the expectation on the bottom market is that we should go for rate structuring. Um and we hear it all the time from our rating agencies.
124:00 - 124:30 Thank you. Um I just have one more question. Sure. Um, what do the current recruitment and retention rates look like for linemen and other field staff? Um, I'll pass it over to Brian, but I'll tell you that we are probably gaining one lineman a month and losing maybe one a year now. So, we're at pretty steady state. So, Ryan, yeah, and I think we've pretty much kind of turned that corner where we were losing so many linemen on a regular basis. And uh you know over
124:30 - 125:00 the last year and a half or actually over the last two years it's kind of turned that to we are recruiting from the outside and getting I would say about one to two a month coming in as Janice said. Um and our retention um is still remains about the same. We have about a 65% uh retention uh rate from our lineman. Can you say that number again? About a 65% 65 uh graduation rate from our lineman uh in-house training program. Um but uh but we do have a much better retention. So, we don't have anybody leaving after they after they graduate. Um, so that number's gone down
125:00 - 125:30 to zero. Thank you. That's all for me, Madam Chair. Thank you. Uh, Councilwoman Hernandez, followed by Council Member McCoscer. Thank you. Thank you, Chairwoman. My question is around water trucks. How many water trucks are available for events? Are there any plans to expand this program? As it gets hotter in the summer and we're all organizing our community events and trying to have zero waste events, um it's really helpful to have this asset. Can you talk to us a little
125:30 - 126:00 bit about that? When you talk about water trucks, um we do Sorry, go ahead. Oh, uh when you talk about water trucks, we do have a a truck specially made for events where you actually can refrigerate the water. It's been very popular. We actually in the process of getting a second one is typically used at different events where folks can bring the reusable uh containers, get water which is actually chilled and uh be able to come back over and over again. So we have one we're getting a second one and we will
126:00 - 126:30 continue to assess the need and if we need to get additional additional ones we could do so as well. What's the cost to have one of these? Oh, go ahead. Sorry. No. Uh we also have mobile hydration stations that are deployable to events. So it's not just a water truck. We are expanding our mobile hydration stations program as well. By how many? Right now we we've installed over close to 300 mobile hydration stations and it's not just DVP. It's something that we do actually in partnership with other departments. Uh we are looking to expand
126:30 - 127:00 that even more especially with the Olympics coming and the World Cup coming. We see a need for us to have uh more of these hydration stations throughout the city. It's a good way also to promote the brand of the city of Los Angeles and the great water that we serve. I don't have a specific number to tell you, but uh I can certainly get back to you with that information. Wonderful. Chairwoman, are we allowed are we allowed to ask for budget memos from this department or no? Yes. Sorry, Sharon. Yeah, we can ask our
127:00 - 127:30 We can. Yes. Great. Thank you. Well, yeah. Can you all just report back on um adding additional um I know you said you have two but if see if you can add uh another an additional two uh water trucks please. Sure. We can look into report back. Absolutely. Thank you. Sure. Thank you. Thank you. Council member. All right. We just witnessed a breakthrough in the charter. Good job. Wow. That was big.
127:30 - 128:00 I have two thank yous in a question. and it relates to hydration stations. Actually, I want to thank the department for leaning in real hard this past year on our uh Watts water initiative where there was has been led, you know, identified in water sources and I appreciate that that through your leadership you leaned in hard. I appreciate your leadership in making sure that we had hydration stations ready and I know that work is
128:00 - 128:30 continuing. And so I want to thank you for that and we'll stay on that issue and run it all the way to ground. Hydration stations in our developments by the way are fantastic and maybe it's a great idea to think about you know how we work with um wasa I mean excuse me with um the department the agency to make sure that during the summer months we have opportunities for you know hydration stations and you know cooling areas. That's the thank you part. And the next thank you uh is on your work uh
128:30 - 129:00 with us this past year down at the port to make sure that we are identifying those power interruptions uh that have various causes um on the meter side. I mean on each side of the meter. Um so I appreciate that very much. Uh but I also want to ask you about future plans to make sure that we are um providing additional energy uh to the port, clean energy to the port and battery opportunities and everything that we're going to need to make sure
129:00 - 129:30 that we decarbonize down in the port operations. So if you could just give us a few words on that. It is budget related because it's your investment. Yes. And uh we have a a full plan for the port. We're tracking that on a dashboard, including upgrades to a station, receiving stations to add more areas to feed the the the port um by itself. So, it's not sharing the same station uh position. Uh we're also improving the distribution system in the
129:30 - 130:00 port to ensure that we don't have more faults in the area. It's an aging infrastructure. We're looking at undergrounding some of the infrastructure and working very closely with the port partners as well and EPRI to identify any issues um on their side of the meter. And I'll pass it off to Brian if he has any additional information for Paula. The biggest piece is the expansion of the the receiving station down at our harbor generating station. So expanding that, adding an extra bay is going to feed a lot of that new load coming to the port.
130:00 - 130:30 Well, great. Well, thank you very much. I look forward to continuing to work over the years to make sure this comes to fruition. Appreciate the cooperation between the the the uh the both proprietary departments to make sure that we can we can get there. So, thank you, Council Member Bluenfield. Great. Thank you. Um, a couple things. One, the transfer obviously is something that affects our budget quite a bit. if you could talk a little bit about how it's calculated uh and also a few words to explain to folks who are maybe hearing
130:30 - 131:00 about it why we do it and how it's different than the IUS where we we don't charge a franchise fee and we don't uh you know charge lease lease payments on our our properties and and why why that works. But tell us what what is it going to be this year and and how approximately how is it calculated? I'll just I'll just start by saying it is a calculated amount based on our wholeset wholesale sales and I'll pass it off to Ann on the total amount as $220ome million dollars this year. The
131:00 - 131:30 department currently has two rate ordinances. Our cap rate ordinance and an incremental rate ordinance. We make a transfer on the cap rate ordinance. Our energy sales for this fiscal year is estimated at 21,741 gawatt hours of energy. And at that and at the capped rate ordinance rate is 12.628. When you multiply that many hours kilowatt hours of energy times that you get 2 bill745 million. 8% of that is $219
131:30 - 132:00 million. That's the bulk of the city transfer. The different the additional portion is our wholesale sales. Sometimes it's a very warm summer and we have high wholesale sales back in 22 23. So that also has an 8% transfer on it as well as some small amounts we have for customer charges and rents. That's how we calculate the transfer. And the transfer the department doesn't pay property taxes within the city. We don't pay franchise fees. And um it actually
132:00 - 132:30 started as a way when the the city issued bonds to buy the distribution system from Southern California Edison and we had to make a transfer to cover that debt service. And since that time the transfer has always continued as part of the city budget, right? Because if if we if it was an IOU and we owned and we you know there would be dividends, there would be all sorts of other ways that that the owners would be essentially being compensated which we as a city are not. And that's the
132:30 - 133:00 difference. Okay. Just wanted to put that out there. It's always this is also an educational opportunity for folks. Um sort of narrow question, but if if big customers like uh LA USD, like the city of LA, like UCLA and others worked collectively with DWP under anou with specific metrics and goals to produce a gigawatt on public land, for example. Would that exchange of free land for renewable energy benefit the rateayer? We would have to look at the whole
133:00 - 133:30 project. Um it's hard to say now, but we'll we'll look into it. Yeah. And I know that's talks have already started on that. I wanted to put that out there and and and that's that's sort of an on-ramp for me to ask for a special study, not a budget memo, but a special study in coordination with the mayor's office to request DWP and instruct BOE and GSD to report back to the energy and environment committee, the budget and finance committee with anou to streamline the fund streamline and fund energy efficiency upgrades and address equipment obsolescence ensuring city
133:30 - 134:00 departments have a clear pathway to electrify operations, eliminate emissions, host renewable energy assets and achieve achieve long-term savings for the city rateayers. Anyway, something we're working on, but I I thought this is a way to kickstart a little bit. So, put that out as a special study. Uh second also just as you know I mean I had a motion recently uh for grounded solar to really get that moving and that's passed the council and um by making it'll make more land
134:00 - 134:30 available for renewable energy eliminate needless hearings red tape and it's my understanding that planning and DWP have some work uh to finish before the council can actually fully adopt and implement the changes. Uh, and I just using this opportunity, I know you guys are working with planning to thank you for doing that and to encourage you to, uh, continue to do that because that's also another way ultimately not only is it going to create a tremendous amount of energy, uh, it's going to be a savings for the budget for the city long
134:30 - 135:00 term. But I won't ask for any special study on that, but I just wanted to uh, to daylight that a little bit. So, thank you. That's it. colleagues, questions, comments, special studies. Okay, thank you so much for being here. We really appreciate the time and all the work. Thank you for having us. Okay, I'm going to ask whether you all are okay with a fivem minute break before we move on to wreck and
135:00 - 135:30 parks. Cool. alive.
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143:00 - 143:30 Council member McCoscer.
143:30 - 144:00 All right. Can we go ahead and call the role, please? Yes, ma'am. Yaroslovski here. Blumenfield present. Hut here. Macauskar Hernandez. Five members present. Wonderful. Thank you. We're going to move on to Wreck and Parks. Welcome to the table. Please go ahead and introduce yourselves. Thank you. Good afternoon, Chair Yeroslowski
144:00 - 144:30 and members of the budget and finance committee. Uh Jim Kim, general manager of the Department of Recreation and Parks. I am joined here today uh by members of my executive team. Uh to my right is my executive officer, Matthew Rdnik. To my left, my chief financial officer, Noel Williams. And over here to my left again is Chiny Stoneham, assistant general manager of the uh recreational services branch, Brenda Agir, assistant general manager of
144:30 - 145:00 special operations branch, and Kathy Santa Domingo uh assistant general manager of our planning, construction, and maintenance. Wonderful. We received your letter. We've all read it. Uh is there anything from there you want to highlight or should we just jump into questions? Um I did wanted to highlight two main points. Um I did want to first uh thank the committee for this opportunity to address you. Um I also acknowledge and recognize the serious financial situation uh facing the city. Um and so
145:00 - 145:30 uh Recken Parks uh would like to be part of the solution. So as I noted um I did want to highlight two main points uh before we jump into questions. Uh first, the proposed budget eliminates 192 full-time positions. That accounts for about 14.7 million in salary account uh reductions. So, the position eliminations include position authorities in all of our major program areas, including aquatics, recreation
145:30 - 146:00 center operations, park maintenance, and construction, as well as our park ranger division. 11 of the deleted positions are currently filled and their deletion could trigger displacement and possibly layoffs. Another dozen of these positions have been approved through PCH and we're in the process of on boarding, but that approval has since been uh revoked. Additionally, it cuts about 5.8 million of expense funding, including overtime, hiring hall, and supplies. And
146:00 - 146:30 overall, this represents about a $20 million reduction to the recreation and parks budget. As proposed in my letter, I am requesting that the committee consider uh restoring some funding for overtime and hiring hall staffing and partially restoring critical positions. I am proposing to offset these costs uh by restoration or the cost of these uh position restorations by reducing our as
146:30 - 147:00 needed part-time salaries by $9.2 million. This was help us ao avoid layoff and restore critical positions without an impact to the city general fund. The second key point what I wanted to highlight is a budget and policy issue for recreation and parks. So, under both the proposed budget and under our alternative proposal, if adopted, next fiscal year would mark the first time that the general fund would no
147:00 - 147:30 longer subsidize the wreck and parks budget, meaning the RAP charter appropriation and the reckoning parks self-generated revenue will fully reimburse the general fund for all wrap related costs. Considering that the general fund subsidy would be eliminated, I am requesting that RAP be exempt from the prioritized critical hiring process, otherwise known as PCH, similar to the library departments, uh, as well as some of the other proprietary
147:30 - 148:00 departments. An exemption will help us mitigate service impacts and better stabilize our operations. Um, and that concludes my opening remarks and my team and I are here for any questions. Wonderful. Uh, we're going to turn it over to Councilwoman Hut. I just could I just start off by asking for a memo on the feasibility of implementing the offsets proposed in your memo? Yes, ma'am. Okay. Thank you, Councilwoman Hut. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Rap, for being
148:00 - 148:30 here. I'm going to start with the your last uh item, which is uh prioritize a critical hiring process. I'd like to request a budget memo that looks at exempting RAP from the the PCH process. So, I'll start there. Thank you, ma'am. And then I'm going to move on to given the scale that uh proposed position eliminations. It's clear that RAP will face significant challenges in
148:30 - 149:00 maintaining core services like park maintenance, youth programs, on-site supervision. This is so important to me being a single mom. That's the only way I kept my house clean is that I was in the parks till sundown. Um, your budget letter, it's true. Even even my kids went to the preschool, so I have a question about that, too. Your budget letter proposes reducing the part-time budget by 9.2 million to help restore
149:00 - 149:30 critical full-time positions. How would the proposed 9.2 2 million reduction to the part-time budget helped restore fulltime uh capacity while maintaining seasonal and uh program needs. Uh the department is going to be re-evaluating um all of our services uh which includes uh services to our community. Um we will make sure as we have always done uh to have um our most impacted uh uh
149:30 - 150:00 communities um have subsidized programming to ensure that we keep uh cost down. So um our alternate proposal will give us the flexibility to be able to shift funds to make sure that the most needy of our communities um remain subsidized. Thank you. I I'd like to request a budget memo to report back on the operational and fiscal uh impacts of the proposed ship. Thank you, ma'am. Thank you. And then um RAP was one of the
150:00 - 150:30 departments most successful at hiring through uh targeted local hire program in in 2425. Uh, are there any of the filled positions currently proposed for layoffs, ones that were filled through uh, TLH and are any of the vacant positions proposed for elimination eligible for TLH? Uh, thank you for your question. There are no positions uh proposed for elimination um that were hired through TLH, but there
150:30 - 151:00 are positions that qualify for TLH uh proposed for elimination in this current proposed budget. Do do we have any idea how many uh just eligible? Um good afternoon. Um one of the main classifications that um we are able to fill through TLH is our gardener caretaker. It's our entry level grounds maintenance classification. Um I think there are about 30 or so 38 identified
151:00 - 151:30 um for elimination. And so that would be a class that um we are going to be proposing um position restorations for um and and that to your point we can fill through TLH. Okay. Thank you. Um, I'd like to request a budget memo on the resources needed to restore one gardener caretaker at Venice Beach proposed for for deletion.
151:30 - 152:00 Yes, ma'am. Okay, thanks. Okay, last one for a moment. Last one for a moment. Um, the letter the mayor transmitted yesterday clarifies that the child care centers will all remain open while an RFP is run to identify contractors to run the centers moving forward. What will be the impacts of proposed eliminations of two vacant and six fil child care center positions? I can and then I have some subsequent
152:00 - 152:30 questions for that. I'll go ahead and um venture and answer. Matthew Rdnick, executive officer. Our intent um as you stated is to maintain operations at the child care facilities. Um uh we were instructed as part of last year's budget to prepare an RFP to identify outside service providers to operate um some of the currently RAP operated childcare centers. We may need to authorize subs or restore without funding some of the positions you just identified that are
152:30 - 153:00 on the on the table for elimination so we can maintain those operations until outside operators transition into the facilities for operation. I see. Um, for me, this is almost like a personal question because I would have been freaking out if they told me my child care was gone because you build a relationship with those folks as a parent. That's who you're trusting your little perfect mini me too. How will you
153:00 - 153:30 ensure impacted families are effectively communicated with and consulted with on on this transition? Yeah. Yeah. uh throughout um as as Matt noted uh we were we're going out to RFP um for the uh childcare centers that are proposed to be taken over by the uh non- city vendors. And throughout that process, um um we're going to make sure that we're communicating and um keeping the
153:30 - 154:00 the current enroles involved in that process of um you know, what's going to happen um what that transition process looks like. Um, we'll also be um going to our board with a um a rates and fee structure so that it's very transparent in terms of uh what the cost will be and um um and who the new providers will be as they come in. So, we want to make sure there's a seamless transition um even even a little bit of a overlap so
154:00 - 154:30 that that transition happens um uh seamlessly. And if I could add, councilwoman, um we need to strengthen that communication with our parents and families. Um as you mentioned, those relationships are built with the city staff and and we also need to do a better job um communicating with the staff that are impacted. It's been it's obviously an uncertain um uh kind of time in terms of moving from a in-house operated program where a facility might
154:30 - 155:00 then be operated by a an outside provider. So, we're going to strengthen those communications, have them more regular, um, and and and continue that, um, and likely come back to committee with with an update on the status as we, um, move forward the contracts that we'll need that will be a result of the RFP process. Council, Councilwoman Hut, Council Member Blumenfield has a follow-up to that. Sure. Before you move on, follow up on on the child care and and it's great that we're doing this. I know last year part of the issue was some of them some of the sites didn't have enrollment or only had one or two
155:00 - 155:30 and so it was inefficient. So, We really need to scale this to make it work. Have you um in addition to the RFP process, are there other opportunities like grants? I mean there's most of the childare money is not city, it comes from the federal government and the state government. Um so what are we doing to to leverage the the dollars that are allocated by by our our government partners for child care? Right. I'll defer to our CFO, Noah Williams. How do I turn it on? It's on. Thank you. So uh
155:30 - 156:00 the department already has applied for grants. I think uh that our strategy will be that um if as we select partners hopefully many nonprofits we would ask them to be subreients. I do want to clarify that the these seem to be state grants. Um but also to my knowledge not affected at this time by the federal um actions that are taking place but also that um the
156:00 - 156:30 people who qualify for the grants. It's not the facility, it's the participants who meet the income requirements and it's a sliding scale. So, and there's at least 10 slots for the uh every child care center that would be that. Some of those fees are like $25 a week. So, um and then I believe that the rest of our would be income based so that you have a mix. So, thank you. Councilwoman Hunt, thank you.
156:30 - 157:00 Um I have another question about the child care piece. Do you have any idea because you bought that fee um what the um cost for families to attend a contracted child care? Is it going to be scale? Cuz that's so different. Yeah, we'll we'll do a uh we'll provide a report back. um we still um we would need to provide we would need to look at the the overall costs and and the the uh
157:00 - 157:30 providers that we choose, but we want to make sure that whatever cost it is that it's equitable across all of the centers so that um again the neediest of our communities are able to access these uh services. That range is so different between you know a child care center and what you get at the park. How are we going to balance out? Well, I think uh you know in terms of just uh regular operations um our the cost to the provider um in terms of rent, right,
157:30 - 158:00 for the facility because it's a city facility, it'll be very um very low, right? And so that'll help make sure that the cost is equal across the board. Okay. One other thing I'd like to excuse me just also uh we received ARPA funds for these. So these facilities are being when they are turned over are basically turnkey. So there's not going to be a what I would call a huge capital investment by by our partners because we
158:00 - 158:30 will have used federal funds to re refurbish those facilities. So but you you do know people are on private child care or child care centers. there's if they're not getting a subsidy from somewhere, you know, they're they're spending almost $1,000 a month, you know, like $250 a week for somebody under five. How what can we do? Well, I mean, you know, just just being just recently coming out of child care for
158:30 - 159:00 for young kids, um I you know, I've had opportunities to speak to some of the providers in terms of like the rate increases, right, over the years. And a lot of it has to do with um the cost of, you know, just renting or or leasing property. And again, because, you know, our we're city facilities, um our uh lease agreements uh are going to be in a way that could help keep costs um as low as possible. Well, I'd like to uh request a budget
159:00 - 159:30 memo on what those costs look like and what the contract and the progress of the RFP will be. We think that's something that can come back in time. Yes, we could come back with that or a special study will work if if that'll give you more time than budget. Well, do you I I'll ask for a special study. I I also have another question. And this is about the charter amendment. Does it make sense to study a charter amendment
159:30 - 160:00 to rightsize the formulas to meet the department's needs? I would I would agree and say yes, it does. Okay. Then I'd like to request a special study to have RAP analyze and come back with recommendations for a charter amendment to increase the wrap funding formula. Thank you, ma'am. Thank you. That's all all for now, Madam Chair. Thank you. I have a couple questions. Oh, sorry. Uh, Councilwoman Hernandez had a follow-up. Yes, follow up to the child care centers. Uh, so we
160:00 - 160:30 have a child care center in Highland Park, the big greenhouse. Um, and right now it's out of commission because there was an agreement with the private provider and but the building essentially became it it got into a status of disrepair and it became unusable and right now it's not being used because of the lack of maintenance. Um, could I add to your special study, Councilwoman Hut, to make sure that in these agreements um that you all are
160:30 - 161:00 putting together, that maintenance um and accountability on that is a part of the conversation and a part of the agreement so that not only are they using the space, but that they're maintaining it. So, all the federal dollars that we've invested in um are protected and, you know, we get we get more bang for our buck and longevity on that. Absolutely. Is that okay, Councilwoman? Yeah, I'm fine. I'm totally fine with that, Anna. Thank you. I have new questions, but I'll pass it back to you, Joe. Thank you. Okay. Um, I
161:00 - 161:30 have just a couple questions and I'll turn it back to Councilwoman Hernandez. Uh, in the proposed budget, there's funding for one security officer to support homeless related services. Under this section, it's noted that three vacant equipment operators are not continued. How will this impact parked services as it relates to homelessness? Well, I mean it it'll definitely impact services. Um but our proposed um alternative uh proposal um will help
161:30 - 162:00 restore those positions um as as we identify the critical positions uh to make sure that we have the appropriate staff for um homeless homeless related services uh which includes our rangers as you know um support um our homeless uh outreach programs as well. So, um, as part of our PO our alternative proposal, um, it'll identify those positions to restore. Great. Um, just one more question. Is the department currently able to
162:00 - 162:30 leverage private donors or licenses to use logos, etc. to to help generate funds? Um, there's a it it it it varies. Um there's a lot of restrictions behind using logos and so you know a lot of the the bigger donors um for for just real just being very straightforward um they don't really want to work with the department because of the the difficulties in in
162:30 - 163:00 how we um recognize some of these donors. So the the easy answer is some we do but for the majority um we're we're not able to just because of the um sign ordinance and and some of the uh processes in the city. Can I ask for a special study or report back or whatever it is? doesn't have to be for next week. Um, where you work with the city attorney on a report back on what changes to current policy, ordinance, whatever need to be changed to make it
163:00 - 163:30 easier for you to do this. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. I'll turn it over to um I guess Councilwoman Hernandez uh for a couple questions and then Council Member M uh Blumenfield. Thank you so much. And just please be advised that I have one special study and two budget memos. Um, are there opportunities to further monetize raped property both within the city and outside of it for
163:30 - 164:00 additional revenue generating opportunities whether it's more weddings, parties parties, camping trips or corporate retreats? Yes, that is uh something that we're thinking about and um really exploring uh to help with additional revenue. um uh other other as a source of funds to come into the department. Wonderful. Um I'd like to request a special study uh on potential revenue generating opportunities for raped property both within and outside of the city of LA. Thank you. Thank you so much. Um and I'd also like to request
164:00 - 164:30 a budget memo um requesting, you know, RAP is is requesting to restore 6.2 million in full-time salary dollars. Can you please provide us a list of uh which positions you would like to restore? Yes, absolutely. We will. Thank you. And is there an opportunity to implement is there an opportunity to implement side sliding scale fees for rap facility activities and initiatives? Yes. And then again, that is one of the other initiatives um that we're thinking
164:30 - 165:00 about in terms of making sure that um our neediest communities um accepts or or receives the subsidies and that the communities that can pay a little more That's right. pay pay a couple couple cents more. Wonderful. Thank you. I'd like to request a memo on potential fee increases that keep facilities and programming accessible and affordable for low-income families while generating additional revenue to fund full-time positions. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Chairwoman.
165:00 - 165:30 A followup from Councilwoman Hut. Can I add to your request that um you add an average maintenance turnaround time on that on your budget memo? Is the budget memo or a special study? Uh was it the was it the special study on requesting potential revenue generating opportunities? Sure. Yes, let's add that in. And but you also talked about loss job loss and Yes. So, and I did a budget memo on uh getting RAP to provide us a
165:30 - 166:00 list of positions they would like to restore in their full-time sal using their full-time salary dollars. That's where I'd like to add and also what does the maintenance piece look like? Okay. And the turnaround time for facilities. Okay. Does that clear? Thank you, ma'am. Thank you. Thank you. Uh, Council Member Blumenfield and then Council Member McCoscer. Great. Thank you. I think I agree with all all my colleagues that we need more money for
166:00 - 166:30 for Wreck and Parks. Um although my I may disagree on on uh changing the charter amount of appropriation because I'm I hate ballot box budgeting and locking in amounts. Um but what I do see as a may potentially more reasonable way to get forward and something that may be achievable is is the son of PropK is getting that next Prop K going and I know we're working on that. So, I want to get a sense from you of the status of the effort and when the council and the
166:30 - 167:00 public can actually be able to review and help shape what's going to be included in that measure. Uh, because that's that's critical for us to move forward. I know you've completed the study, the survey recently. Um, we got to get the public engagement and and I also wanted to know if in this new Prop K if we'll also have maintenance because that's one of the issues with the the old Prop K is that it didn't have enough in there for maintenance. So, as the years went on, I mean, you know this uh better than anybody, but as the years
167:00 - 167:30 went on, we had these great capital projects and not the maintenance to keep them going. So tell me about where we are with Prop K, what we can do to help with that and and if if there's anything in this budget that is going to be slowing that down because I want to put the pedal to the metal on on the the son of Prop K or whatever it's going to be called. Yeah. I I'll start off by saying um we have embarked in a parks needs assessment um citywide. Um what you said a parks needs assessment citywide. I'm going to have our executive officer um add more to that, but that is kind of
167:30 - 168:00 the first step um in terms of um the the next step for um another, you know, the the new prop case, so to speak. So, I'm going to have our executive officer, Matt Rundick, provide more information. Thank you for the question, council member. And as Jimmy mentioned, as part of last year's budget, we received funding to engage in a comprehensive citywide park needs assessment, which which as Jimmy mentioned really looks at the last 25 years of investment in the park system. Um, you know, as Prop Prop
168:00 - 168:30 K funded a lot of amazing projects, it sunsetting. Um, and there were challenges with Prop K as it relates to specified projects um and and how the structure of that of of that measure. So, we want to learn from um that experience. What the needs assessment is doing is looking at the condition of all of our park facilities. It's getting input from the community. We're doing a um two rounds of significant input. You mentioned we just concluded a or we're finishing a um citywide community survey. Um we're doing um all kinds of outreach with a with a consultant group
168:30 - 169:00 at our rec centers. Many of you are you're hosting in your district some of our needs assessment meetings. Um and what the needs assessment will help do is determine what kind of investment does our park system need in the next few decades and that will set the groundwork for um a new parks um funding measure moving forward. So we're really doing all that due diligence um this year through the end of the calendar year um and then it will be up to the city family and potentially advocates to look at a future funding measure for
169:00 - 169:30 parks. Can I ask a follow-up to that? Yeah, of course. Um, would the new Prop K I I guess we could write it however we wanted to write it, but it would would it be required or would the idea be that you would it would pay to build the things that are contemplated in the park needs assessment and how prescriptive would that be or is that all to be still worked out? It's essentially to be still worked out. There's different models of how you you could structure it were a couple good examples are this the county's recent measure A um process and
169:30 - 170:00 grant categories of funding um and and different kind of methods of how um you identify and prioritize funding categories um and and um essentially where those dollars need need to go um in a in a sequenced and strategic way based on um equity criteria and and other demographic information in terms of where the need is. Okay. And what's your timing on developing this new proposal? So, so
170:00 - 170:30 again, our um the park needs assessment will conclude at the end of the calendar year. And as we do that, there will need to be work done whether it's a citizen-led initiative or something that council puts on a ballot for a future funding measure. Um so it depends on what ballot we'd be targeting for a new measure. Okay. Thank you. And of course the the current PropK sunsets next year, right? So unless we get this on the ballot right away, we're going to have a
170:30 - 171:00 gap. Correct. Uh in fact, that's probably unavoidable at this point. Um so what what can we do to expedite this? And are there do you have the resources that you need visav uh you know doing everything we can to put the pedal to the metal on Prop K? Yeah, I would say we're working as as with extreme efficiency on on the park needs assessment. If you recall, the city did um introduce a measure on the ballot
171:00 - 171:30 that failed. And we're doing what we think that that that that leg work now to make sure that uh uh something that goes forward is successful so that we have all the pieces together and all the information together that demonstrates the need um to voters for why we would need to um proceed with a measure. So when we start talking Turkey about projects, will that be in the fall or or you know when we start publicly being able to discuss what could or couldn't be on that?
171:30 - 172:00 Yeah, I I would say so the partn system currently we're not identifying specific projects to add to a list. Um I think that that will come later. So probably I I I would say towards the end of the calendar year into next year. Okay. Okay. Follow. Go ahead. Or I should say to the chair. Go ahead. Thank you. Uh so what's the what's the earliest um election that we can put this initiative on the ballot? 2026. Yeah. So yeah, november Sorry if
172:00 - 172:30 it was asked already. I didn't I missed November 2026 would be our target for for the next ballot measure. That's the earliest we can do it. Yes. Okay. Wonderful. Thank you. Um that is all. Thanks. Yeah. Yeah, I just wanted to add that, you know, our timeline is based on trying to get it onto the 26 ballot. So, everything that we're doing is timelined out to get to onto that ballot. Thank you.
172:30 - 173:00 Okay. Um, does the budget provide all the resources needed to meet our obligations under the LA28 regarding the play LA program? Uh the proposed budget um uh does uh propose elimination and some um recreation positions. Um and so our alternative uh uh proposal will help us identify as I said earlier um those positions are considered critical. And so by approving this alternate uh
173:00 - 173:30 proposal, we should be able to restore those positions so that we could deliver um our play program to the full capacity that that we have. But that's not just a discretionary action that we should take. That's a legal action that we really have to take in order to meet our legal obligations. Is that right? Uh it's it's you know the the way the uh agreement is structured is that um we are to spend a specific amount of of monies and so anything that is left
173:30 - 174:00 behind um obviously we want to be able to hit our targets which is about 20 million uh a year on recreational programs. So the question the simple question is yes like we we want to be able to spend uh expend that funding before 28 comes around. And it's not just the amount that's spent, isn't it? Also prescriptive like we have to have four fencing classes or or whatever it is. So the budget as adopted that the budget has proposed we would meet our contractual obligations under the youth
174:00 - 174:30 sports agreement. Um council's adopted um what we call our project plans annually that projects out um all the classes, all the programs, all the youth sports that are funded. Um typically we we we beat those projections. We're enrolling more youth in those and and so as Jimmy mentioned, there are a handful of positions that we'd like to restore just to make sure that we're maximizing the use of those dollars at rec centers, but we're in good shape on the on the on that on those contractual obligations. Great. Good to hear. Uh last thing I wanted to ask about is you talked about
174:30 - 175:00 the FEMA OES, the reimbursement amounts. uh tell me about what your what you're thinking on that and and explain a little bit about what's being reimbursed. It's it's work that we've already done uh that Wreck and Parks paid for out of its budget. Is that right? Yes, it is. Uh did you want me to go ahead? Thank you. Uh so, for example, and I'll just use the Palisades uh fire uh reactions or we spent about $600,000
175:00 - 175:30 in overtime. Um and uh we diligently work with the CLO to provide that paperwork to FEMA and uh Cal EOS the California and we just want to make sure that that funding uh whatever is deemed appropriate by FEMA and reimbursed to the city comes back to us especially as we are moving into a nonsubsidized department. Um, we're going to we need that money back to so that we don't have to cut services uh because we're doing
175:30 - 176:00 response to emergencies. I got it. know and and I I I like that and I'll ask for a report back with the council member maybe maybe uh that's a process we we undertake already whenever a special fund including uh library recreation and parks uh front funds any expenses that are reimburseable from FEMA um we we do a reconciliation with those funds to make sure that they are repaid before um you know uh that's why we deposit the funds in the disaster
176:00 - 176:30 services trust fund as opposed to bringing them on as general fund It was different for COVID because it was a disaster unlike anything else pandemic and and so you know we treated those FEMA dollars a little bit different but for kind of the the typical disasters that that are declared and we're responding to that is a normal course of business for the city where we will receive the funds and do that reconciliation with those special funds. Okay. So you're saying we don't need any reports that it's going to happen? I don't think we need to report back um
176:30 - 177:00 because it is what we do now. I just would like to make sure that we get a reconciliation for example quarterly uh we seem to be having more and more emergencies and so I would request that that we get a reconciliation as it relates to RAP from the disaster trust fund. Okay. We certainly can do a is there any thoughts on that Ben? I mean the report back would say yes we'll do it. So I I'm just answering the question now. I think that's fine. But so that's great. You'll
177:00 - 177:30 do it. We don't need any more reports back. But we just want to make sure that that happens. Thank you. Perfect. And and I should say whenever we talk about it being a nonsubsidized department, you're right in the sense, but I do want to point out the the 300 million or whatever the the number is that's that's chartermandated. That is general fund. So it's not that it's not general funded. It is general funded. it's just lockboxed by the voters. Um, you know, and again, that's not to take anything away because I I I
177:30 - 178:00 absolutely think we need to spend more money on wreck and parks. It's one of my top priorities, but I just in terms of the uh the way we describe it. I just want the public to understand that right uh our wreck and parks money is general fund money. Uh it's just money, 300 million of it is money that the voters have said a certain percentage just like the library uh can't be changed by all of us here. has to be indicated. Have a followup. Go ahead. Thank you, Chairwoman. Um, going back to the
178:00 - 178:30 assessment, um, does the timeline fluctuate any which way if it is a citizen initiative or if it is an initiative that we decide to place on the ballot? Um my understanding is there's obviously a signature gathering process for a for a um citizen le initiative but we could decide to put it on there right we don't need to do signature ballots I mean signature gathering
178:30 - 179:00 so how does that fluctuate the timeline then if we as a council decide to put this assessment on the ballot it it would give more time for the development of maybe what goes on the ballot if it was uh it was put on by council I would note that um the threshold for voter approval is different under either model. Got it. Thank you so much. Thank you, Chairwoman. Council member McCoscer. Thank you very much. First of all, I really appreciate the sliding scale memo that you're asking for, council member,
179:00 - 179:30 and um maximizing revenues at the facilities, all those big picture things. I'm a big fan of taking you out of PCH, but you're not special. I want to take everybody out of PCH. Um, but let's talk about Cababrio Beach and the Cabrio Marine Aquarium. Agreement between the Port of Los Angeles and Recken Parks. Port of Los Angeles pays for every position at the Cababrio Marine Aquarium. Cababrio Marine Aquarium is going through a major renovation. All the life support systems
179:30 - 180:00 are being changed. And for some reason, while we're changing all the life support systems, there is a proposal to remove construction and maintenance supervisor one from the Coreo Marine Aquarium. I don't want a memo. I don't want a special study. If I have to ask for a memo, I will ask for a memo. Let's fill the position. The port pays for it. If that's a memo, just the memo can say, "Okay, that's all I need because we need to fill that position and it doesn't
180:00 - 180:30 cost us a penny." The other one is is weirder actually. We also have a marine aquarium curator paid for by the port which is in PCH. Exhibit 312 of why I don't like PCH. The port pays for it. We need a curator at the museum. We're waiting for the curator. It's in PCH. Again, I can ask for a memo, but just let's get it out of PCH. Get it approved. in the memo can say,
180:30 - 181:00 "Okay, that's all I need." And I suppose if there's a memo request just for peace of mind, are we funding all of I mean, are we filling all of the positions that the proprietary department of the Port of Los Angeles pays for at the Cababrio Marine Aquarium? It is an important asset for education. It's free to everybody who comes. It serves all of our kids across the region. and we should be filling all those
181:00 - 181:30 positions because the Port of Los Angeles pays for it. So, are the positions filled and if not, when are they going to be filled? That's what the memo is going to ask. Thank you. I have one more question. Uh so the proposed budget includes a chart for the capital projects and planning program which shows a substantial increase in the additional number of residents served by a park within walking distance. It states that an additional
181:30 - 182:00 30,000 plus residents will be served by a park within walking distance. That's perhaps one of the best pieces of news uh we've discussed today. Um, if that's accurate, uh, since 2021, that figure of additional residents living within walking distance of a park has hovered at around 5,000 or less. How is the proposed budget going to deliver on that dramatic increase when the capital projects program is slated to see more
182:00 - 182:30 than a million dollar decrease and receive no additional positions? Is there some is there a project that's coming online in a very dense neighborhood that we don't know about or um I'm going to defer to Kathy Santa Domingo our planning construction maintenance. Thank you. Thank you for the question council member. Um there are currently about $75 million that was given by city council through the budget process about three years ago. A part of that um is basically for capital maintenance
182:30 - 183:00 uh of projects. There's about 75 projects on that list. We are about halfway in delivering those projects. Uh a number of those projects deliver new parks uh or renovation of parks that have since been closed. So capturing those projects is is a big uh chunk uh of the increase. Um our commitment with regards to the ARPA funds is to complete all of the construction by summer of 26. So that's the big realization. All of
183:00 - 183:30 those projects are delivered uh by either recreation and parks in-house staff through our uh planning group and also with our contractors. Also, a handful of those projects are delivered in partnership with Bureau of Engineering. So, we're full force uh to get those. All of those projects are currently awarded for construction. So, we're looking forward to all of the openings by summer of 26. Great. Um I just have one more question. Uh the proposed budget adds regular authority and 11 months funding for one position,
183:30 - 184:00 seven months funding for four positions and one month funding for one position million dollars to support various new and expanded facilities based on their scheduled opening dates. Are the current resources available for new and expanded facilities enough to meet any grant deadlines that require certain facilities to open by a specific date? Uh two things once I think we've revised
184:00 - 184:30 that uh because some of the projects have been delayed so the need would will be somewhat less about half. So um I would say that the this is a common thing that you will see in every budget as we either create new parks or new services. So, I would say that we probably will need an allocation of about half a million dollars in our proposed budget, which I believe was included uh as a recommendation in your in our proposed budget. Our alternate letter. Okay. So, this will be
184:30 - 185:00 encapsulated in the memo we're going to get back. Yes. Well, it it's already in our proposed budget, I believe. If I could add, uh, Councilwoman, so um, we're funded and the construction projects themselves, they'll be completed and we'll meet our closeout deadlines for the grants that fund those projects. Okay. I think what's at stake is just, um, overall across the department, our ability to continue maintain the existing parks and facilities we have, not to mention new parks that we're adding to the system. Right. Okay. Thank you, colleagues. Any
185:00 - 185:30 more questions, comments? Okay. Thank you very much. We appreciate you. Thank you so much. All right. Next, we're going to hear from the Department of Building and Safety. Good budget budget cycle. Okay.
185:30 - 186:00 Uh I don't need that much.
186:00 - 186:30 Oh, that's a good one.
186:30 - 187:00 Welcome. Good afternoon. Good afternoon, madame chair and council members. Please go ahead and introduce yourself and your team. My name is Osama Yunan, general manager of building and safety. I'm joined by my colleagues John Wait, executive officer of the department, NMA Uten, uh, assistant general manager over
187:00 - 187:30 resource management, and Deon Mrick, director of government and community relations. Great. So, we received your letter. Um, thank you for that. Is there anything you want to highlight from that letter or do you want to just get into questions? Well, I just like to highlight we're getting cut 24 positions uh except for one. The rest of them are in code enforcement which would have critical uh impact on our operation in the code enforcement bureau. The department does have uh proposals to to
187:30 - 188:00 minimize the number of cuts and uh hopefully we'll we'll be able to present that during the questioning. Can you just bring your mic a little bit closer? Wonderful. Council member Blumenfield's going to lead us in these questions. Okay, great. Uh, first I want to start by thanking you, Osama, for all the hard work that you and your team do, always working with all of us, but particularly with my office on building and safety issues in the West Valley. I want to recognize how much I appreciate your help with construction on the first city-owned ice rink uh in the city,
188:00 - 188:30 which is in Rita, which we're getting so close to getting open. uh building safety does so much important work in the city making sure our buildings are safe not only during plan check and construction phase but also once buildings are completed. so they stay safe during the years that follow, which is primarily the code enforcement bureau. And and you you brought that up and I wanted to daylight that a little bit in terms of the impacts that the proposed cuts in the code enforcement would have and what it would mean to your uh ability to address
188:30 - 189:00 nuisance properties and properties that cause blight in the neighborhood. Yeah, thank you, council member. The ice ring, I was told next week it'll be all done. Um yes, the the code enforcement bureau performs critical functions, a lot of them related to life safety. When you talk about illegal construction, illegal electrical work and such, vacant abandoned buildings, they're they're dangerous to communities. And the cuts, like I said, are primarily in in the
189:00 - 189:30 code enforcement bureau, the VBA with the vacant abatement buildings, they're getting 50% cuts. The general complaints are 25% cuts. And again, we're hoping we can we have proposals to to help it offset that. Great. Well, I I I want to formally ask for a report back on the possible alternatives to the deletion of the positions, providing critical code enforcement services citywide, including the reductions in other expense accounts or realigning duties from some positions to reduce the burden on the general
189:30 - 190:00 fund. Basically, what what you put out there. Thank you. Um and then just a question about you know how we can increase our efficiency of um code enforcement and I know you've already started to do this with some virtual inspections with uh you know residential. Do you see us, you know, are there ways to to take that to the next level with virtual inspections and letting folks document things, uh, you know, that we can then inspect it to
190:00 - 190:30 save time for the inspectors going back and forth? Yes. Uh, so the virtual inspection program has been very successful for us. We're doing thousands, which saves a lot of trips for us, but it's also for the contractors because they don't have to wait a window of two hours. We tell them exactly we're going to be there at this time and we'll be there at that time. Code enforcement I think there's an opportunity that we need to explore. So code enforcement it takes an actual inspector to go to the field to verify that there is an actual violation. But
190:30 - 191:00 once that's identified if there is construction work related to fixing the work that's definitely something we can look into integrating the virtual inspection into it. Great. Now, I just would love to see uh you know, us leverage as much technology as we can and and you know, give you the support to do, you know, more with less because everything that everything that you do is going to create more economic development in our area and and obviously health and safety. So, I've asked for the report back and um and I
191:00 - 191:30 guess similar to the virtual inspector, the self-certification, if there's if there's more that we can do on that front as well, we've already made some progress there. Do you see that as another front of uh streamlining of possibilities? Yeah, absolutely. And we just got the mayor's order to do self-certification and when we are working on developing the guidelines for it and we'll be done in about two to three weeks and publishing those guidelines. Great. Well, that's it. Thank you so much. Thank you.
191:30 - 192:00 I'm going to go to Council Member McCoscer and then I'll I'll come back to you, Councilwoman Hernandez. Thank you very much. Um, last week the mayor issued an executive order instructing um, city departments, including yours, to suspend the collection of fees associated with rebuilding the single family structures and duplexes destroyed in the 2025 fires. It's an admirable
192:00 - 192:30 uh goal. Um has uh LABS suspended collection of department fees? Have you started doing that? Yes, we have. Thank you. Um I would just ask now this is a suspension. So I would ask the CIA what the fiscal impact is of suspending the collection of the fees and what's expected over the course of the suspension. Um and that's in a a memo. Uh, and I would ask right now whether the budget proposal accounts for these
192:30 - 193:00 offsets or I mean for this loss of revenue or if it has any offsets proposed. Actually, the current budget does not include those offsets. We do plan to release a report on the waiver of those fees uh early next week and we would have to find unrestricted funds to cover those waiverss. Okay. So then so I know
193:00 - 193:30 I realize you're doing it but you might as well bring it back to us. So that's uh an instruction uh for the CIO to report with the fiscal impact of suspending the collection of fees associated with the rebuilding of the single family structures and duplexes that were destroyed in the 2025 fires. Thank you. follow up on that just just to add to the fee look making sure that we're looking at the fees what is and isn't covered by insurance
193:30 - 194:00 when we when we go for the fees cuz I I I'm all for suspending all the fees to get things to move quickly but I also um I I'm looking out for the people and not the insurance company so if there are fees that are covered by the insurance company I'd like to delineate the difference and to add to that some of the people applying are the people who lost their homes and some of the people who are applying have purchased property from people who lost their homes and so query whether we want to extend this to everybody or just to the people who lost
194:00 - 194:30 their homes because I don't know that we need to extend this to companies that are coming in and and um on spec buying these properties to redevelop would love to know what those options Uh, Councilman Hernandez. Thank you. Thank you, Chairwoman. Hello. Thank you so much for joining us today. Can you please explain how the addition of a brand new position
194:30 - 195:00 for a chief financial officer is expected to improve services at DBS? Yes, thank you for the question. So, so the Department of Building and Safety over the past years, uh, the financial responsibility and fiscal impacts we've had that position would oversee millions of hundreds of millions of dollars in special funds. U, it's not just the enterprise funds. We have a lot of special funds and we've done like now we're doing a project to replace our
195:00 - 195:30 permitting infrastructure, which is like $30 million. Our demand for for fiscal appropriate fiscal oversight has grown tremendously and the duties of this position uh align much more with that responsibility than an assistant like an a bureau chief which is meant for more of an operation of a plan check or inspection. Understood. Thank you. Thank you chairwoman.
195:30 - 196:00 Um, I have one question and I'm going to go to Council Member McCoscer. So, given that DBS already has 591 open vacancy building abatement cases, how many more open vacant building abatement cases would you expect in the upcoming year with the current deletions? And what kind of public safety and or liability impacts to the city overall would you estimate would happen because of this cut to the vacant building abatement team? Thank you for the
196:00 - 196:30 question. So it's hard to predict how much increase we'll have because that's something we don't control as a department when buildings become vacant. But what does gets greatly impacted by the cuts. I mean VBA is being cut by 50%. We will not be able to monitor these buildings as we supposed to. we would not be able to take the appropriate action to make sure they're the act they're they're corrected and and take the abatement process. The same thing with the general complaints 25% are being cut. That will definitely have
196:30 - 197:00 a serious impact on our responsiveness. Okay. Um Council Member McCoscer, thanks very much. Um I have a question about um code enforcement. the matrix consultant and I have a a larger um consolidation question. So last year we talked about matrix and the um consultant to help streamline and modernize code enforcement. Uh can you just let us know
197:00 - 197:30 how that's going and what we can expect in this current uh coming budget year? Yeah, absolutely. And I'll ask uh AGM and MAT to to comment on the uh the contract. But the purpose of that uh consultant will come in is to help us uh compare us to other cities, come up with efficiency measures we can use, work with council offices to see how we can tailor the operation. So we're more focused. Uh right now code enforcement, anything really is a code any vi code
197:30 - 198:00 violation is a code enforcement. Yeah. And I know a lot of times council officers is like they want us to focus on certain things, right? and and they will help us with that. We do have the contract out and I'll ask NMA to provide an update. So, the contract is currently being reviewed by the city attorney. Can you speak into the mic, please? Sorry. The contract is currently being reviewed by the vendor and uh the city attorney. Once the review is done, then we will be forwarding it to the city uh to the CEO
198:00 - 198:30 and to the mayor's office for ED3 review. So let's say it makes it through for the executive director review and gets put out in the coming months. How long do you expect that uh engagement to last? When will we get recommendations back from matrix? So it will depend on um I I guess it's only one vendor but it will depend on um the type of study we want them to do. Um so it could be from the end of the fiscal year. I mean I'm
198:30 - 199:00 sorry the calendar year. So around Okay. So it be in this fiscal we would expect it in this fiscal year. So that would I'm sorry uh council member calendar year. So it will be around in this calendar year. Yes. I I thank you. I understood what you were saying. I just misstated it. Um, so then I would ask for a that we add an instruction to exhibit H that asks that the recommendations from the LABS code enforcement matrix study be presented to the budget and finance committee, the planning and land use management committee and any other relevant
199:00 - 199:30 committees with the associated costs as well as cost-saving measures to implement the recommendations assuming we will have recommendations that are good to be uh implemented. and and council member as a followup. It's not just the operations. We also want them to look at our technology just to make sure we have the best that we can have for purposes of tracking, for purposes of reporting and so forth. Yeah, I think I think a lot of us are looking forward
199:30 - 200:00 to a streamlined process for code enforcement that provides due process to those against whom we're enforcing but also results for the surrounding neighbors who put up with these code violations. Thank you. Uh the other is also an exhibit H request and I ask you to to just reflect on it for a moment but I'll be asking the CLA to add an instruction under departmental consolidations and functional track transfers within exhibit H that would contemplate the
200:00 - 200:30 consolidation of development services among the following the planning departments public works bureaus as appropriate and uh do D do D do D do D do D do D do D do D do D do D dot thoughts about a consolidation of development services. Uh I just heard it right now from you. So I know the idea of consolidation between departments had come up in the past and consultants have looked at it and did not have
200:30 - 201:00 favorable outlook on it. Each department does something different, right? Uh I think it's something we need to look into and come back. note is for. So, thank you. So, you agree it's something to look into. Thank you. I appreciate that. And I did put you on the spot. I appreciate you just reacting. Thank you. I'll just echo that and say I think a lot of people are very frustrated with how lengthy and um uh frustrating it is to try and get a
201:00 - 201:30 project through the city of LA. Uh so I appreciate that uh and hope that we can figure out how to start to move that forward. I have a a couple more questions. Uh what's the status of single stair reform which is council file 25-0247 and a citywide uh self-certification program CF25-0043. The my understanding is that both have passed the council and are sitting with your bureau. the the single
201:30 - 202:00 stair I know the the department is working on that motion with the fire department and the I was told is 90% done so it should be coming to the committee sooner than later the self-certification the motion the building and safety portion is already done u and it aligns with the mayor's order but the motion talks about work with other departments so self-certification goes across the report to all the departments involved
202:00 - 202:30 in permitting. So, we've been working with the others and as soon as we get the information from all the other department, we'll plug it into our report and submit it. Okay. What do you think the timing is on on each of those? And do you have the resources, the staffing resources you need to get it done quickly? We have the resources for what the portion of the building and safety is going to do. It's just what I I cannot speak to what other departments going to have in there. Sure. Okay. I think uh I'm can speak for at
202:30 - 203:00 least many of my colleagues that we're looking forward to both of those things moving forward quickly. Um Councilwoman Hut, did you have some fingers up or question? Okay, go ahead. Thank you, Madam Chair. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. I have a few questions. One is when was the last time the department's fees were updated? So the last major update was in
203:00 - 203:30 2008 and since 2008 there have been what we're aware of two fees that were updated. One in 2011, one 2017 for code enforcement. Besides that, we're not aware of any updates and they are due for updates 2008 till now. It's been a long time and we know that for sure because for the past two years we've undercollected our revenue has been about $30 million below our expenditure and if we continue on that path we
203:30 - 204:00 seriously going to jeopardize the enterprise fund. So, we have uh we have hired a contractor to do a fee study and they are in the process and they're supposed to be complete with it by the end of June. Thank you. For for the building and safety portion of it. Yeah, thank you for that. Um how many uh filled and vacant inspection positions are proposed for elimination? So, we have 24 cuts all together.
204:00 - 204:30 and one out of the 24, one is uh accounting clerk and another one admin clerk. The rest of them, 22 are all inspection positions. And and are those uh inspection positions revenue generating or I should say how many positions are revenue generated? I mean they are revenue generation but but it it works per unit. So would each unit
204:30 - 205:00 generates revenue. uh we would have to find out what each unit generate divided by number of people to give the average revenue generation per position. We could do that. Thank you. So I'm I'm going to add or request a special study on the feasibility of implementing inspection fees that would make inspection positions either costneutral or full cost recovery. And then I'd like to request a special
205:00 - 205:30 study on the feasibility of scaled fees and fines for repeated code violations. So if we, you know, we have a repeat offender, he's paying $64, it shouldn't be next week. Okay. Basically, um, I'd like to look at targeting locations and properties who have the same repeated offenses on an annual or even more frequent basis. And and to me, it doesn't make sense that everybody's
205:30 - 206:00 paying the same thing. If they know, oh, all I got to do is pay this fee and it's not growing, they're they're not uh motivated to do better. Thank you. That's what my last my last one is. I'd like to request a budget memo on the impact of staff reductions to code enforcement which kind of goes along with the council member McCloskers to co to the code enforcement bureau that to help reduce blight enhance public safety
206:00 - 206:30 for residents and businesses address home sharing violations and other illegal uses uh in investigations and enforce zoning codes. this analysis would include alternatives that would not impact the general fund. Thank you. Happy to do it. And and just to your point about aligning of funding just by shifting the AM program alone to the enterprise fund which makes a lot of sense because they are revenue
206:30 - 207:00 generating. We are able to save 14 positions inspector positions. Save 14 14 inspector positions. Thank you. Thank you madam chair. That those are all my questions though. Thank you. I just have one more question. Uh so the contract for unpermitted cannabis enforcement is totally deleted in the proposed budget. Does that deletion mean the current plan for enforcement is no enforcement or is enforcement happening elsewhere?
207:00 - 207:30 Yeah, the program does need funding because there's two things that need to happen in that particular program. You need the building and safety inspector and often time because of LAPD wants to do this after hours. We need to pay that inspector overtime to do this off our inspection. Who wants to do it off hours? LAPD police department. And the other part of it is uh we have a contractor that actually places the padlock on there and they need to get paid. So we do need funding
207:30 - 208:00 for that program to continue. We do have about $57,000 right now in in funding for that can use for the contractor, but once that's gone, we won't have any funding to continue that program. If we collected business tax from unpermitted cannabis sales, would we be able to cover enforcement costs? If that money is is transferred to building and safety, yes, that would be one way of helping to fund enforcement. Yes. As long as we get the funding, right, we'll
208:00 - 208:30 be able to do it. Okay. Thank you colleagues questions. I think it's maybe more to finance to allow them to go after and then yeah I don't think so. Thank you very much. Appreciate it.
208:30 - 209:00 What's the matter? You came up without me even having to ask. Welcome to the table planning. Thank you. Excellent. Thank you. We we we are accustomed to reading agendas.
209:00 - 209:30 So, uh thank you very much, chair and members of committee. Uh good afternoon. My name is Vince Bertton, director of planning. And I'd like to introduce the team who's joining me at the table. We have to my right, Kevin Keller, executive officer. Also, uh uh just down the the road there, Lisa Weber, deputy director for project planning. We have to my left here, Anna Rosio, who's our chief management analyst. in the next Arthy Varma, deputy director for our citywide policy. I I really want to thank the committee today to give us this opportunity to address the department's budget. I'd also like to
209:30 - 210:00 thank everyone who worked on the budget to put it together. I know that was a huge challenge, especially this year. So, that's all very much appreciated. Um, you know, as a department, our work is deeply rooted in looking forward to the future of our city and now more than ever, this work is vitally important. The work of the department is mandated by state law, the city charter, and multiple city ordinances. and our services really aren't replicated anywhere else. Simply put, this is city planning in any city is is essential. And as a department, we've worked closely with the city council and we've been at the forefront of forefront of
210:00 - 210:30 many of the city council's highest priorities, including housing and homelessness, economic development, wildfire recovery, and preparing for the 28 Olympic and Par Olympics. I know that the city council understands the importance of the work that we do and has really actively shaped what we do as a department. Just to highlight a few important accomplishments that we have done. We're in terms of housing. Um before you can build it, you have to entitle and approve it. So earlier this year, we adopted the housing element resoning program called CHIP where we created the capacity to build over 500,000 more homes in the city of Los
210:30 - 211:00 Angeles to meet our housing crisis headon. In terms of jobs and economic investment this year, we recently adopted our new downtown community plan. Um which brings in another 100,000 100,000 more homes as well as 35,000 more jobs. Um, we've also created uh new zoning which actually streamlined our processes to make it more efficient. The department approves billion dollar investments in our economy and approves provides employment and tax revenue for the city. In terms of rebuilding, we have risen to the challenge of helping
211:00 - 211:30 the Palisades rebuild after the devastating fires by looking forward and moving quickly and removing barriers for people removing their homes and businesses while not losing focus on the rest of the city. Now, we understand this is a very difficult budget for the city. The proposed budget eliminated 35 of our existing positions as well as 25% of our filled positions would which would result in one in four of our employees being laid off. It's important to note that 74% of planning's direct cost is special funded representing 79 of the 115 filled positions proposed for
211:30 - 212:00 elimination. Our special funds have revenue collections to offset but not eliminate costs. Fees are subsidized in many instances to promote public participation in due process. items such as appeals, specific plan and overlay reviews, nuisance of payment work, and commission and board hearings. Um, because of the nature of and the breadth of these cuts, it would really significantly impact the department's ability to address some of the council's highest priorities. As it as it stands, the budget could have some several outcomes. It it um eliminates revenue
212:00 - 212:30 generating project planning positions for the city that would reduce service levels and delay housing and economic development projects. It could incur significant li legal liabilities by insufficiently staffing the department to meet multiple state and local laws. This could result in millions of dollars of fines and legal fees annually. It puts at risk multi-year investments that are anticipated to be completed next year in such things as the southwest community plan plans, the harbor community plans, the cornfield seiko specific plan amendment and the general plan environmental justice element. On a
212:30 - 213:00 broader scale, these cuts would result in further limitations on our local control over land use policies and regulations, which over the years have been encroached upon by state law. Failure to comply with state and federally mandated project review timelines can result in penalties and deacto approvals for development proposals. This budget also cuts um some of our our staff that implements new technology tools and limits our ability to continue to innovate and utilize technology to enhance and streamline our work. Um, the budget also eliminates community-f facing programs where staff engages directly with neighbored councils, neighborhood groups, and
213:00 - 213:30 individuals to keep them informed of planning initiatives and answers questions. Um, we're here together to find solutions. We've outlined some of those solutions in our budget letter that includes potential additional sources of revenue to offset those proposed cuts. I really want to show appreciation, gratitude to the city planning staff. Um, they've been responsive, problem solving, and dedicated servants. These are really tough times when you're when you are faced with a budget that has so many potential um people who would lose their job in a short period of time. Um it creates a lot of uncertainty. Um but in
213:30 - 214:00 these uncertain times, we all stand together. Um we faced a lot of challenges together over the years and just like before, I'm hopeful that we can come together and find a solution. We greatly appreciate all the work and collaboration um we have had with the city council and we're looking forward to uh working together to solve these problems. So, thank you. Thank you, Vince and team. Um, I just want to start off by thanking you for being here and just make some comments
214:00 - 214:30 about the function of planning in the city. The people of LA, whether they know it or not, have been intimately touched by the work of the city planning department. City Planning and the women and men who work in this department have been doing the hard work of diving deep within neighborhoods to do everything from creating housing incentive programs to identifying environmental justice solutions to conducting zoning reviews. Planning staff know our city's communities, their histories, their
214:30 - 215:00 infrastructure challenges, demographic shifts, and other important contexts that make LA the special place that it is. Planners take all that context and turn it into policies through our general plan or craft zone geographic uh information like our zoning maps. Planners have also borne the brunt of statemandated rules and short timelines. So, I'm going to turn it over to Council Member Bloomfield to get into the weeds uh and ask some of these questions. Um, I just want to I ask that
215:00 - 215:30 you please relay this committee's appreciation to your staff and know that we are intimately invested in restoring as many jobs as possible because we understand fundamentally how important planning is to Los Angeles uh and to our city's future. So, with that, uh, I'm going to turn it over to Council Member Blumenfield to kick us off with the questions. First, I want to start by check uh start by echoing that sentiment. um expressing deep
215:30 - 216:00 appreciation for the work every member of the planning department does. What's proposed before us is nothing short of devastating for our planning department. And and as my colleague mentioned, there's there's no department that does more to shape the city that we live in, that we love. Um whether it's dealing with a housing shortage, promoting development, striking the balance between imposing requirements that benefit communities, and ensuring that projects actually pencil out. Uh
216:00 - 216:30 developing transportation networks, phasing out oil, gas drilling, regulating home sharing, preserving historic structures. I mean, it goes on and on. Um, all of us on the council work intimately with with you all and from a a a budget standpoint, you're fairly unique as well because while you generate a lot of revenue from fees, we've made a conscious decision not to pursue a full cost recovery model. Uh, we've adopted a general zone ordinances,
216:30 - 217:00 specific plans, and when people want to deviate from those plans, we generally impose fees that cover the cost of processing the application. But sometimes, such as in a specific specific plan area or historic preservation zone, we force everyone to submit projects for compliance review. That means they have to pay fees even if their project fully complies with the rules. In those cases, we've often decided that that's just not fair to ask people to do full recovery. And so, it's not one of those areas where we can just ask you to go to full recovery because
217:00 - 217:30 that would be, you know, devastating to a lot of regular folks who aren't even asking for anything special. they're just trying to, you know, obey the city's rules and regulations. So, we aren't always able to charge fees that cover the full cost. Um, we're going to look into what fees we can increase because that that is a way to help, but you know, there are a lot of policy choices that are that have led to where we are and some of them we may want to change, but some of them are there for
217:30 - 218:00 good reasons. So um I want to start with you know the all the positions basically that are critical for economic development, housing production and ask for sort of a a big memo. I'm going to cut cut to the chase on a bunch of things. Ask for some memos up front and then have some of the discussion. I think it'll short circuit us given the time. But a budget memo on restoring the filled revenue generating positions, the grant funded positions, positions that would expose the city to legal liabilities if not funded. uh the
218:00 - 218:30 systems GIS and graphic positions that are special funded, the filled administration and support positions that are special funded, the mobility positions, the positions needed to uh complete projects and community plans that have reached a critical stage in their development and would be more costly in time and cost to pause or cancel positions needed to continue and finish 20 uh policy 23-141 in order to reduce barriers for ground mounted solar.
218:30 - 219:00 Uh, I'm asking for report back on on the positions, but I'm I'm categorizing it in this ways because they're all very different and unique and and some of them don't seem to make sense from a um, you know, just from a costbenefit analysis and from, you know, cutting revenue positions that'll that'll undermine our overall position. So this is one of those where you know it may have been a sledgehammer and we need to use more of a scalpel and and so getting all those positions looked at. Uh also
219:00 - 219:30 wanted to get you know there are entitlements u in development services there there are opportunities to have pre-entitlement zoning review functions performed by the planning department staff. I think you've talked about this to have those positions funded by the DBS uh enterprise fund. So I would like to get up direct planning and DBS to report back with a plan for moving the zoning review functions to the planning department using existing employees in
219:30 - 220:00 the planning department to per perform those functions and provide funding from the enterprise fund. It's a creative idea. Thank you for that. And we definitely want to look at it because that's a great way to uh uh to get some funding. I also want to put ask for a couple of memos that some of my colleagues um who are not on this committee have asked for which I think are appropriate. So, I'm just going to go straight to those as well. Um one of my colleagues is asking for a which I
220:00 - 220:30 will ask for in there. A budget memo outlining uh recommended options for restoring the East San Frernando Valley TNP team to the planning budget. Uh specifically that's in reference to the proposed cuts to the east east San Franando Valley Transit Neighborhood Plan Team, a project that is more than 50% complete and will enable enable additional housing units beyond what CHIP does along the only light rail in the Northeast Valley. Obviously that falls under the overall one, but since one of my colleagues highlighted, I want to make sure I highlight that as well.
220:30 - 221:00 Uh second uh question from a colleague. The recovery in in the Pacific Palisades has just begun. It's unknown at this time how many cases will be needed to be reviewed and approved by the department of city planning. Uh so we want to instruct the department of city planning to report back on the impacts on recovery efforts in Pacific Palisades with a proposed reduction in force and elimination of vacant positions. I won't tell you which colleagues asked me to say these things. Sure. That that can include the fee
221:00 - 221:30 waver too. Uh and then another colleague uh report back. I don't think we're supposed to People have talked to me about these issues and I thought it was a good idea. How about that? um like to know specific a report back to specifically know how these cuts impact the the eliminate dealing with the elimination of positions in the community planning, neighborhood planning. um specifically in uh in district 13 to know how the cuts impact
221:30 - 222:00 CF council file number 23-060-S13 the work that would further update Hollywood and East Hollywood zoning programs and what staffing levels within those units would be required to restore the work program. Additionally, please include any studies or data that can be found regarding the indirect data on how plant updates spur property tax and business tax growth over time. So, those are those are areas around the city that have had, you know, generic
222:00 - 222:30 conversations with people about and want to make sure that we get those specifics uh included as well. Thank you. So that's a lot of budget report backs, but also wanted to talk about [Music] um community plans more generally. So we know planning is a multi-year process, public outreach, plan development, understanding the number of cuts in your department. What are the work programs where significant investment has been made and that investment would be lost if not
222:30 - 223:00 continued to completion if we cut the positions working on them? Right. So, community planning would be one of those areas most significantly impacted. I believe the program overall is cut around 47 48%. I believe the filled positions is around 40% cut. So, so the challenge we have with that program is the one that we've had the most fluctuation in staffing over years. So, it's the place where we've we've had to uh slow down, speed up, slow down, speed up in that area. So, what we'd really be
223:00 - 223:30 talking about in that particular area, we actually have geographic areas. We'd definitely in essence shut down community planning in a more central area and then so that would that would be central would be any you know downtown boil heights Hollywood the east side and so we would that would basically stop us working on you know our final cornfield specifically plan adoption um impact boil heights in terms of its adoption of its its environmental um its final uh formal legality um it would cut in half the staff in our harbor area and we're just we're
223:30 - 224:00 finishing up our community plans in the harbor area so those would slow town as well as the new zoning in San Pedro which is going along. It would in essence require us most likely to move over um we have uh community plans going in the southwest valley, the southeast valley. We would southwest valley is going first. We would probably have to put a pause on our southeast valley plans and move those staffing over to the southwest valley. Um because southwest valley is farther along um we would not be able to launch any new community plans for several years and
224:00 - 224:30 that's really important. probably about three or four more years because we have some really critical areas that we need to address from a community plan standpoint. Um because of issues of development and we have old plans that's had a lot of development around transit areas such as uh Wilshire and uh Westlake. Um and it would also eliminate all of our uh East San Fran Valley transit neighborhood plan work as well as all of our environmental justice work from a um just that's just from a policy standpoint. And that these are all that
224:30 - 225:00 have already had investments going on. So all these projects except for the new plans moving forward that I mentioned potentially Wilshshire and Westlake. All those other ones are plans that are already underway that we spent years and years and probably millions of dollars on. Well, why don't we get a budget impact a budget memo on the current status of the project? Community plans that have reached the critical stage in their development would be more costly in time if paused or canceled. Okay, we've got two follow-ups. one from Councilwoman Hernandez and one from Council Member McCoscer. Thank you and thank you so
225:00 - 225:30 much for being here with us today and thank Council Member Bloomingfield for for those questions. I'd like to follow up on those questions with the budget memo. Um it might be similar to what you put forth, but I'm going to say anyways just in case it's not. I would like to request a budget memo on how the cuts impact the revenue used to fund the department's project planning unit, long range planning programs, and its technical unit in order to advance development in a timely fashion. Ensure the community has a chance to weigh in
225:30 - 226:00 and participate in planning processes and ensure the city is able to complete project and long range planning work in a timely manner that is consistent with local state law. Thank you, Mr. Mr. McCosker for followup. Thank you very much. Um, do you tell me Vince whether this would be easy as as a to incorporate in uh or whether it should have its separate category, but it is the same sort of thing. The local coastal plan in
226:00 - 226:30 Venice has been ongoing for a long time. A lot of work put into it. Um, I don't know how close it is to completion, but my sense is that this would stop the efforts to get the LCP done. Yes. Yes. And I apologize, I should have included that. There's so many things that would that were stopping. That was one of them. And we actually had originally um a grant from the coastal commission to start it. And um it's been literally so many years of investment to get Well, the LCP is, you know, critically important to the community of course.
226:30 - 227:00 And so I would just fold in if I would ask if we could just fold into this memo or the report back on the impacts of the completion of the Venice local coastal plan with this proposed reduction. Um, and I think on each one of these cases, we should be also talking about whether the work already done will be valuable if and when there's a break and there's time that's spent and time goes by. And I know that time is the enemy of good planning, right? The loss of time or the the expenditure of time is the enemy of
227:00 - 227:30 good planning. Whether or not we can pick just pick up that work in a few years and and go back, my my sense is that no, we will lose the work that we've done now. Yes. Um, we will. There's there's these technical studies you have to it's there's a point in time where you're studying things and things change the earth changes right and so you have to you know you have to really be current in a lot of this information I'm just asking to fold in the Venice LCP into that same analysis
227:30 - 228:00 you know you can come back to me I've got a few more but I don't want to monopolize okay new question Hernandez thank you chairwoman um it seems like the programs targeted for major cuts in DCP relate to advancing equity and environmental justice. The EJ unit, oil regulation, office of racial equity, elimination of half of those positions, uh particularly the ones in the newly established South Lake Development Services Center, and other major cuts to wildlife rim of the valley unit. How
228:00 - 228:30 will these cuts impact our most disadvantaged communities and legal mandates? Um, thank you for asking, uh, council member. um you know the environmental justice you know it's the environmental justice unit would be eliminated and that's really important because this is this is a program that is trying to undo harms of the past and past land use regulations and so you know we have people who are living and growing up near near a lot of in essence toxic environments and it's and so this is the
228:30 - 229:00 environmental justice you know really element is to really address that at the heart I would also say we've We've embedded environmental justice to our new harbor area community plans. Those are also impacted by that. So these are our first community plans ever to address um environmental justice. So those are very important and those would set those back. Oil is another important program that would be set and we have people live growing up and living right near oil production which is create creating great long-term harm for them. And um you know these are communities
229:00 - 229:30 that you can actually if you want to see the impacts just read our our community health element which talks about average you know the average lifespan of people who live in Watts versus in areas such as Palisades and they're they're greatly reduced um in the areas that we're trying to to address if you live in these communities. Our office of racial justice really was set up to look broadly across the department in all the work that we do to make sure that we embed equity in it so that we're actually centering um those people that have been harmed by past land use
229:30 - 230:00 practices whether it is a citywide policy, whether it's a community plan policy, whether it's a development project, whether it's a condition we place something on a development that they really are there to look departmentwide and we would lose that that ability to do that. Great. Thank you. Um, I can imagine that this might also be an issue for the neighborhoods around Palisades and the ones in Al uh near Aladena that are in our city. Uh, especially with all the lead that was in the air and all the other toxic um items that I'm sure we're going to be dealing
230:00 - 230:30 with and remediating for some time. So, I'd like to put a budget memo forward um on the impact of cutting existence existing environmental justice and equity work programs led by the planning department, including an analysis of the disproportionate impact these cuts will have on vulnerable low-income communities and communities of color and the full-scale impact of cutting all existing positions in the newly created environmental justice unit within the planning department created by Council File 15-03-S4 and Council File
230:30 - 231:00 15-03- S2, including an emphasis on the ability for the city to meet local and state metrics and legal requirements. Thank you. Pass back to you, chair. Okay. Um, I have a couple questions. Uh, how could delays in project approvals and commission hearings due to staffing cuts expose the city to financial liabilities under the Housing Crisis Act and Permit Streamlining Act? Um, well, I would say that under state law in general, there's
231:00 - 231:30 two ways that we we have liability. One of them is if we don't keep our plans up to date with certain laws. There's there is there's vulnerabilities there, and those v vulnerabilities will depend upon um they're different for the different aspects of state law. You know, for example, if we don't adopt our housing in time and do the implementation, there's very specific requirements. But if we don't if we don't approve a project under certain timelines or if we mishandle how we handle a project, there's multiple penalties. One of the penalties, the first penalty is if you
231:30 - 232:00 don't act within a certain period of time, what the developer proposed gets approved. No. And it doesn't have to necessarily conform with all of your rules with your zoning. So deemed approved. It in essence is deemed approved. So a developer can come in and propose something that doesn't conform with with the general plan and the zoning. And if we don't if we don't act on it with a certain time period of time, it gets approved. So you could have a single family neighborhood with really lowcale development and you could have like a five-story apartment building built in that area. But also we are subject to if we also don't handle it correctly um under state law and what
232:00 - 232:30 would happen in that particular cases were subject to fines and penalties. It's $50,000 a unit. The amount of development we do in a year if we just if we get a few cases that that that don't go our way. You're easily talking in the millions of dollars. It could be $5 million in liability. Um because we have easily have projects that are over hundred units that come in quite often. So there's some real costs to us that are fines and penalties. I'm not even talking about the legal costs when we defend these in court. We have to spend
232:30 - 233:00 even more money doing that. That's just there's also other timelines that we have to do under federal law adus for oh federal law federal uh wireless telecommunication. If we don't hit those timelines right then you have you have penalties there. And then things such as ADUs and also as you as you know coun uh council member state law is moving in one direction which is to be more prescriptive with with cities and counties when it comes to housing and housing uh authority. They also have given oversight from the department of
233:00 - 233:30 housing community development at the state on this. So the state is watching cities and counties very closely that they comply with state law and they're they're very willing and and able now to act very quickly to penalize cities. Right. Thank you. So along those lines, I'm requesting a special study from planning on the status of the work plan to implement AB 1033 within the city of Los Angeles along with recommendations to reduce the time frame for the permitting approval for ADUs. Uh, and
233:30 - 234:00 then I have one more. Um, so I think we recognize we likely won't be able to restore all deleted positions. Uh, are there activities currently assigned to planning that might make sense to relocate or reallocate to a different department to decrease workload of the remaining staff to allow planners to plan? I mean, that's something we have to take a look at. I'm not quite sure. Um I mean there's if there's functions such as home sharing which would be you know one
234:00 - 234:30 function where we do the registration um yet we don't do the rest of it is one thing to look at but you know again you know we'd have to take a look at what are the ones that would make sense. Okay. Okay. You sort of answered my follow-up question. Okay. Uh thank you very much. Councilwoman Hut. Councilwoman Hut. Thank you so much. Thank you for being here. I just have a few questions. I believe um my colleagues did a really good job at digging into planning. But um since we
234:30 - 235:00 have uh your budget letter and it outlines several options to maximize revenue streams, including fee updates, when would potential fee increases uh go into effect? So it depends upon the increase. So we're looking at a um some could be quickly. general plan maintenance uh sir charge is a matter of a couple months to to for that to go through typically um would another one would be looking at a project planning fees and that would
235:00 - 235:30 probably be closer to four to six months probably in that time frame. Thank you. And then um with these reductions what's what's the impact to HBO PO staff and are there any potential fees that can offset the layoffs? So in terms of I believe we have nine staffers that are filled that are working on HPOS's. This would eliminate five out of the the nine. So it would cut a majority of the HPO staff. Um so a lot of things would have to happen. We would have to consolidate HPO boards. Um that I
235:30 - 236:00 believe we do not need to do by ordinance. So that could happen fairly quickly. We'd have to reduce the number of meetings of HPZ's. Um the challenge we have with something like an HPO or a design review board is we can raise fees but cost recovery is the most challenging on on things on areas like HPOS's and design and and design review boards because um you don't want to charge a fee that's so high to the extent that you're discouraging people to getting the permits and so all of a sudden you have a lot of people not
236:00 - 236:30 complying with the law. It's the classic example of if you need an HPO approval to replace your window, if the permit costs more than the window, they're not going to get the permit. So, you want to be very careful with those. And those are typically subsidized largely to to make sure we spend less money on code enforcement. Um because the more you the more you encourage people to do things illegally, the more money you spend on code enforcement. Understood. Thank you. Um or they don't build it at all. Yeah. Right. Or they
236:30 - 237:00 don't. Sorry. or they got broken windows, right? Um the proposed budget eliminates positions that work on new nuisance abatement. Um what my office works with your team regularly on that piece. So what will be the effect on nuisance nuisance revocation investigations and hearings? So all of those functions would be eliminated as part of this budget. So we would stop our nuisance abatement. And so nuisance abatement, as you know, it's it's when you have a use that that's
237:00 - 237:30 creating really bad impacts on on the neighborhood around it. It gives us the ability to either condition or revoke their ability to operate and so that would be removed. So we typically have nuisance abatement issues. There's a lot of liquor stores, um some liquor stores, delies, there's motel and things like that. We would no longer have the ability to to come in and out, bring them here to add conditions or or remove those. Wow. Thank you. I I wasn't expecting that. Um then my next question is about uh a large part of the planning
237:30 - 238:00 is mapping and in this budget there are reductions to the department's GIF staff. How would these layoffs affect the department's ability to provide the mapping services? I'm sorry, I didn't hear the last part of the question. Mapping. Yes. Yes. Yes. How how are the layoffs going to uh Well, it would significantly reduce Yeah. Thank you for the question. So we would significantly reduce our GIS. I think it's our our systems in GIS is either 40% 50%
238:00 - 238:30 reduction in those areas. So we're about half of them are going to be reduced. Yeah. Uh this is Kevin Keller, city planning. Just to jump in on that, it's a great question. Uh city planning has its own search charge with a special fund that funds most of our GIS, but like all of our services, it is a leverage fund with general fund dollars for some of our work. So, our ordinance mapping, a lot of our spatial data, our radius data that we provide on ZMUS about adjacencies to cannabis to sensitive uses, revocation uses, um,
238:30 - 239:00 would all be severely curtailed. We would likely be doing, uh, basic work only, and that's kind of in in quotes. But the ability for the department to prepare ordinance maps for the council whenever a council adopts a zone change, a geographic specific overlay, um, we do rely on our GIS team. Same thing with community plans. So, we'd love to uh be able to explain that a little more or report back on that. Thank you. That that's all for me, Madam Chair. Councilwoman Hernandez, followup. Yes.
239:00 - 239:30 Thank you, Chairwoman. My followup was on the news of Baiton piece. Um, so you're saying that these teams are being cut? Does that mean that do they handle Sorry. Do they handle when property owners like let's say don't put the appropriate fencing up on a vacant lot and people start living in there or stockpile trash in there. Does that team handle that? That would be a little bit different. At Lisa Weber
239:30 - 240:00 who's a deputy director for project planning could maybe clarify some of those. Lisa Weber with city planning. Um, I think that generally their cases uh are a little more severe than that. It's uh chronic long-term uses that involve uh criminal activity. Um uh a number of those cases have come before the plum committee and the city council for consideration. Uh they generally handle about 10 cases a year. The team that's
240:00 - 240:30 being cut, we have two filled and uh two vacant positions that will be removed. In addition, the associate zoning administrator uh that uh uh oversees and hears uh nuisance abatement cases is also being rem removed as well. And so it's a very specialized function of our office of zoning administration that would need to be absorbed. Uh most of the time uh nuisance abatement cases are initiated through council motion and
240:30 - 241:00 council action. Great. Thank you for that explanation and clarity. Um excuse me. Yeah. Sure. So, are are we talking about the motel situations that are being abused and prostitutes? Correct. liquor stores, hotels. We won't have the opportunity to do anything about smoke shops that are selling illegal cannabis. Yes. And I would just add that, you know, the council district uh the
241:00 - 241:30 council members and their their staff are so intimately involved with the communities that these are largely raised up through council offices who really know and their staff really know on the ground where the real issues are. So this is something that we work really closely with the council offices on. Thank you. Thank you for making it clear. Thank you. Thank you. And I'd like to follow up with the question on um a as we think about restructuring and and and and redefining our city in in this moment. Um why don't these
241:30 - 242:00 responsibilities exist within for example like the city attorney's office, the build department of building and safety and LAPD? Um which kind which which which uh well just like I can it would seem like nuisance abatement the department. Yes. The news abatement piece, especially because you're talking about criminal activity, right? Absolutely. Uh it's housed with city planning because it's a land use matter and it's a revocation often of uh the land use authority to conduct uh certain businesses and
242:00 - 242:30 certain types of uses. And we do work incredibly uh close with our counterparts in building and safety, LAPD, and the city attorney's office. Wonderful. So, it's a it's a very collaborative uh work program. Councilwoman, if I could just add, I might want to just take him in on nuisance abatement. The additional tool of the ability of a zoning administrator to go to the core of the operating license of that establishment and revoke it is what only the zoning administration office can do. It is done in conjunction with LAPD uh building and
242:30 - 243:00 safety code enforcement. But when things are severe enough to basically legally shut down that and it's a very complicated procedure. You have to do conditions for a while, look for answers, then go for the shutdown. Only the zoning administration per the the authority of our police powers under land use can do that component. So we work together, but it is a component that is unique to city plan. This is the only way that we get to the core of the issue. Got it. I hear that, Councilwoman. Um Okay,
243:00 - 243:30 that's good. Thank you. Um, my last series of questions are around the budget and entertainment streamlining unit. It's being significantly cut. What is the impact of the proposed DCP budget on on small businesses? What is the status of the citywide permit alfresco program? Uh, thank you very much, uh, council member. So, yes, so there are significant cuts that we have to small business and here part Alfresco, you hit the the two ones that are probably the most important to small business. Um
243:30 - 244:00 it's the Alfresco program where people are allowed to use outdoor spaces for dining which has been hugely successful and hugely important for small business all over the city. And so this this has um large large cuts to Alfresco forget the exact uh number of percentage on there as well as the restaurant beverage program. The restaurant beverage program um has has some is is something important because it allows us to more targetedly allow um streamlined alcohol approval. And this is something where we we work closely with the council offices
244:00 - 244:30 to make sure that we streamline in the appropriate places of the city but also more importantly our bever beverage and entertainment streamlined or best teams really manage the whole process. They really help us guide it through the process of of of alcohol approval. So what it does is the best program does is it really balances out um how we can approach alcohol uses in the city when it comes to restaurants. So, it allows us to put them in the right right places, but also to monitor them and to
244:30 - 245:00 make sure that they don't become um nuisances to the neighborhood around them. And does that also include making sure that we're not oversaturating certain neighborhoods with more alcohol licenses? I understand the streamlining, which is great because, you know, I understand how that supports small businesses in some ways, but it it it does it does it it looks at kind of where they are and it's through the program like Yeah. Kevin Keller, city planning. Great question. Um, one of our main streamlining programs is targeted for certain areas only and so I believe
245:00 - 245:30 we've recently worked with your office to clarify where that applies and doesn't apply because there are some neighborhoods where we do not need to encourage more of a particular use. Great. Thank you for that. I'd like a budget uh memo on what impact the DCP proposed budget has on small businesses, especially on legacy businesses and non-English-speaking businesses. Thank you so much. Thank you, gentlemen. Council member, great. Uh, kind of adding to that one, but the budget memo
245:30 - 246:00 that could be included in that are separate on the impact of reducing services for restaurants and, uh, the beverage, the alfresco, entertainment, wireless permits, as well as current policy efforts to streamline entitlements in advance of major special events like the World Cup and the Olympics. Um, also wanted to ask you about, we talked briefly about expediting. It's really important. We need to shift eligible planning work into different cost recovery modes such as expedited processing unit. So are there opportunities to add positions to
246:00 - 246:30 the expedited units to allow the organization to build up capacity there and to prevent the loss of some positions elsewhere? Yeah, thank you. Um yeah, I believe we have 10 vacant positions that were limited as part of the proposed budget. So we have the ability to to staff those up. We were not able to staff them because of the hiring our hiring process. So the hiring process did not allow us to fill those positions, but they are full cost recovery. So um so if if we didn't have
246:30 - 247:00 those positions eliminated and we had the hiring restriction lifted, we could move staff into those full cost recovery positions. And also it's really important to note that it it it typically acts as almost like a safety valve for our our project planning bureau, right? Because because expedited processing are those are those kind of projects that we can get through in a a relatively short period of time. It's kind of those kind of projects that should go through quickly but don't always go through quickly. So this gives gives them a guaranteed turnaround time and developers is one of the areas where
247:00 - 247:30 developers are most and and business owners really are very much interested in this program. It's very popular. Sure. I mean for them time is money and and right uh so it may be kind of covered in the previous report back but to to put a finer point on it make sure we have a memo that addresses uh adding positions to the expedited unit and and options for funding positions from fees uh that we could otherwise do. Okay. I have two other uh budget memos.
247:30 - 248:00 One is to um budget memo detailing the impacts of a substantial reduction in project planning staff specifically in the San Frernando Valley which includes over-the-counter development services staff, expedited processing staff, major project staff, affordable housing unit staff, specific plan overlay staff and staff from the Valley Project Planning Bureau. and what that means for expedited staff reviews and case processing for priority affordable housing projects, project approval times and project advertisement at public
248:00 - 248:30 counters. Uh the report should include an analysis of development growth in the San Franando Valley with regard to project approvals and permit activity in the last 5 years as well as future forecasting. And second is a budget memo on the status of the long-range planning efforts in the San Frernando Valley, including multiple community planning plan updates and transit neighborhood plans currently underway and proposed to be completed in the next two years, which will modernize zoning, land use, street designation, and development and
248:30 - 249:00 design standards for more than 20% of the city after more than two decades. there. This report should include major milestones with projected timelines and how this work is critical in order to spur economic recovery, sustainable development, infrastructure improvement, housing growth, and community stabilization, including in compliance with our state manded mandated RENA obligations. I'll just could discuss those, but I think you get it and I'll leave it at that. Thank you. Is that just a counter in the valley?
249:00 - 249:30 All right, colleagues, any more questions, thoughts? Council member McCoscer, just to follow up on that. Um, that was just the counter in the valley. Could we look at the Metro counter as well? The Metro Development Services counter, something that is a costneutral alternative for making sure that we have counter hours there. Thank you. I would suggest though I will suggest keeping with my theme that there are a couple of line items in the GCP that
249:30 - 250:00 might be applicable. One is number 39 equity and inclusion. This allocation is provided to support equity inclusion in all city services. I presume planning services too and community engagement activities. That might be something we could look at. Thank you. Councilwoman Hernandez. Can I add the uh to that? Yes, you may. Thank you.
250:00 - 250:30 Reminder, we have no money, but okay. All right. We're going to try. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next up is the Department of Cannabis Regulation. Secret.
250:30 - 251:00 Welcome. Can you please go ahead and
251:00 - 251:30 introduce yourself? Oh, you know what? What um before you get started, I want to make two changes to the memo list from uh May 1st. I realized uh Madame Clerk, that memo 451 is redundant to 449. And I'd ask that these be consolidated and list the CLA please as the lead. And second, I'd like to consolidate memos 571 and 572 under YD
251:30 - 252:00 as they get at the same issue. Okay. Thank you. Welcome. Please go ahead and introduce yourselves. Good afternoon, chair and esteemed members of the budget and finance committee. My name is Jason Clean. I'm an assistant executive director for the department of cannabis regulation. Um I'm currently acting executive director and for at least the next few weeks until director Gakian comes back from maternity leave. Um joining me today is Zach Dorse. He is our chief management
252:00 - 252:30 analyst over our administrative services section. Um thank you for your dedicated service um to our city and to this budget process and it is honor to address you today. Um, I would also like to thank the mayor's office, the CAEO, the CLA, and their respective teams as a city maneuvers this extremely difficult budget season. We recognize the difficult decisions that went into this proposed budget and are thankful for the resources we were provided. Um, I would
252:30 - 253:00 also like to thank the Governor's Office of Business and Economic Development for their support and the grant funding that we are awarded this year through the cannabis equity grants which will assist us navigating this um next budget cycle. I would also like to thank the Department of Cannabis Control, Nicole Elliot, and her entire team for their support, expertise, and coordination on licensing issues. Um together our agencies are transitioning over a thousand provisional licenses to annual
253:00 - 253:30 licenses as required by state law. Um we did receive grant funding from the state specifically the department of cannabis control to help with that transition. The grant period ended um on March 31st of 2025. Um, at the local level, over 700 businesses covering over a thousand activities were timely transitioned to local annual licenses well before the date of their state provisional license expirations. Um, senior managers from
253:30 - 254:00 both the Department of Cannabis Regulation and Department of Cannabis Control meet on a weekly basis. Um, as part of those weekly meetings, we discuss the transition of our local lenses. We identify potential pain points that our mutual applicants and lences may be going through. We ensure timely transitions and we work towards the next steps of this licensing process. To our city attorney, thank you for the amazing cannabis advice, law and
254:00 - 254:30 litigation section which supports our department. Um they are a tremendous asset. I want to thank the department um of building and safety who has expanded our cashiering services to their five development services centers. Um they have worked with us to integrate a pre-application and zoning review process to help ensure that our cannabis applicants and lenses are navigating the local regulatory process to ensure proper permitting to get their health permits. Can I can I just interrupt you for a moment? Uh we've all we've read
254:30 - 255:00 your letter. Um, we've been doing this for almost 5 hours. If we can just get into the specific things you want to highlight in the letter so that we can get into those details. We we know about all the wonderful work you all are doing and we're really grateful for it. Uh, but I think uh if it's all right, we just jump right into the highlights and then some questions, please. Thank you very much. It's all good. Um, the department's core responsibility is to license and ensure compliance of
255:00 - 255:30 local businesses. We have the funding to do that. We transmitted a fee study to ensure we're at full cost recovery for next fiscal year. That went through its first public hearing before government operations last week. The committee asked us additional questions. We provided that information earlier this week. We anticipate a follow-up hearing sometime in May. Um, our social equity program requires the department to provide priority processing to social equity applicants. It requires us to um provide financial assistance and fee
255:30 - 256:00 deferrals subject to the availability of funds um which has primarily been grant funding and to provide business licensing and compliance assistance. Um thankfully we did get a $ three.5 million from the governor's office to provide those services next year. Um and with that I will stop my presentation. Council member Blumenfield, do you want to lead us in this? Sure. Um you know, one of this is a a huge
256:00 - 256:30 business a new thing for our city. Um our budget counts on 70 million in in business tax revenue from cannabis activity. We all have an interest in a viable legal market. We always have this tension. We wanted the best thing we could do is to enforce against the illegal shops, but the the fees that you have uh don't let us do that. But you play a role in helping ensure that that the legal ones are able
256:30 - 257:00 to compete. Um so what are we doing to examine Well, I I guess I should step back. When we first legalized commercial cannabis, we imposed a lot of regulations based on concerns about potential negative impacts. And in my opinion, a lot of those concerns about licensed businesses just haven't come to be, you know, and and the question is now in retrospect, what can DCR do to examine our existing regulations,
257:00 - 257:30 including zoning and local restrictions to reduce the burden on licensed businesses where appropriate? uh because it feels like we still have we're still a little bit in that mentality of this is something new. We have to impose every every check under the sun and you know these guys are having trouble competing with the illegals and we got to go after the illegals and we'll talk about that but what can we do to make it easier for the legals? Um thank you for the question. Um so last week we
257:30 - 258:00 transmitted a report to amend the land use regulations under council file 20-1125-s1. Um we are recommending significant modifications to where the businesses may be able to locate um how the distances um would be determined um to fall in line with state law which would be more permissive and to expand the number of compliant locations citywide which would make it easier for our operators to find compliant
258:00 - 258:30 locations. Um, as part of our legislative cycle last year, um, we made, um, amendments to hold property owners, um, accountable for, um, allowing for unlicensed businesses to engage on their parcels and we're no longer um, considering something scorched earth. If it's just a part of the parcel, the entire parcel becomes scorched earth. Um, these land use changes will also make it easier for our local businesses to find compliant properties, be able to negotiate better
258:30 - 259:00 with the landlords because it is less restrictive, and it would eliminate some of the sensitive uses that are not regularly utilized by the city and don't necessarily provide value. Um, municipal section 105 does have some of the more traditional zoning designations such as commercial and manufacturing zones. Um, Director Batoni and the planning department were before you earlier, you know, that they've been transitioning community plans out of those traditional zones. So, we are recommending that
259:00 - 259:30 cannabis businesses be treated like any other business whereby, you know, we do a review for sensitive use and distancing requirements and we would refer the department over to either building and safety or city planning for a zoning review to determine if the uses could be accommodated at that location. if they can. Um, we recommend being a able to move forward with an application at those locations. And again, that would reduce regulatory hurdles, um, bring our cannabis operators more in line with other city businesses and also
259:30 - 260:00 address some of those perceived negative impacts that didn't actually thankfully come to fruition. Most of those are really good for getting new cannabis legal businesses in. Uh, but what about the existing ones? Like for example, the um you know we have a annual license fee. Could that not be a 5-year license? AB: Absolutely. If we can work with this council, the
260:00 - 260:30 CEO, and others to identify um whether or not it's appropriate to do licensing on an annual basis. um if we did have to have licenses cover multiple years, we would anticipate a higher fee amount um to cover the activities that occur. But that is something that could be explored. Great. We'd love for you to explore that and and anything else to to to make these folks more competitive with the illegal ones. Now, you recently submitted a fee study. Why was that
260:30 - 261:00 necessary? Why are fees increasing? And is the uh anticipated revenue from these increases reflected in the proposed budget? The yes, the anticipated revenue from the fee increases is anticipated in the department's proposed budget. It would ensure that we maintain full cost recovery and then we're able to reimburse the general fund for related cost as well as pay for the departments that support cannabis regulation activities within the city. Um, as this
261:00 - 261:30 body knows, the city has adopted memorandums of understanding with different labor bargaining units and to address some of the um increases due to inflation, um, city staffers did get cost of living adjustments. The last time we adjust these fees was in 2020. Um, on average, fees have or the salaries have gone up more than 10% across the board. um additional services
261:30 - 262:00 in relationship to the controller audit were added to the regulatory structure. So this is really just a catchup. Um now that we do have an administrative team, we have a dedicated fee model that will be updated on an annual basis to ensure that we stay at full cost recovery and ensure that future fee increases are not as significant as what we have proposed. Okay. And just help us understand the fees for like for an existing storefront. What's the annual fee for a new storefront retail business? What's the estimated city fees to get licensed?
262:00 - 262:30 If you want to relocate, what are the fees? What's the kind of scale that we're talking about? And hey, how does that compare to the the the the greater burden they're paying with the taxes? So, the storefront retailer annual license and inspection fee is going up approximately 28%. For our non storefront to what? What's the dollar? From 19,064 per year to
262:30 - 263:00 $24,346 per year. Okay. Um, renewal fees for businesses that are licensed and able to operate is going up from $10,954 to $19,392, which is a 77% increase. The majority of that increase was back in 2020. The department did not have a
263:00 - 263:30 compliance and inspection unit. And as part of the controllers audit from 2022, they did recommend that the department do annual inspections of licensed businesses to ensure compliance. So the new fee study does fund the annual cost of that compliance regime. Um all of these are actually part of our fee study. Um and I can provide you and your staff um the fee tables for our equity share review fee.
263:30 - 264:00 that has gone up from 1,248 to $2,000 at $2,72. That's a 66% increase. Our business um legal business entity record review went from 1,997 to 2330. So, it's only a 17% increase. Um there are different efficiencies that we have implemented over the years that have mitigated the impacts to certain fees. And then there's other things that are more labor intensive like doing compliance inspections where unfortunately um we haven't been able to
264:00 - 264:30 mitigate those increases yet. Any idea how that how those fees compare to other cities? They're right in line with other cities. Um the the big difference is um with the state fees, the state's fees are tiered based on the activity and the size of the activity. So for us, a cultivator, regardless of whether it's a specialty indoor, which can only grow up to, you know, 5,000 square feet, or a medium indoor, which goes up to 22,000
264:30 - 265:00 square feet, it's the same application fee because it's the same work at the local level. However, for compliance related issues at the state level, those fees vary by tens of thousands of dollars. Um, other jurisdictions like San Diego, they have a conditional use permit. So the fee could be as low as $8,000, it could be as high as $70,000. It really just depends on the business, the size, the scale, the zoning, and what entitlements they need to move forward. Um, for San Jose, their annual permit fees are 48,000. For Sacramento,
265:00 - 265:30 they're 20,000. Um, Riverside is almost $18,000. San Bernardino is 30,000. Modesto is 18,000. Marino Valley is 78,000. So, our $20,000 fee is at the lower end of the fee spectrum for that. Um, it does ensure cost recovery and we do do our due diligence to try to make sure that we are a streamlined and an efficient agency. Great. Thank you. Thank you,
265:30 - 266:00 Councilwoman Hernandez. Thank you. Um, in the proposed budget, your department had an administrative clerk that managed the cannabis compliant portal, a complaint portal. How does this elimination affect the department and impact operations? Um the elimination of the position will have no impact on our staffing. Um the position became vacant um over a year ago. Um we have since filled it with an as needed administrative clerk who splits their duty between triaging
266:00 - 266:30 complaints through the portal and supporting our compliance division. Um we did work with the CEO through the financial status report to move monies from our salaries general account to our salaries as needed to reflect that. um we will still have the ability to retain that individual on an as needed basis regardless of the funding source. Um the difference is um right now she triages all of the complaints that come in. Anything associated with DCR goes to DCR. Anything that's associated with unlicensed activity gets forwarded to
266:30 - 267:00 LAPD's gang and narcotics division. Um instead of forwarding that information, those complaints would live within the DCR complaint portal. um and we could work with Detective Boils and LAPD to talk about how that address could be or how that workload could be addressed on a go forward basis. Wonderful. Thank you. Um although your department did not receive additional funding for the social equity program, your department letter indicates that you will receive grant funding from the state. How do you intend to use this funding and what is the timeline to receive the funds? Um
267:00 - 267:30 thank you. We received a $3.5 million cannabis equity grant from the governor's office. Um $3.1 million of that will be for fee waivers. Um we will be providing fee application fee wavers for new applicants. We got approval from the state to also provide fee wavers for renewals which will take care of existing applicants and lenses. $350,000 or approximately $350,000 will be utilized for business licensing and compliance assistance. Um that is the
267:30 - 268:00 one-on-one coaching, the low bono pro bono programming, our learning management system and tools that we provide to social equity applicants. Um DCR only retains 1% of the grant amount to cover administrative cost associated with reporting to the grant, doing the quarterly updates, and submitting the paperwork. Thank you. Um, so I worked on Prop 64, the ballot initiative that legalized and regulated cannabis. And so I've seen the es and
268:00 - 268:30 flows, right, starting back in 1996, uh, when the first legalization of medical marijuana occurred. It's my understanding that we do have a thriving underground market and a lot of that is because of the the regulation system that we have and the taxes that we impose. Um these things are leading to this thriving underground economy particularly with our our cannabis businesses. I would
268:30 - 269:00 like a special study on what it would what the city council needs to do to update our taxes that we apply to cannabis and what is the work that we need to do to begin to fold in some of these underground uh cannabis businesses into the legal market. The Olympics are coming. The Super Bowl's coming. the all the soccer
269:00 - 269:30 is coming. People are going to come here. There's not a lot of places where cannabis is legalized and regulated safely. And in in the United States, yes, but we're going to have international travelers where stuff like this doesn't exist. So, they're going to seek this and it's an opportunity for to generate revenue. And the way that we do that is by folding more of these businesses into our system. So, I would like that special study to also include Oh, sorry. Go ahead. Sorry. to also include how can the Department of Cannabis
269:30 - 270:00 Regulation better work with and hand off some of the work it does with the small cannabis business owners to economic workforce development uh so that they can get support as small businesses through our small business centers. Um, so yeah, including those things, folding in the businesses, updating our taxes so that we can fold more people in, and then how do we how do you all partner with EWDD better so we can actually
270:00 - 270:30 provide more services to some of our small mom and pop dispensaries that we do want to thrive versus the corporations that are also coming in here. Thank you. Thank you. I have a a followup to that. If as part of that, I have a question first. Um, is there any financial penalty for illegally operating a pot shop in the city of LA? Uh, there's the Department of Cannabis regulation does not have the authority to impose any penalty or fine. However, sorry, does it require a change in city
270:30 - 271:00 law or state law? It it's just not part of the local regulatory structure or but we could amend the local regulation to impose a fee or fine or some other sort of a penalty. Yes. The um our cannabis advice law and litigation section um is working on with their peers in the city attorney's office on different types of enforcement actions the city could take.
271:00 - 271:30 Um, one of the things the city has already adopted is the $20,000 a day fine that could be imposed against um, property owners. Um, there have been some setbacks when we have tried to enforce that um, through the judicial system. So they are strategizing on ways to strengthen provisions to do to hold landlords accountable without them being able to exploit loopholes that um different court rulings have kind of opened up that are currently being
271:30 - 272:00 utilized to circumvent the intent of council holding landlords accountable for allowing unlicensed cannabis activity. Is anybody doing enforcement against illegally operating marijuana businesses well in the state? Has anyone figured this out? Do we know? I mean, I to be honest, I think LAPD and building and safety water and power do do an amazing job with the limited resources that they have, right? But assuming we could figure out full cost recovery for
272:00 - 272:30 the businesses that are operating illegally to get enforcement for businesses operating illegally. I mean, I think that enforcement's got to be part of how we bring the ones that aren't operating legally in to, as Councilwoman Hernandez said, um, into compliance, right? They're not just going to come in willingly. Um, some might. Um, so I guess if we could just add to this, uh, was it a special study? um some information on what other municipalities are doing around enforcement if anyone's doing it well
272:30 - 273:00 and then what the recommendation would be to create sort of a self-funded enforcement arm so that we could whether it's through leans on the property owner or penalties assessed against the business or both uh that we could use then to the pay for enforcement folks and also that path into compliance. Yes, Councilwoman Hernandez. I um I had a separate question. Go ahead. Thank you so much. I'd like to talk about on-site consumption. I
273:00 - 273:30 believe state law has changed around on-site consumption. I believe there has been a motion that has been presented and and and gone through the legislative process or it's in its final steps of the legislative process here in city council. What can you give us an update on where that's at? That's another opportunity to generate revenue, another opportunity to bring in those businesses. So, can you please share? Um, my office is just waiting for the city council to adopt a final motion with the instructions. Um, we have been working with the city attorney's office.
273:30 - 274:00 We have already completed our due diligence on what other jurisdictions are doing. We do have a summary of what jurisdictions do, what we think would work for the city of Los Angeles for both on-site consumption and temporary special events. and we are prepared to transmit those recommendations for council consideration. How exciting. Do you have any estimates on what those other jurisdictions have uh brought in with these additional um licenses or
274:00 - 274:30 opport businesses? Nothing will be to the scale of the city of Los Angeles. And I would meaning that we're going to generate way more. We have major events that happen within our city every single year. We have the World Cup. We have the Olympics. We have all kinds of things that happen in our city that a Modesto, a Sacramento, you know, a Santa Clarita can't compete with. So, I would prefer,
274:30 - 275:00 if I may, to defer to the CEO's office and the office of finance about any revenue that may be generated from those activities. Our proposal is to fold the temporary special events into the existing process. So either the applicant goes to the Department of Public Works or to the Department of Building and Safety, they follow the normal special event process and if it's going to have cannabis sales on site, we are part of the clearance process. They
275:00 - 275:30 route the information to us. We verify that the businesses that would be participating are in fact licensed and what their statuses are and that would be our role but otherwise keep the permitting process the same as it is for every other special event and major event that happens within the city. Great. Thank you. Which is excit. It's good to know because then that that means that it's going to be a consistent process. But I also welcome you all making any tuneups and refinements to
275:30 - 276:00 that permitting process because even now it takes a very very very long time to get permits for example to use a parking lot for special events. Right. So please I understand you want to rely on that process but update it so that we can be more efficient quicker um and uh that thank you so much chairwoman. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman Hut. Bless you. Bless you. Thank you, uh, Madame Chair. Thank you
276:00 - 276:30 for being here. Um, in my district, there have been many situations where we've worked with your department and others to close uh, legal operators that have shown that they couldn't do the work with our licensing rules. In one such instance, a dispensary was closed. And then within weeks another dispensary was open in an area that just doors away uh was targeted with nuisance
276:30 - 277:00 abatement. What budgetary or staffing support does your department require to ensure that the department will be more thoughtful when approving the the u permitting for those facilities? Um thank you for the question. So, ordinance number 188451 went into effect December 30th of 2024. Um, we standardized the reasons to deem a business premises ineligible. We
277:00 - 277:30 expanded it to not just be a unit on a parcel, but the entire parcel. Um, we did expand it for utility disconnections, padlocking, and then of course any location that was cited by the administrative citation enforcement program for unlicensed activity. Um if those amendments do not go for far enough to address your concerns, um we are proposing additional amendments to
277:30 - 278:00 municip code section 104 and we can build in um additional restrictions in the reasons to deny and we have also transmitted under council file number 20-1125-1 um proposed amendments to the city's land use regulations for commercial cannabis businesses. Um, that would be another avenue to address your um your district's concerns as well as the concerns of other council members. Who's who's implementing uh everything that you just said like
278:00 - 278:30 the land use, the the utilities? Who's who's doing that work? Because you you don't have um any enforcement. Uh yeah, we don't have any enforcement, but we do have a licensing map on our website. So on a regular basis, we get um data from the state on sensitive uses and other city agencies. Um we get enforcement data that comes into our complaint um or compliance division that we upload to
278:30 - 279:00 identify locations that may be considered scorched earth where we would not be able to issue a license. Um, you know, if a business is looking to go to that parcel or location, um, we do work with the agency that cited them for that enforcement major uh, measure to find out when, how long it's been, what the issue was, how it was resolved. But that was not my experience, right? Because there was a one place two doors down
279:00 - 279:30 from an illegal place. The illegal place got shut down through Plum and then weeks later the old place is open with cannabis again and it and then it closed down again and opened most recently in the last few weeks. It so that's why I'm trying to understand what the enforcement is. I I get what you're saying that you have policies in place which I appreciate but what I I'm not
279:30 - 280:00 seeing is action. So I need to understand how we can improve that. Yeah. So if if the if a business had been shut down for unlicensed cannabis or being a nuisance property. Yeah. New that that would make that parcel no longer viable. Um, what I heard you say is a business applied a few doors down. So if if the intent is to create a radius and I
280:00 - 280:30 believe you introduced a motion for another city department to investigate the ability to, you know, have us consider nuisance properties and a radius around um those nuisance properties. That would be something that we would have discussed as part of the land use policy amendments before the government operations committee and understanding some of the the unique challenges your district has faced. Um there are things that can be worked into that policy to address those issues.
280:30 - 281:00 Understand I I have more questions. Um, it's my understanding that we charge a greater fee for social equity licensing than we do for non-social equity licensing. Can you explain that to me? Yeah, municipal section 10420 um identifies requirements that social equity businesses have to comply with. Um, they have more rigid ownership requirements. We have to look at their operating agreements um and ensure that
281:00 - 281:30 the social equity applicant has the requisite ownership stake in the entity. They have the con commensurate voting rights. Um the code does give them the right of first refusal to um executive level positions within the entity. So there's additional work that goes into reviewing those applications. To mitigate that cost, we created a legal business entity record. So, we only charge that fee once as opposed to charging it for every application. Um, but there are additional services that
281:30 - 282:00 and things that we have to do when reviewing a social equity application. And because we're full cost recovery, it necessitates that um we charge the additional fee. Thankfully, a lot of the fees that we do assess to social equity applicants um do get waved either through the local jurisdiction assistance grant or through the cannabis equity grant. So they may pay a little bit more in one area, but they're receiving more savings than a general applicant would get because they're a social equity applicant and we can wave
282:00 - 282:30 other fees for them. In this budget, DCR has been um budgeted $10 million to pay back the state of California for our mishandling of a state grant. That funding would have saved 88 jobs from layoffs. What happened with respect to the state grant and what corrective measures has the department taken so that this will never happen again? I will do my best to address this.
282:30 - 283:00 So um the department of cannabis regulation got the local jurisdiction assistance grant. Um as part of that grant we became the lead agency for environmental review under the California Environmental Quality Act. The original municipal assumed that the city would be the second mover. So, we had to work with this body to amend local law to have us be the first mover to do the review and move it forward.
283:00 - 283:30 And then we shifted additional activities outside of that review process. To assist us in that, um, positions were added to the office of the city attorney. We had to rework all of our environmental review documents and then we were deferring annual license application fees while we negotiated with the state on the amended process. The state has not directed the city to return $10 million yet. There
283:30 - 284:00 were things that were part of this transition that may be deemed ineligible. The grant reporting period ended March 31st, 2025. The state extended the period of time for jurisdictions to submit supplemental documents to demonstrate that they expended the monies in accordance with the grant. Um the state also has given us the ability if they do have questions to request a further extension to provide clarifying data. Um so any return of eljag money
284:00 - 284:30 will not happen in the current fiscal year. Um I did attend the financial status report meeting before this committee for the midyear where we did indicate that we may be asked to return money. Um that will not occur this year. Um we have not been asked to incur any money. We did have a line item in our schedule that can be removed as a technical amendment. Um because we are not getting any monies this year. The
284:30 - 285:00 $10 million was a ceiling which represented the maximum risk I thought we may have in having to return money. It is not a defined number yet. Oh okay. Um we are working closely with the state. Um when we were going through grant amendment negotiations we had transitioned zero applicants from provisional lensure to annual lensure. You know, at this point, over 700 businesses have been transitioned,
285:00 - 285:30 covering over a thousand state activities. So, I think that there is now performance behind our usage of money. And I look forward to working with Nicole Elliot, who heads up the Department of Cannabis Control and her staff on making sure that we submit the necessary documents to show that we expended those funds in compliance with the grant agreement and that we met the intent of the grant program. And you know, anything I said in before where it was interpreted that the money was
285:30 - 286:00 needed now, um, that has shifted and I apologize for many confusion I may have, um, contributed to. I just have two more questions, Madam Chair. Does, uh, DCR uh, h have you implemented the 2022 controllers audit recommendations? Uh the 2022 controller audit had four different um recommendation sections. I believe one was associated with enforcement, one
286:00 - 286:30 was regulatory structure and compliance, one was taxation and one was recommendations for finance. For the um recommendations related to DCR for compliance and regulatory um we have created a compliance program. um positions were created within our department for that function. Um we have created inspection fees to recover the cost of those compliance inspections and our 2025 fee study does ensure that those services are set at full cost
286:30 - 287:00 recovery. Um and we are planning to do annual inspections um starting this calendar year. So to my knowledge we have implemented all of the recommendations under DCR's purview. Thank you. Um, next question is, does DCR support the concept of tax delinquency amnesty for licensed cannibis businesses? I mean, the the office of finance has
287:00 - 287:30 administered amnesty programs in the past where um businesses that come back into compliance may have penalty fees that are waved. Um, you know, to the extent that those penalty fees are included in the budget, any amnesty program may have a budgetary impact. Um, but I know our cannabis businesses are struggling. So, any type of relief that they could get um would be a benefit to them. Um, since DCR does not rely upon the general fund to fund our operations,
287:30 - 288:00 any impact that a tax amnesty program would be felt by departments other than DCR. And I know that they're struggling. So I would defer to other policy makers on what those impacts are and the CEO and the finance for what those numbers would be. But in general I do support amnesty for businesses citywide. Thank you for that answer. Um, has that been a conversation that you in your
288:00 - 288:30 department have had uh amongst yourself is socializing the idea um within our department because it's outside of our purview. We have not talked about tax amnesty programs. The the concept of good standing um DCR can deny an application or a renewal license if a business is not in good standing. Mhm. Um there are over 700 businesses that are currently not considered in good standing. Our current
288:30 - 289:00 definition is zero tolerance. So a business that owes a dollar in back taxes is going to be treated the same as a business that owes $13 million in back taxes. From a policy perspective, those two things are not the same. Um we have not denied anybody due to tax delinquencies. We are proposing an amendment to the definition of good standing. You have not denied anyone a renewal. Denied what? We have not denied
289:00 - 289:30 anybody a license renewal due to their tax delinquencies. Um we are submitting a proposal to government operations committee to amend the definition of good standing to try to create a pathway to walk our licensed businesses back into tax compliance so that we don't see a you know a huge drop off of businesses. Um, from the information that I've reviewed from finance, once a business
289:30 - 290:00 has been non-compliant for two years, less than 18% of those businesses ever return to tax compliance. So, this is an issue that the city does of course have to address. Um, we want to have a robust local market. Um, the council is considering policies to create new revenue avenues for these businesses. Um, and there can be a pathway to tie all of those different policy proposals together so that it would be beneficial to the general fund and we will be
290:00 - 290:30 beneficial to the cannabis businesses that this department serves. I appreciate that. I just I wanted you to jot this down real fast. This is a a business that was is in my district 4050 Krenshaw. Um, this is the business that was open and then the license should have been revoked and then a a reissue of a temporary license at the same location in a two-month span that was
290:30 - 291:00 just doors away from an a place that was selling illegally and was uh and was closed down. So, do I like for you to look at that again and make a determination on its status because it is problematic. I I commit to you that I will work with your staff to identify what is going on here and then review the existing law and policies um to
291:00 - 291:30 identify whether or not the current code addresses your concerns or whether or not additional amendments need to be proposed. Thank you. Then my last thing is I'd like to request a budget memo on funding opportunities with the Department of Cannabis Regulation, such as the Cannabis Regulation Trust Fund to have street services investigators conduct inspections on behalf of DCR at legal businesses in order to avoid layoffs in the street service side. This
291:30 - 292:00 should include looking at fines on legal cannabis businesses as a way of helping to cover uh staff costs. Thank you. That's all, Madam Chair. Thank you. Okay. Anybody else? Council member Blumenfield. Yeah. One more uh budget memo to instruct the CEO uh to present a DCR budget of what it would look like that does not assume the DCR fee study increases. The report should consider
292:00 - 292:30 budget balancing exercises that other departments were instructed to conduct, such as deleting vacancies. The report should also recommend policy changes that may be needed to occur with this alternative budget that would ensure the revenue from cannabis excise tax is not interrupted. Okay. Okay. Um, thank you very much. My pleasure. Thank you. Appreciate it very
292:30 - 293:00 much. All right, team. We're down to the last department, Department of the Day, Department on Disability. I'm going to ask all of us to try and look through our questions and memos and tailor that a little bit. You can of course ignore me, but I would appreciate I said asking folks to keep this next
293:00 - 293:30 one a little shorter. Party grandpar's already starting. There's a party next door. Take a chair there. Yeah. Go type it out now. All right. Welcome. Please introduce yourselves and your team. Good evening, Madam Chair and committee members. I'm Steven Simon, executive director of the department on disability
293:30 - 294:00 for the city of Los Angeles. I'm joined by Ian Thompson, my budget director and director of my admin division, Matan Cotch, the city's ADA compliance officer and uh director of our disability access services division, and Ricky Rosales, the city aids coordinator and director of our AIDS division. A few brief comments and highlights uh running us forward. Of course, we are aware of uh the challenging budget uh that you're all facing and the work you're doing to that
294:00 - 294:30 direction. Um, we want to highlight that um, our focus is on the fact that the budget gap is fueled in great part by skyrocketing liability claims. Which is why as you you consider the department on disabilities budget, we ask you to begin by recognizing that the department is primarily a compliance department, a liability prevention department. Um, we're a department that is often held accountable for overseeing ADA compliance for all city programs, services, and facilities with the in no enforcement power to ensure that
294:30 - 295:00 compliance. A department that provides community engagement, technical expertise, and training that continuously shields the city from the majority of ADA litigation risk. From from the convention center to websites, sign language interpreters to access to city hall. We work with partnership of our city departments for their compliance. And while we do so, we also do provide critical, direct, and often legally mandated, and at times life-saving services to people with disabilities, their families, and
295:00 - 295:30 caregivers. That shield the city relies on is being dismantled by the current proposed budget. No other department has been asked for a higher percentage of regular position eliminations than the 40% we are faced with. Um, this represents an insurmountable barrier to the city coming into compliance with federal and state law and an outright roadblock to people with disabilities participating in public and civic life in Los Angeles. My department makes up 03% of the city's budget and just as the World Cup, Olympic and Parolympic games
295:30 - 296:00 increase our need for the work exponentially, uh, it is not being budgeted for. Um, briefly, uh, the ADA self-evaluation and transition plan. Um, we're trying to get that, uh, you know, just completed as a roadmap to a greater compliance, um, document remediation and website compliance, the latter of which we believe is a massive threat to the city's risk profile because new ADA regulations for web and mobile app accessibility go into effect 51 weeks from today. And we are not prepared um,
296:00 - 296:30 to defend the city against that liability by becoming compliant. We're currently faced also with a 45% cut to the city's AIDS programs, a program which already manages the types of services you're trying to build out in street team programs and a program whose services are critical for Angelinos as the federal administration slashes HIV and AIDS funding to the state and county. We do not want Los Angeles to be on the wrong side of history as AIDS comes back like measles and polio in other parts of the country, reversing the work we've done for 30 years. In our
296:30 - 297:00 budget letter, we provide solutions to offset the cost of as many positions slated for elimination as possible, mostly utilizing a relatively small amount of opioid settlement funds. This would fund work that fits squarely within the eligibility criteria set forth by the settlement fund, and the work supports the mayor and council's efforts to address the needs of some of our most difficult to reach unhoused neighbors. I'd love to offer other offsets from our department budget, but disability has been cut to a point that I've unfortunately got nothing else to
297:00 - 297:30 give in that space. So, we thank you for your time and consideration and hopefully can answer any questions here or report back that you may need. Thank you very much. I'm going to ask Councilwoman Hernandez to get us started. Thank you, Chairwoman. Um, thank you, Stephen, and uh the DoD team for joining us today. Your department has played a critical role in improving the quality of life for persons with disabilities. Through your commitment to ADA compliance and the wide range of direct services you provide, DoD has helped set a standard of support for our
297:30 - 298:00 city. I also want to recognize the life-changing efforts of the AIDS coordinator's office. Your work in slowing the transmission of HIV AIDS and preventing overdose related deaths is commendable. care first approaches are important to me and so I want to thank you for helping our unhoused neighbors by connecting them to health and substance treatment services. I had a couple questions around operations and core services, contractual services, um, and world events. But, um, before I get there, I want to just start off with
298:00 - 298:30 the budget memo, one budget memo and one special study. Um, I would like to request that the CEO report back in consultation with DoD to effectuate the recommendations in their letter to use qualifying opioid settlement trust funds for the AIDS coordinator's office programs and reappropriate the general fund savings to pay for the restoration of the of the filled positions proposed for elimination. That's my budget memo request. And um I have a special study that I would like uh I I would like to
298:30 - 299:00 request a report back from DoD through a special study on all the resources and staffing needs necessary to prepare for the 2026 World Cup and 2028 Olympic and Parolympic Games. Um and so I want to run through a few questions, but I want to get that through first. With the current budget proposal, what are the overall impacts you anticipate to the city and constituents you serve? Uh while thinking broadly across the department on disability, including the
299:00 - 299:30 AIDS coordinator's office, um my biggest concerns are around um the difficulty being responsive to city departments and assessing their uh and remedying their accessibility barriers. Um we staff two seats in the emergency operations center. I don't know if people all know that. Um and just covering that in emergencies like the fire were extremely taxing on our staff and we will not have the staff to be able to cover those seats fully as needed. we would eliminate uh which Stephen I want to point out that a lot of the folks that we lost in the fires both in Aladina and
299:30 - 300:00 Palisades were persons with disabilities and so I'm sure the load that y'all had to carry both in the response to that but moving forward was was a lot. Absolutely. And I think the city did a lot of really good things to support people with disabilities in that space during that struggle. Um but we we need to make sure those seats are filled and we're able to get people the resources they need uh during emergencies. Um we would certainly reduce the number of trainings to city staff and vendors that we provide. We do a lot of that work on accessible communications uh from there to housing accessibility as well and and
300:00 - 300:30 really are worried that the um the amount of liability for um accessibility related lawsuits would would go up significantly. Those are my primary concerns in a broader DoD piece. I don't know if Ricky uh Rosales wants to add anything for the AIDS coordinator's office about the loss of funding and the impact. Yeah. and if that will impact any grants that we received um state, county or federal, please. Sure. Thank you very much, Ricky Rosales, uh AIDS coordinator's office. Um we currently don't receive any uh
300:30 - 301:00 grants for for the programs that we provide. We are uh on a constant lookout for those those types of grants. We are uh often not eligible to apply for them as a municipality because we are not a health department. Um, a lot of times what we do is is we'll push it to the providers and we'll give them the the the help that they would need to apply for these funds themselves. Um, in terms of of what it would mean uh for for the
301:00 - 301:30 office itself, um, essentially we'd need to cut out eight of the 14 contracts that we have uh with with providers out there. That is both in harm reduction services and in uh core HIV prevention services like HIV testing. And how does that compare to like at the federal level we're seeing all the cuts right that are happening correct? So sorry. Go ahead. Sorry. I'm sorry. Uh so right now the the county is
301:30 - 302:00 still trying to figure out what's going to happen with with the funding from the federal government. So my understanding is that there's been very little communication from the federal government to the county with their with all the grants that they have for HIV prevention and for their care services. What they are what they are getting is stuff that we're seeing in the news. Essentially um that that is uh hundreds
302:00 - 302:30 of millions of dollars that that come for these types of services in in the county of Los Angeles, which of course includes the city. uh the majority of those of those services are within the city because this is the population center in the county. So uh the impact would be I can't even imagine how how bad it would be. Great. Thank you for that. Um and I want you to give me like real life examples for this next one. Okay.
302:30 - 303:00 What would it mean to reduce the contractual services line item for DoD's AIDS coordinator's office by 520,000? stats. So, so I'll I'll approach it by by giving you a few stats. So, so it'll mean around 8,000 fewer HIV tests. Um 3,500 fewer people trained on overdose overdose prevention, about 3,000 uh overdoses that we will not be able to reverse. Um we would we would reach
303:00 - 303:30 maybe 17,000 fewer uh encounters with unhoused individuals out there. Um and and it goes on and on with with with uh statistics. Great. Thank you. So it sounds like cutting these contractual services could lead to more transmission of communicable diseases and also more people dying um from prevent from preventable things um that you all work on. Okay. Correct.
303:30 - 304:00 Um, what work is DoD doing today that is funded by the general fund that could be paid for by opioid settlement funds instead? And again, for for folks that may not know, these opioid settlement dollars we received as a jurisdiction from lawsuits uh against major corporations that essentially facilitated the access to opioids in our communities. Um, and we are a jurisdiction that receives these settlement dollars and there's a criteria for how they are spent. Um, how they could be spent, but can you talk a
304:00 - 304:30 little bit about what my question? Thank you. Yeah. Um, I'll I'll jump in first and Ricky may have to jump in as well. I mean, right now, our our primary proposal is to try and essentially swap out um general funds that are um used by the AIDS coordinator's office to provide out out to community to provide all this range of services that includes everything Ricky talked about as well as broad HIV services for um you know, communities of color, specific programs specific to women, transgender folk, and
304:30 - 305:00 so on. Um um all of that could be swapped out quite frankly uh and save general fund that could help me save positions. We're talking it was $1.2 million. It got cut to 1.1 and now we're talking about cutting another potential 520,000 out. So all of that could quite frankly be backfilled and the additional general fund savings could be used to not only protect positions in the AIDS coordinator's office which would probably be two management analysts if not possibly even three. Um and then
305:00 - 305:30 part of some of Ricky's salary because he spends a lot of time on that work and even part of their admin uh assistant. Um the general fund savings could also save two other um mas in my office. Those mas could be various people, but I tend to have one person in my office and one person really across the city that are experts in various space. So, the one person who's the city's INR um intake and referral um specialist for people with disabilities, that's an MA that we could possibly lose. The one
305:30 - 306:00 person that's the expert on remediating documents and getting those proper documents and doing the training so um city websites are accessible, those documents are accessible. That one person we could possibly lose. um our support for our commission on disability. The one person that does that we could possibly lose. The two people that work on the small but vital piece we have in the Willlet settlement, the sidewalk settlement, we actually vet the the applicants for for their eligibility. That's our role. Um that
306:00 - 306:30 would not be happening if we lost those people. And all of those are potential um positions we are likely to lose under the current budget. Thank you so much. And my final question, um, and that's why I put in that budget memo because I think we should be using some of those opioid settlement dollars to fund some of the work y'all do. Um, but my last question is around the games. What role does DoD need to play to ensure the city is prepared for the World Cup and the Olympic and Parolympic
306:30 - 307:00 Games? I wish I had a quick answer to that. Um the bottom line I would argue is that the city has the same you know ADA obligations for the games as it does in general. All our services, programs and facilities need to be accessible for the most part within the security fence around the venues. LA28 is primarily responsible for that. Outside of that security fence, the city of Los Angeles is responsible for that. As we're trying to build that partnership and work with city departments broadly, the amount of
307:00 - 307:30 work on sidewalks, on on ticketing, on paths of travel, on wayfinding that we're going to be responsible for is rather extraordinary. I don't have a much more detailed answer because we haven't had the resources to even plan that out. We have done um some comparisons with both Paris and London. We have a lot of best practices we're collecting. We are sitting on as many of the committees and planning groups as we we feel we can at the moment and we are
307:30 - 308:00 strongly uh helping to advise uh Mr. Koyan and his team wherever we can. We've also convened a um uh what we actually call it the major event accessibility advisory committee that is a lot of community experts um from parolympians to people who run the sports space to people who understand the physical accessibility to people who understand how much we're going to have to do for the workforce and volunteer force around accessibility. All those are elements that play into this work. I literally have nobody that is funded to
308:00 - 308:30 do that work. We're trying to do it with my AGM and and and Matan who's the ADA compliance officer. Um we have recommended well we support a budget ask that um our colleagues over at uh BOE put in engineering um to actually have a full-time person that would work with Mr. Kakoran's team purely on accessibility. We strongly support that. Uh they have a person in mind um who is great and who does that kind of work for the city now. Um, yeah. So, we also put in and ask
308:30 - 309:00 broadly for the games for funding for our department because we also have to expand, for example, sign language interpreting. There literally are not enough interpreters with the vendors we have to actually be able to manage a full day of the games at any given time. We're going to have to expand dramatically the number of vendors we work with and and actually bring in external uh interpreters. Bring in interpreters who speak Spanish and English and American Sign Language. um and other languages as well. So, the
309:00 - 309:30 complexity is is pretty extraordinary. I'm sorry. And one more footnote. I know I talked too much. You want to go home? Um the other thing we miss is what is a venue? It's not just where a sporting event is happening in a stadium. A venue is the hundreds of sites across 15 council districts where games related events will occur. They all have to be just as accessible. Wonderful. Thank you so much. Um, I'd like a a special study, please, for you all to report back on the resources you all will need, um, both staff and
309:30 - 310:00 additional resources to be able to comply with ADA uh, laws and regulations for these large scale events that are approaching our city, please. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Chairwoman. And as a followup, whether or not that would be recoverable by from LA28, from LA 28, right? For work specifically done on behalf of the Olympics in preparation for the
310:00 - 310:30 Olympics. Just a question. Um, okay. Who's next? Yep. Considering that there's already resources coming down, could I switch that could could I switch that out to be a budget memo instead of a special study? Sure. Okay. Thank you. Okay. All right. Questions? Tough. Council member Blumenfield, I just want to make sure the um this was covered in your report back, but to report back on the utilization of
310:30 - 311:00 opioid settlement dollars to offset the general fund for one management analyst proposed for elimination to work exclusively on programs eligible for opioid settlement funds just to have that as a report back which I think may be covered in what she said but it may not. So we have that. And I just have one question. Uh, so the letter states that compliance with the ADA final rule on web and web mobile app accessibility will become enforceable in April of 26. Does the proposed budget provide sufficient staff for the department to
311:00 - 311:30 ensure the city's compliance with the rule by the upcoming deadline? Uh, no ma'am, it does not. There is actually no funding specific to that. Um we've been working directly with ITA and myself um uh and Ted, their their AGM, sorry, their GM um put out a memo to all the other general managers um with a with with guidance about how to uh become compliant. um all sorts of resources in place noting that each department has its own independent responsibility to be
311:30 - 312:00 compliant but um both neither I nor ITA have actual staffing that is dedicated to that work and it's a matter of scale it's just this simple every single city website needs to be accessible um we know the guidance it's clear I mean there's there's there very clear technical rules that a lot of city employees should be able to implement but we have to u really get moving on that work. Neither of us have staff for that and I would be glad to um put together a package of things staff we
312:00 - 312:30 could use and also work with ITA on staff they u believe are appropriate. Okay. Um before we get there, will the city be liable for fines or penalties if it's not in compliance by the deadline? Yes. Two things. The ADA um it's a blessing and curse is either enforced by generally in this case the department of justice at the federal level uh which is somewhat in flux I imagine at the moment but also primarily enforced by independent lawsuits so any person with disability literally seeking information um you know as a potential litigant and
312:30 - 313:00 we just want to avoid that. We work closely with communities so people don't tend to be over latigious in that space but I think for us to show a good faith effort that the city is moving there requires a great deal of work. Thank you. So along those lines I'd like to ask for a special study um request that you outline the staffing needs of your department and ITA to meet this deadline. Uh and this may have to be addressed in the next fiscal year. Um but ask that you plan for that now. Understood. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Anyone else questions, comments, memos?
313:00 - 313:30 Oh, Council Member McCoscer, thank you so much. It's such important work. But I wonder when we build something new, when we build a physical structure new, generally we do a pretty good job of making sure it's accessible generally. and and I know you're there to help and to make sure and to but why why is it that when we we put up uh a website or put out information electronically what why is it so
313:30 - 314:00 difficult for us to make sure that everything we put up new complies with the st the current standards what is that it's a great question it's almost inadvertently a trick question and here's what I mean by that sir um you know for example when you you receal a road even so in public right ofway um uh and and you've just you've redone this beautiful you know pavement well the new curb ramps need to be upgraded. There are certain rules that apply and are
314:00 - 314:30 clear requirements to happen along the way. And if that sort of side accessibility doesn't happen um then then basically the street is is out of compliance. Um, and what we'll hear from some of my colleagues is that they're not sort of independently funded to do that that that work that's sometimes considered peripheral. So, a lot of times things are getting built and we're not actually fulfilling the legal mandate of what's adjacent to it. For example, um, I agree with you that generally when things are built new, they are um, accessible, but there are
314:30 - 315:00 gaps. So, exactly the way you said it, there are gaps. We need to be very mindful of that. We've worked a lot with um, LAX, for example. I know it's proprietary and they've generally done a lot of good work in that space. They're doing their own self-evaluation and transition plan. Um, but along the way we work with their compliance folks because a lot of new construction, unless there's a person on site that's a certified access specialist, still manages to not be in full compliance. And it does happen with some regularity. And it's much more expensive to go back and remediate that problem than to build
315:00 - 315:30 it right in the first place. Do you have any fee for service when you're doing something at DWP or airport or harbor? We kind of love these questions, but um No, no, we generally don't. The one time we've done it is we were trying several years ago to decentralize sign language interpreting. It's a series of contracts. Um we're actually talking now, we've been working with the city clerk about um working with their contracts and decentralizing there. And so for PD for example, LAPD was the one department that actually um would sort
315:30 - 316:00 of reimburse our department for their use of those contracts. Well, I would say that there's a lot of there's a lot of money to be had in the public and private sector for doing project management. Project managers are critically important pieces of all projects. And it would make sense that there would be a fee for service that could be paid to for your expertise and making sure that projects at especially at the airport and the department of
316:00 - 316:30 water and power and harbor and other enterprise funds should be able to or should be required uh to pay for to make sure we're avoiding liabilities. And I think that that might be a model that we could look at for your department to make sure that this significant expertise is not just coming in after the fact to fix problems, but proactively solving problems before we get to them. So I would ask for a budget memo on the No, maybe it's a special study. A special study on a fee for service
316:30 - 317:00 program for disability to make sure that physical improvements and possibly also these um electronic construction projects which are websites are a fee for service to make sure that we are in compliance. It's a riskmanagement, you know, proactive risk management and it is also um, you know, a valuable service that you could provide to departments and be a service department to other departments in the city. Thank you.
317:00 - 317:30 Thank you. All right. Thank you very much. Really grateful for your time and all your work. Um, this was our last department presentation for the day. No. Yeah. Go back to the first. Oh, I'm sorry. What happened? No, no. I'd like to council member Bloomingfield has a a non
317:30 - 318:00 Yeah, before we recess, I have Before we recess. Yes. Okay, great. Go ahead. Um just because we might be so close to 300 memos, we want to make sure that we get above that or uh I want to ask for one additional report back. U not related to this department. The city of Los Angeles is currently undertaking an overhaul of its capital projects planning via mayor Bass's executive directive 9. Embedded in this directive is a goal for the city to create the first comprehensive cross-dep departmental capital improvement plan. this or SIP. The SIP
318:00 - 318:30 will help us efficiently address our infrastructure needs by coordinating investments and reducing costs, allowing us to work through a growing maintenance and capital backlog. A staff augmentation approach with the consultant teams is under consideration as a means to more quickly develop a CIP. I'd like to request a budget memo on what options are available to fund this effort via a combination of special funds at the city and via proprietary departments that engage in long range capital planning like DWP
318:30 - 319:00 from the mayor. All right. Um any edits to earlier memos? Okay. Also, regarding memos, we're on track to request 300 or more of them. Uh, this is uh untenable to both write and to read. Uh, which those new to this body will discover on Monday morning or yeah, no, on was it Thursday.
319:00 - 319:30 Um, I know we're all going to be working over the weekend. ask that members please take a look at the memo list and prioritize which memos you'd like to get out first and foremost so the departments in the CAO know which we want released ASAP because it's kind of on a rolling basis. That's not to say we don't expect and hope to see the first few memos come through this weekend, but uh we're going to run through our lists first thing on Monday. Thank you all for a productive week. will reconvene on Monday, May 5th
319:30 - 320:00 at 10 a.m. 10 10 in the morning and we will hear from the following departments. Airport, city clerk, animal services, zoo, cultural affairs, el pueblo, library, city tourism, neighborhood empowerment, civil and human rights and equity, Los Angeles city employees retirement system, Los Angeles fire and police pensions. Until then, may the fourth be
320:00 - 320:30 with you. This meeting is now in recess. [Music]
320:30 - 321:00 Heat. Hey, heat. Hey, heat. [Music]