HomeMy WebLinkAbout2016-02-02 Finance Committee Summary MinutesRegular Meeting
Tuesday, February 2, 2016
Chairperson Filseth called the meeting to order at 7:00 P.M. in the Community Meeting Room, 250 Hamilton Avenue, Palo Alto, California.
Present: Filseth (Chair), Holman, Schmid, Wolbach
Absent:
Oral Communications
Chair Filseth: Thank you very much. Welcome to the first meeting of the Finance Committee in 2016. The first Item on the Agenda is Oral Communications and members of the public may
speak to any Item not on the Agenda.
Jessica Brettle, Assistant City Clerk: (inaudible).
Agenda Items
1. Recommendation to City Council to Accept the Cost of Services Study for Planning Fees and Adopt a Schedule for Implementation of Fee Increases and Adjustments.
Chair Filseth: In that case we will proceed to Action Item 1, Recommendation to City Council to Accept the Cost of Services Study for Planning Fees and adopt a Schedule for Implementation
of Fee Increases and Adjustments. The procedure is, if I will get this right, the Staff will present and then we will have Oral Communications from the public and then we will have
questions and comments and Motions from the Committee (Finance Committee). Is that right? Very good.
Hillary Gitelman, Director of Planning and Community Environment: I have the A Team here, Sherry, John, Kara from the City Attorney’s office. We are all here to answer questions on
the proposal before you, which is to address the user fees that we charge for planning activities. So Sherry has a brief presentation and then all the rest of us are available to answer
questions.
Sherry Nikzat, Senior Management Analyst for Planning and Community Environment: Chair Filseth, members of the Committee, my name is Sherry Nikzat. I am Senior Management Analyst for
the Planning and Community Environment Department. Tonight we are coming to you with our Cost of Services Study. Staff is asking me to review the Cost of Services Study and recommend
that the City Council adopt a schedule for Fee Increases and Adjustments. In 2013 the City undertook a comprehensive Cost of Services Study due to the complexity of Planning and Development
Fees and the anticipated split at that time of the Planning Department into Planning and Development Services. Planning Fees were not part of that final Study. Fees for services or
User Fees are charged when providing a service from which one or more individuals benefit. A key objective of this Study was to determine the cost of providing these services. It has
been at least five years since the last user fee was done for Planning Fees. The department brought in a consultant to review our current fees and analyze the cost of providing these
planning services. Another objective was to analyze fees consistent with City’s adopted Cost Recovery Policy. Council adopted a Cost Recovery Policy last year, establishing high, medium
and low categories of recovery, and based on that policy, planning activities generally fall within the group or category for high level of cost recovery. The Study identified cost
of providing service, but it is up to the Council to determine if they wish to set fees at full cost recovery or something less. Fees cannot be set to exceed the cost of services and
one fee cannot be increased beyond the cost of service to make up for another one that you wish to set at a lower cost; however, whether or not the Council wishes to set the fees at
a lower rate or whether to delay Cost Recovery is a Policy decision left to Council. The Study also looked at the department’s fee structure with an eye to recommend two types of fees
consistent with current work load and to make them simpler where possible. The two types we currently have in place and I will talk about that in just a minute. Once costs were determined,
Staff’s objective was to recommend any fee changes and suggest implementation approaches. The Study identified the amount of time it takes for Staff to perform directly-related tasks.
For Staff time, productive time was computed for each position, removing unproductive hours, what are considered unproductive hours of sick leave, vacation, training and the like.
The Study also identified operational costs like our on-call consultants. I think you are familiar with our on-call consultants, and identified indirect costs, such as the cost of managers
and support Staff as well as City-wide overhead for the Central Servicing Departments like Administrative Services Department (ASD), City Manager and the like. The result is the suggested
fee updates and updated hourly Staff rates. Fees for services in the Planning Department are structured in two ways: Flat Fees and Deposit-based Fees. Flat Fees cover the cost of
providing services for those activities where the average amount of processing time and effort can be reasonably determined. Deposit-based Fees are taken when Staff time is expected
to vary widely, as it does with some of the more complex activities. A deposit amount listed in the Municipal Fee Schedule is collected at the start of the activity and then costs to
deliver those services are drawn down against the deposit. Staff recommends right sizing both Flat Fees and Deposit-based Fees and updating hourly Staff rates applied to deposits.
Staff also recommends modifying the structure of some of the fees to streamline them and be consistent with the way services are delivered; in other words, the Flat Fees or Deposit-based
Fees. For fees that are increasing, Staff recommends phasing in any increases over two years due to the magnitude of the changes. The first phase would be effective fiscal year (FY)
2017 and the second phase in fiscal year 2018, bringing fees to full cost recovery. Exceptions to the phasing are the wireless fees and any fees that may have gone down. Upon the Finance
Committee’s recommendation, Staff will develop an Ordinance, provide notice to interested parties and notice of schedule of public meeting for approval of the changes. In accordance
with State law, once Council has approved changes, they will go into effect no sooner than 60 days. In this case, Staff recommends that they become effective fiscal 2017, and that they
are included in the fiscal year 2017 Municipal Fee Schedule. The consultants here with us tonight, Staff and the consultants will be happy to address any questions. Thank you.
Chair Filseth: So we will now take comments, communications from the public. We have one speaker, Mr. McFall.
Jim McFall: Yes. I’m Jim McFall, a practicing architect in Palo Alto. I have lived and worked here for over 30 years. I don’t think most of you know me. I have been out of circulation
as far as the City goes for a while, but I have been both a member of the Architectural Review Board (ARB) and the Historic Resources Board (HRB). A few comments on the Cost of Services
Study and proposed fee increases. As you know, the Study looked at Staff costs for various planning services then compared those to costs to the associated fees charged for these planning
services, thus showing where shortfalls occur and suggesting where to increase fees to cover the costs of those services, in order to maximize cost recovery. It makes sense, but I think
there is a step that has been left out of this process. It is a review of the Cost of Services. Has any review of those Staff time expenses been undertaken? Was there any analysis
of Staff time spent on specific planning services? Before moving forward on increasing costs, excuse me, on increasing fees, shouldn’t we take a look at the Staff costs to make sure
they are reasonable and appropriate? Doesn’t it make sense to consider ways to facilitate planning services in a more efficient manner before you go ahead and increase fees? Some of
the proposed fee increases are significant, more than double the fee for a minor ARB review, increasing the Planning Fees for a second-story addition by 70 percent, that’s $3,000 of
an increase. This is significant money and not everyone who does a project in Palo Alto works for Facebook or Google. The Development Center went through an extensive process of self-examination,
review of processes and training in order to maximize efficiencies and better serve the public. I, and from others I have talked to, think that’s been a big success. Why hasn’t the
Planning Department undertaken a similar process? When the City is considering raising Planning Fees considerably, shouldn’t we make certain that the costs upon which those proposed
fees are based are justified and reasonable? Thanks very much.
Chair Filseth: Thank you. With that we are open for questions and comments from the Committee.
Council Member Holman: Can I ask a question, not a procedure question. Are these mics hot?
Chair Filseth: I think so. They are always hot.
Council Member Holman: They are live. And then, what are we doing about mics over here? I take it you are a consultant. Would it be reasonable to have a consultant sitting at the
table?
Chair Filseth: Unfortunately, there are only a couple of mics that are live at the table so the gentleman will have to go to that mic or we move out.
Lalo Perez, Chief Financial Officer and Director of Administrative Services: And then we will share the mic between the three of us.
Council Member Holman: Okay. Thank you. Maybe we can fix that.
Council Member Schmid: Let’s see. Let me just get my bearings, asking a couple of general questions. These are Planning Department Fees we are talking about?
Ms. Nikzat: Correct.
Council Member Schmid: Although the activities that take place seem to include a lot from the general Staff, legal, buildings, the Development Center and so on, so there is a lot of
bearing activities. These are Planning Fees, and then there are separate studies going on for the Development Center. Their fee, I assume are among these fees and would be the same.
Alright, if you could just give me a sense of what we are doing tonight.
Ms. Nikzat: Well the fees we are looking at tonight are definitely Planning Fees and as you mentioned, there are times when there is a planning activity that other departments need
to participate in as well and review and look at plans.
Council Member Schmid: Well, none of these activities are in the Development Center, are they?
Ms. Nikzat: These are specifically planning activities. These are the activities that are conducted by …
Council Member Schmid: If a resident wanted to do one of these they would walk into the Development Center, isn’t that right?
Ms. Gitelman: The fees that we are talking about this evening are specific to the Planning Department and planning entitlements, so they are things like ARB reviews. You apply at the
Planning Department. This does not include building permits, encroachment permits, things that you would apply for at the Development Center. That is going to be a separate Fee Study.
Council Member Schmid: Initial Review (IR)?
Ms. Gitelman: IR’s you apply for at the Planning Department. It is a planning entitlement. So the way the Development Center and the Planning Department are split, we think of the
Development Center’s application processing as ministerial permits, so there is not a lot of discretion. By the time someone gets through everything we put them through in planning
with the discretionary approvals that we do and they get over to the Development Center they are in the ministerial world and the processing happens, we are checking the Codes, checking
the boxes and making sure everything works, but these fees that we are talking about this evening are the planning entitlements. These are all discretionary actions. You see there
is a lot of legal time involved because we consult extensively with the City Attorney in processing these discretionary applications.
Council Member Schmid: Okay, good. That is helpful. Again, to get my bearings, let me just ask some specific questions going through some of the proposals. The consultant’s Report
was very accurate when they said, oh, the two things most questions are on are residents and permits, so let me start from individuals or residents. I look at types of these things
that a resident might run into and, I guess, a resident runs in two different ways, don’t they? Either as a developer who is looking for change or as someone who sees change going on
and says, what’s happening. Both of those would come to the Planning Department, or would they end up at the Development Center?
Ms. Gitelman: Well, if a resident is an applicant, like they are applying for an IR, that would come through the Planning Department. If a neighbor notices something happening out
there and wants to find out about it, it sort of depends on where it is in the process. If it is still going through the IR process, then their first stop would be with us and they
would raise a red flag and potentially file an appeal. If the IR is already done or it didn’t need an IR, and it’s in the building permit process, then they would be going to the Development
Center.
Council Member Schmid: Okay. I’m struck, I guess, back on Page 13 by the scale of some of the changes. You have their home improvements exception going up by 300 percent. It sounds
like a lot. On Page 15 you have Preliminary Individual Review going up 300 percent. On Page 17 public (inaudible) that’s going up 400 percent. Parcel map 350. Talk a little bit about
why the scale if change is so high on things that residents would.
Ms. Gitelman: Sure. Just kind of big picture, I’m relatively new to Palo Alto and my observation when I got here was that this is an old Fee Study. A lot of jurisdictions during the
recession went through the process of updating their fees and increasing revenues by trying to better capture the costs of providing services. I don’t believe that Palo Alto did that
during the recession and I think the fees that are currently in place are old. They have been addressed a little bit to account for the cost of living, but they really haven’t been
reexamined holistically in quite some time. What we did in this Study is really to look at what it costs to deliver these services and give you my recommendation on that basis. But
as Sherry indicated, it is entirely within your discretion to say, whoa, that proposed increase is entirely too high. For (Home Improvement Inspection) HIE’s we should do something
less than you are recommending, and that would just mean that we would perpetuate the current General Fund subsidy of that application type.
Council Member Schmid: (inaudible) the public up and said, gee, at the same time have we done a check on the let’s call it the efficiency of the Staff. Is there something we should
be looking at there?
Ms. Gitelman: That is a very good point. This analysis is based on the current processing time associated with these activities. To the extent that processing time could go down,
some of the flat fees could potentially go down. I should point out, though, that a lot of the biggest fees we are talking about here are hourly fees, so we charge an hourly rate, and
so if we achieve efficiencies on those projects, we just bill less hours. So that is a new onset I think is important.
Council Member Schmid: I guess I see the difference in works go fairly dramatic. Big projects coming into the Council and you have volumes of consultants’ Reports and studies and details
or potential details, but a lot of the work in terms of numbers must be residents making some minor changes or adaptations in their housing. Are some of the hourly fees more appropriate
for the big detail commercial projects as opposed to the routine housing projects and are the residents getting bumped up 300 percent for something that is not relevant to their needs?
Ms. Gitelman: Yes, as Jonathan said, it is set up so that the larger projects take more time, there is more variability. We are using an hourly rate in billing our time directly.
The smaller fees where there is ability to add (inaudible), you know, we have a lot of consistency about what it takes to process this kind of a smaller application,
that is where we are recommending a flat fee, and again, you could set a lower flat fee if you think it is called for. Just to clarify again, though, if someone is applying for a tenant
improvement or a residential remodel that doesn’t have to come to the Planning Department, I mean, that is the vast majority of permitting that happens in the City. That happens at
the Development Center and is not affected by this. This is only Planning. So we get about 70 plus IR applications in a year, but the City processes like 3,000 building permit applications
in a year, so there is a real difference. What we do is more complicated, it takes longer and there are also fewer fee applications.
Council Member Schmid: Oh, I see. So it is a small percentage that actually have to go through this process. I guess my last question, if you are reacting to something that all of
a sudden you see in your backyard, appeal for question of what is going on, people say, oh, that’s why we are paying our property taxes. To be protected from something that is intrusive,
(inaudible) why do we have to pay a fee (inaudible).
Jonathan Lait, Assistant Director of Planning and Community Environment: So in a scenario where a resident is seeing another home, a two-story home being proposed, and there is some
concern about that development, the way the process is set up in the Code, that is actually not an appeal. That is a Request for Assurance. Proposing any fee for a request for hearing,
that is still the flat fee that the occupant pays. So you just request the hearing and you have the hearing and it goes on to the (inaudible) note to the applicant who might be concerned
about that. For another type of project, say at a residential or commercial interphase, or a multi-family, something that went to the Architectural Review Board, there we do have an
appeal fee. It is the same fee. I don’t believe there is any change proposed to the fee. So it is $280 now. No change is proposed to that and it is significantly subsidized, but
we understand why we would want to subsidize that fee. We are introducing a new fee; however, as it relates to appeals, so that the applicant who is generating this project which is
being reviewed by the City and perhaps the concern of a neighbor, we are requesting that we have the ability to charge the applicant for the additional time and resources that will be
spent in processing that appeal fee, so that doesn’t go to the resident, that would go back to applicant if we have to do another 100 hours’ worth of work, the City is not paying another
dime for that. We are charging the applicant who has the project they are processing through that has generated the controversy.
Council Member Schmid: Okay, that is very interesting.
Ms. Nikzat: (inaudible)
Mr. Lait: That’s right, that’s (inaudible.)
Ms. Nikzat: (inaudible)
Council Member Schmid: Yeah, thank you.
Chair Filseth: Are there questions? Council Member Holman.
Council Member Holman: Thank you for doing this. Obviously it is long overdue, so thank you very much for doing it. I have some questions too. I think Mr. McFall raises a good question
about how efficient are we. It is a different but related topic, certainly, so I have questions that don’t really address that but want to respect that, if that makes sense. One of
the things that it has seemed to me for some time is that Code Compliance maybe isn’t done as early as it should be in the process or could be in the process, so you have projects that
maybe go to the ARB or go to the HRB or whatever, but Code Compliance hasn’t been performed. This is what it seems like. We have preliminary Code Compliance that has been performed,
but maybe not totally, so errors are found later and this is from scattered information picked up or watching my pieces of ARB meetings and that sort of thing, and you listen to the
public meetings and such. So the ARB isn’t responsible for making sure the project is Code Compliant and so if, that’s at least the way I understand it and I have been told over time.
It seems to me that what I have witnessed is that you have projects that go all the way through the ARB or maybe through the HRB to, and perhaps not so much Planning Commission, but
things aren’t necessarily Code Compliant, so there is rework that needs to be done or reconsideration because some error is found or something that wasn’t checked is found, so it brings
up how much time is spent that the applicant is being billed for and also it has to do with how much efficiency there is in what we are doing. So does that make sense?
Ms. Gitelman: Yeah, I think I understand your comments. I am not sure that I fully agree with that. I mean, I think you have a professional Staff that is a little overwhelmed because
we are understaffed at the moment. We do our best to review for Code Compliance early in the process. We have a 30-day period when we receive an application in which we are reviewing
for completeness to make sure we have all the materials we need with which to do an evaluation, and then as the project is prepared for hearing at the ARB or whatever the other process
is we are doing a review for Code Compliance. Clearly there are many sections of our Code as the Council knows, that involve interpretation. Sometimes we interpret it one way and then
it gets appealed and it gets to the Council or wherever and then it’s reversed. These aren’t all black and white decisions, but we do our best to do a professional and adequate review
and the projects, in large part the projects that we act on, you never hear about. I talked about 70 plus IR’s in a year, out of that two of them got appealed last year. So the vast
majority of what we do is review projects, complete the processing of them, and they just move on without further comment.
Council Member Holman: And please don’t hear my comments as being criticisms, because there is a lot of work that goes through and it just seems like sometimes not all of the preliminary
work is done beforehand, and this is from tuning in here and there. It’s not like a constant stream of watching and making notes. It’s checking in here and there on various meetings.
Mr. Lait: I just want to comment on that. We have this process in place. It is kind of a little bit informal, the preliminary review for the Architectural Review Board, and that’s
not an application that we charge money for because we want to encourage people to go through that process or if we do it’s a modest fee. We are not spending a lot of time doing a Code
Compliance Check, so there could be some of that where you get some feedback (crosstalk).
Council Member Holman: Okay, I’m clear. Did the consultant, and I don’t know your name sir, Dan, did you take a look at any of the projects to say, okay, here’s a project that was –
and I don’t know how you would know really, Staff could inform you but on your own you wouldn’t know –- we’ve had some fairly large projects on Page Mill Road, some on Park Boulevard
for instance, one on El Camino Real. Did you have an opportunity to take a look at any of those and see comparatively, just looking at the project as informed as you could be about them,
just look at the scope and scale, were they comparatively in line with each other in terms of what was billed, or can some get more complex.
Dan Edds, Consultant, Capital Accounting Partners, LLC: Again, my name is Dan. You can call me Dan if you want to. Last name is E-D-D-S. I go by Dan otherwise. Let me make sure I
understand your question. You are thinking you have two projects.
Council Member Holman: With relative similarity in terms of what the billing is based on, at least appearance of upscale project.
Mr. Edds: So we have two projects relatively the same. It depends on what kind of project you are talking about, but I think more in terms of fees, so if you are doing an ARB you are
doing a Lot Line Adjustment, something like that, so what we did was add some – the director pointed out where the fees are – we can establish a consistency that on the average the fee
takes 20 hours. Those get a flat fee. If there is wide variation, between two hours and 200 hours, then those kinds of projects are going to be charged out on a deposit basis, time
and materials, so in that case I think that is really what you are referring to in those larger, more complex projects, I do not look at individual projects because there is no need
to because it is a Deposit-based Fee, someone makes a deposit and then the revenue stream is going to be dependent upon who charges to that particular project. So the fee really is
just the hourly rate on those.
Council Member Holman: Okay, thank you. Council Member Schmid mentioned that there are legal fees and all kinds of other fees that could be applied into this. Transportation and,
help me if I have slipped a note here – but Transportation is a Department, but is it not still under planning? Okay, but I didn’t see any rate changes for the Transportation Fees.
Ms. Gitelman: Yeah, that is a separate part of the Fee Schedule and in a separate part of the Municipal Code even, I think.
Ms. Nikzat: We did not address Transportation Fees because most of those things are either things like parking and the costs of parking that are usually set by Council, or there are
some fees like the wide load permit, that are set by State agency. We really don’t have a lot of Transportation Fees that we deal with on an hourly basis, except that we do peer review
of (Environmental Impact Report)EIR’s and traffic analysis (crosstalk).
Council Member Holman: Oh, those are printed into these fees.
Ms. Nikzat: And any number of things like that.
Ms. Gitelman: To the extent that our Transportation Staff works on these planning entitlements, those hourly rates, and those would be captured here, so we would bill our traffic engineer’s
time against the environmental review project based on the Fee Schedule.
Council Member Holman: Okay. All I noticed here was just Planning Fees.
Ms. Gitelman: But if you look at the hourly rates in the back, you will see there is a project engineer listed and we will capture the time of anyone who works on these deposit projects.
So we collect a big deposit, Cara works on it an hour, I work on it an hour, the traffic engineer works on it an hour. We are charging all that time to the project.
Council Member Holman: Is the same thing true with Public Works, because you have trees and …
Ms. Gitelman: Anyone who is working on that project we will collect from them.
Council Member Holman: I think it would be helpful – I don’t know about other Council Members, I’ll see what they have to say – but it seem like it would be helpful to indicate that
in here somewhere so that we know that we are being comprehensive in our approach. Another question is that early in this Staff Report it talks about Cost Recovery Percentage Rates,
low, medium and high, and on a number of occasions it talks about 100 percent cost recovery, but in other occasions it wasn’t clear to me what percentage we were charging. It just didn’t
say 100 percent, it just named a fee, so are those low or medium, or high but not 100 percent Cost Recovery? I can pick out any one here. Legal review of (inaudible) with the City
Council. (Inaudible) I just opened it up here. Expansion of existing two-story greater than 100 square feet that is part of (inaudible) review that it says a fee and then a proposed
fee for 2018. I don’t know if that’s low, medium, high.
Ms. Gitelman: What we meant to communicate is that in the last column, so the last fee there in the right-hand column is what we think full cost recovery will be, and so what we are
charging now is well below full cost recovery, and we are proposing to get to get to full cost recovery over two steps, just because it is such a big increase in some cases.
Ms. Nikzat: I believe at the bottom of each Page there is a little plus sign that indicates if we did not reflect the full cost and in those cases I believe we missed one which was an
appeal, but other than that I believe we also have daycare. (Crosstalk.)
Council Member Holman: Right, that one was filled out.
Ms. Nikzat: That was is 50 percent. I don’t see any others. I believe so.
Council Member Holman: Yes, that one was filled out. So what you’re saying is everything in this Fee Schedule is full cost recovery except for filing for an appeal and daycare. Is that
what you are saying?
Ms. Nikzat: The rest of them, if it was a Deposit-based Fee, we would put in a minimal amount for a deposit, and if it was a flat fee it would be the full Cost Recovery Rate.
Council Member Holman: Okay. So if that is the case, I went through every one of these, believe it or not, I went through every one of these and I saw, (inaudible) it was kind of like
really. I’m not going to be able to find it quickly here, wherever it is, here it is. You know I wouldn’t be happy about this, demolition application for restored buildings. It has
been $2,472 and it is going down to $1,001. Does that mean we have been overcharging all this time, and how in the world could it be that low, because I can’t imagine it can be that
low because you would have to analyze whether the building was historic or not, if it’s on the inventory, if it’s retained its character. You would have to gather the HRB. I just can’t
imagine why it would be so low. That is one that went down.
Mr. Lait: Right, and the reason that went beyond is what we are capturing here is the Staff time in evaluating the request for that request and in some of those instances, we are likely
going to require a Resources Inventory Report, which is a professional consultant’s Report, and so we have captured that under a new section here, environmental documents or research
projects that are required, where we charge now an hourly rate to review that (Historic Resource Evaluation)HRE and to provide comments. We have a flat fee if it’s one that we can
look at. We do our in-house analysis, we take it to the Board and we think it is pretty straightforward. That is the fee that is charged here. If it requires more review, a consultant’s
Report, we are going to charge for the cost of that consultant’s Report plus 25 percent to account for Staff time in managing that contract.
Council Member Holman: Thank you for that and since you mentioned it. I am gratified and a bit shocked that we haven’t been charging 25 percent over. I can’t imagine any business that
hasn’t done that in the last umpteen years, so thank you for adding that now. The other thing was a lot of fees talk about deleted and moved someplace else, but there is no way to know
where else it was moved to, so it is very hard to track what went where.
Ms. Nikzat: I am very sorry about that, Council Member Holman. One of the things we were really trying to do was see that in the legal fees. I think that is particularly where you
see it. In the past legal fees were separated. That is a separate piece and this gets to your question about when other people are involved besides Planning Staff, so we are looking
at this as an activity and who is involved in the activity. It seemed to make more sense to simplify the fees by putting the legal activities when they weren’t extensive to actually
fold them into the fee where we could quantify how much legal time would be involved pretty easily, we could fold that into the flat fee, which makes it easier for the person who is
taking in the application, and makes it easier for the applicant to understand the true cost.
Council Member Holman: I think some of that explanation, and again we will see what other people have to say, but I think some of that explanation when it goes to the full Council, would
be really helpful, so we don’t get the same questions all over again. I think there are two more questions before I pass it off. So currently, and this was really like, wow, so current
Operating Budget we are subsidizing 80 percent of Planning Department activities, understanding that certainly now we are doing the Comp. Plan (Comprehensive Plan) update and blah, blah,
blah, but even after these increases, we are still subsidizing 69 percent and that is just stunning, and I think it would be helpful again, when this goes forward – there is a brief
description in here to kind of what kinds of activities we do subsidize and many of them are reasonable and rational and logical, but the number is so large, the percentage is so large
that I think it is a little bit hard to swallow, so if more meat could be put around that it would be helpful. I had one other question which had to do with Code Compliance, I believe.
I’m glad also – I noticed, of course, that these are fully loaded costs, so thank you very much for that. I’m missing my question right now, it’s okay if you can pass it on and maybe
come back. Thank you for your time.
Chair Filseth: Very well. Council Member Wolbach.
Council Member Wolbach: So first actually I would just want to say, speaking only for myself, I did not share some of the concerns about the clarity with the stuff about what was deleted
and was somewhere else. More clarity there would probably be for full Council. The question of where the money is going, the General Fund and Fee Funding combining to subsidize or
pay for the Planning Department, it didn’t bother me. We subsidize, you could say, most of our department. It is what we do. I was really interested in the first paragraph on Page
eight of the Staff Report, which was Page ten of the Packet and Council Member Holman was trying to get to this a little bit, talking about daycares leads to the question are there things
that we want to encourage or in some way support as a matter of equity or a matter of encouragement that we want to provide some subsidy to those kinds of activities when they are brought
by members of the public, be they a big developer with the project or a homeowner making a change to their house. That is an interesting question. I am just going to share a couple
of framing thoughts about this question, and also my question about how the process works. Before I get into this, what do we need to decide tonight regarding this? I mean, if there
are any (inaudible) or changes or suggestions, would you need us to highlight each particular line or if we wanted to get into some kind of general guidance on something that we want
to, say, encourage or provide some kind of subsidy for, Staff could maybe go back and figure out the details of where that all falls, and then bring that back. Is that how this would
work tonight? I want to make sure that I am just following a smart process that is respectful to Colleagues and Staff.
Ms. Gitelman: I guess we would be open to the Council Members input on this. We have to know this is a public hearing and the City Council will have an Ordinance, so our thought was
any input you could give us tonight would help us draft Ordinance and prepare it for Council. If there are specific – you know, you can be as specific as you want to be – if there are
specific things you want us to bring back before we go through that next step, we can do that too. Our goal though to get an Ordinance adopted by the Council in enough time that it
can take effect at the first of the fiscal year.
Council Member Wolbach: The first fiscal year date would be July 1, 2016.
Ms. Gitelman: And it takes 60 days to take effect.
Council Member Wolbach: And so what we might do, I’m just thinking if there are – I’m just brainstorming about this in a minute – but if there are things that we want to provide some
kind of either incentive or, for equity sake, some kind of subsidy, we might want to have that take place the following fiscal year rather than the coming fiscal year, because we are
looking at years ’17 and ’18 that you are proposing here, correct?
Ms. Gitelman: Correct. I should say too, we do have, separate from our Fee Schedule that we instituted within the last couple of years a Fee Waiver Policy that lets the City Manager
waive fees for nonprofits in certain circumstances. I don’t remember exactly what the policy says, but that’s the situation where if, for example we had a Nonprofit Affordable Housing
Development that was proposing to develop affordable housing.
Council Member Wolbach: How do you know where it’s going with this?
Ms. Gitelman: But we do have the ability to offer incentives in terms of waived fees in cases like that, and that is not a dissection of the Fee Schedule, but it is in the City’s Fee
Schedule.
Council Member Schmid: Could I just add a comment to what Cory had brought up, daycare center was mentioned specifically and he only mentioned the day care and the fee is a 900 percent
increase in fee for Use Permit. That stands out.
Council Member Wolbach: What Page is that of the Packet?
Council Member Schmid: Packet Page 19, first line.
Council Member Wolbach: We had circled that. So I will just bring out a couple of thoughts for my Colleagues. Oh, is there something else you wanted to add.
Ms. Nikzat: I just wanted to say I believe the reason daycare center was called out was because this institutional memory is that daycare had been subsidized in the past and that the
amount that is in there you may note, that is one of them that is not at full cost recovery. That is actually at 50 percent of the full cost recovery.
Council Member Wolbach: Okay, just a couple of framing thoughts for how we think about whether we want to push anything here or do it in the Fee Waiver Policy separately, first, obviously
we are the Finance Committee, so of course, we want to be financially prudent, especially considering overburden of Staff and an overburden on this department in particular, so that
is the first rule element to keep in mind for me. Another is fairness. The developers should be paying their fair share, but at the same time, residents, I don’t want to see us milking
residents because they are doing something on their own property that is within our Code, that is within what we allow, but then there is also the policy considerations of what I was
saying before, of discouraging or encouraging something. You know, to a degree not quite punitive, but say we are going to do full cost recovery on this, but cutting down for something
else, whether it is daycare, senior center or a school, be it more housing or if it is multi-family housing that includes a substantial chunk or is completely below market rate. I know
that, obviously, paying our Transportation Commission (Planning and Transportation Commission) to start conversations about accessory dwelling units which are called out in our Housing
Element and to have our own Comp. Plan is somebody wanted to add or start a secondary dwelling unit and list it as a Below Market Rate (BMR) unit, which is one of the questions the Planning
Commission brought up recently, would we want to reduce the fees for that or is that something we want to tackle later for future year discussion, Fee Waiver Policy. A lot of these
questions I’m kind of putting out expecting that we are not going to act on them now, but I wanted to at least float the concepts and the consideration for us to think about on the Committee
and also for Staff. My guess is that office developments we are probably not enthusiastic about, I’m just guessing we are not going to be enthusiastic about. Subsidizing the fees for
something that is residential, especially with residential with Below Market Rate units or residential with a little bit of retail, we might be interested in exploring that at some point.
Again, we don’t necessarily need to act on those tonight, but I just put those out there, I guess, as policy consideration for everyone to think about and I leave it open for thoughts
on how we best proceed or whether we come back to that either at a later date or in a later year.
Chair Filseth: Okay, is there more?
Council Member Wolbach: That’s it. Why don’t I actually say one more thing about that which is, obviously, the Planning Commission is dealing with (inaudible), we are working on our
Comprehensive Plan and so I guess part of the question is, how does our consideration of these fees as they relate and the policy implications of these fees relate to those other discussions
about Ordinances and (inaudible) and maybe it is better to wait and see what comes out of the Comp. Plan of the Planning Commission, etcetera, and then use that to inform future discussions
about fees. If the Comp. Plan says we really, really want to push X, we really want to (inaudible) that maybe the next time we have this discussion, we say okay we settled on our Comp.
Plan and the Comp. Plan says we want to push this, let’s subsidize this a little bit more, and I do appreciate the call out in the Report that Staff would like to see us do this on a
more regular basis. I think that is so that we can have a more agile system.
Chair Filseth: Thank you.
Cara Silver, Senior Assistant City Attorney: For the Chair, if I could just, on one issue there, this issue of the relationship between Comp. Plan and fee levels comes up a lot in connection
with development in housing and in the Housing Element, and so there is actually an exercise that we go through with our Housing Element is to look at whether the fees that we charge
for housing processing is actually serving as a constraint to the development of housing, so that is a very logical nexus and it is built into our process, and so if it is found that
the fees are too high and serving as a constraint we will typically see Housing Element policies that say, look at the fees.
Council Member Wolbach: Can I ask a follow-up question to that? Does this reflect consideration of the Housing Element discussion about that issue? Was that taken into consideration
when putting this together?
Ms. Silver: I don’t believe that the current fee levels, which are obviously very subsidized, served as a constraint in this Housing Element cycle, so it was not identified as a constraint.
If we increase the fees, then we would go through that analysis again in the Housing Element and there might be a different finding.
Council Member Wolbach: I guess what I would say at this point then is, if it needs to be included when we do Motion tonight, that if the Proposed Fee Schedule for 2017 and 2018 are
likely to serve as a constraint on housing, then we would want to subsidize those fees.
Chair Filseth: I have a few questions. First, let me ask a question. If I understand the process here, the protocol we are talking about is that there would be a major review of fee
structure each three to five years, but then an annual adjustment where we estimate the change in wage and benefits to adjust the fees. Is that correct?
Ms. Nikzat: Yes.
Chair Filseth: Next question, if I read this correctly, essentially what we are saying is the current level of recovery is below 100 percent and if we increased the recovery, most of
these to 100 percent, right, in this document, the gap is about $900,000. Is that right? And we would be doing that over two years. So if we did it all in the first year, the difference
between doing it all in the first year versus doing it in two years costs the City about $450,000. Is that essentially right? Do you have an estimate for how much of the $900,000 is
commercial versus residential fees? Have you looked at that?
Ms. Gitelman: I don’t think we do. We would have to look at, I don’t even really know how we would do that. I guess we would have to go back and look at a sample year and see how many
A or B applications we got that were mixed use versus commercial, wholly commercial, and how many IR’s we did. I mean it would be.
Chair Filseth: Dan, have you got any impression of that?
Mr. Edds: I think Hillary’s point is very accurate. Basically you would have to go back through all the documentation on every project, say okay, was this commercial, was it residential,
was it multi-family. We could probably back into it. It would be an estimate. I’m thinking, Jonathan, correct me if I’m wrong, we could go through the list of fees and say, well this
one is predominantly commercial, this one is predominantly residential, but that would probably be a pretty rough estimate, but it would be something.
Chair Filseth: I understand. We show the stuff that goes to the ARB a few times tends to be commercial, right, as opposed to, not everything.
Mr. Edds: And that’s what we would be looking at, does this one tend to be commercial or does it tend to be residential. I guess the inclination is to say, if it’s mostly commercial,
then you feel one way about the time frame of phasing it in, because it is a business expense and the numbers or amount of money involved in these things is pretty much larger in all
these fees, right, as opposed to residential you might look at it slightly differently.
Ms. Gitelman: One thing I should say is that we are proposing this big increase in hourly rates and one thing that it would be possible to do is go right to the top on the hourly rates,
the fees in the flat fees.
Chair Filseth: What exactly does that mean?
Ms. Gitelman: It just means that the bigger projects that we charge hourly would be paying 100 percent right away, whereas the smaller projects, the flat fees you would phase them in
over two years. That is a possible compromise.
Mr. Edds: From my perspective, that, I think, would be a very accurate way of getting to your point, because those Deposit-based Fees, Jonathan, correct me if I’m wrong, Deposit-based
Fees more than likely are going to be commercial.
Chair Filseth: Right. And what you would save would be, the (inaudible) that would say raise the hourly fees in year one, and the flat fee phase in over two years. Is that essentially
what we are saying?
Mr. Lait: The deposits.
Chair Filseth: Of course, you would like that to be in that plus to the City versus just doing a 50/50, as written, but presumably it would be because you would be dealing with big projects.
Mr. Perez: You could make it 75/25.
Chair Filseth: Actually, you could take the flat fees and do them over, that’s what we said, take the flat fees and do them over two years and the hourly fees do them over one year,
so that would be ahead.
Ms. Nizkat: And I assume increase the corresponding deposits and the deposits would go up too.
Ms. Gitelman: Yes.
Chair Filseth: So that seems like something we should consider.
Council Member Schmid: Could I ask the following?
Chair Filseth: Yes, please.
Council Member Schmid: We have an aging population and we have an aging housing stock. Will this dramatic increase in fees do anything to discourage the updating of that housing stock?
Ms. Gitelman: We charge fees for IR’s, so if someone replaces an existing home or a two-story home and we charge Planning Fees for architectural review, but just remodel of existing
homes or tearing down and replacing an existing home? I don’t think that is implicated here, is it?
Mr. Lait: No. The IR fees, the Individual Review Fees are going up, as you can see and it is a big increase and when you look at the overall expense of demolishing a home and building
a new home, it’s modest, I think, compared to the cost of building a new house.
Council Member Schmid: I guess it is a little upsetting that you can’t answer that question of what share of your current fees or the new fees would be residential as opposed to commercial.
I guess I would assume that the high-end share would be commercial.
Mr. Lait: I think that is accurate, but as you know, we get a lot of A or B applications that are mixed use, some that are purely commercial. We would have to go in and dissect every
application to determine what share is residential versus commercial.
Council Member Schmid: I would just guess though that in this city City in the last few years, mixed use, it varies from city to city, but in Palo Alto mixed-use has been dominated by
commercial space, right? I would assume.
Ms. Gitelman: Yes. And I think it changes over time, but you’re right, in the last several years probably we have seen mostly the commercial. When you look at those big fees, they are
commercial.
Chair Filseth: That was actually my next question. What triggers the Individual Review? Does a kitchen remodel trigger an Individual Review or a two story?
Mr. Lait: Adding a second story adding to a second story, more than 150 square feet.
Chair Filseth: So if I add another bedroom on the ground floor of my house is fine, so adding a second story, or a tear-down, and we have 70 of those a year or something like that.
Mr. Lait: So if you do the number on that, as I did, based on $2,500, goes to $2,800 as the fee, it is $150,000 roughly of that $900,000, so it is on the lower side of that.
Council Member Wolbach: I’m sorry, which Page was the IR on? I just want to follow, I just want to get what Page we are on.
Mr. Lait: The IR is, I don’t have the Packet Page number, but it’s the, it Packet Page 15, the top of the Page.
Council Member Wolbach: Got it. Thank you very much.
Chair Filseth: My next question I wanted to ask, when I look on Packet Page nine, they sort of compare us to other municipalities, and if you look at Beverly Hills, California, their
hourly rates charged to the public are between $400 and $500 an hour, which is prime consulting, junior partner legal time wage, how do they do that and not run afoul of (inaudible)
18?
Mr. Lait: If I could speak to that, Beverly Hills, I’ll give you one example of what is included in that hourly rate that is not included in this hourly rate: Code Enforcement. We
had a conversation about how do we allocate the cost of Code Enforcement. Should it be allocated, should not be allocated, should all of it be allocated, should a portion of it be allocated
or none of it. Beverly Hills took the, in my experience, the somewhat unusual approach of saying we are going to recover all of the cost of Code Enforcement, so part of that hourly
rate that you see for Beverly Hills is, in fact, a small component piece for Code Enforcement. In this case, we did not include anything for Code Enforcement. That is just an example.
There are several other examples of activities that go into those hourly rates for Beverly Hills.
Chair Filseth: You know what I am about to ask. Should we?
Ms. Gitelman: I’ll tell you our thought process and the Cara probably wants to weigh in. You really have to be able to make a good case that the activities related to this service are
being provided for which the fee is being charged. I think it is possible to say there is some little bit of Code Enforcement that is related to, that an IR applicant benefits from,
but our assessment was that to fully subsidize the whole program with fees and make the applicants pay for that was not appropriate. I don’t know if Cara wants to add.
Ms. Silver: I agree with that.
Council Member Holman: Can I just follow up to that?
Chair Filseth: Yes please.
Council Member Holman: So we tend to be rather loath though to charge penalties, so we are not capturing those, so is there another way we can do this, or should we be charging, is there
another way we can do this? Do we need to enhance our interest and incentive within the City to charge fines for people who aren’t Code Compliant, or do something like this? I’m not
suggesting we do that, and the public would be thrilled if we would do something that would actually incentivize people to bring whatever issues into compliance.
Ms. Silver: Yes, thank you. Absolutely you can do that. What we do is we update our Administrative Penalty Schedule once a year and that is the time to examine that issue. Of course,
if you wanted to bring it up at off cycles, we can also take a look at it. One of the things that we have clarified, I believe this year, with our Administrative Penalty Schedule is
that the continuing enforcement problems are going to be charged on a daily basis. It was not the case a few years ago. It was just a single occurrence, one single fine of $200, but
if that enforcement problem continues, then we do how under our new administrative schedule, have the ability to charge daily fines, so that’s a good thing. I know that Staff was also
looking at enhancements to penalties in connection with the Planned Community (PC) process, so those efforts certainly are underway.
Council Member Holman: So you are saying then, am I learning here that the PC’s that are out there that are noncompliant are going to start getting penalized on a daily basis if they
don’t come into compliance in a number of days, and how is that – I’m sorry, this is a little bit of a digression here, but I venture there are a lot of people – how is it going to be
assessed and collected?
Ms. Silver: I didn’t mean to imply that we are making an active change to our PC Penalty Process right now. The existing schedule, though, does allow a daily penalty, so for instance
with Edgewood – this is getting a little off topic – but with the Edgewood Plaza Grocery Store, which is under an obligation to provide a community benefit, that is being assessed now
on a daily rate basis, so there is that ability to do that. What I was referring to is that I think there was some further discussion about how to asses PC penalties, such as creating
an escrow account and charging for the enforcement costs in all of that, and that was going to be studied in connection with PC reform in general, and that process has sort of been put
on hold now with our PC Moratorium.
Council Member Holman: Non-PC Code Enforcement?
Ms. Silver: Yes, you can evaluate that when our Annual Penalty Schedule comes up for review.
Chair Filseth: I have to note, we are starting to get off topic here. (Crosstalk) I have a suggestion, I think we can bring it up later when we start talking about future Agenda Items,
because that is one of the things that will be done later. So I made a note of it here. I had one more question which is, you said earlier that the Study accounted for wages and benefits,
but not things like sick leave, vacation expense and other things like that, and why now, or where is the sense that would be (crosstalk) small, very small difference.
Mr. Edds: Actually, it does account for sick leave. The way I do the calculations is at some point it comes down to what is the productive hourly rate and then what are the productive
hours. So in calculating productive hours we start out with the standard 2080, we subtract out vacation time, paid holiday time, sick leave, the full account of sick leave, training,
routine meetings, so all of that again gets built into the hourly rate.
Chair Filseth: But I assume one thing it doesn’t cover is that we don’t recovery the costs for is the growth in the unfunded public pension and that liability which we have now which
is $500 million, growing at 15 to 20 percent a year?
Mr. Perez: The calculation we use, what we input in terms of the projected rate that we get from (inaudible) for the employer’s side, so it would only cover that portion of it.
Chair Filseth: Right, which is the funded portion, no the unfunded portion.
Mr. Perez: Yes. It assumes that they eventually will deal with the unfunded over a period of time, but just so you know, there are many variables.
Chair Filseth: Maybe for the future Agenda Items, we could talk about that. So just in general I will make a comment here. We sort of had a discussion of subsidizing things and the
cost of these kinds of services that there are a couple of components. One is the amount of time it takes and what that time costs us, and the other is there has been some discussion,
and Mr. McFall brought up, what about the efficiency of our processes in doing this. I think it is not possible for us on the Finance Committee to dig into the efficiencies of our processes
for doing things. I think we have to look at what our costs are, and that’s what they are. With regard subsidies and exemptions and so forth, the costs are what they are and so if
the applicant doesn’t pay for them, then somebody else has to pay for them, and that is going to end up, because it comes from the General Fund, being basically the residents of the
City who pay 72 or 73 percent to be refined in the Comp. Plan finance discussion of the costs of running the City. I think we should, in general, keep this process as simple as possible,
shoot for 100 percent cost recovery on almost everything, rather than trying to build a patchwork smorgasbord of exemptions. We have a couple here that are worthy things, daycare centers
and so forth. I think affordable housing potentially is one of them, right, although we don’t build a lot of Affordable Housing Projects per year in the City, and so if there are things
that are very few, we are not doing lots and lots of them, maybe the fee waiver process is just much more efficient to do it, so I think we should consider that. That would be my hope
is that we will do maintain the simplicity. I do like the idea of accelerating faster than two years going to 100 percent cost recovery for big commercial projects, the cost of doing
business. Again, somebody has to pay for it, right, and if the applicant doesn’t pay for it, then people paying their mortgage have to pay for it. Motions?
Council Member Holman: It sounded like you were just making one.
Chair Filseth: If somebody else wants to make one, or maybe I will make one.
MOTION: Chair Filseth moved, seconded by Council Member Holman to recommend the City Council adopt the schedule for Planning Fee Increases and Adjustments and hourly rates to better
reflect the City’s User Fee Cost Recovery Level Policy with the addition that the hourly fees will go to 100 percent cost recovery in year one and flat fees will go to 100 percent cost
recovery on a two-year schedule.
Council Member Holman: That was on my list to actually ask, that was one of the questions I didn’t ask earlier, the tiering. I do support that I have a question about it and that is,
there aren’t that many flat fees really. Do we have any notion, can anybody do a quick look back in the envelope like how much difference it is, one of you two accounting guys.
Chair Filseth: I saw it in here somewhere, there is a list of the number of flat fees versus.
Mr. Lait: Do you want the dollar amount?
Council Member Holman: I want the dollar amount if that is reasonable to try to ascertain. Because as Eric said, (inaudible) somebody has to pay for it.
Chair Filseth: It is appearing like 2016, for fiscal 2017 may be a lean year for the City.
Council Member Holman: I do support the Motion. Again, there are some things that I asked for earlier that it would be great to have at the time this goes to Council. That would be
one of those items, if you agree to that. It doesn’t need to be in the Motion, but if you can agree that is a (inaudible) that should be presented to the Council.
Chair Filseth: Can you state again exactly what you are requesting?
Council Member Holman: The Fee-based Projects tiered to mean how much we are capturing in the first year versus what we would be capturing if we did it all at once.
Chair Filseth: Is that acceptable to Staff?
Ms. Gitelman: So we would analyze the revenue that would come from the flat fees in year two. Okay, and compare that to what we would be getting in year one.
Chair Filseth: I would be interested in that. I think that would be a useful number. I don’t want to burden the Staff with too much work.
Council Member Holman: I support that and I have another comment but I think we should deal with the Motion first.
Council Member Schmid: I would like to add an Amendment. The understanding from our discussion tonight was clearly that the dramatic increase in fees would not have a huge impact on
residential, so I think that should be stated clearly in the Report going to Council that either show the estimated share of new fees that would be paid by residents, or have a clear
statement that the maintenance and upgrading of existing housing units will not be affected.
AMENDMENT: Council Member Schmid moved, seconded by Council Member Wolbach to include in the Staff Report to Council that the increase in fees will not have a dramatic negative impact
on the maintenance of existing housing stock.
Chair Filseth: So with respect to calculating the actual impact, I think what I heard was that would require a great deal of work to go back and track down all these numbers. Do I understand
that right?
Ms. Gitelman: Yes, although if Council Member Schmid is looking for something like in the whereases of the Ordinance, I think we can include a statement as you just implicated, which
is the maintenance of existing residences (crosstalk) would not be affected by these fee changes.
Council Member Schmid: I think that is the assumption we are making in approving this and just to have it clearly stated it would help all the Council.
Council Member Holman: So what you are saying is that maintenance of existing residential, because it’s not going to be affected by this anyway.
Council Member Schmid: It’s the rebuilding, it’s the updating of the existing residential housing stock.
Council Member Holman: I wouldn’t support that, because I don’t think, housing stock is a large topic. I think Chair Filseth said it well, City Manager can use the Waiver Fee for Affordable
Housing Projects, which I am certainly very supportive of.
Council Member Schmid: I’m not asking for any Waiver Fee. (Crosstalk.)
Chair Filseth: You’re talking about existing single-family homes that want to remodel their bathroom or something.
Council Member Schmid: Or the need of rebuilding of the center structure or the outer walls. I mean, we have an aging housing stock that needs maintenance and they need to get approval
of permitting.
Chair Filseth: But if I understand what I heard here, most of those will not trigger an IR.
Council Member Schmid: And that’s why I would like to have a clear statement.
Council Member Holman: IR regulations are clearly stated already in the Code. IR is demolition and construction of a new two-story home.
Council Member Schmid: I’m just a simple Council Member and I had lots of questions after reading this, and so it would be helpful to ask the full Council to have that statement clearly
put.
Council Member Holman: I am sorry, but I think the scope of the question, the topic is so broad that I am not quite sure what it would cover and what it wouldn’t cover. What your intention
is.
Council Member Schmid: Well, we had a statement that about 15 percent of the current activity of the department would be on the residential request as opposed to commercial.
Council Member Wolbach: Is that single family or multi-family.
Mr. Lait: IR is just a single family. Just doing the back of the Page, for somebody who is not even mathematically inclined, just running the numbers, $2,500 times 70 applications,
that is about $150,000 and we are talking about a $900,000 increase over time, so each individual applicant who is coming in to, if they want to tear down their home and want to build
a new home, the net increase that is going to be affected by these fees at most would be the difference between the $2,800 that we charge now up to the $5,600 that we will be charging
in 2018, so yes, it is about a doubling almost of the fee. I don’t want to minimize that. It is a lot of money.(Crosstalk.)
Chair Filseth: The majority of people aren’t tearing down a home and putting up (crosstalk.)
Mr. Lait: We may have some people here who can speak to the overall costs of building a home, so it would certainly be a lot for me, but I think (crosstalk.)
Council Member Holman: So here is why I wouldn’t support it. I don’t want to subsidize and I don’t want to ask other people to subsidize not that large an amount of money compared to
the cost of a new house. If somebody is going to build a new house they can absolutely afford that very small increment of money. I don’t want to ask my neighbors to subsidize somebody
down the block rebuilding a house and the consultant is nodding his head in agreement.
Mr. Lait: As I am understanding the comment, it’s not that anything about this would be subsidizing redevelopment of a home, just that if you choose to redevelop your home, you’re not
going to be negatively impacted by the fees that are being proposed to be introduced here. No subsidies, just (crosstalk.)
Council Member Holman: No, except if we are not collecting it, somebody is paying it. (Crosstalk.)
Mr. Lait: Well the occupant is paying for it, but it is a modest increase (crosstalk.)
Council Member Schmid: It’s a small share of what we are approving.
Council Member Holman: I won’t second. Sorry.
Council Member Wolbach: (inaudible)
Council Member Schmid: (inaudible)
Council Member Wolbach: Do you want it restated to make sure I was really clear about it?
Council Member Schmid: Just that the Report to Council clearly states that the share of the fee increase will not have negative impact on the maintenance of our existing housing stock.
Council Member Wolbach: Will not have or is not expected to have?
Council Member Schmid: Well, will not have a dramatic negative impact on the maintenance of our existing housing stock.
Council Member Wolbach: But is it explanatory or is that pulsing direction, I guess is the question the Chair was trying to get to. Are we just trying to verify the Report or are we
establishing (crosstalk.)
Council Member Schmid: Well from my perspective, it is the assumption I am making in voting in favor of this.
Council Member Wolbach: And does that include single family and multi-family, or just single family?
Council Member Schmid: Well both, if you want to focus on single family that would be fine. It is dealing with an aging housing stock that when you need to put in new supports, new
walls, new roof, whatever it is, that this vote will not have a negative impact.
Council Member Wolbach: This is going to come to Council, right?
Council Member Schmid: Yeah, this is just to help Council (crosstalk.)
Ms. Gitelman: It’s going to be a public hearing.
Ms. Nikzat: Yes, just as fees.
Chair Filseth: I’m not going to second.
Council Member Wolbach: I will.
Chair Filseth: Care to speak?
Council Member Schmid: Well, I think when we talk about housing in Palo Alto, we are talking about an aging housing stock where the average age has gone up dramatically over the last
few decades, and that means a lot of rebuilding parts, central structural parts of the house or houses themselves and these fee increases we are voting on are quite dramatic and I think
the understanding in our discussion was that the fees would primarily hit large new, commercial developments as opposed to maintenance of the existing housing stock, and just to put
that assumption clearly in the Report to Council would be helpful.
Chair Filseth: Care to speak to your second?
Council Member Schmid: I think he said it well.
Chair Filseth: I think I will not vote in favor of the Amendment. I think, given what we are talking about, I think an appropriate mechanism would be for you to bring it up at the Council
meeting and the Staff to respond to Council, and I think, therefore, it is not necessary in the Motion itself and I would prefer simple Motions. Any comment? Vote on the Amendment.
AMENDMENT FAILED: 2-2 Holman, Filseth no
Chair Filseth: Any further discussion on the mainMotion?
Council Member Wolbach: Yes. I have a question. Going back to some of the things I was discussing earlier, I want to get just a little bit more clarity about this Fee Waiver Policy.
My central question about the Fee Waiver Policy, is this something where there are standing – I’m thinking about whether I want to offer an Amendment tonight or when it comes to Council
or reserve my thoughts for the Fee Waiver Policy – is that something that is always case-by-case and up to the City Manager’s discretion, or is it something where Council has set standing
orders so that we are telling the City Manager you should always grant a fee waiver for X?
Ms. Gitelman: I’d be happy to read the Fee Waiver Policy to you. It was enacted as part of last year’s Budget, I think. It says that the recommendation of the Planning and Community
Environment Director or the City Manager may waive all or a portion of a Planning Fee when the applicant is a nonprofit organization or another governmental entity, and the following
findings can be made: one, the proposed project would advance a public purpose benefitting the residents of Palo Alto; and two, General Fund support is available to backfill the fees
waived. City Manager will report annually to the City Council about fee waivers granted pursuant to this provision as part of the closing of the Budget.
Council Member Wolbach: So that sounds like it is pretty limited in scope. I don’t think that is broad enough to address my core concern, which goes to this issue of whether our fees
provide a disincentive to the housing stock, whether it is repair of existing stock, preservation of existing stock. This concern that we may lose stock at times, or the construction
of new housing stock in accordance with our comprehensive plan or Housing Element and our City regulations, I guess I would actually offer an Amendment, which I don’t want to jinx it,
but I think will probably be unsuccessful as the last one was. Again, my purpose is to at least put it out there for discussion. Perhaps it will come up again in front of the full
Council or will find another way or another time to address it. I would like to offer a friendly Amendment that we direct Staff to study whether any fees provide a substantial disincentive
to housing preservation or construction in our Housing Element of our comprehensive plan and if so, to subsidize such fees as relevant.
AMENDMENT: Council Member Wolbach moved, seconded by Council Member xx to direct Staff to study any fees that may provide a substantial disincentive to housing preservation or construction
as warned of in the Housing Element, and to provide Council with options for subsidies to prevent such disincentives.
Chair Filseth: All housing, since we are talking about here is housing and commercial and that’s it.
Council Member Wolbach: Right, that’s for housing. I can’t remember which section it is, but yes (inaudible) but before I speak to it I will see if there is a second.
Council Member Schmid: Could you restate it?
Council Member Wolbach: Yes, let me make sure I got it right, or did the City Clerk type it?
Ms. Gitelman: I have some, direct Staff to study fees, provide a substantial disincentive to housing preservation or construction in the Housing Element, and if so, to subsidize it as
relevant.
Council Member Wolbach: As warned of in the Housing Element, and to recommend to Council or to provide for Council an optional subsidy to prevent such disincentive. Basically it would
(crosstalk.)
Council Member Schmid: Does that differ from the existing Housing Element?
Chair Filseth: You are proposing to waive all fees on housing projects.
Council Member Wolbach: Only if it identified as being substantial, so this is something we will leave to Staff to figure out, only if it provides a substantial disincentive. If it
is modest, as values are modest and insignificant compared to the total cost of housing, in those cases there would be no waiver. This is something that our Housing Element warns of
is that there may be things in our policy which provide a disincentive to producing the housing that we have to, and this Motion would stay Staff should look at if these fees have that
kind of effect and if they do when this comes to Council, say here’s how you could subsidize these fees in order to prevent that disincentive.
AMENDMENT RESTATED: Council Member Wolbach moved, seconded by Council Member xx to direct Staff to study any fees that may provide a substantial disincentive to housing preservation
or construction as warned of in the Housing Element, and to provide Council with options for subsidies to prevent such disincentives. (Amendment Stated Above)
Council Member Schmid: I guess my feeling is the Housing Element will be coming to the Council in a couple of weeks and there is a language in the Housing Element directed to this, is
that correct?
Ms. Gitelman: That Housing Element contains an analysis of this issue and the existing Fee Schedule as it relates to this issue, and I haven’t read that section in a long time, but I
believe it concludes that the cost of land in Palo Alto is far and away the greatest constraint on new housing and the availability of land, so the fees that we charge pale by comparison
to these other constraints that we really have nothing to do with.
Council Member Wolbach: So essentially you think that it is not necessary to do an analysis because we have already done it and concluded that this is insignificant.
Ms. Gitelman: I think so, but this Fee Waiver Policy kind of grew out of that Housing Element, because in the Housing Element we talked about the need to potentially waive fees for 100
percent affordable projects, and so we proposed this Fee Waiver Policy that the Council adopted and that gives us the ability where we have the affordable housing project that is being
built as affordable housing. It is not a Market-rate Project that has a couple of affordable units in it, that we have the ability to waive fees for that particular housing.
Council Member Wolbach: But that is only, as I heard you read it, that existing waiver policy only applies to something being built either by a nonprofit or by government, and which
is fully affordable, so it would not apply to, let’s say a For-profit Developer said I want to build something and half of it’s going to be Below Market Rate housing, which is almost
impossible and if they said they wanted to do that, the City Manager would not even be able to provide that fee waiver, in that special and very unlikely unicorn kind of case because
it is so limited.
Ms. Gitelman: A For-profit Developer presumably is making enough of a profit that they could pay our fees, again, a nominal part of the total cost of land and construction.
Chair Filseth: Still looking for a second.
Council Member Schmid: I guess I feel that the opportunity of bringing this up in the Housing Element to say let’s change the wording in the Housing Element.
Council Member Wolbach: I’ll just respond to that. The Housing Element doesn’t have the legislative action. It warns of a problem and I am just trying to make sure we take action to
prevent that problem. It sounds like the Director of Planning and Community Planning is fairly confident that this is not a problem.
Chair Filseth: I think the Motion fails on account of a lack of a second.
AMENDMENT FAILED DUE TO THE LACK OF A SECOND
Chair Filseth: First of all I think we are talking about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, because this is such a tiny fraction of the cost of doing this thing, but also,
I think we should think very differently about affordable housing versus vast amounts of market-rate housing, so I think to try to put one thing that covers all those cases, that’s challenging.
Council Member Holman: Can I say something similar to that, which is not all housing is created equally and if there was some way, and I appreciate your nod to that.
Chair Filseth: Can I make sure this is on the Finance as opposed to (inaudible) we could talk about housing and affordable housing for a long time.
Council Member Holman: I was just going to acknowledge what Cory said about, Catherine Robuck said about existing housing and retention of it. I just wanted to acknowledge that.
Chair Filseth: So acknowledged. Can you ready back the Motion, second by Council Member Holman to recommend to the Council to adopt a schedule for Planning Fee Increases and Adjustments
in hourly rates to better affect the City’s User Fee Cost Recovery Level Policy with the addition that the hourly fees would go to 100 perfect in year one and flat fees will go to 100
perfect on a two-year schedule. There was one Amendment which failed and one that did not proceed to second.
MOTION PASSED: 4-0
Council Member Holman: Before you leave, I had a question about the Report. Can we do that? On the Report on Page nine it’s general observations of Planning Community Environment and
it talks about, I just want to get Staff’s responses about the splitting off of Planning from Development Services and also about the splitting of Code Enforcement and Code Compliance
and I just wanted to see if Staff had some comments it wanted to make about this because there were no kind of striking comments.
Ms. Gitelman: Yes, I know (inaudible) and I hope it came through in our summary that Development Services is undertaking their own Fee Study this year, and I think they are going to
be able to look at some of these issues and give the (inaudible) and others a recommendation on whether this restructuring is the right way to go or not. I can’t say anything further
about it right now, but we will continue to look at this issue.
Council Member Holman: Is it just the, and there is a question for Dan too, if it is, feel free to respond. It wasn’t clear to me quite if it is just a funding issue, or if it was also
a structural issue.
Mr. Edds: Could you ask that question again?
Council Member Holman: The challenges that are spelled out in the Report again, on your Report on Page one.
Mr. Edds: My Report, okay.
Council Member Holman: Yes, are they challenges because of how the fees are charged and collected, or is it also a structural aspect of how development and planning have been split off
of each other. Is it one or the other or both?
Mr. Edds: That is a good question.
Council Member Holman: That’s what I was trying to ascertain.
Mr. Edds: The challenge that I see is that you have had a large organization that is now split into two, also which are very complex and so what I am seeing over in the Development Services
side is just, and some of it is staffing and then split funding of staffing, and where people actually are working versus maybe where they thought they were working when the split was
made. I would call that structural and what I am seeing is that is getting worked out. That makes it difficult, both on the management side but also looking at what an individual service
should cost, so I see it more of a structural thing that is getting worked out in an evolutionary fashion.
Ms. Gitelman: We, on an annual basis, as we prepare our Budget, we work with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and Development Services to make sure that the revenues and costs
between Development Services and PC are split appropriately. Obviously, revenues and costs need to be in the same place so you can split them one way or split them the other, but every
year we go through this process of making sure that they are matching up, and as Development Services undertakes their Fee Schedule Study, it will be an opportunity to relook at this
issue of whether you split people or split fees, the revenues, so we can look at that. Okay.
Council Member Holman: Great. And then one last question about the fees themselves, is, are the Council Members okay if I ask for something to be clarified when it comes to Council,
like where some things have gone, and about, and it probably should have been asked before the Motion, but I was (crosstalk) about back at Page 19 for instance where the wireless for
some of these, it just says delete and delete and it’s not clear where they went. So you don’t have to answer, just if you can clarify when it comes to Council.
Mr. Lait: And just, in a nutshell, it’s consolidating the fees, instead of having a whole bunch of Use Permit fees identified. It is the same function, the same Staff work, whether
it’s a Conditional Use Permit (CUP) for one thing or the other thing, so we are just collapsing all the fees into one general category. I will explain that in the Report.
Chair Filseth: If we are done with this, I think we can thank the Planning Department Staff for joining us. Thank you again.
Future Meetings and Agendas
Chair Filseth: We have a meeting next on March 1, 2016. Just to remind the Committee (Finance Committee). I think most of you know it is the first and third Tuesday’s of the month.
At the moment the (inaudible) states that your meeting starts at 7:00 P.M. We have to start again on the first because you have a Closed Session as I have been told, and so it is decided
to have enough time for the Closed Session discussion so there is a request to keep it at 7:00 P.M. Staff would like to check with you, Chair and the rest of the Committee is if there
would be an interest to start the meetings at 6:00 P.M., so let me as the question. My understanding is that several of us could do 6:00 P.M. but you have a conflict on the third Tuesday
of each month. Are you 6:00 or 7:00 P.M., do you have a preference?
Lalo Perez, Chief Financial Officer and Director of Administrative Services: I would defer to Staff’s preference. I would …
Chair Filseth: I would prefer 6:00 P.M. after a long Monday. So let me ask this, given that Council Member Holman is not available at 6:00 P.M. on the third Tuesday, it seems to me
we should either leave them all at 7:00 P.M., or we could have the first Tuesday at 6:00 P.M. and the second Tuesday at 7:00 P.M. Is that too complicated for people?
Council Member Wolbach: Not for us. We will take half. So I take it that Staff has a preference for 6:00 P.M. where possible?
Mr. Perez: It’s usually easier for us so that we can have a quick dinner and get ready (crosstalk.)
Chair Filseth: The Motion? (Crosstalk) you and I set the Agenda, so why don’t we set it for 6:00 P.M. on the first Tuesday of the month and 7:00 P.M. on the third Tuesday of the month?
Mr. Perez: If we are good with that discussion of the Agenda that we have tentatively for the first is the mid-year so we have (inaudible) to our Budget numbers in terms of our expenses
and revenues and we will bring that to you. We also have the much-anticipated draft of the Comprehensive Plan update for the Fiscal Impact Study and then the beginning of the discussion
for the preliminary financial forecast for all Utility Funds. Hillary, is there an update on the fiscal?
Hillary Gitelman, Director of Planning and Community Environment: No, I was just wondering if there is a meeting before March 1, 2016, because we had Housing Impact Fee.
Chair Filseth: I have one listed here for the 16th.
Ms. Gitelman: We have (inaudible) fees coming on the 16th and the Fiscal Study on the first.
Mr. Perez: Thank you for that. I skipped 2/16/16. My oversight. We have the, right now on the Tentative Agenda, the Power Purchase Agreements for the (inaudible) Palo Alto LLC, the
Clean Program update and extension and the House and Commercial Linkage Fees Nexus Study, so we could flip those if you wanted.
Ms. Gitelman: You thought User Fees were fine. (Crosstalk).
Chair Filseth: Okay, so why don’t we leave that. Actually that is the 16th, so that needs to be at 7:00 P.M. The third Tuesday of the month and the, I’m sorry, can you repeat what
was on the first.
Mr. Perez: The Mid-year and then the Preliminary Financial Forecast for all Utility Funds, so this is when the discussion starts telling you what they are projecting for the funds and
the Potential Rate Impacts.
Chair Filseth: Got it, and that’s at 6:00 P.M., or is that at 7:00 P.M. as well. That’s a Closed Session.
Mr. Perez: I’ll go check. (Crosstalk) I think that Closed Session was on the 16th, so I think we are fine, so the first can be at 6:00 P.M.
Chair Filseth: Okay. And then on the 15th we are talking about the Public Works pool vehicles.
Mr. Perez: That’s correct. The other thing I wanted to give you tonight, and I know we’re here really late, but it is mostly blank, it’s the May Budget Hearing calendars, so what we
are looking for is for you to take a look at the schedule and if you don’t mind, Chair, coordinating any absence to those potential dates, so just to remind you we try to have a meeting
on a Monday and Tuesday of the three week period, have a wrap-up meeting and then take it to the Council on two nights. Typically what is required is as long as we have a quorum and
we try to have you all on the wrap-up so you can have a chance to participate if you happen to miss a meeting so you can go ahead and have a say on anything you miss. So if you can
help us coordinate any dates that are in conflict for you, then the Chair and I can work on seeing what we can do to make other arrangements.
Chair Filseth: And you would like that as soon as possible.
Mr. Perez: That would be great. And what we do then is we fill in all of the departments and get the department heads aligned.
Jessica Brettle, Assistant City Clerk: Do you have an extra copy of that? Thank you.
Council Member Schmid: I think the Policy and Services Committee have a recommendation to move Committee to Wednesday rather than Tuesday.
Mr. Perez: To my understanding, the Item is still outstanding. It did not get heard. (Crosstalk.)
Council Member Wolbach: I think there might be some pull back from that as well, because Wednesday is the night of a lot of regional meetings and if we shift our, I was originally in
favor until I realized this, that if we shift our Committee meetings to Wednesday nights, then Council Members would be (inaudible) to any region body becomes almost impossible or it
becomes a conflict and given our interest in how things our neighbors affect us, that would probably not be good for Palo Alto.
Mr. Perez: In addition, the Utilities Advisory Commission (UAC) meets on Wednesday nights.
Council Member Schmid: So we should take these Tuesday/Thursdays as (crosstalk.)
Chair Filseth: I believe so. You know there may be further discussion by the (inaudible), but at this point we are assuming we are going to (inaudible). Okay. Can I ask a couple of
things then? So just generally one of the things that came up earlier, there was a discussion about the Administrative Penalty Schedule, which I guess gets reviewed once a year. Is
that the kind of thing that comes to Finance?
Mr. Perez: It does. It comes to you as part of the Budget process, which is the main schedule. So the Fee Schedule will be listed specifically. What we will do is bring you Staff-recommended
changes, and at that point in time you as the Committee has the opportunity to ask for any updates or changes on anything else that Staff doesn’t recommend. You’re the one that brought
that up.
Council Member Holman: Yeah, so clarification on that is, so is that a time – I don’t want to slow down the Budget-hearing process – is that a time or an earlier time, we should be discussing
how we do or don’t assess or collect the fees.
Mr. Perez: I would say from a financial perspective, that would be the best time, because you have the whole picture with you. We try to put the Fee Schedule a little bit later in the
Budget Hearings, but even so by then you are going to have an understanding of where we stand financially, so you will make an informed decision. And it may be irrelevant to the bottom
line, but that was the thinking of how we structure those hearings.
Council Member Holman: Can I make a comment, this may be a little bit counter to that, to me it doesn’t matter and I am not sure that it does to the community what the cumulative dollar
amount is, it is our enforcement capability and proactive actions in that regard, so is that consistent with any of the Council Members?
Chair Filseth: My recollection of this process was we did have a discussion about that about a year ago in May, right, from the perspective of when we talked about staffing and compliance.
I think that was the only discussion we had on that. We didn’t go more broadly than that.
Mr. Perez: We added a position.
Council Member Holman: So I am a little concerned about slowing down the Budget process. We are going to have a discussion about collecting penalty assessments, assessing and collecting.
I can see there is so much to go through during the Budget cycle that it could be not very favorably reviewed.
Mr. Perez: Let me talk to the City Manager and to Hillary and see what can be done, because obviously the brunt of the analysis or any work that needs to be with them, so let me check
that. I see some windows in April, so we will have to take a look at just a matter of checking it with Staff.
Chair Filseth: I wanted to ask the Section 115 discussion, does that come back to Finance Committee, or is it just going to the 2017 Budget in process.
Mr. Perez: The way we were looking at it, if it is going to be part of your March 7, 2016 Council meeting discussion, at that point I suppose the Council could send it back to Finance
if there (crosstalk.)
Council Member Schmid: What is the 117?
Chair Filseth: That is the Pension Trust. I noticed on the earlier list there is a Police Services Utilization and Resources Study.
Mr. Perez: Correct.
Chair Filseth: That’s going to come, to be scheduled.
Mr. Perez: That’s one where we are working on, there are a couple of items that are to be scheduled there that we are working on with the departments, and that’s been a challenging one,
as you can tell from the date, and so let me continue to check in with the department. If you do not hear back from us, again we have the May Budget Hearings when the Police Budget
comes.
Chair Filseth: I understand. Once of the things that came up was in the National Citizens Survey, it showed that Palo Alto had the highest public safety expense of any city in the region
and I assume that some of that would get some discussion and we wanted the topic covered.
Mr. Perez: Unfortunately, I don’t have it in front of me, but if it is Public Safety and it is broad then it includes the Stanford coverage?
Council Member Schmid: That’s because the worker numbers here are so much higher than the population.
Mr. Perez: We can definitely, (crosstalk.)
Chair Filseth: Per resident.
Council Member Wolbach: It shows a very high per capita because they only count the residents, not Stanford.
Mr. Perez: One thing that Council Member Schmid has done in the past, and I think it is appropriate is he correlates that with the long-range in the Budget discussions (crosstalk.)
Chair Filseth: And then finally, I know you are tired of hearing about this, but at what point do we discuss a strategy to, right now the unfunded Actuarial Liability we assess once
per year with John Bartel, which doesn’t enable us to consider that as we do budgeting and cost recovery and staffing decisions and things like that, but at what point do we look at
a strategy to enable us to actually calculate that on the fly, so that we can use it in operating decisions.
Mr. Perez: I think it would be appropriate when Mr. Bartel comes before you on March 7, 2016, to indicate some assignment to the Finance Committee that you want some further analysis
and some template or methodology.
Chair Filseth: Yeah, I think we need a good table or a template or a model or something like that. They can’t just send it because, he does fantastic work, but it takes two months and
is expensive.
Mr. Perez: I think that would be my suggestion or recommendation that would be brought up at that point that you as a Council decide how you want to handle that and direct it to the
Committee or direct it to Staff at that point if there is agreement.
Council Member Schmid: Yeah, it would have an impact on the Budget.
Chair Filseth: And then, finally, we are through our mechanisms and the City has a great and appropriate focus on the UAL (Unfunded Actuarial Liability), but to the best of my knowledge
we don’t have a plan to pay down Other Post Employee Benefit. Is that something that we discuss in Finance Committee?
Mr. Perez: Absolutely and so we can have that discussion again when we go through the Budget Hearings, the retire/medical is a subject specific Item that we discuss the funding and current
payment level and we can talk more about it at that point, but I will give you this much, we are one of the few cities, we are like top 20 in terms of largest cities in California in
that group that is funding on a regular basis their annual required contribution, but I think your point is, is that enough, and so that is a discussion we can have.
Chair Filseth: The fear is that it is growing faster. So you said that is during the budgeting?
Mr. Perez: Right, because we will have a Budget recommendation to you which right now the current Council policy is to fund the annual required contribution even though it is not required.
It’s one of those catchy things.
Council Member Schmid: If I can put a word in, I guess number 10, is (inaudible) and I note that the School District has made a decision not to aggressively develop, so that should put
the burden, I guess, back on the City.
Mr. Perez: I think for that one we do need to come back. I do need to talk to the City Manager because there is a demand for the space and our largest tenant is moving out, so we should
Agenda that so we can have a discussion and update with you.
Council Member Holman: Can I ask a question? I had that one on my list too. I see it’s on here and I just wondered why it was on Finance.
Mr. Perez: It just comes up as part of the Budget process because of the significant impact of Foothills moving out and so there are provisions in the agreement for a Rent Reduction,
and so we can explain all of that to you and the desires of certain members of the community or groups, I’ll call it, for that space and so there are a lot of issues and so we do need
to come to you and have an update and a discussion.
Council Member Holman: Did that also include, I understand that some Request for Proposals (RFP) might be going out soon for some nonprofits to step down with Foothills moving out?
Mr. Perez: It’s not for the Foothills’ space, but other space that is available, there will be some RFP’s coming up. Anybody that has made it known to us that they are looking for space,
we are adding them to the list.
Council Member Holman: Okay, so what is the timing of that?
Mr. Perez: Let me double check, because there was an update and so it held up the process so I need to check and let you know.
Council Member Holman: Okay, so there are some nonprofits. Thank you for that. An then, do I dare mention Zero Based Budgeting and if we could have a discussion about that and now
how we might do it incrementally, meaning not all departments at once, what that would entail, what an approach might be, what the advantages and disadvantages are. Are the Council
Members interested in that?
Chair Filseth: This comes up from time to time, right?
Council Member Holman: Yes.
Mr. Perez: This is a significant undertaking that might be, if I may suggest, that the Chair have a discussion with the City Manager and take it from there. I don’t feel that I can
provide you a response to that on my level. I think it needs to be a discussion because of the magnitude of the work and the implications on the work plans because it is a significant
undertaking. I do note that you are saying phase it in and it is something that I think is a discussion that needs to be had with the City Manager.
Council Member Holman: Pending that discussion we could Agendize it with the Finance Committee. There is no way to do it City-wide, it would just be an enormous undertaking.
Chair Filseth: Let me discuss it with the City Manager and maybe we can Agendize it after that.
Council Member Holman: You were saying it does come up.
Mr. Perez: It has been asked before.
Council Member Holman: I just wanted to check, this won’t be our last opportunity to talk about Future Agendas. We do it at the end of every meeting. We can, hopefully, hear back any
thoughts following your discussion with the City Manager and maybe take it from there.
Council Member Holman: I do have one other question, if I could. Business Registry, what is the status of the end of Phase Two and when that data might be coming forward?
Mr. Perez: I can’t answer completely. I apologize, I am not up to date. I do know that I did see that there is a recommendation for staffing coming to you for Monday, the 8th, and
so there is a discussion in there as to where they are at and some deadlines. I was working on some other projects and so I had other Staff look at it and read it and I didn’t get a
chance to read it so I don’t know exactly all the details.
Chair Filseth: With that we move to next, which I guess is adjournment.
ADJOURNMENT: The meeting was adjourned at 8:57 P.M.
TRANSCRIPT
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Finance Committee Transcript
February 2, 2016
FINANCE COMMITTEE
TRANSCRIPT
Page 1 of 45