Special City Council/Finance Committee Joint Meeting: April 28, 2025

Hey! Welcome everyone to the April 28, th 2025. Meeting of the passing City Council. The Council did meet in closed section in closed session and did not take up item 2, but did take up. Item, oh, I'm sorry. No, no, this did not take up. Item 2 took up. Item, yeah, took up. Item 3. We did take up. Item 3, 0, 2 apologies that we're running behind. And we'll start with the calling of the role mayor and chair. The. There is a quorum of the Finance Committee. But let's take a roll for the council councilmember. Cole. present Councilmember. Hampton is here, but he's in the back councilmember, Jones here. Councilmember Lyon here Councilman Madison. Councilmember Steve Madison: Here. Great Council, member Masudo, here, Vice Mayor Rivas, here. Mayor Gordo here there's a quorum of the Council present. Okay? Pledge of allegiance. Yeah. Why don't we start with the pledge of allegiance, Mr. Masuda? Will you lead us to pledge of allegiance? Place your right hand over your heart? Ready, begin! I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands. One nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Yeah, we have a number of requests for a German memory. And I'll start with a request for the Council to adjourn in memory of Peggy Sisson, Pasadena's longtime child care, coordinator. and champion for early education. Peggy was more than a dedicated public servant. She was the heart of early childhood advocacy in Pasadena. For decades she served our city with grace, wisdom. and relentless determination as Pasadena's longtime childcare coordinator. She understood something profoundly important that investing in our youngest residents is investing in our future, and she thought every day to make sure children and families had the support they needed to thrive. She wasn't just an advocate. She was a connector between programs, schools, families, and community partners. She also served on the city's commission on the status of women and the Human Services Commission. She had a gift for bringing people together. finding common ground and making things happen always with a smile on her face, and it was because of her that our city established the office of the young child and adopted its first, st ever early child development policy. Personally, I you know I will miss and have a hard time even calling her Peggy, because Mrs. Sisson was my little League team, mom, who ensure and a neighbor who ensured that I made it to Little League practices and other activities that I may not otherwise have been able to make, because both my parents work 2 jobs, and so I'm eternally grateful to Mrs. Sisson in her contributions to our city and to me personally. and so I would ask that we adjourn in memory of Peggy Sisson. Mr. Line. Thank you, Mayor. I'd also like to ask that we adjourn in memory of Robert Denham. Bob Denham was a was a constituent in my neighborhood, and really a philanthropic soul. He was a lawyer at Munger tolls from the 19 seventies to the 19 nineties, and then the CEO of Solomon Brothers during the rough patch where he brought him out of the rough patch in the 19 nineties he was on the board of the New York Times and Oak Tree Capital, and the chairman of the of the John D. And Catherine T. Macarthur Foundation. and the Vice chairman of Good Sam downtown. Those are just a few of his long resume of of philanthropic endeavors, and a great neighbor. He and his his son lived side by side in in Madison Heights for for many years, and Bob died of cancer on March 15, th definitely someone we want to recognize for his achievements and accomplishments. Thank you. Mayor had the honor of knowing Bob, and a good personnel, very accomplished individual. Mr. Madison. Mr. Madison. You had a request. Councilmember Steve Madison: Yes, Mayor, thank you very much, and I certainly join you and Mr. Lyon in Councilmember Steve Madison: the journey in honor of Peggy Sisson and Bob Denham. Those were 2 Councilmember Steve Madison: just, wonderful people. I actually have 3 requests tonight, Mayor, so thank you for indulging me. The 1st is my now late friend and constituent, Edwin Jed Gould, but known to pretty much the whole world as Jed the Fish, the Dj. On K. Rock, who was there for decades after graduating from Sc. There's a wonderful Councilmember Steve Madison: obituary about Jed in the New York Times. He passed away recently, and just a very gifted, wonderful person, and would hold court in his Victorian home in my district regularly, with his incredible Councilmember Steve Madison: Studio of records and and music collection, and Councilmember Steve Madison: you know, don't don't think for a minute that because he was a K. Rock, Dj. That all he knew was sort of heavy metal or a particular kind of rock. He was fluent in every kind of music, and of course you know the arts enrich our lives. And Jed very much did that second Councilmember Steve Madison: rich Martha was a longtime member and board member of the Brookside Golf Club, and a huge supporter of the 1st T. Of Pasadena and the Pasadena Humane Society. He passed away at the far too young age of 74. Recently he lived in the city, and, as I mentioned, was just very strongly dedicated to those 2 organizations and many others. Councilmember Steve Madison: and then, finally, the 1st lady of Ucla football, Andrea Donahue passed away, and, Mayor, I know you'll remember, from 2023 when you presided over the dedication of I think it was our 3rd statue at that time 3rd or Councilmember Steve Madison: of Terry Donahue, who was just an incredibly successful Councilmember Steve Madison: winning coach at Ucla with many rose bowls and many rose bowl victories, and I provided the city clerk. I don't know if Councilmember Steve Madison: technologically it's possible, but. We have it up on on the screen, sir. Councilmember Steve Madison: Some photos of that wonderful occasion when we dedicated that statue, and Andrea was just so so proud and pleased. But she was obviously a regular denizen of our stadium for all those years that Coach Donahue was Councilmember Steve Madison: at the helm for Ucla, and she now joins Terry in heaven, and I think it's fitting and appropriate because of their contributions to our great city that we we also honor her tonight in a journey. Thank you, Mayor. I I agree, Mister Madison. On all 3, I mean, I had the honor of knowing all 3 and the the The fact that they were all so involved in the rose bowl. 1st T, and in our in our community in general, has certainly made us a better city. And so we will adjourn in memory of Peggy Sisson, Robert Denham, Richard Marth and Andra Donahue thing. Councilmember Steve Madison: Cool, please, Mayor. Thank you. Edwin gold jet shed the fish. Councilmember Steve Madison: Thank you. By the way, it was Alternative Rock that do you love it? Councilmember Steve Madison: Okay. Thank you. Okay? With that we'll move on. To public comment. Did you want to do the opening for the budget? And then we can. Okay, why don't? Why don't we do that? Do the opening for the capital improvement budget? Then we'll take public comment. Oh. thank you, Matt Hawksworth, Director of Finance and Acting Assistant City manager, sitting in for Miguel Marquez this evening, as we open the discussions on the fiscal year 2026, 2023, rd sorry, 2026, 2030 recommended capital improvement program. And this is the budget workshop. As you can see, we have a full audience. They're here to present on their various proposed budget items, and we will kick it off after public comment. So for public comment on the cip we have Sean Deevey or Deve, then Greg Apodaca, then Karen French. and then Cynthia Kennedy, and 2 min go ahead. Mr. Dv. Or was it Duvey Stevie? Yeah, thank you. Thanks. Yeah. I'm Sean Deevey. I'm a grad student over at Caltech, and I just wanted to say the resolution 99, 77 2 years ago, right? Recognized that we're in a climate emergency, and I think that only became more clear in January with the Eden fires. and I would like to express that I think our budget could be a little more focused on achieving the goals that are set out in 99, 77, specifically getting to 100% carbon free electricity by 2030. And then also, I wanted to say, I'm really excited to see a lot of things in there about bike infrastructure and and making it easier to get around Pasadena without a car. I bike commute, and it can be, you know, sometimes challenging to navigate around all the cars that are in the way. and I'm sure the same is true for cars navigating around me, and I think if we had our own spots. That might be nice. and thank you all for your hard work on this, and I believe that we can have a great moral opportunity and a moral, you know. imperative right and and a great opportunity to lead as a city. And I think that we can do that if we continue to work together. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Apodaca, followed by Karen French, followed by Cynthia Kennedy. Mr. Apodaka, are you? Are you? Is that you? Yeah, okay, great. Thank you. Thanks very much for the opportunity to talk for a few minutes here. I recognize most of you folks. I'm here to talk about the future. But here to talk about the recent past, too. On January 7th the climate emergency got very real for me, as my home burned to the ground as did tens of thousands of others here and in the Eton area and in the Palisades. It is a surreal experience to have lost everything that my wife and I have built up over about 5 decades. and I know we've been up there to see our property about 5 times now. You know I I guess I'm used to it now, but it doesn't get easier. And we see our our neighbors up there, and inevitably somebody starts to get choked up. and it's hard to to not do that. So it's a surreal experience in the in a negative way, but also in a positive way. Our neighbors meet 27 homeowners every Monday night on zoom, sharing ideas, sharing grief and ideas about contractors and architects, and all the things that we need to go through now to rebuild our lives. But there's a silver lining here in that. We have a kind of a clean sheet from which to rebuild an opportunity to rethink everything. I was just writing some notes down here. I remember when Rick was mayor a while back, when we were starting leadership. Pastina and Rick had an outgoing ceremony for his mayorship that was called. Imagine the Greater City. I don't know if you remember that or not, Rick. We have an opportunity here in the Pasdena area to rethink things from a clean sheet. I hope that you'll take advantage of that, and and let that show in your budget priorities. We can rebuild 1 million dollar homes or multimillion dollar homes where people don't know their neighbors, or you can build rebuild sharing communities where people share cisterns and veggie gardens and fruit orchards and electrical grids and batteries, and and the way things should be right. I didn't talk to all those 27 neighbors before, but I know them pretty well now. and I'm hoping that we can continue that process to build. Please let that show in your budget. If you think that's a good idea. Thank you, Greg, and we're we're on behalf of the Council. We're sorry for the loss of your home, and those are your neighbors. Karen. French, thank you. And then Cynthia Kennedy, that's French welcome. Good evening. I didn't know this was going to happen so quickly. I was thought we would hear about the capital stuff. Then I would have a better chance of what I wanted to say, but I do. I'm here to listen to this process, because I know very little about how city government works, and I but I've been involved over the years on and off, and I'm part of a neighborhood association from Jefferson Park and we are. It seems like the only times I usually come here is because of the park. I think in general the city takes reasonable care of their park facilities. but I've also learned over the years and other people in our neighborhood have stated that it's the squeaky wheel that gets that gets the oil that gets the attention. So I feel that some things happen that get I in particular, for our park. Some situation arose early on. It was admitted that a bad decision had been made. The city to do what they did, and then I then we expected a little more follow up, and it didn't happen. And now we're following up again. Finally Rick Cole is met with us this morning. And so we, I decided I'm going to come here and just start learning a little bit more about how the priorities are made. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you, Cynthia Kennedy. Miss Cavity. Welcome. Thank you. In a time of climate crisis you have before you a business as usual, budget. I'm on the technical advisory panel. So I've been spending the last year. And before that the stakeholder technical advisory group studying the possible portfolios and we are so happy to see that E. 3 has actually produced, with Pwp's collaboration and help a pathway forward. One of the characteristics of that pathway as many of you know, is a major increase in local solar. This is very important as a resource. It's important because we have the good rich bottleneck, and we literally cannot import enough electricity for peak times. But it's important for our climate action. I was very concerned to see that this budget does not have anything in it about rooftop solar, no community solar, no solar on city buildings. There is, fortunately, Pwp has put in a provision budgetary line item for batteries. So that's good. But we have a pathway for success before us. We need to seize it. One of the one person told me today, you know, you're just ahead of us. We're going to get to this. It'll come later. Well, we have to do this. We have to. We can't wait anymore. You know. I realize that we have to. There are budgetary constraints. but that's why we have to start. We need to get aligned. And it's not just pwp. It's every part of the city that needs to work. To make this work. We owe this to the citizens of Pasadena. We can't spend 1.3 million dollars on consultants and then pass a budget that doesn't say anything about what they're recommending. So let's let's do this. Let's do this. This is a time of climate crisis. I know you all know that that's why you passed the climate, emergency resolution. Why is the budget so rudderless? Why is it so unfocused. Please reprioritize. Thank you, Miss Kennedy. That completes public comment. Thank you. Council. Member Jones. Mr. Jones, we're going to have a presentation. Yes, first.st Oh, okay, I'll stay in the queue. I believe. Public works. Director Greg Devink is. Gonna start us off, Mr. De Bink. Welcome. all right. Hello, Mayor Gordo, Vice Mayor Rivas, and members of the City Council, and the entire viewing audience. My name is Greg Devinck. I'm the public Works director for the city of Pasadena. And today I get the privilege of presenting the new updated capital improvement program budget proposed for fiscal year 26 through 30. There's a lot of slides. I'm going to try and go through fairly quickly. But if you have questions along the way, that's fine, and I do have a lot of members of staff here with specialized knowledge to better answer your questions. So the 26 capital budget presents new and proposed or existing projects. and they are covered by a lot of different cip sections. They're listed below department of public works, oversees, municipal buildings and facilities, streets and streetscapes, street lighting sewers, storm drains, parks and landscape and the Royal Projects department of Transportation looks after transportation and parking projects. Pasadena water and power has water systems, electrical systems and electric undergrounding do it, which is our it departments, technology projects, and the Pasadena center has their own improvements, and the rose bowl has their own improvements. The Cip budget is a 5 year strategic planning document. It outlines long-term investment needs required to expand, enhance, and preserve the city's ongoing infrastructure. This serves as a roadmap for identifying sorry prioritizing and funding capital projects, and all of the projects in the plan are consistent with the city's general plan. This is a calendar of taking our updated project to the various commissions. and all 4 commissions gave unanimous support for our current proposed budget. and a specific note on the bottom is the Transportation Advisory Commission. They did recommend an increase of paving appropriation from 11 million to 15 million. 11 million has been roughly what it's been for the last 2 years. But typically it's closer to 6 as our as our normal funding. the project or the the budget has 218 projects with an estimated cost of 2.4 billion over 5 years. 446 million are recommended in this current fiscal year that covers 119 projects recommended for funding. Those are continuing and new projects for the 14 new projects. 7 of them are recommended for funding with 10.6 million. There's been 880 million appropriated to date through this current fiscal year and an unfunded balance of 1.1 million. There's an additional 48 future unfunded projects with an estimated cost of 430 million. This slide is appropriations by fund, and if you look at the top, what we've done on generally on the pie chart slides is we've backed the library out. Our library is such a massive project on its own that it kind of dominates the pie chart, so we pulled it out. The remaining balance is 250 million. and if you look at that. the biggest ones are power, followed by water, followed by grants. The city staff has successfully procured 37 million in grants, and rose Bowl has a good chunk. These funding sources are restricted. They can't just be used and moved around very easily. The only unrestricted fund is the 1 million dollars in the right in a box, and that's a multi-year commitment that the Council has made to put a million general fund every year into sidewalk repairs, and we're continuing forward with that in this proposed budget funding by distribution. Again, the libraries backed out, you can see water and power has the lion's share at 73%. The operating companies is 13%, and all other city Cip is 15% of the budget that covers building streets, street lighting, transportation, and many other projects. We open the public hearing on April 14, and will continue through May 5, which is our anticipated adoption of the Cip Budget. And now we'll go through Presentations per Department Department of Public works is going to go first, st and what public works is responsible for. We oversee 6 of the 14 sections of the budget, municipal buildings and facilities, streets and streetscapes, street lighting sewers and storm trains, parks and landscaping and arroyo projects. Public works also provides design and oversight. or projects in 4 other categories, transportation, parking, electric undergrounding and some rose bowl. Our accomplishments for 2025 include the upper arroyo trail loop and lower arroyo trail loop where we did slope stabilization, cleaned up the hiking trails, repaired stairs, and we had a ribbon cutting December second, which was a Saturday morning. I'll remember that because I had started work here that week. So it was pretty interesting. Public works oversees a lot of projects that just aren't glamorous by nature, but they're incredibly important. And this slide kind of demonstrates that we did Ada improvements for the parking lot at Villa Park. We also improved and made Ada accessible, or made the existing bathrooms Ada accessible for the Villa Park Community Center, so not glamorous, but really very important, that we do it. We did construct 3 pickleball courts at Vina Vieja Park. We also added 14 parking spaces and put in site amenities like benches and trash cans, and that had a ribbon cutting. August 1524. We did construct a very large shade structure at Washington Park. We do have in a future slide funding proposed to do 2 more parks at Mcdonald and Victory. More shade structures. We completed the roundabout at Avenue 64 for improved traffic flow and pedestrian safety. This slide is the meat and potatoes of public works. It's really our annual programs. including street resurfacing Ada ramps, sidewalk repairs and sewer lining. You can see that we replaced 65,000 square feet of sidewalks at 500 different locations. We resurfaced 17 miles of streets that does include new asphalt as well as more affordable processes like microsurfacing. On the bottom left we installed 75 new Ada ramps. In the middle we lined 100 manholes. Not only does that restore structural integrity to the manhole, but it stops stormwater infiltration, which is a big problem in sewer systems. You don't want to treat stormwater. It's already clean. and towards the right we line 25,000 feet of sewer, which is close to 5 miles. Our cip overview is 59 projects with a total of 538 million 230 million is recommended appropriations over 29 projects. 5 of them are new. 109 million have already been appropriated through the current fiscal year and 199 million remain unfunded. Here's another pie chart, and we did back out the library. So 230 million is the total public works funded request. But only 34 million remains after you take the library out of this grants is quite significant. It's our largest single source, and don't really have a lot to specifically say, but we generally do our capital projects pretty much by grants and other sources, not including the general fund. That's only 1 million dollars municipal buildings. So go through by category. Now we have 16 projects for a total cost of 259 million. Again, the library dominates. We have 1.5 million recommended for 2 new projects, and 197 for 4 continuing projects, 26.8 has already been appropriated in the new projects. We are requesting 500,000 for 5 years in a row to update Hvac systems at various locations. Our systems are old. They're not fully reliable. They're certainly not efficient anymore. And it's just kind of an area of our city facilities. That's kind of been long neglected, and we're requesting some attention be put into those very similar goes for roofs. We're requesting 1 million for 2 years in a row to do a lot of roofing projects in recent rains, just in the category of libraries. We had 5 libraries with water intrusion. I know we have water intrusion in many other buildings. If we don't address it. As soon as we're aware of it, it leads to wood, rot. It leads to mold, it leads to property, damage, or contents in the building, uninhabitability, all kinds of much more costly problems. So we are recommending. We put some money towards this for the ongoing projects. We have the library which is actually advertised right now, we're looking for construction managers at risk already. Today. the building maintenance fund is we're requesting a million dollars. Those are just small miscellaneous projects for city facilities. We have the Hill Library replacement, 4.8 million total cost. We're requesting 500,000 to continue that project and the public Health building total cost of 225. We're requesting 25 million oops. We're requesting 200 million to complete that to make their restrooms ad accessible. I would just come in. It's 200,000 200,000. You're right talking. I'm library talk now. Oh, nice bathroom. Yeah. Welcome. For the category of streets and streetscapes. We have 12 projects with a total estimated cost of 120 million. No new projects. 17 million recommended to appropriate to 8 continuing projects. 27.9 million has been appropriated through the current year. This slide may seem a little out of place. But I wanted to quickly run through this to kind of give a stronger visualization of our investment into street funding. This is a slide that was made by a consultant of ours in 2024. And what that blue line tells you is, where is it going to be? Our our projected pavement condition index, based on different amounts of funding over 5 years. So you can kind of see at the time 2024, the Pci was 57. You can see it in the below left. It's just like school. That's a failing grade. It's not very good not something to be proud of. We want to get that up. Council has elevated our budget close to 11 million dollars for the last 2 years, and if we continue that on for 3 years. It projects out to around 63, 64, so we can go up about 6 or 7 points if we continue that trend. And if you want to fund anything less than that, you can kind of see the resulting score. You can actually see if we fund at our current rate, which we're requesting right now 5.9 million. Today the Pci will be pretty stagnant. It'll stay bad. It actually will drop 1 point over 5 years from 24 moving on. So here is the 1st one street resurfacing. We do have 5.9 million identified from gas tax Rmra funds and the sewer fund the sewers in there, because we include stormwater and sewer together, and we do use that funds to reconstruct damage, curb, and gutter, which is an element of controlling storm flow. We have 300,000 requested from gas tax and sewer fund for Ada Ramps. We have another 1.5 million for Ada ramps, a general fund, which is the only general fund that I showed earlier, and an additional 500,000 in Cdbg. Funding to an earlier point. Mr. Cole brought up the Cdbg funding has a qualifying area. Those funds have to be spent in a specific in specific locations in the city. On top of that the general fund, we feel should be evenly distributed to include qualifying areas and non-qualifying areas, so that the intent of the Cdbg funding benefits, the areas of the qualifying locations. We also have 200,000, which is private capital. That's development fees that go into the fund, and we repair more sidewalk locations. continuing more streets. So we have the Holly Street Bridge. We're requesting 8 million dollars be appropriated. It's funded by the highway bridge program. Grant Santariah Fale Bridge. We're requesting 995,000, also funded by the same grant. And then there's a guardrail program gas tax, a hundred 1,000 and bridge repair program, 100,000 gas tax street lighting. We have 6 projects with a total cost of 42 million dollars. We don't have new projects proposed. We're recommending 350,000 for 2 continuing projects, a total of 6.6 million has already been appropriated. Those 2 new lighting projects are 300,000 for street lighting and 50,000 for led safety lighting. If you look at the picture on the bottom left. safety lighting refers to the tall lights that are at traffic intersections. The other street lighting is typically mid block lighting or sometimes non signalized intersections. Both of these, for the most part, are going to replace old technology lighting with new energy. Efficient leds that put out more foot candles to the ground at a lower wattage and saving energy. And they're more reliable, too. Sewers and storm drains. We have 9 projects. Total cost of 94,250,000 is recommended for one new project and 12.4 million, recommended for 5 continuing projects. 37 million has been appropriated through the current year. This is the new project. It's 250,000 for Jefferson Park. Stormwater capture. This project is going to divert Stormwater from a nearby storm, drain, channel it into new infiltration chambers in the Park. and the goal here is to take stormwater that will be just diverted out to the flood channels and eventually to the ocean. Put it into the ground. Our soil is a natural filter. By the time it gets to our aquifer the water is considered quite clean, so the goal is, it removes contaminants, and it recharges our water aquifer. It's also funded by measure. W. Other projects in sewer and storm drains is the annual sewer system improvements, 3.5 million. That's funded by a sewer facility charge of 2,000,001.5 million sewer fund annual storm drain, repair and improvements, 1 million by the Sewer fund. San Rafael treatment and Wetlands. Storm water capture. That's a safe well, measure W. 4.5 million. and modernization of Bush Garden and Rosemont sewer pump stations, 2.3 million by the sewer fund and the East Side storm drain improvements project 1 million by the sewer fund. Parks and landscape is 2 subsections. One is Parks, one is landscape. We have 9 projects, a total of 12 million dollars and 0 recommended or funds identified for one new project and 12.4 million, recommended for 4 continuing projects. 3.6 million has been appropriated already. The new project where we haven't identified funding is the Street Tree master plan and tree inventory. We plugged in 400,000. As the cost estimate the vast majority of that cost, I'd say. Probably over 300,000 is the inventory portion. Our inventory is old, it's outdated. We'd like to get that updated for better planning the master plan itself. We're we've begun efforts already to put forth an in-house effort. We already have 5 arborists on staff. They have decades of landscape and tree care experience specific to Pasadena. I feel they're quite qualified, and we're starting to make progress on that inside to save money. But we still will need to eventually do a master plan and the inventory update the current master plan we have is almost roughly 30 years old, and while trees haven't changed, tree science has evolved a lot and public concern where 30 years ago. Tree flammability was not a concern in the tree plan. Today. It is native species drought, tolerant climate change. A lot of new information should go into an updated master plan. We also will be incorporating 8 specific plans that the planning department has been already working on a long time. 5 of those have already been adopted by Council. The Parks projects is the citywide Shade structures at Mcdonald, and Victory and Brenner Park playground improvements for $265,000, requested the other projects is Citywide park improvements. Those are a whole bunch of small projects for $102,000, and the Villa, Park pool and pool area upgrades. It's a concept study for $50,000 to look into options, to expanding the aquatic capacity of that park. This is, I guess, an explanation slide the pickleball courts we built. We did put out a contract to put 3 courts out. That was done. The courts are completed, we closed the contract. and somehow communication that we've closed the contract actually closed the entire thing in the cip where the original cip had 12 pickleball courts. We put out a contract for 3 and closed it. We didn't intend to close the project that hopes to have 12 pickleball courts eventually. So this slide is just recommending that this project be put back into the cip book as an accidentally closed project. We have projects in the arroyo. We have 7 projects with a cost of 8.9 million 0 is recommended for one new project. 120,000 is recommended for 3 continuing projects, 6.8 million has been appropriated through the current fiscal year. The project that doesn't have funding is the Brookside Park upgrade of athletic light field lighting. It's estimated at 916,000. We will proceed with the project when funds are identified. the other ongoing projects, 40,000 each, all for Measure W. We have 2 in Hamonga, the 1st and 3, rd it's the Hamonga Master Plan, Oak Grove area improvements. The last one's Ha. Hamonga Watershed Park, Berkshire Creek area improvements, and the middle one's the lower Arroyo seco habitat restoration, all funded with Measure W. And that concludes public works. Do you want to ask questions of me, or continue on to public works or transportation. How would the Council like to which should we finish all the presentations and then come back? We have all the departments to go. How about if we do questions? With each of the sections, and then discussion on the whole thing. Does that make sense sure, why don't we? So if there are clarifying questions or information requests, we can ask those now and then. at the end of all the presentations, we can more general comments. So question, and this is the opening of the of the capital improvement. Okay? So questions on public works. Right? Yes. Okay, yeah. Well, to see yourself called. Thanks, Mayor. And thanks, Greg, for the presentation. Appreciate the work you're doing and and the work that your team is doing. And I guess to start off this question be for you and for Mr. Reyes is, I know Msc. Has been working with Pwp. And public works a little bit on the Osp. And you know local solar and storage are an important part of our city's energy goals. And so, you know, it's been brought up by public comment. I've received a lot of emails over the weekend regarding it. I don't see many solar projects in the cip. And so I'm just hoping that you and and Mr. Reyes could address that shouldn't. Thank you, David Reyes, interim general manager for water and power. Yeah. We were last at Msc. On April 8, th and we got some pretty good direction from from the committee, and we plan on coming to the full council on May 5, th which is next Monday, and we hope to get direction. So you know, the the timing and the process is interesting here. But the optimized strategic plan is really meant to implement the goals and policies set forth in 90 in resolution 9,977. And we happen to be here in front of you today with with the budget that you're correct doesn't include a whole lot of solar. There's there's 1 item that sits in there. But I wanted to say that we acknowledge that the current Osp. As it's being drafted, does identify the need for local battery and storage. It hasn't been adopted by the city Council. We need to have some direction from city council, and then the process would be. If we get that direction. We need to work through Msc. To really have some policy goals about how much local solar we're going to have, because that's going to take time and money, and that money is going to then be reflected in a rate study and will have an impact on our rate payers. And so it doesn't make sense that we would come forward now through the Cip process without having any policy direction to identify a solar project. We know that we need solar. We know that the Cip is a living, breathing document that gets amended, you know, multiple times a year, and every year it gets adopted anew. So this is not the only shot at that. I also want to remind the city Council that we have spent over 1 billion with a b 1 billion dollars in the last 2 years on green energy carbon free energy as directed by the city Council and approved by the city Council through contracts. We also are in the process of working on our operating budget. And that operating budget includes over 3 million dollars for income qualified solar and storage projects. I know that's not before us tonight, but we are aware of the issue. We are serious about the issue, and we are coming forward. It's just not ripe at this point in time to bring forward a project that hasn't been vetted through policy discussions. See? I appreciate that response. And and, Greg, how about on public works is in public facilities. Okay? Yes. Buildings would fall under public works. Solar on our city. Owned buildings would likely be a public works issue. We don't have a request for funding in there to me. I think it largely ties kind of nicely with the roofing request. We have a lot of failing roofs. I would not want to put out solar until the roof is really addressed, replaced, or repaired, because then the solar is just in the way, and it costs more. I would suggest that if Council wants to appropriate funding for solar I would recommend we come back, possibly mid-year, with an adjustment. I don't think that delays implementation of panels, because we will need substantial time to get through roofing repairs. As we repair roofings we can determine they're now appropriate for solar. It'll take many months to get to that point. So I don't see a delay if that were the game plan. But it's really up to Council's discretion. Okay, I appreciate that response, and I had a few more questions. So you're proposing 5.9 million dollars for streets. But your slides? I don't. If you can go back to the Pci slide. Okay? Yeah. So it, it's showing that we would need to allocate or appropriate 10.7 9 million per year just to get our Pci up to 63. So where would the additional funding come from? Would that come from the general fund? Because, like you're proposing what? 5.9, we have identified 5.9. We're good to go with. That council has the past 2 years appropriated additional 5 million general funds to roughly double our program and get us up to this projected. These projected numbers include that additional funding for 5 consecutive years we're in. We're we're in Year 3. We didn't put it in there that's at Council's discretion to bump it up. So I would I would chime in Matt Hawksworth. So yes, so the city manager myself as the Director of Finance. We are certainly working to identify additional general fund dollars that we could propose that the Council allocate towards this project. as we were developing the funding and the proposed budget that wasn't ready to go yet. Okay, but I expect that when we get into the operating Budget Kickoff we will talk about the opportunity that the Council may have for any ongoing general fund, or one time general fund dollars that could be allocated, and then additional funding towards repaving will certainly would certainly be on the list. Yeah, yeah, because even what we're proposing according to your slide, that's not even enough to keep us at 57, because you're saying that we'd have to have 6.7 6 million a year. And so I definitely would be in favor of allocating additional funds towards getting us to the Pci of 63, because there's a lot of several streets, and you know the mayor and I were at a community meeting over the weekend, just talking specifically about a few streets and how it needs to be resurfaced and repaved. And there's a lot of potholes in there. So I definitely would be supportive of that. And then moving on to street lights is $350,000 enough for street lighting, because there's a lack of pedestrian streetlights, and specifically in the district that that I represent. There's several dark stretches. There's. you know, a lot of residents outside of streets outside of sidewalks they call about their streetlights and saying, You know, they don't feel safe. They want more lighting. Is this 350 enough to really. I guess, accomplish what we set out to to achieve here. And also, how are we determining the locations for the streetlights? Because I, you know, Lisa and I. We work closely with with Rich, who does a great job of responding to the residents when they're requesting streetlights or wanting a streetlight enhancements. And I'm just curious that, are we doing like holistic inspections at night to identify some of these dark patches? Or are we? Is it really residential, driven? And you know the emails that are we received, and we eventually pass on to your team. Alright! I do believe it is. The vast majority is complaint driven 300,000 forgetting the safety lights. That's just at traffic intersections. We'll do that. It's not complaint driven. We do that, anyway. The 300,000 goes remarkably far, because what we do with that is we just buy the fixtures and our own in-house staff installs them. So it's quite a cost effective program. and the cost for led lighting keeps going down and keeps getting better. So it's on an improving trend. 300,000 will not get you new lights on poles with foundations and conduit and everything like that that's not in here. So those those dark spots are staying dark with this budget. This is just to enhance the lighting, to put out more foot candles to the ground. to have more efficient lights to repair ones that burn out. It's definitely well spent. It's a substantial improvement you're getting for these funds, but it's not new polls. Oh, my understanding! How it articulated to me was that part of that 300,000 was going towards like Claremont, and going towards Morton, and a lot of the like. You're referring to a lot of the dark spots on the streets. they could be lights added to Edison polls. I don't know. Here goes. Here goes the expert specific questions. I mean, right now, the 300,000 is really, it's almost like operating budget. We go in and upgrade existing older technology and replace the luminaires with led technology. It allows us to get a better spread of light on the ground. What Greg was alluding to like. If you were to put a new system completely new system. each pulls about $15,000 in place versus luminaires. Just a luminaire itself is like 250. So we can, you know, buy many hundreds of luminaires and replace existing high pressure sodium and induction lights with led. It's a lot more efficient, a lot better lighting. We're just, you know. There is. There is an existing cip, of which we're getting 300,000 in it. In that cip. It's identified. I don't know the number exactly, but something like 6 million. And that would go towards systems. Yeah, it would be towards systems. But you know, as it is right now, we're we're just getting pretty much maintenance dollars to be able to support the field crews and use utilize field crews in keeping the existing system running. That's that's really. And then systematic upgrades on a on a request basis and rich. If I could remind you or any other staff that come to speak, if you could make sure to introduce yourselves for the audience. Sure, yes, Richard d principal engineer. And yeah, I guess I bring that up because it seems like for the past few years we've recommended, or you've recommended 300,000. However, we've appropriated like 700,000 at the end of the year, so should we be recommending more? Or, what's the why are we appropriating 700,000? At the end of this year, however, each year we keep recommending 300,000. I'm only taking a guess at this answer, oh, yeah, this is appropriated through the current year that 700,000 might be several years of accumulated funds. I'm not sure. That's right? Okay? Okay, yeah. Yeah. The appropriated through is the total that's been appropriated to date on a project. Not necessarily how much been appropriated in the current year. Okay, I'll I'll go back to that cause. I I pretty sure each year it's shown that we've spent the 700,000. There's been budget amendments that I've seen and and council agendas that's went above the 300,000, and then the last one is, and I don't know if this meets the 75,000 threshold. But there are a lot of street signs within the district. I represent that they're hard to see, due to sun damage, and you know they're awaiting replacement. Is there any program or project we can do where we're replacing some of the street signs and also refreshing. And again, I don't know if this meets the 75,000 refreshing some of the red curb paint debating, who should answer this? Oh, sure! Well, signs do have a reflectivity index. When they're brand new, you can see them from really far away and over time, when it's gone you can't see the signs at all, even when your headlights are on them. They're almost gone. We do assess periodically signs for reflectivity as well as complaints. Sometimes they're overgrown by tree branches and other things we do have a signed budget. The way it generally works is we get requests through Dot, and then we order the signs and we install them. You had another question. Oh, the red curb red curb. Yeah. My staff does do red curb. We evaluate by request. We also do periodic inspections. Just our inspectors drive around. Keep an eye. They're looking at so many things. I'm sure they miss it quite frequently. But we do red curb in house. I wonder could it be driven outside of complaints like, is there any way I know you said it should be because yeah fades terribly. It starts starts to turn pink, or even gets erased over time. Right? Okay, thank you. Okay. Mr. Cole, followed by Mr. Masuda. Then, Mr. Lyon. I have no reminder counsel. We have a number of departments to. Yeah, I just have 2 questions. Well, so much of our budget. so much of our budget is constrained by formulas and restrictions. And one area where we have no ability to move it outside of that arena. But a significant amount of flexibility within that arena is gas tax money. It would be helpful for our next discussion, or between now and our next discussion, to know how you've allocated the gas tax money right? Because you could allocate it to street repair. You can allocate it to public transit improvements. You can allocate it to, you know a number of other things. So that's 1 area where we've parceled it out, and we sort of are on automatic pilot, on on how we divide up gas tax so it would be helpful to have that understanding of how we allocate gas tax, and we may want to re-examine how we allocate our our gas tax dollars. Understood. Gas tax is one of the most flexible funds we do receive. It does have restrictions, but it's quite flexible. Yeah, yeah, we can't spend it on solar collectors, except maybe for street lights. But but we we do have some flexibility, and and I'd like to to see that, so we can understand where the money is being allocated. The same question could, you will go back to the street tree, Master Plan Slide. So I know we have a ton of staff here, and I apologize that you all have to sit through each other's discussions, but I bring to this dais a skepticism of our propensity to hire consultants. I understand, having been in your chairs for 20 years, that sometimes we do need consultants for their expertise, and sometimes we need them just as extra pairs of hands, because we already have enough work on our plate to keep our people busy. But is this $400,000 of estimated cost is that for the inventory is that for consultants to tell us what kind of trees we should plant. because if we have to wait until we get $400,000 we'll be waiting another 30 years. The 400,000 is a cost estimate. Staff came up with to hire a consultant to redo the Tree Master Plan, as well as Redo, the inventory of our 60,000 trees in the parkway. After hearing that, I directed Staff kind of encourage them. Let's try to do this ourselves. We have 5 arborists. What a consultant is going to do is grab their last report from their last city that paid them. Tweak it to Pasadena and say, What do you want? I think we can do that ourselves. I'm encouraging them to do that. We're hoping to take guidelines to Ufac at the next meeting. and that would be the smaller piece of it for the inventory. The way I'd like to handle that ultimately is, is the way I did it in San Gabriel, where we go out for grid pruning contracts, and we make that an element of the grid pruning. They're already visiting every tree. We won't get it all at once. We'll get the update as they grid prune various sections of the city, but I think that's probably the most cost effective way to get this done. I know this falls under the city manager who's not here, but but I recommend we we give 10% of this money as a bonus to Mr. Devink for saving the city 300 and and $60,000. Publicly, I do not want that, noted Mr. Debank. But but I you know, obviously I appreciate that sentiment, and I also would not underestimate the extraordinary talent within our citizens. our Urban Forest Advisory Commission, our Environmental Advisory Commission. Other people in our city who understand trees understand climate change, understand? The the fact that we don't want our. We don't want to plant trees that are going to break up the sidewalk right? There are a lot of pieces that go into this, but I really deeply hope that we not only draw upon the 5 experts you have on your staff, but also the resources that we have in our community. I think we can do a better job than a consultant could do, and I have a lot of confidence in you and your team, and if you partner with the community, I think we can get this done after 3 decades of delay, and the sooner the better. Thank you. By the way, we spent a fair amount of money on consultants for the tree recommendations that are in the various specific plans. Right? So that work has already been done. We've already spent that money, and we shouldn't duplicate that work. We don't want to duplicate it. We're trying to come up with a plan that really works better for us. Not so much a block by block. It's this tree, but much more situational because it doesn't consider power lines, proximity to utilities, or a driveway width of the parkway, other trees nearby. We want something more systematic than just right now. The old plan just has a table on this street. It gets this tree. We're also looking to put in some, maybe some community choice, where, if it's in front of your house, there might be 2 or 3 appropriate choices. It helps canopy diversity which will fight, disease spread and other problems. So I think tree science has come a long way. I think our in-house Staff's very familiar with it. Not a tree person. I do have to trust them, but but I do, and we'll get something good out of this. It will go to other groups after Ufac is okay with it. And I would just note, the city manager is actually listening online. He's in the Zoom Meeting along with Councilmember Madison. So he's listening. Do do you mind if I can? Okay, I just wanted to ask for clarification on the question about the so Mr. Devin, you mentioned that you're not a tree person, but you didn't mean that in the way of you're not a tree person, just not arborist. I don't have tree knowledge expertise. Thank you. You're not. I love trees just in case anybody's watching. They're like, Oh, my gosh! This guy's not a tree person. He's gonna cut all the trees down in Pasadena. Thank you. Look for the article tomorrow. No, I'm a big tree proponent. I want to get as many healthy trees as I can while I'm here. Hopefully, the most appropriate trees for where they are I just want to clarify that, was it. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, so questions from Mr. Masuda. Thank you so much for your report. And I just have a few questions. As you know we just had the Eaton fire. and I was told many years ago that we can't do undergrounding of utilities in Upper Hastings. Does that still all true today. That is a water and power question. why don't we reserve that question when water and power does its presentation? Okay, we have a million dollars for roof replacements correct about how many buildings will that take care of? Because I think it will run out of money. Any answer I gave you would be wrong. So I'm not comfortable saying that I know we have a lot of buildings. I mean, it's easy to spend that much money. We have several when it rains. We have a dozen buildings that are complaining about leaks. It's really important that we deal with it before they become huge problems. I don't know how many, because it depends on the solution, the type of roof, the age, the problem. I don't have an answer for you that I'm comfortable with. Thank you. Just like Council Member Jones he was talking about lighting. I hear a lot about lighting in my my district led I just wanna not put you on the spot. But that's something that I hope you think a lot about. Street paving is what I hear a lot about, and I'm sure you do as well. In fact, when I you 1st came on, I put you aside, and I start talking to you about street paving. Is that seem to be a big concern in Pasadena overall. And what is your plan? All right. Street paving is certainly a big concern. It's probably in the top 3, I would say, of all concerns. it's the most obvious infrastructure we have. It affects everybody with a car. or even a bicycle, even more so. and our streets are bad. They're obviously bad. It's it's it's a huge capital investment that has been underfunded, probably for decades. We just had a community meeting with Councilmember Jones this Saturday, and they were discussing streets. And I did point out that you know our current council is aware that this problem is very real. It's been underfunded they're committing. They've been committing more money recently. It's it's unfortunate. The only way to solve it is to come up with more money, but also on my end, to be strategic about it, to come up with the most cost, effective ways, to get our index up. to make the medium streets last longer before they degrade to much more expensive full remove and replace. That's the worst scenario we do have a huge variety of streets. But really, if you live on a bad street or near a bad street, you know it, it sticks out, you're reminded every time you go on it. So I'd say the priority is extremely high. It's very important to me to pay attention to this, to put an intelligent effort into how those dollars are spent. It's a bit of a trick with 6 or sorry 7 council districts where we kind of have to share this project all over, and at the same time the most cost effective way to pave is not to send the contractor loading up his equipment and driving all over the city. When when I did paving in Santa Monica, and that's a much smaller city. It's 8 square miles. We would batch Pave even there we'd concentrate an area and focus in an area rather than spread them all over. But at the time there weren't districts, you know, there was. All the council members were just general, not any specific district. So there's there's tricks to doing this, and it's a puzzle, and it's my job to solve it and to get us as high an index as I can with within the means of what I'm provided. But it's very important. Thank you. Last question, Pickleball. We all hear a lot about it. Inno vieja, you have the you mentioned the 3 new pickleball courts. When or what's the plan to put in the other 9? I gotta defer to staff on that one lot of confused faces. Alright. Good evening, Mayor. Members of Council coco Panos. I'm director of Parks Recreation community services, Councilman Mosura. That's a question it relates to the funding availability. Where now, when we look at the park projects looking at which park projects based on conversation with the community, the demand that we can move forward at this time, seeing that we finished the 3 at Vina Vieja, and we have courts right now over at Brookside Park in the plans in the initial plans as part of the the water project, that through Measure W. That was approved last year by council. So as we evaluate, and we see available funding, we will be incorporating those back into the project. Mix for future funding, and once those fundings are identified, we'll be proceeding with those projects as well. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Mr. Lyon. Questions. Thank you, Mayor. I will be quick. If we could go to this, the Pci slide again. So we we did a lot of government acronyms. Osp, and Msc, and Pci, pci, is pavement condition index? Right? Correct. What? What's our current index? Number? 2 years ago it was 57 by this chart. I would just prorate it around 59, 60 so, and 57 is right on the on the margin between poor and fair, right at the bottom end of fair. Yes, but but but we know it's some good streets. It's some awful streets, you know. It's a mix right, of course, as a city average. it does fall at the bottom of fair, but we all kind of universally know 57 is a failing grade, right? And 63% 63 as a goal is still in the low aspiration. Right? So it's certainly not the streets of a world class city. Correct? That's correct. We do have 350 miles of streets. So it's just a incredibly expensive thing to to do. I had success in San Gabriel, and if I just prorated I had some budget surges there. Council approved more. I had multi years of grants all piled up fortunate circumstances. But if I prorate what happened there to here to get us into the mid eighties, I'd need at least 75 million dollars this year. which isn't going to happen right? Right? Get there this year. But we probably should be aiming for it. We should aim for it. But you got to consider over time. Streets are always naturally degrading. Right? 75 million this year is maybe 80 million, spread over 2 or 3 years, or 100 million over 5 years, because they're always going down. It's a never ending problem. Right? Once they're up in the eighties. The preservation treatments are very affordable, the cost to keep them there is very low. We just put on slurry seals are microsurfacing cheap processes to keep them looking fresh, and to stop cracks from degrading the sub base and causing bigger problems. And, conversely, when they're in bad shape, those those kind of Band-aid fixes end up being particularly not cost effective right? Because we we fill in a pothole, and then the next time it rains it's gone again. I can take you to 3 Corners in my district, where you've filled since you've been here. We filled it twice. I think I do have a pothole story. If you have a second go the way we've historically filled potholes, for I think decades now is our crews go out to the batch plant with a steak bed truck and they get a load dumped on the truck. They drive it back to Pasadena. They shovel it out in the morning and compact it down by lunchtime. It's already cooled off so much that it's not settling. It's not compacting right. And by the afternoon, whatever's left in the truck we have to pay to dispose, because it's too hard and hot or soft. Most cities. I'm surprised when I got here. Have a hot patch truck. It's a truck that keeps it warm, even what you don't use. You can keep warm till the next morning. So I am requesting one of those. But it's not part of this. Okay? Okay, to aim for improved quality of pothole for actually good streets, we should be looking at 1516,000,000 a year, though. Right? At least. I mean, this has us. If we're 15 million a year, we're still only at 67, right? Correct. But this keeps going. Okay. And as we get higher. We're dealing with the worst streets. It becomes more affordable over time. Right? Important point, actually, thank you for that. So you said, this is one of the top. 3 concerns. I would agree with you. I think it's 1 of the maybe top 2 concerns in the city, and it's the budget. As a statement of values is not, is not putting that kind of priority on it. And the fact is, we have decades of mismanagement in this area. We have. We have deferred and deferred and deferred on this on this particular expenditure, and that's coming home to roost. And so we it may mean that we can't spend money in other places. But now I turn to Mr. Hawksworth, I have. How much have we dipped into our 5% reserve this year? Does this budget plan to dip into it at all? No, we haven't proposed the use of any of our 5% general fund reserve. So I think this is a place where we we, the the reserve is there for for it's the people's money, and it's there for critical needs. And we have a critical need here, and and so I think for me the the 5 9 is not satisfactory, and we should. 11 was was already too low. Quick question about the Colorado Street Bridge. So we spent 3 million dollars on design. There's no more money in for anything else. Is there ongoing? Is there still some of that 3 million left that's in work toward some kind of permanent fix. There's 1.5 million still remaining in that fund. And is it being spent. Is it appropriated? Yeah, it's appropriated. Is it actually being spent? We have, I believe, 2 mock-ups being fabricated right now we'll install them on the bridge, have Staff come out and test them. See if they're appropriate or not. I think we've gone before I got here, but I think we've done this before. It is something that's gone on too long. But we're getting closer to a possible solution. So there's we're we're still moving forward there in some fashion. Okay. that's good to know on the I really appreciated the discussion about the street Tree master plan and I so want to encourage and second your your approach of doing it in house w