Council and Authorities Concurrent Meeting on 2025-05-27 5:30 PM - May 27, 2025

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Santa Clara City Council 5h 36m 4 speakers 8 agenda items transcribed 3 days ago official recording ↗

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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.

What agenda items are introduced at the beginning of the council meeting?

Mayor Lisa Gilmore 12:06

Ready? Yeah. Good afternoon everyone and welcome to the Santa Clara City Council Stadium Authority joint meeting. I'd like to call this meeting to order. Uh confirmation of a quorum, City Clerk.

Unknown 12:23

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Confirming your quorum.

Mayor Lisa Gilmore 12:26

Thank you. So we have uh two items for the study session today. Item one A, we're gonna start with study session to review proposed fiscal year twenty-five-twenty-six and fiscal year twenty-six-twenty-seven, biennial operating budget and fiscal year twenty-five-twenty six, capital improvement program budget changes. City manager. That was a lot. Thank you, Mayor. Um The item before you is the second of three budget study sessions and public hearings for our f proposed two-year budget. The the prior session was on May 13th, and your final adoption is scheduled for June 10th. At the May 13th budget study session, staff provided a detailed presentation with highlights of the proposed two-year budget for both the operating and capital funds, as well as an update on your city council priorities.

Mayor Lisa Gilmore 13:19

The city council at that same meeting provided feedback and asked asked a handful of questions. We included written responses to those questions in your packet, and we are here tonight uh to provide another high-level presentation of the proposed budget as well as uh present those responses. Those responses can be found on attachment three to the staff report. With that, I will turn this presentation over to Ken Lee, our Director of Finance. Welcome. Thank you, City Manager. Good evening, Honorable Mayor, City Council, Ken Lee, Director of Finance. Appreciate uh the opportunity to talk about the budget uh again. And uh because it is such a uh uh a lot of information in that 600-page book and a very important uh policy document for you, uh welcome the uh engagement again uh tonight.

Mayor Lisa Gilmore 14:09

And so uh very uh short agenda. Uh I'll cover a high-level summary of our proposed budget. I know I had uh a lot of slides the last time, so I'm not gonna repeat all that just for sake of uh brevity, but um uh that is available uh on the web as well as uh through postmeeting materials. I do want to focus the presentation on follow-up from that May 13th meeting. I know uh many of you had a lot of questions, so I wanted to focus on the answers. And responses to that and then provide the the context leading into the next uh June tenth budget uh public hearing. Uh so just by way of overview, the proposed budget allows for targeted investments. I think as your finance director, uh a relief to have a budget here that uh doesn't include severe cuts, but rather uh targeted uh additions and investments in key areas.

Mayor Lisa Gilmore 15:02

It closely aligns with the city council's priority area of focus in in April of this year. You may recall the study session that the The council had to reaffirm and add to and amend the priority areas of focus as shown on the chart on the right. Proposals in the budget include enhancements to city services such as police and fire services, development review services for uh permit review, housing and homelessness, uh, sustainability and library materials. The budget also includes an allocation. And staffing for the uplift of our Geobond implementation later tonight. And in fact, later in this study session, you'll hear part two with regards to our geobond and as as those activities kick off. And then staffing and resources to support the stadium's major events.

Mayor Lisa Gilmore 15:56

From a fiscal approach, uh the budget restores our budget stabilization reserve to 25% of expenses. That's an important tool. Uh in the downturns, in in economic kind of uncertain situations, whether it's a disaster andor softening of our revenues, it's important as a city to keep 25%. So this is a this restoration is our first time as a city since uh the COVID pandemic. The budget uses for the most part one-time funds for one-time uses, and then also includes funding for a project, a fiscal sustainability plan project. I mentioned this in depth in my last presentation. And the goal of that project, that study, is really to uh address some of the needs, funding needs, restoration and growth of our city.