Fiscal Year 2013-2015 Special Budget Meeting

HONORABLE MAYOR AND CITY COUNCIL Subject: Proposed FY 13-15 Proposed Policy Budget Date: May 13,2013 Page 30 more frequently, if needed) to determine if the service demand and operational needs outweigh the need to pay back the negative fund balance. There will also be changes in workload as Accela is fully implemented that can be better evaluated as the year progresses. 2) How many blight complaints are received by Code Enforcement per month, on average? The average number of blight complaints received per month between years 2011 — 2013 is 600. 3) What would be the cost per position of hiring more code inspectors? The cost (burdened, excluding overhead) for 1.00 FTE Specialty Combination Inspector (Step 2) is $116,176 in FY 13-14 and $118,984 in FY 14-15. 4) It appears that the Administration's proposed budget reduces the number of FTEs assigned to code enforcement. Yet, the proposed budget projects a substantial increase in revenues due to code enforcement. Please explain this discrepancy. For all properties, the City has a code enforcement program to enforce building codes related to code violation on illegal dumping/littering. The former Redevelopment Agency (ORA) previously subsidized funding to mitigate graffiti and illegal dumping on private property. Since the dissolution of redevelopment, an altemative source of funding for this activity has not been identified. The ORA funds that PW had were for 7 FTE positions that conducted • illegal dumping and graffiti removal on public property. The current funding for the enforcement of this program is from the enterprise fund covered by the revenue derived from permit services. Due to retirements and resignations of Permit Plan Check staff. Front Counter staff, and New Construction Inspections staff - the City replaced them with Code Enforcement staff. Customer service at the front counter, timely issuance of permits and timely responses to new construction inspections are the department's highest priorities - in order to promote economic development and job creation. In addition, these services are fully funded by permit fees. Code Enforcement (CE) is not fully funded. Demand for inspections is much higher than the City's CE fees allow. For this reason, the Department is eliminating seven (7) vacant positions for FY 13-14 and FY 14-15. For the public properties, there is no change from the current operation related to illegal dumping removal /littering within PW. As noted earlier in this memo, the Proposed Budget does provide an illegal dumping mitigation proposal listed in the Policy Tradeoffs & Service Buybacks portion of the proposed budget that can be considered by the City Council, if they wish to do so (see page A-3 of the Proposed Budget). Revenue 1) Provide a matrix of Budget Revenue Projections for the last 7 years and the actual revenues for each budget year.