City Council Agenda and Packet 2018 09 17

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City Council Meeting Minutes August 28, 2018 Page 5 of 7 City Manager Balser stated this conversation is before the budget and focuses solely on staffing. There will be more conversation to come in relation to the full budget. This is dynamic. We want to know what other information you want. She added the strategic plan could play into this. Councilmember Loo stated the Parks board recommendations for staff are missing. She stated they originally asked for four people and now Open Space is getting more staff but Parks is not. She stated the number one recommendation from Parks & Rec has been a turf specialist and it has been turned down two years in a row. We want to maintain what we have; the turf looks terrible. Director Hix stated the previous Parks & Rec Director did state a resource specialist was the number one departmental priority. Mayor Pro Tem Lipton stated this is just the beginning of the conversation, we need to integrate this into the budget. He noted half of 2016-2018 growth was in the Police Department, and there are still more included here for the next two years. He is concerned we are adding police and neglecting everything else. At the end of the day, we need to align this with the articulated goals of the Council. We need to maintain what we have, not expand our scope of services. We should improve community engagement. We need to make strategic investments and manage expectations. If we are trying to get from 90% satisfied to 100% satisfied this may not be worthwhile. Councilmember Keany stated he has concerns about some of the choices. We may be continuing to increase the Police Department at the sacrifice of other departments. He is concerned about the resource specialist. He agrees we need to focus on essential services, not expanding programs. City Manager Balser stated the requests noted for 2019-2020 can be supported by the General Fund. She noted the police requests are based on the master plan. She agreed there has been a lot of focus on the Police Department in recent years, so this discussion tonight is a new perspective. Councilmember Maloney stated he will need to see how this fits with the entire budget. He would like to see some narrative on the justification of the positions. He noted four positions are for new functions; things we are not doing today but are hoping to accomplish so we need to know more about what we hope to accomplish with those positions. The Open Space position brings up the discussion of balancing acquisition and maintenance. We need to be sure we can maintain what we have. He supported option 1. Mayor Muckle agreed and noted this will have to fit into the full budget picture. We don't want to hire any positions we can't maintain long term. Open Space needs more staff and management for maintenance. We need to be careful of acquiring more if we can't maintain what we have. 36