Correspondence - #26 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Flores, Dora From: Tim Johnson <tjohnson@jlkrllp.com> Sent: Tuesday, July 20, 2021 9:06 AM To: eComment, Sarmiento, Vicente; Mendoza, Nelida; Bacerra, Phil; Penaloza, David; Lopez, Jessie; Hernandez, Johnathan; Phan, Thai Cc: Ridge, Kristine; Mendoza, Steven Subject: Agenda Item #26- Cannabis Public Benefit Fund Council... Tonight you will be considering changes to the city's Cannabis Public Benefit Fund (CPBF) to essentially allow a re -distribution from the Enforcement (ENF) portion of the CPBF to the Youth Services (YS) portion ... each of the ENF and YS currently are allocated one third of the cannabis related tax revenue from commercial and retail activities. I ask that before approving this reallocation that you consider what activities the ENF portion of the CPBF can be utilized for. There is no doubt that providing youth services are of vital importance. However, I believe that many in our community believe that the ENF portion is essentially only allowing for SAPID funding and do not understand what is currently allowed to be funded from the ENF fund. It is a balancing act of providing for the many needs of our community, but ENF funds are NOT reserved for policing... there are many allowed uses for the ENF fund that would fall outside of police funding. I believe that funds currently in ENF and those that will continue to come in the future can be utilized for the following vital needs of our community because they fall under the very broad definition (likely purposefully broad IMO) of enforcement services as outlined in the original ordinance: • Code Enforcement: Prior to the pandemic, the city was slated to hire additional code enforcement officers which never happened. Our city appears to be still under staffed in this area especially when compared to staffing before the great recession. We have still not hit those expanded levels of service despite possibly having even greater needs. I believe that utilizing the ENF fund for additional hiring here may be a good utilization of these funds and allowed under the ordinance since they are enforcing city code. • Graffiti Removal: Our graffiti removal team does a great job when they are told of an area on the city's app. However, they are reactionary. I am told that there first responsibility is to respond to report on the app. There are areas that I know do not get reported and the graffiti will stay for days. It is very possible that by expanding this service to allow for one or two more trucks to remove graffiti, they can be more proactive and make our city look better and get ahead of graffiti before it is seen by many. Since it is illegal to graffiti our city, it seems that expanding this program would be an allowable use of the ENF funds. • Trash Pickup: There is trash in our city. On sidewalks, on bike trails, on walking trails, in parking lots, along streets, next to garbage cans. Our city workers/contractors do a good job of responding when an item is brought to their attention via the city's app, but like the graffiti removal, they appear to be reactionary and are absorbed with responding instead of seeking out hotspots in the city. I find that hotspots are often not reported b/c residents may start to become blind to the problem because it simply keeps happening over and over again and they essentially just give up. Since it is illegal to litter in our city, this would appear to be an allowed use of these ENF funds. • Parking Solutions: No doubt parking is an issue in our city. Parking often rolls into violations of city ordinances and code. I believe that development of some parking solutions would also be an allowed use of ENF funds if it is to help in bringing areas into compliance or relieve parking problems in certain neighborhoods. • Abandoned or Dilapidated Buildings/Parking Lots: We have certain buildings and vacant lots that need some love from the owners. The city needs resources to encourage the owners to take care of their property to come in compliance with city code and also to simply make corrections to some parcels. The city can develop a program funded by ENF funds to help bring areas of disrepair up to city standards which will help our community.