Benchmarking

1. How does our City compare to the County for General Fund Expenses? Surprised at the size — thought the City has way more funding than Sonoma County.

Budget Process & Reporting

1. Once a budget is approved and the fiscal year has begun, what is the mechanism for the City to report out financial statements? How often does the City Council see financial reports?

2. Who is responsible for bringing the fiscal year to close at or under budget?

3. Is there someone in the City who knows how this all works? (referencing what was presented)

Capital Improvement Projects (CIP)

1. How are major capital projects budgeted for? What line items do they go to? Out of the General Fund?

Citizen Participation

1. What can citizens do to let council do their jobs, and increase trust? Just came from an Aqus Foundation event for "Just Join Something" movie re: decline in community engagement, declining trust and community cohesion. That is what we each can do — increase our involvement in community orgs to bridge divides.

2. How does the city get funding for a simple plan to invest in small but impactful projects, such as curb cuts for easing bicycle transit through the city? Can a summer intern be used for project work assessment?

Community Development

1. Is the reason the community development account is so low is because the City has a cost recovery policy?

2. Cost recovery for planning services isn't working. What will it take to change that? Will it cost more to bring services in house?

Fiscal Health Modeling

1. Could you please explain how much you've interacted with Strong Towns and what recommendations they've made?

Fund Accounting

1. Are there earmarked funds that are discretionary within their fund category?

2. Would be interesting to understand the intersection/interaction of City and PPFA finances.

Human Resources & Pension

1. What is the total payroll of the city?

2. What is the pension liability?

Presentation Format

1. I think we need to have more interactive things like this.

Reserves

1. Is a target Reserve Fund amount held outside of the budget?

Revenues

1. How does outside revenue work, coming into the city, such as county, state & federal dollars? Would like to understand this.

2. How do other cities generate revenue? Any creative ideas we could use?

3. As expenses increase while population decreases, what percentage of state & county revenues drop along with population?

Sales Tax

1. How much sales tax revenue does the cannabis business — now two — contribute?

2. Which business is the #1 highest-grossing sales tax revenue? Lagunitas? Auto dealerships?

Sources

1. Why in the presentation did you say there are only 90 historic buildings in Petaluma? Just City-owned [Answer: It was "96 historic buildings downtown" in the presentation, which comes from the City here: https://cityofpetaluma.org/historic-districts/]

Specific Line Items

1. How much do we spend on street sweeping? Without restricting parking such that the sweeper can get to the curb, it seems really ineffective. And, if as I suspect, the service is tied to a grant related to minimizing the impacts of storm water runoff into the Bay, I can think of other ways to spend money on this objective that could be more effective — like building rain gardens in areas where water accumulates in gutters. [Answer: The City doesn't pay for this. Ratepayers do, directly to Recology.]

Urban Planning

These questions were not specific to municipal finance, but are interesting nonetheless.

1. Can we lobby to ease parking requirements so we have less parking lots and more business? Especially downtown. Downtown is for people, not cars.

2. What densification efforts are you advocating for in the downtown area?