CC 04-16-2023 Item No. 11 Potential service-level reductions for FY 2024-25_Written Communications_3Written Communications
CC 04-16-2024
Item No. 11
Potential service-level
reductions for FY 2024-25
From:Santosh Rao
To:City Council; Cupertino City Manager"s Office; City Clerk; Kristina Alfaro
Subject:Please do NOT cut janitorial, city event funding, law enforcement, other resident facing cuts.
Date:Wednesday, April 17, 2024 10:59:20 AM
CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not click links or open attachments unless you
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Esteemed Mayor Sheila and City Council,
The process of budget cuts has been very confusing and seems to be backend loaded.
Residents do not have a current status on what is going to be cut and what is not. A list of
items are presented to council. Direction is sought. No voting is done per item. Direction is
open to interpretation. Some direction may not be captured.
How is split direction handled. How and when do residents learn of the disposition of each
line item based on the received direction. How do residents learn of this early so that more
input can be provided.
To be safe I am writing in with input on a fuller list below from the 01/17 meeting, some or all
of which may have been in the supplemental report.
https://cupertino.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=F&ID=12578158&GUID=F489F77F-8D8F-
40A3-AD5D-E02DB2044433
1. Please do not cut janitorial services at city facilities. Public and staff health should not be on
the table for cuts.
2. Please do not cut law enforcement budget. Rather provide direction for proper utilization of
the budget such as increased retail surveillance, traffic enforcement, patrol checks, more crime
prevention etc.
3. Regarding reduced IT spend. What is the current tech refresh cycle and proposed new tech
refresh cycle. We need to be very careful with any cuts to IT. Slower refresh cycles leave the
city IT infrastructure vulnerable to cyber attacks and lack of sufficient security related
capabilities.
4. Please do not shift school district grounds maintenance to school districts except for private
schools like Tesselations where you may charge them for maintenance. Our school
infrastructure such as grounds should not be up for cuts. Also please keep in mind these
double up as public parks after school hours.
5. Please find a way to keep July 4th evening celebrations. This is a celebration of America as
a nation. We should never have to sacrifice this.
6. Please do not cut funding for license plate readers and law enforcement funding to locate
vehicles and suspects associated with criminal activity.
7. Please do not cut the budget or funding for sister cities program. Cultural exchange is a
small spend item but creates a lifetime of memories for program participants and the spend is
really trivial such as meeting room expense.
8. Please do not cut the public safety forum or state of the city. Also please do NOT relinquish
these to niche groups like chamber of commerce and rotary club. Please ensure these are city
run events.
9. Please do not cut funding for sheriff coverage at city events. Public safety should be top
priority.
10. Please do not cut services at McClellan Ranch Preserve. This is an invaluable anchor of
nature and education for residents about nature.
11. I don’t understand why the city is proposing to relocate movies and band events to
Memorial Park. Where are these being relocated from and why. Creekside is a perfect venue
for Movies in the Park. Why change something that is working?
12. Please do NOT eliminate the earth day festival or any festival or city event. These touch
100s to 1000s of residents who attend the events and enjoy the booths, socialize, reconnect,
form new bonds, learn about local services. What is a city without these events.
A majority of the cuts proposed are resident facing. I request you to pivot your focus to deep
cuts in staff costs.
1. Please cut all open staff reqs immediately. We cannot afford these. It is the first to go in any
cost optimization in the corporate and business world and should be no different here.
2. Please cut consultant projects down to no more than the top 3. Place a limit of no more than
$100k per consultant project. Let’s have city staff do these studies if needed at no extra cost
beyond what is already on payroll. Same for any surveys. These should be run by city staff not
consultants.
3. As shared previously, employee costs have risen 8% from 2019 to 2024 whereas Cupertino
population has dropped 6.4%. Costs have risen in city manager’s office,
community development and administration whereas they have declined in public works,
parks and rec and stayed flat in IT. Please cut deep in top-heavy administrative positions. It’s
time to go back to 1 city manager. Do we need economic development or can we merge it with
community development role.
We cannot afford to go soft on the hard cuts needed in employee costs and at the same time
we do not want to see cuts in resident facing critical services like public works and parks and
rec. The cuts need to be in top heavy administrative roles.
We elected you council members to make the hard choices. Not to go soft on these hard
decisions that call for leadership. I beseech you to kindly do the right thing and cut deep and
cut now on employee and administrative costs of Cupertino city staff.
Thanks,
Santosh Rao
From:Santosh Rao
To:City Council; City Clerk; Cupertino City Manager"s Office
Subject:Budget feedback.
Date:Tuesday, April 16, 2024 4:29:26 PM
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Honorable Mayor Sheila and city council,
I am writing to request that you take a fresh look at the budget cuts and not perform cuts on
resident services such as side walks, street trees, community events, July 4th, janitorial
services, or any other community facing services.
I am requesting that you take no action on budget tonight as residents have not seen the
proposed fee increases. Without seeing fee increases residents cannot provide you adequate
feedback on budget actions.
Please ask that staff return with proposed fee increases and defer any budget actions until the
community has seen the proposed fee increases in conjunction with proposed budget cuts.
I urge you to please direct staff to return with a report on increase in staff costs from 2019 to
2024.
Let me share some of that data with you.
2019-2020 vs. 2023-2024 budget.
Employee compensation = $19M to $24.6M
Employee benefits = $7.9M to $11M
Insurance, Fees, Claims, Premiums = $852k to $2.2M
*Total increase = ~ $10M*
Cupertino 2019 population = 59,370
Cupertino 2024 population = 55,555
Population decrease = 6.4%
Total spend on employees
Employee compensation = $24.8M
Employee benefits = $11M
Insurance, fees, claims, premiums = $2.2M
Total spend on employees = $38M
Total Cupertino budget = $122.3M
Spend on employees = 31% of Cupertino budget
While our population has declined 6.4% from 2019 to 2024 our spend on employees has risen
by over 8%.
Further that spend has seen an increase in headcount in city managers office and community
development while seeing declines in public works, parks and rec staffing. The community
facing staff have reduced while administrative staff has increased. City managers office alone
has gone from 7 to 15 headcount.
In the mean time we are seeing budget cuts being proposed that impact residents.
I implore you to please send the budget cuts back and direct staff to return with a study on
how we cut employee costs to reflect our population decline and our reduced revenue as well
as the clawback to CDTFA. Specifically please ask to return with a study on cuts in
administration and the city managers office while maintaining resident facing services such as
parks and rec, public as is works with no impact. We do not need 3 city managers. Let us
return to 1 city manager.
Thank you for your attention to reducing employee costs and top level bloat in administration
and ensuring the impact is not borne by residents or rant first level staffing.
Thanks,
Santosh Rao