PREPARED BY: MATT RODRIGUEZ DATE OF MEETING: 07/06/2026
SUBJECT:
TITLE
CONSIDER (1) AUTHORIZING THE CITY MANAGER TO PROCEED WITH RELEASE OF A REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL (RFP) FRAMEWORK TO UPGRADE THE FY 2025-27 CITY COUNCIL PRIORITY WORKPLAN, AND TO INCLUDE NEWLY RANKED, COMMUNITY PRIORITIES AND PRIORITY-BASED BUDGETING (PBB) MODEL FRAMEWORK; AND (2) ESTABLISHING a TEMPORARY City Council Ad-Hoc Subcommittee to coordinate with the City Manager on project progression and implementation
CEQA: This proposed action is not a project as defined by CEQA.
Label
CITY MANAGER RECOMMENDATION
Recommendation
Authorize by Minute Order
Body
COMPLIANCE STATEMENTS
FY 2025-27 Council Priority Workplan Compliance Statement
City Council professional facilitation services are not adopted policy items under the FY 2025-27 City Council Priority Workplan, effective April 7, 2025. However, these contract services are operationally essential to assist the City Council with ongoing update of the City Council’s Priority Workplan.
CEQA Compliance Statement
This proposed action is not a project as defined by CEQA.
RECOMMENDED ACTION
Staff recommends that the City Council take the following actions via minute order:
1. Authorize the City Manager to release an RFP and engage a qualified consultant to upgrade the FY 2025-27 City Council Priority Workplan using the attached executive RFP framework as the scope-of-services;
2. Direct the City Manager to evaluate proposals received against the established evaluation criteria, and to shortlist and interview finalists;
3. Authorize award of the resulting contract by future City Council action and future appropriation of one-time funding from the FY 2026-27 City Manager Operating Reserve (Fund 190);
4. Direct staff to convene the first Council priority-ranking workshop in late summer / early fall 2026, consistent with a consultant timeline approved by the City Manager and City Council; and
5. Establish a City Council Ad-Hoc Subcommittee (Mayor and Vice-Mayor) to coordinate with the City Manager on project progression and implementation.
BACKGROUND
The City Council’s adopted Priority Workplan (Workplan) has grown into a catalog of more than eighty (80)+ policy initiatives organized under five (5) Major Policy Goals:
• Build a Healthy Community;
• Enhance Community Resilience;
• Expand Housing Options;
• Focus on Economic Development and Fiscal Diversification; and
• Improve Public Safety.
All adopted policy initiatives are currently listed in alphabetic and numeric order rather than by priority or value, and the majority carry a funding designation of “TBD.”
In the previous budget cycle, the City faced and eliminated a ($4.4M) structural deficit over FY 2026-27 and FY 2027-28, using a zero-based budgeting (ZBB) model, a temporary hiring freeze, with stagnant, annual Casino revenue growth, and stricter fiscal requirements. Without a clear ranking policy framework, it is challenging for the City Council to allocate limited General Fund resources to top policy priorities. This highlights the need for a ranked, community priority Workplan aligned with a new, Priority-Based Budgeting model for future budget planning and to ensure long-term fiscal sustainability of City programs and service delivery.
ANALYSIS
The City Manager recommends engaging an external professional services consultant to transition the Workplan from an alphabetized inventory into a ranked, defensible, and budget-integrated decision tool. The proposed approach has three (3) connected components:
1. Ranking the Priorities
A City Council-driven process would score and rank each priority established against a shared, transparent set of criteria - community impact, mandate / legal obligation, fiscal feasibility, readiness, and policy-goal alignment - producing a tiered ranking that replaces the current alphabetical listing.
2. Priority-Based Budgeting (PBB) Model
PBB connects the ranked Workplan directly to the budget cycle, tying each initiative to a funding pathway and tier that reinforces the City’s existing revenue-implementation tiers and ZBB framework. This creates a clear line of sight from policy intent to fiscal capacity and a repeatable method for re-prioritizing as conditions change. A new PBB Model will simultaneously be fully integrated during subsequent budget cycles beginning in FY 2028-29 and future budget cycles.
|
Tier |
Designation |
Funding Criteria |
|
Tier I |
Mandated / committed core priorities |
Funded within existing General Fund / grants; protected in ZBB |
|
Tier II |
High-value discretionary priorities |
Funded as capacity is identified; grant-leveraged |
|
Tier III |
Aspirational / contingent priorities |
Pending new revenue or external funding (TBD) |
Sample illustrative tier structure; final tiers and criteria to be defined with Council and staff during the engagement.
3. Prioritizing Community Priorities
Building on the City’s existing annual community and public-safety surveys, the consultant would integrate an engagement-and-data component so resident-expressed needs are systematically captured, validated, and weighted in the scoring. This strengthens public trust and gives the Council a shared evidentiary basis for reaching consensus.
Note: A separate community priority survey would be conducted by Strategic Research Institute, Inc. (SRI) to capture the updated community priorities/needs from the community at-large to be conducted during FY 2026-27 prior to new consultant engagement and implementation of services.
4. Scope, Evaluation, and Selection
The RFP defines a four-phase scope of services being sought: (1) assessment; (2) framework design; (3) facilitation and consensus-building, and (4) delivery and implementation, and will be evaluated on relevant experience and qualifications (30%), soundness of methodology and PBB approach (30%), community-engagement and facilitation capability (20%), and cost and overall value (20%). Full detail is provided in the attached executive RFP proposal framework (See Attachment)
Budget, Fiscal & Legislative Standing Committee Review
The Budget, Fiscal and Legislative Standing Committee (BFLSC), consisting of Mayor Pabon-Alvarado and Councilmember Ponce, reviewed this DRAFT RFP proposal framework on June 10, 2026. Unfortunately, the BFLSC members could not reach consensus to provide a formal recommendation to the City Council.
New Temporary Ad-Hoc Subcommittee
The City Manager requests the City Council to form a Temporary Ad-Hoc Subcommittee, composed of the Mayor and Vice-Mayor, to collaborate on project progression and implementation with the City Manager. The Temporary Ad-Hoc Subcommittee would expire on December 31, 2026.
FISCAL IMPACT
Releasing the RFP framework carries no direct cost at this time.
The future professional services contractual engagement would be funded on a one-time basis from the FY 2026-27 City Manager Operating Reserve (Fund 190). The contract amount will be established through the competitive RFP process, with a not-to-exceed fee by phase and brought back to the City Council for award if the costs exceed the City Manager’s budget and contract authority. No new, ongoing General Fund funding commitment is contemplated for the remainder of FY 2026-27 period.
ATTACHMENT
Att 1. DRAFT RFP Proposal - Priority Workplan Upgrade: Ranked, Priority-Based Budgeting and Building Consensus for Community-Driven Policymaking
Exh A. Revised CY 2026 City Council Assignments to add new Temporary, Ad-Hoc Subcommittee