Happy Valentine's Day, everyone! We love you thiiiiiiiiis much for reading "The People's Business." (Please imagine our arms spread as wide as can be.)

Hey, Monday, Feb. 17, is Presidents Day, and that means there are no meetings of the full City Council next week. So, if you don't have to go to work that day -- ENJOY! If you do have to go to work that day -- SORRY!

The good news for you nerds is that you can still get your policy fix through two committee meetings -- the Audit Committee and the Active Transportation and Infrastructure Committee -- both happening on Wednesday, Feb. 19. Mmmmm... policy [insert Homer Simpson drooling gif].

For background on the agenda items mentioned here, click on the agenda, then click on the item and find the staff report and supporting documents over on the right. Committee meetings take place on the 12th floor of City Hall, 202 C St., Downtown. You can watch them on Channel 24 on Spectrum and Cox cable, or stream them on CityTV.

Audit Committee -- Wednesday, Feb. 19

Kicking off the Audit Committee agenda is a report on San Diego's most vexing and heartbreaking challenge: homelessness. The City Auditor's office dove into how the city government is addressing the issue and this week released its findings. For the Auditor, the problem largely comes down to outreach -- connecting with a person who's experiencing homeless, face to face, and doing whatever you can to route them to shelter and services.

In a nutshell, the Auditor concluded that 1) the City has ratched up its response to the crisis, including adopting the Community Action Plan on Homelessness in 2019, but more work is needed to realize its goals; 2) the region lacks a comprehensive outreach strategy that includes sufficient outreach workers, improved coordination, and use of data; 3) and the City is missing a good opportunity to do effective outreach with people who are experiencing homelessness when it's cracking down on encampments.

"Without effective outreach," the report states, "encampment residents may simply relocate to another location that may later also require abatement—thereby sometimes resulting in a repetitive and costly cycle of abatement and inefficient use of City resources."

The report includes 12 recommendations and notes that the City has agreed to fully implement seven of them and partially implement the other five. However, there is some disagreement between the Auditor and city staff on all of this.

Also on the agenda:

• Audit of the Development Services Department (DSD) administration of deposit accounts for development projects. Well, that's a mouthful! DSD is where people go when they want to, say, build something on their property. The department doesn't run on the city's main budget (the General Fund); instead, it operates more like a business, where its customers (property owners and developers) pay for services. Sometimes, costs are unpredictable, so often DSD requires customers to establish a deposit account. The City Auditor's office found some issues with this process.
• Request for an audit of 101 Ash St. building. The city-owned edifice in question has been beset with some asbestos issues, and Councilmember Barbara Bry has requested that the Auditor's office open an investigation into its purchase, the due diligence conducted on the value and physical condition of the property, and the management of getting it ready for employees to move in. The Auditor reports that it can do this in the current fiscal year, but it would have to delay a planned audit of the city's Climate Action Plan.
• Independent legal counsel for the City Auditor. The Auditor believes that in order to fulfill its mission to perform independent, objective audits and investigations, it needs to be untethered from the City Attorney's office, which represents the city officials whom the Auditor must investigate. The Auditor is asking the Audit Committee to forward to the Rules Committee a proposal to place a measure on the November 2020 ballot that would allow the Auditor to obtain its own legal counsel.
• Reports from the Auditor on activities during the past month and accomplishments in 2019.

The meeting, led by Chair Scott Sherman, starts at 9 a.m.

Active Transportation and Infrastructure Committee -- Wednesday, Feb. 19

Besides two noncontroversial items in the consent portion, the agenda for the ATI Committee, chaired by Councilmember Mark Kersey, has just two other matters.

One is a proposal to amend the existing fee that developers pay the City in order to fund public-serving facilities in Mission Valley such as parks, fire stations, bike lanes, and whatnot. This is called a development impact fee (DIF). The last time the DIF was amended for Mission Valley was in 2013, and since then there's been a whole lot more residential development projected for the community, which means the DIF can be lowered, because the cost of these public services can be spread over more residential units.

Here's what's proposed:

Secondly, the committee will get an update on a proposal to waive a permit fee that's currently charged to land owners who want to repair sidewalks in front of their properties. The waiver would last only through the end of 2020, and then be revisited. The City has recently had to pay out considerable amounts of settlement money to people injured in trip-and-fall accidents, and the Mayor believes that making it less costly to repair sidewalks will help. Right now, a sidewalk repair permit costs about $2,000 -- on top of the cost to do the repair. The other way to get a sidewalk repaired is by applying for the city's 50/50 Cost Share Program, under which the city and the property owner split the repair bill, but there's currently a wait list and the wait time is roughly six months. City staff estimates that this proposal would cost the City about $300,000 in lost revenue.

The meeting begins at 2 p.m.

Well, that's all for this week. Have a great weekend!

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