2019 BAILEY STATE OF THE CITY ADDRESS

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community, we will continue to open our books and work with all stakeholders, including the public, employee unions and management groups, to be leaders in correcting this financial matter now to ensure that future generations of Riversiders don't bear the burden later. In fact, at the beginning of this month we met with the CEO of Ca1PERS to open the dialogue on addressing this problem. Thank you, Al, our city management, HR and Finance teams, for your leadership on this paramount issue. Planning ahead for housing and Ca1PERS aren't the only ways Riverside elevated its game last year. Here are some numbers that should tell you where our organization has invested considerable time, effort, and public funding, yielding significant progress over a few, fast- moving years. Investment in public safety will reach historic levels over a five-year plan to put more police officers on the streets and more firefighters in trucks. New equipment in the hands of our public safety team will keep them safer and help them respond faster to calls for service, which increased to a record 380,000 calls last year. Public Safety is the foundation on which to build a successful city, and we are grateful to the voters for supporting Measure Z and its primary focus on improving safety and security in every neighborhood. Riverside's customer service record continues to be a key ingredient in our recipe for an elevated quality of life. 311 is the most popular phone number in the city, answering more than 168,000 calls for service in all seven wards. Not every city has this program, and because of some innovative inside work by our IT staff, we have an ever growing 311 App that allows you to submit photos of problem spots in your neighborhood or around your business. To elevate our future quality of life, the City launched the next evolution of streamlined government to facilitate development. BUILD Riverside is a best practice initiative that seeks to unify, streamline and improve our field inspection services, from permit issuance through final occupancy. With feedback from local developers and builders, Build Riverside's guiding principles are Consistency, Certainty, Expediency and Transparency — all necessary elements when you are conducting more than 54,000 inspections each year. This effort has elevated Riverside's reputation among other like-minded governments. Cities like Austin, Anaheim, Los Angeles, and Santa Ana, along with Governor Gavin Newsom, have all visited our One Stop Shop at City Hall. Speaking of success, I challenge our Finance Department to continue to hold investor conferences in our city. Your work organizing the first ever investor conference for the region this past year brought public agencies together with investment banks, rating agencies and bond investors to learn about the excellent investment opportunities in our community. We hosted 86 new believers in an elevated Riverside, who followed up by buying millions of dollars in our bonds, saving the city $1.5 million in financing costs. Next time you hike Mt Rubidoux or drive over the soon -to -be -named Joe Tavaglione interchange, you will see a city center on the rise. Can you believe that downtown has 700 housing units approved for construction over a three-year period, all within walking distance of this convention center? That's compared to just 250 units built in the last twenty years. This Page 3 of 7