Annotated meeting pages

California Public Policy Group reports that Caltrans's San Pablo Avenue repaving, street tree and pedestrian safety project had been slated for fiscal year 2027–28; after a joint letter from Senator Arreguín and Assemblymember Wicks, a council trip to Sacramento and testimony before the California Transportation Commission, Caltrans announced about $13 million on August 31, and construction is expected in early 2027. The firm and the League of California Cities run through the year's bills: the city supported AB 1821, which gives agencies 10 business days instead of 10 calendar days for an initial response to a records request, SB 1159, under which “person” in the Brown Act and Public Records Act does not include AI, and SB 1005, which lets cities round cash payments to the nearest 5 cents and is the basis for a consent item the same night. The League opposes Proposition 43 and supports Proposition 1.

In public comment a remote speaker says an unnamed incumbent candidate's web page wrongly states the city's rating as A-plus, puts the city's underlying rating at A-minus, “two notches below his starting point,” and criticizes years of budgets. The Mayor answers that the speaker is “completely wrong”: an A-plus on sales tax revenue bonds and an A-minus on certificates of participation, both raised, with reserves the highest in 26 years. The speaker replies that the Mayor is describing bond ratings, not the underlying rating; no staff member states the underlying rating at this meeting. The speaker also asks whether the city supported AB 1821, and gets no answer.

On consent, the City Clerk corrects the October 6 minutes to add the omitted consent vote and two resolution numbers, and Councilmember Motoyama asks why money in the Section 115 pension trust has earned less than it would have in LAIF; the Finance Director explains the trust's moderately conservative profile and that the money can only go to pensions. A side letter with the Public Safety Management Association gives its police and fire management units the 7.5% doctorate incentive in the fire chief's August contract, as CalPERS rules require, at no current cost; it passes 4–0 with Wysinger absent. The Mayor dedicates the meeting to his mother, who died the week before.

The Contra Costa Mosquito and Vector Control District reports West Nile activity in El Cerrito “like we had never seen before”: four positive dead birds this year, mostly crows, after one in 2023. No infected mosquitoes were found despite heavy trapping, and the district believes the crows were infected elsewhere and came to roost; no human cases were reported in the county. The general manager asks residents to dump standing water and to report Aedes aegypti, new to the county, which can pass dengue, Zika and chikungunya from one person to another; it was eradicated in Martinez in 2022 by inspecting more than 1,000 homes, but has spread in Antioch and Brentwood and was found last week in Discovery Bay. Councilmember Wysinger describes a rat infestation beside her building when underground construction began next door; the district can advise but has no enforcement power over rats.

Superintendent Cheryl Cotton presents the school district's new vision, asks for El Cerrito's voice in its strategic plan, and says a board policy on AI is being drafted for later in November; elementary schools have moved from a device for every child to one for every four. She and a resident, the only candidate for El Cerrito's school board seat, ask support for Measure V, the district's parcel tax renewal at 7.2 cents a square foot, about $10 million a year; the resident asks the Council for a resolution of support, which is not on the agenda. Councilmember Ktsanes asks the district and city to renew talks about the Portola site for workforce housing.

On consent, Councilmember Motoyama asks where the $2 million for on-call professional services sits in the budget. Staff answer that most of it is salary savings, because consultants staff five building division positions, and that the cap is firm and needs no budget amendment, but that the City Manager can shift money between individual vendor contracts under it without returning to the Council. Staff say consultants cost more than staff one-to-one but save money used as needed, and that SEIU was noticed and met with under AB 339. The Recreation Director says the city struggles to maintain what it has, which limits the grants worth applying for, and names Central Park as probably the park in the worst shape. The meeting is adjourned in memory of Dr. Desmond Carson.

The Local Road Safety Plan sets a goal of eliminating fatal and serious injury crashes by 2035. Over eight years El Cerrito had 4 deaths and 17 serious injuries, a third on San Pablo Avenue, and a high injury network covering 5% of streets holds 72% of injury crashes. The plan sets a goal of a 25 mph maximum citywide, which staff would bring back to the Council, says staff will look at a Greenway speed limit as part of a crash analysis, and establishes a backbone bikeway network that repurposes about half the on-street parking along it, exempt from the city's parking removal appeal. Staff confirm the Ohlone Greenway has no speed limit, contradicting a speaker. Ktsanes, citing Richmond Street, asks what role the Council will have after adoption; staff answer that “right now is the opportunity for Council to provide that decision,” and he concludes the Council will not be involved in individual designs. He says he “would vote no”; nobody moves the changes he said would win his vote, and the motion carries without a recorded tally. The Mayor Pro Tem calls the 25 mph ceiling too timid.

The fourth-quarter update is preliminary: revenues 103% of budget, spending 99%, a $2 million improvement that cuts the planned draw on reserves from over $3 million to $1.1 million. Total reserves are 40%, with the unassigned reserve at 22%, $2.8 million above the 17% floor, and no projected dip below it. A councilmember asks whether El Cerrito's earthquake and fire risk justifies a higher reserve; the Finance Director says revenue diversity is what matters. On consent, the June election for Measure C cost about $43,000, not the $80,000 argued over in January.

The Police Chief says Peregrine was negotiated from over $80,000 to $44,999 to fall under his $45,000 spending authority, which is why it never came to the Council; the Mark 43 dispatch contract, above the line, auto-renews at a rate the vendor sets. The swim center receives a $200,000 county grant for locker room ADA work at no new city cost. The Council directs its League delegate to oppose a constitutional amendment for local control of housing, one member calling it anti-housing policy cloaked as local control. EC STARS reports ten interns in seven departments, and the school superintendent promotes a different Measure V.

The city's next step against a vendor whose equipment stays on public property past an expired contract is a municipal code violation notice, with fines to follow; the Chief also reports that nine of the remaining cameras were vandalized “in some form or another” and are under criminal investigation, without saying what was done to them. Several speakers ask the city to bag the cameras until they come down, which the dais does not answer; the City Manager says the city means to abide by the contract as it expects Flock to. A remote speaker argues that trash bags and a ladder would have saved the detectives' time. A remote speaker proposes that the Public Safety Committee develop a policy on which data contracts the city enters at all; like a wheelchair user's request for automatic door requirements in new housing, it receives no response from the dais.

BART's Alternative Service Plan ends service at 9 p.m., runs only the yellow, blue and orange lines, and would close up to 15 stations or line segments. A councilmember says she had not realized from the packet that “potentially our Richmond line would be one of the… one of the lines to go,” and BART's director answers that El Cerrito would still have service, “just not two lines.” The Mayor Pro Tem, a former BART director, says the Council faces “the end of BART” if the measure fails. The Mayor names the constituency he expects to lose on a five-county measure — inland Contra Costa — eleven weeks after county voters rejected a county sales tax.

The Fire Safe Council reports on a $15,000 grant: the last $2,000 of a PG&E-funded grant drew $6,500 from two owners and a $500 price cut to remove a $9,000 hazard, and four homeowners hired the contractor on site for more work. Many residents, the presenter says, “probably could have afforded to do some of this work themselves, but they wanted somebody to take charge.” On the chiefs' contracts, adopted 4–1, Councilmember Ktsanes objects to paying the raises from reserves and says reserves are already dipping below the Council's minimum; staff neither confirm nor correct it.

The district elections ordinance and the certification of the June 2 election sit on the same consent list and neither is pulled. The ordinance converting the city from at-large to district elections, fixing which districts vote when, passes in nine seconds without discussion. Earlier in the evening a resident argued that scheduling the two renter districts in a midterm year, when renter turnout drops by about 20 points, reduces participation among the communities the maps were drawn to protect. No one tonight responds to the argument. Apart from the consent-item title, staff mention the transition only once, in an announcement about filing deadlines: “this will be the City's last at-large election.”

On Flock, the City Manager reports that a work order exists, and while “the contract does not require a timeframe for removal, it does say that we cannot remove the cameras ourselves.” The city's remedy, for now, is to keep pressing Flock. A resident suggests that “any future contracts” include “a clear timeline for removing hardware” and let the city remove it after that deadline; another reports that in “several cities” where Flock did not take the cameras down in time, “government employees have put plastic bags over the cameras.”

AC Transit presents a fiscal cliff of about $50 million a year against an expected $52 million share of the November measure. The agency has a detailed, dated, line-by-line plan for contraction; if the measure passes, it says the money would protect existing service, but it has not been “working on a prioritization” for restoring past cuts. A resident's six-page technical analysis of a consent-calendar fire command vehicle, with comparative pricing, is credited by name by the Fire Chief (“It's incredible. A lot of good points”) and answered on its main points.

The Chief says of a four-year negotiation that Peregrine “provided a bid that is within the City Manager's spending authority,” so the purchase does not come to the Council for a vote. Bill Barish objects to it being “sprung as an item that doesn't need discussion, because it falls below some magic number of dollars.” Of the seven speakers who address Peregrine, four explicitly ask for it to come before the Council, two more object to how it arrived or ask for time, and one says she is “not at all concerned about the software.” No councilmember moves to agendize it; the Mayor Pro Tem asks for a memo so she can answer residents. The purchase next surfaces as a $44,999 line in the 15 September check register. One resident puts the Flock lesson in procurement terms, asking for rigor in choosing a vendor: “We don't want to end up in another weird data breach situation where we panicked, like we did with Flock.”

The budget presentation previews the 16 June dissent. Councilmember Ktsanes establishes that the budget draws about $250,000 from fund balance in each year, and staff name what would have to change to avoid it: landscape maintenance, library hours, and potentially positions. The Mayor Pro Tem raises two findings from reading the capital improvement program: no playground equipment funding for five years, and street repaving moving from an annual to a two-year cycle. Staff publish the unfunded capital projects for the first time in years and say in advance that the total should not cause panic. The budget was assembled from consensus heard in discussion, and staff ask the Council to confirm “that was the direction that staff heard.”

This is the night Measure C is decided; the Council's references to it are a reminder to drop off ballots and a warning that results may not come until Friday. A resident reports that 1,579 of the 2,000-plus neighbors on her email list favor the Flock contract, a figure from a self-selected list. A resident criticizes the school-zone-based districting map; the Mayor Pro Tem and the demographer make related criticisms on 16 June, and another resident on 7 July.

The Council picks five districts and a rotating mayor, unanimously, against a public poll running 60–25 the other way and against the practice of five of the eight districted cities in the county. One reason given is money — “we don't have a budget that is going to be good enough for a salaried mayor” — alongside the value of serving as mayor in rotation and the risk of concentrating power in one citywide seat. Councilmember Ktsanes reverses the candidate-pool argument — a smaller district is cheaper to campaign in, so “it might make it more accessible.”

In the third budget session, Councilmember Motoyama proposes reducing the city-funded library hours — $100,000 — two weeks before the election on the library tax. Councilmember Wysinger answers “I'm shocked”; Councilmember Ktsanes, recalling “the bruises you took last time,” comes round; the Mayor Pro Tem does not: the extra hours are about “allowing working people and families to go to the library” — “those additional evening hours are so important.” In answer to a councilmember's question about staffing, staff clarify that library staff are county employees, and the county sizes its staffing on the city's annual commitment.

The master fee schedule surfaces a business license exemption threshold frozen so long that correcting it nearly doubles the figure, and a tree planting fee that had produced almost no resident planting in twelve years. The Council cuts it to $150 from the dais. The annual vacancy hearing shows a 10% average and a contracted-out permit counter, and the union asks for the vacancies to be filled rather than outsourced.

The EFF representative's point is about where the data sits rather than Flock's conduct: “there is no way to make this arrangement meaningfully low-risk for a sanctuary city.” The EFF and the Mayor Pro Tem raise the same concern about section 4.3 two weeks apart, and the Flock representative says of the carve-out, “That concern is valid.” He opens with “no contract with ICE. Period,” then confirms a federal pilot with Homeland Security Investigations, a directorate of ICE, that ended in 2025. A resident who works as a data security engineer says El Cerrito shares its data with “319 external agencies” while Richmond shares with a “single external agency.” The audit log question is asked only at the end: the Flock representative says the records are immutable and offers the technical documentation by email, and no verification is offered in the meeting.

The case for the system: 88% of people arrested in El Cerrito come from outside it, the Chief's reason for an interconnected network. The cameras sit at the city's perimeter, and the Chief says they cannot follow a car once it is inside the city. Two of the traffic cases he describes involve pedestrians struck, at Cutting and San Pablo and near Safeway, and in the first the system identified the driver. His equity argument is that people without comprehensive insurance lose most when a car is stolen, and that the most common victims of violent crime, outside domestic violence, are the city's workers.

Districting dominates the first half. The demographer says a Martinez map, “called a parody of the original gerrymandering,” was “the reason we have the Fair Maps Act,” and describes a census block split three ways in a Southern California city where three councilmembers lived in the same apartment complex. The budget item establishes that no scenario involves layoffs, that “we already did the easy things if they existed,” and that the Flock contract and the library hours cost about the same — roughly $105,000 a year against $100,000. Councilmember Motoyama explains her position: “I trust the police. I do not trust Flock.” Councilmember Wysinger, whose cousin “walks free right now because of flock cameras,” votes to keep them “even in a losing vote.”

Five percent of the local road network accounts for 72% of injury crashes and 18 of the 21 fatal and severe injury crashes. The safe systems approach starts from the premise that people make mistakes: “in the past, we were looking at perfect human behavior.” Target speed design aims to end what staff call the “never-ending circular logic” of roads designed for 10 mph above the limit and limits that then rise. Hoboken is offered as the Vision Zero success story: a small, compact city without wide roads that has had zero traffic fatalities or serious injuries “going on 9 years now.”

The Caltrans San Pablo Avenue project has slipped to 2028 — two years later than the summer 2026 start described in December, on a corridor carrying 30% of the city's injury crashes. The city has applied for grant money “to install a pedestrian hybrid beacon at Waldo Avenue,” a street staff chose because the data showed two severe-injury crashes, cut-through traffic and high speeds. And staff say the constraint is capacity: “what we bump up against is our capacity to deliver them,” to the point that they have “found ourselves starting to think about” passing by some funding opportunities. A resident struck in a crosswalk eighteen years ago, still living with the injuries, speaks at the study session on the city's first road safety plan, which is due back for adoption in July.

The senior exemption study session ends in consensus to clarify the exemption without amending the initiative. An exemption is legally a rate decision — setting the rate to zero for a defined class — so the Council can create one. The same exemption language appears in the parks tax and the swim center tax, and staff found no record of anyone applying under them: “it's not that nobody qualified, it's just that nobody applied.” The Mayor Pro Tem argues that dropping two criteria would also cut staff work, since with “like, 5 different documents, at least” to confirm, “that's a lot more work.” Age-and-income or income-only options would cost roughly $222,000 to $400,000 a year, about 7% to 13.7% of first-year revenue. A drafter of Measure C says on the record that his intent “was to have an appropriate exemption,” and the Council reaches consensus on clarifying it eight weeks before the June election.

The city receives an unmodified audit opinion with no material weaknesses and no significant deficiencies — and, for the first time since 2013, the audit and annual report were finished by the 31 December deadline. Asked by a councilmember what should guide reserve use, the auditor suggests the city “look at those concepts of, can we commit something toward future needs”.

A resident reads the library petition's own numbers back to the Council: a debt service coverage ratio of 1.15 is “basically around junk bond status,” and $2.7 million of revenue less $0.9 million of operating cost leaves $1.8 million against bond payments above $2 million. “Oops.” He asks the city to hear from a bond underwriter; the city does not respond at this meeting. A proponent puts a $36 million bond at a $2.3 million annual payment. The safety pension picture is also on the record — contributions at 93.96% of covered payroll, net liability at 833% of salary.

The rewritten Rules of Order pass 4–1, including an optional process, at the mayor's discretion, for reducing per-speaker or total public comment time. The Mayor Pro Tem objects that a 30-minute limit means, in practice, “about 30 people.” “I saw it on the night I was sworn in.” A resident describes how Madison alternates speakers for and against and lets people register a position without speaking; the Council does not take it up at this meeting.

El Cerrito has no community room, while 19 of the county's 26 branches do (21 once two new libraries open). The branch has one family and staff bathroom, and the designated reading area is “the darkest part of the building.” Five scenarios start at about $10 million for renovation, with the TOD at “a little over 37 million,” and the parking assumption is what moves them: the Stockton site needs structured parking and the TOD does not. Staff's answer to every “why not just renovate” objection is that there “doesn't appear to be room to use existing reserves” even for the $10 million option, and they are “not aware of any grants at the moment” that would fund it. Asked about total spending rather than budget years, staff confirm that a June election costs roughly $80,000 more.

In the statistically valid community survey, a new library is residents' top facility priority; expanded senior services rank comparatively low. Seven in ten are satisfied with library services while the building is the top facility priority. 29 of 122 ratings improved statistically since 2022, among them satisfaction with economic health, which “rose notably from 29% in 2022 to 50% in 2025.” “Just over half” give positive ratings to the value of services for taxes paid.

A resident asks “what happens to our tax revenue if that building never gets built?”; an author of the ordinance answers that the tax “does not get collected until there is a concrete plan,” and that it ends “30 years after library construction begins.” An opponent says “we start paying this tax this December regardless.” On the claim that the city is subsidizing BART, Councilmember Ktsanes says “I think we are, but I don't have a problem with that,” and “I'm honest enough to say yes it is.” A councilmember says publicly that “probably if I really thought about it, I'd find something I wanted to change,” but the Council cannot modify the measure. And Councilmember Ktsanes objects to forming the task force only after funding is approved, because its information “is part of what informs voters.”

Donna Raveccho was killed at San Pablo and Waldo. This is the only place in the archive where the death is named, and it is named by a resident announcing a vigil — not reported by staff, not agendized, and not the subject of any item. The incoming Mayor confirms it from the dais less than half an hour later: “we've had a couple of deaths recently.” The same speaker describes four businesses on the corridor damaged by vehicles, one of which “had to delay its opening by more than a year”.

A councilmember notes that the transportation impact fee produced one payment in a year — after the Council exempted four projects under Project Kickstart in September and cut the fee 13% in October — and objects to “one-off exemptions.” In September staff had said the fee “is a part of growing our capital fund,” so waiving it means depending further on external grants. The reorganization brings a sitting state Attorney General to administer the oath, and the head of the League of California Cities saying this is her “second visit to your city in the span of about 4 or 5 months” and, in jest, “I think I've been here more than I've been in any other city.”

The incoming Mayor answers what he calls “the half-truths and stuff that you see on blogs” about the library: “let the real truth come out starting in 2026.” The incoming Mayor Pro Tem's priorities include planning capital investment “more proactively” — “not just with the pool… but with parks, with capital investments for fire resiliency.” The El Cerrito High football team and cheerleaders fill the chamber. And the new Filipino American mayor notes that his former senior partner, and that partner's best friend, Los Angeles's first Black mayor, were both once barred from the building where he had just been a guest.

El Cerrito's safety policies were written in 1999, before state law required cities to show evacuation routes and assess evacuation-constrained areas. A technical appendix models evacuation clearance times of 70 to 160 minutes, which the Fire Chief says are “too big to expect any sort of feasible” outcome. A councilmember calls the analysis a “Worst case, sort of, Dark fantasy analysis” — it assumes every one of 1.8 vehicles per household evacuates simultaneously, labels that conservative, and counts vehicles rather than the residents who have none. Adoption proceeds with the appendix unamended, on her motion. A resident, reading a statement for another, notes that not one of El Cerrito's public paths has a sign, and that more than half of the 25 people who died in the 1991 Oakland Hills fire “were in their cars.”

City staff present a $14 million Caltrans project covering 80% of the city's most dangerous street, to which El Cerrito contributes up to $400,000 for sidewalk and street-tree work, and which the city could shape only by working with Caltrans. The CAPM strategy “does not include road geometry changes”: Caltrans confirms that rules out lane-width changes to add bike lanes, and curb bulb-outs. Caltrans says six mid-block crossings on the corridor carrying the city's fatalities are in a future project it plans for 2028 but has no allocations for yet; when a councilmember sums up that it “could be 10 years, because we just don't know,” the state traffic safety chief answers “Yeah.” Councilmember Saltzman repeats her 18 November warning — that repaving without safety improvements “will just make drivers go faster” — directly to the agency that controls the road.

The Measure C arguments arrive fully formed. An opponent explains that proponents chose a citizens' initiative because “the threshold to pass is only 50% plus one vote,” while a city-placed measure “would require 67% to pass”. An opponent states that “research paid for by El Cerrito taxpayers has twice shown that there isn't 67%,” which is not addressed at this meeting; Measure C fails in June at roughly 30%. And Betty Buginis, preparing a Historical Society panel on journalism, ties the dispute to the loss of local news: “if we had the kind of newspaper coverage we once had, we would know the actual cost of this project.” Garbage rates rise 11% on a regional processing contract; 96% of city accounts use the two smallest cart sizes.

Two collisions in four days, both after dark, then a third in daylight that was life-threatening. Both pedestrian collisions, one after dark and one in daylight, involved drivers who said they did not see the pedestrian until impact; the third crash was a drunk driver who rear-ended an occupied car, and the Chief's message is about driver awareness. “Caltrans is the primary agency that has responsibility and ownership of that road”: Changes to the roadway run through Caltrans, which the Chief says is “sometimes challenging to work with”; the city's role is to advocate, and the sidewalk is in the city's right of way. Councilmember Saltzman warns that “the scariest thing is if they repave with no safety improvements, it will just make drivers go faster because when there's smooth pavement, you end up driving faster.”

A resident identifies the Local Road Safety Plan the city commissioned, surveyed residents for, and had not published — in the same week as the three collisions. It finally arrives in April 2026. She also asks for a Vision Zero policy; on 2 December Saltzman says staff will bring one to the Council next year. Asked by a councilmember who says residents keep asking, staff confirm the reserve layers: 13% emergency plus 17% unrestricted equals the 30% policy. Prepaying the pension liability for a 3.5% discount is disclosed in answer to a question.

The chambers rebuild is awarded at $348,940 through an informal selection rather than a formal bid, justified by “the potential for additional system failures and increasing costs for equipment” — about 45 minutes after the meeting's own Zoom audio failed and was fixed by rebooting a computer. The Clerk refers back to her 21 October presentation on the equipment's condition. The Clerk says the contract “will also help us in determining how we will comply” with SB 707, “because we will then have the infrastructure in place.” She also connects the new design to a complaint made forty minutes earlier, that the room's layout blocks sight lines and puts speakers' backs to the public. A separate exchange establishes that projected reserve balances exclude commitments the Council has directed but not appropriated.

Staff acknowledge a mismatch in the climate action plan: “consumption-based emissions dwarfs what municipal operations generates,” yet “the CAP strategies and actions are mainly focused on municipal operations.” The city's climate dashboard was built by the CivicSpark fellow, who is leaving for graduate school, and staff say the work proceeds “without devoted staff.” Asked how progress toward carbon neutrality will be measured, staff say “I will have to follow up on that one” and that measurement “would come in an update of the Climate Action Plan.”

The childcare appeal ran about an hour and a half and was built on a premise zoning cannot weigh: competition. Nine providers operate nearby, many of them home-based, and a councilmember grants the appellants' concern: “it is challenging for daycare providers now,” with universal TK and preschool serving “all children over the age of 4, and many three and a half year olds.” But “none of the findings consider the proximity of similar existing businesses,” and a family daycare home in the same building, licensed by the state for up to 14 children, would need no permit at all, because “cities are not permitted to place land use regulations on family daycare homes.” Traffic is the neighbor argument the zoning findings do permit: an appellant says the intersection has eight times the state average of accidents per mile.

Three different capacity figures surfaced — 25 requested, 20 from state licensing, 18 in the conditions — and the binding number came from the applicant's own offer at the Planning Commission. A published typo stating the appeal window as ten working days when the code says ten calendar days, raised by a neighbor in public comment, was confirmed by staff when a councilmember asked them to address his concerns. The outcome is a compromise built in real time: the operator gets a conditional path to growth, neighbors get a year of operating history first. Elsewhere, over 40 vacancies across the city's boards and committees are reported, and the volunteer paths program reports 125 festival attendees, a volunteer who is “building their trails right now” for the Berkeley Path Wanderers Association, and a formal agreement in progress.

The city's lobbyist reports drafts, poised to go into SB 423 in the last days of the session, that would have postponed or eliminated real estate transfer taxes for fifteen years — “a critical revenue source for the city of El Cerrito”; what reached print applied only to Los Angeles. Only 23 California cities levy one — but, the lobbyist says, they cover “nearly 12 million Californians,” so taking it away is not “going to be incredibly easy.” Of local taxes and fees, he says, “it is open season.” A councilmember asks what happens when two client cities disagree. The disclosed remedy is an internal firewall, then a subcontracted outside advocate.

The Transit Oriented Communities policy conditions future OBAG grant eligibility — a source that has brought the city almost $10 million to date — on density standards set by MTC. Staff explain that the standard is an average minimum density of 75 units per acre, not a cap: Credence, 32 condominium units at San Pablo and Eureka, is 56 units per acre and would fall below it. The timing did not line up: MTC adopted the policy in 2022 while the housing element was in development, the element was adopted in August 2023, guidance followed in September 2024, and the scoring criteria are still “in development.” One land use planner, one transportation planner and one affordable housing program manager, overseen by the Planning Manager and the Community Development Director, are implementing all of it.

The Council takes the pool, a fire engine and the chambers AV system in one discussion, because the City Manager will not bring the renovations budget “in a vacuum.” The AV system is original to 2007 and its main components can no longer be replaced: if the remaining control panel fails, meetings would be “reduced to in-person meetings only.” The fire engine is added to the agenda mid-meeting under a Brown Act after-the-agenda finding to beat a price expiry worth roughly $240,000. Two months earlier the Financial Advisory Board had proposed a maintenance fund for long-lived assets, using a fire truck as its example.