2019

Asked by the auditor “how did El Cerrito get into this financial crisis?”, the new Mayor names decisions each worth “probably about a half million dollar[s]”: “no layoffs during the recession of 2009 and 2010,” “no layoffs when [the] redevelopment agency was dissolved in 2012,” “building the Midtown activity center in 2018,” and “sanctuary city values and opposition [to] ICE contracts by the Contra Costa Sheriff, resulting in a dispatch contract that cost us more money.” A cumulative $2 million, “more than half of that… after 2016.” Then costs with no revenue: a local minimum wage, extra library hours, stormwater compliance, street lighting subsidized by almost $400,000 a year after large landowners defeated a 2016 assessment ballot, and “funding our school resource officers at 11 percent. Even when we’re only reimbursed at 80 percent.”

Three losses the city did not cause: redevelopment revenue gone in 2012 — “we sued the state to return one point four million dollars… I asked them if they could help us with that. They laughed” — which is the appeal still without a hearing date in 2020; a Home Depot sales tax split with Richmond reversed on a count of “two cash registers in El Cerrito and… 12 cash registers in Richmond,” leaving “several years where we didn’t get any tax revenue” and a repayment to Richmond; and recession reassessments he attributes to the county assessor’s re-election timing — his claim, untested here. His request: “a focused audit, as it sounded like the best balance between accessing their expertise and managing our staff workload.” The Joint Legislative Audit Committee approves the audit in February.

Also: the collection part of garbage rates rises between about $1.50 and nearly $3 a month for 95 percent of households, and the city’s recycling fee by $4.50 to $5; the bill has three components, including repayment of the general fund “for amounts owed due to prior shortfalls.” The Mayor relays a warning heard at the regional authority that SB 1383 “is going to make” the 1989 waste law “look like child’s play.” State ADU law removes the city’s power to require replacement parking or owner occupancy, and whether charter status exempts the city “hasn’t been litigated yet.” A councilmember pulls a storm drain contract off consent to ask whether it could wait — it could not, with street water flowing onto private property. And term limits cost the Urban Forest Committee its two tree experts and the design review board its landscape architect; the committee asks for exceptions.

About 800 El Cerrito residents lost power in the shutoff — “a roller coaster for a few days trying to figure out what was going to happen.” The same evening a battalion chief introduces Zonehaven, “now live and operational… the two gentlemen that did this for us did it at no cost” — a system for which, the fire chief later says, El Cerrito and Kensington were the first users (20 Jul 2021). The principle: “you want the people closest to the fire to be notified first… otherwise you can end up with gridlock.” The planned live test is canceled because the county warning system manager is “busy down the street at the explosion at the oil refinery.” And the zones only say who should leave: “the community warning system is run by your county sheriff, and we are not a part of that technology.”

A resident of Arlington Boulevard describes the shutoff week: “a chaotic mess in communications. The community warning system was an utter failure. Utter failure… half of the homes up on Arlington Boulevard do not have cell phone access.” She asks the Council to “lean on AT&T, Sprint, Verizon”. The abatement cost hearing reports 90 percent compliance, and an owner contests a $14,000 bill — “it was the cheapest of the three does not make it a reasonable cost” — he says no letters reached him in a year spent caring for his dying mother; staff record four letters to each of his four properties and bids up to $27,000 per parcel.

Also: a resident warns that demand-based BART parking could go from $3 to “$15 to $18 a day,” and turns the climate argument round — “let us just park at BART and use public transit.” The census presenters aim for 76.9 percent self-response and reassure residents that “even if that enumerator comes through the door they don’t need to fear that person,” while a councilmember asks whether Tibetan, Taiwanese, Chinese and Korean residents will be counted as one group. And Quinto celebrates the state rent cap while restating that “the city of El Cerrito cannot afford doing anything such as rent control”.

The agreement replaces one put in place “well over 10 years ago,” running July 2019 to June 2021: captains 1 percent, engineers 4 percent, firefighters 1.5 percent from July 2019, then “an increase of three percent” for all from July 2020. That 3 percent is the raise the Council amends the contract to forgo in April 2020. The 10 percent paramedic differential, long practiced, is written in for the first time, and the union ratifies unanimously. In public comment a resident urges adopting Professor McBride’s Claremont Canyon plan — El Cerrito is “almost a complete carbon copy” — replacing eucalyptus with natives and clearing “20 foot… away from evacuation routes.” In February 2020 people at an Urban Forest Committee event ask that McBride present to the Council; he speaks at a Council meeting in April 2022.

Two speakers describe what fire compliance costs those who cannot do the work: a Buckingham Court grant approved at “number 62” in a queue “working on application number 20,” and an “88-year-old man who suffers from diabetes and is in a wheelchair” facing a fine for a yard he could neither clear nor pay to clear, until his Meals on Wheels driver organized volunteers. A councilmember pulls the county transportation tax from consent because “anything that relates to new taxes should be heard by the public”. And the Mayor warns that West County may need a health care tax, but “we’re getting pretty maxed out on sales taxes around here.”

Also: a former county mental health chief tells the Council that Kensington sought bids for its police service despite a 2009 ordinance, signed by nearly 1,000 households, requiring a vote before contracting out — El Cerrito being a potential bidder. The Council instructs its League delegate to support amending Rule 20A for undergrounding. The street tax is certified as spent as promised by a citizens’ oversight committee with an independent compliance check. A new library at the Plaza BART development is raised as “only one of the possibilities.” And the Arts Commission’s creative reuse residency depends on the recycling center housing its materials.

A resident notes that private owners are being cited while “there’s been no obvious clearing of vegetation encroaching on the mapped evacuation routes,” warning of “a tunnel of fire effect” and asking whether it will be done “before the Diablo winds begin to blow in October.” Another: “I do not want El Cerrito to end up on the evening news because of a wildfire… because we have lack of city council involvement.” A councilmember reports that residents calling 911 from cell phones during a recent fire reached “Fremont and Marin and distant places,” and a councilmember who uses a wheelchair describes preparing for a shutoff: “PG&E is going to turn off the power. Now what?” — she must recharge daily. PG&E’s first shutoff comes in early October. And a new court ruling is reported: “you can’t move homeless unless cities themselves have a place to put them.”

The school resource officer funding agreement passes on consent with a councilmember on record: “I’m upset that… the cities are balancing the school district’s budget.” The district eliminates the funding entirely in August 2020. A climate action subcommittee is formed on consent — the body not reconstituted until February 2021. Kensington residents warn that their district sought bids for its police service without mentioning a 2009 initiative ordinance requiring voter approval — “the ordinance is a law” — with El Cerrito a potential bidder. And a new tenant task force appointee corrects a public characterization of him as “drawing a mustache or defacing public property”: he had put a “Resist” sticker on an anti-immigrant BART ad, “and I would do it again.” He does not say who portrayed him. A speaker also raises litigation discussed in closed session, describing its basis as alleged harassment and discrimination; the Mayor cannot discuss it but says “we stand firmly against harassment” and that “the officer was the officer of the year.”

Also: the 1715 Elm Street development agreement is extended five years after entitlement, with nothing built — a historic house to be moved across a creek, fourteen units, and a water board letter that week revealing the 2014 certification had expired; the applicant’s summary of the Army Corps process is “Murphy was an optimist,” and the project would contribute up to $360,000 to the affordable housing fund. The green infrastructure plan is adopted, its public projects dependent on private development — “rates of private redevelopment are somewhat out of our control, but that’s a key aspect of our plan.” And the EC STARS interns report, one having helped track fire hazard violations for the abatement program.

Thirty-two speakers, cut to ninety seconds each, most about a repeal placed on the consent calendar. Once a referendum qualifies a council must repeal or submit to voters; the California Apartment Association had qualified one, described from the floor as a thirty-thousand-dollar effort. A councilmember who had changed vote: the ordinance “was a compromise… not nearly as far as I would like it to go… since the Apartment Association pushed our hand, I think it’s better for us to repeal this and come back with something that is more comprehensive.” The original mover: “an election in this city would be a costly exercise for a less than adequate ordinance.” The Mayor votes no: “I am absolutely disgusted by what I’ve seen from the Apartment Association… to put forth something that was a lie and to really betray the trust of our residents was despicable” — her characterization. Repealed 4–1, on the promise that the newly appointed tenant task force would bring back something stronger. In March 2021 the task force reports without recommending protections beyond state law.

The climate emergency is declared on a resolution drafted from seven other cities’ declarations. The Mayor wanted “50 by 2030 and zero by 2045” written in — “it’s not going to be in there” — and the only targets in the text are the 2013 ones, recited as existing policy. A subcommittee is proposed to set targets, and the councilmember willing to serve names the need for “a budget by which we would need to supplement staff,” adding “we’re not in a position tonight to set budgets aside.” A speaker says the climate action plan, adopted six years earlier, “may as well be 100 years ago” in the science. An hour later the county transport tax plan allots about 7 percent to BART, and the Mayor calls it “personally a pity.”

Also: Oakland Privacy's request for a surveillance ordinance — modeled on the police chief’s own public process for body-worn cameras, with a hearing and Council approval for any new technology. A small landlord describes a tenant threatening “I will hurt you” after a three-day notice, and asks why the ordinance prohibited harassment of tenants only. A 42-year resident who had been tenant, owner and landlord supports just cause “as written.” The Financial Advisory Board is “evaluating the status of interfund borrowing” — the practice the Mayor names in December as draining the reserve. And the meeting adjourns in memory of Mollie Hazen.

After Coffey Park, fire is “not just a wildland urban interface issue anymore… [it’s] a community issue,” and the abatement standard is applied citywide: 992 properties noticed, “almost one-seventh of the single-family homes.” Inspectors work from the public way only — “we are not allowed to… look over their fence… fly a drone” — so backyard hazards depend on neighbors reporting neighbors. Two inspectors have been working “12 hours a day” to reinspect before the hearing. A supporter calls abatement “analogous to the state insisting on people have their children vaccinated.” The Kensington fire contract is renewed for ten years on a fee set “in the original contract” of 1995 — “not a mathematical formula… strictly a percentage” — the gap the chief later puts at nearly $500,000 a year.

Rule 20A: El Cerrito’s last undergrounding project was in 2003–04, and fifteen years of credits were about to be reallocated. A district is drawn around City Hall to preserve them. Resident Howdy Goudey: “why haven’t we been doing this for eight years?… there is literally one pole that is right out front here.” The reason: “part of the reason this district was formed is because it only required 10 addresses to be notified.” PG&E presents its shutoff program — door knocks only for registered medical baseline customers, and “I don’t think you’re ever going to see us able to provide generators for the general public” — while a resident objects to its plan to remove fire-resistant live oaks.

The parks tax, Measure A, goes to a November 2019 special election costing $81,000 to $114,000 — polling at 77 to 82 percent against a two-thirds threshold, with up to about $6.5 million in bonds that could be repaid from it. The pollster finds 59 percent satisfied with “the city’s management of public funds” and 22 percent who don’t know. A councilmember notes “another reason why it’s good to get our swimming pool Measure A early on in November” The referendum certificate accepted on this night’s consent calendar forces a choice two weeks later between repealing just cause and sending it to voters. Also: the old senior center site on Stockton Street has been “leveled” and left “underutilized.”

The Polaris project on the old Taco Bell site at 11965 San Pablo Avenue: 144 units in eight stories, the top two earned through the state density bonus for very low income units, with 77 unbundled parking spaces. The appellant, Howdy Goudey, argues it is “turning its back” on the Ohlone Greenway, which will be “shaded all the time,” with “only seven feet between the aerial track and this wall,” and that the plan’s standards bind it: “it says ensure, and do not.” The answer is noise: BART passing the site “exceeds 100 decibels,” interior limits of 50 and 40 decibels force a windowless wall facing the tracks, and the applicant treats that stretch as “connective tissue… simply too loud” to linger in. The appeal is denied unanimously; a councilmember recalls playing at Baxter Creek “back when Adachi’s, the Japanese nursery, was there and there was no BART.”

The county library commissioner makes the emergency case for a new building: during the 2018 wildfire smoke “the library had to close… because it does not have an HVAC system,” so it cannot serve as a cooling or clean-air refuge — “it’s literally a matter of life and death.” He also urges ACA 1, which would lower the vote needed for local housing and library bonds from two-thirds to 55 percent; the Council supports it by urgency letter. In liaison reports: “I saw that they were tearing down the senior center… it’s down completely” — the building behind the library, on land the school district reclaimed. And senior management receive a 3 percent cost of living increase.

Also: the new City Clerk reports that a filed referendum petition has suspended the just cause ordinance before it took effect, and invites applicants for the tenant task force. Committees have been directed to record “only action items” in their minutes. The tree ordinance defers a list of wildfire-prone species for more research — “now we’re going to wait two more years” — while a draft that would have made deadheading your own perennials require a permit is corrected. And the school district explains its court-ordered move to trustee area elections; El Cerrito receives its own demand letter in March 2026.

About $650,000 of transfer tax had arrived, with $2.7 million projected — later reported as $2.3 million. The proposed uses: “public safety salaries and overtime,” station roofs, and $50,000 “as essentially a placeholder” for the Hillside Natural Area. Asked whether Measure V would appear in the fund table, the finance director says “it will not, because it’s part of the general fund”. Residents object: “less than eight percent of those funds,” $50,000, goes to fire prevention; “who’s liable if we burn while you guys are making a report?”; and a 2017 hillside plan already set priorities. A councilmember notes $50,000 “would just get you the initial study.” At the end of the evening the revenue anticipation note — about $9 million — is moved before any presentation, with no speakers and no questions, and adopted in under a minute.

In the police chief’s review of 2018, on traffic enforcement: registration and no-plate stops were “disproportionately affecting some motorists of color,” so the department shifted to moving violations — he presents the data in November 2020. And asked about license plate readers, he reports San Pablo’s “very extensive deployment” and stolen cars down from 38 to 14: “although we don’t have that technology, we have been benefiting from our neighbors possessing the technology, and it is something that is on our radar for the future”. He also notes body cameras let supervisors “confirm or discount what the officer had to say.”

Also: the city halts glyphosate by administrative moratorium. The waste fee rises because China’s National Sword required under 1 percent contamination against a typical US rate of 25 percent; a resident finds the recycling center’s and the curbside hauler’s websites giving opposite instructions on yogurt tubs; and the city attorney explains that the Council cannot exceed the noticed rates, and “the city can’t charge rates in excess of” the cost of providing a service. A resident asks that fire hardening qualify for the Measure V rebate with no time limit, and another that referendum signature gatherers be made accountable — six days before the just cause petition is filed.

The just cause eviction ordinance and the rent registry are adopted on the consent calendar, taken one by one so opposition could be recorded; just cause passes 4–1. On 10 June a referendum petition is filed and the ordinance is suspended before it takes effect; by August it is repealed, while the rent registry survives. The tenant protection task force is created the same night — screened by a facilitator, chosen by the full Council, and balanced four landlords to four tenants “so they have to convince each other.”

The annual review of the comprehensive financial policy commits the city to “fund three months of payroll costs, currently six million dollars, in the emergency and disaster recovery fund,” within two biennial budget cycles — “essentially from today we have five years.” The policy is also amended so that every action exceeding the City Manager’s authority must include “an analysis of the immediate and future fiscal impact.” The master fee schedule is adopted with corrections made at the dais and a full check promised — “last year we came back with a set of corrections after the fact” — after a councilmember catches wrong units and wrong amounts, and staff concede the hourly rates are “legacy fees” whose methodology cannot be reconstructed.

Also: residents already ask that “a portion of the Measure V funds be diverted to the fire department.” The fire marshal predicts an abatement list of “700, and that is extraordinary for us” and finds only about a third of those at its sessions know what a Diablo wind is. Residents who switch to internet phones fall out of the emergency call database. EBMUD warns that in a fire-caused outage, hillside pumps losing power could force emergency water conservation. And a councilmember notes about 250 homes sell a year, about 2.5 percent of the stock; EBMUD’s director adds that 75 percent of homes have not sold since its point-of-sale sewer program began.

About forty speakers. The rent registry is “purely a data collection mechanism… not… an enforcement tool,” collected through the business license at $44 a unit. A speaker sets out what that exposes: “our 4,000 plus, maybe 4,300 units of rental housing” against “the 2,600 business licenses… that’s, you know, 60 percent compliance.” A tenant advocate: “it is not rocket science to figure out where those 1,400 missing units are” — match the assessor’s roll against the business tax roll. Staff concede “we do know that there are some people missing,” and say a new clerk will help find them.

Just cause is introduced for buildings of five or more units only — “only about a third of all rental units,” leaving out “the 490 other rental properties” — and the city will not enforce it: “it would be pursued through civil remedies.” Quinto opposes it for the small landlords in the room, recalling his parents sold a Berkeley rental “once rent control got in there,” and predicts housing projects “will be canceled.” The Mayor calls a survey on tenant protections, circulated by text and email, “fear tactics… a type of harassment.” It is introduced 3–2. A Richmond speaker explains her opposition through her parents’ redlined property, bought for $12,000–17,000 and now worth half a million.

Both sides agree just cause alone can be circumvented by raising rent. Tenants describe being “terrified about asking for any repairs”; a landlord calls it a “lifetime tenancy.” A broker warns the ordinance lets “the elephant into this china shop” and volunteers for the task force meant to extend protections; another objects that equal numbers on it ignore that “there are about nine thousand tenants.” Earlier, the fire prevention officer reports a Wildcat Canyon fuel project “10 years in the making,” and residents ask the city to enforce vegetation rules “uniformly.”

The City Manager reports on the strategic plan adopted in 2013 and updated in 2015, two years after the last progress report in April 2017; most strategies “are indeed intended to be ongoing… not necessarily intended to be completed.” Asked how its six goals were prioritized, the answer is that they were not: “that’s why they were letters instead of numbers. They weren’t necessarily meant to be ranked.” A councilmember: “this document shows the dimensions of El Cerrito as a full-service city… we’re doing all the right things. We may not be doing enough of it.” Another notes $192 million in capital needs beyond 2029 in tables with “no timeline,” and that the parks master plan, put at “15 or 20 million at most” in those tables, “came in at 37 million.”

A councilmember, newer to the city herself, warns: “we’re not going to be able to raise this money if we just keep hitting them with, here’s another tax, here’s another tax, here’s another tax, if they don’t see the whole vision.” The report flags that Measure A, the swim center parcel tax, expires in 2020. City Hall is “not new anymore — it’s 10 years old,” and the corporation yard sits in an old sanitary district building “that hasn’t been looked at at all.” A typical day: 350 children in recreation, 300 at the swim center, ten calls per firefighter paramedic.

Also: a resident proposes a combined emergency and volunteer coordinator, since otherwise “it’s the same staff being asked to do a new job.” The storm drain fee stays at $58 and the landscape assessment at $72 for homes, while commercial parcels pay by the square foot. PCBs in 1950s–70s commercial caulking must be tested before demolition. A hillside lot split at 922 Clark Place gets a frontage exception. And the meeting adjourns in memory of former City Clerk Cheryl Morse.

Adopting the Parks and Recreation Master Plan, a councilmember who grew up at Poinsett Park names the city’s goals — “protecting against fire, building a library, place making… new housing, planning for a new public safety building and senior center” — and then Measure V: “I know that a lot of us had prioritized a reserve for that money. I’m certainly one of those people. My second priority, when I was out walking and trying to get Measure V passed, [was] fire protection in the hills.” He adds that fire protection was “my second priority maybe tied with reserves.” The mid-year update proposes no use of the first $600,000 of transfer tax in the current fiscal year.

The parks plan: 180 projects, 52 without cost estimates; about $30 million in capital, which Lyman calls “probably a significant underestimate”; and about $800,000 a year more in maintenance, funded by “additional support from the general fund, perhaps including the new real property transfer tax” — with a remaining “gap” filled by “sources that as yet are unidentified.” Lyman: “it tells us a story that we are reluctant to hear — that we have an over 30 million dollar obligation.” Facilities are “all about 50 to 60 years old.” And asked what happens when the senior center’s five-year portable lease ends, staff answer: “we would have to choose to either purchase those or… try to cram the services in wherever we could.”

Also: the library served 796 summer lunches to children; the plan does not address tree removal at all, so eucalyptus work needs its own environmental review; Abelson warns “we can’t put everything on the ballot all at once”; one-time property sale proceeds write off long-overdue inter-fund debts; and Quinto asks the city to “fix the turtle” he played in from 1964.

Two weeks after a packed meeting on tenant protections, tenants speak: protections “have been narrowed down to less than a quarter of our tenants,” and senior renters on fixed incomes “won’t come to a public meeting.” One renter: “my landlord pays $1,500 in property taxes a year, but collects… more than $40,000 from us in rent,” and asks for “a temporary measure to limit rent increases.” Another warns that a registry alone will not stop displacement “without a cap.” A Hana Gardens resident recalls an opponent who “introduced himself with fierce anger.” A councilmember reports seniors at a regional workshop unanimously opposed to reducing San Pablo Avenue to one lane each way.

Fire safety groups announce a consortium with Kensington groups, two municipal advisory committees and Supervisor Gioia to clear Wildcat Canyon with East Bay Regional Parks, and report “a very hot debate” with the chiefs over vegetation on the new evacuation routes. A resident urges promotion of the opt-in county warning system and phones kept “charged and not on silent mode at night.” A councilmember relays that homeowners are “dropped, not canceled” by insurers according to “the category that a person is in”.

Also: the regional transportation fee, which has returned about $2.2 million to El Cerrito projects, is updated at 75 percent of new development’s 19 percent fair share of an $855 million project list. The adopted garbage rates omitted a container size, and the rate sheet contained “rounding errors as well as errors in how multiple weekly pickups were calculated.” The Crime Prevention Committee has six of fifteen seats filled. And RecycleMore’s chair explains that since its debt was repaid in 2014, El Cerrito stays mainly for household hazardous waste.

BART presents its first station development to begin with stakeholder outreach: “the library is obviously a unique component of this site.” Quinto credits BART director Nick Josefowitz with rallying fellow directors behind a Plaza library. BART requires 35 percent affordable housing on its land, exceeded at Lake Merritt, and asks the city for “parking maximums and not minimums.” Its Plaza survey finds 38 percent walk and 34 percent drive and park; Abelson notes surveyors worked inside the parking lot, over-sampling drivers. And fast approvals do not mean fast building: rising costs “break the back of projects.”

The parking study finds downtown on-street occupancy never above 54 percent, and enforcement is “very complaint based”; a councilmember reads its data as showing unregulated blocks near Del Norte “well over 80 percent occupied, probably for nine hours a day.” A councilmember: “we clean them, we sweep them, we’re responsible for the stormwater… and they park their vehicle there for eight to ten hours. I don’t see why we’re not charging them today” — while BART keeps waitlists for its own paid permits. Another objects that the study says nothing about transit. Staff measure the San Pablo Avenue plan’s success by approved projects not reaching the Council; one offers $1 million to the affordable housing fund, and a 100 percent affordable project at the former OSH site has no parking.

Also: the fire department makes home hardening a program — “the first line of defense” — and the police plan an evacuation route map and a drill. The Mayor: after Doctors Hospital closed in 2015, “we need another hospital in West County. What we have in Kaiser is insufficient.” The former City Manager’s story: Trader Joe’s asked why it should invest when the city worked from “trailers that were falling apart.” A police volunteer logs a thousand hours. The meeting adjourns in recognition of former Mayor Ken Berndt.

The first meeting of 2019. The FAB presents its revision of the financial policy: the general fund reserve ratio was 2.4 percent in 2017, against a 15 percent target, and not expected to improve given “extremely tight budgets” for 2019 and 2020. Other funds owe the general fund $1.6 million, mostly RDA-related and “going back even before 2012.” New auditors had made a $1.278 million prior period adjustment — “a cleanup, to put it mildly.” The FAB proposes a cash Emergency and Disaster Recovery Fund of three months’ payroll, and the finance director explains its funding: “as recommended by FAB, and also supported by my view on things, if a substantial part of Measure V is transferred into the EDRF.”

A board member: “we said unanimously there is currently, and there hasn’t been for a while, a real reserve for this city… [its] financial resilience is in jeopardy”. The chair: “the city has no liquid assets. It doesn’t have a bank line of credit. It gets one every year in the form of a tax anticipation note.” In liaison reports the FAB is discussing “the governance of Measure V”.

The Council defers the tenant ordinances introduced in December to a February study session, over objections that “protecting renters is an emergency” too. Lyman: “I’ve come to realize through Costa-Hawkins that” preserving affordable housing “is not something that’s realistic.” The Mayor notes most El Cerritans voted for Proposition 10. Fire speakers: “Berkeley fire department has… a wildfire evacuation plan… we have nothing like that. We have no evacuation routes.” And exclusive negotiations begin for the Potrero gateway site.