2021

Paul Fadelli reviews a year containing the pandemic, wildfire risk, “raging tensions and the debates on police accountability,” and “our city making the top ten list that we would rather not have been on last January” — the State Auditor’s high-risk list. The city “began fiscal year 2021 with no reserves, a lack of potential revenues, and the need to take action.” With the auditor’s report “as a road map,” difficult decisions produced a balanced budget and a $4 million surplus, “and no new taxes” — not counting more than $6 million in American Rescue Plan funds.

Of his five priorities, four advanced: wildfire (station 72 kept open, fire budget cuts rejected), equity considerations added to council decisions, the foodware ordinance passed, and the finances. The fifth — updating the climate action plan — “did not get finalized this year,” and he says why: “the lack of staff due to budget cuts, furloughs and transitions.” Residents and councilmembers “may both be frustrated that we can’t have every priority… handled all at once,” but “downsizing and getting our budget in shape has meant less staffing.”

Gabe Quinto is sworn in and hangs every goal from one theme, using the UN definition of sustainability. Financial: approve the fiscal sustainability plan, continue on the auditor’s recommendations “so that we are removed from the high risk list once and for all,” open the Section 115 trust, address the OPEB liability, increase employee CalPERS contributions, fill the emergency reserve, and achieve “a one million general fund surplus each year.” Abelson calls the previous year’s decisions the hardest she has made on the council, “because we’ve been talking about people’s lives.” The Council, together in the chamber with the public still on Zoom, has to be reminded it can vote by voice — “we’re a little rusty up here.”

Corrina Gould, tribal chair of the Confederated Villages of Lisjan and co-founder of the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust, corrects the label first: the Confederated Villages is “actually more than Ohlone,” comprising two Ohlone groups plus Miwok, Delta Yokuts and Napan peoples, and the Spanish had lumped them together as people of the coast; the word Ohlone came into use in the 1950s and 1960s. The language, Chochenyo, is being revived by her own daughter over Zoom. She describes a California history of laws under which Native people could be held as indentured servants “for the next twenty five years or so” — history that “we don’t listen or hear about… I definitely don’t hear about it in fourth grade.” The trust grew from construction uncovering “hundreds of ancestral remains at Emeryville, at the Bay Street mall,” and from a 109-day occupation at Sogorea Te’ that produced the first cultural easement between a city, a park district and federally recognized tribes.

Shuumi “means a gift… an honorary tax that we ask people that work, play or live in our territory” to pay. Berkeley changed its signage, Richmond is creating a gathering park, Alameda renamed parks and “became the first city in our territory to pay shuumi as part of their budget.” More than a dozen speakers follow, and nearly every one asks El Cerrito to do the same — several calibrating the ask to the city’s finances: “I know our finances are far from good… I’m asking for a symbol, or even a token amount.” A history teacher who pays shuumi as a renter puts it as “what better way to really exercise our moral budget.” One speaker notes the city already holds land it cannot maintain, tended by volunteers. No shuumi line appears in any budget in this archive.

Also: a sitting Human Relations Commissioner tells the Council from the public microphone that “the Human Relations Commission is discriminating if the… commission is silencing,” and that “you guys are silencing me and finding ways to silence me more.” The SB 1383 organics ordinance gets first reading — organics being “the largest part of our waste stream,” 20 to 23 million tons a year statewide, producing methane in landfill — with CalRecycle able to “levy significant penalties for noncompliance.” And the Council adopts vehicle miles traveled thresholds, replacing level of service, because “it doesn’t matter if you’re delayed at an intersection” — the better indicator of emissions “is actually how much you’re driving.”

The mechanism: contaminants build on the insulators that keep power lines off the poles, and normally rain washes them away. Through “the driest period in the Bay Area since 1977” — no rain in June, July, August or into September — they accumulated instead, so fog “moisten[ed] the contaminants without washing them off,” creating an arc flash and, on wet wooden poles, fire. The sources here are salt air and “refinery issues that are between Richmond and El Cerrito.” PG&E concedes its own forecasting failed: looking at 2018 and 2019 “we were predicting the same kind of” rain — “we were wrong” — and so “we have not been washing the insulators as much as we should have been.” Asked whether El Cerrito’s grid is worse than elsewhere: “no, there isn’t.” The difference is the air.

Motoyama presses on undergrounding, making the case as economics: “real infrastructure investments will reduce the cost of things like having to wash our poles twice or four times or six times a year.” The answer is that PG&E is “putting together our case to underground 10,000 miles,” which “has to go to” the CPUC and be approved — so “I don’t know any of the specifics… what that underground would be or where it would happen.”

Also: one property at 2507 Arlington, on the border of the very high fire severity zone, is declared a fire hazard on a complaint — the owner’s only reported contact being secondhand, “a friend of a friend,” and nobody speaks at the hearing. Permanent ADU regulations replace an expiring urgency ordinance; production has risen “by a factor of about four to five” since 2018, and had the city not acted in 2019 the state laws “would have just gone into effect” with no local regulations at all. The foodware ordinance, paused eighteen months for pandemic impacts on restaurants, returns with categorical exemptions so plastic hot cup lids stay legal “until there’s a competitive alternative.” And a retired battalion chief challenges $97,000 spent recruiting externally for two posts when “you had two qualified internal candidates”: “seems like a rich city problem, and you’re acting like a poor city problem.”

The City Manager announces that the finance director “is no longer with the city,” having taken a comptroller post in Santa Clara County. He had been “an architect of building back the city’s financial health.” Recruitment for a permanent replacement “will take at least three months,” and in the meantime she asks “the council’s patience and the public’s patience as I’m working with our now rather depleted finance department staff to keep things running.” The timing is the problem: “our annual independent audit is already underway,” so “the usual timeline of reviewing policies [and] financial statements, including working with the financial advisory board, may be fluid and may be delayed.” The permanent director does not arrive until the fourth quarter of the following fiscal year, and the annual financial report is still being completed “pedal to the metal” in March 2023.

The city opens applications for “thirty-five vacancies and seventeen additional upcoming vacancies” across thirteen advisory bodies — and in the same meeting adopts three resolutions revising the rules for its advisory bodies: term limits raised from two terms to three (twelve years), a requirement for applicants to all bodies to attend two meetings (committees had required three), and ethics training extended from about four bodies to all of them. Rudnick repeats a concern she had raised at the study session: tying attendance to a three-month window would penalize applicants when a body cancels for lack of quorum, so it becomes “two of the last three meetings.” Twenty-three pending applications are closed out for a clean slate, which a speaker objects resets the clock on a Financial Advisory Board vacancy already three months old — promised for October, then November, now February.

Asked what the plans are for Canyon Trail Park, the recreation director answers: “I have an answer. It might not be the answer that you want… the master plan contains nearly projects totaling almost forty million dollars in cost — with no funding source.” Also: Rudnick reports BART’s parking figures for the Plaza project — a maximum of 350 spaces, “thirty-four percent of what is the current number,” with a minimum at fourteen percent. An ICU nurse on her day off tells the Council the county’s masking relaxation repeats a mistake clinicians “foresaw coming when the CDC lifted the mask mandate last time.” Motoyama notes the bid analysis gave “really no indication” whether bidders were minority or women-owned and asks that they be asked; staff note federally funded projects carry DBE requirements. And a Human Relations Commissioner tells the Council “I’m being discriminated against” and that “there has never been any growth through ignoring conflict.”

The City Manager traces the equity and inclusion work plan to what Fadelli “thought was a simple request” — to amend staff reports so they carry equity considerations “along [with] the other considerations… including legal, financial, environmental.” Discussion showed “there’s more to be done,” particularly defining “what equity is” since “there’s not a shared language that we all speak.” Other cities “are able to hire a diversity and equity and inclusion officer… whose only job is to ensure these things happen. We don’t have that as a small city” — so the Human Relations Commission gets the assignment with the City Manager as its staff. Rudnick asks that a staff member join the GARE cohort she completed in 2019; a Navy veteran of 1959–85 proposes putting the measure into department directors’ annual performance evaluations, as the Navy did with fitness reports. Fadelli’s caution: “I would love to have this… not have it go on for two years.”

The study session on boards, commissions and committees fills the rest of the evening and produces October’s three resolutions. The Clerk finds that the standardized appointment process the Council asked for in 2005 was “never formally adopted,” so the three-meeting requirement “just kind of articulated over time” and is applied “committee to committee inconsistently.” Quinto objects to “bad behavior that I’ve seen this year and last year” without naming a body, and alleges “preferential special treatment from different council members, from the city manager in years past.” Then the volunteers answer: Dave Weinstein, twelve years on Environmental Quality, tells the Council to “watch this segment, because it seems to portray members of the city committees as more of a problem to the city than a benefit” — and “I sure wish I knew” which committee was meant. Robin Mitchell, who won the Urban Forest three-term limit herself, says “we lost some really good expertise because [of] the term limit expirations.”

Also: PG&E explains the pole fires six weeks before its formal presentation, given in a three-minute public comment slot — drought deposits turning to a “muddy type substance… moist enough to conduct electricity.” The county board votes 2–5 against extending its eviction moratorium. A teacher whose garden backs onto the Greenway says she has emailed every councilmember more than once over eighteen months and is “considering moving” — while a later speaker reports the same block cleared within a week of one email to the City Manager. Albany passed its Sogorea Te’ Land Trust resolution the night before, and a speaker asks El Cerrito to invite Corrina Gould. A resident notes that she does not see “anywhere in this agenda” an acknowledgment of the land, and suggests one.

Half the evening goes to drought and wildfire. The Fire Chief reveals that apart from recent tweaks, El Cerrito’s vegetation management policy “is over 30 years… it’s almost thirty five years old” — written before the 1991 Oakland hills fire. He promises new ordinances by November, including a “combustion zone” of zero to five feet around every house where “there is nothing but cement, rock or mineral,” and phased removal of juniper, cypress and eucalyptus near homes. His evidence for urgency: two house fires in neighboring cities in two weeks, which spread despite crews on scene “because conditions are so dry” and the houses “were not hardened.” The single biggest factor in house-to-house spread, he says, is needles and leaves in gutters.

PG&E: “twelve, fifteen years ago… fifteen percent of our service territory was in what the CPUC designate[s as] high fire threat area. Today, roughly fifty percent.” It tells the Council El Cerrito would “generally” not face a transmission-level shutoff — and concedes “there hasn’t been a tremendous amount of work in the city” because higher-priority areas exist elsewhere. EBMUD declares a stage one drought, modeled on “the most severe drought that we’ve ever seen” repeated three years running, and asks for ten percent conservation. Quinto explains why streets stay in poor shape: “we’ve been waiting for EBMUD to replace the pipes.”

Also: a retiring battalion chief whose evacuation-zone work made El Cerrito and Kensington “the first guinea pigs” for a system that “has now become the standard for the Bay Area” — “Berkeley followed suit, Marin followed suit… It all started here.” The department is down two battalion chiefs as a result. The general fund balance turns positive: “back in February, remember, the number was a negative two point six million dollars,” against plus $2.6 million at the end of May, with property transfer tax at $3.5 million against a $2.4 million budget. And a resident reports the city’s pavement condition index fell eight points, “the biggest in the area,” with the report unfindable on the city website.

The transit-oriented development kickoff. BART keeps the land and leases the improvements; the developer proposes 750 to 850 homes across phases, with “fifty percent of that total number of units… income restricted, serving an income range all the way from extremely low income — or thirty percent [of] median income — up to middle income.” That is 37% low and very low plus 12% moderate, against BART’s own 20% floor and its 30% system-wide goal. With that affordability the project would likely qualify for eight stories rather than the six allowed by right. Property tax on the site would go “from zero, like it is today, to maybe 250 thousand dollars.” The Council asked BART to develop the station in 2016, which staff call “somewhat prescient — it was ahead of legislation that would have required us actually to rezone.”

But the library is the city’s own problem. Asked how it would be paid for, the answer separates the components: affordable housing through tax credits and grants, market rate by the developer, public improvements through grants — and then “the library would be ours,” with the city to “figure out what those mechanisms are and what it would cost.” Fadelli notices the developer’s plans already fix where the library goes and how big it is, and wants “a full city discussion about what our needs are… before we’re kind of pigeonholed into something that’s already been created.” Public comment concentrates on parking: over a thousand cars a day used the station pre-pandemic, and a speaker urges BART to “minimize the amount of replacement parking” and put it at del Norte instead, citing underused parking near the station.

Also: housing production in El Cerrito fell to almost nothing between 2009 and 2018, the affordable units before that probably coming, staff said, from a redevelopment set-aside. Production rose after the 2014 specific plan, which is also why most of the site already complies with AB 2923. A resident counted four fitness centers in the ground floor plan and asked for restaurants instead. Four public hearings follow, including one where raising assessment district rates is deferred because “the city has to run the full election. It’s not able to be contracted with the county.” And the March budget update clarifies that the $633,000 figure is “net change in fund balance,” not a balance; after the negative carried forward, the reserve would be about $520,000.

The City Manager reports it under staff communications: “the California State Auditor has released the report on the city as of today. This is not on the agenda.” The city had been given “five business days to respond to the draft.” She speaks of her own tenure — “in my two years [as] city manager I have had to focus on actions to restore the city to fiscal health… we are working to change the city’s culture,” and she separates the two causes rather than blaming the pandemic: “the city clearly had financial challenges prior.” Fadelli endorses the finding that for a decade “city staff didn’t really communicate as best it could with the Council on financial and budget issues” — “good news and bad news must be shared.” Quinto: “many years of mismanagement… El Cerrito did not do that, and opted for big government.” Rudnick welcomes the “very unified message” but adds: “I want to be a little bit more of a cold splash [of] water… I don’t want rose colored glasses.”

Residents read the report back. One quotes its finding that “El Cerrito’s city management department spent a total of $9 million beyond its budget from fiscal year 2015-16 through 2019-20 — even after [the] city approved budget increases for each of these years,” and that the auditor “question[s] whether those reductions are realistic, given the absence of specific detail.” Another calls the position “mostly self-inflicted… not a situation that the majority of municipalities are facing,” and lists seven things not on the table — consolidating public safety, freezing pensions, and renegotiating the Kensington fire contract, which she says the fire chief stated in 2019 the city subsidizes “to the tune [of] over a half a million dollars” and which “could be construed as a gift, which is not allowed under California law.”

The budget study session then sets out two reduction scenarios. A $1 million reduction is not enough — the city “would not have enough of a fund balance to be able to cover that cash flow,” so it would need a larger TRAN. A $2 million reduction means “reserve policy goals are met right away,” though staff still project a TRAN of about $4 million “for the next foreseeable future.” Staff name the latter as “the most viable option.” The City Manager acknowledges why neither is easy: “every single thing that’s on [that] table has a passionate, enthusiastic” constituency. A councilmember asks in advance what the April town hall can achieve if it is only “a big giant, theoretically, public comment session — there’s no program to it.” Also: a $570,000 diesel recycling truck purchase pulled from consent on climate grounds, and the anti-Asian racism resolution.

The pension presentation sets out the city’s largest obligation. About $70 million unfunded, “probably the largest liability you have,” grown 70% in seven years, with payments rising from just under $5 million to “almost seven” within five years. Pension costs run at about 56% of payroll for the safety plans — fifty-six cents on every police and fire salary dollar. Four strategies are offered: prepaying the annual payment, fresh start amortization, a Section 115 trust or direct paydown, and a pension obligation bond. A councilmember: “that chart you gave us with four options on it — we don’t qualify for any of those. We can’t do any of those things now.” On the bond the same speaker notes the League of California Cities says “stay away from that, do not go near that,” and the adviser concedes a city “can be worse off after a pension bond.” The $70 million figure is also based on 2019 data: CalPERS reporting runs years behind.

The first year of rent registry data arrives: 747 submissions, 523 of them on paper. In buildings of five to 40 units, 2019 averages were about $1,661 for a studio, $1,583 for a one bedroom, $1,918 for two and closer to $2,400 for three. In that category “about 37% did not see an increase,” while about 10% rose more than 10%. The tenant protections task force recommends no action beyond state law, and its facilitator notes why: “I don’t know, at the beginning of the task force, if there would have been the same level of support… once the state instituted the law, the task force felt comfortable.” Fadelli asks the political question directly — the city withdrew its own just cause ordinance after “people in our community and outside of our community went crazy over the just cause effort,” and “yet they don’t seem to mind the state having just cause. Can you tell me what changed?”

Also: the first meeting held on Zoom, with cameras and chat disabled and written comments no longer read aloud — which both public speakers object to, one calling it “the most restrictive way possible… I do not believe that it creates a sense of community.” A new poet laureate is installed. The comprehensive financial policy had not been updated since 2019, which the City Manager attributed to a pause in Financial Advisory Board meetings during the pandemic. And the meeting adjourns in memory of Maria Sanders, twelve years on staff — “the reason El Cerrito has environmental awards, and the reason that our recycling center is the way it is.”

One item fills the evening: the December budget update and the mid-year modifications to follow. The big finding is the audited result for the prior year: a fund balance projected as a “worst case” of minus $2.3 million comes in at “a negative $110,000,” which the City Manager says is “due largely to better than expected sales” tax receipts. Two councilmembers ask for the headline numbers to be explained “in layman’s terms”: $664,000 was the surplus the adopted budget assumed, $303,000 is what is now projected, and closing the gap means finding about $300,000 more. Asked whether that is enough, Rudnick presses: “isn’t that essentially skimming the surface?” Staff answer that “we have cut around all the margins,” and offer a $1 million target if the Council wants one — “it would be much more drastic.”

Quinto is unsatisfied: “looking at what we’re doing, where we are nickel and diming, we’re not being aggressive enough.” His comparison: other cities cut “30% in personnel” and “still have skeleton crews,” while “we are still living with big government in El Cerrito.” And: “even the cities that have a lot of scandal, they have seven million dollars, $10 million in reserves — while we have zero.” He notes he brought the former State Treasurer to speak in 2017 warning about CalPERS, “but previous leadership decided not to do that.” The urgency is the credit rating before the next revenue anticipation note application — he calls its current state “miserable.” A resident adds a cost nobody had named: the note’s interest “could be a two or $300,000 out of the budget that you may not be expecting.”

Public comment is dominated by recreation. A resident argues it is “a preventative public safety system… a preventative public health system… a preventative to housing insecurity,” and asks the Council to “cut the police budget rather than our budget, as the police react.” A parent describes before and after care as what lets families work. The City Manager answers directly: “this is not something I want to cut. This is not something anybody wants to cut” — the reductions follow closure, not preference, while fire works in reverse because minimum staffing turns vacancies into overtime. Also: a speaker on the climate emergency declaration adopted in August 2019 — the passionate comments at the time “ring kind of hollow when there’s no action to follow it up.” And the City Manager declines to name positions publicly, so employees do not learn from a broadcast that they may be laid off.