2022

The recognition of Janet Abelson runs most of the meeting: a Senate resolution, a county resolution, the League of California Cities, and a chamber so full that a speaker remarks on it. Supervisor Gioia chooses one story rather than reading his resolution — a 2004 pilot giving low-income high school students free AC Transit passes, which “formed the basis for funding in Measure J” and still runs. The League’s regional manager notes that “to this day your entire council is involved with the League of California Cities,” and credits her “leadership style that encouraged everyone to be involved.” Two councilmembers thank her separately for getting them to run, one after “years of trying to convince me to run.”

Explaining why she ran, Abelson names two things: housing that would “include all people, not just people who had a lot of money,” and “protecting our climate” — and at the previous meeting she had passed a motion advancing the climate action plan so that “it’ll continue” without her. Carolyn Wysinger is then sworn in by the District Attorney, having taken the top vote. Her account of entering office: a former mayor told her in 2020, “in a very polite way that kind of hurt my feelings,” to do her homework — so she did, for two years, ran again, and won.

Before any of it, members of the Environmental Quality Committee describe three years of recommendations without engagement, its chair speaking for himself. Chair Howdy Goudey reports five formal recommendations entered into “the council’s general public comment record, as opposed to a more prominent part of the agenda,” and a memo proposing a better method that “was received by the city manager, but no action would be taken.” Buddy Akisich supplies the image: people who “yodeled and got a yodel back from Echo Canyon,” and now “you yodel and nothing comes back.” Outgoing Mayor Quinto reports the State Auditor moving the city from high risk to moderate.

Councilmember Rudnick makes the hate crime concrete: “for someone to spray paint a one foot swastika outside of the home of our Jewish neighbors is unacceptable… neighbors who experienced this crime have a constant reminder from the outline of the swastika still present on their own driveway. Every time they enter or leave their own home, they see it.” Councilmember Abelson answers the bystander: “they may think, well, they didn’t do it to me — but next time it might be your turn.” Her two asks are investigation and education. This is ten months before the Zoom attacks on this Council’s own meetings, and nothing in the archive reports anyone being identified.

Chief Keith previews the automated license plate reader program — a public meeting already held, a Crime Prevention Committee briefing set for January or February, and a Council item “probably in spring of next year.” He also says the department is “doing some thinking and planning” about restoring the traffic enforcement unit, cut in 2020 “partially as a cost saving measure.” Asked in Q&A, he gives the operational cost of the vacancies: priority one response times up from about five minutes to six and a half, and an investigations unit down to three people who “have to triage cases.” And on retention: officers on the newer pension tier retire at 57 rather than 50, so a career is seven years longer.

On the pool item: The sole responsive bidder came in above budget, so staff negotiated the price down by removing “the replacement of the slide and refinishing of some of the pool play features” — to be done separately later. The engineer had estimated that element at about $128,000; the bid was $300,000. By August 2025 the city has bought a slide, found the columns cannot support it, and discovered that rebuilding the foundations means touching the deck, which triggers ADA, stormwater and EV obligations. Robin Mitchell, on oxygen, tells the Council that in-person-only committee meetings are “at best a loss of talent, and at worst discriminatory.”

The Human Rights in Iran proclamation draws the Mayor of Pinole — born in Iran in 1980, arrived “with an English dictionary, and I couldn’t speak in English” — and nine requests to speak. One asks the Council to imagine “being arrested or killed simply for showing your hair,” and names what a proclamation is: “although symbolic, [it] sends a message of unity.” Another asks that organizations abroad not attach themselves to a movement that has deliberately avoided banners: “you don’t see any flags in the streets.” Four speakers cede their time to one.

The building and fire code ordinance passes on second reading with no public comment at all, carrying a local modification of real consequence: Type A roofing material is required “throughout the city, instead of just in the very high fire severity” zone. One property — 1300 Devonshire Drive, dead trees — reaches the final stage of hazard abatement, and the fire prevention officer reports mid-hearing that a neighbor has offered to help reach the owner; on the City Attorney’s advice the Council adopts the resolution so the fire department keeps the authority if it cannot be worked out.

Vanessa Warr, later a council candidate, raises two things. She had assumed that “living down in the flats with the metal roof” made her safe until she saw the eucalyptus groves — “I am now really scared.” And she identifies federal EV charging infrastructure funding directed at communities within a mile of an interstate, for which El Cerrito qualifies: “so we qualify… I would like to encourage the city to do more to pursue that funding.” In the quarterly report, expenditures run below budget on vacancy savings partly offset by consultants — and Community Development, having reached full cost recovery on permits, “started to get behind literally as soon as one person’s out.”

The State Auditor updated its local high risk dashboard to reflect FY2021 statements, and the City Manager reports the improvement with the right caveat: “make no mistake, our work is not done… we will not stop working to improve our financial position and get to the low risk category.” John Stashik, who has followed the crisis since late 2019, says he never had a doubt “that this would happen, I just didn't know when” — and after the Council, the City Manager and the finance director, thanks the people who took furloughs “and did some pay cuts for way too long.” The designation has already improved from high risk, where it sat for four years, to moderate.

The Financial Advisory Board’s general fund reserve allocation policy arrives on consent, and Mayor Pro Tem Motoyama asks it to consider the GFOA 17% benchmark — and “to make sure that the EDRF can be counted” toward it. That second question is the one the dissenting board member identifies ten months later as blurring the policy, and the one the Council argues about through 2024 and 2026. Councilmember Fadelli, on the $1 million pension goal, argues for starting with less: “if it’s three quarters or half a million dollars, we need to move forward” — possibly into a Section 115 trust.

The pool bid comes in over budget and the Council grants authority to negotiate; the negotiated result — cutting the slide and play features — returns four weeks later. The building code is introduced requiring Class A roofing citywide, at a cost the building official calls minimal because “only a small percentage” of roofs will be affected, and he flags the state’s new “all electric ready” requirement for all new buildings as “a prelude to major changes.” And the Citizens Street Oversight Committee shows what an ordinance-mandated audit review looks like when it works — six months before a resident reports he cannot find the equivalent report for Measure V.

Kimberly White, a homeowner with over twenty-five years in municipal finance, asks the Council to reject the move to quarterly reporting: “this is not welcome news, but El Cerrito continues to be in a financial crisis.” Her evidence is a BBB-minus rating from S&P — “one step above junk bond status” — and sixth place on the state’s list. Her objection is arithmetic: under quarterly reporting, if revenues decline “the Council will not know about those declines for more than four months.” The Financial Advisory Board had declined to recommend the policy and offered no alternative; the Council adopted it unanimously. She joins that Board within a year.

EBMUD presents the Wildcat Pipeline: 2.5 miles of 36-inch welded steel, most of it down Richmond Street, paralleling an aqueduct “coming up on one hundred years old” that is “still performing very well” but needs to be takeable out of service. Progress runs about eighty feet a day, block by block, reopened each evening. The Fairmount crossing will be trenchless, to avoid disrupting the intersection and a tangle of existing utilities — at every depth, plus a culvert — that would risk delays. And the arrangement that matters to the city: rather than repave a street El Cerrito is about to rebuild, EBMUD will plug its trench and pay the city for the restoration.

Buddy Akacic tests whether “disgrace” was one person’s word about the missing senior center by circulating a petition, getting sixty signatures, and writing down what each signer said: “embarrassment, outrageous, disgusting, absurd, odd, crazy, the shaft.” His framing: “feelings, not attacks, not criticism.” The quarterly report shows an $8 million unaudited fund balance, and the City Manager credits past cuts and adds: “the significant dip in our funding this year is due to vacancies, and so I’m certainly not eager ever to balance the budget on the backs of the rest of the staff who are left.”

The project stabilization agreement with the Contra Costa Building and Construction Trades Council, directed in January 2020, is signed. It trades a no-strike, no-lockout commitment for union referral and prevailing wages on all municipal projects over $1 million. One project is excluded: the San Pablo Avenue Complete Streets project was already budgeted and designed, and staff feared applying the agreement “could impact the budget and the timeline” — the trades agreed to leave it out. Bill Whitney makes the local-economy case: 35,000 trades workers in the county, 65% of them people of color. Then Mayor Pro Tem Motoyama asks how many are women. His guess is about 5%. He does not defend it: “it’s not where we want it to be… half the planet is female, probably a little more, and we’re not anywhere near that.”

The draft housing element must be certified by the state by 31 January 2023. El Cerrito’s allocation is just under 1,400 units (1,391), 526 of them lower income; the sites inventory shows capacity for over 2,800. 91% of that capacity sits in the San Pablo Avenue corridor. The needs assessment supplies the numbers the later debates turn on: almost half of El Cerrito renters are cost burdened, and among extremely low income households 81% are cost burdened with 70% paying more than half their income on housing.

The ad hoc climate subcommittee sets the climate action plan update in motion — an analyst position funded, an RFP promised within a month, and a request that the contract be awarded before year end, which happens in December. A resident objects that the timing is already too slow: building electrification in new construction “is not controversial,” many jurisdictions have simply adopted ordinances, and waiting will leave the buildings now being permitted as “stranded assets.” The housing manager notes a local tenant protection ordinance was drafted in 2018-19 with protections beyond state law, studied by a task force that could not agree, and offers to revisit it.

Fred Bialy delivers 279 signatures gathered since 4 July, asking the Council to do two things: direct staff to prepare an ordinance requiring new buildings to be all-electric, by a date certain, and have the climate subcommittee bring additional immediate actions by the same date. The Environmental Quality Committee backs him with a list of seven near-term measures and the argument that ordinances must run “in parallel with the development” of the plan, not after it. A Lawrence Berkeley energy researcher adds the technical reason it cannot wait: a gas building stays a gas building unless “the gas infrastructure in the building is taken out.” The Council takes no action on the petition; the Mayor responds that he is working on electrification regionally through MCE.

The appeal concerns a temporary fire station in a church car park whose parcels fall in El Cerrito, though the station serves Kensington and the church campus mostly lies there. Craft Avenue and Kensington residents appeal to El Cerrito’s Council, asking for delay while an alternative Kensington site is evaluated; staff note the Council cannot approve a use permit on a different site than the one before it. A thirty-year Craft Avenue resident makes the sharpest point: the last traffic study affecting his street was run in August “when nobody was going anywhere” and found no need. The church, whose staff drive the road daily and whose car park the fire department already uses for training, supports the application. The permit is upheld; a councilmember says that when asked about other options they “frankly didn't hear many options in the hills that were available.”

BART’s board president itemizes a state award: a rider parking garage, $600,000 for on-street parking management, $8.4 million for bike and pedestrian improvements, $2.4 million for transit center improvements. The San Pablo corridor study finds dedicated bus lanes would cut bus travel times up to 45% and improve reliability by 50 to 80%, at the cost of slower car trips — and staff offer El Cerrito as a test case, since the 2014 plan already commits it to bus islands. Eric Saylors is appointed fire chief. SEIU gets 3%, after the furlough days its members took in spring 2021.

AB 481 requires every agency to inventory its qualifying equipment and get Council approval, annually. The Chief walks the whole list: a drone, a command van, two submachine guns held by the joint SWAT team, shotgun and 40mm projectile launchers, and tear gas that “has never been used in El Cerrito in 25 years” — held because recruits are exposed to it in academy training. He also lists equipment the city does not own but might borrow, so that “no matter what we use in town, it will have been approved by a governing body somewhere.”

Then the objections. Michael Freeman raises AB 48, which limits chemical agents and kinetic impact rounds in crowd control to threats of death or serious injury — “a high standard” this policy does not reflect. John Lindsay-Poland of the American Friends Service Committee, who tracks this equipment statewide, makes two points: policies get written for the worst case when the real question is “what guidance does the policy give… for lower level uses”; and of “more than 60 or 70 different policies” he has reviewed from agencies of El Cerrito's size or larger, nearly all of which carry patrol rifles, 90% have policies for them; El Cerrito excludes its rifles as standard issue. He also notes the law requires naming an independent oversight body, and this policy names none. The Chief undertakes to look into the oversight language around AB 48, while calling the policy otherwise compliant, and explains that all officers are issued patrol rifles once trained, which “wasn't always the case back in the early 2000s.”

Elsewhere: a resident argues the eviction moratorium is an uncompensated taking under the fifth amendment; a petition with 150 signatures objects that BART would eliminate all 740 commuter spaces and replace at most 250, and asks that tenants' car ownership be limited; and the East Bay Sanitary franchise is extended by negotiation on the strength of the hauler's record, while the hauler wants a longer term to amortize new trucks. Electric collection vehicles are “not being marketed as technologically feasible for regular route operations,” and hilly residential routes are “an unlikely candidate” — so the agreement builds in annual feasibility review instead of a target date.

The landscape and lighting assessment generates about $791,165 and has not risen since 1988, so revenue “has not kept pace with the cost of activities” and the general fund covers roughly $200,000 to $230,000 a year. The city tried to replace the district in 2006 and lost: an assessment vote is not at the ballot box but “by property owners,” many of whom “don’t necessarily live in the city,” with votes weighted by assessment. A majority protest was filed and the district was not implemented. Asked about trying again, the City Manager says “I still have some PTSD from that process.”

The retired fire chief returns three days after leaving to present the Emergency Operations Plan he did not want to “pass on to my replacement.” It replaces a 2001 document of “probably 500 pages” with position-by-position job aids and checklists, built that way because “we don’t have the luxury of having people that are full time.” Asked about sheltering, he is direct: “neither Kensington nor El Cerrito is really” equipped, the community center has no cots, and “it does not meet the state definition of an evacuation” shelter. Rudnick: “if we don’t have someone owning this, this will become a document on the shelf.” Asked who would be the public information officer, the Chief says it would probably fall to the assistant city manager, “if not the police chief” or fire chief; the City Manager says she would direct the EOC and designate a department head. The plan is adopted unanimously, Rudnick voting yes “with the hope that we can have a dedicated staff member.”

Michael Pigoni is honored after 27 years with the city and 40 in the fire service, having started as a volunteer — “neighbors helping neighbors” — and leaving with the department rated ISO Class 1. Fadelli credits him with making “every year all year an abatement year.” Elsewhere: the Financial Advisory Board split evenly on monthly versus quarterly reporting with one member absent; Abelson wants cash flow reporting back because “we’ve been too close to the edge on that one — that’s why we had to bor[row]”; and volunteers report activating the City Hall ham radio station in a joint exercise with Kensington three days earlier.

The Chief presents the public protection classification report: El Cerrito has moved from ISO Class 2 to Class 1, the top rating on a scale evaluated every seven to ten years. The rating measures four areas — the department, communications, water supply (which the city does not own, so what counts is EBMUD flow) and community risk reduction. He retires in July, a few months later.

The real property transfer tax rebate program returns a third of the tax to buyers who make seismic, energy or water upgrades. Since 2018 the tax has collected $11,192,426 and the program has issued $140,856 in rebates across three years. Asked whether it should be advertised so “it’s not just money comi[ng] in,” Community Development answers directly: “we don’t actually promote it.” Most seismic claims pay for tying a house to its foundation, because older El Cerrito housing was never bolted down.

The State Auditor asked the city to analyze recovering emergency medical costs, and the study session on first responder fees is a case against — flagged as such by the City Manager before the Chief begins. His figures: about 3,750 calls a year, of which roughly 1,250 are medical and 250 are public assist (helping someone “move from their wheelchair to their bed”); only 25 to 35% of responses are covered by private insurance; Medicare and Medicaid do not pay at city rates; and agencies that succeed at this run their own ambulances, which El Cerrito does not. What remains is the uninsured — “we’ve got to somehow or another try to force people to pay.” Received, no action. Also: a replacement engine; the reserve engine is 27 years old and engine 71 is 17, with steel up over 200% and aluminum 52%.

With the Mayor and Abelson absent, three members constitute the quorum. Before them: an amendment to the agreement in force since 1995 under which Kensington owns the fire station and El Cerrito supplies the staff. The 1995 terms required six months of reserves; a 2009 amendment raised that to twelve. Station 65 — which houses both fire and Kensington police — is “essentially seismically unsafe,” confirmed by geotechnical analysis in 2016 and again the previous year, with the renovation now costing about $9.5 million. Financing it with loan and reserves under the twelve-month rule brings the total to roughly $13 million; halving the reserve requirement frees money the district can apply directly, saving “almost a million dollars.” The ask is “a change of one word in the contract, from 12 to six.” Approved.

The Urban Forest Committee reports what the trees are worth, from a 2013 inventory: one-plus tons of pollutants removed, 550 tons of CO2 sequestered as of 2013, and more than 4,000 vacant public planting sites. Its recent program included several presentations on wildfire — presentations from a professor emeritus, Make El Cerrito Fire Safe, and the East Bay Regional Park District on the wildland urban interface. Asked whether the committee feels comfortable saying what is good and bad vegetation, the chair says “no, I would say not” — which is why it has applied for a grant for a hillside fire-resilience plan. The program runs on one arborist, a volunteer committee, and school plantings a teacher builds a curriculum around.

Fadelli pulls a letter supporting MCE's federal funding request, not to oppose it but to fix it: with earmarks newly restored to the appropriations process, “we need to say where we're directing them to get the money.” He had phoned MCE's legal team that afternoon and reads the specific bills into the record. Also: the county library thanks the Council for six extra hours a week; a representative of small landlords asks that policies protecting tenants also weigh “the other group”; and under liaison reports, a subcommittee working on an East Bay hills fire authority, which the Council resolved to join the year before, proposes folding it into the Hills Emergency Forum.