Special Concurrent City Council and Redevelopment Agency Meeting May 18, 2009

0:00:23okay where's your p good evening I'd like to call that Monday May 8th 18 concurrent um city council and Redevelopment agency meeting to order and could we add the roll call please council member Chang here council member ailson here Lyman here Jones here mayor Potter here and please uh join as

0:01:19council member lman leads us in the pledge to the flag of the United States of America and to the for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all so uh we had a meeting we just completed to do interviews for the library commission we didn't have an

0:01:57opportunity to interview all the um candidates so we don't have any announcements to make regarding that and I believe we have postponed our closed session meeting to have that after this meeting so we don't have a report out um on that item either but we do have an

0:02:14opportunity now to take Council and staff Communications I'll begin with the council member Lyman um I have a few things to announce um first I want to announce the successful uh completion of our first bicycle safety day uh was held this last Saturday and it was a

0:02:34wonderful event with stunt riders and uh the police U bicycle Patrol forer uh the fire engine with the ladder up and and uh obstacle course for for bicycles and it was uh attended by between 200 and 250 uh members of the public so it was quite great success um I I want to take

0:02:56this opportunity we did have Raffles for uh giving away bicycle helmets and um that's very important because in the city of El Sero we do have a helmet law and uh no matter what age you are you must be wearing a bicycle helmet when you are operating your bicycle so that

0:03:13that's just a a friendly reminder there also on Saturday um uh mayor Potter and I uh went out to the Juvenile Justice um Awards uh banquet and U our school resource officers uh who will be giving us a presentation later today and but they're standing over here um officers

0:03:36jakala jakala and um Caputo are uh were recognized by the juvenile justice uh system for an outstanding contribution in in uh keeping uh youth from being uh incarcerated and and becoming delinquent so they they were uh recognized by their peers in the uh in this in the justice

0:03:58system um just one other uh quick announcement uh came up at uh Wednesday last Wednesday's crime prevention committee was that tomorrow night Els Sero is hosting the uh East Bay Bicycle Coalition across the street in the Old Courthouse at the police department and that starts at

0:04:207:30 um and then just a reminder that we are participating in National Night Out again and uh we are looking for hosts to host uh the national nightout events on Tuesday August 4th oh oh thanks um if you would like to be a host you can uh send an email to the crime prevention committee's uh

0:04:46website which is www ec.org I think that's correct yeah wrot down great great thank you no I don't have any I just wanted to quickly announce that on Thursday was um Bike To Work Day and at the elrio plaza Energizer station right next to the bike lockers we had a

0:05:18100 more bikers within the 7 to 900 a.m.

0:05:21hour than last year last year was about 150 and we counted uh 250 this year I think it's a really encouraging sign that people you know really taking to saving their pocket books as well as improving their health and the environment and um and it was great event and hope more people show up next

0:05:41year and um get and wear your helmets when you ride your bike thanks Mr Jones I just also wanted to announce that council member liman and I attended um a workshop on Saturday here at City Hall where senator T um provided discussion of the state budget and also

0:06:03of Tomorrow Statewide election and other important issues um it was a very warm day there were a few of us here but it was a very engaging dialogue we have a number of Staff Communications I don't know U Mr Hannon if you'd like to start with the future city council meeting schedule oh um

0:06:23before we do that um Sergeant banini has a couple of announcements that's okay that's great good evening council members Madame mayor I'm Sergeant bini I'm assigned as the traffic Sergeant as I've been here a couple times before but I'm here today with some very good news that we

0:06:46received from the state of California and the office of traffic safety Chief Kirkman was passing out a document that we put together for the past three years and for the second year in a row we finished first in this category for the California law enforcement challenge

0:07:00it takes our traffic safety program and it's judged against other traffic safety programs throughout the state it judged by a panel of police Chiefs and citizen experts in the field and like I said for the second year in a row we finish first as part of that and one of the uh

0:07:17outsources that comes from doing this type of project is we appli for a grant from the office of traffic safety the grant process for uh the state of California is very very competitive and has gotten more competitive in recent years I received word today that the ELO

0:07:33Police Department received a grant for $14,000 $898 that's quite a substantial amount and it's going to provide our department with things we don't currently have things such as a DUI trailer uh additional uh police equipment motorcycles Etc everything that can

0:07:53relate to Traffic Safety that will make our jobs easier it will make the citizens of Motoring pedestrian public much safer so you have your full California law enforcement challenge document in front of you at the back of that are something that the department is very proud of that's the bicycle

0:08:06safety program and that was a special category in and of itself I don't know if we won that yet but I expect to so hopefully we'll come back and stay along with Bike To Work Day and the bicycle safety classes we do that'll be one of the things that will be recognized

0:08:18throughout the state thank you well thank you so much we don't always get good news here and this is very good news and we really appreciate your efforts and putting this together and congratul ations to the department for the award and also to our whole city thank you thank

0:08:34[Applause] you I uh a couple of scheduling items one is related to the budget process um since because of how busy the Calendar's been we're starting a little bit late this year um the budget presentation's currently scheduled for June 1st and and we have a regular council meeting

0:09:00scheduled on the 15th I would ask that the council hold the 22nd and 29th of June just in case it's necessary uh as we need to adopt a budget before the 30th uh or at least by midnight on the 30th the uh second item uh just as people are planning council members and staff are planning their

0:09:23Summers out uh typically the council in the past I don't know six or seven years has only held one meeting a month in the summer and that's always been the second meeting uh the third Monday so I just wanted to raise that so the council can discuss and get the uh summer schedule

0:09:41set I believe council member Lyman has a conflict on one of those days so you may want to consider moving that upper back a little bit can I just first ask if anyone has conflicts for June uh 22nd or 29th okay so we can hold those open on the budget process and um

0:10:00I I suppose in the next couple meetings take up the issue of the full summer schedule you don't want okay or or is this the direction that you're looking for tonight it's up to you I mean the sooner people know that the better but you we you could we could pull the council and

0:10:17come back next meeting if you prefer well I understand that the first Monday in July is now the observance federal holiday for the 4th of July even though it's a 6th because the fourth Falls on the Saturday so I would suggest that we could pick any other Monday in July that

0:10:34could um be mutually agreeable how about the the next one the 13th well the 20th you can hold it the 20th I won't be able make I wouldn't be available for any of those Mondays other than the one that's a holiday okay so it sounds like we would either have to have the July

0:10:51meeting not on a Monday in the first week that first week of July uh or just have it at the regular scheduled time in Mr Lyman would be absent for Mondays or well our historical practice has been when we can't have it on Monday to have it on Tuesday so we could do it on July

0:11:117th okay is that work for everyone so July 7th and then the first a the third Monday in August and the third Monday in September those are the days we have it or that we're off those are the days we have it have our meetings so the one question I would ask there is

0:11:33then we're going from July 7th through August 17th is that too long a period we can always call a meeting if we need to um come together and then we're just bearing in mind that Mr linan will not be available for the last three weeks of July correct and what about

0:11:52September was that included third the third Monday of September that's fine and so for July just one meeting in July on the 7th okay so just to read to go over them all verbally um June 22nd June 29th July 7th August 17th and September the 21st and in that period those are the only dates

0:12:22we would currently have meeting scheduled the my understanding is the June 26 and 29th will be as needed but the others will be um as needed okay are are um day certain days for July August and September July the 7th August 17th and September 21st okay thank you okay

0:12:45are there any comments from the Council on those dates all right do that complete the staff Council Communications or Monica oh I'm sorry I'm Monica courts Recreation director and I just want to bring your attention to the rendering in the foyer for the Bruce King Memorial

0:13:06Park dog park um so if you're so inclined the donation envelopes are out in the in the Foy for your um benefit thank you I quick question about that the location is it is it actually set in we haven't decided on a location yet it's just a rendering as a picture of

0:13:26what the dog park could visually look like okay um that will go back to the park and rec commission thank and then come back to the council okay and Miss courts if you could just keep us posted about when it's going back to park and wreck and we could keep the community

0:13:40informed of that meeting schedule that would be great too absolutely okay all right the next item on our agenda is item three oral Communications from the public I did want to indicate that we took Communications regarding the closed session item earlier but we also have

0:13:57the opportunity to hear people who would like to speak about the Sera theater again during this comment period as we have not yet taken the item up uh Al Miller Al Miller [address removed] good evening uh shortly you will hear a presentation on the school resource

0:14:20officers and all the wonderful things that they're doing last Wednesday I attended a school district meeting at elero High School the subject was moving portala Middle School to the temp old temporary Campus of elero High School uh adding uh 600 about uh six seventh and eighth graders

0:14:43to that campus one of the school board members uh Mr madrano was there and I engaged him in a conversation of how the school district is going to provide school resource officers for the youngsters at Porta Middle School collocated at ELO high school and my words not his it be a

0:15:06good idea but we don't have any money and besides we've got two at elero high school so I'm not sure how serious he was in any of those comments and my intention is not to hold him to those comments my intention is to let you know my very strong feeling that if the

0:15:26school district expects portal Middle School at the elero high school campus and the elero high school campus to share the elero school resource officers that are presently serving to Adell stre of high school that your message to them loud and clear should be no uh I strongly believe that

0:15:47if that is an attempted resolution neither the high school campus or the portal Middle School campus will have adequate school resource officer Services thank you you thank you Peter lobal I'm Peter lobal uh openness transparency spring came briefly to elero at your last meeting our

0:16:15Redevelopment manager gave a comprehensive presentation about the Sero theater unretouched except for downplaying the7 million dollars it cost the public Sandy Potter mayor defended staff and accepted the council's responsibility for the hundreds of thousands of dollars wasted

0:16:35on penalties not to speak of the Lost income and this this money this money loss was caused by not pitching in fast enough to help the current operators who were obviously needing help but it seems that this was a for spring and we're back to yet another closed

0:16:55session uh later today in order to hide the embarrassing truth I'll get back to what staff and Council should have done and didn't as the true facts emerge which they will all I want to say now is the theater was bound to fail which does not mean that it wasn't

0:17:20uh a good venue for theater lovers but it was bound to fail as a sensible investment of Redevelopment money money that was needed desperately for other worthier projects council member Bruce atori the who headed the theater task force spelled out the Dismal economics before the construction

0:17:41started and I remember myself saying you're not doing the fishes a favor uh your C last council meeting was a good epilogue a rehash of what went wrong and why some five dozen uh enthusiastic theater supporters showed up essentially saying we must have a theater no matter what it

0:18:07costs this is a good use of our tax man money but they offered no real help for instance they didn't even get it together to to suggest a uh uh a parent group that would run the baby Brigade on Tuesdays or something like that I don't know if the DDA spells that out just

0:18:24simply give us money gimme gimme and uh you know gimme gimme is what uh babies do and definition of a baby is a loudspeaker on one end and the lack of responsibility on the other and we had plenty of babies in our family um it was good to see that these people swayed only one

0:18:47council member and unfortunately the one who until now always showed some fiscal Common Sense we'll see if he comes to his senses on this or maybe this is just a good heart I needed to demonstrate it at the beginning of his tenure here uh still we of course have the

0:19:08theater obviously it should stay open if at all possible but we need to know what the cost will be yeah those that want it subsidized no matter what the cost are there might be thousands of them in elero but still based on any way we had it's it's a minority they would

0:19:30not they would not get the vote uh later today we'll see if this sad episode brought some economic sense to our town when you debate the target Safeway future uh it'll be interesting thank you thank you okay that concludes the public comment period and now we will move on

0:19:56to the school resource officer presentation which we've been looking forward to very much Madame mayor council members good evening my name is Scott Kirkland Police Chief last week was an exciting week for us you've heard some of the accomplishments that we were able to

0:20:18attain in that we were notified last week in terms of the California law enforcement challenge in terms of our traffic program a very exciting program that we've instituted since the start of 2000 and it's taken us many years to do that we learned we won the office of

0:20:34traffic safety Grant we also had a very successful uh bicycle safety day things that we should be all be very very proud of I'm excited about it but one of the other programs that we're very very excited about is a program that Mr Hannon helped create within the

0:20:48secondary schools and that's a school resource officer program I'm happy to report tonight that in the background in the crowd if you will in the audience is Mr W Greer Mr G Mr Greer is with the superintendent office and has been a staun supporter of the program and I'm

0:21:03glad that Mr Greer is here Mr Greer it's also comforting tonight that you can see the love that we have for our school resource off officers because on the agenda tonight on the consent items is also the officer of the year award and this year the sergeants selected Edwin jakala and uh Edwin is

0:21:24the second school resource officer to have won that coveted award Bo but it's it just goes to show you how much we have valued the program since its exception we know that the job that these two gentlemen are doing is difficult challenging but by the same token

0:21:42rewarding tonight the purpose is is to give you an update of what's going on to allow you to ask some questions but also to highlight the efforts of off Lauren Caputo as well as officer Edwin Chala thank you good evening council tonight we're here to talk about the school

0:22:03resource officer position at El high school and both officer and myself are are very excited to be here this is that better yeah uh before I begin I do want to introduce somebody that's in the uh the audience uh that has uh been there at ELR high school he's a graduating senior

0:22:31and he's going to be uh moving on to the Maritime College in valo that's Jared jaad he's a uh former ELR PD youth Explorer and we're really proud of his accomplishments at the high school and he's shown a lot of support for the school resource officer program as

0:22:49well so to get started you see the GAO symbol on the front there that's actually in the new gymnasium there's been some really nice artwork that's been placed in the high schol school for the new uh students so what is a school resource officer a school resource officer is a

0:23:05sworn law enforcement officer whose primary assignment is within the local schools for the purpose of enforcement law related education counseling and mentoring students and this came directly from the National Association of school resource officers the origins of the El Police

0:23:21Department SRO program began when the school district and the police department partnered to form the SCH resource officer program in October in 2005 this was for one police officer to be stationed at the ELO high school full time it wasn't until March of 2006 a few

0:23:39months later that two full-time SRO were assigned to the high school and at that time it was uh Corporal albrandt and myself our responsibilities as school resource officers include to provide a safe and secure environment to respond to in progress incidents and crimes that

0:23:57the high school investigate crimes identify crime patterns develop a positive relationship with the students staff and parents in identifying crime crime patterns we work diligently with our site supervisors and with our administrators and also with the students who have come forth um in

0:24:18speaking to us initially in um in secrecy to protect themselves but eventually helping us solve crimes so school resource officers are experienced sworn police officers we are employed by the police department and we are stationed at the high school uh we provide the police services

0:24:40to the faculty and the students at the high school we are well-trained police officers we do the same training that all police officers at the El Police Department go through uh We've have all the certifications U we attend update training to include things like firearms

0:24:58chemical and less lethal weapons weaponless defense arrest and control and we continually update and review our various policies and procedures uh you're getting an officer that has the best training and the best experience at the ELO high school as a school resource officer we

0:25:17also receive additional training about what the various rights of a of a school resource officer have on a high school campus we are uh we are afforded more rights um especially in the area of search and seizure when it comes to uh students on a campus and that's because

0:25:37the Su Supreme Court has determined that high schools need to be a safe area so they are willing to bend the rules a little bit so we attend a 40-hour uh post certified post is the peace officer standards and training uh 40-hour course and that's held up in Sacramento uh We've also attended uh

0:25:56some various uh outside training one of them is managing the school environment that was held at the Alam County Sheriff's Department uh that was a program that was with school administrators as well as school resource officers so that both sides can understand what each each uh person's

0:26:13role is on the campus then I also attended a uh threat assessment seminar that had to do specifically with school safety and this was hosted by the Secret Service it was a very interesting seminar and it talked about things like Coline and other types of incidents uh

0:26:29how you can uh work to prevent those types of incidents from happening on a campus as trainers we're not only there for the students but we also provide training for our site supervisors and mainly to make sure that we're on the same page this includes proactive mon monitoring

0:26:49communication systems using our some of our police codes situational awareness conflict resolution deescalation of incidents critical incident response the incident that happened on last Wednesday was a true Testament of how officer Caputo and from uh Corporal albrand have

0:27:11trained our our site supervisors they were able to respond quickly and very crisply in order to quell the problem that we had on the campus in addition to that they were able to respond to the responding officers who needed access to the campus so all in all we we've been able to work

0:27:30very well with our site supervisors as an enforcement role that's our uh primary objective on the campus um we need to ensure the student safety and by doing so we enforce the state laws and the school district's rules and policies the educational code is a a large book there are a lot of

0:27:53rules in there and um they cover everything from classroom to disruptions uh to fighting drugs alcohol uh weapons all of that's covered and all of those uh are applicable on a high school campus so we enforce those laws on the campus additionally having SRO on the

0:28:16campus helps to have an accurate uh reporting of the various crimes or incidents that occur and prior to the assignment of officer albrandt and myself to the high school many of the crimes that were occurring at at the elw high school were not being reported to

0:28:31the police department and in fact the criminal investigations that officer albrandt and I handled during that partial year of 20052 2006 um exceeded the total number of cases for the three prior school years that were there there were 91 total reported cases for three school years

0:28:52and for the 05 to 06 school year there was a total cases of 127 as you can see at the bottom there I've broken this down for some various statistics that you'll see at the high school as kind of the main things that lot a lot of people like to see fights thefts and

0:29:10drugs you'll notice for 05 and 06 you see 32 fights the next year it dropped down to 19 the year after that it dropped down to 12 as of April 2nd when this data was compiled there were only seven fights that occurred at ELO high school we anticipate that it'll probably be at the

0:29:26number of around 12 that it was the year before they're teenagers they have problems they're still learning we're aware of that thefts uh will remain high due to the types of devices that kids are bringing on the campus cell phones iPods uh all of those are very expensive

0:29:43devices and when left unattended uh often times they come up missing it's a it's a lesson that a lot of these teams learn and they learned the hard way uh drug violations uh stay pretty low um alcohol violations are also handled uh through the police department when they

0:30:01occur on campus and off we're there for our students we build positive relationships through trust uh trustful Communications and through daily contacts we not only are there for one thing and one thing alone we're there from 8:00 all the way down to the time that they leave we there during lunch

0:30:29breaks or passing periods we visit their classrooms we respond to even as as minimal as a call for for an instructor who might have a problem with a student escorting that student to the student services that's the type of relationship that we have with all our students it's

0:30:47it's it's well based it's well founded and we're expecting to continue to do to continue the same pattern throughout the following years as role models we establish standards of conduct on on campus we dis we display strong moral values consistent with honesty integrity and we are consistent and fair

0:31:12with the students and staff while setting definitive boundaries for accept acceptable behavior and that could not be achieved if we're away from campus 24 hours a day I'm sorry 8 hours today we're on campus 5 days a week and we build relationships with students staff

0:31:33and also uh our side supervisors s involvement so we're involved with the students during a school but we're also involved with the students after school during a lot of the extracurricular activities this is the fun part for us this is the part where we get to see the kids out play um

0:31:50they're not bored from class they're not tired uh this is the the fun part for them and it's the fun part for us it's the part that we get to support them for the things that they enjoy the most one of the things is athletic programs if you go to a football game

0:32:06you'll see us there if you go to a baseball game you'll probably see us there softball soccer swim meets we try to make as much as we can um so that the the kids see that we're there to support them when they see a police officer standing on the sideline telling them to

0:32:20you know go get a touchdown it brings a a a new look for them in their eyes we also attend the senior ball the junior prom dances uh the senior boat cruise that's actually quite fun grad night and um student performances things like uh musical performances and theater performances

0:32:39like tonight at 7 they're having a theater performance missing that one but I'll make the one tomorrow night this is my favorite coaching I was very fortunate I approached my chief chief Kirkland and and told him that I wanted to be a part of the ELO High School mountain bike

0:32:54racing team it's a club that that uh is a part of the school program and I was very fortunate that the the chief is allowing me to do it uh I do do this on duty I ride with the team and it's allowed me to to meet a lot of students that I wouldn't normally other otherwise

0:33:12meet uh because these are not um for the most part the trouble students these are the uh the the cream of the crop and it's been a pleasure working with them and to see their progress and to uh watch them excel in in the racing environment we also work very closely with students

0:33:29on campus um and we do this by treating them as young adults you know we don't we don't treat them like kids we talk to them like they're young adults and tell them what uh behavior is expected and what's expected of them in the future for when they leave high school it's

0:33:43those types of relationships that's allowed us to gain the respect of the students as well as the staff with the teachers um and the administration we make ourselves available to students staff coaches parents campus neighbors District administrators local businesses elected

0:34:01officials outside organizations and police agencies we make ourselves available by riding a bicycle I'm one of them um to and from campus it it's a wonderful idea because I can hit the bark path meet our kids who are walking down the path or even go down to the plaza after school

0:34:20make contact make sure that they're doing what they're supposed to do from school on home making sure it's safe for them and the new campus I hope you guys have been up there it's uh it's state-of-the-art it's a large campus it's three levels so when the Call Comes

0:34:39for assistance on b302 you know you got a long walk ahead of you but it's a great campus for the students because it allows them to be in areas unlike the old temporary campus we have the math area we have the English area um and they have all of the tools that they need available to them there's

0:34:59computers available to them in computer labs the library has a bunch of computers in there the new gymnasium has all the facilities available to them um the students that were in the temporary campus for three years or longer are beginning to uh enjoy uh at least for

0:35:15their senior year uh the advantages of having a campus that they can call their own it's also easier for us is uh we have offices that we utilize and it makes it easy for us to counsil students stud to talk with students interview students keep students separate um meet

0:35:31with parents meet with administrators we're also Educators uh this is the part that uh sometimes is a little bit difficult standing in front of a class and talking to a group of kids but it allows them the opportunity to ask us the questions that they don't normally get to ask police officers um

0:35:49the questions that are on their mind and we we allow them to ask them um it also gives us an opportunity to provide them with information um that they might not get otherwise things about um teen teen alcohol uh driving many of the responsible things that teens are starting to uh take on uh

0:36:09that they don't get a lot of information about this is the most precious uh tasking that I've undertaken it it's a wonderful position to be a counselor for our young teens and we've referred numerous numerous students uh ing their Tendencies towards violence and anger

0:36:29management we refer them for drug Alcohol Tobacco issues their positive contacts positive and negative contacts with law enforcement and how they they're supposed to handle that their conflict resolution and peer mediation college courses and career choices their interpersonal

0:36:47relationships family and personal relationships the last two are the most challenging at times because a lot of our students come from single parent uh structure and not hardly well a few of several of them haven't had the the model that they have that they could

0:37:09follow and so this is where we come in this is where we guide them we have a a community project that uh that we could refer the students to so that they could address the issues that they have so that they don't have to use violence as their first recourse in handling situ

0:37:29situations some of the additional responsibilities that we take on is uh we're involved with the parent Safety Committee this is parents who uh are in volunteer their time with the ELO high school and uh they meet about once a month depending on the need and we

0:37:43participate with that to help them in their Endeavors uh we also partnership with the community project which is an on-campus uh counciling for the students uh they have peer-to-peer counseling and they also have adult to-peer counseling uh we as a liaison to many of the

0:37:58different outside agencies for the students we're involved with the trcy operations those are usually about every six weeks uh for a week long we are out finding students that are out of school and are supposed to be in school those get referred to an attendance review

0:38:14board and we also coordinate with the juvenile probation department this includes the juvenile courts as well as juvenile probation officers so that after an incident does happen um we're able to follow up later on to make sure that the appropriate uh either counseling or discipline um is

0:38:29occurring and to make sure that that student is on the path that they need to be on to uh to end their probation period um our impact on community uh reduction juvenile related crimes uh we respond to community concerns and officer Caputo has uh is this is a leader an excellent leader in this uh

0:38:54youth Explorer Program puts in numerous amounts of hours in leading our kids if I may um go back to a couple of slides I just want to highlight our treny operations um we will be participating with um RPD and their Management Group in coordinating this a particular

0:39:16program that would centralize all the uh students who are going to be contacted on the streets database will be created so that majority of our operations in terms of uh cutting back treny will be held in one Central Area so that we could all see any patterns that this the students

0:39:40are involved in community wise in terms of crimes that are that they have committed Central uh particular areas that they have been found to be hanging around in so that we can all have this information thank you so here you see some of our explorers this this is a uh a program

0:39:58that we were able to start uh as the when the school resource officer program started uh this was some of this is during an Explorer Academy which occurs over the summer it's a 7-Day program in which the students uh our explorers are tested both physically and mentally they

0:40:16take uh classes on uh criminal investigation and um EV evidence collection and uh they also do a bunch of physical activities to to help them see what their potential is at the end they receive uh diplomas that shows that they've graduated uh from that Academy and jar Jad was one of our graduates you

0:40:37can also see one of our explorers art Nan who is uh participating in our driving simulator this is a great program for us to bring the kids in so they can see what it's like not only to drive in a law enforcement vehicle having to you know be in a Pursuit but also to kind of learn some Defensive

0:40:54Driving skills so what are our future goals for the SRO program we want to bring in some additional programs one of them is mad we don't have much right now in terms of alcohol and driving uh Sergeant benini has contacted the every 15 minute program which is a national program

0:41:12that's designed to bring awareness to uh Teenage drinking and driving they are uh going to be hosting a training session in September with the uh idea of starting a every 15-minute program in April or May of next year and that program would continue every other year

0:41:32this is a a highly involved program where they stage a DUI Collision uh there's an AMR ambulance that shows up and takes away and then they start talking and interviewing students and showing what the outcome of a DUI death what it does to not only the parents of

0:41:50the individuals but also to the school as a whole the clicker ticket campaign uh that's something that we have been uh participating with in the city for quite a while but we haven't really brought it that that far into the ELO high school I'd like to see that brought into the

0:42:06high school more SRO at Portland Middle School it's uh it's imperative that we get an SRO at Port middle school that is what's going to help change that school around we've seen the change at El to high school and I firmly believe that a school resource officer at Portland middle school is

0:42:23going to make that school a much safer School I'd like to see us uh increase the current programs that we already have uh instituted at the at the high school I'd like to expand the Explorer Program currently we only have five explorers like to see those numbers come

0:42:38up you probably saw them at bicycle safety day uh they're involved in many of the community events I'd like to see us uh get more students involved with that and I'd also like to see our students have more interaction with other ELO police department members they

0:42:54see officer jakala and I every day they see us in the morning when we greet them when they walk in they see us during the breaks they see us at lunch they see us after school but they don't get to meet other police officers Not only would that be beneficial to the other students

0:43:06but it would be beneficial to our officers for our officers to get to meet and greet and and get to know the students that are on the El Street high school campus because they meet them on the street um when incidents happen so it would be uh it would be a positive

0:43:20thing for for both everybody that's it thank you very much for the presentation I think um all of us are aware of the great Improvement that your presence has made at the high school and we really appreciate your efforts and your unique skills that you bring to

0:43:45reaching out to those kids um I want to know if the council has any questions just U one quick one uh how much does it cost for each officer on a currently when we started this I know we had one figure I the Blended rate for a police officer is about $130,000 per year Blended rate

0:44:12police officer Blended rate that's if you take all the uh classifications of police officer and group them all together the Blended rate is $133,000 okay and the the school district is funding all of that or most of or part the current contract we have the school district right now it's for

0:44:29$118,000 per year is that it does not take into account the overtime that we spend uh for these officers uh to attend the uh various basketball games the other social engagements uh that they do attend that that that is on an overtime basis great well thank you um just like

0:44:49thank the officers for your your efforts um not only do they spend overtime at the school school but I ran into uh officer uh after my workday it was certainly after his and he was still meeting with people and and students and parents and so uh shows a lot of dedication really appreciate it I'm a

0:45:12little torn though if I would have liked you guys on campus when I went to school or not I I'm a little no really good thank you very much okay thank you um officer jakala and officer Caputo and Jared Jawad thanks for being here I just want to take a quick opportunity actually to have the

0:45:31audience um to reiterate what I said earlier about Saturday you guys getting the awards the Juvenile Justice Awards and um it I I really I have a number of friends who have U children in the high school and they Rave about the SRO program and so it was a great honor to

0:45:47suggest that we submit your names for the uh for the juvenal Justice Awards and it was a a tribute that you guys were selected so again just want to give that opportunity for everyone to recognize that you're you were uh countywide you were recognized for your contribution so thank you thank you for

0:46:04being there thanks sir y thanks thanks okay we're going to move on now to item five adoption of the consent calendar and tonight we have both city council and Redevelopment items uh item 5A through 5H and we have a few um amended resolutions on item 5G as well as 5 5H 5f is the only one I I see in

0:46:34our package before us we get clarification then sorry it's 5f I'm sorry my fault okay sorry um so I guess it what we could do is take the consent calendar as a whole with the amended resolution for item 5f excuse me I'd like to pool F I'm G and H please I move adoption of consent

0:47:07calendars item 5 a b c d and e second all in favor I I opposed okay the motion carries unanimously um Mr Jones could you go through briefly the items five f and g and H yes the reason why I pulled uh requested to pull F it's been a while since we've had a uh just an update on what's going to go

0:47:40there we have a price tag now and I just wanted uh staff to reiterate what we're going to be doing at that intersection um thank you uh mayor and counsel um I'm Jerry Bradshaw your Public Works director it was just about one year ago ago today that I presented the upper

0:47:57Fairmont Street skate plan to the council and at that meeting I mentioned that we had a um developed a scope for some improvements at the Fairmont Ashbury intersection but we had no funding for that so as part of the upper Fairmont streetscape um you gave us direction to do some interim

0:48:13improvements to help clean up some safety issues there um it was that very week after that Council that we were informed that we received a grant a safety Grant to fund the full project so I was back precisely two weeks later asking the council to undo that direction and uh let us pursue this

0:48:31instead and we've done that um we this is a federal project so it's taking a little while to get through the approval process which frankly these days is actually slower than normal because of the hedro Recovery Act money working its way through Cal TR but we are fortunate to

0:48:47get this out before all that crunch hit um in its worst and we do have authorization to spend money on the design of this uh that's the action for you tonight the project does um a few things at that intersection it primarily uh strives to align the North and southbound Lanes a little

0:49:11better as you're aware as you come Northbound on Ashbury when you get to Fairmont there's a quite significant jog to the left and left turns happen at the same time and it's a rather confusing intersection so we will uh design the medum to be much narrower to help align

0:49:27the lanes a lot better we will also remove the um um separated right turn lane for the Northbound people uh that creates a little pork chop Island there and put in a more traditional uh right turn scenario we'll use that area for some um landscaping and a little mini

0:49:47Plaza there and that will'll make up for what we lose in landscaping in the median um we will also one of the uh things that I'm most excited about is to put in the fourth crosswalk leg currently there's only three legs of a crosswalk around there and the high school students who use that are on the

0:50:05other side of the street and they typically just cross uh ad hoc across the street so it'll be nice to get another crosswalk leg put in there um in coordination with that it's it's rather difficult to do it now with the pork chop Island and the geometry that's there uh we will put a few modest little

0:50:22bulb bouts to help uh dress up the area a little bit but primarily it's for safety and it's to uh to realign that and hopefully cut down on the accidents when we were doing the upper phont Street skate plan we found some accident history there they weren't a real

0:50:39serious number of accidents but because they rid at a school we took them pretty seriously and um and then we went forth and applied for the grant which was very competitive program we frankly didn't have the greatest of hopes but we were very fortunate to to get this all all

0:50:55that that you said was going to have is going to happen within the grant we were uh that'll be a complete project with the money that's coming from the grant correct that's correct the grant um is 623,000 give or take and we have to match that with our own 63,000 U matching funds uh to make up

0:51:16the full project so the project is a stand down was fully funded because of the grant great thank you very much okay is there a motion yeah the um I just to make a comment oh go ahead oh I just wanted to make a comment and um thank uh Jerry and the other staff involved in this I remember uh talking

0:51:38to you about this project and um it was sort of sounded like a pipe dream because there was no money to do this project and so I'm totally amazed in a way but in a way I'm getting to expect it that you're back here A year later with this and I really do appre appreciate the work just just as the the

0:51:58police department uh is doing a fantastic job in what they do I think your department is also doing a fantastic job and I think our residents will really appreciate this change thank you I appreciate that and I'll pass out along to my engineer manager who who gets the full responsibility and kudos

0:52:15for this she did a very good job going into a very competitive program uh writing the grant evet Ortiz that uh sponsored this and she'll be managing it throughout and there's no doubt that the Project's going to improve safety for everyone but particularly for the

0:52:29students at Harding school so um with that is there a motion um for item 5f that includes the revised resolution yes I move that the uh city council accept the highway safety improvements program Grant funds and appropriates revenues and expenditures for the Fairmont and

0:52:47ashburg intersection safety improvements project uh including a resolution to accept the 622 uh $890 from the uh Highway grant program and authorizing the expenditure uh entering into a contract in the amount of $62,400 second all in favor I I I opposed motion carries

0:53:13unanimously item G I also pulled only to comment on um a couple years ago we sat here and listened as uh we got reports um that the impression and uh the impression was that the aloney greenway could be safer and since that time we've heard a number of strategies

0:53:35that's been used by the police department but also uh I think it should be brought out uh publicly that we're also uh looking to other means which is uh combining or with Richmond on there to provide additional security with uh technical expertise with cameras and uh

0:53:57this is the beginning of we hope will be a secure Greenway that we will uh complete as as needed so uh I just wanted to publicly state that we are moving in different directions to ensure that the aloney greenway is a safe place for people to use and with that I'd like to uh move to

0:54:19adopt a resolution authorizing the city manager to execute an agreement with ADT Securities Inc in the amount not to exceed $415,000 for the onlyy greenway safety Improvement project and execute change orders in the amount not to exceed $20,000 I'll a second I'll second it's

0:54:39been moved in second it all in favor I I opposed motion carries unanimously and finally item 5H the Redevelopment agency item I pulled that only because I think it should be noted we spent a lot of time uh a couple meetings ago discussing this um at that time we weren't for sure

0:55:01if we were going to have an agreement or not uh on housing but I'd like to uh thank all parties involved and coming up with I think is a much stronger uh agreement than we had before there's true commitment and I and I uh I look forward to moving forward with everybody and

0:55:21getting this project built so I just wanted to acknowledge that publicly and with that I'd like to uh recommend adoption of a Redevelopment agency resolution accepting the proposed development and loan terms contained in the agenda Bill confirming direction to staff to finalize and execute a loan

0:55:44agreement consistent with the terms for the aloney gardens mixed use development as authorized under the Redevelopment agency resolution number 57 9 and making the California Environmental Quality act findings for the project I wholeheartedly second both your comments and your

0:56:05resolution okay all in favor I I opposed so item 5H carries unanimously and at this time we'll move on to item six the study session of Redevelopment of the target site and I'll turn the meeting over to the Redevelopment agency chair Jones thank you tonight um we're going to have

0:56:28a study session on the target site um the city or the Redevelopment agency has several options that that it can um consider and going forward with this we've had as those of you read in the paper and as well as we found out when the press release that uh Target and Safeway

0:56:54would like to go through with a formal agreement to uh transfer the site to Safeway and Safeway to operate there um there's also been some interest from Walmart and so we would like for our own uh education as well as uh public information would like to uh have those

0:57:20proposals uh introduced tonight so this is I I want to emphasize though this is a study session it's we won't be making decisions uh I don't even know if we'll be commenting on it but it is an introduction to a to a process that uh will soon need to come to a resolution

0:57:41so thank you turn it over to staff good evening chairman uh Jones and board members uh my name is laori trino I'm the re development manager for the city and I'm um going to be doing a presentation on the various options uh for the Elso Target store um Terry Marram who's formerly of sway

0:58:09group and CBRE Consulting um has been working with the staff on looking at some of the um options that we have for the site from the agency's perspective he wasn't able to be here this evening but has helped in putting together this presentation and Rick Schaffer who's the

0:58:25senior VP of CB Richard Ellis brokerage Services is here tonight he's going to be helping with the presentation as well and he's been helping us um also and looking at our options for the site so we're going to go through a little bit of uh history and background

0:58:40I'm going to tell you about the agency's repurchase option on the site um go very briefly over uh the target Safeway proposal and Walmart's offer um talk a little bit about what the mixed juice opportunities are on the site and then Rick is going to talk about market

0:58:55conditions and the retail opportunities and then um Todd Paradise from Safeway is here to make um a a longer presentation about their proposal the um the project the target project started back in 1990 when Target approached the Redevelopment agency about finding a site for a store in

0:59:17elero um the agency and Target entered into a disposition and development agreement in 1990 and as part of that the agency uh bought all of the property on the Block uh assembled it and cleared it um on behalf of Target and the cost of that acquisition and preparation for

0:59:33the site was about $8 million Target paid the agency $3.5 million for the land and they provided a loan to the agency for $750,000 to assist in the acquisition costs uh so the agency subsidy to the project um up to this point is about $4.5 million um in 1992 two plus the cost of

0:59:56carrying that loan over the last 18 years the city um and the agency expected to recoup that investment by the end of 2022 through sales tax and property tax revenues um and the disposition and development agreement provided that um if the store were to close and and

1:00:15Retail operations were to cease for six months that the agency would have an an option to repurchase the site during the subsequent six months um some people have um have asked whether or not that means that the agency can approve or reject any proposal on the site and the

1:00:35agency doesn't have the ability to approve or reject um for example Sao proposal but the agency does have the ability to exercise its option if it has a different um alternative it would like to pursue um and if the property is sold to another party the agency can still

1:00:53exercise its option unless the site has been reoccupied by a retail use before that option period ends so once the store was open and operating um it did so relatively successfully for 15 years um however when Target opened its store in Albany um Target did assure the staff that Els

1:01:16Cero's store would not be closing although we did see an impact on the sales tax revenue for the elero store um later when Target acquired the pr the property in um Richmond on McDonald Avenue we pursued we approached Target many times to find out what their intentions were for the site El Sero and

1:01:36their responses varied from they were going to close the store they were going to remodel it they were going to redevelop the site with a new store um and even um they were considering a mixed juice project on the site so the store closed last July um we only had about two months notice and

1:01:55um that was before we really knew what Target intended to do with the site um when the store closed we spent about five months working with Target and a developer on plans for a mixed juice project but the project um didn't go forward um because both Target and the

1:02:12developer um pulled out uh in November when the financial and real estate market crisis um came came around um and at that time Target decided to sell the property and started marketing the property in January um so the agency's repurchase option would have matured in January but

1:02:32uh at that time uh the agency approved an agreement with Target to postpone that period it um recently did commence on May 1st and it extends through October 31st and again that's unless a retail operation were to commence prior to that date even if they were to sell

1:02:49it to another um retailer the agency's price if we if the agency was to exercise it its option is determined by a series of appraisals and a formula that's in the agreement um it's kind of a complicated formula but essentially what it boils down to is that the agency would pay the

1:03:09value of the property for retail use even if the agency's intended use was something different so if the agency were to exercise its option it could sell the property for any use that it tends and at whatever price that it's able to negotiate regardless of what the price

1:03:28is that's paid to Target um the amount that a potential buyer would be willing to pay is going to vary however based on their intended use for the property so a mixed juice developer would probably be willing to pay less than it would cost the agency um some retailers like

1:03:43another gerer would be willing to pay probably what the agency would have to pay um retail developers May or someone like a Regency centers who owns The Plaza U may or may not be able to do that depending on what their tenants would be I'm just really quickly going to talk

1:04:00about the Safeway proposal but um Todd Paradise is going to go through it in detail later um we were informed um a month or so ago that Target and Safeway had entered into a purchase and sale agreement for the site Safeway is proposing to reuse the existing building

1:04:14with a Safeway store and then they would add some retail along the San Pabo Avenue Frontage um and then they would construct some additional retail on the corner of San Pablo and Hill and they're also proposing a um gas station on the northeast corner of the site near the

1:04:29BART tracks um and they've told us that the Safeway store at moer would close and possibly also the store in Richmond on McDonald um based on some information that we got from Safeway and Target um we've put together a quick and dirty um analysis of the fiscal impact of

1:04:49Safeways proposal and we wanted to look at it with and without the gas station because there's been a lot of questions about whether um that could happen whether that's a good idea so um I'm sure that Todd is going to go over these numbers in more detail and talk about

1:05:03their plans in more detail but I just wanted you to see this um this analysis assumes that uh there's a loss of the Safeway and mo the Safeway at mure and the target revenues um to the city um and it is intended to show that without the gas station um The Proposal

1:05:23um if it were to go forward forward would be a net loss in sales tax unless a high tax generating retailer could be found for the moer site we've also had interest from um Walmart corporation which made an offer um to our legal council in April and they asked staff to make the um that

1:05:47offer public last week and they also provided some additional information which we included in the packet um they are interested in the agency exercise exercising its option to purchase the property and then resell it to Walmart the offer to the agency is $20 million

1:06:02uh the agency would keep any sales proceeds from uh Walmart above the price that it would that the agency would have to pay Target and Walmart would be um proposing to renovate and occupy the existing existing store which would not require any um use permit uh so Walmart did uh did not come

1:06:22to the meeting this evening they're not here but if you would like us to invite them to come back and make a presentation just let us know we can do that in uh June or July target has also made um a Financial offer to the agency um to allow the Safeway proposal to go forward what

1:06:43they're proposing is that Target would forgive the loan to the agency the balance of that loan is uh a little over $600,000 and they would do that in exchange for the agency giving up the repurchase option on the site um and rather having a right of first refusal and then if the project were to

1:07:01go forward and Target and Safeway were to close their um transaction um Target would compensate the agency with $1.8 million and Safeway would compensate the agency with half a million dollars um Safeway would is planning to reten at the moer store but they do control the site for 35 years

1:07:21which would um preclude a grocery store from going in at that location so we've done a um a had our um consultant Terry margam do a fiscal analysis of um the Walmart and Safeway scenarios and there's various assumptions that he made basically about um what typical sales are what we

1:07:43believe would come out of the Safeway what growth projections are you know what the various um transaction um costs and proceeds would be um and came up with some bottom line numbers some Net Present values um the net present value of the Lost sales tax revenue from the target um is about $4

1:08:06million if you were to add B back in any sales tax from the Safeway that losses um just a little over $2 million and those two um numbers are intended to look at the Target store in isolation so it doesn't include any of the other um parts of any of these transactions um if you look at the

1:08:28present value of the two different scenarios which include the agency's Investments sales proceeds sales tax revenues um for um both offers for if you look through 2021 which was the end of the disposition and development agreement term um Safeway the Safeway offer uh you come up with um

1:08:513.08 million with Walmart you come up with 4.97 million if you look through 2031 the value of both increases obviously um targets Safeway offer goes up to 3.62 million Walmart's increases to 6.86 million if you were to include the sale the fuel sales that were projected um

1:09:16with the Safeway proposal um assuming that their projections are correct that would bring the um the Safeway proposal closer to the Walmart proposal in terms of value but it doesn't meet that simply because Walmart has a very high sales um Revenue ask a question sure um looking

1:09:38at those numbers if the safe assuming that the Safeway at mure Lane closes have you included the impact of that on this uh it does it does it does not include ret tenting it assumes that that's a loss okay so whatever the current sales tax revenue is at Mo Lane it's assumed

1:10:04that um is being deducted from the number and other under uh Target SL Safeway offer yes okay thank you there's been a lot of interest in um mixed use opportunities for the site um the agency and Bart have for many years been considering mixed juice projects on

1:10:27both the BART parking lot and the Mayfair block um they have not been discussed on the target site primarily because it was an occupied and operating store um Target and its development partner capital and counties did create a plan for a mixed juice project on the

1:10:43site in the fall prior to the uh them backing out when the financial and real estate markets turned um in talking with Terry margam what he has said is his experience in similar types of projects right now multif Family residential projects at the densities that would be allowed at

1:11:02this site he did not feel would be feasible probably within the next 3 to five years um and he also made the point that a residential uh project at this site would have been challenging even in a good Market mostly because it would have been the first uh mixed juice

1:11:17project in the area um so it's always hard to sort of be the first one um another thought that another point that he made though is that a quality retail development on the site can support future mixed juuse development on the neighboring blocks so I'm going to turn um this over

1:11:36now to Rick Schaffer oh yes quick question when when you say it's the first mixed use but there's the Del place right there as the first mixed use so that's true I was thinking of um further down I was thinking on the south end because there's several blocks in

1:11:51the area that um have not been redeveloped and did they say what were the densities that would would pencil out I mean what were the densities being considered he was he was referring to projects of similar um similar densities he was specifically referring to a

1:12:07project that's being um evaluated right now in Mountain View um and where he said that he thought that the demographics and the the project was similar and he said it was very hard to make a pencil it was really on the borderline was it near transit station it was it was near near Cal Train

1:12:22Station which is probably a fifth the number of trains um yeah it's it's there's probably about U 500 B trains a day and then another 500 buses um I guess I'm just curious if you could say what what was the density that was that he looked at for that project and also

1:12:40because in reference to the s p Avenue plan um the density is being considered which are about 65 to 70 and our general plan right now is 4550 or so he wasn't making that detailed of a comparison between the two projects mostly because there really isn't anything proposed specific for the

1:13:02Target site um but he was saying that if you're considering 65 to 70 units per acre that he did not think that there was a market for that right now mainly because of the real estate market and the financial markets just not really being um there for multif family

1:13:18residential um I don't know exactly what their densities were um or the specifics in Mountain View he just gave that as an example to me more qualitatively okay and is is that an actual study in terms of or is it kind of just anecdotal he's like he thought no he was looking at an

1:13:34actual project that's being proposed in Mountain View that he's working on I don't have the specifics for it I'm sorry okay but but I guess what I mean is were there other comparable projects besides that one and looking at the whole region and where there are Transit

1:13:50oriented development opportunities going on um I'm just curious I'm not aware of any other projects that are currently being evaluated for their feasibility thank you can we go ahead would like add she she said she's not aware and I just want to give an example

1:14:10at Pleasant hell BART station there's currently one that's under construction I'm not quite sure how many stories it is but it looks to me to be like five six or seven stories okay um juice from what I can tell so that so there is at least one project under construction right now I'd be happy to

1:14:29try to find some more information about projects in in the Bay area that are relevant and I can talk to you I have a lot of given my work experience um Union City um there's the um Station Park Green in Sano there's quite a few so I think we should look at all of those

1:14:48okay thanks thank you if we uh if I may suggest if we could hold few uh further questions until the end of the presentation so we can get through it and you know many times our questions are answered uh with a complete report so thank you so I'm going to turn over

1:15:06um the mic to to Rick Schaefer from CBRE um and uh he'll be coming to the podium good evening um I'm Rick Schaffer I'm senior vice president with CB Richard Ellis and I'm in the retail um division my basic job here is to bring forth all the different possibilities to tenant

1:15:31this property so you can make an informed decision so far there's two very interested Pro uh tenants you've got a great piece of property but we need to make sure that we've covered all the bases before it's time to make a decision um the Walmart is an interesting option because they don't

1:15:49need to do any entitlement work other than a building permit for their FA facade changes and whatnot so they can occupy quickly close quickly and meet the city's time constraints um Safeway is also an interesting option because they can use the building as it sits and therefore

1:16:06afford it they've made some interesting proposals to the city and they would add some additional retail and possibly some additional um tax um tax basis with the um fuel station they may or may not be able to get open in the time the city has with their option on the property um the

1:16:27problem as I see it with the mixed use although it may work at the site is that it would take from two to five years to run a project through in today's marketplace with the financing constraints um and that would go outside the spectrum of the city controlling the

1:16:45property unless of course they purchased it and held it and waited for this type of opportunity um we hope to find find another uh retailer or two who are interested and hopefully a developer or two who are interested in making a proposal to the city for the development

1:17:00of the property um and uh next slide um Safeways plans obviously meet their needs uh and will bring forth this other interest to try to have full disclosure and make uh for the ability to make a decision um by the council and uh I can answer any questions you might have regarding the retail climate

1:17:28today which is quite interesting right now okay questions or comments this is the this is the end of our presentation before um Safeway comes up so if you had any questions we're happy to answer them okay um I guess I'm curious if since you you you're speaking from a retails

1:17:51perspective versus um I guess how much of your background or I mean how much were you able to bring in from a mixed use perspective well it personally none the but the developers who we would show the site to and Pitch the site to may have interest or have done projects like that

1:18:10we we've talked with Blake hunt who've shown some interest and they've done a couple of these mixed use and big box type projects around and regen C has also shown some interest um we don't yet know exactly what they'd be willing to pay and how that would match up with what um Safeway

1:18:27and Walmart have offered but that's that's what I think my job is is to bring all those forward let the maybe one or two developers that we pick do proposals and hope that hopefully meet all your needs and are those inherently big box I guess oriented retail retailers tax basis wise yes um I I

1:18:49think that there's been talk of some of the sporting goods retailers there's been talk of Best Buy and and some other uh retailers who've shown some interest but none of that is concrete so it it we need to have it be concrete before we can bring a full proposal

1:19:05back I've been I've been working on it about two weeks so if I may ask you use the term twice big box yeah you would consider the current Target site a big box absolutely okay what's so we have that that there's obviously bigger big boxes out there um right but I take it that the target site

1:19:31would be about as big as we could go on a six acre piece of property you're already about the top end as far as parking ratios go okay thank you and the the easiest way to redevelop the property from a development standard would be to take your roughly 990,000 ft

1:19:48maybe do a 30 and a 60 which could be a uh Best Buy Sports Authority that they both fit into that size range so it' be it'd be one demising wall and two TS thank you appreciate question oh sorry um yeah I was wondering about an option that I saw developed in erville where they um first built the

1:20:12retail which included such stores as Old Navy along whatever the name of that Bay Street Bay Street is that Bay Street I'm not really even sure um anyway they develop Ved a series of um stores along that street and then in a later point in time they put in housing over it so if

1:20:31you look at it today you actually can't tell that that's how they did it but in fact it was how they did it has that kind of an option been looked at especially given today's economic climate it it might be a condition to look at in the future that you could put

1:20:46on um I I don't know how exactly you would work it but I don't I don't know that it's possible today but but it's something that that has worked before why why wouldn't it be possible today is it because of the constr financing Market perspec Dev development is non-existent right now um the the

1:21:04tenants the tenant generated development Safeway Walmart or Regency which owns The Plaza in town is a Reit they don't they don't get loans they use their own money those are the type of people who who can do a project like this in today's economic climate climate um I'm

1:21:21not sure that well a lot of the um mixed use developments in the Bay Area are on hold right now because of the financial markets there are still some that had already got financing that are under construction and going forward but there are a whole bunch of projects on hold as

1:21:37well I I guess what I was wondering is given that what what you just said is what I've heard also I was wondering about um in my simplistic way of looking at it it would be building or having the the retail and then having a shell over it such that you could later put in housing

1:21:59when the market was better and and I really don't know the feasibility of that and I guess that's what I'm asking you about uh I'm sure that architecturally it's feasible but I I I haven't done it and wouldn't know how to go about it but but it sounds logical it's all replacing parking if you put

1:22:17housing on the parking lot you have to put the parking on the roof of the building I mean it's it's it's all about parking spaces for custom customers and residents and how that matches up okay thank you any other questions before Safeway presentation I'm going to turn this over

1:22:46to Todd Paradise from Safeway Corporation good evening my name is Todd paradise and I'm with Safeway and I want to go over I think what I'd like to do is start off talking about the proposal that Target and Safeway has on the on the table first with the city and then

1:23:29quickly go over just some slides that I shared with our community meeting that we had last Wednesday evening at the uh Target location and um and I also brought with me I think Lori said she may have already given this out to the council the number of emails we've we've

1:23:48received so far since the website went up from folks uh that that are either for or against or just had something they wanted to say that should be in your packet as well um so as Lori mentioned what we have on the table today with Target is a proposal that would forgive the the loan

1:24:08that the that Target and the city have uh together from Target to the city um in the magnitude of approximately a half a million dollars uh with interest brings it up to a little over 600,000 and then and um in exchange for converting the the right that the city

1:24:28has to purchase the property to a to a right of first refusal and which of course continues to give the city the the right to to buy the property first if someone makes an offer on the site um and then at the end of the pro when the intements are uh completed and in in Safeway I can move

1:24:48forward and that the property would close and then um another 1.8 would go to the city from Target as well as a half a million from Safeway so collectively we're looking at 3 million uh a $3 million offer to the city so when I'm looking at the the numbers that Lori put together the one

1:25:06thing that wasn't clear to me so I I'd have to I'd like to get into those numbers at some point a little bit more what's not clear to me is a couple things one it looks to me like there's there's a um a thought perhaps that if in fact the city went ahead and purchase the

1:25:23property that the price they would they could buy it for would be the the offer that Safeway has with Target and our reading so far and I believe it's um targets reading as well is that fair market value is really set by the purchases that are out there in the amounts that they would be willing to

1:25:40pay for the property so our reading is today that if in fact Walmart would be willing to pay $20 million that in fact that sets the fair market value for the property and it does not there isn't a spread between between the 18 million versus the 2 million to the city so not

1:25:56sure if that's in the the spread between Safeways tax benefit versus the target benefit but um I I would say that's probably worth a closer look um and also we typically when we look at a cash flow we look at how it's being discounted too so off the $3 million that would be paid

1:26:17from uh Target and Safeway would happen in year zero which of course it would have a much higher value versus a tax um base that would be carried over through through a um a 20-year period and discounted back so I can't really get all that by looking at the slide to see

1:26:36what the true benefit is of the Safeway versus the Walmart I just think it's worth a little more discussion perhaps um and it seems to me that it would be it would be fair to look at the value that backfilling the old Safeway space would would bring to the community as

1:26:54well in the for in the form of tax benefit um lastly um while I think it's certainly important I think every city wants to um look at what their tax base is I I I'd hope that um taken into uh consideration would be uh the types of jobs that Safeway would bring um to its

1:27:15business versus on Union Jobs versus the types of jobs that a Walmart would uh and that's not in the tax I'm sure that's not in the tax um numbers that we saw here today the benefits of the city but I think it's worth certainly worth um looking at from the perspective of

1:27:34the overall benefit to the community um so those are the only things I wanted to say about the agreement I I feel that we've really put our uh best foot forward I think that um we're showing that we get it I mean I think target really gets that you know they certainly Redevelopment had um put

1:27:51in their own money uh early on in magnitude of $5 million into the project and um and the city's been very clear that that is something that um is is important to them and I and I just you know I think if you look at um the fact that Target did operate for 16 years and

1:28:09then there was approximately 4.1 or $4.2 million they generated for that 16year period Then you and then when Safeway reopens some portion of the tax will resume again of course there'll be lots of discussion on whether a fuel center should be part of this project or not

1:28:29that does change the the way that the tax dollars um come out at the bottom line because um certainly um fuel does pay quite a bit toward toward in taxes because it's based on the street price of gasoline um on Wednesday evening I had a community meeting at the Target location

1:28:51that we had had noticed on the website as well as uh through the um through a half mile uh mailing radius and and then our cashiers handed out um notices for the the last week leading up to the meeting it was it was decently attended I felt it was um approximately a 100

1:29:10folks showed up that evening we went through a series of slides uh we answered questions and um and and we're still in the process of summarizing um a lot of the a lot of the U things that were discussed that evening um there were actually about six that were reoccurring themes over and over again

1:29:29that I can go over if if there's interest at some point in time uh this evening so going over the slides just really quick I um we we've we've been in our store since 1971 it's not a it's not a store that is owned by Safeway we have actually a little bit under 35 years of

1:29:48of control um it's it's more around 33 years years uh there is flexibility in the existing space uh with with the types of commercial uses that can go into that space we um we've remodeled all of our stores in the system to date over the last five years we're down to a

1:30:06small handful of stores which we didn't have um which we didn't have plans for because we had AC actively been pursuing uh off relocating the site to another space this target space um didn't come into reality until about January as Lori had mentioned um which worked in in our

1:30:29opinion works really well for us but um the reason why we hadn't remodeled our existing store to date like we have for 99% of our other store so far is that we don't see this as being the long-term location for Safeway um for a number of reasons ranging from ranging from the multiple

1:30:48ownerships that we have in that shopping center represented by the number the by the the different colors uh you'll see on this slide from from CVS formerly Longs that owns their space uh Safeway leases their space as well as um the the owner of the Safeway building owns the shops on the

1:31:08side of the store and then there's a separate ownership for the uh medical office the the um Automotive um facility the Craig I think it's a Craig in and then the the gas station on the opposite Corners so um all those things happening on site also impairs the visibility to

1:31:28the existing store um it's under the the building um we've been asked what if you could if you could get the CVS building would you expand would you expand into that building and the problem with with that is that a couple things one we would certainly get a much larger

1:31:44building it would end up being a very long narrow building uh much like a bowling alley which is which is hard for which is which is Impractical for the way that we would we would Market the site or or fixz the inside of the store and with everything going on out in the

1:32:00corners it really just blocks our visibility um to the front of the store uh and then lastly we just have a lack of um Highway access which which which I someone at the community meeting said well you really don't need Comm Highway acces do you to to to sell groceries and

1:32:19and and it's true that we're not going to get people off the the the freeway to um to come in and buy groceries and get back on and leave but the real draw is is that it is convenient for for some folks that might live down in Albany might live up in Richmond or other

1:32:35places and and and being by the BART station as well has has draws has a draw for um the regular commuter traffic on a day and day out basis the existing form of Target building we would we would completely uh remodel the inside and the outside of that building so that essentially it

1:32:55looks it it would still be the same structure but it would look like a brand new building once everything was done today the existing building is just a little under 85,000 Square ft in addition to that you add the the small garden center um and we would take that

1:33:12and we would densify it a lot more than what it is today certainly not to the degree that some folks had mentioned during the community meetings community meeting where we would um put um residential units on top of the store that this store wasn't constructed to to Bear the the load of residential

1:33:31units on top and um and so if that's the direction you'd go in You' really be left in you'd really be left with the position of tearing down that building which which then makes the project not viable any longer because there's a lot of value in that building and in the

1:33:48value that's being paid for uh in the purchase price price what we would do is we don't need 85,000 ft as a Safeway but we would like to do a 65,000 foot building our our proposal would be we've heard a couple of things we've talked to the city about trying to um they they said that the the

1:34:11Trailway to the side of the building is a very important Trailway the aloney way and that if it right now there's really no cross access between the target property and the and the Trailway so we would propose that the cinder block in the chain link fence Wall come down that

1:34:29Safeway as part of its application would improve that right away from uh Blake Street all the way through to Hill Street uh we've been working with the um with the I think there's I think online it's du Public Works they had they had some sketches on how that might look we

1:34:45have a landscape architect working on on with that plan to find how we could do that to make it um to make it to make it green but at the same time not intense when it comes to water usage and so forth that that we've uh have in our development application that we submitted or

1:35:03or we tried to submit last week we hope to get that submitted in a week or so uh so our site is we take the building we take out we we demise it we have a 65,000 Foot Store left for the store and then the shop space then we have shops that uh that get created just to the west of the

1:35:24store of approximately 19,000 square feet and that would face uh s Pablo uh an additional Corner pad could be developed up at the corner of Hill Street and S Pablo Avenue actually we um we think we can bring that that square footage up some uh to to more like 10,000 square feet possibly more and

1:35:46then there's the uh fuel center that is uh up be behind the the corner pad we we we purposely put the fuel center there because we wanted to screen it from San Pablo we thought that was going to be the important issue um and we've then heard well Hills Street's very busy maybe

1:36:06you'll be maybe you'll cause congestion up at your driveway so there's a we're we're happy to place it on the corner or where it is and in fact I've mentioned to to the city on a couple of occasions as well as uh on Wednesday's meeting that the the the fuel center is still on

1:36:26the table for discussion I know that um I know that you know there sometimes is a stigma with gas and it's it's on the table for discussion we uh we're not approaching this deal as a take it or leave it type of deal um it's it's sort of a catch 22 on the one hand it's a

1:36:43great draw for the shopping center it provides a great benefit to um the store in that it's another thing that it's another item that that customers generally purchase at least once a week sometimes more and provides a tremendous amount of tax dollars but we're happy to

1:36:58talk about whether that should be part of the project or not or not um what we feel this could look like from a from a modeling standpoint and this will go kind of quickly is it's not working I think it's the the mo the file that was we transferred from one computer over the next I think the

1:37:23file didn't get transferred over with it so um I'll go to the other elevations then the other elevations here like I mentioned at the end of the day this building this building would look like a brand new building we would reskin the entire all four sides we would propose

1:37:43to in further trying to enhance that connectivity between the front of the store and the aloney way we we would propose relocating the loading dock from the front of the building to the back of the building and um and and that way we're imagining that the side of the

1:38:01store along the aloney way could be glass where you could look into the store from the side and then have a outdoor seating area on the uh on the BART track side that could reach into the the the Trailway um this building this perspective here would be from the from

1:38:20the Hill Street San Pablo section with the pad building that would be created and we're envisioning that space to have uh accessibility from um possibly both sides from the street side and the um and the parking lot side if if if accessibility from the street side doesn't make sense at the

1:38:41end of the day to retailers we could set it up so that it would still have glass and still be and still be you could still see what was happening from the street and and and open up the um the view the view from from traffic going by this is what we had proposed that the

1:38:57side of the store look like and the um and the new Safeway and shops collect together um a concept for how the gas station might look to fit in with the with the architecture of the store uh then here's the Landscaping plan that I had mentioned for the Trailway and for the uh the parking lot

1:39:17as well we would have a along this one section uh over here is we would treat some of our water on site about um I think I want to say it was about 20% of our water would now be managed on site instead of going into the storm drains and and the reason why we're

1:39:38excited about this this store opportuni is we have two right now uh that are undersized they don't have all of our departments that a new lifestyle Safeway would have and I would encourage anyone that if they ever have an opportunity to check out the new store we we built last

1:39:53year in Nado it it's a 55,000 ft store lifestyle store with a a Safeway fuel center and and to really take a look at it because Safeway fuel centers are a lot are different than the kind of gas stations of yester year they're they're they still sell gas and they still serve

1:40:13a function but they look a lot nicer and they match our stores and we we do a lot of cross promotions with our gas where customers get 10 cents off sometimes 50 cents off a gallon with their Club Card uh so our inside of the store is much different um in compared to the

1:40:29store we have in eloro today with a full uh produce offering and a full line of Organics uh offering um service seafood and service meat instead of prepackaged Meats um a full a full line Bakery as well as a deli and just and just just real quick if you haven't seen any fuel

1:40:52centers I just want to throw a few slides on here a few that I've done one in Rockridge Dublin and you can see that each of these has architecture that mirrors the store and then in selenis um the numbers you know the here's here's the last eight years that Target was an operation and their target

1:41:13their sales tax and as Lori mentioned I wanted to go into just a little bit of detail we don't we didn't take into account the the the benefit of the old space on this one either we're just saying that we believe that the store would generate 140,000 a year fuel

1:41:29250,000 a year and then the shop space about 64,000 a year for a total of $454,000 versus the old space today which is generating about $45,000 a year we um we think that this will we can do a real class uh a grocery store at this location um I I I we think that we think that

1:41:55that we could have the best grocery store from valo all the way down to Alam at this location and really make make it a special place um while improving the tax base and still backfilling the old Safeway with a with a with the kind of use and we've said to the city we would

1:42:16be willing to work with the city on the the types of users that they feel would make the most for our old space and we would close both the elero store the Richmond store on the day that the new store opens and then all of our employees between those those two stores

1:42:33would be brought in to our new store and even having done all that we'd still add somewhere in the magnitude between 55 and 78 78 new union jobs and that those are the slides that I showed on Wednesday evening uh we've received approximately 16 or so comments from our

1:42:55website to dat uh and um they've been very positive we we we have had some asking for uh uh mixed use or residential housing on top and and there were there were a handful of folks at the community meeting that did not like the idea of doing a gas station so it

1:43:14basically was it came down to having it be more mixed use with the residential considering not doing the gas station on the property and um and a few folks didn't want us to close our store because it was close and walking it was close for them to get to the store um and they could walk there

1:43:34and they felt like they couldn't walk there if if the store relocate to this new location so those were the majority of the comments but we've received quite a few of positive comments as well saying that you know they really feel like the community would benefit from a

1:43:47new lifestyle Safeway and yes sorry just going to so that's all I I have you'll entertain questions at this time yes please great any questions yeah I've got one um by relocating the loading dock to Blake Street how will the trucks access that location what's the truck route that

1:44:10would uh get the trucks to that location we we did a truck route that came right off of um the prero exit and came down up prero took went past the Denny's and took a left on that street directly behind the Denny's and then and then went down that street uh turned left on

1:44:28Blake and then backed into the uh loading dock thank you it in fact it in fact you know there might be something that a a tra we we had our traffic uh experts look at it real quickly they felt that it was a better situation but we haven't really taken that traffic analysis to the next

1:44:48step to see if there were any really if there were any problems in there that we overlooked at this point we just um from what we could tell just real quickly though that having them come down and take a left onto San Pablo and then a right into the the driveway on San Pablo

1:45:02that goes in front of the store that that was more it felt to us like that was more disruptive than just relocating it to the back and we thought at first there must be a history why the fuel why the why the um loading dock was in front instead of the back where it's more

1:45:18customary and today we haven't been able to find any real background on why it was there versus where we'd propose It Go and and that's just our proposal we if the city felt like that would cause problems we could you know go ahead and keep it where it is as well in its current location if that

1:45:40made more sense thank you Jen yeah I have a few questions um now I I actually don't drive a car so I I might be wrong on on the freeway stuff but I thought that the petero exit you had to be coming from the from the south mhm okay so if a truck were coming from the north it would actually get off

1:46:06I believe on cutting I believe is that correct anybody who drives a car know that okay so it would seem to me that um if there were a truck unless you know for a fact that all your trucks would come from the south I don't I don't know the answer one way or the other but if they were

1:46:25coming from the north into the project area then they couldn't get off at Peto at all and that might be the explanation for why the loading dock is where it is and that could very um very well up in the case for the Target trucks I know I know ours will come from the south

1:46:44because our distribution center is in Tracy and they would come from they would come down 580 to get to this location okay um the next question I had was you said that you would res retain um I forget the percent either 20 or 20 I thought you said 20 might be wrong there percent of the

1:47:06water storm water on site I thought you had I thought there was a requirement that it be 100% these days there is there is 100% how are you not doing that because the the site the requirement is is that the site that gets redeveloped is the site that you have to adhere to

1:47:24the new C3 requirements so the area that's being disturbed is the area where the new pad building is going on Hill Street as well as the gas station so there's a portion of of of parking and in the rooftop for the buildings as well where we have to where we would take

1:47:40that water and then keep it on site the rest of the rest of the existing safe um old or existing building today as well as a port portion of that parking lot would would still um sheet off the the lot as it does currently so so in following the requirements you're you're saying that

1:48:01in the area that you disturb I guess if that's a good word um that that would be you would cover it 100% in that area right exactly okay and then in the area that you're that we're not touching not touching then you just leave it as is correct okay thank you and um I had a

1:48:18question about the um current Safeway location M and your um plans for ret tenting and and what type of tenant can you speak to that at all we provided um a list of about 14 users that we felt were not in the trade area that could use a space of that size which is

1:48:38approximately 34,000 Square ft and we had some initial discussions we didn't really take it to the next level at this point and uh the types of users that we felt would makes sense there were users such as best and um 24-hour fitness and things of that nature that are not in

1:48:57the trade area currently uh I didn't bring the list of 14 with me but I can I could always send it over back over in the morning I don't recall what they all were and how would housing be considered there I didn't we didn't have it we didn't consider housing for that

1:49:14location would it be prohibited I don't believe it is I mean by you I mean no cuz I so I understand the it would it wouldn't be prohibited by us but I that's something that when you when you lease a property always becomes an issue for the developer uh because it it

1:49:34makes it really difficult one you can't sell those you can't sell that product because the the underlying property is owned by someone else and so you're only really left with the ability to to rent and it would have to depend on whether someone would be willing to step step in

1:49:50and put housing on that property with only 33 years left of term but I I would yeah I I mean I'm not really sure but I wondering if it if it would be possible that you would agree to give up the um lease if it were converted to housing was that viable if they were

1:50:11selling it I mean it's a possibility absolutely okay so you don't see that you would as a as a company our Our concern would be that it not be turned into a grocery uh uh retailer okay and um you mentioned earlier Albany MH the people would come from Albany to shop here but there is a

1:50:32Safeway in Albany are you planning on closing that we are planning to rebuild that store as well I was just saying that there's because of the BART station that this particular store would have a much greater draw than than than a store that wasn't around Bart say that again I said because we're

1:50:53because this site is right next door to the Del Norte BART stop I just feel like if there's a store that has the potential of a more Regional draw this would be it um especially if you know folks more for folks actually coming from the north and from the south because it's a lot easier to get to this

1:51:09Bart location than it would be to get to the BART to the Richmond Bart location since it's right off the freeway okay I was just wondering why you thought people would come from Albany I I I think that if you're in North Albany I believe and then in the Hills I believe that there's going to be

1:51:25there's going to be some folks that find it easier to get to this location than to go down to the salano street um Safeway okay um I think those are the questions that I have at this time thank you um I realize that this is a schematic layout for a possible future

1:51:45project and that you I'm sure are familiar with our general plan and Zoning for the area I know I've received some emails and I've thought a lot about the issues around pedestrian bicycle access and about the Sea of parking and the lack of landscaping connection to

1:52:00the greenway and relationship to the BART station and I just wanted to say that um a number of us were very involved during the development of the elrio plaza and that project was not in the Redevelopment um Authority and we um even though we're grateful to have the

1:52:18level of um Commerce going on at that site are still frustrated by the vast parking that um doesn't connect well from one shopping area to the other and the deficiencies in the opportunity for outdoor dining and interesting landscaping and even connection to the

1:52:36creek there and I wonder to what extent if you can say anything today about um how flexible this plan is and to what extent some of those um values that the city has articulated it's General plan might be able to be more strongly incorporated into the site plan I

1:52:54believe when it comes to Landscaping in particular there's a there's a tremendous amount of flexibility in fact what I would propose to do with our application is is something along the lines where Safeway would improve all the right of voice space between those

1:53:08two streets that I mentioned and then hand it over to the city after afterward which is why I'd want to work side by side to make sure that whatever gets developed there does not become a m maintenance headache for the city and um and looking at some of the the online

1:53:26plans it looked like some of the lawn grass being proposed needed to be mowed so we turn it to a no mow type of lawn but but as far as what gets placed in there I mean we envisioned that there would be several um seating areas along the way bike uh racks and um and and

1:53:45hopefully a lot of people say they jog on that trail as well so it's whatever makes sense there we'd propose that we'd improve all that and um for the parking lot itself a lot of that Landscaping in fact is in pretty decent condition a lot of those trees are healthy I'm not sure

1:54:01uh how much of that needs to be uh redone but we could be enhanced and things could be added to it to make it to make it more park-like but I I'd say there's a lot of flexibility the one thing I also wanted to add on the storm water runoff is that you may be aware

1:54:17that the regional water quality control board is uh in the process in CL nearing completion to a revised permit that goes beyond the countywide permit now and so depending on the timing of your application your requirements may change for that and I wonder if there's an

1:54:33opportunity for a water feature on site that would serve both as your stor water detention and also to create some kind of interesting um water feature landscape or maybe even some public art there yeah that would that would work as well we would want to have the water

1:54:47feature be um one of the want to maybe a I'm not sure the the appropriate term for it but so that it's not a pool of water we might want to have it like we might want to have Boulders and so forth in there for to keep debris and leaves out and so forth but I think that that

1:55:02would make sense there uh either either either right along the trail itself or over along the B generators where we would propose that some of the water be retained on site even thank you um I'm just curious for process I I assume some people are here to talk or comment from the public and

1:55:26are we going to have a chance to hear them and then go back to discussion or or no I think we well can answer your questions now then we're going to have we'll do our public Com or uh finish up anything we have to say then we'll go to public comment and that'll be it for the

1:55:43study session okay do you have anything now um I guess it's more question for staff about the process and just understanding you know have has an application been submitted and you know what type of application and what are the timelines for considering them um you know have those

1:56:04timelines started and where we at I guess because I I I just heard there was something about these plans being submitted to design review board for concept but I I'm not just want to be clear there were some plans that were submitted for a preliminary review um I

1:56:23don't think that there's been an official application at this point um and if if if I can I'll go get Jennifer and ask her to to fill in more details and if it were an application what type of application would it be I'm going to let Jennifer address it thank you we did we did bring in 10 sets a

1:56:41submit on Tuesday Morning last Tuesday morning but we were told before a submitt could could happen it we needed to go through some type of design review process beforehand so that submitt did not happen on that Tuesday okay so we do have preliminary plans in um for review

1:56:58what we'll be doing is having staff do an initial look we have a permanent assistance team also take a department-wide look and then we get back to the applicant let them know exactly what they need to apply for based on what they brought in and right now what it's looking like is a cup uh

1:57:15conditional use permit and design review okay thank you and one of the things that I going back to the proposal that I that I heard is that the the offer on the table is that we close escrow once we have entitled and the project entitled but there's I think there's room there

1:57:38to talk about you know if you're making some type of decent progress and it's just a matter of running the course and and and and going through and and the public hearing and so forth that there's there there might be things that can be done to close on that deal even sooner

1:57:52than the you know the full entitlement process I wanted to state that as well so okay well thank you very much appreciate it okay at this time we'll uh open this up for public comment uh we'll we'll follow the same public comment procedures as we normally do uh I'd like

1:58:18the city clerk to state that once again um we have a speaker Timing System for those who are not familiar with it up here when you're um when you begin speaking the light will turn green when you have um one minute left the light will turn yellow and when the light turns red you'll know that your 3

1:58:40minutes is up and that your time is over so with that we have one we have three speakers the first is Al Miller hello again uh a comment about the figures uh that were shown in the Walmart sales taxes Walmart as most of us know is famous for stealing sales from local

1:59:07stores uh they will bring in other customers that the local stores won't but they'll also steal the customers from the local stores so I would expect that any any uh sales task comparisons that are presented to you uh make the best I don't know how they do this but

1:59:27the best method estimate of what are the local stores going to lose in sales tax while Walmart gains it I also hope that you'll satisfy yourselves why is Walmart looking at such a small store all the other Walmart stories we hear in West County is they're looking for a super Walmart or

1:59:49is this the camel's nose Under the Tent so to speak uh Safeway gentlemen indicated that in their development on the Hill San Pablo Corner uh that uh they were considering access on both sides pedestrian access from the street and uh parking access from the parking

2:00:15lot I think most of you recognize that on Fairmont Avenue side of the plaza all of those stores are designed to have pedestrian access from Fairmont and uh parking access from the inside of the stores in my opinion way too many of them don't allow us customers to come in

2:00:39the way we would prefer to come too many of them have locked The Pedestrian access that's not an entrance for too many of them in fact for one of of them uh they're not there any longer but for the longest time the creary store used that as the the sidewalk outside of

2:00:59their uh Fairmont entrance as an Alleyway that's where they had their garbage stacked so uh consideration needs to be given to the effectiveness of multiple access whether it's an advantage or a disadvantage thank you thank you I'm going to ask the agency um if we can divert for for a second from

2:01:21the public because I think it's a common question that um Mr Miller brought up and it's actually in the report from Walmart and I'd like Lori come up and answer the question about the size of Walmart and and what their plan is for this is Lori here I guess oh there she

2:01:47is I'm sorry could you repeat what what the question was yes could you tell us what Walmart has said about the size of their store why it's smaller than their super duper stores well they would be proposing to reuse the box that's there because um because it's already built

2:02:04and they wouldn't have to build a new store the site the site is not large enough to accommodate a larger store um and this is the kind of store that they would like to have in this part of the Bay Area isn't this but they are uh considering A New Concept smaller

2:02:18community they actually have two smaller Concepts they have kind of a smaller Walmart store and then they have something called I think it's called the neighborhood Marketplace um which is not what this is um but they have the Superstores and then they have a non-s Superstore and

2:02:33this would be considered a non Superstore or small Superstore I think they would call it a non Superstore non Superstore okay thank you appreciate it okay we'll continue with the public comments thank you Peter Lal bit later than now tomorrow economic reality is likely to punch a lot of us

2:02:54in the nose the sad thing is that we have a lot of friends who are very aware of what the vote is about tomorrow and still will not vote for money even though their jobs are online because they're so fed up with wasted money uh with regard to what Al Al Miller said he

2:03:13and you should know that all of Redevelopment is based upon taking money from from one end and putting it in another there's a limited amount of money that can be spent if you if you subsidize one store and gets money it's always taken from somewhere else and we should have learned that by

2:03:30now with regard to the movie theater Target or anybody else and and we're on the losing an often now is with regard to this project I and my wife probably live closer to it than anybody else in this room we I'm pretty sure we since with Ken burn gone we live closer to San

2:03:47Pablo Avenue just two blocks away than anybody else in this room we moved there because we wanted to we want to we walk to Bart and we walk away from Bart but we don't walk to San Pablo Avenue at Del not because only time we walk there is to get our car from Honda when it's

2:04:03being serviced maybe if we lived at the plaza we'd walk more we certainly when we go to Martinez we walk we walk in Europe we walkers but not in uh not in this area and I based on the questions some of you are still in an ideological rut housing is not suited for the for this

2:04:23target site which is right between Bart and between San Pablo Avenue which in this part of town not necessar in Berkeley is a frontage road uh it's not quite as bad as wanting talking about housing on the Mayfair site Mayfair site is desperately needed for bus turn around housing is perfectly

2:04:42okay a block or two further to the east but not not here and I think the the questions about possibly housing on the on the relinquished side that you know that's legitimate but get of this ideological kick this this is not a suitable site for housing the gentleman from

2:05:01Safeway I can guarantee several hundred emails if you want from our neighborhood from people not those that live a little bit further north they they maybe wouldn't well maybe they like a larger Safeway store but our neighborhood would would prefer the Safeway store now

2:05:18personal on the other hand if it's if it's taking away from the other neighborhoods if there would be any other good idea for what to put on this site we would we wouldn't be pushing it too much as to Walmart I I I don't know what my feelings are I think i' like

2:05:38Safeway better but for heaven's sakes stop talking about housing subsidized housing in in in this area May May maybe for de people maybe if it's highly subsidized you know people down on their luck will live there they not place is an example that's it's not bad but this is about

2:05:58you know look look at what's happening there took a lot of subsidy and and and it's not as a better sight as The Others May maybe that's as far as you can go with as this state possibly in the future if we increase the density uphills if Alo has 50,000 inhabitants

2:06:16because of people sort of doubling up in the homes for the uphill then there'll be a need for for more stores along San Pablo Avenue and then possibly there would be a places where you could fit housing in but right now think economics you know this is the time to

2:06:34do it thank you thank you Michael albre hi I'm Michael alre I'm the design review board and on the S Pablo Avenue area a a specific plan advisory committee uh I tend to disagree with my colleague here previous speaker I think the site would be underutilized just

2:06:59putting another box door on it I think that the the city's General plan has called for more dense development in that area I know that the specific plan will call for more dense development in that area and I think that we're losing an opportunity here by having something

2:07:13go in for probably 20 30 years that's going to be just a single story development um I also think that we have a opportunity to create something more of a signature building there by having something that's taller and addresses the the the Avenue and a more appropriate way maybe more specific to

2:07:29the area rather than another safe way that looks like it could be in any Town um I also think that the um that it would be good if safy would be held account or not accountable should be held to those standards of the development plan uh I know the target was built before those were adopted and

2:07:46uh I think the council might want to wait until the specific plan is been in front of them to review and see what the specific plan calls for um I would be interested to know what the other potential tenant could be I think that uh excuse me I think I was at that

2:08:02meeting too and I I disagree with some of the assessment I think that the number one reason or the number one request was from people there to add housing to the project the number two was nobody wanted a gas station there you know I I don't see why a gas station

2:08:16makes any s there sense there it's already a traffic area a traffic nightmare for the most part there and we're trying to correct that somewhat maybe with a specific plan I think there's about 700 buses that go through that site a day and there's that freeb access and I think adding to that

2:08:32congestion will not really help um I think that you know closing small stores and replacing with big stores usually tends to add to the vehicle miles per trip that everybody takes and that congests the local traffic even more because people have to get in their car

2:08:48and in order to get to the store um I think in The Proposal that the Safeway show the corner store is totally disconnected from the main building I think that's going to fail um there was a local affordable housing developer there that expressed interest at that

2:09:02meeting too Lamar Turner maybe it would be worthwhile to contact him and I agree with the one of the previous speakers that Walgreens I think takes away from the local stores and I think that same is true about the gas station I mean the gas station seems to be the only thing

2:09:15that makes this whole thing financially viable but people come and come somewhere from somewhere else all of a sudden or is it still the same people that just got gas for before at the shevron station at the corner so it's really not adding anything to the tax baces and if the city wants more gas

2:09:28stations then I'm sure we could find a better location um and then how about yeah if we don't want to turn it on the existing building there's this huge parking lot you could put housing above that we could have parking below and housing above it we have a flat roof how

2:09:43about putting Vol photovoltaic panels on it and supplying uh free electricity for people who drive there in the future there cars that have run on electricity I mean maybe that's a good marketing thing for Safeway you know what about what's a lifestyle store I mean does the

2:09:57community want a lifestyle store what is it really is it I know that in the meeting too there was a lot of people who wanted to walk to the store and the current stores location for ELO is a lot more Central now we're ending up with Alberts on one end and with Safeway on

2:10:10the other end and I'm not sure that that really serves us that well I mean I think 25% of the population in Elo is 60 or older and I think for them having something more Central would actually more accommodating um excuse me if you could wrap up yeah I'm sorry I See the Light

2:10:27here no problem um I and I think that's one and last thing I was going to say like there's a Whole Foods in CFL that's very small but very successful so I'm not sure that size is really what matters I think it's what the product is that you sell thank you thank

2:10:42you no other speaker lips anybody else like to speak great please state your name for the record keep things Michael D elero uh first thing I noticed um as one who lives right near BART at night they grind the tracks I worry about the whe the safety assessments been done of

2:11:00putting a fuel station so proximate to Bart tracks and just wondering about combustion uh second um the street adjacent on the east side to the Target think it's Lexington I'm a bit concerned having considered buying property there before and the aloney route I'm worried

2:11:18about opening up that space it's just a safety issue for the residents on that block uh last third Point um the closure of the McDonald's store I would anticipate that 50% of the current customers will probably be coming into elero and that that should that positive

2:11:36should be assessed better I didn't hear much about that great thank you oh I'm sorry go ahead hi Roland bergfelt El Sero um I was just concerned about the hours of these two proposals the Walmart and the Safeway the hours of operation I heard a rumor that Walmart wanted to be open 24

2:12:00hours a day um and I don't know about the safe way I just want to make sure that that is taken into consideration okay could I just since this is information the staff have any information on operation of ours oh okay Todd said that they do have 24hour Safeways that that would be the plan

2:12:31here I have not gotten any information from Walmart about what they would propose in terms of hours of operation okay is Safeway here still or you have any comments on hours of operation get that question answer answered so if you were to ask me what the existing stores hours are I would I

2:12:57actually wouldn't know right off the top of my head but we would want this store to be 24 hours we we find that although you don't get a lot of trips past 11 11:30 at night um for security reasons having employees in the store working and reloading the store uh does a couple

2:13:16of things one it helps us get ready for the the next day two it it's just better for security to have employees always in the store and I guess three it is nice I mean there there are times when for some reason um you know if 3:00 in the morning you need something thlu whatever

2:13:34this the store is always open so um all of our Stores um most I'd say I'd say in the high 90s are are 24 hours and we propose that for this store as well okay I I know you used to be 24 hours hours I don't know if you still are there I believe the hours there now are 7:00

2:13:52a.m. till 11:00 p.m. they are okay well thank you thank you appreciate it okay anybody else hi Jenny Fowler elsio um I live on the North End of town and um I did just want to bring up the fact that with the uh the Richmond site um of the Safeway closed as well as the empty Albertson's

2:14:18um I just want to bring up the security concern of that kind of area because the Albertson has been kind of sitting vacant for quite a long time and I know that's in Richmond but I think it affects the the North End of the district so I just wanted to make that

2:14:31comment great thank you okay it looks like okay one one more no she's just filling in her Mark Scott I'm the manager of the Elso Chamber of Commerce I'd just like to um uh present a chamber position that any studies that are done here should really take into account the impacts on a local

2:15:10business uh having a Safeway Superstore or whatever they're calling this model uh they sell a lot more products that are that are sold uh locally um and of course that's true with with Walmart and any net increases or decreases in in sales tax should be identified by what the offsets are going

2:15:37to be uh for the local uh businesses that are already in town uh far as far as uh having Safeway or Walmart or anybody else there of course the chamber doesn't have a position at uh this time we're we'll study it just like uh you you uh the council will study it and so

2:16:03uh we know that uh the council should give this all due consideration uh but we have to take it as the um the total impact to the elero businesses that are existing thank you thanks Mark okay looks like that's it for public comment yes J um I had a question about traffic and I think it's kind of a

2:16:31two-part question one is of the Safeway representative and the other would be I think of Jennifer but maybe I'm wrong on that um my question first had to do with um and maybe you can't answer this the the volume of traffic relative to the Target traffic if that's more or less or

2:16:54um and how much of that is attributable to the gas station if you if you can answer that in any way thank you the Safeway representative the traffic uh piece has not been scoped out they just recently spoke with public works and they were able to get get some information on

2:17:18which intersection should be studied um if we're to proceed um so I would be only guessing if I were to tell you what I think might happen um there's there is generally a very high um passby uh rate assigned to a fuel center there's also uh because most most folks don't leave

2:17:40home just for the sole purpose of of purchasing fuel there's also a very high percentage of folks that combine trips when when when they're coming to if they're shopping for groceries and and Fuel and other miscellaneous things um but I don't know really what the

2:17:59target model would be as far as how often someone would shop at Target and probably part of that answer could lie in what their offering is inside the store and whether they have items that people buy more than once a week so if in fact they don't then it's conceivable

2:18:16uh that a Safeway store could have higher a higher trip rate than than a Target because you buy groceries more often perhaps than what you might buy for general merchandise but I don't but I haven't seen you know their the study side by side yet okay thank you and then I had a

2:18:34question question of Jennifer about traffic um and the question I had there is we already know I think that this is maybe the most congested area of the entire city especially with the number a bus is going in and out of the transit center right there uh on hill and um so

2:18:54what I'm wondering is you talked about the studies that would have the cons areas that would be looked at um with under your current estimate uh for for the application as you saw it um currently I mean that just a preliminary but what do you think would be done in looking at

2:19:14the traffic and I think it's already level of service F right yes um the intersections involved with this particular site are some of the lowest um I guess um servicing in the city so we would want to pay particular attention do a thorough analysis during the environmental review um regardless

2:19:32of what level of Environ environmental review is completed on this site and part of what we're doing with the preliminary review on the project is to make sure it's as thorough as possible in order to have a good project description to put out for the Environmental review when it's ready so

2:19:49assuming that um the um analysis showed that there would be an increase in traffic overall and I guess that would be relative to the Target store being there is that a correct assumption yes existing conditions now or when Target was open um we would have to go back and

2:20:08look at at the situation to see that it's usually the the difference of existing but we'd probably go back and look at the Target as well okay well assuming that it's more more than that then um what would be the um likely result of that in terms of recommendations my

2:20:29initial determination we haven't made an official determination at this time um but depending on what is included in the project I would lean more towards um an environmental impact report um as the environmental analysis but we would have to see what is the final version of

2:20:44their application in order to make a determination and and would you look at it both with and without the gas station um it would depend on what they apply for we don't have an official application and yet we're just in preliminary review um so I suppose they would only apply

2:21:02one way I don't know but I I really don't know okay so it would seem to me like a gas station would produce a lot of trips Maybe I'm Wrong there but it seems to me you just sort of go in especially if the was a good price I don't I'm just thinking of the Costco

2:21:20model I don't know if that's a good one but the um that there are a lot of trips going in and out so that would you know that would be generated and um so would it be possible to consider it with and without regardless of their application no we would do the environmental review based on what they

2:21:40actually submit so if they choose during their official application to drop the gas station out then we would do the analysis without it unless it was requested that that was an alternative and we could look at both as part of an eir if it was an M andd or a mitigated

2:21:55negative declaration it would really more be based on exactly what they submit but certainly if if it was an e we could look at an alternative without the gas station if the gas station was included in the official application thank you thank you thank you any other questions comments uh I

2:22:15just have a brief comment about my concern about the impact of whatever goes in at the Target site to other businesses and especially in this case um to the existing Safeway at moer Lane and also the one on McDonald Avenue and I know that in each situation Safeway

2:22:33has a different level of control or authority in the site as well does the Redevelopment agency in those two areas and I would ask um staff and Safeway to um continue to concentrate their efforts on the possibilities of renting down at moer Lane and possibly consolidating

2:22:52Parcels there U we've sort of had to take on our shopping centers one at a time and that one is old and outdated and um I think that efforts to look at new opportunities there and possibly to consolidate some of those Parcels would be a benefit um and ask staff and also

2:23:11um safe way to continue working with the city of Richmond in a collaborative way to address potential um impacts on that border area and also just to reiterate other incentive programs that we have that can help our shopping centers to become more viable vital parts of our

2:23:28business Community thank you appreciate it um just one other thing before we close um I I should disclose that the company I work for which is a general contractor has done business with Safeway in the past we currently do not are not not under contract nor have we been uh for

2:23:50the last few years with Safeway uh my company has also done work with the project architect Johnson Lyman from time to time the last few years currently not doing a project with them but uh in every case it is the owner of the project that selects not only the general contractor with the project

2:24:14architect all right other than that okay so good I'll turn it back over to well actually I don't know before we leave this item completely I I have a question about the process that I that I'm not certain has been answered we've heard from staff that CB Richard Ellis

2:24:33was has been contracted to market the site and they're out actively looking for other uh pro project opportunities although during their testimony they they sort of made it sound like they were focused on um people who could use the existing structures on the site as

2:24:50opposed to redevelop the site what is what is the process while Safeway is going through their application because it sounds like they're proceeding with their application what is the process by which um additional uh options would be reviewed uh if CB Richard Ellis comes in

2:25:10with something you know next month or the month after can we get um I don't know who would answer the question but can we have someone tell us what how these two efforts dub tail together maybe I'll call on uh oh okay good Redevelopment manager I'm not sure that they would

2:25:33necessarily dovetail together Safeways moving along with their project on their own track um and we will bring back um any options that we're able to identify for the agency to consider and they would they would be you know if if the agency wishes to pursue them then we we

2:25:49would have to look at that separately does that answer your question and we we have the right to do that as long as the DDA is in place and we have it from April uh 30th or May 1 1 through October 31st we have the right to do that until um October 31st um regardless of whether the

2:26:11property changes hands as long as it's not reoccupied now that being said if the agency were to choose to um work with with Target and Safeway according to their offer we would be changing from a repurchase option to a wrer first refusal um we would not have that option

2:26:29anymore we would not we would not be marketing the property anymore okay thank you can I just add it the way that we're marketing the property right now is at is not a mixed use um marketing effort correct we've been looking for um retail opportunity ities because those are the

2:26:48opportunities that are probably most likely to happen within the option period and would it would it require us to give staff direction to look at other opportunities to look at the mixed use potential um I certainly think we can I actually I thought that where Council

2:27:06linman might be going um we either through CBR or someone else we could expand the search but we we are constantly talking to developers and the and the message is similar um but we could try to do a more expansive commercial search um maybe with uh firms that specialize a little bit more in on

2:27:28the residential side but I think some of the developers that they're talking to are people who would do a mixed use development on the site with a retail or office component um but we could certainly try to open it up but it's certainly no secret that uh that Target

2:27:44has been marketing the site for a long time um and it's just the message we're getting back has really been consistent but um we certainly I assume uh I don't want to put CBR on the spot now but I think we could certainly try to expand the net if that's my understanding is

2:28:00that they're very different approaches if you're going to do a retail you know reuse the retail piece versus um even just residential only developers are very different than mixed use developers so and they are they are definitely different so we can look at that and then the

2:28:19other question I have is with regards to Safeway and their proposal when would it be back before the agency if it all I'm sorry which proposal the Safeway proposal would it be back before the agency at all you mean the the financial proposal to the agency or the project

2:28:38proposal before the city I you can answer both of those that's great I think that that Jennifer already answered regarding the city that their application will be coming through um as for the Financial offer you know I I I'm sure we'll be bringing something back

2:28:53but we haven't really talked about it up to this point I mean any amendments to the development agreement would have to be approved by the board in Open Session okay thank you thank you anything else I turn it back over to uh mayor Potter and the city council okay so that concludes the

2:29:12um study session on the target site we're going to move on to item 7 which is a review of The Master Fee schedule and we'll have a public hearing um we're going to be considering amendments to the master fee schedule including development fees and considering adopting a resolution

2:29:30approving the proposed fee schedule first we'll have a a report from City staff and then we will have a discussion with the council and look for a motion to open a public hearing at which time we will hear from the public if you would like to speak please outow a

2:29:46speaker slip and you will be allowed 3 minutes although you don't have to use all of those three minutes so I'd like to introduce Mary Dodge the finance director and the City Treasurer good evening Madame mayor members of the council I'm Mary Dodge your Finance Director City treasure and

2:30:03I'm here this evening to discuss the master fee schedule for fiscal year 20091 which encompasses all of the city's user fees and charges for services for fiscal year 20091 most of the city's fees are being recommended to increase 3% in relation to staff cost increases While others

2:30:23might I always cough while others might have Market components that take them either up or down depending on how they need to be adjusted the percentage change column in the schedule shows the fluctuation from prior year and the next column shows how those percentages are

2:30:38affected when we round the amounts in efforts to simplify for Parks and Recreation the fees were approved on their March 29th 2009 meeting meeting some other changes in the police um parking violation fees on January 1 2009 um s SP 1407 went into effect the raised fees well actually it was a a

2:31:00reallocation of fees to the um state court construction fund this increased it to $9 and the police department has recommended fees that include increased costs and those fees for Public Works they added a reinspection fee of $53 for each inspection Beyond two covered by

2:31:20the base encroachment permit fee for work that's not ready for inspection or work not done without an inspection they have some fees that are going to remain constant such as the encroachment permit Bond moratorium Street restoration fee and Hall rout impact fees and also as a

2:31:38result of the new Red Zone ordinance the department has added an appeal fee of $354 on the removal of a red zone uh to hold a hearing in planning fees in 20067 the Maximus calculated planning fees were not adopted at their full amount because increasing the fees

2:32:02to recover the full cost of Performing some of the functions was deemed too large of an increase for any one year the decision to impose fee increases on a more gradual basis tier to project size was implemented in adopting those fees Council directed that over time the

2:32:18fees be gradually increased to be closer to full cost recovery and much of that was achieved with last year's increases in this year's proposed Master Fee schedule panning fees have been increased 3 to 5% to account for Rising costs and to continue the tiered approach on the remaining items a few

2:32:36fees have increased notably due to reassessment of the time involved to issue the permit or due to outside agencies increasing the pass through rate for for business licenses the city's business license ta rate tax rate increases are prescribed for the municipal code they utilize CP data

2:32:55utilizing a base year of 1988 and then compare it with a 12month increase from the previous year last year the change using this calculation was 84% and this year it is 90% when we round the amounts to the nearest Dollar changes to the percentage rate Min are minimal as shown in the

2:33:15percentage change column building fees are a separate section of the master fee schedule and are by far the most complex building fees were most affected by the Maximus fee study done in 0607 and the result was a change in methodology to calculate fees from a construction valuation basis to a square

2:33:36footage basis the Maximus fee study structure that was put in place an FY 0708 takes into account the actual number of Staff hours NE necessary to process a typical application and uses the square footage of the project to calculate the fee continuing review was

2:33:53needed before the study recommendations could be implemented and it was uh postponed until 0708 since the initial year of implementing the building fees was was one year after the study was completed and used 0607 Staffing costs this year's proposed building fees have a primary increase

2:34:14factor of 5% instead of the overall Citywide 3% to incorporate the staff cost increases lost by the postponement of the implementation overall the overall Revenue figures appearing in this uh uh 09010 budget that you will see at our next meeting assume that the changes

2:34:36appearing in the proposed Master Fee schedule are adopted should the city council choose to modify the rates from proposed levels staff will need to review the budget's revenue and expend minatures accordingly and at this time representatives from all the Departments

2:34:51are here to answer any specific questions you have related to departmental fees are there any questions for Mary um I just wanted to make a comment about the traffic violation fines because nobody likes getting a traffic ticket and I see that the costs have gone up in part to cover increased costs

2:35:14at the county but I want to make not that if you park in a bus Zone you will get a ticket of $313 so be careful where you park in Els Sero and respect all the parking rules um if there are no other questions about the fee schedule I'll entertain a motion oh wait a minute I have questions oh we

2:35:37were supposed to have a open the public comment period right I there are no speaker slips okay so do we have a motion to close the public comment period so moved second all in favor okay so the hearing has been completed and is there a motion and then we're going to discuss

2:36:01or I wanted to ask staff a couple questions on okay go ahead okay um Park and Recreation um I see that there is a substantial increase in all of the transfer fees um could you explain that please for example Swim Center rentals under uh item what is that 16 there's a 34.6%

2:36:37increase or maybe we could go at what is a transfer fee may we can start at that the fees just in line with the other transfer fees within the department okay but what is a transfer fee uh you transfer from one date to another for a rental um you could transfer

2:37:04depending on the on like day camp or something like that the bigger not for a class that would be $35 you would kind of wipe out about the exact cost of the class okay uh I was just I I was just really curious why they went up substantially more than the 3% that the

2:37:28theity because we're doing it across the board so there wouldn't be a a separate fee for the swim center versus so you're making it consistent across the board exctly okay and then what I have you here um this is a pretty good good one uh actually the uh Social Hall and kitchen

2:37:49resident non-resident commercial actually went down over 20% each could I ask what what the thinking was on that and that would be item three under uh Senior Center rentals oh the senior center because we've only rented the senior center facility three times per year for this past year want

2:38:14to try to get ized more efficiently and we feel like the facility is outdated it needs some work and it's not it's less desirable and we're having a hard time renting it so if we drop the fees maybe it will entice people it's between the clubhouses and the seniors and the

2:38:34community center so that's an enterprising yes decision I take it that's the same as the uh Sero Vista reservation absolutely had one more more here oh uh i' like to know why the Raven Cliff uh deposit went up from $75 to $100 um you want to call on your yeah I'm gonna have Chris Jones this um

2:39:01Recreation supervisor to people back out back out oh I know just want hi we uh propos to increase it to $100 because um as of today actually our female camper spots already filled uh for the camp that's in August so it's becoming really popular we're trying to discourage people from uh cancelling at

2:39:25the last minute so that we don't end up taking less than maximum uh capacity so we've had that problem in this past that say in the last week they cancel out we can't get a replacement yeah if if they cancel you know once summer basically begins or the or the towards the end of summer people

2:39:45already have their summer plans made and it's uh last year you know we ended up losing I think two people under our ad0 Max one for a health reason and someone else just cuz they decided to cancel okay well thank you I appreciate it thank you that's all I have thank you question

2:40:04oh I did want to ask one more okay quick don't mind here um and and maybe this is for discussion between us I we have a new Fe which is an appeal fee of $354 for red zones and um I know it's probably in line with other appeals but the reason why this occurs is because previously the red

2:40:31curb no stopping no parking red red zones came directly to council to approve and to streamline that procedure we did it we returned it to an administrative action that's an internal that was an internal action and now we're turning around for an appeal and charging if if somebody

2:40:54wants to challenge that we're charging them $354 for that appeal and I'm just wondering if that is really excessive for an internal administrative change on the part of the city I'm wondering that's my question was uh was my understanding there was a process during the administrative um

2:41:16procedure that the neighbors had an opportunity for input so I see it a little differently it's not it's only after the decision's been made that this appeal kicks in but they have the opportunity for input prior yeah you're correct on the U the red curve process does include um a lot of

2:41:39interaction with the neighborhood and uh at some point we would probably bring it to council if there was enough controversy and that people voiced their controversy during the process that we would be advertising and noticing people it would just come to council as a staff

2:41:54item wouldn't be an appeal at that point so all the the um the availability and the access to council for no appeal charge is really still in the process we just by streamline we're able to get the ones that aren't controversial and can be worked out at staff level done at staff level they

2:42:14still have access to council through the process we have now if someone were to not be responding to the notices they got or come in after the fact and we take that action only at that time would that appeal charge be assessed okay so the but the let's see the procedure goes to to your position

2:42:36first correct the decision of whether we go with a red curb or not uh rests with with your your jur in your jurisdiction first it's my signature that affects it or we bump it up okay and if somebody has a problem with that they appeal to the city manager at that point or they

2:42:56appeal directly to the council it's it's unlikely that if we had someone who was having so much of a problem that they were going to move up through the chairs that we would probably at that point just not make the decision and slated it for a council meeting okay um at as

2:43:12staff as a staff recommendation so the way I understand this is really for after the fact in other words decisions are made the paint has been put on the curb and then somebody wants to appeal the recent decision then we're asking for $354 right and that brings it in line

2:43:29with the other appeals that fees that are currently in place thank you okay there any other comments or motion I move to adopt a res I move to adopt a resolution uh adopting proposed what there's no revisions sorry wrong one there are no revisions I I move out uh back over here adopt a resolution

2:44:03revising the Master Fee scheduled for fiscal year 200920 second all in favor I I oppose motion carries unanimously it's now thank thank you um for the presentation it's now time for item eight the San Pablo Avenue street skate project construction and construction Management Services

2:44:35award good evening uh mayor and city council my name is Melanie Minon I'm the city's environmental services division manager it's been a little while since we've shown you the streetcape project I think almost two years Believe It or Not Jerry joked Jerry the Public Works

2:44:51director joked that it's he'll be somewhat sad to not have this be an item since it's been s p streetcape has been in his CIP since he began here but at the same time we're happy to be bringing you the almost Final Phase tonight uh the City Public Works director is here

2:45:08to ask for authorization to award construction management and construction contracts and I'm going to provide again a brief background into how this project developed and some of its Design Elements should we get the lights I got so again the driving goals in developing the streetscape program has

2:45:33been to support and catalyze economic development efforts along the Avenue and to improve The Pedestrian environment through access safety and aesthetic improvements the top image which if you have better than me you can see shows a vision for the Avenue in which the existing wide sidewalks are

2:45:50accompanied by landscaping and pedestrian amenities that create a a more interesting intimate and inviting Avenue the bottom image is a transportation diagram which illustrates how the corridor provides multiple Transportation options including rapid bus stops multiple bus lines and bus

2:46:09stops Bart and even connections to the regional aloney Greenway the project was developed to enhance the feeling and usability of this Transportation Rich Corridor and to stimulate Transit oriented mixed use development the prog the program has uh and its multiple projects grew out of

2:46:27several local and Regional policy objectives and goals in the general plan Community design section policy 1.6 calls for improving the major entrances to the city with Landmark entry features signs and gateways to enhance the sense of community and improve the city's

2:46:44image s Pablo is of course the main entrance to the city also in the community design policies in the general plan they call for developing a design concept for San Pablo Avenue that creates an overall coordinated image and character of the street from north to

2:46:58south and for maintaining an active program of street tree planting and improved roadway Landscaping this streetcape program focuses on relatively simple aesthetic and safety enhancements in the public RightWay in a separate effort as you know the San Pablo Avenue

2:47:13specific plan being led by by the Community Development Department addresses private design and potentially more assertive public rideway changes the project also fits into a regional Vision former former assemblywoman Lonnie Hancock's office abag and others had led efforts to

2:47:30Define San Pablo Avenue as a more pedestrian friendly Transit oriented worldclass Boulevard along its length staff hopes that the city's small efforts contribute to that Vision finally the city's Economic Development action strategy completed in 2006 called for cre creating a physical environment

2:47:45and stronger sense of place along the Avenue the Project's final design emerged from two processes one of them took place prior to actually getting the grants for the project and that was in 2004 mostly the green belt Alliance um with other groups sponsored a bus tour

2:48:05along the Avenue during the city's Outreach for the circulation plan for bicy bicyclists and pedestrians priority improvements uh requested by the public by residents of el Sero were improvements along San Pablo Avenue um and the economic development department and Redevelopment agency

2:48:23conducted a revital revitalization internet survey about San Pablo Avenue and some of the ideas for the project came from there once we did get into design we've held SE several open houses and you can see those listed we had an open house in 2006 prior to submitting

2:48:38grants and we held Community meetings in March and June of 2008 and have also in addition to meeting with our own internal staff um had public meetings at the arts and culture commission and the design review board so quickly uh program elements that have already been completed are

2:48:55pretty familiar now in elero but we completed the banner program the signage and way finding uh way finding and identity signage program uh Baxter Creek Park Street Frontage and of course the landscape medians um incidentally uh just yesterday I re or Friday I received

2:49:14notice from um edma that the medians are meeting or exceeding their water water budget goals and are therefore saving over 2 million gallons of water a year in comparison to the turf that was there before so today's contract award will allow the city to complete the largest

2:49:32portion of the streetscape program it will include landscaping and irrigation pedestrian safety and access improvements and pedestrian amenities pedestrian Transit stop and cycling amenities in regards to Street trees um the street in regards to Landscaping the street

2:49:53trees along the Avenue are the unifying element uh the tree species was selected with input from the design review board um it's a London plain tree uh when mature they will provide a good canopy can be limed up high uh to to promote visibility of signage and are easy on

2:50:10sidewalks as well as being drought tolerant they're also the same tree that they have in West Berkeley which many people have expressed that they like and it's one of the elements that we think could unify the whole Avenue from Oakland to Crockett um while each city

2:50:22has its own distinct uh furnishings and other elements um where there's existing Turf on the planting strips on the sidewalk we're going to be removing much of it and replacing it with lower water using plants we will also be installing rainwater Gardens which I'll get into in

2:50:37a moment um that are distinctive educational and provide environmental benefits we'll be building uh new medians two new medians from Carlson to Fairmont and Fairmont to Central and with all of our Landscaping a major goal was maintaining access for people parking along the avenue to the sidewalk

2:50:56and where possible widening the sidewalk by narrowing the planting strip so the rain Gardens we're going to be installing two rain Gardens um south of Eureka and south of Madison the rain Gardens are uh will serve multiple purposes including providing a distinctive landscape

2:51:15cleaning storm water that runs off of San peblo Avenue and intersecting streets and modeling how such a goal can be achieved on an existing roadway while still providing sidewalk access Street trees and access from parked cars like I mentioned uh this illustration shows

2:51:30that the street runoff will enter a series of interconnected Gardens provide a sidewalk strip at the at the curb um and access in between the gardens uh this small component of the project has received many inquiries and attention from agencies involved in storm water

2:51:46and clean [Music] water um the medians the new medians will will generally follow the same Stripes as the existing striped medians um due to the need to provide long left turn uh Pockets we couldn't make them much bigger but you can see these green areas will still provide a Break um from kind

2:52:07of the Sea of asphalt on that part of the road they'll provide a nicer uh Southern entryway and they'll provide some space for landscaping and smaller trees in regards to pedestrian safety and access improvements the key improvements are bulb outs uh to highlight pedestrian activity and

2:52:28shorten Crossing distances enhanced crosswalks at both unsignalized and signalized locations decorative crosswalks at Key Transit uh locations New crosswalks at petero Manila Stockton and Central in pavement flashing crosswalks in two locations at Madison and Lincoln

2:52:50and pedestrian countdown signals which are those signals that tell you how long you have to cross um at every at every at every uh signalized intersection i' just like to interrupt for a moment I'd like to make um a motion to extend the meeting by 10 minutes second all in favor I I just

2:53:16calmed me down so okay sorry for the interruption no problem it was good um the next couple of slides just show a couple of locations of improvements I didn't mention that of course you know that the Avenue is three miles long and since we're talking about both sides of

2:53:33the Avenue it's six miles of improvements um Jerry uses a metaphor that says we're spreading the peanut butter thin um we also expect to see a real transformation along the Avenue so I'm using just a couple key intersections that are representative of various improvements this one is petero and it's

2:53:50one of our most significant changes you can see if you can imagine that intersection currently there's one crosswalk right there we're going to be relocating and reconfiguring that crosswalk to be here it helps with right turn movements so that cars aren't surprised by

2:54:10pedestrians in that location they see them sooner we're also putting a bulb out there and part to signal to cars that might be coming off of I80 to drivers that they're entering a community and they're they're not on the freeway anymore they need to slow down this crosswalk is entirely new there's a

2:54:28rapid bus stop over here this is Denny's on the corner just to orient you this is an entirely new crosswalk and it's um some of the money that came for the grant was definitely too oops to improve whoa um was to improve access to rapid bus stops and to improve improve their

2:54:53visibility at that intersection is one of the at petero is also where we will be I think it's down right there okay let me launch you again you'll see here kind of oops a band um as I click through here we might get to you see those are the white edges of the crosswalk these are little concrete

2:55:22strips and this will be pavers concrete pavers this will be repeated at various intersections along the Avenue it'll be I think at cting petero Carlson moer and one more and this is supposed to both represent that something different has happening here it's transit or a

2:55:39pedestrian node and also it'll be distinctive to uh s peblo Avenue in elero this is Madison across from the post office this is an existing crosswalk but currently that crosswalk is in front of the median we're going to be using that median extending it and in instead using

2:55:58it as a pedestrian Refuge this striped pattern will be repeated at every crosswalk on the Avenue that does not have a stop light there will also be an advanced yield bar you can see it here and here for southbound which protects pedestrians by having the cars stop further back from

2:56:16where they'd be encountering The Pedestrian and signaling to other cars coming up next to them uh so pedestrian Refuge Island at this one key here though is like we will have at Lincoln these will be in pavement flashing crosswalks and they'll be accompanied by um overhead sign that

2:56:31says a pedestrian is in the crosswalk and advanc warning The Pedestrian amenities so there's certain crosswalks where we gave higher treatments like I said at um petero and others that I can get into but there will be certain elements that will be repeated along the length of the

2:56:49avenue on both sides um that'll really create a kind of a coordinated distinctive image as well as clean up the look of the Avenue um at Transit stop at rapid TR bus stops that'll be an additional light um at all rapid bus stops will also have bike racks um and

2:57:07then at all bus stops we have a new dual stream um recycling bin Recycling and trash bin so we be repl reping the the 1970s Cobblestone trash cans that are out there with this new um trash and recycling bin and it'll be like our residential program and that you'll be

2:57:23able to recycle newspaper glass plastic um on the Avenue and newspapers of course a lot of people read newspapers on the way to the bus so it'll be good there'll also be racks installed along the length of the Avenue and uh metal benches will be placed both where there

2:57:38are no benches now at bus stops and we'll replace the existing wood ones uh lastly before I turn it over to Jerry there's a couple other fun elements that'll be included um the project is funding an art component which will be commissioned by the arts and culture commission interpretive

2:57:54Pavers at locations where there's bulb outs with that wider sidewalk in those locations we will have these um interpretive pavers and we have yet to go through a public process to determine what historical and cultural aspects of elero will be depicted in front of the

2:58:09theater there's a special cross uh special sidewalk with stars for uh donors as well as um sparkly texture and there will be Granite seat pads in several locations I think now I'm going to turn it over to Jerry to kind of summarize and to um discuss the next 160 days

2:58:28which is what about how long the project is anticipated to take thank you I'd like to thank Miss mins for dropping back into public works for an evening here and helping me out on this project that she's been so involved with over the last several years um my slideshow just doesn't want

2:58:56to cooperate tonight bear with me fortunately I only have a few more left to go through um as we say the the project is slated to last 160 days least in the contract um we uh the construction will start hopefully in the next month or so and we will work into early 2010 on the

2:59:27construction there is one more element in the overall Street Skate Program Yet to Come which is the illuminated street name signs this has been a pesky little problem that we've been working on for quite some time and U frankly I'm not sure exactly the status but calr is

2:59:43still working with us on whether they can allow us to hang new signs on these Old Poles under the current design standards which are much more stringent than when the polls were put up many many like 45 years ago so we're working on that outside of this specific program

3:00:01is a related project which is the street light replacement project that is coming quite soon we are hopefully I think later this week um mounting another set of test lights that'll be a little brighter than the ones that have been up for several months and if all goes well

3:00:17I think we can um turn around pretty quickly and come back with a recommendation to procure lighting and get that installed so hopefully that will happen in the next few months so that brings us to tonight's action um the first one is a contract for construction management with coal

3:00:37management and Engineering we um sent out a request for prop proposals we got 15 proposals back that's quite a number of interested parties who took the time to put together uh very thorough and complete proposals we narrowed the list down to four interviewed the four on the short

3:00:56list and um coal management engineering Rose to the top uh some of the key features about their firm they they they are familiar with the project they have been managing the design aspect of this for the last year or more and they proposed a project a resident engineer

3:01:14and inspection team that have an exemplary track record uh many of the uh staff members of the team have worked with the city before on various projects in particular the resident engineer has worked with me on some very very challenging projects such as um laying a

3:01:30massive storm drain system across a resident's side yard and behind apartment buildings playgrounds and other larger projects including the medians and the signs you see out there so he has quite a bit experience with us too um he and the other members of the team really have a good ability to work

3:01:50with residents and citizens that is going to be key on this project um someone who's willing to work with the the businesses out there I think is going to be very very important as we go through um the other contract award we brought to you tonight and this is fairly hot off the presses we open bids

3:02:08on Friday I believe you have in front of you the the breakdown of the bids we had four bids the low bid was approximately $2.5 million which is more than a million dollar below our Engineers estimate we knew the engineer estimate was going to be a bit strong they used

3:02:25uh last year's prices tried to factor them down a bit but it was really hard to predict what the bidding climate would be as we tried to finalize this estimate in the last three or four months um I don't think anybody guessed quite that low of a number but U but

3:02:39we're really pleased to see the bids come in low uh golden Bay construction also is a pleasant surprise they they come with very high ratings from various parties we've talked to including coal management who has had the fortune to work with him on some other projects in

3:02:55other jurisdictions um overall the funding for this the the whole program in totality is uh 7 uh where is the number 7.2 million pardon me $7.4 million 2.6 million of that is grant funding and the rest is Redevelopment agency funding so we're very we're very fortunate to be able to Leverage The

3:03:21Redevelopment agency money with some very good grants the grants have been waiting for this particular construction project up until now we've been spending just our own money but um the the federal grants and the clean a grant will go towards this contract we actually had a bit of a um a worry for a

3:03:40moment that the bids came in so low we wouldn't be able to reap all the the grant money but fortunately we will be able to populate those grants quite quite well I believe so excuse me like to move that we extend the meeting in another 10 minutes second all in favor I I okay thank you um with

3:04:00that I'm I'll throw it up in the questions I have the the two recommendations in the agenda bill and the revised resolution you have in front of you tonight for the construction project and I'll entertain any questions you have on any of this before we go I'd like to mention I do have a

3:04:14representative from coal management who's uh stayed with us this whole evening and we'll be happy to answer any questions if you have any there and also he he knows the construction details better than any of us so uh between the the three of us in the room we can

3:04:27probably answer any question thank you very much before we um Carry On I'm wondering if there are any speaker slips speak okay Miss Aon yes um I have a a question about the bus stop areas and um but first of all I want to say how excited I I am that this project is

3:04:44coming to fruition um it's been a long time and a long development process starting back with the visioning days with uh Lonnie Hancock so um this is really very very positive I think for our city uh and it'll really make us um it'll complete this picture of how we present ourselves

3:05:05on the Avenue but the question I had was about the bus stops and I just wanted to make sure that we would be paying attention to access um to the bus from the bus stop area and making sure that the amenities that are added don't interfere with the variety of locations for doors

3:05:26um because now they have three and or four doors possible depending on the particular bus that's coming along um I appreciate that question and we you know I can't say that there won't be a single mistake out there but we did have AC Transit come we sent them the

3:05:43plans we also walked the site with them and they made they were also very explicit about how far back street trees need to be from both for Access as well as for visibility for the the patrons um so the same thing with bike wrecks and benches so everything was reviewed by AC

3:05:59Transit okay thank you very much just had a quick comment uh thank you very much this is is an exciting project I'm particularly happy with the median the new medians going in I know you took them as far south as as possible and I think that will give the uh Avenue a complete look

3:06:27like we've never had before that'll mean we're going from uh City Limits at Richmond to very near the city limits in Albany to complete that and it be nice to have a good complete project so I appreciate that I I I think uh we went by real quick on this one we are saving or have

3:06:48saved $2 million uh 2 million gallons of water over the use by our redesign which exceeds our goal already within the first year and I think you be congratulated for that that is a tremendous um Improvement and uh really meets our goal for uh renewable resources and cons conservation of

3:07:12resources and finally the lights I'm glad we're down on the home stretch it this will be a great uh thing I also uh in the previous information you put out Albany and Richmond are going to be on our coattails on this and that'll really help the whole Avenue become

3:07:30environmentally uh energy efficient so thank you and looking forward to it okay Mr L yes um on the trees can you describe the irrigation that will be used to uh get them go up and going and running I'm certain you took I'm certain with all the input that you have a plan

3:07:48we we have two plans um the partly due to Grant requirements partly due to existing irrigation we're putting um new um irrigation up till about here to about Manila and we're using existing irrigation connections further north further north there were more landscape

3:08:07um in front of Target and in front of across from Del there was landscape agreements where some irrigation already been stubbed out but we will be watering them until they get established and it's um bubbler well it's a combination of bubblers and drip great thank

3:08:20you okay um I just wanted to clarify the diagram you had of the crossing was it that just a section of it was going to be textured of the entire crosswalk or yeah so there's two reasons that we did it that way it it it took us a long time to come up with this and Chris Jerry AET

3:08:38Cal Trans all of us worked on this um and that would be the dark line you see just the dark line so it's I think it's a two foot band do you recall a total three foot total of three feet including the outside we looked at things you may have seen in downtown Chinatown there's

3:08:52uh in Downtown Oakland in Chinatown there's um a material it's called imprint um we looked at various things but because of our high average daily traffic out here we were scared of everything from a maintenance standpoint and a durability um we you might see on

3:09:05Schmid Lane we've started to sample some of them to see if they could be able to work in other environments the other issue was because it's a state highway and in terms of not wanting to close the lanes for curing time we couldn't do the whole crosswalk also for accessibility

3:09:20issues um pavers aren't necessarily de desirable since they're not smooth so we came up with this because it can be plated so that we don't actually have to close the lanes they can cure they can be protected um and we still thought that it provided some of that

3:09:32distinctiveness without actually creating some of the accessibility concerns okay thank you and just thank you for all of your work on on all of this from the top to bottom it's really really exciting to see it come to this point and it's going to be a I I think

3:09:48it'll be make a really huge dramatic impact and hopefully get those developers to come knocking on our doors a little faster thanks okay any other comments I move a resolution uh of the city council awarding a consultant Services contract to Coal management and Engineering for

3:10:10construction Management Services on S Pavo Avenue streetscape in the amount of $35,500 second all favor I oppos motion carries did I get that right no I did not I apologize that was $355,000 I I look down quickly money it's too late that's why we encourage our meetings 10 to 10:30 yeah exactly

3:10:39but there's also part two there is part two doing two motions so do you want to revise that yes I would like to revise that one if I may in the amount of 355,000 to perform construction management services and a change orders uh not to exceed in the amount of 35,500 okay second second all in favor I

3:10:59I opposed okay motion carries another motion move to re um to approve to adopt a resolution approving plans accept bids authorizing the city manager to execute a contract within an amount of approximately 3,667 for construction of the San Pablo Avenue street skates Improvement spec

3:11:26specific award uh maybe I should revise that um let me do this let me start over uh recommend uh adoption of a resolution approving plans accepting bids authorizing the city manager to execute Ute a contract in the amount of of 200 uh 2,596 one45 from Golden Bay Construction Inc

3:11:55and authorizing the city manager to approve change orders not to exceed 10% of the contract amount second all in favor I oppos okay the motion carries and that completes our deliberations on item eight so thank you everyone and um I will invite a very brief Council leaz

3:12:15on reports as we have a few minutes before we go into close session on the theater item have a couple of items okay um there was first of all um witech had a board retreat on May 9th um and we um discussed you know how we thought we were doing and some ideas came up about further ways that we might

3:12:38raise funds for transportation in the future and one of those ideas was that um Wick Tac be uh changed in structure to maybe a j a um um like a nonprofit organization or that there be a nonprofit arm arm excuse me or that we form a special district so that we would be able to actually um

3:13:04directly tax um just as a city is able to put a tax on the ballot we would be able to do that too or like AC Transit um we didn't really decide what we thought was a good idea but we did discuss it quite a bit and um what our challenges were and and so forth um and

3:13:24it was a a chance to kind of get to know each other a little bit better than we usually do um the other thing I wanted to talk about was the Environmental Quality committee which I'm very proud of uh we have had just an increasing attendance at our committee and it's um not the

3:13:42usual sort of attendance uh where people have concerns and express them everybody's kind of involved in the process um so it's kind of different than most of our boards and commissions and committees so everybody's you know there's an item being discussed and everybody's talking about that item uh

3:14:00somewhat a little more interactively than we usually do and so it's it's a lot of fun uh going to those meetings and and just seeing the level of interest that there is in that topic in our city um we also um have a number of people who are interested in joining the

3:14:18committee from that audience and um what they're asked to do if they have an interest is to stand up and say why they have an interest and why they think they would be good for the committee and then if they come enough times then they'll be considered if as you know as long as

3:14:33they're still opening so that's very exciting um the other thing that's happening at the committee meetings are that the group is divided up into subcommittees on a variety of topics as I've said before and we have so we have committee reports so that's kind of how

3:14:52uh the group is uh operating these days in the interest of time I won't go into the subcommittee reports but um I just wanted you to know how well I think the committee is operating so thank you thank you Mr lman yes two quick reports one crime prevention committee um we had

3:15:09a discussion about uh background checks and it was discussed that fingerprinting would be added to the background checks and we will get that brought forward to us uh here in the near future um and the financial Advisory Board uh two items from them they of course are reviewing

3:15:25the budget they had a preliminary meeting uh on the 5th and they will have another meeting tomorrow on their meeting on the 5th they had an agenda item uh where they did discuss and took public testimony regarding the calers uh 2-year buyout that was uh on our agenda

3:15:42before and um they will be probably making a recommendation that we'll see during the budget thanks um the the last meeting of the design review board was to review the the Hatland center for the blind project and um overall you know the the main comments were focused on how to make the the

3:16:05project better um more um I guess transparent to the the greenway and making sure that the connections exist um and other than that the economic development board I wasn't able to make because I went to the the uh Safeway meeting uh at Target and so um and so yeah that's okay and just

3:16:31quickly I want to report that council members abelon and Jones and I attended the um contra cost County mayor's conference where we heard the state controller John Chang speak about the state budget and there was no good news so with that I'm going to adjourn this

3:16:45portion of the meeting and we'll be meeting in Clos session on the Sero theater thank you