Concurrent City Council and Redevelopment Agency Meeting February 1, 2010

0:03:51Bill City Council we will start with roll call council member Jones here councilmember Potter here councilmember Lyman president mayor potem Chang here and mayor Abelson here thank you all for coming as I said before and um we will now go to the Pledge of Allegiance and it will be led by council

0:04:22member Potter please join me to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all the next item on the agenda is staff and Council Communications are there any Council Communications

0:04:53I'm going to say that yesterday council members Potter myself and mayor Abelson attended a presentation by the Berkeley opera on their upcoming season and we were treated to three performances from their three Hoppers that are coming up the first one is and I don't have my

0:05:17paperwork from I know I saw it out in the lobby and I meant to grab it the first one's actually in February uh it's three nights it's a Saturday night a Friday night and a Sunday night and I believe those are the 22nd 20 29th and first or something to that effect and I strongly recommend that you

0:05:37go it's about 55 dollars by 65 for tickets at the door 55 if you buy a season ticket um and it the performances were very professional and and enjoyable anything else no that's it I just wanted to say I'm sorry I wasn't at the crap feed with the uh the police but I just wanted to comment that I I

0:06:06think it's something special that the police officers and Personnel not only came up with a request to expand their service and in this case a non-lethal way of conducting business but also they were willing to raise money for the seed seed money to put that program together

0:06:26I thought that was commendable thank you very much I have several announcements first I want to announce that I attended a seminar and this is under the ab1234 requirement that I'm announcing this called rebuilding the American a dream and it was on the state of the

0:06:50economy in the Bay Area on Tuesday January 26th at the MTC Auditorium anyway it was very informative and um I thought I would just sort of go over one of the presentations that I think probably is the of most interest uh to everyone and talking about the recession

0:07:11it said that it may well be over but the toll has been horrific employment continues to fall in unemployment to grow and the recovery will likely be very slow as unemployment unemployed workers try to find jobs and at the same time consumers struggle to get their finances in order and

0:07:37what one of the things to be concerned about is that there may be a another wave of less than Prime adjustable rate mortgages which will occur sometime between now and 2012.

0:07:54um on the brighter side when that certainly wasn't very bright um they um gave us a list of the communities that had low foreclosure rates in 2009 and El Cerrito was on that list which is very and this is a list of the entire Bay Area which is nine counties and we

0:08:16had 24 foreclosures and um at a which is a rate of 3.2 per thousand homes so we're actually doing very well in that market which is something we've been noticing all along and may speak to the type of housing that we have and um the type of building that we've been

0:08:39doing so that that part of it was really good news the program itself was extremely informative I also wanted to mention that we're going to have and now I'm speaking about the city of El Cerrito environmental services division is going to have a free um recycling center special collection

0:09:02event for fluorescent bulbs and tubes medicines needles and thermometers and that's going to be held later this month on February the 27th from 9 A.M until 12 p.m at the recycling center at 7501 Schmidt Lane later on in June we'll have a free electronic waste and clothing collection

0:09:25event on June the 5th and 6th and if you want more information you can go on to our City website um and with that we'll go on to the next agenda item s thank you after we see if there are any staff reports good evening council members and mayor Abelson my name is Maria Sanders and I'm

0:09:57an analyst with the Environmental Services Division and back in September we sent you a weekly announcing that we had successfully applied for an EPA climate showcase Grant Community Grant and uh today we'd like to report that we received official notification um that the award was finalized and that

0:10:16we can now begin working on the grant um within the month we'll be coming to council with more details on the grant um but we wanted to give you a heads up since the EPA is planning several events this month announcing the awardees under this program uh El Cerrito will be a

0:10:33lead on the Grant and we will be and it will provide El Cerrito with about a hundred and twenty thousand dollars to pursue our climate action planning and our Energy Efficiency projects and it will also provide another 380 000 for us to provide leadership in working with a

0:10:52regional collaboration with other small communities in the area namely Albany Piedmont and San Pablo and this will help us leverage and develop Community greenhouse gas reduction activities that can be rolled out in communities small communities such as ours this was a

0:11:10fairly competitive Grant only 25 communities out of 400 uh EPA headquarters will be announcing these winners this Thursday the fourth in Seattle at their annual smart growth conference and then sometime later this month it hasn't been determined yet EPA region 9 will be announcing the four

0:11:34winners that um uh were awarded in the western region this will probably take place in Sacramento and we will be inviting council members to attend if they can so we'll give you um uh details more details as they get finalized so to keep you informed thank you very much

0:11:52thank you and I would like to point out that that Grant is very much the work of Maria I believe you prepared that yeah yourself and thank you very much for your the excellent job that you did in preparing that Grant and um I've been doing it since your recent uh you haven't actually even been here

0:12:14that long and so it's really exciting that you've been able to accomplish that much thanks so thank you very much okay and I think that deserves a round of applause [Applause] um just before this meeting we had a special meeting of the council where we did an interview

0:12:36for the arts and culture commission and so I would like to announce that we have appointed and in fact reappointed Nancy Donovan to that Commission thank you the next item on the agenda is oral Communications from the public which is an opportunity for members of

0:12:54the public to speak on items that are not on the agenda if you're interested in doing so and haven't yet filled out a speaker slip you can obtain one front up from up on in the front and um so do we have any speaker slips yes we have several the first is Philip

0:13:15Zimmerman the council has allotted three minutes per speaker and there's a little speaker display up here at the presentation table for you good evening ladies and gentlemen council members I'm Phillip Zimmerman long time El Cerrito property owner volunteer at Camp perms and with troop

0:13:36100 I reside in Kensington I hope you will help me protect Camp herm's trees they are all our trees because they help make the city more beautiful if T-Mobile's application to build a cell tower at Camp Herms is approved it seems case that could Shield it from public view would be more

0:13:55important than ever trees that would I say I am angry about the duplicity I am about to tell you about quote we will not cut any trees unquote said Jeff Leonard T-Mobile representative when a Planning Commission member questioned him about cutting trees he made a similar statement at the last

0:14:17design review board hearing then when board member Razia Lowe I believe asked him why they couldn't move the cell tower further back among the trees he replied quote the wavelengths we use are about the same size as pine needles so trees cause interference unquote

0:14:37at about that time the Boy Scouts held a meeting for Neighbors at Camp Herms I asked him basically the same question that I had heard others ask but in a different way and I got a far different answer I first noted that I understood from my web research that cell tower

0:14:54companies try to include in their lease with the property owner that the owner agrees to remove any source of interference with the cell towers operation from his property then I read the following and handed it I handed a copy of it to Mr leanert quote the visual screening effect of

0:15:13trees growing within 500 feet of the T-Mobile monopole cell installation will take precedence over considerations of their possible interference with Communications trees are not to be cut or removed to reduce interference unquote and I asked him can you work with this

0:15:34his answer was I don't know he had as much as told me that in any an anti-interference Clause was indeed intended for the least T-Mobile hopes to make with the Boy Scouts and that T-Mobile intends to exercise it to compel the Boy Scouts to cut any trees that the cell company cares to finger

0:15:57for destruction or a severe haircut the trees they will most want to have cut are the very trees that will be the most effective at hiding their Tower from public view particularly from the vicinity of Arlington Park they are the ones between the parks and tennis and most of their customers

0:16:17I believe condition 8 in the use permit the planner's proposed was composed by the City attorney to deal with tree cutting issues it is a paper tiger it has no teeth it would not protect our trees please replace its language with mine Camp perms is zoned PR Parks and

0:16:40Recreation to allow a cell tower there is awful or we do allow the company to Savage our trees in this Zone too the chairman of the Planning Commission alluded to T-Mobile's failure to follow through on promises they made the city regarding their last installation where

0:17:00are you going to draw the line with these people thank you very much for your patience and for your service thank you Alan Stanek good evening Madam mayor members of the council my name is Alan Stanek I'm a resident of El Cerrito I too am a adult leader with troop 100 I'm a frequenter

0:17:23of Camp Herms by profession I'm a senior IIT architect I'm employed by PG e my area of focus is mobile Computing and Wireless Communications although I'm not an expert in the distribution side of cellular antennas or cellular towers I do understand through the projects that I manage the

0:17:41consumption I understand the need to have coverage and the capacity there are two things that I noted particularly that are missing from the discussion as we've heard it today in regards to T-Mobile and the tower they planted Herms first is there's only one solution

0:18:01that's been under discussion it is only one set of experts that have been presenting and those are the people of T-Mobile I understand that's the nature of our process the second item that's clearly missing is a capacity plan for the future they've drawn a one-to-one correlation

0:18:18between customer demand and cell towers they also state that the demand for capacity is absolutely skyrocketing if we take them at their word what we really have then is the need to replace a skyrocketing number of cell towers to meet the skyrocketing demand the use bit the use permit process

0:18:45in its nature makes us reactive someone goes for ausement permit they present their plans they bring about their experts it leaves the city council and the City Department trying to catch up make sure they understand the pieces it leaves the General Public trying to catch up to figure out what's

0:19:05going on I would like to see a more proactive approach on how we're doing this there's three things that I'd like to ask of the council the first is that they engage a professional consultant to receive advice on a municipal scale Communications system to bring about a greater understanding

0:19:25of the current technology where the industry is headed and what's realistic today and what will be unrealistic very shortly if we keep down the same road the second thing that I'm asking for is a multi-year plan to address the citizens needs for greater wireless

0:19:45network capacity the planting of more Towers isn't going to meet that plan there's going to have to be some other solution at some point anyway let's get there ahead of the Curve building this plan would be the hired expert the city planning design legal departments industry leaders T-Mobile

0:20:09Verizon bring everyone in citizens review as well such a plan provides a predictable framework for both the service providers and the citizens it facilitates the entry of new companies and greater competition it facilitates Greater services to the citizens of El Cerrito and it might free

0:20:32up some time here if the process were running a little smoothly and we could clear a few hurdles a little quicker the last and third thing that I would ask is a 12-month moratorium on the construction of towers to allow for the building of this comprehensive plan that

0:20:50will not only meet today's needs but will carry us somewhere into the future with some level of sanity thank you Pam Bennett hi my name is Pam Bennett I'm a Boy Scout Troop 104 advancement chair president of the El Cerrito High School mountain biking Club 8th grade committee

0:21:24chair for Portola Junior High parent and committee community advocate for our neighbors around Camp arms we want to make the city council aware of the opposition to the 77-foot cell phone tower at Camp earns Boy Scout camp above Arlington Park from many of the community and Neighbors in the area this

0:21:43Tower is too close to Residents Arlington Park with infants young kids and families as well as City day camps and on top of the Boy Scouts that camp do training and hold day camps as well we know you cannot take into account health concerns but I have talked to

0:22:00seven industry Consultants two lawyers and two experts in the area of radio frequency electromagnetic radiation is recommended to be a thousand to thirteen hundred feet from these towers for place for places with children such as schools parks and residents the International

0:22:15Association of firefighters banned cell towers from their sites quote until a study with the highest scientific Merit and integrity on health effects of exposure to low frequency RF radiation is conducted and is proven that such sighting are not hazardous to the health

0:22:32of our members how can they protect how can they protect themselves from adverse effects they saw from a tower built on their site and they had it removed but as a city we can't we will we can't take charge studies show from the appraisal Institute which is the largest global

0:22:50professional membership Organization for appraisers a decrease in property values and proximity to cell towers and Associated decrease in property tax will the city T-Mobile or Scouts compensate for property losses value losses for the residents if the city passes

0:23:08a plastic fake tree will be prominent above Arlington Park our most popular Park in El Cerrito and used by communities around us just does not fit into our community while El Cerrito is moving to a green City and environment cell towers next to the children is counter to this goal

0:23:24zoning sites cell antennas should be co-located and we already have a T-Mobile site at Mosher in Arlington less than a half mile away test of T-Mobile phones showed that the area's T-Mobile cited as low or no service on their submitted plans to the city in fact had full four bars coverage so what

0:23:43is the benefit to El Cerrito would we accept oil rig digging every quarter mile if El Cerrito had oil have we looked at alternative Technologies then to put cell tellers draped across our city what are the setbacks that El Cerrito will require for cell towers does the

0:24:02city want to set appropriate sites away from children residents for example on The Ridges to maintain the siding of cell towers or halves Towers appear anywhere the cell industry approaches for payment do we want it to be a city of cell towers and power lines versus a

0:24:18city or a green city with a safe environment for a community Albany and Richmond have more stringent zoning on cell tower sightings in El Cerrito why would cell towers be exempt from sequa an environmental impact study as this one is is it too small in size do we

0:24:34consider a 77 foot Tower small when considered the height of the size I asked the city council to look at this Tower proposal and how it provides no value to the city of El Cerrito no cell reception Improvement does not allow co-location or provide a need for the

0:24:52residents does not fit into the direction or a healthier Green City and will imp will impact property values and the quality of our city I asked the city to be proactive in planning and not reactive to individual requests from the cell tower industry and decline this

0:25:08request you need to wrap up that's it thank you thank you very much Rochelle Silverman hi um this is very spontaneous for me to come down here and I've been thinking about the I'm against the cell tower I live right down the street at [address removed] and we've been in this

0:25:30community for 10 years and it just saddens me that this is something that we even have to discuss I'd like the city to see how close the Tower actually can be from our homes from The Parks from our children from our pets I know we can't talk about the health issues but it's it seems it's

0:25:48pretty apparent that there are some and there can be some I've had cancer I don't want cancer again I don't want the cell tower near my children and friends and neighbors um and I just hope you would at least look into how close the cell towers can be from our homes

0:26:06I looked at some of the visuals online and I've seen these cell towers and they don't look like trees they clearly look like cell towers as as many fake limbs that you're going to put on them that is still going to be a cell tower it is still still going to be an

0:26:21eyesore and I just I think it's something that everyone needs to be really serious about considering thank you Catherine Fletcher hi my name is Catherine Fletcher thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak to you I'm an isotope geocronologist by training but when I

0:26:44heard that there was a cell phone tower which was proposed to go in here and El Cerrito I became interested in the effects on property value and I've done a little bit of research and I just wanted to present a summary of the research that I have done on property

0:26:59value in particular I'm going to talk about a study that was performed in New Zealand and they looked at suburbs which had these large cell phone towers installed and there were two types of data which were considered first of all a survey which went out to Residents just all

0:27:17over the city and we're talking about Auckland and Christchurch here so they're large Metropolitan metropolitan areas which is similar to El Cerrito and the second type of data is actual sales data looking at property values before and after a cell phone tower went

0:27:34in so um I guess I'll start by talking about the um the survey data and what they found was a very very large percentage of people were prepared to pay substantially less for property once a cell phone tower was installed nearby and when we say nearby we're talking

0:27:54about within a suburb and in these areas in New Zealand suburbs are typically in the low tens of thousands of people so 10 to 30 000 people and we're talking about perhaps a few square kilometers geographic regions so an area which is perhaps you know half the size of El

0:28:11Cerrito uh so 83 of respondents said they would pay less for a property if a cell phone tower was in close proximity and 48 so almost half of those people said they'll pay substantially less for a property and um using this survey technique the researchers found an average um of 10 to

0:28:3419 reduction in the property value of homes which were near and when I say near I mean you know half of El Cerrito um near a cell phone tower and the second type of data was actual sales data and in these cases the researchers looked at the property values before and

0:28:55after cell phone installation Tower installation and they compared it to control groups so areas where there was no cell phone tower so basically comparing against Market values of the rest of the city and using this technique they found that there was an actual decrease in property

0:29:15value of 21 percent 21 and we're talking about areas which are about half the size of El Cerrito so what we're talking about here is we put a cell phone tower in about half of the city is going to have a reduction in property value which I think is is substantial and is worth considering

0:29:38and I'd just like to add it I know that we're not talking about health effects in this case um because of the law however um the the biggest reason the researchers found for the reduction in property Health property value was the perception of health risks and so this is public opinion this is

0:29:59what people kind of feel based on you know everything they know from the media from what their friends say people believe that cell phone towers they have the perception that they're going to harm their health over the long term and so I think perhaps that societal

0:30:17impact the perception of Health impacts is is something that's that's worth thinking about thank you thanks Michael De May I'm Michael Demay and I've been a long time IL Cerrito resident probably close to 40 years um I live right next to Camp Herms I am probably the closest house to this

0:30:52proposed cell tower I would be able to see this thing every day when I pull into my house I would be able to see it from my deck as I look at my view of San Francisco there it will be I have a home office I look out my window there it will be I am the one person is going to be the

0:31:16most impacted by this because I will see it every single day of life also the cell tower being where it's located I don't know if you're familiar but behind Camp Herms is Wildcat Canyon so half of the coverage that they're claiming is for wilderness so I'm not sure how this is really going

0:31:38to improve Excel coverage in El Cerrito when the other cell tower is on Moser about 3 8 of a mile away from this current location you've heard about property values up in that part of El Cerrito is probably one of the areas that had the most expensive homes and it is a perception is it true or not

0:32:06true about the health concerns there are studies all over Europe that say that there are so when I go to sell my house and somebody I have to disclose that there's a cell tower within 300 feet of my home what is that going to do to my my value and who's going to compensate me for

0:32:25that it's not going to be T-Mobile it's not going to be the city of El Cerrito though it might be because in New Mexico cities are being sued for allowing cell towers near schools near parks and other populated areas because the health concerns here are not known

0:32:46and just because they're not known doesn't mean that it's safe don't forget our own federal government took decades to tell us that cigarettes were bad for us decades there has not been any long-term study in the United States about the cell tower effect also it goes against to what camp Herms

0:33:07is about it's a gathering it's a force for Boy Scouts and all of that and you're going to have this monstrosity of bright green fake tree and it does not fit in the neighborhood so I really urge you to not allow a cell tower in Camp Herms it's not the proper location

0:33:30I'm gonna have to see this thing every day of life it's going to affect our property values and also if you're not aware through these leases T-Mobile will wipe their hands of any liability so if there's a lightning strike that hits this cell tower that starts a fire with all the trees

0:33:50Camp Herms is liable for this which then they'll go to the next deepest Pockets which may be the city of El Cerrito for allowing this so I urge you to please study this carefully and don't allow a cell tower at this particular location thank you Denise Sangster

0:34:16foreign good evening um just quickly on the cell towers um it's interesting that it's T-Mobile limited liability corporations that's filed for the application not T-Mobile Augie which is the company with the Deep Pockets they have addressed this issue in Europe and in Germany in the Alps

0:34:37outside of Munich where they do have less offensive Solutions and I would think that T-Mobile Aggies should be approached and those Solutions should be implemented here in Switzerland and Austria they've also forced a more appropriate and more human type standards which have reduced the

0:34:54concerns there have been brain cancers reported five of the top high-tech execs are all dead in Europe from brain cancer and I'm sure Microsoft would not like to talk about their normal head their former president of Europe that's dead from brain cancer but HP has one Intel

0:35:09has one they all have them so it's a huge problem and it's something that you have to look at um on a different issue I will not be here at the mid February I will not be in town for the mid-February council meeting um I don't know if the city is still intending to declare a fiscal emergency

0:35:26but in the event you are I would like my voice to be heard on this I'm very distressed that you would be considered that you would be considering it in order to place a half to a quarter Cent general sales tax on the June ballot I've listened to the discussion since

0:35:43August as a City personnel moved this issue from concept to final consideration at the late December council meeting in an advisory opinion the City attorney on two items said number one that the legal definition of a fiscal emergency is ambigua ambigu ambiguous at best and second a

0:36:01declaration of a fiscal emergency in February would allow the city to place the general sales tax issue on the June ballot when no council person would be running for election as a residence in El Cerrito already are in the third highest general sales tax bracket in the state of California which

0:36:17is 9.75 percent there's just no justification for El Cerrito to be the only city north of Magic Mountain to pierce the 10 sales tax bracket which I believe will result in a negative image for the city affect our property values and cause people to just simply stop

0:36:33shopping here and just shop over the Border in Albany or some other place so it begs the question as to why we would be possibly considering declaring a fiscal emergency we all know that money is tight and that the two C's confidence and credit are soft with few bright

0:36:48spots in the recovery with that as the backdrop the city clearly has a spending and escalating employee compensation emergency that needs to be addressed in order to stop a spiral spiraling out of control and unsustainable problem Willie Brown in his column in the San

0:37:05Francisco Chronicle on January 3rd said that quote the deal used to be that civil servants were paid less than private sector but we politicians gradually expanded pay and benefits to private sector levels and layered on incredibly generous retirement packages that pay ex-employees workers almost the

0:37:22same as current workers unquote Willie Brown also added that quote talking about this is politically unpopular and potentially even career suicide for most office holders unquote he concluded his column by saying quote either we do something about it or a judge will do

0:37:39something about it in bankruptcy court Willie is Right preserving the status quo in this city is simply postponing the inevitable we clearly need to have a spending and escalation of employees compensation brought to a halt it's not a fiscal emergency we have a spending

0:37:56and escalating employee compensation emergency the lack of hard decisions to curtail this cumulative spending and compensation is jeopardizing the financial well-being of the city and putting jobs and retirements of the city's valued employees at risk you need to wrap up the city needs to act now by

0:38:13reforming what happens in El Cerrito by not borrowing from reserves or asking voters to pay an even higher tax rate in order to balance the budget thank you very much thank you no other speakers either no other speakers um as I understand it this item is not currently before the city council

0:38:34and we'll the I'm talking about the cell tower issue um and it will be before the Planning Commission in March is that correct okay thank you so now we're going to move on to the next item on the agenda which is item number four presentations and it's an annual report to the city council

0:38:57um on this I'll let you explain you'll give the report yes thank you good evening mayor Abelson and council members uh my name is Alan Miller and as chair of the El Cerrito citizens Street oversight committee I'm pleased to present our required annual report to

0:39:19you and the citizens of El Cerrito the committee consisting of myself Vice chair Lynn Kessler Thomas Miller who was no relation to me or him I mean I'm not to him and Elizabeth oselshuk met Monday night January 25th with Public Works director Jerry Bradshaw and

0:39:40finance director Mary Dodge and uh Miss Amy Meyer a partner of the city's audit for amazing Associates was also present to help at this meeting in our September meeting the committee reviewed the measure a receipts from the state and various invoices from the street contractors on

0:40:01the approved project list to satisfy ourselves that all receipts and expenditures met the measure a requirements and were properly accounted for with Ms Meyer's help we also reviewed a draft version of the Mason associate report independent accountants agreed upon

0:40:20procedures report for the city of El Cerrito Master installment sale agreement compliance with Bond covenants for the 2008 sales tax revenue bonds that's actually the title after these reviews were completed and all of our questions were answered by staff by unanimous vote the committee found

0:40:41that the expenditures were an appropriate use of the pothole and local Street Improvement and maintenance transactions and use tax the committee is hereby reporting their findings to the city council and the citizens of the city of El Cerrito pursuant to section

0:41:002.04.320 c of the El Cerrito municipal code and we don't even have legal advice when we do that the committee would again like to acknowledge and commend Jerry Bradshaw and Mary Dodge for their expertise their patience and willingness to thoroughly answer all our questions we would also

0:41:21like to thank Miss Meyer for her help and participation a meaningful review by citizens of things as complicated as this in the financial aspects of the city street Improvement projects would not be possible without their efforts our next meeting is on the fourth Monday

0:41:39of September of September 27th having the current vacancy on our committee filled by then will be very helpful so um I'll try to answer any questions that you might have thank you thank you well I was just going to say thanks for everybody to for taking that serious approach and

0:42:02reviewing the uh the report it doesn't surprise me that our staff has been on top of this because they have but it's good to get it verified obviously and to take any suggestions you may have so that on your next report could be the same way so thank you very much

0:42:20I want to thank you Mr Miller for your service and Mr Bradshaw how great the streets look out there and I get a lot of feedback and especially all the work on Mosier it's really helped improve safety thank you I'll join in the thanks okay with that we'll move on to item

0:42:44number five adoption of the consent calendar move approval of the consent calendar items 5A through 5D second any comments all in favor please say aye aye any opposition extension motion carries unanimously I'd like to note that item 5D was the Commendation to officer John

0:43:09Mullica who I rode with a National Night Out last year and a motorcycle officer well deserving of this note of notice and he will be recognized at the Richmond Elks Lodge I think that's next Wednesday the 10th of February I just had another comment on 5c since Mr Miller's here uh if everything goes

0:43:31right your committee will have another Grant to watch over uh on the street oversight but it does point out that staff continues to work and leverage that measure a money for more streets in town and it's been through grants and their uh their work that the original plan was to have

0:43:52about 75 percent of the streets treated that's now well close to 90 is my understanding or this would put us over probably 90 percent and we're doing it uh we're on track to do it in less time a year a year sooner so thank you for everybody involved thank you okay with that there is no

0:44:16public hearing item so there's no item number six we'll move on to policy matters item number seven and the first one 7A is design build delivery method for the recycling center greetings mayor Abelson and council members my name is Melanie Mintz and I'm the city's environmental services

0:44:38division manager I'm excited to be here tonight to reinitiate the city's recycling center construction project and specifically here to requested the council adopt a resolution proving the use of the design build project delivery method for a design and construction of this project

0:44:57as you can see in the staff report the state in late 2008 authorized cities to utilize design build method and the alternative project delivery method called design build for projects exceeding one million dollars design build is essentially a process by which the city would find a qualified

0:45:16team to design and construct the project for a price that we specify this differs from the design the traditional project delivery method called design bid build in which the city first contracts with a design firm who designs the project with some cost estimates and then puts that

0:45:35out to bid by after which the city would then award the contract to the lowest bidder hoping that that project met the price specifications and Engineers estimates in the design build method again like I said it's a One-Stop shop we actually will specify the price we'll

0:45:51specify the qualifications of the team we want and we'll do a good project description kind of the easiest way to think about it is we're really looking for the best qualified team to that that works best with us and will deliver us our project as we describe it

0:46:05our next steps are to hierarchy if if approved tonight to use the design build method our next steps will be to develop a request for proposals which um is kind of becomes the contract for the project we described the project we described the price and then we get

0:46:20responses from disqualified design build firms um we'll shortlist those firms we'll request proposals from them and the team that we find the best qualified would be the one that we would recommend award so next time we would come to council we would have a complete project

0:46:33description and we would have a recommended team as you can see in the agenda Bill some of the benefits of using the design build method are that you have price certainty as I mentioned you actually stipulate the price you have a less adversarial relationship between your

0:46:49phase one which is your designer and your phase two year contractor because they're all one team which enables in an integrated design process in which decisions can be made on in an ongoing fashion that both save money and in our case incorporate as many green features

0:47:02as possible into the project um again because it's one team it's a faster project delivery method and because it's less adversarial the city needs less technical staff and we can actually participate in the team more as a as a player with everyone else um so that's my staff report I'm going

0:47:21to keep it short so if you have any questions I'd be happy to answer those maybe this is one for staff and I'm sorry I meant to call today but I just couldn't um so we have dedicated or earmarked funding for this project what's the current balance on that fund roughly

0:47:41roughly roughly we're looking at about a three million dollar project and it's um will be financed and it will be out of the not out of the general fund but out of our recycling center Integrated Waste Management fund we'll be coming back to you with the um when we recommend award

0:47:58is when we will also present a financing package and and what's the balance in that account right now roughly what is our fund balances somebody has that it was at one time 1.5 I was gonna say 1.5 million is our annual budget and we strive to maintain about a 10 to

0:48:1615 percent [Music] um Reserve no I meant for the the building of the center itself recycling if I could jump in there it was never assumed that the it would be pay as you go that it was assumed when in the rate model that the centered construction would be financed

0:48:35so there's no there was never a plan to try to pre-fund it so I think the balance is essentially sort of a working balance for the operating fund which is I last I think we looked at it was sort of 10 to 10 or so it's probably a little bigger because it's accumulating in the

0:48:52recycling Center's been delayed correct but again it wasn't there was no attempt to try to save money to pay for it it was always assumed it would be financed okay thank you it's my understanding that SQL will be addressed our next opportunity um and and you'll have a full report on

0:49:16SQL at that point or at least give us a plan for the sequel at that point yeah I could tell you the plan now be um we won't you can't do the SQL analysis until you actually have the project pretty well designed so at your next the next time I come to you will be

0:49:31asking for you to award contract to the design build team then when that team gets on part of their contract will be to do the initial study um for sqa and then we will go to the Planning Commission for them to actually approve the environmental document thank you

0:49:47okay so the team will uh prepare a secret document or find a subcontractor is that how that works and then the city would be response staff would um you know evaluate it and then bring it to the Planning Commission for certification or approval thank you are there any public speakers

0:50:03there are no public speakers on this item um are we ready for a vote sure you want discussion or is there a need I'm asking yeah well I think for the record I think I'd like to point out that also this is a competitive process we have to follow state regulations and providing a competitive

0:50:24process so this is also a best value criteria that we can pick a team for for Best Value based on some criteria we don't necessarily have to take the low bid but we do it does have to be competitive and it does have to we do have to make findings that it is follows the best value type of

0:50:47procedure and council member Jones if I add 50 of those criteria are kind of cost-based quantitative criteria correct and the best value competition but then you can also um look at more subjective criteria such as Vision experience with Green Building technical expertise but um so it's so

0:51:05it's best value which includes um a cost competition but it's not specifically only lowest Bill correct yeah it's not low bid we can we can assess a value that we're getting and quality of the design build team exactly so I've got one editorial comment did did we do we need to in our motion make

0:51:28a revision to the typo that was in the where at first whereas Clause thank you [Music] I think you've changed the first um the first whereas in the resolution um there was a zero missing so it is um that you're allowed to do this with projects exceeding one million dollars

0:51:49and that will be amended before it's brought to the mayor with that I would move a resolution of the city of El Cerrito approving use of the design build project delivery method authorized by California public contractor code section [Music] 20175.2 for the recycling center

0:52:07Environmental Services Division project for a second second okay any further comments all in favor aye in the opposition or abstentions emotion carries unanimously with that we will move on to 7B Del Norte Transit oriented development strategy good evening agency chair Potter and

0:53:01board members I'm Lori Trevino Redevelopment manager and we are here this evening with a study session on Transit oriented development which I'm going to refer to as Tod around the Del Norte BART station joining us this evening are Nadine Fogerty who is a principal of at the

0:53:19urban economics firm strategic economics and Jeffrey tumlin who is a principal at the transportation planning firm Nelson Nygaard both of them and their firms are highly regarded by those in the Tod field and the study session is an excellent opportunity for us to take

0:53:35advantage of their expertise as you recall at the November study session on the San Pablo Avenue specific plan you provided direction for us to return prior to the adoption of the specific plan with a session on Tod at Del Norte tonight we're going to focus on parking circulation and development

0:53:52economics and how we could initiate a developer solicitation should the board wish to pursue Tod at Del Norte the results of the initial phase of a TOD strategy would suggest tools that would be available to the agency in that effort I realized that the handout you received

0:54:08with your packet is very long and we sent it in advance so that you could preview some of those issues and ideas and also so we might not have to go through as much detail tonight should you want any more detail there will be opportunities for question and answer

0:54:21after each presentation so what is a TOD strategy a TOD strategy would address ways of encouraging development around the Del Norte BART station that would make it a more livable place by integrating housing retail jobs and Transit access within a walkable area the strategy would focus

0:54:40on ways to add housing units retail and jobs improve station access and circulation and manage parking it would outline the necessary stakeholder relationships design and policies and standards and entitlement processes project marketing phasing implementation um for at this point we're considering

0:54:59the area to be part of a strategy to be the area between not a Potrero Avenues and Key Boulevard and I-80 though it may make sense to look at a larger area for a longer term so I wanted to go through a few of the challenges that we've seen in the Del Norte area as it relates to development

0:55:17as you all know the issues of parking and circulation around the BART station there are very challenging there are thousands of cars and hundreds of buses that come through the station each day the circulation is really designed to move traffic into the bus space in the

0:55:30parking lots and commuters really have no incentive to stay and Shop in El Cerrito so the current situation is more of a burden than a benefit to the local community one of the long-standing challenges to development in the area is also the odd configuration of the blocks the width of

0:55:45San Pablo Avenue the poor condition of many of the properties and the mix and types of property ownership and these factors have encouraged developers to take simpler smaller scale or single parcel projects and which seem to have actually inhibited Tod in the long in the uh long

0:56:04run for example some of the more successful development in the area is actually big box retail and residential and mixed use development has really not been successful the one exception to that is Del Norte place with that project involved a significant amount of agency

0:56:22um activity to to make that happen what we have heard over the years from developers who've considered development of Bart property is that Bart's requirements particularly for replacement parking are too onerous to make a project feasible we've also heard from the number of

0:56:40public agencies that would be involved in development in the Del Norte area is really daunting so developers have tended to avoid any sort of more comprehensive approach in Del Norte and again they've focused on smaller parcel by parcel projects um other challenges that hinder a more

0:57:00comprehensive development approach in the area are the level of entitlement risk for any large project as well as the cost of addressing infrastructure problems and even though the community's interest has really been in transit oriented development the most feasible projects

0:57:14have remained retail and low density housing for years as many of you are aware and maybe have participated in there have been past efforts to develop a vision for what Del Norte could be and due to the various challenges I've just gone over implementing those plans

0:57:32um hasn't always been very successful so how would the Tod strategy be different from the specific plan well you know the the most recent planning effort is um is the San Pablo Avenue specific plan however that plan looked at broader issues throughout the corridor and how

0:57:53the two cities of Richmond and El Cerrito could work together the Del Norte Tod strategy would drill down on issues that are unique to Del Norte and focus on finding ways to solve problems that are posed by serving as a regional transit hub so Tod at Del Norte is really a question

0:58:10of balancing competing priorities there really isn't enough room for increasing density sustaining the traffic increasing parking adding retail if the area is going to be a livable place that provides the kind of amenities that the community wants also the various public agencies that

0:58:26serve the area really have different priorities for Del Norte that sometimes Conflict for example Del Norte is a successful station for Bart in large part because people drive and park there while the city and the region would probably be better served by moving Bart

0:58:40writers into buses which would allow the station to serve its Regional purpose without being such a burden on El Cerrito and of course Del Norte is really one of our main priorities but it's not the only priority for a much larger agency like Bart um so basically the bottom line is that

0:59:00um excuse me Del Norte really um cannot support both the existing Regional traffic and the kind of development that we'd like to see and up to this point efforts to fixing downloading haven't really been coordinated or comprehensive and this is an opportunity for El Cerrito to take

0:59:19some leadership through a TOD strategy which would be sort of the first step in coordinating solutions to those problems oh one other thing pursuing Tod and Del Norte has another benefit that I don't want to overlook which is that it could have a role in reducing greenhouse gases

0:59:36that are generated by the vehicles coming in and out of the station with the state and federal focus on global warming and Regional interest in funding projects like Tod Del Norte could help solve Regional environmental problems so the goal of the strategy would be to

0:59:54drill down on these various issues and come up with an approach and we would want to do so quickly in order to be in line for funding sources and to be ready for any uptrend in the real estate market so I'm going to turn over the presentation now to our Consultants

1:00:11we've invited them to delve deeper into the economics of Tod and the role of parking and TOD which can then provide a framework for how we might think about pursuing Tod at Del Norte if you have any questions before I turn it over to Ms Fogerty um I'm happy to take this now

1:00:33the second one over there you go okay hi can you hear me okay um so hi my name is Nadine Fogarty um as Laurie said I work for strategic economics we're an urban economics consulting firm located in Berkeley we're also a partner in the center for Transit oriented development so I do I

1:00:59work on Tod projects all the time across the country technical assistance and research and I'm really excited to be talking about Tod here in El Cerrito because um I used to live in El Cerrito and I'm very fond of it it's a city so everybody hears all the time um so um today I want to talk about a

1:01:18few things first I want to sort of walk through how we think about evaluating Tod potential to help give you a framework for how to think about it and then I'm going to talk about one of my favorite topics which is very nerdy Financial feasibility and density and

1:01:31then I'm going to talk about public sector trade-offs and tools with trying to promote Tod and then quickly go through some steps to implement Tod at Del Norte BART so evaluating Tod potential I want to start I know you're all familiar with the concept of trans and oriented

1:01:48development but it never hurts to start at the you know with the basics um so what is Tod um so it's development near Transit that um that has the potential for a wide variety of social economic and environmental benefits including uh enhanced Mobility for people better

1:02:07connectivity to jobs and destinations reduced Auto dependence uh the possibility of potentially lowering household costs by having less cars reduced parking needs it means a variety of different types of uses housing types and services and um and in general in an

1:02:27Ideal World it really means healthy and inclusive neighborhoods but um I really I think a lot of people when they think about Tod they picture a big tall office or apartment building on top of a Transit Center and I think it's important to to remember that Tod really

1:02:47means a lot of different things in different contexts and it can occur at a different a variety of different scales it can in some places it means townhouse development in other places it's like the financial district so it means a variety of different things in different

1:02:59contexts um and in evaluating Tod potential a wide variety of factors come into play I'm going to talk about each of these um in a little bit more detail but the needs of the community and the property owner site considerations the local market conditions the stationary context

1:03:15the role of the stationary and the transit system so beginning with the needs of the community and the property owner um so these are things that really uh can then can impact what's possible um and should impact what's possible in terms of Tod but the variety of needs um

1:03:36that that can occur also have implications for project costs so providing benefits that meet the needs of the community can increase project costs like affordable housing community space open space other Design Elements and in the needs of the property owner can have a big impact on Project costs

1:03:54you know Lori mentioned replacement parking which is very expensive um and um and is a big factor when you start to look at the financial feasibility of development at Del Norte Bart and so to the extent that the project can't afford these costs a subsidy may be required

1:04:11in terms of site considerations um there's a whole host of which I've listed a few personal size and configuration generally the need for environmental remediation zoning and height restrictions and other policies have an impact on what's possible parking requirements parking needs

1:04:31um fragmented property ownership and and other factors and in terms of Del Norte Bart it's really a very significant Tod opportunity site in the San Pablo Avenue Corridor um as as we all know it's also very complex site um and there will be some trade-offs in how to accommodate a developers need to

1:04:53create a really good development a really good place at the BART station versus the need to you know to for to be a really good Transit hub Lori mentioned um and then in terms of Market factors what we like to say is that Transit doesn't make a market but it's a very

1:05:10important amenity so just because a parcel is near a transit station doesn't mean that it automatically um that some something in particular is automatically going to be feasible to develop there for a developer um but it is uh being located near Transit and makes um

1:05:29certain sites much more desirable from a from for certain types of uses um and then I wanted to point it out that that markets are Dynamic and change over time I know this sounds very obvious but um what's feasible in any one place um really does change over time as

1:05:45construction costs and revenues potential revenues fluctuate and as Laurie mentioned again Cod is not always the most profitable thing to build from a developer's perspective and this is something that we come across over and over again in our work in in many places

1:06:01and um and it means that there has to be will to have to make the right types of uses that have a long-term benefit for the community um and then again you know the market for Tod at Del Norte Bart is is unique and so it's not like any other um it's its own Beast or or not Beast um

1:06:19and it's um different than any other BART station and over time um you know as the market recovers um you know there should be develop development potential but it may take some time to recover which I'm sure there's no no surprise for anyone um so stationary context and the what's

1:06:37in the surrounding neighborhood also impacts the potential for Tod including the mix of land uses and what types of amenities are nearby whether or not there are traffic concerns um how good the pedestrian access is to the transit how nice it is is a place to walk around

1:06:53and then the demographics and the surrounding area all of these things have an impact on the potential for Tod generally and at Del Norte Bart specifically it's an interesting place because because of its location along San Pablo Avenue which was historically very auto-oriented Corridor and still is

1:07:10in many ways but it's also a place that you know that I'm sure you know you can really see that it's it's starting to change over time and how you facilitate that type of change in an incremental way is take some real finesse then we know that um you know that changing

1:07:28demographics also support Tod National only demographic changes support more higher density housing and walkable people have a increasing preference to live in walkable places and there's an opportunity in El Cerrito to capture more of this demand um you know nevertheless as I mentioned

1:07:47there are still some challenges for implementation in this location so and I think um so the role of the stationary in the region also has a big impact on the potential for Tod and I think this is something that um that people should should talk more about um not all transit stations are the same

1:08:06um and that uh the you know the role of the stationary and the region has a big impact on what types of uses you would expect to see for for Tod so some stations are primarily origins or others or destinations if you're right next to a big job center then you have a certain

1:08:22type of demand um or versus if you're if you're far out I was recently on a panel looking at the potential for Tod and Cloverdale and so you can imagine it's very very different um and in the case of Del Norte Bart you know as as we mentioned it's a Transit hub for both regional and local trips

1:08:39it's an origin primarily for commuters to Regional employment centers and that has it sort of suggests that there should be a real potential for for some mixed use with housing Del Norte BART now Financial feasibility and density um higher density development means higher

1:09:00building costs and I'll show some examples in a minute um and revenues have to meet a certain threshold to cover these additional costs and a big factor in understanding what's feasible is um is looking at the role of parking and development isn't something they they talk about in

1:09:18school when you when you learn about financial feasibility they don't have they don't tell you enough how much parking matters but they didn't they didn't when I was in school um so this is some these are some examples from um from some work that we did last year in downtown Berkeley

1:09:33um and it shows different um costs on a per unit basis uh for different building types um and so as you can see um the cost goes up the the town home anything basically under uh six stories is can usually be built with wood frame construction which has a much lower per

1:09:50square foot construction cost and as you go up to around nine stories and you hit the um or actually after anything over five stories usually has to be built with concrete or steel construction which has a much higher per square foot cost um anything over about Nine Stories also

1:10:09has additional costs related to um life safety um cost Sprinklers and things like that um and then as you go to more expensive you know typically if you assume um that the site isn't getting bigger as you're going higher you also get to a point where you need to have underground

1:10:26parking and that also gets very expensive um so if you look at what the um I actually also wanted to say this so this was sort of at the around the top and just when the boom was starting to go down so don't put too much stock in these um in the actual average cost

1:10:42things have changed a lot um but if you look at the revenues that are required in order to cover those costs the the key thing here is that as you go towards higher densities especially when you get over the wood frame limit if you get into mid-rise or high-rise construction you need to get

1:10:59to a significantly higher threshold of revenues that are that are possible so um the reason I like to show these charts is because I think people tend to think that the relationship between density and developer profit is just a straight line going like like this

1:11:18um and that um that in reality it's more complicated and again parking costs have have a big impact on development feasibility so service parking is about three to five thousand dollars per parking space to build but a structured parking spaces around twenty five thousand thirty

1:11:36thousand dollars and underground is significantly more usually 35 to anywhere 35 to 50 000 dollars um so that has a big impact on on development potential and it's going to be a big factor at Del Norte Bart because of the replacement parking so I'm going to talk about public sector

1:11:54trade-offs and tools um so there's a variety of ways that the public sector can influence What's um what's possible and I'm just going to talk about a few and show some examples but zoning and height limits can help but not always as you could can tell from the charts that I showed before

1:12:13density is complicated and changes to parking policies can have a big impact um Lori and the Redevelopment agency's powers of land assembly and the ability to enter into contracts with developers can also be very powerful tools investments in infrastructure and

1:12:35amenities can have a you know in the surrounding neighborhood can have a big impact on the revenue potential for a developer for Tod and a nuanced approach to community benefits can be very beneficial especially in difficult Economic Times so this is an example from some work

1:12:52that we did recently for the Menlo Park specific plan in their downtown and it just shows that in some cases um up zoning and reduced parking requirements can have a really big impact on what is on making development feasible so um this shows it looks more complicated than it really is

1:13:13um this shows uh on the left a three-story residential building and you can see the developer revenues are below the total total costs if you reduce the parking standards just a little bit in fact it was very little bit in this case and increase the um you know go allow

1:13:32five stories instead of three-story development you're going from a situation where developer revenues are expected to be less than cost to when where developer revenues can actually cover the costs this is an example from Houston where they don't have zoning but they do have

1:13:48parking requirements um and when we were working in in Houston this was the uh the situation um again this chart it looks more complicated again than it is um it shows residual land value per square foot on the y-axis um residual you can not worry about what that means and just think about it as

1:14:08sort of a rough measure of profitability so um and then along the bottom is density units per acre so you can see that where we were working in Houston along a recently built light rail line that um that town homes were actually the most um feasible thing for a developer to

1:14:27build um and people were really flemexed and and actually pretty upset about this um but so we looked at what would be the potential um what would happen if you if the city put some money in to put some into some of the surrounding uh streetscape and um maybe um help to put in some type of Urban

1:14:49Design requirements that would give developers some kind of certainty about what is going to happen in the surrounding neighborhood over time and if you reduce the parking ratios a little bit you can see it shifts this curve up um and in this case it made it possible

1:15:02in theory would make it possible for a developer to build a um a an urban Block it's called a the other thing that it's called the Texas donut it's a it's a block of um of housing for four or five stories with that wraps around a parking garage um and then another

1:15:24um you know another thing that can have a big impact on um Financial feasibility is um is the approach to community benefits I think a lot of times when uh or I know a lot of times in my experience that when a TOD project is um is first proposed um people want to know what's in it for

1:15:41them and in many cases rightfully so um and um and so uh so this chart shows where the threshold is that I showed earlier about um when your revenues get make a project feasible when there's a sort of minimum threshold for development at the bottom of the Yellow Part below which a

1:16:01developer would need to have a subsidy in order to build a project in the green area is when a developer's return is in theory high enough to um to try to extract some of that for something like affordable housing or for streetscape or for plazas or other things that that

1:16:17people want um but it needs to be up in that area in order for the development to really afford those costs um and otherwise it needs to have a subsidy so the steps to implement Tod at Del Norte Bart um I've got some kind of high level steps um the first thing that we would

1:16:37recommend is um is just sort of a quick testing of market and development or testing of development scenarios not anything really detailed but to have a team come in and look and evaluate development options help to you know get smart about what's likely to be feasible

1:16:55over time understand what types of developers are likely to be interested in the project and what some of the trade-offs are what some of the barriers to development are if there are any that can be addressed early then then armed with that information you can identify realistic goals for

1:17:13development get some Community input and then then the next step would be to issue an RFP for a developer when the timing is right so and when the timing is right is is a difficult question obviously in today's Economic Times but so all I can say is soon but not

1:17:32immediately you want to try to get a developer on board when things are just starting to come back up because it takes several years sometimes for the project to come together and so you want to have a strong developer who's able to work with you over time um but you want to get them on board not

1:17:47when they're on the verge of bankruptcy and incredibly depressed um so that's it does anyone have any questions if I may if you could go back to the slide about high rises it's uh like slide 30 31.

1:18:04and and what I guess I don't quite understand is the costs the cost of the land obviously must end up being a very small percentage such that because the footprint's not changing that this line I can understand it leveling out but why isn't it starting to dip as it gets up

1:18:22into the 17 Stories the only rational explanation there is the price of land is such a small percentage of the overall project development this a very good question in this um April the cost of land is not included the the cost of the land is actually gonna um it's going to vary according to what and

1:18:42this is for was for a planning study so the cost of the land is actually going to vary according to what or what the price of the land would be could vary according to what is allowed from like a purely Market perspective um but if it's if every one of these projects is occurring on the same

1:18:59property and that property costs a dollar or a million dollars in theory the more units you put on it the line should dip as you get out there to 17 stories and you have a lot of units on a fixed price actually yeah that's right if you did include land it would and if

1:19:15the land was a fixed land cost correct yes which if the development agency is participating in some of our properties land would be a fixed cost so this this slide does not necessarily a representative of what some of the projects we might be looking at where land is fixed so that's why I'm trying

1:19:33to figure out what the land value would do to this curve and if the break in shape would be completely different uh uh think about it I'm not sure I know the answer I myself I'm just I think this but I think that the change according to what the relationship between the costs and the

1:19:55revenues are land land values are incredibly when I show that other slide that showed the residual the way that a land the land is usually priced is as the difference between what the potential costs and the potential revenues are from developments called the land

1:20:12residual so it's and it's a very um bouncy thing it's very fluid yeah as we know yeah so but in theory if I think that this the the land cost was fixed the per unit cost would go down as you get to higher densities but it's only going to be by a very small increment because land would

1:20:37be a smaller and smaller proportion of the overall cost a couple of slides later you have um the appropriate up zoning and parking slide for Menlo Park you said small what is small what is a small change in the word parking standards you know I um when I was looking at this earlier I was wishing

1:20:57that I could remember I believe and I could get this for you later if you wanted but I believe that we were looking from looking at sort of an average of 1.5 spaces per unit going down to one and is that true on two slides later the um Houston model this one it yeah this one

1:21:17it was a larger um they had pretty high parking standards as I recall and I I think boy I mean I think we may have been going from two to one okay thank you foreign I think we're ready to carry on them with the next half of the presentation [Music] Madam chair and members of the council

1:21:59my name is Jeffrey tumlin I'm a transportation planner with Nelson Nygard based in San Francisco um and I'm going to cover three topics tonight a little primer on why parking is important some of which Nadine has already covered some rules for Designing parking for Transit oriented development

1:22:14and also some thoughts about dealing with parking at Rail stations the presentation material that you have in your packet is a longer version of my presentation there were a lot of slides I've trimmed those down and I'll also be covering this material very quickly but

1:22:30we'll have plenty of time for questions and answers at the end um this slide is an image uh this happens to be Santa Clara County um it's a mixed use development project you can see that there's some uh some employment and here's a hotel and there's some shopping and these are

1:22:45Apartments over here but because uh uh this city despite the fact that there's also Light Rail over here in the corner um met uh uh all of its minimum Parker requirements for each development site you can see that even though this is mixed use it's basically impossible to

1:23:00walk from one used to the other in fact over two-thirds the land area here is set aside not for development but for parking and one of the reasons for this is that for most cities your minimum parking requirements require more land area to be set aside for cars than for

1:23:17development in fact if your minimum parking requirements are above three spaces per thousand that means you're setting aside more buildable area for parking than for development so something we routinely do when we visit a city this happens to be Ventura California is to converts thousand

1:23:35square feet of land area in 2000 square feet of parking um and uh suddenly City councils realize why they're having a a hard time attracting development is because they're requiring developers to build um a lot more parking than anything else and while it is important to make sure

1:23:52that you build enough parking for your Development building too much parking is just as bad as building too little because every extra parking space you require a developer to build that they don't need means twenty thousand dollars that's not being spent on good design on

1:24:09quality streets on affordable housing other community benefits there's also a strong relationship between parking requirements and housing affordability here in the Bay Area we find that for every parking space that's required for a residential unit the price of that unit increases from about

1:24:2615 to 30 percent and the number of units that can be built on a typical parcel within floor area ratio requirements decreases by about 15 to 25 percent we also know from Fannie Mae that for every car a household can get rid of they can qualify for an additional hundred thousand dollars in

1:24:45mortgage that's the how much household spends on a car multiplied over the 30-year life of a mortgage it's rather extraordinary um and also that um at about 300 square feet per parking space the size of a parking space particularly in a parking structure is about the same size and

1:25:04costs almost as much to build as a studio apartment um we also know that from a variety of studies around the United States that um badly managing your parking also reduce results in a lot of traffic ingestion um in fact in many cities motorists driving around in circles

1:25:22trying to find an empty parking space can represent about half of traffic congestion in downtown and these are in downtowns where we know that simply reducing the number of vehicles out there on the street by 10 percent would eliminate all traffic congestion all of this together says also that

1:25:41parking is key to climate change prevention uh one of your earlier conversations you were talking about Green buildings well um the greenest building in a bad location in an auto dependent location will produce more CO2 emissions than a leaky old building in a Transit oriented

1:26:00location that it takes more energy to get to a building than the building will produce itself over the life of that building that 40 percent of our CO2 emissions here in California come not from buildings but from vehicle miles travel and revealing simply the true

1:26:17cost of parking not hiding the cost of parking in the cost of goods and services reduces vehicle miles traveled by about 20 percent um the the and and multiplying that out over the entirety of our society if we were to Simply uh reveal the cost of parking uh uh here in the United States

1:26:35we could reduce our CO2 emissions by the entirety of the emissions of the country of Australia so let's talk a little bit about how to deal with parking at tods and why parking is very different than in conventional development so I'm going to talk about six points so let me just

1:26:52lump jump into them really quickly um one of the most important things uh to realize is that um government establishes minimum parking requirements for really one simple reason and that is to prevent spillover parking from one land use happening at the front door of another

1:27:10land use so particularly to have spillover parking whether it's from a BART station or from development near rhubart station uh have the the people who want to drive their parking in front of your homes it's annoying um so um one of the first things we advise our clients that are making the

1:27:26transition from Auto dependent development into more walkable development is to manage spillover parking through a variety of tools the most common of which are residential parking uh permit districts they're all over the place in the Bay Area but there are also some interesting Innovation

1:27:40Innovations in residential parking permit districts um uh one of which Austin Texas has already implemented in that Oakland is exploring which is to allow neighborhoods to sell their Surplus daytime parking capacity to commuters or to Bart commuters even and take the net revenue and invest that in

1:28:00neighborhood improvements like traffic calming or utility undergrounding or Street trees another core Concept in transit oriented development of parking is What's called the park once strategy so this I don't even know where this is but it's an ugly versus San Jose it's an it's a much

1:28:17uglier version of San Pablo Avenue um and it works like this so imagine that this street is San Pablo Avenue and you've got various land uses arrayed you've got you know a Target store and a school and office building and a soccer field and each land use comes with its

1:28:32separate parking lot you'll notice again that the parking area is bigger than the building area and let's imagine a typical trip of Dad driving Sally to school and so he has to drive in he turns and he parks and Sally gets off and then he goes and he goes to work and

1:28:45that requires a parking space as well and then uh he needs to pick up Sally and take her to soccer practice because of course she can't get across the street because it's designed in an auto-dependent fashion so he drops Sally off and he goes and he does some grocery

1:28:58shopping and he comes and he picks Ellie up from soccer practice and he goes home and that's a big mess of a trip and it requires ours lots and lots and lots of turning movements off of San Pablo Avenue which of course disproportionately create traffic ingestion and it's a lot of travel so

1:29:14imagine the same set of land uses but arrayed on a grid of streets so same shopping and work and school and play and imagine them having parking lots but because now they're closer to each other they could share parking and shopping and work uh share parking really well

1:29:31you don't need quite as much parking and you've got the same trip of Dad driving and Sally now can walk herself to school while Dad goes to work and Sally can now walk across a narrow Street to get to soccer practice and dad can pick up some shopping on the way back to his car and

1:29:47they can meet at the car and off they can go home and obviously this is a very oversimplified version of travel but it's uh producing dramatically different results so about half of the parking area half of the land area a quarter of the arterial trips one-sixth of the

1:30:04arterial turning movement and about a quarter of the vehicle miles traveled simply by arranging land uses in a different manner orienting those land uses around walking rather than driving still accommodating the driving trip but not insisting upon a separate driving

1:30:20trip for every trip so this is how all of the great Suburban downtowns the Bay Area operate including a very Auto dependent places like Palo Alto um and of course it gets even better if it's Transit oriented because then all of the trips can happen with walking and

1:30:36not driving so uh what does this mean um this means that if we go and we look at the actual Peak cumulative parking demand for auto dependent Suburban downtowns we find that in fact the peak cumulative parking demand rarely exceeds two spaces per thousand even in the

1:30:57communities where their minimum parking requirements are four to five spaces per thousand in fact one of these numbers is wrong uh downtown Santa Monica is now at 1.8 spaces per thousand square feet Palo Alto also at about 1.8 thriving rich downtowns in Auto oriented locations

1:31:18with very little Transit another lesson in Tod um is that on-street parking is um is really really wonderful for a whole host of reasons including providing a buffer between the street and where pedestrians uh are are walking providing teaser parking for Main Street oriented retail but also

1:31:39because it's an incredibly efficient use of land that because you don't need separate Drive aisles or ramps providing on-street parking takes up the same amount of land area per parking space as a three-story parking garage and it's twice as efficient as an off

1:31:55street parking lot uh lesson number four is ensuring good parking Design This is a big parking structure happens to be in downtown Denver but because there's a cafe on the ground floor and because the upper levels of the garage match the architecture of adjacent buildings it's

1:32:13not an oppressive horrible thing to walk past um Walnut Creek does an Exquisite job with some other Downtown parking structures other cities don't do such a good job this is in San Francisco where not only is this ugly but it also results in no net increase in parking

1:32:28because for every off-street space provided the city has simply eliminated a public on-street space this is a five-car garage in Carmel but because the city has a maximum width allowed for the garage entry in order to improve the walkability of its streets you would

1:32:47never know that it looks like uh you know a cutesy little 1920s one car garage and it's a wonderful leafy green neighborhood another critical lesson is the need to manage your on-street parking Supply it is one of the most valuable um uh resources that a city owns an

1:33:07incredible amount of land area set aside and uh and it's um one of the most mismanaged of resources there is much that has been written about the case study of Old Town uh Pasadena for those of you who have not read Don Schoop's book The High Cost of free parking it's

1:33:24required reading for anyone interested in urban Affairs um he writes a lot about Pasadena which in the 1980s was having a lot of problems uh horrible vacancies the only successful businesses were karate Studios and porno Cinemas and yet still despite the poor performance no one could find a parking

1:33:43space on Colorado Avenue because the businesses next door were parking in front of your business and therefore customers couldn't find a space and so Pasadena tried to implement paid part working this was opposed by the merchants until the city decided all right fine we'll give Old Town Pasadena

1:34:03100 of the net revenue from those parking meters because we recognize that the sole purpose or not the sole purpose but the primary purpose of establishing paid parking is so customers can find a parking space that the city makes more Revenue off of a successful commercial

1:34:21District than it will ever make off of parking meters this was of course the disaster of Oakland's proposed changes to their parking meter policy a great lesson in what not to do that the reason you charge for parking is so customers can find a space not to make money off

1:34:39of the parking meters and if you think of this this way then the merchants will actually support you and the merchants will demand what they demanded in Old Town Pasadena which is not only to charge for parking on Sundays but to extend the hours of enforcement for

1:34:52meters on Friday and Saturdays until midnight and this is has resulted in tremendous success in Old Town Pasadena a dollar an hour raises 5.4 million dollars annually this money goes to the downtown improvement district which pays for nightly steam cleaning of the

1:35:09sidewalks in Old Town Pasadena and great availability of parking for customers to the point where sales tax revenues in Old Town Pasadena quadrupled in a seven year period so that Old Town Pasadena has eclipsed the performance of the shopping mall just down the street a

1:35:28couple of blocks with acres and acres and Acres of free parking Old Town recognizing that it could not successfully compete against them all on the mall's terms that it needed to offer a different product which is a vibrant walkable pedestrian-oriented exciting

1:35:45place where yes customers can still find a parking space even though they need to pay a dollar an hour locally Redwood City has taken this several steps further and has actually adopted an ordinance whereby uh the the city council says to staff we don't really care exactly how you

1:36:04manage the parking we just want to make sure that 15 of parking spaces are available in every lot in every garage and on every block face at all times of day and City staff you figure out the price at which that happens and if there's plenty of availability then

1:36:19parking should be free but if parking if people can't find a space you need to increase the price of parking until customers can find a space a six lesson is about varying the parking requirements to match actual patterns that a one-size-fits-all solution for parking never ever makes

1:36:38any sense and there's lots of great case studies for that um one of my favorites is downtown Boulder Colorado which finally got out of the business of figuring out what to do with parking and turned over responsibilities for parking to their uh their downtown Business

1:36:53Association and basically what the downtown Business Association does um is is it tells developers no please don't build parking for your individual building let us take your in-lu fees and we'll figure out a comprehensive strategy for downtown of building parking structures Common parking

1:37:13structures that we can all utilize but also when it is a cheaper for example for us to give free Transit passes to all downtown employees than it is to build parking structure number five we'll do that with your in-lu money instead and as a result it's been extraordinarily successful and downtown

1:37:32Boulder which has very little Regional trends that certainly no rail has one of the lowest vehicle trip uh generator uh generation rates of any downtown of its kind in the country some of the highest Transit utilization of any place in the country and an extremely economically

1:37:49successful downtown other cities have realized that they don't need to tell developers how much parking to build that in fact developers are much better skilled at figuring out what the optimal parking Supply should be for their project and in fact forcing developers to build more parking than

1:38:09the market would warrant is merely a tool for making sure that you don't get development or that you get development that's Auto dependent as opposed to walkable so the question is how do you determine what is the right amount of parking uh can't you just look it up in a book like

1:38:24other cities do well no you can't or at least you can't unless what you're looking for is auto dependency that the that's the demand rate for parking varies just like it does for any other commodity in society that it varies depending upon um the kind of land use context that

1:38:42you're in the availability of Alternatives like Transit the price of land and indeed the price of parking that that parking demand follows the law of supply and demand just like any other good and in fact the right answer for how much parking to build is uh something that is the result of a real

1:39:01estate performer or a value judgment it's also important to realize that the uh as we go back to economics 101 the price elasticity of demand kicks in for parking just like it does for any other good or service and if you look at gazillions Of Studies have been done all

1:39:19over the United States basically for every 100 increase you have uh uh in the price of parking you get about a 30 decrease in the demand of parking um and this is true even uh in places that have really rigid in fact somewhat comical uh parking requirements like one

1:39:39space for every 10 nuns in a nunnery or one parking space for every 2500 gallons of water in a community swimming pool um even in some of the more well-researched references that we use routinely in our new or in our industry like the institute for transportation

1:39:56Engineers parking generation manual um there is a relatively little difference um in the rate of parking demand based upon uh uh gross floor area and this is largely because parking demand varies more by location than it does by land use so this is a fun chart of uh fast

1:40:19food restaurant with drive and window and this uh across the uh the x-axis is a gross Florida areas it's increasing and this is Peak observed parking demand and these are data points and it's it's practically a scatter diagram with an R square valued of 0.038 which means that only three

1:40:40percent uh 3.8 percent of the variation in Peak parking demand is attributable to an increase in uh land area and yet the average rate is dutifully reported out to 9.95 spaces per thousand square feet of fast food restaurant with Drive-In window not 10.0 not 10 not uh you know it's

1:41:02three significant digits as if there were you know any meaning this graph at all so it's also important to realize that even in my industry um there is a lot of precision even when there is no accuracy um so um other studies uh like Palo Alto um have also uh recognized this where um

1:41:24you know Palo Alto demographically somewhat similar to El Cerrito um and we can go into the Census records and look at household Auto ownership by census block group for any City and find that even in Fairly demographically consistent cities that residential parking demand also varies far more by

1:41:43location um than by any other Factor so here in Downtown Palo Alto this is Downtown Palo Alto and by their train station and California Avenue also by their train station and you can see that the same household living closer to the train station in Downtown Palo Alto and also

1:41:59to the mix of retail there has far fewer cars than households living just a mile away and this is true again regardless of income and so as a result many cities have said you know we don't care we don't need to tell developers uh how much parking to build they can sort that

1:42:15out and by abolishing minimum parking requirements that's not to say the developers aren't going to be building a lot of parking they will be building a lot of parking but they're more likely to build the optimal amount of parking than having you as the city figure that

1:42:30out in advance for them and in fact in addition to a variety of cities around the Bay Area that have been eliminating their minimum parking requirements like Petaluma the entire nation of the United Kingdom has made minimum parking requirements illegal as a matter of

1:42:45national law simply because the result of minimum parking requirements is less housing affordability more traffic more air pollution and a variety of other social ills um increasingly cities have also started talking about parking maximums as a tool including some Suburban locations like

1:43:04San Mateo near their rail station and now Hayward in addition to more urban places like San Francisco um which use uh parking maximums as a tool not only for making sure that they get transit oriented development rather than merely Transit adjacent development but in San Francisco's case as one of

1:43:23their primary tools for ensuring housing affordability and preventing gentrification not necessarily something you need to do or even really start thinking about here in El Cerrito but merely an example of the array of uh of paths that cities use in order to tailor

1:43:40their parking requirements to their local needs recognizing that a typical minimum parking requirement approach which is effective for a purely Auto oriented City will tend to result in higher amounts of traffic higher housing costs and higher amounts of solution as

1:43:57opposed to more tailored approaches or approaches that ratchet down the amount of parking that's provided that tend to result in less traffic lower housing costs and less pollution now all of this is well and good in theory but we also recognize the hardest thing

1:44:13that you may ever have to do as city council members uh directly elected uh here is to make this transition from uh a system where where you know there's a chicken in every pot and uh three parking spaces for every car um and so it's not something that you want to do all at once and you need to

1:44:32start by managing spillover parking uh first and foremost by starting to give your publicly owned parking a value because it is a costly resource by investing in Alternatives like car share programs which are now available here and by addressing uh Equity right up

1:44:51front and through lots and lots and lots of stakeholder and community outreach as I mentioned it's important to answer questions like Equity right up front and to look at the relationship between household uh income and auto ownership in your own Community which you can do

1:45:06with your Census records and also point out that parking is never free that it is it is highly expensive for developers to provide and right now the cost of parking are hidden in the cost of goods and services and housing for everyone regardless of how many parking how many

1:45:24cars they own so finally I wanted to talk quickly about how to deal with parking at Rail stations which is also quite complicated and what how to determine what's the optimal mix of investment in parking at your BART station versus other forms of access and versus housing so

1:45:44we've done a lot of work for Bart and helping various communities figure out how to make a transition from giant surface parking lots on very expensive land next to their BART stations to more urban approaches looking at the amount of ridership that's generated from

1:46:02surface parking the amount of ridership that's generated from structured parking and compare that to the kind of ridership that would be generated if that parking were replaced by housing and there's a couple of things that it's important to understand one is that as

1:46:17density increases um the vehicle miles travel decreases on a sharp curve and it happens right in the magical array of development that Nadine was pointing at this sort of the difference between single-family development and three four five stories of development you don't

1:46:36need Towers but even at five stories you get a dramatic reduction in your vehicle trip generation rate particularly if you're building near Transit this also corresponds to a big increase in transit ridership um so one of the things we also look at is the cost of providing parking at a

1:46:54rail station versus cost of providing Alternatives and one of the reasons why many Transit agencies like Bart focus on providing um uh parking at their stations is that the operating costs of parking is very low compared to feeder Transit and Transit agencies typically

1:47:12get their Capital money for free but have to get their operating money from local tax services and however when you add up the sum of operating Capital it's typically cheaper to invest in feeder Transit walking and biking than it is to invest in parking but because of the

1:47:31firewall between operating Capital budgets we tend to over invest in parking particularly when you uh factor in land value which is also excluded so another thing that we like to start calculating is what's the cost per net new Rider added for different types of

1:47:51investments in accessing a rail station with surface parking coming in at about 300 per Rider until you start factoring the land value at which point it becomes very expensive about three thousand dollars per Rider structured parking of course is cheaper if you factor in land

1:48:09value up to a certain point bike and pedestrian improvements start off really cheap until you start maxing out your Market in which case they get very expensive you end up having to pay people lots of money in order to get on their bikes after you've maxed out the

1:48:25people who are really interested in that housing and Joint development starts off earning you money but then gets very expensive as you start getting into more costly construction techniques Transit starts off about in the middle the potential Market is larger so the curve

1:48:40is flatter but the challenge is finding the efficiency point of the mix of Investments that make sense that typically just doing parking or just doing Transit Investments doesn't make any sense that you need to come up with a combination approach of the right amount of walking and biking and Transit

1:48:57and parking Investments that gets you your biggest bang for your buck um Bart has also been getting very sophisticated about this and has as of a couple of years ago the most sophisticated policy in the country on replacement parking at its Rail stations and basically what BART says is if you

1:49:17can come up with something that gives gives us higher ridership and higher Revenue than our current parking lot we're willing to negotiate with you and so um uh we took the parking replacement policy for its first test drive at the South Hayward station where we

1:49:34investigated three different alternatives for uh uh building on the South Hayward parking lot um uh scenario a that had relatively low density and 100 replacement parking of the current surface uh parking in a parking structure up to a scenario C which had about twice the density and

1:49:52about half of the replacement parking all of these could fit in the the buildable envelope that was allowed by the City Zoning so we ran these uh different Alternatives through the BART replacement parking methodology and looked at given the different amount of

1:50:10density the new riders that would be generated by the new housing the writers that would be lost to the reduction of parking that was on that site the net change in ridership and then the net change in Fair Revenue that came from those writers we then looked at

1:50:28um uh based upon uh how much stuff was buildable on the site the change in land value the added costs for parking Capital costs the net ground rent after the replacement parking was factored in and the benefit that was achieved in the reduction in parking operations cost

1:50:47because parking is a pretty significant money loser for Bart um and then finally we added all of this up and we realized uh that um as you increase the amount of housing that was developable on these sites obviously uh ridership increased um uh increased uh pretty significantly

1:51:07um but the big news was that the more parking replacement that you required the less the net revenue was to Bart so the scenario with the 100 replacement brought in the least amount of writers and also resulted in hugely net negative Revenue largely because this big volume

1:51:27of structured parking simply uh couldn't be afforded it was very expensive and was bringing in almost nothing in terms of Revenue and so what has happened historically at Bart projects is that a public Revenue source needs to come in in order to build that parking structure

1:51:41in order to make the development pencil however at about 50 replacement parking not only did we get the highest amount of ridership but we also had a scenario where there was net revenue not only to the developer but also to Bart um of course the establishment of the

1:51:59preferred scenario was not just based upon running this performa tool but it was also based upon politics one of the challenges in doing Tod for Bart is that the BART board like you all are directly elected representatives and the people who have made very non-liquid decisions

1:52:19in their lives about where to live and where to work have based their lives upon the Assumption of available parking at a place like Del Norte and the people who would be living in the future Tod project don't exist so the people who are relying on those parking spaces

1:52:37um uh those parking spaces are very important to them and they vote the people who would like to live in Tod don't exist yet don't vote and so parking is a very very political decision and the result of this is a sort of compromise approach that the BART board took which said all right 75

1:52:56replacement Park that's where you're netting out that makes sense for us we're willing to allow you to move forward with that on an experimental basis so with that a couple resources again um one of which I would strongly encourage you to look at which is the high cost of free parking by Don Shupe

1:53:13other books like parking management by Todd lemon also great sources and with that I'm happy to take questions okay any questions sure I've got a few um the on one of your slides and I see it's darkened already um you talk about transition I think it's slide 82

1:53:38um and you talk about the transition from here to there and actually in a later slide you talk about um cost of compromise what is the and then you just you know talked about Bart making a pick of 75 what are some of the you because you talk about it you what are some of the things that

1:54:00you are seeing where you can address the current culture that is more Auto dependent than the future culture that'll be less Auto dependent so what are some of the strategies you you actually talked about Boulder which is um about having centralized parking garages so what are potentially some of

1:54:20the strategies that are out there that allow us to transition from here to there okay well I think one of the first to start with is by is not unnecessarily antagonizing um uh people and businesses in Auto dependent locations so make sure to protect them and assure them that you're

1:54:38not gonna you know take away their cars uh at gunpoint in the darkness of night um uh maintain uh the situation and manage the liver parking in those areas so that you can look only at locations that have some potential for making the transition to a more walkable format

1:54:58um then once you've focused on your pilot locations uh the the next thing to start with is the carrots to the scent that you can so um really start looking at making all the alternatives to driving as attractive as possible and especially walking because even if you're you know

1:55:21going for a park one strategy where you're not actually expecting lots and lots of people to take transit people need to be able to walk from their car to multiple destinations and that works by making the walk experience um lovely so really really emphasizing the design of walkability is exceedingly

1:55:39important um there are other um uh carrots that are also quite interesting like car share which is becoming increasingly powerful tool in the San Francisco Bay Area um are there Karcher pods here in El Cerrito yet yes yes okay yeah of course there are because I've used them here

1:55:58uh um so doing a lot to promote car share as a means for households to go from three cars to two cars or from two cars to one car really really valuable in a place like El Cerrito in which you know driving will always be important but it's possible to drive less

1:56:18um so uh you know uh uh making sure that uh it's very easy for the Karcher companies to get uh parking spaces um in highly visible locations doing joint advertising and marketing and really promoting car share um as a tool for enjoying all that El Cerrito has to offer

1:56:37um still having car but driving less another valuable thing then you know once you start you know done good work with the carrots then it's time to start looking at sticks and one of the sticks which is also oddly a carrot is I'm starting to charge for parking and again

1:56:54I can't emphasize this more that the reason we charge for parking is to ensure availability for customers rather than raising revenue for either the general fund or for transportation purposes and the Brilliance of a city like Pasadena saying um yes in fact that's true and it's so

1:57:13true that we're going to give the net revenues from our parking meters back to the business is to let you do with as you please um is was a brilliant move and that has resulted in not only a lot of parking Revenue that goes to things that the city would have had to do anyways but

1:57:30couldn't have afforded like all of the sidewalk improvements and fancy lighting and benches and flower pots um but has also um made it possible for anyone to find a parking space on Colorado Avenue which was Colorado Boulevard which which was not previously possible and it continues

1:57:48to be possible even though it's one of the highest grossing retail districts in all of Southern California um uh so that's an important step uh another important step then is looking at your parking requirements and making sure that they're matching whatever your goals are for the district

1:58:08so if you're wanting to promote economic development in a soft Market you should probably look at either eliminating your minimum parking requirements or making sure that they're truly minimum part-time requirements that that they're not what you demand all developers build but really the

1:58:26absolute minimum that makes sense for your community and you know whether that's at about this sort of magical two spaces per thousand level that walkable mixed use areas all tend to equal out to or some other number make sure that you're not forcing developers to build

1:58:43more parking than they would be building naturally um on slide 89 you refer to the balance of things that need to be out there yeah and um does the balance change over time this sort of is the same question I just asked slightly different with a different potential different answer yes

1:59:05and that's I describe this graph too quickly um and this is meant to be a time graph so this is the cost per net new Rider that you add to your BART station over time so in the beginning your bike and pedestrian projects uh you can get significant benefit for very little

1:59:23money as you start maxing out your potential walk and bike Market the cost per net new Walker or biker increases significantly um you emphasize that street parking is an asset the city owns uh on Slide [Music] it gets let's see it's two on two different slides 52 and 60.

1:59:49you talk about promoting street parking um and yet then you say that we should be pricing for street parking so um what is because on slide 52 it's number three it's you know on street parking you talk it should be increasing street parking um promoting street parking and it yet

2:00:09it's a city asset that it's one of the few assets that is hardest for us to to to collect on so I'm just trying to figure out how you balance those two concepts um so the the the right price of parking on street again is the price that assures about 15 availability at all

2:00:28times so in much of the city where you're not you know where there's you know we've got 20 availability the right price of parking is zero um even if it remains an expensive asset um because that's what the market bears and to uh price it at a higher rate than that will simply annoy motorists and um

2:00:48not results in a more successful business uh District or happier residents um and you know after you start getting availability uh uh uh targets less than that than the right price is whatever achieves your availability Target the last question it you on one of your

2:01:12slide you talk about um a parking space that's required and I assume it's for either a unit or for a business being 300 square feet or about 300 square feet for the I think I know why but can you explain why it's not just the size of the parking space that's right so parking space is

2:01:28typically about eight by Twenty Feet which does not equal 300 but when you factor in um the drive aisles and the odd squares and rectangles at the corners of the lot that you can't park in the average works out to be about 300 square feet per parking space thank you

2:01:49thank you very much um I guess my question is um I think you know I'm very versed in the and go around other cities talking about shoot policies and pricing it right but I feel like El Cerrito's just we're still at a transition point we have lots of you know just lots of

2:02:09surface parking and you know this concept of charging for parking and you know understanding that it's a transition Point what would be kind of the key cues to transition towards street parking and Page Street Parking I guess given that we have so many so much surface slot and

2:02:28um yeah what are kind of the key Milestones the key Milestones are our lack of availability of parking in a given location so if in all of your commercial districts because you've as you pointed out have a lot of parking and driving up and down the Avenue one thing that makes El Cerrito Stand

2:02:47Out compared to your neighbors to the South is a lot of parking which is a part of the economic strength the city you know I don't I don't want to come across as being anti-parking what I want to come across as saying is you need to supply the right amount of parking and that too much parking is

2:03:04just as bad as too little so for many of your businesses their model relies upon an overabundance of parking you don't need to change that model unless you want to change the economic base and what you're what you're trying to sell in El Cerrito um so for El Cerrito the um the the

2:03:25institution of um of paid parking I think starts probably at the places where you've got the um the least availability like immediately around the BART stations so working with you know partnering with Bart to develop um parking management strategies to make sure that people can

2:03:44always find a parking space in and around both of your BART stations at all times of day which has a lot of benefits for both the city as well as Bart for the city it means less peaking of the arrivals at the BART station so that you don't have as much traffic congestion in the

2:04:01morning Peak this is also an issue for Bart it also means that for your residents who now cannot use Bart unless they get to the station very early in the morning could actually you know drive to the station at nine o'clock in the morning and find a space which would be great

2:04:20because the supply was managed so it sort of balances out ridership for Bart as well as the availability of access to your stations for your residence the next thing I would think of is if you're imagining a more walkable format for business around your BART stations

2:04:39that's when you start to you know really need to make the transition that right now you know it's really easy to find parking pretty much anywhere in your city so paid parking not not the first thing on your list getting the development program right would be the

2:04:54first thing in your list and that paid parking merely becomes an implementation tool for your development Vision if you're a development Vision um emphasizes walkable compact development around Transit [Music] okay the question that I had had to do with um the stations themselves and people

2:05:23getting to the stations and um the thing I've heard over and over again from residents here who live in the Hills is that there's no way they can do anything other than drive to the station because of the hills really and the lack of Transit and what I hear from the transit operators about the

2:05:45transit is is that the density is too low in the Hills to support Transit so I um I don't see a way out of that directly and that's what I'm wondering unless you can enlighten me and tell me one that um you know doesn't require a lot of money I mean we could put in transit sure if

2:06:07we had a whole bunch of money to do it with but we don't actually in fact they're talking about cutting way back on Transit because they're taking away the funding from France it so I'm just wondering how we get the people in the Hills to the transit in an improved world

2:06:25that's sort of part one that so maybe if you could just start with that sure that's a very good question um and one of the reasons why we provide parking at Rail stations is exactly for those people it's not cost effective to provide transit to serve low density you know

2:06:44curvy street steep neighborhoods um so uh it's cheaper in fact to provide parking for those people so the question becomes what's the right mix of Investments given all of the different markets that you're trying to serve and how do you manage the Investments that

2:07:01you've made so it's probably much more cost effective for El Cerrito to invest in more frequent transit in the San Pablo Avenue Corridor or even more frequent transit to you know West Contra Costa County than it is to invest in transit services to your own Hills if you want

2:07:19to provide access to the station for your own residence so that the parking uh you set the price of parking so that everyone can access the station at all times you encourage the people who are driving a quarter or half a mile in your own City on on the flat land who are

2:07:39driving to your stations and and we we can see that from Bart's own data Bart has tremendous data about who comes to their stations and you can map exactly the home origin locations of people who are driving to the station you say wow there's a lot of people who are driving

2:07:55less than half a mile on the flats to get to the station because it's cheaper for them to drive and park at part than it is for them to take the bus to Bart even though the bus is running you know every five minutes um so you know what we look at is the cost-effective mix for all the different

2:08:14people and then managing those resources both the appropriate fare for Transit as well as the appropriate price for parking okay well my next question actually has to do with what you just said the price of Transit and um some of the places that I'm familiar with have free Transit

2:08:33and I'm just wondering how what your comment is on how that fits into this mix and um how to get what I'm also wondering is how to get transit operators to buy into the concept of free Transit let me I'll propose a more nuanced approach than free Transit there are a

2:08:56lot of case studies that have been written on agencies that have gone with a free Transit approach and for most of them it has created more problems than it has solved there is a a brilliant alternative to that which I think is exemplified Again by the city of Boulder

2:09:13where essentially all employees in the city of Boulder get a free transit pass from their employer and at this point more than a quarter of residents the neighborhood associations actually have voted to tax themselves on their utility bills to give free Transit passes to all

2:09:32residents in an entire in a given neighborhood um and the magic of this uh is as follows if if something is free it's perceived as sort of you know a social service for other people if something has value and you're given uh a special pass for free access to this thing of value people's perception

2:09:56of the service is very different indeed and so the results that we've seen from cities like Boulder even down in Santa Clara County where they have similar programs um is dramatically higher ridership rates for having Transit that is priced but uh certain people get special free access

2:10:16to it um and uh and and they do this you know not only for um you know wealthy neighborhoods and well-paid employees but also through social service agencies so you can both have um this this benefit both the people who need Transit the most and who can least afford it as well as to people who would

2:10:35never think of taking Transit because they have the choice of driving it suddenly becomes uh something appealing to them because they'd be wasting their free transit pass if they weren't taking advantage of it so how would we what would it look like if we were to

2:10:52implement it here um so something you could do for example uh there are a number of cities in the Bay Area that have transportation demand Management program requirements for new development whereas a condition of development the developer has to provide free Transit passes to all employee

2:11:11employees that would work in the building or all residents in the development project so that's one thing that you can do another thing that you can do is negotiate with AC Transit which is interested in programs like this to have broader base programs that if you had a

2:11:29strong business improvement district the bid could invest in transit passes for all of its members similarly homeowners associations or neighborhood associations could do the same thing following the boulder model so what it might actually look like in reality here I'm speculating would be

2:11:49that those things near San Pablo Avenue where we have an increase we're incredibly rich in transit yes would have that kind of a program and the hills where we're in we have hardly anything probably would not find it of interest because it wouldn't be very useful well

2:12:09it's not necessarily true um so in both Boulder and in Santa Clara County the price of buying into the transit pass program varies depending upon the level of service that you receive so in Santa Clara County if you're you know near downtown San Jose or near a light rail station the cost of

2:12:27buying free transvestors for all your employees is several times higher than if you're out on the fringes of the county with limited bus service um so that's a negotiation that you can have with AC Transit because the marginal cost to them for a family living in the Hills to get free Transit

2:12:44passes is almost zero because they've got capacity on their existing buses and their existing ridership levels are fairly low the marginal cost to AC transit in the San Pablo Corridor where they they do have capacity issues is actually fairly significant because if

2:13:01they got a big increment of riders they would have to put out more service so the the these past programs operate on the basis of marginal cost um so the the deal is striking the right deal with the Transit Agency in order to make sure that it's fair and with we

2:13:17would be the ones which perhaps strike that deal um I think that uh you know these sorts of deals they're new for AC they're you know they're starting to explore them um but they've demonstrated that they're interested in different approaches so the you know you would start a

2:13:33conversation with them you'd probably need to help them run some numbers about what the marginal costs would be um and so long as it's you know Revenue net revenue beneficial to AC I think that would be open to the conversation thank you a couple here first of all I I'm glad a

2:13:56guy that is so enthusiastic knowledgeable about parking is on our side um you talked about uh Bart it it it's 75 percent is there the one that's beneficial to them but my my question though is where's the other 25 go and I'm concerned about uh I'm not concerned my question is

2:14:25what is the cost to the city when uh people who don't use Bart parking has to use city streets and therefore it's a cost to the city to maintain those streets and those parking areas and inconvenience to uh residents so how where's the 20 how's that 25 dealt with

2:14:48okay those are a couple of questions about in there so part of the answer I think is looking at the um the Austin parking benefit District approach so in Austin Texas um there's a very big university there lots of students driving from all over the university charges a lot for parking

2:15:06and as a result of that there was spillover parking from the University into the surrounding neighborhoods um the initial thought was to create a neighborhood neighborhood restricted parking Zone and just not allow any commuters in but that would you know just result in a lot of empty curb space

2:15:23and the residents realize look there's a there's a limited amount of spillover parking that we can handle what we want to make sure is that we can find a parking space reasonably when we want to come home during the day and especially when we get home at night but

2:15:39that we can handle some amount of spillover parking what we want to make sure is that we're getting some benefit out of that so in Austin the neighborhood sells a limited number of daytime commuter passes to you know University students and staff to park in the neighborhood and

2:15:58100 of the net revenue from that program gets reinvested into the into the neighborhood so the city takes out just the cost of administering the program it doesn't make a lot of money but it makes some money um and um that money can actually be bonded against uh in order to invest in

2:16:17some pretty significant neighborhood improvements this is also something that the city of Oakland is talking about around the MacArthur station which is also I forget now what's the parking replacement of MacArthur now it's a pretty it's like 50 percent it's small they're they're there's a big

2:16:35development project proposed to the parking lot at MacArthur and Oakland um and I know the developers only replacing a much smaller percentage than was done uh or is the plan for South Hayward and part of the solution there is recognizing that there's a lot of spillover parking that's already

2:16:50occurring because there's no management of parking whatsoever uh and that um that the city and the residents could get some benefit of that as well as deal with the fear that the low parking replacement at MacArthur will exacerbate an existing problem so that's something

2:17:08that you can think about um uh uh the the well I think that's that's probably the main thing that you can think about okay the other thing is that um and I see this every morning the way I go cars are no matter how many buses come in to Bart cars are streaming off

2:17:30of 80 into this and it's people who don't have Bart Service uh this happens to be the closest one off a freeway yep boom they go in um how's how does that situation play into any strategies that we may consider yeah that's a good question and you know here it it gets into you know

2:17:54really talking with Bart about management issues um Bert is currently working on uh demand management strategy at the moment because they've realized that they have severe constraints not just in the transmit tube but especially passenger um uh egress at Montgomery and

2:18:11Embarcadero stations in San Francisco part of which is caused by parking management strategies where where their lots are filling up there's a tendency for everyone to rush to the parking lot at exactly you know 7 12 a.m or you know whenever it's it's 15 minutes before the

2:18:29lot fills um so not only does that result in a lot of traffic ingestion in the cities that have stations but it also is a sort of rabbit through the snake of the BART system all of which accumulates at Montgomery and Market our stations the peak so Bart is trying to think about how

2:18:45they could solve their own crowding problems which could also provide benefits for uh communities that have BART stations so for example um you could set a higher price of parking for entering the BART station during the peak of the peak in the morning so you know say it's a you know it's a

2:19:06dollar if you get there before you know 6 30 in the morning or after nine in the morning but it's three dollars if you get there during the peak that is a solution that might actually benefit both Bart and the city it of course would have political implications again

2:19:24for that base of Bart Riders who are the ones who pay attention to the BART Board election um other things that you can think about is the location of your parking and the parking entries and exits something that some cities do quite intentionally is not locate their station parking

2:19:43immediately adjacent to the station but located a block away and spread it out so as not to concentrate the traffic impacts and so that they can capture some of the economic benefits of having a station in their Community by having the patrons actually walk past

2:19:59storefronts so right now you drive in in a station you you know it just creates negative traffic impacts in the community without creating significant economic spillover so that that would be something to think about as well to get more benefit and less negative impact

2:20:15and of course just simply the total supply of parking uh also relates to the amount of traffic impact that you're experiencing thank you great thank you um I'm wondering if there's anyone from the public who want to speak on this item no speaker slips no speaker slips

2:20:34okay well it looks like I don't know if Miss Trevino wanted to reiterate that you're seeking Direction on Initiative for a Transit oriented development strategy and also for staff to pursue any Grant fundings which I understand are available if if you wouldn't mind elaborating then we could

2:20:54take last comments from the council uh agency board [Music] I'm not sure I should even try to distill down everything that we've talked about thus far um it does seem that you know what what the goal is is um to encourage Transit oriented development at Del Norte is to figure

2:21:15out what the right mix of land use is what the right mix of parking is what's the right intensity of development how do we balance local and Regional Transit needs so that Del Norte can be walkable and livable so should the board want to pursue a Transit oriented development at

2:21:33Del Norte these are the kinds of questions that a strategy would answer so what we are recommending um is that that the agency initiate a Transit oriented development strategy um the first phase of that would be to gain a better understanding of these various issues that we've talked about

2:21:54Define what the community would like to see and identify any problems that the agency might need to be involved in solving and also to find developers that would be good partners in any sort of Transit oriented development the second phase would be to issue a developer solicitation

2:22:11that would be based on the findings from the first phase and it's really important for us to keep in mind at this point that any solicitation that we do is not only going to be crafted to find a developer who has the capacity to pull off a pretty major development project

2:22:26but it also needs to make clear to any developers that we solicit that um why they why they should be interested in doing a project at Del Norte and why the agency would be a good partner in any sort of project that they would propose to do the Final Phase would be to select a

2:22:42developer and start implementation give them the complexity of a project like this this is going to be a very it's going to be phased it's going to take many years to complete and as Jeff discussed there may be some interim activities that we might undertake that

2:22:57could address some of the short-term parking problems that we have that might set the stage for future projects but at this point um the longer term Transit oriented development is going to be in phases in the future thank you um so Steph has been thinking about how

2:23:15to position Del Norte atod for funding the association of Bay Area governments has designated Del Norte as a priority Development Area in 2007 through its focus program and it's also looking at ways to dovetail that program into its development of the sustainable Community

2:23:31strategy that's required under SB 375 which links Regional Transportation plans and funding to the state greenhouse gas reduction goals um given the characteristics of the Del Norte area it would seem that it would be competitive for Tod grants the planning application the excuse me the

2:23:53application timelines for several of those Grant programs are very short so let me just tell you about what some of those are the near term one of the near-term grants is the focus technical assistance program which makes available up to fifty thousand dollars in technical

2:24:09assistance to the priority development areas for just the kinds of issues that we've been talking about tonight that would be included in a phase one of a TOD strategy similarly MTC has station area planning grants that are available for up to three hundred thousand dollars

2:24:27also for the same kinds of issues that would be included in the first phase of the Tod strategy Caltrans has community-based Transportation Planning grants they are also similar though they tend to focus more on public participation in the planning process and they do require a

2:24:44local match unlike the other two and then MTC also has its TLC Capital grants Del Norte could eventually be poised to apply for such a grant which would fund the kinds of infrastructure improvements that would probably be needed to support Tod at Del Norte under the current program TLC grants

2:25:05fund up to six million dollars and require a local match and um it's our understanding that initiating a TOD strategy using things like the focus technical assistance program and MVC station area planning grants could really help us in competing for Capital grants in the future

2:25:24I also wanted to mention that WIC Tech is the West Contra Costa Transportation advisory committee is applying for some similar grants to identify and evaluate potential local Rail and bus connections to Bart including Bart's proposed Light Rail passenger service to the Richmond

2:25:40Bart station and WIC Tech staff has also expressed an interest in supporting Tod efforts at Del Norte so for next steps staff is recommending that the agency initiated Del Norte Tod strategy which would include the initial phase of analyzing economics parking and

2:26:00circulation issues and that would lead to um a developer solicitation and then staff would return um would seek grant funding for phase one and would return for any necessary Appropriations for the next fiscal year so that's our presentation and I'm happy to answer any questions that you might

2:26:21have okay thank you so much we've heard so much information tonight and I was going to suggest maybe that we could each go around and comment on any of the general aspects of transit-oriented development and parking and I know we talked a lot about this when we were looking at the

2:26:39San Paulo Avenue specific plan and many of the agency members here are interested in pursuing this comments on Transit oriented parking issues specifically in El Cerrito and at the Del Norte station and I'm assuming that any specific details about minimum maximums that we could

2:26:57share at this time might be helpful I don't know how much detail you're looking for um not not at this time okay Lori's just trying to sum up here is as we put our budget together as we focus on the remainder of this fiscal year next fiscal year um I don't think the goal was to

2:27:21try to solve the problem tonight as much as does this sound like the right approach for the board and should we essentially cut staff loose on trying to get this funded and in the event a a comprehensive strategy funded and if we can't then we want to budget for any

2:27:40gaps we might have in the agency budget for the next fiscal year so does that well yeah okay so I I'm supportive of this idea I think we've heard a lot of interest and support for it but comments on any of those grants that Lori just went through and are interest and maybe

2:27:56any input on what my we want to include in the RFP so yeah I can be delighted to start um I first of all I want to thank um Mr Tillman and Nadine I've forgotten your last name but for uh pretty Fogerty for coming tonight and and really providing a lot of information

2:28:17um I actually uh Mr Truman very delighted to hear some of the answers you gave to uh board member Abelson with regards to explaining why um Transit up and down the hill is not working because that certainly was one of my concerns at an earlier testimony um and so to me acknowledging that that

2:28:40um that we need to provide parking for the hills is is something that's important out there but the discussion of spillover and the marketing of our street space the fact that street parking is an asset the city can manage and our current parking system we have a permit parking

2:28:57around Del Norte may not be actually as advantageous as some of the parking strategies that you guys are looking at so I certainly would like to have that our current system and the assets that we have around Del Norte as a Del Norte user as one of those Hill people who

2:29:15have a mile all uphill at the end of the day um I I am telling you that if you're not there by and now it's because they just implemented Park pay parking if you're not down there by six you're not going to get a street parking space and the nice part is that you can get a station

2:29:34parking space up until like I think it's about 8 A.M which uh previously you had to be there by seven if you wanted a station parking space correct so so I I will say that that you know obviously something's there uh and maybe advising Bart on what their pricing is it might be something that

2:29:56comes out of our study um I am ecstatic that there are at least two if not three different funding mechanisms for the stage one phase one um that you're working for and so I would certainly encourage us to go after at least the two that don't require matches um a 20 match is actually quite

2:30:14reasonable and and certainly I would not be opposed to pursuing all three um including the one with a 20 match of three hundred thousand dollars for the Caltrans um and they actually seem like they all cover different aspects and could be bundled to be a pretty significant uh

2:30:32study package of some sort so I think I've answered the questions you've asked after these Grant sources I think we're very well positioned with the two BART stations I think there's a lot we could learn to be applied to the other BART station as well um starting with Del Norte as the the

2:30:57challenge spot um and and I guess in terms of scope I'd be really curious to see you know kind of tapping into this community aggregate bulk per like the Costco of Transit passes can we get something like that going for the flats just at a city-wide level is that feasible you know that and

2:31:18that could eventually become and you know a huge benefit of moving to El Cerrito that you know you have this you know built-in transit pass if you're in the flats or something like that um and I think addressing all the questions all the issues that you brought up from

2:31:34you know what is the market demand what is the right level of development that's going to be feasible and what is that yeah what are the right price points to be pushing for the right amount of parking I think I I just um as many times I've heard Jeff's uh tomlin's great presentation I think it's

2:31:52just really worth hearing over and over again because I learned and I bits and piece of it sink in better each time specifically with you know talking about the I think for me I've been really latching on to the price of parking as something that can come back to the neighborhoods but you know I

2:32:08think your your point is correct that ultimately it's a it's a management tool and um recognizing and saying it out front and explicitly is is really our goal so um what else I think yeah I mean I think we are probably early for the the capital grants but you know setting it setting us up and kind

2:32:33of going down this pipeline of thinking and bringing all these best practices and funding sources together I think we're we're at the right stage so thank you for bringing them I want to agree that I think this is a good approach uh to to uh go forward on applying for these grants our staff

2:32:55is really an excellent track record at doing that kind of work and is to be commended for it and I I think that would be a great way to use our limited resources and spread them further um and um but I also think it's it's pretty and so I totally support that but

2:33:16I also um agree with Anne that this interesting idea about Transit passes particularly for people who live around the BART stations are along San Pablo Avenue because that will help to free up that parking for people in the Hills um and and not only that'll get people

2:33:36into tram I mean it's just a win-win situation really so I'm hoping that we could do something um to further that and I see that as being parallel to this um and um primarily a matter of negotiations and I don't know if we need um an outside consultant say help us in

2:33:57that with that process or um or that could be done by staff but I would um ask staff to think about it and and figure out what you think is the best approach and then bring it back to us to consider uh as a separate part of this because that's something we could Implement

2:34:19um probably more quickly than anything and we also could reap the benefits of the parking places that will become available without building anything so that too is a win-win situation and um I think it warrants doing but as sort of a separate step in this process

2:34:47okay thanks now I look at this as an exciting opportunity to uh really zero in on the specific plan it's it's a logical Next Step what I really liked about tonight's presentation is there is a thought out uh logical way of looking at these things and we're tying in

2:35:10uh and really looking at development parking and to some extent traffic patterns around Del Norte so I actually think it's the absolute right time to go to start this process this is a an involved process and just because the economy isn't very good right now or we can't

2:35:34attract a developer at this time or up until this point we haven't uh I think it's the exact time to start this thing by the time we get some of these things sorted out in a in a strategy or strategies developed uh there's a good chance that there will be developers

2:35:53ready to look at projects like this and so I'm I'm encouraged along those ends I don't know if there's any interim plan that we can do to start off if there is though I I would hope that we have an eye for the future that it actually uh lends itself to whatever strategies we

2:36:14come up with rather than having to stop something and and start up a new plan I the only the only uh thought I have though on this it's not necessarily a negative but it's it's one that's in the back of my mind as it is with all studies is I hope this is not another

2:36:32study that we have and then it sits on the shelf and I don't know that we've had a lot of those lately but um if I think we need and I and I think I'm speaking I think the commitment is here that if we're going to do a study like this and if we're going to ask uh to spend all the resources and get

2:36:52all the knowledge that we can on this is that we don't waste it that it is that we're committed to go forward with this and to keep going um I think we're all tired that we've heard of different development plans either Theory or actually tried in practice to develop this area and we

2:37:11still have the triangle and we still have the empty lots and we still have the congested or the not too attractive Lots I should say down there so I think if if we are going to go forward it should be with a commitment that we truly are going to try to change things

2:37:28and we'll just have to wait and see if we come up with a plan that does but I think we should charge forward to be honest with you well I agree I agree very excited about the prospect of moving forward for Transit oriented development in at Del Norte and I'm hoping it will help with economic

2:37:47revitalization of that area and it in fact will spread throughout El Cerrito it's been a really interesting discussion tonight and this Redevelopment agency and the city council has a really diverse commuting patterns and most of us are regular Bart users and some of us bicycle a lot and

2:38:05some of us don't drive and most of us drive and I think that Greg actually wanted to look at slide 82 because I thought that was your Mini Cooper parked in that now that's got a zip car inside so um I also want to note that I support going for any of the available fundings

2:38:22even with the 20 match I think that we should and as others have said we have a great track record and take advantage of those public funds and the greenhouse gas monies that we will deserve and moving forward with this and some of our other green programs so thank you all

2:38:38for your time this evening and we look forward to seeing you again soon is this a motion I think that was our Direction I don't know if we need a formal motion but we'll be glad to make it okay so I think we're back on item eight for the council liaison reports thank you

2:39:02and I'll start that out um I think everything I'm liaison to met in the last few days so I'll try to briefly go through the list um first of all um the mayor's conference had a workshop for what they called the new mayors but really they meant the new term of mayors

2:39:26including the old Mayors and it was an opportunity to talk about how the mayor's conference works and also to get to know each other on a more informal basis and um I found it very helpful it was held in the Orinda City Hall which was an interesting building I believe it's

2:39:44Leed certified so it was interesting to have it there um I also attended a couple of policy committee meetings of villager California cities in Sacramento recently and I I'm on the community services policy committee and the administrative services policy committee we heard a lot

2:40:06about the state budget problems and this the league is working on an initiative um to protect local financing so you may if you go to the grocery store see somebody talking about protecting local financing and transportation and that's that's the measure that the

2:40:26league is working on um the um Parks and Rec commission that and we spent a lot of time talking about excuse me um Huber Park and um whether or not there ought to be playground equipment there or how the limited flat space should be used and there was quite a uh a topic it was quite a topic of

2:40:55conversation between the um people who had who had been around a while and those who were newer and so it was very interesting and we'll see how it turns out um and let's see WIC Tac met last Friday and I was re-elected the representative of CCTA on the Cotton for Costa

2:41:21Transportation Authority for another term which is two years and um the West County Mayors met and we talked about a number of things the most invigorating conversation was held about what was called 350 PPM or parts for million um and we were asked to bring back to

2:41:46each of our cities that topic or inclusion in our climate action plan um so what that was talking about was the uh in English it was the air quality and it's thought that 350 parts per million is the number between beneath which we need to remain in order to prevent global

2:42:15warming if I said that correctly so anyway that I'm by doing this I am telling you that I'm bringing it back and so that as we're developing our climate action plan which I know our staff is doing in working with our Environmental Quality committee that they'll look at that issue and consider

2:42:36it for inclusion so um that's my report I have no reports day and and we had a really Lively discussion we were able to meet the newly selected artists who are going to be working on the San Pablo Avenue public art project and their names are Jonathan Russell and sorori

2:43:09every day and they were really Pleasant and they came to the commission um about the next steps and as part of the next steps um they're going to be joining us at the council chambers at our next meeting to discuss the contract for the public artwork and in your

2:43:28packet this week the weekly report included information about that proposal and that's just sort of a very preliminary sketch that will be developed in much more detail through a public process which was described in the weekly report but I just wanted to bring a couple of points to your

2:43:45attention so that we'll be ready to speak about them next one of them is any direction that the council wants to give on our Banner program as as some interaction or effects from The Proposal with that program the second item is to what extent the council would like to focus our public

2:44:09art program at a pedestrian scale and at the street level presence and we heard a lot tonight about our goals for really bringing alive a Transit oriented Hub and how we know that we have a car oriented area at Del Norte in other parts of the city and so how can we make

2:44:28our program appropriate for what what things look like now and what we want them to look like in the future and there was also a discussion about concerns about graffiti and vandalism on public art pieces which I think is always a concern and can be addressed in

2:44:43a number of ways through materials and placement and maintenance and some folks have asserted you know that it's difficult to have anything at ground level because of this risk and I think it's important for the council to weigh in on the appropriate level that we're

2:45:00willing to accept with the issue of graffiti and vandalism on our public art and it's a new program and so I thought maybe we could give that some consideration and then finally the artist concept is one of collecting a number of symbols and some of the sketches relate the symbols to the type

2:45:20of activity in the district for example the library might have symbols related to books or the theater area might have symbols related to the theater and music and I wanted to bring to your attention the possibility that we might lay out some very general direction on criteria

2:45:35about how enduring those symbols might be about long-standing aspects of our City versus sort of more ephemeral business specific images that might change over time so those were the things that I thought about there may be others feel free to review that packet and

2:45:53we'll be welcoming the artists here next meeting bill thank you uh excuse me Planning Commission met the whole meeting was on uh the cell application for the cell tower after three a little over three hours they delayed any decision they wanted to study a few more issues

2:46:19we also I felt sorry for in this respect I felt sorry for three of the members it was their first meeting and they're hit with a uh with this with a cell Tower thing uh so my only thing is this to me and I I have talked to any of the parties that's just uh intuition and it shouldn't

2:46:43surprise you I think any decision that comes out of the Planning Commission will probably make its way here and so I think we have to be uh mindful of the brown act and how we express our opinions in public on this issue since it's a live one and possibly could come before our board I don't

2:47:03think I have to lecture you I'm just saying I think that's that's the way it's gonna it might come as far as the J uh joint Powers Authority for the regional parks at uh Regional Pla Sports fields at Gilman uh that that didn't we did not meet uh looks like we'll be meeting this month

2:47:25and the West County Integrated Waste Management Authority did not meet last month I am anticipating a meeting this month uh with the possibility of finalizing some rates to come before the city so thank you and with that uh this is adjourned to our next regularly scheduled meeting which is on

2:47:50Tuesday February 16th and I note that it's on a Tuesday because of the holiday on Monday sorry about that I forgot to ask that this is a parking guide from City of Redwood City and how they've implemented the okay okay so the meaning