Special City Council and Redevelopment Agency Meeting March 15, 2010

0:01:50foreign [Music] that you find uh Public Safety as rewarding an experience as I have for my family members thank you and with that I would like to call roll councilmember Jones councilmember Potter here councilmember Lyman here council member Chang is absent and mayor Abelson present

0:02:53okay um let's see I'm not are we going to have oral Communications um there's no speaker thank you then I would like to turn the program over to police chief Kirkland who does a fantastic job thank you madam mayor city council members tonight's a special night as we honor

0:03:18those people who have embraced Us in terms of coming to the city of El Cerrito and joining the ranks of the police department we're also blessed tonight in terms of having a bunch of our retirees and people who used to work here before before I get into that I would like to

0:03:33ask is that if you do have a cell phone on if you would be so kind as to maybe put it on silent beep vibrate that would certainly help the proceedings tonight's a night for families is that if when your loved one is called if you want to come up and take pictures please

0:03:50do so if they're not smiling correctly let me know and I will smack them laughs and we will resolve that as quickly as possible in order to have a police department you need to have not only a great city council but a great city manager and people don't realize how difficult it is

0:04:10or how rewarding it is to work with the city manager that has been as great as Mr Hannah is and I just want to acknowledge Mr Hannon for all his great efforts for the past 10 years that we have worked together the city council they have been great the city council has been great they've

0:04:28been very very supportive I think people in this room realize police departments are expensive to have a good Police Department is expensive the city council understands that and they've been gracious enough to make sure we have enough funds in order to go forward and what we are trying to

0:04:44achieve within the community and that's so important in terms of City staff that are currently here right now I see over to my left we have Jerry Bradshaw the Public Works director we also have Karen Pinkus the assistant city manager we have Mary Dodge in charge of the financing and then over

0:05:00there somewhere is Lance Maples the fire chief and I see we have Mitch osinski here from the Redevelopment Community Services uh department and they've been very very supportive of the police department the police department does not originate on today it comes from a historical

0:05:16perspective we are so fortunate that we have been honored with past people who have served countless hours and countless years with us in the back of the room we have Scott Mosby a retired Commander served over 20 years and the reason that I am fond of Scott is that Scott and I went to the same

0:05:33Academy during the academy Scott was with the Richmond police department and Scott was very instrumental in having me hired with the city of El Cerrito fortunately for the city of El Cerrito Scott saw the light and came over to El Cerrito to his right is Michael McAfee Reserve

0:05:52officers are special to any police department they give so many volunteer hours and Michael was with us for over 30 years we thank you Michael Jack wood what can I say about Jack wood is that he was so instrumental in this department in terms of defensive tactics

0:06:09you cannot find a more talented individual in terms of music and as well as harmonics very very talented he keeps in touch with the police department he's one of the facilitators for the supervisor Leadership Institute which we send all of our sergeants to so I still feel

0:06:27connected even though we don't see each other on day to day one of the funniest men you will ever contact it's because of the groundwork that you laid Jack in regards to defensive tactics that I think we're here today and I thank you for all your efforts I also saw Gary privy Gary just retired

0:06:46about a year ago Gary was here for uh 29 years and just retired as a commander thank you Gary I saw Jay Clark Jay Clark's in the back of the room served over 30 years with the police department in a variety of capacities he doesn't understand what retirement is

0:07:02they sue the day after he retired from the city of El Cerrito he was gainfully employed by the District Attorney's office as a senior investigator but thank you Jay over to his right we have Orris Washington Senior for those people who have worked with ORS knows that orus is a character he's

0:07:21just a funny character type of man was while parking enforcement representative for over 10 years and we thank him for his kindness and generosity Wayne Dalton Mann if there is a question in regards to hockey and or baseball ask Wayne in regards to movies he has seen I think

0:07:48every movie that has ever been produced and if you ask him a question about the director who was in it Wayne will just pipe up in instantaneously He Still Remains friends with all of us he is a great friend to a number of people also in the room who did I see I I want to

0:08:04acknowledge uh deputy chief from the Pinole Police Department that is going to be very very uh difficult to replace Pete jenke and to his right is Beth Barkey some of you in this room might recognize the name Beth Barkey she served with the city of El Cerrito for a period of time

0:08:20and I'm not quite sure what her job's been she's been the work for the city of El Cerrito you went over to Hercules as a city council person she's with the police department now and the Panola Police Department as the executive assistant but welcome and over to Pete's

0:08:34right is Lee Blevins Lee was the first person that we had that had any type of technical knowledge and got us started in the computer age and we owe a lot in terms of our record management in regards to you Lee but thank you so much and I saw Ken Zink over here Ken was

0:08:49with us for a period of time before he went over to the other side that being San Pablo but he still keeps in contact with us but thank you Ken tonight's special an event like this does not happen in an instant it happens with a lot of hard work and tonight we're not only

0:09:06honoring Samantha Smith in regards to her promotion but also for coordinating this event thank you Samantha you passed your first test and uh we'll acknowledge it later on as I indicated before if people have want to take pictures please stop and and take them this is a special day and

0:09:26it's for the families and I'm looking around to make sure I didn't forget anyone that I should have acknowledged but I don't see anyone right now if I did I'm sure I'll be chastised at a later date but that's all right first person I want to acknowledge is Samantha Smith the way I'd like to do

0:09:39this is call the person up they'll have a couple words that they sow they'll choose the person that they want to pin the badge on and then we'll move on from there and then we'll have a story and in ceremony uh all at one time and um Cheryl it will will do that for us Cheryl Morris the

0:09:56city clerk Samantha in June of 2007 the department welcomes Samantha Smith as a police record specialist Samantha graduated from San Diego State University in August of 2006 majoring in criminal justice upon her graduation Samantha worked as a substitute teacher

0:10:16for the Livermore Valley Joint School District we had an opening in the police department with the retirement of the police secretary it was called back then we had an open recruitment and Samantha came out number one it was my pleasure my honor that on December 3rd of 2010

0:10:33Samantha was promoted to the position of police executive assistant so we welcome Samantha we look forward to the many good things that you will bring to the department and to turn now to introduce people okay come on up oh you gotta give her a kiss give me a break

0:11:15[Applause] this next person are three lieutenants are elated to have and you'll understand why when we explain his attributes gabino Gutierrez on August 24th you can stand up kabino on August 24 2009 the department welcomed kabino as a police recruit on that date he began the Basic

0:11:43Police Academy in Alameda County gabino attended High School in Almeda incidental High School upon graduating in 2000 he enlisted in the United States Marine Corps cabina served his country and was discharged in January of 2005.

0:11:57upon discharge he attended Chabot college and graduated with an associate's degree in August of 2007.

0:12:03gabino then transferred into the University of California Berkeley and graduated with a degree in Psychology in June of 2009.

0:12:11during his time attending the two colleges gabino worked almost full-time as a loss prevention agent with Ikea and was a Reserve officer with the Contra Costa County Sheriff's Department gabino graduated with a from the Basic Police Academy on March 8th and during

0:12:27that week he completed his orientation gabino started his formal 18-week field training program March 13th of 2010.

0:12:36gabino is a high-ranking belt holder in the Marine Corps martial arts in a fourth level Bell holder out of five in Krav Maga an Israeli self-defense why are people excited about him Paul Keith is excited that we finally got another Cal grad [Laughter] delacampa is excited because he's in

0:12:59charge of the training and then we've almost anointed gabino in terms of a defensive tactic Constructor I see Jack shaking his head you betcha and also Steve bonini is excited because Steven is one of our defensive tactics instructor gabino my mother everyone well you got to introduce everyone my

0:13:20father gobina Gutierrez senior [Applause] you can get some more pictures I'm here I'm there [Applause] Brandon Ruffin [Applause] Brandon has been with the department since March 4th of 2009. we hired him as a police cadet and you want to know why for those of you who remember

0:14:42he was he was actually scheduled to start the basic police academy in January but Almeda County and Costa Contra Costa County canceled their basic police academies at that time he was laid off from his job because he was getting ready to move up north to be in the police academy so

0:14:59we made an overture to the city manager in terms of we got to do something for this guy he just moved from La up to here and Mr Hannon was gracious enough that we hired him as a Cadet he was trained properly by the Rutgers people I know he was he was hired in March 18th of 2009

0:15:16as a police recruit and started the Basic Police Academy in Contra Costa County he attended salesian high school which I know Mike Reagan is very very excited about as well as uh you got that right and graduated in 2003. Brandon then attended California State University Northridge on our athletic

0:15:33scholarship track and graduated in 2007.

0:15:37his degree was a Bachelor's of Arts degree in sociology and we welcome you and we expect many many things and your father did say he wants that pickup going [Applause] and my friends [Applause] appreciate Gilbert Tang Gilbert was a fine for us is that I had met Gilbert when I was working fraud as

0:17:12he was the assistant City assistant manager for Safeway in El Cerrito we were lucky to hire him in August of 2001.

0:17:23he worked as a police officer but was transferred into investigations in May of 2005.

0:17:29because of what he was noted for hard work tenacity he was promoted to the rank of Corporal December 27 2009.

0:17:38how he really helped us in achieving some of our goals is when we had the video surveillance ordinance is it on vinoxa Gilbert he was become an expert on video surveillance and we enjoyed your uh knowledge of the time and we and we thank you for the time that you dedicated to that program it's

0:17:58a great program but thank you Gilbert appreciate it [Applause] I said nice things about you Ken all right even after you abandoned us we put you through the academy and you stole left yeah perhaps you don't wear badges in San Pablo this is something else [Applause]

0:18:51going on with the theme of San Pablo David Wentworth David was hired in June of 2003 the only reason he was hired is because of the good grace of genes I think everyone in this room should know that his uncle is the police chief in San Pablo Joe Ada and I know that the

0:19:16parents are here are very very proud is that when we were doing his background needlessly I've known Joe for a number of years he called me up and said he's a good man grew up in Rodeo kind of Crockett Rodeo Crockett West County yeah pretty close he's been a lot of things to us

0:19:42after he was hired he served as a police officer he transferred into traffic in July of 2005.

0:19:48we then know knew that we needed him in the investigation unit and transferred in in January of 2006.

0:19:55he served over three years four years in terms of the detectives before he was promoted December 27 2009 he graduated from Sacramento State University with a bachelor's degree in criminal justice in May of 2002. we welcome you and we cherish the time you spent with us so

0:20:13far thank you David foreign [Applause] the other thing that David and I have in common is that we happen to have married people that have a passion for four-legged creatures that eat hay all the time and cost us a lot of money [Laughter] I'm not quite sure who has more horses

0:21:44David or myself but they are very very costly Ian Wong [Applause] been with the Departments since September of 2002.

0:22:01quickly established himself as one of our Premier police officers I still say to this date for those who remember is that he's John Carrillo Junior and I say that as a compliment to him and I even told John that is that they're out there all the time trying to stay busy arresting those people that

0:22:20are fun to arrest and having that much pleasure and doing it with a smile providing a customer service he transferred into investigations in July of 05 but we quickly noted the talents that he had and was promoted to the rank of Corporal in July of 06.

0:22:40he was then promoted to the rank of Sergeant in December 27 2009.

0:22:45he just received his bachelor's degree December 24th Cal State University Long Beach he is currently enrolling in a master's program and we're excited about that we welcome you to your new Rank and we wish you the best of luck Ian [Applause] congratulations [Applause]

0:23:44in terms of the promotions I just want to make one comment take a seat Steve [Laughter] foreign you will note today that we have a lot of promotional designations and it took a lot of work for a couple signatures on a piece of paper to occur is that this is a dream

0:24:17of mine for the last five years and I was working with a city manager in order to achieve it a chief is not Successful by himself if you don't have a city manager that believes in what you're doing you are not going to be able to get the ear of the city council this took us

0:24:34almost five years to complete and it happened very very quickly to a lot of you but the amount of work that it went in went in terms of the background is just amazing but I thank you once again for the organization Mr Hannon I think this could be great opportunities to the city

0:24:49council thank you for committing the funds necessary to do this I think you're going to have an outstanding Department in the future and I think that you will read the rewards of the additional costs that are being borne by this positions of lieutenant position we haven't had for a long

0:25:06period of time Lee was the last person to retire as a lieutenant when Jay and I got it we were lieutenants and then went to Commanders Steve bonini you can stand up now Stephen quite knowledgeable about the city of El Cerrito Uncle firefighter spent some time in El Cerrito with all

0:25:26his relatives what a great career he said hired as a police officer December 14 1997.

0:25:34transferred into investigations in December of 02 promoted to corporal May of 03.

0:25:43promoted the sergeant in May of 05.

0:25:47graduated from Union Institute in November of 05.

0:25:51transferred into traffic as our traffic sergeant in December of 05.

0:25:58Stephen took our newly created traffic position and elevated to the desired goal that I had always wanted since he's been in there and he's not going to take the credit because that's just the way he is but it's because of people like him that we have a very successful program

0:26:16we have won awards in regards to our traffic safety unit the first time that we submitted an award we came in second place in the California law enforcement challenge the next two years we came in first place in the state of California that's just amazing when you think about

0:26:33a unit with such a small Cadre of officers but it's a credit to Stephen and yes he'll tell you that it's the men and women that work for our department that work hard in order for him to achieve that I understand that and I accept that but I certainly appreciate the time and energy

0:26:50that you spend on it right now he's in the process of submitting our other application and if you saw the application it's almost a mini book in terms of it's all done quite an achievement quite a task we thank you for that Stephen is one of our defensive tactics

0:27:06instructor and has elevated that discipline to a high level he also teaches at the Basic Police Academy we welcome Stephen we look forward to your years of service to the city and congratulations [Applause] Chloe my dad Joe you know it's nobody can get here alone

0:27:42so I'm not going to call one person up here if I'm gonna call a couple Sean I told you put on the uniform come on up here and come on up here I'll help you out thank you guys that's right here there's nothing I won't do to make you look good [Laughter] thank you

0:28:30this picture is positive in the California law enforcement challenge oh that was harsh Paul Keith Paul was a quagmire when we first hired him and the reason I say that is that he attended the Basic Police Academy on his own during that time he did not apply to any

0:29:05police departments he then started submitting his application Us in the police world when we see a person that has gone through a police academy and hasn't been picked up we go something's wrong with him that's the reason no agency has talking but to his credit what he wanted to do he wanted to

0:29:20focus his full-time energies on the academy and he wanted to select the department that he wanted to work with we feel very very fortunate that he came to our department and we've been honored ever since I like his grandparents better than him no no difference to the mother as well

0:29:38as the sister but the grandparents are more enjoyable than you as I indicated before he's been with us since November of 2000 he transferred into investigations in May of 2003.

0:29:52promoted to police Corporal in May of 2005 promote the police sergeant in July of 06.

0:29:59transferred back to detectives as a sergeant in December of 07 and was promoted on December 27th of 09.

0:30:09I killed before in terms of kabino I'm surprised somewhere he's probably excited about the yellow stripes my kid was supposed to wear a camera oh okay is that he graduated with a bachelor's degree from the University of California at Berkeley in December of 1999.

0:30:25he also has a master's degree from Cal State Hayward as of June of 05. my prediction is is that he will be back in soon school soon and my money is he'll start obtaining his Juris doctorate degree I think that's where he's at Paul is married and people from yesteryears can remember this he

0:30:45actually lives in El Cerrito we welcome you [Applause] with my make sure you don't forget him we have Jen Wilson from Berkeley is from San Francisco John Emmons from San Bernardino sheriff's office and Marty Craig from Petaluma my grandfather my grandma Bob and Ali as

0:31:15a side note Bob was sworn in his officer for a day way way way back in the 40s and helped break up these horrible speakeasies and gambling joints [Music] [Applause] God I have my in-laws the car consumero I have uh my sister Michelle from the Contra Costa probation

0:31:40department and her roommate Mindy from the same Department and then I have my mother Sue over here with the camera and she'll probably be coming up also to take my wife and my son Brody are going to come up and put on my badge and we'll see I said we were going to be here all

0:31:54night if it took him all night to pin my bad job as people are walking up I just want knowledge also that Paul does teach at the Basic Police Academy and we're very excited about that I think that is a UCLA Brewing councilmember Potters probably all excited to see that color

0:32:52gonna give your wife a kiss come on [Music] all right so I finally called this TNT [Laughter] thank you Paul [Applause] thank you now do you guys come up here and apologize before you walk get fed tonight Robert delacampa talk about a person that knew what he wanted to do at such a young age

0:33:38Robert's certainly an example of that with the Panola Police Department he was with them from May of 87 until September of 93. during that time period he was an explorer Pete's I'm verifying this with Pete I'm watching him shake his head yes or no he was a Cadet a reserved police officer

0:33:58a Community Service Officer and in oh after May of 87 you then went to the where am I isn't it amazing how you get all messed up when you have notes like this see I should stop scribbling maybe jaunt us all down properly in terms of May of 1987 he was hired as a police officer with the city of El

0:34:20Cerrito in January of 1998 and prior to that he was a police officer with Burlingame Police Department October of 93 till November of 96. Pinole Police Department November of 96 January of 1998.

0:34:35as I indicated before we feel very very lucky we didn't know what we were getting into because he kept on switching jobs he's one of those people that switched jobs every couple years not satisfied but I think he finally found a home one of the great things about Robert as you

0:34:49Traverse the West Contra Costa I believe he is related to everyone around here we've always meet one of his relatives I say that in a very very nice manner he transferred into the investigations division as a detective in January of 2000 promoted to the rank of Corporal in

0:35:06May of 2002 promoted to the rank of Sergeant in 2002. he became our administrative sergeant in July of 2006.

0:35:16this is where he started to Blossom one of my goals as Chief I wanted him to take the program that Michael had started in flourishing make it work and through Robert most of our training is what they call post-certified and that means it means the basic requirements for the State of California

0:35:35it helps us defray costs and it also helps us develop our Personnel in terms of great instructors it's a program that I firmly believe in and it's through Robert that it's been able to do so well Robert is known throughout the state of California in terms of a training program manager they

0:35:53go to him for the questions as well as the answers he's been instrumental we offer the training out to other West County agencies and we're very very excited to be known as a leader in terms of training I don't take the credit for that that gentleman Robert de la camper deserves

0:36:10all the credit he was promoted to administrative Lieutenant on December of 09.

0:36:19and during this time as he's mixing his personal and professional life he became a reserve firefighter in October of 07 and he still acts in that capacity for the rodeo Hercules fire fire district he graduated with a four-year degree from Cal State East Bay in December of

0:36:4106 he's working toward his master's right now he's completing his last class those of us who have been there can appreciate going through your last class for your master's degree I know he's excited about it but he's been just a great person to to work with and work for

0:37:01and we look forward to the many great things that you will offer the city of El Cerrito congratulations Robert [Applause] down [Music] ey I've also got some friends here Sergeant Jim Ford from Burlington Police Department and obviously since I worked down there

0:38:04is from Albany I invited me when I worked at the police department in Pinole when I was a very young floor there yeah he was already a sergeant at that time say I looked up I had a lot of My Success training and mentoring and why did this guy taught me a lot about

0:38:58working 2016 .

0:39:06[Laughter] [Applause] Michael W Regan [Applause] if there's a reason to have an Explorer post as you heard earlier it's because of people like Michael who take that little breath of knowledge and make a career out of it he was actually hired with the El Cerrito Police

0:40:14Department as an Explorer in July of 1983.

0:40:19he served in that capacity till September of 05.

0:40:24he then went to the Martinez Police Department as a reserve police officer in July of 86 and served in that capacity till November of 1987.

0:40:34he went he then wanted a full-time job in law enforcement in which the Almeda County Sheriff's Department in November of 87.

0:40:43we feel very very lucky that he was hired here in May of 1988.

0:40:51Michael certainly distinguished himself in terms of his desires for traffic he was transferred into traffic in 1990 and served in the Traffic Unit the one-person unit we had back then for two years transferred into investigations as a detective in June of 1993.

0:41:12promoted to the rank of Corporal January of 1995.

0:41:16promoted to the rank of Sergeant January of 1998.

0:41:22his first assignment as an administrative Sergeant was in January of 2000 and only serving that capacity for six months my charge when he first went in was I wanted the training program elevated I wanted to be elevated to the status that it currently holds today

0:41:42Michael took that initiated the program and it began its great journey we then were very very fortunate within the city of El Cerrito to have been granted through the city council to the city manager a traffic sergeant Mike will always go down as our first motor traffic sergeant

0:42:04he took a unit that was non-existent and started the process to where it is today but I needed them someplace else at that time if you recall we had the video surveillance ordinance going through I needed Michael and we moved him from the traffic Sergeant's position to the

0:42:27administrative Sergeant's position did a great job with that is that he soon became a state expert in terms of video surveillance systems and even today we are called upon by agencies cities not only in California but throughout the nation on how we were able to do it people are still amazed

0:42:48something that we've had in existence now for a couple years people are amazed that we that we were able to get approval from the city council I thank the city council for that I think that's helped us tremendously in terms of where we are in terms of the reduction of crime

0:43:03and can't tell you what a forward thinking process that was promoted to the rank of Commander March 5th 2006.

0:43:14clearly distinguished himself as the person that I needed in order to make the department run efficiently promoted to the position of police captain in December 27 of 09.

0:43:27Mike graduated with a bachelor's degree from Cal State Long Beach in January of 2009.

0:43:34he is currently enrolled in a master's program at the same college and we look forward to that as well we welcome you Michael I cannot thank you enough for what you've done for the city but for me as well thank you very much I have with me here this evening my lovely wife Jennifer who has suffered

0:43:57through a number of years number of years hustle because it wasn't home and my daughter Elizabeth [Applause] foreign [Applause] people who are looked up to over the years Chief Kirkland and Clark Community Mosby just the the people in the crowd Sergeant man Commander pretty people who

0:44:48at every turn helped me try to become not only a better police officer but look at people that we've promoted today the people who hired and I see a department that's striving for the future to improve and to be a tremendous benefit to our city so thank you very

0:45:09much for joining us this evening it's an incredibly important moment for each of us hearing uniform thank you I would ask all of the new hires as well as promote these to line up towards Samantha and then Cheryl Morse the city clerk will perform the honoring rituals

0:45:52so you want to raise your right hand and repeat after me I State your names do solemnly swear I thought of a support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the constitution of the State of California against all enemies foreign and domestic that I will bear true faith and

0:46:21Allegiance through the Constitution of the United States and the constitution of the State of California I take this obligation freely without mental reservation Financial reservation our purpose of evasion and that I will well and Faithfully discharge the duties upon which

0:46:49I'm about to enter congratulations thank you Cheryl Michael before you go anywhere back up there camera is okay all the pictures taken I won't let them leave until I receive kind of a yes nod something like that what I would also ask is that members of the police

0:47:27department present as well as pass please come up here we'd like to take a group photograph I think that's very very important as we honor those people who have served before us so Lee J Oris Wayne Gary Moe's Scott Jack Scott don't be uh don't be what are you doing

0:47:54you gotta get up there for the picture what you you have a you have a professional photographer right over here and Jerry I think Jerry can figure out the camera I see Garmin back there she's hiding from you now they're coming up great picture slide oh he's on you gotta get up here okay

0:48:58I know thank you all right we're calling it all right [Applause] before everyone slips off Susan stay right there come over here what I wanted to do for the sake of the council I realized that you read a lot of these names in the paper you might not recognize some of their

0:49:57faces and I don't say that in a disrespectful type of manner and I just wanted to introduce some of the officers that we have with the city of El Cerrito Susan Gorman detective corporal and we'll just go around the room standing by the door is Diane nakano one of our record Specialists or Diane

0:50:19come on Tracy warlick one of our detectives right now [Applause] one knows Lauren Caputo one of our school resource officers one of our police officers I can't say who's there who's hiding Maples Sean has really noted in terms of what he has done for the for the city as well

0:50:42as the department in terms of the bicycle program I think he's made a number of presentations to the council to Lauren's left is Michael Hernandez a salesian graduate very very excited about what happened today oh they won and if you talk about the cadet program

0:50:57Michael was the first person in the city of El Cerrito when we since we started the program as you know that was promoted as well as hired as a police officer from a Cadet we thank Michael that's Bailey theft Cason Bailey you guys stand up no one can see you hiding

0:51:11back here Angela Payne officer Angela Payne Angela oh yeah let's sing it up oh yeah okay Reserve officer Teresa debord over there [Applause] stand in the room to see if I've missed someone because if client Scott Clark well Scott Clay is running around taking people's

0:51:40photographs there is Scott thank you Scott because Scott's our detective Sergeant right now he's been in that capacity since uh January of all five uh we conclude the ceremonies we have some light Refreshments upstairs and I can't thank Samantha enough in regards to

0:51:57coordinating this effort I thank the city council for coming in early from our council meeting thank you it means a lot to the department in regards to having the officer see you and you see the officers thank you Mr Hannan thank you and uh thank you Chief Kirkland I

0:52:12just want to say how incredibly proud We Are of everyone and um I know many of you from working with you over the years and it's not that I spent a lot of time at the police department occasionally I have a reason to be there and then I wanted to welcome all the new faces and

0:52:25just say what a wonderful event and congratulations to you all thank you [Applause] and I would like to thank everybody for coming I'd like to thank the families and I would like to welcome the new officers and I would like to congratulate everybody who's been promoted or joined the Department but I

0:52:53have to thank somebody else too that would be Scott Kirkland for he's really the head of all of this and I think he's done a fantastic job and I don't know that you're going to want to stay around until 7 30 but he has won an amazing award and I if I might I'd just like to share

0:53:16with all of you because I think it will mean a lot he has won the Joe Maloney Memorial award which was presented to him for his outstanding leadership and dedication to the Statewide Police Officers Association and we have a lot to be proud about in this room and I

0:53:36think that Scott Kirkland Chief Scott Kirkland and I think we unless somebody else wants to on the council wants to say something we are ready to adjourn the meeting and as I understand it there will be Refreshments for everyone upstairs in the hillside room if you

0:54:03just go up the stairs it's right there or if you want to take the elevator over to my left you can take the elevator up and along the hallway there you'll see a number of pieces of artwork done by members of our city staff including our Police Department so I do hope you'll take a look at that

0:54:24and thank you all for coming [Applause] foreign it looks like this is the meeting of the El Cerrito city council and we will start with roll call please councilmember Jones president councilmember Potter here councilmember Lyman president council member Chang is

1:33:36absent and mayor Abelson present okay uh with that I hope you'll all join me in the pledge of allegiance to the flag I pledge allegiance 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

1:33:59justice for all thank you okay are there any general counsel Communications or announcements Bill thank you uh last week I attended the California Redevelopment association annual conference and so I just I won't take too long but I'd just like to give an update on some

1:34:22important information that I got out of that um as many of us know there is a lawsuit against the state of California for the their efforts in trying to take Redevelopment money away from cities counties and Special Districts the update is the case is with the judge

1:34:42and the judge has to rule within 90 days and that started March 3rd however the association is expecting a decision by mid to late April because of the May 10th payment requirement by the state um that's that's the good news we'll have a decision here before too long hopefully

1:35:06in our uh in our favor however it's General consensus at least at the conference that the decision will be appealed no matter who wins the decision so it's really unsure of how payment the required payment will be treated during the appeal that's the update on the legal end of

1:35:26things uh just real quickly the California Redevelopment Association uh stated some change in Direction minor changes in Direction but the gist of it is they want to get more local uh officials involved in getting the word out about Redevelopment and what was interesting is there were three there

1:35:51was three uh former state representatives down there and each of them were saying that we have to get out there and hit our Representatives on what this money means to the community to employment uh to the betterment of the communities and the people in it so uh the one of

1:36:11the directions is to kind of increase that type of interaction at the local level as well as the state level and they will continue and actually increase their support of affordable housing and Transit oriented development in the real estate Development Area so we should see that and also a new

1:36:31direction for its formal is to promote and support Green Building in the Redevelopment areas and the building codes and standards that go with it so we'll see I think we'll be seeing more of that as more and more cities start to adopt uh green ordinances that address

1:36:49sustainability uh just want to remind also they were reminding people affordable housing and the housing requirements by the state there's the 2014 compliance State and to date the state will still is still requiring that that we bring be brought up to the amount that cities and

1:37:15counties are supposed to have by 2014 and if it isn't if you're not in compliance by that date you have to file a yearly compliance reports and audits as as well as the possible loss of State funding if the goals aren't met so it is a fairly serious State the state is not backing

1:37:36away from that requirement thank you thank you um yes I've got uh two quick uh announcements last time we were here I made two announcements about the crime prevention committees events and the crime convention committee did meet this last week and reevaluated their uh how

1:37:58they're going to be using City resources and so they have postponed the March 22nd meeting for neighborhood watch and they will reschedule that after National Night Out so look for me to be making that announcement in the future and the bicycle safety Rodeo has also

1:38:17been postponed at this time and we are looking at new dates for that and potentially we'll scale it down to accommodate uh again City resources thank you okay I think that's all the council uh announcements are there any staff announcements okay hearing none uh we do have a couple of

1:38:40specific items um both of which are very positive and exciting and um I'd like to ask police chief Kirkland to join us up here um he's uh had a pretty full load on his plate over the last how many years couple couple okay more than a couple as I remember it because I actually

1:39:15remember when he was just starting out and he's done a lot of things for our cities of which we are very appreciative but he's also been out there working at the Statewide level on behalf of our city and so it gives me a great deal of honor at this time to present him with a

1:39:37plaque that recognizes just how much he's done for not only our city but our state and um so I want to let you all know that on March the 3rd the California police Chiefs Association awarded its most prestigious award which is called the Joel Maloney am I doing that right okay award

1:40:00to uh Scott Kirkland our very own El Cerrito police chief for his dedication and service to law enforcement and to the California Chiefs Association and this award embodies the characteristics represented by professionalism leadership energy and commitment he was

1:40:22recognized in particular for his services and member of the association's board of directors and for his leadership in the area of medical marijuana which provided invaluable resources and information for law enforcement Nationwide so at this time I would like to ask Chief Kirkland's Scott

1:40:40Kirkland if he would come up here and receive this award from that organization and I hope that you will join with me in congratulating him [Applause] and um I I'd also like to let people know in case they don't not only has he done very Innovative things at the state

1:41:22level but we've also been responsible under his guidance and Leadership for uh our very Innovative surveillance video ordinance which I think is a model for the state if not the nation and so I'd like to thank you for that thank you appreciate all the work that you've done

1:41:41over the The Years thank you thank you so much okay thank you okay okay and um we have been very fortunate this year in El Cerrito to have our city leadership the staff level recognized and so I have another award that I would like to present tonight on behalf of that organ

1:42:02another organization the American public works Association which is in particular the Northern California chapter has given the 2010 Award of Merit for engineering and Technology to our very own Jerry Bradshaw so I'm wondering if uh [Applause] I I think that you probably all know

1:42:40what Jerry got this award for um he is the Envy of every Public Works directory director every city engineer I think in the state of California because in fact we are redoing all our streets in El Cerrito and I don't know that there's a single other city that can say

1:42:59that because I keep asking and um every one of them wants to know how we did it and Jerry's the one actually doing it and he's making it happen and I hope that you're enjoying the works of his labor and the many other people on the staff of the city of El Cerrito who have

1:43:18made it possible for us to brag right now but um anyway um the um I want also to let you know that Jerry met with some really tough competition it wasn't just a matter of doing a great job but the competitors included the city of Elsa excuse me the city of Oakland the City and County of

1:43:41San Francisco and Pinole among others so I would like to really congratulate Jerry and give him this award thank you um and I have no idea how you can possibly follow up on this one if then I'm sure you'll you'll think about it and uh try and thank you for all the

1:44:01the wonderful work that you have done if if I could just add to that I think the thanks really goes to you all city council and the citizens of El Cerrito who had the faith to to invest in this program uh we were just the mechanics who did the work but it took the city

1:44:27council support an election to really make this thing happen so thank you all too [Applause] um by the end of this year um Jerry will have overseen the work on 77 percent of our roads so down to get that number right so the staff's utterly amazing and um so I also want to thank

1:44:59the taxpayers for um paying for it because without them we would be nowhere so thank you all foreign with that we move right on to our next presentation which is for a lady um who is a really important person to the city of El Cerrito and has been over the many years and

1:45:29um it it really gives me a lot of pleasure to be involved with an award and that is for Lucille Irish um so I think we had figured out we would if you both want it if Lucille would like to come up here and Rich bartke from the El Cerrito historical society would like to come up here then

1:45:51we'll do it up here yeah that's what we're gonna do okay um and we're going to start out um with a presentation from Rich now the one thing I haven't figured out maybe if you want to sit there to use the mic thank you I'm rich barking I'm appearing on behalf of the El Cerrito Historical Society

1:46:29over the years I've noticed that there's usually one person in town who everybody knows everybody knows who it is and she knows everybody it's amazing how often that's the city clerk through Mary Ellen Lucille and Linda and Cheryl isn't that interesting that everybody knows who they are and they

1:46:49know everybody and everything that's happening in town seal Irish is a third generation El sariton she went to work for the city of El Cerrito when she was a teenager and became the city clerk now when I was sitting up here and she was sitting down there we always watched

1:47:09her she tried very hard not to let on what she was thinking but we figured it out and we could always tell whether she was for or against whatever it was we were about to vote on thank you in the early year in the early months of 1974 the El Cerrito Historical Society

1:47:30was founded Lucia was at the first meeting she was elected to the board of directors and as an officer at that first meeting she became the president two years later and she also served another term as president some 10 years later but she was elected and re-elected every

1:47:51year for 35 years last month she decided to not run for re-election and so she's completed almost 36 years as a member of the board of directors and as an officer of the Historical Society so we would like to present her with plaque commemorating all those years

1:48:12that she served on our board and as an officer thank you all um it's a pleasure for me to see so many faces that I haven't seen for a while I officially retired in from El Cerrito as a city clerk in 1986 and then went on to Orinda for a short stay that was supposed to be just a couple of months

1:48:55you know while the new city of Orinda took over but anyway uh 1940 that was eight years later so 1996 I quit being a city employee anywhere and but I always had this great love for the historical society and the people that I was able to work with and and meet with and it's not just uh because

1:49:21my parents my grandparents all came from El Cerrito issues this is such a nice place and I've always been in love with it and I still am although I live in Walnut Creek thank you for being here I really appreciate it thank you and we uh from the city of El Cerrito we have another

1:49:44plaque for you um recognizing um that how much we appreciate the many many years of service you've given to our community um and um so I don't know if I can uh I think most everything has been said at this point already but uh what I do remember uh from my first years here in

1:50:07El Cerrito is that you've really been the you have been the glue that held everything together and my daughter moved away from El Cerrito when she grew up up to Lake County and lo and behold they have Lewis's that's what she was when she was born they have Lewis's up there too

1:50:26so there's no getting away from Lucille Irish and her wonderful family that has actually provided a huge amount of service if you look at the different members of your family but I think you were the most special Lucille and um I can't really say enough good things about you and all the

1:50:46different ways you've made this A Better Community for all of us and so I just want to um I could give you this little plaque and thank you so much but I don't really believe that you're retiring [Laughter] so thank you so much [Applause] now let's see here the um

1:51:22the next item on our agenda then is the heart Safe Community presentation and I believe that's going to be provided um but okay two of you I'll let you start John great thanks uh good evening mayor Abelson members of the council I'm John Joy I represent El Cerrito on the County Board of

1:51:44Supervisors and I live in Richmond and I'm here with Pam Dotson from our EMS system who runs the heart safe communities program and we're here tonight to really give an overview of the heart Safe program and then provide some recognition to those who responded and really saved a life and just by way

1:52:01of history and background as you know the county health department is the Emergency Medical Services Agency for the county and several years ago when the Board of Supervisors approved its new ambulance contract with AMR what we all thought working in conjunction with the cities with fire

1:52:20agencies with AMR that the best approach under a new contract was not only to have to make sure an ambulance is going to be there on time and and to Quicken the response time which AMR has done a great job of doing is that we would work on the prevention side and so as part of

1:52:36that there was a partnership created to put more defibrillators heart defibrillators out into the community a plan to try to inform the community more about the importance of CPR and the importance of how to act and respond after an emergency and we all know this

1:52:56saves lives and I can tell you in a personal case with myself my my father died about 20 years ago after suffering Cardiac Arrest walking his dog not too far away from here and when the First Responders showed up and they revived him he had the classic ventricular fibrillation v-fib and after

1:53:16the First Responders were able to revive him he had already suffered significant brain damage and was in a coma for for 10 days and died one of those cases where had someone arrive sooner or been able to revive sooner the likelihood of him living would have been much greater

1:53:35and so we're so glad that you know we're also here to recognize um the event at El Cerrito High which was a positive outcome and I think that was because of the hard work of so many individuals who responded quickly so the purpose of heart safe communities is really to to spread the word so people

1:53:52one um are aware of what to do after in the need to call 9-1-1 more people learn CPR and then like today and we had a ceremony with the mayor and the fire chief a new heart defibrillator was installed here at El Cerrito City Hall so if somebody here suffers a cardiac

1:54:10arrest the good news is that while not while this council is speaking of course you know you all um that um there there will be the means to um to revive somebody um relatively quickly and as you know they're out also at the senior center here in El Cerrito as well as at the

1:54:26community center and many other locations throughout West County so I think it's been a partnership it's been a Cooperative effort and today we especially want to appreciate the efforts of El Cerrito because you are more uh have made more progress than any other city in the area to really reach

1:54:44the goal um to become a heart Safe Community and Pam's going to talk more about that and we saw the chart outside or the the temperature the thermometer outside earlier which showed you're you're almost there and I think this serves as a challenge to other cities and other

1:54:58communities in Contra Costa County to follow the lead here and and be prepared and being prepared means being able to save lives so with that I'll turn it over to Pam and I know then there'll be some recognition of individuals thank you supervisor Joya um sudden cardiac death is the leading

1:55:19cause natural death in the United States it takes them over 350 000 people a year it actually leads lung cancer breast cancer and AIDS combined we don't hear a lot about it by definition it is sudden cardiac death so most of the individuals who suffer from it aren't here they have

1:55:38succumbed to the disease only about six to seven percent survive and what we do know is that if someone is to survive this event that there actually are four things that need to be in place one is someone needs to recognize the event someone has collapsed they need to recognize that

1:55:55they need to then say hmm I think I'll do something about this take action if you will um they need to determine whether or not they're okay are you all right are you all right ask them if no response they need to go ahead and dial 9-1-1 or make sure someone is sent off to do such the

1:56:12second thing is that we need to do immediate CPR um sort of the hard fast uninterrupted CPR is what we know makes a difference in actual return of spontaneous circulation and survival they're going off to save a life now um third someone who needs to arrive with

1:56:31the defibrillator so maybe that person that sent them off just dial 9-1-1 also says Hey and get that to AED so in this particular location um your individual staff the members have been trained to use that defibrillator to do CPR and to and to use that defibrillator so if something

1:56:45should happen in this building they would say hey dial 9-1-1 go get a defibrillator and they would come back with that and someone would actually place the pads on and be able to provide a shock if indeed that was what was necessary um oftentimes um we had a supervisor Joya mentioned we

1:57:02had put a lot of defibrillators out into the community back several years ago and what we discovered is that having them there was wonderful but if they don't come out of the case then they really aren't going to be um useful so heartsafe Community came out of an

1:57:17unfortunate incident where a defibrillator was needed for an individual and it didn't come off the wall so okay now we have defibrillators there we need to go that step further and really get them community and everyone involved in doing something and taking that deferral out of the case and

1:57:34using it and then by dialing 9-1-1 we actually have our Advanced life support our our fire and our ambulance Personnel on the way and that provides the advanced care that this person may need after that in initial shock or at least the initial shock um we do know on February 2nd

1:57:53um we had a sudden Cardiac Arrest at the El Cerrito High School and that El Cerrito um high school was a was a heart Safe Community that night we had a number of individuals who witnessed that arrest we had several people who responded appropriately that they actually said dial 9-1-1 and

1:58:14people did we had people who started CPR people who directed them to start CPR maybe do it this way do it that way there was some hesitation in the fact that often this particular Rhythm the ventricular fibrillation that supervisor Joya mentioned looks like a seizure okay

1:58:31so it may present initially as a seizure um sometimes that makes people hesitate maybe we don't put it on maybe we do put it on they did then the individuals who provided CPR and who had dialed 9-1-1 right away actually had our first response El Cerrito fire respond in a

1:58:51very short period of time they were able to put their defibrillator on attempt to shock add what we call our Lucas device and it's actually a mechanical chest compression device attempt a second shock which was then successful AMR arrived paramedics and in EMT and I understand tonight an intern

1:59:11paramedic which thank you for being there um and they provided the advanced life support we talk about in that chain of survival and transported him to the hospital and we've had a successful resuscitation I'd like to bring up David if you will there again and in order to get all the names right

1:59:49I have to read them but David I'd like to introduce you to a number of people who were instrumental in your being here this evening some of which you know who's there your coach and your friends and family and some of which you haven't yet met um so if we can do that that would be

2:00:04great okay he was wearing an Alameda fire um sweatshirt this afternoon when we met him and he was promptly given an El Cerrito fire sweatshirt so where tonight um it's very good on them actually more than one yeah whole bunch okay um so when David collapsed on the floor

2:00:30of the high school gym as I mentioned there were many witnesses people really did see this happen and took immediate action um Taya Booker if you can are you here this evening can you come on up please you're only one you'll be fine [Applause] and and Kim Thomas is also another

2:00:57individual who I'm not sure if she is here this evening Kim and Taya both dialed 9-1-1 and actually got a hold of Richmond fire and dispatch and actually were able to successfully direct them to what was going on there was CPR directions being offered and they were

2:01:14able to tell that dispatcher that there was CPR already going on which was very helpful so we want to thank you for your immediate action and we'll acknowledge you in just a moment thank you um coaches Michael Booker and Daryl Jackson [Applause] hello [Applause]

2:01:54along with a parent who is an off-duty firefighter from Alameda County who could not be with us tonight Dan Rice as he is um actually on duty hopefully doing his fire thing and saving more lives um Yolanda Yolanda Webster who is a nurse who actually assisted them to begin CPR

2:02:17right away and and as I understand it directed them to to get started and get going and maybe put him in the right position and things like that so Yolanda thank you very much for your participation in this success [Applause] El Cerrito fire Captain John Kelleher

2:02:43engineer paramedic Candace Emirate and firefighter paramedic David Shapiro arrived and took over care providing that life-saving shock that actually made the difference thank you foreign [Applause] Patterson EMT you've come up please paramedic they lie to me okay and bring

2:03:22your bring your intern please to and if you guys could introduce her I'd appreciate that wow thank you Tiffany Todd thank you I knew Tiffany I didn't know the last name thank you um so the links or the chain of survival the links and the chain of survival were in place on February 2nd

2:03:56um as you can see we were successful in this event and it took a village um we got part of it right here um we'd like to honor you Dr Barger our medical director from Contra Costa Emergency Medical Services if you could come on up we're gonna give everyone certificates and I have the um

2:04:17I can do this straight face I have the honor of um representing the sudden Cardiac Arrest Association um tonight as um Anita and Jack Grogan had intended to be here to provide um they do lovely certificates and made much more exciting pins EMS is accounting and we give you some little

2:04:41paper Okay um and actually Jack and Anita Have Been instrumental in working with us through Contra Costa to um to really push heart safe and really help me to come to fruition with it if you will and um I come with a sad heart in that we lost Jack a week ago Sunday to sudden

2:05:03cardiac arrest and so while Anita wanted to be here tonight I asked that she stay home and take the time that she needed to heal and not to try and open this wound um so we'll be presenting certificates from EMS and from Sudden Cardiac Arrest Association sudden Cardiac Arrest

2:05:22provides a pen for Survivor and a pin for the heroes the bystanders who were helpful they also have a very wonderful pen that is a that is made so that our fire and paramedic Personnel ambulance Personnel can wear it on their uniform it's actually official and approved we

2:05:41have a number it has a Roman numeral one on it um for your first save that we know about as you save more you'll get a Roman number two or six or however many we can bestow upon you through the tears um as some of our individual bystanders are officers we went ahead and gave you

2:06:00the Roman numerals so you can wear it on your uniforms off duty uh when you're on duty um as opposed to the off-duty stuff so I'll be with you just I think home okay it's an answer for me yeah go ahead I think I can do it I think I can get them in order um Taya Booker

2:06:35[Applause] sorry um we're just losing the microphone sorry I do I have an order foreign I am so everyone can hear Taya Booker thank you now if I can get these right Michael Booker [Applause] Daryl Jackson [Applause] sorry Yolanda Webster [Applause] foreign John Kelleher

2:08:33[Applause] paramedic engineer Candice Emmert [Applause] firefighter paramedic Dave chappara [Applause] AMR paramedic let's go with Miriam Patterson [Applause] again AMR paramedic Rick Munoz [Applause] apologies to Tiffany we will we will definitely follow up with certificate

2:09:40for you from both thank you foreign and for those of you in the audience who are wondering how can you help El Cerrito get that smidgen more of red in their thermometer just to be the first heart Safe Community designated in Contra Costa will really like from the citizens is

2:10:06take a CPR class learn how to use an AED be able to respond in a horrible situation in a most Brave and honorable way thank you for all of you [Applause] thank you [Applause] so we just have a moment here in the meeting I just wanted to say to David that ever since

2:10:58David ever since February 2nd everybody was so worried and the entire El Cerrito High School community and the city of El Cerrito and I wanted you to know that you have mass math class with my daughter Julia Martine and I was so pleased that when I I've been asking

2:11:15about you often and she said that you're back in math class and I'm just so pleased for you and I want to thank everybody here who are really truly Heroes serving in just like the highest capacity possible so thank you all and we're just so happy David that you're

2:11:30here tonight and I would like to end this item by um with a quiz which is what is the first thing you do when one of these incidents seems to be happening dial 9-1-1 that's right and then uh look for the AED which in this building is located downstairs between the restrooms

2:12:08which as I'm looking at you is on my left so um and um I actually personally took it out it put it in its case and and took it out again and it will make a noise if you do but don't worry that's fine and thank you to all who um uh enabled us to keep David in our

2:12:30community we really appreciate it and I know his family is extremely appreciate is appreciative beyond belief so thank you all okay with that I would like to pull one more um no it's gonna do one more thing I was going to skip to the consent calendar and pull one item off of the consent

2:12:55calendar for purposes of a presentation and then that will end our presentations I believe for tonight and that's agenda item uh four excuse me five C and I would like to ask Deborah Stanton to come forward thank you and um okay um as some of you may know because you

2:13:23got a census form in the mail today I know I did I don't know if you all did uh and this is what it will look like this is what it will look like uh it's in an envelope and uh if I might brag a little bit it's extremely important for our community that everybody fill out that form and

2:13:45return it and the reason for that is some of the funding that we get in our local community is based on getting information from that survey so if you want to help our community in a way that we very much need it today it would be to fill out that form and and make sure you you know get it back as

2:14:06soon as possible because if you don't get it back quickly then what will happen is they will have to go into subsequent steps that cost money and we don't want that to happen if it's unnecessary Deborah I'd like to present to you a proclamation from the city of El Cerrito

2:14:26and we have identifying ourselves as a 2010 census partner and a supporter of the effort that you're doing in this uh census and thank you so much thank you very much and becoming partners with us and thank you this evening it's very important that you send it back it's

2:14:46just 10 questions I filled mine out this evening as soon as I got it in the mail and it actually took less than 10 minutes so I have approximately three I have three people in my home and it took maybe four minutes to fill it out it's easy as fast in the back as soon as possible thank

2:15:01you and thank you thank you [Applause] um I believe that's all the presentations um and now we'll go to the regular order of the agenda so the next item on the agenda is oral Communications from the public which is an opportunity for members of the public to speak on

2:15:28items that are not on the agenda do we have speaker slips we have one speaker Al Miller l Miller [address removed] good evening mayor Abelson and council members I wanted to take the opportunity to thank you for two things one for the support you've given the staff in their

2:15:52development of the El Cerrito green teams uh part of the environmental ecology committee's actions I think but anyway the El Cerrito Green Team under Garth supervision and the friends of five Creek had a broom busting day at the hillside Natural Area and I was fortunate enough to be able to take part

2:16:13of that and I'd say there were 30 to 40 of us up there on the hill I might very well have been the oldest and there was at least a two and a half or three year old that was the youngest and we had a very good time now in addition to whatever contribution we were able to make to the Ecology of the

2:16:33park one of the things that I enjoyed most was the community building experience of all of these people that were there we have people from Pinole we had people from Marin County I'd say half of the people were from El Cerrito half of the people had never been to

2:16:48Hillside Natural Area before so it worked out very well and I'm hoping that your support and the imagination of the staff will continue so that we have more events like this it's very nice to be able to take part in that the other one I wanted to mention quickly was to thank

2:17:06you for arranging the ceremony or the presentation that we just witnessed it wasn't that long ago when another event at another High School in another local city received Nationwide publicity when something went wrong horribly wrong and I'm not saying it didn't deserve

2:17:29that publicity for the attention it focused on a problem but it's really nice to have our high school in our city and our professional Lifesavers recognize for something that went wonderfully right so thank you thank you for your kind words okay um with that we will move on to the

2:18:00adoption of the consent calendar a move adoption of the consent calendar items 5A 5B 5D through 5G second 5cx CX oh we didn't approve it right and items 5A through 5G second again okay there's an there's a mission to the second I think all in favor I depression or abstention

2:18:29most oh sorry okay motion carries unanimously excuse me I just had a just a comment on five e I as the report as the Agenda Report pointed out this is a health savings plan that does not add it does not cost the city funding post employment or and in acting and I think we already do this with fire

2:19:00I think this is the wave of the future and I'm glad to see it it's a plan that employees can invest in that at the time of retirement they have money in which to pay for their medical premiums and as we see the medical premiums and the costs that are going up I think it's

2:19:18it's important that we as employers make effort to help out people when they're going to retire the more people that are taken care of with plans like this and others the less that they become a burden on on uh on our community and society as a whole and the peace in mind that they get that they

2:19:43will have proper have the opportunity to have proper coverage in retirement so I think I think this is personally I think this is a Cornerstone Milestone however you want to phrase it that will allow us to go forward and try to work with our employee groups to to enact

2:20:06a a very positive uh program so thank you thank you I have a comment on item 5B which is a proclamation for the 2010 attend the Year award that we're presenting to Donna Hauser in a ceremony on March 24th this year and I see Monica courts in the audience and I want to

2:20:30thank her for being such a fabulous woman of the year for us in 2009 and you're gonna have to hand your crown over to Donna anyway thanks okay do you have any comments uh yeah I'm gonna follow up on item 5C which we did have a presentation before and if I have my facts correctly

2:20:49um every person that's counted in El Cerrito uh does bring for bring back to El Cerrito through funding I think it's something on the order of nineteen thousand dollars or something like that in in fundings from federal governments and I'm gonna I see you're still here

2:21:05and I know there's it's a it's a very large number and so it's very important for you to fill out your uh for your census form so that that's that's the the message I'd like you to take home and I think you have a dollars over a 10-year period twelve thousand dollars per person that's

2:21:24counted uh brings money back to our local uh communities and and local governments so it each year 12 000 each year so it's very important for you to fill out your census form thank you thank you and I would uh just like to add a little bit to um recognizing Donna Hauser as a woman

2:21:45of the year for the city of El Cerrito um she's a parent at El Cerrito High and this is her last year having a student there and over the years she has provided an immense amount of volunteer service to the in particular to the Youth of our community um and she has worked tirelessly I know

2:22:08that I've seen her and I believe that uh councilmember Potter has also seen the work that she has done and she's one of those people who just simply does it doesn't complain does it with a smile on her face and you just sort of notice that everything gets done when

2:22:27Don is around and so I think that um we will sadly miss her in at El Cerrito High but I think that we can at least hope that she will still be actively involved in our community and she did grow up here so thank you okay I think we're ready now to move on to item

2:22:46number six a and that is the repeal and reenactment of el Cerritos Municipal Code Charter 6.55 which is the alarm systems and include fees for alarm system permits and false alarm fines thank you good evening Madam mayor members of the council staff and citizens watching home

2:23:11I'm Lieutenant Robert de la Campa from the police department and I'll try my best to summarize the proposal for you our statistics show that the department responded to over 1430 false alarms in 2009. those coming from almost 500 different addresses this averages out to just over three per

2:23:35day over the past four years the average is 1600 per year each false alarm incident requires approximately 45 minutes of working time between that of the dispatcher and assuming one officer going to the scene to investigate and determine that it was a false alarm

2:23:55just doing the math roughly that it works up to over 1200 hours per year which is more than half of the working hours allotted to a Photoshop patrol officer for the year that being 2080.

2:24:08so this is actually quite time consuming for our Patrol personnel some of the calls take significantly more time than that estimate some of the reasons include operator error Pets the reasons very if a location is found to be unsecured then that can take much more time

2:24:31because our officers are not allowed to leave a business a residence that is vulnerable such as having an unlocked door that could cause access by a criminal Etc they will have to stay at that scene until it is taken over by the responsible party or secured and

2:24:46sometimes that's quite lengthy because if there is no current contact information on file for the responsible party especially in the middle of the night it can take some time to track somebody down there are times where officers have had to wait while dispatch our dispatch goes

2:25:02back and forth with alarm companies dispatch trying to track down a person I remember occasions where and they did contact a person on file and turns out that person no longer even worked at the business and they're we're not going to come out um I've also had it where employees were

2:25:18called and didn't realize they were on that call out list didn't realize they were responsible for the business after hours so our goal here is to reduce the amount of time that our officers are spending on these false alarms this will free up Personnel to investigate

2:25:32you know true emergencies true criminal Acts and we believe this is a tool to help our officers otherwise become more available to the public there is an ordinance currently 6.55 as you know however it's not been exactly beneficial in reaching this goal regarding reduction of false alarms

2:25:53the department is seeking the reenact in this ordinance to actually be a true False Alarm Reduction ordinance the draft ordinance before you was put together with the assistance of the East Bay alarm Association Mr John Sargent Mr Tom Rood who are in the audience and I

2:26:09believe intend to speak provided a lot of the advisement they've put together similar ordinances for other cities and based on their industry research on how to reduce false alarms some of the issues that have been shown to reduce false alarms include the registration of alarm users

2:26:29a fee for excessive false alarms alarm verifications before police dispatch and meeting current industry standards for the installation and manufacture of the alarm units some of the terms that you'll see in the ordinance include alarm business a business that does such things as

2:26:50install maintain service alarms would be one of those set alarm businesses they will have to have an else real business license as well as the mandated state license for alarm company operators that's already in place alarm agents or the people working for those businesses who actually have

2:27:07dealings with the alarms the installs the service Etc alarm user is what we're going to call on this ordinance those persons or businesses that have an alarm system that is designed to summon the police so that title is honest with residential or commercial use

2:27:26and a false alarm according the ordinance will be one that is due to Mechanical failure misoperation accidents misuse negligence or improper activations things that are beyond the control of the alarm user are not the target of this power outages which cause whites a

2:27:47lot of alarms to go off acts of God Etc are not going to be included in this just to kind of break down how it is going to work ideally when a business installs a new arm in El Cerrito okay or takes over an existing alarm within the city they will complete and submit

2:28:06a permit application form a city form they'll collect the money from the user and submit it to the city it's uh theoretically similar to when one purchases a car from a dealer the dealer handles the initial DMV uh registration transaction but has no involvement from thereafter this will be

2:28:25the same idea the alarm company will facilitate the registration of that alarm permits will be required of all users as I said um we've made up a form it's going to have the name and address of the premise it's going to have the name address and phone number the alarm

2:28:43business that did the installation in a 24-hour number for the business the business will have to be available 24 hours 70s a week the alarm permit application will also have a statement signed by the owner the user and the business that they've understood the ordinance that they will

2:29:02comply with it it will contain the identification number and expiration date of the state license of the alarm business and the type of alarm such as Panic burglar arm Etc permit applications could be denied under this ordinance if the person did not provide the required information

2:29:20such as a phone number or if they falsifies it if they falsify it we want to anticipate that happening but it will be in there permits can be revoked if an applicant May false alarm statements on the application or if they just violate the ordinance including failing to pay fees

2:29:40in the event that this happens permittee will be notified in writing within 14 business days there will be an appeal process in the ordinance wherein they can appeal the revocation of their permit to the city manager or his or her designee they can get a new permit if they

2:29:56correct the issues which led to the revocation permits for users that already have an alarm when this is adopted so somebody has an alarm today they will accordingly ordinance apply for permit to get their alarm registered within three months of this becoming effective

2:30:16now I'll get to the public notification portion later in the presentation renewals every other year the operating alarm user will be required to renew their permit this will be accompanied by a 15 renewal fee the main price the point really being to update their contact

2:30:33information as I said especially applicable to businesses where the need seems to be more urgent but people change their phone numbers frequently and this way we can keep current information again getting back to the ability to contact that person when the alarm goes

2:30:49off false alarm determination if an alarm is determined to be false the user will be notified via the mail U.S Postal Service pay per mail within 14 business days they will have 15 days calendar days from that to appeal the determination that it was a false alarm

2:31:10and they can even have a hearing at the police department if if they choose to from what I hear in other cities some people may disagree that alarm was false they may try to say that there was some action caused by some other person that causes alarm to go off um in an effort to avoid the fee

2:31:31but that'll be the point of of that so we can make a determination if the person doesn't agree that was a false alarm in the event that they do have false alarms which are not otherwise Justified or excusable the first one within a 12-month grade will be at no cost to the user

2:31:51from thereafter second through the fifth alarms in that same 12-month period will incur a 74 dollar fee uh if it is continuously sounding after that Sixth and subsequent alarms will be assessed a fee of 158 dollars per response with a daily cap of 500 if it is to

2:32:11sound continuously in one day it will max out at 500.

2:32:16again these things will be weighed with factors that were beyond the control of the alarm user power outages weather conditions disabilities of the operator Etc notification of the fees that are incurred if so be it we'll go both to the user and their alarm business

2:32:36the user will have if the user has five false alarms he or she will be sent a letter notifying of the cost of the future alarms being 158.

2:32:46the ordinance provides that if after seven false alarms the police chief can discontinue responses to the site right now we're not anticipating doing so Our intention is to if we are called we are still going to go and investigate now that is our goal because in addition

2:33:07to trying to reduce false alarms we have no intention of reducing responses to crimes so we do still intend to go out and check these alarms because if it is material criminal activity we'll take care of that the alarm ordinance will specify unpermitted alarms um

2:33:27okay if an alarm does not have a permit that person can be subject to a fine of a hundred dollars in addition to the fees for false alarm responses that fee can be weighed by the police department if that user submits an application for a permit within 10 days of being notified of that violation

2:33:47that kind of gets to the person who has an alarm now and doesn't find out about this ordinance until they get a false alarm until they get that letter that person can within 10 days of being officially told about it can get their permit and then they will not have to

2:34:02pay that 100 however the multiple responses would trigger the same result they'll deal with all alarm systems that are prohibited those being in my understanding from the industry experts here they're no longer installed routinely um but they are listed because when they

2:34:22were common they cause a lot of false alarms those that would be installed with a direct dial to the police department are not going to be allowed those don't happen now either they cannot they must be within the underwriter laboratory standard used by licensed alarm companies now

2:34:43there's an entire section about the requirement of alarm businesses and what they will be required to do those businesses that as we stated before install maintain alarms Etc they will be required to provide written and oral instructions to the users and the proper use and

2:35:01operation of their systems again this gets back to one of the common reasons that alarm false alarms are occurring operator error alarm businesses shell not program system which are capable of sending what the alarm industry calls a one plus the rest alarm I had never heard of this until recently

2:35:22but the way it is explained to me is that this is wherein someone can have a pre-programmed code in their panel like on the wall for a panic alarm by putting in an extra number it sends an alarm that there's a problem apparently that led to a lot of false alarms and those are no longer

2:35:42common in the industry they shall not install a device to activate a hold up or Panic alarm by the way of a single action non-recessed button and that's really just a hardware issue those it's kind of like a doorbell just led to more false alarms are easier to to push by accident so now they're

2:36:02recessed a little bit harder to get to unless you're immune to the alarm panels that go up have to meet a standard it's called the American national standards Institute cp01 very long definition on their standards the shortest way I can explain it is that it will have a time delay that

2:36:21gives the person a few seconds like 45 to put in their code before the alarm company starts sending the police this gives time for people to go from the door to the panel Etc and it's another industry standard that has reduced false alarms automatic voice dialers will be

2:36:41prohibited I was also educated about this apparently in in Years Gone by people would have alarms that were programmed with their own voice and when the alarm sounded it called the police dispatch number and repeated a recording saying that there was an alarm at this address please send the police

2:36:56and it just repeated itself so the dispatcher wasn't even talking to person she was talking recording those are prohibited in this ordinance apparently they're not used anymore either we are going to put in a period we're in uh during the first six days after seven

2:37:12days rather after installation the alarm companies will not make a dispatch request to the police department in response to a burglar alarm signal unless the person the user asks for an exception this excludes Panic alarms those that are manually set up to request help

2:37:30without a verbal interaction between dispatchers so if someone felt that they needed that they could ask for exception and I'm pretty sure we're going to Grant it but it's designed to give the people a few days to get used to the system work out the Kinks alarm businesses

2:37:47are going to be required to report to the correct number our dispatch number as opposed to our business line or our Sergeant's phone Etc the alarm companies will be verifying alarms by making it at least two calls to different numbers now this does not apply to the Panic or

2:38:04hold up alarm before calling dispatch so this will be the people that are listed on that application they're going to get a call asking if there's a problem if police are actually needed and if they are we'll be on the way it's no problem if they're not then uh

2:38:22there's no false alarm response they are being required to communicate cancellations to us so if the person tells them hey no problem we don't need the police our alarm company we'll pass that on to us they're going to be required they be in the businesses to tell us as much as

2:38:38they can about the location of the alarm this is particularly important uh larger premise wherein they just give the address but the alarm could be coming from a particular door particular Zone roof so they have to be as specific with us as they can be and they need to communicate to us the

2:38:55nature of the alarm is it a panic alarm is it a burglar alarm silent or audible Etc they will notify the police department if a responder is in on the way to the scene so if they call someone they say I'm not there but I'm going to be on the way we'll know that

2:39:13yeah our businesses are going to be required to maintain records of alarm dispatch requests for at least a year and the police department will be able to request those records um and they're specified time periods for them to provide that to us if an alarm business buys an alarm

2:39:31system account from another they'll be required to notify the police department again to update that information each of the owner businesses will be required to have someone who's their designated alarm response manager person will be the point of contact for the police department and they're going

2:39:47to have to be knowledgeable about the ordinance that we're talking about here have authority to deal with false alarms and that gives us so many good direct contact with at the alarm businesses and the alarm businesses are going to be required to give a customer list in the

2:40:04form of a spreadsheet to the police department we will use this as part of the public Outreach and their ability to do so is already codified in the California government code gives them authority to provide that list to law enforcement okay as far as the public Outreach for

2:40:23this I'll just give you the highlights of what we've done up till now bearing in mind that it's not yet enacted but trying to give people forewarning that it's you know highly probable on the near Horizon here a summary of The Proposal was in the elsewhere Chamber of Commerce

2:40:39publication called the byline in March of this month I actually tried to get on their agenda to speak at their meeting but there was not room so they were they were busy with very important persons and we just made the publication last week I presented it to the crime

2:40:59prevention committee Mr Lyman was present for that a press release went out to local media contacts last week that same press release is now posted on the city's Police Department web page word for word we've made up an information sheet to give to our officers

2:41:19from henceforth wherein they can leave it at the scene of a false alarm to give the people the information where to go to get the permit basically online we will be mailing letters with the permit applications to the premises where the false alarms occurred in 2009 we have a spreadsheet

2:41:40of it we're just going to mail them hard copy letters we're also going to mail the same letter to the same same purpose to the clients of the alarm businesses that we receive from them if they're not already been addressed as having false alarms also tonight I spoke to Mr John Wayne

2:41:57from KTVU did a little on camera summary of the ordinance I'm not sure if it'll be on tonight but it might be and once this is adopted hopefully we'll be the El Cerrito webpage will be updated to include not only the press release it's already on there possibly a

2:42:16link to this very presentation which is being recorded as well as the paperwork the permit it'll be a PDF document that they can download we're not able to do online submissions just yet they will have to print it out mail it in with their registration fee or bring it in

2:42:37and an information sheet basically the same letter and permit will be given out to persons applying for a business license in the city or a permit to upgrade their home being that they may be the same people that have alarms in their homes also a side note the police department

2:42:53currently uses New World Systems software for records management and it has always contained a module basically a program for tracking this kind of program so that's not something that we needed to invest in newly we've had it just never been used so we're software wise ready to go with it

2:43:16and I'll point out that many cities in California and some very locally have similar ordinances they're not all word for the same there's some differences in style and fee amounts and whatnot but just to name some local ones Richmond San Pablo Berkeley Pleasant Hill Concord

2:43:34and even Oakland and San Francisco have false alarm ordinances with that thank you I have a few questions um okay um can you give us a or maybe some of the representatives uh Mr Sergeant or Mr Rood can give us a an estimate of the number of alarms in El Cerrito both the

2:44:08residential and in commercial businesses Mr Rude told me they they would estimate that could be 10 percent I'm not sure if that meant residences they go by the population of the city so that could be over two thousand by twenty four thousand population that's just an estimate

2:44:32so so as many as 2 000 residents there's addresses including businesses may have alarms or so um and and there was over 60 it's averaging about 1600 a year so almost one uh false alarm per address is is what we're currently experiencing sure however my next question is how many

2:44:56um of the addresses were incurred seven or more that would fall into that position where they might um no longer have service seven or more yeah seven or more yeah wait a minute I've got a spreadsheet here foreign 23. so about is that one percent sure would be one tenth of one percent yeah

2:46:13thank you the other engineer in the room helped me out that one thank you um so so it you know it is a number but it's it's you know does show that there wouldn't be that many it would be and then for the City attorney uh what what are the sunshine protections on these addresses that we would be

2:46:35getting from the alarm companies I'm assuming that we can withhold those from Sunshine requests we can't um there are Provisions within the government code that would allow the city to withhold um from disclosure the contact information for the people who register with the

2:46:49city and then uh how many alarm businesses I mean we have a defined term but how many alarm businesses would we be essentially looking at um having to have this type of relationship with is it hundreds dozens tens you know that one I might have to refer to the industry guys

2:47:09if you'd like to have them set up now I can do that or I think they're gonna I don't know if it's part of their presentation or or did you guys decide to forego your presentation okay um so is that part of the presentation do you know if you're going to present

2:47:27the question is a number of alarm businesses that the city of El Cerrito may have to be doing business with is it tens hundreds presentation and I wasn't made aware of that no no okay I just both wanted to speak in favor and answer questions so um mayor Abelson council members I'm

2:47:51John Sargent I'm with ADT Security services and I'm past president of the California alarm Association um to answer your question the the alarm industry has a couple very large companies and then the rest of the industry is made up of much smaller companies I work for the largest and I

2:48:12work with representatives of all the national companies when we work to implement with the municipality and alarm ordinance and so what you're probably looking at here in El Cerrito is five of the largest companies then some Regional companies and the number could be there could be up to maybe even

2:48:3380 different companies that are doing some type of business here but but the Lion's Share of people using alarm systems are from some of the most established companies around thank you okay thank you any other questions before we open the public hearing have a question okay

2:48:56um it seems as though the charges are really reasonable and I'm wondering if the intent of the ordinance with regard to the Penalty is a deterrent for residents to better operate their alarm systems or is it a real attempt to recoup the costs um of the Police Service that we lose when we respond to

2:49:14the calls I mean certainly it is reasonable it is what it actually costs for our Personnel to deal with these however someone who doesn't want to pay it we believe will be deterred and probably take action to prevent it from even becoming an issue so I guess my

2:49:33follow-up question then is what is the anticipated Revenue after we pass the ordinance it's hard to say it depends on compliance I mean it probably will depend on how well we get the word out to the worst offenders and if they are if they take responsibility and correct

2:49:50the action the revenue beyond that of the registrations may not be all that much so it kind of depends on the operators if it is enough to deter them then we will bring in less Revenue thanks any questions Bill I just had a couple quick ones here uh and I think the presentation part

2:50:13partially answered this but um the alarm systems that aren't allowed how do people who go buy one know whether the alarm system they're buying is allowed in El Cerrito or not and I know the top five is probably standard they they handle all that but if you go to the Home Depot

2:50:35type of operation of self alarm how does one know whether they're buying one that's good for El Cerrito or complies with El Cerrito well that's a good question I mean it's uh they may not pay much attention to the ordinance until they actually bought the alarm at which point it might be too

2:50:55late uh the way these gentlemen explain to me these are fairly standard requirements I don't know that there are their devices on shelves that commonly be purchased that would violate this good evening mayor members of the city council I'm Tom root I'm president of

2:51:14the East Bay alarms Association um it's kind of a tough question to answer but I can say this that usually you've got Honeywell a Demco Bosch these are the major manufacturers of alarm systems or alarm control panels these particular devices are primarily sold through

2:51:37um ADI or Triad distributor that specializes in the type of equipment you can't necessarily as a private citizen go into a ADI for example and buy one of these systems if you're a contractor and you have a license to sell install these systems you can buy that equipment but I know

2:52:01that at Home Depot you can go down and buy a closed circuit TV camera system it's a little different with an alarm but uh I believe that that anyone who does that if they try to buy an alarm system that would not necessarily meet the standard and I'm not sure that

2:52:21they exist out there in the Home Depot worlds of the or retail stores of the world I think if they try to defeat the ordinance or try to comply with it and have a false alarm we're going to identify the police will identify these individuals fairly quickly and deal with it

2:52:40appropriately okay and and I can tell you from my I want to say that that the alarm Association supports this ordinance and we really appreciate the efforts that Lieutenant de la Campa and we appreciate Chief Kirkland and Commander Riggins um opportunity to allow us to to work

2:53:01with you to make this ordinance come to uh to you tonight this is one of the most Cooperative relationships we've ever had and and you know the police department you're blessed to have a police department that works well with the public and I say that without any reservation even having

2:53:20a son that's a police officer in the city of Richmond El Cerrito stands out in the crowd I tell you that but I hope I answered your question yeah thanks it's probably going to be rare if if at all okay hey thank you I don't think you're going to have that big of a

2:53:35problem but if you do you're going to find out about it fairly quickly great I appreciate it okay um I had another question who notifies the user to renew is that through the alarm company through the city well every other year right when they they get their permit we'll make sure

2:53:57they know it's every other year so there'll be a follow-up by the city hey you're it's time to renew good because I I wasn't clear with that and yeah and uh oh I'm sorry oh I I just have one other thing I noticed that the actually the the number of false alarms have

2:54:16decreased in the last three to four years is there any explanation for that that you know of that you can attribute that to you know with certainty it could be that people are aware of these ordinances being more careful but not directly it's still a large number but there was a slight

2:54:38decrease yeah thank you there's one other little amendment that I'd like to recommend that uh under Section 655.040 um where it comes to the revocation of the permit in this paragraph after uh subsection number two it says at the end the event that the chief of police

2:55:00determines that it's necessary to revoke a permit the chief of police shall send a notice of intent to reboot revoke the permit to the permittee we would like to add the alarm company as well because we um we take a very active interest and an active role whenever the cities want to

2:55:23revoke a permit because it may be that this customer has a maintenance issue or service related issue that's causing this excess number of false alarms and uh we want to address that with the customer so that there's a partnership between the police the customer and the

2:55:44alarm company great thank you any uh further questions before we open the public hearing you have one question I just noted in the fee schedule the first one listed is for the failure to obtain a permit does that only apply to the initial perimeter also to a renewal

2:56:06just to the initial okay so there is no penalty if you miss your two-year renewal I mean according to the fee schedule 100 dollars I'm told you to apply to both it reassuring to know if the city is going to send out letters to the people who have permits a certain number of days

2:56:31before the two years is up in order that they avoid the hundred dollar penalty for that renewal yeah we could do that a good two months before it's due okay thanks okay at this point I would like to move on in the process and um so we will now open the public hearing

2:56:53and we will hear comments from the public do you have speaker slips we had speaker slips from Mr Sergeant Mr Rood and we have a speaker slip from Eugene go okay would you call the first speaker please um anything else okay thank you again John Sargent with ADT Security past president of the

2:57:19California alarm Association um before I get into a couple brief comments I'd like to address council member Jones question on alarms going down the alarm industry Nationwide realized that we had a major problem with false alarms going up as the number of alarm system installations

2:57:38went up and so all of the national companies and the large most of the largest companies have adopted the processes that we're asking to be put in place called enhanced call verification or multiple call verification this is where we don't immediately call the police department

2:57:55unless there's an exception that's been granted by the police chief on on a burglar alarm that so what we are doing and it was rolled out a couple years ago uh is enhanced call verification and so the alarm industry is not calling police departments directly while there are

2:58:13some that still do for the most part the large companies don't and we've been able to either get someone at the premise or someone I mean on a second call who said no you know my kid's coming home at that time or they they know there's something else there and don't want the police so we don't go to

2:58:28that that extra step and so that's the reason why they've come down they've come down nationally great thank you uh so you have before you tonight an ordinance that is uh now used Nationwide in working with cities it's based on what we call a model ordinance from The

2:58:46False Alarm Reduction Association that's a national actually a North American law enforcement organization of alarm coordinators and it includes what we call Best Practices such as the enhanced call verification and control panel standards that are built in to prevent

2:59:00false alarms from occurring in the first place we know that these measures are going to be successful in reducing the call for dispatch um council member Potter you asked about what the cost or the revenue is going to be well we can estimate looking at the false alarm in the past what it's going

2:59:20to be but what we really want to see this Ordinance do is we want to cut false alarms by more than 50 percent in the city and uh so um hoping that we have success with that then we have the police not responding to those calls we won't have the um interaction taking place and uh it does

2:59:40provide some cost recovery um for those false alarms responded to by all Cerrito police we know that alarms deter crime they prevent crime and they provide peace of mind they're not designed except in rare occasions to be a mousetrap if they were they'd all be silent in the city they're

2:59:58they're meant to scare people away bring attention to a property and uh uh you know that they are a good thing for Public Safety we also know from many studies that the majority of false alarms come from a very small number of alarm users usually 10 or less in the

3:00:14community are causing the bulk of the false alarms in fact many people don't they may have a false alarm once every three years or maybe not have one at all and um so there is that small percent and they will be picked up as when this ordinance is is put into place and hopefully they

3:00:34will be able to rectify whatever the problems are usually false alarms the most false alarms are just user error people make mistakes but if there's an equipment problem that can be addressed and fixed and so we know that the ordinance would bring the offenders down

3:00:51um this um I thought of one other thing I wasn't going to mention but there are some cities and and I El Cerrito might be able to to handle this um where we have had a program that we call the dirty dozen list Oakland for many years was very successful using this and what they did is they would

3:01:12Target the worst offenders in the city which happened to be the school district um uh but by working on a monthly basis with the dirty dozen or the 12 worst people in your city that keep having these false alarms the police department notifies the alarm company and the

3:01:28customer and we've got to get together and have a meeting and find out what can we do to fix this because we can't keep calling the police you know it's going to cost you a lot of money too so that's just one other thought that I'll throw out that has been successful in I work

3:01:42with municipalities so this follows also your successful camera ordinance mayor oh you're out of time oh I'm sorry okay well I just asked that uh that you passed the ordinance and thank the city of El Cerrito for working with us on this okay thank you and I'm we're trying a new way of

3:02:02mentioning that and I guess we didn't quite get it off right right but um do you want to explain it Cheryl the um the city council is a lot of three minutes per speaker we have a lighting system up front here when um when you start speaking the light will turn green when you have one minute

3:02:22to sum up the light will turn yellow and when the light turns red you'll know that your time is concluded and it's time for the next speaker if you go past um your three minutes I'll provide you with a gentle reminder just letting you know that it's time to wrap up

3:02:41and our next speaker is Tom Rood I appreciate the opportunity thank you and the final speaker is Eugene go good evening mayor Abelson and members of the council and I appreciate my name is yuccino I'm with the now Cerrito crime prevention also I've been there for 13 years and I appreciate all the

3:03:16work that Lieutenant Robert lecampa has done he's been our liaison but what I wanted to say is I think that the city council needs to hold off on this ordinance basically because I think if it's a matter of um uh issuing in the ordinance for people that have monitoring versus people that just have

3:03:38a bell I think it kind of penalizes people from having these alarms I know that the crime preventions has been encouraging people to have alarm systems to kind of help deter burglaries and such uh crime in their neighborhoods now in our neighborhood we have a bells or

3:04:00whatever and we have our neighbors to kind of watch our our facilities and alarms and such I can see where where offices that have a silent alarm I one of our members also works in the office and their alarm goes off it goes to a monitoring system and she's sitting

3:04:19there she doesn't hear any alarms so she doesn't even know the alarm's going off I think something like that needs to be taken care of uh directly I can see that needs some immediate attention so I feel that we need more education in our community about alarm systems and the

3:04:39pros and cons and the fees and all certainly our city is in dire economical funding and I'm wondering you know where is this extra money going to come from to administer this ordinance and I've lived here for 33 years and I have never heard about the alarm ordinance before so

3:05:02it only took one meeting from Lieutenant Theo Kappa to let me know there's an ordinance I mean it it's going to take some time for the rest of the people to get up to speed so anyway I I do wish that the city council kind of maybe study this over a little bit more and

3:05:22get another recommendation as to how this ordinance should work in regards to monitoring a type of alarm system versus just the alarm system where a bell goes off where sometimes I like it because it reminds me that I haven't closed the window or closed the door so that I'm I

3:05:43secure my house so again I would like to say that the we need Community acceptance with their inputs I think the community would accept any particular ordinance that would be uh passed if we have a little bit more information more communication more acceptance to have hearing their

3:06:04words so that is my comment and I appreciate listening thank you thank you that's any of the public speakers yes okay um I moved to close the public hearing all in favor all right I think that was unanimous or was unanimous okay the public hearing is closed um are there any additional comments or

3:06:32questions from the council yes I've got several um actually that the last speaker spoke about Bells versus monitoring I was wondering if how does this ordinance apply to those that just have bells that go off and they're not tied into a monitoring system um you know what is their how does this

3:06:54ordinance uh apply to those homes I don't think it affects it because oh okay yes please well they're real they're really the same as long as a police emergency response is triggered by the alarm uh doesn't matter if the reporting party is person from the alarm company or

3:07:19neighbor or what have you so they're really the same so in my house there's a an alarm a bell something trips it off and I'm not home and you and you are called by one of my neighbors you arrive you see that it was you know the parakeet or something like that that did it

3:07:41um it's a false alarm you determine the building's secure so you go away 14 days later in the mail I get my notification that I had a false alarm I don't have an alarm company there is no alarm business um I register my alarm but there's no alarm business information there's no 24-hour service

3:08:07provider so I provide my contact information and everything's happy so the next time there's a an alarm you you will respond because my neighbor calls it in um but if it's false then the false penalties start kicking in it was right okay um I'd like I do have a couple of

3:08:34questions uh in addition to that one um on uh on item 6.55.060 which is the false alarm fee I would like to this is to speak to at least some of the concerns that were expressed about communicating this out to the community I would like to insert a line in the feed schedule that says

3:09:03essentially for the second false alarm in the year 2010 there would be no charge so that we have essentially if I read the staff report correctly uh it will be essentially July before this ordinance takes effect and it if we allow for the second one to have no charge

3:09:25through to December 31st we would be allowing six months more of where we would have a good opportunity to potentially provide people information about the penalties in the ordinance of the false alarm similarly under 6.55 0.060 item d letter d as in David um any person operating an unpermitted

3:09:50alarm system will be subject to a fine of 100 for each false alarm in addition to any other fines I would like to have that um not apply during 2010 uh as I don't believe this is intended to be a revenue uh ordinance it would allow us six months where we are educating people who

3:10:16are who are having their first false alarm um and they didn't know that they needed to register and they're getting their 14 their notice of 14 days but as soon as you know that we're gonna be talking about this for the next six months or nine months but in 2011 that that that

3:10:35ordin that fee should be applicable um so those are those are two comments or suggestions that I would like to see I do have a question and I'm not certain if uh Mr Sergeant is the best person to answer this under um section 6.55.080 additional duties of alarm businesses letter A

3:10:58the alarm businesses shall provide written in oral instructions um is that done in multiple languages and do you know are there uh brochures that would provide that information in multiple languages so that we have a diverse Community here and I want to make sure that we're not

3:11:15the the education isn't just being sponsored in in one language uh the instructions uh that I'm aware of in most cases are in English and I believe there are there are there's literature in Spanish there are user uh manuals um I I don't know how many different languages they actually are published in

3:11:38I can find out about that but there's a manual that comes with the alarm equipment itself that is provided to the alarm user um as well as we're working on a uh a simple two-page summary of this ordinance for the citizens so they can without having to read through the

3:11:58entire ordinance understand what the requirements are so so we have a let's say we have an Eastern European family here that doesn't speak English very well and they're constantly having false alarms and they claim that it's because they weren't taught correctly

3:12:14um how are how will you address the obligation of the alarm business under item a would have to have someone that they I mean in some cases we do this now we have to have someone translate for a family you know if that's the case that they you know got to bridge that somehow and it's up

3:12:36to us to make sure that that we've got someone working either on behalf of the business or the residence that's communicating the information when we're training the person after the alarm system is installed it's fantastic to hear from ADT is that true of something that we

3:12:51can hold the entire business the alarm business Community too well um that's a good question and and to that effect uh all of zero eight zero and there are 10 items a through G in uh in this section and then there are 10 very specific items under item G A through J

3:13:14and there's 10 very specific actions under item G um how is it if an alarm business doesn't do one or many or all of these things how is the user uh expected to to you know facilitate that we're going to be penalizing the user and and maybe the alarm businesses not servicing the

3:13:40equipment properly hasn't replaced the equipment properly hasn't given them the instructions in English or rather their language their native language um so you know how is it for example your business uh purchases the account from another business and doesn't inform

3:13:56the police chief how is it that the user is going to know whether you you the alarm business industry has done your portion of this ordinance if if I could um any time that a customer calls us to install or monitor their alarm system there's a certain procedure that we

3:14:23follow I happen to sell systems every day and there's a contractual obligation that we meticulously discuss with the customer it starts with meeting the customer designing the system or reviewing the system that they have making recommendations if they have an old

3:14:44system for example that's not monitored it just has a bell it's a local system we may want to encourage them to have it monitored or buy a new system there's a number of different variables when we meet the customer in the final analysis when the customer makes the decision to invest in an alarm

3:15:04system we have them sign a contract they sign many documents including the alarm permit uh information and then they have a three-day right to rescind that if there are if they're a residential customer if they're a business customer we set up a time where we go out to the site the installer

3:15:26reviews what the work that's going to be done the installer programs the control panel teaches the customer uh how to use the system and how to contact the Central Station if there's a problem um you know we understand that there's a diversity in in this business but we as

3:15:46an alarm as alarm companies understand that and to John's Point uh were required to help the customer because we have a contractual obligation with the customer they have to do certain things and we have to do certain things we don't do business without a contract so I I

3:16:05respect that however under item I of this particular issue for example you're supposed to designate in a a individual that's knowledgeable of the general provisions of this ordinance and let's say that person you've designated is no longer working for you how am I as the

3:16:23user why should I get penalized if you're not in compliance and I guess my question is as representatives of the industry what would be a fair penalty for the businesses that are not in compliance with the ordinance well first of all I I support the fact that if we are a

3:16:40company that's in business in El Cerrito and we're not uh adhering to your ordinance and you so desire to finance a certain amount of money because we don't I support that because if we're going to do business in your city and we're going to sell Life Safety Systems and we're

3:16:57going to ask the police department to be a part of this relationship and the city then we need to be held accountable as well uh for my part the the members of our organization the East Bay alarm Association uh shame on them if they try to sell an alarm system without getting the proper paperwork and

3:17:16the permit and submitting it to the city and frankly I will tell you that in Hayward they have an ordinance whereby if you as an alarm company do not get a permit first and you install that system before you acquire that permit it's an automatic 500 fine no whipsands or buts

3:17:34so the alarm companies are very very serious as as you are about these types of ordinances and frankly if we don't comply then you have every right to hold us accountable and uh you know in some cases there are alarm companies that come here during the summertime that go door to door to

3:17:55sell alarm systems by unlicensed people those individuals we want to identify and we want to have them uh prosecuted or dealt with by the appropriate authorities and it happens every year and so it does so your point is is absolutely well taken I I'm not going to

3:18:13sit here and say fine it's 500 that's entirely your call but believe me if we don't do our job then you have every right to hold us accountable for it I will be recommending that this section zero eight zero does have a a fine associated with it because I I see all

3:18:30those obligations as being obligations that your industry has a is responsible for and I don't see us as a city having any uh teeth in in getting those uh those enforced so I I will be recommending that to answer your other question about Farm manager every alarm company has a

3:18:52general manager or president in my case in my company we have a president a vice president uh and these individuals are aware of the ordinances and they are aware that if someone who is in that capacity leaves their organization they have to replace that individual I was just using it as an

3:19:12example so but that's a very fine example because uh I can tell you that um you know everyone that works in our alarm company and everyone who works in the alarm industry whether they're uh a sales coordinator or whether they they handle paperwork or invoices each and

3:19:30every one of those individuals has to get an alarm employee card and they have to be cleared so they have to in order to be you know talk about alarm systems whether it be a call list or a false alarm problem they have to be licensed and you're adding one additional step to

3:19:48it to hold one person as contact so that if Lieutenant de la Campa needs to call the alarm company to talk to an individual about a specific problem that individual is available and and we can this is nothing new to us we do it all the time so so you know I can assure you

3:20:06that that there's no there should not be an issue but if there is you know let us you know hold us accountable we'll we'll take you we'll accept that thank you all right and then finally I've just have um a typographical error that I think I I can point out by email in uh item F of

3:20:25zero eight zero and then in item H and in item h of zero eight zero uh reads an alarm business that purchases alarm system accounts from another person and I think that that should read provider or business or or something or entity um but I just wanted to point out those

3:20:48two how about account holder how would that work that would work fine it is as far as long as you're not necessarily holding it to a person so those are too small the City attorney has the comment that councilmember Lyman I just wanted to point out that um to go back to the

3:21:06provisions of section 655080 since those are all requirements that are imposed on alarm companies um any violation of those would constitute a violation of the municipal code and be subject to the overall penalties that are applied to any violation of Municipal Code okay so they

3:21:21could be issued an administrative citation an administrative penalty could be imposed that doesn't preclude you from setting forth in the fee schedule um specific penalties for violations of that section but I just wanted to make clear that we hadn't lost sight of the

3:21:34fact that that we that the ordinance included a long series of obligations of of alarm companies and that through the overall provisions of Municipal Code we had Provisions available to ensure that those would be enforced so for example if if a resident who had an alarmist

3:21:49installed was subject to a number of false alarms and explained to the police well nobody ever taught me how to do it in a way that I could understand that would be something that the police could then investigate and if they found that it was in fact the case that they had

3:22:01that the resident had not been properly instructed then the alarm installer could be issued an administrative citation and penalty under the existing provisions of the municipal code again that doesn't preclude you from setting forth specific fines within within the

3:22:14fee schedule we need to bring that back for later adoption because it would be a new addition that hadn't been noticed but we can certainly do the council can certainly do that as well certainly explore that thank you I was not aware of I mean I don't know what those

3:22:26administrative penalties can be but certainly I don't know if they amount to enough to make it an incentive for businesses to translate into multiple languages for example the instructions but that does give me some comfort that there was at least some way for the city

3:22:43to enforce this ordinance I believe that they started a hundred dollars per violation and Ratchet up to 500 per violation thank you that's actually very comforting okay yes okay council member Potter so I have a question of Lieutenant daily kampa if person has an

3:23:01alarm system now and they didn't have a false alarm last year do you still have on file their contact information not unless the alarm company gives it to us in their list of clients I'm just wondering if it would be possible during the 90 days to mail that same letter that you spoke about mailing

3:23:21to The False Alarm people to anybody in our system through the alarm companies that we actually have a contact for because I am concerned about getting the word out but having said that I will make the comment this ordinance cannot be adopted until early April at our next meeting

3:23:39and there's a 90 there's a three month period before it's effective which is much much longer than a typical ordinance which we allow 30 days for so that really gives us over 110 days to fully get the word out so I'm not particularly concerned about the length of time being allowed here I think it

3:23:56was well thought out to allow for that public information campaign and just while I have a minute I'll say that I do support council member lyman's idea to kind of phase this in and use 2010 as a buffer but I'm satisfied with the provisions and the municipal code on

3:24:13the penalties available for the alarm companies so that's it okay bill yeah I'm I'm happy with the municipal code violations I think if we start getting into fines uh for over and above what's already called for then we have to evaluate what that is for each of those 10 points and uh I I can see

3:24:40more administrative and legal hassles over the thing than actual uh getting the job done so it's already on the books and I I think we could go with that although I I uh appreciate the council council member Lyman bringing it up it is an important point to take care of I

3:25:01would support rather than worrying about who we have on file who we don't have on file who we may miss who we may not miss in this Outreach I think we should just mail everything to all residents and businesses in El Cerrito telling them about the ordinance if they do have an

3:25:18alarm they have a certain amount of time to to register if they haven't already and uh that way we've covered everybody including people who may be considering buying an alarm system now they would be properly notified if we want to use 2010 in the way that council member Lyman had indicated as a

3:25:41base as a base year and not and delaying the penalties in this type of situations that he indicated that would be fine with me but I I don't want to delay the actual implementation of the ordinance we are one of the last cities to to do this and uh I don't think it's going to come as a big

3:26:09surprise to anybody that will become a big surprise if they don't know that we're actually doing it but I don't think they'll be surprised that there is going to be an ordinance or shouldn't because like I say we're one of the last buy a good 15 20 years so at any rate

3:26:27that's my uh Spiel on that okay I have a few questions my first one is of the city manager what would be the cost of doing a mailing to the entire city such as what as was just recently identified uh it would probably be around five thousand dollars 3 000. okay

3:26:47and um okay and that would be as opposed to um just notifying those people who got false alarms for the first time where they had no charge and how much would that cost me as as an estimate vaguely probably half of that half of that is it 2500 it's just an approximation just assuming

3:27:12that we could get you indicated earlier that the false alarms were to five 500 different addresses so we're talking about 500 people well in addition to the list that we get from the companies about persons their premises that already have an alarm that may not have had a false one

3:27:32last year and I'm unsure really how much how many that is at this point could be more than we think so you so you would estimate though based on your best knowledge that it would be we would be mailing well I'm not sure the way you would mail would make the cost per person mailed to

3:27:54different it might might yeah as opposed to a postcard we would just put a letter in envelope so just um so there's okay so those those are your estimates so so the city manager said five thousand to the whole city and that would just be residents or would that be residents and businesses

3:28:14my guess who would be and we would do a sort of a postal drop it'd be all addresses in the city okay and then the other way would be where it would be singled out and there would be some more hand massaging yes of individual okay okay and then um the next thing I wanted to

3:28:33do first of all is to thank you uh for doing all of the work and and um bringing this to this point um I have a great concern about um the number of police officers we have are more like or more realistically don't have on the street right now and I was wondering if the city manager could

3:28:55remind me was it six or nine officers that were down in terms of positions filled okay two officers or down two right now okay um we're just down two okay I thought it was more than that was right the other number you may have maybe recalling involves non-sworn

3:29:16Personnel oh okay so we're down two officers um even two is too too too too many in my opinion um the concern that I really have is whether or not we have an availability of officers on the street or doing some other important police job when we need them and so I guess what I

3:29:37see this doing it's not just so much about the money but covering the cost is certainly important in this time but actually having somebody available when we get a serious uh crime on the street and um so so what the reason I want this is to take care of that problem primarily

3:29:59I don't want to be the one and I don't want anyone else to be the person who's call doesn't get responded to in a timely enough manner simply because somebody was out there for 45 minutes with a false alarm or maybe two officers were out there with false alarms as I

3:30:19understand for businesses it's two usually really for all they're all too and your point is well taken when one considers the fact that one of these alarms for the most part signals a felony crime in progress right either a burglary to a home or a business or a

3:30:34robbery that's going to get a multiple officer response and the person who has something that may not be necessarily as dangerous but still important to them that they want to report is waiting uh to report their actual theft from their vehicle or what have you that may

3:30:50be a misdemeanor and it is a lower priority response and that person's waiting well these officers are going to a first priority call possible filling progress which most the time ends up being false okay so that's the concern that I have and that I think that this ordinance can

3:31:09help address and um that I would like it to do and I would like that to happen um I think that the costs associated with the fees are reasonable um and um it sounds like there is a is a good um there's some some slight changes that we could make that would incorporate

3:31:33um a fee for the um where the alarm company failed to um provide adequate instruction or whatever was needed what was missing it sounds like um I mean the fact that the alarm companies are supporting this ordinance is is a real positive sign actually and that tells me a number of things one of

3:31:58which is the police department staff has worked with them to work out something that is in fact workable and um so I'm I I like that a lot but mostly what I like is the idea that we will have more availability of officers on the street uh to handle the really important things in town and um

3:32:17so those are my comments and um are there any other comments I have a thought if if possible if we place of doing the mailer to all the city could incorporate something for the next newsletter that goes out that's already going to be mailed to all the residents it might be a cost savings on

3:32:37the postage well I I was assuming that we would put it in the mailer and also the uh the community service recreation community services brochure but if if we're serious about reaching out then let's spend a little extra money notify people with a separate piece of

3:33:00of mail that addresses the problem and then we don't worry about it anymore um they have ample notices it's in its own it's in its own deal it's its own uh envelope and it's and it's specific to that I I don't it if if we really are concerned about reaching out then let's Reach Out

3:33:31would be my suggestion do you have any other questions comments or questions Bill oh no okay Sammy on that last topic I would like to ask a question of the city manager the or maybe this is to the police chief or Officer De La Campa the question that was asked by Mr go was you know how are

3:33:53we going to administer this uh 2000 whole 2000 alarms was our estimate at 15 an alarm does generate thirty thousand dollars in the year that the applications or the permits are issued the initial performance are issued in the subsequent year there would be a much smaller number

3:34:13because it's every other year that we would get that kind of a renewal fee almost thirty thousand dollars so um the five thousand dollars put in context of that Revenue coming in certainly strikes me as being something that that is suitable but I guess the question would be that thirty

3:34:34thousand dollars was set to offset a clerical person's time to to put this information in um so I guess the question is is that five thousand dollars of that clerical person that's now doing this job but not being reimbursed by the the revenue because we're using that Revenue

3:34:55to offset the information process is is this really going to make a difference since it's every other year we're going to see this Revenue because if I read this correctly in theory there would be 2 000 people this year that would come in and get their permits and

3:35:13next year there might be 200 and then the next year would be 2 000 and so on and so I guess I'm trying to find out that there would be a slug of Revenue that we would get in the near future um and I'm just wondering police chief city manager uh you know ordinance

3:35:31author Dylan kampa if we can if this five thousand dollars associated with getting this little word out isn't something we can absorb within our short-term Revenue gains associated with the permit fees we might be you might offset itself just by the 450 homes that would would

3:35:52we would catch as a result of the newsletter well I I think for the for the amount and also in to better ensure that we do get the word out um that what what I would recommend is we uh City manager's office through our public information budget pick up the initial mailer and then the

3:36:16police the police department will take it from there in terms of the fee since we'll we will probably be getting out the notice even before you know I mean right away um I'm reasonably certain that we can make the we could make the five thousand dollars fit within our public

3:36:30information budget this year to give them a head start and then they can do all of the follow-up and all the Outreach that they had planned to do anyway on top of that it also answer your question councilman Lyman is in regards to Personnel cost is that in the police department we

3:36:50currently have one vacancy in the record special position we also have our record supervisor that's been off now since December is that tonight you met a special person in our organization that is Samantha Smith is that Samantha is going to help us in this situation until

3:37:05we get properly staffed in the records aspect of the department and so we believe that's going to be very very fast thank you um I'm just looking back through the fee schedule if I remember correctly there was a an initial registration fee that was different than the renewal fee and I'm

3:37:27looking back and I'm not seeing the yeah the initial registration fee that's already in the master fee schedule at twenty six dollars that's correct okay great and the reason for the lesser amount for the renewal or 15 dollars is that the basic information has already

3:37:44been entered into the record management system great we would only need 200 houses to pay their initial fee to pay for the mailing so I I with Mr Jones and suggesting that um potentially is well worth the investment to mail it everybody call for the question um can I want to ask one question if I

3:38:08might first the fees can only cover cost right so we can't the fees for service such as registration can't exceed the cost of providing the service the penalties for non-compliance are different they they're not required to to there's no cost of service that they have to match

3:38:27up against okay thank you and I'm also wondering uh council member Jones as we do have a couple of officers up here to see if they had final things they wanted to say I was wondering if council member Lyman might make a motion since he is the one who had suggested the language on the uh

3:38:462010. I was going to um you know I believe let's see looks like we're supposed to take the ordinance first and the resolution second so I I moved to approve by title and waive any further reading of an ordinance of the city of El Cerrito repealing El Cerrito El

3:39:07repeal it repealing chapter 6.55 Burglar Alarm Systems of the El Cerrito municipal code in its entirety and replacing it with chapter 6.55 alarm systems with appropriate modifications in section 6.55.06 subsections A and D that I've identified that the second false alarm

3:39:45in the year of 2010 would have no charge and that a Define for an unpermitted alarm system would have no fee in or no fine in year 2010 okay any further discussion it was there was a suggestion that the city send a renewal notice two months before the expiration date and I

3:40:25think Officer De La Campa Lieutenant excuse me as of tonight de la Campa had indicated that that that was possible agreed fit in here agreed I thought that was much more of an administrative process and and not necessarily necessarily in the ordinance but we start I'm more than willing to accept it

3:40:45in to the ordinance and it would be under renewals which is 655045 and we could add a sentence the end of that that says the city will send renewal notices yeah 60 days prior to expiration that would be good with me I I think the city has an obligation to notify and so

3:41:13this would take care of that so so I will accept that friendly Amendment does the second or accept it yeah um going are we going to include anything on an initial notification oh on the initial notification the the mailer I believe that was direction to staff I don't believe that needs to be

3:41:36in the ordinance in in with regards to the penalties for the businesses I I felt that as with the other council members that the municipal uh municipal code violations was satisfactory enforcement mechanism yes an elasticity clerk if she got that okay great and is there a second second

3:42:00okay there's Motion in a second further comments okay all in favor please say aye aye aye that was unanimous okay thank you uh and thank you very much for the report in the work I moved to adopt a resolution amending the city's Master Fee scheduled to establish fees to

3:42:21charged for renewal of alarm system permits and responses to false alarm activations as identified in the resolution any comments all in favor please say aye aye unanimous um motion carries okay uh with that we will go on to our next agenda item which is a Redevelopment agency item so

3:42:54I'll turn the meeting over to Redevelopment agency chair Potter thank you tonight will we we will be discussing our mid-year review of the Redevelopment agency's Five-Year Plan and we will be having a public hearing so first we'll hear from staff and then we'll open the

3:43:11public hearing for comments and we'll bring it back to the council for deliberations good evening agency chair Potter members of the agency board I'm Hildy miles senior project manager the action before you deny is to conduct a public hearing for the purpose of reviewing the

3:43:27Redevelopment plan and the five-year implementation plan fiscal years 0708 through 1112 for the city's Redevelopment agency the review in the associated public hearing is a requirement of the California community redevelopment law the information presented in this review

3:43:45is basically a summary of actions and obligations that have already come before the board so in consideration of the staff will keep their comments brief overall the biggest change since the implementation plan was prepared is the downturn in the economy as we all know

3:44:01the agency's goals as stated in the implementation plan have not changed however the resources available or not what we had anticipated despite this challenge the agency has undertaken several projects since the adoption of the implementation plan rather than listing those they are

3:44:19listed in the staff report on the housing side the agency closed alone with rcd in the Hatland Center for a 57 unit Housing Development and acquired the trade away property um I'd like to use this opportunity to also very briefly review agency housing obligations as these obligations in

3:44:40addition to the city's goals and objectives uh inform and guide staff recommendations um very briefly I think you're aware of the affordable housing production obligation this is sometimes also called the 15 inclusionary requirement and that requires that 15 percent of all

3:44:58housing units in the project area are affordable to very low low and moderate income households the agency has historically done well in meeting this obligation and we're on target to meet it in the current period the housing fund expenditure requirement was introduced in 2002 it's somewhat newer

3:45:16and it requires that agencies spend their housing funds in proportion to the community's need for very low and low-income housing and in proportion to the need for non-senior or family housing the targeting requirement effectively prohibits the agency from spending more

3:45:32than its proportional share of housing funds on Modern income housing or on senior housing agency staff are mindful of these requirements as they look at current and future projects and the end of the few the first compliance period for this requirement is in fiscal year

3:45:472013-14 um thank you for the opportunity to present this information and I'm available to address any questions that you may have regarding this item thank you thank you for that staff report are there any questions I'm sorry just to confirm we are on track to hit

3:46:10the 2014 commitments correct given given what our current outlays for projects we are okay so that's so even though things are resources are decreasing we still will be able to make that commitment as of now as of now yes given given what's in the pipeline and how we've budgeted great

3:46:33thank you the question I have is sort of a follow-up on that which is actually um and I think I might know the answer that I would like to hear you say it um what happens if in fact the things they have in the pipeline don't happen as already some of the things in the

3:46:51plan didn't happen and uh so by the end of the period we have not met our goals what happens then okay um and I'm going to separate out the goals in terms of the affordable housing production obligation um we are only on the hook for uh 15 of all everything that's built we've

3:47:15already the the larger projects in our community as we know the Fairfield Plaza the Creekside at the plaza have fallen through at this point so we don't anticipate that we will see the scale of development that we had planned for so we actually have a surplus in our

3:47:31housing production um because in the past we've produced more than 15 inclusionary so we anticipate seeing a fairly modest amount of housing growth and I think we're in a good position to meet that even if some current projects don't happen in the time frame that we have have anticipated

3:47:51um on the housing expenditure side um we have made those expenditures we have made a loan we have purchased property um the if we um for example the property we purchase if we don't dispose of it by 1314 I think we are in sort of a gray area if you will in terms of we

3:48:17haven't identified what project this will go to so I think we will be looked at I would hope favorably in terms of compliance because we've bought it for the purpose of affordable housing if we haven't actually built it yet or don't haven't identified what it is for I think

3:48:33they'll um look at that as we're taking action fruit and action does that answer your question yes it does thank you um mine might be really quick as well uh some of the expenditure calculations were based on demographics how will the 2010 census potentially modify uh this in what sort

3:48:57of like council member abelson's or I guess we're agency board member abelson's question what if the what what about the census might cause us to slide backwards sure um some of some of these targets are are moving targets if you will um as as the data changes um at this point the

3:49:19um the moving Target at this point would be the requirement around senior non-senior housing because that is based on Census Data um I'm not sure I mean the the 2010 census results May not will be available so close to the end of the period that I I don't think that is my concern

3:49:40yes exactly and I think it would be hard for any reasonable person to expect that we that any agency would shift that quickly we would obviously have to recalculate our targets based on that but I think we can make a prudent case to say we've planned our expenditures

3:49:58based on the data we had the data that everyone had to to meet that requirement and going forward we'll we'll see how we can change but I think everyone's in that position thank you okay um we'll now open the public hearing for public testimony any speakers no slips

3:50:18no slips moved closed by the hearing second it's been moved in second in all in favor hi hi um the motion Kerry said the public hearing is now closed and we have an opportunity for discussion but before that I want to say I think that the Redevelopment agency staff has really

3:50:38done an amazing job given the economic Times the struggle with the take the state's Revenue takeaway from the agency and the fact that we still have projects going on and we're meeting our obligations is incredibly good news for El Cerrito so I don't know if we have other

3:50:54comments I'm very fond of The Five-Year Plan I think it's a good plan I really think we're moving it along Sarah motion um does there need to be emotional yeah yeah I'm actually trying to find the resolution that we're supposed to be moving on there's no action called for

3:51:19on this item so okay well then I'll turn it over to the mayor on policy matters okay then that brings us to item 7A which is the financial reserve policy thirst report good evening Madam mayor and members of the council I'm Barry Dodge administrative Services director and I'm

3:51:45here tonight to bring back our discussion on the general fund Reserve policy this was first brought up at the last year in June at the budget meeting when there were concerns expressed by councilmember Jones that we should work towards a 20 Reserve instead of our

3:52:01current 10 and concerns by mayor Abelson on whether or not this was the time to do this so the financial Advisory Board was requested to look at this and they spent four months of meetings monthly meetings revising a policy and presenting one that tried to capture a

3:52:19little bit of all of those concerns at the time the policy was done there was also somewhat of a concern that it would be very difficult during this economic time to be able to comply with the policy as it was presented so at that point is when it was brought back

3:52:34for further revision and that's where we are now so we've taken all of the good groundwork laid by The Fab tried to incorporate the concerns and come up with a policy that we actually can comply with so that the changes the new policy would develop with a minimum of

3:52:5010 percent but basically discuss the goal of 15 percent which we kind of had internal and we never really discussed before and the 10 between the 10 and 15 is for economic fluctuations and uh or one-time events as adopted by the council below 10 percent we need to have it

3:53:11declared a fiscal emergency and within the time structure on this one it should it would need to be replenished within five years in the 10-year plan and the other major item is we still want to be able to have the economic replacement fund be used in an emergency

3:53:28only and in the copy that you have there are a couple of small typos in the front and those would be cleared up before we finally do the adoption and if you have any questions I'd be glad to answer them questions I I just for a point of clarity I would like to make sure that I understand what

3:53:44sections were revised uh or or are new and it appears to be italics and it appears to be sections 2.3 .2 portions of 3.3 3.4 and 3.5 at least those were the ones that I focused my attention on as they were appear to be the only ones that um were were adjusted or revised they were

3:54:12focused on the area for the general fund Reserve policy there are other other areas in this comprehensive policy but the only changes that were addressed during this revision since the Fab did it was in this one area in in the section the section three general fund Reserve policy the italics in

3:54:30section 2.3 are just a formatting that's part of it as well yes that's correct okay is attachment for an underlying strikeout showing showing three less okay I want to thank staff for their diligent work on this and I think it is in a position where I would be willing to

3:54:57move it forward thank you other comments well I do I have uh some things here I appreciate all the work I appreciate all the work that was done on this and um I really respect the fact that not only staff looked at it but that the Fab the finance Advisory Board and outside financial consultants

3:55:22have and they support a percentage so I'll I'll work with that even though I am worried that by working a percentage you can actually lose the dollar amount the dollar value of that and we may see that this year if our operating budget goes down and 10 percent is suddenly not what 10 percent

3:55:46was the year before and I was even the last time we talked about this I thought this was a good idea but I was reading it and it dawned on me and correct me if I'm wrong maybe I'm reading it wrong that in fact we may never get to 15 because what it what the policy is

3:56:07calling for is that if we drop below 15 the 10 for the 10-year plan we must show a plan stretched over to a maximum of 10 years to reach 15 but it never it never obligates the city to get to a 15 percent if you look at the 10-year plans for the the years prior to well since I came

3:56:34here and and um city manager and I started working on 10-year plans and before the economy changed we always had a 15 percent that oh I know and it was the goal and it would be the goal again I think that the the difference in some of these approaches now is that we do want to be

3:56:53able to allow us to be able to continue doing services without going against a policy yes past past budgets demonstrates that the administration and the council likes to have that as high as as we can go however the plan that we're going to be putting in it calls for us it calls

3:57:17it only calls for an obligation of a 15 percent 10 years into the future the next year you can go and you can say uh okay here's my plan for the next 10 years to get the 15 in the 10th year and this can go on and on it does become somewhat of a rolling 10 years that's

3:57:38correct and the same with it by the way the same with the uh The Five-Year commitment to the 10-year makeup if we need need to do that so I ask if we keep the wording the way it is is it worth it I mean is it is it worth it because my original intent was to try to get the amount of

3:58:03dollars higher and I get real worried I'm really worried now and I think we have to we should get a solid Reserve fund because the state for the first time in a long time will not be a be our safety net or will not be our bank should we need a substantial amount

3:58:21of money of which the reserve may not be able to cover um I don't know that they it if we had a 15 million dollar uh need on our Reserve fund and we only have roughly three you can't go to the State anymore and borrow or or or try to have them cover I don't think they have the money to do it

3:58:47is what I'm saying and so I'm just worried that that 10 percent as a minimum it won't give us the amount of dollars required and that's what I'm going at so I guess my question is given that we've done all this and being as the language right now calls for this

3:59:07rolling 10-year period for the 15 and five-year period for the 10 percent don't does this policy in your estimation improve what we had before or should we change the language or the current or should we forget about it I think what we're proposing now somewhat formalizes what we've been

3:59:30doing in regards to the goal of maintaining 15 percent and the Restriction of nodding allow ourselves to go anywhere underneath the 10 so which is something that we have been doing and the goal of the 10-year plan from Switching Goals here if those assumptions are not solid enough to

3:59:51actually be showing what we anticipate and are only reflecting percentages then we have a problem with our 10-year plan anyway that's correct but as we've seen we review the 10-year plan each year and it'll be adjusted we've been adjusting it to real real life factors

4:00:14it's not necessarily made up but as revenues go down or our assumptions of Revenue coming in are adjusted so is the 10 plan uh and so each year that could be adjusted to show at the 10th year we're going to hit 15 and there's no obligation to hit 15 we just show it

4:00:37um we've been I think this this Administration and this Council has been true that we don't we don't dummy up the numbers to get to that so my suggestion is not that we're gonna that somehow we're going to dummy up the numbers just to get the 15 but my question is

4:01:00are we ever going to get the 15 percent so I was just asking your your opinion on that um well if I could I think ultimately it's up to the council um I mean the goal is 15 the goal now is 10 so the the the act of changing the goal from 10 to 15 will require us in a month to bring

4:01:25you back a 10-year plan that shows how we're going to get to 15 whereas if you don't change it it's going to be 10 and if you recall last month when we brought the scenarios none of them got to 15 so it's ultimately going to force the staff and the council to decide their priorities in in the

4:01:44grand scheme of all the priorities of the things El Cerrito does if having a bigger Reserve is one of them and we're going to have to either increase revenues or cut costs beyond what we already have to increase revenues because there there is no scenario running the numbers out that

4:02:03gets to 15 percent right now I mean either expenses need to change downward or Revenue needs to go up you're right there is no 15 scenario that we have right now without a change but we will now be required to bring you back scenarios for how to get to 15 um it's it's up to it'll only be up to

4:02:28the council is the 10th Year good enough or do you want it in the fifth year um and that's true every year yeah but but reality is we don't we don't have to hit that 15 till the 10th year so there anyway that's okay I was just wondering if you felt the language was strong

4:02:49enough now or should we tweak it or I'm comfortable with the language okay I'm also hopeful that since we had 15 just a few years ago that when we do recover that we will be able to have 15 and maybe at some point in time as things progress years down the road we

4:03:09could look at this and at that period of time determine if there is a new structure and some money then that we wanted to be able to put away to access I'm a little bit concerned it's like the city manager that even putting in this 15 percent will require some um new strategies that we're going to

4:03:27need to be developing in the 10-year plan when we get those few years out okay council member Potter so I read that uh section that councilmember Jones finds Troublesome a little bit differently I don't see it as some kind of loophole that you just postpone and postponed getting to your

4:03:45goal I see it as a very clear policy statement about where our goal is and a useful tool for getting there and um I I think that this policy was developed with a huge amount of input from the financial Advisory Board from community members who have attended these meetings

4:04:03this Council has looked at it three or four times now and I think it's very balanced it's a policy that improves increases the level of the reserve compared to what we've been using since 1991 one and at the same time it provides the flexibility and it it implements a tool which is a required

4:04:23annual long-term financial management plan which is not something to tie our hands behind our back it's a tool to try to get us to our goal and so I think that the intent of this is a policy level document is very well served by clearly stating the goals providing the tool to get

4:04:42there and then also flexibility for unexpected um eventualities I I don't see it as a way to obligate I think maybe that's just a difference in perspective on this so I'm very pleased with where we've gotten to and I also want to add that it isn't going to be easy and in three months and

4:05:01in 12 months when this staff comes back to us and says now how do you want to get your 15 reserves that's going to be a time for this Council I think to look very closely and to make decisions in a very public way about our priorities and at that time we may as a

4:05:20group be saying you know all we can do is 12 or 11 or 9 percent so I think that it's in the best interest of everyone to have that flexibility and I support the policy yeah councilmember Jones I I too went into this with the Fab thinking that there's there must be some way for us to to

4:05:42establish what this Reserve should be and I will say that we spend at least two meetings discussing this in in the wide range of professionals that we have on our financial Advisory Board considered this and worked through different scenarios that of risk that might need to implement the the reserve

4:06:02and I would say that our risks of of needing Reserve are you know if there's a big earthquake the federal government not the state government potentially would be helping us through a declaration of emergency um that there are lending institutes out there that with our ability to

4:06:24um generate some revenues we might be able to get loans so in general the risk is fairly low for the size of the size city that we are and and they were very comfortable with the 10 number um so I do want to to say that we we definitely spent the time trying to figure out what does this value need

4:06:46to be that was one of the charges they had and they they feel that 10 and 15 are real numbers that are that represent the types of of numbers that we need for the types of emergencies and the types of flexibility that we're looking for so I I do want to try to address that

4:07:02concern of yours um I also want to point out that there are I think the 10 and 15 are are good numbers that this is a policy um there are other organizations out there San Francisco school district is one that used their reserves to close their budgets last year and now they

4:07:22they they're struggling because they don't have that one-time Revenue anymore so you know having this stated goals of 10 sort of that's that's important for us to keep um and a goal of 15 that is our Reserve I think those are good goals and and I I support those so if if you'd like I

4:07:44would love to make a motion um I gotta find my resolution um as a because we there are two resolutions we have to do them as separate actions on looking at the City attorney for a nod um I I would like to move a resolution of the city council of El Cerrito approving revisions to the fiscal year

4:08:052009 2010 comprehensive Financial policy I'll second it okay any further discussion all in favor please say aye aye position abstentions motion carries unanimously I'd like to move a resolution of El Cerrito Redevelopment agency board approving revisions to the fiscal year

4:08:302009-2010 comprehensive Financial policy and rescinding Redevelopment agency resolution number 585 a motion in second um any okay all in favor aye any opposition any abstention motion carries unanimously thank you with that we will move on to the next agenda item which is

4:09:02um measure ww Parks Bond program update and I believe that the presentation is by Jerry Bradshaw our award-winning city engineer foreign just a moment as I spool this thing up see here well thank you madam mayor and Council uh I guess I don't have to introduce myself tonight then no

4:09:36I'm here to present an update on the measure WWE we are quickly approaching our next application deadline for year 2010 so I'm gonna run through briefly just where we started last year or where we left it off last year last time we spoke about this and just in Brief Review uh this was a

4:09:57500 million dollar bond issue uh three-fourths of which we're going to go to the East Bay Regional Parks district for various projects and one-fourth of it was going to go to local agency projects El Cerrito's share was just over a million dollars last year and this is not in your

4:10:17in your packet last year this was a list I showed you I haven't made any changes although there have been some minor revisions but as you recall I we had a list of candidate projects we broke them into four categories safety projects of which there was one replacement and Rehab of

4:10:35existing facilities then there's another category of new amenities and Facilities and then one final category for acquisition of land for future parks we also divided that list of projects into two categories of which ones are ready to go anytime and which ones would

4:10:53need more study the council Direction at that time and this was based on staff input and that of the Park and Recreation Commission was to submit an application for Cerrito Vista play structure with some pathway repairs set twenty five thousand dollars aside for the Gilman Fields project

4:11:13and then to look further at four projects that weren't quite ready to go yet Creekside Park lighting Central Park in collaboration with the city of Richmond Huber Park improvements and a cursory study of land acquisition issue after that Council action we came back

4:11:32to you I believe in November and asked to create a new project and at that time you appropriated up to twenty five thousand dollars of measured ww money for the Bruce King Memorial Dog Park so here's the status of all those projects Cerrito Vista play structure the first

4:11:52to go I'm happy to report we completed that in time for the July 4th event I think a mere matter of hours but we did make it Creekside Park lighting we had a community meeting in November 2009 and this project enjoyed great support from the members of the community that came to that

4:12:13we have an environmental document and draft form which is scheduled actually I do have a revision on this this actually will not be at the Planning Commission we are changing tack on this a little bit and after the initial study we've decided to go with a categorical exemption on this

4:12:32project but we will be ready for an application by March 31st Central Park we had that same community meeting we discussed Central Park we had mix support for the skate park and by mixed support I mean that they didn't like it at all the neighbors and we heard from more

4:12:54Neighbors after the meeting as the word got around now the city of Richmond had desire to update the old playground which you see in the photo there but since that time they've uh dedicate a lot of their measure WWE Monies to another project I think it's the plunge so the immediate future is

4:13:15uncertain for that uh Huber Park we had a community meeting just last month the neighbors uh were expressed their desire to have this flat area that you see in a photo to remain in place and not change it to a playground area and the upper areas would should be

4:13:38improved to the extent possible there are some challenges there this park has Ada access issues to say the least it's in a it's a hillside area and it's going to be quite challenging to provide adequate access to all the areas the land acquisition here's some things to consider on this I

4:14:00we we didn't do a full-blown land study for this but I did want to present some of the things we have to think about it before we go forward on this existing policy excuse me we consulted the general plan the general plan sets a level of service goal of five acres of publicly owned

4:14:22Parkland per 1000 residents the 1999 General plan identifies 131 Acres of city-owned Parkland which computes out to approximately 5.7 acres per 1000 residents so we make our five acres per thousand goal just using city-owned land and if you add in other publicly owned Parklands such as the

4:14:47schools that gets to even a higher number in addition the plan sets Rehabilitation of existing facilities as its highest goal it does State acquiring a new land is one of the goals but that should only be done after existing facilities are brought up to acceptable levels of

4:15:06adequacy so staff feels at this point we're fairly well in conformance with that another thing we need to consider is needs we do not have a full-blown Parks master plan in place we've been dealing with needs on a um uh one at a time basis and as grants come up and we've tried to be

4:15:27opportunistic and try to be Equitable and in the way we've addressed those needs but that's something we'd have to look at as far as creating new parks is something we'd have to look at where the needs are and I've got a little slide later on that kind of looks at the

4:15:41various coverages we have currently available and most of the any available land in town is privately owned would have to be purchased and the cost of that land varies depending on a whole Cadre of variables for any particular site there are site considerations I was just

4:16:01speaking of Huber Park obviously that's very challenging in today's environment to to provide access and to provide level areas and play areas that you like to see at parks that those are some of the land considerations that might come up so there those would have to be considered

4:16:17with any particular site we might consider for acquisition and of course there's the ongoing costs of ownership maintenance potential liabilities and all the other things that go along with owning land and owning facilities if you look at the current assemblage of parks I drew a quarter

4:16:36mile radius around each of the city's parks and you can see we we have a bit of a few gaps there but when you add in the hillside Natural Area and the Ohlone Greenway we actually have a fairly good coverage around town the two exceptions are the El Cerrito High School area and

4:16:53when those athletic fields are rebuilt we might be able to consider those as as publicly owned recreational facilities too and the golf course and then up in the Upper Terrace area are two other gaps the dog park the status of that is we have that underway this is about a three

4:17:12week old picture and I think it's moved even further than this and you authorize that in November to move forward we did start work last month and we do have a grand opening scheduled for April 17th Central Park Todd equipment this is not a project you you may have heard of

4:17:32we received a ten thousand dollar Grant from the first fra first five and we are leveraging with some other parking Loom money to get some preschool items installed at Central Park and also a new play surface in this area that's the status of the project so far

4:17:56so as we look ahead we have applications due at the end of this month to East Bay Regional Parks District staff is planning to apply for two projects which is Creekside lighting project once we have the environmental in place we can move ahead to do the final design and construction

4:18:13and Huber Park improvements I'll go into these in a little more detail in a minute staff we are not planning any action on Central Park because of the questionable nature of of Richmond's participation and also the issues on the skate spot at that location and we are not planning on acquiring any

4:18:36land at this point so the two projects we want to move forward on Creekside lighting we are looking at an array of 12 new lights and also probably some improvements to the three existing street lights at the end of those cul-de-sacs that abut this this pathway and we're looking at a cost of about 165

4:18:57thousand dollars we have not finished the final design so there is a 20 contingency in that to allow us some leeway as we move forward on the design we are looking at some ways to install lights that might actually be cheaper so I'm cautiously optimistic that we can

4:19:14bring it in for less than that Huber Park presents a challenge so it's we are have just recently uh talked to the community we feel like we have a pretty good consensus on the direction to go there um and we're and we think the expectations are fairly reasonable on

4:19:32all parts so I think we we're ready to go um some of the priorities there would be to resurface the lower court and provide Ada access to that area we would install some drainage improvements to keep the creek from flooding over into the picnic areas and washing out some of the landscape and

4:19:52potentially damaging some of the walls up there we'd like to make some improvements on that we'd like to determine whether we can move forward on some playground improvements in the upper areas if there's an exemption for Ada on that we'd like to hire consultant and just

4:20:06see where the what the legal terrain is and the equity terrain is as far as where we think we can go on that and then we'll do some pathway improvements on the upper Pathways to the upper streets spruce up the picnic areas and Institute some Ada upgrades required

4:20:26by the building code for undertaking any kind of project there we'll have to do some Ada upgrades and we have a pretty good list of that from our Ada transition plan that we can choose from to see where the best optimum choices will be for those improvements the costs were estimated at this point

4:20:46is 174 thousand dollars we don't have a detailed cost estimate for this project because we haven't designed all the improvements but we're using um this as a as a an applic budget that we would confine ourselves to we would go down the priority list as we've established them based on community

4:21:05input and get as much in as we could for this for this amount all in all the financial status is here the first money we were still setting aside for the Gilman field is 25 000.

4:21:22and 186 000 on the Cerrito Vista playground and we've invested thirty seven thousand dollars in the initial study for Creekside lighting project uh the two projects we're proposing would be Creekside lighting implementation for 165 Huber Park which would bring us to a total of 587

4:21:44000 out of the roughly million dollars that would leave 487 thousand dollars remaining for other future projects in future years so with that I'll open it up to any questions or discussion that you have for us we are not asking for any formal action at this point the master

4:22:02agreement we have with East Bay Regional Parks designates the Public Works director with the authority to to move ahead on on these applications but we would certainly enjoy hearing your thoughts in any other direction you wish to provide for us councilmember Lyman well I've got a

4:22:19couple of quick ones um in your coverage map there you do have some gaps we did talk about last year of property acquisition for future Parks associated with our increased density of housing along San Pablo Avenue so I don't want to lose sight of that comment that we had last year

4:22:39um I know that you've used a Loney Greenway to sort of get your coverage on that that Corridor but there are potentially opportunities for pocket parks in that area once our population especially the transitorian development densities that we're talking about around the Del Norte so we don't want to

4:22:56lose sight of land acquisition I understand that you're not taking any action on it um the next question I'm sort of I'm stuck on census tonight um you know you used our current numbers to get your 5.7 acres per thousand people I think it was um but if if we used El Cerritos maximum

4:23:20population would would we still be you know because I understand we used to have a larger population would we still be above the general plan Target of five or should we be looking at land acquisition and potentially trying to fill in some of these gaps especially

4:23:36near the Potrero 53rd and Potrero area which is a underserved well may not be underserved if you include Booker T um the lights the lights at the um Creekside my understanding is from other cities is that they like the LEDs because the it's harder to shoot them out and darken them

4:24:00because there's lots of little bulbs as opposed to large bulbs I'm assuming that that's the type of safety Improvement you're thinking of there to actually get that up so um the question is LED lights I assume yes that's correct um and then the Huber Park is been on the list of the park and rec

4:24:20commission for a long time to try and get improvements there um but your moving forward without a necessarily a plan there does cause me some concern that it's going to be a slippery slope that we would do something and then not be able to stop the the investment so I just

4:24:39wanted to get some sense that you do have a plan there you've outlined it in your staff report of prioritizing them and going into them in little bits and pieces but I just wanted to make sure that you felt comfortable that it's not a slippery slope that we're going to

4:24:53take the first step and then you know we we touch that wall and then we have to do the wall and the pipe and the roadway and the building and the so I just want to make sure you feel comfortable you've addressed the slippery slope issue there yes I It's Our intention to not make any

4:25:09major Investments other than maybe the Ada consultant to assess that but to have a firm plan in place for all the improvements and cost estimates before we really proceed with large Capital Investments up there and if we find some surprises we may be back here discussing

4:25:26it again I with that with those comments and your answers I I do understand why we are moving forward I think it's um the dollar value doesn't go up over time its purchasing power goes down so the sooner we can identify things to invest in the further our our dollars will go

4:25:48so I feel that these are very worthwhile projects for us to be moving forward with other comments oh I just want to say I find this to be really well thought out and incorporates a lot of the ideas that we talked about last year and um you've identified some of the parks that are most in need of

4:26:05Improvement Huber Park I know we can't work this year on Central Park but clearly from the photos work is needed I do have a question about the play equipment that Cerrito Vista that was removed was that past its useful life to do we um not able to be reused anywhere in the

4:26:25system I see she's go ahead what's she saying how's she doing yeah it's gone away yeah it it didn't meet current safety standards so about it okay it was already reused right from yeah yeah and obtain that structure from prospects Sierra school and um it it had met his its lifespan

4:27:03okay all right now I have no other comments Bill do you have any comments I think the recommend I think the recommendation by the director of Public Works is fine I'm I'm for it thank you okay could I see the list of um proposed projects that slide towards the end towards the end yeah yeah

4:27:25I'm gonna move to extend the meeting second for how long but 10 10 minutes all in favor motion cares unanimously um so this these are the ones looking ahead okay so the comments I have on the Creekside lighting project I was wondering if the placement of Lights

4:27:48would impede the pathway at all anywhere uh you mean have actually have a poll in the pathway itself no good thank you yeah um then on the Huber Park improvements um one of them said uh Ada improvements to meet code code or something like that um could we see the one on Huber Park maybe

4:28:13the slide to reach the basketball area it's the that one right there okay the last one what is that uh building code as I understand it requires that when you do a renovation project on a facility that you invest in Ada upgrades if you're under a certain threshold they limit how much you really

4:28:36need to do um to 20 of the cost if we were to go over a certain threshold we'd have to upgrade every thing in the park so we have chosen that threshold to standard because first of all it kind of meets the General scope of the cost of the project anyway and it still commits us

4:28:56to spending in this case approximately twenty four thousand dollars on other Ada upgrades besides what's in the basic renovation I guess my question is what is it we're talking about it could be a lot of things we do have a um a long list of ADA upgrades it could be

4:29:17the bathroom it could be access up to the clubhouse the parking on street Ada parking uh and ramps from that handrails it could be a lot of things I'm just wondering um what I'm wondering about that in a way is um was wasn't that already covered in our transition plan many years ago it's

4:29:39in yeah and it's in our new transition plan actually to to some good detail and we just have not had any funding never I thought because I thought in the original transition plan if it weren't done it was the facility was supposed to be closed no the transition plan is a plan on how

4:29:56you'll transition from what you have we did actually close buildings this is the initial one that went back to I don't know what year 93 I think around approximately 1990.

4:30:07um I think um you know for example Casa Cerrito upstairs is closed to the public because of that um I participated in going around and looking and then the council at the time did in fact close buildings over that so I'm just wondering what this is relative to that

4:30:29maybe it isn't known I I'm not seeing the connection okay okay I'm wondering if we have building a building open in the clubhouse say just isn't for example where the bathroom is um not at all ADA Compliant yeah or something like that I don't know I mean I just am kind of wondering what

4:30:48we're well we do have some basic access the clubhouse there currently is actually a parking spot up by the clubhouse the bathroom there was remodeled with um earlier money and so we do have some basic access to the main Clubhouse area under current standards they have found

4:31:10some additional upgrades that can be made to meet the the letter of the of the code but we do have some basic access available up there so if not okay is there sidewalk up to the building that we see in that picture that's a basically like an access driveway that particular driveway is a little too

4:31:31steep to meet current codes for Ada access I believe that's why in years past they actually created a parking spot up by the building so a car could actually Park up there someone could then access it from the car into the clubhouse at that point if they had a car

4:31:48if they had a car yes uh not all people have cars um okay so the picnic area is a lower area I'm not I know I know that I have I just am not remembering all the detail on this facility although I know I have been at it um the um is the picnic area the lower part

4:32:10no the the if you see the pointer there that the clubhouse is at the second tier and there are some picnic facilities at that level okay this lower area is just a basketball court just an open court area for court play there is also another picnic area up here in these trees about two more

4:32:32levels higher and it's actually a split level picnic area too so those are the two picnic areas refer to are around the clubhouse at the clubhouse level and then again up here a couple levels higher where there's at least one picnic table I think we're missing one up there that's one of the

4:32:50improvements we'd do okay I guess what I'm kind of wondering about is um I'm a little frustrated by Huber park being on the list all the time um and I know that the residents in that area would like to see improvements in that area and I'm just wondering if there's

4:33:08some project that we could um patch together if that's the right way to say it that would provide would that would deal with the Ada access issues but yet provide some features that the residents in that area would appreciate you know that we could do you know say

4:33:29this year that would be really nice do you see any such project well I believe that's the project we're proposing oh okay is that this Lower Court area currently is not accessible there's a short set of stairs clear over here on the right side of the picture we propose

4:33:43to put a ramp from in the vicinity of this sign into the court area so that this lower cart area would become Ada accessible with all the various activities that you can do there we'll have to take a further look at how to make the clubhouse more accessible than it already is

4:34:01above that it's really prohibitive it's nearly impossible to have a full ad access any higher than that right I guess what I would hope then is that for those lower areas I guess I'll call it that we would move forward on something yes those are definitely okay and then

4:34:19if I mean it would be really great if that upper area could be but if it just simply can't be for whatever reason then that's you know the way it is at the moment but um a study to determine that if that wouldn't be very much money would be of interest unless you just

4:34:37think it's so obvious that it could never be well well we do plan on hiring a consultant to evaluate the Ada situation there um it's our belief that those last few upper areas are just inaccessible to meet all the current standards for Mobility impaired particularly thank

4:34:57you and can we go back to that slide I first asked you to look at just to see if I got all my comments oh where was I okay video um next side so it's Creekside Lighting in Huber park with the two and then that's it okay then that's it those are my comments are there any further comments

4:35:22okay are you looking for a motion no no no okay thank you very much okay with that we're going to move on our agenda to the very last item I believe which is um nope one more yeah one more the recycling center design build consultant contract award Melanie Vince

4:35:49I have a long staff appointment good evening mayor city council my name is Melanie Mintz I'm the city's environmental services division manager I'm here tonight to request request authorization for the city manager to enter into an agreement with swinerton management and Consulting to develop

4:36:08design build bid documents and manage the design build procurement process for the new recycling center and Environmental Services offices and to request authorization to appropriate 68 66 000 from the Integrated Waste Management fund for the completion of this pre-construction phase of the

4:36:24project as you know design build was recently authorized by the state to be utilized on public projects valued over a million dollars design build provides the advantages of being a method in which projects are typically delivered faster and at lower cost city council authorized the use of

4:36:39design build for this project at its February meeting two of the key success factors in design build are adequately defining performance criteria in the technical request requests for proposals and selecting an outstanding design build firm through a rigorous procurement

4:36:55process as such staff issued a request for proposals for a consultant to develop the design build request for qualifications requests for proposals and assist with management of the procurement process because this is the city's first design build project the RFP invited proposers

4:37:12to propose scopes of work as part of their proposal so that the final design build technical request for proposals approach would be based on extensive knowledge and experience in the field rather than a predefined scope set by staff six respondents submitted proposals in

4:37:27the top three firms were interviewed by staff from both Public Works and environmental services Winterton management consulting staff's recommended Consultants stood out from the others due to their extensive experience working in all aspects of design build their specific experience

4:37:41developing design build requests for proposals and their particular emphasis on working with public agencies in this process as well as their commitment to sustainability even more importantly however the scope of work they proposed was the most comprehensive and provided the city both

4:37:56a well thought out procurement request for qualification two-step procurement process request for qualifications and requests for proposals as well as the development of a detailed technical proposal staff unanimously felt that swinerton management consulting with

4:38:10simultaneously provide Superior staff support in this first design build project as well as develop a technical request for proposals that would assure that we get the project we want and manage the procurement process so that we get the best design build team to do it

4:38:25if approved tonight staff will work to get swinnerton under contract as soon as possible and anticipate being able to select and recommend for Council approve approval a design build firm by late summer I'm available to answer any questions as is Jerry Bradshaw the Public Works

4:38:38director and John Baker from swinerton management and Consulting thank you um am I missing something or the the document you guys provided as attachment to if I go to page of course the pages aren't really numbered the scope of services here is essentially a page long is that

4:39:04is that the is what do you get so there's no no offense no offense but you're saying me telling me that this one page of scope of services was so much better than everybody else's I really scared there's a 40 page proposal in the original agenda packet is that right or did that

4:39:24not right the one I printed I have something that says it is the proposal for development of rfqs and then some number of pages in maybe eight or ten is that true for all council members there's something called the scope of services and it's one page long and if I buy your staff report this was

4:39:47yeah exactly that's where it ends well no that's experience with sustainable that's not what I call scope that's experience I'm sorry so that is just in the proposed so out of the 40 pages just one so in the um that is all that was in that proposal I have for here what we usually develop is the full

4:40:04scope um that was just the proposed detail we actually have oh good because because I was very concerned that this was that I would be shocked at what the other proposals looked like if this was what you said declared well it's in actually the scope of work developed we have we have the draft

4:40:25scope of work which is also about a 20 Page document so that was just in the response to a very um to a one-page request for proposals that we sent out we then did interviews and based on that we would further develop the full scope of services and you might have gotten I think um but

4:40:43okay so when was which scope was the scope that you used to select we selected the three firms based on those proposals right so this one so this one page yeah no the others actually I would say that was and this was the most robust the the others ranged from their entire proposal

4:41:02from three to five three to five pages their entire proposal right including experience and and others well um councilmember do you have just so I'm clear there's approach to design build there's understanding scope of services and it goes through the world then

4:41:19there's design build plan which is program development definition of goals so far and then the next page is specifications development and then General conditions contractual development so if he's talking about the entire scope so um I believe councilmember Lyman it's after

4:41:37the org chart they have an org chart thank you city manager so there's proposed team information and proposed team approach it's I think what you might be referring to right now is the way that they organize their entire proposal you're there's definitely a front end which you can tell is right

4:41:55we're all Pride their whole uh firm but approach to design build is is spoiler is boilerplate so I was actually when you end up looking through it the program development design build plan it's actually now that we are developing the scope of work this was really what

4:42:15was being proposed excellent so you see um in this fee breakdown that I believe you were given today you can see it pretty closely the three phases of the project pretty closely um mirror the page that the city manager was referring to the said design build plan correct there's a definition of

4:42:36goals there's a space needs analysis there's the program development which includes all of the performance criteria well includes space needs and things like that there's a program criteria that's the scope of work that's being developed quite honestly it wasn't in the

4:42:51evaluating the written proposals they weren't the top firm it was through the interview process that we learned more so the depth of what was being provided by this firm as opposed to the others so the organization of The Proposal maybe didn't wow me as much either but in the

4:43:07written proposals and then the uh um so does that answer your question it does okay other questions yeah okay Bill do we need a motion to extend who were the other excuse me oh we're five minutes late right we need a motion have we emotion move to adjourn there's somebody proposing what

4:43:41there's nobody proposing to extend the meeting I move to adjourn you don't have a second is there a motion to I I will move to extend the meeting five more minutes it failed to have a second so we have a new motion okay I'll second five minutes okay all in favor bye

4:44:12extension most encourage unanimously five minutes okay who were the other firms if I may ask uh so one was Urban green one was methune one was a firm two that I hadn't heard of one was called cre so the ones that were interviewed the top three were methune a firm called Urban green and

4:44:33swinterton the other oh the other uh was a firm called cre a firm called drb and Howard Fuchs an independent okay um on the chart We Got Tonight uh-huh it has uh five on each of these levels has five months three months two months are we to assume that's the length of

4:45:00time it's going to take for each of these phases no I believe the entire project is is about is five months so we expect to be done around August so it's the you know yeah can I ask how why is it going to take five months to select a design build team I'll try to answer to the best

4:45:23we want to pass it on um where we haven't sat down and done a detailed schedule I've talked to swinderton you know upon Council approval we would sit down and do that a large part of of this approach is the technical proposal so one thing we need to do and we don't

4:45:44have yet for this project is it is a space needs analysis basically doing all the performance criteria as I wrote in the agenda bill for uh Mechanical plumbing space needs and so there's the development of the technical proposal and then as you can see we're developing

4:45:58and again I don't um actually in The Proposal that you have there is a a less detailed schedule so we can look at that on the second third to last page the process is a two two phase procurement process what we are working with Myers Navi on and will be able to

4:46:15benefit from swinterton's expertise in this area as well is to do a pre-qualification process that process enables us to assure things like the qualified bidder what we're basically going to see what the market is before we complete that list it allows for some flexibility but the list

4:46:31will include such things as having an apprentice program having worked extensively with public agencies the design build firm having worked together before having worked together on green projects Etc so we'll go through a pre-qualification process once we've qualified those firms we'll

4:46:48move on to the second phase which would be actually the detailed technical proposal that would be inviting so we'll move as quickly as we possibly can and if we can shorten any of that we will but basically the front-end document in many ways is I mean it's it's a bid document it's

4:47:04going to constitute the contract and so it's actually going to be a pretty detailed and that's where we felt that it was different than some of the other proposers which were more just proposing the process that this actually defines gives more of a product and makes it we

4:47:19feel that the design build teams will have better description of what they need to provide in the ultimate contract okay thank you other yeah you go you go I go resolution of the El Cerrito city council authorizing the city manager to enter into an agreement with swinterton management and

4:47:41Consulting in an amount not to exceed 55 000 for consulting services for the recycling center um and authorizing contract amendments in the amount not to exceed 11 000 and appropriating sixty six thousand dollars from the Integrated Waste Management fund yes I do okay

4:48:05um swarrington if you need to extend the um meeting five minutes somebody I I'd like to call a motion I mean can we vote on this um it's the protocol when somebody else has already skiing okay five minute extension okay all in favor aye aye any opposition extension motion

4:48:42carries unanimously bill okay um sworn sworn inton is a a good reputable firm there's there's no problem with that they have a good reputation in the in the industry my feeling is that the city does not need to go through this extensive of an exercise to get a design build team

4:49:08it's going to take too long in my opinion five months is way too long in which to select a design build team for a project that last I heard was two to three million dollars in the process uh there's things in The Proposal in my opinion that uh does not need to be there we're trying

4:49:34we are selecting a firm that is supposed to put a process together in which to select and yet um I think they get into a lot of things that the design build team would be doing after the design build team is hired example project schedule the project if if we're talking about

4:49:55the project meaning the actual construction that's with the project manager and the contractor and the owner that does not need to be set in this process to select a design build team the cost benefit analysis and value engineering is not something that's normally done when you're selecting a

4:50:20team that is done with the project manager the contractor and the owner it's part of the reason why we do design build the design criteria they have to be involved in that no problem but only to the extent is to be able to describe what is needed I get the impression on some of this

4:50:49that we're getting into the design actually design of the building and we don't need to do that what is needed is just an overview of what is required now we have spent considerable amount of money already on this project for designing there is no need to redefine the

4:51:09programming there's no need to excuse me redefine the area on which this building will be needed there was two designs done on it one was because of the original function of the of the center it came in as you recall it came in high too high over budget but then we changed

4:51:30the process of the res Cycling Center and therefore because of the process it eliminated some of the function that we normally did at the center and therefore the cost of the building came down but the fact is we've already done the programming we've already done the um

4:51:48like I say the site analysis there may be some need to do some environmental work and some testing soils test but I would assume that we have a soils test on record and so long as that is meets the standards we can use that um I don't understand they talk about

4:52:11assisting with the environmental approval I I don't know what that has to do with uh recruiting other than to identify permits and they do they list that and that the permits required and and that sort of thing so we're okay there I I just think that uh they have

4:52:35proposed more work than was really needed for a project of this size and although a project of two to three million dollars is is a pretty big project for the city of El Cerrito when you're talking construction it's not it's not big therefore I think we don't need

4:52:53this type of extensive uh procedure to select a design build team and I certainly think five months is way too long shouldn't have to wait five months to get a design build team on board in my opinion so that I recommend that we do keep swearington I would ask that we uh

4:53:17scale down the scope of work and and ask that they come in with a more reasonable price for the for the work and also that the price should be inclusive the scope of work okay there's a motion on the floor um any further uh comments okay uh ready to vote all in favor

4:53:42please say aye aye aye okay um opposed no okay uh the motion is uh three yeses one no motion carries I move continuation of item eight to the next meeting second okay all in favor bye in the opposition abstentions motion carries unanimously uh meeting is adjourned thank you all for coming our

4:54:07next meeting will be on Monday April the 5th thank you thanks