City Council and Redevelopment Agency Meeting April 19, 2010

0:00:00foreign welcome to the El Cerrito city council meeting thank you all for coming we will start with roll call councilmember Jones here councilmember Lyman here councilmember Potter here vice mayor Chang here mayor Abelson here the next item on the agenda is the pledge of allegiance to the flag and

0:00:28tonight it will be led by council member Jones of the United States of America or which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice wrong um the next item on the agenda is Council and staff Communications let's start out with Council Communications

0:01:04sure I've got a few things to report the bicycle safety Rodeo that I announced two weeks ago was postponed is actually now back on for May 22nd at St John's Kearney Street yard from 11 A.M to 3 P.M on Saturday May 22nd families are welcome bring your own bike and a

0:01:27helmet and participate in an obstacle course I want to also provide an announcement for take control of your finances in your future this is an event Saturday April 24th 2 o'clock to 6 p.m at the Richmond Library at the Madeline Whitley community room and that's at 326

0:01:54Civic Center Plaza in Richmond and this is a free one-on-one financial planning free foreclosure counseling free financial education workshops again that's Saturday April 24th two to six um and another one our um our bicycle Police Department team is hosting along with the Hercules Martinez

0:02:22and Benicia police departments a bike the bridges special for Special Olympics it's a fundraiser 25 and 50 mile cycling event and this is on Sunday June 6th 2010 for more information you can contact Sergeant Sean Maples here at El Cerrito 215 -4414 extension two six

0:02:51and last uh certainly not least I wanted to make sure that everyone is filling out their census forms to be counted it's important that we are counted as best you can and uh hoping that everyone is doing that and I'm checking really quickly I think we're still offering

0:03:13there's no dates on this hopefully we might still be offering assistance Tuesdays and Wednesdays 9 A.M to 2 p.m and Thursday 11 to 4 P.M at El Cerrito City Hall I'm looking to see if anybody's nodding so I'm assuming that's a yes so we're still potentially offering assistance

0:03:35here at City Hall Tuesdays and Wednesdays nine to two Thursdays 11 to 4.

0:03:45um I'll just announce that we had a very successful opening day of our Bruce King memorial dog park in the North End of El Cerrito on on The Greenway at Petro and Blake and there was over 200 people and their dogs to celebrate this um wonderful occasion of memorializing

0:04:05the memory of Bruce King through a wonderful Civic project where 52 000 was raised by the community um we're very excited to invite everyone to enjoy the park if they had didn't get a chance all the council members were there except for mayor Abelson but it was a very well attended wonderful event

0:04:26thank you I would like to just Echo what mayor Pro tem Chang has said about how wonderful it was to have the celebration for the Bruce King memorial dog park and what a beautiful weekend we enjoyed in El Cerrito it was a busy weekend earlier in the day on Saturday there was a

0:04:43showing of the film Loma Prieta 15 seconds that was shown at the Cerrito Theater which is always nice to be able to enjoy the community sponsored events there the film was the idea of our own staff Suzanne Ehrlich and was also sponsored by the El Cerrito fire department and

0:05:04anyone who's interested in viewing the film or getting together with a group can contact Suzanne at City Hall or Dave Gibson or chief Naples at the El Cerrito fire department we learned a lot about the cert program here in El Cerrito the community emergency response training

0:05:20program and I encourage all the residents to take advantage of this free program that will help you to prepare when we have our next natural disaster so um I just want to share that with you and please give a call to City Hall and have the opportunity to see the film it's

0:05:39really quite a reminder on the 20th anniversary of Loma Prieta thank you I'd just like to um again Echo the dog opening it was great but it also uh it I was there reminded me of some things never change and it's been a few years since we had our dog and so uh it was shortly after the park

0:06:03was open and the dogs were allowed into the space that I was reminded that the smaller dogs like to stir up the excitement of the bigger dogs that are four times their size it was fun to watch the small dogs try to get under the skin of the of the big dogs and anyway it was a fun time for everybody

0:06:24thank you thank you and I would like to mention a couple of things the first one is that next Saturday April 24th is Earth Day in El Cerrito and we hope that you will all join us uh we're having work parties from nine till noon in the morning if you don't have a location that to go to

0:06:48and you would like one just come over to the community center at 7007 Mosier Lane anytime after 8 30 a.m and we will give you a work location in El Cerrito what we like to actually do is something to make our city a better place and the projects range from weeding trash pickup

0:07:10painting cleaning up neighborhoods all kinds of different things and it's a really enjoyable time then at noon we have a a meal at together at the community center at 7007 Moser Lane and we hope you'll all join us um in addition I want to mention that under the rules of ab1234 I want to

0:07:36mention that I attended some policy committee meetings of the league of California cities that I am I'm on to policy committees the community services policy committee and the administrative services policy committee we had a really significant issue come up at all

0:07:53of the policy committee meetings this time on ab12 or excuse me ab32 and SB 375 those are both environmental pieces of legislation and the issue was about suspending ab32 in particular and possibly SB 375 um because of the state of the economy really so there were was a presentation

0:08:23the major presentation was from somebody from carb the California air resources board if I got that right and I attended that presentation well there um since that time in fact just today I learned that um the full Board of the league of California cities is considering taking

0:08:46a position on whether or not to suspend AB 32 and SB 375 and so it might so that on an emergency basis we might want to consider whether or not we want to take a position on that and I'm running at the City attorney could direct us what the protocol for that would be if we did

0:09:09that yes Madam under the brown act the council can consider an item that's not on the agenda based on a finding by two-thirds of the council that the issue arose after the agenda had been posted and that there's a need for immediate action and since um there won't be

0:09:27another council meeting before the full Board of the league is going to meet and since it came up after the agenda was posted I believe there is a basis for making that finding if the account also chooses okay thank you so I if at this time anyone is interested in

0:09:42making such a motion to consider then we would it would be a two-part process first to make a motion that it's that emergency exists and they would if that in fact is voted affirmatively by four council members tonight than what we would do is agendize it and consider it

0:10:01at some point during our meeting tonight can we combine that too yes okay I'd move that uh oh I don't know excuse me I don't know about that can we can we combine the two items into one motion sorry what are you considering the two items two items is to declare an

0:10:21emergency and and put it under agenda item 7c the the the motion would be to find that the need for the action arose after the agenda had been posted and that there's a need for immediate action so that motion and then and then emotion that could be combined to then make it

0:10:39item 7c would be fine okay I moved that we declare an emergency due to the fact that the issue came up after the agenda was posted and uh we will need some sort of comment and resolution on it before our next council meeting and if so approved I would like to agendasize it under 7c

0:11:05is there a second to consider um the suspension of ab32 SB 375 is an emergency item as a result of the action pending before the league of California cities and to suggest that that would be item 7c on the agenda I'm just clarifying the item is to provide you with input to go back to the

0:11:35league on the matter um it's too late for that so it would be to to we would send the resolution to the league of California cities okay so but our discussion will be about whether or not to suspend those two pieces yes okay okay so is there any other discussion I'm

0:11:58sorry on the motion the motion to con agenda is this okay ready to vote um and do we have a second yes Potter all right Sandy okay all in favor please say aye aye aye okay that motion I believe was unanimous okay then we will consider it later on our agenda as 7c

0:12:19um the other thing I want to mention is that the Environmental Quality committee met and primarily we discussed Earth Day because the Environmental Quality as you might imagine is is quite involved in our Earth Day celebration and the other thing we mentioned that I

0:12:37thought was particularly interesting was the bi-weekly curbside food scrap composting Pro collection pilot project that's about to start on July the 1st for those residents who are interested in for those residents who are interested what you'll do is put it in

0:12:58to the bin with your green materials that's the um green bin I believe it's green I think and then it will be it will go through the process that way and um we've been told that yes it's sanitary to in fact leave material that is food waste in that bin for up to two

0:13:28weeks which is how frequently we do collect those that bin which is done by East Bay sanitary so um that was quite a discussion was had about that people are really interested and excited about this opportunity and it will do reduce a lot of um material in the waste stream so

0:13:51it's a good thing the other thing we talked about that you might be interested in is a pledge of environmentally friendly campaign practices and there's going to be a subcommittee working on that and I'll be providing input to that so those I think are the most

0:14:09interesting things that were on that agenda and so at this time I would like to move on to the next agenda item which would be the staff Communications are there any staff Communications none okay thank you with that we will move on to oral Communications from the public

0:14:27I swear we have two speakers on General comment and then several on the budget and Senior Services the two on General are Michael Demay and Pam Bennett we have just to let you know we have a speaker system up here a speaker light and when you the council is allotted

0:14:46three minutes per speaker when you begin speaking the light will turn green and when you have one minute to sum up the light will turn yellow and when the light turns red you'll know that your time is concluded the mayor has asked me to to let you know um when when your time is concluded if

0:15:04you lose sight of the red light so Michael Demay thank you hey and I've been a resident of El Cerrito for about 40 years I'll be kind of short and brief I've also been a long time neighbor of Camp Herms which is requesting to have a 77 foot cell tower installed 285 feet from my

0:15:35house and I came and spoke in front of you guys maybe the last me or the one before that I really think it's time for the city of El Cerrito to perhaps put a moratorium on cell tower siding some of your rules and regulations for them are a bit old and outdated compared to your

0:15:57neighbors of the city of Richmond and Albany sighting in a park and rec area does not seem appropriate nor in the middle of a residential neighborhood there are many studies that have been done and I and several of my neighbors have emailed them to you that there are

0:16:21health effects regarding these and we all we are well aware that you cannot deny a permit and such based on health concerns but you have this knowledge and I'm asking you to make an agenda item and really take the time to look into proper cell citing I'm not asking the city to

0:16:40be anti-business I'm just asking them to look where they where they should put the should they really be put 285 feet from a neighbor should it be put in a park and rec area I don't think they should be also the Circuit Court has decided that California law does not

0:17:04prohibit cities in counties from denying approvals for proposed cell phone antenna in rights of way based on aesthetic concerns so we're looking at a 77 foot fake tree that can be seen from Arlington Park it can be seen from Arlington Boulevard and it can be seen

0:17:25from inside my house every day of life so again there are tools at your disposal that I'm asking you to look at and to update our own policies regarding this thank you thank you Pam Bennett hi Pam Bennett I've been a resident all my life of El Cerrito 50 years hate to

0:17:57admit it this year I'm here also to talk about the cell phone tower at Camp firms um we've been very much in research there's a petition now of seven 700 people in El Cerrito including Park users uh Sierra Club and the sock most of the soccer teams that use that Park child

0:18:18care that's in the area who believe that their business will be impacted by this Tower are um uh scout master from our local troop who has said they will remove themselves from using that site and so forth so this is really not being supported in the community I'm here to bring

0:18:37Awareness on cell towers it's something that I myself did not know about prior to this and what's going on in the industry um and here to ask again for a moratorium we found that since our wireless which was redone recently there's been many other cities that have

0:18:54updated their Wireless and are much more current with what the um industry is needing you know as far as zoning I'd like to read a letter from the Columbia University College of Physicians and surgeons um Martin blank who's the associate professor of physiology and cellular

0:19:18biophysics I've been doing research at the Columbia University for over 25 years studying the biological effects of electromagnetic radiation I'm also one of the organizers of the 2007 bio initiative report on EMF that is available on the internet because of this background I've asked to provide

0:19:36information about the potential harm harmful effects of EMF on neighbors of the El Cerrito Community especially children who use the campgrounds that Jason park playground that would be exposed to EMF following the installation of this Tower there are now sufficient scientific data about the

0:19:53biological effects of EMF and in particular about the radio frequency radiation transmitted by Towers to argue against installation of this Tower as a precautionary measure we can state in unequivocally that EMF can cause damage single and double strand breaks to DNA

0:20:11at exposed levels that are are considered safe under the FCC guidelines in the United States T-Mobile said that they need the tower the antenna every quarter mile they said in in the um Planning Commission testing of the T-Mobile maps that were submitted by T-Mobile showed that we have service

0:20:31four bars at most sites studies show that Health impacts are a thousand to fifteen hundred feet alternatives are there we can use Fiber Optic Cables we don't need Towers every quarter mile which all the wireless will be asking for from Los Angeles City Board of Education

0:20:52for consideration the Board of Education of the city of Los Angeles petitioned the California Environmental Protection Agency to perform the appropriate research and experimentation to determine the effects of non-ionizing radiation on health not only for adults

0:21:08but children that are most vulnerable vulnerable excuse me last thing I wanted to read we can take action there are 10 cities that have resolutions to that have been signed example San Francisco mayor Newson just signed two weeks ago urges the U.S environment Protection

0:21:27Agency to perform appropriate research in an experimentation to determine the effects of non-ionizing radiation on health of adults and children they have appropriate establish a safe level of exposure and urges the Federal Communications Commission to pursue a

0:21:44comprehensive Global analysis of best practices and scientific evidence in order to update the existing standards and to adequately measure the health impacts of Wireless facilities it encourages the California Congressional Delegation to introduce Federal legislation to repeal the

0:22:01limitations on State and local authorities and are imposed by the Telecommunications Act of 1996. there are cities taking action please help us and please consider moratorium to help improve El Cerrito make it a green city thank you Diane Brenner thank you I'm Diane Brenner I've been a

0:22:28resident of El Cerrito for about 15 years and I also I'm here to speak against this proposed cell tower for Camp Herms one of the tools that local government agencies have and are presently using to restrict the sighting of these towers is the responsibility to protect property

0:22:45values for their residents as more and more people in the public become aware of the hazards or at least perceived hazards of living close to these towers there's a perceived negative health impact and that creates a negative impact on property values I have with me tonight

0:23:04um signed court documents from two property appraisers in Richmond indicating that one they feel that a property's proximity to cell towers is something that ought to be disclosed when a property is up for sale that so that all the potential buyers are fully informed

0:23:22and stating that there are buyers who will not purchase a property that's near such a tower again having a negative impact in that your pool of potential buyers is limited there also have been a number of studies done in the last couple of years in other countries of course not

0:23:42surprising um showing Health impacts increased cancer rates and primarily for people living within 300 meters or 400 meters of these towers and as my neighbors stated earlier this proposed Tower is only not even 300 feet from some of the neighboring houses so I

0:24:04support the idea the requests that we update are El Cerrito rules regarding these and have a moratorium on new towers thank you Paul Gray I'm sorry David Gray yes my name is David Gray I'm El Cerrito resident for the past nine years I'm also a member of the Sierra Club and the

0:24:31reason I'm speaking tonight uh is to bring up the issue of proposition 16 which PG D has had placed on the November I'm sorry on the June 8th ballot PG e has a monopoly on power provision in in this area and effectively what proposition 16 would do would be to codify their Monopoly in

0:25:01perpetuity uh in the constitution of the State of California um basically that would require a two-thirds vote by the people of the city uh to adopt any form of Community Choice power Community Choice power would be an opportunity for getting renewable and clean energy to the

0:25:24citizens of El Cerrito and I would hope that the city would like to have that uh opportunity be available I just wanted to point out how well the two-thirds majority has worked with the California state budget um I would like to ask the council to consider adopting a resolution by the

0:25:45city of El Cerrito against proposition 16 I have endorsement forms I hear that I would like to end to the clerk and if you would also consider signing individually as as council members that would be greatly appreciated I'd also like to State given that ab32 just came

0:26:06up that I would really hope that the council would not adopt this emergency resolution we need to maintain ab32 and SB 375 as reducing global warming gases thank you very much foreign speakers who wish to speak regarding senior Senior Services okay I believe I don't see this agenda so I assume it

0:26:38would be at this time they would speak okay pardon is it under the budget or is it under just public comment on items not on the agenda who are the speakers oh I don't see a slip for you well if you don't have a slip we'll make a slip for you if you want to come and do that and

0:27:08you can speak but let's figure out this thing with the seniors who are where are the seniors right here okay do you want to speak um on items not on the agenda or do you want to wait and speak on the budget now or on the budget okay okay I'm just trying to figure out when

0:27:33they're speaking Yeah okay okay what would the seniors like to do let me speak first and then I'll make the introduction we're trying to figure out if it's now or later though it's now it's open public that they are that's what the Sundays it's not an agenda okay fine go ahead

0:27:57get an item okay so go ahead so I'm just you know exercising the brown act well the question is just where on the agendas okay we're ready okay on um uh uh number three okay okay also I first I just want to acknowledge uh Kaufman Jones councilman Wyman for the uh successful uh dog park

0:28:19inauguration okay and uh my 80 pound uh Labrador has some issues being precluded from being in a small dog park okay but being an attorney well we'll set that for a mediation okay um I'm speaking it's off it's not only agenda speaking on uh an issue was raised um

0:28:41by three Council meetings ago and Council Wayne raised the issue about Russo I thought it was a very good when I thought about it about what constitutes being Central Services okay because you know he's on part of the Fab and councilman Jones talked about maybe

0:28:58this is a time we should talk about changing the charter of the city of El Cerrito okay and I talked to John Joy about this and you know yo uh our charger is really funky okay you know get this General law thing type of thing okay and but it does require a uh the vote of the uh

0:29:26of the residents okay and we're very successful when we did the vote for raising money to to repaving okay now I'm thinking very seriously okay I think we can actually put something on maybe not this you know office is too late for June for next year to amend the charger okay to

0:29:46bring us in come conformance okay with all the other cities as far as the charter that gives us a lot more flexibility as far as taxation and uh issuing out you know bonds Etc and um I will you know you know being being you know being an attorney I will you know prepare a

0:30:08letter to the you know Council have it vetted out by a city the city attorney's office well how I think it should be done and we can talk about it you know in the future Council meetings Etc okay but I think it's something that the council needs to start thinking about

0:30:24because we're already behind the times okay uh as how we you know how the city was incorporated Italian or Incorporated talking and uh and how we are today we need that flexibility the counseling needs the flexibility okay and mayor needs the flexibility we have to have

0:30:44that type of flexibility to be able to do things to uh you know to move the city forward yeah I mean I don't know how many times I've gone through you know people ask me where do you live California where California Northern California where Bay Area where El Cerrito oh Credence Clearwater Revival

0:31:06band okay it's pretty much what I hear okay but you know but seriously okay let's take this very serious okay by changing the charter of the city and re and changing the corporation of this city okay I think it's going to work for us okay and I can really really help

0:31:25to move this forward okay and now we'll yield balance my time to uh to the Reverend uh Sharon your three minutes is up sir I'm sorry you're three minutes give her 30 seconds okay she can actually have her own time she doesn't have to uh take care give her a little

0:31:46additional time okay because her you can give her the full three minutes actually but give her a little additional time you're okay thank you okay okay so now we're is okay well I'll introduce the Reverend Sharon I tried to practice okay the next speaker is Florence Brown

0:32:17hello I'm very glad to be here my name is Florence Brown and I live in on Del Monte Avenue in El Cerrito and we have had that house since July 3rd 1957.

0:32:34and uh it's been a very happy time and the years have passed by and the kids are gone my husband is gone for 22 years already and I'm still here very much alive and I love Monday mornings when the time for senior citizen classes are due um the weekends are long The Sundays are

0:33:01lonely I don't drive at night anymore so we I am speaking for myself at this moment but I know I speak for all the seniors who participate in all these senior groups that we need you we need you to help us it's probably the one great thing that all of us do during the

0:33:24week we have classes we have current events I am no less than the international news reporter it's funny to me too anyway [Laughter] so anyway we do have a good time we look forward to it and I have to tell you that the people who come to I'll be 88 in August I am not the oldest one there

0:33:52and we come in wheelchairs we come with canes we come with uh crutches with casts one place or another and yet we come and we really really beg you to consider keeping our places open uh we are good Citizens We're too old to get in trouble and and we need you okay and that's my

0:34:23story thank you Lawrence Brown it was John Aiken hi my name is Joan Aiken I live at [address removed] Richmond and I want to say ditto yeah right right seniors we need we need something but I'm here this evening to talk about a problem that faces our one day a week

0:34:58senior centers in El Cerrito until this time our centers have been funded by West Contra Costa School District adult education however the school district like everyone else is suffering from serious budget problems and thus far there's no indication that there will be funding programs for

0:35:20older adults after the end of May I've been a member of St John Senior Center in El Cerrito for seven years I volunteered there and many other uh areas of the city and my mother and I have been coming there my mother's gone but I continue on and it's true we learned many things at

0:35:46the senior center we have such social ability such a warm group of ladies every Tuesday and of course we have music games we enjoy it so much looking forward to Tuesday and when I go to make an appointment I always say not on Tuesday that's my day for the senior center

0:36:08you know with all of your knowledge and expertise all of you please help us keep our senior centers open thank you Reverend lukeman as I want to speak in uh support of the senior centers who are really fighting for their existence um 37 years ago Christ Lutheran decided to

0:36:42partner with the adult school and welcome seniors into Christ Lutheran for the senior center and uh in my 17 years there I've watched hundreds of them come through and be enriched emotionally and socially to intellectually be stimulated through the programs and we as a community are

0:37:04committed to do all we can to keep the program going at our Center and we ask for any help and assistance that can enable that to to continue and we have many volunteers who keep the program going from our community but we can't do it alone but we are willing to do

0:37:26anything possible to keep it going because of how important it is so I ask for the community support in all the senior centers that benefit these seniors so very much thank you the last that's the last speaker last speaker okay thank you very much all of you for your very thoughtful comments uh

0:37:50with that we're going to move on to presentations and the first presentation is from California state Senator Mark desangier well I will try to be as brief as possible uh first of all thank you forgendizing a few minutes with me and thank you for all your hospitality I've represented El

0:38:16Cerrito in the California state senate for about uh well a year and three months four months um prior to that you folks know that I was in the assembly representing the 11th Assembly District which is north of here and then before that of course I was on the Board of Supervisors for four

0:38:31terms and during all those um those wonderful years of Public Service we've I've tried to do these meetings with City councils and with school districts in the area I represented so trying to get to 19 cities uh the seventh Senate District includes 18 cities all of Contra Costa

0:38:51except for San Pablo in about two-thirds of Richmond are in Senator Hancock's District so trying to do this has been fairly daunting but we're getting there slowly but surely and it's also part of our public outreach program a few weeks ago the mayor joined me at a mobile

0:39:06district office hours on the weekend where we had folks come at the senior center it was wonderful thanks for letting me use it um so any suggestions you have on how this can work better for you we're more than welcome we're more than willing to listen to it I just wanted to briefly

0:39:21talk about our budget which will hopefully help you with your deliberations um I have given you a packet of our legislative package this year the second year of a two-year session so if you have any questions I'd be happy to respond to that but I just want to briefly talk about the budget briefly

0:39:37talk about reform efforts in Sacramento right now because they're important um and then any questions I can answer and I will be out of your way and at your disposal whenever you would like interesting choice of words uh on the budget in January after coming through a

0:39:54year last year where we had a almost 50 billion dollar problem shortfall during the hopefully the worst of the worst recession In Our Lifetime having dealt with that and for your viewers who may not know that we State local government all go on a fiscal year in California

0:40:10from mid calendar year to Mid calendar year so in January when the governor's office and the Department of Finance came out and said that we were going to be 20 billion dollars short of estimated revenues for the next 18 months so quickly we were able to work fairly

0:40:26effectively with uh with the governor it's all relative uh to identify about five billion dollars worth of budget Gap filling uh things we could do for this budget year we have already started our budget subcommittee process and we've I know my budget subcommittee

0:40:43which is General government and the Department of Corrections we've already had about five meetings trying to address the other 15 billion dollars that we'll have to deal with for next year for oh for 10 11.

0:40:55um and it's going to be difficult because as you know uh coming although it's better than last year and there there's our revenue is actually up for the first three months so far according to the the um our financial officers it's not up enough to make a difference

0:41:10and we already cut so much last year so it's going to be a challenge um and when it comes to local government although I voted against 1A as you know the legislature suspended 1A last year which means we we can't come back at that for the next two years um so it'll be a challenge this year as

0:41:28well but we're hoping if we keep our fingers crossed uh that will it'll be a 10 million dollar problem if the economy keeps just Trucking along and getting better and then just lastly there's the good news about all this challenges some of you have heard me speak is that

0:41:43there's a number of initiatives both outside the legislature and outside the governor's office uh good government groups the League of Women Voters not being the least of which encouraging us to change the way we do business in Sacramento which I firmly believe in I'm

0:42:00a chair of a select committee uh with both the assembly and the Senate that we had a number of public hearings on to make recommendations on how we could change and a lot of this is in your packet I have one big constitutional revision that I'm carrying right now and

0:42:14today we were negotiating with our Republican colleagues as one of the the your public comments speakers mentioned good to repeat I think over and over again we are one of three states in the United States California that requires a super majority of both houses of the

0:42:28legislature to pass a budget the other two being Arkansas and Rhode Island Rhode Island's a little bit bigger than Contra Costa County and Arkansas is about half the cut size of the Bay Area so trying to get four Republicans to join Democrats in the assembly and then

0:42:44we need two Republicans to join us in the Senate has proven to be very difficult to to achieve we have the worst credit rating of any state in the United States and the rating agencies actually mentioned this this is one of the main reasons that they give us such

0:42:59a poor credit rating is for the physical standpoint that we can't get a budget done on time without this kind of really intense political negotiations so the Constitutional revision that I'm carrying actually comes from a group called California forward and if any of

0:43:14your constituents are interested they have a very good I think informative website and it's a whole series of changes to the Constitution that would have to go to the voters but again we would need six Republicans in the legislature to join us to get this on the ballot it's a whole series of what

0:43:31we think is good government proposals California forward is a bipartisan group it was used to be headed on the Democratic Side by Leon Panetta and former Congressman Panetta said that when he left California forward to become the Obama administration's head of the Central Intelligence Agency he

0:43:48said it would be easier to run the Central Intelligence Agency and do all the challenges they have then reform government in California so there you have for Mr Panetta but that just briefly the things there would in this constitutional revision would drop the requirement to a simple majority to pass

0:44:06the budget not to raise taxes it would stipulate that if the legislature didn't get the budget done by June 30th we would forfeit our pay um very popular amongst my colleagues but I think it's a good thing and then it would do a Pago system where basically we we would fund existing

0:44:22programs up to the level they were so good programs like senior programs that have always existed we would fill those up as the economy comes back but we wouldn't do new programs without actually identifying funding sources we would also do that for taxes one of our

0:44:38stumbling rocks with the Republicans is they don't want to do it for taxes we think that's fair if you're going to cut taxes with a simple majority you should go to your constituents and tell them if it's going to come from senior programs or education and then there's a couple

0:44:52Provisions around performance-based budgeting that local government's done very well but we in the state have not done so there's an opportunity to change things that's the encouraging thing about being up there right now but I do think it's going to take a lot

0:45:07of effort to get enough people to agree to do it and then lastly the initiative system in California is very unique to the United States 24 out of 50 states have it we have the most if you have the money you can get an initiative on the ballot the PG e that somebody brought up

0:45:25as an example of that and oftentimes you can convince people to vote against their own best interest we're trying to change the initiative system so it works better for Californians as opposed to large money to interest but again that needs the super majority of both houses

0:45:39and it needs the voters to approve itself don't mean to be pessimistic but there's a lot of opportunity here and uh lastly very lastly I think if there's a way to interact I think I know Senator Hancock feels the same way the two of us representing Contra Costa County if

0:45:55there's a way for us to better interact with local government we're all ears so that we can represent you better so with that I'll finish if there are any questions be happy to answer them and if not I'll let you get on with your very busy agenda be happy to offer my opinion

0:46:09on a on SB 375 which I was co-author of and on ab-32 that I worked on in the 10 years that I was on the California resources board don't suspend thank you I think that was what I was hoping um before we go any further if you don't mind there's something wrong with the

0:46:31sound um and I'm just wondering if it just that it's sounding like that here or is there something wrong with the sound because it keeps cutting in and out it could be me no it's been happening it's no it seems to be every microphone's doing it does anyone know

0:46:52James do you think have an idea it's what it's from being too close to it or no we'll go ahead and keep going and hopefully it can get fixed um okay are there questions from the council yeah hi Mark just one question I won't ask you about the budget that was pretty well covered but I I did recently

0:47:27recently uh made aware of the bankruptcy law or the bankruptcy proposal that apparently you're now on the committee that's looking at that and have a an alternative uh piece of legislation that addresses this but I just wanted to comment I don't know how my colleagues feel on this but uh

0:47:50get going to the state for authorization to declare bankruptcy by a city which is what is being proposed I think really uh is interfering with the Municipal Affairs of the city and there's plenty of bankruptcy laws procedures courts that will that can handle and sort out

0:48:14these problems I don't think we need we shouldn't be have to go to the state a city should not have to go to the state something that uh that a private business goes directly to the bankruptcy procedures and so um I for one would voice that I'm not in favor of that it's interfering too much the state

0:48:36already in my opinion the state already interferes with cities too much either through the um the Constitutional amendment process or through Straight legislation and I think this is just another affront to Municipal Affairs so thank you I appreciate that bill that uh that

0:48:57particular Bill not my bill because my bill died when I couldn't negotiate between the league csac and the sponsors which is uh so the sponsor is actually the treasurer uh Mr Lock here and a group of Labor most of the laborers the other Bill actually went through

0:49:16local government the Senate today and I voted for it but I'm going to keep working on it the big the biggest problem 12 states allow local government to go right to Bankruptcy Court we are one of the 12. the biggest issue is I understand it we try to work this out as

0:49:32chair of the labor Committee in the Senate where there are instances we're told that in the best instances when you're in trouble antiox a good example they've had a lot of problems with their budget the city manager went to their bargaining units and said you know we're

0:49:47not in we're we're you've got contracts we need you to reopen the contracts because we can't make our we can't pay our bills they were able to work that out in in reality that's happened hundreds of times in California you don't hear that but basically public labor groups have given up wages and

0:50:05benefits and done other things because they realize they can't the cities can't afford so the idea was to try to the the danger was that there were some managers and it wasn't just police that were going in and basically not bargaining a good faith and saying we're

0:50:19going to reopen the contract you have to take a 20 cut or we go to bankruptcy so we've tried to work something out where things would be transparent the numbers would be clear so those good reopening and bargaining and doing what's best for everybody so neither side

0:50:34creates a situation where you go into bankruptcy this vehicle is imperfect as you've said and we'll keep working on it trying to make it better thank you it's brought to our attention the issue about previously approved legislations ab32 and SB 375 both important

0:50:54environmental legislation now as we've come into our Great Recession some interest in suspending or turning back on that and since we will be considering it later this evening haven't had the opportunity to have read the latest it would be great if you could provide us

0:51:11with an update in your opinion well on 375 as you know I mean El Cerrito's done great jobs on in great job on infield for years 375 as you know the audience may not was a very important bill last session when I was in the assembly I was the assembly co-author with Senator

0:51:28Steinberg who was the principal author who's the president of the Senate and basically it'll change the way we do development in California to provide for more vibrant higher density communities to get the tons we need for for CO2 that we need to get out of ab32 we haven't

0:51:46even started that process to suspend it now I think is sort of silly I actually have a bill that would help to raise money so that local governments can plan for SB 375. so I would argue that 375 will create more jobs than it will take away because you'll change the way you do

0:52:03land use and you'll do it better and more efficiently on ab32 similarly it's a landmark legislation and because the Congress hasn't been able to to follow through with the Waxman Marquee Bill the federal government is still behind California we're really as you know

0:52:20leading not just the nation the world and trying to address climate change there are Provisions within ab-32 that allows the California air resources board to consider the cost benefit the economic impacts of that legislation we had a meeting with the chairman of carb

0:52:37Mary Nichols who's very well respected by everyone trying to address this so the I the the initiative that's now Gathering signatures would suspend ab-32 for until we get below five percent unemployment and that could take years and years to be honest so strangely

0:52:55enough there are there are a lot not strangely but the odd thing is all this has been coming to the fore in the last few weeks last Sunday the cover story in the New York Sunday times was by Paul Krugman arguing I think very forcefully that it would actually hurt the economic

0:53:10recovery if you suspended ab-32 and he put it a much more thoughtful way than I could but there are a lot of jobs out there for people if we keep maybe 32 and this is in in this County and in Alameda County we have 30 unemployment rates in our building and construction trades

0:53:27unions so we need to get those folks back to work but we we think I think we can get them back to work without suspending ab-32 great thank you okay um I just uh had one question for you um and that has to do and I don't know if you can answer it but I'm hoping you

0:53:48can give us some guidance uh one of the items on our agenda tonight is our budget and um we Face a um a significant shortfall in our budget created by a number of factors but one of the factors is that the state has reduced the the money that normally flows to the cities and

0:54:13um I understand that the state has difficulty but one of the things that makes it particularly difficult for us at the local level is that um the state will say we're we have a shortfall of however many dollars and then there will be some changes made as a result of that and then a few months

0:54:34later maybe one or two even sometimes the same thing will happen again so it's very difficult for us to plan and um you know to make accommodations for the amount of money we're receiving because it's it seems to be a moving Target um do you have any comments about that

0:54:54yeah actually the second part of the constitutionary Vision bill that I have scr19 for for California forward deals with the relationship between the state the local and one of the things it does is it assures you your base level of of of property tax and then creates a

0:55:12vehicle for you to raise taxes if if you can collectively work with the school district the county and the Special Districts it's not dissimilar from what the league is now Gathering signatures for to protect to have a base level personally I think it's the unpredictability when I was in a city

0:55:29council and On The Board of Supervisors we all understand the economy goes up and down I understand that each level of government has its own challenges and I found that there's even less money in Sacramento unfortunately than there isn't a local government but it's it's the predictability so I

0:55:46absolutely agree with you if if we don't get this passed myself and my co-chair from this committee assembly member Mike fewer who's a former Los Angeles city council member our plan is to try to negotiate I would be doing most of the county negotiations because of my

0:56:03background and Mike would do the city but to develop a system so that you have a base level of of return like California has forward has suggested so at least you have the predictability most of what we're all suffering through is because of the global recession

0:56:19however the things that we have done unique to California in particular is a vehicle license fee where Governor Schwarzenegger dropped that as soon as he got in as opposed to keeping the triggers that you folks are familiar with that Governor Wilson actually negotiated

0:56:34the vehicle license fee in California was in place for 50 years without anybody bringing it up or talking about it if we still have that at the rate it was at for 50 years we would have 40 billion dollars more than we currently have half of that would go to education

0:56:47of course so we'd be dealing with a much less severe budget problem all of us collectively if we didn't inflict us upon ourselves and I'd say not me and I think I probably speak for all of you I I was against that and people who could complain that I'm a tax and spend

0:57:05Progressive Democrat will say that about me but I I think I would rather pay been paying 250 dollars for my vehicle license fee which is the average in California it's a progressive tax because it's a based on a percentage of a car not regressive that I'd rather

0:57:21have that and have the services we used to have than be dealing with what we're dealing with so we're working on it and you folks have to hold us accountable I don't have a problem with that well I would like to thank you for coming tonight and um sharing with us and also for the

0:57:39recent um session that you did with individual members of the public at our senior center thank you for being there Janet that was helpful yeah yeah I will anytime good luck with your budget yes thank you thank you we're going to need it okay the next item on the agenda is item

0:57:59number 4B which is Bruce harder is going to uh speak to us about the West Contra Costa Unified School District thank you so much delighted to be here see if I can make this work as well as it did this afternoon you're always been a great help spending time with me and getting this

0:58:25all pre-loaded what I'd like to do tonight is just to to tell you a little bit about our our upcoming measure D and then seek later in your agenda tonight um your support for um endorsing it you know we started out the show tonight with a look at El Cerrito High School on the solar roof

0:58:46that's on there that's a great I'm with you tonight also with Bill Savage our engineering officer you know Bill well uh he's been here many many times just it's on the record and Madeleine Cronenberg our board president and Charles Ramsey are one of our board trustees is also with us tonight

0:59:01I want to take you back so to start the show back to the place I used to be at which was Wilmington Delaware and this is P.S Dupont High School it was built in 1934. now when it was built I know people said it was too expensive it was too big it had an auditorium for 1200

0:59:16and it had two gyms and it went 74 years before it was it was renovated I was actually part of a bond program and back there in 2004 that got the voters to approve that that was finally finished in 2008 but but my point is that when we when we build things right then they

0:59:33last for a long time and and uh what we found in Delaware and it's also true out here is that schools that were built in the 60s and 70s it certainly didn't last for the Long Haul and that's why we're coming back to the taxpayers now to help us to finish up our bond program uh what

0:59:49we want to see are schools that are built right like El Cerrito High School like Harding Elementary School uh Madeira Elementary and uh what we're going to build it right in uh for our new Portola Middle School right here in El Cerrito we go back to what happened in the 90s

1:00:06the state had a program for uh for renovating schools and ended up doing really three schools for us although the middle and high school for Hercules are combined into one but those Renovations were really inadequate and they've required us to spend millions of dollars

1:00:20uh to really bring them up to what our standards are and they still haven't reached there and left all of our other schools desperately in need of repair and renovation Chavez Elementary School it looked it looks nice on the outside but it just got a new Fresh coat of

1:00:33paint and a completely no renovation because it wasn't built right in 1995 because the state was too uh too lean on the on the finances for that Hannah Ranch still has Portables on it as does Hercules high in Middle School of course it's been improved greatly over the last

1:00:49four years but it's been a great investment in the from uh from our capital resources in the school district in order to be able to do that but now look at what measures EMD and J have done they're the highlighted ones in the blue and see what a tremendous impact that

1:01:05they have had on all of our schools and you can see how few schools that we have remaining and that's really why we're here tonight is to seek your support in uh taking uh the next step and which should be the final step in our in our renovation and rebuilding program

1:01:20now we've been accused of hiding the tax rates but we really haven't we've had them out there in front of everybody you get to see the tax rate every time you get your tax bill and what I'm really proud of is that we've had uh over the last 12 years is we've had 33

1:01:32opportunities because we've had many uh separate Bond issues to set the tax rate and we've always been inside the limitations of each of the measures that we've had and so we've really uh although uh we've had many many uh separate measures they've always been within the the limitations that were set

1:01:50established by the measure and I just want to run quickly because people focus on the cost side without the benefit side I want to run quickly through the schools that have been done because as you saw from the the slide there with all the blue color it's an enormous

1:02:01number of schools anywhere that was a that was Bayview Elementary in San Pablo and here's Dover that's under construction now it's come a long way since this picture was taken Downer a brand new school in San Pablo in 2008 Ella Horst uh up in up in Pinole wash into Elementary School in Point Richmond

1:02:22Helms Middle School which we're going to have the grand reopening of May 26th and we'll want to invite all of you to join uh serves students in the San Pablo and Richmond Lavon De John which is the first of our bond Bond projects only completed in 2002 that's just eight

1:02:38years ago and you can see the progress that this district has made over the past eight years Lincoln Elementary uh Kennedy we've we've invested a great deal in there and we still have more work to do in in terms of Kennedy Martin Luther King is well well underway in

1:02:54Richmond and here's the new De Anza that we plan to have to be as uh long lasting and and uh and well received as uh El Cerrito High School is Kensington uh a neighborhood and into this community Lupine Hills up in Hercules Mira Vista up on the Arlington uh montalvan Manor none Incorporated uh

1:03:15Contra Costa County Murphy in Richmond Nystrom I'll get underway this summer with the multi-purpose room uh there in the in the uh in the historic building to follow Ohlone will begin in uh in up in Hercules will begin in 2011. Perry's and Richmond and Pinole middle

1:03:36and uh Richmond College Prep we've been funding that that school and the the building of that school as well Riverside and San Pablo Sheldon in in Richmond Stewart out in Pinole Verdi in North Richmond uh in the Vista Hills independent uh study center which serves

1:03:56all of our students and we've also completed five of our six High School tracks and stadiums and we'll with the support here in Major D we'll finish the one in El Cerrito as well a lot of play fields that have gone into elementary schools that have been great Community

1:04:10use facilities I just wanted to emphasize a couple of features the natural daylighting that we use today instead of closing up all the windows that we did back in the 60s and 70s the elementary libraries are all done to the to the same standard our classrooms have

1:04:27been focused and done well and they look best when they're full of our students because that's that's really what we're here all about and tonight I'm talking about buildings but I'd much rather be talking about students in their in their learning and the educational technology

1:04:40that we've added here as an example is just one of the labs at the at El Cerrito High School so with the new Bond program we'd add the schools in yellow and we'd come very near to completion our goal and in this Bond measure is to under promise and over deliver and so we

1:04:54have a very short list of schools that we're out to do but hopefully with the uh the kinds of bid prices that we receive lately we'll be able able to to complete the program so this new Bond measure measure D would add 48 dollars per 100 000 and uh we would not exceed

1:05:10that tax rate over over the life of the bond measure the reason that we've done so many schools in in El Cerrito and and up the Hayward Falls is just because of the Hayward fault it's a it's a hazard and that's uh we've been working on getting the schools in closest to it

1:05:25closest to it first and we still have some other seismic hazards like Gompers uh old Gompers High School we've actually moved the students out of there and we're hoping to to put up a new continuation school there with leadership Public Schools as part of this Coronado in Richmond uh Siege uh

1:05:41it's almost in El Cerrito it's just a 500 feet away from being in El Cerrito Highland Elementary is one of the one of the projects Wilson Elementary in Richmond the Knoll Valley high is the is the large project in this proposed Bond Valley View elementary Richmond High

1:05:58will get a significant improvements to the inside of that building as well as some of the outbuildings in that school and then of course Fairmont right here is the last Elementary School in El Cerrito and the new uh stadium and uh soccer and football field and in El

1:06:15Cerrito so here's the the the minimum list in terms of the project list of the boards approved but the schools that you see see on there as well as the upgrades to security and lighting and and so forth and that the bond measure will bring we did a tracking poll uh in in

1:06:34February this year and we can see that El Cerrito tracks on uh very similar to what we received in major J in 2005 you can see there's a lot of support out there in in the community uh in in terms of our polling results for this so that we can bring about uh long lasting

1:06:52schools for 75 years like like El Cerrito High School and thank you for your time tonight and I'd be happy to answer questions and Bill will have answers as well okay yo would you like to start no questions no um it was a comprehensive presentation that's right thank you I don't have any

1:07:15I don't know if I have any direct questions but um well maybe I have one um and I was just wondering how quickly if this major passes the work in El Cerrito would begin on the several projects well it seems like the work in El Cerrito never ends and uh you know we're moving off the

1:07:36portable campus uh finally off El Cerrito High School the fields are are in design right now and bill has a the ones that are part of major J are underway bill I don't know if you want to know the uh the soccer field uh complex with the baseball field and the softball field and the tennis courts

1:07:53which have been a joint use project with the city for many years are at the division of State architect for their final review the Portables will be off this summer and so we anticipate that piece of measure uh Jay the current Bond measure will go forward immediately and

1:08:07then if the new Bond passes we'd initiate the planning process with the community and all the stakeholders and the athletic groups to do the stadium redesign and get started on that process immediately so what you're saying is that the middle what I think of is the

1:08:19Middle Field the middle part of the campus between the building and the football field would be redone by we anticipate that we'll start construction about the end of this summer so it would be ready uh 2011 at some point in 2011 depending upon you know the timing and the weather and a

1:08:42whole bunch of issues but we'll definitely be starting construction later this year in the I'm anticipating in late summer okay thank you okay um I guess we are then ready to move on and just for the record I'd like to note that the next agenda item which is the

1:09:01adoption of the consent calendar includes an item that would I'm just trying to find here it is item H which would be support of the West Contra Costa Unified School District measure D which is the major that was just discussed so with that I'd like to move on to item five adoption of the consent

1:09:20calendar items 5A through 5 I move adoption sorry I'm sorry interrupt Madame I just wanted to point out that on the dice in front of you tonight is in yellow paper is a slightly revised version of um the ordinance that goes with item number 5C and reviewing the agenda packet it

1:09:44appeared that the one that was included in your packet did not reflect the version of the ordinance that was introduced at your last meeting and so we reviewed the record to ensure that that the ordinance in front of you on the dice in yellow is does reflect the

1:10:00ordinance as it was introduced and so tonight in approving the consent calendar I just wanted to reflect for the record that what would be adopted is the the copy that is in yellow in front of you and not the copy that is in your agenda packets thank you so I'd like to move approvably consent

1:10:15items 5A a through 5i and the version of 5c the most recent that we have tonight move approval second there's been a motion in the second all in favor please say I I that sounds unanimous oh thank you very much yes I'd just like to indicate that 5i was a report back on Paving contract

1:10:41change order status report as we had asked staff to do and I found it interesting that the change orders actually reflect the additional amount of work we were able to accomplish in 2009 due to favorable contract bids and other monies that came in so change orders reflect actually

1:11:09additional work in many cases in many of these cases and not just changes to the original contracts for the original work I should say so it was actually a very nice report and reflects the hard work that we're doing thank you you find me yeah yeah I just want to highlight two items on the that

1:11:31we just passed 5e which is about Hepatitis B Awareness Week Hepatitis B is known as the silent killer and we are through the passing this resolution trying to get more education out there and I'm hoping that the city will provide a web link to the Hepatitis B website so that people can

1:11:53go to our website and find a location where they can get more information about the hepatitis B also um we passed a Sexual Assault Awareness Month and there are several service providers mentioned in our proclamation in support of uh of this and those two I'm hoping I'm hoping I'll get another

1:12:15nod here those two should be provided with web links on our website so please go to the city of El Cerrito website for more information about these two proclamations we passed thank you and I would like to mention that item G is the a resolution uh Coast allowing the city of El Cerrito to

1:12:36co-sponsor with the American Cancer Society the Relay for Life which will be held on July 24th through 25th at Cerrito Vista Park and this is the really exciting news that the city of El Cerrito is forming a team so anyone interested in joining the team should contact Karen pincos our

1:13:01assistant city manager and it's a great activity it's a fundraiser and it goes for 24 hours um and people go around the track in a relay continuously for that 24-hour period in um memory of those who have passed away as a result of cancer and those who have survived it

1:13:28and um it's a a really enjoyable event and it raises money for research okay do we have a speaker I'm Jana from the American Cancer Society flyer so I'll leave them for the public about the event thank you so much okay thank you okay with that we will move on to the

1:13:53main item of the evening the one I think most of you are here for and that would be the fiscal year 2010-11 budget priority study session thank you I'm actually going to ask the staff to come up and sit at the table in front of you I mayor members of the council just

1:14:23before I start I wanted to make clear based on a number of questions that um the the color red was purely coincidental honestly maybe it was uh subconscious but that was an accident um this year is a little bit different as you've already heard in some of the discussions today

1:14:45as as we talked about a few months ago in the mid-year budget next year is certainly going to be tight if not to say we anticipate that our our budget will be upside down um what we wanted to do tonight was to get direction on the framework for the budget that we're going to bring

1:15:04back to you for consideration I want to stress that no actions tonight are final it really is to give us a direction on what to bring back to you as we reported in mid-year we fig We Believe next fiscal year will have many challenges and we'll go over those tonight

1:15:26um I don't want to spend a lot of time on this point but I'm sure many of you have heard what's going on in other cities while I would say that we are better off than many um it's still tight uh you I'm sure you've all heard in the news uh what's going on in San Jose Richmond Pinole

1:15:44Novato Concord and the list sort of goes on and on with a mix of service cuts and rollbacks and obviously the economy is caught up to local government as well as a lot of unknowns that are still out there as mayor Abelson already mentioned uh we at the the state what the state is

1:16:03going to do to balance their budget seems to always impact uh local government what we'll do based on what we the direction received tonight is come back to you on the first week of June with our proposed budget for your consideration probably some budget scenarios and recommendations for how to

1:16:24go forward so to jump into it um what we want to cover tonight and we'll we'll try to move relatively quickly but there's a there is certainly a lot of information to cover is the schedule the goals and challenges that we face the look at the general fund um just

1:16:44like in mid-year we're focusing on the general fund because that's our main operating fund what I'm doing what we're doing we're doing very differently this year as I've asked um the Departments themselves to talk about what they see give you a little bit of a snapshot for each City

1:17:02Department as well as their goals and objectives and the challenges they see coming up also they're obviously here if you have any questions concerns or clarifications but we thought rather than me to go through the budget I think in light of where we are it's helpful to hear it directly from them

1:17:22I'm going to talk a lot about personnel and compensation issues that's always the toughest thing to talk about and then we're going to take a little break and then if the council pleases and really turn it to the council to try to focus on their priorities for next

1:17:39fiscal year and then we'll close with where we go from here in terms of schedule after tonight depending on how late we go and where we wind up if necessary we'll come back and continue at the next council meeting we will We it's our plan to bring a draft first cut of next

1:18:00year's budget to the financial Advisory Board in May and have a draft budget book for you to start reviewing in late May and in a budget presentation on June 7th uh the dates what we're essentially asking is for you to hold uh the 14th 21st 22nd and 26th just in case they're

1:18:19needed so a question there you said 26.

1:18:2322nd and 28th I mean it's really any dates that you ultimately want and feel you need uh to get through get through the budget so moving into a sort of the meat of the presentation I'm not going to read these back but we want to uh highlight the goals that the council set when we

1:18:43started this year and while they're all important and worthwhile they don't directly translate into budget numbers so what that's why we're asking you to go down and look at the next level of goals and objectives Beyond fees the challenges that we face next year

1:19:00we've we've talked a lot about and we've already mentioned the unknown State takeaways and then the ripple effect that often the state takes actions that affect counties and then counties turn and Implement programs or fees particularly as you've heard the police department

1:19:18talking about booking fees and jail access fees they pass through the takeaways to us so it it it hits us from multiple directions increasing regulations uh also lead to additional unfronted mandates and we've talked about some of those and we'll talk more in the budget about those

1:19:36we also mentioned at mid-year that an unknown is property tax last year we saw our first decline as small as it was in property tax values and while we are working diligently to try to understand what is going to happen next year in terms of our property tax numbers it is still unknown

1:19:55as of today and so we are we are likely to project a decrease in order to be conservative uh one of the topics again we'll talk a lot about is employees and employee compensation and I wanted to point out that the non-sworn employees have not had a median adjustment in nearly five

1:20:15years and the median compensation policy is something that we're going to ask you to re to reaffirm or defer later on in the discussion and as we talked about we still have for us an unusually high number of vacancies in the city and they go through all all departments

1:20:36on the on these slides on the general fund as well as what you'll see from all the Departments we're simply trying to provide a little bit of an overview on budget numbers and not get too into the details tonight but we really wanted you to understand some sort of some big

1:20:50picture issues and we're using this year's budget numbers uh those are the best the best we have and these are our not our budget numbers but our projected actuals which are very similar to what you saw earlier this year the important thing on this slide is that just incredibly large blue piece

1:21:07of pie as we've been talking about for years now Personnel is making up a larger and larger portion of the general fund budget that number was probably five percent lower only a few years ago moving on uh just to reiterate sort of how we divide a different way to look at

1:21:28that pie is how we spend it in terms of the services we provide and just as a reminder a few things that you should know is invite remember we moved Environmental Services into City management administrative Services as you'll hear in the second include city-wide expenses

1:21:47which may skew what looks like Administration significantly most of the Public Works budget is not funded by the general fund any longer some Community Development expenses are covered by the Redevelopment agency now and Recreation expenses are offset by three million dollars in revenues

1:22:08the reason these things are important it goes to sort of a growing Trend that our special funds are doing more and more as compared to the general fund and services the general fund used to cover most particularly Landscape and Lighting have gone away so those special funds

1:22:24are there for a reason and those things that the special funds were originally meant to do may not be getting done because they're backfilling the general fund shortages um and certainly the Public Works director can talk more about that on the next slide again we just wanted

1:22:41to give you a snapshot of where our people are distributed it's roughly 50 50 in terms of bodies of Public Safety and non-public safety and as you can see the vacancies are spread across all departments but I also want to point out in terms of these dollars these are gross dollars and some

1:23:03of these positions are back filled either with overtime or contractors so again um later in the presentation we'll talk about the net impact of the vacancies on the general fund which explains why some of the bars are bigger may be bigger than the others also these are not all

1:23:19necessarily full-time positions which reflect a skewing of the bars but the main point is there's a fair amount of vacancies in the city right now so with that I'm going to turn it to the administrative Services director I asked them to go across and introduce themselves even though I'm sure you're

1:23:40familiar with them again they're going to go relatively quickly but also please feel free to jump in or ask questions or if there's anything to be clarified please please feel free to interrupt good evening Madam mayor and members of council I'm Barry Dodge administrative

1:23:58Services director and I'm here tonight to talk a little bit about the administrative Services Department this is well not the most exciting Department it is one that is necessary we have uh 7.6 FTE uh 2.6 of those are in the employee services department with one vacancy and the other five are in

1:24:19finance um we have 2.26 million approximately is our budget which sounds kind of like a lot for the 7.6 people but that is because of us as city manager was discussing we do have all of the transfers including City Hall pension fund some of the largest large large

1:24:39items like insurance and those types are in our department partially by responsibility one of the reasons you put the transfer in there doesn't mean that it's something that we really do but we're responsible to make sure that the money moves around appropriately

1:24:53the other item that he has on there for in uut the other bullet point there kind of goes to the other side of our responsibility and that's to make sure that we collect all of the revenues that the city is due we're not ever want to collect a dime more we want to make sure

1:25:10that we collect every dime that is due to us so besides us trying to be most cost effective we also want to make sure that we are also collecting all the revenue that we are supposed to so if you go to the next slide this is basically it says our goals but it's

1:25:26also our ongoing activities so um everything there except for the new world system ones is one that we will do every year one that we always want to make sure that we can accomplish and it basically boils down to all the reporting requirements issuing all of the checks receiving all the money doing

1:25:44all of the reports filing all of the ew2s and make sure that we take care of our internal and our external customers there's a lot of transactions that happen and we really try very hard to make sure that we are accurate and that we give our customers excellent service

1:26:01it's something that we definitely strive for in in everything that we do so I won't go through each of these because it's it's pretty basic for what a finance department does but we do have some some challenges and one of the main challenges that we have is our 7.6 people

1:26:21um and trying to be able to have enough bodies to cost cross-train as well as maintain internal controls and internal controls for this type of a organization a finance department means protecting the city from fraud by the employees as well as protecting the employees from

1:26:41having opportunities too many opportunities to touch too many aspects of it when you're as small as we are this starts being difficult to be able to have there be some real separation of Duties so this is always a challenge that we have and one of the other challenges we have

1:26:58and that kind of runs all the way across city of El Cerrito is that we don't have anybody for administration but we have people who have specific functions cashier business license person that's all she does accounts payable that's all she does so we are all working as a lean

1:27:16staff but that's just kind of been the way it's always been here El Cerrito definitely has consistently run very lean most of the time it's fine on occasion it does provide some real challenges so I have any questions I'll be happy to answer them it don't have a couple quick ones here um

1:27:37what has been over say the last three years the increase in rates not not cost per employee but just rates of Health Care insurance exact rates but I do know that know that for the last years and we do have somebody who can help us look this up and we could have three years for you

1:28:02within well I see later on I think it's on the slide that this year alone it's up 13 percent which is and what did cost of living go up this year to 1.8 somewhere in there so and this is a cost that we have no control over it doesn't really matter what plan really that we have basically those are

1:28:27the types of increases we're seeing across the board correct no matter what plan how much employees are picking up how much the city's picking up we're talking about just straight across 13 increase correct and and so if you that that one increase but if even if we

1:28:52had a different plan we're talking about raises like that correct no matter what company potentially higher correct okay thanks the other thing is um other agencies and it was mentioned earlier other agencies turn around and charge us for services some we contract for some we basically

1:29:13have to have uh so is it's almost we don't have a choice we um and these agencies many times raise their fees unilaterally could you tell me is there any that you know of is there any basis for those increases Do they base it for instance we have a Nexus system that we base our

1:29:36fees on and we when we raise them or consider raising them or decreasing them we go to the study that has a number of criteria we raise it according to what that standard is in that study but do these other agencies have that or they just raise them for what they need

1:30:03question for for example it would be such as animal control and they develop their budget for animal control it gets passed and it gets allocated out to the communities that are receiving the service um I don't think we have too much say so on exactly adopting their budget so we

1:30:22do receive that charge and there's not a lot we can do about it okay but do you know if it's on actual costs or do they I do know they bump it up okay what I'm trying to get at is do you think that some of this is being used as a profit Center versus a pass-through

1:30:49covering some of the same because they've had some issues with facilities in that one specific instance but I I without reviewing one of their budgets I wouldn't be able to say okay thank you I appreciate it I just wanted to bring it up okay I think there aren't any other

1:31:10questions on this one thank you very much Mary foreign okay I'll go next I'm Karen finkas assistant city manager and I'll be doing the overview for City management and as you can see um what we have listed here is a city management kind of incorporates a bunch of different functions and

1:31:31um divisions including the city manager and myself and Suzanne I'm the city clerk Information Technology environmental services and the Redevelopment agency Environmental Services is paid for primarily out of the Integrated Waste Management fund which again is separate

1:31:46than the general fund and is funded by rate payers fees for recycling and other charges in that in the Environmental Services Division as well as Redevelopment agency obviously is paid for out of Redevelopment funding as Mary alluded to the city manager and finance

1:32:05Finance administrative Services we have very little administrative support I answer my own phone make my own copies um and as we do have a couple of uh vacant positions that we are likely to consolidate so again as Mary referred to we do a lot with very minimal staff

1:32:26so this is a lot of goals and for and objectives for all of the various functions that serve under City management um just a few worth pointing out under city manager fiscal responsibility um that's pretty notable and and the reason we're here tonight on city clerk

1:32:42has a big um election on coming up in November um Information Technology we're working on improving technology with cost and power savings which is good for the budget but also good for our environmental goals as far as power efficiency Environmental Services a

1:33:01couple of big projects on there um on their plate this year we're going to be beginning the process for construction of the new recycling center as well as development implementation of the climate action plan and the Redevelopment agency goals are listed here these have been discussed in the

1:33:16implementation plan previously and we're continuing in accordance with that plan some of the challenges that we face again relate to um a lot of dealing with resources in with respect to the projects that we um are able to do with very little resources maintaining the

1:33:36current level of city services and overseeing labor negotiations again this is why we're here tonight to try to get some budget priorities so that we can Implement our charge um as the man as management to go continue that um city clerk and information technology

1:33:52relate again to limited staff resources especially with keeping up with external customer demands for information and internal demands for updated technology Environmental Services while this is outside funding outside of the general fund but like other funds it is limited

1:34:09and so we are constrained by the budget on what we can do we're seeking grants but grants do require a lot of oversight as well so we have to balance the staff time with the amount of the grants available and the Redevelopment agency obviously the challenge is listed are many items

1:34:26out of our control including the state action and um outside uh um budget woes from the state and how that relates to the ability of the Redevelopment agency to function so this is essentially again like Mary I won't need to read those out loud to you but if you have any questions I'm happy

1:34:48to answer them any questions uh Greg no questions thank you very much and mayor members of council I'm Mitch oshinski community development director and on our first slide an overview as the expenditure Pie shows we're similar to the overall budget split in that most

1:35:13of our costs are also related to personnel some other key points for the Community Development Department are that our expenses are offset by about nine hundred thousand dollars in permit revenues that we often deal with homeowners rather than experienced developers on

1:35:31projects so that more staff time is often needed to help them step through the process and as we've absorbed the vacant permit Tech position and a switch to more plan check consultant use we have seen a customer service impact also due to redo reduced Redevelopment

1:35:49funds that have already been mentioned we find that we're limited in our Economic Development tools at a time when business assistance is most needed due to the poor economy moving to the next slide please in Community Development many of our functions exist due to mandates that are

1:36:08found in state or local laws for example there are mandates to prepare the general plan to guide future land use and transportation and other policies and we need to review and or update the general plan every five years the city has to have a body to serve as a Planning Commission to consider land

1:36:26use changes and development applications we have to prepare an update a zoning ordinance to regulate the types of land uses and development standards for those uses we have to perform planning and design review on development applications as well as environmental SQL review and

1:36:43other types of review and Public Notices are often required for many of our items we also must adhere to the permit streamlining act that tells us how quickly we have to move permits through the process after the planning process we then perform the building review process on

1:36:59the detailed construction plans that come in and we perform plan check review We issue building permits then we conduct building inspections in the field as projects are built code enforcement activity responds to complaints and proactively seeks out violations and works to achieve

1:37:17compliance we also perform Economic Development to bring new businesses to the city and to attempt to retain existing businesses that serve our residents as well as produce sales tax revenue our major Economic Development Focus for this year is to facilitate business

1:37:35improvements on the theater block and along San Pablo Avenue for example we're working with all the businesses and Property Owners on the theater block to look at options for improving their businesses or bringing New Uses into the city we're also actively helping a new

1:37:51restaurant that is coming to the theater block to meet the building code County Health requirements as well as stage requirements for their business we're also working along the Avenue with Realtors businesses property owners and developers on business attraction and

1:38:08retention and we're searching for incentives to help with the unreinforced masonry Hazard mitigation throughout what we do serving our residents and businesses our customers is an overarching theme so we strive to provide excellent Planning and Building Permit processing and One-Stop

1:38:27counter and phone customer service other major efforts that we're dealing with include processing permits and sequa for the Safeway project and finishing the specific plan an animal code update and a historical survey request for proposals in addition we're assisting with the climate action plan

1:38:46and the Green Building Code the next slide please in terms of challenges related to our customer service and mandates we're working to maintain our building permit customer service at the counter and the phones in light of our building technician vacancy for example at busy

1:39:04times the customer queue can grow as well as the way to speak on the phone with the single building Tech and we're also working to maintain our plan check customer service at the counter and our plan check review times with our one single in-house plan checker another challenge is to expeditiously

1:39:24perform our necessary General plan updates and to fund the historic survey in light of the reduced Professional Services budget our Economic Development challenges include providing the tools with limited Redevelopment funds to facilitate the theater block and Avenue business

1:39:42improvements for example tenant improvements resale assistance building rehab and purchases are affected by that and then also to provide tools for business retention business attraction and urm mitigation incentives facade and sign improvements urm fee payment or

1:40:03rehab and rental assistance due to the limited Redevelopment funds so that includes our departmental overview and I'd be happy to address any questions if you have any no just one question you'd indicated that customer service was impacted but you didn't really elaborate on what the

1:40:21impact was if you could just briefly give us an idea well for instance with our one permit Tech we're now seeing the queue grow at the counter so we might have as many as seven customers at a time waiting to get assistance from the permatech who can provide the technical

1:40:37kinds of permit assistance at the counter and then in terms of plan check now with our one in-house plan Checker and outside Consultants we don't have as many in-house plan Checkers to help people with questions at the counter so we can refer those on the phone but we

1:40:54don't have as many plan check experts to help out at the counter in your estimation um no that's okay we're not getting into the specifics that's right thank you and I'll turn it over oh I did have a couple questions one is that I recall when we um we made the decision collectively not to

1:41:13fill fill that some of the plan check positions and um we are seeing diminishing staff we also saw a reduction in the applications for projects and for development especially at the residential remodel level and I understand that the economy is showing signs of recovery and I want to know if

1:41:31you're also seeing that increased business at the counter in City Hall in response to yes we are I think we've seen you know the new construction Has Fallen and it's not like other cities that are totally dependent on new construction we we have a lot of remodel activity in El

1:41:48Cerrito and that has helped us and so actually um last year was you know pretty bad in terms of activity but this year so far we're actually seeing the um the activity through remodels is picking up so that's a hopeful sign that we hope will continue and the other question was that Jerry

1:42:09raycraft has um uh Bradshaw sorry has presented to us many new fundings we have come into El Cerrito through the stimulus package and some other grants and opportunities and I'm not always clear which department they go to but for example some of the storm water

1:42:27improvements and I wondered if in Community Development we've had any of the revenue coming in from outside sources through grants or the stimulus funds I think that's pretty much been going to the public works department I believe okay thank you thank you I think

1:42:46yeah I want to I guess this council member Potter may have answered part of my question but you have alluded to the fact that you have short-handed on both your permit check and your plan check and and on slide eight there was only one vacant position in your department so I just wanted to find out

1:43:08are you proposing that more I mean you have one vacant position but your testimony sounds like you have two vacant positions so I just want to find out which it is we only have the one vacant position which is the permatech we did have some hard time plan check assistance and we've now

1:43:26switched that over to consultant plan checking services and so the effect is just that the staff is not there in the city hall to then help out at the counter at all times but the demand for that service is is increasing at this time so um we're relying more on the consultant

1:43:46than we potentially you need to I guess that's more than we have in the past correct okay thank you thank you and with that I'll turn it to fire chief Maples good evening Madam mayor members of the council I'm Lance Maples I'm your fire chief first and foremost I'd like to

1:44:04thank you for this opportunity this evening as you know you have a full service fire department that provides a full range of fire prevention and fire suppression services if you look at the slide before you the annual budget for the fire department is 7.2 million dollars that being said 2.1

1:44:20million is reimbursed through a contract for service from the Kensington Fire Protection District and an additional hundred thousand is reimbursed from Contra Costa County EMS for an actual fire budget of about five million dollars Personnel costs make up 93 of the fire

1:44:36department's budget with the remaining seven percent going towards supplies and services over the last few years we've done a real good job of tidying tightening our belt in this area but we have now tightened it as far as possible next slide we have five key goals in FY 1011. we

1:44:55want to continue to provide the high level of service the citizens have become accustomed to from effectively responding to their emergencies and also providing aid for them on their day-to-day business with the fire department we want to continue the Department's

1:45:09training programs to include refresher skills all the way through Advanced Training one of the key problems in this area is although the trainings needs are still in place the costs continue to rise as the training budget has been stagnant over the past two years

1:45:24as with many government agencies during this economic downturn automatic Aid agreements with surrounding agencies are becoming more and more important this is a key goal that we will monitor throughout the year to ensure the customer service does not suffer as automatic Aid Agreements are challenged

1:45:41during these tight times it is also key to remember our community outreach programs must stay in place to support the work we have done in the past our programs such as cert CPR first aid Tri-City safety day Fourth of July Outreach just to mention a few are very

1:45:58important parts of fire prevention and emergency preparedness in our community and of course our constant goal year after year like all the divisions is to determine if there's better ways to do business and the other efficiencies that can be discovered next slide

1:46:14so what are our challenges play into this next year well as a fire department we're constantly faced with the predicament of providing the same or an improved level of service year after year while our budget budget has remained neutral or decreases this puts us in a situation

1:46:30where we're unable to enhance our current programs or we must reduce the ones that we have in place our Second Challenge that I think is across the board is compensation to our staff we all know that the key uh to having a strong staff and be able to give a high level of customer service is

1:46:49staying competitive within the marketplace as you know our number one asset is the men and women that provide the services to the citizens of El Cerrito I think we all know that staying competitive will be one of our greatest challenges as we move into next fiscal

1:47:02year as with many other divisions in the city we have many outside contracts and agreements in place both formal and informal that could possibly change over the next 12 months that could affect our ability to provide services and we will have to monitor those as I mentioned one of our major

1:47:20challenges as I as we move forward would be our goal to have strong automatic Aid agreements with other Service delivery models in the region we truly will be faced with agencies very close to us that will struggle to provide services and contribute to one another

1:47:39the key to automatic Aid success is equal partnership between agencies and we will have to be diligent to ensure that we have equal partnership with our neighbors in closing you have a first class fire department that's responded effectively to approximately 3 000 calls in 2009

1:47:55with a median response time of 4 minutes 15 seconds we have done this through the year with three vacancies we understand in these trying times all the divisions will have to be flexible and we will continue to strive to provide the high level of service our customers have

1:48:11become accustomed to and I would be happy to answer any questions you have on the mutual Aid automated Aid responses I know for example we went into Albany to fight that large warehouse fire in about six months ago um and I know we've gone into Richmond more than once to help them in

1:48:38conversely I know that they've even on my block Richmond came in and Richmond and came into to service a fire in our neighborhood so I guess what how do you track this partnership shares and how will you know if our we're extending Services Beyond an equal or Fair level well the automatic Aid

1:49:02agreement with the city of Richmond has been in a place since 1985 so we have the ability to look at historical data in essence how many times we go to their Community or they come to our community also remember with the city of Richmond we also have a joint Training Division

1:49:16that in essence is part of the automatic Aid and we have joint dispatching we constantly look at the numbers we look at the number of responses we look at the number of units you can't just always counter response because they may send three or four units meet we may

1:49:30send one and vice versa at this point the reason I'm concerned with our automatic Aid agreements is they're they're very strong they've been functioning in an equal basis I'm just concerned that other local government agencies that are surround us will not be able to support their operations

1:49:47and and how far south does does would we be responding I know we went into Albany not too long ago but we have firefighters in Kensington that obviously are probably crossing the line to the South and going into Alameda I.E Berkeley to provide services so do we

1:50:03have agreements with that Community as well we have agreements with Albany and Berkeley and then we have in essence Mutual Aid agreements that take us farther than that that could take us to Emeryville could take us to Oakland and those are the the grander mutual Aid

1:50:17agreements right and then unincorporated I'm assuming to our North we go all into that area and we have an automatic grade automatic Aid agreement with Contra Costa County Fire Protection District to run into East Richmond Heights great thank you thank you very much

1:50:36Madam mayor council members of Mike kriegen from the police department thank you for allowing us this opportunity to discuss with you some of the goals and challenges the police department will face in the coming fiscal year fiscal year uh the first slide shows that it's not

1:50:51going to be that different than the other City departments about 95 percent of our total budget is taken up in Personnel cost the slide shows that 84 of that our budget is dedicated just to departmental employees however the 11 that's shown is uh Professional Services

1:51:08pays for employees and other agencies to perform tests for our Police Department it pays for dispatchers and Animal Control Officers and crime lab technicians so in essence when you added together 95 percent of our budget is taken up we're paying those Personnel

1:51:23costs the other five percent is used for the day-to-day operations of the police department maintaining the facilities paying utilities maintaining the vehicles and other equipment next one as you look at our goals for the coming year the one that jumps right out to is

1:51:40the organizational transition to a new Chief of Police a majority of our police officers have never worked for another chief of police Scott Kirkland's been our chief for 10 years he's served with distinction serving this community the city in this department the new Chief will have to

1:51:56come in July 1st and do the very same thing and Lead our officers to provide quality services to our community for the next 10 years getting to authorized strength or our head count involves starting the recruiting process so that we can fill vacant police officer in non-sworn

1:52:12positions the head count currently shows that we are two police officer and four non-sworn positions down at the moment for ongoing training and development as you're aware last December the police department conducted a major restructure of the Command Staff which had trickled

1:52:28out effects throughout the ranks we promoted a number of Corporal sergeants and lieutenants we are committed to continuing our training and mentoring of these individuals over the next year to ensure the leadership and supervisory skills of these people for the foreseeable future

1:52:44we'd like to promote and fill the vacant traffic Sergeant position as you know the Traffic Unit was put in place approximately five years ago and its work along with the engineering department has had a dramatic effect on the number of collisions that occur in El Cerrito on a yearly basis we feel

1:52:59that them having the supervisor to work with them on a daily basis is important for the continued success of that unit we will need to select place and train a new school resource officer and narcotics enforcement team member as you know we provide the school resource

1:53:16officer services to Portola and the high school and it has come time for one of those school resource officers to rotate back to patrol we take that function very seriously and we'll have to go through a dedicated selection process to make sure that we select the person most

1:53:31capable of carrying out uh the tradition of fine school resource officer services at the school will also have to be dedicated to completing that person of training and getting them into the school before the beginning of the school year as you know we participate

1:53:46in the West Contra Costa narcotic enforcement team and that detective will be due to rotate out toward the end of the year but we feel that selecting the right personnel and providing them the proper training is vital to the continued success of those units as as witnessed by the community support

1:54:03and the support of the police employees Association there's tremendous interest in a canine program for our Police Department there isn't a line item for the canine program in this current budget as we have to see how other things will take place before we go forward with that

1:54:20however we know that we have a commitment from our employees and the support of our community and so we want to come back to that item from time to time to see when would be the best time to start that program we may have reached the end of doing more with less we may have reached our

1:54:37limit however we have to continually examine the ability to utilize new resources or new technologies as we move our services into the next decade so we will continue to look for those and look for those items that may provide the service that our community really needs

1:54:55as opposed to the one that we've always thought they've needed as we look at the challenges you'll notice that the first one is organizational change within a new Chief and I know it's kind of cheating to put it on both sides however it's true police officers will chase the suspect

1:55:11through high water across the freeway apparently into a number of dangerous zones but the one thing that they truly fear is change and so this new police chief will need to come in and Inspire our troops through his leadership through their uh leadership style and and make

1:55:30pardon me to sell their Vision to our to our troops as we move forward and provide service to our community working with the known absences and staffing issues is probably going to be the most difficult as I stated we have two police officers and four non-sworn

1:55:46vacancies on paper however as you know it takes about 13 months 12 months to train a police officer from the time they enter the academy until the time they leave the field training program so during last year we worked that whole year without two police officers who

1:56:01were attending the basic police academy one just graduated last month and has entered the field training program and one will graduate this Friday and he'll enter the field training program however we know that those people people will not be eligible to be regular Patrol

1:56:15officers until September we also know that we've had an officer out on long-term injury leave for over a year and we have no anticipated return for that officer to return to patrol functions and so at this time we're actually five police officers down when you look at people that we can actually

1:56:34put on on a beat and have them control the city as we move toward the end of the year we have a number of military reservists who proudly serve their country at the same time they serve their Department however we are fairly sure that two of our police officers may be called to serve

1:56:52overseas before the end of the year and so it's quite possible that by the time the two new recruits get out into Patrol that they only may only be replacing people that are being deployed overseas uh in our non-sworn ranks we know that we have an extended family medical leave

1:57:08uh approaching and while we're we're joyous to to say that we'll be welcoming a new member to our extended family we know that that's going to cause our department member to be away from uh the job site for some time and as we also examined our upcoming retirements we know that we currently

1:57:26have four of our police officers who are eligible to retire one of them being the chief of police we know that the retirement is going to occur over the next 18 months four more police officers are going to be eligible to retire to bring that total to an eight I'm sorry

1:57:39to bring that to a total of eight which would dramatically impact the day-to-day function of the police department when we look at recruiting it's a challenge to recruit new police officers to begin with to find that person that we truly wish to place the public trust

1:57:53in however once we do find that person we can plan on in 11 12 or 13 months training program we have not recruited police officers for some time and so that means we'd be starting the process up a new in essence and we can plan that the recruiting process could take up to six months

1:58:11which pushes out our our uh our timeline for selecting a new police officer getting them into training and getting them out into the street we're looking at a time somewhere between 14 and 18 months now there's only further complicates the shortages that we're seeing in our foreign ranks

1:58:31as with the other departments we were battling uh costs that are rising outside of our control things our contract services with other with other police agencies and with the county they rise from time to time we don't necessarily uh we're not providing necessarily with the timely notice and

1:58:47we can't necessarily forecast them three five and ten years out and so we battled those uh those rises in costs each each uh calendar year things like dispatch and animal control the booking fees and the jail access fees rise yearly not necessarily giving us much note

1:59:08and that concludes my presentation I'll answer any questions if uh gather I don't believe we have any questions thank you very much thank you madam mayor and Council I'm Jerry Bradshaw your Public Works director Public Works is unique and different from many of the other departments

1:59:34uh fully three-fourths of the funding for Public Works comes from non-general fund sources they come from special funds uh while all these funds are fiscally interrelated and there is some overlap in in what is eligible for the different funds uh it becomes a unique challenge in

1:59:54trying to balance all those funds across the different tasks that we need to do and as a general fund has receded in in its ability to fund our sources the special funds have been taxed more and more the point is the Landscape and Lighting district has been enjoying some

2:00:14support from the general fund for many many years but in this last year that support has virtually gone away and we've had to backfill our parks and lighting tasks with monies from the gas tax which then looks to measure C in the storm drain fund for support from that so

2:00:30they're all interrelated and it becomes quite a bit of challenge also you notice on this slide we don't have the 80 90 Staffing cost we're at 54 in the general fund and overall in public works it's it's a similar range about 50 percent Staffing that's because we we do a lot

2:00:49of the physical work in town we do hire a lot of contractors to do some of the the the parks and Street Maintenance for us so that brings with it other challenges as a result we're fairly lean on staff as it is and many of the people more than half the people in public

2:01:06works are one-of-a-kind positions uh one of those positions has been vacant for a year now with the loss of Bruce King and that has really stressed some of our abilities to do the work in the manner which we've um have been accustomed to do it on the next slide I have five key goals

2:01:25for the coming year the first one is in implement the integrated Pest Management policy this is a new requirement in the municipal Regional permit from the storm water regional board it's integrated Pest Management has been around a long time and the city has had

2:01:44a casual policy to pursue less Reliance on chemical means for pest control but beginning July 1st that's now needs to become a formal policy and along with it comes a lot of tasks and documentations including inventory and all the different pests and the locales that we

2:02:03have in town developing long-range landscape and facility management strategies to help reduce Reliance on chemical Pest Control while we deal with that so that that's going to be a major shift in how we deal with a lot of the things we we take care of and having to

2:02:20learn new methods and become smarter in how we do that and it may also require or lead us to doing swapping out various landscape schemes and other sorts of things that will require capital investment Downstream so we have our uh our work cut out for us there along with that there's a few

2:02:42other clean water activities that are coming along with this new permit which is uh a brand new one um trash capture this is a long range plan and we have to get going this very first year and start uh designating trash hot spots and mitigating those and start to develop a percentage of our

2:03:03catch bases where we can capture trash in those we also have to deploy an enforcement response plan and improve construction site controls as well as our new development C3 enforcement I don't have a lot of continue words in this goals but in the capital Improvement program I did use continue

2:03:23that that's a goal next year is to continue doing that we have been really outpacing ourselves in this last year with an aggressive Capital Improvement program while at the same time living with without a special a manager to manage just the CIP we've split the the

2:03:43tasks among three of us in the public course Department to manage these capital projects and have had some help from from Consultants as well and just to keep Pace with with our expectations there it's going to be a challenge to to meet that goal on a continuing basis

2:04:00another goal I have is to actually take advantage of the vacancy I have and do some restructuring in public works I'd like to flatten out the organization and help bring in a little more specialization with the creation of a sustainability analyst position and then

2:04:16also reclassifying the the Public Works supervisor position into a little different position I've used the title superintendent here but that's not etched in stone so we'll see if we can achieve that goal next year and out of the engineering department we'd like to

2:04:35make some Headway on our safe roster school program they have not yet begun working with the school district we hope we can get someone's attention there and make some progress on a on a program to help develop safer routes to school when it comes to challenges I've already

2:04:52stated several that that within the goals but you see seven major challenges here creeks and habitats is an area that requires a lot of specialized skills and we don't really have anyone on staff to really have those specialized skills right now that's something I would be looking to this new

2:05:12sustainability analyst to bring with them that goes along with the integrated Pest Management and also dealing with our Creek preservation ordinances that is now starting to come in to application we could use some additional specialized skills on that uh Parks is

2:05:30primarily a funding challenge again that has relied on general fund support which is currently not there and probably won't be there in the near future City trees we've just planted over a thousand trees in the last two years and those will be coming online for

2:05:45maintenance duties as well as we move into the future and just Prosecuting the urban Forest management plan is another challenge within our our world of trees out there and that goes hand in hand with the Landscape Management very similar to trees I've already talked about the Clean Water

2:06:05program with many many challenges there the street Improvement program is some we've made great strides in the last few years but as I look ahead as we start to settle into an annual program we don't foresee having the full 1 million dollar per year funding that we had hoped to

2:06:23have when we embarked on measure a measure a is still there and it's holding strong and it's meeting our Revenue goals but we had also projected revenues from general fund and measure C and measure J to help support that currently those funds are having to be diverted to help support the other

2:06:40operations in public works and one last challenge we're going to have is the neighborhood traffic Improvement program we've been developing that for the past year we've had two public meetings and we're just putting the finishing touches on that and and hope to bring that back to the

2:06:57council for final adoption but the challenge is there is to actually Implement that will require more staff time than we've had to put forth in the past as well as maybe have to bring in some consultants for specialized traffic problems and often when we find Traffic

2:07:15Solutions it's going to require some Capital funding at times to implement those and those are also hard to come by the first five of those goals linked directly to the vacant position I have a sustainability analyst is those are basically the job description for a lot of what that person would do

2:07:38even with that person on board those would be challenges for us and without that person they become very cute in how we think we can handle those uh this is a story just like you've heard from other Departments of rising expectations against diminishing resources as we've put out a lot of

2:07:57improvements through our Capital Improvement program recently and made other strides in how we manage the infrastructure and Facilities of the city people have come to expect more and more from us and as we look into the near future the resources we have to deliver that are becoming less and less

2:08:12so that's sort of an underlying theme to all the challenges I have there I'll be happy to answer any questions yeah I just want to reconfirm when you mentioned that you've diverted funds from One Fund to another it's all legitimate um I don't want to give people the

2:08:34impression we're moving money around when we're not supposed to thank you for leading me out of the trees here so I could see the forest again that's absolutely correct Transportation funds are available for Paving Industries as well as taking care of street lights and and the landscape

2:08:51meetings and so forth so there's a lot of overlap between what these funds can do great and the other thing the labor Rank and file labor labor that you that we rely on for a lot of your services is that going up down stayed the same say in the last five years The Contract Services we have have

2:09:14typically taken advantage of the annual increase up to three percent one to three percent is what we've seen in most of the labor contracts we have for services Rank and file you mean our city employees yes well yeah they've gone up with cost of living increases

2:09:32no I meant bodies number of bodies oh numbers excuse me not bodies number of people uh no we have not increased that since uh I think two years ago we did get one additional position okay and has those types of Demands um increased over that same period of time

2:09:57not should the in the way of tasks we perform because the in-house staff still tries to fill all the gaps in between what we contract out for I think what's changing is having to try and do our work smarter and to try and keep up with the the regulatory climate

2:10:17and the environmental climate we have out there and that's been a challenge and not so much for the rank and file but for the management staff to try and keep ahead of that so that's that's always a challenge thank you yeah I just want to have one clarification question

2:10:34oh sorry I apologize okay I just I wanted to make sure it it's um my understanding that the general fund provides about eight hundred thousand dollars worth of your budget and your total budget is about 3.3 million so about two and a half million comes from those special funds is that is that

2:10:50right yeah that's correct great thank you um I just thought I was curious to hear more about the safe routes to school program and what you're proposing it would look like well as you know Public Works and the engineering staff go after a lot of Grant funds it was mentioned earlier

2:11:08and in order to to be successful in getting grants oftentimes you have to have a lot of your planning work done ahead of time we've done the Illinois Greenway master plan that helped us when we dealt with Bart not a grant but it was certainly work to be done in our name that's

2:11:27that's been the case over and over again we did get a safe route to school Grant last year but that was because we had heard from a particular Community a PTA group in the school itself and it wasn't really a programmatic not necessarily the best place to use the

2:11:45money it's just a place we're aware of I'd like to develop a city-wide safe roster school program so we can go after safe routes to school grants in a more programmatic way and make sure we're spending the money in the smartest way we possibly can so it's just one more

2:12:02planning goal I'd like to have in place so that we're postured properly to go after these grants thank you the next section is Recreation good evening Monica courts Recreation director and I guess you're saving the best for last the of El Cerrito Recreation Department

2:12:25continues to make our community better by providing access to outdoor space for play and exercise facilities for self-directed and organized Recreation positive alternatives for youth which help lower crime and mischief and activities that facilitate social connections and lifelong learning

2:12:44while some may not consider Recreation services essential those who rely on our department daily to care for their loved ones young and old receive an affordable and nutritious meal social interaction and services that allow older adults to age in place and many others who utilize our programs

2:13:04services and Facilities would certainly disagree so let's begin the department provides meaningful opportunities for citizens to stay active healthy and connected to our community Through programs and services Recreation expenses are offset by 3 million Revenue revenues fiscal year

2:13:270910 the department handled approximately a hundred and twenty two thousand transactions which represents 10 000 patrons the general fund support has decreased over 500 thousand dollars since 2004.

2:13:46most programs are near are near or at full capacity Department staff are trained in multiple areas maximizing staff to cover staff vacancies next slide expanded programming and limited staffing has reduced general fund subsidy from 2004 to 2010 by 500 000.

2:14:13and this slide shows that subsidy going down over a seven year period the goals for fiscal year 2010-11 is to provide quality Recreation programming for all ages in facilities that are clean well maintained and safe maintain Department programs in the most cost effective manner through monitoring

2:14:41Staffing levels and managing material and Supply costs we continue to provide and improve good fiscal management throughout the department increase the majority of Department fees by 3 percent and establish establishing new fees where appropriate for instance Splash Park

2:15:06continuing to seek Revenue generating programs and services evaluating those that are a natural fit with current functions and operations such as the baseball ecyb has come to us and asked us if we could provide the registration for a fee and lastly safely and successfully open

2:15:30the El Cerrito splash park hopefully this summer challenges for fiscal year 2010-11 is to manage increase costs throughout the department with our staffing and materials and maintaining the service levels that we have currently in the most cost effective manner

2:15:52decrease expenses at the open house Senior Center and Swim Center while maintaining a safe and clean environment for all users keeping in mind the number of Staff needed to open a facility safely implementing fee increases at the swim center and Senior Center that do not

2:16:13result in in a decrease in participation and thus less Revenue and we haven't quite hit our breaking point we don't know where that is in fee fee increases but I think we're getting there our staff is dedicated to the day-to-day operations little time for long-term

2:16:34Planning and Development development is within the department we improve we want to improve technology maximizing staff efficiency better serving our patrons currently by hand and you're welcome to come once a month we process over 500 bills to our child care patrons and facility

2:16:57annual facility rentals we we'd like to fill the vacancies without taking additional funds from the general fund balancing the need for cost recovery versus support to community non-profit and co-sponsor groups that cannot pay full market value for facilities and

2:17:17service while we recognize those co-sponsored groups are important to this community it is also a cost to the city for doing that type of business continue to provide scholarships since and special events when donations and sponsors sponsorships are down due to

2:17:37economic downturn and we continue in this economy weekly to receive requests for scholarships filling in the gaps in Services programming and Facilities caused by the district's budget crisis and school closures we will be working with the district to utilize City facilities during school

2:18:03hours for the use of Portola Middle School next year while they relocate to the lower blacktop however the city will also lose Jim's space with the closure of Portola gym and and we want to continue to provide at no cost support to other departments including use of facilities

2:18:27advertisement marketing registration and equipment in closing tonight I want to come back again to the notion that Recreation and Parks may or may not be considered essential services just as police fire and Public Works are considered essential El Cerrito Recreation programs are vitally

2:18:50important in establishing and maintaining the quality of life in El Cerrito ensuring the health of families and youth and contributing to the economic well-being of our community and I'll be glad to take any questions thank you a similar clarification question um as I did with public works I just

2:19:12want to uh re-establish that of your 3.7 million dollar budget about 3 million of that is revenues so the general fund is only supporting about 700 about 600 000 as your line graph shows of services thank you okay thank you came back to me um what I wanted to do next was talk

2:19:45about that that big piece of pie that overall was 80 and that's uh our Personnel cost and as you've got to see in walking through the Departments um in some departments police and fire which are our largest departments that number is actually approaching 95 percent

2:20:03um so acknowledging that that's sort of the toughest thing to talk about for all of us we wanted to spend a little more time on some of the key issues that you'll see on the next slide as what's particularly common discussion it seems in uh Contra Costa County Pension funds continue to take up a

2:20:24larger portion of the general fund my personal opinion for what it's worth is before the economic crash we've all seen I'm not sure this was much of a discussion item anywhere but it seems like the focus has now shifted to public employees as seemingly the problem

2:20:43through all that is wrong in the world economy so I I think we need to be sensitive to to that as we hear these discussions and potential ballot measures related to public employees I would also want to make the point that while there are clearly certain very uncommon issues around pension

2:21:04spiking and taking advantage of loopholes those don't exist in pers cities like ours and so I think uh it's certainly been over magnetized particularly in the local media as we talked about earlier medical benefits continue to rise at a much higher rate than inflation

2:21:25I think I'm doing this from memory although we had one maybe six percent increase to go back to council member Jones's question I think we had a number of years of 20 increases in a row uh I couldn't even remotely guess to you guess what is driving those increases

2:21:43um but again as councilmember Jones asked us about outside uh contractors I don't think we're going to get the justification um you know I briefly mentioned you know many cities are struggling and there's no question about that but what what we are finding um particularly in our most

2:22:01recent survey for one of our employee groups is Wages have continued to go up uh in other cities and we do a pretty large Market survey when we look at these things will that change or stop it's hard to predict but we need to be sensitive to being a very small player

2:22:19in a very big Marketplace again to reiterate um and this is just a statement of fact it's not a value judgment but clearly there was an expectation or hope long before the economy crashed that non-sworn employees would get in a compensation a median adjustment Beyond

2:22:36just a cola this year um the El Cerrito Police Department is currently in the middle of a contract and they are due for an adjustment pursuant to their contract the another point that we've made in the past but I think needs to be reiterated here is that unlike the majority of

2:22:54cities El Cerrito does not offer uh health benefits after retirement so when we talk about our portion that we spend on benefits we're already significantly below most cities because we don't pay that benefit and um putting aside whether that's a good thing or a bad thing I think it's

2:23:12certainly a responsible thing when you look at the portion of the unfunded medical liabilities that are facing cities that are astronomical and that is one issue that we don't have to struggle with here but also it's important that when we are we are hopefully out

2:23:27recruiting someday that we don't want to be at a competitive disadvantage on our benefits and we already have overcome against most cities that we don't pay that benefit and again vacancies do impact service levels as you've heard and and also morale but fortunately I'm in El Cerrito

2:23:45maybe at times where judgment everybody does jump in and help each other out uh moving along in the council member's package there was a proposed timeout right now but I would like to keep going and propose that we take uh if the council's wish to take a break I have

2:24:02one question uh where is public comment in this process that is up to you um is this the right place maybe I guess I would suggest um let me finish with my piece and then maybe before you all discuss your priorities that might be a good okay I'm sorry I thought you had that we were at

2:24:20the break no I was I was actually it was in your package to take a break but I would like to suggest that we go another three or four slides and then if you'd like to take a break that might be I'm wondering public comment I think a good time would be when I just after I'm

2:24:33finished and before you start that split slide um it'll be right before slide uh it'll be slide 41 or 41A you wanna just do it now soon yeah I have a question before you move off the numbers and the pie chart sure because um I know that overtime is really an important aspect of running many

2:24:55departments but I'm not um very clear about which departments the majority of that occurs under and how that number Trends over time sure um the of the just over a million dollars in overtime um roughly 99 of that is Public Safety um of that it's about uh two-thirds fire uh one-third police

2:25:21and of that of the fire budget it also contains um and I would look to Chief Mabel's to jump in if I get this a little wrong um in the past probably half of that is related to calls when we go um we get called up by Cal Fire and we go around the state helping on

2:25:37um Mutual Aid requests that maybe I can direct my next question to Chief Maples because I'm wondering um to what extent filling some vacancies in the department would lower that number when you look at how the fire department's set up now with the two vacancies by running two vacancies short

2:25:58we are looking at a projected overall cost Savings of in between nine and ten percent somewhere in there when you look at how a vacancy is filled it's filled by different ranks and sometimes not filled by the specific rank that's absent so the the margin of savings goes

2:26:17up and down but we are at a savings Point still with vacancies paying the overtime to cover two spots okay thank you and to refer to one other part of the overtime that Mr Hannan referred to um there is a portion of our overtime every year that we pay out for Mutual

2:26:34Aid response State of California Mutual Aid response whether it's an OES rig or one of our managers go out in an overhead position and that uh over time that's paid out that you see in the budget it Trends very erratically from year to year it's based on the calls

2:26:49it's fully reimbursable with a 16 admin fee thank you good okay you ready to move on yes um the next slide um just to be clear on this slide this is what staff hopes to get out of the presentation we're not asking you to actually answer these specifically but in its simplest terms we're like I said

2:27:20we're trying to get direction on what to bring back to you when we bring the whole book um so those those questions relate to the policies that are most important to the council services and programs that we should focus on and sort of what are the least desirable or most desirable

2:27:35options as we bring you back a budget in terms of just some general costing of things that impact the budget you have a list here of certain things that drive our expenses including colas anticipated median adjustments the health benefit increase possible furloughs

2:27:58the impact of using general fund reserves and potential Revenue enhancements which we've talked about in the past and that's particularly related to a sales tax and then you have the projected fund balance which is consistent with what you saw in February and in percentage

2:28:17and in dollars on the next page we try to essentially decont deconstruct what is maybe consider the a worst case scenario although obviously with things the state can do things that can happen with property tax I guess it could always be worse but what we're trying to show here is

2:28:37that assuming if we started with a balanced budget and the employee's that are due cost of living adjustments got them that the employee group let's do a salary adjustment got it that we kept positions vacant that we anticipate to be vacant going into next year the net

2:28:56impact of those we assume the city continues to pay 100 of the health benefits and we assume a two percent decrease in property tax you go negative by 2.4 million dollars obviously there are a number of things you can do to make that number move up but that's one

2:29:13way to build build backwards to uh how much in the red so to speak we could be what we do on the next slide is something we've actually never done before and um that is create service categories and as we put our budget together um we will look back at these to some

2:29:35degree to see if our funding is consistent with this never um certainly in my time here we haven't had to try to as describe what is essential what is a priority and what is support and obviously listening to the recreation director I mean there really is a lot of

2:29:51room for judgment as to what somebody considers essential we are we are look to sort of common uh definitions what what we've seen in other cities what we've seen when this exercise has taken place and typically um Public Safety is grouped into essential services and that really is

2:30:11Health Safety and Security Priority Services go more towards the quality of life and they are sort of recreation Library senior arts and culture Economic Development Redevelopment and all the special events that we talk about and then Support Services um really help to make all those other

2:30:31other things happen and what we tried to show let me go to the next slide another way of grouping these is maintaining and improving Public Safety versus Economic Development quality of life and customer service and then those of us in Support Services want to make

2:30:49sure that we provide services efficiently and really ensure that we have long-term fiscal stability um the next slide I it was not meant to be all in all inclusive and I seem to get more more questions on this slide than anything else but what we're simply trying to show is if you're you're used

2:31:07to seeing our organization chart by Department if you backed up and tried to divide it by Service uh under these descriptions you can see that certain departments fall directly under one block but there really are another bunch of Divisions and functions that we

2:31:24provide that across many lines and this was again not meant to be all encompassing but rather just to illustrate that a lot of things cross through those priorities and you could certainly put more boxes on here for instance we mistakenly left our city city attorney

2:31:46off so again he may be dabbling all of these services so no slight to him um so before we take a break what we're what we want to ask the council without going through each of these specifically is some affirmation that the way we group the services um you concur with

2:32:09um with that I would stop my presentation I was well I wanted to suggest that maybe it's a good time certainly you could take public comment before you deliberate take a little break before you get into sort of what we described as the fun part of the meeting and if you have any questions of

2:32:27us before that uh please feel free okay why don't we start out with any questions that we might have from the council at this time answer those then after that take public comment and then after that we'll take the break and then we'll come back okay I would suggest we take the break before public

2:32:43comment we're going to be here a while um is my my assumption excuse me and how many speaker slips do we have two one why don't we just go ahead and read public comment if that's okay okay so are there any questions from the council this time okay then let's go to public

2:33:06comment Jamie Jacob Zack um hi my name is James Jacob Zak and I appreciate you allowing me to speak this evening I'm the code enforcement officer for the city of El Cerrito I've been here for about a year and a half and um I enjoy working here I enjoyed um people that I work with all the

2:33:39employees code enforcement's been quite an interesting task for me and I can go into detail in a personal basis if you'd like as far as what has what code enforcement has actually done and in the future I'd like to have some presentations to the council members for

2:33:56what activity is or what changes have been done within the community but I've noticed that with the amount of work that has been put on me and all the employees with the decrease in the income or the revenues that the city has had it has kind of put a strain on a lot

2:34:11of the employees I think and I'm hoping that the council will look at ways of rather than allowing furloughs or not allowing any increases in Pay maybe to look at something that might help us to be able to continue to give the service that we have in the past I have to commend all

2:34:29the employees because I know that they when I'm sitting back there and I see them working very very hard to provide the services that I think that the council would like to give to the community so thank you thank you Sean Moss good evening mayor ableston members of

2:34:58the council my name is Sean Moss I'm an associate planner here at the city in the Community Development Department I'm also the um Vice chair of um our SEIU Local 1021 El Cerrito chapter obviously I feel like Don Johnson in my t-shirt and sport coat but um um I just

2:35:23um wanted to talk to you about a couple things um there I'm always kind of leery of addressing you guys if you know I feel like I'm lobbying or something which I'm something I'm very averse to but um there's something that's very important to me both as a um both as a service provider and as a

2:35:48customer and that's customer service um and actually just last week I um I've made a phone call to UPS to give them some tips on on their customer service because as a customer it's something that's very important to me something I'm willing to pay extra for um

2:36:08and it's something obviously that the you know the budget affects um you know it stands to affect um the you know the service for all the customers of the city um and I think you know I want to um commend my fellow employees for doing a really good job of maintaining a high

2:36:29level of customer service with um you know recent cuts and reductions and staff but I think it will become increasingly difficult if not impossible to maintain a really high level of customer service with additional cuts and additional reductions and staff um and I I definitely

2:36:57um you know appreciate the position that you're all in and the difficult decisions that that you have to make regarding the budget and I know there are a lot of options before you um and you know obviously our preference would be you know any options that don't

2:37:15um you know lead to Future cuts and and future reductions and staff and um I just um want to say in conclusion um that you know we have have um they're you know um there were employee furloughs that were part of last year's budget um for all uh non-sworn employees and

2:37:41um you know we recognize I think that that might be um you know hopefully not but might be a necessity in the coming budget year as well and we would just ask that any you know any future measures of that type would um be something that would affect all employees equally

2:38:04um you know I I [Music] um some of our membership is expressed um that the um that this last year that the um you know the furl is affected not all the employees equally not all the not the sworn employees as well so um I'll just end there thanks thank you very much

2:38:30no other slips I think there was one other speaker if you haven't filled out a form you just we can just get the information from the other one can't we okay Madam Jamie Vaughn uh uh president just um I spoke earlier um just touch on a couple things that uh came to my attention uh

2:38:55uh being a former Council member of a much smaller City okay 1781 residents okay I salute all you guys what you're having to go through okay um being a former deputy district attorney uh some of the things I see uh over in Martinez okay is a number of uh El Cerrito police officers who are there

2:39:19three or four of them having to uh hear under uh subpoena if they're all day and you know and you know the question is is the city being being reimbursed by uh Bob cockley's office okay something to think about okay um the other uh thing came to my attention when the uh our fire chief

2:39:41testified is that uh it is you know it's a city you know being reimbursed for uh transportations at doctors hospital or Highland Hospital Etc are we receiving Medicare reimbursements Etc something to think about something to kind of look into um the other couple matters uh I'm probably

2:40:04using my time here that kind of kind of concern me okay this for you is called backfill I don't really understand what that means okay is it does it mean like you know positions are they're not funded or what have you so being a layperson I um I don't understand that

2:40:23word and um finally um I think the council should to really take uh taking considerations you know they're gonna how to grow our revenues in the city a number of cities and I'm going to be working with the council uh as far as you know to help you know with the

2:40:50cooperation the City attorney the council over here to you know change our charger so we can get more flexible so how we can no no obviously you know raise money okay instead of you know going sales tax and all these um assessments okay so we have some flexibility but

2:41:09um a number of cities are doing things like uh they're doing like assessments on shopping carts okay for blight okay you know we have a problem in ilani trail and throughout El Cerrito we we see banned shopping carts okay and we have a number of stores here and if you

2:41:29look at what's being done Emeryville and uh Fremont Etc they charge the supermarkets an assessment okay by how many shopping carts they have okay you know it sounds kind of stupid but that money adds up it's Revenue okay because otherwise it becomes a blight for the city of cerudum

2:41:52yeah three minutes I'm sorry gone three three minutes okay are you my last two seconds to next person behind me pursuant the brown act okay so since I was involved writing that act yeah no I have no other speakers left okay thank you with that we'll take a 10 minute break

2:42:17and then come back okay all in favor aye aye and that was unanimous okay so with that um Scott you're going to continue thank you and you're on page what uh 41 41.

2:53:28so then the next part of the discussion um we are looking to the council as as much as they can to give us uh Direction on the topics we've identified and we realize that many of these topics can be a whole night discussions unto themselves but it's our hope that wherever possible

2:53:53maybe you could um uh move for a consensus quickly where you need more information we have all our folks here but as much as much direction as we can get would be uh helpful um the other point that I would make is in in thinking this through is that if you get bogged down or if the council is

2:54:13split that also sends us a message that there is no clear consensus on something for the Council on that in and of itself tells us about where it is in terms of priority having said that based on discussions with a number of you and preparing for tonight we just wanted to

2:54:28put out there that you may want to consider and I will leave this to you some ground rules for how much time do you want to spend on each item for instance or are there certain ways you would like to move items along um so I don't know before I get started if there are any thoughts otherwise I'll

2:54:47Just Jump Right In so I guess what I would like to do but I'll just jump right in is to try to move things along because we aren't really making any decisions tonight uh what we're trying to do is to get a sense of what the council wants to do and if we can't seem to do that tonight

2:55:04we should just really acknowledge that and then move on and the other thing I think that we want to mention is that we're not really this this next section is not about detail um it's about the way I think of it is that it's kind of looking at things from 35 000 feet up

2:55:26and trying to get an overall um thought pattern about how we want to deal with this very difficult situation but we're not going to say we want to do this rather than that probably at all tonight so um we just want to get a sense of of where the council members are coming

2:55:45from and um so if it's okay with everybody if it appears that we spent uh that you know maybe 10 minutes on an item and we're either getting consensus at some level or not then then I'll just mention that and then we'll um move on if that's okay is that okay with

2:56:05everybody yes in order that we can get out of here tonight thank you because we're going to be back lots of times before the alarm goes off right we can try um so okay with that I'll turn it back to you Scott sure um generally there are four areas that we're asking you to look at those are

2:56:23use of reserves which we have spent a fair amount of time on cost reductions services and program reductions and revenue enhancements I'll try to briefly um explain what our thinking was and then I also might suggest uh grouping a couple a couple of these which may help

2:56:43uh the sort of under policy discussion and some of these we've touched on already the first question is is probably as close to a softball as you're going to get tonight and that is uh should the budget be balanced the next two questions I would group together and

2:57:00that is should general fund reserves uh be used when we bring the budget back and I remind you that the council's the recently adopted policy allows me to include reserves uh between 10 and 15 percent and balancing the budget um if if we think that's necessary obviously whether we do that or not will

2:57:23ultimately be up to the council additionally there was a provision for fiscal emergencies and the need to go below 10 um and I realize that's that was an issue we spent a lot of time on but it would be helpful to know that it would be your preference or not to go

2:57:39below 10 and then finally you've heard a lot about compensation tonight and the council has discussed or or the staff has discussed and we've brought up the the immediate compensation policy um I think that has something that has served the city well but under these

2:58:00Economic Times it may be time to reconsider that I but again I would remind you that a median means we're paying our compensation in the 50th percentile and we're not exactly out in front on compensation but we do think that the council should reiterate whether that is something that they

2:58:17think should be we should make every effort to leave that in place or or if it is your desire to reconsider it we would certainly bring that back with Alternatives so with that I would sort of turn it to you on the sort of the first question and the mayor on how you'd like to get through these

2:58:33okay so that's the first question is the vacant yeah no no the first the prior page for fiscal year okay oh okay so um I'm a little confused the first question is do you expect her get a balanced budget okay okay so that's okay so let me say yes okay there's a yes from Sandy

2:58:58Bill yes bill is a yes yes obviously that's the goal but I'm not I'm not sir I I'm going to be a dissenter here um you know what are the choices that go into a balanced budget um so it may be that the first budget they bring us is not necessarily balanced but I I agree we are going to

2:59:21get to a balanced budget the next one is uh general fund reserves above 10 should be used to help balance the budget yes for this year yes I'm still thinking about Mr lyman's comments because um I feel like if even the idea of not adopting a balanced budget is in the is

2:59:46in the thoughts then the answers to the next two questions seem really pretty clear no I think we'll adopt a balanced budget but the third question the current economic conditions weren't going below 10 I don't agree so I would like to see the first budget come forward without using that first if

3:00:05we could oh yeah we agree okay so then I think that one's unanimous number two then three is the current economic conditions weren't going below 10 reserves Greg do you want to start no I don't believe it does I would like to see the first budget come forward without using uh below 10 percent

3:00:25um I I would I disagree I think or I agree with the proposal that we sh the current economic conditions does warrant going below 10 percent maybe up to 7.5 but to some degree I we are in a fiscal crisis in the state of the world and state of our city it all trickles down and I think

3:00:49so I agree that the economic conditions warrant that finding but I would only go into the last 10 percent reserves in order to prevent layoffs of current staff I could agree with that and and I guess that's my position is that the first budget that they bring to us

3:01:08should attempt not to go below 10 but that we may find that we need to go below 10 in June so I guess our guidance it tonight I thought was to give them to give staff and guidance on preparing the first the first budget the first book okay Bill no I disagree the more we go into the

3:01:32reserves the bigger the hole we're digging um and it's better to take the hits now to save money up front than it is when we're behind the eight ball and then we decide geez we we can't spend anymore um going in no this is again going into the strategies and the options that will

3:01:56come up as we're looking at it that's my position at this point going into this exercise it may change after upgrade okay and I feel on the fence about this one I looked at you know the total dollar amount of our reserves currently it really isn't that much um and you know if there were a major

3:02:16event that happened it could eat into it pretty fast so I I'm you know without thinking about what how many dollars we're talking about I would think that my answer would be yes but when I think about the actual amount of dollars available and the um um you know some lawsuit could happen

3:02:35for example it worries me to go into it so I actually think that our vote is on the fence on this one and we've disagreed and then we should move on and so we can move on to the fourth one which is the council should reconsider or defer its policy of median compensation for all employees bill you

3:02:55want to start this one uh yeah yeah uh no that's all right um yeah this is a tough one uh here's my thinking on it uh unless we can find new revenue or the reductions aren't as bad in revenues as as we think they're going to be for one year I I think we're almost

3:03:18forced in my opinion to defer I don't want to lose that policy I don't even think we should reconsider it but I do think we may have to defer for one year any so um the city manager mentioned that there are many other agencies that are continuing to give wage increases I also

3:03:40know that those very same agencies are also laying off their workers so I think we need a way of measuring the the median compensation to take into account the true fiscal crisis at local government and state level government is experiencing in their Workforce because

3:03:57I don't I think we're going to be talking a lot more about this on slide number 44 when we're asked about the labor agreements but I'll just leave it at that um I think knowing that that there hasn't been catching up of compensation for the past five years of the non-sworn employees

3:04:21um does make me feel like we we definitely don't need to reconsider it um don't don't need to be we should maintain it um and I didn't second what um councilmember Potter is saying about um looking into ways to you know other methods I just my comment was that when we look

3:04:44at median compensation that we look at the whole picture it's always been a struggle for us to evaluate what's going on in other in other cities and I know I know you have a formal way of making an evaluation but maybe we need to look again even at how me uh how the median

3:05:00is is determined I'm not saying that I'm not committed to the spirit of staying competitive and giving Fair compensation I'm just concerned that if 80 of the budget is in the salaries and we look at these one at a time and conclude that nothing can be adjusted we're going to get nowhere

3:05:24yeah I'm gonna put forward a opinion here that is probably going to be unpopular um in that I actually think that we should maintain our median compensation strategy that recognizing the value of individual employees and making uh compensation Corrections for those that

3:05:45are those individuals this may result in individuals being pay increases versus others because their position is is has greater value or their skill set has greater value and this is where it's going to be unpopular that may be that that needs to be offset by other revenue or other

3:06:08reductions in cost such as increasing the number of furlough days not having colas for example so that in my opinion I disagree with the way this quick question is written we should not reconsider or defer our median compensation but that we should be recognizing the value of individual

3:06:30employees I would not go here in looking at all the different things that we could do this would not be one of the first things I would look at it would be one of the last things and if I kind of understand what everybody's saying I think we have mixed messages on this one

3:06:51we're not all saying the same thing so I think we're ready to move on I guess if I could more information well if I could interpret um I'm hearing consensus not to reconsider however uh possibly if necessary we would look at deferring well I I want a clarifying point because

3:07:15now that Mr Lyman mentions that this is worded about some sort of action on our policy I really I think that the intent of the policy is really important is a question do we want to defer implementing the policy for a Time yes so that's that's different and and

3:07:36that's maybe where well should we reconsider the concept the policy of paying median conversation and I'm hearing no no if if it helps in putting the budget together should we defer should we should the possibility of deferring some median adjustments be considered I'm

3:07:54hearing it's a mixed feeling and and mixed feelings on how to implement yeah I think that's accurate I I want to add one thing that um that I was thinking about and that is how bad is it is financially and um I'm concerned that uh what I've been seeing the state do which is what I

3:08:17referred to earlier when the senator was here about they um say that our their budget is bad and then a month later month two months later they say now it's even worse and then they do something that involves taking away money from locals government and then three months later they do

3:08:38another round of taking money away from local government and there's going to be a point at which the very survival of local government if they continue along that very gruesome path is going to be at stake um and if that kind of a thing happens then we're going to have to re-examine

3:09:00everything we're doing but if that is but if we're not in that point at that point then I really don't want to look at um reconsidering this policy so I don't know if that's a way to say it so it really depends on the financial climate of our Revenue side um and and how bad it's getting and the

3:09:25thing if we were at the point of having to declare bankruptcy for example then I would say one thing versus if um we are where we are now which is not that we're not ready to declare bankruptcy at all so I think that's the difference and the statement as stated

3:09:47doesn't um really address that other part but I have you gotten your answer Scott okay thank you so now we're ready to move on yes on the next slide again I would group the first two these are cost reduction options and we've talked a lot tonight and uh in the meteor budget about

3:10:06vacancies so question number one goes to if we if we are to propose filling some of those vacancies in the upcoming year should they be done in the service order that we earlier and the second question goes a little more specifically to does the council feel that there are specific

3:10:29positions that we should bring back filled and that will certainly Drive some of the other things you're going to have to consider and if so please tell us if there is a consensus that certain positions should be filled I'd like to start this one out if you don't mind

3:10:45because I've been doing some thinking about what is it I really want to see and what that has to do with and so what I've decided what I really want to see is priorities by Department because I actually think that the Departments are the experts in running the Departments

3:11:04and that where they um could could best make a cut they know but they know better than we do probably I think it is our decision to make what we actually do but I would for example like to see each department list a number of cuts that they can make in priority order

3:11:28um and then bring that back to us so that um that would be the time at which um we would answer this question because maybe a department um you know just feels that it a vacant position is just incredibly important and they're having an incredible time getting the workflow done

3:11:52without this vacant position with this excuse me with this vacant position so um I think that there is this way of what I'm hoping to see out of this whole process is that we answer these questions as requested and then staff goes off and develops the budget but

3:12:15along with that they develop a a list of priorities for service reductions and if they really think they have to have an increase in some specific area that that would be mentioned too and I don't know is that okay with everyone on the council to do that kind of uh

3:12:34no I well there's nothing wrong with it I I've got some thoughts on it though um I don't know where we we've got vacant positions going into this we're we're in the red it looks like I don't know how we're gonna this for this one next year I don't know how we're going to fill vacant positions if

3:12:56we're talking about the the ones that were on the list um I well first I I don't I'm not saying that we would do that present it yeah sure the decision is up to the council well if I may what what I think we're trying to get at with the with the characterizations is

3:13:20um the the vacancies that we've talked about just happen to be vacancies at a at a point in time there was no decision by the council or um the staff in terms of how we wound up with these vacancies it's just the way it fell at a time when we sort of said okay this is

3:13:39where we are and we're essentially going to keep things constant what we're trying to determine is um just simply on the assumption if we are to bring a budget back with any positions filled should it should there be any hierarchy to how we do that um and secondarily if there are specific

3:13:59positions that the council thinks are a priority to fill it would be helpful to do that I have no problem with us coming back with a list of um different options that went into it but ultimately we are going to make a recommendation to you and take into account how each vacancy affects the

3:14:18service we provide and um yeah and bring it forth but I here's my thoughts on it I I think vacancies should be if we're going to consider Cuts I think we consider service cuts and then where the vacancies happen on um the services that we cut if if we get to that point I'm not saying that we are

3:14:43but if we do then I think that'll show what positions um need to be filled that are vacant now but also conversely I think if we're going to prioritize vacant positions that means if we're going to fill one that that is already that is already vacant that may mean we have to

3:15:03eliminate another service or another position so I'm having trouble with this because I think you have we have to have vacant positions that they've saved us the last couple of of years and to go higher or or to fill some of those we need to improve revenues or eliminate other

3:15:27positions if I could give you an example and then I think we need to let others speak because we're not giving much time to this what if that they can I mean what if James left for example there is no one that can replace James this job for example sure well here's here's my

3:15:46team no no wait a minute I don't even know if you see me when I said that but you know technical skills that no one else's position is already filled I would think that we would fill the ones that are that are at current level I'm looking at this as the ones that are

3:16:01vacant now the ones that are filled now no no I'm saying what if it were already that way I think there's an over emphasis on this comment my main comment was not that at all it was actually the other part about prioritizing reductions um by the way so so that was just an

3:16:18aside for special circumstances well and what I hear this here the salary statements have occurred in a sort of random way and to get back to the separation or the categorization of essential Services Priority Services and support services I think that the city is too small of an

3:16:44organization really to divide it up that way because I think that if you were to consider Support Services somehow lesser than the essential service and you undermine your fiscal controls and your legal counsel on those other aspects that you're going to have major problems

3:17:00in your essential services so when I looked at this question of number two particular vacancy positions should be filled regardless of the budget impacts well some of them might need to be filled so which ones would those be ones that bring in revenue for example

3:17:17ones that reduce our costs if that's if there's such a thing um jobs that fulfill State mandates that if we if we don't have people in them we're in violation of the statute so that would be and you know result in other liabilities um possibly we would want to fill jobs that

3:17:37require a long lead time to fill because we're we have to kind of pace ourselves and look out way out into the future we got a plan for that and then um finally jobs that could compromise the Integrity of the city I have to tell a story of being here on a day City Hall

3:17:53was closed when the finance staff was trying to deal with bringing up our new I.T system for all of our financial records it's a huge job I know they're over stressed and I can't see letting it the Staffing level go any lower when we're dealing with such really

3:18:13important things such as our financial so can you give us a short answer to number one I think that in a kind of broad sense perhaps you could apply some of the categories but not I wouldn't say strictly speaking you filled everything in police and fire and then you went

3:18:35down and then you filled you know I don't think it can be done that way I agree with what you said earlier that to some extent it needs to be to keep the department whole I don't think our city can function if one of the department goes down so if the thinking was you would start with

3:18:53these two departments and fill all the vacancies and then move to the second priority level and then finally turn our attention to support I kind of disagree with that okay and um I I have to agree that I don't think for number one um initially was leaning towards yes that

3:19:18there should be some some kind of prioritization but um I think thinking more you know definitely the service group it seems like it's it's key to everybody's functioning and I don't think you can separate that out and the other um the things related to quality of life

3:19:34I I was starting to see it more from a um more from a preventative measure because we're looking at health and safety we're getting people out where you know it's just they're they're you know one feels like immediate emergency but the other is really preventative I see and that the two need

3:19:53to be working hand in hand and that um that I don't see um an obvious way to to prioritize those different services so no Greg Madam mayor I'm going to somewhat agree with you in that um really we would be diving into the weeds to be naming specific positions um and so that some of this does need to

3:20:17be left up to the Departments for them to come back um however I do believe that we do need to provide some guidance and in the presentation for example um we heard the development department saying that they have a reduction in service and that is a potential uh as

3:20:38council member Potter said that's a potential Revenue Department so you know here's a here's a situation where we are um having a lack of resources that is inhibiting our recovery our economic recovery in the city so that that's not doesn't make sense but to continue

3:20:57um with 20 vacancies that are haphazard or random is doesn't make sense so I do believe that we've for example I think the Public Works said that they were considering restructuring to add a sustainable skill set um and that would allow for Regulatory Compliance which is very important so

3:21:17that we don't get fines that increase our our costs um so I think it's I think it's very important for the Departments to to look at the vacancies but I also believe that filling all of the vacancies is is Impractical and that um you know that it's on on the slide that

3:21:37uh slide 36 that was brought up before break the million dollars of the 2.4 million dollars is associated with uh savings from vacancies we could not get achieve a balanced budget without significant revenues new revenues without leaving many of those positions

3:21:55vacant so I do believe that um that we will need to have vacancies or those positions eliminated and uh it the best people to to tell us what those are are the Departments um but I think that council member Potter is correct it can't be just you know fill fire filled fill the police

3:22:18department there are Revenue generating positions there are positions that are that that are important outside of those departments do you have an answer Scott an answer too you like this question I hear no no was that correct okay that's your answer okay moving on

3:22:41to the second one um no I hear no one the first one and no one the second one I think yes on the second one should um I was just asking about the first one but oh oh I thought I heard everybody say particular vegan decisions should not be filled well they should

3:22:56but not in necessarily in the categories well so if we just look at some if we just this question specifically asking should Are there specific positions when you get the book back you expect to see filled yes [Music] I told you one of them no well I thought I heard the mayor

3:23:27suggest that the department heads would bring forward the vital positions that they saw as the most important to the operations of the department and I support the concept of filling some of the vacant positions I guess it's the word particular that I'm struggling with

3:23:46maybe what what if we I don't know if this is too much work what if we had a um for each presentation that came back from the Departments that they would list which positions were within the or that department were um should be filled regardless and then which ones weren't according to them

3:24:08nope that wouldn't work okay I mean it has to be in the context of of the entire budget I mean again you can work with them I'm sort of going back to um what council councilmember Lyman alluded to it's a there's a million dollars of potential 2.4 is is vacant positions we certainly will look at all

3:24:28the vacancies and the Departments will certainly have the opportunity to make a case on we think positions need to be filled for these reasons and you can so that's going back to what I was saying I just wanted to make sure that the council didn't have any expectations that that out there

3:24:46that we may miss may have missed okay going to the again diving into the weeds I would say that we certainly should not be inhibiting our economic recovery we should be looking at ways to facilitate New Economic revenues through taxes so the development uh position

3:25:02potentially should be considered certainly the long lead items that uh council member Potter mentioned which would be police and fire some of those positions should be we should be feeding the pipelines that we should be recruiting for those um and so I think that those are some

3:25:18that I would rank on on the higher side of the priority list okay I think I think we're ready we need to move on oh wait a minute I still go back to it still has to be taken in the context of the whole budget right unless somebody comes up with a way of getting a million dollars

3:25:37and there may be ways um some some Physicians that we feel the the question is regardless of budget impact I don't think we can handle it regardless of budget impact so you're right the staff can re-look at what's important what isn't and provide it but for for us to say regardless of budget

3:26:00impact I think is not a practical way of looking at it I'll agree okay so I think we need to move on but before we move on we have to extend the meeting I moved to extend the meeting for 15 minutes that was unanimous so the next one is reduction of City Hall hours should be

3:26:20considered yes and it's as simple as that I mean some cities do this um I think this to some degree is a little more showing pain than picking up savings but certainly we could um we could close every Friday we could change the hours but this the suggestion would be that we would reduce the hours

3:26:42worked by City Hall folks and they would be paid less is that is that what this means yes I'm sorry could we because we've got 15 minutes and a lot to do could we just say yes only no because I don't think you can save that much money doing it Sandy I would be demonstrated to be a significant

3:27:09savings same same and my answer is uh no so did that I think that worked unanimous okay uh then deferring or eliminating colas for employees should be considered for this year Greg you want to start this one um I'm going to put this in context of our median policy on the previous slide

3:27:34they go hand in hand in my mind that we need to recognize uh the employees and the value that the employees provide so if we're not going to give median increases then we should be giving colas um I think we should yeah it's I would agree with councilmember Lyman about

3:27:57that statement that if if we're moving towards deferring median compensation adjustments then colas should remain any well I guess this involve looking at Labor agreements and compensation are interrelated and so I would want to see you know the best package come forward

3:28:21that's the most Equitable you know and we're going to be looking at the furlough question also another alternative and it's like you get a reduction here and in addition here and I want to make sure that it makes sense at the end of the day is your answer yes or no

3:28:41um I I don't know I think it's maybe because I have to see it in the context okay what else we're doing okay the extent to the extent that we can afford it I'd say go ahead with the colas to the extent that we have to lay off or eliminate services or people then I say

3:29:00we rethink it um I agree with bill okay I think that sounds good too okay do you have the answer okay so we're ready to move on to the next slide I um asked that this slide be changed so the one you see if you look at your old thing is different in um so I had trouble ranking the one two or

3:29:30three on this slide but I think but what really they were wanting to know Scott was wanting to know was um which of the these is the most and least desirable so we have to rank so it's a matter of ranking them so uh if the way I did it in my mind it I could actually do that really fast

3:29:50and because it's easy to make a decision but the one two three thing I had a hard time with so if we start out for saying which is the least desirable or we say most desirable thing to um do to balance the budget what would be the so if everybody could just answer that question I think we

3:30:13could move through this pretty desirable let's say what um either way it doesn't matter which way we start we started an end I'd go least desirable uh furlough should be continued or expanded expanded I I would yeah my least desirable is laying off staff the first one okay same uh first one is

3:30:35the least desirable okay Greg uh laying off staff is the least desirable and it's mine too okay so we had a um we had four to one I think on um that's fine that sounds good reduction and said okay what's the next actually if we now get to the other end if this exercise to me became a lot

3:30:54easier so then um what is the um most desirable to do well I'm not sure I know what the last one on here a second tier retirement system would do for the current fiscal year so I'm not certain how to put that in the context of these other other ones um I do know that you know the city of San

3:31:25Francisco is expanding its furlough program um you know so that to me is one that I'm familiar with and I do understand what that does these other two the healthcare ones I'm not sure what they do so I I would have to to say the most desirable way for immediate reduction in

3:31:44the budget would be the to do the furloughs to consider the furloughs if I could just um just to clarify yet Council member's current alignment is correct um in terms of immediately balancing the budget the second tier retirement system has no impact it's it's on this list in

3:32:05the context of if we sit down with groups and they're looking at opener is this something the council wants to wants to be part of that but but he's corrected there's no immediate dollar savings but it is a popular uh uh topic these days well given the topic at the head of this page is cost

3:32:25reduction options for this year it seems like it ought to be on here I just want to say that because it would only affect future employees I do policy at a 10-year budget that if we're going to be reopening I think we need to take the Long View as well that's just a side note I know that it

3:32:52won't be Central to the budget that comes to us in the coming months in that context I agree okay Bill um what was I'm sorry what was the uh councilmember Potter and I were concurring that if the labor negotiations do are reopened that the second tier retirement system should be

3:33:17something that should be considered because it will affect future budgets and any recovery to 15 or 10 budget right I agree it should be explored okay um okay if you if you agree then we we need to move on uh because that makes it and I'll I'll agree with it too so now

3:33:35we're ready to move on to the middle three so why don't we pick the um the um the second least desirable if I said that correctly bill you want to start second least desirable I just found the middle three I believe right yeah right furloughs was number five right or number but if you just

3:34:01look at the middle three and think which is the least desirable that's the easy way to do it I think the least desirable okay um employee benefit contributions because I I think the other one up here capping the cost of current levels accomplishes part of the next one which

3:34:24is employee benefits if you cap that means the employees have to pick up the the difference so what I'm saying is answer your question employee benefit contributions is should be increased that's the least next least desirable my my way of thinking Okay sandy well I have a tie on the health care and

3:34:49then again the health care because pers the two closer to the bottom that isn't the last one we just discussed um I don't like to see those costs being passed on to the employees as it relates to health care costs I agree that we need to lower the cost of Health Care

3:35:14but given the um existing climate regarding furloughs for many cities and counties and certainly at the state level when El Cerrito is at four furlough days now I as a state employee have been off for 36 furlough days this year the city of Oakland has about 14 furlough days I

3:35:35don't know what the city of San Francisco is doing we'll be up to 15. it seems like there's some room in the furlough sector to get some cost savings that could be more predictable and more flexible than going in and changing the whole benefit structure that we've

3:35:51negotiated so what what I thought we were trying to answer the question of we're looking at the middle three okay so and what's the least desirable two are tied for me the city's cost of health care benefits should be capped and the employee benefit contribution

3:36:15do you agree with that bill yeah I agree with that okay I don't see a lot of dollar differences and I agree with that that leaves the that that automatically gives us the answer to the other one you okay no no you're not no I'm not clear so furloughs is the second

3:36:43most yeah well it's number two and uh and then three then the next two are sort of tight okay clear now thank you okay so next page okay um so this is back to one by one I think okay so program reductions eliminations identified through a prioritization process should be considered

3:37:12can I ask whose process this would be we would before we came back with a formal recommendation we would come back uh if if we if staff and putting a budget together felt we need to look at service reductions um we would come back similar to what the mayor has been talking about with

3:37:34here's a list of potential options we would have you know public meeting here and discuss you you would then be asked to you know here's our here's our shortfall here's how here is the options for filling it and this is a formal process to essentially decide what what stays and

3:37:53what goes I guess conversely we will bring you a budget um a proposed balanced budget with our recommendations and we'll skip over this let's skip over this page what do you skip over this we won't try we won't add another prioritization process but rather we would bring to you a

3:38:16the one I was talking about a you know a single budget um with a recommendation with our recommendation um for your consideration we would we would essentially go through the budget and say based on what our input and our expertise here is our proposed balance budget for you and it

3:38:38includes these alternatives or these options for your consideration you could ultimately say we don't like them go back and do something else um re-cost things um but this would this this is asking would you rather go through a service prioritization before we bring you a proposed budget I guess

3:39:04I'll reiterate my prior support of the mayor's request for us to take on some of the burden of of making those decisions so I think that this would be an exercise that would be useful for us to take on the responsibility of prioritizing okay Anne um so so I agree and by saying that are

3:39:28we then we would then go through and state our prioritizations of these various measures okay Andy so I'm hearing you guys say yes that's a number three high priority that yes yes okay I concur okay Bill yeah high priority okay it's unanimous the second one is across the board

3:39:54departmental budget cuts should be considered and just to be clear what what we're asking is some departments some cities typically much larger than ours we'll just say okay we're going to make X percent across the board cuts um I think as we've discussed in the

3:40:11past and discussed tonight that's not so easy as CDR size but again it's it's something that's often talked about and we wanted to put out there is that a priority you know a strong priority with a three or not a priority I think it's a poor policy decision to do across the board yeah I I agree Annie

3:40:30I I think it was Obama who said we needed to do it with a scalpel and not a I don't remember Hatchet I think that means that you agree yeah yeah okay it's unanimous so then we do three organizational consolidation should be considered could you explain what that means slightly yeah again

3:40:51um I think just to a large degree as we talked about as the Public Works director talked about on some of the positions that are missing I mean whenever we look at our agency and look at our departments we are always looking at ways in these times to consolidate

3:41:06what we do so the question really goes to how how much of a priority is it for us as we go through our budget to look for these opportunities too I'll make ourselves smaller I think for this year I think it's a low priority I think it should be done after this year if needed unless

3:41:27um unless City management wants to do it like Public Works did in in the course of everyday business but as a policy or a directive I think we should wait till next year see where we're at in a year's time Andy well I guess I'm kind of on the middle on this I think that if a

3:41:48reorganization can result in cost savings and more efficiencies that we should think about those and so I would be supported it just says here be considered it doesn't say that we would and um I'd say yeah I'm medium priority on looking into them if seeing what's possible

3:42:09okay it sounds like public works and administration is already considering it so it's a medium for me it's not I mean I think the vacancies maintain vacancies is a higher priority and for me it's a low priority how did that come out three two but that's I mean it's not a

3:42:27vote it's just we're trying to just do it just trying okay so we got you you got your answer okay you don't have to have a go oh please I think this is my final 20 20 minutes we can actually probably finish in 20 minutes I moved to extend the meeting for 20 minutes

3:42:47second all in favor aye all right okay it passed okay the next one is outsourcing or Contracting your program should be considered and I would just caveat this with I believe every service we provide is contracted out by some City in Contra Costa County I think so

3:43:04we're just putting out there house how much time and effort should we look further at this we already do as you heard Mitch talk about we've moved more towards Contracting and and the building division but that's really to try to ride the economy and we may have to as

3:43:20you've talked about look at whether that still makes sense and in other positions the Contracting provides you more flexibility but I think and as a larger scale you may be compromising customer service so okay quality of service which I think is the highest here

3:43:38okay only as necessary it's a low priority for me I ranked it in the middle it should be a tool if it's appropriate yeah I'm in the middle on that also um low priority for me so next one is eliminating special events should be considered bill you want to start with

3:44:01that one should be considered I think it should be considered like everything else so I I'd be in the middle on that one yes I agree middle middle because I don't have any specific ones that I can recommend um to eliminate my answer is no but I think we may need to but we need to

3:44:23consider is cutting down the size and cost um because if things aren't in a difficult financial situation we should not be doing things that are extravagant did you get your answer go good okay reduction of programs and services at Community Center pool seniors centers

3:44:45should be considered uh Greg only in the context of all sort of all of our services should be re-evaluated um there's these although these are not in the quote-unquote essential Services they're as the um director of recreation pointed out these are some pretty integral services to our

3:45:12community so they should not be picked picked on more than any other service that we provide so does that mean you would give it a one it would be a two because every service we provide should be a two okay and I guess in this economy I feel like more and more community members are looking

3:45:34to their own communities for entertainment get Recreation and getting out and I think that's um this is a low priority for me okay so I also ranked it as a one and low priority but that's a lot because the recreation program brings in a lot of Revenue and it's almost self-sufficient

3:45:54and I think that adjusting the services down could have an adverse effect on the revenue side and I also think that when we start talking about possible ways to bring in Revenue we go to the residents to ask for that support that um these are the kind of programs that we when we ask for

3:46:15sales tax revenue or any other kind of mechanism that we're asking for confirmation from people who use these services to fund them I support continuing to fund those programs bill reduction uh low priority if we are going to reduce though we would only uh those those programs not making money or

3:46:36have low attendance um reduction is a low priority but it should be considered I I think that it's a low priority for me um and uh some of these programs require really essential services for the people that they serve um for example um some of the senior programs I'm thinking

3:47:05of one that I don't think we actually currently provide although it's in our Center Alzheimer's respite which is an opportunity for people who take care of Alzheimer's to get out and do their grocery shopping or whatever so um this you know these it's it's all in the behind the beholder

3:47:26and um like I think it was Ann said that uh or some somebody said it doesn't matter who that um there's a lot of uh costs covered by fees and so forth so there wouldn't there's not a lot of money here is the thing so there wouldn't be a lot to have do you have an answer Scott on

3:47:45this one I wasn't counting very well oh yeah well okay okay so now we're ready to move to the next page did I miss something yeah just wonder if we could talk about this on the next page um okay great that would be a measure to increase the sales tax should be placed

3:48:06on the ballot yes or no take that first because since we're taking it first would you like to be first this time I would like to be first because I think we've talked about this before and we have God be research working with us and Advising us and I've heard support from this Council to put

3:48:21something forward on a future ballot and so I wanted to lead off by saying yes I support this and it would inform the answers to the other questions bill yes I'm going yes for this reason I'm afraid if we don't do it there's going to be another agency outside of El Cerrito

3:48:41that will try to put a sales tax on and that money will be leaving our community I support it I support it with sunset Clause I support it that we Define it Define the use of that money um to the extent that we have to on the ballot but yes okay um perhaps if everybody could answer if

3:49:05three and four together Sandy you want to answer four and then a little be caught up so I as a public policy um principle feel that it's best to have a stable Revenue source for your programs and so for that reason I would like to decide on what we're going to be permanent programs we

3:49:26wanted fund and then have a permanent Revenue stream for them but having said that I would look to Godly research to see what was what their advice was for our greatest success in trying to close this Gap Force said should it be of limited duration do you have an answer

3:49:42there well that's what I'm saying I mean yes I would prefer that it is but if if our advice from our consultant is that that's not going to be something that they communicate and live with then I would be open to making adjustments limited duration means I think the

3:50:00opposite it's getting late well I read this to mean if we were to ask for a sales tax measure would we limit the term that it was collected right and that will make it more likely to pass so why correct but I would prefer not to have it limited in duration okay yeah yeah okay

3:50:22now we understand Ann okay I would support a tax sales tax measure and I would also um I would not want to limit the duration I think um you know we're in an economic level where I think there's a lot of compelling reason why we sh we can fundraise for this these resources to keep our

3:50:43departments going and um there's just a lot of opportunity right now in our federal Administration with a variety of regulations on land use and um climate change Transportation all these things I think we can find really good ways to plug this money into really

3:51:03uh think long term and um you know be ahead of the Curve once we're out of the I'm sorry what was your answer to four so number four is no limited duration okay thank you Greg uh in in addition to saying yes I think I support a sales tax ballot measure um I'll I guess I would be the first one

3:51:27to say that I believe it should be on the half cent side but uh by going by giving good staff some guidance on what what value to plug into the to the equation I am going to say limited duration okay and my answer is yes I think it should be considered but before doing so

3:51:44I think it's essential to do a another poll quickly and make sure that our voters are still interested because I've been hearing some things about how a voter interest in tax majors has been going uh decreasing I was just something this weekend where they were talking about that and the um

3:52:06this based on Sir this is based on polling that's going on uh then in terms of limited duration um the answer is yes because I think it's really important that it pass and that will help ensure that it passes and the theory of why I think we're doing it is that we're trying to get through the

3:52:25recession that's what I was the point I was going to make before we put this on it's not for tonight's discussion other than I think we have to clearly Define why we're putting it on in my uh I'm with you this is to get us through a time where we're bet where we're back on

3:52:43track um but on the other hand we should have that discussion at the problem yeah what what value quarter or half well that is not a question I believe being asked here do you need to do you need guidance on which one we don't need that answer the need will drive we'll drive that as well as the

3:53:04support oh okay okay if you say so I I'm a little confused Greg it's not even a question here okay okay I don't know how he's going to balance the budget if he doesn't know which value um because he knows from the polling we already did um the additional fee increases above

3:53:23for inflation additional fee increases above inflation for programs should be considered uh just a little more background out in May you typically get the master fee schedule as councilmember Jones alluded to earlier the cost of living has probably gone up by less than two

3:53:42percent our costs are likely to go up by more than two percent um we are trying to balance uh recovering our costs um what the current market is for some of our services with the people suffering from the economic downturn so in our discussions about the fee schedule a lot of our discussion has

3:54:08been about doing something below full cost recovery but above the local CPI but so the question to you is should we be looking at sort of what's the council's sensitivity to um fee increases when we bring the schedule back so the question is should we should we

3:54:33be looking at fee increases that are above the CPI or up or above something uh uh and and additionally the other question is as it relates particularly to Recreation are there particular programs that we should push the fees up uh further to achieve a greater cost

3:54:51recovery so sort of goes beyond just our typical you know CPI was up by two percent or less so that's what we're going to layer across which doesn't necessarily reflect our actual cost or the market we're playing in Village well I would um yes this is my comment on fees above

3:55:16the inflation only those selected um that we currently charge below Market we had testimony by the director saying that we're she feels we're close to the Tipping Point on fees so when it comes anyway to recreational fees um but I don't want to get into the habit

3:55:39of charging above cost or above what we normally do in an economic downturn and I don't know if it's even good policy to do that but um that's my answer well I just heard the city managers say that we do have costs the question was about cost recovery and that's what we're authorized to

3:56:03charge for is the cost that we incur in providing the service the question is are we willing in this time when we're having trouble balancing our budget to even further subsidize our record or our all of our all of our programs so why I wanted to do the ballot measure

3:56:20first is because you know if the ballot measure passes we probably can say no to those two questions regarding the fees and the special events should should it not pass then maybe this is an area where the community needs to feel the impact of this budget Crunch and

3:56:42that's what it results in having to pay pay as you go and what in my opinion the question is asking more than more than cost recovery no no I'm sorry let me try again the what's likely that we're going to see is that our costs are going to go up at an amount greater than

3:57:05CPI in the Bay Area so should we should our priority be just keeping our fees as low as possible related to the seat General sort of economy or should we be looking more towards going above that and trying to recover as many costs as possible keeping in mind the market factors but

3:57:25the mat I think the question that we had was that was being asked was about going above the actual um cost of doing the service provided we're not suggesting that that would not be legal right isn't there there are there are fees that that are not subject to that but generally speaking yes okay

3:57:48we're just talking about cost recovery then yes we're where we think it's marketable what's your answer yes yes okay and then what's your answer um yes yes um mine would be uh yes um except where the market or some special Factor enters in like policy great for some other reason okay so the

3:58:14second one is all special events should be a hundred percent cost recovery EG July 4th has an admission price um okay Greg uh inherently no no and um yes I think we should try it yeah I think yes if we can't raise the funds through the ballot measure no I I don't know that it that it's

3:58:46possible and I think we either offer the service or we don't offer the service okay my answer is I think the answer is no but I think that the events should be toned down in cost until we get through this crisis um and Earth Day for example has been there are no trees this year for example

3:59:17um the next page so just to close it sounds like we are we've gotten as far as we're going to get for the time being um at the moment our plan is to come back first meeting in June based on some of the things I heard today maybe we're going to need to come back in May for

3:59:37some more Direction but for the time being I don't hear or need to continue till May 3rd um and uh we'll go and sort of decipher uh everything that we heard tonight and if there are changes we'll we'll report back thank you for the effort thank you um then I believe at this point we're

4:00:03ready to move to our next agenda item do we need to extend the meeting well I was going to propose that we moved to agenda item 7c that is the next agenda item 7B 7B usually proceeds 7c I'm sorry you know I didn't have time to turn my page um we can do be fast okay okay are there

4:00:26who would like to be on the wall of fame uh selection subcommittee I thought I'll do this at once okay I would volunteer okay we need one more and did you do that one meeting okay so it's it's council members Ann Chang and Sandy Potter we're now on C okay so seven C's

4:00:52uh and did you have a yeah I would like to make a motion that we um recommend or suggest to the the board of legal cities to not uh try to suspend adb32 and SB 375. second okay so this is uh to give direction that you write a letter to that effect yes yes okay uh I I'm ready to support

4:01:18that okay Bill no this is comment oh comments yes my comment is the same with with everybody else it doesn't make sense to redo something that's just nice okay so now we need we need to check in about public comments no speaker slips no we don't no we can't vote without

4:01:46public comments no speaker slips though okay um all in favor aye aye okay that was unanimous okay now we are I move that we do uh number eight next time second okay um I don't know I don't move either it is late sure um I'll move continuation of item eight I second it

4:02:11okay all in favor aye okay uh now I now adjourn the city council Redevelopment agency meeting to Monday May the 3rd 2010.

4:02:25council member otter will be um absent at that meeting excuse absence thank you all for coming uh and hanging in there with us hmm