City Council Meeting August 16, 2010

0:00:05good evening everyone welcome to the meeting of the El Cerrito city council and we will begin with roll call thank you council member Jones here councilmember Potter here councilmember Lyman here mayor Pro tem Chang and mayor Abelson here and I invite everyone to join us and particularly

0:00:29join mayor Pro Tim Chang as we do the Pledge of Allegiance [Music] one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all the next item on the agenda is Council on staff Communications and I'd like to begin by announcing that we just came out of a special

0:01:05counsel session where we interviewed for the design review board we had some wonderful applicants to choose from and I would like to announce that we have selected Cassandra Adams to fill the remaining vacancy design review board with that I'd like to make a few more

0:01:24announcements number one I would like to thank our Police Department for the special job that they did in um passing the boot around and they raised funds this last week on my daughter's birthday August the 12th for Special Olympics and the next or the day before I guess

0:01:53um the police department Association raised money for Jerry's Kids by being celebrity waiters at Macaroni Grill so we I'm very proud of the work that our Public Safety folks are doing in our community to make every this a better place to live on their own time so thank

0:02:19you upcoming events on August the 22nd we are opening this shade history room and there will be a ribbon cutting ceremony that's on August 22nd from three to five and I hope that if you have time that you'll come and join us it will actually be in the upstairs part of City Hall

0:02:42here and then on August 30th we're having a Dynamo golf tournament and if you're interested in participating you can um go on to [Music] www.el.cerido.org Recreation or you can just simply call 559 7000 and ask for Monica the funds from this event are used for scholarships for

0:03:14students who would not otherwise be able to participate in any of our 30 camps in the summer and as well as our sleep away camp these kids kids in these programs some of them really depend upon those scholarships and this golf tournament is one of the main ways that we raise money

0:03:35so if you'd like to participate just call 559-7000 um on September 25th from 9 to 12 at the recycling center we're going to be collecting difficult materials including for fluorescent bulbs and tubes medications and other things if you want more information about that you can call

0:04:00215-4350 then on October the 9th we're going to have a city-wide garage sale from nine to three and I'll we'll have more information later are there any other announcements from the Council sure I'd like to actually recognize staff for Distributing this postcard

0:04:24that came in is coming in the mail or is about to come in the mail and it's announcing some of the things that the mayor just announced but there are a couple that are coming up here in the near future that I wanted to make sure that people are aware of and that's on Thursday

0:04:40August 26th at 7 pm there is a open house or a discussion about the El Cerritos recycling center and that's going to be here City Hall council chambers so just wanted to make sure that people were aware of that and I also here at City Hall council chambers on August 31st Tuesday at 7 pm

0:05:04is a opportunity to give feedback on proposed animal ordinance so that if you're interested in that and so you'll plan ahead properly for that chance to get outside and see a free movie is Saturday September 11th a cinema in the park and that's at uh Cerrito Vista Park

0:05:28and the movie is Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs starting at dusk on that day and then um as part of the part of the crime prevention committee uh try safety day is at El Cerrito Plaza and that's on Saturday September 18th 11 A.M to 3 P.M come out and meet firefighters and police officers from El

0:05:54Cerrito and Albany and the Kensington Fire Protection District I'll just announce now since we won't be meeting until the second or the third Monday in September as the next meeting so uh the the Chamber of Commerce is having their annual Taste of El Cerrito it's going to be a slightly different

0:06:15format and that it's at the city um City's community center with entertainment provided by the Berkeley Opera and it's 45 per person from five to nine and you get um uh you get no host bar and full me full Italian three-course meal and um and I forgot if I mentioned so it's

0:06:35Saturday September 25th from 5 to 9 pm so let's pass that on oh I just briefly wanted to announce and reiterate what mayor Abelson said and to thank the El Cerrito Police Department for their extraordinarily high level of service and also um to let you know in conjunction with

0:06:55the shoddy historical room grand opening on August 22nd there will be a display of the Japanese flower photograph exhibits that is sponsored by the El Cerrito historical society that may be of interest to many folks and the details are on our website and then finally I wanted to acknowledge

0:07:14that many of the youthful residents of El Cerrito this week are at the city's camp ravencliff out on the Eel River and so I wanted to thank Chris Jones for all of his effort in organizing the camp and to wish all the campers uh safe and fun week up in Humboldt County

0:07:34thank you I just wanted to reiterate the the mayor's comments about National Night Out and tips for cops well attended I see the the chief police our new police chief is in the audience and she was making the rounds and she had a very active audience that wanted to talk with

0:07:53her so that it was it was very good and Sergeant or Lieutenant benini is here who uh was part of the organizing of that night it was great a lot of police a lot of interaction and I thought it was very very worthwhile on many fronts so thank you thank you are there staff

0:08:15announcements I believe the Public Works director has one thank you madam mayor as you're aware the Portland Middle School is set to open a new session next week at a brand new campus it's a temporary campus being built on the lower Playfield of that school um and as we have make been making plans

0:08:37with the school district on this one of the major new parts of this whole new campus will be this traffic circulation and how kids get to and from school in the new location one of the key elements of that is the school buses uh the AC transit buses where they drop off the kids in the

0:08:58morning where they will pick them up in the afternoon there's been three parties actively involved with this for the last several months working on the the best way to do this and that is the city staff with public works and police department staff involved the school district themselves

0:09:13and last but not least AC Transit who operates the buses they all have their own needs and agenda we've been trying to find the right balance with that we did come up with a recommendation that the school buses would stage on Moser Lane which is on the south side of the campus

0:09:31and the one of the school district's primary objectives is to have the school buses as close to the entrance gate as possible the layout of those three bus stops were to have one just to the west of that gate and then two more bus stop areas to the east of the gate going up the hill

0:09:49we sent out notification to the neighborhood to let them know what we were planning and also in anticipation of bringing an item to city council which had not necessarily to do with the with the no parking zones for bus stops but with some white curb temporary drop-off zones for students

0:10:08we've elected not to go that route with the white curve so we did not bring an action item to the council however in the audience or a lot of the neighbors who would have comments on this plan so I just wanted to set the stage a little bit with what has gone before and what

0:10:24the recommendations were at this point some of the things you might hear is is why not use Portland drive on the other side of the school for the bus stops unfortunate Portland Drive is a one-way Street uphill the buses would discharge kids on the wrong side and we actually considered whether or

0:10:41not it was worth trying to reverse the direction on of travel on the street and that that had its own problems specifically with the intersection at the top um and another another question we got was why not put the third bus stop instead of to the West towards the

0:10:57community center move it up the hill and that has some problems of its own with your permission I'd like to invite Bill Savage up from the school district at this time to fill in a few of the more gaps on on background here before we go to the public comment period

0:11:16thank you council members and Mayor Bill Savage engineering officer with West Contra Costa Unified School District and we're very excited to be opening our temporary campus and reflecting the need for student safety and staff safety to get our school out of the seismically

0:11:32Hazardous buildings at Portland Middle School and I appreciate the public works department and everyone in the city working with us on this issue related to the bus stop relocation I think from the school district standpoint we we certainly hear the concerns of the

0:11:48neighbors that related to student safety to their own safety and what we've tried to focus on when we've gone through the discussions here is the best location for the buses that serve our students would be as close as possible to the campus and to the gates where we'll have

0:12:05ready access to site supervisors and to a police officer that's assigned to the campus we have four sros that are on we have one SRO one the safety resource officer from city of El Cerrito and four site supervisors who will be active on a daily basis at our campus that can

0:12:22assist in student safety and can help to manage and supervise all the areas of the campus including Mosher Lane during the before and after school periods and all the access will go through that gate that's at that driveway where the sliding gate is installed directly

0:12:37almost directly opposite Pomona but not quite a little bit offsets slightly so our initial approach had been to put bust One Stop below the driveway and two stops above but in hearing some of the concerns that we had from the neighbors and the preschool families that we saw

0:12:57in emails we were we have been working with with uh Public Works to look at alternative locations and with AC Transit the the requirements that AC Transit has related to clearances and visual needs to be able to pull out into traffic are is going to restrict us it worked on

0:13:16this morning with staff on site could we get all three stops in the area directly east of the driveway and the gate going up the hill and there's about 155 feet there and that's just not enough to give uh three buses they're staging and pull out location needs and so we we do

0:13:35believe that we're going to need to put one of the stops below the driveway and we can be within 15 feet of the hydrant which the for the rear of the stop so extending then about 60 feet down the hill from that so two stops above One Stop below the driveway and directs uh

0:13:52visual supervision area for our campus supervisors so I think that this offers us the the best opportunity for student safety and for safety of the neighborhood one of the other concerns that we did hear from the neighbors was regarding the issues related to emissions from the buses and I I hope

0:14:11that it you have seen the communication that AC Transit provided us with the idling their idling policy and the policy related to idling which is that none of the buses can be uh they they prohibit idling for any more than three minutes at any location and and we

0:14:29certainly will work with them to do to make sure that that's not exceeded and will be obviously Public Works and the school district will be working to make sure that this approach is effective and works for for all involved and I'd be happy to answer any questions if you have any

0:14:50no thank you okay uh okay we are in staff announcements so are there any more staff announcements yeah mayor I just want to um make that a clear point the reason we don't have questions isn't because we don't want to have questions is because we're at a period of the agenda where

0:15:11we're not allowed to question isn't that correct that is I was just going to chime in and say that um that just to remind the council that this item is not on the agenda tonight um since uh Jerry knew that members of the public were going to be attending um he wanted to take the opportunity to

0:15:27understand Communications to provide you with some additional information but as you know since it's not on the agenda um there there are as an opportunity to for you to hear from the public to ask questions and to make brief comments but that extended discussion and decisions

0:15:42are not permitted under the brown Act could I ask for clarification that um there isn't a plan to bring this to the city council for a decision because it's an AC Transit jurisdictional issue or will it be something that comes later um it it is somewhat an AC Transit

0:15:59jurisdictional issue the the city engineer in El Cerrito me is been designated with the authority to uh create no parking zones and response response to bus stops created by AC Transit so yes it is their policy to make bus stops where they where they see fit and then we'll have the authority to

0:16:19put no parking zones to keep cars out of those bus stops so somewhat of a ministerial act although we are actively involved with AC Transit and planning things particularly with such an involved site is this thank you for that clarification in light of where we are on the agenda I

0:16:36would like to know if there are any other staff Communications or announcements okay so with that we're going to move on to the next item on the agenda which is oral Communications from the public on items which are not otherwise on the agenda if you'd like to speak on an item

0:16:54that is listed on the agenda you can do so at the time we discuss that item in either case we request that you fill out a speaker slip which are available up here by the city engineer right there and um so we will begin taking um public speakers now and our acting city clerk would you like

0:17:21to call the first speaker please sure um I'd also like to let the public know that we do have a speaker timer system that is up here on the um on the diocese when the green light is activated you can begin your words you will have three minutes to speak the yellow light will

0:17:36turn on when there is one minute left and when your time is ready whiz concluded will be when the red light goes on and I will make sure to let you know that um our first Speaker tonight is Joanne Wong I didn't uh neglect to say one thing if you wanted to speak on an item

0:17:52on the consent calendar this is the time when you would do that also I forgot to say that thank you hello I'm Joanne Wong my husband I own music works here in El Cerrito I'd like to thank the council for allowing me to voice my concerns about the tree planting that's going on on San Pablo

0:18:14Avenue I was wondering I had given a list of 11 tree planting concerns to Jerry Bradshaw is wondering if the council had seen that and if not I do have copies I just want to stay within my three minutes here so I could give these to you later I also have pictures and of uh

0:18:35the various concerns we have as well as I did send a bill to the city manager in regards to having to uh clean up the concrete and remove dog poop from an area that was where the trees are being planted we're we're having problems and I think it'd probably be best if I just

0:18:53go ahead and read what the letter I had sent to the city manager I enclosed a bill for removal of dog excrement from the dirt area carved out by the city to plant trees I'm also including charges in this bill for removing graffiti drawn into the wet cement in front of our

0:19:08store the El Cerrito florist which is on the same block as us attempted to call several departments within the city government to come out and fix the problem but no one was no one ever came and so after waiting half an hour Louis Torres and I wedded down the area and

0:19:23tried to trial it down ourselves we store owners work 12 to 16 hour days and we don't have time to have to take care of this kind of problem and this is to me foreshadowing what will be seen once the trees are planted in addition to the items that I have on my list we have no illusions that if

0:19:43someone gets hit by a bicycle while coming out of our store because the tree planting will cut the tree side that will cut the sidewalk to about half the size of what it is right now we have problems as it is with almost being hit by bicycles when we come out of our

0:19:58store and we know that bicyclists are not supposed to be there but they are and so with the tree planting it will cut down the size of the sidewalk for bicyclists they'll automatically start coming over towards our opening of our door and we've had near misses and in

0:20:16fact my husband actually was hit by a bicycle and that's with the sidewalk with the normal size it was and our concern of course is about if a small child was to be the victim of such an incident something really tragic could happen and we have no illusions that if someone's going to sue they'll

0:20:35sue us first the bicyclists and they may come after the city or not I have been told that the trees will slow down traffic in hand San Pablo Avenue for pedestrians and make a statement about global climate change I don't think these are realistic it's a highway people will go fast that the

0:20:54pedestrians it's not a pedestrian walk because the businesses are too far apart and global climate change I don't think a couple of trees on our block will make a difference and every inconvenience caused by the trees will have to be addressed by us so if I could leave these with you thank

0:21:13you the next speaker is David Banks Kong good evening Council my name is David Banks Kong I'm the board president for the El Cerrito preschool Cooperative I'm here tonight to express not only my but the membership of our schools opposition to the westernmost bus stop as Mr Savage

0:21:41and Mr Bradshaw mentioned pertaining to Portola Middle School the other parents will speak to the Smiths excuse me specific issues I wanted to give the council a little brief history on our place in the community if you didn't know the El Cerrito preschool Cooperative is the second oldest

0:21:59preschool in the United States it is the oldest preschool west of the Mississippi this year we'll be proudly celebrating our 70th Anniversary all of you guys are invited um you know it's a cooperative and so all the parents participate in our school um and helped us and our stand along

0:22:19with teachers you know trying to guide our children in a play-based philosophy education um our most famous Alum which might also be El Cerrito's most of famous citizen is John Fogerty of Credence Clearwater Revival his mother in the 40s was actually instrumental in founding the

0:22:39school and was actually the school's first director um you know um that being said sometimes I like to think that maybe she would be here in my position um also in opposition to the westernmost bus stop um I have petitions here from the parents of the school as well as

0:22:57Neighbors in the media vicinity um who have signed their names other about a hundred of them a little over 100 in opposition of the bus stop um and where it's being placed we feel that it is there are major safety concerns for our children for the children of the middle school and that

0:23:19there are other options um for the placement of this bus stop um so I'm gonna end my time now and I'll let some of the other parents come and speak to specific concerns and issues thank you I apologize if I get any of your mispronounce any of your names good evening

0:23:50my name is Crystal I'm the mother of a five-year-old who just graduated from ecpc and I have a younger one I'm looking forward to returning to ecpc as a co-op we have specific jobs when we're at the preschool to watch how the kids play we have two parents in the front yard

0:24:10every day in the morning and afternoon our job is to watch our kids inside the schoolyard not to pay attention to what's going on outside in the streets last year we had an incident where one motorcycle police was sitting right in that parking lot at the community center

0:24:30two School District police cars were driving up down Mosier Lane three El Cerrito police vehicles were driving up and down Mosier Lane and after about half an hour of that we saw a group of kids running down Mosher Lane don't know what it was for don't know where they were headed but there was a

0:24:49lot of screaming a lot of running a lot of noise these are preschool kids they get distracted they run to the fence we don't know what's going on and to me as a parent I'm concerned about their safety so to have a bus stop there it worries me I don't know what those kids are doing

0:25:09when they should be going home instead they're hanging out in front of the school they're using swear words words that I don't want my child to be exposed to at that age and I think it's inappropriate to have a bus stop across the street from a preschool we work very hard to keep our kids safe

0:25:28to teach them how we want them to grow up as adults and I really don't want that bus stop there so please think through this carefully thank you Charles weitzer hi um so I have a daughter that graduated from ecpc El Cerrito preschool cooperative and I have one that's currently going

0:26:02there and um we all from time to time participate each week and do different jobs and one of the jobs is or several of the jobs are to be in the front yard facing Moser uh about I think it was a year and a half ago or something like that um I was in the front yard and a rock the

0:26:28size of my fist came flying across the street from some students we had multiple parents who observed this I have absolutely no doubt that if that rock had hit one of our kids in the head the kid would have died flat out we've had many many situations like that

0:26:51I wanted to talk tonight about what I had actually experienced my wife happened to be meeting me at the school I ran out tried to get the kids to stop tried to talk to them they would not stop they kept walking we ended up calling the police and along with two or three police cars

0:27:09we confronted the kids their names were taken I called the principal of Portola and nothing really happened a second incident that happened is that again I was working at the school and there was a gaggle of about six kids right in front of our gate they had come down we had watched them

0:27:29come down from Portola and they were using the most horrendous language you have ever heard in your life terrible terrible language our head teacher went to them and said guys I really need you to stop this it's not appropriate and they completely ignored her I went outside and I confronted them in

0:27:50a very uh nice but not threatening way and I said you know you really need to move along these are little kids there have been many other incidents we've had to deal with from these kids what I can tell you is that me personally if another rock gets thrown or if I see a fight or something else

0:28:15I'm not going to go out there I'm going to call the police and I will do it every time something happens I think the other thing that you ought to consider is you know from time to time the wind does blow in a southerly fashion which of you would want your grandchild

0:28:32or child breathing exhaust for three minutes thank you very much yeah Ari thank you my name is Daniel Ari I'm a resident of Richmond my daughter goes to ecpc and I'm just coming to voice my support of ecpc and our community of parents I'm concerned about my daughter's safety

0:29:07from The increased traffic of students going to and from and also concerned about the exhaust fumes as well so I am just here to put in my voice and say I agree with what these people are saying I agree thank you thank you Paul Paul nurse nurse nurses thank you

0:29:34my name is Paul narcis I'm a resident of El Cerrito and also have a son that attends ecpc and also agree with the things have been said so far and some other parents will come up and voice their opinion as well I understand what's been said before I understand that there's probably been a lot of work

0:29:48done in studies done in terms of where these bus stops should go we just want to make sure that in that consideration is also our feelings and also the consideration of how our children are going to be impacted by this bus stop being there yeah we can do studies and we can talk about what's

0:30:03best for AC transit in terms of spacing they may need but also we hope that you guys consider what's going to be best for these children who are just trying to go to school and just trying to learn and just get a start in life and not really be influenced by these older kids

0:30:18who sometimes do things that are inappropriate thank you thank you Liz Spurlock hello I have a child that goes to ecpc and um I know that there needs to be busting for the kids at the middle school but I would appreciate it a lot if that bus stop could be as far as possible from

0:30:46our schools for the traffic concerns exhaust concerns safety concerns with the behavior of the middle school students and my support everything my fellow parents have said thank you Shari I'm sorry Sherry nahi Fredrickson nihei I'm sorry my name is Sherry Fredrickson and I have

0:31:16a seven-year-old daughter that went to ecpc and I have a five-year-old that goes there um four-year-old excuse me it's going returning there next year and I also support everything that these parents have said about the Portola uh bus stop David McLean hello my name is David McLean I'm a

0:31:44resident of El Cerrito on norvel Avenue I think there are some things that are not being very well thought through about the placement of the especially the um the downhill most a stop the location of this of the bus when it's at that stop is going to obscure observation of all the children that may

0:32:07be downhill across the street anywhere around the bus if somebody's going to be observing people on the other side of the bus then you'll need to have extra staff that's actually on the other side of the street if you think about it if you're standing on one side of a bus

0:32:20you're not going to be able to see what children are doing on the other side so I think it's it's very difficult for me to to believe that having a person or even two people at that bus area are really going to be able to observe what's happening with children on the

0:32:36other side of the street um I also think there's a significant liability the city may be facing um with children who are crossing the street in that area and cars that are coming by who are not going to be able to see if children are popping out from behind this bus that's parked there it's

0:32:54true that that's also a risk for buses further up the hill but there are fewer children that are going to be trying to cross the street in that uphill area because there's not a significant of a destination there's not as much traffic and I think that the that the median in

0:33:09the middle of the road encourages children to be able to just hop across one lane and then another so you know there's a reason why school buses have lights and cars are not allowed to go around them when kids are entering and exiting these buses don't have that and

0:33:24and traffic's just not going to wait on a busy street like that when children are entering and exiting the bus so um I think it's really something significant that that I have not heard consideration of um I also think that dividing the pickup and drop-off areas between the two sides

0:33:43of Portola school because there is going to be pick up and drop off for most of the children over on Portola that's going to make it more difficult for oversight to happen if you do have staff that's focusing on that there's going to be some staff that's still on the campus

0:33:55when children are being picked up and dropped off if you have to divide the remaining staff for the pickup and drop-off sites between two locations it's just not going to work as well you're not going to be able to have the same coverage so it would be better if you could

0:34:09consolidate it all over to Portola there would be less concerns about pollution less concerns about noise less concerns about oversight so so that would be preferred but at the very least moving the bus stops further up the hill is what everybody has been asking for

0:34:29um I also think that there are clear alternatives to to what what has been proposed and um I think that you know if if there there's a snag for instance there's been uh some concern about the intersection up at the top of Portola if the direction of traffic was reversed I

0:34:49think that those things can be addressed and thought through so um I I think that too quickly the Alternatives have been rejected from what I've heard from the residents in the neighborhood many people support actually moving the bus stops over to Portola that's something that's the most

0:35:05popular and so if um if any any flaws in one strategy or another could be worked around that would be much better I also think regarding the um the idling of the trucks you know fire departments now require that they have exhaust for their diesel engines they have big doors that

0:35:24open it's not a problem for um uh you know if it's not a problem for a vehicle to be idling for 30 seconds you'd think that it would be okay for firemen to have have that but what they found in studies is there are a lot of firemen who suffer very traumatic problems with their lungs as a result of

0:35:43exposure to that diesel exhaust and I hope that you can imagine how much more sensitive two and a half year old children are to that sort of thing so it's really it's really unacceptable I think to be exposing small children and pregnant women to that kind of environmental poison thank you

0:36:03thanks Shannon Hicks hi thank you um I have been at ucpc for going on six years I was a board member for several of those years and I'm very proud of our place in our community I'm proud of our relations with our neighbors with the community center and with the theater

0:36:24and with the residents that surround our school I feel easy peasy does a very good job of representing ourselves maintaining our grounds we're a green Wildlife certified school we do as much Organics as possible we don't even use bleach in our school and I'm very proud

0:36:40of that my concerns is the safety of those students we constantly have the flow between the Middle School and the high school walk past our our school in our parking lot and that's been a problem in the past in my six years I personally have broken up two fights the

0:36:55kids from the Middle School come down to that spot the Western spot because it's the one that is not visible it's the there's the high part of the yard and then it's dropped down right before the center and they meet there for fights and I personally have had to break them

0:37:08up in the afternoon when school gets out and I called the police and I've also called the principal and I was told to call the police because it's their issue not the schools and that's my big concern is the monitoring and the protection of our children um my two and a half year old coming

0:37:24home with cuss words you know wasn't my favorite day at El Cerrito preschool um so I'd really like you to think about that and I thank you for your time thank you thank you Dr Mara matmud hi my name is Mara and I have two small children Ella who's five who's just

0:37:49graduating from acpc and Max who's just started there who's two and a half and I'm also the vice president of the El Cerrito preschool Co-op board and I also wanted to speak to you as a parent as a board member and then also as a developmental psychologist there's been a lot of brain research

0:38:09done recently on how children think and how brains develop and one of the things that they're discovering is that the frontal cortex the part that we all use to make decisions to plan to reason to behave as we do in these council chambers continues developing throughout

0:38:27our life it doesn't develop significantly until much later in life children such as our children at the preschool teenagers rely largely on what is referred to as the reptilian part of the brain the part of the brain that is actually focusing on survival on fight

0:38:46or flight on instinct and so I'm just trying to put a context here for these teenagers at no fault of their own their behavior is oftentimes characteristic of it can be characterized as impulsive it can be characterized as unplanned as somewhat reactive not to say that teenagers are always acting in

0:39:09this way I'm sure many of you have teenagers I was a teenager and I can say yes that is true that is true some of the time probably of of all teenagers and I think that some of the behaviors that my parents the other parents have referenced and that I have also

0:39:26witnessed are characteristic they're teenagers that's what happens and such things as throwing rocks as using poor judgment and and using all sorts of language that they're trying out themselves I've personally witnessed you know a number of teenagers three teenagers

0:39:46jumping our fence into our play yard um solid language teachers cars being actually damaged by people throwing rocks I think at them when they're walking by teenagers from the school all of those things are characteristic of teenage behavior and that's not to say that that's always

0:40:07going to happen but it does happen it has happened and it probably will continue to happen I think a concern as a parent and I think probably a concern of yours is policy makers probably as as Mr Savage also is working on behalf of Educators is what can we do then to

0:40:23protect these kids to ensure that these teenagers will have a safe passage to and from school and to ensure that the very small children we have 70 families at our preschool that those children aren't unnecessarily exposed to behavior that is it can be characterized as

0:40:41dangerous and if we see that these kinds of incidences have have happened already just in kind of the coming and going how will those then will those will there be a lot more of those kinds of behaviors since we may have a large group of children potentially somewhat unsupervised

0:41:02directly across the street from our school thank you thank you JL Myrick good evening I just wanted to quickly thank you council members I wanted to quickly um address one of the the resolutions on the consent calendar today and I wanted to thank mayor Abelson for um for for uh

0:41:30supporting this resolution and encourage the other council members to also support it um it's in favor of the California jobs budget which is a very important budget this would close the state 17.9 billion dollar uh uh deficit in a way that saves 430 000 jobs that the governor's

0:41:49proposing cutting um it would do this by creating some small cuts and of about eight billion dollars but also um putting in place some some modest revenues things like oh oil Severance fee um changing the way income taxes are done in a way where there are there are

0:42:06there's an increase but folks are able to write that off on their federal taxes and also reducing sales tax and this is actually done in a way that's particularly helpful for cities like El Cerrito because um the sales tax from the state level is decreased but the amount that City's get

0:42:22is still the same and for a city like El Cerrito I know you all are going to be putting a half cent tax on your ballots pretty soon that will make it easier so your residents will actually still be paying less in sales tax but you as a city will be getting more so um this new

0:42:36budget also will uh be be giving money back to allow the localities in El Cerrito that's going to mean 229 thousand dollars um plus and so it would be great if you guys were to endorse this resolution in support of the California jobs budget thank you okay thank you

0:43:00I had a clarification to ask staff regarding staff our staff yeah Jerry you had um indicated that there's alternatives on this and I just wanted to clarify what is the final recommendation on the parking on the Bus Parking yes as it stands now the the recommendation stays as it has

0:43:27been for the last several weeks which is to put two bus stops uphill and and then the third bus stop downhill downhill from where the oh downhill from the gate there opposite the entrance gate yeah and we put it roughly where um in relation to Ashbury and Norville

0:43:45um Ashbury is about 250 to 300 feet away from Pomona so this bus would stop very nearly the Pomona edge of Pomona and extend about 60 feet downhill so it would take up about one-fourth of that distance between the two streets thank you we have no presentations and so now we will move to item number

0:44:14five which is adoption adoption of the consent calendar mayor I'd have a few words that I need to say before this uh agenda item uh in accordance with government code 109 1.5 I need to disclose that Avila is also a subcontractor to a consultant providing services to my employer the City and

0:44:35County of San Francisco and I am the task manager who will be reviewing Avila's work product um in it's not to say that I have a conflict it's just that the UC attorney has advised that I put that in the record what for what item was that I believe that's 5c I said Charlie 5c correct okay

0:44:58thank you is there a motion uh Mary excuse me I'd like to pull five e uh plastic bag band okay and approval of the consent calendars items five A through five D and item five F through five I one second all in favor please say aye aye aye in the opposition or abstention

0:45:25motion carries unanimously with that we'll move on to five e thank you um I have a question I'm very supportive of the spirit and probably about 99 of the uh ordinance what bothers me is this um it states in the uh agenda bill summary that the bill will also require

0:45:50these talking about the plastic bags the the bill will also require these stores to sell bags for no less than five cents um we're talking are we talking there about the paper bags or the plastic bags that we want to ban I think we have staff yeah okay thank you

0:46:15this I'm Melanie Mintz environmental services division manager the five senses referring to paper bags okay could you give me briefly the reasoning behind we can allow stores the charge no less than five cents up unlimited I guess uh for a paper bag I don't understand the logic behind this I think

0:46:40the rationale behind it is to create a distance is to create an incentive for people to move towards the um reusable bags that can be used I think in the legislation it talks about 100 times um so I think it is trying to put a more true cost to it and to create an

0:46:57incentive to move towards the more sustainable option okay thank you I appreciate it here's my here's my concern um right now actually right now A A store owner whoever the store owner is um builds the cost of paper bags into their price if we're allowing them to charge us for

0:47:26paper bags we're creating we we are creating a profit Center for them for instance if it costs them three cents a bag or a Cent and a half I don't know what it is um they'll probably double that charge and charge for the paper bag went man I understand a lot the logic is

0:47:46okay then go get a reusable bag which is fine I I don't know if people are going to do that I don't know if um McDonald's and some of the other folks are going to promote the use of non-plastic or or paper bags right now I'm asked if I want to want to use a paper bag or a plastic bag or not there

0:48:11won't be any incentive for the grocery store owners and the store owners to ask that question in my opinion and I was wondering why the California Grocers Association was backing this and I don't know I'm not privy to their thinking but I would think that one of

0:48:31them is they can now charge in fact they're being forced to charge uh five cents and so I it bothers me a little bit uh I don't know if it bothers me enough to to turn this thing down but I think it's a major point I understand the thinking I think in reality what's going to happen is

0:48:52they're going to charge for the bags it's going to be a pay for a product a a a profit Center for them and they're going to be making money on something that they're not making money on now so um unfortunately we don't have the full language of the bill attached to the

0:49:11staff report but I wanted to point out that there are pollution issues related to paper bags and the manufacturing a pulp and that's one of the reason even though that the bag is focused on Marine debris and the Plastics that they're trying to discourage use of all

0:49:24single-use bags and secondly the fee does not go back to the Grocers they can only cover the administrative part the rest of it is going to go back to the state on a pollution abatement so I don't think that we can think of this as a profit opportunity for the grocery stores and

0:49:40that may be one of the reasons they're just trying to reduce their usage and when this bill if it were to be approved goes into effect then they can get out of the existing bag requirement which is an educational one and the printing of the notices on the bags that we're

0:49:55already working under so it gets to shift some of the responsibility away from the groceries doing the educational program and a Statewide program that's consistent from City to city and county to county that will allow us to reduce the use of the single-use bag so if you

0:50:10perhaps it had the full language of the bill to analyze then we would have seen more of that but I totally support this bill I think it's a good thing I think a lot of communities have been pushing for this and struggling against lawsuits from the Plastic industry and that this

0:50:25would level playing field throughout the state for consistent policy well you're right if we did have the language or if it was outlined that way I probably wouldn't have a problem with it so I appreciate the clarification it also like like to point out that our

0:50:42Environmental Quality committee at its last meeting unanimously unanimously supported this bill any other comments on this well just that I think I would absolutely support this um uh these two legislations so yeah okay anymore all right I'll I want to make sure that you recognize that

0:51:09Scott's waving his hand we put intentionally put the links to the full text of the bill and the Agenda Report so if you wanted to see it but we we actually worked sometimes the bills are very lengthy if you prefer that we always include the paper we can but we did put the links in

0:51:29um trying to save trying to save the paper but again we could do either in the future on behalf of the environment I would like to say I appreciate the fact that you put the links there how soon we'll be getting our packets electronically I'm working on that um I think we should all do it I'll have

0:51:52an iPad and no more paper at all anyway okay so hearing no more comments on this item is there a motion I'll move approval of item 5e second all in favor please say aye aye any opposition sanctions motion cares unanimously thank you very much okay with that we have no public

0:52:16hearings and we have one policy matter which is the El Cerrito neighborhood traffic Management program and Yvette Ortiz is going to be presenting that item good evening council members and mayor Abelson my name is Yvette Ortiz engineering manager with the public works department

0:52:39tonight's staff is would like to present to you the city of El Cerrito's neighborhood traffic Management program for your consideration and adoption a prepared a presentation to outline the main points of the neighborhood topic Management program it's not that short

0:53:00but I hope it's informative first I'll start off with an introduction and background including how we handled existing traffic requests and how that will interact with the new neighborhood traffic Management program I'll then review how we actually develop the neighborhood traffic Management

0:53:24program based on input from the public and Council and guidance from the general plan um I'll discuss the key steps for processing a neighborhood traffic management requests including like key approval metrics um based on petitions and ballots and finally I'll just briefly discuss the

0:53:44first year of implementation for the program if it is approved by the city council the ntmp represents the city of El Cerrito's commitment to enhance the livability and safety of its if it's neighborhoods it is intended to improve the quality of life for the residents that live along

0:54:06our streets as well as all modes of travel through those streets it provides City staff and community members guidelines procedures and a toolbox of potential solutions to address speeding concerns high traffic volumes and pedestrian and bicycle comfort and safety related concerns

0:54:25the program is intended to rely on active Community participation to engage neighbors and help them to be part of the solution so how do the existing ntp and the existing and ntp processes interact the regular traffic request process will remain and and what will happen is we

0:54:48will encourage residents no matter what their concern is to submit a standard request it can be in writing it can be email letter or a phone call that's how we take in requests now we will look at the request and if it's a regular like safety concern like pedestrian Crossing or intersection

0:55:07related at right-of-way limited visibility or parking modifications will handle it as we do now like first come first serve if it's a concern related Mark to livability or quality of life such as maybe speeding and just high traffic volumes are again like pedestrian or bicycle amenities

0:55:28then we'll Elevate that to an ntp process and we'll continue to maintain City initiated projects similar to the recently um the projects that we recently received grants for Mosher and Ashbury and the Central and Liberty Street State projects and these all these processes will use

0:55:48the same tools however the ntp is a little bit more complex because it uses the combination of tools and at more than one location versus a regular traffic Quest that looks like maybe like a spot in spot location or an intersection and might involve just the use of one or two measures

0:56:08um so just to recap the existing traffic requests a process a public work staff evaluates them on a first come first serve basis uh most like pressing um safety matters are addressed as soon as possible back in 2005 we developed a tracking system just to organize the

0:56:26requests and ensure that we we follow through and then Public Works in the police department hold monthly coordination meetings to discuss traffic concerns such as beatings how to best address them and um and this process will remain in place with the ntmp Public Works and police use education

0:56:48enforcement and Engineering tools to address currently to adjust speeding and pedestrian and bike concerns Public Works implements and evaluates the engineering tools and our police regularly employ the education and enforcement measures what what do we use what does Public

0:57:06Works use we use our your standard traffic signs and striping and pavement markings um in 1995 the City established the speed hemp program to address speeding concerns um and the speed hunts were installed in about 10 city blocks and they were installed within the first five years

0:57:26since then we really haven't had the last 10 years haven't installed a speed hump um because the streets are not meeting the criteria that was established back in 1995. most recently we have began began installing enhanced and high visibility signs and pavement markings you'll see

0:57:47them around town the fluorescent the double-sided The in-stream Pedestrian signs the latter and textured crosswalks the advanced warning bars which you'll see right at the at the bottom picture um in advance of crosswalks mostly or all at the lonely Greenway and we've started painting Edge lines

0:58:06and painted medians to like narrow the effect of the roadway we did that on Moser and um along Kearney near Fairmont Elementary School our Police Department uh Lieutenant Panini is here um they have taken the lead on doing the education enforcement measures um the the tool that's most used in our

0:58:29toolbox right now is the speed radar trailer um when residents call about speeding concerns and the concern isn't like high enough to Warrant a speed bump for example well um ask them to what will request the police department to deploy the radar trailer as an education tool to inform

0:58:51the drivers that regularly use that road of how fast they really are going and we also informed the residents that they can call the police department at any time email or phone to request that the trailer be placed on their street regularly if they want and the speed trailer has is a useful

0:59:07tool it's been shown to reduce speeds at about five miles per hour but again it's a temporary kind of measure in an educational measure and of course our police department does regular speed enforcement and enforcement of pedestrian safety in the crosswalk and finally they do pedestrian and

0:59:29bicycle safety classes in local classrooms and the bicycle Rodeo that was conducted back in May if you have any questions about that Lieutenant Panini can answer those so what are the problems with the current situation we we have increasing concerns regarding vehicle speeds

0:59:48traffic volumes and obstacles to pedestrian and bicycle travel and convenience police cannot Target all those streets the streets are not meeting the speed bump criteria or speed up criteria and then a public work staff doesn't have a formal process to evaluate other

1:00:06types of measures that could be used on streets so the the questions we need to resolve is which requests have priority which traffic conditions represent normal traffic conditions what measures are appropriate for use in the city of El Cerrito and how our impacts to nearby

1:00:28streets evaluated many jurisdictions throughout the country in the Bay Area face similar questions and develop a neighborhood traffic Management program or a traffic calming program to help staff and residents systematically address traffic issues involving these livability and

1:00:47safety concerns in residential neighborhoods as a result in early 2009 Public Works hired TJ Camp Transportation Consultants to assist us with the development of this program and TJ cam did come with us in July of 2009 to hold a study session with city council to to get your input about this

1:01:07program so the intent is to not develop just an off-the-shelf traffic coming program that could be applicable to any City but to really spend the time and tailor it and to meet the needs of El Cerrito so the steps we took to develop the ntmp it was based on past City efforts some

1:01:32of the most recent measures that we've implemented like the high visibility signing and striping guidance provided by the general plan which calls for the development of a neighborhood traffic Management program guidance provided by sitting Council in July of 2009. policies and lessons

1:01:47learned from other jurisdictions and transportation industry standards and finally public input at two Community meetings that we held in March and then written correspondence that we received from April through just July of 2010.

1:02:05so the ntp objectives um most of these are the same that we put we presented back in July of 2009 but we did refine them based on your input and based on um what we heard from the public um you can see there the key is to promote safe and convenient travel by pedestrians bicyclists and vehicles

1:02:28encourage compliance with designated speed limits encourage through traffic to take more appropriate travel routes based on roadway classification but limit impacts to other local streets maintain the capacity and facilitate traffic flow on the city's arterial and

1:02:44collectors collector system and can collaborate with our police and fire department to balance traffic management needs with emergency response needs you know some of them some are the process oriented objectives is to provide a well-defined process that is responsive to all neighborhoods in El

1:03:03Cerrito to help to give staff criteria to be objective to help prioritize projects to maximize neighborhood participation and reach measurable consensus before anything is implemented use the least restrictive measure that will address concerns and provide for timely and effective implementation

1:03:25one of the new objectives that I've added recently just um is to maintain and enhance existing routes for accessibility this is not in your report but I would like to add it it's just to any traffic management measure that is installed should ensure that we don't alter

1:03:46existing accessible routes or if we do that we enhance them and not create an impediment um so as as we develop the ntnp one of the key things we heard is we need to balance user needs who are the users of our streets they're pedestrians bicyclists and the motoring public we

1:04:10heard that we need to reconcile the need for livable streets quiet low seats low speed streets with efficient and convenient vehicle routes by designing a streak that's convenient for all users or that functions well for all users we need to provide special consideration for requests in your

1:04:29schools Transit centers and activity centers with high level of use and by special consideration I mean that we have to collaborate with those operators of those facilities not every measure will apply to those streets that are right next to schools we have to consider that the schools that parents

1:04:49need to drop off their kids and we will need to balance the concerns of the residents on certain streets with the needs for our access and circulation around schools the other thing we heard I think over and over again from the community is that pedestrian safety is like the key

1:05:10concern and the provision of pedestrian friendly features will help you know lead the way because if you provide these pedestrian features such as curb bulb outs or race crosswalk they have a dual purpose they not only you know improve Crossing safety but they also

1:05:32calm traffic calm traffic speeds and so our neighborhood traffic Management program is geared to to that we want to focus on those types of tools first I also wanted to say that um in our qualifying and prioritization criteria we do give locations near facilities that generate

1:05:54High pedestrian use uh additional points so that they can receive a higher higher priority if I may um I'm I'm actually looking at the prioritization worksheet and and I'm at certain if I understand where on the sheet uh you are making reference to that statement

1:06:14so you you're referring to appendix D of the neighborhood traffic management that's correct appendix d as in David it's a one-page form is that it's at the bottom of the form correct and activity centers the second one for four points is that correct exactly so

1:06:41we have um the the bottom two categories are pedestrian and bicycle facilities and then pedestrian and bicycle activity so facilities depending on what type of facility um a pedestrian bike facility or this the condition of the facility you can get up to six points and then

1:07:02locations near um pedestrian or bicycle generators depending on what type of Center it is can get up to six points as well well I guess my point is that it shouldn't just be a pedestrian or bicycle Center or it should just be any activity center right it's a gen I mean I guess the definition

1:07:21of activity center is is what we're discussing at the moment and you've you've I didn't indicated that things like parks and senior centers and libraries are rated higher but they're not rated as high as a school is that correct thank you the prioritization criteria if you want

1:07:50to comment on it if there's any suggestions for changes yeah I'll hold my comments to the end I just wanted to understand where you were talking about these these activity centers okay so given that our the the ntpmp um our focus is hopefully to install um measures that improve pedestrian safety

1:08:17we still recognize that there might be some streets out there local streets that carry an extraordinary amount of through traffic and at that point we would consider measures to direct that traffic to use collector and arterial streets for the general plan however

1:08:34this was not a concern that was brought up at all during the public comment period really it was speeding and pedestrian concerns and in terms of extraordinary amounts of through traffic most of a typical traffic volume on a residential street could be about 600 vehicles per day

1:08:59um our threshold for qualifying for some type of measure for Traffic Solutions or traffic volume Solutions is 1 000 vehicles per day but at the same time if there's there's one street that generates 1 000 vehicles per day because there's multiple family units there

1:09:19that wouldn't qualify so the traffic volumes have to be higher than what would be generated by the uses on that block that have direct access to that block one one of the other things that shaped the neighborhood traffic Management program is the concept of complete

1:09:40streets over the last few years the historical view of streets has been changing many agents have many agencies have begun instituting complete streets policies to ensure that roadway roadways meet the needs of all users in a complete streets environment people

1:09:59feel safe walking and biking the environment is comfortable for all users access to destinations is logical and convenient environmentally sustainable travel options are promoted and congestion is reduced and efficiency increased Caltrans recently approved a complete

1:10:16streets implementation action plan which applies to State highways such as San Pablo Avenue and the California complete streets Act of 2008 requires that local governments include a complete streets policies in the next revision of their General plans this is not a complete streets policy

1:10:32but is very much consistent with the complete streets policy and it's a step in the right direction we are focusing on multimodal travel through our residential streets not only that but also making the streets themselves more livable the ntmp process um includes an a petition request which

1:10:55is the initial step evaluation of qualifying criteria project prioritization neighborhood meetings detailed analyzes and finally neighborhood consensus for installation the process is intended to be completed under one year we did try to simplify the process there was additional steps

1:11:17in our draft program but based on public comment we did try to consolidate some of those steps and generally we'll follow the Tier 1 process and only elevate it to a tier 2 process for more severe traffic conditions this is the flow chart and I think it's appendix B of the ntmp report

1:11:43um as Illustrated here to the top top left the process is intended to start with a regular traffic request and we can screen out the the various types of requests so the program can be applied to almost any Street in the city of El Cerrito we heard from you and the public that some

1:12:08some of them um a lot of the concerns are along our collector our and minor arterials not just our local streets the only streets that are excluded from this program are our principal arterials which is which are San Pablo Avenue and Fairmont and I think portions of Central

1:12:27and Carlson otherwise every street qualifies based on input from the public and the council we did reduce the thresholds for on speeds currently a street has to have an 85th percentile speed at or above 30 miles per hour for Speed hemp to qualify for a speed hemp we reduce that to 27 miles per hour

1:12:56on local streets or pedestrian routes and to 29 miles per hour on other collector and minor materials we've also added a criteria for traffic volumes as I discussed previously and then we have a a third criteria for Collision data any street that has a collision

1:13:18um collisions that are above the city right average will focus on as well um but that would again if it's a an urgent safety concern we would focus on those locations through our regular traffic request process prioritization criteria once a request qualifies for a neighborhood traffic

1:13:45Management program then we will have to prioritize over those requests um right now we receive about 100 traffic requests per year various levels and complexities about 15 to 20 percent of those are are related to speeding um we can't get to all the requests especially the speeding ones because

1:14:09they are more complex it's not a simple solution so you know this program will help us prioritize those requests that do qualify so we can focus on those uh during the year or um every year when we prioritize the requests again the prioritization criteria generally

1:14:31it's the higher the speeds the higher the volumes um the the higher the request ranks um right now uh let's see I might have flipped this yeah yeah I flipped up first did didn't you okay thanks I felt the two points it the travel speeds um you based on travel speeds you can

1:14:55get up to actually 12 points um for traffic volumes you can get up to 15 points Collision history 12 points and um the status of The Pedestrian bicycle facility six points and the amount of pedestrian bicycle activity or the location near activity centers up to six

1:15:16points so what are the tools in our toolbox the tools in our toolbox are intended to alter driver behavior and improve conditions for non-motorized Street users an ntp will involve several use of several of these tools at one or more locations unlike a regular traffic

1:15:40request and um I mentioned earlier that we have two tiers tier one Solutions and tier two solutions this is a list of like the typical tier one measures that could be used in El Cerrito there's the educational measures the speed trailer speed radar trailer which we already have but we've listed a

1:16:03couple of two new programs the neighborhood pace car program and the pledge program I'm sorry the neighborhood pace car program and the neighborhood speed Watch program our Police Department is excited to help Public Works launch these programs in the near future if we if

1:16:20Council approves the program um we also will continue the the standard enforcement measures and Engineering measures including the various types of signs and high visibility markings that you see there one of the new items um is a residential street multi-way stop sign we would have

1:16:42to return a council to adopt that stop sign criteria but we think it'll be a valuable two to have in our in our toolbox once it's reviewed and considered by Council generally tier one measures are non-physical measures consisting of educational and enforcement measures

1:17:04combined with relatively low-cost engineering devices tier one measures are anticipated to provide the most effective solutions for most neighborhood traffic concerns in El Cerrito and our goal is to try the least restrictive measure that will address the neighborhood concerns

1:17:23to your true tier 2 measures are more physical measures there are measures that you can kind of separate between speech control and volume control the speed control measures are listed on on your left they could be the speed feedback signs speed cushions speed humps race crosswalks

1:17:42curveball bouts traffic circles um and then the volume control function are the more severe types of measures and those can be diagonal diverters Half street closures one-way streets and full street closures um tier like I mentioned before the tier two measures are the most restrictive

1:18:07form of traffic management and we didn't hear from the public a big need for these types of measures in El Cerrito but they are here if need be um they have more significant impacts and usually require an environmental impact analysis some type of a mild impact analysis

1:18:25what we will do is if it elevates to this type of measure we need to work very closely with the residents any special land uses or facilities in the area and our police and fire and Community Development departments to to find the best solution for that specific

1:18:44situation and I want to go over some of the key um key approval steps the first step the first big step for an ntp process is for the neighborhood to submit a petition showing 60 approval from the addresses on the street we think that the petition process is very important because it engages The

1:19:12Neighbors and it shows us that it's not just one person that's really concerned but that there is a neighborhood that's concerned about livability issues on their block it also helps us again have the neighborhood and residents be part of this the solution and identify a

1:19:30solution we have a considered that we do have extra long blocks in El Cerrito and that Gathering petition signatures can be difficult on those blocks and so in order just to get the process started we've reduced the percentage for longer blocks to 55 percent also for streets

1:19:51that cross jurisdictional boundaries we only will require that addresses in El Cerrito are reflected in the petition although we will encourage the resident that's circulating the petition to walk across the street or down the block to talk to the neighbors in the other City

1:20:10multi-family dwelling units will be counted as one vote to get the process started this is just to get the process started it's easier I think to go to one you know resident in an apartment building and say can you represent the apartment building so that we can get this

1:20:26petition into the City and start the process but once we actually start the process in terms of communicating with the residents inviting them to community meetings giving them a vote about what type of measure would be implemented we will staff will send notices to each

1:20:42unit in an apartment building and they will get an equal vote but just to get the process started it's just one vote for the petition but excuse me I have a question about this slide I understand the need to have a trigger for and getting the petition process and

1:21:00initiating an investigation but the last point on the slide indicates that a different level of support is needed for a tier one engineering measure and I'm wondering how you know when you're only at the beginning of looking at the problem what the possible solution would be

1:21:17so everyone will start with the tier one process every request will initially start with that 60 percent if during after like our first community meeting we find that in our initial evaluation that a tier 2 measure may be needed then we would require that a second petition

1:21:38be completed that shows 70 support and we we are asking for that higher level of support because those tier two measures can be more restrictive and have more impacts but no matter what um the process will start as a tier one process okay thank you as long as you're

1:21:57discussing the differences between Tier 1 and tier two can you give us the boundary differences between tier one and tier two because when I read through this there there seemed to be a geographic boundary difference between the two levels as well well initially

1:22:13um what we're envisioning is that any ntmp request will include the project Street and one block around the project Street um depending on the type of tier two measure it will be a larger area and every request will be different depending on what you know the adjacent

1:22:33arterial or some geographical feature that separates neighborhoods it can be a pretty large area um right thank you that's a clarifying question about the tier one so if you're if the neighborhood has to to get and collect petition signatures to just initiate the

1:22:57process how do they know what they're approving if you're just starting you know they've I assume have been able to enumerate what the problem is but then so they don't have to identify a solution they can just basically what we're asking them to is is describe what

1:23:13their concerns are so if let's say it'll come in as a regular request um and someone says I we have we're concerned about speeding on our block um that's the type of request we can't not handle through our regular traffic request process now so what we will do is elevate it to a neighborhood traffic

1:23:32management request we will contact the original requester and ask them um to get their neighborhood involved and circulate a petition say that they have a common identification a common concern and that they will want to work together with City to identify a solution that's

1:23:49appropriate for for their Street okay because because I could see potentially the community might or at least a project proponent wants what would come in with a pre set idea of what they thought was the right solution and then you know before you get going down this line of

1:24:05collecting signatures and like knowing what is probably the best recommended outcome that you're I don't know I just would want to be have a clear enough process so people noted yeah that they're best informed with yeah and so I I can try to I'll clarify that in like the the request form that

1:24:26they shouldn't try to identify a solution they can they can list it of course and in our evaluation we can you know evaluate that particular type of measure or Improvement and and the pros and cons of that Improvement and then recommend maybe what's best suited for

1:24:42that location foreign so for a tier one measure really that initial petition is the only petition that's required we just want to know that that neighborhood is has a common concern and is willing to work for a solution um we will have two neighborhood meetings and we'll staff will recommend

1:25:06uh revisions and and just hear from all the neighbors for a tier two process things get more complicated because again it's restricted has more impacts and so we will go to a kind of a ballot um ballot system where we'll give a vote to both the project street where the measure will be

1:25:27implemented as well as neighboring streets where traffic might be diverted greater weight will be given to the project Street can you go back to that slide that new text there oh yes I'm sorry about that yeah um so if a vote so if a ballot is not returned how is it scored

1:25:52[Music] approval percent for project streets we will basically be measuring the approval percentage so we will have to get at least you know 70 percent approval so those ballots that are not returned will be counted as a no vote and um the reverse would be true for

1:26:22neighboring streets usually what we found is that for the neighboring streets we get the no votes versus the you know yes we like this idea we usually get the no votes so for the neighboring student will basically be the the no votes will will determine basically the disapproval rating

1:26:42okay so that a a non-responsive address on the neighboring streets would be a yes yes considered you know neutral approval um exactly and just to let you know this is based on a as it's been developed by the city of San Leandro and they have found it to um work for them they they tried other

1:27:03systems in the past and this is working for them now so um and our consultant recommended it and I think it's worth a try this way we give a vote to the whole neighborhood so so I take it that a project proponent you know two or three houses that are really supportive would

1:27:22at some point be able to find out who has voted and they would be able to go try to encourage them to to even if they vote no at least vote yeah is that is that the is the app is the addresses that have returned a ballot going to be disclosed to the to the people who are

1:27:41pushing the idea that's a that's a I think it we can give that information of who's voted but not necessarily what they voted correct this person these people have not returned to ballot I mean that's that's that's essentially my question is is have is there going to

1:28:03be a process by which people who are advocating for the project would be able to know which addresses in which units of an address have cast a ballot so they can at least try and get those those non-voters to return a ballot so that they are not counted as no's or at

1:28:21least they're counted I think that would that would work thank you one of the other key questions about those tier two measures that divert traffic is how do you determine what's an acceptable level of traffic diversion and when does it become a significant impact for another Street

1:28:46um the city of Portland has um develop this impact threshold curve that they have found useful and basically an increase of 150 vehicles per day is acceptable on any local Street it's a volume of traffic that's not noticeable um and so but the the the that volume can increase

1:29:14with the increasing existing traffic volume of a street it can go up higher um I forget um let me look that up it's appendix f is in Frank is that right yep yes it's appendix f I think if I remember it was like 400 but let me double check correct it's no more than 400 per

1:29:45vehicles per day increase so if a if a local Street for example is carrying 1800 Vehicles a day a 400 vehicle per day increase would not be noticeable to them it would be considered an acceptable traffic diversion and then acceptability of um diverted traffic to arterial and collector

1:30:09streets will be based on the city of El Cerrito's General plan level of service criteria at intersections we're almost done tier one measures would not require city council action except for regulatory signs as required by the municipal code which includes like stop signs and um

1:30:32turn restriction signs for a controversial tier two measures the city engineer May request City accounts approval on a case-by-case basis or as required by the municipal code city council at that point may decide to approve deny or revise the trial or permanent installation of the tier 2

1:30:52measures and then city council will also approve the funding required for the installation of these type of measures that are not covered by the operating budget so what do we see for the first year well just a quick um the ntmp has been reviewed and supported by the police and

1:31:12fire departments the police police's traffic safety unit is excited about the neighborhood pace car program and the neighborhood speed Watch program and they will play a big role in implementing those programs um the Public Works anticipates using unspent funds previously appropriated by

1:31:33the speed hemp program to launch these two programs as well as for some data collection for requests that we may get next year also staff anticipates returning to Council in a few months to review a new multi-way stop sign criteria so that's the first the kind of division

1:31:53we have for the first year of the program I'm available to answer any questions you may have if I may um it goes into effect immediately tonight if I read the resolution correctly and it has a September One debt date of cut off how how what that they're gonna have to wait a whole year

1:32:14to get their applications that's a very good question no um that would September 1st would be a regular date but for this first year since we are starting so late I propose to extend that to December 1st so it is there um shouldn't it be on an annual basis tied into some form of

1:32:34budget deadline so I'm just curious why if September one is a good it may be a perfectly good date for a budget deadline but it it shouldn't it be in in a cycle so that we get these requests can can go through some portion of the of the flow chart that very nice

1:32:51long colorful flow chart um in time for a budget setting what I envisioned was um getting these requests in um evaluating them having a certain budget which we we are going to use that 14 000 from this B to hemp program to do data collection evaluate then prioritize

1:33:09them and the next fiscal year um if we need funds for implementation it'll give us enough time to evaluate those and get them ready for the budget okay and that's what September 1 would normally do is what you're thinking all right um if you if you don't mind I'm

1:33:25going to ask Lieutenant benini I'm going to make us his you know sitting in the back worthwhile um lieutenant benini the 85th percentile of 27 miles per hour and I I do want to recognize staff going below 30 miles an hour when you look at appendix I as in um I which is the you know neighboring

1:33:47cities that you guys looked at there are none that are below 30 miles an hour and I know that we asked you that in last July based on the devastating injuries that occur when a vehicle and a pedestrian Collide um so I do want to appreciate I really appreciate that you took that to heart

1:34:03and put that into our policy but I do want to ask Lieutenant Benin how many of our streets will easily qualify for the 12 points um which is six miles per hour over 27 miles per hour in an 85th percentile not that I understand the math behind it but hopefully you do

1:34:23you understand what the 85th percentile is and how that's established and why we why we're there if you would like to give us a two set a two Holocaust two seconds is too short if you'd like to give us a 30 second briefing on that that'd be great because my concern is

1:34:38that most of our streets are going to qualify for the for if not all the points but a good number of points out of that criteria in this one specific area of speed correct the 85th percentile is what most of the people are traveling at or below when we roll out that radar trailer so if you have a

1:34:58speed limit that is 25 miles per hour the 85th percentile is usually within a few miles per hour of that established speed limit so in looking at that for what we commonly use it for is radar or lidar enforcement that 85th percentile gets established as a general speed safe

1:35:16speed for the most Motors that are using that particular roadway we will see the occasional two to three percenter that is going much faster we will see the occasional two to three percenter that is traveling much slower as an established uh 85th percentile and

1:35:32established number that can be used for establishing speed limits within cities in California so in our documented speed criteria of appendix D is in David we give points 5 through 12 for going two three four five and six miles per miles per hour over posted speed limit the 85th

1:35:57percentile being six miles per hour over the posted speed limit which we're typically at 25 is that correct for most of the streets in El Cerrito yes yeah so six miles over will be 31 as the 85th percentile are there going to be a lot of streets that that get that

1:36:1212 point bonus so to speak as a project criteria yes yeah I was afraid of that um as long as you're standing there let me ask my next question um I understand to the speed watch and the pace programs these are um newly embraced by the the city of El Cerrito and and I was just wondering if

1:36:34you would explain um how those would work and and and how we embrace them certainly the neighborhood component to this uh Paul or this procedure is a proportion that the police department's excited about because we can modify behavior on a short-term basis through enforcement and

1:36:55education it's the residents in the community that can modify behavior in the long term so that's part of what we're looking for and in conjunction with that the pace card program helps the community the neighborhood the residents establish or begin to modify that behavior those residents that sign

1:37:12a pledge they're gonna they're saying that we will go out and around town around our neighborhood we're going to travel at that 25 miles per hour which to a lot of us seems slow but when you're a residential Community with limited site distance because of trees

1:37:27Vehicles whatever it may be that 25 miles an hour is important so we have residents that are saying when I'm driving I'm going to go out there and do 25 miles per hour the theory behind that being the more residents that travel at 25 miles an hour will regulate the speed

1:37:41of the other motorist it will help bring the speeds down on those streets where there are some concerns or it'll help bring down those streets in the neighborhood that has gone forward and said we have an issue one of them is speeding and to get the neighborhood and

1:37:55the community involved this is one of those areas we also would like to loan them a radar gun the radar trailer is one thing where you can get the feedback the department and the city can get the feedback on the speed limits for cars or the speeds that cars are traveling up and down those

1:38:09roadways if we hand a resident a radar gun and they can now take that and go out and do the same thing that the police officer does granted they'll need a little bit of training but we can get that training to them in 30 minutes they can go out and take a look at those

1:38:21speeds most of the time what we're finding is the perception of speed is a greater problem for the resident than the actual speed because of the road way the roadway is designed an incline or a decline a crosswalk in the area the width of the roadway it may be a

1:38:38situation where the perceived speed is actually faster than what a radar gun might show this may help the community as a whole get an understanding of what is going on the actual speeds as it relates to what they're seeing and what they think the speed is thank you very much

1:38:54problem um so Yvette on on a street like the Arlington or Barrett or cutting if a block goes out and asks for a project how how is that addressed because those are some of our more secondary art collector streets I think is the it may not be the precise term but there's a term similar to the

1:39:19secondary collector how how do we look at do we look at the whole length of that collector Street or do we just do whatever the citizens are potentially demonstrating is necessary in that one block and and not necessarily address up and down the length of that collector

1:39:38yeah and arterials such as that we probably couldn't not the whole stretch but we would look at a logical segment that maybe has the same you know roadway configuration um it'll depend on the concern if it's you know um I think a lot of what we've heard along the Arlington is pedestrian

1:40:00amenities people really want a sidewalk on one part of the street and a sidewalk they um will also you know narrow the feeling of the road and calm traffic and as well as provide a pedestrian facility um so we would definitely look at more than just one block but we the

1:40:20neighborhood The Neighbors on one block could petition us to start that process they don't have to do the whole length to get that process started okay excellent um and I I'm going to ask the next question it's not um it's it's it's a question of Staff but it's really to start you know when

1:40:37we get back into discussion potentially uh allow us some better understanding of the prioritization worksheet on appendix d um because one of my concerns is that this worksheet as we've just demonstrated may not differentiate projects and you may end up with a lot of projects with the same score

1:40:58and they maybe scored the same actually in the same categories speed volume I think you you made a comment earlier that most El Cerrito streets are at 600 vehicles per day or something like that so one of my concerns is that the worksheet does not necessarily um

1:41:15help you differentiate between the projects so my question would be these five categories documented speed traffic volumes Collision data pedestrian bicycle facilities and pedestrian and bicycle activity in your mind because they're certainly not one has 12 2 have 12 one has 15 and

1:41:36two have six so they're not numerically currently weighted the same if I guess my question is if the speed is higher that's a that's a Potential Threat to pedestrians and so um there isn't really a differentiation between car and pedestrian in these categories I guess is what I'm trying to

1:41:59get at or I guess what I'm also asking is how do these these are all metrics these are all things that can be measured that's that's the useful part of the form but how do you anticipate that a higher score in one category does or does not affect either vehicle movement or pedestrian and

1:42:17bicycle movement concern does have a direct relationship to The Pedestrian safety concern um they do go hand in hand um so if they score high in the speed um category then um I think it's a valuable um or request to to look at um the one thing I'm as I rethink this I

1:42:48think the traffic volume criteria the points assigned to traffic volume might be too high um because we're giving greater weight to streets that maybe carry high traffic volume so that I think the best thing to do would be to reduce the points that are giving to the traffic traffic volume

1:43:04and give more weight to uh the speeds thank you I think I'm sure we'll discuss it our policy or how our policy is captured in this worksheet when we're done with questions for you but I think you're getting at the the topic that uh that I hope to discuss is how our policy

1:43:22is reflected in this worksheet thank you okay um so questions yeah so I was curious about how um so you describe multiple requests that come in um every year and uh 100 a year 20 related to speeding and and that kind of the the standard kind of minimal impact requests would just continue their

1:43:47standard track but what about I guess how would you factor in maybe there's multiple requests individual specific requests coming in from um one neighborhood pocket that when you cumulatively look at all of them together they're meriting some larger kind of assessment and you know can is

1:44:08there some mechanism to to you know yeah map out everything that comes in and see where yeah and that's when we use like the city initiated kind of projects where we're getting concerns from different parties and different residents about a certain Street and that street also happens to be maybe a

1:44:26key Corridor pedestrian or bicycle Corridor um in the city we we try to kind of package that into a city-initiated project um what we found is um so that's our process now and we will continue to do that if there's a neighborhood's not you know organized but we are hearing from

1:44:51different parts of a neighborhood the city could take could take the lead on those projects or maybe just have neighbors communicate with each other um actually that what that's what happened as at one of the community meetings that we held for this project there was a neighbor on cutting in a

1:45:07neighbor on Junction and they had similar concerns and they said well we should get together and you know approach the city about our our common concerns along this in this area okay and um so that might speak to some level of committee like targeted Outreach to to

1:45:24get people connected and maybe reflecting back to the community where all the requests are coming in um but so another question is so going back to the um the PACE program which I think is an awesome excellent idea that I actually personally do myself on Sea View and enjoy slowing everybody down

1:45:43because my mom and you know is walking up and down all the time and um and so I guess how would this be triggered I mean it sounds like it's a program overall that would be applied to the whole community that it or is it it's a tool within the tier one system I

1:46:01guess I'm not clear how it would get rolled out as a a solution for a tier one request versus just being open to everyone well this is one of the portions that I saw as the petition for the neighborhood coming into play because it will get the community involved and they'll talk to

1:46:20each other and they may have the realization that their the speed on the street is a concern so they may get together sign the petition or work it out and say this is one of the things that we want to work on the city may be able to go to them and say you guys have

1:46:34six or seven people on your petition here that say speed's an issue then we may be able to get with them and explain to them if there's the pledge program the pace card program and these residents May begin to roll it out in that specific Community as it becomes

1:46:47more of a factor or more of a player in this neighborhood traffic management it may be something that other residents there can also take to heart and begin to emulate and soon you have what started as three or four requests that were difficult to track because they

1:47:02were individualized through the petition portion of this now becomes a situation where we have a group of people we can start with that group can take it to a few more and pretty soon we can get 30 residents for it and it'll begin to Blossom that's one of the areas where we

1:47:15saw as the petition portion to be heavily influenced and something that we can we can deal with right away and we did run in that situation that you were describing where the police department received requests for some form of traffic enforcement Public Works received some form of request for some

1:47:30form of traffic call me or something we couldn't put the two together or this petition process and this neighborhood traffic Management program we can now link the two and go to one specific area and say we have these this is what I'm hearing we have these concerns and list

1:47:43them for them residents may say absolutely we're on board with that or we may get to something that wasn't specifically addressed or they didn't relate properly and whatever communication they had with us that will also come out I see so it sounds like it's it's one of

1:47:57the solutions that would be offered to petitioners but then I guess if just independent of of the petition process if there's just the thoughts of how you would roll it out to the rest of the community right and that's the education aspect of this hopefully as more Community or more

1:48:14neighborhoods become aware of this more people will begin to adopt it and it's not something that needs this specific program but this is the Avenue where we can get the information out quickly okay got it we could also try just you know if we want to roll it out on a more like

1:48:28city-wide basis getting it in the newsletter or definitely on our website but um in the recreation for sure something to publicize it great um and so I guess my question other question about um just how many requests are currently kind of in the queue I know when we

1:48:49started this whole process there was other community other neighborhoods that had similar concerns as the Rockaway neighborhood that we let go and under the you know before in order to move that forward while we were developing this program I was just curious about the sense of just

1:49:03I think just a general sense there's probably about 10 kind of streets out there neighborhoods out there that are have been following the program and and would like to get started on the process and they're not in the queue right now we're waiting for the program and what I've

1:49:22told them is that um if Council adopts it I will contact them and just kind of educate them on the on the process and then they can submit the you know the required forms okay thanks thank you questions Sandy I just have a question about the concept of the city initiated project

1:49:42um I feel like our traffic decisions it's important to have a prioritization and that's what this whole program is looking at um But ultimately I think that our investment in especially tier two projects the city's investment should be based on data and need and that ultimately all

1:50:02the projects are City initiated that we have created this process for right raising concerns bringing people together and addressing Problems But ultimately when the council has to allocate the money and make a commitment to do these projects they should be based on real safety

1:50:21needs and my other concern is that I've sat on this Council where we've put stop signs in in neighborhoods where they were unwanted and we had to make those tough decisions for safety so we we at the same time where it's so important to involve the community there also has to be this

1:50:38ultimate check about you know what the data is showing us and about the real need and so I just didn't want to lose sight of that and I feel like making a distinction between a city initiated project and like a neighborhood group initiated project makes it seem like if everybody's just

1:50:55upset and complains enough action is going to happen even if it's an expenditures that's not in the best interest of all the residents of El Cerrito so that's a topic I want to come back to I don't know if you have a comment on the use of that term City initiated project and maybe how I might

1:51:09have misunderstood what it meant Jerry do you want to help me on this one we use that term here to indicate that there's there's other drivers driving traffic projects this program opens up a whole new way for for traffic projects to come about but the old ways are still there and City

1:51:34initiative project classic example is The Pedestrian bicycle program along Ashbury and upper Moser we we put this together based on some a gathering of of needs assessments that we had done and a grant program came along so we saw a funding source we matched that together and lo

1:51:54and behold we have funding so we're pursuing this project that was not developed from a petition or neighborhood uh consensus that's something that the city has seen uh as a need and we we went for that that's been the classic way to get significant projects done

1:52:09from streetscapes to uh just crosswalk enhancements this opens up another Avenue to help sift through all the requests we get and and help organize and prioritize that and to some extent some of these some of these projects may come about that the city doesn't have

1:52:29any strong feelings one way or another on what a neighborhood wants to do yet if we can find funding and it really is the desire of the neighborhood and we don't see any reason not to go ahead that that's another way to look at some of the projects that may come about this

1:52:43way we're not giving up any Authority we have to manage the traffic situation in town or to program and expend funds that the city has so those are definitely constraints on this program that we have but just another Avenue to listen to the people to try and do the best thing for

1:53:02the neighborhoods so this back to your question City initiative projects as foreseen here are just the way we've been doing business all along okay I guess that I'm concerned by putting an exact percentage of vote in that we could be elevating expectations beyond what we think is necessary for

1:53:23Public Safety or what works for the larger community so I just maybe we'll talk about whether those percentages need to be made to be a little bit more flexible and so that we can also make it clear that even when there's a petition action may not result from it if the

1:53:40data doesn't support the need and I think we heard from Lieutenant benini about the perceptionist feed and how that can sometimes not be accurate no no I just have two questions one is we dealt with last year uh situation on one of the the city streets where Street

1:54:00definitions became one of the primary focuses of the of the discussion and the debate are those definitions being used here are they being collapsed into for instance uh residential streets of three to four hundred cars per day was used as a definition and a justification

1:54:21um by the proponents of of the uh of the Rockaway situation now I see the it you don't get any points for anything less than a thousand vehicles per day so I was wondering am I missing something we're still using those definitions or are we going in another Direction

1:54:45same definitions the the traffic that Rockwood should have generated based on the number of homes on it was three to four hundred vehicles per day but 1800 vehicles per day were traveling on Broadway on a typical weekday and the threshold that we're considering as part of this

1:55:05program to be extraordinary amount of traffic is 1 000 vehicles per day so it's still it's still consistent with those original definitions yeah but if somebody comes to us and says you know we have 20 houses and that works out the three to four hundred we're still staying though with a

1:55:25thousand thousand is really the threshold correct correct well yeah and I like that um because I think one of the things that I found that I didn't like about the definitions that were used previously is they didn't seem to reflect the city and the historical use of not only of that

1:55:45particular street but when you get into residential streets that are around shopping centers and and schools and things that generate high volume they're not typical according to the definition they're not typical residential streets but in fact they're residential streets they just

1:56:04have a higher historically they've had a higher threshold so we are we're not it doesn't seem like we're using that definition that really the threshold we're using is local streets less than a thousand uh is is the threshold there I think you're right there I think the only

1:56:22Distinction on Street classification is the primary and principle arterials are excluded from this other than that all streets are seen as equal and we just go to the numbers okay and that threshold's higher than the definition we were using uh well we weren't per proposing three

1:56:41to four hundred as the definition of a residential street we just said that that was the base number that would be seen if it was just the residents using the street and we didn't try and Define it as such uh this threshold wasn't really brought in at that point the

1:56:57distinction sea view is a collector and it has about 3 500 cars Brockway is a is a non-collector and it had about 1800 cards so you can see right there the points uh would be a little different for the two streets in this but there would be no no extra points given for a

1:57:16collector of residential for instance it's just the numbers at this point right okay so I'm happy to see that actually that's good second thing uh when we get to the end of the the report it said that uh remedies and and how we can implement improvements based on resources which

1:57:41obviously is the fact is the case so I come to our the neighborhood safety program that the police will be will be heading up glad to see that and we might buy or we might have radar guns for people to use so I was just wondering do we have extra Ray Garden on this hand around or what what is

1:58:04something like that cost just basic what the police department has done over the last couple years is we've replaced a lot of the radar guns with laser speed enforcement guns so the officers on the street now have the ability to use laser which in a short explanation is these

1:58:20are pinpoint one car with a laser then the beam with the radar which captures several I see so we as we replace those radar units with lasers we still have the radar units they're larger a little bit more cumbersome for law enforcement use but they work great for a resident

1:58:36to get a picture of what exactly is going on it's one of the things that we wanted to do so a resident can now take that look at the same data or feedback that uh that an officer would get and be able to understand what's actually going on yeah I like it because it gets back

1:58:50to what council member Potter had said about at some point we introduce actual data into the equation and I think we'll be surprised or the residents will be surprised if they they think that there's a big huge speed problem on their street and when they actually read

1:59:09it it may not be as bad as they think and I I was with city of Albany when they did the Marin and people were complaining about speed and they did all the studies they did them three times the speed uh didn't increase that much maybe one to two miles an hour or more over the course of

1:59:29of a five-year study but what they saw was the volume of traffic picked up and therefore the perception that there was a lot more that cars were going faster and so yeah I I really like that because I think what you're saying is before everybody gets worked up and everything

1:59:47that the neighborhood could actually determine for themselves almost if they have a bigger problem as they think they do and that's one of the nice things about this program is it may be a situation where we somebody comes to the city or to the police department says we

2:00:01have this issue we'll go out and take a look at it and through the program as it's set up through what the tools that we can use in the toolbox we can grab from it may end up being a non-issue right they don't even have to go start this with a with a petition they

2:00:16perceive a problem Maybe before they go through the whole formal deal here they can investigate for themselves and see if there really is a problem and it gives us an opportunity to have some documentation or some way to get back to that Resident or that community and say

2:00:31we took a look at your problem here's the things we've done here's the toolbox that we used what what we use from that toolbox and here's your end result it gives some nice feedback so that their request or their perception of a problem doesn't go unnoticed or unchecked by the

2:00:45city we can go back and say we looked at it here's what we did and here's your end result great appreciate it thanks questions of staff to to do that transition first of all are there any members of the public who would like to speak even speaker slips no speakers okay and I

2:01:09want to um just first of all thank Yvette Cortese very much because I had a lot of questions which I'm not going to share with you now because she answered them all and I want to tell her that I really appreciate the way you uh went through them with me today for I don't think it

2:01:27was maybe an hour and a half um thank you I appreciate that and uh then I want to State what it gave to me it gave me a sense of what this program was about and I wanted to start that as the transition if we could I think this is a program and we've been talking

2:01:43about it a little bit where we're enabling the public or the members of our community to participate in this process in a way that will I think enable them to work well with their neighbors and other members of our community and come up with a um so a traffic system that in fact is a much

2:02:05better traffic system for doing that and as she was answering my questions every uh answer that she gave me tended to talk about that and I don't know if you even noticed that yourself event but it was about um you know the idea of collecting the data and getting people together to talk

2:02:24about it and I think that's a really good thing and I think it will be we will benefit by it we'll still have all of our usual Traffic Systems in place but we'll have this new mechanism where rather than having neighbors who are frustrated because they can't get their pet problem taken

2:02:48care of can work towards a resolution of that problem either by discovering as was said maybe it really isn't a problem at all or maybe it really is a problem and maybe there really is a real solution and maybe then it follows into falls into one of these more minor tier one

2:03:08category Solutions or maybe it in fact is one of the ones that is really truly a big problem and needs a tier 2 solution but it's really I think helping to put the solutions and the process into the hand of the neighbors and giving them control of Their Own Destiny and I

2:03:26really do like that and I do like the staff for having come up with that kind of a solution and I want to thank you and I think it's probably Jerry Bradshaw I should be thanking as well as Yvette Cortese and and probably our Consultants too and I'm probably leaving out

2:03:43somebody but I I think it's a a great work and I look forward to being really successful having said that I also see that if this exact program if we approve it tonight in this exact program has a few things in it that maybe after a year or two don't work so well we can

2:04:03also bring it back in and modify it slightly or however much it needs to be modified so that in fact it works even better and um so I personally uh look forward to um passing this um resolution tonight with that idea in mind that this is our first attempt at this and we don't have to worry it's not

2:04:27like it's forever we can always make a change if there's a change needed in it but it's a great start and I also want to by the way thank the police department for their part because I could tell from the conversation tonight that you also had a hand in it and thank

2:04:44you for that and um so I I don't really have anything more than that except one more thing and that is the accessibility component which I care an awful lot about and I I think it's really important to as we go through all of these things make sure that we don't

2:05:01sort of trade accessibility for something else and um it's a constant pressure I think sometimes to to try to give on one point and then along the way we somehow lost accessibility um and um so I mentioned that in when I was talking to a vet and anyway I think we actually got that was what caused

2:05:24some of these changes if you and but um anyway so having said all of that is there anyone who wants to make some comments and then hopefully finally a motion who would like to start Sandy well I just wanted to say that I feel like um ever since Jerry Bradshaw came on with the

2:05:41city as our city engineer that we've seen so many improvements in signage and education I can't count all the numbers of speed tables and new crosswalks and really well signage areas for pedestrians and any number of improvements which I'm so happy are out there so I want to thank

2:06:00you first for all that effort and I really appreciate all the staff and the collaboration between Public Works and the police department to bring this really well thought out um program together that will allow us to prioritize and the main thing I just want to reiterate

2:06:17is that we continue to make safety the top priority and that we be careful not to manage expectations of neighbors and to keep that safety as the very top priority um I think that we can get into believing that we're the only ones who use our neighborhood and that the safety of we

2:06:39just had a room this earlier this evening a room full of folks who some of them aren't even El Cerrito residents who have a concern about particular area in our city and so um I use the city streets in many areas we all do that so we have to make sure that we're making the right decisions

2:06:56for the greater uh community of users and just keeping that in mind but um I appreciate all the comments that were made I appreciate the other council members who asked for clarification and to move this program along so thanks thanks yeah I um this is actually was a goal of the city

2:07:18council about three years ago when at our goal setting was to take a look at it and it it came out of people um a lot of well I say a lot but relatively speaking there were several comments and complaints and inquiries that I heard from residents from all over the city for different particular

2:07:44things and and the staff was trying to handle him on a case-by-case basis and um it became apparent I think to the council that we tried to do some systematic way of of uh managing the process of evaluation and so um I think that uh this was a great effort and doing that I

2:08:08attended a neighborhood one of the neighborhood input sessions and Not only was the information good and the interaction uh getting people involved very good but uh I think it was appreciated by our by the people that were there that we were making this effort and that money was being well

2:08:29spent as we as at time and money uh was being well spent in that so I applaud the effort thank you very much um I think it was thorough it took some time and you looked all of it I think the the neighborhood traffic Management program provides professional industry

2:08:47standards it gives the city multiple methods and procedures to remedy situations and that's been reiterated a couple times here um and it also requires assessment and evaluation in a consistent and coordinated Manner and I really think that is one of the key benefits of this

2:09:06program um in my opinion uh some some of the remedies are better than others and but uh a couple of the ones that have hit me in particular is the use of the traffic circles uh I look at it and I've been looking around three or four years when I traveled to Berkeley it seems like you

2:09:30hit them about every other Block in some areas of town but I really think that something like Colusa Circle is probably as small as you're going to get a small area is going to get for this to work and I I've been in other areas Truckee being one and then uh Europe uses them

2:09:51quite a bit but you need good space and for it to work properly so I would just say that it's in our toolbox and that's fine but we make sure we use them in the proper areas and I I think the other major concern is to avoid remedies to transfer the problem from one area to

2:10:11the other so I was very glad to see that in the evaluation that that's taken into account on the positives I do like what we've done before and things like the crosswalk uh um travel bumps I guess uh the bulb corners and the light indicators for crosswalks seem to have promise and I do

2:10:33really like the uh the painting that we've done on crosswalks and intersections and indicator marks and arrows uh in front of the bumpers I really think the visual impact has does a lot I do like although on Fairmont we did the crosswalks up there and it's really

2:10:55slowed the buses down I've noticed they used to come around that corner and just barrel down there and at least they're slowing down a little bit so I like that um I think the program will evolve as the mayor has mentioned as we utilize it and we'll find out the the methods that

2:11:14work best for El Cerrito in our given traffic situations so I see this in closing I see this as a living document that will get better as we use it and refine the program so I'm very much in favor of it thank you thank you thank you um and thank you echoing all

2:11:31the the great work that staff has done in the community for coming out to the meetings to give input and and have Traffic Safety is at the top of their concerns um so I think um I I'm supportive of the program overall that the structure and framework um I just some concerns that I wanted to

2:11:53point out um just actually in talking about all this is the the consideration of traffic volume and vehicle volume and as a community that wants to support Transit oriented development and the perception that as we build in more Homes at BART stations you know what what is that you

2:12:12know what is that and I don't want this become a tool essentially for for Community to say no to new development because the traffic volumes that are pers are that would be projected to come from that new development would exceed these thresholds and you know basically get

2:12:28ourselves in a a sequa you know conflict Zone um so just I'm not sure how you know I think this is just one of those things to flag and observe as time goes um I think in light of that um so so I think emphasizing the the speeds versus the volume I think if we you know we can

2:12:51accommodate lots of vehicles as long as everybody's driving very safely and slowly and cautiously I think that's one way to look at it and and for our community businesses I think that's a good thing to strive for um and I think a couple of criteria that I wanted to propose to the

2:13:08council to consider is is to get the community I think that the PACE program is a great tool but potentially as the program evolves further and if pace is fully set up is is looking at kind of additional bonus points I would say for neighborhoods that um you know obviously are facing traffic

2:13:28from surrounding communities but then are taking upon themselves to not be you know part of the problem elsewhere and that they're committing to maybe a certain percentage of the neighborhood is participating in the PACE program or have done you know some kind of

2:13:42commitment to either maybe going to the the bicycle safety rodeos or just educating themselves about their own behaviors maybe committing to reducing driving to some extent of for themselves um I I suggest that because there's a lot of grant funding right now floating

2:13:59around to support everyone driving less for all the benefits not just safety but health and communities crime safety and you know potentially it's creating a whole new layer of consideration but it's um it's something I'm really interested in seeing if if there's some way to knit

2:14:20that in in that our own communities or the communities that are wanting these traffic and um uh regular programs to be installed that they're willing to to step up and change their behaviors in some quantifiable way I would want to prioritize over people who are just you know wanting to you know

2:14:40passively have things installed in their community and they're just you know feeling better about that but not changing their own behaviors um so I think that's my biggest question about somehow adding in addition to the commitment levels of agreement amongst Community having another layer

2:15:01of a way to demonstrate their own commitments to to change and make it better for everyone so I would throw that out there for the council to consider well I'm going forth here I get to say I Echo everyone's thinks that have gone before me council members uh Potter uh

2:15:22Jones and and uh Chang have summed up all the things that are I should extend out there um so I will leap into two issues that I'd like to address one is uh councilmember Potter brought up but didn't expand on which is that I see this as a process by which we prioritize

2:15:39City projects and that the nature neighborhood Transportation model this is how we get people and I think that's we've all recognized that this is an outreach program to help neighbors to understand the problems and stuff like that but I think council member Potter

2:15:55is correct these are all City projects um and they are subject to as stated in chapter five they're subject to availability of resources and I I just she after by the time you get to chapter five you've built up so much momentum in the public process that there's a sense

2:16:11of entitlement and um to that I that I mean I'm going to get to my I'm going to share with council member Chang um the desire that our policies about pedestrian friendly streets be emphasized in the priority worksheet but I do believe that we don't want to be rewarding uh neighborhoods for a

2:16:33non-objective measurable uh metric like commitment so so I actually think that this does as a process the way the process is set up right now it is measurable and objective and that's transparent and I think that's what that's actually what makes this this system really work

2:16:52um however I do want to set my second comment my first being that I really do feel that um this is a method by which we're prioritizing um that we're having people the public help us prioritize projects that are City projects there is the prioritization worksheet in

2:17:12chapter D or in appendix D David which I would like to see along with council member Chang um not reward volume quite as heavily and I think the staff member uh Yvette Ortiz did a touch on that that the potential area is a a different waiting um of these different criteria that

2:17:34would emphasize Safe Streets pedestrian friendly streets and I I trust staff has already started to respond to that comment um and I I don't want to necessarily dwell on it in detail tonight but I definitely would love us to as a group provide some sort of consensus that we

2:17:53would like to see our safe and pedestrian friendly streets maybe that being some of the focus of the priority worksheet can I ask question a procedurally if we approve this program tonight is this worksheet fixed is there a mechanism administratively to refine this worksheet as this is used in

2:18:15because I'm a little concerned about how the resolution is written in regard to approval of the program in the concept of living document is one that both council members Abelson and Jones put forward and and one of my comments was can this be a living document and how is

2:18:32it modified going forward does it have to come to council every time especially with regards to the worksheets the policy part I think I'm okay with approving is it agreed I know but these are right and and I mean for example if a new tier one or tier 2 tool comes forward you

2:19:06don't want to be locked down to the ones that you've set in your in your in this document well I think one of the questions for the council is how much discretion do you want to give um the staff to administratively adjust um the program without having to come back to council I mean there are a lot

2:19:23of ways to structure that um it immediately comes to mind that for example with um curb painting you actually gave city engineer a significant amount of um discretion to to act with the understanding that for programs changes that were likely to be publicly controversial that that he would at

2:19:42least notify the council about them before implementing them I mean there's something similar to that like something similar that could be done in addition the resolution itself could be adjusted to say that um the first um now therefore be it resolved paragraph could state that the city

2:19:59council hereby adopts in um the the program dated August 10th um and substantially the form attached here to is exhibit a and authorizes city engineer to make adjustments administratively you know consistent with council's policy directives provided at this meeting something along those lines I

2:20:28mean but if if the council's not comfortable with the exact wording we could take a break and work on it or we could bring that particular aspect of it back at the next meeting I guess I would just propose that um specifically appendix C and D and E I feel like are very

2:20:47administrative and may need adjustment as they're used so that I mean there other council members may be all right and I would be okay with that General flexibility but we could also limit it to those three appendices or actual forms that are going likely to be need adjustment

2:21:05as we begin to use them so far I'm comfortable with either one I do want to direct council member or council members to page four um one of the sentences that caught my eye in light of councilmember Potter's comment is the last sentence in section 1.3 the city engineer will continue to have

2:21:27the direction to initiate City projects separately from the ntmp does imply that the ntmp does have the authority to bring projects forward independent of the city engineer and so that's not the case and and so that's why I did make my earlier comment um all the projects are City projects

2:21:48and this is a method by which we're prioritizing City projects based on safety and our policy of Safe Streets and pedestrian friendly streets so there's at least that one sentence that I would like to potentially consider allowing the authors to to to modify um if if that's our guidance tonight

2:22:11you know we could put in the uh another way to maybe approach this we put in the resolution that uh once or twice a year or whatever we feel comfortable with um The public's Work Director can propose changes to the plan and and I know that's a little more formal than a straight administrative

2:22:33change but if we do want to check and balance we could something like that and then it would come forward to us in an in a consent calendar mode is that is that the idea yeah if it's not if it's just minor changes and nobody sees a problem with it it can stay as a consent

2:22:52calendar if somebody sees some major deal they can always pull it off I just feel like with regard to the appendices that that isn't really getting at the need to be able to make adjustments on the ground that are perhaps even for example um you know right now we ask for email

2:23:11addresses who knows in a year what kind of other addresses or information you may want to collect on the petition form so I just feel like to bring it back to the council would be cumbersome and maybe the language that the City attorney just suggested might be adequate for to provide the

2:23:30flexibility but that doesn't get to Mr lyman's Question on page four of what that sentence really means I read that to mean to just make it clear to people that we would still be taking on traffic Improvement projects right with right possibly without any neighborhood

2:23:48involvement so I don't know if it's the word the discretion that uh it is I'm ambiguous right I'm just just trying to get it clear that all projects I mean I sympathize with your earlier comment that all projects are City projects and and I don't want to have a sense of

2:24:05entitlement that if you go through the ntmp project process you're going to have a project um it's in light of safety and resources would it improve it if we struck the word um just to initiate projects rather than City projects certainly that would that would address

2:24:26I think that would be the quickest way to address my concern yes but that I don't know where else that's embedded I mean that goes to the to your comment of where else is the concept of a city project embedded inside this project inside this document it's not really anywhere else we okay we put it

2:24:44here just for that clarification and and then the rest of the program is program Centric then why don't we just add all all projects or city projects and then add that sentence and then and then I would be I would be inclined to to um exclude the appendices from our

2:25:03resolution resolution um as because they are the living part of this document and let the policy be stand on the report the six chapters that are in the report I mean you're ready to make a motion I think I could make a motion but I may need to see attorney to guide me through some

2:25:19because I do believe we are modifying the resolution um and I think you were modifying this first resolution is that was was that your recommendation it was let me get back to it so that I can assist while he's doing that if if I could ask um you put a couple additions in your

2:25:46slideshow yeah how would those be considered editions in concept that we would then perfect through some language uh maybe what I'm thinking right now is it's something maybe that we can bring back as a consent item in the next council meeting with just the revisions

2:26:06um I don't know if that's an approach we could take um and excluding the the appendices I think it's it would be very um worthwhile for us to be able to change those at any moment um to clarify them so so do I move to table this item no no let's figure something out okay because

2:26:26we're talking about you know word changes kind of the whole deal right yeah it and and because there's accessibility was one of the items that you wanted to incorporate and what was the other one the other one was declare correct the changing the composite voting system

2:26:44so are those outside the appendices then correct yeah those are in the actual report itself no they're in the report they're yeah they're in the report so there's three concepts that we're trying to infuse into the report well I think that if we want to do further work on it

2:27:00um to refine it the the most logical option would be to continue the item and can it be continued to consent or absolutely okay does that work for deadlines that you were hoping to yeah that works fine so we would expect it on the next agenda in September correct

2:27:21okay we don't want to we don't want to you're right we don't need the report and then ask for changes next meeting so that's on the books that were ready to go we would approve it as as it is we need to come back yeah we would need to send it to staff for revision and reprint and re-notice

2:27:46it and what I'm hearing is a desire from most members of the council but correct me if I'm wrong to continue the entirety of the item until the next meeting um at which point the resolution will be revised to reflect I believe the council intent to allow for the public works

2:28:06director city engineer to revise the appendices of the program um without further city council approval that the text will be of the program will be revised in section 1.3 to take out the word City from the phrase City projects and that there the additions that were made on the slides will be

2:28:24incorporated into the program so that the council can actually approve those as as discussed tonight basically we're saying we conditionally what council member Jones is saying is we conditionally approve it but we need to see the revision before we can finally

2:28:38approve it yeah I mean there are several ways to handle that but the easiest thing might be if there are no deadlines that need to be met between now and and September if I mean I think it's fairly clear from the meeting tonight that the council is generally supportive of this

2:28:52to the extent that there's a need to to communicate to the to the community that that that's the case I think you can take some formal action if you want to by motion um but it sounds like the easiest thing to do is do some cleanup and bring back the document at the next

2:29:06meeting for you to improve on consent but if you wanted to adopt a motion or somebody wanted to make a motion that you know to express the council's general support for the program is presented tonight that there's no reason not to do that I just move we continue the item

2:29:22second all in favor aye aye in the opposition or representation motion carries unanimously and thank you to all now we um are going let's see right now we are going to move to um item number eight Council assignments um I don't think I have anything that I have to report on I have a quick one

2:29:51okay the arts and culture commission met on July 21st to discuss the San Pablo Avenue historic markers program and the next meeting of the commission will be this Wednesday August 18th to continue discussion of the San Pablo Avenue streetscape project from the economic development board met

2:30:12last week um mainly to hear about the current scope of work for Dwayne Dalman economic development manager and to talk about the the shift and reorganization to make streamline the Departments given the the refocus interest on economic development and the design review board was canceled

2:30:34okay um last month the Planning Commission met uh heard the revised or I should say the evolving uh design of Safeway at the Target Center and it looks like that's moving along and hopefully it hopefully it'll move along to a conclusion and we can get going thank you there being no further Council

2:31:04liaison reports I would like to adjourn the meeting in memory of Marge Collins who passed away on August the 2nd of this year she was a long time resident of El Cerrito and was an active member of our community she was mayor from 1980 to 81 and served on the city council for

2:31:26five and a half years and she was also a founding member of the city's arts and culture commission and served as its first chair she will be remembered always as a generous and inspiring person who belonged to many organizations and she gave of her time very freely by

2:31:48volunteering and doing enormous amount of fundraising for any number of worthy causes she's survived by her husband of 43 years Marvin Collins six children 11 grandchildren 12 great-grandchildren and her six siblings some of who or at least one of whom was present at her memorial service

2:32:12that I attended and our condolences in deepest sympathy are with her family and many friends and we will miss her very much thank you with that we are I want to announce that the council is meeting in a closed session especially it's a special city council meeting

2:32:37closed session and we there will be a conference with legal counsel on anticipated litigation thank you foreign