Concurrent City Council and Redevelopment Agency Meeting February 22, 2011

0:00:17Council meetings started good evening everyone we please begin with the Roll Call councilmember benicini councilmember Abelson here councilmember Lyman here mayor Pro tem Jones here and mayor Chang here thank you um and now with pledge allegiance by councilmember beniciti

0:00:43pledge allegiance of the United States of America [Music] thank you so at this point we have any Council or staff Communications first of all I'd like to mention several things that are on our Environmental activities calendar on February the 26th there's going to be

0:01:17a special recycling collection event at the recycling center from nine until noon on March the 21st just to put it on your calendar we're going to have a study session on the animal ordinance which is part of the council meeting and um then on March the 26th from 9 until noon

0:01:44it's the city council chambers City staff and community members will discuss plans for reuse and exchange at the new recycling center including rules of conduct for those activities excuse me that'll be at the recycling center which is at 7501 Schmidt Lane and then on April 16th

0:02:07which is a new date we will have Earth Day from 9 until 1 30.

0:02:16and it will be at the the party work parties will be around town and the um uh lunchtime will activity will be at the community center and that will be followed by a com free compost giveaway at the recycling center on April the 23rd um so that that that is um that group of

0:02:46activities and I just wanted to mention that I have been busy attending um meetings and and events on Redevelopment and I recently was in Sacramento at a couple of hearings um on Redevelopment and things have I would say not been going very well in terms of uh being able to save Redevelopment for our

0:03:18cities which is a big deal but I appreciate the support that we've gotten from our city and also from our staff in helping me prepare information for the presentations that I have done um okay I think that um that is all I wanted to mention except to say that if anyone is

0:03:46interested in um working on a project on Earth Day or if they want to form their own project now is the time to let us know that and they can do so in a variety of one ways one is to send an email to Earth Day at ci.el Dash cerrito.ca.us another way is to call the

0:04:14recycling center at 510-215 4350 and we hope to hear from you soon if you're interested including if you want to start your own work party in Project thank you I just wanted to announce certainly a new state law recently passed requiring that all students entering the

0:04:497th to 12th grade beginning in fall 2011 will be required to have booster shots for um and the vaccine includes whooping cough it's called Tdap just wanted to make a note of that as of late last year I think there were more than seven people who died in California from this

0:05:05preventable illness and the state recently took action on this to make sure that students who are answering the 7th to 12th grade where their vaccine the potency of the vaccine has started to wear off at that point need to get booster shots thank you thank you a couple things here this

0:05:27Saturday youth baseball in El Cerrito has their opening day parade and celebration and I just bring this up because uh I believe it's the 48th year that the organization has been in town serving the Youth of El Cerrito and so many of us in the community uh have participated in that one way or the

0:05:51other so if if you're around Cerrito Vista around 10 30 come on by the there's festivities going on second of all I I imagine uh a lot of you have been uh probably saw in the paper it's been in about once a week PG e puts out a press release saying that they're

0:06:10they think they're going to go to the rate payers to pay for their uh problems in San Bruno and I just want to point that out I don't know how anybody feels I I think you should study the issue and see what you think personally but to charge the rate players for a

0:06:30for that type of mistake where 11 people died in over 40 houses were destroyed and then come back and say that the rate payers have to pay for that horrendous mistake I I think it crosses the line and I'd like us to watch that and if it does become that PG e tries to pass

0:06:51these rates on and I think we should discuss it here and for the residents of El Cerrito and see what we could do to uh to make that not happen so I just want to point that out thank you um I've got a just sort of a quick personal note that I'd like to pass out

0:07:10to people um I'm I'm just getting over three weeks of being very ill uh just a cold that just took a life of its own and uh I my thoughts go out to people who are not doing well and and really ask you to take the time to get better it's not something you're going to shake in a day

0:07:29this really is something that you will hopefully be able to take the time to get better so I I'm hoping that you'll heed your uh your your grandmother's advice and stay home and have a cup of chicken soup thank you I just have uh wanted to clarify last week or last meeting I

0:07:50mentioned our goal setting session which is for the council traditionally called gold setting but we're kind of taking a slightly different Tack and so just wanted to reiterate that on or clarify that on Saturday a March 5th at nine o'clock the council will begin a work

0:08:08session with the primary purpose of being the development of a mission statement for the city of El Cerrito and identification of values that are most important to us as a city and public servants the council will begin discussion on a longer term vision for the city and then the the mission

0:08:26statement values and vision May ultimately provide the basis for a more detailed strategic planning process which would identify the major goals of the city that we hope to accomplish in the future and um this process and you know focused on getting the council to talk

0:08:46Community is partis is invited to come and observe and participate but mostly with the purpose of council time to talk and then if allows during that time we would kind of go into the the more detailed um you know it's actually goal setting and priority setting for actual ways to

0:09:09implement the vision but really the idea is to focus on the high level Vision long-term thinking and and get us all on the same page and basically giving ourselves the time to reflect and and think about these things in light of potentially the future General plan

0:09:26amendments coming up and or update um and kind of larger budgetary questions um so again this is essentially the council's city council's work session on our our City's vision and Mission so um just wanted to let you all know about that and I think with that is there any

0:09:51other staff Communications nope great so we can move on to oral Communications from the public are there any public speakers on items not on the agenda no speaker slip submitted okay thank you so we then can move to item four presentation for a proclaiming February 2011 as American

0:10:15Heart month and committing to a heart Safe Community do we have presentation by John Doe oh okay there we go good evening Madam mayor members of the council I'd like to thank you for giving us this opportunity to discuss our proclamation to declare the month of

0:10:35February a heart safe month and also to acknowledge that the city is being designated as a hard Safe Community ultimately I don't want to steal any of Pam dodson's time our Thunder when she has a discussion about this so I'm going to turn it over to her right away this

0:10:51is Pam Dotson from County EMS and she will give us a short presentation and an overview of what's taken place thank you good evening mayor mayor and city council I want to First apologize for supervisor Joya who had attended plan to attend and has a conflicting meeting and he wanted to

0:11:11send his regrets and his congratulations as you are the First Community in Contra Costa to receive heart Safe Community designation thank you for proclaiming February as National our American Heart month there's no better time to commit ourselves to better heart health

0:11:31the proclamation is just one of the activities that the city of El Cerrito with the fire department as the lead has done to gain the heartbeats or points necessary for designation as a heart Safe Community tonight we would like to formally recognize the city of El Cerrito as the

0:11:46first Contra Costa County heart Safe Community I'd like to read the letter to Chief Maples Chief Maples El Cerrito Fire Department dear Chief Maples congratulations on the city of El Cerrito for achieving Contra Costa heart Safe Community status Contra Costa Emergency Medical Services Agency

0:12:05and the American Heart Association encourage and promote Community awareness regarding cardiovascular health and the potential for saving the lives of persons with cardiac emergencies throughout the county and your community has achieved heart Safe Community designation based on

0:12:23earning the required number of heartbeats through placement of automated external defibrillators or aeds in public locations throughout your community courses held to teach citizens cardiopulmonary resuscitation or CPR and your robust Community awareness program

0:12:39again congratulations on your designation as a heart Safe Community a community that assures that the elements of the chain of survival are in place ultimately increasing the chance that anyone suffering a cardiovascular emergency will have the best possible chance of survival sincerely art Lathrop

0:12:56director and EMS I'd also like to present you with the hardsafe community road sign there will be two road signs for your community these signs will be placed at the entrance where the city limits signs are and it will explain to the public or those who are passing into con um El

0:13:18Cerrito that this is a community that encourages all citizens to learn the risks of cardiovascular disease to stay fit through exercise and good nutrition to recognize a cardiac emergency and to learn critical life-saving skills CPR and the use of an AED go ahead

0:14:02[Applause] foreign in closing tonight I would like to acknowledge two people that essentially made this happen uh you just heard from Pam Dodson from County EMS she spearheaded this program at its beginning in the county and and brought us the information we needed to get

0:14:34started uh the other person that was key in the success of this program was fire Captain Tom McCullough he has been our CPR coordinator for years and runs all the programs from the scheduling to the teaching to the training the instructors if it wasn't for Tom's involvement we

0:14:48wouldn't have the ability to reach out and touch so many citizens within our city and outside our city teaching CPR I'm very excited that we were the first in the county uh when Pam brought us this she said it's going to be highly competitive and there's going to be

0:15:02other agencies that that really attempt to get this done and I'm happy to say we edged out San Ramon by maybe days minutes seconds maybe maybe three days okay but it was a race towards the end and uh I'm proud of that as your fire chief so thank you for your time this evening

0:15:21thank you thank you thank you very much any questions from councilman comments okay thank you we if I can um Item B 4B Street committee audit report from Ellen Miller chair of the citizens and Street advisory citizens Street oversight committee good evening mayor changan council

0:15:53members as chair of the El Cerrito citizen Street oversight committee I'm again pleased to present our required annual report to you and the citizens of El Cerrito the committee consisting of myself Vice chair Elizabeth ozelchuk Lynn Kessler and Thomas Miller no relation to me met

0:16:15on January 24th with the public works director Jerry Bradshaw and finance director Mary Dodge Miss Amy Meyer a partner of the city's audit for Mason Associates was also present at this meeting and that are September 2010 meeting the committee reviewed the measure a receipts from the state in

0:16:36various invoices from the street contractors on approved projects to satisfy ourselves that all receipts and expenditures met the measure a requirements and were properly accounted for with Ms Meyer's help we also reviewed the Maze and Associates report entitled independent accountants agreed

0:16:57upon procedure report for the city of El Cerrito Master installment sale agreement compliance with board covenants for the sales tax revenue bonds you have a title like that you'd expect it to be this paid but it was only a very short one but I always get a kick

0:17:14out of the title after these reviews were completed and all of our questions were answered by the staff by unanimous vote the committee found that the expenditures were an appropriate use of the pothole and local Street Improvement and maintenance transactions and use tax

0:17:33the measure is hereby report or committees hereby reporting their findings to the city council and to the citizens of the city of El Cerrito pursuant to section 2.04 0.32 c of the El Cerrito municipal code our committee would like again to thank Jerry Bradshaw and Mary Dodge for their

0:17:56help and commitment to ensure that all of our questions were answered and to the best of their ability we understood all of the various forms and how they kept track of these things and they did a good job of it we also thank Miss Myers for our help and participation in the process

0:18:14a meaningful review of the financial aspects of the city streets Improvement project would not be possible without their professional assistance our next meeting is scheduled for the fourth Monday in September September 26th it is our hope that by that time several

0:18:32of our fellow citizens from El Cerrito will step forward and volunteer to fill the vacant positions on this Committee in time so that you may select one of them to join us and fill the vacancy on our committee thank you thank you yeah yeah I'd like to uh thank Mr Miller for chairing the the

0:18:55committee for the last four years I think it's important and the amount of activity that's gone on and the amount of money that's been coming in from various funding sources the last four years kept kept you busy and I really appreciate this is the fourth I believe

0:19:11it's the fourth report that you've made maybe a little more than that it it's been four years I don't know how but it really helps and uh gives credibility uh not only to us but to the uh to the community that there is a pair of independent eyes looking at the expenditures of especially the magnitude

0:19:33that this project has been and will continue to be thank you it's always enjoyable being connected with an award-winning project the only aspect of the project that has a negative effect to me personally is that there's a large I don't say lar there's a segment in our

0:19:53community that it's very important to have citizens oversight on the various measures that you do in response to that expectation and request demand if you will you very wisely included that in measure a and I'm somewhat embarrassed that more of my fellow citizens that are

0:20:12in that camp have not stepped forward to volunteer to serve to fulfill our obligations in a position that you gave us the opportunity to thank you thank you thank you very much [Applause] um now at the item number five adoption of the consent calendar can I mayor if I

0:20:36may I'd like to um although it at our winter training session we were told that we can potentially to give our votes at some fashion the City attorney has advised that we with that I ask you to sever five AAS that you guys can vote on that without me since I was not here

0:20:54um so it was so that my abstention it can be read recorded properly um I also would like to um not pull the item but at least acknowledge that officer chalk is here tonight so um so that when we pass that uh item that we can have a maybe a quick hand for him since he is here with that

0:21:18I'd like to make a motion to move items 5B 5c 5D and 5e council member Lyman I would like to make a friendly amendment I need to pull item 5D due to a conflict with my company so if we could move to approve items five b c and e i I will accept that friendly amendment five BC and I I

0:21:44don't know if it was intentional but I was noticed you're leaving out 5A I am oh that's the one you're okay that's correct so so so both a and at the moment both A and D are severed so my motion is five b five C and 5e and second that motion all those in favor aye

0:22:06passes unanimously and um we'll take 5A separately I move adoption of uh vitamin minutes for approval a second promotion all those in favor aye abstain one abstention um carries um now five D um so you you're like I can move 5D I move the passage of 5D second and all those in favor

0:22:40aye abstain abstention okay very good thank you if officer chalk could stand up so we can give him a quick hand yes thank you [Applause] thank you thank you very much the chief have anything to say any comments from the back bench there uh city manager Hannan and our community

0:23:16I would never miss an opportunity to to recognize the outstanding work of one of our public servants officer Robert chalk has been nominated and will be recognized as officer of the year for Elks Lodge number 1251 in their ceremony tomorrow night he is being recognized and rewarded for

0:23:41dedication far above and beyond the normal Call of Duty he has distinguished himself by recovering stolen vehicles in our community and from our community he has excelled in deterring and locating and apprehending suspects related to those motor vehicles and then

0:24:00returning those vehicles to their rightly owners he is also distinguished himself by organizing the team events that solidify the public safety employees across the street he has gathered employees from the police department to participate in competitions athletic competitions and

0:24:21really furthered these the spirit the morale and the camaraderie of his fellow officers he's an extraordinary young man who is committed to law enforcement and Public Safety and I couldn't be happier than to recognize officer Robert chalk as the officer of the year so thank you

0:24:37for the opportunity thank you [Applause] all right so we are now moving to um the concurrent city council Redevelopment agency item and for number six this this item um for 6A it's the amendment of the public improvements and cooperation agreement between the city of El Cerrito

0:25:12and the El Cerrito Redevelopment agency to include public buildings [Music] we've got a third one oh I know I've got so is everybody at home is following what we're doing we're getting revised attachments one two and three to item 6A good evening mayor and council members

0:25:45thank you so you've received the um copies of some changes that we made based on uh comments we comments that we received earlier today we made some minor revisions to the text of the resolutions in the agreement um just for some clarity and some typographical errors

0:26:03um so before you this evening for consideration at the public hearing or resolutions from the city council and agency board authorizing Amendment of the public improvements and cooperation agreement between the city and the agency that you approved let at the last

0:26:18um Council on agency meeting the proposed amended and restated agreement includes all three publicly owned buildings that the agency had anticipated in its budget and its five-year implementation plan those facilities are the senior center a public safety building and a

0:26:34county-owned facility which is generally considered to be a library which is an obligation of the agency through the fiscal agreement with the county um the inclusion of the public buildings in the agreement necessity necessitated a public hearing and making certain

0:26:53findings and also the preparation of a summary report that identifies the cost of the projects facts supporting the findings and the Redevelopment purposes of the buildings so all of those actions were that that was prepared and we are presenting the information for you to

0:27:10make those findings this evening I wanted to note that including public buildings in this agreement does not commit the city to fund or construct the buildings and it doesn't take away the city's discretion to approve or condition any projects um we also Incorporated some minor

0:27:26changes into the agreement to um to take care of some um to clarify some of the names dates and costs of some of the projects so just as a reminder from the last meeting the overall overall purpose of the agreement is to protect the future tax increment for the agency should the governor's

0:27:43budget proposal be adopted um the agreement will create an obligation on the part of the agency to commit future tax increment Revenue to projects and programs and that obligation is what enables the agency to collect tax increment so I'm happy to answer any questions

0:27:59that you might have Lynn Hutchins from goldfarm and Litman our Redevelopment council is here this evening as well if you have any questions for her great so we'll do clarifying questions from Lori right now and then then we'll move to the public hearing portion so if

0:28:12there's any speakers who want to speak on this please fill out a slip and then and then we'll come back for discussion after we hear from public so I oh I have a clarifying question we've just been giving these three new documents and I don't know what the there are a lot of pages and I don't

0:28:29know what the changes are and is if somebody could go over what those changes are um they're they're relatively minor on the on the resolutions we change the order of the wording in the last whereas and um added um in section three the words to the extent um applicable meaning that some of the

0:28:57some of the findings were not necessary for this this particular agreement but they are made reference to in the resolution because it's part of the statutory language so um we were making clear that even though the statutory language makes reference to certain findings that are needed they

0:29:14weren't always needed in this particular case so that was the changes on the resolution and on the agreement there was uh let's see the first two there were there was a typo on page one um I struck a few words that um should have been struck earlier renumbered some of

0:29:46the paragraphs references in the paragraphs and did some clarifying punctuation just to make the language clearer particularly in recital I and I think that was it thank you oh and we're removing the words to be completed from the exhibit a because the exhibit a is complete

0:30:07thank you uh just one clarifying question uh if the state budget goes forward and Redevelopment is held harmless will these agreements have any implications or impact on how the Redevelopment agency does its job or would they would we need to see sort of uh would we need

0:30:26to revisit this after we see how things shake out after July I think but also just that we necessarily know because we don't know enough about what's going to be in the legislative language which still is not available Lynn would you have anything to add good evening I'm Lynn Hutchins from

0:30:51goldfarbon Litman and Lori actually answered the question we don't know yet because the legislation is not yet available certainly depending on what the legislature does do um with the proposal it would be appropriate to maybe reconsider the agreements later in the year

0:31:10instead for for Lori yeah I just want to be clear on a couple things um we had to bring this back because there is a different timeline for public buildings than there was for the private uh property that we handled last meeting it's specifically for public buildings

0:31:33not just for any public improvements but there was a requirement of a 14-day public hearing notice which we weren't able to get published in time for the last meeting so we just came back to add that right those in with the public hearing so this is this is the same

0:31:49thing we've we did two weeks ago just for public stated public buildings exactly and these buildings have been on the books as projects for a number of years correct I don't know how do you know how many roughly uh well they were in the implementation plan that was adopted in 2002 and that

0:32:12was that was right as I arrived so I don't know about before that this might that sort of thing does that does that go on file with the state the implementation plan I don't believe goes to the state is that right no um so no it's it's not but um it is a requirement that any I any

0:32:35projects that the agency is considering would be incorporated in some way into the implementation plan okay the other thing which I think is is pretty important and I I'm of the opinion this thing is going to stay in the courts for a long time if the legislature really feels that

0:32:51they're going to do this thing but one one thing is we have an agreement with the county to fund uh partially the library for 5.3 million dollars and that's been on the book since uh 93 1994 yeah 93. yeah so I think that's important that we're also taking care of that with this we're

0:33:13securing that funding for that agreement with this with this action tonight that's one of the more complicated of the projects because the way that the definition of obligations is as we understand it so far it doesn't include those kinds of obligations um and and so we're trying to clarify

0:33:33that with people that there are there's more than just bonded Debt Service there's many other kinds of obligations this is one that's very hard to capture in the way that the language is being considered correct yeah and then for the other for the private the one we

0:33:50did took care of last meeting we actually have the trade way and the Helen projects um that are going forward they would be I think it should be clear even though we're not uh talking directly to those two projects that those things could be disrupted stopped in its tracks

0:34:11okay thank you very much appreciate it just a point of clarity the the list now that's in exhibit a which totals over a little over 150 million is is actually more than what our revenues would be so we we are actually um identifying a a suite of projects that we might be funding and it and

0:34:36collectively they they exceed our actual anticipated potential Revenue um and so we we hope to have all the projects go forward but we would have to have supplemental income above the Redevelopment agency is that correct that's right so the the projects in the list are as you put it sort of a suite

0:34:53of of all the projects that we might consider they do far exceed the tax increment Revenue that we project we could collect um assuming that you know that real estate values grow slowly the agency does have a tax increment collection cap of 250 million dollars um I I have a hard time for seeing that

0:35:16we would ever get there um but you know maybe we'll have another run-up like we did in the last 10 or through 2008.

0:35:24um if if we were actually able to get closer to our tax increment collection cap we could probably fund this amount of projects but um so that's sort of the I mean the test the intent was to create as much obligation as we can to collect as much as we can thank you

0:35:44any other questions um I believe now then we can open it up for public hearing so is there any public comments from the public no speaker slips submitted I moved to close the public second all those in favor aye unanimously um so at this point we can open up to any

0:36:12additional com uh comments or discussion on this item what point of order it our very helpful um hearing script says that there's two resolutions but it to me it looks like there are actually three resolutions so I just want to confirm what what action do we need for attachment three

0:36:31which is the amended and restated public improvements in Cooperative Cooperative agreement is that that's just the agreement that we're adopting through the other two resolutions is that correct [Music] there there are two resolutions okay um one for the city council one for the

0:36:49Redevelopment agency board that need to be adopted to approve the agreement and we're taking the city council one at the moment that's correct I'd be delighted to move a resolution of the city council the city of El Cerrito approving an amended and restated public

0:37:04improvements and Cooperative agreement between the city of El Cerrito and the El Cerrito Redevelopment agency and making certain findings related there too second all in favor aye aye aye motion passes unanimously and I will pass to the agency chair to do the second resolution

0:37:26is our discussion or emotion I'll be delighted to move this one as well since I didn't do my share last week a resolution of the El Cerrito develop Redevelopment agency board approving an amended and restated public improvements and Cooperative agreement between the city of El Cerrito and the

0:37:43El Cerrito Redevelopment agency in making cert making certain findings related there too I'll second the motion two seconds and um all in favor please say aye aye venomous motion carries these are the revised resolutions sorry leave the city clerk wanted to clarify that those were the revised

0:38:10resolutions to the city I apologize they I was reading from the revised resolutions in both cases yes very good so we can now move on to the second public hearing item 6B on the new news rack ordinance and fee thank you mayor and Council I'm Jerry Bradshaw your Public Works director

0:38:46um this news rack ordinance comes from the great effort we put into the San Pablo Avenue streetscape identity and Gateway project over the last five years that whole program is nearing completion as the final project is in its last month of work out there one of the critical elements of this

0:39:09program what in cleaning up the street and making a uniform look throughout was to change our approach to news racks out there in fact our approach has been no approach really in the past that news racks have just happened as Publishers have elected to put their vending

0:39:28machines out there so one of the Staples of this program was to eliminate the variety the different looks the sporadic nature of the locations of these news racks and in some cases the the large quantities that have in in some instances obstructed access to the

0:39:48sidewalks and places of business out there the intent of this is to enable us to exercise some control over the place and manner of these Publications all while respecting their first amendment rights to to publish their their newspapers and other Publications out there

0:40:13um as a way of background in late 2007 we two there was two locations in town that got to the point where we as staff brought to the council and abatement action to declare them a public nuisance and to actually have the situations abated in front of L street or natural groceries for instance

0:40:30we had over 25 News racks lined up in one long string that was getting seriously in the way of access and a similar situation up by Church's Chicken at that time we did not really have the tools to work with the newsrack situation short of declaring a public nuisance and going through an abatement

0:40:50process this new ordinance gives us the tools we need to do a better job to help the Avenue fulfill its Mission out there to be a pleasant place and a nice environment for all concerned the ordinance itself as drafted has several elements I'm just going to walk you through those they're

0:41:11also seen on the agenda bill on page two this news rack will create this the ordinance will create news rack zones so this won't apply to all the public rights away in town um only to specific news rack zones and the ordinance creates the first Zone which is San Pablo Avenue from the north

0:41:35city limit to the South seating limit and includes the public rights away for 100 feet each side of San Pablo Avenue the news racks will be of a uniform style and color throughout the zone and it's structured so it's that the city will own the pedestals and the

0:41:55trays and each publisher will own their own individual boxes that way the city does not have to be concerned with all the mechanisms with the doors opening the uh the coin mechanisms subdivisions within the box and so forth that's all up to the individual publisher to bring

0:42:13their own system out there because not not everyone is a pay paid publication lot of them are free so that will be left up to each individual publisher but by the city owning the bases we will be able to maintain control over the locations and also the Styles and

0:42:28specifications of these things a permit will be required for each set of boxes out there each publisher will be required to take out a permit so we're no we know they're out there we know where they are and they know the rules by which they need to operate a publisher can get one permit for all the

0:42:47boxes that he would have out there so it won't be too cumbersome it's just for each entity so we know where they're at along with the permit there'll be a permit fee and I'll talk a little more about that later the maintenance of the boxes as I mentioned will be the responsibility of

0:43:05each individual publisher there are some limitations they're allowed to put stickers on so people know what newspaper or publication is in each box and hopefully they'll be visible enough from a car so if you're driving looking for a newspaper you know where to stop and get one and so forth

0:43:21so identification is important for the Publishers and really for our citizens who want to access those we will develop standards so that Publishers who bring their own boxes into town will know exactly what color what size what style they need to be and we will have Provisions to remove

0:43:43boxes or Abate any other violations of this ordinance and those are all these form the tools that we lacked in 2007 that I think will benefit the community greatly as we move forward foreign the schedule for implementing this I believe is going to be about two months

0:44:03uh once the ordinance is adopted we will send out notices to all the Publishers who are currently out there who have been out there recently and let them know what the new program will be and ask them to pick locations that they want to be we'll have a a a a map of

0:44:19possible locations and that's the map you see in your your agenda Bill attachment I want to caution you though that map is probably overly optimistic that's a location where we found any news racks in the past we'll see how the Publishers come in and want to populate

0:44:35those locations I suspect they'll be fewer locations in which you actually see out there regarding the fees we have a separate resolution for the fees that's handled through the master fee schedule it just requires a resolution we have two kinds of fees it's an issuance or reassurance

0:44:57fee which covers the administrative and the paperwork to get them on the books and and follow the process through and then we have a box fee and this covers the enforcement inventory monitoring the field activities of of the Publishers in their boxes uh and they're delineated there on uh

0:45:15page Pages three and four of your agenda bill um each permit will be good for three years at a time we don't expect this to be too fluid of a of a scenario out there the most once the boxes come in and get filled with Publications they're fairly stable and with the master fee schedule we

0:45:35re-adopt that every year so there's opportunities to adjust the fees if we find that we don't need as much fee or that we need more that we need to restructure how we break it down by the number of boxes we have that opportunity each year as we move forward and learn

0:45:49ourselves how this program really best works uh one last thing I want to mention on the maintenance we do reserve the right in the ordinance for the city to go out and Abate graffiti the graffiti may very well hit the boxes that are individually owned and maintained but we don't want

0:46:05to have to try and mobilize different owners to Abate that we'd like to be able to move quickly so we reserve the right to do that and we also have a little bit built into the fee for for the expectation that we will do that But ultimately if we have to clean Graffiti Off the same boxes every week

0:46:22for for several months and they start to get worn out and faded or the pace starts to come off because of our activity ultimately still the responsibility of the Box owner to maintain that uh one one last thing we even though the ordinance is structured so that the

0:46:38Publishers will own their boxes we find ourselves in a situation where we actually have purchased all the boxes for the San Pablo Avenue in conjunction with the with the streetscape project so uh we are um planning to move forward and allow the Publishers to come in and use our

0:46:53boxes for no cost they'll be responsible for keeping them up and if they do vacate a location they need to return the box to us in good order but they will not have an initial outlay Capital cost to buy all new boxes and we feel like that's a win-win for everybody

0:47:09it gets the Avenue into a uniform look like we had envisioned when we set on this project a couple years ago and it's an incentive for them to stay active in our community because I think these Publications really do serve our citizens and it benefits all of them is

0:47:24is really our duty to do our best to keep it an active environment I do have some modifications that we are proposing for the ordinance before the meeting started we passed out a two-page sections and I'll just detail those this is just some minor wording modifications

0:47:45that we think strengthens the language a little bit on page A3 of the ordinance section 13.60.020 definitions paragraph a we modified abandoned newsrack definition to mean any news Rack or box we added or box and then we change that to recognize that different Publications have

0:48:09different publishing intervals so instead of just a flat 10-day period at which they become abandoned is 10 days beyond their publishing interval on page A4 at the bottom section 13.60.050 paragraph B right at the very bottom we had originally tied this to paragraph e just above it in the prior

0:48:37section and they really are two different things so we we put paragraph B at the bottom page to stand on its own so we remove the reference up the page which was inadvertently subsection r instead or F instead of e anyway to make this uh stand on its own that the director of Public Works shout

0:48:55conduct an annual review review of availability and then it goes on to say what he'll do with that review information so those are the only two modifications I believe your script references three sections the middle one of those three in the in your notes uh is not

0:49:12applicable at this time okay and so with that I'll so before we do questions from the council I just want to catch up with my script which is to to let folks know that if they wanted to speak on this right after we get Council comments we'll open it up to public hearing and

0:49:31if you have if you haven't done a slip to do that now and then we'll get to your questions right after the council questions so with that um Council questions yeah okay I have a few questions um the um Box locations that are on the map are rather um they're not real detailed because it's

0:49:54the whole length of San Pablo Avenue and it's not really possible to do that on a relatively small piece of paper but I am concerned about whether or not they would obstruct the usage of a bus stop because right now there are many things that obstruct the use of a bus stop and

0:50:15over time the location of the door of the bus um changes so that you never quite know where it's going to be over time so I'm wondering if I have didn't notice any way of handling that in the language for this but it is there some plan to do that yes in fact that's that's a that's a valid

0:50:41concern because newsracks and bus stops that's one of the Nexus that we're trying to accomplish out there so we do put news racks at each of the bus stops particularly the Rapids we have paid extra special attention to that very detail the bus zone is we we understand how critical that is for

0:51:01access on and off the bus and even though there have been a few mistakes out there already we are paying extra special attention where we can we're putting the bus stop not out by the curb but onto the back of the sidewalk where it's up against landscaping or some other inert element

0:51:17that doesn't you know obstruct a business or access to a business so we're trying to put them at the back of the Walk instead of out by where you're getting on and off buses or in and out of cars and whatever what if there isn't a great deal of distance that way the

0:51:30depth of the bus stop is say not very you know not very great right at the bus stop we need either eight or ten feet off the buses particularly for the Ada access and four feet all the way otherwise if that's the case we'll move it out of that bus stop length and just

0:51:49put it just off to the side okay and um then my next question is have other cities come up with um a proposal like this or are we the first no we're not the first we we've we've tried to customize it to what best fits the way we work and what the newspapers desires were when we met with them uh a

0:52:14couple years ago um but every city handles it much differently San Francisco was one that we looked at but they have a completely different environment over there I understand Albany has just done a replacement program with theirs and the one of the Publishers under the Bay Area

0:52:31News Group actually took the lead on that and did the work and and got reimbursed from the other Publishers for their fair share but again I don't think the city has a toolbox like this to maintain that that actually that very scenario happened 14 or 15 years ago and

0:52:47I think it was just left to its own Decay curve and now for 14 15 years later they've had to just revamp it so that's another model another model is to just have some maintenance requirements but let every publisher still bring in their own equipment there's all kinds of

0:53:03different models we look at that out there so we tried to take what we felt was best from the different ones we looked at and come up with a program that best fit our community so um the last question I had had to do with um I know that you have a lot of locations

0:53:19marked on the map that I saw but maybe um maybe they are or are not where ultimately the newspaper um companies think that they ought to be located and if over time you know things things change the businesses that are located in different places change and I would

0:53:42um guess that the newspaper companies might want to have them near certain types of businesses like for example restaurants would be an example that comes to mind so anyway as all of that changes um it could be that the locations become out of date and then so is there a plan

0:54:03for dealing with that well the ordinance gives the Public Works director the discretion on where these should be I think within that there's a lot of a lot of options to to respond to the environment as it changes so if we need to consolidate and you know pull back if if we start

0:54:23out with 115 boxes and five years from now we only need 80 of them out there on the whole Avenue yeah they're we certainly have discretion to do that and reorganize where they are and we'll be working with the Publishers I think this also sets us up to for teamwork on this

0:54:41thing okay and what if you have more Publishers then um more Publishers Desiring more locations than there are locations how will you resolve that well I honestly don't think we have so many locations on there I don't think we're going to have new locations pop up

0:55:02but if we have a location for instance by the post office where we are anticipating six and we need 10 in there we can put a six and a four in close proximity that will form one cluster but still have enough of a gap between they don't form a large barrier so we have a

0:55:20lot of flexibility that way too so you're I think your answer then is that and if there is demand in a particular location for more than you initially put out you know the flexibility of going and putting in more racks but in a way that wouldn't present an obstacle to

0:55:39um movement through the area yes that's correct great thank you thank you for the presentation Mr Bradshaw sorry uh just just two questions uh councilmember Abelson hit on a lot of the points I wanted to make first the meeting you have with the Publishers that's mentioned back in

0:56:00December 2008 or the meeting the department had what was was their reaction um supportive of this type of a measure or were there are there comments included in the ordinance that you've prepared well the comments we got at the time we we tried to incorporate everything we could their concerns were

0:56:17you know we don't want costs to go up uh publishing business is Tough Enough and it's only gotten tougher since then so we we really had an eye towards that they like to have flexibility and convenience for themselves uh some of the larger papers were willing to take

0:56:34on the stewardship of the whole program but some of the other Publishers were wary of of that too so we got a variety of comments so that all that is built in the spirit of all those comments I think we did a fairly decent job of building that into the ordinance that we have

0:56:49here we we really understand the fiscal situation that Publishers are in especially the free Publications and we have rent guides and all these other things out there that that don't charge so it's really tough for them so we I'd love to do this for free but we just

0:57:05can't but I think it was the direction from the community and the council and staff certainly support all that to to have some sort of control out there and to have an environment that worked well so we had to do something I think that's the price we pay but we tried to keep

0:57:19the price absolutely as low as possible and and certainly with the with the free boxes this go around uh that's a huge incentive right and they have a cost with providing their own box anyway so it seems like we're replacing one cost with another um and I do understand that the the goal

0:57:35of this ordinance is not to control which Publications get placed around our city is it correct that we're going to be I I noticed some of the language has to do with first come first serve that we're not going to pick and choose among Publishers that come to us that it's our intent to just

0:57:53um allow those who come to us to try to get them as box as easily as possible is that is that accurate that's okay okay those are all my questions yeah hi some of them have been answered but I I just wanted to be clear did the final version of this of the final draft

0:58:10that we see here was it reviewed by the Publishers before we received it uh no not the final draft no well so they know it's coming though um I think some of them do it's been a while since some of them have been in touch with us some of them aren't even out there anymore like the Berkeley

0:58:26Daily Planet but uh no I we didn't send this around for a final go through with them okay um so how we if we pass this tonight then how we if some Publishers have some Pro big problems with it although I take it you've been working on it for two years so maybe there won't be any big issue

0:58:49but if so how are we going to handle that well I I believe that the ordinance gives the public works department a lot of discretion to work over a lot of the issues of where and when and how um the fees might be a problem for some of them but I do believe that you know

0:59:06even one of the larger presences out there would be about 300 every three years so even the fee should not be a deal killer in most cases I think what's going to probably be the biggest stumbling block is for the a lot of the Publishers to actually pay enough attention to know that anything is going

0:59:23on here despite the letters we'll send them and the second notices and so forth so I think that may be the biggest stummy block is some inattentiveness but some of the others I think we have a lot of flexibility to work on when and where and how that stuff can go out there

0:59:37yeah good the answer to the question about the boxes I was a resident that I talked to today that knew this issue was coming forward had talked about uh what happens if we have a gang of eight boxes and they're all full and another publisher wanted to put a another a ninth box in

1:00:01there and of course that is we will provide for that correct uh we'll probably keep it in even twos so if the ninth one comes in I would probably put him on hold until a tenth comes in and then try and do an arrangement just because of the geometry two rows high and trying to keep an even

1:00:22look out there in some cases we could put an empty box we will have a few extras out there which I anticipate if someone vacates and actually isn't there anymore we would keep an empty box out there just to keep the space all right cool so we're doing we're really not changing really through

1:00:42all this we're not changing any way we have approached uh as far as the free speech and the distribution of newspapers what we're just what we're trying to do is put it in a better organized organization basically and reach some of the goals that you indicated in the in the in the Box

1:01:02because I I know I was with Albany when they did their first one we're we're kind of behind we're we're really one of the last cities to do this but at that it was one of the first and the rage was the first amendment and but I think those things have been flushed out

1:01:18and I I think we just you've done a good job assuring people that those safeguards are in place we understand those and we're not trying to do anything except put these things in a good wrapper okay thank you um it's my understanding that this ordinance only applies to San Pablo

1:01:37Avenue and 100 feet in either direction away from San Pablo Avenue and does not change the ability of news news Publishers to um Place their currents traditional boxes in other locations of El Cerrito so for example along Fairmount or along Stockton or along Potrero so there may

1:02:03be we will continue to see uh the Standalone and and proprietor provided uh news racks in El Cerrito it this only applies to San Pablo Avenue and 100 feet east and west from San Pablo Avenue yes that's right thank you um with that I guess I will ask for um any public comments that have

1:02:34might have come in in the last few minutes we have one speaker Mike Mike Switzer and so I'll just remind you you have um three minutes per person and please watch for the lights when it's red when it's yellow you have one more minute left right there thank you very much

1:02:59um my name is Mike Schweitzer I'm the single copy manager with Bay Area News Group we're the Publishers of the West County Times the El Cerrito journal the Oakland Tribune San Jose Mercury News and several free distribution papers in the Bay Area we work closely with all the cities

1:03:17being the major newspaper in this part of the bay we've generally taken the lead in the installs of the pedestals that you see throughout Town Albany was when we just finished we work with many cities that don't have any fees at all Albany um Oakland Concord Walnut Creek and I think we do a

1:03:39pretty good job so we would obviously prefer not to have fees attached to the uh the work we already do but having said that uh very pleased with what Public Works has done here I mean annual permits for news racks are crazy so three-year permits is a wonderful thing the prices that rates

1:04:00I guess whatever you've got here seem very fair again we're a large newspaper we're hurting just like all of them but we do sell our newspaper so that affords us a little more flexibility to spend money on them on maintaining and the things we have to do is I understand a little more

1:04:20difficult for the free papers but um really as I review the package that was put together here um I'm about as pleased as you could be for having a new set of organ regulations it will have to live up with but we look forward to working with the city and doing the installs and

1:04:39making San Pablo look just a little bit nicer San Pablo Avenue look a little bit nicer thank you still on I'm yes I have okay I just had one question in some of the other cities you work with do they also have uh graffiti removal service for the boxes it's all uh the city of Alameda specifically

1:05:08um on Webster and park both have um I think they're contractors with the city who kind of one does Webster and one does Park and they go up and down the street once a week and they clean things they report to me if they see a problem that hadn't been reported to me

1:05:22otherwise that's the only one that is um built into the to the operation I know that in San Francisco the racks that look like the ones that you've purchased that have the Billboards on the back those are cleaned by uh by Comcast I believe that's the company behind the billboard program the

1:05:44rest of the racks in the city the city calls and the newspaper has 24 hours to remove the graffiti so if you get a call that your rack outside of that package of racks you have to clean it right away otherwise it's generally calls Oakland Berkeley we get calls from the business

1:06:00districts or someone at City Hall or or they'll just tag a rack and send us a lighter and say this thing has graffiti you've got how many days five days come out clean it off um you know you'd think we could be more on top of it what happens is at four in the morning the rafts are being serviced

1:06:16it's dark the folks who service them for us some are better than others some report to me that they've got a problem others I'm afraid don't and big markets so those are excuses and I apologize for them but certainly our crew were made aware of a problem we jump right on it

1:06:32so well thank you I appreciate it thank you hey no further speakers okay and see I guess I moved to close the public hearing second all those in favor aye aye motion is unanimous and so or we will now sorry I'm recording myself Okay so we've now move on to discussion

1:07:02by the Council on this any other I guess comments and discussion at this point yeah I just I'd like to just make a comment that I want to thank staff for their very hard work on this it's very clear that in the last two years since December of 2008 that you have put a lot

1:07:17of time in this I do think it's a well thought out and considerate uh ordinance that I will support yeah I had a little bit of problem um with the fees normally there isn't fees associated with with this type of work but on the other hand um we are paying for the initial boxes

1:07:41and I'm I'm afraid we're in uh in a situation where we have to make sure that we have funding sources for projects and I I look at the fees and when they're stretched over uh one to three years here uh I think it's manageable um the director of public works also

1:08:03indicated that we haven't done this before and so we'll take a look at it and see there's a possibility that the the fees will drop and I know people don't think that but when we did our Master Fee schedule there was a number of fees that dropped from their original

1:08:18levels so I think the city does a good job in keeping their word that we review fees and and act accordingly so with that I'll support it also the other comments yes I I just want to chime in and also express my appreciation for the hard work um the staff is done on preparing this

1:08:41ordinance I know it's a real difficult problem because there's a number of sides and the question is how do you really look at it and do it in a way that's fair but gets the job done and I think that that's what's happened here is that there's been a real serious

1:08:59attempt in a successful attempt I think uh judging by the fact that our only speaker tonight actually supported it so that's very I think our staff has to be commended for doing that and I'm ready to support it I agree thank you Mr Bradshaw and I look forward to seeing how these boxes look

1:09:20Along on our Avenue with with that I moved to approve by title and wave any further reading of an ordinance establishing chapter 13.60 of the El Cerrito Municipal Code titled news news rack zones this motion includes staff's administrative changes to sections 13.60.020 A and

1:09:4913.60.050 B second all of those in favor please say aye aye aye any opposed abstentions motion carries I moved to adopt a resolution amending the city's Master Fee scheduled to include item 23 News rack permit and box fees as identified in the resolution we say aye aye

1:10:19motion carries unanimously very good thank you for your work Jerry on that and looking forward to another increasing beautification already great work um so we are now at item 7A policy matters um so I will defer to agency chair is there a staff report on this item

1:10:54there is a staff report good evening Sherwin Abelson and members of the agency board I'm Hildy miles your city's housing program manager I also wanted to acknowledge and introduce some staff remaining housing that are here tonight we have Linda mandolini who is

1:11:11executive director of Eden Housing and Katie Lamont who is the associate director of real estate and also the project manager for the tradeway project uh so they're available available if also if you have any questions um before you tonight to request that you authorize the executive director of

1:11:29the agency to execute an exclusive negotiating rights agreement with eating housing for the development of a mixed-use affordable housing project at the tradeway site which is at 10860-10848 San Pablo Avenue um we have a lot of work ahead of us to bring this project to fruition but I

1:11:52wanted to quickly review how far we've come to be here tonight after extensive negotiations with the con Wills uh in August of 2008 the agency approved acquiring the site for the purpose of helping to meet the community's affordable housing needs staff in the agency board went through I

1:12:11think a thoughtful and thorough process to develop goals for the Redevelopment of the site which included a study session in October of 2009 and two reviews of the developer solicitation package in March and in April of 2010 the goals for the site that came out of

1:12:30that process were to help Revitalize the Civic Center area to provide affordable housing to help meet the community's housing needs to support mixed-use development because the site is zoned for Transit oriented mixed use and to incorporate a Civic use such as a senior

1:12:47center I think we've done pretty well the senior center goal I think has sort of been sacrificed to the economic times we don't have the funding the developer solicitation package was pretty explicit and evaluated the proposals in terms of the feasibility of the project the

1:13:05leveraging of agency investment with other funds the maximum number of very low and low income units that are proposed to be produced and whether those are senior serving units and finally the presence and robustness of a mixed-use component the agency board selected Eden as the

1:13:24most qualified developer with the proposal that most closely met the agency's goals their proposal includes 64 units of rental housing including 4 600 approximately square feet of commercial space which includes a medical clinic currently in negotiations with Samuel

1:13:42Merritt to run that clinic and approximately 2 200 square feet of space for neighborhood serving um retail or Flex Office Space staff and Eden have negotiated a mutually agreeable NRA which is attachment two to this report the enter itself is fairly short and straightforward and the significant

1:14:07terms are summarized in the agenda bill so I won't review them here except to note that um there include somewhat slightly extended time periods for performance to allow time for the state budget uncertainties to be resolved because those have a bearing upon the project

1:14:29um the function of the emra as enter as its title suggests is to establish an exclusive negotiating period and also to establish procedures and standards for the negotiation of the disposition and development agreement so that includes the achievement of certain pre-development timelines and

1:14:46feasibility of the project the inner does not obligate any of the parties to convey the property doesn't Grant rights to the developer or entitlements or environmental approvals um and it doesn't obligate either of the parties to undertake any activities or costs except for that that's explicitly

1:15:04contemplated in the NRA um the NRA the execution of this document will allow the agency and the developer to move forward with negotiating the DDA and with environmental review and design and planning work that's associated with the environmental review uh staff would return to the agency

1:15:23board upon negotiation of the DDA and completion of the siqua environmental review and asked for consideration of your approval of both sqa and DDA at that time in addition the Eden has requested pre-development assistance so we would either bring that separately

1:15:39prior to that action and we would bring that concurrently and wrap it into the DDA document with respect to environmental review the execution of the NRA doesn't constitute a project under sequa so your action tonight is exempt from sequa in terms of financial considerations the impact of tonight's

1:16:02action is neutral as we're not obligating or committing funds at this time and at that with that I conclude my staff report and myself or staff from Eden are available to answer questions thank you any questions okay let's start um I think I have three questions

1:16:24um one is has to do with the extension periods uh I read it and it's in my opinion that the 90 days for good faith cannot be tacked onto the back of the 180 days if an eir is required for a total of 270 but I wanted to confirmed that my it it's where to just openly enough that we

1:16:54it sounds like too much wiggle room well it might be it might be useful wiggle room I just wanted to make sure that that we know what we're we're entering into um I hadn't honestly really looked at it in that regard one thing I would say is that we will probably determine pretty quickly

1:17:13whether we are doing an eir or not so we will know whether we're triggering that 180 day period um before we get through the first year I would hope um so that's one question I would have to defer to Lynn in terms of how the NRA agreement itself might be interpreted Do

1:17:36you have a and while I think Greg's referring to yeah well while uh outside council is is is considering that question I can ask my next question which I think you would be able to answer section 1.2 um the 25 000 good faith deposit uh is for consultant use and it is not

1:17:57intended for the consultant that might be hired for SQL review uh it is not entire to pay it is not uh meant to pay for any of the uh costs associated with environmental review and entitlement work so which are City fees run through planning so that so the developer is responsible in any case for

1:18:18paying those fees or commissioning that work uh it is meant to pay for agency costs associated with the NRA and DDA specifically in regards to legal and environment economic Consultants that would be looking at the feasibility of the project great thank you and last but

1:18:36certainly not least we selected Eden as a developer and not necessarily their project although the um the exclusive negotiating uh rights agreement does talk about the proposal the the project that was in The Proposal still needs to go through environmental review and my understanding some form of

1:19:00public input and therefore the actual project even though it's identified in our our action tonight is not necessarily the final project that will come forward during the DDA correct and you can think of it as a sort of two concurrent parallel tracks which is um

1:19:22the agency's DDA process which will give the agency if you will the agency board [Music] a way to look at the project and and the DDA will certainly allow them to look at things like design and schedule and financing which is sort of separate from the land use approval entitlements track

1:19:46which is would be but the certainly the land use approvals are granted by the Planning Commission so that is they will go you know through the drb and Planning Commission process as a normal project with does that address your it does okay it confirms my understanding and that gives

1:20:08outside Council an opportunity to come forward and speak to item 1.2 good evening again and actually um those sections are written so they can be go for a period of 270 days the idea behind it is if you're at a position where you need to do an eir six months is actually pretty quick time

1:20:34frame and so um if you have an eir you're going to get an automatic six month extension of the time frame and then the 30 days is in the executive director's discretion depending if sufficient progress has been made in good faith negotiation but there could be a total I read it of

1:20:52270 extra days now if you want to amend that or clarify that we could certainly do that no that that reading is acceptable to me that the 90 days is something that can be tacked on so thank you for making that clarification refinished thank you thank you I see within 90 days of the execution

1:21:20um Eden will present a number of things schedule data performance that's uh I think the financial commitment is there any time before that 90 before that period that we will be looking at the finances to make sure that we're not we're not spinning our Wheels all this

1:21:41time um pretty in-depth and proposal and evaluation process um pretty thoroughly what I would be looking at in the in the sort of next 90 days is whether there are any conditions that have changed that would that would somehow alter that financing plan because what they presented was feasible

1:22:11um but we know that you know the nine percent low income housing tax credit program there are other variables there's more known now about the HUD 202 new guidelines for that program so what I will be looking at and what Eden will be preparing is has anything changed and

1:22:30does that need to be look reevaluated okay and the 350 000 Edition what is that the cover and covers entitlement work architecture environmental the work that they will need to get through entitlements that's that's what it was requested for is that okay however

1:22:54the way construction is going these days it would be very easy to get a project that's going in at 350 000 under estimate if that's the case we're still going to put up the 350 or will they be able to cover that what have responded and speak to it this evening if they wish to

1:23:17but we did ask that question through the uh evaluation process when proposals were submitted because we were very clear that we only have so much money our only source of financing or funding is the is the housing set-aside fund so one of the things that I actually liked

1:23:36about Eden's response is that they were very clear in acknowledging that that was the case acknowledge the city only has a limited amount of funding and their plan is proposed is to go to the county to request home and cdbg funds for multiple rounds which projects often do

1:23:56and they have done successfully So what at this point if a gap evolves as we would call it we would be looking at any of them to the county but we can you know we can see how our finances go in the future but at this point that's what we would be looking at I I think you

1:24:16know where I'm going with this I I would hate for this project to be held up for 350 000 to you and I that's a lot of money to a project of this size it's not and yet should the state um you know it's uncertain with the state I would hope that we can go forward despite that and uh although the

1:24:35city doesn't have 350 000 to put to this project that we know about as yet and we're you know at ways many cities right now are obviously we're all very concerned about what will happen with the governor's proposal and whether any funds that we generate in future future years will be

1:24:57swept over to housing authorities over which we have no control and perhaps don't care about whether these projects happen or not so we like other cities are looking at ways of committing those funds so we may be bringing a proposal forward to you in the future if we can

1:25:14find a prudent way to do that yeah this this piece of property though has been purchased right the money is out the door um we have a piece of property that can be developed and and uh I would hope I haven't seen anything yet that says that the things will stop it's you know the state

1:25:37has to absorb pain anyway what I'm what I'm saying is this yeah I would hope this project I think is so important that um we find a way to keep it going forward and I'm hoping that the 350 000 isn't the stumbling block that that stops IT so uh anyway you've assured me

1:26:03a little bit tonight um let you know that Eden with a number of other non-profit affordable housing developers has been very active working overtime up in Sacramento visiting legislators uh and others because they know that the elimination of Redevelopment would get rid of a

1:26:22significant source of it would get you know it would affect a lot of their projects because affordable housing funds are are the seed money for a lot of those projects so you know chairwoman Abelson you may run into Linda there there's a lot of uh they're very much uh working with cities on on

1:26:40this one definitely thank you okay uh just add on to um what councilmember Jones was asking about given that this project is a 20 million dollar project and we got this 250 000 Gap that we may or may not be responsible for contributing during the financial analysis uh we'll I assume the

1:27:02consultant and you all will work together to come up with ways to identify cutting costs and one thing I'm thinking of is anything that the city is imposing that's causing costs to go up for example I noticed in their proposal that they have X number of parking

1:27:17spaces set aside per City requirements so just kind of thinking about if there are things that the city has in place that's making costs go up I hope those will be identified during during the analysis period because those are things at least we have input on um it's it I appreciate that comment and

1:27:35we'll we'll note sort of what the cost drivers are um I think we have to operate within what our current land use laws are we obviously have the ability through the affordable housing density bonus program to Grant some concessions because it's a mixed use project we we can grant

1:27:52concessions on the residential not necessarily on the commercial so we just have to work within what is currently adopted and I know you know we are all looking forward to a specific plan but it is not an adopted document so we cannot work from that in terms of

1:28:06the entitlements but we'll do what we can and and there are you know there's a number of levels at which we can look at that and we will um we but we are currently I just want to make it clear that we are working within the parameters of the goals we set out in the developer solicitation

1:28:22package which was to have a mixed use project that is also adds a cost consideration but it's something that have so far been identified as worthwhile um so that is another um uh consideration but it has so far been a policy goal that we have wanted to keep so your point is taken thank you any

1:28:43further questions okay are there any public speakers on this item no speakers thank you I'll bring it back to the agency to see if there are any comments yeah I've got a comment that I certainly um would like to make sure to remind the developer Eden and and your partners

1:29:03that uh the project has certainly not been selected at this point and that there is quite a bit of public pressure to to look at the historic nature of the buildings that are there as you move your project forward and I just want to take this opportunity to reiterate that uh public opinion

1:29:26um thank you okay other comments is there a motion I'll move that we that we approve the exclusive negotiating rights agreement with Eden Housing Inc for redevelopment agency property at 10860 and 10848 San Pablo Avenue second all in favor please say aye aye I believe that was unanimous

1:29:55okay with that I will and unanimous yes with that I'll turn it back over to the mayor for the next agenda item which is a city council item so that's I agenda item 7B on the greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets [Applause] um in the climate action plan okay

1:30:27[Music] good evening mayor Chang and members of the council my name is Maria Sanders and I'm an environmental analyst with the Environmental Services Department last September we gave the city council an update on the progress towards completion of our climate action plan

1:30:58and tonight I'll be presenting for your consideration information regarding adoption of the greenhouse gas reduction emissions reduction targets that will be used to organize the climate action plan and monitor our progress in implementing the plan should it be adopted

1:31:15I'll first be providing a quick background on the purpose of the climate action plan which we call cap for short and the methodology that we're using to develop the climate action plan and after that I'll be discussing our recommended reduction targets and what

1:31:31these targets look like in more concrete terms so why is else really doing a climate action plan the city council has consistently shown commitment to the issue and has passed resolutions supporting the development of a climate action plan and the goals of the state's

1:31:49global warming Solutions act which is also known as ab32 the El Cerrito public has similarly shown a great deal of support for climate action in our climate action survey 91 percent agreed that climate change was an urgent issue that required action and in the latest election 85 percent of those who

1:32:12voted in our city voted against the initiative to suspend ab-32 and of course the main driving reason behind this support is concerned over the threats posed by global warming such as sea level rise and more intense water shortages but this support is also stems from the

1:32:31understanding that taking action to reduce global warming pollution also creates many benefits such as less air pollution more livable and healthy communities cost savings on energy Fuel and garbage and greater energy Independence foreign so just to provide a little context the

1:32:52main purpose of the climate action plan is to provide a road map for pursuing greenhouse gas emissions reductions in El Cerrito over time from a regulatory perspective the cap may also be helpful in streamlining SQL review for of ghg or greenhouse gas impacts for projects that are consistent

1:33:15with the cap and in terms of the scope the climate action plan will focus on emissions over which El Cerrito has some type of influence and which can be reliably measured over time and these emissions will be from both our own Municipal operations and from the community as a whole

1:33:37in developing the cap we have been following the ickley local governments for sustainability Milestone methodology and that methodology is to conduct a baseline inventory of our greenhouse gas emissions to establish a reduction Target or reduction Target to develop the plan on

1:33:59how to reach those targets and then most importantly to implement the plan and monitor progress towards that plan I mean towards those reduction targets in 2008 uh the city city staff conducted an inventory of ghg emissions due to activities in El Cerrito and since that

1:34:21time the Bay Area Air Quality Management District or backmed came up with um guidance on developing inventories as part of their guidelines for analyzing greenhouse gas emissions impacts under sequa and in response to that guidance we slightly revised the inventory to

1:34:41better account for vehicle miles traveled Beyond El Cerrito's jurisdictional boundaries and to include the embodied energy of water consumed and treated in El Cerrito or treated due to activities in El Cerrito it's important to know that our Baseline inventory is not a full

1:35:01accounting of el Cerrito's carbon footprint our inventory counts activities over which local governments have some type of influence and which can be be reliably measured over time so that we can monitor performance what's not counted in the inventory are emissions associated with

1:35:22the production and transport of consumer goods and Foods air travel and also travel Beyond Contra Costa County so you know looks like so here's um our um our Baseline inventory we established 2005 to be the Baseline year for the inventory and it's the foundation on

1:35:44which we'll be building our reduction strategies and as you can see uh 51 is at 51 percent the biggest chunk of emissions comes from vehicle use and at 44 energy use in the residential commercial and institutional sectors is our second biggest source of emissions

1:36:04with residential energy being almost twice as large as the commercial institutional sector next here's our Baseline in Greater detail showing the breakout of the emission where the missions come from and you can see that in the upper half that's uh Transportation Broken Out by

1:36:26different uh different streets and um then you'll notice that under um that the second biggest single source of emissions is from residential natural gas which is you know primarily the energy we use to heat our homes next so the next thing is to figure out how

1:36:49much we need to reduce in order to make a specified reduction Target and during the planning process we've been using a as a benchmark the reduction targets for local governments that is recommended by the ab-32 scoping plan to see if our actions could meet or exceed the ab32

1:37:10recommendation this target is 15 below current levels or 2005 in our cases in our case by 2020 this first Target set just sets us on a path towards a more climate-friendly world so in the cab we'll be modeling what we'll need to do to keep that one percent trend line going steadily

1:37:34downward for another 15 years to reach a reduction Target of 30 percent by 2035.

1:37:44so the so this look like in 2005 we emitted a about 147 000 tons of CO2 15 below that um is the green line so that's 125 000 tons by 2020 and 30 percent below that is a approximately 103 000 tons um the good news is that we're not doing this all by ourselves the state has

1:38:13several fuel efficiency and renewable energy regulations that will automatically reduce our emissions by about uh seven percent in 2020.

1:38:23um so that leaves us about um between uh the blue line and the green line that leaves us with about 29 000 tons that we'll need as a city to reduce in order to get to the 125 000 by 2020 and um that as um we get colors we do 2035 on those tons uh will be about 55

1:38:47000 tons that we need to reduce by 2035.

1:38:52taking a quick step back um the bulk of our plan will concentrate on strategies that will help us reduce ghg emissions at the community level we'll be evaluating land use and transportation strategies that are aimed at making El Cerrito more walkable bikeable and Transit oriented City

1:39:11we'll look at energy use strategies that are aimed at Greening increasing the efficiency of our buildings and waste reduction strategies and at the municipal level we'll be concentrating on strategies that will make the city operations more resource efficient and

1:39:29environmentally friendly and also hopefully provide good examples of leadership for other businesses and institutions in El Cerrito so in terms of the strategies um the what does the 2020 15 Target mean at the municipal level since 2008 the city has instituted several initiatives

1:39:53that have shown some impressive results the fire department shift schedule change for employees our annual employee no car challenge Energy Efficiency improvements and a fuel efficiency pilot project at the recycling center have resulted in reductions that are equivalent to nearly nine percent of our

1:40:142005 Baseline and at this rate the city at a corporate level will most likely be able to exceed the um the 15 reduction Target if it continues to pursue these types of initiatives at the household level um 15 is equivalent to basically driving 19 miles less per week per person using

1:40:40energy star appliances if you don't already use them insulating your attic and participating in the foods the new cities the city's new food scraps program these of course are meant to be examples of the types of actions needed to make the 15 reduction on an individual basis you know actual

1:41:00strategies that are employed at the household level will vary by household and some households will obviously have greater opportunity to reduce more than others but on an individual basis actions such as these are not outside the reach of the average home in El

1:41:17Cerrito um in terms of uh uh strategies for 2035 30 reduction targets basically would mean you know imagine a world in 25 years where you're putting 2 000 miles Less on your car you've installed a 98 efficient furnace and sealed the leaks in your furnace stocks you've installed solar

1:41:43panels on your roof and you've generated the equivalent of an office trash can of waste per week again this is not an unimaginable world as there are many homes in El Cerrito that are already fitting this description but of course the challenge will be achieving these types of reductions

1:42:04across the entire Community for instance a little more than a thousand homes per year for the next 10 years we'll need to take these types of reductions in order for us to make the Target and in order to achieve this the city we need to enact a whole range of strategies which

1:42:21we'll be investigating as a part of the climate action plan including education incentives ordinances that will encourage near-term changes in our energy use Transportation habits and waste generation continuing to invest in the infrastructure that invites people to

1:42:39walk bike and Transit more and over the long term pursuing development that helps us create a more compact Transit oriented energy efficient community that is structurally less dependent on fossil fuels so in conclusion we're recommending that the council adopt the greenhouse gas

1:42:59emissions targets of um 15 below 2005 Levels by 2020 and 30 below 2005 Levels by 2035. these reduction targets will be the Cornerstone of the climate action plan they will determine how many tons of emissions the city will attempt to reduce and how ambitious policies and

1:43:21programs will need to be in order to reach that Target and based on our analysis we believe that these targets are appropriate for smaller primarily residential communities such as El Cerrito will contribute our to our fair share to the regional effort to reduce emissions

1:43:40and they're not so lofty that they're unattainable yet they are ambitious enough to push us to innovate new ways to reach these targets so thank you so much for your time and I'm happy to answer any questions yeah you just actually said something that triggered my thinking as we find

1:44:02out in our next agenda item we have roughly 10 200 about 10 400 homes in the households in the in the city and you said about a thousand households a year need to for the next 10 years need to adopt some of these strategies um however when you looked at the strategies for achieving the 2035 goals

1:44:25which is 24 years from now um some of those are pretty lofty Capital Improvements to these households uh solar panels and and heat for new furnaces and and potentially doing some insulation that's still a very large number of almost 450 houses a year have to make

1:44:49those types of capital Investments over the next 24 years in order for us to meet our our 2035 goals what are what are some of the things I mean that's a tremendous investment in our in our real estate certainly has a tremendous cost yeah cost from a permit perspective what are

1:45:12some of the things that that we've looked at to try and get 450 houses a year roughly to to make that kind of investment yeah there's um quite a few initiatives out there at the both the state and the and the regional level to get um on a kind of incentive and education

1:45:32basis but will be a combination with you know with PG e and um and uh the CEC that there's this a very um uh um active um push at the CPC and the CEC level to work on um uh retrofitting existing homes in California because they realize that they're not going to make a um the ab32

1:45:58goals without those kinds of pushes so so there is help at a kind of a regional and a state level um there are also things that we um would be looking at in terms of um in terms of potentially ordinances that would um such as like a time of sale ordinance or some type of thing where there's an

1:46:23increased um uh standards for the types of improvements that people would be doing during major remodels we're looking at we're investigating those right now as potentials um you know in a time of sale about 200 homes a year in El Cerrito during good years it goes um it goes up for sale

1:46:48um so there's the potential of getting that the other thing to consider is is that people's homes are their furnaces and their envelopes are getting to a place where many people realize that they are having to upgrade them just as a part of normal normal maintenance on

1:47:06the home so so many of these homes have furnaces that are original to the house and in 25 years you can imagine that many of those are going to be turning over about 50 to 100 turnover just just as a normal amount of just as a normal attrition in our community um

1:47:29so we are looking at those types of things in terms of and also we're also trying to increase our ability to educate the public about these issues so that it is an option that people will pursue I guess where my question was going is that essentially we're looking at eight

1:47:48new permits a day every business day that for just this aspect does that does that sound like something that we can handle with our current capacity you know is this something that we should be if we if the education was to work and people did have the resources to make those

1:48:08types of Investments is this going to burden our current Staffing in order to even implement this I can't speak for the building department um that it is going to be a stretch I mean it is I mean as I say that these are these are um these are ambitious goals um and it will be a stretch from that

1:48:32perspective um in terms of of getting um the housing stock in in El Cerrito to consider these things great thank you I mean we do have in our housing element there's um over 50 percent of our housing stock is over 60 years old so there there certainly is a tremendous opportunity

1:48:54for to make some of these improvements um if they haven't been made already some houses have have had improvements but certainly you know when you start looking at that many households require it or trying to encourage that many households to have this larger investment it's it's going to be a

1:49:13burden on our our building department so thank you I just had one yeah um you triggered point of interest on on these goals do you are you familiar on how they were formulated by the who is it here the the av-32 scoping plan yeah because my next question is just pretty

1:49:38simple did they take into account when they're setting these goals improvements and things like well uh cars uh improving over time and do you know if uh that type of thing in your estimation was am reasonable or was it High I mean you have to make certain assumptions when when setting out goals

1:50:05for 2020 and 2035 and I just didn't know if did they take a conservative approach or were the was it out there pretty good how you know I'd have to it's been a really long time since I've read the ab-32 scoping plan but uh I would have to say that um they used a business as

1:50:25usual um a kind of scenario building in order to kind of come up with what they felt that we were going to be growing over time but one of the things that is in the scoping plan is um improvements to the vehicles specifically because of pably Standards which are basically to increase the fuel

1:50:46efficiency in vehicles in California and then also a low-carbon fuel content so those are initiatives that that actually were built into that blue line and then on top of that there's also in the Renewable Power standard which it basically tells utilities are mandates

1:51:10that utilities increase the amount of renewable power that they use in their electricity mix so all those things do contribute and as you can see in that in that one slide of the graph that it has significantly shaved off the growth curve for us okay and I just in reading

1:51:32your report something Kingdom might hit me and I okay the phrase reasonable and ambitious goals I guess maybe I'm old school but I thought reasonable and and ambitious were two separate almost two parts different parts of the spectrum but then I got to thinking

1:51:54about it maybe maybe it is reasonable and ambitious I I so I'm asking you do you think these are reasonable even though they are ambitious I the reason I actually put it in the terms of a household level is because when you kind of break it down to the household level it almost feels

1:52:12unambitious um and so from that perspective it does feel um reasonable but from the perspective of of replicating those types of reductions or the equivalency of those reductions throughout the entire Community it is ambitious I I also um felt I mean obviously it's

1:52:35um of the you know to the council's discretion you know to decide to go to a lower Target if it felt too ambitious but um but we also really looked at in terms of the state and the region is really looking at the 15 reduction Target for local governments and um and it's a a

1:52:59Target that many communities are are trying to to trying to reach so from that perspective I felt like we really needed to go as ambitious as we possibly felt we could sure if we hit it we hit it if we don't we make adjustments but that's that's good no thank you very

1:53:22much thought about this is that that if you look back you know a period of into a prior period of time you'll see that things were less efficient and they cost more money relative to household income to produce like furnaces for example you know so as as we go on into the future I

1:53:51would Envision things like solar panels will become cheaper just like computers have become cheaper and um you know I don't really know for sure what the order of magnitude will be but I would imagine it would go that way not it certainly would not go the other way

1:54:08which which would be that they would get more expensive so as they get cheaper I would imagine that people in fact will do them at an increasing rate yeah and that that rate has actually increased even in El Cerrito over the last five years it um the installation of solar panels in

1:54:27El Cerrito has increased like I think something like a um 15 a year I mean we are starting from very small Baseline so it's easy for it to increase pretty quickly um right now but we use that traditional Ray to kind of look at some some of the scenario building on what that would um

1:54:46reap in terms of our Energy Efficiency our our energy reductions um the other thing is is that yes solar panels there is a big push right now for solar panels to to get to almost a two dollar a watt level so um so there and there's also a lot of different ways that

1:55:11rule making around Net metering can be can change over time as well that would actually make it a lot more beneficial for people to actually install solar panels than than is currently exist so so um there's a lot of changes that can happen in the next 25 years would really

1:55:32affect the the affordability of a lot of these measures the other thing I would expect over that longer period of time is that there would be a number of changes that we don't even yet envision and that they would be improvements because if you look backward in time you

1:55:52see that there are many things that we would never have envisioned and they have come true and they have happened you know a computer you know that is a cell phone you know they used to take up entire floors of buildings and this one probably does this is only a cell phone it probably does more than

1:56:14those giant computers that we used to have so I I would see a lot of things happening like that that would be in our favor and we don't necessarily now know which ones will go which direction but that's okay you know that's okay and I think that this is a um a reasonable approach to a very

1:56:35serious problem and so part of what I'm concerned about that I think has been addressed in in having goals that are a push is that we are saying yes this is a serious problem it's not um something just to be played around with it's something that is very critical to

1:56:58our future existence and I think based on you know for example the things that you mentioned earlier about the surveys and the feedback and the voting on um against the elimination of ab32 you know these are all indicators that our community is very much in support

1:57:20of having a Target that is a push thank you Maria great presentation um one question for you I know that you did online surveys as well as had a number of community meetings where community members were able to come and give ideas for the types of measures that they would be supportive of can you

1:57:40give sort of just a couple of tidbits from the findings of those were the online surveys that you received I think you was it a couple hundred that you received and what were the sorts of improvements that people seem to be supporting were they more Transportation

1:57:53related or maybe more Home Improvement related yeah we um in the survey we didn't ask so much uh there was a a big push both in the survey and the uh uh um Community workshops there was um a real uh desire for um us to kind of reopen the bicycle plan and to update the bicycle and pedestrian

1:58:19plan so that we could um we look at infrastructure improvements for bicycle and bicycling and pedestrians so that was kind of the big one for the transportation for um we did ask a series of questions on policy options for uh for uh um residential improvements including asked

1:58:45people what they had already done and uh about 27 percent had gotten to a place where they had actually put insulation in their homes and of course these are 400 people who for the most part self-selected to take this survey so there are people who are fairly committed to the um to the issue

1:59:07and they you know have indicated the types of things that they wanted to do and they were all within the they were all things that they had uh you know like investing in solar and and whether I in the home and doing doing a series of of Energy Efficiency improvements in their

1:59:29households we're all high on their list we asked them policy options on that and of course some public education and incentives came out you know as um we had a lot of support the other thing that had the highest support was um Pace financing or property assessed clean

1:59:47energy financing which we brought to you earlier or late last year which unfortunately has been held up at the federal level and and then things that kind of began to rate lower in the um in in the policy options was something such as you know a time of use or a time of sale ordinance on asking

2:00:15for increased Energy Efficiency at the time of sale those kinds of things did rate lower and can you tell us sort of what the what the Press is now it once these goals are vetted with the council what it how long is the cap process and I'm not sure if you've kind of mapped this

2:00:34out at this point and what are the interval intervals where the public will get involved yeah we um we did the climate action um workshops um so are the strategy workshops and uh we are right now in the process of quantifying and drafting the plan we are shooting for having the plan

2:00:55um circulated for public review um late spring of this year and we're looking at I'm looking uh sometime in summer of coming to council we'll probably do two public meetings I think we we actually did set the public meetings tentatively and they've been published in The Greener El Cerrito

2:01:15garbage bill insert so you can kind of find those in there there in May and June and I think council member Lyman brings up a good point about the interaction between some of these policies and goals and how our city staff functions I mean to the extent that we are we have

2:01:31barriers to some of these things getting enacted we need to identify them and maybe come up with ways maybe we were already planning on Expediting permitting or having an online permit system that would benefit the community at large for all their other activities

2:01:45but would also have a bearing on these types of measures so I'm sure as you're writing this plan you're probably flagging areas where our city departments either need to work better together or there's going to be an increased burden on them and that we at least need to acknowledge

2:02:00that as we're trying to cost out what the what the plan is going to be thank you thank you um I just I just wanted to applaud I think just the fact that we really solidly have in in this target the acknowledgment of the transportation and land use connection which I think

2:02:19you know given that we are mostly residential built out that for new development at least that's really where um making an efficient choice of how we build and where and what can really add so um I went to to I guess applaud that and um I'm sorry I'm skipping to discussion

2:02:40but let me ask go back to my questions real quick um so I I think one main question was the consideration of grant funding towards the targets and are there I guess carrots out there to you know reinforce this level of targets that that you've proposed tonight um I guess considered When developing

2:03:04those targets yeah there's uh right now quite a few different types of um funding um sources for this kind of work I mean obviously it's not uh you know the entire I don't know if we can necessarily fund 100 of our actions um through grant funding but for instance

2:03:24the EPA climate showcase communities Grant is funding a good portion of our the development of this climate action plan but we've also reserved uh funds there for investing in some Energy Efficiency projects at the municipal level and then from the incentives in education for uh

2:03:47for residential and for business we've also set aside funds during that um for in that grant for residential home energy assessments so that that people can tap into a larger program that's uh rolling out in Statewide and uh in Contra Costa County with stimulus funds

2:04:12um I sent out a weekly just a little while ago about those uh um that assessment so what we're doing right now is we're giving 250 dollars towards a a professional level whole house perform energy performance assessment and then that can in turn be used to um to look

2:04:31at rebates or to apply for rebates under the under the PG e and Contra Costa County program so those are the kinds of leveraging that we are hoping that we can do with other you know other kind of Grant funds um you know we just also got a grant to do more work along the Loney Greenway so

2:04:52the idea is that you know you really create gems along the eye a lonely Greenway so that you can so that the greenway becomes more of a place for people to really feel comfortable walking and biking and using that as as you know the other Avenue to get around El Cerrito

2:05:10and I guess um so I hear that we're definitely already starting to line Grant monies that we currently have but I'm curious if there's um you know future are are you seeing at the state level funding competitive funding starting to align with well cities have to have it you know you can

2:05:29have a climate action plan but you may have to have certain targets to be eligible at all or or pretty much you know I um I I have not been following the SB 375 process um as closely as um some folks have been able to and um but I imagine that there is um Regional

2:05:50Transportation funds that will to a certain extent be aligned with the climate action goals um and um to the extent that a good portion of the transportation and land use strategies that we'll be looking at in the climate action plan are strategies that are really consistent

2:06:10with the climate with a with the sustainable Community strategy that's being developed you know at the regional level um so from that perspective I think that it will um those kinds of things will be lined up for those kinds of Regional Transportation funds um and uh in terms of you know in terms

2:06:32of other types of funding you know for Energy Efficiency I'm much more kind of tapped into that world and PG e has Innovation grants we have a local government energy partnership and so from that perspective we you know there are programs that are really focused in the East Bay and you

2:06:54know us going out there and really working with them and you know PG e has you know about a billion dollars a year on Energy Efficiency so to the extent that we funnel those those funds into El Cerrito the better off we are and just another question about just prioritizing any strategies that come

2:07:13out through the um that are being developed and um if there's consideration of addition you know basically looking for strategies that have multiple benefits and and quantifying them in some way so that it's not you know basically how are we are you inventorying strategies that are going

2:07:33to have multiple benefits in addition to climate um as a way to prioritize them and go after them yeah we are playing around with a little bit of a model right now where it does kind of um give a numerical quality to kind of the um to the multiple benefits um and from and I'll just say what I

2:07:56mean is Health you know from increased walking or it's you know whether it's medical costs or it's um you know economic benefit from more passed by walking traffic and right yeah that kind of Greater economic diversity um yeah and from that perspective we will we are kind of developing a model

2:08:18right now um that does look at very few of the policies that are going to be in the climate action plan um are solely just for Greenhouse gas reductions and in fact I can't think of one at this point in time that isn't aligned with other other benefits or priorities of the city so

2:08:42um so from that perspective um you know there will be in terms of prioritizing them um we'll probably have some type of numerical way of looking at those multiple benefits right and publicly perfected it yet though okay okay thank you so I think Point um any more discussions and then

2:09:04we've gotten the questions out any comments from the public oh I'm sorry yeah comments from the public come here I'm sure I've got a comment um you know I remember back in 1990 when uh Solid Waste bill came through and they set what everybody thought were incredibly ambitious goals and we've

2:09:23easily achieved them the diversion from the landfills so uh I I actually see that these goals are as uh councilmember Abelson said we need to aim high and set very ambitious goals and I would actually even say 90 reduction by the year 2100 would potentially keep that

2:09:45one percent trend line and and certainly you know keep the same idea going being ambitious that relying on technology and everything else um you know that's something that I think we sounds funny today but I'm in council member abelson's Camp it probably is very achievable come 90

2:10:06years from now to have a 90 reduction in in our 2005 goals um so thank you somebody's gonna be here I wanted to make a comment as well I was just looking back on I was very I'm very proud to make a vote tonight um with regards to this motion and I was looking back at sort of the timeline of climate

2:10:33action or lack thereof and seeing that it was a 1988 when Jim Hansen the NASA scientist made what he thought would be a very important presentation to the Senate uh committee on Energy natural resources where he stated with 99 certainty the scientific Community

2:10:49agrees that Human Action and CO2 is causing climate change and thought he could just go home he had raised the raise the red flag I was in the sixth grade at that time and it's amazing that 23 years have gone by with very stunted action at any level of government other

2:11:06than at the local and the state level so I'm so proud to be able to to make this kind of vote today and to put El Cerrito on the map as one of the communities that's doing something about something a large topic that we've known about for many decades now I'd be happy to make a motion any other

2:11:24comments okay okay I make a motion that we adopt resolution adopting greenhouse gas emission reduction targets of 15 percent below 2005 Levels by the year 2020 and 30 percent below 2005 Levels by 2035 for both Municipal operations and the El Cerrito Community as part of the El

2:11:50Cerrito climate action plan second all those in favor aye motion carries unanimously thank you congratulations moving on um so we can go on to item 7c draft 2007 to 2014 housing element study session good evening mayor council members um I'm Jennifer Carmen development services

2:12:38manager for the city and we're here tonight to talk briefly about the 2007 to 2014 draft housing element um what is a housing element many of you know but I'm going to go over it for the public it's one of seven mandated elements of the general plan um it's meant to address current and

2:13:00future housing needs in the city of El Cerrito and it's required by state law it mandates the state law mandates the following contents A needs assessment an inventory of resources and constraints a statement of housing goals objectives and policies and an implementation

2:13:17program strategy that goes with those goals and policies just for a little bit of legal background government code 65584 requires all cities to have an adequate housing element and there are specific and detailed statutory requirements that go with that the housing element is required to be

2:13:39reviewed by the State Department of Housing and Community Development and what happens is we bring the document to Council in advance of that review they have a 60-day time period to review it they send it back with comments and then we start the adoption process after

2:13:55we've updated it based on hcd's comments the housing element is required to identify ways that the city can accommodate the number of units that are assigned through the Regional Housing needs allocation number and that is a number that comes from a bag and a bag's number

2:14:13comes down from the state when we approach this project we wanted to do a very streamlined focused update that built on the 2003 housing element there hasn't been aside from the economy a lot of change in El Cerrito we have a pretty stable population stable demographics which you'll see in a

2:14:32moment we wanted to make sure that was consistent with the existing state plan or the existing General plan is required by state law and that additions and changes to the document reflect recent changes in state law such as sb2 which was the homeless Housing Initiative

2:14:51ab2348 which establishes minimum densities in metropolitan areas ab2634 which is housing for extremely low income households and we consider this an interim update prior to a general Plan update and the release of 2010 census data we're a little bit behind but we are

2:15:14moving forward with a document based on the 2006 through 2008 American Community survey that the census presents so Arena numbers that is the short version of Regional Housing needs allocation each City must accommodate a fair share of the Region's housing needs based on

2:15:34State population growth it's based on a mix of housing for all economic segments it's linked to zoning density Transit it's a very complicated methodology that ABAC runs to come up with these numbers and their targets they're not quotas so we have to demonstrate through the

2:15:52housing element that we can meet it however if the market doesn't meet it there's not much there isn't any penalty from the state at this time for not meeting it and this is our 2007-2014 Arena allocation we're looking at a total of 431 units spread across the various

2:16:12income groups um as I mentioned AB 2634 established a housing for extremely low income households that is a subset of the very low income number and it's not necessarily called out but it's definitely included within those 93 units so the housing draft housing element

2:16:33contents that are in front of you um there's the introduction the needs assessment resources and constraint discussion and the policy program and then assorted appendices that go through various technical data required by the state the process that we've moved forward

2:16:53with has involved a lot of public Outreach on the website multiple articles in our newsletter we had a community-based organizations Workshop we've had multiple public hearings and study sessions at the Planning Commission and tonight we're having a city council

2:17:07study session and once the document comes back we'll have multiple public hearings at both Planning Commission and city council so the housing needs assessment contains a community profile that describes the City's population economy and housing characteristics this section also

2:17:25analyzes current and housing current and projected housing needs and this slide is an example as you can see El Cerrito has a relatively stable population and housing mix over the last 10 years the housing resources and constraints section describes and analyzes the

2:17:44actual and potential governmental and non-governmental constraints um this is more related to government codes the market constraints and other things that's section three of your document the housing element goals and policies we did have one question about what's

2:18:02different from the 2003 plan in this regard um and for the most part we carried over the same goals we've made some minor modifications to the language on goal number two we added a mention of minimizing constraints as as best as the city can and we dropped the original goal number five which was

2:18:22have a housing element that meets state law we believe that was redundant and we're always striving to do that so we've changed it to an energy conservation goal as as desired by the state part of this process is also making sure that we meet the goals that hcd sets forward for all housing

2:18:40elements and those are based on a program that they put forward called building blocks for Effective housing elements and all cities have been closely following that to ease the review turnaround time with hcd so these are the five policies that we have in place and I won't go through

2:19:00every other goals I won't go through every policy but I'll summarize them so goal number one is focus is on policies that maintain the overall health of Housing and neighborhoods in El Cerrito and there are a number of policies within that goal number two has the most policies of

2:19:19any goal in the housing element and it focuses on policies to encourage development to meet Arena numbers um so from encouraging construction of accessory units allowing manufactured housing and minimizing constraints where we can those are all included here goal number three focuses on policies

2:19:44related to housing for special needs including transitional housing and even though the housing element is a little bit behind schedule we actually met a lot of the new state laws relating to the housing element with the update of the zoning ordinance sb2 put into place

2:20:00zoning that provides for transitional housing and we met that back in 2008.

2:20:13goal number four relates to fair housing opportunities and goal number five is the energy conservation goals and there's room here for a significant expansion in the future based on a new city initiatives like the climate action plan the future specific plan things that will be

2:20:30adopted in the future so the next Rena process we have two there's Arena and then RH and D so the Regional Housing needs determination process is what generates the Regional Housing needs allocation number it's a lot of acronyms that the state uses so the next the process for the 2015 to

2:20:552022 Regional Housing needs allocation number has already begun um and the number is the years are a little um I think there's some fluidity here um you're seeing if you look at a lot of other cities there's the 2007 to 2014 housing element that we're working on

2:21:16right now some cities have called it the 2006 to 2014. some are using 2009 to 2014. pick a year a few years and work with that um so the next Arena actually will be the housing element cycle will be expanded to eight years so we can use 2014 to 2022 or 2015 to 2022.

2:21:40the next edition of the housing element will be based on the updated General plan that we anticipate will be completed prior to getting our new Arena allocation number possibly in 2013-2014.

2:21:52and it's an opportunity to incorporate facets of the climate the climate change plan and any new general plan elements that come forward during that time so the next steps that we have tonight are questions and comments from City Council submittal of the draft housing element

2:22:07to hcd hopefully as soon as possible environmental clearance that will be started as soon as the housing element is sent to the state we anticipate in a negative declaration for the document as when we get that back from hcd we'll start the response to comments

2:22:24public hearings for adoption and then certification by hcd and we're hoping to complete this process by May provided hcd response in a timely manner so I am here to answer questions related to the development of the elements land use anything else Hill de mile is here

2:22:42who can respond to questions about appendix B subsidized units and other affordable housing issues and that concludes my presentation questions from Council I guess the question I have is one that's not on the list but it's the one that kept coming to mind as I read

2:23:06through the document and that is that in other um forums we're talking about the SCS or the sustainable Community strategy talking about the RTP the regional transportation plan right and about the connection between all of those things and um is this connected in some way it

2:23:32didn't look to me like it was I mean there's no mention of it being connected particularly that is correct this is an iterative step animal communities heavily involved right now in starting the Regional Housing needs determination process I just found recent memos today

2:23:54they're working very closely with a bag on that so I think in the next with the next generation of numbers everything's going to come together through that process okay that's helpful because I kept wondering what's the connection and and I know with the RTP and the SCS

2:24:12um they're there supposedly is will be a connection yes definitely but um okay so this will connect this and that will connect that'll make the big picture okay that's really helpful to um to see and um thank you just one clarification question I think it's somewhere in your document I just

2:24:32can't find it uh we've been allocated 413 units you noticed or you noted for the 2007 to 2014 period and what has our production bin do you know um as of right now we have entitled close to 200 units since 2007 however due to the economy we're not entirely sure if those units will ever be

2:24:50produced and are they across the spectrum of affordability they are across the Spectrum okay thank you you you mentioned the 2010 Census Data yes and I'm just curious how will if that does come out in the next month which is what I've heard some people say it might come out as early as that how

2:25:12will that get folded in or are you just going to move forward with the with the information we have I mean and then use that on the next iteration that that is the plan we would move forward with the data that we have um it's taken quite a long time to generate what we do have

2:25:30um and actually as I started comparing our document to other cities we found that a lot of cities just retain their 2000 census data and it seemed acceptable to the state which my thought was why am I generating all this new stuff but we wanted to have the most the

2:25:45best picture that we could in the element and so that's why we used 2006 to 2008 data foreign [Music] I I will I will put out there that this is a tremendous amount of information and I really appreciate getting this amount of information it certainly does uh illuminate

2:26:19you know our house our housing stock information and it puts it into a an interesting way to look at the data that's out there the 10 200 and some occupied units that we have the age of those units the age of the occupants of those units um it certainly helps to really think

2:26:40through many things one of the things that um they caught me completely unawares is that there are um and I'm looking through my notes to quickly find it but it's something on the order of almost 2 000 households in our community which represents about 4 500 people

2:27:05uh that are in households where the households earn less than thirty thousand dollars a year and and that is um that's a lot of that's a lot of our uh community and and uh it just uh was not something that I was aware of uh and so I I really do appreciate a report

2:27:27like this that does go into um to looking at all aspects of our community and and reports it out in a in a way that I I will say that there's potentially ways to improve the presentation but um the information is all here and and it's uh it's sobering uh the the amount of

2:27:50households we have that are struggling um overcrowding overpaying for their housing unit these are some of the terms that are in here that that uh people should look at and and really consider um how fortunate they are as they go through their process and I agree with councilmember Abelson

2:28:15that the uh there's a lot of information here as I alluded to in some of our other agenda items this evening that does dovetail with some of the things that we're talking about like the climate action plan or our general plan or some of the specific plans that we're

2:28:31considering and so that it you know this is not it this shouldn't be it's not a static document it should be something that is consistently um referred to and used as we're making a lot of our planning uh decisions in in our city so again I want to thank you for what's very clearly a lot of hard

2:28:50work associated with this document and I look forward to you know getting additional public comment on it as well as the state's comments thank you yeah um one of the criticisms I heard from the last round of going through our housing element with the state was that

2:29:17um it would be sent to the state and then they would make comments then we would change the comments to reflect their concerns send it back to the state then what appeared to be some another person reviewed it had different comments sent it back and there was this reiterative process

2:29:37going on I'm wondering if this time it would be possible to keep track of that so that we can document it and send it into the state because when I mentioned it um in meetings since that time people have been interested in knowing exactly what was happening and I think it would be

2:29:56really helpful to inform what's going on with state government right now to do that we will definitely keep track of them I think hopefully there's none well we haven't heard of many problems they've had dedicated people assigned to every city so hopefully that is still the case

2:30:14with their current situation and we won't have many issues moving forward okay yeah thank you um no I think it's a really good update on uh our housing element and I understand that this is not the full-blown um adjustment and review that's coming up with the general plan

2:30:45well what type on that type not this but on on that type where the element is completely looked at and and you know dovetailed into several uh parts of the general plan what type of a public process are we talking about in any and the length of time you think it'll take

2:31:04to do that um I would well the the public process when you're starting a new planning document is extensive especially if we're building it from scratch if we include most of that as part of the new the general Plan update um it's difficult to give you a definitive timeline but the public

2:31:25process can last about a year um no no no for the entire general plan housing element would be part of that but the housing element alone we've seen cities run it very quickly we've seen them run at very long time so it it really depends on the scope how far we're going to take it

2:31:46um and it may be that our new allocation number is so small which I've just jinxed us um that we don't have much to do but um it will be I think getting through the general Plan update will show us just how much we need to include in the new housing element right I appreciate

2:32:05your reasonable and ambitious uh timeline of the year but I I haven't I've been involved with a couple actually three General plans and I wish they would just take a year so good I I I think Council has a lot to do with uh that though well and the public process is just the beginning put

2:32:26it together not the adoption process and all the public parts of that sure so we're looking at roughly a year okay um appreciate that the law the recent laws and policies from the state are included here so that's that's a good update what strikes me as I was reading this

2:32:46though what strikes me is we've had several housing projects that have uh how should I say have not come to pass I don't see anything in here though that would relate to that that it was because of the housing element that we had housing that didn't develop it was purely a

2:33:09marketing a market economic Market situation so when we do the housing element how do we figure economics into the thing into the goals um into the goals um well to the goals in other words we're told to put out 431 units before what 2014.

2:33:36I I don't know if that can be achievable in an economic Market not only now but say in a couple years even if things pick up I mean right is is the 431 completely divorced of uh from economics or is it somehow factored into that now it's completely divorced for the most

2:33:57part um it's it's more about um showing the state that we could if the market is right and we're very lucky we have there are some cities in the Bay Area that have been told to build on tidelines like Larkspur they got a number that was I believe over a thousand

2:34:17um so we have a very real realistic assignment oh and Skye can speak to that our City attorney he knows Larkspur well oh that's all right but um no it's it's looking at the methodology economics does not appear to be part of that it may be in the future as part of the SCS but in the past it

2:34:39was not a huge well that's good I think I think this sets us up well it's a document that this exercise was to bring it up administratively up up to date I don't see anything that's happened in the community that we have to just suddenly change a lot I'm sure that the

2:34:57housing element will be there'll be a lot of comment and and review of what is needed going forward but that should dovetail with the general plan which I think is going to be a pretty intense uh this time around okay I will say this and councilman Lyman actually picked it up from the

2:35:21from the latter point of view I was I was blown away literally blown away because we hear about how um people uh only make a certain amount of money and everybody else shouldn't be making that there are 41 percent of the households and El Cerrito that make a hundred and three

2:35:44thousand dollars or more including what is it nine percent seven percent that make over two hundred thousand dollars a year so I really think what this does for me and it should be going forward we should be looking at this it breaks down some of the stereotypes

2:36:04we have on um how much money people are making or how much the community is making and it updates us on what the real facts are rather than opinions rather than basing it on 1990 figures or whatever and so um and it's at 2008 so I imagine when the 2010 comes out we'll have some

2:36:26adjustment in those numbers and that's what we have to look at going forward to debate the past is it is is not a very uh I'm pontificating here but it's not it's not a good exercise and I would like to make sure that we're looking forward and not backwards so thank you very much

2:36:48together I guess I I'm also thank the staff for you know for getting us up to speed and caught up um I had a bunch of questions but I understand more clearly you know it's just we're at the cusp of you know Cycles where our general plan is you know about to Sunset and then

2:37:08we've been doing the specific planning process that is also feels like oh we can't you know it doesn't feel like it's caught up but um but I understand that procedurally this is what we we got to start with and then um we'll move forward from there and so um I think

2:37:25yeah related to you know for future thoughts on the next iteration if I can start going there um I think that the biggest thing that of course bothers me is this you know this little Clause that's in the in the you know units um I think it's in the that our unit projections were you know

2:37:47a range of whatever it was from like you know 100 to 200 at a certain given site but with the caveat that you know parking right uh result in fewer units and I just really want to make sure that as we move forward places near Transit are never going to have to face that or that it's it's

2:38:09we're not trading housing um cars instead of people in places that are really well served with alternative ways to get around um and that you know we're looking at future you know updates to parking requirements that are based on square footage rather than just straight units

2:38:28because then you have a proportional burden depending on the size of units um that we're looking at [Music] um you know just just the the fact that we have more variety of smaller housing spaces in the form of multi-family units um and that in and of itself creates

2:38:49just physically you know the cost per um housing unit of multiple bedrooms within a multi family format is just much more affordable than you know full single family and um and encouraging you know recognizing the multi-family housing for that benefit um I also wanted to

2:39:13um I guess uh you know in everything you know so it's the ultimate how um housing and transportation question where you know where we're also looking at the the center for Community Innovation study um looking at second units and and also increasing the flexibility of parking

2:39:34requirements around Transit stations and because that's you know we are mostly single family um I feel like that's another huge opportunity to to look at um accommodating affordable housing in those in that way um and I guess looking to our Council to to get you know really clear on what how

2:39:58much flexibility do we mean when we say by making those parking requirements more Flex reduced in exchange for other Transportation amenities um I think in the same way that you know the expectation that computers have gone from massive to small the the next generation of workers are also

2:40:18really changing you know attitudes on lifestyle expectations and what people are looking for and I think [Music] um we kind of get a a dual benefit of creating more affordable units through multi-family as well as you know actually meeting a desire a desirable you know

2:40:39um creating a type of housing that is increasingly going to be desired um which is the more urban kind of walkable community and I just want to add that um uh uh I think yeah those are my main main questions and I guess the fight the final thing I wanted to find out is if through all this if there

2:41:04was any kind of discovery of of single individuals I guess non-household families living in single-family residences because I feel like as a community there's we've most with mostly single-family larger homes in the Hills that we get a lot of of you know shared

2:41:26households of single individuals and if that has kind of bubbled up in the the data um anywhere because I feel like because of the lack of housing diversity that we're seeing lots of people move into these you know non-traditional housing arrangements and yeah I believe

2:41:44that the number was let's see none but there wasn't there was a number in here um it was I if I remember correctly it was like 450 or something to that effect so about about four percent right um are you looking at the non-family households yeah it was not it was non-family

2:42:09households 20.

2:42:11with it but it was a subset of non-family households it's in another table I will say that there's a tremendous amount of data [Music] yeah that that one does have multiple subcategories but there is there was another table that did have that number in it um foreign

2:42:46corollary to that is is the number of multi-bedroom homes that are occupied by a single person because I'm I think we have a number of those as well and and that the data doesn't there isn't the um housing stock is not broken down by bedrooms uh to allow us to come up with

2:43:10a some sort of estimate of the number of multi-family multi-bedroom uh homes that are occupied by a single person that data should be released with the 2010 census yeah oh I just have a comment which is that um I hear what's being said but it seems to me in planning for the world in

2:43:34which we are meeting our climate action plan uh targets it would seem to me that we would hope to encourage people to live down where Transit is so we need to also keep that in mind about um in you know rather than um discouraging people from living in new units that would be built near San Pablo

2:44:04Avenue that we would you know keep that other goal that we have in mind um because uh putting in second units for example up at the top of the hill May in fact not be a productive thing to do if we've got this other goal so um so we need to think about all the different aspects of all of the

2:44:26things we're trying to do and um and you see that they work together and to that end actually one of the things that that I noticed is that most of the units that are in transit oriented are one bedroom and and two bedroom units and and it was very clear in here that one of the

2:44:45things that's missing is larger family units that are in the affordable category and so I there is a a statement that there isn't enough large you know multi-family multi-bedroom units uh to support the larger families that are that area in the in the you know so it's

2:45:07not it's interesting there's there's they're a very clear argument for a demand for affordable multi-bedroom units but when you start looking at all the proposals for that came in for example for the property next door they were all one bedroom two bedroom you know there was one three

2:45:28bedroom for the manager and it's very interesting that we that we're not getting the we have to figure out how to get the economics so that there are larger units whether they're market rate they may have to be market rate but there are larger units that are attracting

2:45:43the full spectrum of people to our Transit oriented areas I guess just kind of the the philosophical big picture question of you know the way this whole thing is set up it's like we've got we're inventorying our needs we're inventorying the demographics but I mean

2:46:01clearly we I think we see that we have the potential to go above and beyond the 400 units required here in that um and that were so yeah just you know it felt like a little bit of a disconnect in that you know with any planning I mean a lot of people that would potentially want to live here

2:46:20don't live here yet right and and thinking about how how to accommodate that future growth and how that's important for our community um you know growth in the future so just saying that that can handle very well in the new general plan so maybe we could move forward

2:46:42not to keep pushing it but there's another thing that comes to my mind if which we all I imagine saw the census hopefully filled it out in fact um and there's not a lot of um information being requested on that document so I'm not sure that we can actually update all of these numbers from that

2:47:02document that's correct and what what they're doing what the census is doing now is the decennial census is a much more limited form and the American Community survey is the longer form and they do that on a more regular basis and so I actually thought we'd have some more

2:47:20data coming from the 2006 to 2008 data sets that we looked at versus you know waiting for the 2010.

2:47:34all right any other comments on or feedback for Jennifer nope great well that's that's it for us thank you thank you very much 60 days it comes back give or take okay so we have our last item s to do um Council liaison reports um I'm just trying to pull up my notes Here

2:48:13which I have I have a couple I just am having a little trouble finding them right now I'll just I'll go then um there are you ready um sure whatever you want whatever you like um so the two committees that I will report on are the committee on aging and the Environmental Quality committee and

2:48:37um the Environmental Quality Committee of this committee um [Applause] met um and they've really been quite active recently um oops I'm still looking at the wrong committee here a second I think I need to you need to come back to me okay because I can't find all of

2:49:03my notes um I can quickly report on the park and rec commission met in January and there's no actions no items for me to report back on um and well I guess I could say we won't see a WWE proposal come through forward this year I think that we uh Jerry Bradshaw already informed us to that

2:49:27um and the design review board met and um considered Safeway's design program that's it he's met since the last time we spoke I just had to the softball field down at Gilman field is under construction so any if any of you have family or friends that are playing softball

2:49:54have girls uh primarily girls playing softball there'll be a new field for them to go the second thing the Planning Commission met they met on the the housing element and they took it as a as a review they had no problems with it they're also looking forward to when the new general

2:50:13plan comes up and uh I guess that's it thank you great okay I found my notes uh the um Environmental Quality committee meeting had what I thought was a very productive meeting uh and um looked at the year uh in review of the year in advance it was called and the

2:50:38thing that was really productive I thought was dividing everybody into small groups and that included the audience that committee has a large audience participation in meetings and they were included and spread across the different groups and I think it was a really

2:50:59productive session and I hope that it will be continued in the future because I think it it did a good job of enabling people to express their opinions and also to make the audience members feel included so I appreciate that and in addition to that we heard from a couple

2:51:19of the subcommittees the um which are working on a number of different items such as the you know the green things that you hear about they get reported on and then um the other one is the community outreach which is working on some films that are hopefully going to be shown soon the

2:51:40other committee was the committee on Aging and they have been over a recent time developing a larger membership and and more people attending so that's really good and um uh everybody was divided uh sort of or reassigned or assigned to the same subcommittee on that group as sort of an

2:52:08annual process and um the other thing that they requested or one of their members requested that was actually done which puts them ahead of us is looking at General law cities versus Charter cities so um they wanted me to do a presentation on it so since we had not actually they

2:52:33thought we had already done something and since we hadn't I asked our city manager for help and was provided with a list that describes the character differences and characteristics so I thought what I might do is give that to the city clerk to um to um uh including our next packet

2:52:57um which is I think an interesting comparison of the differences what group was this I agree on Aging oh oh okay yeah they just I don't know they requested it yeah now you didn't miss anything and uh so anyway I just thought that would be interesting for the council to

2:53:14see and um so um anyway that's those are my reports um the arts and culture committee met and they are essentially working with the artists to come back with full designs that they would support in March and unfortunately one of their committee members resigned

2:53:36so there's now a vacancy on that commission and um the the HRC human Relations Committee did not meet due to a lack of Quorum of the numbers so but they just got two new members so hopefully that'll but that's that's it for me and so with that I think we are adjourned to our next meeting

2:53:59um which will be on foreign on March 7th or a goal setting before that or tomorrow thank you