City Council Meeting May 2, 2011

0:02:02foreign to order uh can I have the roll call please excuse me councilmember Abelson here councilmember benicini here councilmember Lyman here for Tim Jones here and mayor Chang here and now we have the Pledge of Allegiance led by mayor Pro tem Jones please join me I pledge allegiance to

0:02:36the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you at this point are there any um Council Communications or staff Communications I have some you want counsel uh sure okay

0:03:04um let's see here um I have a bunch actually I think that's oh not sure what to do about that um don't touch it yeah okay I'd first of all like to thank everyone who participated in the in the recent Earth Day it was a great event we had a lot of uh work parties that were of a new nature

0:03:35that is to say they were Community Gardens we had a number of them throughout town and we also had a lot of people who when they came in to the community center at the end of the event sort of had their hands out and they were kind of looking at their hands and

0:03:52they all had been trying to get rid of the Scotch broom and there were machines that they had used to do it and I uh their hands were all very clean I think they had on gloves but they all I think were very sore and they worked really hard but it was very much appreciated

0:04:08because we do have an invasion of Scotch broom going on in town and so I would suggest our local residents that they don't buy any Scotch broom because it's a very invasive species and if you look up the Hillside and you see these sort of puffy white large bushes that look like you could

0:04:32um sweep the floor with them that's the Scotch broom and we are trying to get rid of it so but we had a lot to a lot of removal going on um then and um I'd also like to mention some upcoming events one is the recycling center which is very exciting if all went as it was

0:04:55scheduled then the recycling center was closed all day today does anybody know if that really happened yes it did really happen and will they really be open tomorrow yes they will really be open tomorrow so they're right on schedule and the really good news is that while they're rebuilding the

0:05:14recycling center you can still continue to do drop off and it'll still be in the general area of the site and on Monday May the 9th a week from today at 8 A.M there will be a groundbreaking ceremony to start officials start the rebuilding and I believe that the building is scheduled to be redone

0:05:42by the end of the year yes that's about right okay great and uh on that one day uh Monday next Monday the interim drop off Orient side orientation will start at nine according to my schedule and um because of space constraints some functions may not always be available at

0:06:04all times and parking will be limited in quantity and duration so we'd appreciate everyone's cooperation as we work through this construction period I feel really privileged that we're able to keep the center open for drop off during the construction I think we owe a lot to

0:06:22staff for developing a way of keeping that open because it's not always easy to do that um so the um the other thing that is happening so I'm trying to find my note I think it's on May 24th uh we are going to be showing uh another movie of the Environmental Quality committee and it will be held uh

0:06:50that's on a Tuesday and it'll the movie will be held at the Cerrito theater at 7 pm and it's um recognizing that this is a bike to work month and the name of this movie is Beijing bicycle and um we're being honored by the presence of our mayor Ann Chang and we're very excited about the movie

0:07:15and thank you for doing for being there and for coming up with that particular movie in fact thank you and um then I'll go on to I attended a number of meetings uh last month um and I need to report them in order to fulfill the requirement of ab1234 the first one is that I went to a luncheon

0:07:43where uh controller State Controller John Chang spoke and he spoke about the difficulties that the state has of actually paying its bills and it was it was very interesting listening to him talk and get his perspective on that great difficulty but the thing that I might be

0:08:04I think more be more interesting to people listening to this is what you might be able to do to find some money yourself and I can give you a website address um where you can do a search on your own name or the name of an organization you care about and it's the unclaimed

0:08:27property website and if you do a search on that website for your either yourself or an organization and there is money then that means that the state's actually holding money that belongs to you and you can claim it so anyway here's the website it's HTTP colon forward slash forward slash

0:08:56www.sco.ca.gov so go there and you can find out if you are rich several years ago I heard this speech previously and and did it and in fact I think I got about six hundred dollars from an old bank account and um I'll do I'll give you the website again it's http

0:09:19colon forward slash forward slash www.sco.ca.gov uh good luck and um with that I will move on to the next item the next thing that I want to report for ab1234 is that I attended along with the mayor the a bag meeting and I don't know if you want to be the if you want to report out you want me to

0:09:46do the whole okay then um it was the spring assembly and um a bag began uh in 1961 so this is the 50th anniversary of a bag so it's a very special year for abeg the association of Bay Area governments so they tried to have a not a very um appropriate event for that so they

0:10:13one of the things they talked about uh was what I would call a topic that whose point was to get people thinking outside the box and um what the topic was is why the bay area needs to act as a city-state and what that means is that we would all act as a United organization as opposed to all the

0:10:36separate organizations that we currently have in so many ways that so many different levels and um I don't know if any of us agreed with the speaker but I think it it was very useful in in getting people to think about uh you know is this the best way to do that or is there some better way

0:10:56to do it and um you know it's not uh All or Nothing it can be something in between so that was a really interesting discussion and then they had um a number of Mayors talk on Regional solutions to local challenges so San Francisco mayor Edwin Lee spoke Oakland mayor Gene Kwan spoke

0:11:24San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed spoke and um Redwood City council member Barbara Pierce spoke and they also had some presentations on and gave Awards and so it was an interesting um event the next item is um see I attended the league of California City's policy committing meeting and

0:12:01um I attended actually two different meetings one was the community services policy committee meeting and one was the administrative services policy Committee in addition to that there was a joint meeting among all the policy committees present that each day on

0:12:21the budget and um at that time in particular the budget was a moving Target but it I think hasn't gotten too much further along now than it was then which is to say that there's a major State deficit that they have not yet resolved and um the concern from the city point of view

0:12:47is the impact on City operations Redevelopment and things like that so at this point it's pretty unresolved about half of the state budget deficit that is forecast or was forecast at that point was resolved and I guess we will soon have um the May revise I'm not sure within

0:13:13the wit next week or two that should be out and my understanding from her a few people talk is they think that the budgets in worse shape than they thought it was then so they they've got some difficulties and we'll just have to figure see what happens um about that

0:13:32um they also talked about pension reform and um uh the senate had a proposal and the governor had a proposal and um we'll see what happens moving on to the community services policy committee um there was a discussion about AB 438 which at this point has actually been

0:13:57redrawn and what that would do is require um cities that wanted to contract with a private company to do library services to have to go through a procedure with the state in order to do that so this actually has been withdrawn now so it's probably not active anymore but

0:14:25um and um then in the administrative services policy committee this is the one that has a lot of city clerks in it and deals with issues that are often handled by city clerks so we had a discussion on pending transparency governance and meetings on those topics and

0:14:49different pieces of legislation that impact those and the the point of view that we typically look at it from is um is it possible for our city to implement it in particular the city clerk and um are you know what difficulties are there and what changes do we recommend

0:15:09to any legislation that's pending at that time before the state we also had a um discussion uh of recent fppc activity that was a relatively brief discussion and with and then they also talked about um some of the legislation not excuse me not legislation but um the League's

0:15:39positions and want that they had prepared for the national league of California cities conference and they were prepared papers on protecting local revenues priorities for transportation reauthorization which is the federal legislation that authorizes funding for

0:15:59all of the Federal Transportation programs it's a really important program in transportation and then also full funding this is another topic full funding for a critical Federal programs and creating sustainable communities and with that I will end thank you very much

0:16:16for putting up with me for your report thank you fairly quickly here I at the invitation of Bart I attended one of their they call it the seat lab they are in the process of Designing their trains for the future and not 2020-2030 2050 future but right now they they are in great need of turning over

0:16:46their Fleet their looking to 2017 is when the first cars will be hitting the rails and replacing the old ones this one happened to be on on seating and it was interesting uh also saw some uh seatings that are currently being used in other agencies throughout the United States and there's

0:17:12a lot goes into to seeding but anyway it was good it was free open to the public we happened to get uh personal invitations but by no means was it a public official only type of situation if you get a chance my whole purpose on that is if you get a chance something interests you you see one of

0:17:32their Labs come up uh for design I'd encourage you if you have the time to go and take a look at it they are very serious about taking comments and utilizing them so I want to pass that on and then quickly this is probably more for the public than Council since we got it in our uh one of

0:17:53our weekly reports but as a warm-up to the main event presentation coming up shortly I just wanted to to indicate some of the things that our staff is doing and being recognized for on a regional and National basis for example a magazine a trade magazine that uh believe it or not there's a

0:18:16trade magazine that goes out and outlines uh Street rehab and it's a national one so it goes to tens of thousands of cities and El Cerrito was featured on the cover and so was an article main article by Jerry Bradshaw on our rehab Street rehab that we just concluded after four years

0:18:41so that that was nice to be recognized nationally for that Dwayne who's our uh economic development manager was selected to speak at the if let me get this right now the uh Local Economic Development annual conference or Cal Ed looks like in Sacramento but it's a Statewide conference annual

0:19:08and he was selected to uh present so we have a representative from El Cerrito presenting to a Statewide conference on economic development I think that's very good and Karen pinkos our assistant city manager was presenting in San Jose and an annual conference and let me get this one right women's

0:19:35Leadership Summit as part of the municipal Management Association of Northern California so my whole point in all this is that we've got some people on staff they're doing a very good job for the city but also being recognized for their expertise regionally and nationally and

0:19:55I'd just like to comment on that and and congratulate them for their professional advancement in that regard also uh I this is one that I'm really glad to see and um it's a service that we're going to be providing uh fairly soon you will be able to come to City Hall see the city

0:20:15clerk and if you need a passport um process it through our city clerk the County of Alameda has been doing this for several years and but we're going to be what the second under the third City in Contra Costa County to actually provide the service so we're looking forward to that that

0:20:36should be pretty good councilmember that that starts in July even though it's not advisable to travel abroad right now now is the time to apply for your passport so well then now might be a good time if if travel is being suspended maybe now is a good time to get the password

0:20:52anyway thank you very much I've got two quick ones um there are dates in July and August um one is the National Night Out will be on Tuesday August 2nd and we have a informational event for hosts uh to come and learn more about it pick up their information packages hopefully we'll have our

0:21:21banners by then and that's on Barbecue on July 16th the time for that I don't believe has been set yet or if it is it's one to three uh but check the website the city's website for the date of the National Night Out host barbecue and that's on July 16th Saturday and

0:21:42National Night Out is on Tuesday August 2nd thank you mayor just a couple more this Saturday is our city-wide garage sales that's always a great opportunity to get fabulous deals on reused and recycled items Saturday this coming May 7th from 9 to 3 P.M and I also wanted to mention

0:22:01that the draft climate action plan Workshop just is coming up next Tuesday on May 10th so that's a good opportunity here in city council chambers from seven to nine to give input on staffs drafting of the climate action plan and I know that they're going to be looking for a

0:22:15lot of community input so if you're interested in that it'd be great to show up the last thing I'll mention is that mayor Chang and I both had the opportunity to attend um a session on building relationships for a strong community that was put on by Saint Peter Christian Methodist

0:22:31Episcopal Church it was a great event where our chief Sylvia Moyer gave a really fabulous speech on leadership and participation and building strong leaders in our community and it was great to see her get some recognition from that from that Organization for her

0:22:48beginning efforts in our city to do the sort of thing that we need to cultivate good leaders thank you lots lots Lots going on so just to add to that um in in terms of the as as councilmember Abelson mentioned a bag General sem assembly attended as well as the league

0:23:11of cities Transportation Public Works and Communications committee and a number of just a quick recap on the the items that were discussed in Ontario um a secret exemption for purple pipes over one mile and up to eight miles which was denied uh by the the group

0:23:36um another one was ab345 traffic control devices getting representatives from outside of the the state-appointed body um essentially all types of Road user groups to to give input on traffic control devices currently it's CHP at the AAA and a number of other State appointed bodies but including

0:24:00additionally like bikers and Walkers and um and Transit Riders but that also failed um another item uh uh that was sought for input was AB 441 for State planning to get mpos Metropolitan planning organizations to consider Health impacts within Regional Transportation plans and that also

0:24:26failed um and so those were and then after that I wasn't able to attend the following two after that but that was just a little bit of a flavor of of our kind of our who's on the transportation Public Works committee and for the league of cities and kind of what happens when I

0:24:44think the meetings go to Ontario and are not in Sacramento um so um in addition to that um the West County Mayors also met last Thursday um we had a presentation by Cleo Goodwin from the AC Transit marketing department talking about easy passes which was is basically

0:25:10a a massive discount for Transit passes if you buy up to 100 you can purchase for an annual cost for 120 what would normally cost 130 a month and so getting the word out to the various communities served by AC Transit and sharing that information um and then as far as events there's a

0:25:40great event that we'll get to in the the consent calendar item but on Wednesday May 4th the Whitmore school is having an event to honor the Chung May Center invite you all to attend that on May 7th in conflict with our garage sales for those of you who are policy

0:25:56wonks and want to kind of provide a balanced perspective on Regional planning for the Bay Area Concord um meeting for for the whole County um community members are invited to attend and give input in an interactive format to see how folks would trade off um whether it's you know large homes or

0:26:18short commutes or cleaner air and all these kind of kind of big uh big values to consider in in shaping our future um and on of course May 12th leading up to kind of the Pinnacle of Bike To Work month we will have a the city of L Street will be sponsoring A Bike To Work

0:26:40Day station I think many years in a row now the the event's a great success from seven to nine a.m there will be bags um and lots of very excited staff to greet everyone and and thank them for for choosing a cleaner alternative to get to work on and finally on May 14th our Spring Fling

0:27:04our first kickoff annual event that we'll be celebrating all the great kind of Capstone of of wonderful streetscape improvements that all the prior councils have worked so hard on and all the and great and and our staff um to finally have a day to bring everybody out and to celebrate and to

0:27:25enjoy and to learn about all the hard work that has gone into designing and um and winning grants and um and installation so I'm really excited to to be a part of that and to welcome everyone to that as well um so with that that is I think I'll to report there and so at

0:27:48this point I think I'd invite any other stuff thank you your honor I'm Karen Pincus assistant city manager and I had a whole list of things to say but the council did an excellent job at covering all the events I was going to announce additionally I wanted to tag on to the

0:28:04mayor's announcement about the spring Spring Fling on May 14th we just wanted to announce that there will be a welcoming ceremony at 10 A.M in front of the Rialto Cinema's Cerrito theater we will be um dedicating the Cerrito theater sidewalk stars and we are happy

0:28:19to announce that due to a generous donation by AC Transit we will be giving away clipper cards first come first serve there'll be 100 clipper cards for um people to use to take the bus up and down the Avenue that day and then you can keep the card and load it with your

0:28:35own money later to use and all over the Bay Area wherever the Clipper card is functional so it's a wonderful giveaway and we're thankful to AC Transit and after the ceremony we encourage folks to walk bike or take transit we will have podcasts with our new historical and

0:28:53cultural pavers that will be laid into the sidewalk and we're just really excited about the event so for any additional information just go to the city's website at l-cerido.org and I wanted to make one more announcement everyone has seen the um the newsletters that we send out on a

0:29:10regular basis to all residents but unfortunately this time we had some problems with the post office and we found out that as many as 800 newsletters might not have been delivered if you if anyone in the public has not received a newsletter they can call Suzanne at City Hall at

0:29:25215-4318 if we can we will mail one to you if you want one or we will have them available online if you would like to look them up and save paper so we're apologetic about that and and we're going to try to correct that problem in the future so thank you very much

0:29:42thank you so at this point do we have any oral Communications from the public yes we have one speaker Al Miller good evening Madam mayor and city council l Miller [address removed] I just wanted to take a couple of minutes here time to complement the staff of the

0:30:04recycling center or the Environmental Services Division I don't know if there's a separation or not for the very enthusiastic and well-planned well-staffed and well set up compost giveaway on April 23rd uh this is the second one that I've had the privilege of being a volunteer at I

0:30:27guess there were maybe 15 or so volunteers I think most of us are part of garth's green team which is again in my experience becoming an Ever more enthusiastic supporter of the staff and the city's environmental program the thing that impressed me about the compost giveaway were three things one

0:30:51that we all again had compost that starts in our green waste and food waste containers and ends up being given away free back to the people of El Cerrito to improve their Gardens which will generate more food stuff that look you know just keep cycling around and around

0:31:11two as I mentioned earlier the really great preparation for the event so it was all set up all well thought out it started on time we went from nine till afternoon uh and the other group that uh was really interesting and fun to watch was the enthusiasm of the people from El

0:31:32Cerrito that were coming to get the compost I mentioned last the first one that we had was the first time I'd seen an event where cars were lined up from the recycling center back to Naval Air and everybody was happy usually when you have a lineup of cars with people in them that long it's for

0:31:52some reason other than being happy well we didn't have as long a line this year we was a pretty much continuous traffic of vehicles through the recycling center picking up their compost in fact some of the people in El Cerrito more determined than others might have made uh three

0:32:15four trips through but anyway we had a plenty of stuff to give away and uh Monica will even have some left over to put in a couple of the parks if she needs it so anyway my bottom line is it was a great event I thank the staff for setting it up and running it so well and

0:32:33I hope that we'll continue to have many more as time goes on thank you thank you very much for that report our speakers no okay with that we can go on to item four of a proclamation to recognize uh Dale Murray upon his retirement is there a presentation all right

0:33:08so I'm going to go ahead and read the the proclamation or [Applause] and I think this is Daryl you can be patient with me well real quick um I'll go through this we would love to hear you speak so this is the El Cerritos city council Proclamation recognizing Daryl Murray

0:33:29for his service to the city of El Cerrito and wishing him continued success upon his retirement from City service whereas Dale Marie building inspector has served his community with pride and upon the occasion of his retirement is deserving of recognition and whereas Daryl Murray was raised in

0:33:47El Cerrito and enjoyed growing up here served his country as a flight engineer on Chinook helicopter in the Republic of Vietnam having been awarded a Bronze Star air medal and the Army Commendation Medal for life-saving actions and whereas he married Renee and together

0:34:06they raised two children Jessica and Amanda and Jessica and her husband Shane have given Daryl and Renee two grandchildren Shasta and cash and whereas Dale Murray came to work for the city of El Cerrito as a building inspector in September 1995 and whereas Dale Murray served as an asset to the

0:34:26city's team by performing residential and Commercial inspections paying particular concern to life and safety issues in interpretation of the building code always looking for ways to provide consistent application enforcement service with his co-workers and whereas Dale Murray is a member of

0:34:45the Valley Bible Church in Hercules Gideon International the business men's fellowship in San Pablo and a Committee Member of the annual black history and Multicultural celebration in guinda California and whereas Dale Murray intends to continue to pursue his volunteer work

0:35:04and service to others and in retirement will also consider teaching a small business or part-time work and whereas Dale Murray has served the citizens of El Cerrito well work to Foster the family atmosphere of the city organization and in retiring from his position as building inspector concludes

0:35:23a career with the city of El Cerrito that spans over 15 years now therefore the city council of the city of El Cerrito takes great pride and pleasure in drawing special attend public attention to Dale Daryl Murray for his record of service and to and concern for the protection of life and

0:35:42property in the local community and extends to him sincere best wishes and continued success in all future endeavors [Applause] now it's my turn oh not yet I appreciate all those kind words I clean up pretty nice most of you are used to seeing me in blue jeans and in a t-shirt or a sports

0:36:30shirt but I don't crawl under houses in this yeah so but one of the things I wanted to comment on I came from the private sector before I became a building inspector and there's a stigma associated with government employees that they're somewhat lazy they uh they're just in it

0:36:49to get on the government public Dole and all that stuff but you would be hard-pressed in my opinion to find a group of people like the people at city of El Cerrito who work so hard and do so much and are so loyal and are so functional and on time showing up for work

0:37:06you'd be hard-pressed to find the same type of group of people in the public sector that you have here in the city of El Cerrito that's one of the joys that I had in coming to work was that it was a great team to work with um there's a philosophy that's often thought of that the best thing a teacher

0:37:29can do is to teach a student and the student becomes so proficient at what he what he's been instructed to do that he excels or exceeds what the teacher has taught him and I think you have that in Gordon Stevenson who will be taking my place or who has already taken my place

0:37:49I was asked by one employee what are the happiest and saddest moments of your employment here and I said probably the happiest would be getting hired and the saddest he was hired the same year I was just a little before me and we were we had a great time together

0:38:14was Bruce King that was probably the saddest but there were a couple other sad things too the police called me up to a house on Gladys one time to do an inspection and they asked me to check the living conditions and there were a couple of kids there and a woman who was on drugs

0:38:33and a house full of dirty dishes dirty diapers just raped of human fecal matter and urine and I told the police I said you don't need me here you need CPS or cup Protective Services up here right away another one is uh this city is good at at service to the public

0:38:55building inspection is somewhat regulatory but it's also it's also a service obligation too and one of the sad things sometimes is when an owner Builder permit is taken out and that involves more time going out and explaining to the owners how to do things properly and then trips coming

0:39:13back to make sure they're doing them properly and sometimes they'll take out a permit to do a kitchen remodel in addition to because they've had a child or two or and then you'll be going along you get to know them on a personal basis I mean sort of as a family thing

0:39:32and uh after sometimes it takes so long but by the time they get the room Edition completed the children they were building the room for off to college but there's been a couple of cases where you grow really fond of the family and then you come back and find out

0:39:49where's Kathy oh we got a divorce you know that's those are the sad things but on another note on the happy things I've seen a lot of council people and I've seen a lot of Mayors and I've seen a couple city managers and I've seen a couple assistant city managers the

0:40:07administrative staff here is outstanding uh in what they do there's a lot of promises made when I first came here they were never kept I mean not just me personally but for the city and one of my proudest moments was this building right here we've seen a lot of change in the city of El Cerrito

0:40:23the plaza that wasn't my money that designed that parking I was somebody else's so you know but at least it got improved it was really a joy to see couples walking hand in hand around the plaza you know young couples and with that love bug in their eyes and what

0:40:38have you and just doing shopping and enjoying it I didn't particularly agree with the Rehabilitation of the city of or the Cerrito theater place where I got my first kiosk anyway but uh it turned out really nice you know and it was it was a it was a great uh Vision that was put together

0:40:59um North End of town has changed quite a bit there's a lot of experience there that uh that I had the privilege to uh to see and be a part of but I enjoyed waking up and coming to work here most days but uh I wasn't totally self-driven and I owe a lot of it to my wife Renee back there

0:41:21for being encouraging too to me come on get up you know let's go to work but it was it was a great time and I think Gordon Stevenson the new inspector or that he's been here a while but to fill my place I think he'll enjoy it as much as I have and uh always have fond memories of my service

0:41:45here and the city of El Cerrito and all the employees thank you thank you [Applause] let me just say a few words it's interesting because I was working with Daryl with the city of Albany when he got hired for the city of El Cerrito and I off and I thought that that was a

0:42:15great uh move on the part of city of El Cerrito being as I was living in there I it was good because Daryl was known then as he is known now as a person who would work with people whether it was the owner or a contractor and when I came on the city council and when you

0:42:34come on the city council you suddenly people come up and tell you about the city and um one of the things that came out over and over Was Daryl Murray and how he handled his business for the city out there and he was was is a person that would work for Solutions rather than trying to find

0:42:54violations somebody told me that one time and I've always remembered that and it's true inspectors as Daryl himself said tonight they're a regulatory person but they're also a service and and Daryl aired on the side of service and making sure that the regulation was taken care of so for that

0:43:18I really appreciate it Daryl thank you [Laughter] yeah he Daryl came over a couple months ago and uh six fire alarms and and smoke detectors later I finally got uh where it was supposed to be so thank you Daryl thank you Daryl um so we move on to a second presentation this evening

0:43:49by Monica courts on the California Parks and Recreation Society Awards good evening I I am proud to stand before you tonight as the recreation director um this past year in 2010 we received two Awards of Excellence for the city of El Cerrito through the recreation

0:44:10department however all the employees many of them were involved in these projects one is for the Fourth of July celebration and it was given to the city of El Cerrito Recreation Department in grateful recognition of significant contribution towards creating community

0:44:30Through People Parks and Recreation and the second was for which I'm really proud of and a lot of folks helped here including the building department for our splash park and the splash park has been an an Award of Excellence both in Contra Costa and Alameda counties for cprs but

0:44:53also in our community where we have taken loads off of the lines that people stand in stand in waiting for public swim I was there this weekend it was hot and I'm proud to say we got everyone in to the student center and that was not the case before we had to bring out our

0:45:12Public Safety to help control our crowds and this time people were happy it was hot and everybody got to Splash and play in the water and to me that's a significant contribution to our community so I share these with you and thank you so much for supporting us in

0:45:31both projects [Applause] [Music] [Applause] thank you it's very much any comments so I think we can move on out to the adoption of the consent calendar can I have a motion to approve the items I move adoption of the consent calendar items a through f I'll second that

0:46:11all those in favor please say aye um opposed absentions motion carries unanimously um you can now move on to public hearing item 6A revised Master Fee schedule so at this point um I will open the public hearing and then invite um as the first step staff to make a

0:46:41presentation or no staff presentation no it says second bullet okay staff presentation okay I'll begin I am good evening Madam mayor and remember to the council I'm Mary Dodge your administrative Services director and we're here tonight to talk about the Master Fee schedules

0:47:02it's something we do every year we look at our fees and we see what we need to add whatever revisions are and we consider well one of the components we do is we figure out a primary rate we're going to use this year we used five percent but many of the fees go from

0:47:19one or two or three to five but primarily we had a five percent increase we use that in conjunction with cost increases um across the board but most every Department looks at their fees to determine whether or not they're appropriate they're benchmarked and how

0:47:39well they fit within our organization so this year we actually have a couple of new fees the the most exciting one is the new passport fee and that whole program was talked about by Bill Jones and we're excited to start that in July Cheryl Morris our city clerk has done a

0:47:55great job setting up the pilot and um the other new fee well the other new big change we have is in the parking fees we haven't changed these fees in 10 years they've been four dollars and fifty cents per year charged it for three years at a time and we're trying to

0:48:14propose a two dollar a year increase this means it'd be 19.50 for a three-year permit and it would only be when they come into it get their three-year permit so they'll be staggered over the years um business license that has a convoluted formula that we have to do every year and this year we

0:48:35come out at a 0.9 4 and proposing to go ahead and increase it and if we these fees are all kind of built into the budget we will be bringing you on the 16th and if we chose to not make these increases we would have to go back and look at the budget so at this time I'd like to answer any

0:48:57questions you have in regarding these changes so display will take questions from the council followed by public testimony so any questions from the council at this point thank you Mary can you just remind me was it last fiscal year that the fee schedule was adjusted by did I hear a

0:49:20negative percentage or could you kind of go over a little bit of the annual increases and how five percent Compares with other increases we've done in past years we have used three to five for the past few years and the I think a negative one percent is basically if you look at our

0:49:38general fund expenditures um since 2006 um they have changed uh from year to year on an average of six percent High to 14 um at a minus one in 2010 but overall pretty much so our increases in costs have far outstripped the increases to our fee schedule that we have

0:50:01and the cost allocation plan is something that we would like to pursue but our last one was done in 2006 and things change structures change time spent on processes change and that's what drives the whole fee study is what time it it takes to do these things and

0:50:20so it's time to do another one but they are expensive and at this point in time we don't really feel like we are able to to change the fee structure that much I don't know that we could potentially recover some of these costs so the money spent might not have an

0:50:38actual return and we're talking about fifty thousand dollars now we spent uh close to that before but now we have a structure we wouldn't have to be starting from the scratch but it would still probably be fairly expensive I had a question by the way I do agree

0:50:59with your last point I I don't think Now's the Time to spend money on fees when they won't go up I think the time that although the time that it may be well spent is when the economy has finally started to take off and we can see where things are going and what is driving the costs because I

0:51:18know even though the the cost of living has only gone up between two and three percent this past year what's driving a lot of the I I got from your report was driving a lot of the up to five percent is things like fuel cost which has gone up tremendously and it's very hard to predict where

0:51:37that's going except it's increasing in tears so we know it's going to go up we just don't know to what extent for a year and also things we have no control of such as uh the prices charged for benefits particularly Medical um corrects as well other contrast for

0:51:57services that we receive such as from other jurisdictions have all steadily gone up and we don't really have any control over those right that's the thing that that kind of drives uh when you start looking at the budget as you know drives me crazy anyway is the uh things we have no

0:52:17control of or or it's not predictable and we're coming up to uh that time of the year again and for the state to go another three and a half months without a budget it it is something that we have absolutely no control over so it'd be interesting hopefully they don't take that long this

0:52:35this time but we'll see anyway that's a couple of comments but I did have some questions and one is and some of these you may want to call on your colleagues to answer but um the youth program fee low and moderate income uh participation went up 13 and 16 percent and that's on page 17 number 18

0:53:00and I was just wondering why that suddenly shot up into double digits what do you call it questions do you have another one while she's looking for that one sure um well this is also for the same Department I was just curious uh I just raised the quarter from from that and I think we wanted to

0:53:32put it in line with the other fees okay but the low moderate isn't that supposed to be a discounted fee it is a discounted fee it is yeah which which section are we in so I could catch up to you guys page 17 item 18. Paige sorry is it page seven yes 7 or 17. I thought it was and I think

0:53:54page seven item 18.

0:53:55okay yeah page seven excuse me you're right it's still it's in line with the other low moderate free lunch programs and there's a fee for us to do business and we're just trying to keep in line to do the business yeah but what's driving it I mean costs Drive our fees pardon Staffing and

0:54:26Equipment costs Drive our fees and the other schools we have a scholarship program or a program provided by the district the district hires the city to implement after school programs these are for programs such as Madera the tiny tot programs and the tiny top programs

0:54:44take on such a low ratio that you know if you have a lot of low-income folks I mean it's sad you know we have a scholarship fund it doesn't pay for it all um but for us to recoup and stay in line with our expenses which is really hard to do our ratios and the tiny top programs have to be one two

0:55:12seven or seven or eight I can't recall and then it goes up to one to ten and then 1 to 14 and between the Staffing and the equipment can I ask a clarification question because actually I'm not sure I understand the columns correctly Uh current fee for example is five

0:55:31dollars and fifty cents it looked like the proposed fee was six dollars and 24 cents but the rounded fee turned out to be 5.75 which was only four and a half percent over the existing fee so so councilmember Jones I think the 13 and 16 were the proposed increases but the

0:55:51actual increases was the last column that's correct which is only four and a half and five point six which is pretty consistent with the five percent Target that's correct but I was just wondering what was there any one particular thing that drove that up to a 6 624

0:56:09um proposed actual fee yeah it's it's 6 50 for I I'm hoping I'm looking at the right area before and after school Child Care is 650 rounded then 750 for resident no this is under item 18. I keep then keep going down that list yeah and then it'll be the fourth one fourth and fifth

0:56:37item non-resident 575.

0:56:40is that what you're looking at and he's wondering why that 624 the column before that why the proposed rate was so significantly higher I can't you know I can't I don't know I don't know if somebody made a mistake but the rounded rate is the actual rate that we're going for tonight correct

0:56:59so I'm just wondering if there was something that suddenly popped up that's going to be driving this thing higher and higher right energy costs I I don't know I I think versus the other thing are Staffing costs are significant to provide a quality service to make sure and that your child

0:57:18is safe while you're under our care the most expensive part of us doing business is having staff at the facility that are qualified and I want to make sure that each day your child arrives when you get there that same child is there when you come to pick them up and to do that you have to

0:57:41have qualified educated staff that I feel comfortable comfortable with at the facility sure so the discounted we are discounting in about 50 cents on that particular one and about 70 cents on the other so it is a discounted rate that's correct and we do have some scholarships

0:58:00for those who need it we also have the um at the lower economic schools a a grant funds the city of El Cerrito to provide services at those facilities and they pay us some of those facility schools the disbursement of fees are free or very reduced so depending on what the grant is from

0:58:30the school district so all in all between our discounted rate scholarships things like the school funding comes in we're able to cover our our costs and and be able to offer the program that is Our intention thank you very much you're welcome any other questions yeah I I want to uh

0:58:52thank staff for bringing the fees forward and and helping uh get your testimony tonight about explaining why the fee increase pretty is a target of five percent and that's to ensure a steady increase over the years of our fees even though our costs may have gone up or down in at a

0:59:14different rate um so so this is you know we're working off of an old uh Baseline so to speak and we've been building off of that Baseline and in some years that three to five percent increase hasn't kept up with our costs and in some years it has kept up with our costs but it's still in

0:59:30line with what we think um things are and maybe next year will be better year and we can go out and true up our Baseline again uh since it's it will be close to a decade since we last time we did that um one of the fees that did catch my eye that was highlighted in the staff report

0:59:47is about the parking fees and when I look through here and we have in section three Roman section three which is the police and fire fees and we just approved recently as part of the alarm ordinance um the uh initial permit fee filing fee and the annual filing fee and uh it's

1:00:09under Roman 3 item four police permits on page nine last two lines uh 26 dollars to do a first permit and uh 15 annual renewal and that was based on the amount of time it took a clerk to actually enter input that information yet we're somehow able to do the parking

1:00:34permits um for uh six dollars or whatever we're proposing this strikes me as being not reflecting the actual cost and even though you're you're requesting a 50 increase this year it's not representative of the actual cost and um you know we're going to have people

1:00:58um they get their three-year permit and by the time they come back to renew their three-year permit uh they will certainly have benefited tremendously from these these reduced rates so I'm just wondering why we aren't looking at a significantly greater uh fee for the

1:01:16parking permit to reflect the actual work it takes to record and file that that fee and I'm just using the the exact fee the same type of services that we uh approved last year as The Benchmark for what those parking permit fees should be this is a very good example of why we are doing the five

1:01:38percent increases even if you only have a year where there's one percent if we had have done this with the parking fees we wouldn't be at the point where we do need to start going at a 50 raise we need to do some increasing but since it is a three-year turnaround on this we

1:01:55can't change it all in one year and then the people who got them this year they get a three-year benefit so we have to try to make sure that we increase these things somewhat steadily over time and give people an opportunity to know that the changes are out there since these

1:02:12people don't do this until once every three years it's not one of the ones like the alarm permits that they have to do it every year I think that the parking permits somewhat get forgotten and if when they come back the next year and it's come up too much we could have some real

1:02:29concerned citizens if I could also add council member Lyman and I believe councilmember Abelson was the only one on the council this came up in early 2001.

1:02:38and at the time the clear Direction just to give some context from that from the council back then was that the permit was in response to helping out people who lived around the BART stations and it was to be as least financially onerous as possible so we really tried to create

1:02:59the fee at that point that minimally covered some of the costs and in that Spirit we've been very reluctant to increase the cost it was believed that the the biggest cost big one of the biggest pieces of implemented program is putting up all the signage and that

1:03:14happened once and other than maintaining them they've essentially stayed so even though it's clearly not um covering its cost and it's certainly far less than our neighboring cities there's been just um since since the the folks who live around The Bard stations are the ones

1:03:37who have to put up with the parking we were trying I think the intent was to not add on a charge to them for having to deal with the all the parking particularly on the North ends from out of town so just in some context there was clearly a charge at that point

1:03:52to keep the fees as low as possible so we've always been reluctant since then and then to Mary's Credit I mean we really identify that we really need to start inching it up a bit so well and I was going to say as as I remember it back then and I do remember the many

1:04:10hearings that we had on this issue of resolving um the whole parking issue but the thing that I remember was that the fee is only supposed to be the fee for the processing it's a fee so um it's it's you know it's not supposed to be the cost of of anything more than what a fee is

1:04:33supposed to pay for which is the cost I understand that that means the pot the cost of the paper works so I have a little bit of difficulty understanding benefit in years two and three well it's the cost because because all the paperwork is done in Year One um so okay so it should be looking at

1:04:55so we're not supposed to um do anything more than that this is not a tax where you are trying to develop income Source I understand that I'm not I'm trying to figure out why it is essentially coming out to 26 or something like that for something that um the alarm code we don't we don't give

1:05:20them a sticker we don't have signs up so for the alarm ordinance it's 25 to register the first time and we don't we don't do anything we don't put signs up and maintain them we don't send a sticker out so you can't tell me that the fee that we're we're putting is

1:05:39comparable to that to that service and yet we're we're asking something you know an increase to something that's 18 as opposed to 26. what I remember is that it was supposed to be a fee for the processing of the paperwork that's what I'm trying to say is that the cost of

1:05:56doing the paperwork has to be at least thirty dollars lines the cost of the fee includes the signage actually I might not remember but that isn't what I remember it's all part of the service without this without the signs then the stickers are not necessary right I mean at some

1:06:17point the signs are part of the sticker program right but there are more people that benefit from the whole that program it's not a sticker program it is a program to regulate parking and there are more people that benefit from that program than just the people who live on

1:06:32the street I understand people who park on the other side of the street it it just it it also strikes me as that I mean I I understand that it's a fee and therefore can't be handled as a tax be consistent with prop 26 and all those good things but at some point

1:06:49um you know we're basically um having our residents that are closest to Bart that can do without cars we're providing them a benefit that encourages them to have cars so I'm just at some point we're not necessarily being consistent with our overall Transit policies what I remember from

1:07:13the discussions that went on is it will allow work people who work they'll say that you live in that area without that they can't have anyone come to their house and for example fix a leaky sink or something because they can't find any place to bring their work

1:07:30vehicle I understand that's a four that's a good reason for the four hour limit but then why give a sticker yes please do this on this topic because I'm it does seem like I hear what you're saying and I hear both of what you're saying it it does feel like it's it's a

1:07:51larger policy discussion that we should set some time for it and I think we do have time um you know definitely coming up with um you know looking at overall parking policies for the Del Norte station area and as we treat and how we integrate the residential permits in that area I think

1:08:10potentially might be part of this um technical assistance study that we got sixty thousand dollars of of time from the MTC for and um in that you know kind of yeah I I totally agree I think that's you know in in principle with what we're we're trying to do and trying to encourage the

1:08:33you know behaviors that are going to you know alleviate congestion for you know the neighborhood as well as you know make it safer to walk around um I feel like for this purposes it's it's we would need a lot more data or I would want more data to kind of understand what's that what's I guess my

1:08:55question would be on the same page three two lines down to get a city-wide garage sale listing it's fourteen dollars why are we only charging six dollars where we send them an adhesive to put on their car where is the balance in the services here so I mean you I'm just I'm just

1:09:19saying that it's not it's not Equitable we're not we're providing much more service than what we're charging I think the um garage sale permit and and certainly the alarm permit and senior members of the police department are here I mean the there is a review process on the alarm

1:09:37permits and there is actually a permit issued um by the police department and I think as I think one of our newer fees it really does pretty accurately reflect the cost of processing and and I we have not updated which we certainly could do I think the parking permit fee

1:09:55does not accurately reflect the cost but I don't think this spread is necessarily the same and because we tried to do the three-year renewals um so we would issue it once and Trying to minimize the cost we don't do it every year but if if I hear you correctly I think it is correct that of

1:10:16the fees you're mentioning the parking permit probably less least accurately reflects the real cost I'm content with the way it is because obviously I'm in minority here tonight but it strikes me that we could usually make that nine dollars which would reflect a twenty seven dollar uh fee for

1:10:35three years and that would seem to me to be reflect the actual service they're getting based on the on the alarm ordinance that we passed just last year um but you know it's six dollars nine dollars we're only talking about a hundred dollar a couple hundred dollars

1:10:49difference in the overall City Revenue so it's just you know balancing it out against uh Services I think we were a little concerned that six dollars might not fly so if I may are we in the discussion area or are we in a question area because I do have comments

1:11:09yeah I apologize we did sway away from my question which was the base the basis for that fee not being larger as I apologize uh that ends my questions thank you okay um thank you any any other questions on this side Janet yep okay um I did have a quick question

1:11:33um and just kind of generally setting up fees what your thoughts are about um Annual fees and kind of in light of this AC Transit phenomenon where if you get people to commit to 100 or 100 passes although I I don't know how we would get to that volume but kind of using kind of volume volume

1:11:54project exactly for other activities yeah too many of our activities that would lend themselves to them volume pricing the only place that I could just kind of going out there with my first time hearing this might be for somebody to get a discount to prepay on child

1:12:06care I mean if you wanted to basically pay ahead um and I'm sure that this is something that Monica and her industry has discussed but I don't think you could prepay your business license I don't know that you could prepay any of the transactions that we do yeah yeah

1:12:22um and and I guess maybe not the volume part but just for example swim fees um we have a monthly cost but what about the idea of an annual I think they have some past structures okay we in the past we have had an annual fee I don't know if people use them no no

1:12:47okay and we've done it for child care during the day camps if you signed all up for all 10 weeks we gave you a 10 discount we stopped doing that because people would sign up for all 10 weeks get their discount and cancel half of the sessions and there was no way for us

1:13:04to go back it would cost us more to go back and try to track those folks get an annual uh pool fee correct Pool Pass I've had one in the past but nobody's used it so um correct they they tend to want to do it monthly or buy 10 swim passes at a time and renew because the annual is it's

1:13:33expensive and people rather in the short term you know 42 or 52 dollars it's easy to come up with but I can't recall say 250 is a little more difficult okay that's it for me um so I think we can move on to public testimony if are there any speaker slips on this

1:13:58topic no speaker slips okay can I have a motion to close the public hearing so move second all those in favor motion is unanimous um so I think now we can have discussion when the parking actually I did have questions um on the parking some of them most of them were taken care of but you hit on a

1:14:27theme that I uh married on a theme that I uh wanted to discuss and that is the rationale behind and I think there needs to be a discussion on that I mean the parking in my opinion and I remember when the parking permits came up it was really just the car take care of the cost of the signs and

1:14:48the the actual permit itself and I think there's some Merit to that I don't know that there has to be the same across the board if there is a reason a good reason why we should keep one uh cost down and and the other can go up in this case um it was originally done for Bart area

1:15:13and it was basically a condition forced upon the residents it was forced upon them they had no choice and so um to create some parking permit zones uh to alleviate that that type of disadvantage I guess I I can see where we would want to keep that low now the problem is as the report pointed out and

1:15:38if we were reading the news you saw San Francisco is debating the same thing they're talking about uh going from 97 to 100 for some permits and so I think we get a question is uh what are we using the permits parking permits for is it suddenly a profit Center and I

1:16:01know we've criticized the county for trying to turn some of their issues into into uh profit centers such as booking fees for instance and Animal Control fees I say that that's my opinion by the way but at any rate so I think if it would be good at some point in the future

1:16:24to have a policy discussion on the parking on the parking permit and see where we want to go I think several several way back when there was a policy discussion on why are we offering Adult Services for instance and as you know Adult Services and team services are ones that the city

1:16:45basically underwrites part of because without that underwriting we couldn't have that service and the community and councils since then since that policy was made has made the conscientious decision that yes we want the service therefore we will underwrite it to a certain amount so

1:17:06I think it's more of a policy issue that that we should take up and and I agree with that thank you any other comments on the the parking aspect well the only comment that I would have is I don't think the in having that discussion we're really having a discussion about the top I

1:17:32don't think the topic is the fees I think the topic is the bigger picture of of parking in general and as such it should be dealt with that way if if and when we should decide to actually do it and get funding for it and so forth but I don't think it's uh it's at all a discussion

1:17:52about we wouldn't want to have a 50 000 um study to study collect the collection of 37 dollars for um a few residents so you know it's not in line with with that but um I think it's really a bigger topic and it's a different topic of um transportation and um moving it around what I remember from

1:18:20that original um study original item that came up in 2001 I guess it was was that um people were unable to leave their car behind you know they didn't normally a person although they don't have a right to it everybody kind of thinks they have a right to park their car in front of

1:18:44their house or certainly they think they have a right to get out of their driveway um and the people who were living around the BART stations were not so fortunate because they were being impacted by the people who were driving their cars to Bart and then parking and blocking

1:19:03everything else um and by the way not paying anything for it but anyway so I think it's a different issue and uh and um certainly one worth looking at but I would not look at it as the fee issue well I I actually respectfully say that there's two issues there one is the fee

1:19:24and one is the larger parking issue because there is a service that we are providing and right now that as our previous discussion um illuminated it that the fee we're providing it the fee we're at collecting 18 over a three year period is not paying for the processing

1:19:46of that fee um that said the difference between 18 and 28 or 32 or whatever it should be um you know is peanuts and it's not worth haggling over tonight and can be addressed at some point as staff moves it up over the time because what I hear is staff is going to

1:20:06make adjustments every year in a potentially a more aggressive way and we'll just see this fee increase over time so I think from the fee I have no problem it's been 10 years we should increase it I think printing costs and labor costs have gone up in 10 years so

1:20:23I'm for that the recommended fee I have no other comments on the parking but I wanted to just make a comment on the larger fee schedule in general of course I think we all approach this item with a lot of concern and trepidation and we're always concerned when we are

1:20:40oh can I just clarify so I just want to ask from staff what if you wanted to get closure on parking for for all of us or or each we're just giving a direction and giving General contestants direction will be whether or not you approve the whole revised schedule okay

1:20:58okay right we we can we can nitpick a different fee if we don't want to increase a fee we don't increase it if we want to increase a specific fee too much we do that as part of our motion so okay okay this is the only topic on the agenda correct okay thought on the parking thing before I go

1:21:20um go ahead okay so just to conclude I I would entertain a higher fee I guess I wanted to hear from councilman alignment if he was proposing nine and or not and if you were then I would support that but and I wanted to hear feathers wouldn't be it sounds like no no okay

1:21:42so we can I just wanted to clarify thank you for providing that opportunity yeah and to separate the itself and keeping the fees cut up um and just generally in adding to the discussion of future thoughts on on fees for parking I think it is it's definitely a great opportunity there's a

1:22:00number of communities who are using the the residential fee permits around Transit stations to it create revenues for the benefit of those residences such as providing potentially you know if if there was a way to have a two-tier fee for non-residents and for residences

1:22:21residences paying minimum and then non-residences residents paying a higher fee that you know ultimately could add to you know improving the walkability and making it easier for those who do with live within a close walk so I think everybody agree with that or um but I just want to lay that out there

1:22:44so that's it on the parking excellent I was just going to make a comment on the general fee schedule um when I was looking through it I think that cities reflect their values and a lot of these things and when you're looking through 36 pages of you know 50 rows a page

1:23:00maybe you aren't able to glean that it would be great and I don't know if this is possible but as we're going through these reports in subsequent years if we can highlight the areas that we are subsidizing for example um Monica spoke about some of the fees that are covered in part or some of the

1:23:16programs that are covered in part by fees and in part by other types of Revenue sources it would be great when we do other schedules if it would be possible I'm not sure how analytically you might be able to show this and Mary is shaking her head and looking disturbed by the suggestion but it might

1:23:31be possible to note some of the program areas where we're using fees to cover whatever it may be 30 of the cost and we might just note that the city is identifying we think these programs are so important that the city is identifying other Revenue sources to supplement the fees so that as people

1:23:47are looking at you know a 50 50 Cent increase per hour that they may be shocked by that but it might be helpful to put into the context of well this is still only covering 32 percent of our costs and we need to identify other Revenue sources to get us up to 100

1:24:02percent mm-hmm I think that would be difficult to do and if we did I would prefer to only do it in maybe categories I think it would be I think it could make someone feel uncomfortable accepting a service considering a subsidy I think that some of the highlighting of those things

1:24:22could could have unintended consequences so while it's something that we might be able to do I in a general basis would be I think a little bit more easy to analyze okay and you think the unintended consequences might be that we're highlighting things that we're

1:24:44subsidizing and not subsidizing others and maybe pitting one group against another I'm just trying to think of how you could do I'm trying to think of how how processed and and put down on paper and I'm having kind of a hard time figuring out how how we would do this

1:25:02and what fees we actually have that are that much subsidized I know we have some in Iraq but I don't know that they have any information that basically says individual fee wise we could have a potential percentage I suppose this may be something that is brought up

1:25:19when we contract for a master fee schedule update is it the case that they would bring everything up to 100 cost recovery or that they would look at all the fees and suggest some that may be gradually brought up to 100 cost recovery it would give us a fee at 100

1:25:34and as we did with the other one we can choose to either not go to 100 we can choose to gradually implement it like we did with the planning fees when we did the last study uh like we're kind of doing this time with with parking fees we're doing our own gradual

1:25:51implementation okay I appreciate that I hadn't looked at the 2006 report so that's really helpful to know that they do give you the 100 cost recovery and then as we're going through our process of deciding on what level to select for all the fees at that time that will convey what our

1:26:07values are by setting the fees at less than 100 for some cases and at that point we would be able to Define what where subsidies were or were not okay all right I appreciate that comment and thanks Mary for your response and I'm happy to support the master fee schedule once we're done with

1:26:25our discussion just like to thank the staff for all the work that's been done on this topic I know it's not an easy thing and I know it goes across departments there are a number of people who are involved in this study and I'd like to to thank staff for the work that you've done I

1:26:41know that it causes you to have to go through and really do a little what I don't know soul searching is the right way but you know really evaluate the different fees and figure out what's called you know what's what's caused um what these are you know what the cost of

1:27:01the fees are for different services that you're providing and I can imagine that it wouldn't always be an easy thing to do because um really you pay the person once and um you know you you have one one month you might have a certain number of transactions another month you might

1:27:20have a different number of transactions so so to directly associate fees with Services is not an easy thing and so I'd like to thank the staff for all of the work on this item I'd like to build on uh council member everson's comments and thanks staffs especially want to note

1:27:37that in the park and rec uh fee schedule there was quite a lot of fee changes this year uh mostly to do exactly what councilmember Abelson was talking about based on Research with other cities and uh looking at the services and the fees that we had we were able to simplify the

1:27:55fee schedules dramatically to make it more user friendly and and More in line with the types of services that are being used so I do want to thank staff for that and uh and ready to move on on the thanks to staff for for the time and consideration and just to add in the

1:28:21the idea that you know staff is so great at getting Grant Awards and having all this additional you know additional grant funding I'm sure augments the cost you know Revenue ratios and as each thing comes in you can't predict all of these things and um yes very Dynamic process

1:28:41um so with that can I I move a resolution of the city council of the city of El Cerrito adopting revisions to the master fee schedule for fiscal year 2000 I guess it's 2011 2012. second all those in favor please say aye aye aye motion is unanimous um great we can move on to item 6B

1:29:07extension of moratorium on the approval and issuance of conditional use permits for wireless telecommunication facilities good evening mayor council members um on May 17 oh I'm Jennifer Carman development services manager on May 17 2010 the city council adopted a 45-day

1:29:25moratorium on the issuance of conditional use permits for wireless telecommunications facilities in the city in June the council extended that moratorium for an additional period of 10 months and 15 days staff is here tonight to request that the council adopt an urgency ordinance

1:29:41extending the moratorium for another year as stated in June of last year staff has begun the research process to explore how other jurisdictions have addressed these facilities and to determine what new or alternative options may be available to regulate the shoes

1:29:57extending this moratorium will allow staff to continue the review of existing regulations of such facilities and study opportunities to encourage the use of new technology that would eliminate or reduce the need for such facilities staff is also intending to conduct

1:30:12public Outreach such as an online survey looking for public opinions on the different types of new technology that's available and that could be supported in updated ordinance we would anticipate this happening during the next year in accordance with government code section

1:30:2865858-d a status report of the measures taken to date was available for public review on April 22nd 2011 and that concludes my presentation for this evening questions from Council yeah I'd like staff to talk a little bit about there's a item in the resolution that talks about surveying the residents

1:30:55and I was hoping that staff could add a little information about that so that it would be in the in the records that people would know what what their what opportunities they might have looking at cost methods of doing research and more than likely it would be an online survey

1:31:16through our website using SurveyMonkey we will be crafting a lot of different questions not about whether or not cell towers should be allowed but what types of facilities and Technology what what are the comments that the public has and I think we're still looking at what kind of questions to ask

1:31:35so I can't really speak to what we would put into that survey at this time thank you yes uh in the agenda Bill indicated that further studies would be required in the financial part of it it says that uh we will need some money to accomplish that are we planning to put that in the

1:31:58budget uh has the funds been identified for those studies not at this time professional miscellaneous Professional Services budget that could be used and some remainder from this year's budget for Contracting for anything like that all right so is it my understanding this

1:32:18is our last time to extend the moratorium so we're going to extend it for a year but we don't have the money to do the studies as yet do you anticipate us having it in the next budget session well we're not entire sure of of whether or not we need to do any major study

1:32:36we're looking at other Technologies and other ways that cities are regulating such a use and it may result that the city doesn't need to make any major changes to our ordinance so until we've sort of decided the path that we're on in that way we don't know what studies

1:32:52we'll need to look at doing well I do like the idea of looking at what the larger cities are doing and yes that's good okay but there may be though so when you're in if you can when you anticipate knowing whether we need more money for studies I mean well we would be looking at our existing

1:33:12budget lines that we have set for this type of use or this type of study um and hopefully we would have some left over from this year's budget that we would be able to carry over in some way okay fair enough thank you uh Jennifer could you let us know whether or not you've received any admit

1:33:33any applications for administrative use permits or any other activity on this front since the moratorium was put in place no not at this time not not for administrative either okay thank you um for me any public testimony [Music] no speakers okay can I have a motion to

1:34:01close the public here to close the public hearing got it all those in favor aye motion is unanimous um so discussion I just had one item and in the report I think we have to be careful when we use the word public health and qualify it on this particular issue because

1:34:25our jurisdiction and that is very limited on that so I would just caution if anybody's looking at that public health item and saying geez you know we can really take off on that please recognize that we are remind that we are limited in that thank you any further discussion

1:34:53any entertain a motion from anyone I move that we approve the extension of the moratorium on the approval and issuance of conditional use permits for wireless telecommunications facilities we do have a more formal motion I beat you to it I'm faster than you are we

1:35:14actually council member Lyman actually have a more formal you're correct I move that we approve an urgency ordinance of the city of El Cerrito making findings and extending a city-wide moratorium on the issuance of conditional use permits for Wireless Communications facilities pending a

1:35:30review of existing regulations of such facilities and a study of opportunities to encourage the use of new technology that would eliminate or reduce the need for such facilities are you willing to approve that by title and wave any further reading then I'll second it

1:35:54I'm waving all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed any abstentions motion carries unanimously given the wedding over the weekend okay on to item number seven policy matters and Adoption of the mission statement for the city of El Cerrito so I think can just entertain a motion

1:36:35any no speakers no presentation I think Mr speakers they only I would are we ready for a comment or um correct I really like this statement is my comment I you know I read it over after not uh putting it aside from when we last worked on it and I think that we um did a thorough job of incorporating a

1:37:02lot of ideas that truly represent us as a community and um so I'm totally ready to support this I agree we did a great job everyone so congratulations and congratulations and thank you to the staff for getting us together and having us do this it was a great Retreat I think for all of us to

1:37:22hear one another's perspectives and it was a great exercise to get together and put our vocabulary into one voice and I appreciate all the work we did so I think whoever did the final uh wordsmithing because it did come out really nice and with that I'll make a

1:37:37motion uh to adopt a resolution of the city council of the city of El Cerrito adopting a city-wide mission statement second all those in favor please say aye aye aye sounded unanimous to me to move on to um yeah item number eight Council liaison uh assignment and liaison reports

1:38:14who's ready I I have I have a really short one on park and rec park and rec met um although they discussed many items the most notable one uh was a motion uh on the master fee schedule uh Monica has left they um Scott how will Monica be conveying the Park and Recs action

1:38:39urging the city council to acquire use rights or the actual gymnasium um is that something I should be mentioning now it's fine on that note um the Karen the assistant City Mansion I actually met with the school superintendent and the assistant superintendent responsible for

1:39:05facilities um just today to start the dialogue on the ultimate disposition of um Portola so and I I would imagine the next few months we will be reporting out and at some point we even discussed the possibility of a joint meeting looking at um future use of the site as well as

1:39:25discussing the impacts of the proposed remodeling of Fairmont on the library and the senior center so it we think it's time to start discussing sort of our long-term View and of play Fields facilities and how it affects both agencies so um we're on it and we'll be reporting

1:39:45out real soon okay and and so the park and rec commission did take a motion to urge us to do exactly what staff is doing which is move forward with uh some use agreement for using the portal of the gymnasium going forward that's it uh let's see here last week there was a

1:40:11meeting of the high school facilities uh committee for El Cerrito High School and I'm your rep doesn't say this but I am the representative for that what we have is uh an Al Miller would probably be uh could report on this a little better than I am since he lives across the

1:40:31street but the phase one which is known what was formerly known as the practice fields that's where the Portables were located they're halfway through the project um it'll be Synthetic Turf on there we'll handle baseball softball soccer football just just about anything you want plus five quarts

1:40:55tennis courts will be relocated into a new design on that field so that's going forward now they anticipate it to be completed by uh the end of August this year be ready to go for the school year where that ties into the community and why I'm reporting on it is that it will also be

1:41:18open for Community use either organized activity or unorganized activity similar to what the old practice field was there will be lights on the field but not for participation there are security lights and uh Pathway lights so that there will not that particular

1:41:43field will not be lit on the stadium the the main field there it has been moved up on the priority list of the district um they will be the plans are in the DSA the state architectures uh department for review at this time they anticipate that starting when the practice fields

1:42:08are are complete that will have a bleacher section where the visitors are now and the Press Box will be located on the visitor's side so that it can service both the stadium and the practice area should there be contests there there will be locker rooms and concession

1:42:32stands built there'll be new lights put in not not the polls themselves but the light fixtures that will be much like it's at cougar field in Albany it's the new latest technology where it um really focuses the light down and therefore Cuts drastically cuts the

1:42:50spill over and it'll have state of the art uh address system and that technology is also good and also focuses and targets the sound to go in a very distinct area so all in all it's looking good for the community and finally when the stadium is done the high school

1:43:10project will be complete and so I think that's really good the the I have to say the district has done a great job I think in coming forth with that project and and bringing it to this point and and to completion in another year also I just want to alert you I believe

1:43:30that the Fairmont School Design Concepts are up on their website for review for those that are interested one thing I found very interesting uh Fairmont uh well 40 years ago when I was there and then moving forward had been all this time a single story and they are

1:43:57designing a two-story facility there my guess is just from that then that means that they're anticipating more students down there than they have currently so it's it's it's one thing uh they're taking comments on on the design right now and it's a bigger footprint the

1:44:17school has a bigger footprint than it is now than it has now all right thank you um I have several things um some of the things in my reports actually I think have already been covered and I won't do it again uh the Environmental Quality committee met and they considered support for Prop 13

1:44:41which is a Grant application for prop 30 excuse me prop 84 which is an urban Greening Grant and what that would do is to um [Applause] it would um help guide El Cerrito's efforts towards achieving an increasing sustainable and livable City and um through a through our climate action

1:45:15plans San Pablo Avenue specific plan and helped guide the development of a future General plan and um so they did recommend support and that should come up before the city council I would assume at some point in the near future and um there are a number of different

1:45:38activities that were reported on which I won't mention at this moment but um I do want to repeat the information about the film being on May 24th the bike film being on May 24th and what I think the future goal of the committee is is to have a film series where every

1:46:02period maybe a month or so I'm not really sure there would be another film so that people would come to expect that they could see a film on some environmental topic and with some sort of regularity and overall what that would do is to help educate people in our community

1:46:22and as a byproduct entertain them but also what it would do is help promote the areas that we really need to work on as part of our climate action plan because what that shows is most of what we need to do is not what's going to be done by the city government itself but rather by our

1:46:45residents and by our businesses so we have a real great need to do that education and so this will be a tool in the toolkit of uh doing that with that I'll move on to wicktech and I did a number of things related to either directly or indirectly to WIC Tech last year or excuse me last month

1:47:07and those include it's all organized I went on a tour of Express Lanes on Ice 680 which is located in the area going between the San Ramon area and San Jose and so we got on a uh shuttle and we just went on the um the the Hop excuse me hotline is it's also known just to see how it was

1:47:44operating because because they've actually got one installed there so what that is is they're using the HOV lane the lane where you have to have on I-80 for example you have to have three or more people will out in that area you have two or more people to go in that

1:48:00lane but what they're doing is they've said that there's a lot of times when there's plenty of capacity in that lane that could be used and so what they're trying out is selling that capacity to um people who may be single occupant Vehicles so what they're doing

1:48:23is they have signs up above and it tells you information about that such as the price because it's congestion pricing which is to say if it's getting really if that Lane's getting really crowded the price for using the lane will go up um the idea is to I guess you could say

1:48:45attract the highest bidder and um it would only be used in the case that there was capacity so for that purpose so um the reason we were looking at it is uh that there is a possibility that this could be used on I-80 um not as likely because it's would be difficult to implement it on I-80 for a

1:49:12lot of technical reasons but anyway it was really interesting to see it and it did appear to be helping traffic move and the way people would pay for it who would use it would be very via the fast track that you used across the bridges and it would just um bill your account and um

1:49:34so this particular system is operating between Monday through Friday from 5 a.m to 5 p.m at night and the people who are in carpool's transit buses and other legal HOV lane users don't have to pay anything they they get to use it for free so it was really interesting

1:49:56because I've been in a lot of meetings where we've been talking about these hot lanes and it was interesting to actually see one operate and if you want to see one you can do so yourself just go on the freeway out in that area um then I want to talk about the regional

1:50:15transportation plan there I actually ran a hearing for that on April the 13th that was held at WIC Tac and in which is located their offices in San Pablo and then on May 24th there will be a hearing at 6 PM in this room the El Cerrito City Hall city council chambers

1:50:40so if you're interested in providing input into the regional transportation plan they do this historically they've done it every three years but it'll now go to every four years then please come with your idea of projects that you would like to see done the projects are

1:50:58the significant projects that require a lot of funding so if you want a sidewalk repaired this would not be the sort of thing that would go into this project list what would go into this project list would be something like the project I just talked about the hotline project you know big

1:51:20Transportation projects so again that's on May the 24th at 6 PM I'd believe you cannot go to both the film and the RTP hearing so as as our mayor says if you're a transportation wonk this is the one for you the um that's the end of my reports okay I just have two reports to make uh

1:51:49the EDB the economic development board met on April 13th and what was discussed was were all of the upcoming events this year so we're still on the preliminary planning phases so I don't have dates for all of these but the items they are planning on achieving before the end of

1:52:052011 include a small business training day that would include a keynote speaker we're kicking around some ideas and trying to identify a good locally known person who can is preferably known for running an excellent business who could Inspire home-based and small business

1:52:23owners to achieve even greater sales or services or whatever their products are the other thing we're working on is having a restaurant week and that we're looking to do in the fall and that would give El Cerrito restaurants an opportunity to partner with the city to

1:52:39promote some of their Foods food goods and uh in exchange for that they would maybe come up with some sort of special discount like buy an entree and get a dessert free that sort of thing to encourage more people to go out to eat during that week we're also looking at potentially doing

1:52:55a scavenger hunt that's still in the very preliminary planning stages but we have a very enthusiastic member who really wants to see this happen so we may very well have a scavenger hunt sometime in the summer the other um board that met that I attended was the Fab Financial Advisory Board they

1:53:12met on April 12th and we discussed a number of items including options for shirt short-term borrowing this is something the city's been discussing as our revenues are getting more and more lumpy and our expenses are more steady they're they're come there are certain

1:53:29time periods where it may be necessary to have a borrowing option that's extremely short-term just to sort of cover the ebb and flow of revenues notice no recommendation was made at that time we also reviewed memos on our internal control as issued by the Auditors and we're very happy most of

1:53:46the board members are very happy with how that memo came out in terms of how the city is performing in controlling our funds and the Fab will be meeting tomorrow and more furiously during this budget period so we'll have more updates from them as we move into budget season

1:54:03thank you very much so for me the human relations commission is meeting on Wednesday so don't have to can't report on that but the and then the second meeting um the arts and culture commission did meet but I was not able to attend that meeting um uh for the I do know that the human

1:54:24relations commission is also because of the film um is is the topic is Beijing bicycle and just to warn folks it is a PG-13 movie and um and it was one of these films that um I I personally recommended because it was this great way to bring together both kind of cultural diversity Asian

1:54:44it's also Asian um history um month and we got them both the eqc uh film Committee just to to co-sponsor as well as the the human race relations commission so I thought it was a great way to bring the two together um but really the idea is this is that it's you know it's also entirely in

1:55:07Chinese with English subtitles so I just want to make sure folks know that going into it but it should be a very beautiful um interesting film look at China in 2001 approximately and really the story's about a around a bicycle and you get to see great cross-directions of

1:55:25Beijing traffic and Mobility um so I just wanted to make sure folks um got to hear about that and that also in kind of in light of this event I personally wanted to put out there a raffle prize of a free bicycle for folks who fill out a bicycling activity survey that will be in the Bike

1:55:50To Work Day bags that are going out on May on May 12th but it should also be on our website it's um Maria Sanders their climate action planner is putting together kind of questions and and getting getting people to give feedback on how they would want to get more involved but the idea is

1:56:09that by May 24th we'll pick a winner from all the folks that fill out the survey so folks once you will send that around and make sure folks know about it but it's a wonderful bike that I personally purchase for myself after having back pain and it's a very economical as well as functional bike

1:56:29that I thought folks should know about I actually saw it for the first time in El Cerrito in our bike fit studio and it's uh called public bike it's designed by a San Francisco based group and actually one of the co-founders of the company is a past mayor of Chico and very much

1:56:49Mission based um Bike company that I I'm very excited to see who will get to win it on May 24th so um and so I think for the human relations again yeah I already mentioned the the next meeting and um and arts and culture I unfortunately don't have a report on that so

1:57:15that's it for me on that one so I think at this point we're adjourning The City the regular city council meeting and um