City Council Meeting October 17, 2011

0:00:02we are like to thank you for coming tonight I'd like to call the meeting of October 17th 2011 to order could we have the role please councilmember bannicini here councilmember Abelson here councilmember Lyman here mayor Pro tem Jones here mayor Chang absent thank you I'd like to ask council member

0:00:45evelson to lead us in the pledge I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States [Music] under uh Council and staff communication I like to start by saying that the uh Council met and special session for the purpose of interviewing for commission opening of commissions

0:01:20and we have appointed two people tonight and Perkins to the crime prevention committee and Aurelia Schwartz to the street repair and maintenance citizen oversight committee so we thank them for applying and congratulations for being accepted is there any other communication I have

0:01:41a few things one I wanted to mention um to local residents that there's a program in case you didn't know called Clipper that enables you to travel on a number of different transit systems using a single card and um in particular I wanted to mention um a program that's part of that program

0:02:06for seeing and this is for seniors um if you're 65 or older you can get a discounted Clipper card and um there's you can contact either AC Transit or Bart if you're interested in getting it and they have information about how to actually get your first card once you get your first card then

0:02:29you just reload money on it which you can do for example at our local BART stations and it it really is a convenience for when you're traveling and I encourage you if you do use that to get one of those I last a week ago I guess from today I was up in Sacramento

0:02:51and I was part of a celebration of women having the right to vote for 100 years uh in case you didn't know women were the last group to get the right to vote and it was a real interesting celebration and we had a March and of course it was raining cats and dogs

0:03:11during the march and I guess that was kind of appropriate because um the sorts of things that apparently women had to go through to get the right to vote made that appear like nothing so anyway it was a real interesting and Pleasant Celebration and other than the

0:03:30rain and um it was a good time was had by all um there is a program called The Empty bowls project which is happening on well I guess it already happened never mind um on October 29th there's going to be a film that's sponsored by the Environmental Quality Committee of the

0:03:55city of El Cerrito it will be held at the Cerrito theater at 10 A.M and it's about the problems created by the use of plastic bags and all of the waste that they're creating and I hope if you can come you'll come to see this film at 10 a.m Saturday and the 29th that is and

0:04:23um it's there's no charge for the movie so it's it's got the movie has a lot of humor as well as having a real message so thank you and let's see on October the 20th there's going to be a bicycling town hall meeting that will be held here at the El Cerrito City Hall from 6 30 to 8 P.M again

0:04:50that's on October 20th and if you're interested in making this a better place for bicycling I encourage you to come let's see I think that's it right uh I'll just mention one other one of their upcoming event is the third annual El Cerrito free Folk Festival which will be occurring this Saturday

0:05:15October 22nd from 12 noon until 10 pm so bring your energy drinks at Windrush school and I'll continue to help celebrate women's suffrage by voting with a lot of enthusiasm tonight so thank you for reminding me councilmember Abelson I just want to thank all the people who

0:05:34did have yard sales this last weekend it was a wonderful event and it was nice to see all that material being reused and recycled so I think the great tradition we started all right I just had a couple real quick ones um one is your the council members of the council as well as the city staff

0:05:56attended the state of the school breakfast put on by the um hosted by West Contra Costa County Unified School District and we'll have a presentation about that fairly soon but I just wanted to let you know that the city of El Cerrito was well represented at that meeting and it was a very not

0:06:14only informative but up upbeat meeting so it was great the second is uh apparently there was a very successful I wasn't able to attend but a very successful resident meeting with the police department police organized it talking about the rash of break-ins that we've had in El Cerrito

0:06:37and what can be done about it and I can just assure you that the police as well as other staff members throughout the city are well aware of the the situation and on top of it and working hard to get these things to stop so but it was a very good meeting I understand and so it was good to see

0:06:59all right staff communication okay there is none so uh I'd like to ask the city clerk to uh announce the rest of the agenda please um this time is an opportunity for members of the public to comment and the first is supervisor John Joya good evening mayor Jones members of the

0:07:25council my name is John joy and I'm here on I'm not taking it off consent so I'm just going to say a few sentences briefly I appreciate you have on your consent calendar as item F support of the West Contra Costa Health Care District measure J um just to be brief and I know you're

0:07:43all aware of this Doctors Hospital in San Pablo is one of two public hospitals in this County the county hospital Martinez and Doctors Hospital in San Pablo it is also one of two hospitals here in West County it is the only full service emergency room Kaiser has an emergency room doesn't

0:08:01perform quite the range of services that doctors does Kaiser is a very important Hospital 15 emergency room beds Doctors Hospital 25 emergency room beds um if a doctor's hospital were to close we would lose we would go from 15 from 40 to 15 emergency room beds here in

0:08:19West Contra Costa County and what does that mean under a health Department study performed earlier this summer it means longer ambulance transport times longer waiting room times and other emergency rooms which would lead to negative medical outcomes the county has

0:08:35been involved working with in partnership with doctors hospital I'm currently serving as the chair of the governing board for Doctors Hospital the governing board is now made up of 11 members the five elected Health Care District members four representatives from the county three from our health

0:08:51department and myself and two Physicians and as part of moving this Hospital toward the sustainability is a chance for voters to approve a forty seven dollar per year parcel tax which would raise five million dollars a year and would help close an 18 million dollar financial gap

0:09:14um I thought it was important that a majority of this Gap get closed in other ways whether it's through internal restructuring some Partnerships with the county there's been some outside assistance we've been working with Kaiser and John Muir but this five million dollar Gap this five million

0:09:32dollar measure through through measure J is very important to close this Gap and without it frankly the hospital would close next year um the measure also provides that if the hospital closes the tax automatically ends it is only for the purpose of keeping the hospital open so if in the

0:09:50future for some reason the hospital could not stay open the tax would automatically uh end without a further vote of the of the public so we appreciate your support of the measure there's been a lot of hard work to try to move this Hospital forward um you know last thing I'll close with

0:10:06there's a lot of Kaiser residents here in El Cerrito so if you're a Kaiser patient you still rely on doctors hospital because if you have a heart attack or a stroke you would go to doctors hospital as opposed to Kaiser because that's where for example heart attack patients go because of how it's

0:10:21set up and also if doctors were to close it would dramatically impact the emergency room at Kaiser and cause much longer weights and put a strain on Services there so if you have any questions but thanks thanks for your support mayor I got a request to if I could

0:10:39could you um elaborate on how this election is working so that people can remember to look for this in a particular place oh thanks Greg I appreciate that it's a um it's a mail ballot only ballots will go out here in the next week or so and they are due back on November 15th uh that's a week

0:10:59after the normal date of the eighth so it's due back in Martinez um there is there are no precincts however on Election Day November Tuesday November 15th the elections office has made arrangements to have individuals if they wish drop off their ballot at one of three locations between 1 and 8 PM in

0:11:17West County um unfortunately none of the locations are in El Cerrito they're Richmond Senior Center Maple Hall and San Pablo or Hercules City Hall one of those three but um most people are going to mail their ballots in and so people need to look for their ballot obviously it's going to

0:11:32come in the middle of the next two weeks and to return them and they need to be received by close of business on November 15th at the elections office in Martinez the only thing that we're voting on and it's everybody who lives in all the West County cities from El

0:11:47Cerrito to Richmond to San Pablo to Pinole to Hercules all the way out to Crockett great great thank you thank you very much Roger thanks appreciate it Tom panis good evening mayor Pro tem Jones members of the council and City staff my name is Tom panis and I live at [address removed]

0:12:22Avenue in El Cerrito I'm here this evening to speak on behalf of the El Cerrito Historical Society I'm pleased to announce that the historical society is now ready to open the Dorothy and Sunday shoddy history room to the public on a regular basis the initial plan is the room to be open

0:12:36once a month on the third Thursday of the month from 4 30 to 6 30.

0:12:42so according to my calculations that makes this coming Thursday the first time it will be open if demand warns the room will be open on a more frequent basis the shoddy room is on the second floor of City Hall immediately adjacent to the elevator the email address for the historical

0:12:56society is El Cerrito Historical Society yahoo.com once again that's all one word El Cerrito Historical Society at yahoo.com if anyone has questions the stories I would like to thank our city manager Scott Hannan and our assistant city manager Karen Pincus for helping to

0:13:11make this possible thanks for your time thank you Mr panis appreciate it next on the agenda is a presentation it's the state of the West contract Costa Unified School District by Dr harder mayor Pro tem Jones and city council it's a delight to be here I appreciate

0:13:41the opportunity to share a little bit about the West Contra Costa Unified School District and uh certainly we'll be happy to answer your questions uh this is uh the presentation that was done for our annual state of the school's breakfast I've truncated just a little bit for a presentation tonight

0:13:57you know we really are in a whole new kind of gridlock it's called political gridlock that we see Across the Nation and we also see here in California as well and we all feel like we've been kind of on an economic roller coaster that's uh you know sort of a scary

0:14:11rather than a fun ride that's for certain and it's been particularly difficult for those who are on unemployed because um they really are looking up up a long Steep Hill in order to take care to take care of their families it's had an impact on our school district as you can

0:14:27see from the graph here uh the uh oh um the um push the wrong button the free and reduced lunch account has gone up about nine and a half percent over the last five years we have about 1100 more students receiving free and reduced lunches than what we had just five just

0:14:47five years ago in in the district at a time when our population has gone down by about 5 000 students so here they are uh West Contra Costa Unified School District best the parents are sending their best kids to school every day and there's twenty nine thousand two hundred

0:15:01and fifteen of them this year uh the enrollment just for a trend looks back in 1969 we had more than 41 000 students sort of went down the slippery slide to the mid 80s over the next 20 years for about 26 000 students and then gradually over 20 years grew back to 35

0:15:19000 students and then started down the slide again the good news is that our demographer says that for the next 10 years we're going to be pretty stable so we're looking at about 29 000 students for the next 10 years that means that we're going to have a stability in terms

0:15:33of our schools and that we're about right size to where we needed to be for our buildings our population has changed a lot and I only went back 20 years on this back in 1991 92 we had about 35 percent African-American 26 percent white and 20 percent Latino 13 Asian and

0:15:51six percent Filipino 20 years ago today we have about 48 percent Latino and 21 African-American and 13 white and 12 Asian again six percent you know so we're serving a bit of a different student population from what we were just 20 years ago in West Contra Costa

0:16:09our home language diversity has gone grown enormously as well we have about 10 000 of our students out of the 29 000 whose home language is Spanish and then the other languages that I have listed there are all under a thousand they go from about 750 for a Filipino down to

0:16:27about a hundred for Hindi and then between a hundred and one uh there's 65 other languages in the district as well and that makes for an enormous diversity in terms of cultures as well as uh students that we have in our district we have about 1100 students in in preschool

0:16:43this year I'm very happy to have them and then about 4 500 students in special education services I'm showing a picture of a regular education class because we serve three out of four of our special education students in the regular education classrooms which is helpful to

0:16:59them and helpful to their peers as well we have about 4 000 students this year in our adult education program at least this fall we're very happy to be able to maintain it about uh most of them are in English as a second language class or an adult basic education or in high school

0:17:17completion are the three biggest programs that we have in addition to a whole variety of fee based classes that we offer um we start out our students very early on with uh you know predictable language books reading in pairs they move up to where they're reading chapter books

0:17:33after a a couple of years in school and then in our math program we start them out with lots of manipulatives in our program we don't want to have any more math phobics and so we want them to make sure that they understand math as well as that they're able to do it

0:17:46so that by the time they're in high school they're ready for pre-calculus and calculus and the tools that they need as well as to be able to use their math and apply it in new and different situations like these young ladies are who are using their math to build to

0:17:59build a bridge our academic performance has gone up steadily over the last eight years and we're very pleased that the at least moving in the right direction even if we like the trend to be a little bit steeper than than what it is in this graph and all that a lot of that has to

0:18:14do with our teachers the quality of the teacher is seven times more important than any other factor in in schooling for children and so we want to make sure that we recruit and and develop and sustain the very best teachers that we can so that as our children go through

0:18:28they're in contact with skilled professionals who are very demanding and set high expectations for them and then give them lots of interesting things to do like Bob fabini's class at El Cerrito High we relentlessly talked to students about the 15 big classes that they need these

0:18:45are the classes that are required for the UC CSU these are the 15 academic core classes that they need to have and we're real delighted to see that we've tripled the numbers of our of our graduates who have completed those basic a through G classes over the last five

0:19:01years and this that represents about 40 percent of our graduates the most recent numbers I have are for the class of 2010 we expect to be up over 50 percent by the time the class of 2012 graduates they have to meet all take all those 15 classes but they also have to have a 2.0

0:19:18grade point average which for some of our freshmen and sophomores who have some difficulty starting out makes that 2.0 a a difficult challenge for them and here's the reason they need to go on to college if you look on the graph there there's about 16 percent unemployment

0:19:33today among uh young people who don't have a high school diploma about 10 percent unemployment for those who have a high school diploma and eight percent for those who have uh two uh some some amount of college and the ones who are most advantaged are the four percent

0:19:48unemployed for those who have a bachelor's degree or above you can see how those graph has really changed but it's always in the same in the same uh order there and certainly there's a great Advantage for students to go on and get a college degree or Beyond we're very pleased that

0:20:06with our ivy league connection is one of the programs that's been so so good in terms of getting our students interested in high selective colleges and universities and that's helping our other students Aspire and know that they can go on and meet the challenge that

0:20:19meet the challenge as well this last year we were able to bring in some of the presidents of the historically black college universities uh and and we're able to send students off they're often a recruiting trip to the West Coast to bring uh students to those colleges and universities

0:20:36you know when you look at the faces of some of the students in the class of 2011 you probably wouldn't guess that more than 80 percent of them now are off into either two-year four-year or technical schools that's up from only from 46 percent just uh five years ago

0:20:49so it really changed the college-going culture in our community and our students really aspire to go on to college and university part of that's because we've had 21 career academies now in our district they range in everything from architecture and and construction to our

0:21:07green automotive technology you know the what the career academies do is they put the Career Technical at the core of the program and then build the academics around it so that all those are integrated for students and it really creates a much better interest and also

0:21:21a sense of community among our students and so the information technology was one of our first I think it started El Cerrito High and it's really a Mainstay of what we've been able to do we have several Health academies in our in our school district and a new one this year

0:21:36is a hospitality and tourism Academy that we've just started up and students are very excited about that we have a couple of law academies a law and Justice academies in the district as well and Engineering has been a big a big Focus for for us because those those

0:21:50science technology engineering and math are very important for our students as they go through these happen to be students from Richmond highs engineering hearing Academy that went off to Northern California Mesa competition that's math engineering science achievement and look who came home with

0:22:07the blue ribbons the two young ladies and the two young men came home with the red ribbons and were very proud of them all because it's a real tough competition when you're out competing with everybody in Northern California one of the things we brought back this

0:22:18last summer because our students really not only need to think of themselves as being a part of a business or having a job in a workplace but we want them to think of themselves as being the business owners and to do that you really need something like the tried and

0:22:30true Junior Achievement company program where students really learn about starting their own business and and what it takes to make it work our safety program is really focused on four really important care factors that we have in our district one is a school resource officers that we have in all of

0:22:47our middle and high schools we've had extra training for our district safety staff and and brought them into new uniforms and created a whole new work ethic among among that group the surveillance cameras have made a big difference for us and they're now standard in all of our secondary schools

0:23:03as we build and renovate our schools but finally the most important thing is the building of the relationships because that's what really keeps us safe in our schools and in our society and generally when we know our neighbors and we know uh and we know each other and respect

0:23:16each other our attendance has gone up as steadily over the last five years this last year we finally cracked the 95 percent barrier and I actually did a little bit better in our high schools than what we did in our elementary schools and we think a big part uh reason for that is that we've got health

0:23:32centers in all of our high schools you know when students can get their health needs addressed they're much more likely school and what we've seen is a decrease over the last five years in teen pregnancies and STDs and also a decrease in our dropout rate as well and we think

0:23:47that our health our health centers and our high schools have all played played a role in that but again I can't stress enough the importance of relationships when students know their teachers and the teachers know them we give students a reason to come to school and that's the most important

0:24:02thing in our attendance effort we served about 4.9 million meals last year breakfast lunches and snacks with a very talent and dedicated crew and we really get the emphasis going early on and eating eating in a healthy way we really eliminate all the junk food from

0:24:19anywhere in our schools that you can't buy it you can't eat anything but healthy healthy foods in our schools today and the students are reading it the biggest problem that we have is just in terms of the budget reductions we've had to face over the last five years it

0:24:33seems like we've done nothing but cut to the tune of a total of about 40 million dollars out of our 240 million dollar budget so it's a it's a very uh big constraint on our on our programs and services our board has tried to keep their priorities uh in terms of having

0:24:49smaller class sizes that are uh K2 levels and we've been successful in doing that up until now but we certainly haven't been nearly as successful at our at our middle and high school levels where classes of 38 and 40 are now more common than than not common so we have

0:25:07larger classes we have fewer teachers we have fewer support services and our employees have really uh had to take furloughs and benefit caps as well which makes it much more difficult for us to go out and recruit and retain employees uh is particularly highly effective

0:25:23teachers that we need one of the victims of our budget reductions has been our advanced placement program those are those college courses that students take in high school we had this continuous upward uh curve for the last five six years and then last year it fell off and

0:25:40and it has fallen off just simply because we can't have the course offerings that we used to be able to have because the constraints that we have from our budget so that's a really disappointing part although I should say that we still had 64 AP Scholars and 15

0:25:53Scholars with distinction and we're very proud of those students who did who did so well in in that program but it's disappointing when we could have more students in those in those courses if we'd been able to offer the offer the courses well the big um issue that we've

0:26:08about to resolve is the Old State loan it's either you know the sort of Damocles over here or it's been the albatross around our neck but we're about to finally put put the loan loan to rest uh we have enough in our in our um a long-term debt fund now to pay off

0:26:24the balance in the loan and so we're going through a required State audit the otters have been in and we hope that they'll have a report back to the state by December and that the board can adopt those findings in January and then hopefully uh have a big loan payoff

0:26:37party in February or March next year is what we're looking forward to is because it's been uh 21 long years that we've had to State loan the state budget doesn't look any better than than uh than what it has the the legislature set up a series of triggers to say that that

0:26:54if we got something less than the 4 billion additional funds that were that were projected last May then uh we we fell short by 2 billion or more than the school budgets would be reduced and would be reduced for this year which is sort of a scary thought for us because

0:27:10that would take 8.2 million out of funds that we've really already committed in terms of our our program for this year that we'd have to have to just find use reserves for the good news is that our board was very strategic and set aside 10 million dollars for that this year

0:27:25just not knowing where the state was going to be but if we do have to if the triggers do happen and we do lose those funds and we'll make the cuts that we're going to have to make for 12 13 much larger and honestly I'm beginning to run out of places where where we're going to

0:27:39be able to cut you know as you look at our graduates there we're very proud of what they do and the accomplishments that they've had and I've only touched upon a few of them today but uh there's some students who are missing there and there's students that are victims of our achievement Gap

0:27:52you can see on the chart here the students at the top are our Filipino Asian and white students and they've all made improvements over the last eight years and so have our Latino students who are in the blue line and our African-American students in the red line but the but the difference

0:28:07between the achievement of our highest achieving students and our Latino and African-American students while it's got it's gotten smaller by 2011 it's still way too big and we're we're really not doing all that we can do to make sure that our students have the kind of

0:28:21Futures that they could have had without the achievement Gap so again we have a plan together that we we've been working on it really begins with link learning at our high schools to and that's helped us reduce our dropout rate and improve our achievement a focus on the Core

0:28:36Curriculum and making sure that we're teaching to the standards professional development for our teachers we've improved our interim assessments to give teachers better feedback along the way and this year we brought on a new Focus around middle school and high school

0:28:48math which has been certainly one of our weak points in in our in our program and have a renewed effort in that for this year and we've been very unfortunate to be able to keep summer school at least up until uh through the summer of 2011.

0:29:01I'm a little bit concerned about the summer of 2012 when most districts around the uh around the area no longer have summer schools and our bond program we have a 57 total schools and this year we have 61 percent of all of our students who are in either the renovated

0:29:17or new schools and by the end of a Major D of 2010 we'll have 91 percent of our students in New Or renovated schools and I just wanted to give you a look at a few of them here's Dover Elementary in San Pablo it's just off of Market Street in San Pablo King Elementary it's not

0:29:34too far from uh Kennedy High School just off cutting in in Richmond Pinole middle and we we're just about to move into Pinole middle we'll move in there over the it looks like Veterans Day weekend the most part we're already in the new new building and this is just the historic

0:29:52Wing that has finally been finished at Pinole middle Ford Elementary will be finished early in 2012. that's on Maricopa between Richmond High and salesian high schools it's the elementary school it's right there and then uh De Anza high school will be finished in 2012 as well and this is an

0:30:09aerial view of De Anza as as it goes up there along Valley View Road um as of this morning I have Bill Savage was kind enough to send me this picture along here the fields up at next to El Cerrito High School and the carpet is finally going down and so we're looking

0:30:24at a November uh timeline and so for soccer season it looks like we'll be up there on the on the new field there which which will really be great for our our students at El Cerrito High School here's a rendering the latest that we have of uh portalet at the Castro site

0:30:38we're going to begin that uh construction there in the spring of this year probably in March or April of this year we'll begin the actual construction there and and look to move those students in in the second half of the 2013-14 school year into that school overall it's just a chart of our bond

0:30:57our bond program I really don't expect that you'll be able to read everything on there but the pink ones are the are the ones that the state has has provided those are State program schools and really only three of them Hercules Middle High are there together the blue

0:31:09ones are what our bond dollars are really brought about and of course we've gotten a considerable State match but it's been about 90 10 in terms of the what the local versus the state and then the yellow ones are the ones that are in Major D of of uh of 2010 and so you can

0:31:24see that the bond program has really really made a transformation that's going to last our residents at least for the next 50 or 60 years in this District so just a little bit about the inside of our schools because the kindergartners start out they're making friends and

0:31:39making faces and enjoying school and that's where we want them to be we want them to have curiosity as they go through school and we want them to begin by learning to read and then reading to learn is a real big transition that happens in elementary school without

0:31:53them to write from the earliest age and then increase their writing frequency so they write early and often in school and we want them to be knowledgeable about mathematics and as I said earlier we want no math phobic so this is actually geometry in kindergarten Here although

0:32:07it may feel like painting to her we want her to distinguish between squares and triangles and rectangles right from early on and then they do Algebra before they're even knowing it what's underneath the paper plate that's the unknown and they're solving problems

0:32:20around around that as early as second and third grade we teach them about the California history as well as U.S and world history as they go as they go through school and we want them to use their five senses as they uh to make sense of the world to look and see and

0:32:34investigate with their eyes and get get Hands-On Touch of of the real world things that are around us and then see in the microscope beneath the the visible um and we want to participate in the science fair we think it's really important and we still have science

0:32:51fairs in our in our elementary and our middle and high schools and it's it's a great a great program for students to learn problem solving we're very uh delighted with our performing arts program and uh here's a picture of the El Cerrito band from just a couple

0:33:04couple of weeks ago and they're they're doing very well and getting stronger every year Visual Arts is important in our schools students at the first and second grade start off doing work like this and then by the time they're juniors and seniors in high school they

0:33:18can do things like this which is a remarkable transition in terms of the quality of what they're able to do we want our middle schools to explore careers and so that when they can make a choice in high school not that it's going to be a lifelong lasting choice we

0:33:32want them to choose a career Academy as they get into their high schools we want them to be able to use technology in our schools and be able to use it in their homes as well we're really pleased to have a number of Partners um Chevron certainly with Project Lead the Way and

0:33:47the donations that they've made to make our engineering academies work the writer coach connection is something that started El Cerrito High and now is at Portola as well and we hope to expand that around the district because it's a great way to help our students learn to

0:34:00write and improve their writing and college essays Rosie Rosie's girls is a program where young women in Richmond learn about themselves and learn about their communities and they learn how to use the tools and and make projects we're very fortunate to have a great

0:34:16partnership in many dimensions with University of California Berkeley this is the Y plan where students make presentations on ways to improve their Community this happens to be about the greenway and in in Richmond this last year we bring in scientists in the classroom and and uh from like from bio

0:34:33rad and Bayer is an important thing and then Dr tanitos is one of several dentists who volunteer in our schools to help help our kids and to start out with good habits and and in the dental room and then we have a great partnership with Contra Costa County this was uh the day in which we

0:34:52brought in the last of the students who hadn't gotten the the required inoculation for pertussis this year and the Contra Costa County brought in nurses and and gave all the students who didn't have their shots uh their shots and so now we're as close to 100 as

0:35:05we're going to get in terms of that requirement but we want school to be a fun place for students where they get a chance to get their hands on and get to explore things they get to dress up now and then to make it much more enjoyable or they get to be a part of our

0:35:19forensics or our dance programs where they get to be involved in athletics and then where they just might get the chance to meet a community icon like Eddie Downer this is uh Jerome leaks who happened to attend the economic Summit in Richmond he's a young entrepreneur

0:35:34and he gets to meet somebody like Eddie who's funded entrepreneurs through Mechanics Bank for years and years and that's the opportunity that's open to us so they're our children and that's that's uh that's the state of our schools in Wisconsin so thank you for

0:35:46having me thank you Dr harder any questions before we 'd just like to say it's it's uh it second time around was just as good as the first time around um there's measurable Improvement which is great and best of luck in getting the state loan taken care of thank you very much

0:36:11hopefully that brings more money into to handle what you're trying to do and the programs you're putting on thank you thank you very much I had a question um if people wanted to volunteer in some of these programs that you were talking about from the community what would they

0:36:29do when we we have a listening audience at home and I just want to know what they could do if they're interested in helping in some way but we have a number of violent volunteer programs we have them at virtually all of our schools and uh really the the kinds of things that

0:36:47people can do ranges from you know reading to students to actually writing for them to you know going on and coaching like they do in in high schools uh to become a volunteer we we ask folks to get a TB test and then we we've made a fingerprinting available to our

0:37:02community without charge and so once they've passed that criteria then they can volunteer in our schools a couple of exceptions to that parents who want to volunteer in their net with their child in their child's classroom there's no requirement for the uh for the uh for

0:37:18the for the fingerprinting and the same would be true for someone who's an occasional volunteer like a guest speaker there's no requirement there either we don't want to drive people away but we still want to make our kids safe and if they're going to go coming

0:37:29regularly into our classrooms or go on a field trip we need to have them have the TB test and be fingerprinted so how would they sign up they can sign up on our website just go on to the the volunteer your button and click on and and they can submit to go ahead and

0:37:43submit that and then we've had a number of uh clinics uh Saturday clinics uh and I'm not quite sure where we are this well we don't have yeah we do have one this coming Saturday I'm not quite sure where it is uh where we're going ahead and taking appointments for

0:37:56fingerprinting we do them every five minutes so we get more volunteers fingerprinted we've added about 700 volunteers already this year over the ones that we had in previous years there's very fast turnaround on that I actually uh did do that and I think with I I have my badge

0:38:14well thank you we're delighted thank you for the presentation I loved all the pictures that you inserted in there it really makes what you're talking about come to life so that was very much appreciated I know it takes a lot of work to put those into presentations

0:38:29um just a quick question on the connections between the school district and the constituent cities I'm aware of some of the things that El Cerrito does currently with with the schools within our borders but can you talk about other things that other cities may do to

0:38:43um to support schools in their in their areas or or any sort of connections that are made between your staff and City staff well we have a great relationship with each of our cities and the cities all do things a little bit differently but one of the core things that all the

0:38:58cities do is is support us and we support them in Recreation and programs and so our facilities are available to the cities and the cities make their uh recreational facilities available to us and we couldn't have gotten through these last six years of the city of El

0:39:13Cerrito hadn't been so generous with us with uh all the renovations at uh at first at uh at uh El Cerrito High School now at Portland Middle School so you know we have a good relationship around safety and so we we contract with the cities for school resource officers and

0:39:29and some of the cities have been fortunate enough to be in a position to be able to provide us with one as well and that that's worked out very well for us and really helped us be be much safer we've had some joint uh development projects the city of Pinole has had did

0:39:44a joint project with us at Pinole middle and so the uh the city has use of the Pinole middle gym for Parks and Recreation now we already do that with the city of El Cerrito and have for years and years Child Care is another area where uh El Cerrito has really been

0:40:00the number one in terms of support there in terms of providing the child care right in our elementary schools and so it's been a really rich and deep partnership and we're very delighted to be able to work with all of our cities some people think it it must be awful to

0:40:14have all these different cities but it's actually delightful to get to work with each one thank you Dr herter thank you very much for coming tonight your presentation is always is very informative um just a quick question about the old Portola campus just wanted to confirm

0:40:30that I understand this demolition will start there soon yes uh and I I wish I had uh thought that's why I brought a pad up here I'll get you the the time schedule on in terms of the demolition of portal I know it's we're we're already in design around that and it's

0:40:43ready to come down and we've been working with the city and maybe Scott knows better than I do what the actual start date of that is great thank you well thanks very much I appreciate it thank you next item on the agenda is the adoption of the consent calendar item numbers 5A

0:41:08through 5G move adoption of the consent calendar second we moved in second and on the motion all those in favor aye aye opposed passes unanimously thank you next item please next item is public hearing abatement of fire hazard public nuisances great uh before we get started for those

0:41:37that aren't uh familiar with the public hearing process we'll have a presentation by staff in this case Who's involved in the public hearing then we have questions by the staff as uh any of the staff as well as the city council then we'll open the public hearing and at that time anybody with an

0:42:00interest on this uh subject we'll talk when the information session is is or closed we will ask to close the public hearing and then bring it back to the council for resolution so thank you very much thank you honorable mayor for Tim Jones council member staff Michael Bond fire

0:42:23marshal for the city of El Cerrito I'm here tonight to ask for your consideration approval of the resolution before you regarding the abatement costs or the fire of the five properties that were abated by City contractors this year as you know our goal is 100 voluntary

0:42:42compliance with vegetation management and fire hazards unfortunately we're unable to make that goal this year and had to Abate five properties through product through uh private contractors uh they've cost our varying as you see in your packet we try to keep them at an absolute

0:43:03minimum for concern for the property owners and sometimes it gets quite costly and with that if you have any questions at all be more than happy to answer them any questions yeah I would you please elaborate on the notification processes starting with the notification to Abate a notification

0:43:27about the cost of the abatement and tonight's notification about tonight's hearing when we begin the process in May early June we we go out and we inspect the properties and we send each and every property owner that is not in violation this year I believe it was 247

0:43:45properties that were sent a notice of non-compliance as far as vegetation management standards go and we informed them at that time that they have X amount of time to com comply with the code if not we will we will come to council and they're given a council date

0:44:01a hearing date that we will ask that their properties be declared a public nuisance and we give them time to to remedy that again come into compliance another notice is sent if they have not come into compliance saying that you're not in compliance there's a public hearing that's going to order the

0:44:23abatement of your said properties in in compliance with the the civil code after we've abated the properties there was a notice sent out this time of a a change in date that we were going to do the public hearing and specifically stated today's date and any event all

0:44:45dates are sent to the people via first class mail informing them of all of the steps and procedures that are required by law to to do this in the initial uh abatement process we do indicate that we will be charging for administrative costs should they not yes sir okay and the administrative costs

0:45:15are updated yearly it's it looks like to me yes based on uh wages and compensation uh full benefit packages of the individuals that are out doing the inspections and the administrative time that's built in for developing hearings and inspecting the properties reinspecting the properties and you name

0:45:36it going to County to have the the documents recorded when it's said and done okay we only charge the administrative costs for those who fail to comply at this stage of the abatement proceedings correct yes that is that is true we give them every opportunity to pay the the

0:45:54vendors directly and not be charged the administrative fee that we have here for the baited properties that have not been paid okay my last question is is there any theme about why the these particular properties on the list did not Abate is there um you know we we do our best to get out

0:46:18and contact the folks make contact by phone we actually go and knock on doors and stuff we do um yes it is yes sir and uh people there were some there were additional properties that were abated by contractors but the property owners paid the contractor directly again as a

0:46:37result of our trying to reduce the cost to the the people that are being abated so it's it's with a uh you know just the the so their choice our notice includes at this stage actually trying to meet person to person to to notify him before you bring this list to us for uh this

0:46:59time uh yes most of I believe most if not all of the property owners that were able to be contacted were contacted and given the opportunity to pay okay thank you in fact the the contractors build directly to the the property owners okay thank you any other questions yes yes I have a

0:47:20question so if um a particularly property owner gets to the situation that we're discussing tonight um they the um amount of the assessment will actually go against the property on the tax roll is that true or yes is what is what we're gonna excuse me is what we

0:47:42will do after tonight's hearing next week uh Captain Teresa Pace will go out to the county assessor's office and file a lien that will be placed as a special tax assessment on the property rolls to recover the money that we've expended to complete these abatements and when would

0:48:02we actually receive or so have we paid who paid for the city has paid for the actual abatement cost to this point And now when we go to the county that will be getting this the city reimbursed in whole including administrative fees with the reimbursement occur now or when the

0:48:25property is sold uh it will be placed on the tax assessment and be um collected through property taxes so it'll be on the bill yes and so the first time the bill comes is the property owner um what if they don't pay it what happens um I have not been through the this process

0:48:54where nobody has satisfied their their tax assessment is my understanding that the same is not paying any of your property taxes that the state would go through whatever process they go to to recover the cost as a as a regular property tax okay thank you anything else just yeah just as a point

0:49:17of clarification I want to make sure that I understood your responses correctly um the administrative fee could have been avoided if the property owner paid the contractor directly and as a result of us having to the hearing tonight the administrative fee which is sizeable in some of these homes

0:49:39um and and percentage-wise it's actually quite large on some homes um that is only being assessed as a result of getting to this point where we're going to have to potentially file uh liens against these properties but they could have been avoided as a result of paying paying the contractor yes

0:49:56thank you or abating the properties themselves through private contract with with abatement contractors well thank you appreciate it any other uh comments by staff before we move on okay I'd like to open the public hearing now so do we have any people no no comment

0:50:22cards move to close the public hearing second I've been moving second end to close the public hearing all those in favor aye hope the police have the record reflect that there was no public comment on this okay all right so let's take this up this item um do we have a motion I'm willing to

0:50:41make a motion I move to adopt a resolution confirming the cost of abatement of public nuisance conditions resulting from the presence of weeds rubbish litter or other flammable material on private property as identified in exhibits A and B to the resolution as authorized in El Cerrito

0:51:01Municipal Code chapter 16.26 second motion and smooth and seconded on the resolution is there final discussion on this I'll I'll just um for the record say that it's really unfortunate um that we were unable to uh reach resolution with the property owners uh you know this is a first for

0:51:26me but it as it turns out it's something that's necessary for the city to recover costs that we've incurred and and I feel it's important to move this item forward okay well thank you okay on the motion all those in favor aye aye opposed motion carries thank you

0:51:49seven policy matters 7A is Bart license agreement for Ohlone Greenway thank you mayor protaman council I'm Jerry Bradshaw a public works director in 1986 the city and Bart entered into an agreement concerning the Ohlone Greenway a pathway system that runs underneath

0:52:19the BART tracks and beside the BART tracks through the length of town that term of that agreement was 25 years at the time and it's due to expire next month actually a year or so ago Bart began working on a new generation of agreements with several cities in the in this area in an

0:52:40effort to try and have a consistency among the different agreements and how the Ohlone Greenway and the BART right away is is handled both contractually as well as physically on the ground um the draft agreement you have in front of you tonight is is a work product of

0:52:57of of that from going back at least a year that we've been working with Bart on this it contains very typical Provisions Provisions that you also would have seen in the old agreement for instance the maintenance of the greenway nothing changes there the city is still responsible for the maintenance

0:53:15of the greenway Bart is still responsible for the maintenance of their trackway and their columns including graffiti abatement discusses future improvements major improvements that we might want to make in that area we have to get a plan review and approval from Bart

0:53:30minor improvements are excluded from that and the term of this new agreement is again 25 years very similar to the old agreement if that was all that was in there this likely would be a consent calendar item however there wasn't one new wrinkle that we did not see in the last

0:53:46agreement and that dealt with the mass transit Corridor issues Bart is a Transit only agency a single function unlike the city that has many functions Transportation Public Safety land use and parks recreation the Department of Transportation Act section 4f protects park lands it states that

0:54:15parkline cannot be taken by Transportation agencies unless there is no feasible alternative or or such and if a transportation project does have to take Parklands it has to mitigate do everything it can to lessen the impacts to that Park land such a provision in section 4f of the

0:54:38dot act would not necessarily apply to a path that is primarily a transportation feature and has some incidental park or Recreation uses along with it which incidentally is fairly close to the alone and Greenway master plan that the council adopted approximately two

0:54:56years ago that states that the Ohlone Greenway is first and foremost a transportation facility however we do recognize the the value of the open space and recreational function that it serves the land and water conservation fund Act is another act that comes into play in

0:55:14this agreement and that provides grants for Park and Recreation areas one of the stipulations in that act is that if the funds go into a park or recreation facility that must remain a park or recreation facility section 6 after that act states that you cannot convert those

0:55:36park lands that have been funded by by that act away from Park use it's prohibited unless you get the approval of the National Park Service so that sort of sets the stage for this provision in the agreement that if the city were to use Land and Water Conservation funds for some improvements

0:55:56on the greenway under Bart and if Bart then sometime in the future needed to make some improvements to their transit system that would interrupt or eliminate that Park feature that could be viewed as a as a a conversion and would have to deal with the mitigations

0:56:18accordingly therefore Bart well unless there's one big unless unless you predetermine that the facility is not primarily recreational in nature and that's what BART is inserting this Clause into the agreement for they've requested that we agree to the the statement that the

0:56:36Ohlone Greenway is not a primarily a recreational feature as primarily a Transit feature uh Bart also added another provision that says the city where the city agrees not to use Land and Water Conservation fund money for improvements on the greenway and if we did that we would be

0:56:58responsible for any mitigations that might come about through some future Improvement by Bart that would trigger the conversion clause when Staff first saw those uh those Provisions at the agreement we were a little rankled at first obviously we view the greenway as a as a fairly

0:57:16recreational in nature facility that we're very proud of and and actually does serve as the closest thing that some neighborhoods have to park in the lower part of town but at the same time we also understand why Bard is very protective of their transportation only mission

0:57:32allowing recreational uses into that is akin to allowing an endangered species to come in it's something that could preempt your primary Mission as a transportation facility so I understand that they need to be protective of that and this is certainly an opportunity for

0:57:47them to do that in fact the city is protective in our own right for rights of way we have an analogous situation where if a homeowner wants to build a fence out by this front sidewalk that happens to be a couple feet into our public right-of-way we can allow that but we also make it a

0:58:04revocable permit where we can go back in and revoke that permission anytime if there is a need to do so so we certainly understand their role in this staff does recommend approval of the of the agreement that you have in front of you tonight for several reasons Bart and

0:58:21the city really have a history of partnering in the support of the greenway in fact The Greenway has really served as a a successful model for multiple uses for a Transit Corridor like this the likelihood of Bart improvements in the future needing to truly eliminate a

0:58:37recreational use is slide we really have trouble envisioning what that might be and future use of land and water conservation funds this may be a little tougher one probably be safest not to do that although the National Park Service has shown some flexibility in the past

0:58:56we've actually used line of water conservation funds to develop the Italia Plaza and five or six other mini parks along the greenway and before that was approved they recognized that our agreement with Bart was only a 25-year agreement did not meet their in perpetuity requirement but

0:59:14they were flexible enough to allow it at that point so there may be some flexibility in future uses of land and water conservation money just go out okay um so I think the best advice would be in the future to not necessarily not consider that funding but to vet any

0:59:32project on a case-by-case basis very carefully and to that extent guarding future staff against inadvertently going for these funds we've agreed to put in our property files for the greenway memos to alert any future staff to go and consult the BART license agreement that is in place

0:59:50at the time to make sure that they don't stumble into something that could come back to the city in in the way of costly mitigations we also will have other grant opportunities in fact we are currently in the process of finalizing a grant for the an urban Greening Grant this is a

1:00:08state Grant it's not a Federal grant like the land and water conservation it would be and we actually pointed out to the grantors the language in the draft agreement that we've had for a little while here and they don't see any conflict with that and they're allowing

1:00:25the grant to go ahead with again a 25-year term and the restrictions that are in the agreement you have there so in summary the agreement is a little more restrictive than than the prior one but we think understandably so the restrictions really only affect the

1:00:39possibility of land and water conservation funding and the city has to uh one one concessions that the city does agree to a statement that that the greenway is primarily transportation and the recreation and open space is secondary to that but all in all the greenway continues to

1:00:57be a valuable Community Asset and the agreement will take that asset into the next 25 years on your desk in front of you we do have a substitute resolution that's not totally conformed and format but the language in the body of that is highlighted in yellow the the one Clause that's partially

1:01:17highlighted is basically the same as before we just restructured it so that the last sentence sets up the next recital and the next full paragraph is the new one we felt it was important that the city make one last statement that we do recognize the high value of

1:01:36the greenway for its open space and recreational purposes doesn't change the action doesn't change the agreement has no particular legal standing but it does reiterate the statement that we mentioned in the agenda Bill we decided that it would be important to put it in

1:01:51here too so I would offer that for your consideration that I'll answer any questions that you might have thank you questions we'll start Rebecca thank you thank you Mr Bradshaw um a question about past Youth of the land and water conservation fund as a resource you you mentioned a

1:02:08couple of places it's been used um but thinking thinking back on money we've put into the greenway is it a very important funding source or have we used a variety of funding sources and it's just one of many it's it's definitely one of many I've personally not been

1:02:25involved with that clearly the city has at least once I do have some other staff here that might have a little better information but I think primarily it's just one of many grants and certainly wouldn't shut us down for future improvements I don't think and just to

1:02:39follow up on that thinking turning that question kind of towards the future given the grant that you mentioned uh from the state of California that we're applying for for sustainable communities and sort of the continued emphasis or or enlarging emphasis on bark on bike

1:02:54transportation in cities looking forward does it seem that there are going to be more opportunities for other types of funding sources given that by this agreement we're going to largely give up opportunities for land and water conservation grants yeah we think so I mean there's the grant

1:03:11climate is obviously in flux all the time and for bicycle or pedestrian that is a transportation related activity so that's certainly wouldn't be precluded from any any of the provisions of this agreement and would probably be supported by all okay thank you I I just thought um I was a the liaison

1:03:32to the park and rec commission when we went over the plan for the greenway after Bart does their seismic retrofit and um do you think that'll have any significant impact on implementing the recommendations from that no this is um really separate from that obviously

1:03:56we worked several years to come together the city and Bart on the plans for what happens after the retrofit those are all set up ready to roll out as as they begin their construction here this this coming winter so this won't have any effect on that this these were developed

1:04:14somewhat concurrently so the provisions of this agreement were in mind as we went through and looked at all the different improvements so you think we'll be able I think I was thinking about it in terms of the funding um you know Finding sources of funding to finance the improvements that are

1:04:34above and beyond the actual minimal replacement that Bart would do well that funding is all taken care of we've entered into an agreement with Bart where the their use of our right-of-way for construction access was roughly equivalent to the value of the betterment and we've entered additional

1:04:53betterments I'm sorry I'm wondering about the you know because we're wanting to make the greenway better than it um is now um after the seismic retrofit well well there's there's two levels of betterments first of all when Bart um after they finished their construction they have in their with in

1:05:16their contract to put the greenway back together in a better condition or different configuration than we had before so that's one term of better month where it was going to cost more than for them to just fix what they broke if you want to consider betterments as

1:05:32future improvements that are not on the table right now this doesn't affect that well I'm not really thinking about that because to me that's putting it back to the way it was before but I'm thinking about the other kinds of improvements such as at a particular place we would

1:05:50put um I don't know there were even things like a dog park I think was one of the ideas that I remember in the plan um you know some sort of a what I would think of as a recreational um opportunity and um that's what I'm wondering about whether or not this agreement would

1:06:13affect the funding for that well I'm wondering whether or not the if we're not gonna go after this whether the signing this agreement makes it more difficult for us to in fact do those improvements because of the um because we would need additional funding in order to complete them uh no we don't

1:06:34believe it would okay thank you so I've got a hypothetical question for you and you may not be able to answer it but I'll ask anyway if is temporary disruption of use uh for improvements on our property so for example for construction access to repair or fix something on Bart's

1:06:58property would that constitute a 6f in other words if we use some of this land and water conservation fund act money to make an improvement like a toddler gym on our property adjacent to the bark property um and at some point it becomes imperative for them to to remove that

1:07:21jungle gym for six months to repair something fix something um does that constitute a problem with regards to this agreement that we're signing okay well 6f would only apply if used Land and Water Conservation funds to build it initially correct however um a temp and and I'm not clear on

1:07:42whether a temporary Interruption temporary impact really qualifies as conversion I I don't know the answer to that but I do know that under 4f of the dot act a temporary Interruption Recreational facility does require mitigation under 4f and in this the hypothetical you drew yes they would

1:08:04need to uh mitigate that impact in some fashion but I thought I read in the staff report that mitigation is upon us that's in the mitigation under the 6f 6f only okay which is if it was funded by land and water conservation funds in the future correct I I I'm aggregating

1:08:26several of the council members concerns that we're we're going to reduce our funding pool uh through this agreement and trying to figure out is if we did use this particular fund for improvements on our property um would would we create a a mitigation problem for ourselves in the future as a

1:08:49result of a temporary disruption in use yes under that scenario yes we would we we would be responsible for mitigation is that is that basically indemnifying Bart from having to provide the mitigation for that that's why we need to be very careful about how we would

1:09:05plan to use any land and water conservation grant funding in the future granted I definitely share Echo that that sentiment I just wanted to make sure we understand stood what risks and liabilities we were potentially putting ourselves in for if we did use this this

1:09:20funding mechanism albeit your testimony tonight is that we don't rely on that it's a small very small funding opportunity for us and that much of our improvements would be better suited through some of the transportation grants that are available so so this is this is just covering our bases and I

1:09:39understand that that we don't rely on this funding source for much of our improvements in this park anyway so or this sorry this Transit corridor allow me to parse the hypothetical Just One More Level if we were to use line and Water Conservation Grant funds for a

1:09:56facility on our property not on Bart's property it's not entirely clear that that would come into play if Bart did Improvement on their property using art using our property as access using our properties access that would muddy the waters back up again that's that's why that was the hypothetical I

1:10:17gave you is that and that one that you just parsed out so I did give you the most complicated one and and it does it does highlight the fact that we do need to be conscious of using that Fund in the future anything else just a another question um just to be clear we're not prohibited

1:10:40from using land water conservation funds it's just we have to use them under this under these criteria correct accept them under these criteria with the risk associated with what we say in the in the agreement yes however we do like at the dog park for instance we do get parts permission to

1:10:59use that land correct before we we constructed or did we uh I think at the dog park is not on BART land oh that's on ours okay that takes care of that one thank you very much thank you appreciate it okay is there any public comment on this agenda item no speakers okay great bring

1:11:29it back to council do I have a motion or further discussion on the issue um I will move a revised resolution resolution of the El Cerrito city council authorizing the city manager to execute a license agreement between the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District Bart

1:11:50and the city of El Cerrito for improvement operation and maintenance of the BART owned portion of the Ohlone Greenway and let the records show that we have received revised language that does acknowledge that the Illinois Greenway first as an important Transportation Corridor but

1:12:09also recognizes its function as a continuous open space and a recreation resource in the city of El Cerrito second it's been moved and seconded on the motion final comments all those in favor aye aye opposed promotion carries unanimously thank you next item please item 7B Consortium

1:12:32records management agreement with the city of Richmond to provide records Management Services good evening Mr Hannon mayor Pro tem Council and residents of El Cerrito I am Sylvie Moyer your police chief tonight fire chief Lance Maples and I recommend that you the council authorize the city

1:12:54manager to renew and extend two agreements with the city of Richmond one is for Consortium records management to provide records Management Services for the police department and another for Consolidated Communications both dispatch and system maintenance for the

1:13:13police and fire departments both agreements have been in effect for several years without a break-in service in making this recommendation staff is considered other options for both records management and Communications but believes that renewing these agreements serves the best interests of

1:13:31the police and the fire departments our residents and our businesses the cost share of both agreements is based on several factors which are specific to our city and our service volume no fiscal impact exists as the cost has been budgeted and is included in the fiscal year

1:13:502011-2012 budget this concludes my very brief presentation and chief Maples and I are open to any questions that you have before we get started let's be clear you've spoken to to both agreements on on the agenda with their item they're separately itemized so why don't we take

1:14:11up discussion on the records management agreement first any questions on that yeah just one um do they justify their their increases because they're asking for nine nine percent both years and cost of living is right around between two and three percent so I was just wondering if

1:14:36you 've had any analysis on that or explanation it is based on the contractual cost with Richmond and with their labor groups and it should actually say not to exceed nine percent so while it is an estimated cost it it should more accurately reflect to say it should not exceed that amount okay fair

1:15:03enough thank you certainly I actually I do have one uh the term of this agreement of the records management agreement it it's for I believe it was three years three years correct yes is there is there a reason you selected a duration that specific duration or is it is it

1:15:27more appropriate to enter into a longer plan it is what the Consortium was presented by the city of Richmond and uh I don't have a justification for why they chose that amount okay so it could line up for example with their labor agreements for example as we just discussed in the previous

1:15:45question they don't have a way to control their rate increases beyond that this term possibly possibly I don't know the reason that they chose that term and just to follow up on mayor Pro tem's question um is there do you have any I'm not sure if you happen to look up what type of

1:16:06increase they had in previous years in terms of the consortiums contract for records Management Services we actually did going back to nine there was actually a decrease of 0.87 percent in our actual costs then moving on to fiscal year 10 there was a 6.24 increase and then 11 our actual

1:16:30cost was 2.90 more so that really reflects that we are charged actual costs and that that nine percent is it will not exceed nine okay thank you though that's helpful so so in attachment a where there are percentages cost share percentages provided are you suggesting that that fluctuates based on

1:16:51actual costs and this is just a part of the estimation tool estimation tool is that a that reflects our service load and our service demand and the other factors on which we are billed and so that is an estimated percentage that we have of the overall contract yes an agreement okay

1:17:11so the the the fact that El Cerrito Police Department is currently 11 and a half percent might might be might be 11 and three quarters percent next year and eleven and a quarter percent the year after that based on actual use or is this what we're agreeing to that is based on our

1:17:29actual use it's based on a host of factors that's specific to our city part one crimes Callister service population number of officers a whole host of factors that are specific for our usage for that Year great thank you sir great any further questions do we do we need to make sure that the

1:17:48record shows that attachment a was submitted at a later time and that we've had it and had a chance to review it yes thank you let the record show okay thank you is there public comment on this item no speakers there isn't okay you're not seeing that final discussion or if I move a resolution of

1:18:11the city council of the city of El Cerrito authorizing the city manager to renew a Consortium records management agreement with the city of Richmond to provide a records Management Services second it's been moved and seconded on the motion all those in favor aye aye opposed motion carries thank you

1:18:29thank you we'll now go to uh item 7D um 7c excuse me B Charlie C is in Charlie excuse me Consolidated communication agreement with the city of Richmond to provide dispatching and communication services the answer to all my questions that I asked previously would be the same for

1:18:53this one they would and I appreciate the point of order in in terms of differentiating the two any questions on this just had one it pertains to the uh Communication System the two County communication system do you anticipate any changes either in the charges or in the administration of

1:19:19this when that comes fully online it's a great question I'll ask my esteemed colleague the public safety Senior Chief Maples to answer that good evening once again as I'm your fire chief Lance Maples as we move forward in time and we've come back to council with

1:19:37many items regarding the e-bricks radio system these two items you see before you tonight are the record management component of dispatching and the communication slash actual dispatching of the units for police and fire the e-brick system will be the backbone or

1:19:54the system we communicate on in the future that being said we currently pay a maintenance fee to the city of Richmond for the system we're on right now which will go away when we go to the new system in 2012. tonight you only have two items before you that will be

1:20:12re-signed up for for another three years the maintenance side of the system will come back to you when we switch completely over uh to the e-brick system if you remember approximately a year ago we came to you and we got on the operating agreement uh the jpa for

1:20:29e-bricks and that talked about the cost that we will incur then and it's close to cost neutral moving from one but we will no longer pay Richmond for system maintenance we will pay the two County system great and that comes back to us before that happens or no that that is

1:20:45already uh set and we did that a year ago what we'll come back to you is the equipment the end user equipment will come back um we gave you a slide overview then but when it comes time to purchase that equipment we'll be back to you again um one thing that should be pointed out

1:20:59and chief Moyer denoted this in her agenda bills once the e-brick system becomes a two-county system that's up and running we will have more flexibility in dispatch Services records Management Services things of those nature that may make it more competitive it may open the market in essence and so

1:21:19we look forward to studying that as staff as we move forward onto the ebrich system so is the duration of this contract predicated on the rollout of the e-bricks there has been there hasn't been discussion on that the contracts in the past have been much longer than

1:21:34three um three years excuse me um but we will have the flexibility if you look at the contract and I I won't even try to quote it I think there's a 90 day after one year there's a 90-day period where you can pull out of either one of these agreements thank you mayor Pro tem Jones one

1:21:53question sorry um Chief Moyer a question on the dispatch this is just a good opportunity I think to review what the service that the city of Richmond is providing to us and you know how whether or not it's meeting our expectations and needs so they are providing dispatch when the

1:22:08resident announce Cerrito calls 9-1-1 they're responding to that call they're dispatching directly to either else through to police or fire and they're also providing after hours support for folks who are calling our five who are calling our El Cerrito Police Department

1:22:23directly is that correct yes they are okay and we're and they've been doing this for over 20 years as it says as it says in the resolution and we've been happy with the service up until this point well I I think we have been happy with the service there are always

1:22:37opportunities for us to explore enhanced service that meets the needs of our community which is much higher than many of our surrounding communities but we actively engage in those conversations and seek those opportunities to improve the service more aligned with what our

1:22:53community expects okay thank you okay if there's no further questions uh look for action on this meeting either final discussion or I'll move the resolution I move a resolution of the city council the city of El Cerrito authorizing the city manager to renew a Consolidated

1:23:18Communications agreement with the city of Richmond to provide dispatching Services second second and I'll if I make comment I share the Chiefs both Chiefs enthusiasm about opportunities for more competitive contracts when Once the e-bricks is rolled out okay all those in favor

1:23:41aye aye opposed motion carries next item please thank you thank you 70 letter regarding the Third Amendment to the tri-party agreement being entered into by and between the El Cerrito Municipal Services Corporation Safeway and property Development Centers related

1:24:00to the property at the corner of Hill Street and San Pablo Avenue thank you we have a staff report looks like good yes hi I'm Laurie Trevino the Redevelopment manager before you as Cheryl said the is the is a resolution to authorized execution of a letter by the city manager agreeing and

1:24:22acknowledging certain provisions of the agreement between the MSC Safeway and property Development Centers which is going to be considered at the MSC meeting following this meeting that agreement primarily involves the the MSC assigning its rights to acquire property

1:24:38at the corner of Hill Street in San Pablo two property Development Centers which is a subsidiary of Safeway in exchange for an assignment fee and then PDC would be would be developing that property um Safeway and PDC asked for the city to acknowledge and agree to certain

1:24:58provisions of that agreement primarily that the MSC is going to take responsibility for widening Hill Street which is a mitigation that was required on the Safeway project and that PDC would be giving the MSC 350 000 for that mitigation that the city would admit

1:25:16that the city would indemnify both Safeway and PDC should anyone sue for changes to or the implementation of that mitigation that the city would use the greenway contribution that Safeway made on through the original agreement um for um for that mitigation to widen Hill

1:25:41Street but only if it's not necessary to why to improve the greenway and that money can also be used to make improvements between Safeway Property and the BART station for better pedestrian connectivity the city would agree to process pdc's approvals and permits in a timely way and acknowledge

1:25:58that the secret document for this Safeway project um would be used to the extent it could be allowed by law in processing the PDC application it doesn't restrict the city's ability to condition any future development of that site so if you have any questions I'm happy to answer them

1:26:16and I'm sure that Sky will be I'm able to address any questions you might have about SQL as well thank you Greg start with you sure the um 350 000 uh payment to uh make the city obligated to implement the mitigation that that's going to go into a dedicated account so that it's

1:26:40reserved for that function whenever if and when we get around to that to the widening of the street that would be set aside in a dedicated account in the Capital Improvements program I was just looking through and I believe it it's it's in our agenda item for the

1:26:56later meeting but there was a discussion about the 25 of the 487 thousand dollars is associated with the Hill Street parcel um that obligation to pay that portion um of the 487 000 is now an obligation of PDC yes in the original tri-party agreement with Safeway Target and the and the

1:27:21Redevelopment agency the Redevelopment agency agreed that when it conveyed the property to a developer that it would require that developer to reimburse Safeway for 25 of that contribution so this is just shifting that 25 on to the party who's ultimately going to

1:27:41develop that property correct but it but it this letter acknowledges that that's now a PDC obligation correct um that was not an obligation well in a sense yeah I mean that that that's really between those two parties the city doesn't have any obligation to get involved in that portion of their

1:28:01transaction okay um I believe that's all my comments of questions at this time sure thank you Mr Vino um can you discuss the the due diligence that staff went through in considering assigning the property for an assignment fee to PDC um sort of the due diligence that was

1:28:24gone through given that we're giving up the right to try to partner with a developer to develop this property um to sort of come to the to the assignment fee price um given the constrained time time amount that you had to to work on this but can you just kind of discuss how

1:28:40that number came up and how it's brought to us and it appears to be a fair fair assignment fee well there were several things that went into that number um first of all it related to the value that was originally being discussed between the Redevelopment agency and

1:28:59Safeway and Target when that original tri-party agreement was being negotiated prior to that there was a discussion about them those two entities making a combined contribution to the Redevelopment agency of about three million dollars in total of various um different pieces that was the value

1:29:19of those things ultimately Target for gave a loan to the Redevelopment agency which was about uh 750 000 is my recollection and then the um the difference was where was our starting point and then they Safeway did an analysis of what they thought the property was worth in the current market

1:29:38for the development that they were considering and so though the number sort of came somewhere in the middle imagine that the analysis Safeway did was based on land comparables sales of similar types of property that would ultimately be used for the type of use

1:29:54that they're considering I um I would suspect that it was more of a return on investment trying to announce it that they that they did what they thought that the residual land value would be based on what they thought it was going to develop rather than doing comps okay I think that there's any

1:30:09there are any really good comps in the area for vacant land okay perfect thank you I guess the only question that I have is I'm curious about whether or not um they've the Safeway subsidiary has indicated any or Safeway has indicated that they're actually actively

1:30:29interested in developing the parcel now oh definitely um I mean PDC was doing a pro forma analysis specifically because they're trying to figure out what kind of proposal they're going to come in with for development of the property thank you any other questions

1:30:50thank you very much do we have car public comment on this no speaker slips okay final discussion I I just had one point I think it should be pointed out uh at least at the meeting here that uh this is basically to pay for the state we're going to take this money as it's

1:31:06been stated several times in public forum to uh pay pay our Ransom to the state should we have to uh do that to keep the Redevelopment agency operating and it's just another example of the state forcing us to give up assets and resources to the state so I think it's just another it's just

1:31:36another one point eight five million dollars to add to the I don't know it's up to over 5 million maybe the last five years that we've given so um I think it should be at least noted and at the meeting here all right yeah no if I may I add comments not to be predecisional this

1:31:56this body has not made a decision about what we're doing with the Redevelopment agency however this is another step keeping our options open which has been the council's uh trajectory on the on Redevelopment agency um and of course as we have stated in the past we do believe that the current

1:32:17state position on RDA is causing something that could be called extortion but I also want to thank um some people who went before us and and I actually don't know which Council uh or which staff to the council had the forethought of of creating the DDA and putting the DDA on the target property

1:32:39uh many years ago as staff just uh alluded to the extinguishment of the DDA is what is allowing us to get something close to three million dollars worth in value uh out of out of this property through loan forgivenesses and now this uh this parcel uh this parcel was coming to us

1:33:02as part of the extinguishment of the DDA and and now we're in a position where we can convert that parcel into into cash that allows us the flexibility with the redia the RDA so I I would like to extend a thanks to our staff and Council and counselors uh council members that

1:33:22had the forethought of putting a DDA in place that allows us this flexibility today great you're right uh by the way we formally haven't taken we've kept our options open but we have gone to the point where we have not opted out of the of the payment I mean the ransom to this

1:33:43point so but you're right we still have that flexibility yeah so I'll move a resolution of the El Cerrito city council authorizing the city manager to execute a letter acknowledging in it and agreeing to certain provisions of the Third Amendment to the tri-party agreement

1:33:57being entered into by and between the El Cerrito Municipal Services Corporation Safeway Inc and property Development Centers LLC related to the property at the corner of Hill Street and San Pablo Avenue second we've been moved in second and any final discussion all those in favor

1:34:20aye aye opposed motion carries next agenda item please Council assignments and liaison reports great start with council member evilson okay I have several things let me just turn to them here um oops there okay first of all I um attended as alternate The Greening our

1:34:54communities Forum uh which was a function of the um Association of Bay Area governments and it was a very interesting um meeting and we had a lot of different sessions on that topic and let's see here let me find my list here and um so we heard from a number of

1:35:24different um council members and Mayors from around the Bay Area a lot about what they're doing and what their ideas are for um greeting our communities and um I found this this session to be particularly interesting that way and to be a very high quality and um so I would I would recommend in

1:35:56the future if you were interested in in attending one of these to do so and we had sessions such as why green cities are good for the environment and the economy a panel on Greening our neighborhoods and communities for sustainable Bay Area um successful implementation in Bay Area

1:36:19communities local government panel and um we were welcomed to San Francisco where it was held by mayor Ed Lee um which was was fun and um the final session was on Greening the edge of the bay for flood control water quality and quality of life where they talked about

1:36:44issues related to global warming and the impact that would have on on um what you know the intrusion of water into the bay and the rising of water that was pretty interesting session so I recommend it highly then the other thing I want to mention is that the um I attended a meeting of the

1:37:10Environmental Quality committee and as I said before one of the things that they're working on is the um baggot movie and they'll be working on other movies the one after baguette is um called let's see if I can remember the name um I'm blanking on the name for the moment

1:37:32but anyway we have a series of films that we're planning afterwards and um I'm sorry I can't remember the name right now but um anyway that's that's my report for that great sure I have one to report on the design review board has met in them at the beginning of this month and

1:37:59they had a presentation from Eden Housing on the tradeway property and the design review board was able to give them quite a bit of positive feedback on their proposal and ways to improve their proposal great council member thank you none of the Committees with which I liaise met

1:38:24since our last meeting so next time I think I'll have an update though okay I'd like to give a presentation on the last meeting of the West County uh Waste Management Authority or uh recycle more snow there were two issues that have been of Interest not only to our city but other

1:38:44cities in the West County uh one is the single-use bag model ordinance and that was discussed in detail at the last meeting what's going to happen is there's going to be a model ordinance that will um be developed and then come before count each individual City councils to comment

1:39:05on and when all that comment period is over and the board approves it that it'll be finalized and then the next steps will start with that which would be a sequa study right now it's being recommended that we go to a negative Declaration on that so we'll see how that turns out

1:39:27uh by the way uh the committee did receive that El Cerrito was for for a countywide model ordinance on that and then was also acknowledged not this meeting but the previous meeting that our Environmental Quality committee has studied the issue and recommended it

1:39:46so we were well uh represented on that second of all is the uh The Authority took up the post-collection budget for this coming year for the authority and and basically it's what happens to things after they're picked up post-collection we are kind of carved out because of our

1:40:17recycling center our rate is carved out of the rest and I just want to we'll probably I'll probably ask to put this on the agenda for next meeting we have to have an answer by November I believe it's November 8th is the next recycle more meeting of which the this budget will be finalized and it

1:40:39is basically uh staff there has outlined three options of which how we could handle our portion of the fees that are collected on this on the post and uh it all depends on how how we want to go or how we want to use [Music] the amount of money that we have or that

1:41:04we collect for the rates for the rates and and we have three different options by which to set the rate for El Cerrito and uh it's not on the agenda so I can't talk in specific or else for comment but we probably should put it on the agenda for next meeting to see how the council

1:41:23would like to go normally this is left up to the board members but in practice we all go back on issues like this we all go back to the council for any comments or recommendations on this so um one of the options I can just say one of the options actually uh shows a decrease for the residential

1:41:47so and there's other there's two other options but um so you might want to look forward to that see how it rolls out what it is and why yeah that's all I have for right now anything else okay for those that still with us we do have a special El Cerrito Municipal Services

1:42:09Corporation meeting that will immediately follow the adjournment of this council meeting so thank you for all coming this meeting is adjourned and I'd like to Now call uh call into order the October 17 2011 special edu special El Cerrito Municipal Services Corporation meeting

1:42:33and I'd like to have you call the roll please I'm director benicini here director Abelson here director Lyman here director Hannan um Vice chair Jones here and Nodine chair Chang and director Pincus are absent correct is there uh any staff or board communication

1:42:59hearing none uh oral communication for from the public no speaker cards okay thank you there's no presentations so we'll go to uh I move adoption of the consent calendar second to move the second to approve the consent calendar all those in favor aye aye opposed

1:43:24motion carries there's no public hearing I'd like the city clerk to announce the next agenda item please yep policy item 6A Amendment of the tri-party agreement with Safeway Incorporated thank you there's a staff report good evening again I am I'm here to um now present

1:43:51on the amendment to the tri-party agreement um I'm here to ask that you adopt a resolution approving Amendment of the tri-party agreement which was originally between the Redevelopment agency Safeway and Target it was subsequently assigned to the municipal Services Corporation

1:44:06and with this amendment would be partially assigned to property Development Centers and this amendment is only regarding those provisions of the of the original agreement that relate to the Hill Street parcel on the corner of Hill in San Pablo um through that original tri-party

1:44:25agreement Safeway agreed to transfer to the Redevelopment agency a parcel that was about an acre at that corner of Hill Street in San Pablo earlier this year just a Safeway Was preparing to transfer that property to the Redevelopment agency there was uncertainty regarding

1:44:40the possible elimination of the agency and so the agency assigned its rights and obligations under that agreement to the municipal Services Corporation ultimately the state legislation um would require payment by the city in order to continue Redevelopment and the city and the agency don't

1:44:59currently have sufficient funds to do so in light of the also in light of the current economic uncertainty related to developing the parcel for the corporation to be able to develop the parcel um the corporation in Safeway are now considering amending that agreement the

1:45:18significant changes would be that the corporation would assign its interest in the agreement to property Development Centers which is a again a subsidiary of Safeway and PDC would make a payment to the MSC of 1.85 million dollars um there are other aspects of that

1:45:35agreement that only involve Safeway and PDC as they make their property transfer separately the corporation would assume responsibility for widening Hill Street which was a mitigation on the original Safeway project and PDC would make a cash payment in 350 000 for that

1:45:50widening the MSC would indemnify Safeway and PDC in the situation that the city might change that mitigation or determine it's not necessary or if the MSC failed to implement it um and the corporation Safeway and PDC are all also acknowledging that the city can

1:46:10use the greenway contribution that was originally made by Safeway in order to improve the greenway Put The Pedestrian path on Safeway's property which was in the original plans and then also make pedestrian connections to the BART station and widen Hill Street if

1:46:27necessary um the payment from PDC would be made to the municipal Services Corporation on January 5th and in keeping with the corporation's obligation to the agency it would make that payment to the Redevelopment agency which the agency could then use to fund the city's payment to

1:46:46um the state to keep the Redevelopment agency alive should the state Supreme Court decide that that's still a possibility so if you have any questions I'm happy to answer them and the Redevelopment Council Karen Tiedeman is here as well questions uh just just one clarification

1:47:06question that's noted in the staff report I just want to repeat what it says and just confirm the understanding of it uh the the Green Bay contribution the 487 thousand dollars it's noted in the staff report is what I would would I would say is prioritized for the

1:47:20improvements to The Greenway uh on the greenway between Hill and Blake including The Pedestrian path and pedestrian pedestrian improvements between Safeway and the BART station and only if there are funds left over after those prioritized improvements are made would those funds be made available for

1:47:39a potential Hill Street widening that made other mitigation exactly okay just want to confirm that the priority for those funds is the greenway and only under circumstances where there's excess funding available may they be transferred to another type of mitigation on Hill Street and there was

1:47:53a shared interest in making sure that the greenway was was done to the level that everyone wants it to be um you know in keeping with the nice new store fun thank you no uh yeah I just want to make sure that again the record is complete and that the fact that the decisions we're making

1:48:15tonight does not um make any pass any judgments about what developments will go on at the Hill Street parcel um that that there is an existing SQL document that does analyze some development at the Hill Street parcel and that our decision tonight is not you know impinging that previous analysis

1:48:34nor embellishing it or adding to it in any way that's right it doesn't it doesn't give PDC any certain entitlements and it doesn't impinge on the city's ability to condition development there great thank you anyway Hannah any questions okay thank you very much any public comment no speakers

1:49:02therefore bring it back here either further discussion or emotion I'm happy to make a motion I move resolution of the city of El Cerrito Municipal Services Corporation board approving the amendment of a tri-party agreement with Safeway Inc and property Development Centers related to

1:49:19the property located at the corner of Hill Street and San Pablo Avenue second it's been moved and seconded on the motion all those in favor aye aye opposed motion carries unanimously next agenda item please item 6B adoption of the conflict of interest policy I'll keep this very short

1:49:46um this um this uh conflict of interest policy is to ensure that the MSC is complying with the California corporations code for non-profits and um we'll demonstrate to the IRS the msc's compliance with that code in the application for taxes instead tax exempt status

1:50:05great thank you questions no public comment no speakers see none uh looking for emotion on this I'll move ladies first and in honor women's suffrage centennial celebration I move resolution of the board of directors of the El Cerrito Municipal Services Corporation adopting a conflict of

1:50:27interest policy second is there a second second oh I'm sorry I was I was being fast yes all those in favor aye opposed motion carries and with that I'd like to adjourn the meeting of the El Cerrito Municipal Services Corporation thank you for coming