City Council Meeting November 21, 2011

0:00:10how are you just turning this good evening everyone we can start on time which is great um if we could begin with the roll call please councilmember Abelson here councilmember benicini here councilmember Lyman president mayor Pro tem Jones here mayor Chang here and the

0:00:36second item or first item Pledge of Allegiance uh to the flag led by council member benicini thank you please rise and join me I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and

0:00:55justice for all hey at this point um any counsel or staff Communications for the staff Council I have um yesterday was International solar day and even though it wasn't very solar here in El Cerrito yesterday we celebrated It Anyway here in uh in front of City Hall and the public safety

0:01:26building and we did have a nice little turnout including a number of children to celebrate in the rain and it actually felt pretty good doing it because it's the uh it's knowing that we're joining in with people from so many different other communities in doing that and so I

0:01:46just wanted to mention that and last week I went to a a one-day session on sustainable Economic Development strategies in lean times and I'm reporting this uh pursuant to the ab1234 requirement that's why I'm going to mention this and there were a number of speakers there

0:02:12um and it was particularly interesting because it did relate public policy to the economy to sustain sustainability and we had a number of speakers it was a fairly academic session however we also had a state Senator Mark desangier there who presented the state Viewpoint of it and

0:02:41so I would recommend attendance at such things that was held in Berkeley at the David Brower Center they have a number of really interesting different sessions there on occasion and um so I just want to mention that and that is it any other Council Communications

0:03:05all right seeing none the third item is oral Communications from the public at this point it's comments for items for anything that's not on the agenda but also for items that are on the consent calendar are there any speakers yes I have four speaker slips the first is Al Miller

0:03:26evening mayor chair and council members I'm here as president of the Steve Sanitary District to advise you that we have selected a new director to fill the vacancy created when director James resigned uh Jay James the Kensington resident had been a director for 28 years

0:03:45and he resigned to assume a position of Professor of nuclear engineering at a new nuclear engineering Technical University being built in South Korea so uh we had six applicants for the position which is more than I can remember in the recent times when that's happened we're

0:04:06a very fortunate that they were all of a high caliber after a result of our review and initia interviewing the applications Mr Paul Gilbert Snyder a resident of El Cerrito was selected to fill the role that she used to have thank you very much thank you next speaker please Sarah

0:04:30Stone good evening mayor Chang council members I'm here to talk about item 5B the animals ordinance and as I understand it I wasn't here for this there was an informal agreement in March of 2011 that there would be no animal slaughtering in El Cerrito and that the new ordinance is not yet

0:04:58prohibiting the animal Slaughter and I think there's there's a lot of sense I'm that in some way there's more Humanity or more sustainability to people being able to slaughter the animals they're raising at home and in fact a lot of the animals wind up in shelters

0:05:16they're starved there's Animal Hoarding people don't have the knowledge or skills either to raise the animals successfully or to slaughter them in a humane way there's a lot of repeated attempts so this is just a request that there be an explicit ban on animal Slaughter in the ordinance thank you

0:05:34thank you next speaker Ron niron and just as a reminder there is a lighting system that lets you know when you're up with your three minutes so when you see the yellow light you have one minute left okay um and I also wanted to speak to five b so is that is this the appropriate yes now's the right

0:05:59time okay I also wanted to uh support a ban on animal Slaughter in El Cerrito um for all the reasons that Sarah mentioned my name is Ron nyron I'm a resident of El Cerrito and I know what El Cerrito is very uh uh focused on sustainability and raising animals is a

0:06:19highly inefficient use of resources um both factory farming which is terrible for the planet but also the individual raising of animals it's a much less resource of intensive use of resources to um grow plants there's an abundance of food sources available in the Bay Area either

0:06:40to grow in one's Garden or to purchase at Costco if one is economically strapped there's really no reason to be slaughtering animals except as a hobby and uh if it's an inhumane thing to do as Sarah mentioned it can be botched um and I'm just very concerned about the

0:06:59possibility of of animals suffering unnecessarily in the city of El Cerrito so I would ask you to support a ban against it thank you thank you next speaker George McRae good evening mayor and council members I'm George McRae I live in [address removed] in El Cerrito I wanted to

0:07:22speak on um on 5B I wanted to congratulate the fine work that the city and the city council have done in crafting this ordinance I think that it uh it's a fine piece of of Legends it took a long time and I think I think you guys did a did a spectacular job um I I think in the future the city

0:07:45could look at there's a number of very fine educational programs that are available to citizens in the Bay Area and particularly in the East Bay regarding animal husbandry and beekeeping and all the various things that and so that we could put together a a package of information for people that

0:08:05are interested in it I know that I've been doing a lot of pre-study to learn about this and there's a lot of local source that I think would be available and and as far as animal Slaughter is concerned I think that there are a number of animal cruelty laws both

0:08:23county-wide and Statewide and even Citywide that exists that are all on the books as it is and so if this was in fact an issue that there's plenty of legislation there's plenty of law for enforcement already available and that's all I really want to say but thank you

0:08:40very much thank you next speaker please Ian Elwood if you allow Slaughter in El Cerrito this is what you're allowing [Applause] oh [Applause] so do you have any comments that's a recording that a neighbor in Oakland made of an animal farm where they were raising goats and the goats

0:10:01were fed poison they didn't know how it happened but that's the sound of a goat dying and you you can't mitigate against that thank you next speaker Emily wood I guess I'd also like to encourage y'all to um explicitly ban slaughtering in the city um we've done a lot of I've I've done a

0:10:31lot of look at at the writing of uh um and blogs of people who are currently keeping livestock animals in urban areas and slaughtering livestock animals in urban areas and these people are the best practitioners um the the woman who owns that farm on the recording was one of the best

0:10:53practitioners and they're still full their blogs and their books are so full of horrific scenarios and they're out there teaching classes so if that's the best El Cerrito could have I think you could do a lot better by just Banning it all together thank you next speaker please Ann Martin

0:11:19hi my name is Ian Martin I'm a PhD student at um in city and Regional planning at Berkeley I'm also a board member and volunteer at Harvest Home Animal Sanctuary in Stockton like several of the other speakers tonight I'm here to encourage you guys to have an explicit ban on animal

0:11:37Slaughter in the new animal legislation one of my concerns is that federal law pertaining to Humane methods of Slaughter actually do not apply to rabbits chickens Ducks geese or any other foul and so if you don't explicitly ban Slaughter but make it legal to have these livestock animals

0:11:59any imaginable animal cruelty or neglect to these animals so long as they were claiming they were they were food sources there would be no ability to enforce any kind of Cruelty because there is actually no protection for Humane Slaughter for these animals on any level up to the federal level so

0:12:16thank you again thank you next speaker um mice Bruno I'm sorry if I botched your name and I'm joined with by Judy Hardin hi I'm Judy Hardin I live in El Cerrito and I am in an Animal Rescuer and I own a business in El Cerrito called rabbit ears yeah my name is Mike Benoit Judy and I

0:12:47are concerned about the prospect of Home Animal Slaughter in El Cerrito during the city hall meetings on March 21st to November 7th when the animal ordinance was discussed four out of five of you actually expressed an interest in Banning animal Slaughters mayor chain

0:13:01and council members Abelson Jones and Lyman a First Amendment Establishment Clause concern was raised citing a 1993 Supreme Court case involving the city of Hialeah Florida and practitioners of the Santa Ria religion I'll refer to that as Hialeah moving forward the current

0:13:18concerns expressed seem to be based on a misreading of Hialeah that does not give consideration to The Landmark precedent set in 1990 the 1990 Supreme Court case Oregon Department of Human Resources versus Smith in the Smith case the Supreme Court ruled that if a code was neutral and

0:13:35generally applicable it could not legally be violated on the basis of the First Amendment Establishment Clause Justice Scalia wrote the majority opinion he wrote we have never held that an individual's religious beliefs excuse him from compliance with an otherwise

0:13:49valid law prohibiting conduct that the state is free to regulate decisions have consistently held that the right of free exercise does not relieve an individual of the obligation to comply with a valid and neutral law of General applicability escalia continued to argue that to do

0:14:05otherwise contradicts both constitutional tradition and Common Sense ahalia follows the standard set forth in Smith in the Helia decision Justice Kennedy wrote the majority opinion and he writes that our cases established a general proposition that a law that is

0:14:21neutral and of General applicability need not be justified by compelling governmental interests even if the law has the incidental effect of burdening a particular religious practice referring to Smith these ordinances failed to satisfy the Smith requirements Kennedy

0:14:36argued that these laws accomplish a religious gerrymander basically in the hylia case the Santa real religion and a specific Santeria Church in Hialeah were targeted by the Hialeah City Council that bears no resemblance to actions that the El Cerrito city council is

0:14:50considering taking and a ban onslaughter in El Cerrito would meet the criteria of being neutral and generally acceptable therefore a ban on animal Slaughter in El Cerrito is not a constitutional issue if you have concerns about this please consult a subject matter expert on the

0:15:05Supreme Court's treatment of The Establishment Clause I've spoken locally with Bruce Wegman he's a local law professor who teaches at UC Berkeley in Stanford he was not able to be here tonight but he's willing to speak with any of you about this issue and I can

0:15:17afford his contact information Additionally the animal legal defense fund has forwarded a memo to all of you on Friday and I have copies of that as well that all uh that I'll hand in today uh I'd encourage all of you to follow your original impulse and to the example

0:15:33set by cities like Oakland San Francisco Merced and Delano and Van helme animal Slaughter thank you thank you next speaker please no other speakers for this portion okay thank you um so moving on we don't have a presentation tonight but we next so next item is adoption of the consent calendar

0:15:57to remove item 5B from the consent calendar um I understand that I am concerned about the issue that was just discussed by a number of our speakers and I know that I am on the losing side of that and normally I would not be able to do that but it's my understanding because this

0:16:17is an ordinance that is possible is that true City attorney Paul yes that's correct I would like to remove that okay is there a motion to move the rest of the items I move adoption of consent calendar items five a c and d second all those in favor please say aye aye

0:16:37aye so items five a c and d are adopted unanimously and so at this point I believe we can have a discussion about Item B so um I think at this point hearing the comments um is there would you like to make opening point of order there's no public hearing on this

0:17:03tonight correct it's just discussion on the council exactly thank you yeah okay so um we at our last meeting uh decided not to discuss uh any further and look into the the details of animal Slaughter and it was moved forward and um I I actually do think that it does

0:17:26deserve an opportunity to be heard as part of this process and so I would like to suggest that we do that are you making a motion can I can we actually make we can I'm not looking at the City attorney again in this part of the process well at this stage um you can

0:17:51um do two things you can make changes to the ordinance as it is on the agenda tonight which will require it to be reintroduced for another first reading with those changes um alternatively if you would like to um have um additional discussion of the ordinance in particular this issue of

0:18:13animal Slaughter you can ask directly to be re-agendized at a future meeting but either of those would take however a motion second and a majority of the council to vote on them my recommendation would be that if you want to address this issue substantively that the direction to put it on a future

0:18:37agenda would be helpful so that we can work out the appropriate wording and that would occur if a majority of the council um through a straw vote or similar mechanism indicated that it was interested in Banning animal Slaughter or taking some other action along those

0:18:55lines so I am interested in doing that do should I do that now or wait until others have spoken I had a question for the city can we go ahead with the rest of the ordinance and pull this out for future discussion there's really nothing to pull out since the ordinance doesn't

0:19:13address the topic um so the ordinance could be adopted and if the council wanted to um have discussion at a later time of this issue um you know that could be a potential wording could be developed and it could be presented to the council as an amendment to the existing ordinance

0:19:29that's in front of you now I I would suggest we do that question to council the ordinance can be amended at any time in the future or is it is this one of those things where as a result of the general law we can only modify ordinances four times a year no this you

0:19:47can be you can amend it at any time so I think so we we have an initial I I guess um council member Abelson would you want to accept it sounds like a friendly amendment to your motion which would be to adopt what we have now and to introduce at a later date a discussion

0:20:10amendments now if we um would do that on an interim basis that's what my well as we just as we discussed last time on an interim basis we're not enforcing anything until April 1. so frankly it doesn't matter it doesn't really matter what we do much tonight um and I think council member Jones's

0:20:28proposal to come back with as city council uh recommended last time a well-crafted ban as opposed to a um one sentence ban is potentially well warranted as I read through all the issues and and I I want to thank everyone for their testimony as well as some of the legal briefs that we

0:20:50received from both the public as well as our city council this is a very very complicated and delicate issue and frankly um total ban versus Backyard Band versus um the right to practice a religion are are very delicate topics into I'm not certain we're prepared we're informed

0:21:14enough to discuss it tonight and and I think councilmember Jones's proposal to move the current ordinance forward so our staff can plan on all the documents that they need to plan on by April 1 and allow our Council to bring us forward a well-crafted amendment that would

0:21:31Institute what many of us feel is appropriate which is to eliminate inhumane Slaughter and the secondary offensive effects from from backyard slaughtering is appropriate so would someone like to make them so so I'm hearing that their support for Council or mayor Pro tem Jones's

0:21:56suggestion yeah what I would suggest is that we approve the ordinance and then give Council Direction on what we want to do for the future I just suggest I mean I think it needs to be clear that that a majority of the council actually wants to revisit this issue which is not clear at this point

0:22:14okay so maybe we can so revisiting issues is the first step so I think there's three of us here I I can provide I can add I can say that I would like to have Council um I would like to provide guidance to council to bring forward a amendment to ban backyard slaughtering

0:22:36guidance is there I I have a slightly just different take on that I would like Council to explore further the issues that you've already presented to us regarding the extent to which we're opening ourselves up to any liability first of all um and if you find that there is a way

0:22:52to craft this where we are liability is sufficiently sort of curtailed then I'd like a little bit more information from staff about about um about bands that are in place and conversely cities that don't have bands and what their experiences are I am open to hearing more on this issue

0:23:14um but I am not fully supportive of directing staff to craft and a way uh to include in the ordinance Banning slaughtering well I I thought yeah I thought the the interest in taking further not action but getting further information was to get information on it

0:23:37I agree and I think even that's what so I think councilmember Lyman I can certainly support that it and so to that end I mean we don't have any complaints on backyard slaughtering to date um albeit we don't officially have any um agricultural growing of agricultural

0:23:56animals in our city so um it it might be premature to say that this is an unwarranted concern but I do believe that it is one that we should be exploring and and bring It Forward in an intelligent manner with that um council members I would like to move item 5B

0:24:16oh what okay we had a motion we don't have a motion we have a guidance forward at the moment we've only provided guidance to council and staff and I believe so I would just weigh in I think I'm I'm in favor of moving our the current ordinance as it reads forward

0:24:33and to revisit what options we have for Banning for in the same very similar uh vayne as councilmember benicini suggested that we get a clear picture of what enforcement mechanisms are out there what you know what is the state of the practice and you know although it's

0:24:51a you know I initially had the same gut reaction I do don't want us to get in the position of limiting free um speech and freedom of religion and and and if we're getting and definitely just avoiding getting ourselves in the position of of promising something that we can't

0:25:12deliver so um so with that I think we there's there's agreement that we would come back we would request that that we come back um that the issue of ban the slaughter ban would come back to us well I'd like to move that we approve item 5B second reading on the animal

0:25:31ordinance second all those in favor please say aye aye is unanimous thank you all right just a follow-up comment I do appreciate uh City attorney's work on this thus far and uh uh I think what we're asking is just to make sure that we have all the angles covered on this

0:25:56thank you can we are we are now moving on to um so no public hearings tonight so item number seven policy matters 7A is on the transit oriented development feasibility and parking study so we'll be discussing Transit oriented development feasibility and parking studies for the specific

0:26:22plan update and Del Norte Transit oriented development strategy no not on good evening oops good evening mayor Chang and council members I'm Lori Trevino the Redevelopment manager and we are here this evening for a study session on parking requirements management

0:27:08strategies and development feasibility in support of updating the specific plan for San Pablo Avenue and completing phase one of the Del Norte terensen oriented development study hmm I'm going to start out with some background information with us this evening are Chi sin Sao from CHS

0:27:28Consulting who will be presenting findings regarding the parking requirements and parking management strategies and Alexander Quinn from AECOM who will be presenting findings regarding development development feasibility I will follow up with some staff recommendations and Analysis and then

0:27:45we're going to conclude with the discussion of the recommendations and ask for your concurrence with what we're recommending and then outlining some next steps and along the way we're all happy to answer any questions that you might have but there will be an opportunity for Q a after each of us

0:28:00present so just for Council Members as as the presentation is happening feel free to pipe up and ask clarifying questions as we go so you don't lose those at then thank you so to start off why are we here in the spring there was a study session on the specific plan at

0:28:18which staff recommended to the council updating the draft of the specific plan to address new economics validating some of the assumptions regarding economics and parking identifying parking strategies and um producing more Transit oriented development standards particularly for

0:28:36the Del Norte area we are also come completing phase one of the Del Norte strategy um which you may recall we had initiated prior to that study session and we were able to take advantage of an economy of scale and have the same Consulting team work work on both because AECOM and CHS

0:28:54were assigned to us by MTC for technical assistance on the Del Norte area let's see so much of what set the stage for what um for staff recommending another look at the specific plan it was feedback that we have regularly received from developers about El Cerrito and I know

0:29:23in in aecom's work that they have heard similar feedback we hear from developers various things regularly one is that the plaza is a much stronger market for both commercial and residential development there is a market for multi-family housing along the corridor particularly

0:29:39for senior housing and a lot in the larger sites that are near BART stations residential development is harder on some of the small parcels and particularly depending on what's located near them but we've heard a lot of positive feedback about the streetscape improvements having

0:29:55improved the environment for development overall Del Norte has some unique challenges and opportunities there are some large sites but Bart's requirements can make development challenging so can adjacency to the freeway and some of the circulation around the station really

0:30:15calls for creativity the development of Standards there will need to allow for greater intensity require less parking and take into account some of the air quality concerns that have come up with the new Bay Area air quality standards and then at Midtown we have much more

0:30:31constrained sites and developers tell us that the standards there need to be much more flexible to promote develop development um we get we've uh Dwayne Dalman our economic development program manager speaks with a lot of retailers and Retail developers and here's pretty

0:30:47consistently that the retail space that we have on the Avenue now has limited appeal because of its visibility its access and condition and particularly now long strips of commercial tend to um just not to as Thrive as much retailers really prefer to be concentrated with

0:31:05complementary uses um and so the retailers that are willing to locate in a lot of the space we have now tend to be a little more likely to turn over we've also heard that reuse of a lot of those buildings is really difficult particularly for restaurants but also even for new development

0:31:21there's a lot of challenges because there's a lot more costs particularly involved with some of the utilities these days can you expand on that fourth bullet please about the cost of utilities yeah which which agencies are are well the one in the the issue I've heard in particular

0:31:35is that um East Bay mud has some new requirements about um about meters and um particularly in in commercial spaces the feedback from Safeway in particular when they did their tenant spaces at the new building they were required to meter each one of those separately which was a

0:31:52very very costly um item my recollection is each meter costs between Thirty and fifty thousand dollars is that correct yeah and they went from one to seven thank you and it with the new requirements right we have similar feedback about some of the other requirements that

0:32:09um just have become more costly um the number one feedback that we receive from developers is about parking that it really impacts their project feasibility it's costly to build and if they build too much their return on investment is really reduced so their incentive is really not to build too

0:32:27much parking and instead it's really to build just enough parking for their demand in their from their tenants or buyers um in an auto oriented environment like um particularly around the Del Norte area parking is free it's there's a lot of it and demand can be really high in

0:32:45that situation in order to transition to a more Transit oriented environment the question is really what are you going to tackle first the supply or the demand starting out by capping the supply really runs the risk that we might pick the wrong number and will be less likely less able to

0:33:02adjust as conditions change demand is very responsive to pricing and that's something that can be more easily tailored and can be adjusted more easily than Supply so the approach is really to change the cost of driving and parking relative to other ways of travel and

0:33:20then secondly would be to stop requiring developers to provide more parking than they really need and then ultimately would be to cap the amount of parking that's allowed if that makes sense so this is a stepwise program that I think we when we had one of the study sessions

0:33:37before I I think I pointed out that we have currently a population that's very Auto dependent and that we need to outgrow that population um and so this is a a stepwise or time dependent process that's right I think that's right and just one more clarifying question on these two main

0:33:57bullets on the slide um so the first bullet makes sense developers want to build just enough parking to meet market demand so this would indicate that they don't want High minimums they don't want a zoning code that says you need to build three spaces for every unit that

0:34:11that cuts into their profits and they do not like that but then I'm a little confused about the green third bullet then consider parking maximums and limited situation is that more is that bullet based on developer feedback as well that they're also they're both concerned with minimums

0:34:28making them build too much parking and cutting into their profits and their concerned with maximums I think it depends on who you talk to and this may be a residential commercial split as well there is a bit of a split that in that yes um we get a lot of pushback from retailers

0:34:46about parking maximums and it really depends I think the issue there is that it can really limit the type of retail that you're going to get with residential development it really depends it's more much more location based um nobody really has a problem with a minimum a higher minimum at Midtown

0:35:07because the densities are going to be a little bit lower but around the BART stations we do hear people say they want lower minimum so they have the flexibility to meet the market but that a maximum can sometimes be too um can be difficult for them to manage in a market that's unproven okay thank

0:35:24you okay so I think that's the perfect time to turn this over to CHS to review their results for their parking study thank you mayor Chen members of the council I'm here to present to you two items one is parking estimated future parking demand based on the opportunity sites and the

0:36:13recommended parking requirements and the parking strategies what I'd like to do uh is to let's go this way okay give you a quick overview of what we presented last time uh we have two base two bar stations and one is uh Del Norte the other one's El Cerrito Plaza the note is a End Of The

0:36:36Line Station uh so there are a lot of people coming into Del Norte from outside of El Cerrito only 38 of the bar Riders actually live in El Cerrito and therefore the drive percentage is higher about 62 percent that's including drive alone and devices but it functions like one yes

0:37:02and uh 16 walk and a bike but the uh El Cerrito puzzle station is quite different about 47 of The Writers come from a residence living in El Cerrito therefore the drive percentage is down and the walk and bike percentage substantially increase about 50 percent of the bot passengers uh by gonna walk

0:37:26and what that what this is very interesting statistics this came from the bar survey and that red drives the parking Supply and the parking demand at both of these stations and uh we also at the last presentation presented the park we did a parking survey and presented parking survey

0:37:47results and the basic is suggesting that the on-street and off street parking in general is pretty low uh in the midsections much higher at two bus station areas and uh pod commuters and we also determined that Park commuters are using down street parking spaces uh in the vicinity

0:38:13of the Del Norte and the El Cerrito BART station areas and parking occupancy rates are substantial substantially higher on the street than in the uh in the non-restricted area than with the residential parking permit areas those are the findings and we also presented to you last time

0:38:34uh some of the best practices examples we service six cities there were 26 strategies in total we presented uh they are three of them and the two of them they're common almost two of the six to all the six cities they include reduced parking requirements for Tod and

0:38:56El Cerritos has that and shared parking and the next here uh which is the ones that about four of the six cities have that include in-loo parking meter parking parking benefit district and parking maximum that's what we presented to you we also heard some comments uh

0:39:16from you guys uh this summarizes in Six Bullets and one is the concern about the number the parking surveys we conducted and it was in this year it's everybody knows that the economy is in recession we should take that into consideration we do the estimation for for the future

0:39:39situation which we did I will present to you shortly uh and uh this some changes they want you want us to make including indicated parking regulations San Pablo providing detailed parking occupancy information which we have included that in our the report we submitted to you guys

0:40:00let me move on to today's presentation we basically have a three four tasks and the first the third task is assessing future parking needs and develop parking requirements that's the first presentation I'll make that to you uh what we did was we have four different ways of looking at

0:40:23Future parking needs and the first one we did was we uh first calculate the parking needs based on your current uh zoning code requirements then we use that as a base to compare the others I I know you guys are familiar with this I don't need to go through it but I do

0:40:45want to present some statistics to you for residential uh parking situation which is this is based on the 2000 census which was quite interesting to us and the per household vehicle ownership rates range from 1.4 to 1.5 1.6 and 1.8 this is all the zones in the study area and the interesting

0:41:15thing is that uh it's 1.4 and one of the highest ones in the Del Norte station area hours the analysis shows that it's probably because they are more single-family houses in that in that census Zone that's why it causes the uh the vehicle ownership rates a little bit

0:41:36higher than the other three locations 1.4 1.5 1.6 and because you have a mixture of uh single-family houses as well as the condos and departments so that's just I was just going to clarify you said the 2000 census is it is the 2010 census you cannot know such information available right okay just to

0:41:56clarify thank you and and on this chart that you're showing um can you please clarify the under the unit per you have the acronym du it's drawing your net thank you yeah and the current code as a separate requirements for smaller unit mini Studios and one bedrooms versus the larger units was

0:42:16true uh bedrooms and above the next one was AECOM conducted uh developers survey in terms of what they their perceived parking needs are and those are focused on the residential developers and basically what their perceived needs are larger than the current city required minimum and as

0:42:46shown here because the city required minimal you have credits for Tod so in Del Norte in the plaza areas of the minimum is 0.8 per unit in the Midtown and Plaza North is one per unit for smaller units and a 1.1 in Del Norte in the plaza for larger units and 1.5 in

0:43:06Midtown and it plazas two but developers feel that they need two per unit for Midtown and Plaza north and and Del Norte and Plaza needed 1.35 and a 1.5 this is an average not differentiating smaller units versus larger unit and and this is their opinion about what they need yes okay

0:43:29and again these are developers who have built an elsewhere in the past that's correct and do you have the ratios that they applied in their most recent projects I would assume Del Norte place in village at Town Center are the ones or just they're off the cuff comment

0:43:51uh-huh so I think it would be really helpful to know what they actually built and how it's currently performing relative to what they currently feel like uh Lori did we have the numbers for the village at Town Center I I might have asked that a while back I can't remember

0:44:11I I it's 1.5 percent okay thank you so we did hear I did hear about that one I don't know about Del Norte place okay so this uh one did the first scenario we tested is based on developers input for the residential units and but we kept the city's minimum requirements for retail office

0:44:36that's that's the first test the second one is called the MPC smart growth uh parking model as you know the smart growth parking project at the end of the product has a spreadsheet and that considers proximity to Transit and uh Peak factors walking factors Bike

0:44:59Factors all kinds of other eight different considerations in green share parking and we use that model as the base then we validated Against The observed occupancy as councilman Albertson commented and we basically once we've done this estimation we inflated by another 15 to

0:45:20account for uh the current low economic situation so that's the third model we tested so for clarity this the this is a this isn't a code it's it's not what developers thought they needed this is mtc's estimate of parking needs in the Tod area and but you've inflated it to count for the

0:45:47recession that's correct thank you and I guess sorry to account for the recession meaning that people are more likely to own fewer cars because I mean personal wealth is less or what yeah what yeah what we did was we you saw the default values from the MTC model with the demand estimation and and

0:46:12uh then we uh validated against existing counts because the existing counts is counted this year may represent a more of a low economic situation so then after we did the validation we inflated up by another 15 at another 15 on on just office in retail or or residential

0:46:33as well officer retail yes that's the differentiation okay yeah I've a question about that I when I was thinking about that comment if as I remember one of the things I was thinking about was the fact that Bart ridership goes down when um the economy is is in bad shape

0:46:53so that would mean that the information that would be any information gathered now about um parking demand around BART stations would be skewed by that recession actually based on our I hear when I go to Bart meetings actually um ridership is down um as a result of the recession I mean it's

0:47:19like every time there's a recession Bart ridership uh goes down General total traffic counts as well overall there's less right activity actually some people who would take BART then drive actually is what BART says um and because the freeway is not so crowded because it's down

0:47:40so so if you're just looking at Bart's Bart um then what you're actually seeing is less use of Bart therefore however however it is that people get to Bart well you know that will be lessened excuse me um so that's what I was talking about I think when I said that made that comment

0:48:04that's what he's explaining he's accounted for that but that's why he inflated the the parking expectations upwards of Bart station because currently the council would be low lower okay Bart parking is what I'm talking about though as opposed to um say parking midtowner yeah

0:48:26is that what you're doing no uh what we did or there's two different things one let me comment on both of those one is uh what you're saying is that what what you heard from Bart is that the system award writer should have been down and we have two points that as we presented

0:48:44at the last meeting we have what counts for the stationary of what this specifically the two station area in 98 and we have another one account is that uh about 2008 like a 10 year apart occupancy is not that much different for El Cerrito both the Del Norte and El

0:49:02Cerrito Plaza stations that was part of our presentation and last time that's so that's the uh that's number one number two what we're doing is not resurrectly looking at whether the bar ridership gonna be up or down is to work with AECOM to see what kind of future

0:49:23parking needs you would have in the new opportunity sites and what kind of requirements we will recommend you to make change for future development although it's not so much related to existing bot writers so we did not really look at that okay so you're looking at

0:49:42um development not ridership of barge that's right there's the the pro this project is look at Future parking needs and opportunity sites and what kind of change we will recommend to the city in terms of parking requirements okay because that okay that's interesting because that would address

0:50:03then some other things that will come up okay thank you sure so that's the the third option and the next one is we look at it's a more of a threshold measurement it's what is the national average and the Bible we typically use this is It's a trip generate parking trip

0:50:26generation manual published by The Institute of Transportation engineers and so that's another one we tested and the it has rates for urban and suburban and I just noted that it is a national definition when they talk about Suburban uh it's probably like somewhere in the Stockton Valley not not

0:50:48in the Bay Area situation so we use the urban uh requirement to do the test and comparison and the last one all right could you just clarify with because ite um what what kind of Tran I mean my understanding is that the urban numbers don't reflect any places that have mixed

0:51:09uses Transit availability and generally they're Auto dependent despite being Urban that is correct even the urban definition does not include any Tod requirements this is a typical uh typical development in sort of like a stripped City like El Cerrito but without any Tod consideration this is

0:51:35just keep in mind this is a national average that's not a follow-up question then we have an immense amount of Transit all along San Pablo Avenue with the rapid bus as well as the local bus um one of which runs every 12 minutes one runs every uh 15 minutes uh and that's in addition to the BART

0:51:54station so why would we be wanting to use that kind of a comparison a comparison on the table so we understand how the existing requirements our proposed recommend the requirement Compares with the national average that's all the purpose but why why would we want to see what the national average

0:52:16is for areas that don't have a lot of Transit you don't need to consider it um just we we did it for the for just for informational purposes okay yeah it says there's practice example so the wonderful looking at the wrong place right well it's a previous Slide the

0:52:36national average of parking okay there you go yeah that's now we're at the right cycle oh okay yeah okay okay the next one we did was we look at the best practice examples and that's again uh these are the there are nine nine locations we look at in terms of their

0:53:02mostly these are in the Tod area and what we found is that the requirement really varies a lot and you take a look at this is a city of Portland and the Hayward Mission South Mission area they basically have no requirement but no minimum requirement for residential development

0:53:24and you have Berkeley at a point three spaces per unit in Oakland at 0.5 spaces per unit uh which they are cases that sets the minimum requirement very very low as different from Union City their their one bedroom and Studio one bedroom sets up 1.5 which is substantially higher

0:53:45than and then there's also redo requirement they're two bedrooms two the retail and office uses there's some cities that set a lower requirement and some of them are some more comparable to to your requirement like a three per thousand situation um can we pause there sorry so I

0:54:08understand the city of Berkeley is that the 0.3 essentially uh one parking space for every three units is for the downtown area correct and that on top of that so so here's my question about all of these um with Berkeley at least they're what we're missing here is that they're also

0:54:26requiring one free transit pass and one free car share membership and that there's this complement of Transportation amenities that are better tailored to the transit Rich right environment and so I think it's it might be uh it's worth noting which of these very

0:54:46lower much lower parking ratios are also coming with an addendum of additional Transportation requirements yes agree thank you sorry uh mayor Chang you you know this quite well but can you say that what were the two amenities that come with that one was a parking pass and what was the other one

0:55:07a freak uh car share membership for sure thank you sorry not a parking not a Transit PATH okay sorry thank you both both a transit pass um bus only I understand and then also a free car share membership sorry can you speak into the microphone please thanks that would be a

0:55:31clarification I think my My overall point is though that as you're looking at a change in parking requirements that there's a whole other spectrum of you know Transportation amenities and the supporting parking policy yeah but I think what um uh the consultant mentioned was that it's a provision of

0:55:50car share parking space that is correct is that for sure I'm not positive but okay because I understand I think that was what we had to assume okay because I heard the opposite so so it might be under uh absent those those companion programs the parking the minimum should

0:56:09be higher theoretically okay thank you okay the next slides basically we'll put all this in perspective just see where you are at as compared to or these uh examples uh looks like the residential requirements the minimum requirements today uh spin relatively on the low end is not that

0:56:39bad today is the office and commercial requirement retail requirements is a bit higher than especially the validated MTC model that's what MTC recommends in terms of the uh parking requirements can you go back to that slide for a moment please the best practices one obviously has a

0:57:13wide range of of uh choices and and you've got this very faint colors um just you're not trying to you're not trying to represent the range in that graphic yeah because it's hard to to represent the range because the range starts with zero that's why it's faded

0:57:33out great thank you yeah okay and these are the four different scenarios and the summary of the rates we tested let's move on to the next one uh and what based on these research what we're recommending to you is one as the potentially the change of residential parking requirements

0:58:08uh even though you are pretty regret pretty Progressive already compared to the other places you could potentially push it the minimum requires down a little bit and so do you see the the presentation has the black color and the uh more reddish color the more reddish

0:58:33color is the current city core requirements the black color is what we will recommend potentially for your consideration to potentially reduce down two as a minimum and it would propose to you two different options because we had an internal discussion with our team

0:58:51members uh in current code has a separate requirement for smaller units meaning Studio than one bedrooms versus the larger unit which is two bedrooms uh and the consideration is more from the economic feasibility side is that if we the option two is that instead of

0:59:14differentiating the size of units is to make it one requirement which is one uh per unit and give the developers the flexibility to choose whether they want what kind of product they were built uh so that's the that's the consideration and the concerns is that if we uh

0:59:38continue to have the split between smaller units versus larger unit and you may end up become getting it more biased product more toward the smaller units product and that was the concerns expressed on the other hand if a developer wants a coming in to just want to build a smaller unit and we have

1:00:04a single unit requirement they may feel that they're penalized so it is the pros and cons of option one and option two uh and the other thing we are recommending for your consideration is that currently you have a minimum requirement but you don't have any criteria for

1:00:22maximum uh and with also discussion with with the staff in terms of whether this is the right time to impose maximum allowable and the feedback is maybe we consider that as the next step not implemented now but we I do want to share some information with you in terms

1:00:44of how other cities doing it in terms of setting up maximum uh and a couple of examples like City of Pasadena they basically have the maximum same as minimum for office and Retail uses but they do allow 125 percent as the maximum for residential requirements so

1:01:05they for example they set a minimize one so you can point provide one 1.25 as a maximum for residential uses and city of San Francisco has just a flat 150 percent as the maximum allowable and then uh Redwood City as the more relaxed as uh two times of the minimum as their maximum

1:01:30uh excuse me I I don't know if your slide modifications were as a result of some of the questions I had but I do appreciate the slide modifications where this is a comparison against your recommendation tonight and you know I I do truly appreciate but as you're going

1:01:51through this major bullet of established criteria for maximum allowable some of the maximum allowables don't necessarily have to be ratios of the existing minimum they could be flat numbers yes okay yes yes yeah these are just at the at this point we we don't have a single recommendation in

1:02:11terms of residential use so we presented two different options and for your consideration like to hear some feedback from you guys and as far as the maximum is concerned what we are recommending is that the city is not considering establishing criteria for maximum and

1:02:27we're providing to you some examples in in terms of how other city is going about it great thank you could you clarify what you meant by as a next step we may consider looking at maximums uh Lori does that mean as part of a general Plan update or what is the sorry what is

1:02:42the next step as you all go through the process of working with Mig to update the specific plan and what does the next step mean I think I think we meant it um that it's something that would could be considered as a Next Step should it make sense to do that and we'd want to know we would

1:02:59want to come to you with some criteria for um when that would make sense okay so thank you so building on that that question these are the minimums that ch -s is recommending whether we go with option one where we continue to bifurcate between one bedroom and two

1:03:16bedroom or option two where we have a single number for residential this is this is the chs's recommendation for minimums um and you're giving us examples of what maximums are but we could just as easily say we want the maxims to be you know 1.2 around Del Norte for residential

1:03:37okay thank you and and actually you're mentioning that you were going to share with us the criteria that they would allow exceeding I guess up to the maximum versus What's um desired is that right or yeah I would love to hear you know what are the criteria to go beyond what's a

1:03:57recommended starting point whether or not it's not the minimum but yeah so um I either whoever can answer that mayor mayor if I could try to elaborate on your question so that we we maybe get a more full question a full response um as we've stated earlier the developer

1:04:18wants to build only as much parking as the market will bear uh maybe you could explain under what conditions a developer would want to do more parking than the minimum and why we would why a a developer might want to exceed a maximum why why would we want to put a

1:04:38maximum on so for example if the minimum is 0.5 for one bedrooms we would put a maximum of 0.75 why would a developer want to exceed 0.5 and what under what conditions on the mayor's question is how how would a developer come in to ask for a exception to a 0.5 to go up to some

1:05:03Maximum we have heard two different comments and typically one one type of comments you mentioned developers as cost so much money to build parking and we want to reduce the requirements so we don't have to spend that kind of money and we also heard the totally opposite

1:05:23uh comments that we cannot get it long from the lenders lender has certain requirements and if we don't provide two per part two spaces uh per unit we're not going to get along so the the issuing here is where is the middle point that you allow the developer to

1:05:42provide as fuel as a past Financial Heath beliefs financially possible and also he can sell the unit and get a financing on the other hand if you get into situation the lender says hey if you don't provide me to provide two spaces per unit we're not going to give you a

1:05:58loan then you don't have a project and that criteria is hard to determine where the bond with where the boundary is so I I'm not recommending you a criteria and and actually what I did was give you some examples and how other city is doing it and if you push the requirement really

1:06:18really way down you may want to consider it more relaxed maximum if your minimum is not a way down then you can consider for example Pasadena has for their uh studio in one bedroom they maximize the minimum and and so I so to kind of add more complexity um the the idea that people change their

1:06:49behavior not just according to what's how much parking is available in their own residential unit but how is the parking regulated on the street and so I think a big question is how do we look at all these ratios considering that if we're interested and interested in managing the on-street

1:07:10parking so that our existing neighborhoods aren't flooded with new Parkers if there's a lack of enough parking um so so in other words if if we were to also move forward with a whole program of managing the parking Demand on street so that everybody can get to where they

1:07:30need to go but leveraging the pricing tool then what you know then you have a whole other you know Paradigm to work with in terms of what your parking requirement should be is that what do you think about that yeah I think that's very good point actually the two of them

1:07:46one is the compendium parking policy and the other one is you mentioned earlier is availability of transit services and the important thing is we provide the residents options they can still get to and from work and they can still get to wherever they need to to go in terms of

1:08:04shopping recreational trip services so both of those are major considerations and this uh what we had done in here we had assumed because the Tod policy assumed Transit access assuming the share parking assumes a whole bunch of like eight different kind of a parking parlors it's a companion

1:08:21parking policies which is something we assumed in here and that would be the next part of the presentation and presenting to you what are some of our recommended parking management strategies that would deal with both the existing situation existing on street and off street parking uh occupancy

1:08:40situation as well as you know once you have that companion parking policy would also benefit future development could I have one more whack at the dead horse um so you did mention that uh in your interviews with developer or you did mention with cities sometimes have

1:08:56um a maximum but that you may go up to 150 percent or or a minimum and it may go up to 150 is there also the flip side where you could build 75 of the minimum if you are able to show you you are serving an elderly population or you are providing bike parking is there a way

1:09:14that a developer if they can get a loan on a project with parking that's less than your minimum the city sometimes consider other factors in you know reviewing their minimum in particular projects yes San Francisco is a great example for that okay perfect and the uh

1:09:31the downside of that is the parking code becomes very complex so you get it what if you do this then what in that kind of situation and I guess this is the kind of things that we need to talk to staff and you guys need to provide some guidance in the whether the city of El Cerrito is ready to

1:09:47provide that to develop a parking policy as complex as the one in San Francisco um project with AC Transit where we uh we're trying to get people to ride the bus and um so we went out to a senior housing project and we discovered that nobody rode the bus and so this is a senior housing project

1:10:14right they all had cars so I don't I'm not sure it's we want to assume that just because people are seniors that they don't have cars um if if I'm sure if it's you know if you have a you know it needs to be looked into more carefully than that um as we were shocked to discover and

1:10:35and from my own personal experience there there is times when parking is um not provided in some of these uh denser urban areas where guests will walk four to five blocks away uh to to you know spend time with their friends in their uh you know on San Pablo Avenue

1:10:58housing so we we obviously when you start uh reducing parking at these facilities um you you are going to have spillover into uh residential areas that are I think fairly far away compared to what people are thinking so I this is not a as I think the mayor has pointed out it's not

1:11:20a you can't just legislate the development itself you have to figure out what you're doing in the entire urban area right it's quite complex issue and uh just give you an example San Francisco for elderly housing and the low-income housing their parking requirements down to one per every four

1:11:40units so their code is very complex I mean there's all kinds of variations and I'm not sure uh you guys are ready for that kind of a parking requirements well I think what we would want to do is to to actually reflect what is happening so you know seniors one thing

1:12:02but where do you draw the line of senior you can have anywhere from my mom who's running marathons and she's a senior or you know on up you know there's a whole there's many age brackets within the senior bracket and there's just peerability and income all of those are

1:12:16known to have an impact so I think I personally think we want to uh customize it for what makes sense is what's known to make known to to be exhibited in terms of parking Demand versus guessing about it and and to build on earlier comments it's a phased approach

1:12:37so this may be something that's not we don't have to jump to the end of conclusion you know now we give five or ten years from now it could be Revisited with different numbers so you know that is something that we've already heard testimony on tonight another thing if I might add just to

1:12:54make it even a little bit more complicated is that one could take the attitude that one wants to build housing that will attract people who use Transit versus not care about that so for example if you put in I'm not suggesting necessarily that we do this but if you

1:13:15had some housing that had zero parking places to to take it to the extreme then you would be more likely to attract people who didn't want parking places on the other hand if you had apartments that had three parking places per single bedroom then you might attract people

1:13:40that had a lot of need for that sort of thing so partly it depends on what you build in terms of what you end up attracting and there was a study done quite at this point quite a while back with Del Norte place where they were showing that um the placement of that

1:13:57particular project um actually caused it ended up in a real high Transit ridership uh there were some reports done on that a while back but um so so it you know that you can influence those things um depending on what you do so I think what that's showing yeah I think that my

1:14:18understanding is the purposes project is to establish policy that's that can be as Progressive as it can be but would not deter developers from boating buildings in El Cerrito so that's why take a look at the this uh no the one we had earlier yeah take a look at this table what are we

1:14:40suggesting to you is that uh if you want to pursue option one you could potentially reduce the minimum requirement down to 0.5 for the Tod areas and keep as a point eight and make it down to 0.8 for the mid section and the potential use 150 percent as your guide because what's happening is

1:15:02that 0.5 times 150.75 which is not it's less than one per unit for Tod smaller units and for the larger units it becomes like a point uh it's 1.3 times one one and a half is about 1.65 which is more like what you have today uh in average for the El Cerrito station areas

1:15:29so this may be the first step when you you could go you could go see how that how the ends in five years from now and and reassess this see whether you may want to go even more Progressive than this this is the one option I mean you can certainly go the other way which was the

1:15:49consideration of the flexibility for the developers and it just make it one per unit okay now uh what we did was we did a comparison in terms of what kind of Supply we're looking at this is a this is a comparison with the existing code requirement it will go with the option I

1:16:08mentioned earlier which sets a minimum you would see a reduction of 1 340 parking spaces then what would be required under the current code all right shall we move on to the management strategies okay I just sorry going back to that slide um I wanted I really appreciated

1:16:29um calculating out at the different scenarios um and and just to quantify if you're going from what our current standard is down you know almost just over a thousand parking spaces and um applying a very conservative you know 20 000 per parking space you know that that's equivalent to 20

1:16:52million dollars saving in terms of capital cost savings that I think is really important I that our Council considers that if we're looking at a Transit rich you know part of our our community that do we want that parking to be built for cars that may or may not be there and

1:17:13you know just to just to hear the 20 mil I mean 20 million dollars is not a small sum over a 40-year period to pay for that parking and if it's you know in in the cost estimate 20 20 000 per parking space doesn't even include the cost of land or maintenance and so feasibly you

1:17:32could double that very easily okay uh uh recap a little bit about the parking requirements uh and the pink is the existing strategies that have been included in existing code and the green highlights in the boat are the ones that we are recommending I'm going to go through them one by one

1:17:59uh there are 15 of them in total the first one is among the parking and I believe you guys are familiar with it is basically when a developer sells a unit instead of having the parking uh be part of the sales price it's the parking would be sold separately and the

1:18:18opportunities to give those who do not own cars do not need a parking space they don't have to pay and make it more affordable it would apply both to unoccupied units as well as rental units and we have included on this on the side and the right upper upper right corner

1:18:36uh in terms of who may be the responsible party for implementing it and the priority and effectiveness the priority the criteria of assigning High moderate and the low in the in terms of priorities pretty much the consideration of how easy it is to is more of a easy to implement

1:18:58and Effectiveness unfortunately not not a whole lot of quantifiable data and the reports as of yet uh so it's mostly based on the research more of a qualitative research findings in our passive experience just assign in terms of High versus uh moderate and low and and uh this would

1:19:21be a high priority would recommend for your implementation and effectiveness of what Effectiveness in terms of reducing plugin demand okay okay and uh so that's number one and next next two uh the first is one of the same but there's different ways of implementing

1:19:43it it's more of a managing the existing on street parking spaces as you know they are off free and we're recommending two uh ways to consider it one is a meter parking and the next slide is basically issue parking permits to allow smart passengers to park on the street and

1:20:04depend the uh the benefits here is the one is equity and they are bar Riders Park they pay even though as small as a dollar a day but they still pay versus for those who can Finance free parking and park in your on on your streets for free it's more of equity issue and the second one is to really

1:20:22reduce spillover impacts and in the meantime General summer revenues for the city for uh staking area improvements or or amenities I have a question about this one I'm having a little trouble because you flipped I think the the one I had the question about was two but I

1:20:39it wasn't there long enough for me to make sure that the issue that I'm concerned about is um the for example the plaza area there was a lot of complaint when the plaza went in about um there was no place for customers of the retail stores at the plaza along Fairmont to park because they were you

1:21:05all used up by Bart Parkers so it would seem to me if there were a 10-hour um parking for on-street parking specifically on a street like Fairmont where there's a border between Bart and the retail that it would favor the BART Parkers and then the retail operations

1:21:28wouldn't have parking and that's what the complaints were that we got at the time was they didn't their customers were complaining there was no place to park when they would go into the stores um many times they just needed to go in for a few minutes like the um the example stores where

1:21:48that I can think of specifically were the um the video rental store and the um the copy store you know they don't those are stories where people don't stay that long and um with 10 hour paid parking uh there which is what I assume you're talking about because that's right next

1:22:07to the BART station that doesn't work so can you address that thanks yeah this is not any diff the imposing middle parking is not going to be any different from the current situation it actually put on street parking in this in the same playing field with the uh off street parking

1:22:24facilities uh it's the 10 hours is the issue and I think maybe it's the introduction of pricing that would vary so I was just in Santa Cruz this weekend and downtown they basically charge 50 cents for their first hour and with each additional hour if you stay the longer

1:22:43you stay the higher the cost is and that's how I mean potentially I think we're considering we're we're open to considering that is that you would disincentivize anyone trying to park there for the day by making it very expensive and that they would look to park further away but then if you wanted

1:23:00to stay for a short amount of time that you would be able to do that and essentially leveraging pricing structures to to um uh prioritize different users for different street needs and and in my understanding of reading this is that in that area for example your your example you've given

1:23:18in Fairmont this wouldn't necessarily be applied because that's a commercial Zone this is much more for inside the residential areas such that that we're we're recouping the cost of parking within some of our residential neighborhoods it so in that in the example uh councilman Rebels and then

1:23:37you've given you wouldn't necessarily allow it along Fairmont but you might allow it along some of the other streets around uh Plaza so then what happens when a repair person comes to work on something at a residential house in that neighborhood and what do they do right now I mean the

1:24:00situation today is that well I'm not sure if this is the example you're thinking of but I'm just thinking of the streets where you can free you can park for free and go walk to the BART so your car is there all day in a residential area with no the other side of the BART

1:24:14Parkers can't park at all so the ones that currently have a residential parking permit Zone there's a floor to four hours so four hours this doesn't this doesn't preclude us from making one side of the street four hours and the other side of this street metered

1:24:28the side with the BART Parkers okay so I think we would need to be uh more specific in in address in addressing something like this so that we would cover both of those situations but when you get down to implementation you need when you draw the boundary and is that's

1:24:45the time to consider it and then the area with high demand especially when you mentioned uh there's a short-term parking demand you can set the rate structure a little differently and I think it's important that we can we can I mean right now we legislate what color curbs are down to the parking

1:25:04space and so I imagine that feasibly we can customize down to the block face depending on what the top priority is and who needs to be served whether it's residents or you know businesses trying to get customers we can there's a there's two very there's there's

1:25:20different sets of tools to to facilitate the you know or to meet the needs of those two different types of users yes I appreciate uh you looking at this slide again and and recalculating the number of spaces but can you please tell us the methodology for calculating the

1:25:40615 spaces please oh the next one number three yeah you're the new number three for those following at home that with the agenda packet it's the numbering is not the same uh he's using the the version you saw earlier versus this current one it previously it was number seven and

1:26:07with only 183 spaces 183 is at Del Norte and the remainder was at Plaza thank you and what's the methodology for calculating the number of spaces thank you that was based on uh the previous uh the survey information we conducted and our estimation in terms of how far uh what

1:26:29patrons actually parked on the on the street but but these spaces are currently in four hour spaces or is this all Street faces as we were just discussing all three spaces We Believe are patrons Park as far as great thank you yes maybe I missed it may ask how did

1:26:55you calculate the 183 that's on this well at least my slide has 183 which was around Del Norte Dell notary only this is this slide now combines both Del Norte and Plaza but the 183 is Street let's see if I get this right you guys can correct me because I just asked

1:27:18this question the 183 is all spaces whether it's a four-hour zone or a free zone within a reasonable walking distance of Del Norte and 615 is the combined distance that's correct so whether it's in a four-hour zone or a all-day Zone that was the total number of spaces right but I'm trying to get it

1:27:43how how do you determine a surplus Regional parking per residential parking permit how did you calculate it as Surplus I guess is what I'm asking what are you referring to Surplus um total spaces in the zone minus those that are reserved for residents yeah the survey we conducted

1:28:12we know on every single block face uh how long the car parks there whether they are those are the vehicles with the residential parking parking permits or not that was part of our survey information so what we did was withdraw it distance and calculate how many parking spaces are within that

1:28:34and then how many spaces are actually in the RPP zones and let's get deducted the rest as it becomes the the calculated spaces okay so that's Surplus yeah so so sorry that's different than than the that's different than the answer I gave um so what I was asking was

1:28:58all parking spaces on both sides of the street whether four hours or not restricted and the answer you just gave suggests that it's only the street faces that are in the four hour Zone the RPP Zone so I'm just curious I'm just trying to figure out we also know the total number

1:29:17of RPP spaces versus number of vehicles parked in the RPP spaces so so this calculation is Justice are the ones that not presently occupied in only the RPP zone right correct yes so that's the four hour Zone that's the that's what yeah so this does not calculate the number of C spaces

1:29:36that are on that might be subject to the 10 hour to go to the previous slide this does not calculate the number of spaces that might be subject to the 10 hour okay thank you well the 10 hour per the 10 hour parking meter so that this would be so for example if one side of the street

1:29:54is now got a 10 hour meter on it and the other side of the street isn't is the RPP or the restricted parking Zone if there's Surplus spaces in the restricted parking Zone as calculated here we could sell those by permit to frequent commuters from Vallejo for example so that somebody from Vallejo

1:30:15would have a El Cerrito parking sticker on their car and they could park on the four-hour side um in one of these 615 spaces so in addition to the 10 hour meter income we would have income from permitted Parkers who could park in the RPP zone right and I can see

1:30:37who's going to answer the phone when somebody calls up I'm just uh calls up and says I've got a non-resident parking in my parking spot and I'm a resident of El Cerrito I just no I I agree that one of many I know there's one of many uh problems oh yeah yeah you don't don't

1:30:56leave your home between seven and nine in the morning great thanks I have another question about the 10 hours um it seems to me there are a lot of people who uh would use the BART system to get to work somewhere where they're going to be gone more than 10 hours does that mean they

1:31:14don't get to Park anymore uh yeah that that would be the invocation why would we want to do that well you got a space that this there are spaces in the parking garage they don't have the parking notes on the street the reason I think they're parking in the street now is because there aren't

1:31:32places so I think this all goes back to the pricing um and and there's also a compendium recommendation to get the bark Bart parking lots to charge more a higher a price that is more reflective of the actual demand and then if you charge the right price on the parking lot or on the

1:31:52BART controlled Lots themselves then you would so you see these dots on the very first slide of showing where people are coming from I was surprised to see how many how just how many people are driving uh within a quarter mile even just to Plaza BART so if you can

1:32:10literally walk within five minutes but yet you're driving I think this would start to address you know you would have an incentive than to walk and then that that one resident then could free up a space for someone from coming from further away but it's all pricing it's not the idea

1:32:26is to use pricing as a way to control supply and demand and actually use a market-based strategy but what we've done is use pricing to say that somebody can't park it's I mean it seems to me that um we're fixing if we're if it's about demand it seems to me we're we're not getting anywhere

1:32:47because they can park now say and that would be changing it to a situation where they have to pay but then there may their um perhaps getting you know they're not really getting anywhere I think this they're just paying is is what's happening but when um I do not remember that when we had

1:33:13um when we were not in a recession period that the BART Parkers um spread out really far um because I would get complaints from residents uh that they couldn't back out of their driveways um quite a far distance from the BART stations well out of the um the residential parking areas that were

1:33:38immediately around the BART station so um so my my wish list to address this exact situation which I was surprised to not see come up here is the um giving us the opportunity to to adopt essentially a performance outcome-based measure that is the 85 percent capacity and 15

1:33:59vacancy rule that no matter what it is if we are going going to charge um that we're always charging a price that will ensure that 15 of spaces at any given time are open so one out of every seven spaces or essentially one space on every block is available so that you're not

1:34:23prescribing the the cost of the parking until you've reached that 85 percent capacity and that you start introducing on a very incremental basis and very you know varying it by the time of day varying it by each block but you are ultimately guaranteeing that you will

1:34:41never have a point where you have more than 85 percent parking uh filled but you're getting that by allowing pricing to happen and on top of that the pricing then can go back essentially creates a funding source to further promote um you know whether it's better lighting

1:35:00safer um you know Crossings all of these things that would then um that we're currently putting in but we don't you know to to take it to another level maybe Landscaping but then would actually have some kind of maintenance uh funding yeah very good point actually

1:35:18we did not mention it but when we calculated 263 thousand dollar uh potential Revenue that is based on 85 percent calculation and and what I would love to see is that if you could do it by little neighborhood districts then the neighborhoods could give input into

1:35:35what they think is a priority in what they would like to see fixed or enhance maybe it's small public art project or whatever it is it's it's something that the local neighbors have an incentive to to participate in yeah if oh go ahead it's funny if I could go back to the 10 hours

1:35:55um the conversation has gone a specific way but what I was concerned about is the number 10.

1:36:04um and because 10 doesn't represent an adequate amount of time to necessarily um say get to San Francisco work a a long day and then get home and be able to you know to do that so why is it 10 10 is a typical number let me explain to you why 10 is typical enforcement in any given city is from

1:36:31eight or six after that there's no enforcement so you can create a rule uh and it's not going to be enforced anyway so that's why the 10 is there okay but I I go ahead I just have it on the 10 hour parking I noticed that um examples uh you only you had indicated MacArthur transfer

1:36:57Village and it's proposed do you know of any um system that's being used now that is using a 10 hour paid parking in uh neighborhood areas next to Transit oriented development like we have at both Del Norte and the Plaza not offhand but I do know a number of locations that have this 10 hour

1:37:24parking uh to accommodate commuters okay and it does tail into what the mayor was talking about which is uh the 85 percent now I've seen that set up in Pasadena that's what theirs is set up on but I'm wondering if you've ever if you've seen that in neighborhoods

1:37:46neighborhoods themselves where you're statistically you you'll always have one space available and I can just see uh somebody yeah the one space is a block down and I'm going to carry five bags of groceries to my house in the neighborhood I've seen it in the and it

1:38:06works in the if you have a large enough retail and Commercial area it seems to work or at least what I observed in two days of looking at this in Pasadena but um I haven't I haven't heard of any neighborhoods so that's why I was asking if in the neighborhood areas if you've seen and

1:38:23used that 85 10 but 85 is industry standard and it's a guide for the city to determine whether you want to make changes to the implemented uh practices and they've exceed 85 percent means get too crowded and it makes it hard to find a parking space then you may want to to

1:38:44reduce the number of uh for example if that if we go with the permit strategy you may want to reduce the number of primage you want to issue because it's a criteria and it doesn't I think 10 hours in is in conjunction with the existing resident only so that residents will still get I

1:39:05guess you could go even further and delineate districts within the residential permit system because right now we have one Sol one complete district for for both stations I understand and so similar to Berkeley where you can you can parse it up into smaller um is that not true so if you had a

1:39:30so you can't have a permit in one and park in the other okay so we already have that as a precedent so we could fine-tune that even further if it's then it's just your block or a certain within a couple blocks that I think okay and that was just that West Hollywood is a example of a residential

1:39:53uh community that essentially because there's a daytime population that goes away they the the the residents are able to sell their their permits to outside um visitors visitors yeah uh the next one is already uh may you guys talked about it is is compendium policies to increase the part uh parking

1:40:15fees they charge a dollar a day we recommend to increase that to two dollars we had a conversation with uh keyboard staff they have no objection to that and I also want to know that there's a Json parking lot actually charges uh ten dollars parking Intel Notte wow

1:40:35[Applause] in order to implement the BART parking fees uh no one city council member is the question about this jpa uh this is the this is a result from our conversation with Bart staff because of their property they felt the only way uh to allow them to share the revenue to

1:40:59increase the revenue would be uh through a jpa type of arrangement I'm sorry can you expand on that just a little bit because um you know they they have a revenue Source Within their own parking lot as we just discussed they could charge potentially as high as ten dollars a day

1:41:21where why do we need to share anything we we generate off the street with them so I'm just trying to figure out why why that we needed the revenues you generated with them is rather they shared the increased Revenue right now they charge a dollar a day and they this at the staff level you

1:41:41know two dollars a day is not unreasonable they'd be willing to at the staff level willing to support that suggestion so the incremental Revenue General but Bart in order for them to share that with you guys oh I like that idea mm-hmm okay these are some of the uh high

1:42:04priority items I would believe they also have uh they're highly effective the next few are the hype we think we would suggest to you is a treat it's a high priority project it's relatively easy to implement but I think the effectiveness would be more moderate not

1:42:20as high one is to allow on street parking to meet up street parking requirements uh this is the part of the reason we're suggesting this especially in the midsection section you have very very low occupancy rate even if you don't require any parking if the new device don't provide any parking you

1:42:37won't even have a parking prop occupancy problems and then that's why it's just one thing we suggest for your consideration can reduce development costs and the next one is the cost share Service uh I don't want to talk too much about it I think everybody's very

1:42:54familiar with it what that is I can move on to the number eight which is a more sustainable kind of a site designed to allow uh better uh bike in The Pedestrian access and the more aggressive bike parking requirements to in the uh I think this is a would allow people to ride bikes instead

1:43:25of driving their cars to to the to the BART station potentially reduce spot parking demand and the next one is the credit for bicycle and motorcycle parking as a way to reduce parking requirements the next two I want to spend some time talk about once the transportation

1:43:47demand management programs uh it's something the city can require potentially as a conditional use for approving new projects and the goal is to reduce uh vehicle ownership and it will reduce parking to reduce driving and a way to implement this and we suggest for your consideration is a

1:44:09creative creation of a TMA transportation management association and their I understand there's some concern about the five dollars a month per unit charge uh the this is the estimate that this point is based on our estimates about potentially 115 000 to 220 000 operating costs per year

1:44:34for the TMA uh and it really depends on the thing in the initial phases the the startup phase you may not need a full-time person the cost could be lower and at some point if you have uh sufficient number of participants you may consider it really really a full-time person this is the

1:44:53cost of estimates is based on full-time person so the cost could potentially be lower and it's a vehicle to implement a TDM program and many other things they can do because now you have a organization that the city can deal with and and working with them and on a much

1:45:11more collaborative basis I have a question about that um through our major J in Contra Costa County we have a certain part of that set aside for doing what kind of looks like a variation of this to me why wouldn't we just ask the people who are already paid to operate those programs to do this

1:45:35good yes absolutely you could do that um yeah is already there and they they have these programs that do a variety right especially if they're one in the vicinity it's easier for them to just expand their scope of service to include well they're already doing stuff for

1:45:52example they you know if you uh guaranteed ride home program for example where if you take transit but then you have an emergency your child's sick they'll pay for a taxi or whatever you know things like that um and those are already in place it's called 511 Contra Costa

1:46:12I think agree the next one is relatively a new idea it's called peer-to-peer car share and the relatively new uh the two organizations in San Francisco one actually started in May of this year called the San Francisco get around and basically similar to car share but it's a instead of a company to

1:46:33purchase a bunch of cars and and you can rent more like a rental car this is a to allow individuals like you and I owns cars and when we don't need a car we can we can rent it out at relatively low cost actually it's lower than car share they this company called San Francisco

1:46:49get around only charge four dollars an hour including insurance uh so this is something is suggesting for your consideration especially when we have the larger uh potential larger new residential development that they could and the TMA the tablet could implement it

1:47:07and Eco pass uh is that believes something you guys also very familiar with it's it's been around for over 10 years started in Border Colorado uh and the interesting thing is that a an AC Transit has this Easy Pass Arrangement that ranges from 43 dollars to 121 dollars

1:47:27depends on the location and depends on the number of participants and there's a 43 dollars per year and you can write local as well as uh transbay buses for free and it's extremely uh cheap process then they say one example is a building in Berkeley the fourth and and the u university goes

1:47:51the fourth and U apartment and they uh this project was approved and with AC transit in August last year they they paid participants they pay 80 a year which is substantially lower than you and I paying for AC Transit uh I think it was could work out quite well and the minimum I understand is

1:48:10that you have to you buy a hundred of them at once in order to access that kind of volume discount and I have to I'm sorry I have to plug and I thank the council for indulging my um extra comments tonight since this is what I do for my day job um also uh the the green trip

1:48:29certification program that I run at my day job where I got um basically a 700 unit project in San Jose to commit to free Transit passes for 40 years providing two per unit and it's because that there are programs like this volume discount Transit passes available and um and I obviously would

1:48:53not certify a project in our in our own backyard for for a conflict of interest but simply that to let you you all know that there are developers who are willing to do that also in Berkeley another green trip certified project committed to 155 free Transit passes one

1:49:12per unit for 40 years as well so it's it's happening yeah this is the kind of things certainly you guys can uh require or ask developers to provide for future Pro for future projects and uh the next one is something that I should do is Free Part parking for a couple of them then pull vehicles to

1:49:36further reduce parking needs to the BART station area and then uh the the last one is uh the attended parking which is similar to valet parking as a way to increase parking demand during the peak of the peak situation let's talk about this I've I've heard Bart say that this is a very effective

1:49:58tool but you've got it down in the Pleasant Hill sorry it's you've got it down as low effectiveness it is uh uh if they lose it at Richmond too by the way and and you just said it's an effective tool for reducing demand It's actually an effective tool for increasing Supply

1:50:24is it not that's correct it actually doesn't reduce demand it actually increases the supply so that so given that Effectiveness is a measurement of reducing demand okay this would have a low Effectiveness for reducing demand because all it does is increase Supply

1:50:40in a congested Zone and they are they are using it currently at Richmond according to the sign in the BART station okay um so in summary uh we have this recommendation that we presented in terms of the priority for implementation and in the potential Effectiveness for

1:51:01your consideration and that will be the end of my presentation thank you thank you do you want to take a break that's a long time yeah I think um probably five minutes it's up to you obviously sure are folks okay okay I'll settle for a five minute break thank you yeah

1:51:26I think he just wanted to break you know um I don't know what this is foreign thanks folks um we can resume now with the economic study results Alexander good evening honorable mayor and members of the council my name is Alexander Quinn I'm the director of sustainable economics for AECOM I'm here

1:59:00today to talk about the economic feasibility analysis that follows this original parking analysis for the same study area uh just generally our outly of what we're going to do what we're going to talk about just uh to re go back and talk about what this is all for uh really this is about

1:59:22understanding what can be implemented implemented in this area feasibly with the appropriate parking strategy and I always like started with a punch line first so that's what I'll do the punchline is is that we're really right now near the threshold of when projects

1:59:44might be feasible in in El Cerrito we're not there yet but there is probably some creative development strategies that would arrive you at a feasible project so you're not you haven't necessarily gotten to a point where you're at a threshold of go under traditional development standards

2:00:03but if you're creative and you strike the right deal you probably could be a go the areas that are more on the brink are the areas near the BART stations and specifically the Plaza you can charge higher rents in those locations and parking ratios are lower so your costs are lower

2:00:24some of the ways to think about creative thinking as relates to development is create development certainty the more certainty that you create the more uh the rest less risk implied and the more projects that project becomes feasible the shorter timeline in which that that

2:00:42project is entitled you also want to show to certain developers that it can be feasible some of some landowners excuse me landowners some landowners don't necessarily know the development economics of their parcel and when you show them that it works they're more likely to invest and

2:01:03consider Redevelopment options consider non-retail uses there are two deleterious effects of of retail in this specific study area one is that rents they're not that much different from prevailing rental rents but they're a little lower but the other more important factor is that you need to

2:01:27provide more parking per square foot of space so the cost of that space is more than if you're dealing residential okay um we're going through this process I think this is exactly what the specific plan is about of trying to convert what was traditionally a suburban area to to

2:01:47a more urban environment that transition has some pains associated with it and developers and it the lending environment isn't set up to necessarily know what that hasn't set up that transition in their minds so without a precedent in place they are less inclined to provide a loan to a

2:02:08developer who's going to build a higher density more Transit oriented development type project so that transition the more you can create a precedent the more you can then set additional development standards that maybe make it more Transit oriented friendly the current environment is such

2:02:25that development is not easy we're not 2007 this is 2011. the market is very reticent to lend above prevailing rents uh lending environment is much more difficult the loan to value requirements are are much lower than they used to be for all those reasons it's very difficult in providing

2:02:48flexibility will allow for those those first in people to come in foreign so how many did we test there are four nodes and there are ten sites and there's 22 scenarios so that's a lot we did a lot of iterations and why do we do that one is that we want to look at

2:03:07very different configurations of of parcels we want to look at sites that needed to be assembled we want to look at single sites and see what the development would be on them we also wanted to look at it from different uh areas because obviously San Pablo this Corridor is varied in its Market

2:03:28here are the heights that we looked at 80 feet 65 and 45 feet and you know the strange picture up there is hotel Durant and you were asking me why did you put Hotel Durant up on as an 80-foot example well that's because we couldn't find any modern examples of 80 foot

2:03:44buildings and I'll explain that in a moment but it's just the it's very rare to find an 80-foot building that you can find in the East Bay so we pre we evaluated these specific programs multi-family residential office retail we looked at a big box scenario on one side four which you have the key

2:04:05to and I'll explain for the viewers at home um and uh then neighborhood retail these are the parking standards the parking standards are based on chs's recommended parking mix for the uh small and and large unit not the single one unit per but the small and large in

2:04:28that mix that's why these look different because they're specifically a mix of Studio ones and two bedroom apartments is that you follow that okay you could see also that the parking standards are quite different now why is it 1.8 and 2.7 at Del Norte node that is

2:04:46we have our big box retail at site four in Del Norte node so for Big Box retail we assume a higher parking standard as it relates to densities densities can be an arbitrary number to assign to a parcel because there are so many things that play into what is the

2:05:06massing the size how you arrive at the density is very different and I'll show you an example of a four-story building that's actually more dense has higher density than a six story building but things like less ground floor retail can mean less dense lower parking demand

2:05:25can mean less parking therefore more housing Heights at 65 feet if you do all those things you get higher residential densities so far standards and um height standards can often be less important than actually things like what's your setback requirement what's

2:05:45your what's what's the parking minimum parking requirement how much retail do you need to provide and that often informs intensities so provide just uh Basics on on the cost per square foot there this is not a science there are projects that'll be 180 per square foot there are projects

2:06:07that will be 240 square foot we used the best data available to provide the most realistic duplication view of the of the uh of of what we thought were the appropriate development inputs but they vary and they will continue to vary so we use the Davis and Langdon RS means and developers to get

2:06:29at an estimate that we thought was most reasonable that's an average of around 200 per square foot when you go higher than 65 feet remember we were talking about this why you don't see an 85 built 80 foot buildings this is why because you hit steel construction so the

2:06:44construction goes up 25 so are you going to build one additional story of building for 25 increase in costs probably not um also when you look at sites that are smaller they have less economies of scale contractor bids at a higher per square foot value so we have to assume

2:07:05that when they're bigger there's economies of scale and vices so you can see the opposite occur these are parking estimates those parking costs or estimates are without the architecture and engineering costs the land costs none of that is included this is just the construction cost the hard cost

2:07:22I'm just curious to do uh not put underground parking explicitly for a reason we didn't because it was too infeasible to even get you there so as a solution if we try to build underground underground parking it just wasn't feasible and does that also include half

2:07:43underground versus partially submerged uh parking is is still cost prohibitive we estimate that at around 28 500 per space so uh it's it's reaching the limits okay these are the least values again we can see what we're talking about in terms of the the price per square foot for for

2:08:10rent and for uh being if you're in the plaza area you get a three percent increase if your bar to Jason get a seven percent increase it's two dollars for and uh 37 cents per square foot if you're in Del Norte you get a seven percent increase but the Del Norte neighborhood gets less premium minus two

2:08:26percent so you're at two dollars and 27 square foot okay and in between you don't get neither the BART premium um and you're not in the plaza neighborhood so you don't get the same rent premium associated with that so how does this well I'll go over a little bit more assumption sorry uh land

2:08:46costs forty dollars per square foot again land expectations vary by landowner and by what they perceive to be the development perspective of their property what their basis in the land is when is it an incentive for them to actually sell the property so forty dollars is a prevailing price but it is

2:09:06by no means an exact number okay site prep cost twenty dollars vacancies either pretty standard and then here are the rents these are on the upper thresholds when you do new development you're assuming that you're going to hit the higher portions of the market you're not just getting the

2:09:22average uh these are these are the unit sizes and the studio mixes and these are based on new projects that are a little closer in like fourth and U like uh Avenue 64.

2:09:37and those are the rents we took rents that were off those and of of fourth and U slower lower than that but still aggressive kind of a rent per square foot of two dollars and sixteen cents so what is a basic Pro Forum analysis it's a it's a point in time when you've

2:09:57got your building leased out you've got it occupied um you figure out what the revenue is going in what's the cost going out and then what's that Worth to an investor so you basically you're building and you're selling is the presumption of a static pro forma and a static performance

2:10:16basically says here's our cost coming in here's our revenues coming out if we if we build it we occupy it and sell it okay does that follow and sorry so so that is all based off of present day rent values that's correct would you say are depressed with the the down economy uh rental housing is not

2:10:41depressed the other ones are condo office and Retail are but the rental housing market is actually doing quite well in this market and do you think as we increase or if hopefully our economy picks up that it would be even more robust in the future the prospects are

2:11:02that rents will continue to rise in the Bay Area as long as job growth increases and there's two driving factors one is that there's a growing um separation between when you can buy a home and so so because the amount that you need to pay now has gone significantly more the result is is that

2:11:22there's a growing barrier between owner occupied so more people are in the rental housing market and two is that you've got this influx of more owners who are being kicked out of their houses and moving into rental housing so those two things are deriving a lot of the rental housing demand in

2:11:38the market add additional employment growth and you're seeing that market becoming significantly stronger that's why you're seeing development in that Arena and that doesn't account for a senior increasing senior population overall in the future as well it does

2:11:52not make any suggestions about that people might want to live where it's easier to walk around okay that's right thanks although there are some studies that show that case as well uh so when feasible projects are it's basically you are trying to set a precedent so minimize the perception of

2:12:15risk and that is again talking about entitlement risk it's about demonstrating a market for that the more lenders realize that there's a precedent there the more they're willing to develop and even develop further afield you can see that on University in Sacramento in Berkeley on University

2:12:32Avenue as the development started going further and further west and that's a pre that precedent helped to basically Finance projects that were further from the University okay no developer wants to be the case of the test case and more importantly no investor necessarily wants to be the

2:12:51test case test case so lenders are much less likely to invest with their you know the first in on a project and you're doing something new and different um would you say then The Village at Town Center for example is that not qualify as a test case based on the parking ratios or yeah I

2:13:15don't think it's based on the parking ratios you know the density is not fair uh yeah so so that's you're saying if we depart from what our business as usual is yes which is what we're trying to do okay yeah okay go ahead another way of saying what you've just said about uh no

2:13:32developer wants to be the test cases that the first developer wants needs a significant rate of return or in order to take the risk thank you thank you yes so uh you need a your your the higher the risk the more return so if you are if you're the first in you need to show that your

2:13:53rate of return to investors is much higher and that means that your cost of money is generally higher does that make sense okay um so here are some other triggers that you can do reduce land or construction costs obviously those are very difficult things for you as a council to to

2:14:13manipulate but there are certain properties that are actually owned by the agency you can consider reduce interior circulation what I mean by that is that very expensive in development is building Halls that are not rented so where you have exterior circulation

2:14:30there are examples of actually four-story buildings that are almost entirely all the circulation is on the outside because the parking is on the first level you actually have two stories of flats and then a two-story townhouse on top so that reduced the cost that's one way of being

2:14:47more efficient with your space remove the ground floor retail requirement I spoke a little bit about that and then utilize lift parking lift parking is expensive it's a very expensive thing to do but it's sometimes it's the difference between going from a tuck under scenario to a structured parking

2:15:05scenario so you're putting in the the lift parking to address the the Delta the change from from one parking scenario to another and from the engineering perspective of that since a car is typically only about six or seven feet tall you can actually get two cars in a traditional story

2:15:25um so that you know you you basically get twice the parking out of one story is that the idea yeah but you do have to create a lower trench area and Berkeley has put some standards on that because the fire department has to be able to access that lower trench so what people

2:15:43have been doing is they've been actually building taller first floor Heights through comedy okay and going back to a comment you made earlier about first floor Heights you know retail on the first floor does dictate a higher height which chews into the overall volume of the building

2:16:01um so if there isn't retail on the first floor you don't need that higher higher height and the first floor is cheaper that's right okay so here is the here's it all down onto one sheet for you to look at this is as it currently stands return on cost what do I mean by that return on cost is not the

2:16:25same as your return on the money that you personally have invested as a developer and your Equity investors it means everything the cost everything in versus the return on that so if the project costs a hundred dollars and you made uh 108 the eight percent return on

2:16:41cost does that make sense so the return on your money is actually much more but this is generally considered a threshold point you know eight percent is considered when developers start sniffing around and are actually interested in thinking about developing okay

2:16:57um as you can see you're close on a lot of projects obviously the plaza is these are the these are the most feasible alternative of each of these sites so when you look across here the plaza 6.8 percent six percent uh when you look over at site four and I'll explain some

2:17:15of these sites when you add in the regulatory complexity it becomes less feasible so uh site four and if you look at site two which is the BART parking lot that does not include the cost of the replacement parking so that is not a number that you would say that project is feasible if we

2:17:36just got another six percent percentage points ahead okay does that make sense all right so let's just look at this on on a map there they are um and you can see what's what's driving this and I'll get in a little bit more detail but again Plaza looks most feasible uh Del Norte node looks

2:17:57like uh the Redevelopment agency site it's probably feasible at some point with land prices get a little bit better and rents get a little higher uh the big mall uh next to across the street from the BART Del Norte board station also looks feasible but that does not include the overlay of the air

2:18:15quality requirements which may make it very difficult to build residential on that site okay um could you talk more about the eight percent eight percent yes yes and what who whose standard is that and how Universal is it and is it published it's not it's not universal eight percent is a general

2:18:35threshold point for developers but it there are it varies from developer developer and the way that people or developers evaluate it is very different so some evaluate it on a irr internal rate of return basis some on a net operating income basis um so in some you know on a investment

2:18:56on cash basis uh and some on a return on cost return on cost is the simplest way it's the traditional First pencil that a developer does it's usually one sheet which is so it's really simple say these are my costs this is how much the project is going to earn and then they

2:19:12start trying to figure out the details um eight percent is considered when it has enough lift in the financing to allow you to build so in other words your uh your debt service ratio is hot enough so that you have enough Revenue coming in to service your debt a little more

2:19:31than enough does that make sense so eight percent is that threshold but again it varies and I can show you examples of projects that have much lower than that if they're in very low risk environments so six percent um and I can show you examples of much higher depending on their environment

2:19:52and what they think is going to be so and the risk you're talking about is it just during the entitlement process risk or risk so the entire the life cycle of the projects yeah so it's entitlement Market precedent you know those are all complexity of the land deal is it is it a land lease

2:20:12scenario so those are all factors that drive how feasible a project is thanks so again the the 2.2 percent I put a little asterisks there no replacement parking assumed okay okay uh so this is just showing you the heights and the most feasible so when you look at it across not all the most feasible

2:20:39sites are 65 feet across you can see that site one the Redevelopment site is 45 feet why because we're not including retail in that example okay um and 45 feet in the the mid Plaza area it's uh just because you have less less Capital risk so it varies in terms of how much retail

2:21:02is assumed in each one of these but so here's a summary for Del Norte and I've got a little map there the key basically the site one is the Redevelopment agency site no retail assumed look at the one it says 45 feet height remember and look at the amount of units per acre 87. so even though

2:21:22it's the smallest building or the shortest building it has the highest density because it has no retail and your site 4 which has a lot of retail has this density of 71. a lot that's also again the complexity of that site makes me wonder if that is as feasible as we're showing it

2:21:44okay and this is just uh some buckets of the site plans of possible site plans for these you can see that the complexity of the parking becomes more difficult on certain sites which also enforce the development economics each site is unique the development economic economics are

2:22:03going to be different by the configuration of the site big sites are easier rectangular sites are easier small sites are more difficult narrow sites are more difficult this is Midtown this is the big site I think this is the Safeway and Marshalls Marshalls yeah Safeway

2:22:23Marshall site this is the Redevelopment of this and again you're not realizing the even though you're getting economies of scale you're not getting the BART premiums associated with this site so the returner costs are less than marginal so you'll notice in my next when I go

2:22:39through another iteration of this I'm going to knock these three out because they're pretty far from being feasible and I'm going to talk about the ones that we think have more near-term feasibility I'm thinking this is Plaza North very narrow sites more difficult in fact what

2:22:56I would expect in site 8 is that you wouldn't get a 65 foot example there you'd probably get a three story with ground floor flats and Townhomes nor it's it's worthy of pointing out and this will be a string of questions I asked about the um sensitivity of her model this one does

2:23:15demonstrate the retail ground floor example pretty substantially and there's almost a greater than 10 percent difference between the two as a result of the retail yeah I think retail obviously drives a lot of this and it's it's it just makes it more complex the

2:23:29whole project so so it's a it's a pretty substantial sense the model is very sensitive to the presence of retail on the ground floor yes I think it is uh especially where you have a high parking standard as it's supplied here it's 3.3 versus if you get to the the The Bard areas we're talking

2:23:47about a 1.8 so when the Delta between a residential uh parked area versus a mixed-use Park area in this area is greater right so it costs more so so for example if the commercial parking of 3.3 per thousand that's the second to last column on that on number eight is

2:24:07actually moot because there was no commercial in this site so yeah so really the you know the parking went to 1.2 for the entire site yes um which which was again going back to your parking numbers and the cost of parking it's very sensitive to this to this commercial retail space

2:24:28this is a site uh nine and ten these are near the plaza you may know this as uh saitan as the banks site and the corner site across from it and their respective returns now realize that in our analysis we assumed that it was a single development or a single investor or

2:24:49single developer it's a better way of saying that um what you may see is probably Mechanics Bank and and the uh Chase Bank would would be redeveloped separately and you would have a separate development on the other side okay so can you go back to that slide for a

2:25:12second just going again talking about um feasibility or sensitivity here the the nine is substantially smaller than 10.

2:25:22um but it it appeared that small sites were going back to the way you built the model so small sites are penalized however this particular site is still right at that 60 threshold so it's not supremely penalized right that's I well I think we just made a clear separation

2:25:42was it 16. yeah yeah I don't think this is this is not penalized so so it's it it's it doesn't even though nine is small or substantially smaller than 10 it's not necessarily uh recognizing that small factor okay thank you okay so this is just again a summary of

2:26:03the return on cost and you notice that we took out sites three uh six seven and eight so the sites that have negative numbers to them we're talking more about projects that are in the near term excuse me um and these are the sites that we think are the most feasible and obviously in

2:26:22return the sites that show in the sites that we didn't even evaluate there are areas uh near for example the El Cerrito Plaza that uh we didn't evaluate maybe behind the Trader Joe's project uh Shopping Center in everywhere where those are near-term near feasibility projects

2:26:42and also Del Norte node we think that there is a possibility there as well uh where there are potential economies of scale I'm just highlighting this outline in blue whether they're rectangular they're they're uh rectilinear they're more Square uh where they don't have to have an

2:27:01excessive parking replacement placement requirement uh where the city can actually directly impact land costs where they own the agency on lands the price those are all reasons for what is the most feasible site okay this is feasible another way of saying risk is reduced risk is reduced

2:27:20investment is more likely okay so here's just the typical return on costs as we perform in it today then we add in these other factors and when we talk about 10 percent parking demand reduction we're talking about actual the market demand is reducing it's not that

2:27:43you have decreed it and therefore it makes sense it actually has to be something that the renters are willing to buy into right because they're paying eighteen hundred dollars for a rental unit and at the same time having less parking so there has to be other things

2:27:59that you're doing like what CHS was saying is these are some programs that you could actually put into place which would reduce overall parking demand which therefore allows for developers to provide less parking okay so when you do just the 10 parking demand reduction these are the

2:28:19increasing you can see that some of these sites especially near the plaza become feasible or near feasible okay and these are the changes in densities by doing that so by reducing the parking demand you have less parking space area per the whole building area so the

2:28:39result is you have increased densities to the point of almost near a 100 units per dwelling unit at the Redevelopment agency site while maintaining the height while maintaining the height everything from the outside really doesn't look any different these are these are looking at

2:29:00I mean these increases in some cases are greater than 10 percent increases in number of units yes because it's parking demand you're reducing the parking demand which allows for you know you're You're Building more of an envelope for housing and less of an envelope for parking but

2:29:21it's is it it's not linear but what we're seeing is a greater increase in number of units than reduction in parking yes so if the parking was reduced five percent we could assume there was a six percent increase in units something like that yeah from side to side yeah

2:29:39but yeah I think it's highly site dependent because you have the I mean you can talk more about but the the fact that if you're typically you're trying to build the first ground floor or just slightly or ground floor as parking behind something and that you can't build half a layer of

2:29:57parking or you could but it's just not likely to access it yeah unfortunately models like this are blind to that and and pretty much what we're seeing is greater than 10 percent increase in the number of units for greater for a 10 reduction in parking so yeah yeah that's exactly this is a model

2:30:18and so we're making these tests and changing the develop envelope an actual architect comes in they can get a little bit more creative and actually design the space a little bit more efficiently there's a lot of standards that we're setting to get to to these numbers okay

2:30:32even though we did have an architect involved in the actual site plan and setup of the of the program um this is 10 plus the five percent rent increase and I think the mayor is correct that we're actually not that far from thinking that five percent rent increase above

2:30:51inflation above prevailing construction costs is unreasonable we think that that's actually a reasonable expectation in the market is assuming this in some ways by its capitalization rates in other words what they're willing how much profit do they need to invest in a project

2:31:08um and those capitalization rates are getting lower which means they need less profit to justify their investment and that's what the expectation that rents will ultimately increase okay so this is the five percent increase again higher uh revenues more projects

2:31:26become feasible so conclusions so I've got to ask the question go back to your nice pretty graphic one more before this this one right here yep um you know it it seems that a five percent rent increase has a very dramatic modification on these uh uh return on cost calculations

2:31:54and if we were to say as you pointed out rents are increasing we could we could potentially hit well above eight percent um without changing the parking demand structure uh at some of these locations so I mean I guess that's all of these potentially would be feasible even if we

2:32:16don't take parking demand reduction steps okay well if you allow me I'll put that in there ah thank you uh uh so let's see this is the uh yes so this is the five percent okay so five percent first ten percent later that's right thank you very much all right so this is the five percent first

2:32:36the ten percent later and what that looks like and you can see it does have a pretty substantial impact on feasibility but it doesn't make them all feasible it's just the ones that were already very close yep thank you Okay so in conclusion Heights above 70 feet in

2:32:57the near term don't seem that feasible but you can't allow you know a height standard of 70 feet or 74 feet what it would do is we'd probably would see some articulation of the building so you would still have a six-story building but you might have some nice I don't know parapets I'm just

2:33:15making this up but things that are are angular so you you actually get that that uh articulation um you know it just leaves open possibilities in the long term as Construction Technologies are moving to allow for wooden construction higher than 65 feet so we don't know that

2:33:34necessarily that will always be the standard so you could make it slightly higher so when you make the buildings more interesting does that increase the value and the rent that's hard to perform and I don't know if a lender would necessarily say it I mean maybe uh if you have a very fancy

2:33:54architect I'm sure David Baker would say that uh you know that that's exactly exactly the case I think there is some Credence to saying that certain architectural firms provide certain values in the investment World especially when you're looking for um Equity investors so to say that this is

2:34:14a project that we can sell and then you can show to your Equity investors I think it's worth it thank you lower parking ratio minimums these are obvious things allowing for greater flexibility is a recurring thing that I keep talking about and it it deals with that each problem has a very

2:34:36different solution there's not a single solution uh and allow for developers to change the responding demand because again if we are continuing this way and maybe if gas prices get five dollars per gallon maybe we will continue to reduce our parking our Auto ownership and therefore more

2:34:56Transit demand so we should keep that in mind and again let design and marketing factors Drive some of these project densities setting an arbitrary number of 80 dwelling units per acre I think limits you in the solutions you still have the height the massing the setback

2:35:12requirements all those from the typical layperson will not know the difference between an 80 dwelling units per acre versus a mining dwelling units breaker they won't know those differences at all so that's that's it yes questions question about the Del Norte area

2:35:34and I think it cites one and two one is the Mayfair site right two is the BART parking lot some of the proposals we've seen in the past have suggested that there be a project I think it may not have included the Mayfair site but it included property on the east side of the tracks

2:35:55the parking there's a park there's parking lots over there or park one parking lot I can't remember and then there's a space so what I'm wondering about if um if one included say those spaces plus site 2 plus Mayfair all as one project would the rules yeah the real monkey wrench

2:36:21there is a replacement parking it's very expensive and I I was working on the uh the Walnut Creek Transit village where bre properties is developing their site and the big issue is not only do they this Bart require you to build parking to their specifications which are more

2:36:38expensive than prevailing parking if you're building it privately but you also have to build it first in other words you build the bar parking before you start your project which is a very large Capital infusion before you can move forward and that can be a real

2:36:56uh hurdle to actually making the project feasible so if you maybe didn't include site 2 the the BART site that might make it more feasible that brings it back to the Mayfair site then yeah in that example um so then how do they I know that they're doing a project now at MacArthur

2:37:18right it's under construction I think and they just completed one at Pleasant Hill and I think both of those are in the parking lot so how did they make that work I'm not sure I don't know the answer to that okay I think they some of it deals with subsidies but I'm not sure

2:37:37okay I know that they built a I know at Pleasant Hill I remember that they built a structure or added onto a structure maybe I can't remember um as part of the Pleasant Hill project and it was done first um and I think there's over 500 units is that getting to where there's well

2:37:58economies of scale are important make a difference yeah and one of the things that bre properties has done as a solution is that they've selected to build the parking themselves rather than pay BART to build the parking okay so that might be the case Okay the other

2:38:11question I had about that site that's where the um the buses are located are you assuming that the buses are still there or what are you doing about the buses I presume the buses the bus area is still there okay thank you just a quick question on what you were just mentioning the Walnut Creek project

2:38:30it sounds like you have a little bit of experience on that one so your experience on that is that bre has selected it is is privately financing all of the replacement parking yes and they're able to do that for I'm sure a variety of reasons but one of them you're saying is that they are building

2:38:45the parking themselves and saving a little bit of money that way right but the project economics overall still allow them to get their appropriate return even though they're providing all the replacement parking that is very expensive to Bart one would hope yeah they're deep in okay

2:39:01thank you um earlier you said that density is a function of retail parking and set pack and obviously retail and and actually all three of those things are things that we can make uh are within our control in some fashion um what is the sensitivity of your model

2:39:19to those three functions um you know as we demonstrated uh rental rates changing is pretty substantial you've actually already alluded to the fact that if gasoline prices go up there would be a change in the marketplace but given those three things those three variables that we have some control over

2:39:38uh presence of retail on the ground floor uh amount of parking that's required per unit and setbacks or massing um what what are what which one of those is the model most sensitive to um I think it's the parking but I I'd have to go back and look uh I think it would

2:39:58be the parking threshold the setback standard does Drive some of this but in some ways the setback helps allows you to build surface parking which is cheap so you're not it's it's I think that's less of an issue than the parking requirement itself and when you have to

2:40:18go if you're going 65 feet then you've got to build more surface and Tuck under parking which is more expensive and you're getting less land area to build rentable air rentable space so I think it's the parking standard is the big one the setback I don't think is

2:40:34as important and actually what happens is if you have a higher parking standard you get bigger setbacks by just default because they want to basically allocate enough land for surface parking a minute ago you you I believe you were saying oh shoot and I have to look back at my

2:40:55notes but one of your uh recommendations was to not have a maximum density um and as what I just said was density you you've earlier said density is a function of retail parking and setbacks and I believe that your most recent one was you were saying don't put a limit on

2:41:13density and let the marketplace dictate the the density per acre and that the Common Street walker or not sorry common pedestrian is not going to recognize from the street what density is I'm just curious you know how you get to that to that recommendation it yeah

2:41:34it basically deals with this the things that were driving the density weren't necessarily the height of the building it was or the or some density standard those things were really driven by things like the parking requirement and your retail requirement and your

2:41:50setbacks so those were the things that were informing the massing of the building and if you change the setback standard I would say that that one might have a or a parking standard that might have a greater effect on the density than actually say going from 65 feet to 55 feet so in in

2:42:13the examples that you provided I just paused you on the one with regards to the retailer no retail at at the Midtown and showing the big discrepancy there what you're saying is that if we modify the parking number which you didn't it was one of your static numbers it wasn't a

2:42:31variable you played with but if we were to play with the the parking that we would potentially see a pretty significant difference in the rate of in in the variable that you're using to make to evaluate whether project is profitable or not yeah I should be clear

2:42:45on this when I say modify the parking number modify parking demand because again you decree a certain minimum threshold that doesn't mean that that development will go forward until there's a market for that lower parking demand got it which goes back to the CHS

2:43:02is presentation where we were talking about reduction of demand not limit of Supply exactly thank you hmm one other option is that you can offer retail with no additional parking requirement attached to it at all where it's a policy imperative to provide retail

2:43:21thank you okay um and so with that I think staff there's a final concluding presentation and if I could just check a clerk if are there any speakers on this item there's one speaker one speaker um I'm inclined to just let that speaker go ahead and then we can wrap it up

2:43:47Hal Miller of course do you mean again mayor Channel council members in the early 70s uh I was stationed in Washington DC living in Arlington Virginia I don't remember the before and after uh requirements for building Heights and densities but I do remember the public

2:44:13outroar uproar that came out of the change that Arlington went through when they significantly increased the Heights and the densities and the reason was is that the result of the changes resulted in both the fire departments and the police departments needing new equipment

2:44:33to protect the buildings and protect the people in the buildings and training and drilling on how to handle and deal with different circumstances in the new density and height requirements and for some reason the developers did not pay those expenses so the citizens of

2:44:54Arlington were required to raise their taxes to keep the city solvent to how they were providing that new coverage now that's an oversimplification of what happened in the City of Arlington but it illustrates that I don't know what changes you're going to come up with and

2:45:12I don't know what effect if any they will have on the fire protection and the police protection and the equipment and the training needed but please don't do this without contacting your fire and police professionals to see it and if it turns out there is hopefully there is some way that the

2:45:33developers who are developing this capability can contribute to the support needed to make these safe and livable places the other comment I wanted to make is let the market decide we heard that in a couple of places I'm not a developer expert and I haven't met many developers but when I do meet

2:45:56one that cares about the quality of life in El Cerrito and the economic stability of El Cerrito more than the amount of money they're developing delivering to their investors I'd be more comfortable with but the market decide my preference is to let you decide because you're

2:46:13accountable to us I have not met a developer that's accountable to any voters thank you thank you is one more speaker one more speaker Todd Jersey thank you my name is Todd Jersey I'm a local architect I live in Berkeley but I have a daughter at Prospect Sierra

2:46:34so does that count it does to me I um I have been um trying to I I have a particular love and interest in transit oriented development high density development and especially interested in a Renaissance in San Pablo Avenue Corridor as a remarkable once once it was

2:46:57remarkable Avenue in the East Bay and and restoring that um of course El Cerrito has a large stake in that as uh as its significant places are really along San Pablo Avenue Corridor in in such I have been interested in advocating for um higher density developments

2:47:19particularly at the Del Norte area and have worked actually for a couple years now and Lori knows this and Scott knows this trying to get developers to come here so I have lots and lots of conversations probably 15 different Developers and I really recognize what the

2:47:39gentleman said too about trying to find the right developer you know not the rapacious one um the one that the mythical utopian developer that's actually interested in our community and um I hope I found one and and um in a person that will hopefully I'll be bringing forward to you but I did want

2:48:02to speak to the issue at hand um in that as a recent reader of Don shupe's book The High Cost of free parking I have been absolutely become absolutely convinced that to uh to uh that the the requirements any kind of requirements for all street parking are a direct threat to any kind of real

2:48:23revitalization of El Cerrito um in fact they go right along with the uh as one of the key enemies to high density uh Central business district uh development and uh and one of the main reasons as you if you read Jane Jacob's book is why our essential cities are are

2:48:44really still suffering other than San Francisco New York and such like that but Oakland's a really good example of what happens uh when off Street requirements are parking requirements are instituted and they're doing some really good work in in changing that I I

2:48:59asked L3 to do as well um and then also the the density maximums are are again a sort of a thing that seems uh not necessary I mean we do have a public process we have a use permit process we can address all the things really specifically to a site um I think you know let's let's let the

2:49:21community design process do its course and and if we find that if we can find a creative developers that are interested in working in El Cerrito in a neighborhood um maybe what the market wants is extremely high density with smaller units at a particular site uh so we we do need that and I think the

2:49:42Acom in both the presentations tonight were fantastic uh and uh just great great great stuff and thanks for listening thank you any any other speakers thanks thanks for your comments um and we can of the last uh Act of this presentation last but not least great so now I'm

2:50:08going to bring it back to how the consultant's recommendations can be used to craft a vision in the specific plan that can become a reality various goals have been have been articulated for the corridor whether it's sustainability or Vitality housing jobs amenities for

2:50:26residents and it's important to realize that in order to get from that Vision to a reality it's important to communicate those goals to the developers find developers with resources and the creativity create an environment where they encourage to pursue that Vision

2:50:44flexible enough for them to use their creativity and also remember that incremental change is going to be the most likely change to be successful in addition to the specific recommendations that we're going to talk about in a moment I wanted to just talk about some of the more overall

2:51:01strategies that we've heard through this process for any Community that's trying to encourage development adopting the flexible development standards and policies one thing we've also heard is to consider things other than cars when dealing with circulation traffic policies

2:51:19developing and implementing parking programs and policies that will reduce parking demand and the impact of the parking on projects focus on sites that have short-term potential for development streamlining the entitlement process very important as Quinn has been talking

2:51:36about for reducing risk and costs were possible if we can allow infill exemptions that's very helpful for feasibility having the public sector take on identifying Planning and Building public infrastructure to support Tod is important and um ensuring that any fees or conditions any

2:51:56sort of exceptions that we put on a development developer are sufficient to cover the kinds of expenses that are specific to a project which one of the speakers actually just brought up but also making sure that we don't create a situation where the fees are going to

2:52:09discourage the development that we'd like to see I also wanted to just mention briefly the sustainable Community strategy as we're revising the draft specific plan we're going to take into account what's happening with that process which is the original approach to sustainable

2:52:27development in the Bay Area that's called one Bay Area it's going to rely on heavily on infill cities like El Cerrito and the current plan one Bay Area plan may require greater intensity of development than the specific plan does under certain scenarios so we really see

2:52:47that the specific plan might need to be sort of an iterative step from here forward through the general plan and the sustainable Community strategy and we'll come back at some point in the near future to talk about that um so getting to the specific plan as you recall there you probably recall

2:53:04there were development standards in the specific plan um in five areas we called them specific planarious Spas um Spa one was at McDonald and San Pablo Avenue and it's not covered in this study um Spa two were the areas within a quarter mile of the BART stations and

2:53:22going forward we're probably going to have different development standards for the two BART stations because they're very different and the standards did not apply equally well um and then suppose three four and five are areas between the BART stations along the corridor with the spot three

2:53:40being at City Hall so um on each of the next few slides I have a table for each of the spas and it shows what the different standard is that's being described what the current code is what the last draft of the specific plan had as a development standard and then an approach that we're

2:54:01recommending we take as we go forward in revising the plan we're not at this point being very specific about what the numbers are saying we want it to be exactly 70 feet or exactly 65 feet or a certain density these are really ranges that were wanting to make sure you're okay with

2:54:22this going forward with um recognizing that there will be some variation um depending on the spa and the and the some variables within those Spas um so for Del Norte and actually for all of the Spas we are recommending that residential be permitted on the ground

2:54:40floor um that's just sort of a baseline assumption that we're starting with um in Del Norte we are suggesting that we we will recommend a higher maximum right now we're saying it's probably going to be about 70 feet which would allow for six stories plus articulation

2:54:58um commercial parking we would uh we'll be coming back with a with a low minimum residential parking a low minimum with densities as we've been talking about um the densities really will be driven by a lot of the other factors and so right now we're imagining that the

2:55:15outcome will be somewhere between 70 and 100 units per acre um and that will um something that when we when we actually get a number that we can work with we're going to work with Mig um to do an analysis of while we may not be recommending a specific density for example we will

2:55:37need to have some sort of assumption to give to Mig when they're doing the update of the SQL analysis and so right now we're anticipating that we're going to give them assumptions in that range for their analysis purposes um but you know really the building form

2:55:52and footprint that is adopted is going to drive those results much more than any standard that might be set on its own okay um a spot 2B for the plaza um the uh the recommended approach is very similar here probably the outcomes will be different and it's really

2:56:15because of the variations in the sizes and configurations of the sites um the proximity to the BART station of those sites is different there's more single-family homes in closer proximity there's more retail the on-street parking is very different so those things will affect the ultimate

2:56:34um outcomes for the Civic Center area again um we're saying that residential would be permitted on the ground floor I think there's a still a an interest in having some commercial on the ground floor for some some concentrations of complementary uses but not a requirement

2:56:54higher maximums but having some clear setbacks and step Backs from the residential areas so that there's not quite such an impact there a very low commercial parking minimum a lower residential parking minimum we would think that the density is going to come in in lower just by the nature of the

2:57:13sites that are here and we would see some variations based on the proximity to transit or the or city hall or some of the residential areas on the corridor intersections a similar maximum Heights to what we're already in the code we don't anticipate having a minimum commercial parking

2:57:36requirement there's plentiful street parking and very little room for retailers or commercial uses to put parking off Street a low residential requirement again the density would be informed by the height setbacks and design standards the model from AECOM in those Heights

2:57:57came out around 50 units that was kind of the range without retail and again those things are going to really depend on some of the variations in the locations um Corridor mid block these are some of the more challenging areas the most challenging areas to develop again

2:58:15residential permitted similar Heights to what are allowed today no minimum parking requirement for commercial low minimum for residential the densities are going to be um necessarily lower and again those things are really going to depend upon the site locations and particularly in

2:58:37this area on the depths of the sites and what some of the adjacencies are so those are the specifics on our recommendations I don't know if you want to if you guys have any questions about those before I go forward or not excuse me if we could uh it's coming on 10 30

2:58:52and I'd like to extend the meeting no longer than another 20 minutes to 10 50 or less second if that's the motion all those in favor please say aye aye aye okay we're extending to 20 minutes so another 20 minutes okay thank you so did you want to does anyone want to

2:59:12go back over some of those details or should I go forward the only hearing no yeah I I want you to go for it but I'll just reiterate that the reason that all of these recommended approaches are not picking specific numbers if you could just reiterate that sure um

2:59:33well I guess what I would say is that um yeah are you talking specifically about density or are you talking about the others in general you're proposing like for example on the one you have showing mid mid court or you're saying low minimum for residential parking you're

2:59:55not giving us you know 0.25 or 0.5 you're saying low minimum no Max so can you explain why you're not providing you know specific numbers at this time I think that um we felt that we could either go with a recommended parking ratio from the study that CH has provided or we could also imagine it

3:00:19being lower but we wouldn't want the minimum to be any higher than what was provided to us as a recommendation by CHS so I didn't feel that I I we knew what exactly that right number should be yeah and and when will those numbers be developed I mean let's say tonight we

3:00:35say yeah we like your recommended approach but at what point do we make a determination as to whether it's 0.75.8.9 you know whatever that number is um well we're going to come back with a recommendation um maybe I could jump in and take a shot I think there are there sort of two

3:01:01factors as to why the recommended approaches um somewhat General I think the two studies were to designed to inform this specific plan further and give you a sense of what is likely to come in the final round hopefully the final round of the specific plan so when so that's one that's one reason

3:01:27another reason is we found ourselves in the last draft trapped by trying to do one-size-fits-all approaches not only within Spas but across bus as Lori alluded to we had the plaza and Del Norte sort of twin Transit spot one Transit uh area as opposed to two that are

3:01:50obviously very different as as we saw tonight so as we go through converting all of this all of this information and incorporating into the document it's going to require I think someone already mentioned a little more art than science of trying to make it all work and then turning it into

3:02:08regulations and and phases the second piece is also Lori mentioned but it requires I mean it's really a big a big piece is up to this point what's in the draft specific plan was studied in the environmental and there's a neck deck we need to be careful that as we

3:02:26start pushing either Heights or potential densities because we do need to pick a number to analyze that we don't trigger either unavoidable impacts or even worse and the need to do an eir because we're at a point now where we're right at the end of the project and if we had to

3:02:47trigger an eir we would essentially be starting all over again so that's sort of the framework of why we're presenting it this way we will take all of this go back and the plan is if we if we feel that we needed more Council direction we would come back to the council but if if

3:03:06nothing generally speaking if nothing in here that you've seen is a fatal flaw I think we would go back be working over the next few months updating the specific plan and then going back and beginning the process again which would be going back to the Planning Commission and then as that

3:03:27goes we would ultimately be back at the city council lab hope that helps just to sort of to build on that and what I was trying to struggling to articulate a moment ago actually the plaza is a good example of this you'll notice at the bottom that I I noted possible variations in the

3:03:44standards parking is actually a really good example in in the plaza area because I'm not sure that I I believe that the minimum parking is going to vary pretty much across that that area because what's within Spa 2 at the plaza you have small retail right on San Pablo

3:04:05Avenue you have the plaza you have big empty parking lots and the standards are going to vary really widely between those types of sites within the same Spa so not only across across Spas but between them um so I didn't I didn't really have enough room to be that specific or

3:04:21enough understanding to be right now of the differences between those sites thank you just a quick follow-up on that point or On a related Point um for the density row is the recommended approach that A Min and or Max density be set in the plan or that nothing is spoken about dwelling units

3:04:43per acre but rather the height the setbacks and the design standards are what is provided you know as the requirement in the plan and there's nothing in terms of numbers of dwelling units per acre I guess my my preference would be that we um I would prefer not to have a

3:05:01maximum I think there are reasons to have a minimum I would prefer not to have a maximum because I think that the other design standards are going to constrain density on their own um but I think the question will be can we what kind of assumptions will we need

3:05:15to make for SQL and will we then have to set those as limits or not oh okay okay thank you take on it I don't know if Scott is a different take yeah I think that's a good opportunity for me to sort of come in there and supplement um comments both from Lori and Scott is

3:05:29that that we have a prepared mitigated negative declaration that that in rough terms analyzes an envelope of development um the process of revising um the specific plan from the early versions that you saw has been informed in part by trying to come up with a plan

3:05:50that everybody from the staff and the consultants and and of course the council I'll be was going to plan better for the area is to do all of that within that envelope that already exists within the mitigated negative declaration because going beyond that means starting a new

3:06:07environmental review process which as Scott said basically means starting the whole process over again so there's a degree of flexibility within that envelope things can be moved around and pushed and pulled and and um but ultimately so for something like the the density it may be that we need

3:06:24to say even though the from a planning perspective it may be desirable not to have a maximum and instead let all these other factors inform what ultimately happens on the ground it may be that a maximum has to be included to ensure that we aren't going to have impacts

3:06:39that result that are beyond the scope analyzed and the mitigated neg deck but we don't know that until we start to sort of see all these moving Parts in place together and that the maximums could apply at a district scale rather than a parcel by parcel you know each is that right that's

3:06:58that's the hope is that when when all these pieces start getting put together that what we'll be able to say is well if we look at the total amount of development that was possible within the study area and that is analyzed in in the mitigated neg deck that that can be

3:07:12spread all over the place and as long as we don't ultimately exceed that level of development analyzed then we're fine the problem is coming back to that is and and this goes back to the same Row in the table that's up right now is how do we get to the point where we assure that

3:07:28the Development Across The District doesn't exceed what's already been analyzed and it may be that we do have to put in a maximum to ensure that that doesn't happen and maybe that we can use these other factors sufficiently to provide that Assurance so that we know

3:07:39that there aren't going to be impacts Beyond what's been analyzed so we're I think that's part of the reason that the approach tonight is bring it to the council conceptually and make sure that everybody's on the right track get your get your feedback and and your stamp of

3:07:52approval to proceed this way and then there's going to be another round of sort of more detailed work to ensure that the actual written document is going to well it's going to one figure out how to implement this and then two make sure that it's all going to take place within

3:08:07that envelope of impact that's already been analyzed and I see if I foresee a problem with an envelope on a regional basis the last developer in could have an inverse claim that he can't get his 40 units because the area has been maxed out so I I you know I definitely see a

3:08:24future problem with a regional approach to the number of units that can be used well if the first one's come in all at 100 100 an acre you know and they and they use up all the development units the last person in can't even put 30 on their lot if that happens I'm sure we

3:08:42will figure out some way to address it particularly given that the time frame that we're then talking about is years which will probably overrun the general Plan update at which point there will be a more comprehensive opportunity to look at all of this stuff together this is

3:08:54like the shot to get the ball rolling now slippery slope in piecemealing so we can go there later yeah I mean I don't think that since this is a plan you're not really piecemealing since it is ultimately been studying what is going to be in the planning document it's just that I think

3:09:13what I'm saying is that without trying to without that the scenario is possible but also unlikely to occur which doesn't mean that we don't have to study to the maximum potential it's just that that I think that that if that's what we're worrying about that ultimately the whole

3:09:31the overall planning for the city is going to ultimately address that a good time to to let let for a council to weigh in on are there any red flags given what's been presented so far and if there's any quick uh small suggestions or any refinements to alert staff to

3:09:53now's the time to do it I'd be happy to go first um I appreciate all the work so much on this and entertaining all of our detailed questions it helps it helps us all and going forward and I think this is going to be a great product when we're done with it we're not quite there

3:10:09yet um so just going through all of the recommended approaches I'm very happy with with many of the things that are listed here um the only items that jumped out at me that I wanted to bring up uh were first I I like the low minimum that's listed for the residential parking I

3:10:25particularly like criteria for exceptions uh we have a whole slew of potential measures that developers may come in with to minimize what they say their parking demand will be and I like that we're gonna we're gonna take those into consideration and set the message

3:10:42out from the start to developers that this is what we think your demand is based on all this technical analysis we've done if you have bet some other information or plan to propose something new that we haven't thought about please let us know and we'll consider that

3:10:56um the and when you say very there are some places where it says low men and other places where it says very low men for residential parking um I would like to just make sure and I'm sure you're going to be thinking about this that what um uh a comes report showed was these feasibility

3:11:13measures and if you were able to reduce parking the parking the cost of parking the provision of parking by 10 some of these areas will become feasible so just keeping in mind that he was using chs's number which I think was 1.0 or 1.04 spaces per unit so 10 off of that would

3:11:28put us below one space per unit so just when you're looking at low minimums or very low minimums keeping in mind what we've demonstrated from our analysis of feasibility and the other thing that comes to mind when I look at these are is the no Max was something that just

3:11:44jumped out at me I asked a number of questions about that and how how typical is this our City's looking at not including maximums for one reason or another and the one thing that came to mind during the presentation was that at interviews with developers indicated

3:11:59that just you know off the cuff remarks of how much parking do I think I'm going to need keeping in mind that I would imagine they try to give as high of a number as possible just to make sure they're in the ballpark if they actually come and do a project here the the typical response was two spaces

3:12:15per unit um not sure how many interviews were done but it it brings to mind that um was it one and a half okay thank you um just keeping in mind that there may be a place for a maximum and I'm not totally convinced that we're serving a great purpose by having no maximum so

3:12:35that's one of the items that I think I'm sure I'd like to hear what other council members have to say about that but I'm not totally convinced that we should go with no maximum for residential and commercial parking I actually would like to agree with that uh with a maximum uh concern because I

3:12:55think it it helps us um I can think of you know past attempts at development and and various things where the none the numbers would have been quite high and I'm also um concerned and I'm not sure how that would get handled with something like a big uh a big box

3:13:17there were a space large enough going in and then having huge amounts of parking is would that could that happen under any scenario that we're um looking at here well under the under the recommended approach here there you're right that there's nothing here that would prohibit

3:13:40someone from building a big box but um I think the fact that you're allowing so much higher and more intense development means that there's there's really not an incentive to do that if you have if you can build something that's of higher and better use um go ahead can I add just one caution to

3:13:58one site and that is site for setting a parking maximum that's the the ball site setting a Park parking maximum might not make sense specifically on that site because they would be in a heart a rock in a hard place and you know what I'm saying basically there thank you it

3:14:16would be because you can't build residential because the air quality standards say you can't build residential you can't build retail Park you can't build a viable retail Center because you're not providing the ample amount of parking retailer so all the other sites absolutely agree that's one

3:14:32site you might want but if I recalled our our current draft of the specific plan has ultimate long-term Vision a garage parking garage where all the uses would share in that shared parking space so that it could potentially use up the home buffer um hmm if and given that so again going back to

3:14:54all the complement of strategies we've got on the table there's so much to work with now that I'm really excited to see what yeah what what the final ratios will come out to now that we're giving you fair um you know unleashing you to the world of of strategies available including

3:15:09pricing and and sharing and all that so five minutes five minutes no because I need my five minutes don't forget last developer in and we better go another hour and a half here anyway no I um we've got a lot of expertise here on the technical aspects of of of this uh subject matter so I I've

3:15:38been concentrating a little bit on the overall um Concepts philosophies that sort of thing I do like the recommended approach um that has been outlined here uh because I like the reasons behind them the numbers that's fine I used to get hung up as some of you know on height

3:16:02um but as has been demonstrated here there's going to be enough uh how do you say enough considerations um that will probably self-define Heights for any one project so um that's okay uh where I'm really having problems with is the parking strategies and I'm concerned about the effects of

3:16:33neighborhoods that are right next to the two BART stations the other thing on one of the strategies are a couple where it says we should develop some parking management associations and that sort of thing I'm having trouble asking the residents of El Cerrito to pay a fee and develop that for in

3:16:55particular the Del Norte were over half the cars that come in are half the riders that come in not necessarily cars are are out of or out of the area or not El Cerrito residents and Bart created that so I would my only suggestion is ask BART to put in the five whatever it

3:17:19takes to run that uh I I can't see asking our residents even five dollars each to put in that and I I don't even know if we need something that formal because we're really talking about um parking strategies for two areas of town here uh the plaza area and I think

3:17:39that's worth clarifying because the five dollars per household is for new new development coming in not to assess existing yeah but even so um it's still El Cerrito residence and and I don't know that they should be part that's just my I that's just my thing here

3:17:58a speaker talked about the cost of extra Public Service my question and and I had it down uh here actually for for a long time is the cost of infrastructure required to support uh this development and if we take a look at the two areas we are now having at critical times

3:18:22we're maxed out um in my opinion as far as uh circulation and and that sort of thing so what who's going to pay for the infrastructure we need to bring um the roads the water all the other Public Access and and public requirements to facilitate uh the growth not that it can't be done it's just what

3:18:50are we going to do if you take a look at um Central Avenue from San Pablo actually from the plaza all the way the plaza area Bart all the way down to the freeway and Beyond it's a terrible situation and I think it's a good example of where infrastructure is way far behind

3:19:10development and as if you recall two years ago Lowe's believe it or not wanted to go down next to Costco and luckily you know for whatever reason they pulled out there was a there was a big public outcry over it but the fact of the matter is it's a good example of

3:19:29where is the public infrastructure going to support something like that so I think we have to I don't know if it's here but at some point in the in the process we're going to have to look at that in my opinion I like the idea of flexibility I like the idea although I I don't think the developer

3:19:49should have a hundred percent say on what they put on there but I like the idea of trying to be creative and work with developers to to provide something for uh our our future here the the only thing two is that um we're not San Francisco we're not Oakland we're not San Jose we're not Los

3:20:11Angeles we're El Cerrito and I think that the challenge will be in the future after we get this plan and go together is what fits El Cerrito and what do we want El Cerrito to look like in the future um when you go to Europe the big cities they're all multi-unit you won't find I

3:20:34shouldn't say you won't find it's very hard to find a single resident and say the big cities maybe New York's that way I I don't know um maybe San Francisco is getting that way in certain areas but I don't know that El Cerrito is here they developed because they had to I think we have a

3:20:52chance to decide what fits El Cerrito and and where our limits are in that so thank you extension motion or I'll move for a five minute extension so I can get my two minutes in second um okay so continue um so my only concern other than once I've expressed all evening

3:21:19um with regards to the recommended approach is the no minimums for the commercial parking in the mid block and intersection areas um my concern is that uh you know no minimum at those locations uh where those are located I'm not certain I understand what that policy what that

3:21:38action is trying to promote I heard that there is ample street parking but at the same time you know the businesses that we may be promoting as a result of of not having um having a you know no minimum I'm not sure what businesses don't want somebody to park there or

3:21:58would only support walk-up type users so I'm I am concerned about the no minimum at the um at the intersection of mid-block locations and and certainly similar to what we were just talking about with regards to the parking maximum for certain locations there may

3:22:16be in you know um intersections that that's appropriate for but as a general rule for the for the for those um San Pablo Avenue development areas I'm I'm a little concerned by that uh you know if nothing else with regards to Ada access so um so that that would be essentially my

3:22:36two minute comment um otherwise I would I think the recommended approach in general is is satisfactory and can support them so that leaves me um I I think I've said a lot already tonight but I generally feel I'm very proud of our city that we're getting to this point of having

3:22:55these conversations of considering the full palette of of tools available to us and that are starting to emerge over time simply you know just having a stag I I just don't want us to have a stagnant parking code that stays on the books forever that is not context

3:23:12specific does not consider Transit access does not you know all these things all all this context does have an impact and so I'm really excited that we're considering not only looking at pricing on streets um as a huge way to address the lack and potential that can supply in the future

3:23:32rather than over building you know we have limited dollars in space so as you know um so to getting getting the the parking to match what our ultimate goal is that you know potentially even adopting some kind of uh performance metrics of overall reducing driving over time but

3:23:51the commensurate of seeing an increase in walking and biking and Transit which you know if we can look to the census at the very crudest to see that we're constantly shooting for an upward trajectory of increased access maybe not necessarily increased driving but more

3:24:08people able to get around much easier in a variety of ways and then the 85 15 rule I think would be really critical to have worked in somehow so that we can protect the existing neighborhoods so that they're not taking on this bill over parking and that we're fine-tuning

3:24:24it to be demand responsive and that uh the echoing what council members are saying about the the maximum um you know regardless that we're starting the conversation as at what what Transportation demand management measures are you including at the outset at the at the beginning of the project

3:24:45and having that conversation at the as the opening discussion rather than just like energy you know Green energy and build Green Building in the past it's been always something asked of at the last minute and it's much harder to integrate but if we bring these things

3:25:01up at the very very beginning and and lay out that clear expectation I think I hope that it creates a greater sense of um of certainty that you know if we have consensus and we've got a palette of options and we're constantly monitoring and asking future development to carry

3:25:19some of that burden of you know annual accounts just you know let us know what does work so that we can evolve and adapt and we're not committed and tied into any set of Technologies or Trends but that the overall as a as a policy making body we're we're asking that there's an

3:25:38upward constant upward Trend um maybe not assigning exact benchmarks but that you know over time we're looking for that slow increase in um ped bike Transit mode split so I with that I think um we've got two other items um and I unless they're I'm hearing another motion to extend

3:26:04um we'll be covering those at the next meeting um I'm I'm happy to extend for five more minutes for this last item and we might be able to put it to bed in one minute who knows so I I move we extend for five minutes is there a second yeah I'll second that all those in favor

3:26:23okay last one do you have a motion I do um do I I'm happy to make a motion the public comment on this one I think there is actually we do have one speaker slip okay and for the folks at home this is that the last item we're talking about is the um discussion of a council meeting day

3:26:47change so that we would essentially consider move from meeting on the first and third Monday to the first and third Tuesday and there's a compendium staff report explaining um how that syncs up and coordinates with existing meetings so any stuff any other staff clarification

3:27:09on that I I can I I can do it I'm you've essentially covered it um periodically in my time here council members bring up why Monday as opposed to another day um a couple weeks ago councilmember benicini brought it up and actually said why don't we have put it on the agenda

3:27:28so um largely through the work of the city clerk we put together just a brief staff report so you can see what other cities do see if there are any conflicts with boards and commissions it seems like that's fine cable TV would be fine in terms of the package as you know we we

3:27:46get it out on Thursday late afternoons early evenings that would stay the same it it seems largely about giving council members in the public an extra busy business day also because of the alternating Friday schedules we do have some packet weeks where there's only one

3:28:05there's only the one business day that's the meeting day for the public to come in or there'd be additional analysis or so that's it that's it that was my primary purpose an extra day and more interact interactions with staff in order to provide clarifications and with that

3:28:22I'll ask for a public comment if yeah I have a comment myself too so okay so so let's take the public comment and then we'll have final discussion okay and if I can ask you to be brief not use your full three minutes I would appreciate it good evening mayor Chang

3:28:49members of city council and staff my name is Tom Paris I live at [address removed] in El Cerrito I'd like to offer my Commerce the city council uh regarding the meeting day change agenda item that we're looking at as a person whose work requires me to travel out of

3:29:03state with some frequency I'm always arranging my travel schedule with one eye on the city council calendar uh right now the first and third Monday are pretty much off limits to me and at least for me to be voluntarily planning an airplane ride uh this at times makes

3:29:19travel planning interesting and my clients frustrated changing Council meetings to Tuesday will mean that I'll now have to have Mondays and Tuesdays to avoid that'll make travel planning even more interesting I certainly acknowledge the extra day there would be for

3:29:31Preparation but for me I wish that was two weeks instead of four days thanks okay thank you and so uh councilmember Abelson yeah um I have some difficulty with it that a meeting that I have that isn't listed on the thing is the Contra Costa Transportation Authority which has

3:29:50an extensive packet and that would mean if we went to Tuesdays that I would have two and I have daytime meetings also I had two really heavy days that um and it's a little bit clear when I unclear when I would even have time to read my other packet because I often

3:30:09don't get it very much ahead of time for some reason um although it is fedexed um so I have a i it would present a big hardship for me that way um I also though Wonder um why we're meeting at 7 30.

3:30:28I mean when we could meet at say seven like I noticed a number of the other cities do and that would um I just think that would be a a better arrangement for a variety of reasons uh one is that we wouldn't all be here so late and that would include staff in that comment so I would wonder

3:30:47if we would want to consider our meeting a time of day not just changing the date but it will present a major hardship for me actually I'm sure we all have it well I would agree with the seven o'clock that'd be actually uh I don't know why we meet at 7 30. I've never seen any explanation on

3:31:11that but anyway seven o'clock would be fine with me and um so long as the packets come on Thursday uh which we heard they would Tuesday would be fine the extra day would give a lot of um preparation time however it's a big hardship on somebody that is conducting

3:31:31business for the city maybe that should be taken into consideration too um well I I certainly support seven o'clock start time also um for many reasons we wouldn't be here at 11 we'd be here at 10 30.

3:31:52um the other is that I actually um Tuesday with the hours that the city runs on Tuesdays the staff being here until six o'clock the meetings on Tuesdays would actually reduce us eating into the personal time for staff right now the business day ends at five our meeting doesn't start

3:32:11till 7 30. that's two and a half hours that staff has to wait around for that meeting to start where on Tuesday the business day ends at six the meeting starts at seven we're only eating to their personal time by one hour so I actually think that Tuesdays from uh

3:32:28from perspective of more transparency more time for people to comment and more accommodation for our staff is actually a um something I could support um you know Mondays at seven Tuesdays at seven you know it's all the same to me but certainly for others it may make a

3:32:47difference so at this point I think you're looking for general staff or general counsel direction do we or should we make a motion for on a discussion their consensus meaning direction if or okay we just need some direction because then we need to bring back some some changes

3:33:10to uh what code so I personally I I have to um I understand uh council member abelson's difficulty but I think it it does give the public more time to to digest to consider and to essentially bring questions to staff for clarification if needed given that it essentially is resulting in more overall

3:33:37review time for all parties um and and so I I would support doing a 7 PM Tuesday uh change in the schedule and I guess the question do we need a consensus uh or you need at least emotion if somebody's going to propose the change we will have to come back in a minute with an

3:34:08ordinance to amend the municipal code but uh okay so we do need a emotion and a vote on the motion so I move that we direct staff to prepare an ordinance altering the meeting date and time to to the first and third Tuesdays of every month at 7 pm so I'm going to ask a question

3:34:35um certainly with the conflict of with Richmond and there might be times that we want to send a representative to Richmond is what's Magic about first and third why not second and fourth uh Tuesdays I mean what's what's the what's Magic about first and third I mean if we are

3:34:51going to move it to Tuesdays what difference does it matter whether it's the first and third or the second and fourth will that help without council member Abelson um I don't know what else it would I'd have to I'd have to look and see I think there's commission it definitely

3:35:06disrupts commission meetings but we're the council they work you know because that people sign up for things with an expectation that they uh will be able to attend them so when it's kind of all finely tuned just how I look at it and people only kind of sign up for things

3:35:23that they can go to so when one of them switches it kind of fails that um working up and people then for example if you if you did the second and fourth Tuesday I think that's an it's an eqc meeting time right I think it is and so then that would the people who signed up

3:35:46because they could come on a Tuesday can't and so then we move that to some you know it starts um making it difficult for the people who are occupying the seats with the expectation that it has a certain meaning date then I'll suck in the motion on the floor okay so Four Eyes in one day

3:36:16that's that's it for tonight can I ask before we leave when's this supposed to come back and then do we have to do we have to wait for uh what 30 days after that well then it comes back for second read so we're talking about starting after the first of the year February February the the

3:36:42second meeting of February which is already scheduled for the I just want to make sure that was still plan here all right thank you okay thank you every very much everyone and we will adjourn to our meeting Monday still uh first Monday in December for reorganization thank you