City Council Meeting February 19, 2013

0:00:00I know this is a good part of the evening as the the part before the meeting we get to catch up with people but we do need to get uh on with our meeting um so I'm going to convene the regularly uh regular city council meeting on Tuesday uh February 19.

0:00:16well the records show that all council members are present um and we will now move on to item one which is the Pledge of Allegiance I'm hoping that many of you will join me but you have your right to sit there and be quiet or stand and be quiet so if you would join me at this time with the

0:00:39Pledge of Allegiance one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all right we will go to council and staff Communications I unfortunately have a stack so I'm going to look at Staff first staff raised his hand I have two um the first one is uh we heard today we're

0:01:17proud to announce that I believe for the third year in a row we received notification that we won from the government Finance Officers Association gfoa which is a National Organization uh the distinguished budget presentation award and you know that's something we

0:01:34worked a lot of years to get to that level so again this is a third year in a row so we're we're really happy about that um the second thing only slightly related is I'd like to introduce Lisa Malik SATA who's in the staff section in fact today is her first day as our new Finance

0:01:54director Lisa joins us from the city of Berkeley and um based on the time of the year I think you're going to be seeing a lot of Lisa really soon so we want to welcome her to our team great thank you um councilmember bridges any any reports messages thoughts councilmember Friedman yep council

0:02:18member Abelson mine are all related to uh assignments okay no okay I will try and get through this as quickly as I can first I wanted to let everyone know that we did send a letter off to First select women Patricia yodora of Newtown municipal center I don't know if everyone was aware that we

0:02:41had done that it was distributed uh shortly after our last council meeting um next I want to read a statement regarding the city of El Cerrito versus matto Santos which is the true up payment lawsuit at its at our December 19th meeting the city council met in closed session to consider and approve a

0:03:02proposed stipulated judgment to resolve existing litigation with the State Department of Finance and the Contra Costa County auditor controller the city had filed this litigation to challenge the demand by the Department of Finance and the auditor controller that the

0:03:14city's former Redevelopment agency remitted 1.76 million dollars as part of the process of dissolving the Redevelopment agency Statewide referred to as the true up payment the city believed that true up payment had not been properly calculated the city also challenged the constitutionality of

0:03:31the authority of the Department of Finance and the auditor controller to withhold sales and use property tax from the city to impose fines for refusing to remit the funds demanded under the terms of the stipulated judgment the city is not required to make the true up payment and neither

0:03:46finds nor penalties are were imposed upon the city so I just wanted to make sure that was read into the record um we have a uh the Solid Waste Authority of West Contra Costa County um has published their eir for the proposed regulate single-use carryout bag ban in

0:04:10West County um so that SQL document or eir is available for review the proposed ordinance uh the draft ordinance that they are reviewing would prohibit the free distribution of single-use carryout paper and plastic bags at the point of sale um the copies of the eir available at

0:04:31recycle more offices El Cerrito City Hall here and other locations the document can also be downloaded from recyclemore's website the public review period on this document will end March 4th 2013. so after the SQL process we will have the opportunity to adopt that uh to to adopt

0:04:54the ordinance uh based on their environment their Regional environmental analysis however prior to that staff will do an extensive Outreach to both residents and businesses in El Cerrito to let them know our plans to adopt that so that's still a ways away but the

0:05:10public comment period ends on March 4th um also from recycle more then this is for uh the school anybody with school children and since we have a representative from the school district the school district there is a elementary school essay contest for 300 words uh up you can win

0:05:31up to 200 by explaining why is littering littering bad for the environment or wire reusable shopping bags better for the environment than plastic or paper bags and the deadline for this is Friday March 15th I don't know if you've seen it but we can just get it routed

0:05:53around so that both the clerk and um Todd Groves who's here from the school district can bring that up then on to the brighter side of things we um this Photograph that's on the cover of Western city is actually a photograph Melanie smiling it's a photograph that's

0:06:12extensively used in the climate action plans we'll actually all be seeing this Photograph later uh today but this is uh we did make the cover of Western City and it's discussing the vast improvements we've made along Sam Pablo Avenue and all the good things that come

0:06:29from from that development um similarly San Pablo Avenue made the feature archetical in East Bay mud's Water Report San Pablo Avenue was featured there as well as part of our upgrades along San Pablo Avenue we put in extensive amount of water savings devices so so we are saving water and

0:06:53and East Bay mud is recognized us for that so in um in the most recent East Bay mud report we are featured in there as well so those that concludes my reports at this time I have many more later in the agenda um with that we'll move on to item three oral Communications from the public

0:07:18I have no speaker slips mayor is there anybody here who would like to speak who neglected to put a speaker slip in seeing none will move on to item four we have three presentations today um we will start with a presentation from director Zachary Mallette from the

0:07:38Bay Area Rapid Transit System welcome thank you uh thank you for honoring my request to introduce myself to you and your citizens I just wanted to give a brief presentation about who I am what I ran on as a Bart candidate and then working towards and the State of Affairs

0:08:03at Bart that will impact residents in the BART jurisdiction in coming years um okay so again I'm going to discuss who I am uh I'll give a geographic confines of what district 7 is my initiatives and priorities in both State of Affairs I've been a long time Transit Advocate I uh

0:08:28grew up originally in the South Bay um and when I took transit for fun or otherwise I was always surprised when I got to San Francisco and other environments where there was this big boom in transit usage compared to where I grew up and I I spent a lot of time curiously wondering and identifying why

0:08:49that is so I pursued um advocacy to advocate for investments in land use and transportation that can make Transit more viable um consistent with that I later pursued a bachelor's in urban studies from Stanford and a master's in City Planning with the transportation emphasis from UC

0:09:10Berkeley I recently graduated I am a West Contra Costa resident reciting a few miles north in El Sobrante so while I was going through school and being an advocate I came to the realization that uh a lot of transportation and land use decisions are politically generated

0:09:35um the visions and ideas are developed politically and the the plans are then implemented through professionals and I I found myself wanting to be part of that first side um developing the vision working with the community towards that end and politically working to make that occur

0:09:59in addition the on the on the board there was a lot more politics and limited planning background I felt I could benefit the board by bringing my background as a newly minted Transportation planner and uh some some age balance going to that effect uh I have a couple bragging rights I I am the

0:10:21youngest person ever elected to the BART board 25 years old I am I also am the first person to be elected to represent district 7 from the East Bay um I believe we've had a prior appointed members but in terms of being elected I I get to call myself the first uh

0:10:38District Seven you see here in green it's the only District that transcends the bay representing portions of San Francisco from the visitation Valley and baby Hunters Point up through South of Market Treasure Island the Western communities of El Cerrito Albany Berkeley uh and West Oakland but all of

0:11:01Emeryville and all of West Contra Costa from Crockett through Richmond here in El Cerrito districts three and seven are basically splits by the BART tracks with my district 7 on the west side and District three on on the east side um this came about through redistricting

0:11:22in 2011 December 2011 and I like to nickname The District the I-80 Corridor District because that's basically what it represents um I'll go into details about what that means with my priorities a little bit later um I I went through some of these earlier and I will go through my state of good

0:11:45repair matter in a couple of slides when I discuss Bart's State of Affairs and how old and aged it is uh but one other key priority that I ran on was fair Affairs um and what that relates to is there are interagency agreements between Bart and and pretty much a single select Transit

0:12:06Agency that allows you Transit users in that City to have unlimited rides on Barts they pay almost nothing 25 cents per ride for the average worker but that's at the expense of all other Bart Riders and I wanted to bring attention to that and the biggest thing that I ran on was

0:12:28W Bart uh W bar is simply a project and study title A lot of people mix it up with a specific technology or something of that story technology will be decided through the study but as a definition it's looking at the corridor and how to improve transit in the I-80 Corridor

0:12:51West Contra Costa in West Contra Costa the I-80 quarter as I'm sure everyone here knows it is the most congested travel Corridor of the region uh we waste more than I think I saw 14 000 annual hours on the I-80 in in congestion annually and the El Cerrito del Norte station is also the second

0:13:15most congested home origin station of the East Bay with more than 8 000 daily Riders and nearly 60 percent of those Riders live north of both El Cerrito and Richmond so there's a great need and call for traffic relief in this corridor one idea that I put together and that

0:13:36Janet Abelson got to hear a little more than a year ago was the idea of an extension uh you would split based on this proposal the Millbrae and Fremont lines at Del Norte and bring one of them up the interstate with up to four stations in San Pablo Hilltop Pinole and

0:13:56Hercules laughs but there's many steps before we get there um I believe your city clerk provided you some handouts uh any extension project of Bart or other rail must meet certain density standards along the corridor to satisfy Bart and MTC requirements I believe MTC requires in

0:14:19the range of 3850 dwelling units within a one-half mile on average around the station areas um finally I'll discuss the state of good repair in other states of Affairs at uh at Bart our our system is as our infrastructure is as old as the system is 40 years old and it is deteriorating

0:14:44with frequently out of service elevators and escalators uh our capacity is more than double what we originally planned for this is a frequent occurrence in downtown San Francisco stations and we're we're needing to find ways to curb this uh there's also a lot of financial

0:15:07sustainability things to focus on that barge Bart pays both employer and employee share of Pensions uh employees are are guaranteed medical after retirement after just five years uh we we have a lot to do financially that I am committed to looking at before returning to voters as we will have to

0:15:29do in order to fund getting to a state of good repair so a lot of Cleanup in terms of infrastructure and finances at Bart I I just would like to reiterate that I am a young newly minted City and transportation planner I'm not today a career politician maybe in the future I

0:15:50will be but today I'm I'm merely a city and transportation planner who has found that the best impacts and contributions I can make is through the political planning process and I look forward to doing that over the next four years and potentially Beyond I'd be happy to

0:16:08answer any questions or comments that the council has uh Council councilwoman Ben C thank you for the presentation and thank you for coming to us it's such a we always want to meet one another I think and it's nice when you can come to our meeting so that makes it really convenient for us

0:16:26um one question so is if the W Bart project and ongoing is it is it a to be funded sort of planning project or what's sort of the status of doing the review of some of the density thresholds and other matters that you listed it's definitely a to be determined status

0:16:41it's an idea right now it's been Revisited off and on over the last few decades but uh my getting on board is basically the the newest effort at looking at it great and I might just um point out to you two items that well one item that's on our current agenda for tonight and items that have been on

0:17:01our previous agenda that kind of deal particularly with our BART stations and that is you you were probably aware of these but I'll just point them out now since I have a captive audience in you uh the San Pablo Avenue specific plan is in draft form and that involves a great

0:17:15emphasis on Transit oriented development around the BART stations and of course there's multiple property owners around the BART stations Bart being one of the primary Property Owners so I think as that gets into the finalized form you might just want to take a look at that

0:17:29document that's hopefully to be finalized this year and I might also point out that our current agenda tonight has our draft study session on our draft climate action plan and one of the strategies that I I was kind of in thinking you were coming I was looking for items in the climate action plan

0:17:45that might kind of intersect with with our BART stations and one of them has to do with um or relates to the fact that uh the number of folks that do come to the Del Norte station more than half of them I think our climate action plan noted were in single occupancy vehicles and one of

0:18:03the strategies that we have in terms of trying to reduce vehicle miles traveled is to examine how to incentivize um a shift of that proportion you know much lower below a majority of folks coming alone in their cars so those are just two things that I want to note for

0:18:18you are sort of on our recent agendas and kind of on the councils on the council's radar screen this year and thank you so much for coming great thank you well thank you very much for coming and we look forward to seeing more of you it's wonderful to have a representative

0:18:37who actually resides in our side of the bay so we really appreciate that so thank you very much for coming tonight and we'll see you soon I think thanks for this opportunity with that we're going to move on to item 4B the annual El Cerrito streets oversight committee report presentation

0:19:07by Al Miller good evening mayor Lyman council members uh having the privilege of being the chair of the citizen Street oversight committee for the last past year I'm here to make the our annual report to you on January 28th uh the street oversight committee met and reviewed expenditures

0:19:32of Revenue collected pursuant to chapter 4.60 of El Cerrito municipal code to determine whether such funds were expended for the purpose specified in the current Street repair and maintenance expenditure plan I'm reading this because there's very specific requirements that we have to do

0:19:54and although I don't know I don't think many people will know what chapter 4.60 of the El Cerrito municipal code is now they know that it's there and if they're interested they can go look for it the expenditures reviewed were reported for fiscal year to 11 to 12. were

0:20:14summarized in the city's comprehensive annual financial report we also reviewed the agreed upon procedures report issued by the city's independent Auditors Mason Associates which stated that nothing came to their attention and caused them to believe that the city had failed to comply with

0:20:33the terms covenants and conditions of the master installment sale agreement related to the bond issue that means that the professional Auditors that you hired to look from your point of view at the bond expenditure and the other conditions imposed on the city through the sale of

0:20:54those bonds to see that those were met and complied with and we agreed with her the committee also reviewed a detailed list of vendors to whom the expenditures were made after a review in the discussion uh Jerry Bradshaw as usual did a very good job in answering all our

0:21:17questions so it went rather smoothly because the workload in this last fiscal year was significantly reduced from the previous one because most of the actual Street construction work has been completed apparently by unanimous vote the committee found that the expenditures

0:21:37were inappropriate use of the pothole and local Street Improvement maintenance transactions and use tax the committee is hereby reporting their findings to the city council and the citizens of the city of El Cerrito also pursuant to the section 2.04.320 c of the El Cerrito Municipal

0:21:58Code which chartered us uh other comments are made just for your information uh the fact that the council has approved projects as part of the street maintenance program that were not directly included or not directly part of quote fixing the streets at least the perceived direct

0:22:24application of fixing the street caused mild concern of at least one of uh oversight committee uh through our discussions I think we made them understand that the process that's in place basically we're there to see that the funds collected under the tax are spent

0:22:47in approved programs by the council that those conditions were met and though we might not agree individually or collectively with decisions made by the council that's not part of the city's streets oversight committee to get involved with so basically another upside report I'd

0:23:07also like to comment again that Mary and Jerry supported the committee very well and Jerry explained to us the plans that he has in place to replace himself as he moves part-time other time elsewhere out of the program I would also like to announce that at this same meeting

0:23:30the committee elected member Aurelia Schultz as chair for this year and member Lynn Kessler as Vice chair so that's who you'll see next year and I'll be happy to take any questions if there are any thank you very much Mr Miller thank you very much for your report and your

0:23:49service as a chair and we will look forward to your your replacement so thank you with that we'll move on to item four C sustainability tools for assessing and rating communities the acronym of star it's presentation by Melanie Mintz foreign good evening mayor and City Council

0:24:28Members my name is Melanie Mintz and I'm the city's environmental services division manager I'm joined actually tonight by Emily alter the Environmental Services Division intern who's working with us on a number of efforts but we'll be doing the heavy lifting on this star project

0:24:47tonight I'd like to give you just a brief background on the star system um let you know about our participation as a pilot project and then provide an overview of the of the framework star is a framework for assessing and rating communities based on a broad set

0:25:04of sustainability metrics and it aims support to support cities and counties to become increasingly livable and more sustainable over time more technologically savvy too here we go let me again thanks star has been many years uh yeah just in case thanks uh star it's been many years

0:25:30in the making and it's a collaborative project between Italy an organization best known for its efforts to assist cities with their climate action goals the U.S Green Building Council another National Organization best known for creating and operating the lead rating

0:25:44system for green buildings the center for American progress and the national league of cities of which we're actively involved what star aims to be what lead historiums to be for communities what lead is for cities it aims to foster a race to the top in regards to

0:26:01sustainability the rating system aims to provide a framework for actions for identifying actions and outcomes that support sustainability across all the pillars of sustainability the social economic and environmental it is a system that provides us a benchmark internally to help us see

0:26:20where we're at and see where we can do better it also drives continuous Improvement and it supports friendly competition it evaluates us against other communities that have similar goals the system is also an online system and that is the The Benchmark of its tool

0:26:37it's an online system for inputting um data regarding to our sustainability outcomes as well as allowing us to upload different actions so that we can in the end get a score star's guiding principles goals and objectives collectively aim to Define community scale sustainability

0:26:55and present specific outcomes and actions to measure and guide a jurisdiction's efforts to become increasingly sustainable and resilient over time last year El Cerrito applied to become one of the pilot program communities to test evaluate and participate in the

0:27:11star program where actually as you can see oops we're the only Northern California community and what you can't tell but is fun and interesting is where the smallest Community participating the system is actually built for cities and countings and is aims to be flexible for

0:27:27communities of different sizes and already in our participation in this National dialogue we've identified a number of ways in which small cities have some advantages in terms of interdepartmental collaboration and not working as much in Silo so that's been a little bit interesting

0:27:43um also for the fun of it I have also listed all of the other communities that are participating across the country and in Canada and you can see that while we're a small City we're actually participating with some Giants in the in the sustainability movement Santa Fe

0:27:58Chattanooga King County Victoria Canada one of the the perks of participating in this program is actually participating in monthly webinars with people from these communities talking about their own efforts so why El Cerrito what's in it for us and what and what can we gain from it

0:28:16and why are we participating well first and foremost it provides an additional framework for achieving City council's strategic plan Vision the one I have here is in draft form as you know and we're still in the strategic planning process but it helps provide another

0:28:28framework and an implementation tool that provides specific metrics and actions that support council's vision for a safe connected and environmentally focused destination with numerous other amenities and features the star framework will be considered as we enter into the Strategic plan

0:28:43implementation phase and might be incorporated in in in one way or another star also provides a common vocabulary for interdepartmental communication about some sustainability goals this is both valuable internally as it creates a common vocabulary and dialogue

0:29:03but it also helps to leverage synergies between the various departments and as you'll see and in your packet you have a grid which shows the breadth of the star system as I mentioned it also allows us to participate in a national dialogue with other cities and communities that aim to

0:29:19also be proactive in creating sustainable livable communities and it provides and this has been useful already it provides well vetted strategies and actions that a city can take to achieve its goals and again in a broad in in all these areas so star is built on seven goal areas as you can see

0:29:39um the built environment natural systems economy and jobs education arts and Community equity and empowerment climate and energy and health and safety within each of these goal areas are numerous objectives which I will go into and you have in your packet with Stars game by integrating

0:29:55strategies across these multiple goals is to aim to get greater benefits for the resources invested and to leverage greater synergies again to create a kind of a broad view of what sustainability really is so again these are the seven goal areas that I just we were just looking at but

0:30:14now they have the objectives within each of those goals that each of these objectives then have outcomes that communities are measured on and local actions that they can take to support the outcomes and you have these in your packet but you can see they include a really

0:30:30broad array which when staff was looking at the program found this really compelling that it really supported many of the goals that Council and the community have talked about in the strategic planning process as well as elsewhere but everything from Community

0:30:42cohesion to emergency prevention and response to Green infrastructure greenhouse gas mitigation complete and compact communities housing affordability and others so you can see it's very very Broad and of course within each of these there are several outcomes and many actions that we can

0:30:57take to support them and get there the system is menu based and the points are awarded on a cumulative cumulatively so a city can choose which goal areas and which actions and objectives it wants to meet um based on where it's at in its current development or its own priorities

0:31:16and you can see in each of the areas you can get up to a certain number of points or 700 points in the system and at the end of the process you are measured and you can see where you fit and again because it's a menu based cumulative system you can do just as much as you

0:31:29can do and get measured based on that so really based on where you're at in the community and you can also then of course aim to improve over time so I'm going to provide just a quick overview of the system it's a pretty robust system and it's also very attainable very understandable and very

0:31:48easy to read and participate in so the system as I mentioned is built on goals which are across those seven goal areas and within those goals there are numerous objectives um within those objectives there's several outcomes Community level outcomes that are measured and then

0:32:04there's a series of local actions that you can take to get the points the criteria for including the outcomes in the and the actions and the measurements selected by star are that the the data is accessible that it's derived from commonly collected data so communities across the country would

0:32:23likely have access to it either through something like the National citizen survey or the census that is flexible to fit different communities that it's timely so that it can capture outcomes that are currently relevant but also forward-looking that it's useful in that

0:32:36it provides significant value to help councils and jurisdictions make decisions and address local priorities and that it's systemic that is that it draws attention to a Preferred Future while offering a metric that measures progress and where possible satisfies

0:32:49performance reporting for multiple goals to highlight the integrated nature of sustainability so randomly out of a hat I picked one goal area and um one objective area just to highlight how the system works and how it looks like when you drill down into a local

0:33:04into something local so in the both environment goal area the overarching goal is pretty simple which is simple and robust which is to achieve livability choice and access for all where people live work and play and you can see on your on your grid that the objective area is within this touch the

0:33:24areas of noise and Light Community Water Systems Compact and complete communities housing affordability infill and Redevelopment public spaces and transportation choices so again out of my hat public spaces is what came up so I will go into that so public space

0:33:39is the goal within this system is to create a network of well-used and enjoyable parks and public spaces that feature Equitable convenient access for residents throughout the community there's four different outcomes that you are scored upon and that is that you

0:33:52achieve and these you have to achieve some some of them have partial credit across the system and some don't but you have a certain level of service for your population density so acres per person or per thousand people that accessibility and proximity is considered that is that all of your

0:34:06residents have a park within a certain distance connectivity and use and satisfaction local actions and again this is just uh you know this was the one measure that I chose but each of the measures each of the objectives that you see on there have these similar groups of actions and

0:34:23outcomes and like this one some of them are things that we've done and that we're far along on um and others kind of point to things that we might like to do and others sometimes actually bring up something new that we haven't even necessarily considered within our sphere of

0:34:37influence or within our our dialogue so this one you can see is a group of adoptive parks and or open space plan which while we have a general plan we don't have a specific Parks plan although we are about to embark on an urban Greening plan which will incorporate some of the things that this

0:34:50would incorporate conduct a study regarding the economic impact of public spaces and Parks adopt regulatory strategies to incentivize or require in-lu fees or the provision of parks and public plazas by development adopt design guidelines to satisfy sustainability goals in your parks and

0:35:09also to provide the appropriate amenities for residents participate in a regional Alliance to increase Recreation and open space and parks in the in the region and then of course these which we have done many of them create an Advisory Board like our Parks and Recreation Commission

0:35:26established volunteer maintenance programs which we have in the making to provide assistance for low-income users which we do toast programs or events in parks and public spaces which we do and consistently invest sufficient funding which I haven't learned what this metric

0:35:39and how they determine what sufficient is yet this is just a quick screenshot of the online tool and you can see again it has a goal area then it has each of the objectives and if you were to click on either one of any one of those objectives it would reveal the outcomes

0:35:52and actions that you would take and provide opportunity for documentation so the hierarchy as you can as we just reviewed the pillars of sustainability that this is built on are environmental economic and societal and then it's built on goals objectives an overarching

0:36:10purpose evaluation measures outcomes and actions and in the actions and you probably saw this but these are the types of actions that each of the objectives are built upon so you can do education and Outreach you can do plans you can update your policies and codes

0:36:24you can Implement best practices you can make sure that you have the appropriate enforcement and incentive mechanisms that you have the programs and services and that you are investing in and maintaining your facilities and infrastructure to meet those objective

0:36:36areas so where we're at right now is the program really just got underway and our first step will just be to do a quick self-assessment then Emily and myself will be attending monthly webinars and trainings with the star staff but also working with we've created an

0:36:54interdepartmental team to talk about star and also to identify who would be the appropriate person to learn about each area and then Emily mostly will work interdepartmentally to complete the evaluations we'll be identifying the appropriate people for her to talk to

0:37:07about the status of different planning efforts or data um and then we'd like to generate a short Report with recommendations where we're at what was our score and where we think we could be in one three or five years and again this would interact with our other planning processes such as the

0:37:22specific plan it provides some good metrics such as the Strategic plan it provides a complementary tool um the climate action plan was almost wrapped up when we started doing star and so when we've talked about it Marie and I it's it's interesting we didn't specifically integrate star into the

0:37:36climate action plan but star provides a robust way of getting it many of the goals that we identify in the climate action plan um for further information of course you can go to the star communities website but you can also sign up for their newsletter or updates and if you do sign

0:37:51up you will see that we were featured in the February uh National webinar um we presented Emily mostly on in the climate and energy goal area and we presented on our waste minimization efforts and of course we were the Envy of many places across the country and

0:38:07they because of that many people actually asked for the presentation so Emily had to do it twice so they could record it and realize that they need to be recording these so those will be up there and we were presenting with Victoria British Columbia who was also

0:38:18who presented on their greenhouse gas mitigation measures which was also Fun Since we were right in the process of wrapping up our own climate action plan so I'm available for questions councilmember Freeman yeah I've got a few questions I think this is terrific

0:38:32it's such a comprehensive list it can get kind of overwhelming uh the first question is how many communities applied and they said I asked them that actually and about 120 applied although it was kind of a selection process among some of them figuring out who was ready who

0:38:50would work for so I think they're bored actually so I don't know exactly how many applied but they had aimed to include 25 and they ended up allowing 30 to participate well congratulations on the team that put our application together my next question is their ability to change these criteria in this

0:39:10pilot phase I think so so I think that it's definitely gone through like a seven year process with numerous stakeholder groups and a lot that we didn't participate in we got to come in at the tail end right now but I think that is the type of information that they might likely be looking for

0:39:24especially maybe there's some that really just isn't relevant for local communities just like with lead in California we're pretty far ahead on some of this stuff whenever you're participating in a national system there's many things that the state Title 24 is always the best example

0:39:39um but so those are interesting there's others we don't touch but maybe we should but I think that they welcome that feedback okay um in particular I noticed that education arts and Community was only 70 points where all the others in this grid are 100 points so I'm wondering why that

0:39:57this Vision was made something that they've often we could probably do would be a webinar for Council council members could be the type of thing that they do Nationwide they I think on that one and Emily correct me if I'm wrong I can't remember if they couldn't when when

0:40:11certain points were less it wasn't because they thought they were worthless but they couldn't identify enough local actions and measurements so we could look at that but that's what I recall when they talked about why some of those were lower is that they felt that there

0:40:24wasn't something that fit their measurements for for being a part of the system because I felt that people either couldn't that local jurisdictions couldn't influence it couldn't get the info but I haven't looked at that one yet and so when that webinar comes I mean we I will learn

0:40:37more and I will share I can share it great last comment and I'm impressed with the list under equity and empowerment but one thing I think it's kind of alluded to but not clearly stated is economic Justice Justice we will look great so thank you very much excellent council

0:41:02member Abelson um yes I'm I'm really um happy to see that we um are able to participate in this pilot and um I guess one of the things I was wondering about um regarding it is the idea of this whole project not just what we're doing but the whole thing to exercise this

0:41:24program and to find where there are where it works and where it doesn't work and and then make changes and make it a better system so um in doing um this pilot what we would then be or not because of that but but because of the way this works uh yet is is some indicator information about how we're

0:41:47doing that could then inform other processes that we're doing such as the general plan and any other process that we might do that um it's probably as you said too too late for the climate action plan but um it's um so anyway I really like seeing this um happening and I think

0:42:13that we'll need to really get more information about it later when when it's done and then we that and we can then discuss how to use the information that we do get out of it and it would also seem to me that the um if we get a low score um we won't really know if it's because

0:42:35we're not doing very well or if it's because the system doesn't work but I think that's okay because I think this is a real chance to sort of try it out and get some information about ourselves and like what I could have said if we're doing really well you know but you know

0:42:53it so you could sort of say it either way but um so I think it's a really interesting um process I'm really interested in the use of the word star because I remember that we got a star from Italy when we first joined Italy and began our processes and I think there's five stars you can get and I

0:43:16don't know if we ever if they still even have that system Recology with each of the five steps that you take you could yeah I don't uh um know how interrelated they wonder what happened to that and if uh this was just a an another way of looking at the same thing which is a more sophisticated

0:43:35way perhaps um or if the idea is that that initial star system that ickley had or maybe has um and this work in conjunction with each other it would be interesting to know the answer to that question we can look into it a little because I know when I think about our all the work

0:43:56we're doing in the climate area I always think about the Stars the what they represent which I think was I can't remember what the first one is that conduct inventory adopt reduction targets and then develop the plan we're in that phase right now and then monitor implement the plan

0:44:15and then you evaluate the plan I think those are the five steps so um I think it's been a really useful tool in my thinking at least about it and I hope in other people's too and I um think that this kind of a system has a potential to be really helpful and useful in a more

0:44:37detailed way as we get more sophisticated in dealing with issues surrounding the climate I think it'll be really helpful and useful and I'm really quite excited that we got chosen and um anyway thank you for doing the work you're doing thank you thank you very much for uh for the

0:44:58presentation and thank you for all the hard work getting us selected and look I'm looking forward to seeing how this does rate our overall performance because this isn't just um just although it has great Synergy with the climate action plan it's really about making the the city more livable

0:45:18and achieving our mission and values so I'm looking forward to seeing how we get rated and see where we have to make improvements thank you yeah thank you with that we'll move on to item five um I would like to um pull item 5B officer Sid hubs is here so I would like to recognize him uh

0:45:41separately and and to have some words potentially said about him um are there any other items that anybody wants to pull from the consent calendar make a motion I have a motion okay I make um a motion to adopt the consent calendar items five a c d e and f second motion made and seconded all

0:46:06those in favor say aye aye let the record show that our extensions or opposition let the record show it pass unanimously we would like to move on to item five b good evening Mr Mayor members of the council City staff and members of the public I am Robert delacampa a police

0:46:24Lieutenant Phil cereal Police Department and with me this evening is Officer Sid hubs Sid hubs is going to be our officer of the year this year a little bit about Sid he started with the Department as a volunteer Reserve officer in 2001. volunteered with us for

0:46:39four and a half years we hired him full-time 2006.

0:46:43sent him to the Alameda County Sheriff's Academy where he came in first place academically amongst his fellow students has been an officer with us since then and Sid is a person you probably see frequently he's one of our motorcycle officers in addition to that though he does a lot

0:46:58of things behind the scenes that really help the department that aren't necessarily readily apparent he calibrates the preliminary alcohol screening devices for us he deals with calibrating our radar devices he deals with catalystic compliance for our gas masks he's one of our primary evidence

0:47:14techs he's one of the ones who set up our crime scene response trailer this past year he's been one who's responded to some high profile incidents recently he uh participated in a motorcycle competition last year first time we've ever had anybody do that so Sid is a complete package very well

0:47:33respected officer very dedicated and uh it's about time that we recognized him and so tomorrow night he's going to be honored by the Richmond Elks Lodge number 1251 they have what they call a police officer appreciation program wherein they have nominees from most of our

0:47:50local police departments and uh he'll be our nominee guest of honor I know that two of you will be there with us tomorrow night and in addition to that he will also be honored by the Albany El cereal Exchange Club as our officer of the year and that is in May the date is not yet been

0:48:06confirmed great thank you um I don't know if anybody has any words but I I will say that um I I saw you officer of Zed the A's game when I think we were recognized uh we had our opportunity to provide a motorcycle and you were parked along first base right in front of the

0:48:27visitors Dugout unfortunately but um so I do yeah they don't I know but so I do want to recognize that this has been a wonderful year for you and I appreciate all the things that you've done and for the department and that I look forward to seeing you tomorrow night and are presenting this

0:48:46Proclamation again tomorrow night so thank you any other questions words can I get a motion thank you very much yeah [Music] I'd like to move to Proclamation commending and congratulating officers Sid hubs for his recognition by the Richmond Elks Lodge as El Cerrito Police

0:49:09Department honoree for police officer appreciation night I second the motion motion's been made and seconded all those in favor say aye aye opposed abstention so that it showed that it passed unanimously uh we will be moving on to item seven at this time uh we have two items on item

0:49:37seven uh the first is a discussion on the climate action plan we have a presentation looks like by Miss Mintz again oh no Maria that's right that was in the that was in the memo you guys are just switching places on me um so if we could please move on to item 7A the climate action plan with a

0:50:00presentation by Maria Sanders those are those are at home we can see the computer screen that they're they're selecting even though you can't so it's entertaining sure good evening mayor Lyman and members of the council my name is Maria Sanders and I'm in the Environmental Services

0:50:46Division included in your packet tonight is a copy of our draft climate action plan and the related environmental review document and to my tonight I wanted to go over the public review process in order to the contents of the climate action plan or we call it the cap for

0:51:04short thanks was that me or you um we are in the beginning of the public review process early last week we posted the climate action plan and the related environmental documents and held a meeting at the eqc or the Environmental Quality committee to kick off the public

0:51:28comment period eqc will host another session on March 12th to receive more public comment and then we'll be closing the public comment period on March 15th following this review period will revise the climate action plan based on the comments and the Planning Commission

0:51:46will also consider approving the environmental documents on March 12th 20th you can't hear it sorry um better good the final climate action plan will be brought one last time to the Environmental Quality committee for their final recommendation on April 9th which is the regular regular meeting and

0:52:12finally we'll anticipate bringing the final back to council for your consideration on or after April 16th for the council members for the new council members uh here I'd like to briefly just provide a little background the city council has consistently shown commitment to the issue of climate

0:52:33change and has passed resolution supporting the development of a climate action plan and the goals of the state and the goals of the states global warming solution act which is also known as ab32 the El Cerrito public has similarly shown a great deal of support

0:52:50for climate action in 2010 we conducted a climate action survey and 91 agreed that climate change was an urgent issue that required action and of course the main driving reason behind this support is concerned over the threats posed by global warming such as sea level rise and more frequent

0:53:13water shortages but the support also stems from the understanding that taking action to reduce global warming pollution also creates many benefits such as less air pollution more livable and healthy and economically vibrant communities cost savings on energy fuel water and garbage

0:53:33and just greater energy Independence the main purpose of the climate action plan is to provide a road map for pursuing greenhouse gas reductions or ghd reductions in El Cerrito over time we hope that the climate action plan will also be able to be used as a resource by community members and

0:54:00businesses and institutions as they decide to take action to reduce their carbon footprint as part of our planning process in February 2011 the city council adopted targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from activities in El Cerrito by 15 percent below 2005 Levels by 2020

0:54:22and 30 percent below 2005 Levels by 2035 so that gave us a second star in the ickley's two star method um and then staff recommended these uh targets because they were consistent with the goals for local government recommended by the ab-32 scoping plan um but mainly we also felt that these

0:54:49would represented ambitious goals for a small residential Community such as ours we're achieving these goals would rely primarily on the many small aggregated actions of community members our planning process was informed by Community input a community input process that included the climate action

0:55:12survey which we discussed into the um uh and which we started in 2010 we had about 450 participants in that survey we had um and this is kind of a one of the events at the July 4th where we disseminated the survey uh we had three public workshops in 2010 as well where

0:55:36we worked with the community to brainstorm strategies and then we had another public Workshop in 2011 where we vetted a final list of strategies we've also had numerous eqc updates and we have a list of about 170 people who have expressed interest in the climate action

0:55:54plan and receive regular notifications and we also do with part use the newsletter and our environmental alert email monthly email to get the word out about the climate action plan so tonight I'd like to give you a brief overview of the climate action plan um this is uh this this screen right

0:56:19here is lifted directly from the contents of the climate action plan um it's comprised of two volumes uh the volume one is the plan itself which consists of six chapters and volume two which is the appendices and that's also included in your packet today so chapter one is

0:56:43um an introduction to climate change and our planning process and it provides the context for why and how we develop the plan it discusses much of what we've just what I've just reviewed with you thus far it also provides background on the state and Regional kind of

0:56:58legislative contexts that we took into consideration while developing the plan chapter 2 goes over the numbers it provides an analysis of the Baseline ghg emissions inventory and reviews the numbers of tons we need to reduce in order to make our targets and this chart

0:57:16here is our 2005 Baseline emissions inventory it is um the foundation on which we built our reduction strategies as you can see over here this right here is a 51 of our emissions comes from vehicle use or vehicle miles traveled also known as VMT and 44 is this right here is a residential and

0:57:45Commercial Energy use and obviously it's the second to biggest source and then waste in landfills is a distant third and then much farther behind that is a municipal refrigerants and and water use and treatment which is actually um there's a it's a proxy for the energy

0:58:03that we use to to to distribute and and treat water um so it's important to note that our Baseline inventory is not a full accounting of our El Cerritos of el Cerritos carbon footprint our inventory is meant to be more of a snapshot of our emissions that we can replicate over

0:58:28time so that we can do monitoring it's um consistent with the Bay Area air quality management districts ghg emissions quantification guidance and it counts activities over which local governments have some type of influence and that can be reliably measured over time so we can

0:58:49monitor performance what's not counted in the inventory are greenhouse gas emissions that are associated with the production and transport of consumer goods air travel travel Beyond Contra Costa County and also emissions resulting from anything that is a part of kind of a natural carbon cycle such

0:59:10as the growth and natural decompass position of plants and I mentioned this mainly because our reduction targets are aimed at reducing what we've measured in our inventory so we did not measure reductions from such strategies like carbon sequestration from the urban

0:59:27forest or embodied energy saved from the remanufacturing of recycled goods and these are important strategies and we actually do have a method where we can kind of we can analyze that and put it into into look at it as a as additional emissions reductions but they would not

0:59:51count towards our our 15 percent or our 30 percent emissions reduction goals mainly because the corresponding emissions aren't counted in inventory and here's what our targets look like the red line on top is the growth forecast in greenhouse gas emissions and the green line on the bottom are our

1:00:17reduction targets so in 2005 we emitted 147 000 tons of CO2 15 below that is a 125 000 tons by 2020 and then 30 percent by 2035 is 103 tons approximately so the good news is that we're not doing this all by ourselves and we get to count that and so you'll see that

1:00:45throughout the climate action plan is that the state has several fuel efficiency and renewable energy regulations that are that will basically shave off the growth curve so that's the center Blue Line right there that leaves for us to kind of figure out for what we figured out in the climate

1:01:02action plan another 22 000 tons that we need to reduce in order to get to 125 000 tons by 2020 and then another 54 000 by 2035.

1:01:17so the bulk of the climate action plan investigates the measures that are intended to help us achieve these reduction targets chapter 3 focuses on community-wide measures which involves land use transportation and Community Development goals energy and water efficiency goals

1:01:37waste reduction and and finally waste reduction goals and under these goals the cap advances a whole range of strategies and these include education incentives and ordinances that encourage near-term changes in our energy use Transportation habits and and waste

1:01:55generation continuing to invest in infrastructure that invites people to walk bike and take transit and over the long term pursuing development that helps us create a more compact Transit oriented energy efficient community that is structurally less dependent on fossil

1:02:14fuels um this is the way that reduction measures are organized in the climate action plan this is just a sample page from that chapter we have a series of goals which are this blue band uh whoops sorry this Blue Bland right here and uh that's basically just the fifth goal

1:02:34under our transportation Transportation Community Development goals which is called sustainable communities and under each one is a series of objectives and then under each objective is also a series of strategies or action steps um we've been talking about goals

1:02:52objectives and strategies and actions a lot today these action steps are more near-term in nature and they're expected to be updated as we make progress on the plan and test implementation of these measures thanks in terms of reducing the numbers of miles we drive or the VMT the climate

1:03:17action plan advances a series of goals that are meant to in the short term encourage community members to use alternatives to driving and in the longer term create the conditions for an urban form that will make it easier for Elsa readings to leave their car behind

1:03:33here the cat proposes the types of actions that will create a more compact Transit oriented infill development along our Transit corridors and a more vibrant local economy that will help that will make walking more the norm in El Cerrito and these goals are are very

1:03:52consistent with many of the goals that we've already been considering as a part of other types of um like this the San Pablo Avenue specific plan um um and our Regional Housing allocations and Regional Housing needs allocation um let's see so in terms of energy and

1:04:22water use the the climate action plan has four goals um one that is focused on encouraging incentivizing and and where appropriate requiring Energy Efficiency in existing buildings um with um a focus on um a a focus on projects that help Target the residential sector since it's

1:04:41a huge portion of our of our um of our uh inventory or our ghd emissions another goal is focused on ways to encourage and to require new construction um to build to higher levels of Green Building and Energy Efficiency than currently required by California code

1:05:03and a third is to provide a renewable energy strategy that encourages the use of renewable energy systems in the private sector but also there is an objective to make electricity the electricity of the entire community to do more green through Community Choice a Community Choice aggregation

1:05:23effort and fourth uh also a fourth goal is encouraging conservation of potable water by removing barriers to the installation of rain water catchment and gray water systems and of course the most important thing one of the things to consider here is that that these are um uh um these are

1:05:48each one of the actions is basically what we're looking at is um each one of the actions are would have to go through another their own processes as we move forward so for instance if we really were going to be looking at ways to streamline our permitting process there would be a

1:06:07process that we'd have to go through in order to make sure that we were doing that correctly and that there weren't any kind of unintended consequences and things like that so so each one of those is um has their own processes involved with them finally chapter three contains an

1:06:28overall waste reduction goal to continue our Trend in annual reductions in the amount of trash generated in El Cerrito the objectives and strategies in this section will serve as a work plan for staff over the next three to five years chapter 4 is essentially just a mini

1:06:51climate action plan inside the climate action plan itself it documents emissions from our Municipal operations um and that's shown right here what our emissions look like um and um then develops a series of goals and strategies that will make the city's um uh operations more resource efficient

1:07:10and environmentally friendly and help the city itself achieve those that 15 reduction by 2020 and the 30 reduction by 2035. we also hope that the implementation of these measures will provide examples of the types of actions that other businesses and institutions

1:07:28in El Cerrito could take so that's why we wanted to isolate it as one a little up plan so that it it's so that it acts as a um as kind of a plan that might be able to be replicated by other by other institutions in El Cerrito um since so many of the emissions reduction

1:07:51strategies discussed in the climate action plan rely on voluntary participation of community members we wanted to show that achieving the reduction targets at a household level was not that daunting of a task so when analyzing what it would take for us to reach our 2020 reduction targets we were

1:08:10happy to find that if every household in El Cerrito did the following which is basically insulating their attic converting their older appliances to energy star appliances driving 19 miles less per week per household member and participating in the city's waste reduction programs that

1:08:34we could meet our targets so in chapter five we wanted to show residents how these targets looked in reality and have provided a sample of the types of actions that they could take to participate to reduce the the carbon footprint in their own communities it also provides some resources to get them

1:08:55started of course this isn't you know comprehensive list of everything that can be done but we just wanted to give them a sample um but our reduction targets begin to seem more ambitious when you um think about what it would take to implement these types of measures across a

1:09:16community of 10 000 households for instance a little less than a thousand homes per year would need to insulate their Attic in order for us to make those natural gas goals so in the implementation chapter we discussed some of the challenges that we Face some as a

1:09:33small community with limited resources to pursue robust implementation of the climate action plan and primarily implementation of these strategies will require outside funding and or assistance from you know Grant sources the utilities and also private sector investment

1:09:55fortunately many state and Regional funding sources such as the regional transportation dollars and the State's new climate action our cap and trade revenues are begin are being aligned with ghg reduction goals so as with many of our other plans we will be able to use the

1:10:16climate action plan to prioritize activities and demonstrate commitment and public buy-in when when we're applying for these types of funds and in closing this is just by way of saying of showing that we can achieve our reduction goals here's our emissions uh scenario graph again but this time

1:10:39we've added a couple of lines on the bottom um uh and these are the basically the the red line at the bottom is um this line right here are the total reductions that we've identified and this blue line right here as our Target reductions so if we implemented everything that was in the plan we would

1:10:59actually be four percent over what we need to so we'd be almost out of 20 goal instead of a 15 goal in 2020 so there's a little bit of breathing room there and then also these um this purple line right here is basically um uh all the plant all the measures that have been already enabled by

1:11:22existing plans policies or programs in the city and you can see that that's not a horribly large gap it's about nine thousand tons right there so so between what we've already enabled and what we um what our Target is it's it's a not a huge distance so um it's uh it seems to

1:11:46me quite doable so um thank you very much and I'll be happy to ask her answer any questions I know Rebecca already has questions she's lined up okay uh councilmember bridges yeah you may go first first of all I think this was really readable I mean it's sizable but

1:12:08it's very readable and I think that you did a good job and I think it was an in-house publication you put it together yourself so that's really good um you know global warming is a it's not just a threat to us it's a worldwide threat um but locally it has a lot of

1:12:23implications for us because with decreased snowpack you know there's water shortages for us East Bay mud's gonna have issues that affect us and um you know Wildfire is going to be more of a problem for us real these are things that really directly impact us locally

1:12:39there's a lot of ambitious goals here but I really love that you put the little the little box because as I was reading this I'm going oh I feel so guilty I drive 22 miles to work I try to carpool most days but then I found out that I could insulate my attic which

1:12:54I've already done and I could convert to energy star appliances which I've already done and I could maybe that one day I don't carpool I could maybe call in sick just kidding commute and um and then I participate very actively and shrunk my garbage to just you know one little dinky pie so I

1:13:13felt a little better about myself after after going through that I also like the fact that since 2005 I like the little measuring sticks that were in here all the things that we've already accomplished which I think is pretty sizable I mean that as a city commended for that

1:13:30um I also have a particular interest and a couple of the things that were brought up about energy and that was um is something we as Council City staff could work with the financial institutions to come up with some Solar Solutions um I'm in the community that would be a

1:13:50really interesting thing and I think there's some models that exist already perhaps like in San Jose maybe San Francisco um that we could take some direction from and I also like the idea of um looking a little bit more about rain water and gray water I think that's

1:14:06something that's that you know we have a deluge like we had in December I just felt you know you look at the drains and you look at all this water running going oh my God you know we I could have done something about this and saved it and I think you know the water and energy are

1:14:18so important to us um so I just you know this is really very well done so thank you for the president thank you yeah um I'd like to thank you Maria and everyone else in the department and in the city who has made this document possible it's I'm it's it's really truly

1:14:39um where we need to be and and I'm very happy that we're here and um one of the the things that um uh that struck me uh actually at the eqc meeting where this was also presented was the the gentleman who said he really didn't believe in um that there was an issue with the

1:15:01climate and yet what he said was he liked all of the steps in the plan because and that's what I think is one of the things that's going to make it really happen um and I know on a personal level um the the thing I've noticed in my life is I've done these things already is I

1:15:23get rewarded every time I do one of these things because it cost me less money in whatever way so when I when we put in a new furnace our heating bill went down when we um um you know changed our washing machine and got an energy efficient one that didn't use much water

1:15:46um lo and behold are a whole bunch of costs went down that was I think the biggest thing we did and because I you know I have a lot of kids and um the um the thing is those are all things that save money you know save money to the person who does it and so there's a direct benefit and that

1:16:09is what this plan is in many ways all about doing things that are better for the environment and are better for us as as individuals as a city um so there's it's kind of a win-win and I really appreciate uh you know that that's the kind of plan we have we don't

1:16:30have a plan that says everybody has to we're going to have to pass some laws that are really offensive to our residents and um you know if they don't do them they're going to go to jail you know not not that we would anyone would ever do that but you know this is not what this

1:16:47plan is about this plan is about make a change and save yourself money and save the environment all at the same time and I really really like that that's the approach we were we're lucky enough to be able to do and I think that it's a plan that our residents will like it's a

1:17:06plan that I think is utterly fantastic but I do have one question which and maybe because I haven't had time to thoroughly study this yet um the um let's say that we're we're rolling along in time and um maybe we're halfway there and we might be wondering are we making

1:17:27progress how do we figure that out um yeah we are going to actually be coming back to you within um the year um assuming that the climate action plan you know gets adopted we will be coming back to do monitoring and evaluation so one of the very first steps would be is

1:17:46that we're going to conduct a 2012 ghg inventory and that will kind of show us where we are on that curve and then we can be able to see where which which things are moving faster and which things are not I mean of course there's certain things that are going to be more kind of like we

1:18:09want to see incremental change every year those would be more of the things like the energy and the waste measures but our emissions but something along transportation we might that might be a little bit more punctuated because you um you know there's going to be a you're

1:18:31kind of like front loading some some Transportation trip reduction strategies which have you know some impact but not huge impact but then you but then you really are working towards a urban form that will really invite people to to use their car less and so um the and that you know that will

1:18:53happen as um there's investment along the Avenue that will um uh foresee you know that will fulfill that vision thank you council member bandicini thank you thank you Maria just a couple questions for you so I wanted to do one of the items that's a pretty small part of our

1:19:12inventory is the water conveyance but you kind of already touched on why it's such an important even though it's not a great ghe emitter it's a resource that's that's Irreplaceable and to replace it would require really energy intensive you know infrastructure and operations

1:19:29um so I did notice that on one of the strategies about the the gray water systems and the rain water um attachments there's a lot of references to state to being consistent with state code and how we want to make sure we get rid of any impediments there are to those systems is there a role for

1:19:45East Bay mud it doesn't seem like it would that was an agency that was listed in the plan in that section listed a little bit but um they're more um conservation oriented um I mean uh water conservation oriented of the of the you know potable water um so um they

1:20:02um obviously will have a big role in helping us figure out how to to um get um uh you know greater water conservation efforts and they have you know nice incentives for landscaping changes in landscaping and irrigation so that will be um an important kind of um

1:20:20uh partner um in terms of things that people have been you know the California code now has a um some and I have to kind of go back and investigate reinvestigate this but they do have a code where you can do um gray water from your washing your clothes washer to your garden and

1:20:42there's a whole you know kind of protocol for doing that um and so just basically um you know doing that can consistent with that code and educating residents about that and making sure that our permit processes are consistent with that as would be what we would be

1:20:59looking at great so that is a regulatory change that we would need to make to our code yeah and I'm not sure if it's so much of a regulatory change as it's a um just a kind of a process change um it seems to me uh that sort of the philosophy of the plan in terms of

1:21:17carrots and education versus regulations it's it seemed like we were kind of going towards the regulatory route like you just mentioned on or not the regulatory route but the the route where we build an environment that's more inviting for people to use alternative

1:21:34modes of Transit and we're kind of trying to steer away from what councilmember Abelson was saying which is you need to do this or there is a penalty could you kind of just talk through what the considerations were in in some places there are there's language like encourage or require so

1:21:51could you talk through when it gets to implementation uh how we're going to choose whether or not to encourage encourage or require I mean I assume we would the council would get to choose that but you as staff how are you thinking through when is it appropriate

1:22:03to just educate and try to make the environment such that choices are easy to make that are better for the environment versus is sort of more penalty language or you know fees or that sort of thing I think that that there are certain things like in the transportation world that would be very

1:22:25difficult to have requirements um in um more kind of when something's based on a permit um those are places where there's a point of interaction with the city I think in general we want to make sure that if we require something we don't have unintended consequences so it's

1:22:42more a matter of us um of us doing the due diligence on each one of the measures to make sure that that we're getting the cons we're getting the action that we want um and and there's some times where it might make more sense like for instance there's there's some small things that

1:23:00that have big implica you know that have not big implications but big reductions or big impacts that we could do um in the rest of many parts of California Title 24 already requires that whenever you get a new furnace you have to do a duck blast test to see if you have

1:23:19leakage in your ducts we don't have to do it in our client it because we have a mild climate um but um that's not to say that a lot of us have huge holes in our ducks and we don't know it and we're you know we're heating our crawl space um and so those are things that we might

1:23:38look at since it's already been adopted and and implemented in other parts of of the state we could look at what how that works and and then um look at requiring that so it's not a huge requirement a huge penalty it's just a matter of of us looking at like what that would look like and how we

1:24:02would go about making process changes or regulatory changes um so it's it's more of an investigation so when we move forward on implementation and I appreciate that description I think as I was reading it I was agreeing with that sort of a philosophy of the plan that you know where you have points

1:24:18of interaction those are the times that you can really really focus on education and incentives and then where necessary say you know what we need to require a duck black a duck blast um so I appreciate that philosophy okay I'd like to so we're 2013 we're going to

1:24:35have an inventory for 2012 coming up soon so we'll kind of hear how we've been doing since 2005 which will be really interesting when you read through the plan you kind of gave an alternating uh oh we have to do a thousand insulated addicts per year and we've only done I don't know how

1:24:50many we've done in on a typical year how many people actually do that um so you kind of give an alternating this is really doable but it might be a little bit hard but then we've already done a lot so that so I want to hear from you when you look at these implementation items what are the items

1:25:06that you think are you know there are a couple that are just really big Big ghg Ticket items like the CCA for example as you're reading through here what are what are you looking for that might be worrisome that we have a seven year time frame until 2020 that if we

1:25:22didn't get this one thing that we would really have to go back to the well and come up with some new innovative ideas to fill that Gap oh you just meant and that's probably why I mentioned it is that natural gas measures and in our residential residential homes is kind of

1:25:43um the holy grail for for many many climate action plans that have you know a large residential sector and it's mainly just because it's not sexy um it's um they you know people tend to do these things when they have to not because they want to um but the the flip side of that is that

1:26:05we did when we analyzed our we did the analysis we based it on what people were what kind of weatherization um things people were already doing in their homes we have older homes many of them are getting to kind of their their furnaces are getting to the end of their

1:26:21useful life so furnaces are are turning over and that has this huge in you know huge benefit just by going you know going from a 1960s furnace to a you know 2012 furnace um and uh um there's uh um you know people are doing a lot of Windows um people are doing a lot they're not

1:26:45doing so much as wall insulation or attic insulation but they are doing other kinds of weatherization measures so because and that and that is in the hundreds um and and there's also um this large ramp up right now for doing more residential weatherization um uh at the utility level a bag has got

1:27:08a big effort that we'll probably be hearing about soon so um because the state's really focused on it I think that we as long as we tap into that it's definitely um something that is probably going to be achievable and I base that on my experience from having worked in Energy

1:27:29Efficiency World prior to being here where when we first started out it just seemed impossible the idea that you would ever do 200 businesses a year was just you know way out there and we had set ourselves for a goal for doing 400 and now the program that that I was

1:27:47running is doing something like you know a thousand plus on businesses a year so so there is a flywheel effect that does happen to these things and so I'm I'm betting on that a positive Loop okay and then I just have two comments or suggestions for um for the plan that I wanted to bring

1:28:06your attention and that is um I'd like to see the emissions on a per capita basis and the reason for that is that the business as usual projections are contingent or or are based on the Assumption of that we're going to add 3 000 residents we're going to add this many jobs and I would hate

1:28:23to to see sort of it appears though our emissions are going down just because our we aren't growing at the rate that ABAC thinks we're supposed to grow because those people are going somewhere and they're making emissions elsewhere so I'd like to just see the numbers on a

1:28:38per capita or per service population including employment however you want to do it but that would be really interesting as a tracking mechanism just to know that our carbon intensity per person is is going down that's really what we're trying to Target I think so

1:28:52that's just one suggestion and I love the welcome packet for new homeowners idea as a recent homeowner or new homeowner who didn't know a thing about Building Systems and encountered a 60 year old furnace and I there's just so such an overwhelming feeling when you

1:29:09buy your first home especially here where a lot of the homes are older of what to do first and it would be really wonderful to have that sort of first interaction with new homeowners in the city that just kind of gives them a guide if this is something that would

1:29:22really have an impact on your comfort alert and on your energy bills and it would it it's not as though it would be the definitive guide for any every home is different but at least that sort of um welcome that lets residents know where where your city staff and we're

1:29:36here to help you and please you know come and talk to us about this because if you're freezing in the winter you don't have to continue to be freezing there's a better way to live um and those are all my comments I I loved I agreed uh profusely with the layout of this plant it was really

1:29:51readable it was a long plan but it was a really nice read and very nicely put together thank you councilmember Friedman I want to Echo the statements from my colleagues and just add a few quick ones I hope uh I also really appreciate that this is an in-house production and I really appreciate

1:30:10seeing that because I think there's more of a sense of ownership sometimes than hiring outside consultants and it also leverages the expertise that we have between you Maria and Melanie and other staff and it's often more cost effective also and certainly any revisions we need

1:30:28to do will be easier as long as you don't go anywhere [Laughter] I was very interested in the menu of things that households can do and was thinking maybe we would offer to households or individuals to make a commitment I hesitate to use the word pledge to make a commitment that they will

1:30:55attempt to accomplish some of these goals within a certain time frame as the voluntary way of participating and contributing to our communities reaching our targets and I know that green business designation has been there for quite some time is there a corresponding

1:31:12green household designation or Green Home designation and if not why not good point um I don't think that there is I mean other than new homes having a Greenpoint rating which is not that appropriate for here um but um that is a that's an interesting that's an interesting

1:31:31concept right with similar housing stock where'd they go and um you know I think one of our great programs we offer citizens is that the police officer will come to your home and evaluate how safe your home is and improvements you could make if we could develop a green team probably a

1:32:11volunteer since our city staff is stretch pretty thin but a green team that could go into people's homes and give them suggestions on insulate here double pane window here weatherstripping here new printers here Etc I think that would be a great part of uh overall

1:32:30program to help us to get to our goals right great thank you I've I Echo everybody's comments about the readability and accessibility of information in the report and it is for those that have not picked it up and looked at it it is full of a lot of information that not just

1:32:52information about El Cerrito but information about the entire process of greenhouse gases and what it's doing to our environment um as the representative to the solid waste board I did pick up on the waste management item and I'm afraid the numbers don't pan out for me so I I'll

1:33:10send you my comments offline but it the numbers didn't necessarily work for me so I'll um bring that to you okay but I did want to highlight um I think it's figure 2.2 and I I could not find a cross reference to figures 2.4 sorry on page 15 and I did not find a cross-reference in text to that

1:33:30particular figure um and and this figure is the community greenhouse gas emission sources and with the last uh the last column being the estimated costs and I believe that's the I just want to find out if that's the estimated cost to us oh um yeah that is actually

1:33:51um the the estimated cost to Consumers so so it's basically what we paid um in 2005 for our electricity our natural gas um the water that we consume um and you know the the um gasoline the gallons of gasoline that we consume so we I just translated that into Dollars based on you know the price

1:34:17during that period of time so that corresponds with footnote 8 on the bottom of page eight that's worthy of of pointing out and it says in 2005 El cerriton spent approximately 49.3 million on energy fuel water and waste disposal if each household reduced their use of

1:34:39these Commodities just 15 percent that's our goal for the 2020 each household would have another eighteen hundred dollars to spend of disposable income so this goes uh council member Bridges brought this up in or Abelson actually brought this up in in her example of her

1:35:04furnace saving her money um but just you know on an aggregate basis that the fact that the Elsa Eaton spent almost 50 million dollars for these basic Commodities um was was a stunning uh figure for me and and to think that 15 percent would allow us you know another eighteen

1:35:24hundred dollars a year in disposal income is was something that's actually not worthy of a footnote so that's why I was trying to figure out how two point table 2.4 um fit into the dialogue and and if table 2.4 did support that footnote and I my uh if there was something that I

1:35:45certainly wanted to highlight would be exactly what councilmember Abelson said so eloquently is that this is not only good for the environment it's good for the pocketbook and that's something that really needs to be emphasized um this is an item that we do have the

1:36:05opportunity to get public comment on do we have any public speakers hello speakers and with no public speakers we will conclude this item I want to thank staff very much for your presentation I'm certain that you can leave that computer up because the next item

1:36:23probably has a presentation no it does not okay um we are moving on to item 7B for those that are at home this item has four resolutions that we are considering this evening so there are three by the successor agency and one by city council I know the agenda just has three Arabic

1:36:47bullets but I just want to make sure everybody knows there are two resolutions for the third Arabic bullet there um this item does have a brief staff report as as confusing as this is I hope you can be able to keep this brief I can keep this brief um and uh if you would Lori go ahead and

1:37:08give your presentation sure good evening mayor Lyman and council members I'm Laura Trevino the economic development manager I'm here this evening with um items for consideration both by this uh the city council uh as uh and the uh serving both as a city council and as

1:37:27the governing board of the successor agency to the Redevelopment agency um under dissolution the successor agency is required to review and authorize submittal of what's called a recognized obligation payment schedule for each six-month period after dissolution

1:37:45um and then that um that schedule also called a rops is considered by the oversight board and the Department of Finance before any funding is distributed for the successor agency to pay the former Redevelopment agencies obligations the funds that are distributed by the

1:38:04county auditor controller were formerly known as tax increment when we were when there was a Redevelopment agency now it's referred to as Redevelopment property tax and so um the the rops is the way that the successor agency makes um know what the obligations of

1:38:21Redevelopment property tax are for the upcoming six-month period um the successor agency has to submit an oversight board approved Rob snow later than March 1st of this year for obligations that are due between July and December of this year it's referred to we they have a new naming convention

1:38:41they're now going to refer to them by fiscal year so this is for UPS 13 14 a um also for the upcoming fiscal year the successor agency is required to approve an administrative budget for itself um and under the trailer bill which was enacted last July and amended the

1:39:03dissolution act cities and successor agencies are authorized to enter into cash flow loan agreements to deal with the cash flow issues that a lot of successor agencies have had in this initial startup period of dissolution um so I'm not going to go through each

1:39:22of the individual items on the rops I don't think you probably want me to do that unless you have specific questions I will say though that the rops itself includes not only the items that are due during the upcoming six month period it includes a Reconciliation of last drops

1:39:37period drops period two not the one we are currently in which is reps period three um and an opportunity for us to provide information and comments um which we have done liberally this time because dof has had a hard time understanding some of the items that we've submitted over the last year and a

1:40:01half um so the total amount of funding that is requested on this reps is about 2.3 million um that is more than is expected to be distributed by the auditor controller for this period the reason that is the case is because um the dissolution act gives priority to

1:40:19any unpaid pass-through payments and there the pass-through payments from the first fiscal year of dissolution were unpaid because of the way that the dof structured the timing of disbursement of those funds and they conflicted with the pat with The Debt Service that was due during wap's period

1:40:40too so we have um more than a million dollars in pass-through payments that will get paid prior to just distribution of any funds to the successor Agency for our obligations so that's why there is there are insufficient funds during this period and that that is that would be

1:40:58the case if all the obligations that we've listed are actually approved by the Department of Finance I did want to note that going forward once all these pass-through payments are sort of cleared through the system there we do not anticipate a shortage of funds

1:41:12on an ongoing basis um this is really the last fiscal year where that's going to be a problem and it and it'll clear itself up um so uh that's the Rocks the successor admin um budget is uh also included for your consideration this evening we have tried to scale back from the um budget that we

1:41:34uh that you approved last year um recognizing that we are spending less now that we've sort of figured out the process here um this is a budget that gets will get included within the city's overall operating budget so this is a requirement of the statute that you

1:41:51approve this but it is going to be subsumed within the city's budget and the successor is uh is entitled to 250 000 in administrative allowance regardless of what's actually spent so it's to our benefit to try to minimize that um and then lastly there's a cash flow

1:42:11agreement um so you'll notice that there was no reconciliation of Rob's period three that's the period we are in currently the city did pay for some expenses that would have been successor agency expenses and that's why we are putting they were things that were approved on

1:42:28rops 3 but there weren't sufficient funds so we're putting those on as a cash flow loan between the city and the successor Agency on rops for because they were already approved on romps 3 and this is an allowable thing to do under the under the new regime that was

1:42:44adopted last year um this is not new funds these are funds that were already expended for administrative matters and for the litigation that was finished in January so um that is my presentation if you have any questions I'm happy to answer them I know this is a rather convoluted process

1:43:05we go through every six months right councilman Friedman any questions I do um I keep thinking this is going to get easier every time I get one of these agenda bills but it still hasn't um so just a couple questions for you so just to be clear we if adopted we would

1:43:25request um our pttf funding for fiscal year 1314a of 2.3 million dollars is what is what's listed in the table but we do not expect that we would get that much we're expecting that the auditor controller will come back with about 1.4 million dollars and can you just and can you

1:43:44remind me of then the process then we have the discussion with dof and try to change their mind or well the amount of money that's available is set okay and it's it's how much money is in the fund that the county has collected in Redevelopment property tax minus whatever is owed in pass-through

1:44:02payments so the money that's coming is a set amount and we have to live within our means um so we may have more obligations in any period than is actually available and in that case you have to just prioritize right that's what I was going to say necessor has prioritized for us

1:44:20in the last three periods because there hasn't been enough money and they haven't approved everything and so we've paid what was approved and Debt Service is always first and um so this is really the first period I think where we're going to have this sort of a little bit of tug and

1:44:37pull because if they were to approve everything um we'd have to make decisions I'm I don't anticipate that they are going to prove everything because they don't have that track record to this point but I can't really predict what they will or won't okay um and and only one question or or one

1:44:53of the items on the Rob 1314a that I wanted to hear a little bit more about uh there's a couple of bullets having to do with the Eden Housing loan agreement and it appears as though we'd like to some amount of money has been approved by dof but there's an a more of a loan

1:45:10agreement having to do with the post DDA period um but it looks like we don't need that money at this point is that is that am I reading that correctly that even though the loan is 310 000 we don't need it all at this point and we will expect to have further discussions and kind of catch up on that

1:45:26well there's there's two issues going on here um the loan commitment was for 350 000 and that was before the Redevelopment agency was dissolved and it's there's two parts we have a commitment of a hundred thousand dollars prior to execution of a DDA and the other 250 is

1:45:44after the execution of a DDA and initially the Department of Finance approved the whole thing but there was confusion about the funding source then they came back and said okay we're going to approve the whole thing for rpt so we thought we had we had it made but we didn't have enough

1:46:03money to pay it then they came back in the third reps period and said wait a minute um there's this is a bifurcated agreement you can only have approval of the first hundred thousand dollars we had already funded for 40 000 of it prior to dissolution so the number was really

1:46:20sixty we went back to dof and asked them to reconsider the disapproval of the other 250 and they came back and disapproved the whole thing and so now we're saying no wait a minute you've approved this twice in different forms actually three times in different forms and now you've disapproved it and

1:46:42it's not really clear what their thinking is on it so we've put at least the the first pre-dda portion back on the rops for funding in this period saying we believe that this is an enforceable obligation and that it should be paid and we'll continue to make that case the 250

1:46:59is contingent on a DDA regardless and so we are kind of kicking that can down the road a little bit okay to be taken up at a later date hopefully post DDA yeah okay thank you that was really helpful and the last question I have is just having to do with the so the cash flow

1:47:14loan I I guess I just want to know I mean I've kind of read through you know the remedies for default they're they're not totally you know listed here but there's reference to any remedies for default so I just wanted to hear about the risks to the city for this loan are we are we expecting we

1:47:32would have no problem getting it approved as an enforceable obligation in the future um dof has been back and forth on what they have and haven't approved um Karen Tiedeman our legal counsel has been trying to find some examples of those that have been approved versus

1:47:47those that haven't to see what the distinctions are I'll just be honest that there aren't very many that we can find that have been approved but they've we were told by dof during this process over and over again just put this on put this on put this on as a as a cash flow

1:48:03loan they're they're telling us to do this the fact of the matter is the money's already out the door so we've um you know in terms of the litigation expenses and the administrative costs that were expended and there just isn't and quite enough money to um to pay the

1:48:22last little bit for Rob disrupts three period that we are currently in today um of expenses that the city has fronted for the for the successor so it's it um other than the litigation costs um the amount is pretty small okay um and the litigation costs would just be

1:48:39um I don't want to say found money but there they if it's not approved it's already right exactly or where we were already we have paid those attorneys all right great thank you Larry council member Abelson no no um so to be clear on this loan payment because the loan is actually

1:48:58as you say money that we've already spent and so it's essentially the difference it's somewhat the difference between the money that was made available by the controller accounting accounting CA um and what we had to pay out exactly and so when we go to the rops and we

1:49:18have you know an estimation of what we think is going to be paid out of two point three million and there's only going to be 1.4 million coming in that nine hundred thousand dollars it runs in that same type of potential cost that we have to pay out but what I hear you saying is it's we would get it

1:49:39back it just might be two fiscal years before we get that back well in the case of the of the um the um of of this period that were this upcoming period July to December this is nine hundred thousand dollars short if dof approves everything that's on the robs correct so that's a that's a

1:49:59big assumption and that includes um you know the rcd loan the Eden loan the cooperation agreement with the MSC these are things that um you know that some of some things which we could push a little bit not pay now or we might want to pay now those are you know

1:50:18priorities that can be determined after dof has made its determinations um so I don't I would not anticipate coming back next period and saying okay we're going to spend 900 000 of City general fund I I can't um fathom that being Mar what we'd come back with and

1:50:38then my second one is a point of order the loan is on the rops and so even though that is attachment to um I would like to the council to take up the loan which is items three and four attachments uh three and four prior to us approving the robs just just so that we have

1:50:58um you know that housekeeping taken care of prior to approving the wraps so so just so you're following me along it we we can approve the the fiscal budget um the administrative budget budget in due course but the second attachment which is the approval of the rops 1314a

1:51:17I'd like to do that last um do we have do we and I and I'm assuming that's okay with with the staff and Council for us to do that way yeah that makes sense that's fine are there any public speakers on this item no speakers um with that I'll bring it back to the

1:51:36council for comment or motions uh I think I understand what you said and we'll start with a motion to adopt the city council and successor agency resolutions approving a cash flow loan agreement for consideration by the oversight board to the successor agency option

1:51:58second so we have a motion that's been made and seconded all those in favor say aye aye opposed abstentions let the record show that it passed unanimously so that was uh the third that was item attachment three in our package right I'm happy to move a resolution of the city of the El

1:52:18Cerrito Redevelopment agency agency successor agency at proving the FY 2013-14 administrative budget item number one on our uh agenda right second so it's been made and seconded we have a motion all those in favor say aye aye aye opposed absentions none uh let the

1:52:38record show they're passing unanimously all right looking for somebody to read out the resolution attachment for by the El Cerrito Redevelopment agency one page before that though right excellent um I move adoption of a resolution of the elsewhere to Redevelopment agency

1:53:06successor agency approving a cash flow loan agreement with the city of El Cerrito second motion we have a motion in a second all those in favor say aye opposed assumptions let the record Show Pass unanimously one to go the most important one I move a resolution of the El Cerrito

1:53:30Redevelopment agency successor agency authorizing submittal of the draft recognized obligation payment schedule 13-14a as required under the dissolution act second Motion in a second although so in favor say aye aye opposed abstentions none let the record Show Pass unanimously

1:53:51thank you thank you staff for helping us understand this um chaos that the state has imposed upon us with that we will move on to item eight Council assignments and reports uh I don't think I've asked you to go first yet tonight so we'll start with the I have nothing to report I will have

1:54:14something next time we meet council member Abelson um yes I have been in a number of uh things um the ones that I want to make a comment about uh the Contra Costa Transportation Authority which is listed here um and of which I'm Vice chair um uh I would be as a function of being

1:54:37Vice chair I was invited to attend a tour of the um transfer it's called the transfer platform of what's called ebart out in eastern Contra Costa County and it is the um uh the platform upon you know at Bart level if you go out on a Bart platform so this particular platform's function

1:55:03is to enable one to transfer from the BART that we know today which in some places is called big Bart um to um ebart which is using a different technology uh it's a different vehicle uh it's called dmu diesel um uh the motor locomotive I think is what it stands for and

1:55:31um it's um less costly than big Bart and so it was really interesting to see you know to be out there and the interesting thing about the transfer platform is there's no station there and there will not be a station there all you do so if you're coming in from Eastern Contra Costa County to the

1:55:53transfer platform all that happens there is that you transfer to big Bart and come on in so what happened in the history of the development of this project which was a major J front project is that they envisioned putting in a number of stations and people had a variety of dreams but what

1:56:17happened actually was that the initial alignment which is the the place where they're going to put the rail could not be acquired from the railroad right-of-way and so they moved the um project over into the freeway right middle you know between the two the lanes going the two

1:56:42different directions and so what we see today or I saw I literally saw uh that day is that that's in the middle of the freeway so it's another middle of the freeway platform but it's I believe unique in terms of um Bart right now and what this um dmu locomotive or ebart does is take you

1:57:08or we'll take you right now when it's completed uh to Antioch and um it is envisioned that someday it will go further but um because things don't always turn out like we hope it has not happened yet and so it'll go one station is basically all it will do but it will help to relieve

1:57:31the Very extreme congestion that is occurring in eastern Contra Costa County the other thing that's happening there is they are widening the freeway and that will double the lanes I believe one of Lane will be in HOV lane but so it was an interesting opportunity

1:57:53to see the construction in progress and uh and just to see how it's done and I enjoyed having that opportunity and um then on the invite at the Environmental Quality committee uh meeting that occurred last week we uh heard this very report that we heard today and heard comments from our um

1:58:18audience members I mentioned who um didn't believe in what was happening but sure like the the dollar part of it um so I thought which I mentioned earlier was really interesting and we did have a pretty big audience at that one to come and listen to it and Rebecca

1:58:36was there and um so it was um it was it was an interesting event and um so now as I understand it the uh we'll have a 30-day period that was this did it start Maria when at the eqc meeting that day or that was the day it opened so that was Tuesday of last week began that process

1:58:59so it was it was pretty interesting process and those are my reports great thank you nothing to replace right um well I unfortunately have a few things to report I'm going to start with the fact that at our last city council meeting we actually had we started before the city council meeting we had a

1:59:21municipal Services Corporation meeting um and it was a closed session and my report out is that we provided staff Direction I attended the Waste Management Authority meeting this month and at that meeting we extended the existing post-collection contract for six months

1:59:41um so we we have six more months of in our case because we do our own recycling we have six more months of household hazardous waste and and garbage disposal at the landfill beyond the January 1 2014 uh date it it would be till July or June 30 30th that's only if we don't reach an

2:00:09agreement prior to that the also on the agenda for the Waste Management Authority was a review a report on the term sheet that term sheet is for post collection Services includes household houses waste recycling green waste and it that term sheet is mostly affecting the other four cities in the

2:00:32jpa because uh El Cerrito um won't benefit from what uh this proposer has provided which is to go from every other week pick up to weekly pickup so El Cerrito still is negotiating with uh the um entity uh Republic sanitary services for disposal independent of the other

2:01:00four cities and and I can report that that is progressing so both the term sheet and our independent negotiations are still ongoing we do hope to have the finalized term sheet at the next Waste Management Authority which will be next month um I went to the Contra Costa County

2:01:20mayor's conference along with the council member Abelson and there we had a very Vivid presentation of the fourth War of the caldicate tunnel and the Bay Bridge construction both of those are should go into service later this year and and the presentations by um that's that's not wicktech that's the

2:01:46actual Contra Costa Transportation Authority right staff actual um the um they actually reversed who was doing the presentation so the Caltrans presentation was done by the executive director of CCTA Contra Costa Transportation Authority and the um Caldecott project which is a CCTA project in

2:02:14Caltrans project was done by Caltrans staff so so those were both very Vivid and we can look forward to those that our measure J dollars providing um services to the caldercott tunnel um the city of San Pablo announced that they received an American Planning Association award for their health

2:02:38element in their General plan so I don't know if we have a health element in our general plan but San Pablo Avenue uh sorry San Pablo the city of San Pablo apparently has a good one because they got an award for it um and the Board of Supervisors gave an annual report of their activities they

2:02:59recently had goal setting and I would say that Health Care was the number one thing they set based on the comments they provided they also obviously dealt with ab109 which is the inmate issues and they passed that recently they have are in the process of discussing their

2:03:16fire Services that's in the state of flux as a result of closing several stations and the thing that was of most notable for us is they're celebrating their 100th anniversary of the library this year which includes an event in El Cerrito on October 31st of all days

2:03:36um so I just I don't know if staff knew that already but they put it up on the slide I'm like really Halloween okay um and so that's that's the date that apparently we're doing something in El Cerrito on that date the crime prevention committee met uh they are they had a discussion of their

2:03:55activities in 2013 and they began their National Night Out planning the tree committee met and they um had a discussion about the tree selection process for our approved list or recommended list and they also formed an Outreach subcommittee to reach out to Citizens about education of Tree items

2:04:23and that is my report with that we will adjourn the this meeting this to the next regularly regularly scheduled meeting which is Tuesday March 5th uh 2013 at 7 pm here in the city Chambers