City Council Meeting September 17, 2013

0:00:00to order the regular city council meeting of Tuesday September 17th and let the record show that all members are present of the council with that we will go on to pledge of allegiance to the flag led by council member Rebecca benicini please join me or take a moment of silence

0:00:32one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all you must like granicus item two on our agenda is Council and staff Communications and uh is there any staff Communications this evening councilman ridges any Communications councilmember Anderson

0:00:59um I've attended a lot of meetings and I went to the Eden Housing meeting with a workshop that was held actually In This Very Room we had a very large attendance and a really interesting presentation about the proposed senior housing project right next door south of here

0:01:23and that was on September the 11th and um I also um in my role as chair of the Contra Costa Transportation Authority went to the city of Hercules Intermodal Transit Center groundbreaking ceremony for segment one which actually is the an extension of the Bay Trail

0:01:47and that was pretty interesting and it's fully that segment is funded and in fact we'll go forward and what they've done up there because Hercules has some pretty uh developed ideas of what they would like to see but they aren't funded so they're doing it in segments so that

0:02:08actually there can be some progress as they develop funding for the different phases so I also went to the Contra Costa College groundbreaking ceremony which was on September the 4th and they threw a major that was on the ballot have raised some money to do some replacement of some

0:02:34other significant buildings there and um so um it will be a very different looking place I think when they finish with the project and I look forward personally to seeing all the all the improvements up there and um and I also went to a in my role as a chair of Contra Costa Transportation

0:03:01Authority I went to a ribbon cutting ceremony we do a lot of that there out in eastern Contra Costa County where they are working hard to try to relieve the very heavy level of congestion and one of the things they're doing is if you if you've ever been out to Brentwood

0:03:24you may remember going on a a two-lane road where you sort of go forever and then you turn left maybe depending on where you're wanting to go and so they're making that into a highway into Highway 4 extension and so what we were doing is opening a um uh one of the

0:03:48interchanges and called Sand Creek and that we did on September the 5th so um and I also attended the mayor's conference on behalf of the mayor and that was held on September 11th and um we had a very interesting presentation by Henry Brady who's the dean of the

0:04:13Goldman School a public policy at the University of California Berkeley and he talked about the polarization of American politics and the implications of the trend for the governance of cities so that was pretty interesting and I think everyone really enjoyed hearing him speak and

0:04:34um let's see here I think that's about that's about enough great councilmember benassini thank you just two items to report on uh first the school district has released their draft strategic plan um city manager Hannon and I attended the session which was kind of for city

0:04:51and county and other agency officials who wanted to provide comments I'm going to pass around the draft and I marked one of the pages uh which shows the Strategic plans six key priorities along with the key hurdles those priorities are trying to address and um they're along with these priorities

0:05:10are 57 objectives and the idea is that these are all fantastic objectives but clearly the people behind the Strategic plan including the school board and others know that they have to get down to a more manageable list so the importance of this draft is that they're

0:05:24taking discussions and input and the idea would be that they would take these 57 objectives and narrow them down to 25 or 26 of the most important Ones based on input from the public and the board and all all the different stakeholders so I'll pass it around with the city

0:05:37council and I'll leave it up with assistant city manager Karen Pincus if anybody wants to take a look at it uh the other item I wanted to report on is that the Contra Costa Library System held their town hall meeting in El Cerrito a couple weeks ago on September

0:05:5111th there was a great turnout here in City Hall more than 60 residents and the discussion was on three key questions that each sort of table group of folks who sat together talked about and those are or those were what do you think is the biggest Community priority that the

0:06:06library should serve in terms of its service what is one thing a library could do better and what is the most important contribution our library makes to the community today so once all of the responses from all the other communities in the county are kind of put together

0:06:22then each branch will have an idea of what the direction should be in terms of the service provided at the library so thank you for think thank you to those who participated and for the Strategic plan folks who put this together for having us participate any other there's no other uh comments

0:06:40this evening then we'll move on to item three item three is oral Communications from the public this is uh reserved time for the public to speak on items that are not on the agenda or that are on the consent calendar we do limit speech to three minutes a piece we do have a

0:06:59lighting system in front of the podium when it goes green you'll start yellow you have a minute left and red I will ask you to please wrap up we are pulling two items from the consent calendar at this time that I'm aware of item five D which is the fall prevention awareness week I understand

0:07:21that Laurel zein is here and we will be effectively taking that up as the very first item when we get to item five so it will look a lot like a presentation uh and then fight item five H I have a couple of uh thoughts that I would like to express so we will take item 5H after

0:07:40we consider the other consent items um therefore if you are just here to speak on either five five D or 5H you will have an opportunity uh when we take those items up first speaker please um your honor we have two speaker slips one is General comment one is for the uh

0:08:00the Girl Scouts Proclamation for a so the first one is Ray Turnipseed good evening um I live on Gladys Avenue [address removed] and I'm here tonight to voice my concern about the trucks that are going into Castro I first came down to the city because when I retired 15 years ago I thought

0:08:30it'd be nice to get up in the morning sleep in which isn't the case because we get a lot of fafs coming to Port a lot which is fine but recently we had a problem over here with trucks lining up at six o'clock in the morning and so I called down the city and say

0:08:45why are these trucks up here at six o'clock in the morning and I was told by the city well we don't know and I said well what can you get them out of here and they said well they're not supposed to be there they don't have a permit to be there so I came down the city and I got a copy

0:09:02of the pen and I took it up and talked to superintendent on the job and I got this look smirk on his face oh we've sent in an email to the city and we have a permit that's where is it he says well we have it and it's our route now is to come up Potrero to turn on to Naval Air turn down Gladys Street

0:09:21and turn and come down and they didn't have that permit and they were going to have a meeting I'm sort to use I would talk to her and they were going to have a meeting to talk about that she said I didn't I saw their email I did not change the permit where they're supposed to go up Donnell

0:09:36to go into the school and come down that way so then I said well I'd like to attend that meeting he says well I don't think it's necessary I'll take care of it I called her back and she said well they think it's unsafe to go on that route that they're using and they like the

0:09:48route that they're they're going to use I said okay do they have a permit for it no I said why not she said I said I think there's a safer route she says well we're going to look into it we're gonna put a monitor there they did that the announcer came from the site not

0:10:05from the city okay that was fine they decided to use that route and then she told me I said I think there's a safer route I think you should go up Schmidt and go down Lawrence it's safer for the turnings radius okay well that's a little bit farther we don't want to do that so that's fine so

0:10:24we I live with it but what we're having a problem with is one of the trucks not more than more than one truck several of the trucks have come within six inches of hitting a power pole they're up on the sidewalk on Naval Air and Gladys and Potrero and Naval Air turning up on the sidewalk

0:10:42having someone having to back up to make the turn they're going over double yellow lines to make the turns they cannot make the turn safely I'm asking the city to give them a better route and a safe route it's an accident waiting to happen and if they knock out a power pole it's

0:10:58gonna be mindful I think it's six inches Miss Ortiz came up and took pictures of the tire marks on the sidewalk and it's a very dangerous situation and I think it needs to be changed and I'd like you to look into it and take care of it thank you for bringing that to our

0:11:12attention thank you very much second next speaker please Dave Weinstein hi I'm speaking as uh chairman of the El Cerrito Trail trackers and I came here to really thank the Girl Scouts for all that really great work they did on tashahara trail I thought you guys were

0:11:33given the proclamation first and then I might speak afterwards but it was just great you know they um came to trial trackers wondering what kind of work they could do to really help the city out and we had seen that those nine empty Planters had been kind of looking

0:11:45desolate for a long time and you know the place needed a little bit spiffing up it turns out there were nine girls nine Planters so really it was a marriage made in heaven and they're maintaining these things and it's just one more way that the trails are tying

0:11:58the town together and people get behind the trails and they really did a great job and of course Robin Mitchell from the community garden group is out there and Stephen pray was out there helping just a really great thing all in all and these girls deserve all the help and a

0:12:10couple of other Trekkers came just to thank them too so they can stand up if they want so thank you girl scouts it's great to help out the city thank you well with no other speakers we will move into item 4A which is the the Girl Scout Proclamation and I understand that uh Stephen pray

0:12:29has a few slides hi uh good evening mayor Lyman city council staff and members of the public I am Stephen pray I'm the environmental programs manager in City Arborist for the Department of Public Works and I do have a um a little slide presentation it's my honor thank you

0:12:52to call attention to the Girl Scouts here this is El Cerrito Girl Scout Troop 31352 seated here uh for the wonderful beautification project that they've been working on the last several months as Dave Weinstein said it all started for the city late last winter when the troop contacted

0:13:12Dave Weinstein founder of the El Cerrito Trail trackers and member of the Environmental Quality committee they contacted Robin Mitchell Recreation and park commissioner Community Gardener and native plant enthusiast and me The Troop would had come up with this idea of beautifying the uh the Tassajara

0:13:32steps Tassajara Park steps off Barrett with the renovation of nine planting beds that have been retired some time ago due to budgets constraints diminished City funds the project involved planting and it needed to be low maintenance let's see oh I need to point at that

0:14:06I've got I think there we go thank you so it helps when you turn it on so the girls uh came together they um we had a day on May 30th where the girls came together we uh to uh plant the beds they were doing some preparation of the beds with the cardboard sheet mulching here seen here

0:14:32a couple of girls don't look like they're having very much fun um here's the first plant going in the ground using recycled cardboard sheet mulch to deter the weeds here's uh one of the California poppies some months later benefiting from All That Loving Care that the girls have been giving it

0:14:54here's another planter and yet another and here's a couple of the Girl Scouts who have worked together to ensure survival one of the deals with this was that the troop had come up with the idea but the it was the Clincher was they had they had they each came up with a design

0:15:17for one of nine Planters and the deal was that they needed to commit to caring for the Planters until they're established so these girls have been out there I guess weekly or maybe more often uh watering dragging the hoses up and down these steps and the result is there

0:15:38are these beautiful Planters here so um there you have it I'd like to give special thanks to Monica quartz and the Public Works Crews for their help and at this time I'd like the Girl Scout Troop 31352 to step up front here I believe the mayor has something to say well I

0:16:00actually I will invite any of the council members to to provide any words if they're interested um otherwise I I will personally extend my thanks uh that uh stairwell I used to use quite often when I had a dog and I live in that neighborhood so I know that stairwell well and so I thank you very

0:16:20much for making that Improvement it was much needed um I now get to ask the council if I think we have to make a proclamation um so if I get to sign this Proclamation [Music] so the council is supposed to approve this population Proclamation so can I get a motion so thank you seconded all

0:16:41those in favor say aye aye great um should we go down and get a picture taken sure okay okay it's whatever you want why don't you just do it okay okay it's hard to get that wide and angle and make sure all the drills down mayor can represent ative I want to thank you

0:17:16[Applause] [Laughter] a lot of people that were involved in it yeah thank you everybody [Applause] all you have to do is say your name into the microphone if you could if you could please use the microphone that'd be great so yep my name is Valencia White my name is Madison courts

0:18:23I'm Maggie Campbell I'm Sophie Hannon Bella reubenaker I'm Christina fedelli Jamie Brown [Applause] thank you foreign [Music] at this time we'll move on to item 4B which is El Cerrito Stars internship program and I invite sukhari bashirs to the podium for a brief presentation

0:19:13and she's getting her presentation ready good evening mayor Lyman council members and City staff we're gonna what I want to talk about tonight is our El Cerrito Stars program this program was introduced to the city council on May 7th and we are now bringing it back

0:20:00to you to report out at the conclusion of the of the um program this program was an eight-week paid internship that began June 10th and ended August 2nd the each intern that we had was part of the program will present to you this evening and the we've you probably hear me refer

0:20:23to them as the EC stars and just to kind of tell you what that means it's El Cerrito students training and ready for success we collaborated uh with the school district to bring this idea to fruition and we started out by taking this program to to the interns we went out to

0:20:50the high school we had department heads go out and talk to the interns about the opportunities so that they were aware of what those internships were so we exposed them to the entire Recruitment and selection process which began with an application interview and then actual

0:21:11orientation before they were hired and just to let you know the interns they worked an average about of about 20 hours a week and they also had weekly classroom meetings and assignments the intern assignments were in each of our city departments they were assigned

0:21:35to mentors Who provided regular and ongoing guidance and feedbacks on assignments and they exposed them to a work environment and local government so the whole idea about the program was to bring students or to provide students with skill building internships through

0:21:54project assignments that we had here at the city in addition to that students also volunteer to work at special events such as the Fourth of July and Street play we had nine students participate in this program and I'm proud to say that they each and every one of them completed the

0:22:19program and I believe that you know they will be able to take these skills on to use during their senior year at the high school and for some of them this was their first exposure to a job and to the work environment so it was really great to have them be a part of this program

0:22:43and what you see here is a picture of a student activity that we did with the interns and this was basically working on communication in a team building so they were challenged um to communicate outside of their normal comfort zone so some of them as you can see there's two here that have

0:23:06blindfolds on so they had to actually follow Direction they couldn't that was they couldn't talk and they couldn't um see what was going on so they had to do everything by touch there were also some who could only communicate with their hands and others who were only

0:23:24allowed to use verbal communication so again this was to get them out of their comfort zone and to help them them to build other team building and communication skills so with that I would like to introduce our first uh intern and her name is Emil and what she will do is tell you what

0:23:44she did over her summer vacation a meal [Applause] okay hello my name is Amel kahelli and I am an easy star who am I I am a student from Australia High I'm currently a senior and I am also in the ITA Academy I was in the city Management Department with Karen pingos as my mentor which was

0:24:17great my future goal is to attend a four-year college and to use the skills I learned during the internship and use them to excel in my future career my experience as an intern my project was actually pretty new to me I learned what the city assistant city manager did

0:24:35which was Municipal codes another word for city laws I learned how to research in a college level and was also to also allow or able to draft a proposal for the regulation of tobacco smoking or secondhand smoke and I presented it to the equal in Environmental Quality committee I

0:24:57also volunteered or I had the choice to volunteer for the El Cerrito 4th of July and also Street play My outcome my presentation skills I um learn new presentation skills like when I um presented with the Environmental Quality committee which is my first time in City Hall presenting with Karen Picos

0:25:19my research skills I had to go far beyond what I learned in high school and into a college level which is a new experience and my communication skills it was new um I had to be not talking in one of our activities with the Egg and I learned listening skills and also teamwork

0:25:39and I will be passing it to Jessica [Applause] hello my name is Jessica villasouk and I'm a senior at El Cerrito High School I I am also in the ITA Academy over the summer I worked in the human resources department for the city of Los Cerrito the roles I basically did for the human

0:26:13resource department my responsibilities were to research salaries and benefits for this project that I've done and also I was filing opening jobs and I-9 forms and paper paperwork basically with part-timers and full-timers that were resigned from 20 2010 and older

0:26:32why am I interested I was interested in working for the city of El Cerrito because I wanted to get the feel of how it would be to work in a professional environment and also to serve my community a project I worked on was the salaries and benefits project was which was

0:26:49basically about the um to compare the salaries and benefits with our city El Cerrito and other cities within the within the district like Pinole Hayward and Hercules and Etc and what I did was I had to research online and go to their websites and um yeah I had to go to websites and gather their

0:27:11information of salaries and benefits and put it into an Excel spreadsheet and then I would input all that together and compare their salaries and benefits with each other with El Cerritos salaries and benefits um skills I've utilized was basically my typing and researching skills and also

0:27:27I've used Microsoft Word and Excel which I've known how to use before and also I got better at my communication and note taking skills which made me um better at interviewing people and collaborating with others and also a highlight for was this project I did which was filing

0:27:47um people who resigned from 2010 and older well part-timers and four times I resigned from 2010 and older and for that I had to take all the files from the drawers into the storage put into boxes and input their data into an in Microsoft Word Microsoft Word and then

0:28:05after I was done I would give them to Cheryl and later on the human resource department will send them off to storage um for what I learned I learned a lot of new things actually and like that I would we would go to classes on Fridays and for the Friday classes we would have

0:28:20guest speakers and we would take notes on them and from that I would learn more about them and about how they would get to their career path and it inspired me of how really how they got through their struggles and how they got to what vocation they really wanted to do and

0:28:34that I got better at interviewing people and collabing with my classmates which we had to do activities such as that egg that egg activity that we did together and that we had to collaborate with one another which people weren't able to see and to also talk and stuff so we had to

0:28:51collaborate in those pretty fun and also when we had our classes we were assigned from for different assignments like functional resumes and professional bios and it was it's a benefit for our future career hopefully and that it was it was a great thing to do and also the

0:29:08outcomes of my experience was great it was a really great experience and that for that we I met new people and I got to know them better and I was comfortable working with them such as my mentor Cheryl Mosby and Sakari bashirs and also um another outcome was like I was being more

0:29:26punctual this time and that I've came to all my um work I came to work on time and I got my assignments done on time and that was a good thing for me and I I felt accomplished that by doing that and also I was able to apply the things I knew that I had I learned from ITA and

0:29:42from the other classes I've learned and then I complied to the real world and to this internship and it was a great opportunity and I would like to thank everyone and thank you for your time and thank you for those who contributed to this internship thank you [Applause]

0:30:01to Jesus foreign when I was in the summer internship for the city of El Cerrito I was working in the city Management Department my mentor was Suzanne Ayala I was excited to be a part of this internship because it was my my very first job it was a wonderful experience

0:30:33I was also very excited to start working with a whole bunch of different people like meeting new people um I was also very excited to start working with a whole bunch of different people like meeting new people it was very inter it was a very interesting job once I said it on the first day I

0:30:49already had a huge assignment to come complete Suzanne had me go out to take pictures of the wind sculptures that were put up on the light post on the street of San Pablo Avenue I got I got to ride with the artists themselves I got to meet them and they were very friendly and funny that same

0:31:06day after I was done taking pictures Suzanne had me go with her to Home Depot to help her out we were hope we were having people fill out surveys the surveys were for the city they had questions like what did you think about what do you think about um our city and

0:31:20do you have any ideas on how we can make El Cerrito a better place Suzanne and Karen pinko's we're very wonderful bosses they will always have work for me and my friend who was also my co-worker at the time a male the assignments that they had us do were always interesting like another

0:31:37assignment that Suzanne hammy do was um since she since I had a little bit of experience with one of the programs she had on the computer which was Lightroom five and she was new to it she had me create a step-by-step instruction manual based on the basic steps for Lightroom

0:31:51she would be using it so she can teach herself how to use it I had many other assignments that Suzanne had me do but those two I thought were the best ones I did it over the summer I had a really a really wonderful time for working working for the city I encourage anybody

0:32:06who has the opportunity to sign up for the internship to not hesitate they will not regret it I did I don't regret anything at all I thought it was a very great experience and I'm glad that I had the opportunity to be a part of this internship I would like to thank Sakara

0:32:19Bashir Suzanne and Karen pinkos for the great time we had his shirt together in the office I would also like to thank thank Mr Mason and Miss Shaw for telling me and letting me know about this internship also I would like to thank my my photography teacher Mr Grover because

0:32:35he let me use one of his own cameras that he that he um he let me that he got out of his own pocket from his house he trusted me with it and he let me use it for the whole summer um and lastly I would like to thank the city of El Cerrito for this great opportunity that you guys gave me and my

0:32:51friends my name is Jesus Salazar and I thank you all for your for your time and cooperation [Applause] good evening everyone I'm Alvin wing and this is we are both currently seniors at El Cerrito High School and we have recently completed our internship at the city of

0:33:21El Cerrito we were both assigned to the inter uh to the public works department in the Community Development Department within the Departments we have contributed to the progress of the urban Greening plan and active Transportation plan I chose this department because not only

0:33:35do I want to help make my city a better place to live not that it's already a great city to live in but to also make the city of El Cerrito a greater and more natural City to be I chose the department because I wanted to see a civil engineering action and an architect in action I also wanted

0:33:51Insight on the ACT Transportation plan in El Cerrito because of this fantastic opportunity for me to work in a city work environment I was able to do tasks that I would have never done I got to organize and plan my own team focus group meeting with Mohit that allowed

0:34:07teens to come and give their input to the city to help them decide what they should build or improve to benefit the teens in the city muhi and I also got to participate in professional meetings that with big companies like AC Transit Mig and Caltrans this fantastic opportunity enabled me to

0:34:26gain great practical skills that I can use every day one highlight of this internship was that the day when former city engineer Jerry Bradshaw came to our AC Stars class and gave an epic speech that helped me choose my major for college because at first I wasn't so sure if I wanted to

0:34:41major civil engineering but after hearing uh Jerry's epic speech I found that I wanted I could see with myself doing that every day I found him okay my vocation for me if there was one thing I would be able to take with me from this internship it would be all the practical

0:35:00skills I've learned and developed I've learned how to interact with professionals during meetings how to use office equipment and how the city of Elsewhere operates these skills are only a few of the many I've obtained this internship has made me a stronger critical thinker a more

0:35:15creative and a resourceful person and a more engaging citizen and for me if there was one thing I can take along with me from this internship it would probably be uh all the Insight that I gained on City Planning and how to interact professionally with others from writing an email to uh organizing a

0:35:30meeting the internship was uh also a great experience I needed uh I gained a great experience that needed us again to be successful in life and uh in the Working World and made me a more engaging person now that I know a lot more about how the City Works I when I see a stop sign I I

0:35:48know the process of how to get that fixed and what it goes through uh I would like to thank our mentors uh Yvette Ortiz and Emily alter and uh Melanie mints for helping us and mentoring US during our internship and uh I also like to thank the city council the city of El Cerrito and the ITA

0:36:08Academy to provide us with this internship experience a special thanks to subscriber shares for helping us and uh giving us great information throughout the internship thank you hello my name is Jennifer you and I'm currently a senior at elsewhere high school during the summer of 2013 I

0:36:49interned for the finance department I found particular interest in the finance department because I always wanted to know how the city budgets its money and in order to provide this residence the main needs they offer one of the big projects I one of the big projects I did during

0:37:11this internship was the grants inventory project in which I conducted means with several departments regarding the grand safe they currently have this this project helped me gain valuable communication skills because in the beginning I was intimidated by this by

0:37:32doing this project but afterwards I felt more comfortable talking with others throughout this program I have developed many valuable skills and I've experienced what I felt feels like to work in a professional environment with more mature and knowledgeable people

0:37:53the experience I had during this internship is definitely one of a kind not only did I learn valuable things from my experiences but also from the people I worked with I have become I was very inspired by every person I encountered during this internship I feel I have matured and discovered new

0:38:11things and views throughout this time I'm still learning and growing every day and this experience has contributed a huge part to My growth I would like to thank my mentor Lisa and Alex for being an amazing mentor and taking everything I say into consideration I

0:38:31would also like to thank the finance staff for balcony and supporting me during my time here lastly I would like to thank the CEO for making this amazing program possible foreign and I am a senior at El Cerrito High School and I am also in the ITA Department the ITA Academy and the

0:39:02department that I internship for over this summer was the fire department and some of the things that I did was first I did fire RMS which is basically a program which held emergency contacts addresses phone numbers and other important information of all the businesses in El Cerrito and Kensington

0:39:20which was extremely tedious and took a lot of patience and other things that I did was I worked on the fall issue of the fire plug which basically just informed and educated the residents about fire hazards safety measures open houses and much more and another thing that I worked on was

0:39:40maps and what I mean by that is I calculated the numbers of houses in all of El Cerrito and parts of Kensington which is also extremely tedious and gave a lot of patience and the skills I attained by doing those Works along with many other projects was first I believe that I became more of a

0:40:02quality producer because I knew that other people were relying on me and that motivated me to produce a greater quality work another thing that I got was first when I started fire RMS I was completely oblivious to it I had no idea what this program was I had never seen

0:40:20in my life ever before and getting as accustomed to that was kind of a challenge at first and also other software such as Excel that I previously used slightly but I got more depth I got more in depth with it over the couple over the couple weeks and also proficient which equals the

0:40:43proficient user of digital and media media technology and other things we did another thing we did was jargon words every week we would share jargon words from each and every department so I was in the fire department I would share my jargon words with the rest of the

0:40:58interns and they would share theirs with ours and we would be able to understand the different the different departments even though we were specifically um specifically in one one of my highlights I'm one of my extreme highlights was the fact that everybody from all of the Departments

0:41:15would take time out of their day and come see and come talk to us personally and some of the things that they told us one of the important 100 things that I will remember forever is the vocation versus occupation they told us that we should follow our dreams follow what we

0:41:32believe in and that way we'll be able to obtain so much more than just following a job that we might want or doing just doing it rather than just doing a job following something that your heart is telling you to do so and we learned that everybody in El Cerrito every single person that we

0:41:49interacted with every single member every single worker was completely devoted to their job and that made them that made them so much more productive and we're actually happy doing so um another thing that when we first started off we learned about 21st century

0:42:07student which was basically just critical thinking communication skills technological skills and I think by the end of the couple weeks that we spent internship in the internship we were definitely we definitely came out as 21st century students using the skills

0:42:27to better the community and lastly I would just like to thank the city council and the city of El Cerrito and everybody who participated to make this internship come true thank you [Applause] okay um hi my name is Conrad Cosell I'm currently enrolled in the ITA or

0:42:55Information Technology Academy um ITA teaches students about computers some of these things are programming computer components and web design because of ITA I've grown to love working with computers and I want to be a programmer one day I was an intern in the El Cerrito Police

0:43:22Department because I always thought that law enforcement was cool and I thought that um how they're willing to put their lives on the line for others and how they help others was really cool foreign so some of the skills I developed in um working in the police department

0:43:50was note-taking skills and research skills some of the programs I had um some of the projects I had was researching rugged laptops or laptops to just um sustained damage from day to day to six foot drops and Spills I got better at writing down key parts of speeches and documents

0:44:17by interviewing some some of el Cerritos professionals and taking notes while reading a book to help students in the future I also strengthened my speaking skills by speaking in a formal tone to everyone in the police department and thanks to everyone in the police

0:44:41department I got to learn about um the different parts of it such as Patrol um and property and evidence The Internship taught me many things some of the things they taught me was to never give up on finding my vocation because many of the professionals I've interviewed

0:45:10during my internship had many problems and had many occupations before fighting their vocation I also learned to keep an open mind about the occupations because you never know which one can lead to your to your um vocation I also learned that you never stop learning new things and improving your

0:45:35skills Chief Mario taught me this and she has a wide range of knowledge and is better um bettering her skills every day to um just learn about new things and help others so um thank you all and the next and last intern is Karina Martin [Applause] hello everyone my name is Karina aracely

0:46:14Martin and I am still currently working for the recreation department for the city of El Cerrito and um I have to say it's been a great experience I love working there and um at first I didn't know much about what the recreation department was I just really thought it was about like

0:46:31swimming since it was by the swimming pool and um however all of that changed this summer with the help of my mentor Vivian Brandt and my co-workers I have a complete broader sense of what Recreation is from Child Care to summer camps to winter spring classes all the way to special

0:46:48events facility rentals senior services and Aquatics programs um the first project my mentor had me work on was based on mesup which is Madera after school Pro enrichment program and I pulled out information from two surveys participant and non-participant and I created a comparing contrast

0:47:09between the two at first I didn't really think my project would be such a what would be into use much however that changed a couple months later when the program was about to start working um one of the the contractors was talking to my mentor Vivian Brandt and she actually took out

0:47:27my compare and contrast of the cons and pros of the Mesa program and I was really shocked because I was like wow my work is actually being into use with someone in the like real working environment which was really an amazing experience um another thing I worked on was their

0:47:47e-newsletter which is now called Rec news I redesigned their look of it as well as the logo um working for the recreation department it helped me grow as a person and helped me develop my skills in communication time management and research I have to say EC stars is an amazing

0:48:06program and I believe everyone should have the opportunity to to be in this program because honestly I've grown with this program I don't know where I'd be without it I want to thank Sakari B shears for allowing this program to start as well as Chris and Melody Shaw for and for

0:48:26telling us at the ITA also um I want to thank you all for allowing this program to go into place and thank you thank you Sakari bashir's human resources manager if I could have all of the interns stand up please actually you can have them come on up to the the front in and uh well actually

0:48:57we're going to have you guys come on up and then I'll turn this over to Mayor Lyman who has some certificates that he is going to present to the interns and I I will be coming down briefly to present these certificates to you uh this is our opportunity for the council to express

0:49:11any words uh go ahead um yes I would really like to thank everyone involved in this program this came this program came out of a conversation that I had with uh Mike aronian who's sitting there in the audience Mike if you would wave and um talking about how to expand a program

0:49:35we had been doing in the summer of taking students to Sacramento in a service club that I'm in and um this program is just so much richer than that and one of the things I would like to acknowledge is how important I think that this sort of thing is for the students learning and preparedness for

0:49:57life because it's connecting the academic side of the house with the actual real work experience and I want to thank our El Cerrito staff who were involved who were named along the way but also I want to thank Scott Hannon for really believing in this I especially want to thank

0:50:16Sakari and Karen pinkos who I don't quite there she is over there and and all of the staff who really bought into the concept and made it really what it is so that it wasn't just an exercise in filing paper clips uh or something that it was real work and so that the

0:50:36students could actually see what it was like to actually have a job where you know where you produced real output and I think all of these students did do that and I think that um I would I would hope that we would do this program again and I would hope that the other cities around us and other

0:50:57organizations around us would do the same and I do think that one of the important features of this program is that the students are paid for their work because they are doing real work and it is important to acknowledge that and I would also like to thank the school district proper for

0:51:16um um their part in bringing to us the program that was behind this which was the link learning program I think it may have a different name now but it was uh originally called the link learning program it's the academy program that the students mentioned they were all in

0:51:34different academies and um so I think it's just the most fantastic thing that we could have done on our um city uh summer and I hope that we do it again thank you everybody um I I just want to Echo what Janet said I think it was a great program um I actually at one of the park and rec

0:52:01commission meetings had one of the students give a presentation on the smoking ordinance that we were thinking about she did a really good job and I think it's really I think you sounded like you had a lot of fun and I I really wanted to find out more about the jargon

0:52:15words who had the best what department had the best dragon words but but I'll just leave it at that and thank you all for participating I will come down and give my remarks from the other Mike foreign first of all congratulations to all of you for your achievement and your

0:52:41presentations tonight were fantastic so you should take at least that experience away with you um civil engineering is a great vocation and I know an epic speech is not a forthcoming at this point because I'm known for my brevity but um I I'm glad that Jerry was able to

0:52:58convince you to join our ranks um I did take note that that many of you learned and repeated some of the things that you all uh learned communication skills um and these are lifelong skills note-taking researching and I want to emphasize one that you're all practicing right now

0:53:17which is listening um listening is a very important skill and I hope that you all remember the skills that you learned and and take them forward in your careers and may they be vocations there are many people here that that Janet did a beautiful job of thinking

0:53:33the school district uh the people who thought this up and of course our city staff so I won't take much time doing that I will begin to give out presentations um you did get a cert from us from the city of El Cerrito you will be receiving a certificate of achievement

0:53:55um and from uh Contra Costa County uh supervisor John Joya you will be getting a certificate of appreciation so uh I don't know I don't think I saw a staff member of his here but I know that he really does also value education and the type of training you guys received with that I'm going to

0:54:18call them out in the order that you spoke because that happens to be the way I signed them so um Amel Jessica make sure that you only got one the other okay um Jesus [Applause] Alvin [Applause] let's see Mohit [Applause] Jennifer foreign [Applause] Conrad [Applause]

0:55:26and I'll come to you uh Karina [Applause] thank you all [Applause] [Laughter] right and I I see a few people lining up behind me so we will take short remarks from at least uh Mr Iranian I see Dr harder here I see Mr Mason lining up to speak and I don't know if Mr Groves has thoughts

0:56:16that he wants to express but if we could be brief we do have a meeting to go on to do you want to torture them by having them stand or can we have them sit could you guys come on right back over here and behind Mr Mason good evening council members thank you for having us

0:56:44um Mr Mason come on this program as Miss Abelson had discussed it was conceived Mr Hannon was there miss beshears was there a couple times Miss pinkos was there it was great and the amount of support we had was fabulous this gentleman here something you don't know this gentleman here had a

0:57:08teaching partner for every Friday that kids met and I would like to take this opportunity to present Miss beshears with a plaque this on behalf of the school district Sakari bashir's honorary teacher oh [Applause] you're all set if you need another vocation [Laughter]

0:57:44so uh on behalf I had the duty of weekly instruction um this began as a seat of an idea and it grew very very quickly and very naturally and organically but it took a willing School District a willing city um all kinds of support from teaching staff Chris thank you so much you're

0:58:03absolutely invaluable we had to do some mushing we had to do some persuading a number of special events and here is the uh very much the fruit of all that labor our future I'm going to keep this really short but for my part I'm so proud of this student cohort they grew so much individually

0:58:21and respectively and y'all are not just DC stars but rock stars go out make the world a better place one day at a time you're going to do it thank you so much for your inspiration [Applause] thank you congratulations to all of you if there's no other speakers we will move on to

0:58:55item five D um item 5D is similarly a proclamation it is for fall prevention awareness week September 22nd to 28th and we do have a representative uh Miss Lauren Zion I always pronounce that correctly if you would like to give us a few words about this Proclamation then we will move it

0:59:21so I'd love to thank you um I'm Laurel Zion I'm an elder care coach and educator and I'm a volunteer with the fall prevention Coalition of Contra Costa County and it's I've been here several years before it's great to be here with you again as a kickoff for fall prevention

0:59:39Awareness Week the fall prevention program of Contra Costa county is a sub-program of Meals on Wheels and Senior Outreach Services and we thank you for your support of our program it's a great honor to receive a proclamation again in recognition of fall prevention awareness week from all

0:59:56of you Meals on Wheels senior Outreach Services has been serving seniors in Contra Costa County since 1968.

1:00:03the fall prevention program serves nearly 700 seniors through evidence-based exercise classes home safety assessments and modifications and through sharing Educational Tools about preventing Falls the number of clients MOS serves has balloons since the economic

1:00:25downturn began from 2996 individuals in fiscal year 2007-8 to 5109 in fiscal year 2011-12 an increase of 71 percent in four years over 800 volunteers and 70 Coalition members actively participate in our work allowing every dollar that we spend to provide many dollars worth

1:00:51of services thank you again for your support of fall prevention and fall prevention awareness and please feel free to contact us if you need any more information thanks very much you're welcome um this Proclamation is uh I think very important I know I've actually

1:01:08personally known three people in my life whose lives were shortened because of their Falls and breaking their hips in their in their senior years so um so it is a very important uh reason so I'm looking for a motion to pass this Proclamation still moved second we have

1:01:29a motion in a second all those in favor please say aye aye aye let the record show that it passed unanimously and I will assign it and bring it down to you thank you thanks very much thank you thanks that was a hard act to follow [Laughter] we will move on with the rest of our

1:02:19consent calendar five uh a through 5c 5 e through 5 G does anyone want to pull any other items for discussion so we have adoption of those items sorry second you have adoption of those items we have a motion in a second all those in favor please say aye aye let

1:02:39the record show that it passed unanimously item 5H I pulled this just mostly because this uh I don't know if staff wants to say any words this is really mostly for us to to talk so I don't know if your memo was quite good and and but this is a very complicated topic so I don't know if you

1:03:03want to shed a little light on with your remarks well I hadn't really prepared any but if I guess what I would say is if there are any questions that um any of this phrase I'd be happy to address them essentially we're we're just going through the same process we

1:03:17have gone before and asking for money for the obligations that um are the former Redevelopment agencies so the the most important thing that I wanted to highlight is that we are potentially under cash flow loan uh we will be utilizing our cash reserves to cat to

1:03:35make this loan or potentially use our cash reserves for making this loan and um I also wanted to talk if you would briefly about previous litigation expenses and and their recovery just to affirm that we will we have high expectations that this cash loan would be repaid sure

1:03:54um the trailer bill that amended the dissolution act I believe specifically says that litigation costs are unencorable use of Redevelopment property taxes and we did um put a cash flow loan agreement on the last drops which initially dof denied and then once we presented them with some

1:04:17information documenting the specific costs it was not a problem at all and so they approved both the cash flow loan and um specifically for because it was for reimbursing the city for litigation costs and so that those funds have been received and the city has already been

1:04:37reimbursed for those costs great thank you any other comments just one more and is the loan amount expected to be sufficient to cover the cost of the litigation or is this sort of uh the first tranche for this fiscal year and it depends on how things may go well I guess I would say I think it will

1:04:55cover it but I I would certainly defer to [Music] um to the City attorney um I think that that the loan should be sufficient to cover the cost of litigation based on typical litigation costs for the trial level depending on what the outcome is at that level if there's an appeal then we'll probably

1:05:18have to revisit it or if there's anything that's unexpected I mean that's the nature of litigation is that sometimes unexpected things occur but other than that I imagine the amount that that's on the loan should be sufficient for the trial phase of litigation great thank you

1:05:37with that I'm looking for a motion I'll move the item we have a motion second we have a second all those in favor please say aye aye let the records show that it passed unanimously uh that concludes our item five we will move on at this time to item six which is a public hearing

1:05:56um in this public hearing uh we will announce it we'll have a staff presentation we'll have questions from Council we'll open it for a public hearing if there's public test public here to testify they will testify we will close it and then we will move on with discussion uh with that I will

1:06:14announce a public hearing uh excuse me a public hearing on the abatement of fire hazard public nuisances on six properties pursuant to El Cerrito Municipal Code chapter 16.26 good evening good evening good evening honorable Marin council members as you know I'm Dave chappar the

1:06:31fire prevention officer and I'm here to introduce the resolution confirming the cost of forced abatement on six properties previously recognized as public nuisances by the city council and allowing for the lien of the associated costs against the properties as a quick

1:06:44overview from last time there were 140 properties initially found in violation of City standards uh from there 23 were declared public nuisances at the nuisance hearing and from there uh six were left for Force debate um they have been abated uh the costs are before you and I'm available for any

1:07:07questions you may have questions I have one if no one else does I I'm just kind of curious I was looking at these and wondering if it may be true in some cases and maybe you can't tell that people actually like the idea that we would take care of the abatement and

1:07:29all they have to do is pay a bill well the the difficulty with that is is they may like us to take care of it uh what we find is there are several properties that show up on the list uh annually and they wait to the last very last um notice or the last day to take to

1:07:48take action on their own property I doubt they really like us to take care of it due to the administrative costs that are associated with it however there have been circumstances especially last year where I was at the home as the contractor was there the person came out of their home

1:08:06flagged me down and we were able to make an arrangement for her to pay the contractor directly for those costs the home got abated according to the program but the administrative costs were waived at the discretion of administration okay thank you so um I'm familiar with a couple of

1:08:25these properties and know that they may uh they may be in the process of changing hands but in some cases they may be owned by people who are in fixed incomes and so if they're unable to pay or a property owner does not pay what is the what what happens to these charges that

1:08:43we've accrued well what the general process that occurs after this abatement here or after the cost hearing I should say is that I go down to the county offices and place Lanes when I asked I spoke with the county actually in in an inquisitive fashion just to find out the

1:09:02process of what the county does if folks don't pay their property taxes basically their answer was that they allow the liens to accumulate and then at some point the liens that are placed outweigh the value of the property and at that point the county takes over the property

1:09:17and auctions It Off and and we would get reimbursed from the auction process they're actually reimbursed much earlier than than all of that I will place uh these um charges on this year's tax bill and they usually get this out earlier than even next year's um next year's assessment so the city is

1:09:42reimbursed every time by the county um up front great and then I was looking at the actual dates of service and uh it looks like after we had our meeting in July um that the vendor the provider Who removed the vegetation didn't visit the site for almost two weeks so I'm just

1:10:04curious if there's a way for us to shorten that time period given the um the notoriety of the Rimfire and our most recent Bay Area fire the Morgan uh Trail fire fire Morgan Territory fire I'm just curious if there's any way for us to to have this vegetation removed

1:10:24earlier Late July early August as opposed to late the third week of August which is what appears like the dates were of service uh the the reason why the dates are so spread out is to give the property owners every opportunity to take care of the property issues

1:10:39themselves the length of the process that started in the early 90s was verified through City attorneys and also get like I said the main goal of which is to have the property owners Abate the properties themselves without us having to add the administrative costs that are associated

1:10:59that's that's why it's usually about a month from between each of the steps is because the property owners have to be given a chance it's not that it can't occur any sooner it just becomes challengeable if they're not given the chance to rectify the situation themselves great

1:11:18thank you um with that I will open the public hearing at this time we have no speaker slips mayor I move that we close the public hearing we have a motion that's been seconded all those favors say I I let the record show it passed unanimously um and that brings us to the proclamation

1:11:43that's at hand the resolution of the city to a confirming the report of costs I move the resolution we have a motion second oops go ahead go ahead seconded by councilmember Bridges all those in favor say aye aye aye uh let the record show that it passed unanimously uh thank you very

1:12:03much officer chaparro for all your hard work I see you racing out the door I know you can hear me though we're Amplified in the lobby I think he has his weed whacker back there right um that concludes item six and brings us to item uh the happy item of 7A and I see uh Chief maples at the podium

1:12:29good evening mayor council members and staff tonight I am excited to bring before you item 7A this item will ultimately authorize the purchase of a new ladder truck for the city's fire department and we'll replace the existing one that's over 20 years old staff tonight is requesting Council

1:12:46adopt a resolution that authorizes the acceptance of 856 406 dollars from a federal FEMA Grant we're also requesting the authorization of appropriations of 951 562 which is made up of this Grant and a contribution of 31 718 from the Kensington fire district and uh the matching Grant from the city

1:13:11of El Cerrito's general fund excuse me unrestricted general fund of 63 438 dollars and finally the main part of tonight we're looking for authorization for the city manager to enter into contract purchase a 2014 Spartan 103 foot aerial apparatus from high-tech emergency vehicle services in

1:13:32the amount of 951 562 dollars I would be happy to open up to questions for anything you'd like to know about the existing piece of equipment the replacement piece of equipment or the grant process that we used any questions from Council um I've just had a couple questions so

1:13:52um first of all let me just comment yet again we got another Grant and but not only this we also had the grant for chest compressions and the breathing apparatus and I think and all in all is over 1.1 million or something like that I'll be back later in the year

1:14:09for both of those items also I mean did I did I steal your thunder no you no not at all no that those came out in weekly reports I can tell you for those two items um we had a process in place and Mr Hannon helped us so we have the funding in place for the air packs and

1:14:25we have the funding in place in the current budget to be able to do the match for those this was one that was a very competitive process and it's also much more money we didn't have the funding in place because it didn't we didn't get authorized the grant until after the budget cycle it

1:14:40closed right and I had asked some questions about our vehicle replacement fund and I understand that our leases our current leases are taking most of that money and therefore that's why we're going in unrestricted General funds that's fine 103 feet how many stories is that eight

1:14:58seven six seven eight ish around there depends on the placement depends on if it's on an arrow Street or a wide Street okay um and then I think that we also saved ourselves a little bit of money because we did this tag on with Nevada Fire Protection District which saves a lot of

1:15:12administrative time and going out for an RFP and putting together a spec That's Unique right and this is this does 70 700 I don't know what did I read 800 gallons of capacity of water shooting no this this is a pre-pum plumbed aerial that can right shoot water but it

1:15:30doesn't have a pump a ladder truck doesn't have a pump on it and engine supplies a ladder truck is this unique Is this different than the the one we had from the only difference between the well there's lots of differences but the main difference between the one we

1:15:43currently have is it's 105 feet this one's 103 feet but the the the capabilities of the truck are very similar okay go ahead um really truly amazing by just the I understand these are only some of the um reports that are in uh included in the process of developing

1:16:09the materials that are needed for to do this procurement and what my question is uh because I really am truly amazed at the you know amount of detail and amount of technical information that was here um is how do the firefighters or whoever's doing this learn how to do these

1:16:33or even look at the documents well well there's there's uh like every good Department there's a bunch of people behind the scenes doing a lot of work and I can tell first first and foremost on this project um the department has applied for this grant three times this is this is the

1:16:49third cycle that we've applied um Chief Gibson has been very successful in writing grants for the Department um he was instrumental in putting this one together and every year tweaking it and going to the grant seminars and seeing you know what wording do we change how do we go one way or another

1:17:04and then the second part of this puzzle is a battalion chief Mike pagone who has an extensive background in fire apparatus and all the emergency components that go from that before he was in the fire service he worked for a fire truck vendor so it's those two individuals that make things like this a

1:17:22success and we can do it in-house and uh you know I honestly I wouldn't want to review grants or sell fire trucks to either one of those folks they do a real good job of it and just for the benefit of our viewing audience can you explain to us what the benefit is of having this

1:17:43kind of apparatus for sure um a community is raided by the insurance services organization and you have to have certain components within your department are within your region one of the components is a ladder truck um having a ladder truck in the El Cerrito fire department is one of the

1:18:01main factors that takes our ISO rating from a four to a three when we first started the relationship the contract relationship with Kensington they weren't considered part of us so their ISO rating was a four when they came aboard and we became one organization

1:18:17operationally it gave them the ability to come from a four to a three so it it helps El Cerrito remain as a three and it it helps Kensington not go back to a force and and what that does for the individual residents it rates your insurance which sets the rate that the

1:18:33insurance uh carrier charges for residential commercials so without this we would have higher rates is that correct we'd go from a three to a four [Music] it's a good question yeah any questions no I I actually have one because it looks like there's an opportunity for a policy here on page 22

1:18:53of uh of this very extensive detailed uh list it it says it's um halfway down the page 30-12-7000.

1:19:05the apparatus body shall be painted must specify so do we get to pick the color tonight I I get to pick the color I knew that'd make you smile it will match our Fleet okay because I was asked earlier today if it's going to be red or yellow no no no no it will it will

1:19:26result the the one the one key component about this uh this spec and this Spartan Chassis is the cab and the front of it will match the other two rigs that you guys have recently purchased engine 71 and engine 72. white top red side it'll look they'll look like sister engines

1:19:44right next to each other it does say Cabot paint exterior two-tone but it doesn't tell me what the two tones are so I was definitely looking through here in in all honesty we'll paint it whatever color you want bread is what I would like um uh let's see we have taken up this

1:20:03matter are there any public comments on this item no no secret slips any further comments I could just make one comment and this is this is an absolutely fantastic leverage opportunity and how amazing that we got this grant Midway through the cycle and it's a great use

1:20:17of funds I do just want to note that I had a quick conversation with the city manager this is the second item we're talking about dipping into our reserves on and we did discuss the the possibility of making sure that we still try to find savings elsewhere this isn't

1:20:31I mean in the grand scheme of our budget it's sixty thousand dollars but we've taken up two items now that we'll dip into that a bit and we've talked about how we can fill that gap before we get to the end of the fiscal year um so I'm happy we had those discussions

1:20:43and when leverage opportunities like this come along clearly it behooves us to move quickly and get this done in a million dollar piece of equipment is going to be a great Boon to our residents I'm glad you mentioned the cost savings we're helping them maintain

1:20:55that's one of those things that yeah you know a delayed person wouldn't have known but I didn't want to just make that note that we did talk about trying to fill that gap before the fiscal year and I'm sure as we get budget updates we'll hear how that's going thank you

1:21:07and I do appreciate your comments and and I will say this is one of the things that's so wonderful about the city of El Cerrito and the Department's heads you have I was contacted from all the department heads when this first became public and that we knew that it wasn't

1:21:19budgeted for and everyone said there's got to be a way we can do this and if we can tighten the belt a little bit here do this it's I mean it's sixty thousand dollars for a million dollar piece of equipment so um it's it's a real big deal thank you thank you to you and your

1:21:36staff for all the hard work that you put into this and uh when when you get it let's have a ribbon cutting or something where Firehouse move the resolution I'll read it because there's actually three parts to it uh resolution of the city council authorizing the city managed to accept

1:21:57856 406 dollars in Grant funds from FEMA appropriate and appropriate both the 856 406 in Grant funds and ninety five thousand one hundred and fifty six in matching funds and executed contract with high-tech emergency vehicle services for the acquisition of a replacement

1:22:19103 foot aerial fire truck through Cooperative purchase program second the motion we've had a motion it's been made and seconded all those in favor say aye aye let the record show that it passed unanimously [Applause] okay here comes item 7B proposed agreement between the city of

1:22:45El Cerrito and Republic Services Inc for the post-collection processing and landfill Disposal Services I see Mr Schultz at the podium for a presentation yes sir thank you honorable mayor members of the council members of the public watching at home everyone else

1:23:01present I'm Garth Schultz I'm the manager of the city's operations and environmental services division and among other things that division is responsible for solid waste concerns here in the city I wanted to um there's a few folks here with me tonight I've got William Schoen with R3

1:23:18Consulting Group the cities consultant advising us on the development of this proposed agreement we've also got Peter nutty division manager with Republic Services and Council to Republic Services Scott Gordon so as we get through the presentation if you have questions that I can't answer I may be

1:23:34referring to those folks so I'm here tonight to ask the council to approve a proposed agreement between the city and Republic Services and through a variety of subsidiaries for post-collection processing and landfill Disposal Services I'll start off with just making sure we're clear on what

1:23:52that means the post-collection elements are everything that happens to the city's garbage and green waste and some other waste streams that I'll discuss in my presentation after it's been collected from the curb so here in the city we have East Bay sanitary collector

1:24:08garbage and Greenways for residents and businesses and once that garbage gets into the trucks and the green waste gets into the trucks it's got to go somewhere and that's what post collection is as a side note the recycling component of what the city actually collects isn't a

1:24:23part of this agreement that's handled otherwise and has been handled outside of post-collection agreements like this since the city began its own recycling collection operation in the 70s so we're talking about where our garbage goes where green waste goes how it's

1:24:38processed and other concerns similar and related to those so by way of background the city as you are certainly the council is aware and the members of the home might not be is a member of um the West County uh Integrated Waste Management Authority also known as

1:24:54recycle more I'll refer to them probably just as the authority tonight but the authority has been in existence for um roughly 20 plus years and as since El Cerrito became a member of the authority uh early 90s El Cerrito ceded its ability to direct the flow of where

1:25:12garbage and green waste and other materials like that go to the authority The Authority gets to decide on the behalf of El Cerrito and the other member agencies which includes Richmond San Pablo Pinole Hercules and unincorporated areas of West Contra Costa County where garbage and green

1:25:27waste go The Authority has had an agreement with Republican its subsidiaries for the last 20 years and that agreement is expiring at the end of this calendar year December 31st realizing that was coming The Authority rightly went out to figure out what what are we going to do with the West

1:25:47County's waste after this agreement expires and the authority went out on a competitive procurement process a statement of Interest process wherein companies submitted their interest in handling that post-collection material and then the authority went through and

1:26:03selected the um uh qualified firms and then with those qualified firms negotiated potential outcomes and then had a essentially you know it was able to establish what they felt was the most competitive bid so the The Authority went out and did this starting about

1:26:19this time last year in December and it was actually probably mid 2012 by late 2012 The Authority had received six proposals from qualified firms and the authority to determine that Republic Services are current contractor will had the best proposal for the authority

1:26:37um it had a combination of all the services that the authority wanted to see as well as some valuable services for the other member agencies in the city within the region increasing and we've heard from May alignment on in the past several months increasing their

1:26:52collection frequencies to weekly and the like that's not what we're discussing tonight but I wanted to give you a background of the process and why we're considering a contract with Republic Services um the rest of the authority members have been negotiating and this was one on

1:27:06your consent calendar earlier this evening um has been negotiating a post-collection agreement with the authority and Republic um for post collection Services early on El Cerrito realized that it would be more beneficial to El Cerrito because of the unique situation of this contract

1:27:22and the uh because we don't have the same collection provider as the other West County cities to do an independent relationship between the city and Republic as the authorities selected contractor so that gives you a little bit of the background of why we're selecting or why

1:27:38we're proposing specifically with Republic and that there is a competitive process that was done at the authorities level when we began our own review of an agreement with them we wanted to establish and make sure that we we could demonstrate that competitiveness to El

1:27:51Cerrito uh specifically um and so we engaged our three to be able to establish the competitiveness with Alternatives available to El Cerrito um we also evaluated some new and Innovative services that were being proposed by the company and we wanted to keep a Keen Eye to rates to make sure

1:28:07that the El Cerrito repair was getting the maximum amount of value out of this agreement one of the first steps we took in evaluating the competitiveness of the proposals was to evaluate separately how this would impact El Cerrito's rates I mentioned that the proposal with Republic to the authority

1:28:26included a bunch of other services that were available to the other West County cities but not to El Cerrito because of our different collection provider so we looked at just what the post-collection services would be for El Cerrito and we were able to establish because of longer

1:28:40hauling distances to some of the other Alternatives inability for the other alternatives provide some of the key and Innovative services that are included this in this agreement that those other Alternatives weren't as competitive as what Republic had proposed um additionally we looked at some other

1:28:56potential Alternatives that weren't proposed as a part of the Authority's SOI process and found that Republic's proposal was both um very competitive with those and for the cases where there was maybe some question as to whether there was additional competition out there namely

1:29:09you know one of our neighbors in Berkeley um it was pretty clear that this was going to be the best service value for us overall so getting into the the Innovative Services there's a few really great things that we get out of this proposed agreement we get the same Services we've had for

1:29:27garbage and green waste for the last several years and garbage has been the same forever it's going to a transfer station and it goes to a landfill here in Contra Costa County for the last three or four years or so here in El Cerrito and elsewhere in the the region

1:29:40we've had composting locally on the old closed Richmond landfill of all of our green waste and food scraps and other organic materials making locally produced compost material that we have available for our residents so those two those two services are the same but we also get a

1:29:58new service at a better kind of volume which is a processing of mixed construction and demolition debris and this is where an individual homeowner or business engaging in a construction process can order a debris box from our collector East Bay sanitary company

1:30:16put all the various uh construction and demolition debris materials in there and then it gets trucked off to a facility where the contractor Republic will sort it out and get across the whole facility about 70 diversion so that's a new service that makes it easier for small construction

1:30:32projects or large construction projects and also read it to get good recycling another key in Innovative service is a new one that's been kind of engaged with San Jose for the last year or more is dry waste processing there's certain key sectors in all communities and this is

1:30:47true of El Cerrito where regardless of education and abilities to our attempts to try to set up good source separation of recyclables and food scraps and yard waste and trash some folks just have barriers to being able to do that in a way that makes it worthwhile the dry

1:31:02waste option is where we just have two separations you separate your your wet stuff which is typically your food scraps from just all the other dry material which is a combination of the kind of remaining garbage and recyclables and for for certain sectors of the our service area that can be a

1:31:18real beneficial way of getting 50 diversion or more while making it easier to implement on a residential or on a customer basis and typically this will be for some of the larger business businesses a larger multi-family complex is where it's just a high barrier

1:31:32one other key service is a greater relationship with the schools here in El Cerrito I mean the public schools currently in El Cerrito neither the city nor East Bay sanitary company are franchise collector service the public schools and so we haven't had a lot of

1:31:47ability to influence or negotiate with anyone with respect to what types of diversion programs and education are occurring in the schools and so through this agreement we have a provision to work more cooperatively with Republic as The Collector for the public schools to implement greater

1:32:05diversion programs and have a relationship that's specified through the terms of the agreement and finally and this is a pretty key one we've done a lot in El Cerrito over the course of the last six years to increase our recycling programs take more recycling at the curb take food scraps at the curb

1:32:20we've got the recycling center and we've got the new services in the agreement the question we have and this is one of the things in the city's strategic plan as well as the climate action plan is is what's next in terms of diverting more material from landfill how can we send

1:32:32more or less material to the landfill and right now we don't really know we have to we have to see and so these waste audits which is the the kind of final service provision is to evaluate the waste stream on an annual basis to figure out what's left what's remaining

1:32:46in the in the garbage and what can we effectively devise new programs to divert in the future um overall this agreement as proposed is going to come in cheaper than what we're currently paying for a lesser set of services now and so we get new Services out of this agreement and we're going to

1:33:05get it about nine percent cheaper than we're currently paying and I mean the rate payers are paying here in El Cerrito so it's a total cost of um just over a million dollars a year and it's about a hundred thousand dollars less than we've been paying for uh just garbage green waste and

1:33:20um some other services in the current year a final thing I forgot to note is that Republic also provides the household has this waste collection program here for West County and in El Cerrito which includes a drop-off station out in Richmond mobile collection for seniors and the elderly

1:33:36and they also provide a number of the hHw services that we Implement up at the El Cerrito recycling center but way of summarizing I did mention the Strategic plan and the climate action plan there's a few key elements of both that we feel that this agreement Works

1:33:53to achieve one of them is promoting environmental leadership with the school district I mentioned that the greater relationship in terms of um getting better diversion in the school district and then with the climate action plan itself it maximizes our participation in waste reduction

1:34:09services and gives us reduces waste from landfill and moves us down the road towards figuring out how we can get to zero waste per the terms of the plan finally in terms of the environmental considerations I mentioned there were other alternatives on the table both

1:34:24when the authority considered the original proposers through the Authority's soy process as well as the others we looked at and at a very Baseline this is the same set of facilities that the city is currently using it's not going to increase truck traffic to those facilities no new

1:34:39facilities need to get built as a result of this agreement and that's not necessarily true of all the other Alternatives I'm not saying the other Alternatives were less environmentally sound but it was just not as clear and certainly with many of them we would have needed to direct East Bay sanitary

1:34:53to directly haul their garbage and Greenways trucks a much further distance which would have had air impacts air quality impacts vehicle impacts as well as just an unknown impact on East Bay sanitary's operation and replacement of vehicles and the like um I keep saying finally and I'll say it

1:35:11one last time I apologize um Financial considerations to the city directly there's a a small chance that this because it is a reduction in the amount of fees charged to the ratepayer it could result in a small decrease in the franchise fee in the current year since writing this I've done a bit more

1:35:27analysis into what I think the total garbage rates to the customer are going to be in the current year and I think this worst case scenario of ten thousand dollars is still sound I don't really think we'll see any increase any decrease to the franchise fee at all but

1:35:41it is still a possibility all the numbers aren't fully lined up yet and this is because the franchise fee uh that a space sanitary collects and remits to the city is on both collection and post collection so this post collection uh cost reduction could certainly result in a slightly decreased

1:35:58Revenue to the city for the franchise fee oh um and you have before you a go in queue I had my note here so we um the mayor issued a number of questions to me yesterday that resulted in some positive changes to the agreement um and those are before you in the gold

1:36:13copy of summarize them in a two-pager at the beginning of the gold copy before you and then the gold agreement includes all of those changes mostly it was to clarify some terms and to include the hHw facility in a number of areas where we hadn't previously so that what

1:36:32we're seeking approval of is the revised agreement in Gold before you tonight and I've already vetted this through the company they've agreed to these proposed changes and so I'm I'm complete if you have any questions or for me or any of our partners please let me know any

1:36:45questions thank you for the presentation just a couple questions for you um on table two which does the compare or sorry not table two on page three of the staff report where you have the comparison between the various rates that um that staff and others considered

1:37:00two questions so our actual rate uh proposed under this contract would go down by almost nine nine or ten percent how is that possible I guess I just wanted to hear how do you achieve cost savings while providing more services is this a function of our being part of the

1:37:15authority what I wanted to learn more about this so often we have cost increases that have to be explained but even when you have cost decreases I want them to be explained that's a great question I wasn't around 20 years ago when we initiated the initial agreement

1:37:27but essentially it's it's a factor of competition through the SOI process it was a competitive playing field and I think that that certainly made for a really competitive set of proposals um and I think it caused uh Republic or the the contractor to really look at

1:37:44where they could provide additional value and and trim things where needed um you know I don't have the background for what you know specifically how they run their business in that sense but I believe it's a factor of competition one item I wanted to note I'm seeing another

1:37:56note to myself the the initial proposed per tun rate of ninety dollars and thirty cents per ton in this table and in the agreement is the initial proposed rate subject to current government fees and so one of the things that we do know may be coming up over the course of the

1:38:11next few months is a potential increase to one of those fees and the agreement has in place a process by which those fees will get passed through and it would be a fairly insignificant change but it may be a change that's coming Mr Hannon looks like he has something to

1:38:26say pardon death service I think another component of why the rates go down is The Debt Service retire retiring The Debt Service on the original transfer station which is a big component of the current rate although I should qualify my my analysis of the the um decrease doesn't include The Debt

1:38:44Service decrease so we will see a couple of different areas of decrease to the rates to the post-collection rates um for this coming year one of them is The Debt Service Mr Hannon mentioned and the other is just due to a more competitive proposal thank you you said you had two one more yeah thank

1:39:02you and the staff report also uh makes reference to why the Berkeley transfer station alternative which is the only potential option which is less costly is not um as good of an option in terms of service and other administrative factors but I wanted to just give you a chance

1:39:16to voice those of why that option was not pursued yeah so one of them is that this is a ballpark figure this is a best case estimate and it doesn't represent it the penny well yeah I know I know it's all divided by exactly but it's it's based upon you know some loose

1:39:30conversations about what might be possible given our situation and it is a very close option for transfer some of the concerns one of them is around the fact that it's in Alameda County and we're in Contra Costa and one of the things that wasn't clear is Alameda

1:39:43County has a pretty significant fee on waste disposed of in Alameda County and there's restrictions on Contra Costa County Waste being disposed of in Alameda County so it would have been it was theoretically possible but it would have required a fair number of number of

1:39:58hurdles to figure out how to work through that specific element so that's one two is that in order to pursue an option such as that El Cerrito would have needed to seek withdrawal from The Authority such that we would regain our own flow control direction of our waste

1:40:14stream and that comes with a fair amount of uncertainty and a significant amount of potential cost so weighing those two kind of primary options together just made it seem that just at base value here not considering these other external factors that the the level of

1:40:29competitiveness of this wasn't really worthwhile pursuing and they couldn't provide services like the dry waste the in school education they couldn't provide a couple of the other services but it wasn't as complete of a package as what we're receiving with Republic

1:40:41right and I am seeing a great opportunity for the EC interns to come to the recycling center and help you figure out how to get better recycling at the school thank you yeah thank you councilmember Bridges um yeah so I just had a couple questions well first of all

1:40:54let me just thank you that you did a lot of analysis on this and you know it's it's a little it is a little confusing I think with all the questions I directed to you earlier it sort of shed a little light but I still had a couple questions about um well the the CND so

1:41:11when I'm a little um uncertain about is if I were to remodel a bathroom and I was going to totally gut it down to the studs um does my contractor uh how does my contractor get educated is is it me the homeowner that uh is to do that education piece well Republic does the

1:41:31city do it and what do they currently do like on these small projects I get what they're going to do if they're going to gut the the theater and we're going to do a big renovation project there but what about these smaller homeowners well so what I speak to is what will happen

1:41:45um so what I've been in discussions with with the building division is how to educate all contractors coming into doing a construction or demolition project regardless of sizes to provide them with the information about what's available to them and it's essentially

1:41:57they have a couple of different options if they're going to order a debris box which is a large you know 10 or 20 cubic yard container that has to go through East Bay sanitaries they have the exclusive right to haul that material here in the city and if it's East Bay

1:42:09sanitary they just tell these space in military this is a construction project and most likely East Bay sanitary will notice that when they drop off the bin and it just goes straight to the C D facility and it gets the kind of blanket 70 rate for recycling for the entire

1:42:22facility the other alternative is that the contractor could sell haul it or the homeowner could self-hall it and that could then go to a number of facilities because they're not restricted to haul it to any specific place but they'll still get the information about what's

1:42:37available to them as a part of their building permit process for certain projects above a certain threshold I'm still trying to clarify this with building because I don't understand building codes much is that there's requirements through Cal green now that certain levels of projects must achieve

1:42:53a certain percentage of diversion and those folks are going to have to go through a process where they demonstrate how they're going to do that and that's going to come through my division so we'll be able to educate them further this might actually happen at the permit

1:43:04polling exactly exactly it will happen then yeah well and I think that's important because when we're looking at the Strategic plan then we want to reduce you know by 4 000 tons per year you know if we did more than the 400 or 500 tons just with the dry the dry waste

1:43:21and this I mean we could be a quarter of the way there just by these two new Innovations it certainly helps a lot and it's one of the reasons C and D especially was one of those that I've been keen on I know that we've had a fairly uh you know slow building uh period here but with new projects coming

1:43:39on board that are going to be bigger and larger that's a real key opportunity to divert a lot of material and prevent it from going to the landfill and so how do you see this dry waste working like uh if you have an apartment building say over at Del Norte and then there's

1:43:54another one that's sort of on the other end of town will they how how will it work I get the the business sector like it might be just the plaza or just the north end of town but they can't they're not going to hop Scots around well they may they may very well so one of the fortunate things is

1:44:12there's a little bit of flexibility built in now to East Bay sanitary's collection routes and specifically the commercial collection route and I've discussed this with them before including it in this agreement but they've got an extra half route that Services commercial entities in El

1:44:26Cerrito large large apartment complexes and well as businesses and that that half a route gives us some flexibility to say let's pull this subset of current customers that are being collected as garbage only and pull them as a dry waste route and so we'll go through East

1:44:42Bay sanitary me and probably representatives from the company from time to time to verify what's being you know what the the most logical candidates are work with them to make sure they're pulling the wet material out and then collecting that as a separate route on that half route

1:44:56through East Bay sanitary so the logistics of it are actually fairly well built in I mean we'll have to do a bit of education and we'll have to do some analysis of what customer basis is going to be able to be pulled into that separate route um but that's essentially all it is how

1:45:10would you define a larger a multi-family really dwelling is that really anything above 20 or so and we don't have that many of those I mean you know we've got I think it's something like 1800 or so in the city but the vast majority are below 10.

1:45:24um so really you know above 20 we're talking about 35 or so complexes all right thank you very much I just have a couple of comments that that's okay how about we take comments after we take uh public uh tests I mean go ahead questions yeah I'm really glad to see the inclusion of

1:45:44recycling programs for El Cerrito Public Schools it does say that there's separate agreements between the school district and the contractor do you know when the current agreement expires I do not this uh Republic now I'll restate that for listeners at home he believes there's about five to seven

1:46:12left on it five to seven years five to seven years correct good because this references coordination and it's a lot easier to do if we have the same contractors the school district obviously so I'm glad to hear that we've got quite a few years for to be in coherence my other question was on the

1:46:32climate action plan and again I'm very glad to see this as part of the agreement it says contractor agrees to meet and confer with the city in good faith to develop City programs to implement as part of the city's climate action plan is there a timeline for implementing this part of the agreement

1:46:49no and it's it's more we wanted them to recognize that in our climate action plan is as a goal for significant reduction of amount of waste sent to landfill we wanted to be clear on that that building a a proposal based around continuing to send current tonnage

1:47:05levels to landfill and all of the costs and revenues built therein wasn't going to work so they're aware of our climate action plan goals and it's a commitment to work with us as we begin to implement them so there's no time frame as much as a recognition that that's a that's a

1:47:19reality of el Cerrito's situation as we enter into this agreement and it's something that staff will be monitoring on a regular basis absolutely great to that end can you explain how the Blended rate model encourages that type of diversion absolutely thank you for

1:47:35the question so what we've seen in other agreements and certainly in the present Arrangement that uh recycle The Authority has with the company is different uh waste stream components have different per tonnage costs so presently say our our green waste and food waste stream in El Cerrito

1:47:55we pay you know our rate payers pay something on the order of I think it's 60 or 65 dollars a ton to process that material garbage on the other hand is I think you know twice or more that rate and there's a separate race for c and d and so one of the re one of the when we

1:48:12entered into drafting this agreement I considered well we don't want to build in a perverse incentive for the company to look at a load of green waste that's contaminated and say or it was slightly contaminated even obviously if it's very contaminated we want them to do the

1:48:26right thing and get it where it needs to go but have perverse incentive to look at this and say well that looks like it's garbage let's send it over here because we're going to get 135 out a ton out of it instead of 65. and so the Blended rate income encapsulates all the

1:48:39various costs of dealing with the different uh material streams um but it eliminates that incentive because they're going to get paid the same no matter if it's green waste garbage C and D dry waste it's all being paid the same it also eliminates one of the problems that we've seen in the

1:48:56collection side which as you start moving material from one place to another you have these unintended consequences in terms of rate impact oh that sound like it went out for a minute um so as Greenways for instance gets pulled out of the garbage stream as dry waste material gets pulled out of the

1:49:15garbage stream there's not going to be a rate impact of that that we'll have to deal with in the future it just is a a flat deal on that um on on the tons thank you and with regards to CND there were some recent Law changes you alluded to them earlier and they actually are

1:49:34uh taking it to a pretty small threshold I think it's a thousand square foot remodel uh would trigger someone to recycle to recycle as much as 50 percent of their construction and demolition debris so it it is something that every homeowner will need to know at some

1:49:51point if you could please come before us at some point in the next couple of meetings during the staff presentation item two and and just um say it again too so that people at home that are listening during that part of meeting can hear about the future changes that

1:50:07are coming so if you you or someone in the um and they may talk to building directly about that because I'm having them investigate specifically what it is because it will be a building permit matter and I'm not sure about the thresholds but I did want to just uh

1:50:21clarify a statement and not not as much as 50 a minimum of 50 exactly of the material that they're uh that they're disposing of correct we'll make sure someone comes and you again you um you mentioned the government fees earlier and that the the current projection is

1:50:37as much as a nine percent savings um however there is an anticipated uh government fee that was discussed at the last Authority meeting of uh the city of Richmond increasing their franchise fee and franchise fees are um perfectly legal we have a franchise fee for our recycling center the they

1:51:00want to double their their franchise fee double yeah double from a dollar fifty to three dollars a ton so um not all of the savings that you've highlighted in your memo may come to fruition as you've alluded to yeah absolutely which is why when I talk about the the cumulative impact of a

1:51:18variety of changes to the rate uh the monthly rate that the ratepayers see I'm still not sure where that's going to land we know that one component of that rate is projecting a significant reduction right now there's other components that we know may be going up

1:51:32overall we're expecting that the total monthly rate that rate payers pay will be somewhere between 100 and 101 percent of what they're paying right now come the new calendar year and this franchise feeble is an element of that and and I there was one question I asked earlier

1:51:48today that uh the answer um just baffled me a little bit so I'm hoping that somebody has the answer here tonight um I asked you where is the Hazardous Waste go and you said well of course it goes to the Hazardous Waste Facility and my question was well where do they take

1:52:04it do we need to approve that facility that they take it to um so I was just curious if you if like do we know where they take the Hazardous Waste in is that facility need to be incorporated into this agreement yeah um I'm probably going to defer to Peter newty and to maybe respond to that in a

1:52:23little bit more detail as he manages that operation but one of the things I wanted to be clear on is that the hHw facility is still um a a function that is managed and administered via the authority and so the authority and authority staff has to check the manifests for all of those

1:52:40materials that come through the hHw facility whether from El Cerrito or other or other parts of the authority and so that kind of that approval that regulatory aspect of where that stuff goes and how much of it there is is handled the at the authority level so I

1:52:56believe that that piece of it's already handled for you for the sake of Education Peter McBee could you comment a little bit on that up here oh come on you can do a little Mr nudy you came all this way to listen to us talk we would like to hear you say something

1:53:11inquiring minds want to know as far as where the um where your household hazardous waste material goes once it gets collected through the through the facility we actually have a separate contract a three-way contract between uh West County resource recovery uh the the West

1:53:30County jpa and Phillips services so the authority in our company get together with PSC we try to get as much of that material in recycling as possible the definition of recycling household hazardous waste is a little different than what we're normally used to some of

1:53:46it goes for fuel some of it gets re-blended in the paint which we take back and we hand out for reuse some of it because of its Nature has to be landfilled or incinerated but we do work with PSC to find out where the ultimate destinations are as a matter of fact

1:54:02tomorrow at nine o'clock the authority and us have a meeting with PSE to go over some of those locations and if we can move some of them and we're actively working trying to find other areas we can get more recovery or recycling of that material but we do we do actively

1:54:17find out where it goes and monitor it good thank you and I believe the answer is that it does not need to be incorporated those destinations do not need to be incorporated the answer to your direct question is yeah all you have to do is get to the facility and then we take care of it from there

1:54:30fantastic that concludes questions um I are there any public speakers on this matter I have um we'll bring it back to comments on council member Abelson right I think the comment I was going to make maybe has already been made but I I'm really when I started looking at this agenda

1:54:52item in the packet I thought about what to me are the important things that I know about up front and one of them was the issue of recycling in the schools and um which when I go over there it didn't look to me like was being done in any excessive Manner and uh the other one was the overall

1:55:16Arrangement and relationship between our city and the other members of the authority and and the cost implications of all of that to us and so as I went through and looked at all the materials I thought about those issues and what I um was happy to see is that it looked like

1:55:40our staff and our representative thank you mayor um did a really good job of representing the best interest of our city our community and the environment in El Cerrito and so I want to thank everybody for that because I think it's a really important thing it's an important step

1:56:00and um it's a very good next step for us so thank you councilmember Bridges comments councilmember Friedman well okay I can't help myself um thank you first of all for uh for being patient with all the changes that I recommended and thank you to uh Republic's services for accepting the

1:56:26many minor changes to increase the clarity of the of the contract um and then councilmember Abelson to build on your comments uh not only um did I represent the our residents at the authority um I want to uh say that it was uh part of the decision my decision to support

1:56:48this contract on the authority basis was the increased services that Republic proposed um our neighbors in our adjacent cities will now get weekly pickup of their green waste and of their recyclables and their their household waste so it's it's um you know that they will feel

1:57:06comfortable using those services and hopefully begin their diversion uh increase their diversion rate through this contract um so to that end I want to thank Republic Services for their creative proposal that included the The increased services to our our regional residents

1:57:28um and then finally I want to thank Garth just for his uh very uh personal and professional commitment to our city not only in this contract but in all the solid waste activities that you oversee it really shows and it helps not only our city but Garth was on the selection

1:57:50committee and I do believe that his um his understanding of the solid waste business is a large part to why we're here tonight with uh contract almost five months prior to the expiration of our current contract so thank you for your service on that Regional body

1:58:09selection committee with that I will entertain a motion and please make sure you refer to the move the resolution is amended on the yellow sheets we have a motion second motion has been made and seconded all those in favor say aye aye let the record show that it passed

1:58:29unanimously thank you all right um we have uh item eight and for those I hope you can remember back to uh July 17th because you will will be reply providing us with uh Council liaison reports since July 17th um councilmember Abelson I think most of what I wanted to talk about I already

1:58:59mentioned and most of the things that I do actually go Fairly dark in August anyway councilmember Bridges you've got your meeting tomorrow right yeah I have mean tomorrow drb actually had a meeting last Wednesday and uh they had two applicants there and we did not have a

1:59:18quorum [Music] um council member Freeman council member benicini I'll just note that Fab has been on Heritage until this month for the summer and Planning Commission was working on cell towers and we'll meet again tomorrow and and I'll have an update after that

1:59:35and I'm looking through mine and I know that uh the Solid Waste Authority is probably the one that has met and uh at that meeting we did learn about the new CND laws that were coming out we did discuss the regional contract which led to the earlier item 5H or five G I

1:59:57believe it is um and I have no other meetings to report about can I add one I'm so sorry I just looked at my notes uh the same night the Planning Commission met about the cell antenna they also had another item on the agenda which slipped my mind as you might imagine and it was a study

2:00:15session on fences and this was something that the commission had been really concerned about and they wanted to really get a good Clarity on what should be the policy going forward they felt as though there was um some applicants were depending on their presentation and whatnot they were

2:00:30getting one treatment and they want to just make sure they all had the correct understanding of what they should be doing so that was a really good study session and they had a long discussion about whether or not to be more stringent or less stringent and how to

2:00:42read the guidelines so I felt as though at the end of that study session they kind of had a Clarity of purpose so that the next time the fence issue comes before them by a resident they weren't all grown they'll have this feeling of sort of mutual understanding of what the

2:00:55what the planning code is actually telling them so that was a really good session great um and that brings us to item nine adjournment I'd like to make sure that we adjourn in the memory of the 12 victims in the shooting in Washington DC uh yesterday so we could adjourn in

2:01:17their honor I would appreciate it um with that we are adjourned