City Council Meeting November 5, 2013

0:00:09of the city of El Cerrito City Council on November 5th at uh here in the city Chambers um let the record show that we started at 7 15 and that all city council members are present um councilmember Bridges would you please lead us in a moment of silence or the pledge of

0:00:33allegiance to the flag please join me pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all [Applause] so I thank everyone for patiently waiting for us we were in a closed

0:01:02session and so I want to report about a closed session that we had on October 1st on October 1st the city council met in closed session to discuss a performance evaluation of the city manager the council selected subcommittee of the mayor and the mayor Pro tem to develop

0:01:19an evaluation process and to negotiate on behalf of the council regarding the city manager's contract uh tonight we met in closed session to deliberate about the city manager's performance evaluation and provide direction to the subcommittee about negotiations with the city manager

0:01:36regarding this contract we did not conclude and we will be resuming after this meeting so um with that I'm going to ask if there's any other Council and staff Communications done um I yeah I just wanted to um mention a few things that I attended the committee on Aging

0:02:05sponsored a presentation on heart attacks stroke and keeping a healthy heart on October 16th I think I haven't mentioned that and um it was well attended and I think is um uh a sign of the good work that they're doing on that Committee in bringing a lot of information to the public on

0:02:33October the 19th I went to the community open house on the San Pablo Avenue specific plan complete streets plan active Transportation plan and urban Greening plan and there was a very um well it was also very well attended it was um somewhat in two sessions you could go

0:02:55at different times and it repeated itself I also attended on October 20th Sunday the film at the Cerrito theater on us called Cinder shoddy's gifts and it was about Sunder shoddy who developed the display that was held up on the Arlington along with the flower gardens

0:03:19that he created um and it was a really good documentary and for those of you who don't know the El Cerrito srapnos took that over after he passed away and then the El Cerrito foundation and volunteers of our community are to this day maintaining that display and I believe

0:03:44he died in around 2002 and um oh I was at his memorial service and it was very well attended at that time so it was really interesting to me to go and see that uh presentation he was a very uh well-respected man and well deserving of that respect um and I'll leave it at that

0:04:11and I will report that on Saturday the 26th um I forever animal rescue hosted a costume party fundraiser for Pet Rescue at the Petco in El Cerrito Plaza and a forever animal rescue is an organization that encourages the adoption of pets that have been rescued and they have a outlet there at the

0:04:40Petco so that's I would encourage you to consider adopting they've their current uh line of of pets that are there possible pets are there is I think there were three cats in the in the cat tree area so if you're a cat lover there are cats out there that need adopting did you bring home

0:04:59any new family members no I I did not um I do not you have one more yes I have one more I uh uh didn't see that piece of paper on um Friday just past the November the 1st I attended a groundbreaking for the Family Justice Center in Richmond and it's a a really interesting

0:05:25um idea and they are now implementing it and it's to take a building and bring a bunch of services and put them all in the same place so that they can work together and those Services include uh Contra Costa County zero tolerance for domestic violence the Richmond police

0:05:45department Contra Costa District Attorney's Office Bay Area Legal Aid stand um for families free of violence and Community violence Solutions so all of those groups have banded together to to create this Center and the groundbreaking was attended by lieutenant governor Newsom so we were

0:06:09very honored at that and it it'll be a while before it's actually open for service in that location but anyway it was interesting great any announcements from staff or Council at what point did you want me to take this up do I need to pull it no no I'm sorry um that the um there's there's a

0:06:32substitute resolution for item five beyond the consent calendar and we just wanted to make sure that if the council moves the consent calendar that the substitute resolution is included in the motion great thank you we'll take that up at item five um seeing no comments from staff we'll move

0:06:48on to item three oral Communications from the public this is an opportunity for the public to speak on items that are on the consent calendar or not on the regular calendar so you can bring up any Topic at this time but if you are going to speak to something that is on items uh six seven

0:07:09um you would there's no public hearing tonight so on item seven please wait until that item we do have a Time system so it's three minutes per speaker and we assist you with colored lights on the middle Podium here green is start yellow gives you I believe it's a minute left

0:07:29and red is please start winding up your comments um with that are there public speakers this evening yes we have three to start Alex ala Faris good evening good evening mayor city council my name is Alex olifers I'm with the Contra Costa taxpayers Association and I'm here

0:07:50to talk about why Prop 13 is important over 35 years ago 35 years ago citizens passed Prop 13 by 63 majority and what it does is it sets a property tax rate of one percent not to exceed two percent per year and Prop 13 is already as you know property taxes already California's largest

0:08:14revenue source and it's according to statistics in the California Legacy of analysts office Prop 13 all Californians face the impacts of increased property taxes and Prop 13 protects seniors families minority women and small business owners and including pension employees and

0:08:37Pension funds there's a thought and I and I have some printouts and I'll send it to um I'll give it to the clerk so you could see more facts but I'm just doing a little synopsis here Prop 13 did nothing to change how school funding was allocated you say it was California's Supreme

0:08:57Court case Sereno versus priests and equal protection case which said revenues must be equally distributed amongst uh school districts and again I have a a good printout on this and there's been talk about of you know the consequence of a split wall and what would this do

0:09:17there might be you'll get six billion dollars by the cost at a huge cost of the California economy 71 billion over 394 000 jobs lost and and Prop 13 does protect small business owners and and so forth and I have a good printout on this and I'm going to give it to the clerk so

0:09:38you can research get more facts about it and educate yourself about um why it was passed because at that point people's property were being assessed at an increased value and people were losing their homes and so forth so thank you thank you next speaker please

0:09:59Tom Kirsch mayor council members my name is Tom Kirsch I'm with my wife tonight welcome thank you we live in the 300 block on Carmel Avenue near fat apples we want to publicly acknowledge the contribution of your outgoing director of Public Works Jerry Bradshaw

0:10:29it's not here I'm sorry so pretend that he is here and that he's going to hear that we will make sure he hears these words I appreciate it it was three and a half years ago that Tony stood up before you with a petition signed by 22 Property Owners protesting the continuing and of

0:10:48continual flooding of our neighborhood the petition requested fixing the trash rack owned by East Bay mud and improving the storm drains in our neighborhood Mr Bradshaw Jerry designed administered and constructed a civil engineering Works improvements which are nearing completion I have a

0:11:09nice picture of it it is getting closer to help prevent future flooding or at least to minimize the impact of it on our neighborhood the project was constructed in-house using City Maintenance staff the improvements that Jerry made to the site should make access and maintenance

0:11:27simpler these are improvements the jury and the maintenance staff can take pride in order to get the project built Jerry had to deal with a diverse group of people the cemetery East Bay mud the county fish and game and some irate citizens I guess he would say all in a day's work

0:11:50as your first director of Public Works he has said the accomplishment bar very high it will be hard to fill his shoes you Beth sorry that was pun intended but but that will be a vast challenge to rise to and above to become great requires challenges to be fulfilled and Jerry has met those

0:12:15challenges for us and is low-key way with professionalism we will not know how well as Civil Works will perform for many years to come but today we can rest easier for his efforts Tony and I thank you for your dedication to your work and on our behalf and we thank you for your service

0:12:37I know I speak for my neighbors as well thank you thank you Tom panis example good evening mayor Lyman members of the council and City staff my name is Tom panason I live at [address removed] in El Cerrito it's my pleasure to be able to give you the community some wonderful news this

0:13:09evening on September 30th The Keeper of the national register of historic places determined The Chiang Mai home historic district was eligible for listing on the national register a finding of national register eligibility indicates the historic resource has particularly noteworthy integrity and

0:13:24significance this is extraordinary feather in our community's capital I'd like to comment briefly about this finding as this effort first got rolling more than one person asked why it was thought possible the district might meet the national register requirements this

0:13:38question was always preferenced preference with a comment that the original 2007 historic resource report had only found the district appeared to be eligible for listing in the California register of historical resources I put quotes around that because qualifying for the state registers is no

0:13:54mean feat regardless the answer is quite simple historic resources Consultants unless directed otherwise always Target the state Register ran the national register the state registers Integrity requirements are less rigorous documentation documentation requirements

0:14:09are much less stringent the process is more transparent and protection offered by this offered the historic resource is nearly as good listing on the national register certainly confers additional protections and indicates a markedly higher level of significance but most people people

0:14:24neither elect to spend the additional twenty to thirty thousand dollars required to develop a proper National registered mission nor to do on their own all the work suggested by that price tag [Music] so the answer boils down to just a question of dollars and cents but we're

0:14:40past that hurdle now and can Savor this extraordinary tribute to our City's unique heritage I'd also like to point out that Windrush school if that if wind res school had not been such a good Steward of this site I wouldn't be this here this evening to make this announcement we

0:14:53need to be treating all of our heritage sites with the same love and respect I'm hopeful that we will achieve the same recognition for other sites in our community thank you for your time this evening thank you this Corey Mason please and and you'll have three minutes

0:15:18hopefully you're coming here to tell us or show us what you got yeah it's kind of show and tell tonight uh and if you don't mind uncharacteristically I'm gonna read just so I make sure I include a couple of things and I want to make sure that we we thank you and you will

0:15:31tell you tell us why we're thanking you thank you I will thank you mayor uh good evening good all uh mayor council members citizens and neighbors this last week I had the pleasure of accepting an honor awarded by Contra Costa County Arts commission ac5 for individual work that spans nearly 20

0:15:53years the letter of this Proclamation I'll read to you in excerpt apparently this honor is for work as the founder director of world one radio which is wccusd public radio 88.1 kcg 97.7 to educate and engage the community while promoting Global awareness through

0:16:19music culture nature and technology and the very popular world one Festival in El Cerrito and as an educator who provides his students with practical experiences of diverse cultures the 2013 KO honorees named in this Proclamation include the much respected and ebullient

0:16:36Los Angeles Mexican Art Center formidable imagineer architect James Philip Wright I appreciatively shared this distinction and will shine this honor forward with all who have supported our various related initiatives my beloved wife collaborator finder of lost objects

0:16:56healer Deborah Sue Kelvin of course the city and citizens of El Cerrito I have to spend 360 because that's us um I I can't possibly name everyone but I have to you know tip my hat to Chris thank you our captain and general manager for this whole thing and all the

0:17:15Departments who are clearly All In wccusd Contra Costa County ROP all the artist sponsors recordist producers professional mentors public education teachers volunteers listeners who've shared their passions and creativity with our students and our community Through the public radio station and the

0:17:33festival what I have sought to offer over this van of time is a deeply held dream of a harmonized healthy beautiful restored co-creative World our friend responded to the news of this award with a Wily wink quote I always enjoy myself at the festival and appreciate all that your

0:17:50intention brings I also enjoy the radio station regularly and have it programmed into my car choices uh because now that you've been publicly recognized you can never give up the fair Sly those city and county officials she says with a big grin so may it be so I add that we have managed as a city and

0:18:08a county and a school district to survive some very lean and even mean economic Seasons to arrive to this and I might say we did so artfully the art of living is seeing a way a practical way some resourceful inspired and inspiring way where there is no way and so perhaps

0:18:24a further testimony to the value of seeing and processing information and experience artfully bringing art an Artful perspective to rational in the world needs and problems respecting and Reinventing Traditions It's My Hope in closing that all Civic and business

0:18:40enterprises continue to vigorously and generously support the nurturance of comprehensive whole-being education enlightened business practice active collaboration among the two and the celebration of our world of music's arts dance agriculture architecture ecology

0:18:56sciences and lifelong learning from my heart Thank You Don't Stop Believing thank you thank you thank you congratulations I'm hoping I'm hoping you can take a minute and hold your award up and and our assistant city manager can get a picture oh my goodness yes if I may I'll

0:19:19mention that this icon was created by hand by uh Berkeley reciting artist Randy strong hey share this with our beloved city of El Cerrito I am geez follow y'all we did it let's make another one cheers y'all good evening and thank you thank you see you soon any other speakers no mayor with that we

0:19:52move on to item four which is presentations uh tonight we will have a presentation regarding the international City Managers Association people's uh voice of the people awards um which there are not only three of them on the table outside so apparently they're disappearing okay

0:20:12um good uh and Suzanne Ireland will uh present us good evening mayor and council members my name is Suzanne Airline I'm the City's community outreach specialist the city did receive four Awards and this is the award that has been taken from the vestibules here tonight

0:20:31um I'm very happy to be here tonight to announce that the city has received four voice of the people awards from the international City County management association known as icma and the national Research Center icma and the national Research Center announced these awards at their annual

0:20:48com at the icma annual conference in September in Boston that was attended by city manager Scott Hannan and assistant city manager Karen Pincus these Awards these Awards recognize excellence in local governance and the award program helps to build a community of best

0:21:06practice leaders for the benefit of all cities is it the white one this time there we go communities receiving these Awards showed either the biggest Improvement in a service category rating and or had the highest rated Services according to a sample of their own residence

0:21:37um the awards were presented to communities with the largest improvements um or the highest service ratings and there were 16 communities who were honored this year out of about 250 eligible communities just to remind you the National citizen survey is a collaborative effort between

0:21:59icma and the national Research Center and it provides a statistically valid mail survey of residents and the city participated in the spring of 2012.

0:22:10we've also participated in 2004 2005 and 2007 and the reports of all the results from those surveys are on our website the city received an award of excellence in the category of recycling services so this award the award for excellence category is for a service quality rating

0:22:35that was within the top three of jurisdictions who participated in the National citizen survey in 2012 and they had to be within the top 10 percent of jurisdictions in the survey database which is about 500 jurisdictions residents who completed the survey rated

0:22:56El Cerrito Recycling services uh very highly in all the years that we've participated in the survey we've always been above the national Benchmark average the city also received transformation Awards in the categories of city parks Recreation programs or services

0:23:17as well as Street repair services the award for transformation was given to communities whose service quality ratings improved significantly higher between their survey in 2012 and their previous survey and that change was significantly larger than the overall trend scene in

0:23:39communities who part who participated in the survey for Parks and Recreation opportunities survey respondents had a 13 increase of people who thought that our Parks and Recreation opportunities were excellent or good compared from 2007 to 2012.

0:24:01and in terms of Street repair we had a 27 percent increase between our two survey years in fact we actually I had staff who was pulling together our survey results actually call me and say we've triple checked our math something must have changed in your community

0:24:16because this is a very very large change so I was able to tell her about measure a and all the road work that we've been doing in that time period uh the National citizen surveys are one way for the city to measure our resident satisfaction with city services and to

0:24:36identify strengths and weaknesses and so I wanted to thank everyone who participated in the survey and who provides us with feedback in other ways and I also want to let you know that the awards will be out on display in the vestibule at the end of the meeting tonight

0:24:49do you have any questions not I have questions way to go nope thank you very much do uh do either the city manager or the assistant city manager want to speak about um the uh was there award ceremonies or any any Gala that where you received these that you can there was not a Gala

0:25:10um they were announced at the 2013 um conference and we have actually won a couple of these Awards in the past um it's just it we should all be proud of ourselves the residents should be proud because they are the ones who provided us with that feedback and allowed us to be able to take that

0:25:30feedback seriously and then act on it over time and so I just want to thank all of the residents Val Cerrito who have participated in the survey and continue to provide us feedback so that we can continue to provide the community with the desire to you know fulfill the

0:25:44desires and needs that they let us know that they have well on behalf of the residents I want to thank um Suzanne and the city manager and assistant city manager uh for allowing providing us the services during these lean Economic Times between 2007 and 2012 so that we were the residents were

0:26:04able to recognize you for all the work that you've done for us so thank you with that we'll move on to item five we have uh four items on our consent calendar um of which um one of them I want to make sure that we are it doesn't have a separate agenda bill but the public should know that on

0:26:30between Tuesday December 24th through Friday January 3rd City Hall will be closed except for City Hall and the community center will be closed except for one day which is Monday December 30th when both of those facilities will be open regular operating hours will

0:26:52resume on Monday January 6th that's item 5D um and uh for item 5B we do have a supplemental resolution that the there is a new fifth whereas Clause that identifies the California Environmental Quality act categorical exemption for our decision this evening I move adaption of the consent calendar

0:27:21consisting of items five a through D 5A is minutes 5B as amended the Ohlone green ray crosswalk improvements project 5Cs low and moderate income housing asset fund budget adjustment and D was just described by the mayor holiday hours we have a motion that's been made and

0:27:44seconded all those in favor please say aye aye uh proposed abstentions let the record show it passed unanimously if I may excuse me just point out that the public safety front office will be open it's regular hours throughout the holidays okay thank you to the so the public

0:28:02safety building will be open uh it's just City Hall and the community center that will have reduced hours I do have a question on the December 30th day for um this is saying that City Hall will be open that one day and is there a specific reason that you'd like to share with the public we in

0:28:27discussing it was stuff we just were not comfortable staying close the entire two weeks and wanted to make sure that in case anything was in started prior to Christmas that we were here just to make sure that um oh things in progress would get the attention that it needs we just were not

0:28:45comfortable being dark for the whole two weeks thank you and and both facilities are open on that day is that correct yes um we will now move on to item seven policy matters uh which tonight we will be considering um the San Pablo Avenue specific plan and completes streets update and study

0:29:06session and I'm assuming that's going to be a team of presenters and it looks like Miss Melanie Mintz is going to start the presentation good evening good evening you won't have to hear me for all night all the slides the first one so the only difference between the one we had in our package

0:29:41and this one is that this one has page numbers there's a couple other slight revisions to maybe the typos that were bothering some of us and or just other slight revisions but the page numbers were added to be able to facilitate conversation and questions so we could

0:29:55track and for the public those the the revised slideshow will also be posted online with this meeting thank you so good evening mayor and city council my name is Melanie Mintz and I'm the city's interim community development director I am joined tonight by other

0:30:14staff Yvette Ortiz our interim Public Works director who is leading the complete streets component of the plan our development services manager Margaret Cavanaugh Lynch who will play a key role in implementation of the form-based code and I'm also joined by our consultant

0:30:27team Mig and Faron peers who have been tremendous and dedicated Partners in this effort and who bring a wealth of experience from other communities aiming to fulfill similar similar goals yeah as you know the specific plan has been in the works for several years now and

0:30:44I'm happy to report that we aim to have a final draft plan ready to release to the public along with a draft environmental impact report in February as the economy picks up and real estate indicators are pointing towards an increased demand for housing near BART

0:30:57stations and bikeable walkable places we are all very eager to put the specific plan in place to help better position the city to attract private investment to become an even more unique environmentally focused vibrant trans and oriented East Bay Community the purpose of the study session tonight

0:31:15is to provide you with an update on the process to date and especially to confirm the plan's major elements before we enter into the final stretch as you will see the major elements we will discuss tonight mostly have to do with development requirements and proposed

0:31:27complete streets policies and Street improvements both of these are key elements and are on a critical path for us being able to complete the environmental impact report which is the final step needed before circulating the plan for final public comment and eventual adoption

0:31:43in the next few months staff and the consultant team will be working hard to complete the entire plan and its numerous elements your feedback as well as the planning commission's feedback at the upcoming November 20th meeting will help confirm the direction we are headed

0:31:57based on previous comments received well tonight we will present key development standards such as heightened parking at the Planning Commission meeting we will delve more deeply into the specific administrative components and more fine-grained detail of the form-based code

0:32:11going forward after the November meetings this meeting and the Planning Commission meeting we will again attend the Planning Commission for an eir environmental impact report scoping meeting um in which we will outline the major components of the environmental impact

0:32:25report and expected environmental impacts again this eir was a very significant addition to the draft specific plan which will enable us to analyze the environmental impacts of the proposed densities and traffic and be able to really streamline um development proposals going forward

0:32:43after that meeting we will put the final touches on the entire plan including the form-based code the complete streets element the infrastructure plan the multimodal capital Improvement program and the financing strategy with all of those we'll aim to complete the eir and

0:32:59again release the whole package by the end of February with the goal of having it back to you for adoption and certification by May one thing to keep in mind as we as during our presentation tonight and something that I think comes up often for many of us each time we talk

0:33:16about the specific plan or San Pablo Avenue or the neighborhoods around the BART stations is it fulfilling the vision for the Avenue doesn't end with a specific plan it isn't everything the plan will create a Clear Vision development regulations and guidelines to help attract private investment to

0:33:30catalyze the type of walkable Place envisioned in the general plan the climate action plan and the city's strategic plan but it isn't the only piece of the puzzle going forward staff will continue to seek out other tools to make the vision a reality including updating the general plan completing an

0:33:44economic development action strategy actively developing programs and seeking Partners to open businesses build housing provide alternative transportation options and seek funding to implement public improvements as you know this plan is only one piece of the city's planning framework for

0:33:59achieving the goal of improving livability and sustainability in El Cerrito it takes into account previous plans such as the Ohlone Greenway master plan and climate action plan and is being prepared parallel to a city-wide Urban Greening and active Transportation

0:34:13plan which is also the update to our 2007 bicycle and pedestrian plan together all of these plans aim to fulfill the city strategic plan and will help inform a general Plan update because San Pablo Avenue of course is a principal quarter for not only El Cerrito but neighboring Richmond and

0:34:30because some parcels along the court or fall within the city of Richmond jurisdiction and it is being prepared with the city of Richmond as a partner and helps to fulfill their General plan goals it is also consistent with the goals of their form-based code that is in draft form

0:34:43and just went to their Planning Commission which is being prepared as a part of their livable corridors project which geographically takes place north of our plan area on San Pablo Avenue and along other corridors in Richmond such as 23rd Avenue um I've already referred to the city

0:34:59strategic plan but included the slide to remind us of the big picture of creating an environmentally focused Bay Area destination that is vibrant with strong neighborhoods and many opportunities for all in the introductory section I've also included illustrations from the active

0:35:15transportation and urban grading plans which are currently underway and while we won't spend much time talking about these tonight I do want to point out that both are while they're citywide's plans they also overlap the specific planning plan planning area the

0:35:29community outreach process for all of the plans has provided an opportunity for staff to incorporate comments and hear from the public receive through all the planning processes so that there's a Synergy created and for the public to see the big picture the ideas and goals of both the urban

0:35:44Greening plan and active Transportation plan are integrated into the specific plan and the urban Greening plan and active Transportation plan in turn will identify policies and projects to assure that as development occurs along San Pablo Avenue the goals of creating a

0:35:58Greener more livable El Cerrito are furthered finally before taking initial questions and passing the Talking Stick to maku Malhotra of MiG I'd like to share the key principles that staff and Consultants have developed as we've been developing this final plan these principles help us determine if

0:36:15the proposed piece of the plan is right wrong or could be better and we think they align well with council's goals and policies they include deepening a sense of place and Community identity which was such a strong outcome of the city's strategic plan process attracting private development because

0:36:31as we know private investment is the key driver of the built environment and being more Market friendly was a key strategy that was emphasized when Council studied and made comments on the previous draft of the specific plan setting high and clear standards for

0:36:44private development while retaining flexibility to be open to new ideas and new types of projects that we didn't Envision is something we're actively striving for building upon recent successes and Investments such as the El Cerrito Plaza Cerrito theater City Hall the San Pablo

0:36:58Avenue streetscape and Citywide bicycle infrastructure improvements is a principle woven throughout the plan we like to look for projects that that build on the evidence of the success as well as contribute to an overall vision building Partnerships strengthening

0:37:11Partnerships and working with Partners including public agencies such as AC Transit Caltrans and Bart and the private sector will be a necessary component of a plan's success and as you'll see as we go through we've been working with a technical Advisory Group that includes the public agencies

0:37:26and finally enhancing the public realm and fostering environmental sustainability comes directly out of the city's strategic plan as well as other planning documents and is a key component of the form-based code and the complete streets plan um with that I can take any initial

0:37:41questions um just based on the overall framework that I wanted to provide or I can turn it over to McCool who will jump into the form-based code presentation after McCool speaks we can again pause for questions because as many of you have commented it's dense and there's a lot

0:37:55of material and then I'll pass it on to Public Works directory vet Ortiz and her team to present the complete streets plan and again take questions um yes we have questions council member Abelson yeah I have a question I'm not quite sure when the appropriate time is

0:38:11to ask the question so my real question at the moment is when to ask the question and my question has to do with including accessibility uh and and where I'm noticing accessibility issues in what I see when would be the right time to bring that up well I think it's good

0:38:31that you brought it up now so the speakers coming up can integrate it into their comments where appropriate and then if there's something that you haven't seen I think we should address it in more depth I can just give you a couple of example Pages just to get to

0:38:45tell you some what I'm talking about are examples of what I'm talking about on page 92 it shows a bus stop with steps leading towards it if I understand the picture correctly okay which means um that's adding as far as I can tell no value and it's removing accessibility at

0:39:04least on what I can see and it um so so anyway that's one example okay um and then the other example is on page 47 where there are um what I think are called Stoops maybe I'm not sure if that's the right word but um were there all these stairs going up to buildings which mean that that's

0:39:32all that's equivalent to saying people with disabilities are not welcome so um I'm okay those are two examples of um of that great I appreciate that not to say that those are the only ones but just those are examples of um that show leaving a certain segment of the population out of the picture

0:39:55yeah and I think um we definitely intend to and will include uh Universal Design and accessibility guidelines in the both in the standards first public right-of-way improvements and private and I will let um some of the pictures we tried to screen them to make sure

0:40:10that they didn't have uh any bad illustrations of not good Universal Design but we will address that in common or try to integrate that into the comments when we get to those thank you councilman Bridges Friedman just one question uh you flash on page six the active Transportation Network and that

0:40:29and just to be clear we're not going to talk about any of these elements that are not in San Pablo Avenue tonight great thank you um to build on that we will be right now we wanted to meet the deadlines get these development standards in place and really start moving the eir forward

0:40:45after the new year will be coming we will be entering the next phases of the active Transportation plan and the urban Greening plan and one of the purposes of having these types of of guidance documents is so that both residents and developers and staff know that know what is up for an

0:41:06administrative use permit and what's up for a conditional use permit can you speak maybe this is better for Miss Kavanaugh Lynch but can you speak to how the specific plan begins to outline that uh that decision process between those two different levels significantly

0:41:23different levels of approval I think I can Margaret's here as well and if there's more detail needed we are currently working through that we are our goal is um it's it's it's a very active dialogue right now and that the Planning Commission will be prepared to

0:41:38delve into that in more detail we really in order to keep moving through with the eir analysis we want to look at some of the big numbers types of things that were coming and at the form at the Planning Commission we will delve into the administration but one of the things

0:41:50that we are discussing is having more um administrative use permits so more permits that fit within the general guidelines of the specific plan that we could handle at the administrative level and only go to Planning Commission when there's something that seems that it

0:42:04doesn't quite fit or there's an exception to the guidelines um being flexible as I mentioned is key so we definitely want to have that process available at all times but we also want to um the dialogue in one of those examples for example you will see that we require

0:42:18commercial developments be minimum two stories we want to we want to push that and we hear that many developers including commercial developers have and urban prototypes if they can do that if they can't do it if somebody comes who's who's meets many of the other goals we

0:42:32could go to Planning Commission so we're seeing potentially more ability to go to to do administrative review and then we are looking at what the design review process would be because we do think that the public being able to comment early on the design is an important

0:42:46thing for designers and you've made it very clear that you're going into it's a very um ongoing dialogue and that there are some components that are going to be addressed in much greater detail so um and on your overview you're asking us for confirm the major elements so I just

0:43:05wanted to make sure that as your speakers go through that they're letting us know what the major elements are so that we don't dive into the weeds and we do stay you know focused on major elements like accessibility and not necessarily some finer Point details like

0:43:22um guiding that um on the other hand I think um when I say major uh components one of the main reasons that we scheduled this when we did was partly because of the multimodal components in the complete streets because they really affect how the eir goes forward so

0:43:42um that and height and parking are are kind of the major building blocks I think all other comments and questions are welcome because as I said we're in that active dialogue and uh you're a part of it you will be having to act on it so I think bringing those up and just reminding you

0:43:58that that comment is being heard now and that some of those elements haven't been but I think knowing what's important and what you're looking for is good so you didn't say density well because so you'll see as we go through so use and density are not as strong components of

0:44:12a form-based code as they are traditional zoning ordinance um McCool will talk about this a little bit more but the building form and creating an overall Urban walkable place is more where you go with a form-based code um use is a little bit looser it can transform recognizing that it transforms

0:44:31over time um and there was another one uh that you refer to but so those density and density so similarly height and the massing articulation setback how it feels from the street how it feels for the public how it feels for those that are not is an important part of a

0:44:48form-based code and why the emphasis on the public realm density is not as much of a driver we have to we are including it um and I think in our future slides we'll get into it height height maximums based on um the context of each lot is is a more important component of a form-based code

0:45:06we do look at density because partly the state one because you can calculate it right but also the state does require that we have that we provide density bonuses and so it's somewhat marrying the state density bonus law with form-based codes is something that hasn't happened at the state level so

0:45:22still talking about density and being able to create a density bonus but it's not as much of a driver because again that doesn't necessarily impact the way that a project feels great thank you anything else before I pass it along great thank you somehow we moved we jumped way ahead any

0:45:46slides ahead so you will have to back it up foreign good evening mayor and City Council Members my name is mukul Malhotra as Melanie said I'm the Mig project manager Mig is the firm hired by the city to work on the specific plan as we begin the discussion on the specific plan this

0:46:14is the map that you will see all the time so this is the study area of the specific plan and as you can see the parcels that are highlighted in Gray are within the project area as you can see it runs along the entire length of San Pablo Avenue within the city of El

0:46:32Cerrito straight from Baxter Creek to the north to the plaza to the South most of the parcels are in the city of El Cerrito but there are a few Parcels especially on the western side of San Pablo Avenue which are within the city of Richmond and they are a couple of

0:46:51parcels also along Central on the south side so the form-based code AS Melanie already pointed out is trying to articulate and ensure that the desired character of development that is envisioned by the council and the community gets built out it does not emphasize so much the uses but really

0:47:12depends and relies on Market forces to come up with the different Market friendly building prototypes the emphasis within the form-based code outline is to look at what is the intent and how you can use the code what is the overall vision and the Urban Design framework uh the key elements of the

0:47:31regulating plan that I will present as well as various approved conditional and prohibitive uses we will briefly talk about the key building standards but not so much focus on the general public and the administration of the regulating code all of them are very key elements

0:47:48of the formbase code but at the big picture our request is to get your feedback on on the overall Vision regulating plan and key building standards so jumping straight into the Urban Design framework there are five overarching planning strategies that build upon the principles that Melanie

0:48:08laid out and the first one is to encourage practical and market-friendly development we want to ensure that we provide very clear development Clarity that is what developers always look for is a very clear but flexible development code and one of the key things of it is

0:48:26to ensure that we allow ground floor residential development to happen on most development Parcels because this is the feedback that we have got from the staff and from the developers the past few years and we want to make sure we incorporate that overarching strategy is to ensure return

0:48:44on investment the city has invested and so have other agencies such as AC Transit and bound on various public improvements we are seeing the results on San Pablo Avenue and other places we want to make sure that the formbase code does build and leverage these Investments

0:49:04um especially as buildings happen on uh private Parcels thirdly we want to strengthen the sense of place development that happens within the study area should specifically ensure that it recognizes it is being built along San Pablo Avenue in the city of El Cerrito and it can be done by

0:49:25articulating a distinct role and identity for different sections of San Pablo Avenue as well enforcing distinguishing a sense of place qualities such as access to intermittent views of certain areas such as all Albany Hill Golden Gate Mount Tamil Pius and also making sure we strengthen

0:49:45existing assets such as Ohlone Greenway Place making is a foundation that we would like to see to be built in all private developments within a strengthening sense of place there are clearly three distinct areas along the corridor uh the first being uptown which we are essentially calling the

0:50:05mixed use commercial District Northern Gateway it is within the half mile walk shed of the BART area and the key thing is to build upon its key Intermodal multimodal Center character yes it's a regional center um uh for Bond and it has yes an automobile access component to it but

0:50:26there is a great opportunity to build on the multi-modal transit axis character and responsibility of the BART station um the opportunity that exists within this area also and you can see as we walk and drive in this area is that there are larger lots and larger

0:50:44building Footprints the opportunity presents to build on that character while at the same time making sure we humanize it with a more bikeable walkable neighborhood that helps in turn build on a stronger neighborhood towards the middle of the San Pablo Avenue areas

0:51:00what we are calling the Midtown area basically where we are right now around the Civic Center area and it is the community friendly District area again we have larger Parcels out here we have well-established neighborhoods on both ends of this area and we want to build

0:51:17upon that we also want to make sure that there's a lot of recent and planned development being envisioned this in this area and we build on that um all of this again as with all private development we want to make sure that we get enhanced pedestrian and bike connectivity and later in the complete

0:51:36streets presentation you will see how this area in terms of traffic and pedestrian bike connectivity there is a greater opportunity to come up with more amenities thirdly and lastly is of course our Downtown Plaza area which is a jewel that we have as you can see by

0:51:54the photo there are a number of nice things that are happening out here we are calling it the entertainment theater and shopping district and as well it is our Southern gate way within the half mile back walk shed the aim is to concentrate on the um all the assets that we have both in

0:52:14the plaza as well along what we call the Theater District block that we have out here now the development that exists and the opportunities that exists out here are going to be for example distinctive from what we see in uptown and in Midtown one of the key reasons being is

0:52:31that the parcels are much smaller out here in terms of both width and depth and as a result based on the assets that are there in all these three individual areas and the opportunities we will see something unique that will make each of these three areas distinctive

0:52:49um a key overarching planning strategy is to humanize the public realm be it strengthening pedestrian and bicycle connectivity integrating complete streets Concepts that will present a little bit later and exploring new gathering places to serve the needs of both the existing and the new users and

0:53:07then finally there is an opportunity out here to position the Avenue as a new environment and ecological destination that builds on the council's direction as well as the community's desire to become an environmental center create an innovation district with that allows for

0:53:25Innovation clusters of innovation to happen connect to the green and the blue belts which are basically the trails that run along Tilden as well as the Bay Trail and integrate economic and environmental sustainability that we have heard again and again from the

0:53:41community and the council so if we begin to map all these five different overarching principles on our existing mace map this is the overall Vision map that you see that highlights in asterisks the different destinations both public and private that we have within our Corridor right now what you

0:54:00see uh in in red are the the recent uh Investments that the city has put in uh the orange show you both planned developments being planned by the city as well as for example by Bart as part of their restoration of their or enhancement of their BART stations and

0:54:20then as you lay out the different opportunity sites as well the well-established uh residential Parcels that are highlighted in yellow you begin to see the three different clusters of Uptown Midtown and downtown that then provide us a unique opportunity to create three distinctive sub-areas

0:54:40um keeping this overarching Vision map in mind the we came up with a regulating plan um a regulating plan that Melanie pointed out he needed to be very flexible and needed to respond to Market forces and we try to keep it very simple developers like very simple zoning they

0:54:59don't want to see a micromanaged uh zoning map and what you see are two land uses uh what we are calling the transit oriented high intensity mixed use with which is within half a mile off the each of the two BART stations the color that you see in red and the transit oriented

0:55:19mid intensity mixed use which is in yellow which is between the two BART stations and of course there's a small parcel to the north of the Del Norte or the Uptown PATH station area um this along with these land uses what makes it form-based and makes it very contextual to the unique conditions of

0:55:41San Pablo Avenue is to come up with the streets type plan which basically says that the farm needs to respond to their joining context be it of the street or the surrounding residential neighborhood single family and multi-family houses or commercial areas the uses will remain

0:56:00Market friendly and practical but they encouraged and the desirable uses will include ground floor retail personal services Flex space and residential but at the end of the day we do want to concentrate retail and Commercial development to ensure higher walkability

0:56:17and convenience so there are two types of storing streets we have what you see in blue are strolling areas along San Pablo Avenue and then of course our other mixed-use strolling areas which are perpendicular to San Pablo Avenue and include streets such as Fairmount

0:56:36Central Mojo Stockton um both the strolling streets um the key identifying feature of them is they are great streets where we would like to walk shop uh sit outside enjoy the weather and enjoy the the private amenities they would all have flexible space on the ground floor so that they

0:56:57could have commercial development right now and tomorrow be residential or they could be residential today and tomorrow become commercial so that's what would make it flexible but at today's date we would request or we are recommending envisioning recommending 50 of the

0:57:13street Frontage uh fronting in these strolling areas to be devoted to uh sidewalk activation uses such as retail services but again the aim would be to prioritize commercial uses and what you see in in the black arrows is as we are as we are mapping out the strolling uh

0:57:34streets we are thinking there is an opportunity to look at perhaps Focus using even more where we would like to have 50 percent of the areas to be commercial so if that opportunity exists we would definitely like to use that opportunity and that's some of the feedback that we are looking from you

0:57:52too um this the next type of street types are Gateway streets are basically streets such as Central uh Potrero which are our first impression streets we want to landscape them we want to make sure that we provide a great first impression to all users and also make sure they are

0:58:11more walkable as new development happens on them we they can have a wide variety of uses such as residential and mixed uses the next type of streets are what are we calling neighborhood streets such as skinny or they could be cross streets such as San Diego they are going to be local and

0:58:32Commercial streets by the very nature of uses that they have along them and we encourage users uh to respect the adjoining context such as residential and Commercial and then the final type of street types is of course something unique to our area which is the Ohlone

0:58:50Greenway it's not a street that has cars but it is a street where people walk and bike and we want to recognize that building new Building Development response to that unique context they could be potentially new type of connections that we have as new development happens especially on the

0:59:09long blocks and we are calling them potential Plaza connections and bit block connections the aim is to still allow for for example uh if big box retail wants to come out here they can continue to do so but we want to humanize some of our blocks which are more than 500 600 feet long and some of

0:59:29the desirable walkable block lens are more 300 feet um so when we map all these different street types together that's the palette of colors that you see and they all begin to work together the key standards that would be envisioned as a result are based on some of key performance

0:59:49measures and that is something unique that we are exploring as part of this form based is we would like certain primary requirements to be met by these standards and they include ensuring economic Vitality Place making Street activation respecting the adjoining

1:00:05residential development ensuring a mode shift to pedestrian bicycle and Transit use considering use and at the end of the day what the general plan and the Strategic plan has consistently said which is to ensure quality development but we can get certain types of

1:00:23amenities also incentivized and they could for example include affordable housing higher environmental performance elements as well as community community health benefits such as having pocket parks open spaces mid block Muse so and so forth one of the key things before I

1:00:44go into the nitty-gritty of the standards is to say that we have looked at most of the parcels we did a very detailed study of all the passes along San Pablo Avenue and one of the biggest things that we saw as we went into testing out different standards was that

1:01:01the parcels along San Pablo Avenue are very constrained and they are constrained at a different number of levels first most of the parcels are not contiguous and are not very large in fact some a lot of the parcels are only 100 feet deep which is not very developer friendly and they the width of

1:01:22these Parcels is also not very wide the other part of it is that there is a strong northwest southeast orientation which is to say that you know they have the ability to cash Shadows on the surrounding residential neighborhoods and that is something we want to respect

1:01:41the adjoining residential neighborhood because we want to build on the Synergy of the residents so keeping these constraints in mind and these unique attributes in mind the the built open space standards that we are proposing right now are under three categories

1:02:00overarching building form building articulation and parking within building form the key thing is the height and as part of the transit oriented higher intensity used which is within half a mile off the two BART stations we are saying that you can go up to 65 feet

1:02:19high which is translates about to six floors or you could go with a density bonus another two floors which would be about 85 feet high in the case of Transit oriented medium intensity you could go up to five floors which would translate to about 55 feet and with the density

1:02:40bonus that would make it about 65 feet like Melanie mentioned we are saying that we would request two stories commercial but we understand that some commercial developers would only like a single story and that can be achieved with a cup uh similarly uh we would

1:02:58recommend a three-story residential development which is what you are actually getting now as per your applications but they will be certain constraint lots and you could go lower on those constraint clots with a cup the setbacks and and as we talk of setbacks keep in mind the constraint Lots we are

1:03:19saying that really the front setbacks should ensure uh the need to create a nice uh pedestrian environment along the streets and that would basically mean that we want a very clear contiguous pedestrian pathway we want want a nice trees buffer from fast moving traffic

1:03:37and we want amenities like outdoor dining and other features and for that to happen what I'm proposing out here are basically they're not um very specific but they're ground rules that say that you would need up to 10 feet that is to say you could have a zero setback if your sidewalk is wide

1:03:57enough and in the Uptown and Midtown area our sidewalks are pretty wide enough at about 14 to 20 feet wide so you would require up to 10 feet if you want to for ground floor especially when we have narrow sidewalks and in that case specifically relates to for example

1:04:15in the Uptown area where a sidewalks are only five feet wide and they have and in some cases four feet wide and we want to have a wider sidewalk with more amenities along that area and up to 15 feet for residential uses because residential users if they are beginning

1:04:33to front onto the ground floor they would like some privacy so that they can open their doors and windows onto the street level and we want the eyes on the street as ground floor happens on as as residential happens on ground floor the second part of the setback is that we

1:04:51want to respect uh access to Sun and light to adjoining residential uses and this is just a diagram that you see as to how that could happen in a very market-friendly format and what other areas of San Pablo have achieved in other jurisdictions building articulation essentially means

1:05:10we want to have a variable wall plane colors transparency eyes on the streets we don't want to be monolithic building blocks out here and you can achieve it you can achieve that especially in your building facade and if you just take a site we took a prototypical site out

1:05:29here put a four-story building put in buildings and put in window those indoors and also colors and textures you can begin to see how you can break the mass of a building and still achieve a friendly building that would activate the sidewalk and also respect the unique

1:05:47context parking is a very key component as I always tell people as a designer the first thing that I see when I go and design a site is how do I fit parking because it is one of the key design requirements on the site and our aim is to make it as flexible as possible to encourage new development to

1:06:10happen so the minimum amount that we are proposing for Transit oriented higher intensity keeping in mind that we have perhaps one of the most Transit rich neighborhoods in the East Bay for commercial we are saying they they does not need to be off no off street parking

1:06:28is required if you have a small business that is up to 3 000 square feet but you do require One auto space per thousand square feet for businesses greater than three thousand square feet we are requesting one bicycle space per three uh per 3000 square feet of space which

1:06:47is somewhat consistent with your existing bicycle standards for the residential we are saying it's about half a space and one bicycle space per residential unit which goes beyond your bicycle standards right now and you could further reduce your parking standards if you incorporate transfer

1:07:04importation demand management strategies such as Transit passes enhanced bike parking car share so and so forth similarly for the transit oriented mid intensity which is outside the half mile walk shed we are saying no off Street auto parking for businesses less than 2

1:07:24000 square feet but uh but one space for every 500 square feet for space larger than 2 000 square feet and one bicycle space per 3000 square feet residential is One auto space and one bicycle space per residential unit and you can reduce the parking requirements if you have

1:07:43transportation demand management practices location we do want it behind ad habitable space we don't want it along these These Streets we want to minimize the curve cuts and not them being more than 20 feet wide we understand their constraint lots and they would be conditional use permits if

1:08:03you want more than one cup card per area um with regards to the type we will request a number of different Innovative parking that is being tried out in different cities uh on both sides of El Cerrito that include stack Tandem and shared and unbundled parking um but they all have to be ad accessible

1:08:27and I do want to note that yes the photo graph on the right is extremely inappropriate in terms of ADA accessibility and I do apologize for that but the key thing we were just trying to show is that even single family units can now have stacked parking within their houses if they're

1:08:48designed but in the case of El Cerrito we do want to maximize all Ada accessible units so that as the council member pointed out we are not taking off certain residents from our neighborhoods that is critical to us making sure that we do have the right type of open space stand standards be it

1:09:09common public and private open space um be it and they could be you know through mid block connections multi-purpose open space as well as Open Spaces as part of a street right of way it is very important we have contiguous Ada accessible Pathways but we don't want to go for the minimum four or five

1:09:30feet standard we want to achieve a higher standard and set the bar higher for El Cerrito with at least seven to eight feet that allows for at least two or three people to walk comfortably together and we also want to ensure ground floor residential setback Flex parking on

1:09:49cross streets as well as flexible streets and these are just of some of the diagrams that show how we can achieve it within some of the wider streets where some of our sidewalks are 20 feet wide especially in the downtown area on the um east side of Saint Paul Avenue and

1:10:09this would still allow for residential development to happen so if residential development happens we can allow a part of the sidewalk to be landscaped and allow for double row of trees that would encourage more privacy for the residential units especially on the

1:10:26ground floor and that in turn allows us to meet our neighbors friends and family and open our doors and windows onto the streets as well as build upon the flexible streets that the city of El Cerrito has so successfully Incorporated um in in our in the downtown area

1:10:47so before we go on to complete streams is this the right time to request for questions yes please um if I heard correctly we just covered three of the areas where you would like some input from us uh I think you said it was overall Vision the regulatory plan and the Building Development

1:11:08standards and specifically within the Building Development standards height and parking so those are the areas where I heard that you were looking for feedback that's correct okay I'm going to start on my right Mr Friedman any comments yeah um I think questions yeah

1:11:28well I'll save my comments till the end of everything but the question was on the bicycle parking for residential I assume there would be an adjustment made for senior housing where they might not have as many bicycles for resident that is correct can you go back to the parking and talk

1:11:47a little bit more about that slide you had a 3 000 square foot um commercial square footage requirement and you said it was nope that's not the right sled it was three thousand square feet um per business so I guess I was wondering if somebody were developing a

1:12:03larger development but they were splitting it into several storefronts that if each storefront were less than 3 000 square feet then would no parking be required it was envisioned it would be the total amount of space devoted to commercial development so not per business not per

1:12:21business and has this have have you has this been tested on some of our I'm just thinking of some of our little Lots particular particularly in the downtown that are I don't know maybe 50 feet wide um could they are they three thousand square feet I guess are are there are

1:12:38there typical lots that are 3000 square feet that where a parking space would be required that could actually accommodate a parking space the short answer is you can accommodate a parking space but some of the most constrained lots are typically like 50 by 100 feet and by the time you build on

1:12:53them they would be less than 3 000 square feet on the ground floor commercial so you would not require a parking space in case it's a multi-story um development like a true story that Melanie was talking about earlier correct again we tested out different scenarios you would be able to have

1:13:16parking in the rear but I like I think so you're hinting to the parking in constraint Lots it's going to be very difficult that's why we have lowered the parking standards way below what is seen in other jurisdictions and is this reduced parking allowed with Transportation demand management

1:13:34strategies that apply to commercial and residential similarly just to reiterate that some of this remember um on San Pablo Avenue we also have a surplus at the moment of on-street parking and if you recall the parking studies that have been commissioned it said maximize for for a number of

1:13:51reasons utilize that so going to what you talked about if there were a condition or a proposal um that we haven't talked so much about if it was two stories so it was more than three and it could not fit parking and it was in an area where the park where it was clear that we weren't

1:14:05exceeding 85 percent um on-street parking that exceptions would be granted okay and is there are there cases where commercial businesses share parking our current shared use is a little restrictive and I think we'd like to go for something different the current

1:14:21shared use agreement requires that you actually get an agreement from the other landowner that runs with the land that seems um and we've heard that not many landowners want to give that and I don't think it actually represents a very flexible model that allows for much

1:14:34maturity in the way that the parking demands evolve over time so I think what we're more looking at and that's one of those on my first slide where I said what comes next um I think that many areas are going more to mixed shared parking districts so that we look at it as an entirety and

1:14:50not per business and that could be something that the city could facilitate as well as an owner to owner that makes sense and uh another topic I wanted to just ask about the strolling streets um you don't have to tell me right now but because those have kind of a strong

1:15:05regulation attached to them and that is that at least 50 percent of the street Frontage needs to be activated ground floor if we're going to make that requirement I want to see a pretty strong rationale for first why were the streets chosen so I mean there are parts

1:15:21of San Pablo that make a lot of sense some of the cross streets I I wasn't quite sure why one cross street was chosen over another cross street um and then I at some point maybe we could hear about or hear later how the street Frontage would be calculated and enforced so if a street today were 100

1:15:38Commercial and new development came along they wouldn't have to do commercial they wouldn't you know does it kind of go down the line where you're looking at a block or you're looking at the whole strolling area so I want to hear a little bit at some point about how that

1:15:51would be enforced or how it might be enforced in the future or if we're still talking about it what Slaughter you uh councilmember woodslaughter are you most interested in just like slide 28 for example the one with the one with all of the strolling streets identified

1:16:13would be that's a good one slide 29 27 20 29 rolls yeah that's right it's so very briefly um the strolling streets um the reason we chose them was based on the existing the way they were being used where there was a Synergy for example the Theater District block is a

1:16:36very good example of a strolling Street where we would like to maintain that character similarly in the case of what we are calling mixed shoe strolling streets which are the cross streets such as Fairmount that was the other reason for the Mixed use strolling streets that

1:16:49we picked that area um so they it was a combination of existing uh uses that happen right now that we want to strengthen and build upon and then the other part was the opportunity based on some of the improvements for example we looked at Key nodes like such as at Stockton and

1:17:11or along San Pablo between Stockton and Eureka which has of course the grocery store and so on and so forth and we want that to remain and build upon its character we are only saying 50 percent of that become or be devoted to sidewalk activating uses in terms of its Street Frontage

1:17:34that or the amount you said what we are saying as part of Market friendliness is that the developer does not need to go for the typical 60 feet deep standard what they need to activate is the street so they could do it with a six foot cafe or you know some sort of a store that

1:17:54helps activate this street so it's not so much the quantity but it's the activation the street Frontage that it brings to the table that makes sense I was still trying to figure out how the 50 what what is the 50 percent of it's the the 50 is of the street Frontage and

1:18:11it will not be for the entire block but it will be the street Frontage that the development is proposing so on strolling streets if I come in with a new project at least 50 percent of my linear Street Frontage must be devoted to activated activated uses yes okay and as you can

1:18:30see in our graphic is when we first mapped it out uh and we felt perhaps you know the amount of space devoted to strolling Street was maybe too much and we wanted to be even more Market friendly so as another option we said and this is what you see in the black arrows is perhaps

1:18:50we could make it even more strategic even more focused on just certain areas such as long San Pablo between uh Carlson and Central uh between Eureka Eureka and Stockton as opposed to you know seeing where you see right now all the dark blue and the dark orange lines

1:19:12so this is an option being discussed we would love to hear your feedback okay I like the black arrows the black arrows representing the area where the 50 would involve or right that the black that instead of the 50 being applied to the blue and the orange that the 50 would only be applied to the

1:19:33black and it would be encouraged elsewhere along the strolling streets we are never discouraging commercial uses anywhere um honestly so you know you could you could you could do it anywhere but we're requiring it only on those black areas and that to 50 percent of the black

1:19:53areas so so two of these black areas are in low mid mid intensity mixed use um so does the does the level of intensity of you of use have it's not overlaid here um because you've got you know San Pablo in Midtown which is uh mid intensity you you have the same level of strolling

1:20:24the street requirements is that correct yes and actually the the uh you're absolutely correct the use will not determine the intensity so when we look at the two medium intensity and high intensity it is not telling you that you need to do Residential or commercial it is only talking about the

1:20:47intensity of use and very specifically the two different characteristics of the two land uses our number one parking we are requesting lower parking standards in higher intensity mixed use and number two is height we are requesting uh higher Heights in the higher intensity

1:21:08mixed use that is to say up to 65 feet height and we are requesting lower Heights of 55 feet in the medium intensity use so those are really the two different characteristics that the two land users have okay I guess the building on council member brennocini's comments in uptown you have

1:21:31um a very small black arrow in uptown for an area that's supposed to be high intensity uh high intensity mixed use I'm just curious why there isn't more of this 50 requirement proposed in the Uptown area um um as I said we are in active dialogues right now and the black arrows that

1:21:59you're looking at actually got added yesterday because of partly the same conversations that you're having um so seeing that I think we would add um more in uptown again looking at if there were large developments happening there that you would want to see a lot

1:22:13of sidewalk and ground activating I think that that needs to be expanded um but I think um in response to some of the questions and some just to share some of the dialogue we're having so it's helpful to have your this is one of the key areas that we did want your feedback on

1:22:27um as you know a bag expects us to provide more jobs I think our community and we would like to really celebrate that there's a lot of of talent probably here locally um and that we could continue to create Flex spaces that create the opportunity for people to open businesses as McCool

1:22:43said the entire um Avenue would be available for that so we are deliberating knowing that we've previously said um you know we don't want to be too prescriptive we've all seen mixed use you know that hasn't leased up on the other hand um I think there's also a real desire to

1:22:59have strong commercial districts and small nodes so we are trying to figure out what is that balance where we don't give it away so easily and I think this is happening in Economic Development circles around the bay area where residential is such a strong need right

1:23:12now that um I think that the black lines and I hear your point at Uptown we could look at that similarly on Mosier at first we were showing it going up Moser and we really realize it's really the San Pablo Avenue that we're trying to activate through this um also just to point out because his

1:23:29questions come up a couple times we do know that upper Stockton is another commercial node that upper Fairmont is and of course that's outside the specific plan area but a lot of what we learned through this is something that we could look at in the general Plan

1:23:38update as we look at what are the other strong commercial centers even if they're small in neighborhood serving so before we leave this slide because I know you probably have another commenter question is is the intent that in the black areas it would be a mandatory

1:23:54minimum and in the other areas they could exceed 50 percent if they chose to what what's the I'm trying to understand in essence there would be the mixed use strolling the San Pablo Avenue strolling and the whatever the high intensity Street activated streets area

1:24:16um what how would this particular 50 Frontage requirement apply to those three different levels of strolling streets so the fifty percent wrong the 50 requirement event would apply equally to each of the areas that we Define as this rollable street so if we decide to

1:24:35prioritize more where the black arrows are um it would apply there and I think as McCool was just saying the intensity would the the form that would result would still be different because there would be more parking Midtown right there would be different there would be

1:24:47different heights and again remember that the reason these were chosen Midtown and um the the medium intensity and the higher is the proximity to Bart So within a quarter to a half a mile apart the idea is that as time goes on as the next 5 10 15 years goes on and is

1:25:02already demonstrated by mode split that people can and will increasingly get around that a major that some of the people of course we also like to see these more dense commercial nodes as a place that people could park once knowing that many of our residents live

1:25:16in the hills and will continue to drive the idea would still be that you park once and that you actually do have a good concentration of multiple types of activities that you could you know take place and so the 50 commercial requirement remember the um Flex space requirement in the in the

1:25:35high in this rollable areas would be for all ground floor so all ground floor the hope would be that eventually that all becomes commercial in those concentrated areas recognizing that we can't require that use we can't tell people to open a business if the Market's not there we want the flex

1:25:50space to be there our proposal is currently to really push the envelope by by trying to get 50 of the frontage and as McCool spoke this isn't really square footage it is the frontage to activate the street that would be we would we would allow flexibility even in that

1:26:06recognizing with a cup so we want to push in those very key areas thinking that if we don't push it we could end up without it um so the 50 requirement would be on all strollable streets and the flex requirement would be on all so the as McCool was saying is it

1:26:23you want to correct that wow 50 requirement you're right will be on all the blacks trollable streets you if you want to go above 50 if a developer feels comfortable to go above 50 go for it there's nothing stopping the developer from building more than 50 right now and again and this is it let

1:26:43me ask my question again because you just said exactly what I was asking before what is the requirement if the requirement for 50 active activated Street Frontage is only on the black what's the requirement on the orange which is mixed use strolling and the blue which is San Pablo mixed

1:27:03rolling so one of the confusions is that it's um right now you're seeing what it was and what it could be so the blue and the orange were before we started having the conversation about black so the blue and the orange were when we were looking um at a defining swirlable streets more

1:27:18broadly and now we're talking about concentrating them got it so if we chose sorry so if we chose black then the other colors would go away if we chose black the only place that we would be we would be calling those our strollable streets we would choose two different colors since one of

1:27:33them is mixed one of them is not San Pablo Avenue or a revised black as we discussed potentially in different areas um exactly so if we chose black the only place that we would be requiring um 100 Flex space with 50 of it devoted to active commercial uses would only be

1:27:51in the black area so we would be taking away the dark blue and the orange to that mayor did that that answers my question I'm not certain I I re-emphasize that there's not enough black in uptown because uh the number of jaywalkers we have up there would suggest there's lots of people walking

1:28:10there already and they they um so we we know there's a pedestrians there and there's an insufficient number of black and Uptown so that that would be my overarching comment uh at this time is is I actually thought I mean I liked the idea that there was this much

1:28:29um Street in El Cerrito that we were trying to promote to some form of strolling um having three different levels of strolling uh you've you've mixed me up whether it's intensity or not but having three different levels of activated Street activated uh streets does strike me as a

1:28:50bit confusing so I I don't know how to answer the the question that you've posed by introducing um more concentrated nodes I do understand the more concentrated nodes are better for businesses better for strollers better for everybody so so I'm not I'm not opposed to reducing the the

1:29:09amount that's that's strollable um but I certainly don't want to turn my back on strolling um having walked the length of San Pablo several times there are portions that I wish were more visually entertaining than they currently are if you um as you're sitting there want

1:29:29to propose obviously one of the of the challenges here and we go back a lot on this too is this desire to be not prescriptive to really let the market Define and then also to yet provide a framework that really does start to describe something so we as you can see we were looking at it from

1:29:44Potrero because Potrero does also have kind of a concentration of businesses so originally it was Potrero all the way to um I thought it was went further but it looks like it's to uh not actually you know what now that we're talking about this it is we missed the black line from

1:29:59yesterday so we are proposing a black line from Hill to not excellent I guess the the question or the the question I would pose that hopefully you would mull on before you go to planning would be um instead of having just one the black uh or I guess like the black

1:30:22in its with its overlay of whether it's San Pablo Avenue or not would there potentially be an area where we would encourage through incentives which we've covered that slide already um you know future activation because I could see all of San Pablo that's blue at some point in

1:30:42the future easily meeting this requirement um but it I don't see a need to acquire this requirement today and that's what I'm trying to get to is the difference between making it a requirement and making it something that's a Target or encouraged we can try to articulate that

1:31:01more in the vision and you answered an important question which is what we're talking about right now is requirements that would not preclude us pursuing if we found out that there was some sort of a cluster or Hub that wanted to locate somewhere it does not mean that we

1:31:15wouldn't um monitor it over time to you know to as things change that there might need to be some amendments and modifications mated where we realized we achieved it and let's increase that so I think that those goals you're talking about really this was a setting trying to create a

1:31:29much more more flexible not giving up all those key corners but making it much more flexible but as you said that would not preclude us from pursuing it's why I put in there what comes next there's still the economic development action strategy they're still trying to

1:31:41cultivate new businesses it's just a development requirement and just to make my final comment on this and then I'll I'll stop holding the council hostage um my view is that the requirement for 50 should be really targeted and concentrated and really thoughtful on

1:31:58which streets we're going to say you have to do 50 activated use you have to fill that use with an active use a second layer might be that you have to build Street Frontage that could be active in the future where the market to change in some ways that was another

1:32:15thought I had is I've seen examples of locations where you allow a resident to live in a space that could be later converted to a commercial space so that was my suggestion thank you um yeah I'll start out with something that I kind of noticed that was kind of interesting I thought as I went through

1:32:34this the first time and that was what was missing from all the pictures actually are very interesting to me um but there was something missing from the pic all the I think maybe completely and that was the um various components of the roads that clutter in in um

1:33:00utilities that clutter the intersections on the sidewalks um and um those to me actually are really problematic in terms of creating the vision I think that we're trying to create here um I mean there are times when I mean when you know a really nice space will

1:33:25be created and then they'll put in all that that stuff that would be the signal heads the um push buttons the um phone boxes the signal controller boxes and by the time they get done with all of that stuff which by the way may not come later it may already have been

1:33:45there um then there's no room for pedestrians and um so I'm wondering if there is a way to create pictures that show reality and if there's a way to create a reality that in fact enables us to have the kinds of walkable streets that we're trying to show here and I don't know if

1:34:13I know what the answer is but I I'd sure like to think that there was one and a couple of things one we are stressing very clearly you need to have seven to eight feet contiguous it can't it cannot be intermittent it has to be a contiguous pedestrian pathway free of

1:34:34utilities there are no exceptions to the case no newspaper racks no protruding signage nothing in that seven to eight feet and um and if it doesn't exist right now and you're proposing a development then the building will need to set back to accommodate that that what we are calling is the new

1:34:56basic requirement um and as you see some of our Graphics perhaps in the complete streets section we have tried to show that that's seven to eight feet is is very clear but I understand what you're saying it's the Bane as we design streets you'll design this beautiful rendering and

1:35:15there'll be a utility box that just kills me um and sometimes you know you can spend ten percent of your budget just undergrounding it but sometimes it's money well spent so I clearly understand what you're saying but the issue to me is that by law those utilities and so

1:35:33forth have a right to be there and so this thing that we think we're creating is becomes a fiction to me um because it can never happen um though I don't know if there's a single picture of an intersection in this entire document that shows a signal we have some signals in the complete

1:35:58Street sections and maybe we can talk a little bit more I mean are there can there be regulations about where the utilities can put them because I know there are regulations defined in like for example I think state law maybe I'm wrong it's some other law that actually say that the

1:36:17utilities have rights and can put them wherever they feel like it as part of the complete within the right of way as part of the complete streets element we can definitely make that a standard for the city of El Cerrito along San Pablo or within our study area and we can

1:36:33ensure you know for example at the intersection where they are the Ada ramps they have to be eight feet wide a minimum and they within that eight feet wide Ada ramp with the truncated Dome you cannot have any utility um but I don't what I don't understand I know that we can say things but what I

1:36:56don't um understand is how uh we can preempt state laws that say otherwise that's my question maybe there's an answer in the audience come to the podium please so the audience at home can hear you so generally on the on the best streets you'll see that a sidewalk is divided

1:37:29into three zones and one zone is that zone right immediately in front of the um of the the shop front or whatever you want to call it and that's maybe where people put chairs and and sit outside then there's the pedestrian Zone which needs to be completely unobstructed like uh what

1:37:46councilwoman Abelson is saying um and that is between that zone right in front of the storefront and then there's a Street Furniture Zone and that's the Zone where you you see Street lamps and Street trees and uh benches and you can actually put some of this you know junk stuff that that has to be

1:38:08out in the street by state law but you don't want to obstruct the um The Pedestrian so that's that's a kind of a basic principle of good uh sidewalk design is to kind of divide it up into these different zones so anyway that's but can we enforce it that's my question

1:38:24really well you know a good well you you can probably so I mean a good Street cross section um can have you know regulating uh Power um and I think the city is is developing um some Street cross sections and the Yvette probably can talk to you about that and the diagrams can have

1:38:45regulatory um Powers um you know because of their Dimension what not then you know numbers the the metrics can be enforced so before that responds council member we're supposed to be focused on overall Vision regulatory plan and Building Development standards speak yeah this to me is the

1:39:06just when I'm talking about destroys that vision and that's why I'm bringing it up right now okay the overall Visions were on slide seven so or so or actually slide 12. um so if we could bring up slide 12 since that's what we're talking about is the overall Vision that would be great can I

1:39:24just add to what Steve price and Nicole were saying we are as part of the complete streets plan which we'll be discussing in a little bit we will be developing uh design standards for sidewalks but we will also be developing a multimodal performance metrics that

1:39:39are looking at the built environment so that's where we can consider those things and we'll adopt it as part of the complete streets plan and can we well still the utilities can still be there they'll just be in a specific Zone well there I would say that they're kind

1:39:55of that way now but uh that they take up the entire sidewalk as the I think right now we're just dealing with minimums and as part of the specific plan of the completion plan we're trying to develop uh uh a bigger better design standards so that six to seven foot wide seven to

1:40:14foot seven to eight foot wide clear zone is what we want to establish as our standard not minimum standards okay I'll move on to my next question which has to do with um the um the use that in the beginning of the document it talks about the use um being diverted more from car use to the

1:40:40other modes and one of the other modes was Transit so for transit to work as I think most of us or if not all of us know that requires um volume of pedestrians doesn't matter really what the use is it just matters that there is that volume and so we happen to already for example have on

1:41:05San Pablo Avenue a rapid bus which is um has a lot which has a very high volume it's the most frequently running vehicle in El Cerrito it's it runs more frequently than um any particular Bart line um and um when I'm wondering about is if you then go to the Midtown

1:41:29um segment if that is going to have a negative impact or a positive impact or no impact on the ability to um create uses that will in fact support the continuation if not the Improvement of the transit that's running there now on you know the the buses so the short answer is that it will have

1:42:02a positive impact and we're going to show that when we present a complete Street section so we are definitely wanting to make sure that we build on this unique asset that we have which is what you mentioned is this frequent 72 and I love the fact that it's not just simply 2 R it's 72m

1:42:21and 72. I can always get a bus in four minutes from my office to City Hall it's never taken me more than four minutes to take any one of those three buses so yes it will have a positive impact and we'll show you later in the presentation how that will happen okay

1:42:41um since I think we're well we need to move on we haven't had much discussion about for example height or parking so I don't know if if there's any questions specific about parking or height that you might have um I think they I heard numbers that I basically liked I am the only concern I

1:43:04have I suppose if any is which really kind of gets back to what I just said relates to the um um the fact that the areas that are denser are very small and there are only two of them in the entire town and um that concerns me can you I didn't fully understand well

1:43:31if in um I think that map shows it but it's so blurry I can't I can't tell on page um page anything it doesn't so so they're so dumb it's Del Norte the southern end of town in Midtown are the three areas so two of those are are high density areas right yes up down and downtown basically

1:43:58around the two bot stations and the density but those two two areas are not all that large it looks to me like because you said half a mile I believe so I I think what you're getting at I have um one response so in terms of increasing ridership for AC Transit um

1:44:16in addition to the commercial areas I think that one of our big goals and I think one of the indicators for one of the factors that really contribute to people riding is how closely they live to the to the line so adding a lot of residence is a big part of how we hope

1:44:30to promote ridership for both Bart and AC Transit and especially off-peak ridership so that's something we've even mentioned AC Transit is we've been talking in the technical Advisory Group similarly while we're calling them medium and high they are all high so the amount of development that would

1:44:48occur and that we'd like to stimulate remember this is 55 feet and we currently our our current Tom I think types at 45 feet um with 35 dwelling Newton acre and we haven't talked about it but what we're proposing is equivalent in the mid town to 100 no 85 85 85 in the medium

1:45:10um 85 dwelling units in acres we said we're not using density so much as the as the regular framework but just to give you some comparison it's equivalent to 85 dwelling units in acre in Midtown and 100 in in um up in the high intensity areas where the density bonuses would even be higher

1:45:29so it would be equivalent to about 120 I believe downtown and Uptown with a density in between 135. remember and again um one thing there's two things I've been wanting to add to the conversation one remember this in terms of the jobs and Commercial this is all for new construction

1:45:45everything that's out there could might stay commercial for a long time which is most of the Avenue so this is really trying to bring in new residents and really trying to create development friendly standards similarly what was your question just now Janet I always wondering about what oh similarly

1:46:05that's Maxim that that is maximums and not every lot could accommodate that type of height but I'm kind of thinking about is the um our climate action plan and uh and the bigger picture of where do we as a society not just in El Cerrito but in the Bay Area in the world where do we

1:46:26put our uh housing where do we put our uh our business that goes along with that where do we put whatever and um I think of El Cerrito as a place where we ought to be putting things um and you go to slide 25 please I think that'll help answer your question keep

1:46:46going slide 25 uh regulating plan so right there that one so the the question that council member you're asking is what is the density between those nodes the yellow area is considered mid-intensity mixed use and all of the yellow area not just the area that's being asked to be a focal

1:47:15node for this strollability or any other aspect all of the yellow area has the ability of being 80 up to 85 units per acre without a density bonus and I'm guessing something close to a hundred per acre with a density bonus so that's dense okay so where does it actually say

1:47:38that well no wonder I didn't know that it talks about height and as similarly those those nodes were more looking at the commercial areas and where we were thinking of scrollable streets but thank you mayor that is accurate that really it's the entire Avenue okay it is the

1:47:57entire Avenue and um okay and in fact in terms of adding residents by not even requiring the activating uses it's even more incentive to build those leasable spaces right and and um in to a certain extent it doesn't matter if it it's the it just doesn't matter whether or not it's residential or

1:48:20commercial it's it's about having the people there and they could be in offices they could be in any you know in anything and that is the um my understanding about this type of planning process is that it um is recognizing that if I understand correctly okay and

1:48:44um okay I think those uh helps to have a light um okay um I think that's then I'll stop for the moment because I'm councilman Bridges I don't have anything more to add that's been covered so I I do have one set of questions if you could go back towards the beginning

1:49:04um the key principles that are showing on in UK I know you can't see the slide numbers but uh the key principles is which is on slide seven and the overarching these planning strategies differ and and I just want to make sure I understand because you were asking us to

1:49:23comment on the overall vision and I'm trying to figure out which vision is it that we're commenting on is it these five that are on this slide 12 or is it the seven that are the key principles on slide seven um because these principles strike me to for example have the word sustainability on

1:49:46the slide where not necessarily that word isn't on the on slide 12. so I want to make sure when you're asking us to to provide guidance on an overall vision is it slide seven or is it slide 12. I would actually say it is slide 12 is what M however um these planning strategies in part

1:50:13were really for the form-based code the others are something that we've been using more to kind of test for a the whole thing but you can see for example flexibility isn't here it was more principle that we wanted to make sure was in the implementation whereas this

1:50:27is much more I think much more on the form based and on the Urban Design so if you it matters what you're commenting on so some of it is it will all go together if there's some key it could be a combination and I guess in some ways it's a there's somewhat as you

1:50:43uh they're redundant in a way they're not completely redundant that's the challenge right so if there's um honestly that some of the principles the principles have been kind of these have been we've been working with these for the whole time the principles started to

1:50:56be something that we realized we had to keep talking about you know is this flexible enough because you when we're a bunch of planners sitting at table you can start to get less flexible and had to remind ourselves that being marketed being more flexible so those started to

1:51:08be principles that we kept wanting to test for um as you can see this does have environmental and ecological destination which is a little bit different than fostering sustainability um so I would say if there's some um as I in the table of contents there will be a vision component which is the

1:51:28the beginning right and then there are the planning and form-based code um requirements you need to show us that your project does certain things in order for us to be able to to administratively Grant apartment so I think that if there's key things in either of these that

1:51:43um you know you're attracted to or not that you feel that really do contribute to the overall framework we'll have to figure out because one of the things we're trying to figure out in the implementation section like I said that we're still working on the the administration I

1:51:55think is a better term implementation as the entire Vision but the administration section is how do we use these what do we use to be able to test the project does it match does it not match um so of course when you take these strategies down you start to see a

1:52:09number of supporting strategies and objectives within it so I think at this point I think it might be most effective if you see any that you really really like or you really really don't like and maybe the ones you don't like um you know you should let us know so

1:52:23that we go forward but does that help it it does and and I would um I mean societability is here on this slide so I thank you for moving forward to this Slide the concept of creating more transit or more bike friendly pedestrian friendly doesn't seem to be quite as infused in the overall overall

1:52:44planning strategies as much as I think the council would at least my opinion um would suggest I think that's and I guess that's what I'm looking for my uh co-workers to sort of suggest that this enhance and humanized public realm does it meet your needs for Transit and

1:53:07sustainability well I think if I I might answer your question that um that is something I would like but I'm not sure I see it and I see it because I don't see the overlays that I know exist in the real world and even if you look in front of this very building at the bus I'm not sure if I remember

1:53:31this exactly right but the bus stop area it's a terrible bus stop area because it's got all this stuff in it so that um there's hardly a place it's really hard for the bus to stop and let off passengers because there's all this seating and um I'm not sure what I forget what it's

1:53:54there but I know there's seating and maybe plants and all this stuff that interferes with usability when I was referring to the corners that's what I was really talking about so I think to answer maybe both of those so some of those I'm going back to what Steve price said the furniture Zone the

1:54:12Claire Zone and the Furnishing Zone in front of the the buildings I think doesn't work perfectly always because I think many times I've heard you make comments in places where we might be utilizing either AC transits or another agency's best practices and so what I would encourage him and I think

1:54:31that Mig also specializes in this in Fair and Pierce so I think we will try to make sure that we make that clear that you need to be able to move not only along that seven that eight feet north south but you might need to be getting to points towards the street or towards the

1:54:46buildings in terms of your so I encourage you when we do get the guidelines and as a vet the Public Works director mentioned when we have standards if you see something that's uh not right to let us know and in terms of yours mayor Lyman there is another slide that talked about

1:55:02um when it was going to be the required and the incentivized types of features one of them was um mode split encouraging encouraging remember um it said something like encouraging mode shift um and you're right it's throughout City policy documents um supporting bicycle

1:55:22you know the climate action plan is very strong with this um so uh mode shift so catalyzing mode shift and it might be I think you might have a couple more questions but actually the next section when we get into complete streets really shows both how from a policy perspective as well as

1:55:36from additional infrastructure and Engineering changes that we aim to do that on the on the in the public realm what's really nice about doing these both together is recognizing that while we do that we still want to support Economic Development we still wanted to

1:55:50relate well with the land use so being able to wreck to relate land use and those Transportation improvements together would ideally both create the new users you know the new bicyclists the new Transit users as well as create the infrastructure that people could

1:56:03could move through but I hear you that in the key principles that the sustainability and or specifically uh multimodal or non-motorized Transportation wasn't or active Transportation wasn't as highly valued or highlighted as you might want can you go forward uh towards parking

1:56:21the first parking slide page one it's page 44 for those of us with numbered Pages it's this one um here you say quarter mile of Bart the third bullet you say within quarter mile ever where else you were using half mile actually this one's a little confusing because the next one says it quarter

1:56:41mile as well so yeah that's what I was going to ask is there is no mid within a quarter mile so I was just really that's the one actually caught my eye the most so if you could go to the next slide um there is no mid within a quarter mile so I don't know how you do the third one

1:56:57so I think this was an error um um this is also still somewhere we're talking about which is one of the challenges is what do we require that's Market friendly you know without loading too much onto development um until we know that the market is strong enough that maybe we can do more

1:57:16um and then the other is incentives are are a bit of a challenge we're trying to figure out but how do you incentivize right so we're trying to figure out what we would require because we're already reducing minimum so much sometimes what what's pretty typical in

1:57:30cities is to have higher parking requirements and to incentivize these types of strategies through lowering the parking requirements our Park we're kind of already giving that because that's really what we already want from an urban form so we're trying to explore what and um something I

1:57:43didn't mention earlier in terms of next steps is over the net we're going to try to organize over the next month a developer and architect Visa Workshop charette partly to test some of these things if we were to add you Bay Area developers who are developing you know

1:57:57Berkeley Richmond El Cerrito Albany what could you tolerate as a requirement because clearly the more we require the more we're going to get um we can and so the first one we still have to discuss it could be within the full half mile that we would allow reduction which in the higher intensity

1:58:12areas could mean down to zero and it feels like without a really good demonstration of why in the mid Zone that could happen we wouldn't allow that so I think both of them would allow a reduction with TDM measures but the extent of the reduction in the bottom line would be different sorry I guess I

1:58:30that most of the the study area is relatively flat there are some great changes I would suggest that a mile within a mile of Bart is probably still a location where incentives could could work so I I would strongly encourage you increasing for this mid slide here slide

1:58:4945 that just increase the distance to a mile to try and encourage people and also on parking on both of these I do respect member Friedman's comment about you know making the bicycle space potentially less for for a senior housing but most uh people I know have

1:59:10one or two bikes and so I would actually increase this to two by bicycle spaces per resident units that both of these because um you know if there's two people living there it's really nice to have the rollout space and not have to take it in the elevator and take it into your into

1:59:28your place so I so I would strongly recommend that um if you know and that in that way bicycle space becomes a dominant part of the development they may use the incentive to reduce the amount of bike parking that they use um right point will Taken and others have said that you know a lot of people

1:59:46walk a mile to Bart especially if you're in mid Midtown um the other thing we've talked about is instead of bicycle space we could also have a bicycle or Flex space because I think storage in general there's other types of toys and boats and equipment that people might need or trailers for

2:00:02bikes or extra long bicycles um similarly I think in terms of flexibility important thing to keep in mind whether it's senior housing or others looking at who the population being served is keeping in mind that the overall form and use might change but I think I'm trying to build in a lot of

2:00:16flexibility on these is great but these are the kind of comments we wanted so that's and then my last comment on slide 48 which is right before sidewalk activation I think so I think it's the slide right before um I'm just curious if there's an opportunity for Community Gardens to be

2:00:33included in something like this that would build a socializing space uh as well as create some of the public space that's out there um it would I know in Sacramento they have Community Gardens in there denser what they consider dense um and it just would be makes sense for

2:00:53us to try and encourage that uh social space do you um in in saying that are you thinking of shared private Community Gardens associated with development or actually overall Urban Gardens that are shared like the one are you thinking of both I I'm I'm going to leave that up to the developer so we

2:01:12are talking a lot about that and that is where it overlaps with Urban Greening and we are trying to think a lot about what what drives people to want to be in a single family home and it's often Garden space and storage space so recognizing that living higher density

2:01:23um they're trying to make sure that our urban areas like other urban areas whether it's Seattle or San Francisco um start to provide those other types of amenities that people enjoy in their in their homes so like Garden space that's my freedom thank you uh both of

2:01:38you have referred on several occasions to incentives and without having the tool of Redevelopment is the incentive you're mostly referring to is giving a developer more flexibility to ease some of the requirements and standards really we are about to get deeply into this

2:01:54over the next week so at the Planning Commission hopefully we'll be able to talk about it more we're talking about a point system you know in order for a streamlined process maybe even an administrative use permit you know are there a certain number of checklists

2:02:05that you that you would need to make you know um so we're talking about about things like that um flexibility is an interesting because we could relax them yet there's certain goals we really want we really do want so that's it seems um I think as we've been going through

2:02:19this it almost feels like something that came from the previous planning world where you could give on parking and you could give but now we're like those are our desired those are our bottom line so we are trying to figure that out and hopefully by the Planning Commission

2:02:30we'll have some more thoughts on that okay thanks so as we move into the next session oh you have a comment go ahead well sorry uh have we tested this to see whether or not the upzoning accommodates our one Bay Area projections yes yes so we're using those for the eir and we're

2:02:48actually hoping that we meet those sooner rather than later and go beyond at that and have to update the whole thing and just a question on your methodology so in coming up with the height standards I know that Bard is very interested in high-rise development at some of its

2:03:01other BART stations and maybe ours as well in the in the East Bay um are were there any areas where a tower could be accommodated I'm thinking along San Pablo Avenue and obviously I can't think of a tower location on San Pablo Avenue but in the future are there

2:03:18particular lots that might be located along the way where a tower could make sense in an Urban Design stand from an Urban Design standpoint or did you rule that out from the beginning for some other reason and what we're talking about is a plant development right

2:03:32sizing we needed to come up with something here some clarity something that seemed in scale but we can't predict that something really great might fit so by by creating these values and goals if a tower came and it actually achieved a lot of these and so we've talked about that we don't want to

2:03:46preclude something that we haven't thought of but yet we didn't want to so right think of everything so trying to kind of really be context sensitive what do we think you know pushing it already now but if something were to come in I think that we'd want to be open to that

2:03:59and it would probably come to you if it was something a certain or to the council sitting at the time so I think that we will try to add really clear values that the values are more important than the specifics okay thank you so as we move into the next section are

2:04:15there uh similar areas can you make sure that you highlight the areas that we need to comment on as we move into the complete Street San Pablo Avenue I think I might allow a vet to handle that one so I think we covered everything that we needed to in this section

2:04:36good evening I think I forgot to introduce myself before my name is Yvette Ortiz I'm the interim Public Works director city engineer I wanted to provide you with an overview of the San Pablo Avenue complete streets effort to date before turning it over to our Consultants Baron Pierce who have

2:04:54been working really closely with Mig to ensure that the development standards that we've just discussed are closely coordinated with the complete streets policies so that we can achieve some of the goals that we've been talking about tonight including multimodal Mobility

2:05:08environmental sustainability Economic Development and sense of place the complete streets plan is intended to increase the amount of Transit pedestrian and bicycle travel along San Pablo Avenue by providing a well-connected safe and accessible multiple multimodal

2:05:25transportation system as part of the plan we are evaluating how accommodating all Transportation modes within our existing right-of-way can reduce the need for auto-oriented infrastructure improvements which might not necessarily or adequately meet our various City goals

2:05:42currently the city's General plan identifies a performance metric known as level of service only for vehicle congestion this can result in the identification of infrastructure improvements such as widening of roads and adding up vehicle lanes that prevent the use of the public

2:05:59right-of-way for multimodal facilities such as busy planes widened sidewalks and bicycle Lanes so in order to promote a more meaningful mode shift in El Cerrito towards Transit pedestrian and bicycle modes the complete streets plan is introducing new and enhanced multimodal facilities and

2:06:19design standards and also establishing multi-modal level of service metrics for Transit pedestrians and bicyclists our Consultants have tested alternatives for both reducing vehicle congestion at Hot Spot intersections such as San Pablo Hill and eastshore and cutting but at

2:06:37the same time also providing physical and operational improvements for multiple modes and they have found opportunities to implement significant but varying improvements throughout the San Pablo Avenue Corridor for example and some of them are are more restricted

2:06:52right-of-way areas like Uptown and downtown um the the optimum facilities for all modes might not be able to be provided so we this is one of the areas we're testing is what are our priority modes in these areas and our draft approach right now is looking at prioritizing Transit and pedestrian

2:07:13modes of travel in those areas also as part of this process we have convened a technical Advisory Group as Melanie mentioned earlier that has consisted sorry yes um also as part of this effort we convened a technical Advisory Group consisting of Caltrans AC Transit Bart

2:07:34the Contra Costa Health division East Bay Coalition Bart the cities of Richmond and Albany and they provided input on what's what we can do through um to coordinate with their efforts and as well as I think one of our key the two key stakeholders we've had several

2:07:51discussions with are AC Transit and Caltrans we're also working with um through the WIC Tech through wicktech as they're updating their action plan for routes of regional significance and they're also looking at multimodal performance measures for um San Pablo Avenue and the city of El

2:08:12Cerrito and Richmonds are working together with Wake Tech staff to make sure that whatever we're doing is part of the specific plan is coordinated with that effort tonight again we would like to confirm with you that our approach for prioritizing modes along San Pablo

2:08:27Avenue and our methodology for assessing performance metrics for Transit pedestrian and bicycle bicyclists are we're on the right track and after we get input from you tonight we will continue to work with the tag in the community to further develop the Design Concepts and multimodal assessment

2:08:47methodology and so now I'll turn it over to Matthew Ridgeway of fair and Pierce so he can go over the details of those two things go ahead I'm gonna let McCool cover the first part okay um since I've been requested to speak more I'm gonna do it so in terms of San Pablo

2:09:17Avenue again this is the existing base map what did you begin to see are all the existing uh facilities that exist in terms of you know what we already know is a very rich AC transit 72r system out here you can literally see all the bus stops that are there in literally every

2:09:38block or every other block we also have various crosswalks which are identified by Blue they're not consistently along the corridor but they are there and starting with this existing base map we looked at what could be the complete streets Improvement in this case and

2:09:57keeping in mind complete streets means that you need to accommodate and make every use of this street and equal user of the street and no one user impacts the other user the overarching improvements that were common all across the all along and across the corridor

2:10:15was to widen the sidewalk with so that The Pedestrian travel paths become a contiguous seven to eight feet wide uh and we know there are certain problem areas especially in the Uptown area add more crosswalks at Key intersections and also at Key mid blocks uh where some of

2:10:35the blocks are extremely long like I said there's some of the blocks are 500 600 feet long and enhanced parking also uh can be used so by enhanced parking we just don't mean the number of parking spaces but the people can use the on-street parking uh that exists along

2:10:54San Pablo what we heard from different folks was because the traffic moves so fast they don't feel very comfortable parking along San Pablo Avenue so we do want to encourage wherever on street parking happens specifically in the three different areas Uptown we and

2:11:11Matthew is going to talk more about it is to convert a one-way cutting to two-way traffic and that could actually produce benefits for multiple modes of travel eliminate second left turn Lanes on Center Pablo Avenue and again it happens in the Uptown area a pedestrian has to literally cross a

2:11:32crosswalk length that is more than 80 feet long that's a really long crosswalk to have um and then provide bike shadows and possible bike lanes and we're going to talk a little bit more about it within the Midtown there is an opportunity to add buffered bike lanes and we'll talk

2:11:49about what that actually means and have Far Side bus stops which begins to address a little bit of improving the transit access and connectivity all along the corridor and then finally they in downtown it is to provide bike Shadows which basically means that we put a

2:12:10Green Lane a green colored bike lane in the middle of a travel Lane and also have a sharrow sign that we see happening in other parts of the Bay Area so some of the improvements to have increased pedestrian connectivity especially in the mid blocks when we started to look at what was the existing

2:12:32condition that was happening primarily in downtown and Uptown which has perhaps now what is more I ironical out here in terms of big picture is that the downtown and Uptown because of the BART and because of the uses that happen in the area have perhaps the most amount of

2:12:50traffic in our areas too and those are perhaps the most areas that we want to walk and bike also because of the destinations that exist in these two areas so if you begin to look at the cross sections we basically have two lanes of traffic moving in either direction parking all along the way and

2:13:09we have a median which becomes a left turn lane um in the case of Uptown specifically we have relatively decent sidewalk widths they do not have a consistent seven to eight feet pedestrian pathway but they do have the real estate space right now which can be better designed to

2:13:29accommodate for enhanced walking experience for the pedestrians so what is being proposed out here is to maintain the travel lanes and the travel flow that is being there but to a begin to accommodate what is known as a Super Shadow within the travel Lane that you

2:13:50see identified in the green the other key thing that is being proposed out here and you begin to see is is to have bus platforms come into the parking Lane and what this begins to do is that a lot of the space and a lot of time that is spent by the buses to go in and out of

2:14:13the bus expand begins to get reduced because then they can they do not have to waste or spend time doing that that in turn actually helps increase parking and in Pre increases the overall experience for the transit user improving the transit efficiency also by bulbing out the transit stop into the

2:14:40parking Lane um so what you these are basically plans showing how the roadway would be configured one of the key things we did keep in mind because it was very important um was to keep the existing curbs along the sidewalks where they are the number two thing is that there was a lot of

2:15:00investment that has been spent in landscaping and planting and we wanted to keep that and build on that as much as possible but there would be places for example where we put in the bulb outs for the transit pads that there would be changes to the curb and that is

2:15:17something we had to keep in mind in terms of the pedestrians you also begin to see that by creating bulb outs we reduce the amount or the length of the crosswalks that a pedestrian has to cross right now and that would reduce the amount of time it takes for a pedestrian to go from one side of the

2:15:37street to the other side of the street thereby also increasing pedestrian connectivity Transit efficiency and also improving the overall parking access the bicyclists get some sort of a facility it is not the most ideal facility that we get for the bicyclists because

2:15:55they're still sharing the lane with the travel so we envisioned more the hardcore uh bicycle commuters will be really using these parts of the downtown and Uptown these are just some of the examples that other cities have done it this is the case in the very well done

2:16:14case in the city of Long not in the city of Long Beach along 2nd Avenue in the Belmont neighborhood where they have seen a great increase in bicycle connectivity and bicycle usage and more importantly they have seen a 50 decrease in bicycles using the sidewalk which we

2:16:34see a lot happening in San Pablo Avenue so that improves the overall pedestrian safety in our sidewalks also we where possible and there are places especially in uptown not so much in downtown that we can begin to explore one or two blocks where we can have potentially

2:16:54bike Lanes they won't be buffered bike Lanes but they would be bike lanes that would be wide enough that would allow other bicyclists to come and use the street too in the Midtown section which is essentially the section between Lincoln and Potrero where the traffic

2:17:11volumes are much lower and the trap turning lanes are less than what we see in downtown and in uptown we do have the same existing configuration in terms of two lanes of travel Lanes in both Direction and then of course a well landscaped median in the middle what we

2:17:30are proposing is to have what is known as a buffered bike lane that is to say the bike lane would be next to the sidewalk and it would be between the parking Lane in and the sidewalk area that would allow for not just the commuter bicyclists but also people with

2:17:54their families bicyclists with their kids to actually begin to use this street this would again have similar amenities such as having the bus pads come into the parking Lane so that we continue to improve the transit efficiency and Transit accessibility for the bus riders thereby reducing the

2:18:15friction of the time that is wasted by buses trying to pull in and out of their bus pad in the parking Lane these are just plans showing how that would happen a point to note out here is to achieve this is that the right-of-way or the real estate space that is devoted right

2:18:34now to cars is not that different but it's but it's but it's about five feet more that five feet almost makes or breaks the thing because it allows to put buffered bike Lanes where with the lower traffic volumes that we could not achieve to put in downtown and Uptown

2:18:51um the the other thing that we are trying to say out here is the need and you know what uh Steve mentioned and others mentioned is to start to establish clear paths for the amenity Zone The Pedestrian pathway and the furniture Zone and what you see in the upper left is the desire to keep a clean

2:19:11seven to eight feet path uh just for two or more people to be able to walk comfortably all along the corridor and the need would be to make sure as council member has already expressed that the utilities be constrained or restricted to either the the Furnishing

2:19:31Zone which is next to the building or preferably be in the amenity Zone which is right next to the bicycle tracks what you begin to see in the upper uh in actually in both the sketches the crosswalks again will be defined building on the existing Investments and

2:19:52and as you can see there would be a great amenity provided for the bicyclists as they go along now number of cities have done it in different ways and it depends on how much money we have to be able to do it you could do it with a simple paint job which is what say you

2:20:09see in certain streets in Chicago this involves not changing the curb at all or if we have more money we can do it by just strategically placing the bulb outs at the intersections thereby and striping the rest of the area which allows for the parking power cars to be able to

2:20:31open comfortably into the striped area and then when they see a gap in the bicyclists they will be able to go into the sidewalk now a key thing that I would like to stress out here is it is not totally ad accessible and that can be really achieved in the case of this

2:20:50example that we see in Vancouver Uber where the whole bike lane is raised and is at the same level as the sidewalk thereby making the entire pathway 80 accessible um how does it perform I'm going to request Matthew to talk about it cool good evening my name is Matthew Ridgeway

2:21:13and I'm with uh fair and Pierce Ellen polling is also here with fair and Pierce today and we are doing the transportation components pleasure to be here actually going to start with this slide which is uh extend to accentuate a point that McCool made in doing the

2:21:26analysis of existing conditions this is the traditional basis to do analysis that is delay intersection delay based for vehicles what we discovered is that the area near the plaza and the area near Del Norte BART stations are the ones that are the most congested and

2:21:42that in fact there's a big section of Midtown that has got very favorable current traffic operations which I think is one of the things that led us to be more creative in what we did in Midtown but then as we got into the multimeter level Services I'll show you in a minute

2:21:56we also began to rethink what sort of what our priority modes were but this is sort of giving you the framework of how we got our initial thoughts on and the grades are Am Pm Peak is it left to right Am Pm okay that's in there this is just existing conditions 2012. great

2:22:14I'll show you more of those later um so as McCool said we did come up with um based on existing congestion especially at the Del Norte Bart area we did come up with a couple of ideas to sort of create win-wins for all modes one of which is to convert both Hill and

2:22:29cutting both to two-way streets as you know under current conditions especially if you're coming off of the freeway and going to Bart you go in the morning you come on cutting and take a right onto San Pablo then a left onto Hill to get into the parking garage and then in the

2:22:45evening frequently do the opposite of that the result of that is that there's two Northbound left turn Lanes from San Pablo to cutting then two southbound left turn Lanes from San Pablo to Hill because of that jog so converting both Hill and cutting to two-way streets

2:23:01allows us to take all that traffic that's currently jogging on San Pablo and get them off of San Pablo so that has a pretty dramatic effect in terms of allowing us to reuse 12 foot Lanes one in each Direction so if we eliminate one of the left turn pockets in each

2:23:16Direction so take the Northbound left down to one and take the South one left down to one go ahead a question um we're talking about the buses that's how the buses get in and out of Del Norte buses currently can do that there's also a contra flow bus lane on cutting

2:23:32already that they can they can go into but the problem is the bus bays are not aligned that way it's a good point we've already talked to AC Transit about it and they're flexible uh the bus Bays that are on the west side of the BART station are not aligned that way they

2:23:48also have bus Bays on the east side of the BART station that are aligned that way but we've already been talking to them about potentially needing to redesign the whole Intermodal Transfer Facility that's on the west side of the BART station so would any proposal that would propose to

2:24:02change this flow also not do any not implement it until there would be the funding developed to redo the whole bus loading area I don't think we've done the detailed analysis yet to determine whether they could make it function on just the east side of the station I just want to share

2:24:22one thing which we haven't brought up Bart is actively doing station modernization plans so we've been meeting them with them both monthly and through the technical Advisory Group and they have other reasons that they're interested in some changes to the bus bays and yes your answer would be that

2:24:35they would only happen concurrently we wouldn't be able to do it unless AC Transit was interested okay and the other thing about the ones you're the ones on the east side are already not those buses I don't come from there they come from um they already enter a different way

2:24:52okay and they're the main line I guess the point is that there's space there but Melanie's point is that Bart's already willing to Bart's already talking about changing the Intermodal Transfer Facility right but Bart is not the interim Bart is not the buses I understand AC transit's also been a I

2:25:10don't know how much they've participated in the BART study but they have definitely participated in our analysis and are supportive of that concept uh okay I just I guess my concern would be that I mean you know it doesn't get lost in the funding sure you get partly

2:25:25implemented thereby creating havoc on the street that is a good comment yeah so that was a win-win the other major change that we've talked about up in the Del Norte area is that there's a little street called Peerless that forms the fifth leg of the intersection of Hill

2:25:41and and um and San Pablo uh we would like to convert that so that's only in so that there's no longer an approach there and that allows us to no longer allocate green time to that movement which allows us to serve that so I'll show you later that it's even though we've adopted or

2:25:58proposing that you adopt a new multimodal level of service standards we actually do get fairly good operations for traffic in in that area because of a couple of changes that we're looking at uh McCool already talked about um oh I'm sorry it's the last point on

2:26:13the Uptown of delore area is that we are looking at a minimum of the super shares in terms of a bicycle accommodation um we would think we probably can accommodate bike lanes and portions but we're still sort of that Melanie described many things that are currently

2:26:28working on and that is one of those things as well and we're also looking to get wider sidewalks up there McCool did a good job of describing the Midtown so I won't go into great detail about that and it's it's the area that I'm the most excited about and so is the East Bay

2:26:41Bike Coalition they have called this potentially the best uh and first example of separated bikeways in in the East Bay and so and in Bay Area and as well I guess there's one in uh Golden Gate Park right now on JFK drive but one of the first in the Bay Area uh uh the

2:26:57downtown area is probably the most constrained and the most frustrating from a transportation perspective because it has the most the narrowest right-of-way and the highest volumes go ahead what was your comment about the bike Coalition in Midtown they were excited

2:27:09because it's buffered or they were excited what was their point they're excited because it's buffered and I'll talk later about um about what why they think that's important and so and so do we that's the question you said downtown has the highest volumes well downtown in Del Norte both have a

2:27:29high volumes I guess my point is that the Midtown does not have high oh okay I was gonna say because I thought Del Norte had yeah they're both high but downtown has the combination of a constraint it's the most constrained right-of-way and very high volumes so that's the area where we're proposing

2:27:45the super shares that mukul also shared showed um which is a as we'll get into the multimodal level service and talk to you about different types of cyclists and who that's going to attract as new cyclists will make the point that that's not necessarily going to attract a lot

2:27:59of new cyclists but it is an improvement over what's out there today I have a second question in my mind I know that's how we look at it now is volume of it's is volume of vehicles but maybe we should think about volume of people moving movements so for example if you've got buses moving and

2:28:17they're full of you know 40 people per bus then whatever wherever it's going is moving 40 people right uh whereas a single occupancy vehicle is moving one and that may have some meaning somewhere so I would suggest and we'll show you in a moment that we are proposing to change the metrics to be

2:28:37more people-based as opposed to auto-based Super and sorry before you leave that slide I noticed Midtown and downtown both have bullets about adding or enhancing crosswalks and Uptown does not have a bullet like that so just when you're going through the presentation if

2:28:50you can talk about if that was okay additional crosswalks were considered and eliminated for some reason or if they just the bullet just doesn't show up it's just that building crosswalks for example on the south leg of the intersection in the North Leg of the intersection of Hill and we've

2:29:04actually already also proposing a mid-block Crossing uh in that same block good add a bullet note to self uh so here's the multimodal level service criteria as Yvette Melanie all made good points um uh the city has pretty aggressive objectives as it comes to uh mode share in the future

2:29:27um so for example uh as this is getting into why multimeter level service your climate action plan calls for a 25 reduction in vehicle miles of travel uh which is a big bold ambitious goal uh and one that you don't achieve without some sort of major rethink about how

2:29:43you're accommodating other modes other reasons to consider multimodal level service um are just that that'll Focus for the last many years as indicated by your current General plan has been focused primarily on automobile capacity and reducing per vehicle delay and so the

2:30:00consequence of that is that this other modes have been a bit neglected so there's sort of a balance that needs to take place there um probably the the number one driving reason for considering multimodal level Service uh has to do with economics so we have strong indicators that

2:30:13investments in bicycle and pedestrian and Transit facilities have are have strong basis in in growing markets for local retail and so forth and then there's the more obvious reason which is it's the state law now so complete streets are dictated as part of a senate

2:30:30Bill and so it's uh any new general plans that are conducted throughout the state of California are required to address complete streets they're not necessarily required to adopt multimodal level service but we think it's a really important implementing function of a

2:30:44complete streets ordinance so I'm going to talk quickly about methodology options and specifically what we're proposing here and then give you sample results and and next steps uh so the this is the cover of the current year 2000 Highway capacity manual which as we've already talked

2:31:01about really focuses on automobile delay there is a 2010 Highway capacity manual that actually has some better metrics for bikes pedestrians and Transit we've been applying those as part of other projects especially in Oakland uh and finding them that that they're data

2:31:18intensive uh and also produce counter-intuitive results so we're not really favoring the 2010 HCM and we've developed a methodology for you that's a little simpler and a little more intuitive in its results I think the other major thing that we like about what we're proposing to you is that it's

2:31:34an it's not a it's a very easy step to get from what we're going to I'll describe the moment that's built environment factors to Capital Improvement programs less so with some of the more complicated method methodologies like the 2010 Highway capacity manual or what we in the

2:31:48industry call the HCM sorry for using jargons um uh more on why a multiple level service this is an intersection in the Sacramento area but you can see what the effect of uh having a lower uh so in the the top cases uh currently achieving level Service uh actually that's a d and

2:32:08the improvements on the bottom or the area that would be widened is what they would have to achieve in their case to achieve level service see your standard is not level service C and D but it just makes the point that it creates a very auto-dominated uh pedestrian and bicycle

2:32:21inaccessible scenario for users and then more to the point this is a these next two images are images from the nacto guide Urban Street design guide nacto stands for the National Association of city transportation officials and they're a sort of a they're not a new organization but

2:32:40they're newly uh sort of feeling sowing their oats and developing a couple of guides one bike guide and then this very recently released Urban Street design guide and this shows a pretty typical Urban Street and you can see that it's pretty Auto dominated and this is their

2:32:56image of how you might rebalance that obviously the amount of right-of-way that's dedicated to automobile traffic has been significantly reduced but the amount allocated for buses and and bicyclists has been dramatically increased and and so have the pedestrian

2:33:08enhancements and that's our intent here so what we're recommending to you is a two-pronged methodology first is what we're calling built environment factors assessment uh and so this actually stems from partially Your Design guidelines so this is I I think it's a very intuitive basic

2:33:29methodology it is essentially saying here are the elements that we think are important uh in the in terms of design attributes for sidewalks for crosswalks for bicycle facilities for Transit facilities and then you simply assess do they exist or do they not if you then determine that there's

2:33:45elements of those that don't exist and you fail to meet your level of service criteria it's pretty easy to figure out what it is you need to do in order to meet the level of service criteria you need to add those elements so there are a number of them so there's a Transit

2:33:58portion there's two uh pedestrian built environment Factor spreadsheets or sheets that I'll show you uh and then there's uh also a fairly complicated bike one that I'll describe to you in detail as well the second portion of what we're suggesting to you is is to use average

2:34:14delay uh for persons rather than just for vehicles and so we have come up with a mechanism that allows you to make those computations for all modes for all all people in each mode individually and I'll describe that to you as well uh you we can we're we're what we're

2:34:33showing you today is really a computation of each of those as Standalone Elements which is a little complex in that one intersection or or segment actually will have multiple level of service outputs one for each mode and potentially one for person delay and then a separate one based on

2:34:47built environment factors there are ways for us to roll those up into an Aggregate and the answer is blank for each intersection of segment and we're talking about whether and how to do that as as we progress uh Yvette got at this earlier so um uh uh well I'll get to what I got to

2:35:10earlier we have uh for the built environment factors we have a fairly basic uh red yellow green metric similar to a traffic signal red being not meeting your standard uh yellow being not meeting your standpoint getting marginally closer uh green being meeting your standard

2:35:26um and you can see that we're seeking to accomplish green for bikes Peds uh and buses and yellow for automobiles all right uh so but I want to make the comment that uh as Yvette said earlier buses and pedestrians really are our priority modes and this is something we

2:35:44we would like feedback on uh so the comments about what a provision were made for bicycles particularly in uptown and um in downtown are really a function of prioritizing PEDs in transit in those districts and we came up with bike improvements that that I'll show you

2:36:02later don't meet this green standard but they get as close as we can and the decision was made consciously that we were prioritizing Transit and pedestrians in those areas and then on the auto what we're proposing here is consistent with the West Country West Contra Costa transportation is it

2:36:18advisory Wick tack whatever whatever the last two uh A and C stand for advisory committee thank you in it doesn't mean anything but uh so what we're proposing here is consistent with the action plan that is being developed by WIC attack it does allow a higher level of congestion

2:36:37um so we're uh we're allowing level service e as a standard matter of course uh and actually level service f is also determined to be acceptable that doesn't mean we're shooting for LLC erf we're obviously shooting for something better but if if we can get the greens for

2:36:53buses and pedestrians in particular at the end of trade-off in terms of vehicular level service then that's what we're deeming to be acceptable so this is how the built environment factors components work and I'm I'll take a cue from you um I'll go through the first one maybe the first two in

2:37:11some level of detail and then you can tell me if or nod your head or shake your head if I'm if you don't want that level of detail because they're kind of detailed um but um uh so this is the portion of this is an early draft or it's a current draft for what we're doing for the transit

2:37:27assessment and the transit assessment really is set focuses on the transit amenities we have had uh conversations with AC Transit and these are likely to change a bit based on that but what we're looking at are the locations of shelters and locations and presence of

2:37:41shelters and benches not Illustrated in the image but one of our factors will be is there a bus bulb present one of the comments from AC Transit is we're currently giving that one point they would potentially like to see a greater Point score for that way finding uh routing information which

2:37:58includes next bus is also a factor presence of bike parking uh is it gets points um so each of these is it's another accessibility this really cute um uh bus um shelter shelter excuse me um which I really like the green part of by the way I'm not sure that it could be

2:38:24used by a person in a wheelchair because it doesn't look to me like there's a way to get in and out of it oh I'm sorry I was looking at that image on the top right uh okay yeah we're on it okay okay that um and it's requirement of the Ada actually that it have spaces and you'll note that

2:38:51we do have ADA compliance identified as one of the uh elements too and actually it was one of the other comments from uh AC Transit that we agree with which is that we shouldn't necessarily have a point score for Ada it should just be assumed that that's a that's a

2:39:03requirement so we are going to be removing that as a point score element and adding that as a as a necessity um uh the one thing that's not Illustrated here that I think we're also going to try to illustrate is that um that we well this actually does show an in-lane bus stop which is an important

2:39:20component of reducing delay for users what it doesn't necessarily show it in the form of a bus bulb um so we'll be adding that components but though so the way that this works is that you you essentially identify which of these elements are present and for each one that is present you get the

2:39:35score that's adjacent to it and you sum those up and if you have less than five points or last year it's not adequate if you have six to seven points it's not quite adequate either but getting closer and if you're between 8 and 10 points uh then you then you're looking pretty good

2:39:52uh the other key continuous iteration for Transit and this has actually been AC transit's primary objective uh is the transit delay is considered as part of the person delay which I'll describe to you later and that's what AC transit's really been focused on with us is making

2:40:05sure that whatever improvements we come up with results in an overall increase in their travel in their average travel speeds in the quarter um so any questions on transit go ahead I have another question on um page 83 in the upper right hand um figure on that's it yeah okay so the um

2:40:32where it says one you see that on the left yes bus assessment what is that is that a what's that supposed to represent is that a best shelter or is that a bus that is a bus shelter oh okay if you put bike racks there by parking there then you make it because the thing about

2:40:56bike racks is people if people use them they're going to be there like all the time right for like all day for example so that makes it more difficult to get to the bus shelter so it would seem to me that when it's not put the bike racks in the bus shelter air immediate area or where you

2:41:15would board or deboard the bus which is in a variety of places that it should be outside that zone maybe next to that zone but not in the zone yeah I agree with you we're talking about our calling for consistency with the designing with Transit that's a publication at AC Transit developed I

2:41:32think 10 years ago now um and it's part of a effort that fair and peers LED um probably five years ago now uh calling bike bike access to Transit uh we identified an alternative set of Designing with Transit bus stop look essentially configurations that accommodate bike parking and made sure

2:41:49that the bike parking was not in the door zones for the buses and so forth so we would make sure that that's an element of what we're talking about as well it's hard to illustrate that kind of detail in this kind of image but that's we are expecting that that's what

2:42:01we're looking at uh so that was the bus stops um uh pedestrians we have a couple different assessments one is uh along sidewalks so you can see that we're calling for as McCool and others have said we would like to get eight feet um of usable sidewalks so that's not

2:42:21including the other zones that Steve price and others have talked about adjacent to the building and then out by the curb it's just the usable sidewalk element and then we also would like it to have that space buffered the third element within this is that there's crosswalks so this is actually

2:42:38the one that's probably having the most impact on the design of San Pablo as we get into designing or looking at the elements of sandpapel that either currently do or currently do not meet these standards and the resulting changes and so that is that we would like to have a crosswalk at least every

2:42:54400 feet along the length of San Pablo those crosswalks would only go in if there's actually demand for it but we would expect that the land use program that you're proposing occurs that you would actually have demanded at all these locations and so that is actually

2:43:09the addition of quite a few crosswalks and then we'll talk in the next step about how it is we assess whether the the infrastructure that's installed with each of those crosswalks is sufficient but the sidewalk itself assessment is pretty basic but you can see that in

2:43:23order to achieve the green level status you have to have at least a six foot sidewalk preferably eight and you have to have a buffer so that means some sort of landscape buffer so actually most of San Pablo meets that with the major exception that there is a lot of clutter

2:43:37in the in what is currently or should be the unobstructed sidewalk Zone but the areas of San Pablo that do not meet that are primarily up at Del Norte BART station where you don't have we have an attached sidewalk with no buffer and it's a fairly narrow sidewalk

2:43:53questions on that one okay is this the level of detail you'd like or should I go through the rest sort of quickly quickly but personally I would like it because what happens otherwise is that it gets ignored and then it's built and then there are deficiencies okay

2:44:15so this is the crosswalks assessment uh and it is more complicated uh almost as complicated as the bike assessment um uh and so we look first of all we're asking that um as as demanded uh as demand warrants excuse me as there is sufficient demand and pedestrian flow at these locations

2:44:34that the crosswalks be marked I'm sure that many of you know that even if it's an unmarked crosswalk so the extension of any sidewalk off of a side street across San Pablo whether it's marked or not is a legal Crossing vehicles are supposed to yield to pedestrians in

2:44:46those zones but not many vehicles know that they're supposed to do that and not many pedestrians know that they have that right of way so we're asking that those be marked and then we're also asking that appropriate infrastructure be installed and so the way that this

2:44:59table works is is to essentially there's sort of different elements that you can add in terms of infrastructure that make that Crossing sufficient the first is you could signalize it and so our assumption is if it's a signalized crossing that's a protected Crossing for

2:45:13pedestrians and that's a good crossing the the next one is that you could install what's called a hawk which is very much like a signal it's actually now called a uh oh gosh I'm sorry I'm not bringing the names it's it's a that it is a new manual of uniform traffic control

2:45:29devices but it's it's um operates very similar to a hawk and it's a protected phase for crossing for pedestrians so that also gets a high score as does another new device called the rapid rectangular flashing Beacon and we'll change that so that that's spelled out in this slide but those are

2:45:44devices that based on new research have really indicated that they get a much a very high yield rate for uh for vehicles and so if you have those devices then some of the other treatments that are shown in element Three Down Below in terms of curb extensions and medians and

2:45:59so forth are not as critical um so you can see for example if you have a traffic signal even if you don't have Curb extensions or medians you get eight points just for the traffic signal and so that would put you into the green category if you have a hawk then you

2:46:13would ideally have one of the other elements in addition to that in order to get into the green and same for the rapid rectangular Flash and Beacon and then the further down in terms of in that unsignalized category under element two further down you get that sort of

2:46:25the less intrusive those traffic control devices are and as a result the more extensive you would have to get in terms of elements to decrease the crossing distances so for example if you just had standard striping at the bottom of the unsignalized you only get three points

2:46:41for that in order to get that up to something like a green category you'd have to add curb extensions and a median Refuge which gets you to seven um so even actually even on that one you wouldn't be able to get it you'd have to have the high visibility striping to get

2:46:56in addition to curb the medians and the curb extensions in order to get to a green so that's consistent with essentially the research in a new National Cooperative Highway research program uh report called 562. Janet you had a question about curb zones we haven't gotten into specifics at the

2:47:14intersections about defining clear zones for Curves I'm sorry it's a question no go ahead finish what you're saying I'm sorry yeah but we could out I mean and we're trying to sort of balance between keeping this simple and intuitive and keeping it as a really effective tool

2:47:29for the city we could add an element of this which is to essentially do something akin to what we did for the sidewalks to Define uh certain Design Elements such as two ramps per Corner clear areas and so forth so we could add another element that looks at the corners and and adds that as another

2:47:46MMOs personally I think that would be highly desirable um and it would make it a lot more possible to use okay intersections better I I mean I make I'd give that a high okay value and then there's a question I just had a question is high visibility striping ladder striping it's any number of them

2:48:09but any yeah the two 12-inch Stripes is the standard striping but any additional the the latter piano um some people call for performs but yeah any sort of augmented striping and does the phasing under the traffic signal does it matter how long you have to wait once you are a pedestrian and

2:48:27you push the button do you get a higher score if you get a faster Green Arrow not in this category but we do have pedestrian delay as part of the person doing calculations that I'll show you in a moment thanks I have a question um to me a crosswalk is only as valuable

2:48:45as the enforcement of people who don't yield the right-of-way when they're supposed to and I don't see the chief here but I'd like to know some statistics on what the enforcement is because we can put in as many as we want and unless people have some consequences

2:49:02for ignoring them they're going to keep ignoring them it's a good comment we've focused really on engineering practices and this so for example the hawk and the rapid rectangular Flash and Beacon is going into the national research get yield rates of 80 or greater uh just as an

2:49:18engineering countermeasure regardless of sort of enforcement tactics um but I totally agree with you especially as you get down that chart into the uh to the lower to the in roadway lights and high visibility striping only those are areas where enforcement has a big

2:49:33effect uh so those are the crosswalks I ask a question about the in on this page the ballards in the picture down at lower left I think those are ballards aren't they those are bollards yes um they it looks to me like it cuts the sidewalk in half uh these are images from Benicia uh and

2:49:57they do not cut the sidewalk in half but it does it does look at that little that way I don't know the background on why the bollards were installed in this in these photos but it makes the I mean so it's an example of an image that shows that I mean is this this is about San Pablo

2:50:13Avenue it's it's illustrative I mean the um we're doing this the the standards that are being these apply only to San Pablo Avenue so I would think we wouldn't want to put something like that there because our only the right part of this is actually in the multimeter level service

2:50:33the bullet points and the image at the bottom are illustrative in that are just in this PowerPoint presentation or he's not recommending them not being recommended yes okay because they make yeah no we're not recommending that but I could later point to it and say look

2:50:46we can do that so on the bicycle component this is uh as I was sort of threatening it gets a little more complicated when you get into bicycles because there's a a new sort of I think recognition about why it is the Bike Share in the US is so low uh it is that we've been building bikeways

2:51:04that in fact don't invite most people to Bicycle um uh so there's a a new methodology that's been put out by the Minetta Institute which is out of the San Jose area that's gaining National favor uh and it really measures something called level of traffic stress and this is

2:51:19level of traffic specifically for cyclists that follows this other philosophy that's been being preached for now for probably a decade but it's finally starting to get heard which some people call 8 to 80 indicating that you want cyclists who are you want to accommodate cyclists anybody from any

2:51:35from the age of eight to the age of 80 feeling comfortable on a on a given Bikeway and so we're setting that as sort of our metric or our standard for what we're trying to achieve on San Pablo Avenue and it is a tall order it is really quite different difficult to

2:51:48design a Bikeway on San Pablo Avenue that accommodates that range of users and so you'll see that some of our grades or the outcomes of this are a little bit harsh in terms of how San Pablo Avenue scores and we think that's appropriate but you can see for example

2:52:02that what we're trying to achieve is level of traffic stress of one or two and you can see from the from the table at the top that you really can only achieve that if you get two to three lanes and lower speeds unless you get into some level of separation from traffic and so that's why in the

2:52:22midsection we've recommended an actually physically separated Bikeway and that's the only area in which we're able to accomplish the green bikeways along San Pablo um although the others get better than they are today so I'll go into the details of how this works and this really is

2:52:39um specific to San Pablo so we developed these based on the volumes and speeds of their present on San Pablo today uh with the one exception that we're anticipating that the speed limit on San Pablo will be dropped to 25 miles an hour is our is our Target objective we

2:52:56can't drop the speeds arbitrarily first you have to install all the improvements that are going to result in an 85th percentile speed of going 25 miles an hour and then you can repost signs but our goal is that the that there would be a balanced flow of travel along San

2:53:10Pablo Avenue roughly at 25 miles an hour or not in an exceedance of 25 miles an hour so there's a couple factors within the bike category um the for and the the first two are a little bit confusing so let me uh explain the distinction the first is that there's a designated Bikeway that

2:53:25means that we've just called it out that this is a place where Cycles are allowed to or are encouraged to exist that doesn't mean that they actually have space uh so for example the super sharo that McCool showed in the earlier figure if you haven't seen it yet there's a new

2:53:38one on 40th Street in Oakland adjacent to the MAcArthur Bart station uh not on that very block one on either side of it um and and that's a good example of a super sharo um so that is a designated Bikeway but it is not as the second category it gets into bike right-of-way it hasn't

2:53:56actually prescribed an area for that is for the exclusive use of cyclists so that's the distinction between those first two so you can see that just having the superhero gets you two points but if you can get a super sharo plus a bike lane uh then you get I'm sorry if

2:54:09you can get the dedicated Bikeway uh which would could also be a bike lane and the actual right-of-way which which would be cycling then you get six points and then as you you can see that the next things you needed to get in order to get into the green category is an

2:54:22actual buffer you need to be physically separated from traffic and the only way that you can get that is to have either a striped buffer or a solid buffer so I think that's pretty intuitive but I'll wait and make sure okay then the intersections are fairly complicated but there's I'll boil it

2:54:42down to just a couple key things at signalized intersections the key when you have a separated Bikeway is that you want to phase separate the bike movements from the opposing turn movements uh so for example the right turns that would take place across the separated Bikeway you don't want to have

2:54:57those going at the same time as the separated Bikeway because you create a right hook collision and the left turns off of the main street so the key that we're defining as a built environment factor that you want for signalized intersections wherever you have a

2:55:10separate Bikeway is Phase separation that means you have signals in place that allow those movements not to take place not to move concurrently and there's a lot of other complications to that but that that's essentially what that table is showing you or series of

2:55:26metrics then at the unsignalized intersections did I just do them in reverse order no that's right uh so it's unsignalized the key for um uh at the unsignalized intersections uh is sight lines uh so we want to make sure that we have daylighted cyclists is what we call it so in other words you've

2:55:55brought it you don't want to have the cyclist behind the parked cars you're approaching uh the intersection because it's that same right turn we were describing before won't see them and again the right hook so the idea is that unsignalized intersections you've moved

2:56:06the cyclists out uh so that they are visible to the motorists and um and will be treated as such so that's the key to the um to the design of of separated bikeways uh at unsignalized intersections I don't think we want to go into a lot more detail on that unless you have

2:56:25questions yes I my first question is the traffic car traffic is uh more intense Uptown downtown but the buffered bike Lanes only exist in Midtown and that's because there was something said about five foot it's spacing we have a wider right-of-way in Midtown than you have

2:56:46elsewhere yes yeah so we essentially have more width than we can fit them in the other areas we were yeah we were able to fit them so that was what I was describing earlier is my frustration especially at the theater block uh in in downtown is probably the most constrained block of

2:57:03San Pablo Avenue in El Cerrito and there simply is not room even for bike Lanes in there unless we were to do something like remove on street parking which would not help you with your Economic Development goals and so there's it's really a tough one and then you also talked about

2:57:18crosswalks being was it every 400 feet um that would impact uh Transit time a fair amount would it matter well so we're not talking about necessarily uh traffic signals at all those locations we're just talking about Crossings and so and those are all legal Crossings under

2:57:38current conditions what we're talking about is making them more visible and obvious and more intuitive to users about who has the right of way but hypothetically those were all legal crosswalks now that Transit vehicles are supposed to yield to pedestrians in so

2:57:51it's not really a substantial change in in practice for the transit vehicles or shouldn't be well except first you said they no one stops anyway I mean you know stop when you're on a crosswalks let alone when you're not yeah but if there were that many of them it may mean that

2:58:06it gives the motorists the sense that the road belongs to the pedestrians you know if there's the volume of the crosswalks and that might make it better for pedestrians um and therefore the buses because they'd have more passengers maybe yeah a mayor yes I'm a bike rider and I won't

2:58:33write on San Pablo because I consider it way too dangerous um I really appreciate the plan for buffered lanes because I think that's the only thing that works on a high arterial high density of traffic arterial Street like that to not be taking your life into your own hands and

2:58:55it's really disappointing how many bicyclists don't wear helmets also so um why would a bicyclist choose to take San Pablo rather than the greenway once the greenway is fully back and open when it's only a block or two away and much safer so this gets that an issue that

2:59:16we're dealing with as part of the active Transportation plan um and I think our there's a couple reasons why we're trying to accommodate bicyclists on San Pablo one is that there's a lot of destinations on San Pablo so while people may not choose to ride the length of San Pablo they might

2:59:32use the greenway or Kyrie which we're proposing to be a bike Boulevard and there's one street to the east of San Pablo um uh people do want to get to San Pablo and access to destinations that are on San Pablo so that was part of our the other is that we really feel like it's

2:59:47part of an economic development tool that providing that buffer it actually is enhancement for pedestrians there's new research out by a woman named Rebecca Sanders who's a PhD I think she just received her PhD I don't think she's a student anymore at Cal um which shows that her Research

3:00:04indicates that investment in bicycle facilities actually resulted in a better sense of this of the comfort of the street for bicycles yeah yeah I understand that and and I fully support buffered bike Lanes I think any other bike lane is is kind of useless because

3:00:21cars don't respect them and you're you know sharing the roadway in a dangerous situation so I would prefer if we could buffer all of San Pablo if we're going to make it a bicycle arterial yeah I would too and I appreciate you helping make the point because I think

3:00:36that was our thought too was that uh especially in light of your climate action plan goals you're not going to achieve that level of mode share at that reduction vehicle miles to travel unless you can achieve mode share you're not going to achieve mode share by

3:00:49traditional bikeways you need something that's really going to invite people like you to ride on San Pablo yeah two I mean with doors opening parked cars buses dogs running across street I don't know all sorts of things I think buffered I would agree I wouldn't ride there either

3:01:12actually we I don't know about the rest but I did get some emails about improving San Pablo Avenue because a lot of people would prefer to ride their bike on San Pablo that's how I got here today yeah I might add I think people like it because it's fast when I write

3:01:27it a couple of blocks that I write it on my route to work or I used to write it um that you can just go so fast and it's very satisfying it's very satisfying when you're commuting it takes a lot less time than the greenway where you're pausing in each intersection to look for

3:01:41the cars that may or may not stop there well our other comment about the greenway is that on the north end of town it's a block off of San Pablo on the south end of town it's five blocks off of San Pablo so it's it's really not as close as as you might think and

3:01:56especially in the plaza area I don't think that's five blocks I've looked at it okay some of those are pretty short black they are short blocks they're shorter blocks East West than they are North it's a relative term but every block is an intersection that's right yep

3:02:17uh so those are the built environment factors uh the last thing I want to describe to you is the person delays um so what we've done is we're doing the traditional Auto driver DeLay So that is a component what we are doing is uh multiplying that by the number of people

3:02:30per car so you convert the auto delay into a person delay bus riders we're assuming that um we're looking at the movements which are primarily the fruit movements on San Pablo Avenue that buses are executing um uh and so there's essentially becomes a priority about moving uh the through

3:02:48movements on San Pablo or other movements that buses are executing moving those at a higher uh providing a better level of service for those movements than for others um although there are some instances particularly up near Del Norte where we think we can accomplish

3:03:02Q jump Lanes a q jump plane is a lane that a bus is essentially able to get around the the queue of vehicles that's built up at a signal and then they get an early release from the signal so that they get out in front of the of the all those Vehicles before the cars are the

3:03:16released and so we think we can get qtm Lanes at Hill and cutting um someone went there and they um forgot to repaint it in right uh uh so where where are we assume cue jump Lanes then we have not assumed that buses will be sitting in queue we've only assumed that they would be subject

3:03:34to the delay of the signal itself not not of the move up in queue delay uh pedestrians we've calculated delay um essentially based on the signal um so what is the essentially it's it's probability what's the probability that pedestrian arrives at this corner and

3:03:47has to wait uh for either the full cycle in order to get their their call or they happen to get there at just the right time and you apply that to all of the movements based on the actual volumes of pedestrians that are present so it drives directly from the signal timing

3:04:00if we can assume shorter cycle lengths for example Than The Pedestrian delays go down so that's it drives us to to make decisions that I think are in the best interests of pedestrians especially as it relates to cycle lengths and Crossing distances uh and then for cyclists we have assumed

3:04:16essentially that they don't get to they don't have to wait in queue so they get to move up to the front of the queue but they are also subject at the same delay as Vehicles as signalized intersections so what this allows us to do is to then I for every intersection you'd be

3:04:29assessing as part of a traffic impact study or as part of this specific plan is to have a report to you that says what the delay is for each of these users and then potentially what is the delay um with either the changes we're proposing as part of the specific plan

3:04:43or as part of some traffic impact study how they've how their additional traffic or changes they've proposed at those intersections would affect each of the users what we're proposing to actually use as a quantity as for you to quantify and develop essentially significance

3:04:59criteria around is just the transit and Autos um uh so for Transit we would like to achieve something equivalent to what would have been sort of a vehicular condition of level service C so we want to make sure the transit has very little delay going through this Corridor uh and

3:05:16for Autos as I said earlier we're allowing levels of e or F but we are proposing to continue to quantify those and and Report those out sorry can you restate that or let me state it and you can hopefully say yes if I understand what you said level of service would

3:05:32only be calculated for Transit and and Via uh Drive Vehicle drivers um because there's no good way to quantify pedestrian and bicyclists not quite so we what we're proposing is to quantify for all but we're trying to simplify what it is you use the significance criteria so we're proposing

3:05:52that in terms of actual things you would assess you would focus on Transit and Automobiles you would we would also we would also suggest that you have reported out the bicycle and pedestrian DeLay So that you can if you see something that you think is going in the

3:06:05wrong direction you can say why is that the case if you prefer to quantify all four then you can do that as well we would just sort of try not to make it overly cumbersome thank you yeah I just um like to say I'm not sure that that completely what part of it works but if

3:06:22you're looking at pedestrian delay and if you think for example about cutting in San Pablo and how long it takes a pedestrian to get across there or some other there's a few other intersections it it is really excessive and I think it's a big part of what causes people to run across the

3:06:40street sometimes getting killed so to not even count that delay of The Pedestrian because The Pedestrian not only has to I mean a car can sort of come anytime the light is green and go The Pedestrian doesn't get that choice they have to have hit the button before

3:07:00it turned green or they have to wait this whole huge cycle again that's kind of how our signals work so this is an issue we're looking for your guidance on if that's what you if you would prefer what I'm suggesting is that you need to count The Pedestrian delay and so we're proposing

3:07:17that we would report it you would see it but you wouldn't necessarily have a significance criteria in terms of impact analysis associated with it but if you would prefer not only to see it but also to have a significance criteria associated with it we can go that way as

3:07:30well are we talking about when a development project comes in what we're going to ask that developer to quantify in their to study in their so they actually you would I'm sorry to interrupt you so we would ask them to study it we just wouldn't necessarily have a SQL level criteria for an impact

3:07:48based on that criteria based on pedestrian DeLay So a pro How could a project could a project negatively impact a pedestrian's experience or pedestrian's level of service um let me just interject something here which is in terms of um two things just to remind you all

3:08:05in terms of the level of detail on this aspect tonight is Yvette and fair and Pierce would be coming back again getting taking all your comments and coming back to be able to address the details and come back again because obviously there's a lot of detail um in terms of the project by project

3:08:21what's interesting is if this had come after the specific plan it would have been on a project by project basis but if um that policy gets brought forward and as a part of this will actually be a part of the specific plan it won't be on a project by project basis and we'll add

3:08:35actually apply to all the units that we're analyzing in the eir so if we're anticipating 1400 is it 1400 that we think 1400 which is the a bag numbers in housing and a certain number of commercial this policy not nobody would have to do an eir um on a project by project basis once we

3:08:55get above that then we'll have to amend our eir look but just um typically it would be on a project by project basis but as a part of the specific plan it will be Corridor wide so following up on the the con the request for guidance on the significance criteria

3:09:12obviously the significance criteria is somewhat dependent on the number of pedestrians right I mean there's a hundreds of pedestrians versus a thousand pedestrians we know what the number of cars are we know what the number of buses are based on measuring tools that

3:09:27are out there what what would you use for the number of pedestrians or bicyclists if we wanted to incorporate them into the significance criteria so as part of this study and and as part of other studies you do we have counted bikes and pedestrians at each of the

3:09:43intersections as well so so if we did say we wanted these uh users incorporated into the level of incorporated into the significance criteria we can do that you can do it yeah so that's the long and long I would say long and short but that was a long and long of it

3:10:04um uh McCool already showed you the sort of the Cross sections of the Uptown and uh in downtown uh with the super sharo um we do have the in-lane bus stops uh and The Far Side bus stops at each location uh and then in the Midtown is whereas you get the the more right-of-way and

3:10:23and you're able to do the separated bikeways and so the law the sort of consequence of all that or the um result of all that is is this Matrix which has the built environment factor analysis for each of the modes so it's Transit Peds bikes across the columns and then Uptown Midtown downtown and

3:10:43what we've done is we've picked some sample locations that we think are relatively representative this is all very preliminary and we'll have to do a more exhaustive analysis as we proceed but you can see that for the transit level service it goes from uh red under

3:10:58current conditions to Green it we're able to add a series of trans amenities in uptown we don't have enough detail yet to do the downtown area but we'll add that and you can see The Pedestrian levels of service go up dramatically throughout and then as we were talking

3:11:10about earlier Uptown and downtown for the cyclists gets better but I'm sorry uh Midtown gets significantly better it goes all the way up to a 10. Uptown gets somewhat better and this is actually based on some other assumptions in terms of actually being able to build bike

3:11:27Lanes in those sections which we're designing or trying to design now but the the downtown area uh down near the Plaza BART station in particular in in the Plaza shopping center uh only gets the super share which gets you the two points which is still not a mode

3:11:41changing facility type so it scores us a red here and I think I'm gonna skip the well I can show you a couple other slides but I think we've that's that's the bulk of what you wanted to hear we do have other auto level service metrics that we've reported for a series

3:11:57of scenarios um including a scenario where we looked at um dedicated Lane on San Pablo for buses and found that it was going to result in probably more congestion than than uh even in the midsection uh than and and without a lot of co-benefits associated with that but if you want to hear about

3:12:15that I'm happy to talk about it and then this is a summary of what we've already talked about councilmember Ableton comments questions yeah I I did about that last what you were saying about um I'm particularly interested in the downtown red and I was wondering if in the case where

3:12:34that we've we found that to be true if then it might be um as part of this study appropriate to designate the next uh street over or something as a um alternative route for bikes or something sure we are get through yeah we have as I said we're also working as part of the active Transportation plan

3:12:59on a Bikeway along Kearney which is the next street over obviously Kearney doesn't Traverse the plaza um uh none of the streets do as a matter of fact uh but we are trying to look at ways that you could uh get a Bikeway through that through that area as well um that so that is a goal the other

3:13:17thing I think is that we would potentially have an aspiration that says in the future if if something along those blocks that are constrained redevelops in a way that allowed for additional dedication of right-of-way then you could increase improve the level of service so like there's a

3:13:30benefit to reporting it out as as a benefit of saying our goal is green and all we can achieve with this plan is red because it gives you a basis in the future to say if an opportunity presents itself what we would like you to help us make it a green um so I've been talking a lot I'm ready to

3:13:49hear from the public when kids yeah just just so we know the two areas that we were asked to give guidance on was the emphasis of the modes and the mmlos the multimodal level of service and and I would say that uh after a presentation this evening the the multimodal level of service seems to

3:14:14be um thorough and simple um so that is that is something that can be used um but I do want to talk about the significance criteria to me I'm not certain I know why bike and Petter left out of the significance criteria um but it strikes me that the significance criteria if this plan does

3:14:38end up being the secret document for traffic along the Avenue I'm not certain that the significance criteria has much weight um so I'm just curious if if if that makes a difference what our opinion is about the significance criteria I just wanted to clarify that we are proposing

3:14:56this significance criteria for Peds but it would be built based on the built environment factors only and not The Pedestrian delay but we could add The Pedestrian delay as a significance criteria as well it's just it makes you know an additional um an additional

3:15:11right calculation okay so the two things that we were supposed to give guidance on emphasis of the modes um which I think the emphasis is good in the level of service standards and then the significance criteria this was a late request of what we needed to provide I don't know if anybody has any

3:15:30thoughts before we go to public comment um mayor Lyman you'll need to extend the meeting and so you might want to find out how many public comments there are to gauge how long to extend it I believe there were nine I move we extend the um make it a minimum of 30 minutes yeah I I

3:15:47moveics in by 30 minutes thank you second we have a motion in a second all those in favor please say hi did you yeah all right let it show unanimous that will extend the meeting to 11.

3:16:04um any additional questions you did for on or I'd like to the public okay um with that thank you very much for your presentations please don't go anywhere I'm sure there's additional questions um we have my guess was I thought I saw about seven or nine seven seven

3:16:23um we will allow the full three minutes if you don't need to use your full three minutes It'll be appreciated um what we're going to do is I will have the clerk uh read out uh at least two names at a time if you would please queue up behind the podium so that we

3:16:39don't lose any time transitioning between speakers if someone before you has said something that you're going to repeat please respect our time and say so please call out the first two speakers Kyle brunella and howdy goody Gowdy sorry um great thank you oh good evening Council my name is howdy

3:17:12Gowdy I'm a member of the El Cerrito Environmental Quality committee and also the East Bay Bike Coalition but I'm speaking as myself as a resident of El Cerrito I've lived here 12 years I've biked in El Cerrito 12 years and I am very heartened to see um the impressive plans that have been

3:17:34presented and I Echo a lot of the comments you've made about them you know there's a lot of material to comment on I'm going to focus specifically on the bicycle improvements and particularly the buffered bike Lanes I think it's a it's a really Visionary transformational

3:17:54uh step for El Cerrito to show leadership in the East Bay being the first city to consider this infrastructure and I am really impressed to see it as part of this plan and I would like to see it you know really uh prioritized and emphasized as a you know as as was stated an economic

3:18:16development um goal because um I think if if you are traveling by bicycle you're you're staying within your city you're shopping in El Cerrito uh you get in a car you you can quickly leave El Cerrito and Shop elsewhere and I think as part of the place making and identity

3:18:37and and just you know building that um that economic Vitality within the city I think that really welcoming uh you know obviously the multimodal you know interaction of all these modes I'm emphasizing bicycles but I think it's a very important part of it because it brings in a slightly larger

3:18:58distance but it's it's it's bringing the community together so I think there's been a great job of of integrating the multimodal but I'd I'd like to see the the bicycle uh infrastructure particularly the buffered bicycle Lanes really um showcase because I think that's an

3:19:16exciting potential and it um you know should be extended as as much as possible I realize it's it's highly constrained but um those are my comments thank you thank you next two speakers please Tom panis and Steve price please good evening mayor Lyman members of the

3:19:39council and City staff my name is Tom Pettis I live at [address removed] El Cerrito I believe over the past several years San Pablo's plan has been before the council three times previous versions have been flat showed limited vision and contained too many errors and omissions

3:19:54if you recall I've been critical of those plans this document is quite different it's alive it combines Economic Development multimodal transportation and planning form-based planning at that in a way the public hasn't seen today I'd like to thank the staff Mig and fair

3:20:10and peers for putting this document together I know we have a long way to go on this but for the first time we are starting with a document that makes sense and embodies our shared values I'd also like to Second everything howdy said thank you for your time this

3:20:22evening thank you next two speakers please Steve price and Garland Ellis um yeah I also think it's it's an exciting moment for for the city of El Cerrito that we're developing regulations that are actually going to shape our city it's not just going to be regulating land use but it's actually

3:20:42going to shape the urban form um I I should say up front that I'm actually a a board member of the form-based code Institute so which is a a National Institute that's actually concerned with formulating form-based code uh standards and promoting them across the country and there's now about

3:21:00250 uh cities across the country who have form-based codes and quite a number of in the Bay Area Petaluma Hercules uh Pleasant Hill Redwood City uh and across the country the entire city of Miami is now has a form-based code Denver Cincinnati Peoria so it's it's it's game

3:21:23it's developing it's gaining traction uh and I think in in a few years we're going to just see that Urban form development regulations are going to be fundamentally different in the United States um I'm a little concerned because I you know I was reading the description of

3:21:37what the city of El Cerrito was drafting was going to be a hybrid form-based code so I'm not sure exactly what that means I know most um coders uh don't feel comfortable with that term they figure that it's either a form-based code or it's not um although you know uh they they talk

3:21:56about a hybrid development regulation for cities that might be a combination of a form-based code for certain parts of the town and then you know conventional land use Zoning for the other part of town just because you can't afford to do the entire city um and I'm looking at what we're seeing

3:22:15here it looks it looks good but I'm I'm concerned that it goes back to that 50 you know whether we're creating are we going to create um uh commercial social spaces that are a hundred percent commercial social spaces or are they going to be 50 so um I think it doesn't you know you know

3:22:35if you look at communities in Berkeley and in Albany and and uh Oakland and San Francisco you know the the number of places that are 100 social spaces are you usually very small parts of the city um you know I may you you may have I mean uh Fourth Street in Berkeley how

3:22:55big is that it's just like two blocks long um and you know it's what one half of one percent of the surface area of of Berkeley so I don't think we should you know be so concerned about not alienating developers um uh by coming up with a hundred percent um of the building types we want for a

3:23:15specific place and the form-based codes typically you know delineate there's different types of streets uh in different parts of town there's there's Boulevard streets there's Main Street shopping streets and there's residential streets and they're all different types

3:23:30and and they re they have different building forms that are necessary for being on those streets so a good form-based code will establish good building form standards and then map those two specific streets so a Main Street Building is a different type of street than a residential street so I

3:23:52think that's what we really need to do is you know make sure that we we get a form-based code that is actually going to deliver those places I think that are really important and the public are really going to want um and really make those distinctions between those different types of

3:24:07immersive environments thank you next two speakers please after Garland Ellis there's Nicholas arzio and the final speaker is Dave Harris all right thank you hello mayor my name is Garland Ellis resident of the city of Richmond actually one block away from your fair

3:24:30City gone to school in El Cerrito I lived here all my life rode bicycles all over El Cerrito Richmond and Sam paddle is not a street you want to ride a bicycle on there's several issues that need to be discussed in your plan one you talk about adding more public transit

3:24:55during the previous part strike it was very evident how much public transit there is AC Transit had less than 20 buses to serve from Fremont to Richmond those are extra buses to handle what BART couldn't do up to 40 to 50 percent of the funding for AC Transit comes from the state of

3:25:17California If You're Expecting AC transit to come in and do a whole lot for you in the future it's not going to happen State of California doesn't have the money they basically told those that were on strike at Bart don't expect any money from the state of California we don't have it we can't

3:25:34give it to you you're not going to get it for equipment you're not going to get it for employees and AC Transit would be in the same position you talk about wanting to put super shows on San Pablo Avenue city of Berkeley which has probably a more advanced bicycle plan of any of the

3:25:54cities in the East Bay or at least on this side of the hills will not put a bicycle plan or path on San Pablo Avenue they refuse they put it a block off of San Pablo they won't put it on University they put a block off of University they don't put it on their main streets because they know it's too

3:26:15disruptive to vehicle traffic and it doesn't mix very well besides the problems of weight versus no weight you also have an emissions issue when you have buses and trucks that travel on your main arteries they put out things that are not good for bicyclists to breathe so why do you

3:26:34want to put the same people on the same streets you need to separate them that's why the Ohlone Bikeway is so popular also you're considering having bike paths on San Pablo Avenue Kearney and the Olney Parkway that's too much in the city of Richmond you only have

3:26:55maybe five percent of the population that rides a bike in El Cerrito it's probably the same or less why are you Dome putting so much emphasis upon bike infrastructure and not taking care of the vehicles that you have San Pablo Avenue is a state highway it's also a designated route when Interstate

3:27:1580 gets backed up you're receiving money because they're going to put Gantry signs on the freeway that tell them to come to San Pablo Avenue when to get on when to get off if you plug it up with buses that are going to stop in one of your two lanes that are active

3:27:33especially if they load and unload Wheelchairs and then also you have bicyclists riding in that same Lane that can ride right center or left at any speed they want to and a vehicle cannot get past it it has to back up behind it what are you going to do to the motorists of your city and all the

3:27:52other Motors who want to visit your city and Shop here they're not going to want to come here they're gonna get on the freeway and go someplace else the other thing in the past the city of El Cerrito has never cooperated with Oakland Berkeley Albany and Richmond and

3:28:07San Pablo and having traffic flow through continuously they've always wanted it to stop that furthermore is going to disrupt things having crosswalks every 400 feet is going to encourage people to go out and stop traffic further infuriating the people that drive what are they going to

3:28:27do they're going to go on to your residential streets wrap up your comments uh the other thing you need to look at is your height you're going to have 80 feet worth of building going down San Pablo Avenue that's going to block the views of all of your people that live up

3:28:45in El Cerrito at least to Naval Air and maybe even higher it's going to shadow this side of San paddle Avenue in the mornings and that side of El Cerrito in the evenings are people going to want to even go along the oloney parkway when it's all under shadow in the afternoon and in the

3:29:05evening please Shadow will go that far please conclude your comments there's a lot of other things that need to be addressed and they'll probably be put into public comment but you have to remember what you're doing is affecting a lot more than just the residents of El

3:29:24Cerrito and if it becomes too difficult to get to El Cerrito they won't they'll go someplace else and shop thank you thank you hello I'm Nicholas arzio an El Cerrito resident I actually wanted to ask a couple of questions is that possible you can ask them we may not be able to

3:29:46answer them but go ahead the first question has to do with the proposed bicycle sherros in the downtown area I see no evidence from the slides that the travel Lane the outer travel Lane will be widened at all in order to create the sharrow is there does anybody have any

3:30:03information on the current outer travel Lane width and then the proposed travel Lane width including the Super Shadow please ask all your questions and potentially we'll have time for responses uh I see them writing them down they're not this this uh Cheryl will be possible

3:30:21for um cars to safely pass the bicycles or whether this will be like a linear shared Lane where the No Passing will be possible uh the second question is completely different the overall plan I wanted to know how will it affect existing businesses and existing buildings and what ways will

3:30:41new regulations apply and in what ways will existing businesses and buildings not be uh not be not not apply to the proposed plan great thank you I mean can I get an answer now or it'll be we have one speaker and then we'll be bringing them back so if you could wait just a few minutes that'd be

3:31:06great thank you thanks and if we don't have time to answer them he can talk to you after the meeting because he's sticking around to the end I know okay yeah my name is Dave Harris and I live in Richmond Annex between San Pablo Avenue and Carlson and I'm very concerned about what your

3:31:26proposals are going to how they are going to impact my area like for example uh it was mentioned the heights I would not like to see an 85-foot building row of buildings on on the Richmond side or on the El Cerrito side because number one it would drop it'll block my view of

3:31:43the beautiful El Cerrito Hills it'll also block also the views of residents of El Cerrito of any Bay views that they have and uh it was my understanding that in 2009 there was some kind of an agreement between the Richmond Annex area and El Cerrito as to building

3:32:01Heights of 35 feet and that has not been honored here and I think you need to examine that uh that that possibility that this is that these Heights are very out of character with the neighborhood the other thing I'm concerned about was the uh the one was was someone made the

3:32:20the suggestion to increase the distance between Bart for uh not require for not having parking uh available for them if they build new houses or something like that instead of it being a quarter of a mile to extend it out to a mile well that that means that all the people that

3:32:38don't have parking spaces are going to park in my area and they're gonna they're gonna take up all the spaces between San Pablo and Carlson and they're going to park there instead of instead of El Cerrito and so that's another aspect of what I was saying before about how you have to think about

3:32:53how these things affect the the residents of re of Richmond which are right on the other side of San Pablo Avenue for most of that distance and I happen to live in the area where on your map it was designated as the downtown area I'm at the at the upper end of that

3:33:11and um some of the some of those uh proposals just just don't seem to fit in with my neighborhood since that's what my comment thank you any other speakers no mayor okay um we'll bring it back to council for comments uh but I'd love to get uh um the questions from the public answered

3:33:37if there is a quick answer I will handle the one that was about how will it affect existing buildings and businesses that's again still in conversation but mostly um they would benefit probably from some of the regulations like reduced parking requirements we know some are actually

3:33:54waiting for them in order to be able to even tenant their businesses currently our parking requirements are pretty um out of uh they're not very Market friendly so for example one for 100 feet for commercials so we're hearing for some that are waiting and we would not

3:34:10be we definitely do not want to disincentivize people investing and upgrading their current buildings we would not ask someone who was not doing a complete rebuild to um change to some of these standards we'd be looking at things that provided more flexibility for them like updated

3:34:25signage so we'd be trying to bring them in but it's mostly to Spur and catalyze new development and ideally change the marketplace where people would want to reinvest in the existing but it should not restrict but should provide some more flexibility for them right and the

3:34:39other one was Lane width sharing and part passing capabilities so the curb Lane widths vary right now but they are pretty wide so it's they're at least 12 in some places wider The Proposal is to have a 11 foot curb Lane uh wherever the super Shares are in place of this the

3:34:55super sharo is intended to direct cyclists to ride down the green stripe down the middle of the lane so that is the in mix flow but the the comment is is corrected the idea is that that's that's a shared space that's cyclists it's not intended that Vehicles would

3:35:10pass a cyclist in that lane they would have to change lanes in order to pass a cyclist great thank you councilmember Friedman yeah um there's only a few of us in the room I know Mr Price and Mr Miller were there 15 years ago when uh Steve and others brought the Prince of Wales to our town

3:35:31to do a study that looked remarkably like this study and it cost a lot less also um I think obviously this is more detailed and more refined than what they were able to do in the three-month period they were here two months Steve a month well anyway that Vision was a

3:35:52great vision and extremely uh harmonious with what's being proposed here I thought that was a great plan at that time I think this is a great plan but as I've said in the past my problem with plans is how do they get implemented the Prince of Wales we never came close to

3:36:10implementing and unless we see some figures on how much this is going to cost and where the money is going to come from this will just be another really beautiful plan that is far from becoming a reality so I'd like to see some numbers and some sources of revenue

3:36:31down the road I realize we're establishing codes and standards at this point but until I see that it's going to be hard for me to get as excited and inspired as I am at this moment from seeing the great work that's been done on articulating a vision in that one that's been in our community for 15

3:36:53or 20 years but not with this level of excellent work the other major problem we're going to have in implementing and I hear it repeatedly when we talk about Economic Development and to do any implementation other than what's on government shoulders in terms of transportation and

3:37:13Lanes Etc is many of the landowners and landlords in our town are have set extremely exorbitant prices to sell or rent the property that they control and it's going to be very difficult even by creating restrictions on what can be done on that property as this plan would do without really

3:37:41addressing that issue and getting some cooperation of the people who control the land because at this point the city doesn't control very much of that land and without Redevelopment we don't have a mechanism for gaining that control thank you councilmember Benson just to

3:37:58sum up my comments on the areas that input was requested at the mmlos is definitely an excellent metric and I appreciate all the detail you went into to help us understand it I support that as a as a measure as a performance metric um and in terms of the mode priority I

3:38:18tentatively agree that these are the correct modes I would like to just know you know what the trade-offs were if if you gave priority to bicyclists then who loses the most I would assume Transit loses the most but I would just be curious at a future date maybe I'll send

3:38:34Melanie an email with just some detailed questions of what the trade-offs were that were analyzed you already mentioned you tried a brt protected Lane for buses and that didn't gain very much so I was just curious about some of the um analysis you did in the background to

3:38:47eliminate the options that were not put forward as your proposals but generally I mean this has been an excellent presentation in 95 slides and four hours later I feel I know a lot more about San Pablo Avenues this has been time well spent Bridges I don't have anything more to

3:39:04add councilmember Abelson yes um well I would like to thank everyone for all of the immense amount of work that was done and what from my point of view looks like a very short amount of time on this um because this is a completely new and different um thing that we saw and that then when

3:39:24we saw the specific plan of of several years ago and um this is a Visionary plan and this is a plan for the future unlike to me that other plan um and um so I'm not sure if everything looks perfect to me because it's just too preliminary and I know that you're still developing it so that's okay

3:39:48but I want to say that I support it and um I do caution you about putting in all those non-accessible features I know that they do creep in but it does make a really big difference in reality because they not it's not just that they creep into the pictures they creep into people's

3:40:09lives and um have really negative impacts but um I think you've done some really great work and I look forward to your the completion of it thank you so I'm going to try and be brief for the eir I based on a public comment today I I do think that we do need to have some sort of visual analysis of

3:40:34view sheds of both uh El Cerrito and Richmond Annex people uh and additionally I know SQL documents frequently do shading analysis so I'd love to see the shading analysis done I do believe the significance criteria should include um and this is building on one of the

3:40:53first comments council member Abelson made should include both pad and bike delay in the significance criteria and the screen that's still up uh it shows the proposed bicycle Los of two in the downtown segment and I do believe that based on public comment tonight both by

3:41:18council member Friedman and the public is that potentially in that area the bicycles should be routed off of San Pablo Avenue for everyone's safety um so I'm not certain that how that affects the bike ped plan in that in the downtown air segment but with Kearney

3:41:37and Carlson as potential potential corridors there and the level of service just can't get above it too I'm not certain that that it makes sense for bicycles to be incorporated into that segment so those are the four areas otherwise MML the multimodal level of service as you proposed is is

3:42:05very good all right thank you everyone for staying this late and thank you to staff and and our consultants for such a thorough presentation it was much appreciated um with that we will move on to item eight uh Council assignments and liaison reports and we have roughly three minutes so

3:42:31councilman Bridges um drb meets tomorrow park and rec was canceled council member Abelson well I think I didn't announce here but um on November 15th at Caldecott tunnel will do a ribbon cutting to open the tunnel that weekend sometime or at least by Monday morning

3:42:54and um it what it's what it is the project is is the fourth bore of the Caldecott Tunnel and it actually will help the reverse commute it will not have an impact on the um major commute direction of travel and um so what that means is that it would be more likely to help somebody coming

3:43:14from El Cerrito who works out say in Walnut Creek or something as opposed to somebody who works in Walnut Creek headed for the city um so it's been a um a while coming but we came in on time under budget and um so CCTA which I the moment and chair is very very excited about it it

3:43:38is our um our Premier project of the moment and um see what else I think I'll just leave it at that for today one more thing um at the WIC Tac meeting we okayed the final documents to um join pers as an agency for his agency and that'll have a really positive impact on us being able to hire a new

3:44:06executive director among other things the council member vanessini Planning Commission met Ohlone Gardens went through and got final approvals I think that's correct from the Planning Commission um or or positive comments on their ear I don't actually recall if they approved

3:44:26it or if they're going to take it up one more time and high-tech Auto it now has a multi-year permit to do their 10 pm sales which are extremely popular um and they were very happy to get those dates kind of set in those permits in place for promotional purposes

3:44:43the committee the commission and committee's rules subcommittee will hopefully be moving something forward over the next week and a half and you will see that on our next city council meeting uh the Contra Costa um West County mayor's conference met and we got a presentation on the

3:45:04Integrated Waste Management post collection Services agreement and we have agendaized for the next uh at least the next meeting and possibly the next two meetings uh discussion about Prop 13 reforms and that is why we had people coming out speaking in support of prop

3:45:2813. so we will be hearing more about Prop 13 over the next two months from both sides those that that would like to reform it and those that would like to support it with that I will adjourn this regularly scheduled meeting for until the next city council meeting

3:45:53which is Tuesday November 19th at 7 pm here at City Hall council chambers Pet City Hall closed session if nothing else to find a date that we might be able to