City Council Meeting December 17, 2013

0:00:39good evening everyone this is the El Cerrito city council meeting and we will start out with the Pledge of Allegiance or a observant of a moment of silence if you'll please join me I pledge allegiance to the Lord for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for

0:01:07all the next item on the agenda is Council and staff Communications are there any I have done no no two two okay um one is uh I'll do them chronologically one is uh tomorrow night Wednesday December 18th uh actually tomorrow um Chung May Heritage day and it starts

0:01:35at 10 A.M it's here in City Hall uh 10 a.m to 5 30. it's upstairs in the shoddy history room and uh 5 30 to 7 it'll be downstairs in the lobby uh outside of the chambers um and it's uh it's recognition of the Chiang Mai Chronicle and The Chiang Mai boys home uh and it's listing as on the national

0:02:01register of historic places the other one is that I want to make sure that everyone is reserving the date of Monday January 20th um the human relations commission uh is uh hosting and celebrating the 25th anniversary of uh Martin Luther King day here in El Cerrito in 9 A.M gather

0:02:25behind City Hall at the El Cerrito DMV 9 30 the parade begins and 10 30 to noon it's a rally and program at the El Cerrito High School Performing Arts Theater thank you anyone else okay not seeing any we'll move on to the next item which is oral Communications from the public

0:02:47and this is an opportunity for members of the public to speak on items that are not on the agenda if you'd like to speak on an item that is on the agenda you can do so while we're talking about that item and are there any speaker slips sure yes mayor we have two speaker slips the first is Tom panis

0:03:18good evening mayor Abelson members of the council and City staff my name is Tom panis and I live at [address removed] in El Cerrito on May 15 2012 an extension of the exclusive negotiating rights agreement with Eden Housing came before the council my suggestion that evening was the enra

0:03:36should not be renewed because in my view Eden had been so unreceptive to the communities thoughts and wishes Eden reinduced the reintroduced the program the project to the community about three months ago since then our city staff has skillfully orchestrated significant change to the proposed

0:03:53project we now have a project in which our community can take pride and which properly honors the historic resource on the site I now wholeheartedly support the project and I like to underline and thank our staff Eden Housing and its Architects the Planning Commission the design review

0:04:10board and the Japanese American citizens league for their thoughtful collaboration in some cases remarkable efforts on this project thank you for your time this evening the next speaker Gary Hill right this is a for 5B on your consent calendar so this would be the time to

0:04:41speak Madam mayor yes I will actually be asking for that item to be taken up separately so I don't know if you want to reserve his comments for later the speaker say what he wants to do you want to do it now or later I'll wait okay thank you okay are there any other uh people who

0:05:02would like to speak but haven't turned in a slip not seeing any um thank you and we will move on to presentations uh the first presentation is an update on crime Trends in El Cerrito presented by our police chief but I believe she also has a very able assistant

0:05:22am I right chief there were lives so yes you are a mayor and I actually was smart enough to bring the real talent of the police department here this is Samantha Wendling she's the administrative analyst for the police department primarily in charge of crime analysis

0:05:42so all right so good evening Council and mayor Abelson and Mr Hannon and the community that's watching I'm Sylvia Moyer your police chief and this evening I am presenting just data on a crime update and crime Trends as we navigate through the visual presentation you'll see several things

0:06:09there's a lot of data on the slides that you'll be presented and I'm not going to reference every bit of data on those slides but I will navigate through them and then explain the most important components of each slide so this before you you see a year-to-date

0:06:27snapshot we took January 1 to October 31 of this year and what we've presented is part one crimes and to refresh your memory part one crimes are divided into two categories violent crime and property crime part one crimes are the crimes that we report to the FBI and it's a general

0:06:49report card of how we're doing in terms of crime and crime statistics in our city you'll see on the left January 1 to October 31 we took 3249 police reports and handled nearly 19 000 calls or service that was just through that period of the year in 2013 we've seen a seven percent

0:07:12increase in part one crimes overall and while there's been a decrease in violent crimes these decreases are offset by an increase in property crime as I move forward I will explain some of the reasoning and some of the explanation regarding the increase in property crime

0:07:32you'll see that the change like I referenced in property crime is 11 and that is a significant what I believe is a significant increase that we need to address so we took two full years to give you a snapshot 2011 and 2012.

0:07:51and then on the right hand side what you could see is that we looked at El Cerrito We examined Contra Costa County and we examine the state averages and you can see that we are trending slightly above the other averages something to note is that the FBI only draws aggravated assaults in terms of

0:08:14their their data that could be some misalignment in the in the data in terms of assaults but we report very consistently throughout the year so we're only including the exact types of crimes each year year after year yeah this provides a snapshot and really gives you a graphic representation of

0:08:38part one crime in the same time frame for each year it shows you January 1 through October 31 for each year to give us an exact date for each of those years and as you look at the patterns you can see that property crimes are trending up and violent crime is trending down in El

0:09:03Cerrito so violent crime and thanks to Lieutenant Paul Keith for for this slide and some of these others and also I'll pause and give special thanks to Samantha Wendling our admin analyst who did a large portion of this data collection and Analysis so we look at violent crime in 5.9 years

0:09:25over the last five plus years there's been a 3.75 percent reduction in robbery a 22 percent reduction in assaults and a 40 reduction in sex crimes compared to 2008.

0:09:40we experienced an upsurge in robbery and assault last year compared to a historical and previous decline and in addition after the closure of Safeway crime Trends seem to migrate both to the major commercial areas which I'll expand upon in a moment near Del Norte Bart and the El Cerrito Plaza BART

0:10:02during this time frame also something to note is that just in this time frame there were 80 assaults recorded at El Cerrito High School that our sros handled but for our sros Patrol officers would have responded to those calls for service and there were 40 assaults that occurred at Portola

0:10:22Middle School if we were to remove those assaults we would argue that this graph would change dramatically so you might be asking what about robberies because our community and Council that you ask about robberies so what we did was We examined the last 96 robberies

0:10:46and you can see that we get a lot of questions from our community what's happening on the BART path the Ohlone and Greenway and for reference the black circles are related to the BART path the green are robberies that occurred related to a business and the squares are those that are random

0:11:06acts that occur on the street so when we examine the robberies that occur in El Cerrito you can see a pattern that they're typically a long or closely associated with San Pablo Avenue so what's happening in property crime what we've experienced an increase in Contra Costa County has shown a

0:11:31double-digit increase in burglary that I'll expand upon in a moment and this increase in burglary tracks very closely with the state's efforts under ab109 and the release of 18 000 low-level offenders into the community Through realignment and looking at that you can see a trend

0:11:52where theft may be down and vehicle theft may be down but what affects El Cerrito is burglary now we look at we asked ourselves okay in El Cerrito what can we do about the people that are offending in El Cerrito and I'd like to give you this look this is a five-year snapshot 2009 to

0:12:172013. in this period of time in El Cerrito we arrested over 9 000 people of that looking at the pie chart at the bottom we said okay where are they coming from and we asked where are they coming from because that may in fact change our strategy and our collaboration well what it did

0:12:39was it proved that 67 percent of the people we arrest in El Cerrito are from Contra Costa County you take that 67 percent and of that look at the pie chart to the right with of that 67 percent of people that we arrest from Contra Costa County 56 percent of offenders we arrest in El

0:13:00Cerrito are from Richmond and this illuminates the importance of maintaining prevention apprehension and collaboration strategies with Richmond PD fly essential for us in reducing crime in El Cerrito Chief Magnus and I are closely aligned in our efforts and that

0:13:20is permeating throughout our organizations so because I referenced before that the increase in property crime is closely associated with prison realignment I provided you some data some very recent the public policy Institute of California and the California police

0:13:42Chiefs Association really got together and said how can we study this realignment was a swift action taken by the governor to reduce the prison population with I believe the other intent that the governor was saying we want to give the power the decision-making to the locals

0:14:00to try and reduce criminality in the community and through that effort you can see on the left there was a report that linked property crime spike in California to the prisoner reduction plan this is what I think that reflects it reflects that there was good intent to

0:14:19reduce the prison population but we need to do a better job at the re-entry efforts related to prisoners because as you see in this slide on the left hand side you see property crime but I'd like to refer to the right hand chart the chart on the right hand side shows

0:14:40this since 1960 the data regarding crime in California and California has experienced a long-term decline in crime rates with the peak right around 1980 we started experiencing a decline in in crime in California until realignment and I think that speaks volumes to what

0:15:02we have to do now referring back over to the left hand side here we have a chart that shows with some academic significance what the reduction in the prison population is doing to crime in counties and specifically if you look at Contra Costa County our crime rate and property

0:15:24crime is up 10.1 percent a state average is seven percent so we're above average and this is not a score on the report card we want to be above average so what are we doing about what's what do we do in El Cerrito we'll get to in a moment but under the auspices of the Rand

0:15:47Center on quality policing Rand released a report that summarized existing high quality academic research on the cost of crime and the effectiveness of police in preventing crime presented this methodology underlying across cost of crime calculator and then provided some illustrations for

0:16:09its use and you can see a graphic here that shows the many costs of crime in terms of tangible and intangible effects of crime on a community like El Cerrito and then the cost of crime for each of the majors that we report under that UCR that I referenced before under the part

0:16:29one crimes and then what it says is okay when we are making decisions about funding police increasing or decreasing numbers how can we put cost to what those reductions may do in turn into a city and so what it says is it says this is a tool for decision makers to use regarding

0:16:52the increase or decrease in Staffing so although crime in the United States on average is shown historic decline since early early 1990s a recent Rand Corporation report shows that a 10 increase in the size of a police force decreases the rate of homicide for instance by nine percent robbery by six

0:17:13percent vehicle theft by four percent each year the effect on sexual assaults is less clear so it's not stated the bottom line includes obvious costs of crime like a reference intangibles and intangibles but Rand also figured in a factor for the well the intangible

0:17:32costs and those are reference on the graphic so what do we do with that well we said let's use this as a tool to just provide us data and what you see there is the cost of crime calculator with the specific crimes and the numbers from El Cerrito now it shows the size of the Department's 46 Warren

0:17:51and that's what we currently have you'll see it says change in number of police Personnel I'd like to pause there for a moment say no one is suggesting anywhere that I've heard that we have a change in police Personnel but it's a tool a calculator that we wanted to see

0:18:06the effects of so what we did was we used the Rand cost of crime calculator and we put in our specific crimes for 2012. and then what we got was based on the Rand data the cost to the community of one officer or I would say the value is three hundred and twelve thousand

0:18:30dollars well what is that it's data that empowers us with some decision making ability and then we look at the total of expected crime cost savings from hiring an individual officer in 2010 it's about like I said three hundred and twelve thousand dollars so this chart gives us

0:18:48an ability to look at where we compare in terms of the number of crimes we have and the number of officers we have and it gives us a number so what are we doing about it well this council is very engaged in astute and knows but to reiterate some of the things we're doing regarding property

0:19:09crime so we look at a home we have public meetings and Outreach about crime prevention techniques this year Lieutenant Paul Keith organized the very first security Expo bringing vendors to our community center to one single spot and bringing everyone together and giving an opportunity for

0:19:26the community to meet with vendors we're doing home security inspections and increasing the number of officers in the in the El Cerrito Police Department that are certified in septed crime prevention through environmental design so we're doing that enforcement and prosecution

0:19:42always should be in bigger letters there I think we roll out our police blotter through a variety of means and we do vacation watches something to highlight that is significant for El Cerrito from 2010 to 2012.

0:19:59our community engagement and our partnership with the community is reflected in the fact that our reporting on suspicious incidents from our community is up 71 percent I've said this before that some people would say geez Chief you're not doing a very good job your officers aren't doing

0:20:16a very good job if calls or services are up by 71 percent and I say this reflects our the trust that and the relationship and the partnership between the police and the community because they're calling us with increased numbers so what are we doing about robbery well

0:20:35some of the things we're doing digital forensics leveraging technology and advanced skill of our investigators we are collaborating and coordinating more with not only Contra Costa agencies but those in Alameda County that border us Berkeley Albany Emeryville Piedmont El Cerrito

0:20:56Kensington Richmond we get together and we talk about about crime and crime Trends particularly with robberies we are analyzing differently which Samantha will expand on one of the tools that we're using and one of the courageous things that this council did you can recall in the the budget

0:21:17document that we converted Samantha wendling's position from an assistant to leveraging her skill her Talent her education as a graduate of Criminal Justice from San Diego State and her commitment to Crime analyt analysis when we converted her position and we are

0:21:33using Samantha to more closely focus our crime fighting efforts so where do we go where are we going as we go down the road as we travel in the future we have significant challenges to face and overcome we are continuing to examine the costs Effectiveness and social barriers that we recognize to

0:21:56license plate readers we I acknowledge the benefit from a crime fighting perspective to license plate readers but recognize that some see this notion of government collecting a whole bunch of data wide sweeping data as offensive so we are remaining sensitive to that as we examine what

0:22:18license plate readers and other data collection tools would do in our community and we have will give the same thoughtful consideration to in-car videos and other kind of video surveillance and collection Technologies we will examine and meet with our community about our staffing levels and

0:22:40and we will also participate not only with City staff but internally in the police department how we can more effectively staff and deploy officers to address crime one of the significant things that we did this year was an analysis of the days and times that one is more likely

0:23:02to be a victim of crime in El Cerrito and we're adjusting our staffing to meet that need the other thing that we are doing is looking at the conversion of key positions to more thoughtful or Progressive positions like we did similarly with Mrs wendling's position

0:23:19so at this point I I would like to pause to entertain your questions and then Mrs Wendling will present on the technology that we are going to use at the city level and the community level to analyze crime so I'll pause for any questions that you have I have a question

0:23:45um so how does the License Plate Reader work so License Plate Reader captures in milliseconds a license plate and it runs it through a database it also collects the GPS location where that vehicle was identified or captured and how do you actually use it though so

0:24:06there are a host of ways that a license plate reader can be used the largest use is when well first let me tell you that there's a mobile License Plate Reader or there are some that are on a fixed location so either one is used to capture a plate it runs it through a database to see if

0:24:26it is a wanted vehicle or a stolen vehicle and there is there are some options for uploading the data from a license plate to a broader system and um I had a question about the tens of thousands that are being released from realignment if someone commits a crime and they're

0:24:46one of the individuals that was released if you will what happens next so I mean I suppose it depends on the crime sort of but just council member Bridges you you bring up a great point because it does depend on the crime in some instances uh there they go directly back to prison but with the

0:25:11lower level offenders they're typically reoffending what we found based on the data is they're reoffending at a low level again so the majority of those lower level offenders are then spending time in the county jail which we're working with the sheriff to maintain certain bed space that we can

0:25:31then incarcerate them at a local level I will say that there's a lot of courageous work that's going on by law enforcement and local law enforcement the sheriff probation the district attorney and Social Services to find alternate means other than incarceration

0:25:49and is there a bunch um re-entry reforming any anything being offered there are some things being offered but the California police Chiefs Association has been very strong and adamant that there's not enough being done to then rehabilitate the 18 000 that were just immediately

0:26:13released and we thought it was Hasty and we anticipated that this would occur and we were hoping that it wouldn't but now we have two years of data to show uh we don't want to say we're right because it's a bad place to be to be right but we are working with the the state to do more thank you

0:26:34thank you just two questions so just your final slide said what you were already beginning to touch on which was re-entry efforts was there any more description that you wanted to give on those efforts or just that there's there's some out there but there's not

0:26:46enough in the opinion of of many I would say that I'm not well versed enough in the actual efforts to speak to them but I would say we definitely this gives academic significance we have to do something differently okay and my other question was on the crime prevention through environmental design

0:27:03training that many officers have gone through so did does that training refer both to private spaces like homes and public spaces like San Pablo Avenue or the greenway it didn't they I assume they owe Pine when we're doing redesigns of public spaces the police department gives some sort of

0:27:19opinion about how environmentally how the design is contributing to the safety or not contributing to the safety yes we do great thank you but my question was also about re-entries uh the re-entry efforts um so I'll be a little more pointed with mine what can El Cerrito do with regards to

0:27:39re-entry efforts when more than uh looks like but if I did the math of the two two pie charts you had up earlier more than three quarters or actually more than 80 percent are not El Cerrito residents we can do a lot and I'm not surprised sir that you did math so

0:27:59we can do a lot and part of it is that at every level of the organization we have to be collaborating with a city like Richmond which is I believe what you're referencing the relationship that I have with Chief Magnus is um very tight we are closely aligned in terms of our values and he is doing

0:28:21exceptional work on behalf of West County to impact realignment those re-offenders so we'll just call them the re-entry population so specifically what we can do is continue to do what we're doing and invest in the relationship with Richmond and the the decision

0:28:39makers I will also tell you that on behalf of the California police Chiefs Cal Chiefs went to the governor and said we need to put money at the local level to deal with the offenders and the governor was courageous and gave a substantial amount of money to counties

0:28:59I'm at the table myself and Mike Regan Captain Mike Regan are at the table with what we are going to do in our County at the local level to not only impact the recidivism but address the re-entry population and we're starting to do that by investing in technology and data so I

0:29:22would say overarching we have to continue doing what we're doing and then we have to be strong about everyone collectively getting together collaborating and and assess I mean we're all kind of our equilibrium is a little bit off because now we have very recently just last week

0:29:41academically significant data that shows so we have to be at the table moving forward I had an opportunity in October to spend some time with Chief Magnus and and I would say that uh he would have described that their crime has changed in their community in a very similar

0:30:00manner both time of day types of of uh crimes and their their changes is that a fair is that a fair statement I mean it sounds like you're collaborating with them and I would applaud you to continue collaborating with with Richmond because of of how close we are to them in many

0:30:19topics not just crime I agree wholeheartedly and I would say that that's accurate which also says now we need to do something about our community making the individual homes less attractive to burglars and at the same time we need better tracking of property crime suspects and that is that is a big

0:30:41deal I think two parts for Richmond one is that they've done incredible things regarding operation ceasefire and reducing the violent crime but at the same time they're experiencing an increase in property crime similar to ours last question on the the chart where you

0:30:57placed a star on on the chart and there is it obvious trend line at the 45 degree angle which would be straight up through the center and we landed below that line which to me suggests that that we should be um looking at increasing the police officers because above that line

0:31:21uh this that's it there the trend lined up through the center was you know going all the way up to Baltimore and and down to Boise um being below that line is is not as desirable as being above that line is is the way I interpret this chart um and I understand you derived this

0:31:41where else Rita lands on this using the model and you know trying to figure out what you could have done a plus three instead of a minus three but um so I'm just curious if that if I've interpreted this chart correctly gives us some real data to work with when we're making decisions about

0:32:01Staffing levels all right thank you do we have this Statistics tracking the correlation between crime and economic factors including unemployment rates poverty Etc no we do not okay we could get that pretty easily couldn't we though we could that would be great to see the other question is do

0:32:27we have any way of knowing what percentage of crimes in El Cerrito are committed by gang members we could potentially have that data so I we will look into that one as well when we report out on the other thanks as a follow-up question to that would you say that we have a problem with

0:32:49gangs in El Cerrito well by problem uh I we don't have sign it we do not have the depth of the issue that other cities have and I would argue that we have have almost no problem with gangs in El Cerrito okay thank you like gang members from other cities may be committing crimes in

0:33:11our city so we do have maybe a problem just not amongst our residents perhaps well actually my question wasn't about our residents but rather the people who are here in our city sure I when I when I asked it it wasn't about our um residence it was more about um

0:33:31gang activity we have we have very little evidence that we have a gang problem in El Cerrito okay um as a follow-up to what's being said I really appreciate the report um I think it's got a lot of great statistics is there a way to get a copy of it uh is it online somewhere or could it be

0:33:53certainly yes okay I think that would be really helpful because there's a lot of good information there and the other thing I was wondering about um I used to be on a organizations I've told you uh called the East Bay public safety corridor project and it was a

0:34:11Consortium of a number of cities in the East Bay Corridor along I-80 that we're working together to try to reduce crime um and it it folded actually when it no longer could obtained funding for staff but um anyway one of the things they talked about a lot is that if we're

0:34:32going to do something about it there's also another component that we need to work on and that is for example to not just take care of the um those who are coming out of prison but also to prevent the situation that gets them there in the first place in other words maybe

0:34:52it's at an Maybe let's just suppose that the problem occurs by the time a student hits middle school and maybe we could be doing as a as a city maybe we could be doing some things in that area that would actually help to reduce the crime rate and support the efforts

0:35:13that our Police Department is making and is there any knowledge about what we actually might be able to do or have you read any literature that discusses what something that has the most value in that regard or is is there little known on that so while I'm not prepared to

0:35:33speak to a specific program that's been successful I think there's a lot of evidence that supports the assertion that you're making regarding times in people's lives that if they achieve certain education require educational requirements that they're less likely to

0:35:53be involved in criminal activity and I could certainly look into that and Report out on some of the options that are out there the best and the smart practices that exist I think that would be really interesting if the time we're available to produce that kind of

0:36:08information and what I'm really thinking about partly too is our interface with our school district and what we could do to interface better and what programs we could be um most helpful in that would have the most um you know results for example we did an internship program this Summer that I

0:36:31thought went really really well thanks to the wonderful people like um tsukari who I don't know if she's in the room she's what she's sick today I'm sorry anyway she she did she did a great job in a number of other people did too to make that a really good program and I so I think we

0:36:50did touch those lives of those students but um maybe there's some other students that we could whose lives we could make a difference in without too much effort from some of our other departments or all of our departments and that's what I'm wondering if we would be how could

0:37:08be helpful if we knew what that was um in doing that and help help you do the work that you're doing in our way you know when the district attorney was here a couple meetings ago he talked about truancy and put up some pretty pretty good evidence about how not being

0:37:29in school leads to a a path to crime and I think that's something that should be looked at so or they are looking at obviously thank you I agree thank you so I'd like to take this opportunity now to commend the men and women of the El Cerrito Police Department that are out

0:37:47there every single day either in the field or in investigations that are wholly committed to reducing crime in El Cerrito and the fear of crime they do exceptional work every single day and I'm really proud of them and proud to serve with them so Mrs Samantha Wendling

0:38:05our administrative analyst is going to present on one of the technologies that she is going to use to serve the community in a very data driven way Samantha thanks Chief good morning mayor Abelson or good evening excuse me mayor of some council members so moving forward on our

0:38:22commitment to use data and Analysis to reduce crime and consider alternative deployment strategies we have teamed up with barrier analytics and purchased a analytical and crime mapping software and there's essentially two components there's a law enforcement side and a

0:38:38public side and for the law enforcement side it's called attack grades and it allows officers to log on each day it's web-based and create dashboards that show pattern analysis and crime mapping and it shows them the crime that's occurring within the city but more

0:38:55importantly within their specific beats and so this I think will be good for them to encourage them to find creative strategies to fight crime because they can see specifically where they are patrolling and then the public side which is called raids online it connects law enforcement

0:39:14with the community and it gives the public a better idea of a crime that's incurring occurring in their area in the city and make more important decisions about their safety and it goes beyond the crime mapping and it automatically they can sign up for alerts and it'll automatically alert

0:39:37them a recent crime activity that's occurring and also allows them to sign up for a neighborhood watch reports that automatically email them a breakdown of the crime that's occurring within their area and also allows them to submit anonymous tips for any crime that they

0:39:52see occurring it'll directly go to the police department and so it's kind of a bit of a process but we're hoping to have this up and going by early of next year and once we have it up and going we'll make sure to put on the city website and send out through all the social media nixel on

0:40:11Twitter and all that and we're hoping it empowers the public to make better decisions and by putting the same technology that we're using in their hands and um hopefully they'll take advantage of that and um so yeah we're hopefully hopefully early next year so thank you

0:40:30are there any uh comments questions from the council yeah I just wanted to thank the chief and Ms windley for your work and the force as you so uh appropriately thanked for all the efforts that they make and I think it's uh also I want to thank all of our citizens who are involved in

0:40:50neighborhood watch groups or participate in National Night Out or report crimes it's uh it's a community problem and it's going to take Community Solutions and I think what you present is very helpful thank you and I would only Echo and and thank uh analyst what's your new name Wendling a little

0:41:13harder than Smith yes a little bit harder Ms windling and and Lieutenant Keith I see him in the audience as well Chief so I want to thank you for pulling this together and presenting this tonight and I look forward to seeing additional presentations on this type of

0:41:29information especially once we get the raids online up and available for the public to to view absolutely thank you yeah we're we thank you for the for the time we have a very astute and involved community that we want to give them the tools that they can really be part of the solution one

0:41:50last thing is in a few weeks you will see the El Cerrito PD app that we Samantha is an Apple app developer now and I and so we are going to come out with an app that gives another tool that our community can use so we're really trying to reach out to the community

0:42:09give them what they want um I I do I'm hoping that we'll also you'll you mentioned that you were still analyzing what to do with license plate readers so I'm hoping that when you do come back to us you might have some additional thoughts on license plate readers if that is a tool that the data

0:42:33suggests we should be employing yes we will okay I just wanted to thank you for the great presentation and the um all the analytical that's going on with this I think it's really really helpful to us and I thought it was pretty good information about the scenario of one

0:42:51how one officer can make a very large difference in a very small City so thank you I would like to agree with everyone else but I want to tell you I'm really excited about the app here to serve that I was at a meeting yesterday and somebody was talking about the use of apps and um that's really

0:43:10very Cutting Edge and um I'm so I'm very excited and proud to know that our own Police Department is out in front thank you okay finished then okay with that then we'll move on to our next presentation what is this doing it's frozen okay okay the next presentation is from

0:43:49um Pacific Gas and Electric Company or PG e um it's an update on the natural gas pipeline testing in El Cerrito and the El Cerrito substation rebuild project foreign good evening my name is Roxanne Cruz I am your local government relations representative from PG e and I've

0:44:11brought to you tonight two of our um we have two topics as you mentioned that we will be speaking of we will be speaking on the valve validation project and the substation what we call the substation g p Genie upgrade project so I have two different subject matter experts that

0:44:31will be speaking to you first I'd like to introduce to you my team who were sitting behind me so we have director Brian Dalvin we have our project manager um Randy Franks and and we have Rory dimmick who is our customer impact specialist but I like to invite Mr delman first to speak to you

0:44:59good evening mayor Abelson council members here at your request to update you in regards to the testing that's going on to excuse me one of the pipelines in your area um really a response your request is a response to a letter that was sent out uh to you folks uh in that was notifying

0:45:18you of the potential uh for some testing and I'd like to go over a quick uh synopsis of what took months to transpire but uh wrap it up for you so you guys understand a little bit uh what is going to be going on and how that will affect you guys um in early 2013 PG e was doing some

0:45:38internal inspection of some third-party vendors that were doing what we call non-destructive examinations it's a requirement of code that we go in and look at the welds after the fact through x-ray when we were doing the investigation and working to do what we call field observations as part of an

0:45:57ongoing quality program we found that a vendor was doing non-compliant inspections I want to reiterate that the quality of the welds were good they were sufficient they were of high quality what was not was the non-compliant inspections that were going on um so we notified the state Commission

0:46:18in regards to this issue they had some of their internal inspectors come out we worked with uh some Third Party Experts to evaluate how we would remediate the issue on a particular line uh that was going uh in construction and would be putting into service we remediated those again the

0:46:38state as well as the the federal agency found uh to be no issues associated with weld quality but did find gaps in in the actual inspection program by a vendor in short that vendor has been released from contracts through PG e no longer in service but we then took a step outside

0:46:59of just that particular line and evaluated the work that they had done with us in the past during that evaluation we found 488 non-compliant inspections and we worked to look at those and review those inspections one of those inspections was in El Cerrito and that was at a it's an eight

0:47:23inch weld on a reg station at Carlson Avenue and Adams Street uh it's right essentially on the border of El Cerrito Albany um we at this time do not feel that there are any weld quality issues associated with that Reg station nor any others in our system however what we are doing is we are

0:47:45evaluating the uh top 62 of those 488 that we found during our inspection and primarily what we what we looked at is there's gaps Associated not in the pipeline but there's gaps in the film that they use to do the x-rays and evaluating that and looking at that it's

0:48:06a again is a non-compliant weld according to both state and federal code so we are working to remedy that we are doing analysis on those 62 uh welds we are looking at actually re-inspecting those per code with an independent third party and doing a statistical analysis

0:48:23on that to ensure that we are confirmed good weld quality and that we have a safe that we have a prudent inspection program going forward so those are the efforts I want to keep an opportunity answer questions for you folks so I've kept it General okay um so you're ready for us to ask

0:48:47questions I am please Rebecca um that was General um so just to be clear the 62 welds you were speaking of that have drawn attention are not in El Cerrito are throughout the system correct and there is one in El Cerrito that is correct okay and what will the once the results

0:49:07of the analysis come out how will we be notified or what's the next step in communicating what the results of this is the statistical analysis will show in terms of whether or not these will be no longer non-compliant so it's my understanding that in in the manner and

0:49:24the timing at which the letters came out to each of the cities um it's my feeling that PG e could commit to uh sending out letters again letting uh you folks know what the results of those that study was great yeah welcome um I do have a couple questions uh well

0:49:45first couple things for clarity a reg station would be a regulating station or thank you I get sucked into our vernacular so yes it is a regulating station it regulates pressure from a high trans uh high pressure transmission line down which serves some of your

0:50:00local communities and um also to be fair to PG e you had two contractors one that was constructing the pipeline and one that was hired to inspect the work that the contractor was doing the construction contractor was doing and it was the inspection agency that was performing

0:50:17non-compliant work not the contractor correct uh specifically on the line uh that was being constructed it's actually in Brentwood California in my hometown where we found the issue you are exactly right in the uh in the issue at El Cerrito that line was not constructed by

0:50:36a contractor but it was it was constructed by own internal resources but again that same vendor did the inspection which was a non-compliant inspection and and this is where I'm not certain how you determined that they were non-compliant because I do know that sometimes some of these

0:50:52non-compliant uh companies are using the same imagery for welds over and over again so I'm I'm trying to sustained how you figured out it was just 48 488 welds in your thousands of miles that you that you're just ins that you're concerned about because I'm certainly

0:51:13inspected tens of thousands of welds right yeah actually in this particular population we found 3755 welds done by this particular vendor over that time period um this this was this well the way to find the non-compliance essentially is a geometry issue right when your pipe

0:51:34diameter gets large enough the angle at which you are able to take an x-ray can be no greater than 120 degrees that often requires over a certain size pipe more than two shots it requires three x-ray shots this particular vendor although they were aware of state and federal regulations

0:51:57they were only taking two shots so it was very easy for us to detect the the problem once we were made aware of it that's why we were able to go back and and evaluate the films of each of those welds and identify where there were two shots when there should have been three

0:52:11and and when was the uh when did PG e perform the work at Carlson and Adams um I can get that information for you after this meeting I know it was in 2011 2012 or 2013. got it so it's recent so it's not we're not looking at the compromised parent material material of the out of

0:52:35the pipe at all um so we're not we're not it the pipe the pipe material is not um weak as a result of being 40 or 80 years old some of the other recent challenges you guys have encountered not at all okay and um so it is the regulation station operating within its parameters or you

0:52:58know is it fully charged or is it is it operating under a lesser pressure than design it is operating at its design pressure we also went through the process of determining uh maintenance records and Associated maintenance record for that rake station those all

0:53:13look good um and and are compliant so we believe that to be no again no weld quality issues associated with that pipe at all great thank you very much you're welcome mark question you have inspections for a reason my assumption about that reason is that on occasion you do find a problem

0:53:36somewhere right correct that's the reason for doing it so the um there's not so that would mean there's a percent chance that there is something wrong right because that's why you're doing otherwise why would you bother to do the inspections you're you're right you're talking to a math

0:53:53minor here so I I absolutely would tell you that statistically there is a chance when we talk about that one of the things to note about this particular issue associated with this vendor is that we could see in some uh in a large majority actually of the inspections we

0:54:10could see the entire circumference of the pipe it was non-compliant because it was a beyond the 120 degrees we did some uh some empirical tests we also did some physical tests where we actually embodied defects in the pipe uh in our test lab by Design and also shot

0:54:31them with that same angle greater than 120 degrees again non-compliant but what we found is we could detect each and every one of those defects and so when we re-examine the films we identified the fact that they're non-compliant there's no way we're going to get around

0:54:47that they're non-compliant inspections but we wanted to ensure the safety of the pipeline when we re-examined those we were ensured that we could see a majority of that pipe there were no defects they were of high quality the welds the welds themselves were of high

0:55:00quality and okay and then I have a couple of quick follow-up questions um one is um how quickly will you do this inspection I didn't know if I quite cut a date so to date we have done uh 23 of the scheduled 43. those 23 inspections have confirmed all high quality welds passing

0:55:22uh All-State and federal regulations we have another 20 to do that we are scheduling to do by March of 2014. we will then do the analysis of that we are working with Lawrence Livermore Labs as an independent third party from a statistical analysis perspective as well

0:55:40as a uh renowned expert in the pipeline industry teaming up with Lawrence Livermore to look at what we believe to be a larger population we want to insure as well so the the 3755 by this one particular vendor is being looked at in a statistical relevance perspective we we chose uh

0:56:04through that statistical analysis we were looking at 43 Wells to give us a high degree of confidence that we do not have an issue but we also are planning on looking at the bigger population not just that one particular vendor and we are working in conjunction with the

0:56:18state uh Utility Commission on a weekly basis I update them to our progress um you know so uh again long term uh we're looking at the end of uh or the beginning the end of second quarter 2014 to do the full analysis this particular analysis what we're talking about in the

0:56:38one vendor the 488 welds will conclude by March that means El Cerrito uh that would include El Cerrito yes okay um and um if you ever had exam um have you ever found non-compliant inspectors before I've been with PG e for 12 years am I uh my understanding is that

0:57:07I'm trying to understand the trying to put a fence around your question so have we found in any type of inspections because there's a lot of inspections World inspections have we found non-compliant weld inspections not to my knowledge but again I've got 12 years

0:57:22experience with PG e there may be something outside of that experience that I'm unaware of and in the incident in San Mateo which I understand was a similar yeah yes County okay uh that um is it was it a also the same kind of an issue was that caused by the same

0:57:51thing that they were inspecting for in in El Cerrito um I am very very familiar with the San Bruno investigation I was on that investigation as part of uh part of PG E's uh personnel and gas operations um actually the welds that we were talking about are completely different

0:58:07the weld issue associated with San Bruno was in the long seam so if you rolled a piece of paper up into a cylinder if you imagine if you had to weld that top seam that was the issue associated with San Bruno the welds that we're talking about here is if you took two of those

0:58:22cylinders together place them end to end and welded them circumferentially around the pipe those are the welds we refer to those as girth welds as they uh put two pieces of pipe together and weld those together so again very vastly different types of weld for for the pipeline the other thing to

0:58:44note uh that that I think will bring some comfort to not only yourselves but also the residents of El Cerrito is that area is not susceptible to ground movement a girth weld only sees about 30 percent of the forces associated with internal pressure the seam weld seems sees much much more

0:59:02but that girth weld only sees about 30 percent of the pressure um there is almost no statistical data uh in regards to girth Wells Letting Go due to pressure ruptures so they are typically uh results of ground movement and again we've done the studies and and worked

0:59:24with our folks in our land Department to determine that that area is not susceptible to ground movement there are some areas throughout our system that are those primarily are the ones that we are putting a higher priority on in reviewing but the one at El Cerrito that

0:59:38rig station is not so you want to continue the presentation at this point I believe there's another part uh on the electric side thank you very much for your time thank you thank you thank you so I'd like to introduce to you Randy Franks who is a project manager over the substation G

0:59:59um upgrade work thank you good evening as Roxanne said my name is Randy Franks and I'm a project manager in the substation group at PG E before I get into the presentation I want to say that until very recently I was a resident within sight of El Cerrito just over the line there in Albany and while

1:00:20I lived there I watched the city do some pretty impressive things like build this building the new recycling center and the Goodwill drop off I've availed myself of that and then when all the stimulus money came out in these streets and El Cerrito got repaved like that um

1:00:35I I was I was envious um let's see okay can we go to the first slide Roxanne um I want to tell you a little bit about our substation here in El Cerrito um the function it serves the people at provide electric power to a little bit about the physical makeup of the

1:00:53substation what we're planning to to construct at the site is we upgrade it um the reasons that we're looking at the station for the major Investments and then my colleague Rory will share with you some of the Outreach efforts that are underway and plan for the project

1:01:11um so the station is actually at uh if I go back one slide please Roxanne it's at uh 4701 Schmidt Lane it's just down the street from the recycling center just up the street from from this place it serves about 73 000 total customers which places it well above average in

1:01:28terms of the the number of of individuals that get power from the substation so it's a pretty important Link in the space power grid um it's it's hard to put uh tight political or Municipal boundaries around what parts of uh the territory of particular substation serves but in

1:01:46general terms uh if you look at the Richmond index almost all the city of El Cerrito Kensington uh practically all of Albany and a large majority of the city of Berkeley get their power uh through the substation here in El Cerrito and in terms of Berkeley you could go all the way down

1:02:01to Ashby and Dwight As you move east to west so it's a it's basically from San Pablo Dam Road and I-80 all the way down to highway 13. it's a very large area so it's an important part in terms of individual notable customers we have two dedicated Transformers to

1:02:17provide the train power for the the Richmond Bart line so if you're riding on a train anywhere between Richmond and Ashby El Cerrito G is making those trains move um and then other so those are the specific dedicated Transformers to Bart on the rest of the grid the Civic

1:02:35centers where we're standing here in El Cerrito kensington's Public Safety area up on Arlington Albany and Berkeley are all powered out of that substation there's also a few large commercial loads that I'm going to skip over for for time uh Next Step please this is a 45 degree aerial view of the

1:02:54substation property that's taken from the south I'm going to point out a couple of things um so this is Schmidt here on the North and then Portola on the south side we have the bark Transformers are up here this is the existing switch yard two of our distribution Transformers and

1:03:14then the third large distribution transforming the equipment are here one of the challenges in rebuilding a substation is that we can't just switch it off take it apart and rebuild it because the uh the available capacity in the grid do that isn't there um so what we're constrained to do is work

1:03:33within the property that we have to accomplish the the upgrade and so we've spent about 18 months looking at feasibility studies and different options for for ways to upgrade the substation and what we have is a long rectangular area here to begin our construction of the transmission

1:03:48infrastructure and a narrow strip over here to begin the replacement of the distribution infrastructure um you know and I neglected to mention that the function of a substation is the transition point between where the power comes in on the on the tall steel lattice Towers

1:04:05goes down through some protective devices and switching devices and then leaves either an underground cable and conduit or on the poles that we're all familiar with on the side so that's that's the function here at El Cerrito you'll notice along our West property

1:04:17line that the property line actually is not currently the defense boundary for the substation there's about a 50 foot by 300 foot strip here that the adjoins with the city on Casa Cerrito Child Care Center and this is a part of the pro it's currently covered in some a

1:04:37mature Monterey Pine trees and what we're contemplating with this project is the removal of those trees and incorporation of that land within the substation as part of the construction so the next slide the reasons we're investing here are in they're complex and they're intertwined

1:04:57but they're basically for safety and for the liability of the system a large part of safety of electric services the fact that modern life depends on it so if your power is not out and it stays out that becomes a problem um part of maintaining the reliability then

1:05:13is that we service the equipment and and to keep it in a good working order and then before it's the end of its useful life comes we need to have a capital project to replace it it's very much like water mains city streets any other piece of infrastructure um there's also a seismic concern that

1:05:31I'll address on the next slide because we are you don't have to go yet Roxanne because we are in proximity to the Hayward fault what we're planning to put on the site is uh modern state-of-the-art equipment will include all new controls uh a more reliable um what we call a bus configuration so

1:05:50that switching can be accomplished more seamlessly allow maintenance more to be performed more seamlessly and to allow faster outage restoration times that's that's on the transmission side coming down off the high uh high tension wires as well as on the distribution

1:06:04side for the lines that feed out into the city and then my last slide this is a this is a great graphic that I found with USGS they've got a lot of interesting information on the Hayward fault I found it interesting personally just looking through it but you'll

1:06:22notice so here's the Hayward fault in these dashed lines it's basically up underneath the Arlington this sled identifies active and potentially active landslides and this bit right here that's in light pink is our substation property and you can notice that the station itself that

1:06:42large square area is outside of the active Zone um I think a useful analogy to think of here is actually our neighbor here with Portola Middle School that is in that area and had to accomplish a essentially a rebuild project and we unfortunately don't have the luxury of consolidating

1:07:01adjacent sites and and to accomplish that so we're constrained to work within our our station um that's largely the uh what I've got for oh let me also say that the uh the schedule on our project is about a five five year long investment plan we've done about like I said 18 months of

1:07:25feasibility studies and about six months ago we started engaging with the city on we we know we can fit a new substation within our property and now we're engaging with the city and the public is to the impacts of that construction and how we can mitigate and um and accommodate everyone

1:07:44um and along those efforts Rory is going to speak to our Outreach good evening Council as you can see here it's a simple map that's pulled from Google and it kind of outlines exactly where our substation is and correspondence with city property as well as other customers in the area

1:08:07to keep it simple here there's uh the red line there indicates where the wall will be placed to outline the the new area of our substation with that there are four residential customers and one commercial customer being Casa Casa Cerrito School Center we've met with those four customers in

1:08:31one residential all in October and most recently on December 3rd of this year um plans for this Outreach will continue all the way through the project but most notably in quarter one of 2015 when the project starts to be underway we plan to send letters to the local community

1:08:53there with about a 1200 foot radius and it's kind of outlined there this is just a sample for now if things need to change for the council here we can definitely expand that um the third thing there is to hold an open house so that we can facilitate questions discuss the project in a more

1:09:15uh simpler depth of a walk-through basis working with the community to identify those things and then also canvas the local area that are going to be in close proximity to where they'll either be able to see or hear the work so we really want to put a personable touch

1:09:31with communicating to the local neighbors of the project so that they're well aware in keeping that open Communication open outlined in the blue there of course is the El Cerrito Park and Recs community center that is currently just an option but that would be a nice area for an

1:09:53open house we've worked on many of these projects where partnering with the city as well as a local community that having a presence and making it known that we're there definitely works in in both favors outlined in the green triangles is particular areas of where we'd like

1:10:09to have signage that kind of outlines the work for passer buys whether it's somebody that lives outside of that 1200 foot radius passing by they could see the Investments we're making in the neighborhood and with that that's all I got for customer Outreach so I was going to close with a reminder

1:10:34about how to contact PG e in an emergency situation and then our specific contact information for the project and solicit any questions that the council might have if they're on Outreach for you'll handle them if they're more about the uh the nature of the project or any of the details I'm

1:10:48happy to field those myself so um you ready for the questions yeah let me let me do the emergency contact just because I think that's very critical if if you see natural smell natural gas get down power line the first step anyone should do is call 9-1-1 make one of the

1:11:04service calls that the chief was talking about so they can respond to that situation the next call should be to PG E's toll-free 800 number which is 1-800-743-5000 and the the prompt on that that line when you pick it up will offer you an immediate option if it's an

1:11:21emergency situation so you don't have to get on hold then wait for that um and then you can you can see the cell phone numbers and and email addresses for those of us on the project I'm Randy Franks the first one Rory who spoke to you this their second and Roxanne is uh

1:11:37third and just that area code right there is an artifact where I started my career but that makes this phone right here ring so it's not like I'm on the peninsula far away I am a right here thank you okay um I'm gonna start Mark you want to start this time um what are the major issues that neighbors

1:12:01often have with these kinds of projects from your experience when it comes to construction it's a couple of things it's usually it's very similar to road construction it's Dustin it's noise electric construction can have an added impact which is we often need to do

1:12:21night work to accommodate de-energizing electric circuits that are normally energized so if loads are lower at night because everyone's asleep and their TVs are off that can that can um definitely come around to be something that's important at this point we're

1:12:37very early on in the the design of the project and I I don't anticipate any planned power outages but I want to assure everyone if that's if that happens on a planned basis there's a formal notification of communication that takes place by US mail not only to the property but also whoever's on the

1:12:53account paying that bill and that I believe right now it's two weeks advance notice if that if that is going to occur so that's and when those happen how long typically do they last it depends on the nature of the work that's being performed it can be as short as when I

1:13:09was in Albany replaced a pole and my Transformers out for two hours but it can be up to eight hours usually okay thank you I do I have a few questions um are you going to be uh conducting a sequa process of any type so I'm not an expert on environmental law but I have a land Planner on my team

1:13:33and on this project our our approach is that we'll be seeking ministerial permits from the city of El Cerrito encroachment permits uh building permits for some of the structures but we're not going through um the Public Utility Commission discretionary permitting process

1:13:51so so you're covered by some form of General plan consistency is that is that the I mean you you obviously are governed from a lead agency's perspective it's the California Public Utilities Commission and I'm assuming that you've you've gone through some sort of environmental review with them

1:14:10um to to figure out what is necessary out there I'm going to use birds for as an example there's trees they marry me a raptor in there and so there may be an environmental impact from cutting those trees down and I'm just curious how you've analyzed those impacts with the

1:14:27specific respect to the trees we did conduct a bird survey out there in conjunction with Casa Cerrito to access it in a minimal impact way and assess whether the reactiveness on the site and before we start construction that's another step we would take to ensure

1:14:42that there are not active nests on in those trees um with respect to the agency permitting process that planning I'd defer those questions to our land planning department um they have reached out through the city manager or the assistant city manager to make contact on and

1:14:59and solicit that feedback and provide those answers I don't have it personally here in this form though yeah so so some of the things that people would be concerned about would be traffic noise as you said dust certainly power outages um and and usually an environmental

1:15:17review document is how the public is exposed to those types of of changes in their environment I'm just curious through the public Outreach process how you will be informing people of those changes to their environment noise you know the buzz that might come from a new

1:15:35Transformer uh that's post construction obviously there is construction issues I'm just curious how the the public finds out more about the project and any mitigations you did suggest that we might hear about some mitigations this evening just curious how we would how

1:15:52the public does find out about some of the mitigations you're proposing both during construction and post Construction so from this this perspective the the project is not expanding the substation or changing its basic configuration it's more or less a like for like replacement

1:16:08and I think from my understanding that that carries a different level of review the analogy I've used before is you know the City built a new city hall and it it functions and has a lot of the same purposes but it's not necessarily um an expansion it may feel bigger and

1:16:24look bigger we've got the same level of voltage coming in the same number of circuits leaving the same number of Transformers so it's really a a like for like replacement project as opposed to a putting a new substation into into an area and that and that probably is the

1:16:40basis for the CPU C giving you a SQL exemption um but you've got a project you've gone through conceptual design you do have some information about the project you have proposed some mitigations like monitoring for Birds um so just curious how the public does find out about the project and some of

1:17:02the mitigations you're proposing and most notably um Casa Cerrito is next to you next door I'm just curious how any changes in where the EMF are originating okay I understand it's within the same footprint I understand it's not creating additional capacity on the environment

1:17:20but you are changing the location of where some things are going to be on the property they're either going to get closer to Residents and be louder or further away from residents and be quieter that would be a good thing or closer to our youngest and most vulnerable uh at Casa Sarita and so I'm

1:17:37trying to figure out what are the changes okay how do I learn about the changes and what are the mitigations that are being proposed let me answer this the sound issue and then I'll let Rory address the EMF issue the sound issue is actually one that we're currently studying right now we

1:17:52have we took ambient noise measurements at the site in 2011.

1:17:57and now that we have a concept finalized conceptual layout of where equipment will be we're moving into modeling the noise levels at the site to study what it could look like and if there are you know sound walls or sound barriers or something like that that is necessary

1:18:13to keep the property within compliance we'll know about it at that point that's not information that I've got on hand at this point it's still under study uh you want to address the EMF question Freedom sure in regards to the EMF issue we went ahead and we did a study on December 3rd

1:18:28uh just a few weeks back we had our EMF program manager on site walked the grounds with Chris Jones and went ahead and just identified area the previous study was taken in the early 90s those that data and those uh those numbers were handed over to Chris so he does

1:18:45have that information to pass on with that said we have also agreed to reintroduce that EMF study to take place once the new wall is installed and then also post construction so that is an option that we are willing to go ahead and do for you in addressing in address

1:19:06to the public Outreach we do want to really showcase all of the work that we have planned and that we will be doing in that open house Forum I think that gives a really good opportunity to get intimate not only with the project but also the community members that live in

1:19:23close proximity to it so we can address their individual concerns and I would strongly recommend that having worked in the construction industry and if you are planning nighttime work you cannot get around backup alarms and as you if anybody who has done any night work

1:19:39knows backup alarms is the number one complaint you'll get because it is designed to be allowed to save lives so certainly somebody who's trying to sleep near a backup alarm may not appreciate that the OSHA is trying to save construction workers lives but that goes

1:20:02a long ways to helping people understand why their their sleep is going to be interrupted if you can continue to reach out to them and I do really do encourage you to get as much project information available as soon as you can I understand you're still designing the

1:20:19projects of sound walls of the need for sound walls for the permanent installation sound walls are actually not that useful during construction but they potentially can be used during construction to reduce generator noise for example um so there is as much Outreach as you

1:20:37can so that the people will understand what the project is for and certainly the seismic benefits and the safety benefits post project thank you thank you oh sorry one more uh can have you provided to us your exemption from the cpuc uh because I'm assuming that you have some

1:20:57SQL exemption of some sort for this project I'm going to speak with our land planner tomorrow and find out if that's been communicated right thank you finished okay Rebecca thank you don't walk away too quickly I'm so happy that you're here to talk about this project and I'm happy

1:21:15you've been speaking with the city for the last six months that's great to know obviously this is a huge piece of land in the city and anytime There's an opportunity to make an upgrade that's going to improve reliability and at the same time if you can also make upgrades

1:21:29that that concurrently happen to positively impact the neighbors who are around that property that's always it's a great opportunity for a win-win and you probably know that just the property values in that area are so heavily impacted primarily by the noise and the

1:21:44perception of the EMF so I guess I I'm curious to know on how PG e makes the decision to put up sound barriers or or to cap a substation obviously you have many substations that are actually completely encased in in buildings that really dramatically decrease that noise

1:22:03and that perception of living in a dangerous neighborhood I I heard I heard a few questions in there I guess I want to know how how do you decide to put up a building or sound barriers around a substation okay um most modern substations are constructed at what's called air

1:22:24insulated so we use the air to insulate the conductors themselves and so we're not necessarily putting you know we're not worried about the rain that doesn't affect things so putting them inside buildings is not generally done in this day and age for a new construction of the substation

1:22:39they're generally all outdoor facilities if we're in a in a tight Urban environment um where they need to be mostly it's about physical security that people can't leap off of a taller building or repel and get into the substation throw things from a higher story and damage the

1:22:55conductors those sorts of concerns not so much the noise um with respect to the sound issue there are County and city noise ordinances that specify you know certain volume levels at the perimeter they do generally have a penalty for Pure tones which is you know a buzz is a

1:23:12lot more annoying than a white noise that fluctuates up and down and so we we have we have monitored the site taking those those measurements and we're going to do the models to decide if if what we're proposing out there is going to be outside of the uh those compliant limits

1:23:28but our attention is obviously to stay within them so just to clarify so it's worse for your equipment to be inside of a building because of the air insulation that you were speaking of more complex to construct and it's it's much more difficult to operate because there's not

1:23:43access free access all around the equipment you know now you're inside a building with something that can can jump out and and zap you as the worker so you need you need a very large building to contain it and it's usually cost prohibitive to build it that way yeah I was wondering what the is the

1:23:59cost just cement or is the cost different it would be like buying a car and Building a garage over it to house it if you didn't have a garage so it's probably a substantial fraction if not doubling the cost of the project it's it's not a it's not a trivial amount of work to

1:24:16design and and to to build as opposed to sound walls that you could just more easily put up well the sunwell also functions with you know security barrier for the site and it may not you know it may not be necessary to to keep the noise level within compliance with the ordinances

1:24:35okay I'm thinking about this because I'm working on projects in San Francisco where there are substations and there's discussion about the value Improvement you would get to the surrounding Properties by reducing those sounds and the opportunity to maybe see those costs

1:24:51kind of offset one another that somebody would benefit from that reduction in sound if you all would build that and maybe there's some deal to be made so um maybe I'll ask a bit more about that offline uh just a couple questions about the the overhead though the 1200 foot

1:25:07radius um what what is the basis for that radius and it looks like it's from the center of the site right it's not from the edge of the site exactly it is from the center of the site and it's just something that was preliminary put together so like I said there is

1:25:21opportunity there to grow or expand that number but just looking at it as far as noise travel it's just a general number that okay so it's not based on a noise study specifically it's just exactly sort of a guideline and then what's the building on the site when Randy was giving the

1:25:40presentation he pointed out what the various pieces of equipment are that I don't I don't remember you saying what the building is sure yeah it's great Roxanne so today this building serves as two functions it has a warehouse of spare parts and then on the lower floor

1:25:58and then on the second floor right up here is the protection and control for the substation so these are all the relays monitoring load flows and voltage a look at the system and if they detect a problem then they issue signals to the equipment out there so the built the building

1:26:17um is largely a shell with ex with the exception of basically a nerve center to control the substation it's got um telecommunication infrastructure so we can remotely access the information of the substation and then obviously so it can operate automatically know you don't have the project designed

1:26:39at this point but with the general idea be that you would be sort of I don't know if you would demolish or you would just leave the other equipment in place and then build new equipment around the inside the lines that are drawn here the the sequence that we're developing

1:26:57um pardon me if I don't look at you directly here is that this area will contain the first phase of our new uh transmission switch yard and when this is constructed alongside a component of the new distribution equipment it can be tested and released for service and carry load and allow

1:27:16this portion of the existing equipment to be de-energized and removed and then the second phase would actually use some of this area and part of what's underneath this blue line to expand this the Swiss yard install the rest of the distribution equipment connect it and

1:27:31release it so the the new Swiss yard will essentially occupy this area of the substation there's a number of structures and devices here some of them will stay and some of them will be removed this equipment in this area will all be removed and and replaced with its

1:27:49equivalents at this end of the substation um the Transformers that serve the bart trains and all of that that Hardware is not affected by the project that'll stay as it is and then the transmission lines where they enter the the substation itself we're not expecting to to modify

1:28:07any of that as part of the project okay um so I I without that's a good description but I one thing I've been thinking about is the size of this Pro the size of this block is a huge impediment for anybody trying to cross the city from north to south and one thing I was thinking of when I saw this

1:28:28was on the agenda is just to put in your minds that one thing that would be really wonderful for our community would be to have some sort of way to cross to get to the community center which so many people try to walk or bike to and really have a difficult time doing so

1:28:43because they only have Richmond or navalir as those two streets so when I was obviously I hadn't seen this before um but as you're putting together your plans and you look at the huge amount of acreage out there if there is any opportunity as you're placing equipment

1:28:59here or there and perhaps the community will mention this as well when you do the open house if there's a way to come up with some sort of secure easement to cross from Schmidt to the community center I think that would be the type of improvement that the community would benefit

1:29:14from for decades to come to the extent that that could be placed into the project without compromising all of the various safety reliability and security protocols that you guys need to adhere to yeah I think that's a fantastic idea to explore and we're certainly open to

1:29:31doing that and I know precisely what you're you're speaking about with the access issue in my my cycling days we'd actually ride circuits around this big Square from between Richmond and Naval Air precisely because there was a big challenging Hill right there that we

1:29:44could ride up and down and up and down and up and down but I understand for the general public that's probably an impediment fun for exercise but if you just want to go to the Swim Center yeah I understand completely okay great thank you Randy um yeah I just had a couple questions so

1:29:58the project I I understand that we're you're in real preliminary phases here but if it you're gonna like break ground in 2015 sometime how long do you anticipate this to be going on and when will it be finished or do you know that what we'd like to do is is do some of the construction in the

1:30:17second quarter of 2014 along this on along the property line here with replacing the Antiquated chain link fence with the Precast wall and then grading this area so that it's prepared and ready that would be one mobilization and then the site would be uh just it's normal operation while we're

1:30:36finishing the design for the rest of the area and then that construction to do the electric construction down here would start in early 2015. okay and then it would run currently it's it's scheduled through 15 16 and then um we're expecting all of this work to be

1:30:53done by late in 2016 early in 2017 and then the removal pieces here will will happen in 2017.

1:31:00couple years in the sound mall is it the the purple perimeter here that's against the red line where is the sound wall where is it I mean I'm not making myself clear no I think I think I understand your question right now we don't have any sound walls in the design because we

1:31:17don't have a noise study that says we're out of compliance we we could potentially be out of compliance with the county noise ordinances oh okay so if if if uh um if a sound wall was necessary what we would be looking at is what precisely is the source of the noise

1:31:33um and where it would a wall best be partition be placed to to block that sound so there's there's three or four houses on the end of this property right [Music] um yeah right there so noise studies would be done in that vicinity too right and one of the things the noise study would

1:31:52account for is the fact that now it's a six foot chain link fence that's separating us from them and this would be a taller Precast solid wall right so I would expect that there's a mitigating Factor there well it seems like you're really familiar with the area you've ridden your bike

1:32:06through here and you yeah you have El Cerrito Envy you want to live here um that's all good but just look at where the you know the the egress is going to be very important because the schools you know there's it's not just the preschool there's a school there that even though it's in temporary

1:32:25um placement now for Portola there'll be another grade school moving in around the time this all up you know you'll still be doing construction and those students will still be there so your egress will be really important you know as to how you because there's there's

1:32:39buses that come through up and down Moser and it gets very very crazy through there and I suppose you already know that um and then about the community outreach do you anticipate that there's going to be more than one meeting or two or three and will it be an ongoing thing once the

1:32:55project is actually and based on the demand and what we get from feedback from our customers it's definitely something that can be ongoing and definitely more than just one event so of course and then I suppose you have project managers that are going to be the the

1:33:11overseer of the site correct and how does that work you mean on a day-to-day basis running the project yes yeah there's a construction Foreman that's on the job site if it's built with our internal resources uh who's there uh on a on a day-to-day basis um usually on that signage we've got an

1:33:34emergency contact number associated with with the project so if there's a problem and you need to get a hold somebody that's there okay thank you very much okay um two quick questions well one is quick the other one not um how many people are in that building at any one time generally

1:33:55for ongoing operations zero this is an unmanned automatically controlled substation okay so somewhere else in PG e you're monitoring all the data that's being transmitted from there uh that's right for for the transmission system it's uh control centers in San Francisco and Vacaville their their

1:34:16backup systems to each other and then for the distribution equipment it's um it's down by the open Coliseum off of 880. and you have backup power so that data will be transmitted even when there's an outage or not necessarily uh yeah it's an interesting thing the

1:34:32substation itself has power flowing all around it but it gets its power just like all of our houses with a set of those pull-top Transformers so those are designed to keep the the lights on and the computers running if there's a if there's a loss of station power which is

1:34:45a very rare event there's a DC battery backup that allows things to still to still operate automatically and without people interacting with it okay thanks and then my uh it's not so much a question is a concern about those trees that you're proposing to take out you know and sometimes we've

1:35:08had problems in the sea with Monterey Pines obscuring people's views I don't think that's a problem with these trees and I think it provides a very useful buffer and enhancement for the preschool which is right there to have those trees there do you really need to take those trees

1:35:25out can't you come up with the design that would leave them there both for Aesthetics and the buffer and the environmental positive nature of them we've looked at a number of different configurations and the the constraining factor here is the number of circuits

1:35:44that I need to take from inside the station and get out to the city streets and that that's essentially going to happen power is generally flowing east to west this way and once the distribution system takes over it needs to go north and south and so I have a very narrow window here to to move all

1:36:01that to Schmidt and to Portola and the closer together those circuits get the less power we can run through them because they get hot and so what I'm what I don't want to do is make a major investment in something that can only do 30 or 40 percent of what it could do if

1:36:20sufficient space was there for it so in terms of of the actual square footage of the station there aren't there aren't very good options there in terms of screening um you know the finish on that wall those sorts of things where we're you know we're designing that wall and it's

1:36:37one of the emblems that we've been soliciting from from the city staff in this Casa Cerrito or are happy to incorporate a number of those things I would say I think those pine trees were probably a great visual screening barrier when they were 5 or 10 or 15 years old but now all the foliage on

1:36:54those trees is 30 or 40 feet up in the air and so really what you've got is a a 12 inch diameter obstruction but otherwise it's it's a clear view through the substation so I don't think that those particular trees are doing what they did once in their lifetime and I think a wall That's lowered down

1:37:09that covers that you know that that space from zero to ten feet above grade is would accomplish what those trees used to accomplish I I have the the thing when I heard about this that I think I was most concerned about just conceptually knowing the neighbors of this site was

1:37:33um Portola well it was all the children that actually go to either preschool or middle school or in the very near future Elementary School uh as next as neighbors next door or immediately across the street and we have had experience with another unnamed utility

1:37:55doing major work um that began on the first day of school as I remember and um was so noisy that they actually couldn't even hold class in the classroom buildings nearest to the work site and um so I'm sort of sensitive about that topic I guess you could say because I

1:38:18got a lot of uh concern calls about that so what I'm wanting to know about is looking at the two sites Casa Cerrito and the Portola that's known as the Portola site um then what what are you going to do to make sure that for example you don't do something major on the first day of

1:38:43school or maybe even the first week or two of school and that you don't have um a lot of noise of construction not just operation of the facility in general which we of course are concerned about and I think you are too but the actual construction noise created for example if you take

1:39:04down these trees that's going to be noisy um a noisy operation so there are better times than others to do that to reduce the impact on the neighbors um so could you address yeah absolutely thank you with with respect to uh removal of those trees you know the the

1:39:27unfortunate thing in this situation is that Casa Cerrito is not really a school it's a it's more of a daycare center or a preschool and it doesn't have an extended summer vacation or two weeks off you know the next two weeks off and so there's really not a no impact way to do that work and

1:39:43that's something that I I personally did the research to find that about a year ago and so that's why we've been engaging uh directly with the staff and up through uh Chris the recreation director to find the least impact way to accomplish that removal work um I did a project in Pleasant Hill that

1:40:00was between Diablo Valley College on one side College Park High School and the other and I forget the name of the elementary school and there was a one week period in August when all three of those schools were out of service and we ramped up with as many crews as we could

1:40:14get to knock out three and a half weeks of work in about seven days and is that your plan for here that's unfortunately not the type of work that we're doing at the substation this is a multi-year effort and and so crashing it all at once to knock it out isn't isn't

1:40:29a good a good option but what I can commit to you is that while we're planning out our construction sequence and identifying what activities are occurring at those sensitive times of the year that's something that we'll look at and uh you know I don't have the the principles

1:40:43phone numbers or these particular campuses yet but that is something that on my projects I typically go out and do um I think I think that's probably a good Outreach for us to do specifications can provide you those phone numbers right Chris yes yeah so that's so that's some direct

1:40:58Outreach on on that um even though they they may not all completely Cohen's for example I would imagine that taking the isn't taking down those trees is going to be really noisy yes and is it of limited duration and time that's small it's not going to take like half a year to do that it's going

1:41:19to be how long maybe yeah I'll provide you what the direct discussions we've had with the city staff on this particular issue because we've had quite a number of conversations and I think they've been very constructive what we've basically worked out is Casa Cerrito doesn't operate on the

1:41:35weekends but having chainsaws and trucks running if they're in your backyard as a resident is also a pretty serious impact and that's something so we don't want to do this Saturday and Sunday six Saturdays and Sundays in a row because that's got a a pretty bad impact on a

1:41:51residence not so much on the school but definitely the residents and so what our current approach here is to start on a Saturday do the work that's closest to the the school building itself continue working through the week at the rear of that of that strip and then if

1:42:07we need it for that second weekend to get in and remove the rest of the trees or the wood that's at the site actually because of the lights being on I can't really see when you point what your I don't have a clue what you're pointing at get the lights down yeah could we

1:42:21could so when you said rear of the site where were you pointing um back here so the the uh the interesting thing in this this setup is that there's not actually any physical divide between the PG e property and the city property so if you're at Casa Cerrito it seems like you

1:42:36this whole area is is free and open to Rome um what we're currently engaged with um with the public works department on a permit to enter is is how to use the gate here on Portola what sort of temporary fencing to erect along along this driveway so we've got some

1:42:54separation between where the the children are and where the work is occurring um how best to secure that there is there is access through our site through a gate here but it's sort of a convoluted path of travel and we'll make the work more complicated and in any

1:43:08case we still need to provide some sort of physical separation between where the kids are and where the the work's occurring so what about Portola right there right yeah so what what we're going to have is some pickup times our our crews are generally working 10 hour days so that

1:43:30sort of spans the school Rush but there is going to be an impact to traffic when those trucks are coming in and out if they're at those at those same times are there a lot of materials coming in the main entrance to the substation is here on Schmidt and that's that's the entrance we plan

1:43:48on using and this is where most of the available space will be for sort of like construction trailers and staging so I don't anticipate a whole lot of construction work happening coming up Portola this is this is difficult to navigate in a passenger vehicle with a

1:44:02one-way Street and the uh in this corner down here at I'm forgetting the name of the street that turns in here so I most of our access in and out of the substation for materials dump trucks that sort of thing would be on the Schmidt side so so will you have a lot

1:44:16of in and outs of large amounts of whatever I'd expect it yeah this sort of construction has some phases so when we're we're doing what we call dirt work digging trenches Foundation footings there's a lot of material to off haul that's generally not on an ongoing basis

1:44:33it's more like we stockpile at the site and then bring all in all at once to try to remove as much of it as possible in a day what I'm kind of wondering about is it the sort of thing that would impact um the route of travel in and out let me just say I'll just finish what

1:44:52I'm saying and maybe and then you can use it in the future the information um on like for example at El Cerrito High School when they were bringing a lot of stuff in like Portables they brought in a huge number of Portables all at once uh over a period of days they actually did a notification of

1:45:12neighbors along the Route and what they found is it that if you at least told people what you were doing ahead of time then they were more accepting of of what was going on rather than if they were woken up by it in the morning you know at six o'clock in the morning

1:45:31which I think you're not supposed to do actually anyway but you know the um just just sort of doing some Advanced notification a postcard in the mail for example seemed to be very helpful in letting people know what was going on at various points in the construction when

1:45:50when that was happening and so I would highly recommend that you consider doing that and I will speak to that we've done several projects that are similar to this and where we've had multi-layered uh ways of communicating to our customers one thing that we found

1:46:07extremely valuable is once we find a partner such as an HOA we find uh extra homeowners associations we find extra or even neighborhood watch groups that are able to email the masses but what we've done when we bring in large pieces of equipment or other things that we're

1:46:27bringing into the substation that could be extremely large have impacts we do notify those customers in advance so while we want to start off with introducing the project it will have its continuous Communications that'll reach our customers because I think you could

1:46:44also point out that the advantage to the area of having an upgraded system you know you can do it's this is not completely just the construction it's also that we'll have a much better and I would hope it would perhaps make it more reliable and I'm getting nod yes good

1:47:03system and this is this is what brings us the power where we live so um you know so they're I think you can you could um use it to do that also but but it it did on these other projects that I know about uh make a real difference to be able to to do that kind of work ahead of time it

1:47:25reduced the number of complaints very significantly um and um so um so you're gonna one of the other one other one with the things you maybe you just addressed is so Portola drive itself you'll pretty much stay off of in terms of large things at least yeah so I don't know that we're going to stay

1:47:53off of it entirely there's there is a gate uh right about here with a driveway whether we reconfigure that widen it close it off those are sorts of the the discussions we're having right now our feasibility studies have basically been what can we fit inside this parcel

1:48:07electrically and now we're starting to look at the details of those designs as well as the the box that it that contains at the perimeter um what Rory was talking about are permit loads and we definitely will have some large pieces of equipment to come in here and those will be permitted

1:48:22separately with you know they'll probably come from a port so that's interesting you should mention that because that brings me to my next question about the roads we like our roads here um because we think they we have done you know we've done a good job of rebuilding them and

1:48:39um so we would not like to see them ruined um so when you say pyramid of those I assume you mean too heavy for conditions yeah those would be oversized loads that generally don't move with with traffic during normal hours the plan for doing any repair that would be necessitated by the work that

1:49:01you're doing or will you have a plan well I don't have the specifics of those we haven't ordered the material yet I don't know which vendors will be delivering it I I don't have any place to put it right now but what I can say is we'd be more than happy to go out with public works and

1:49:15document the existing conditions that are out there compare before and after and if there's if there's evidence that we've caused some damage we'll we'll be around to fix it that's something we'd be happy to do okay are there any further questions from the council no I actually have one

1:49:33um it has to do with a comment you made Mr Frank said about uh complying with County noise ordinance um this property is fully within the city and I would encourage you to comply with our general plan and our noise ordinances and with regards to the the fence that you the

1:49:52gate that you just mentioned I'm hoping that you will coordinate uh egress to the property with our fire department since we were in First Responders since they will be I'm sure providing you Services over the duration of this of this project so sure absolutely thank

1:50:11you okay is that it thank you for coming we appreciate it and appreciate the opportunity for our residents to hear who are listening um over the internet and by other means council members I just have an update to Mr lyman's Question in regards to when that facility was built in El Cerrito it was

1:50:31put in service on February 29 2012.

1:50:35thank you it's older than we are as a city if it was that old I would be very worried very worried um with that we are through our presentations and it's almost nine o'clock um so let's quickly move on to the adoption of the consent calendars items number 5A through 5e certainly I'll move

1:51:06adoption of items 5A 5c 5D and 5e second um all in favor please say aye extension motion carries unanimously so I take it that means that b you want to discuss I I do I'm hoping the police chief is still here and has the opportunity to discuss a few items um as uh we were given additional uh

1:51:40testimony um from Mr Hill uh with regards to a couple of items but the most notable one that I wanted to focus on was the clarifications that were provided with with regards to trick riding um to to refine the definition of trick riding and and the areas where uh trick

1:52:02riding would be prohibited and I was wondering if if you could speak to those that suggested language um and because it did come out after your agenda bill and I was just wondering if this was something that you would entertain us entertaining so thank you councilmember Lyman and

1:52:19mayor and the rest of council I'm Sophie Moyer your police chief and to speak specifically to this item really City staff got together to engage in examining the ordinance um Mr Hill a member of our community raised some very important issues that he would like us

1:52:38to consider in terms of trick writing so just speaking to that section section 11.64040e trick writing is intended to keep those cyclists who engage in acrobatic fancy or stunt riding on lands that's not traveled by pedestrians vehicular traffic the intent is to keep those people that

1:53:01are engaging in either practice or competition away from the general public because they're focusing actually on perfecting their craft or competing I think it's appropriate given the late input that we consider suspending the adoption of this ordinance and the amendment so that Mr

1:53:23Hill and other members of the community in the police department can meet and have a real thoughtful conversation about how we can include language that really lives up to the intent of the law so I would re I would be open to suspending this and having further

1:53:40conversation if this Council would like it however I also believe that the way that the ordinance amendment is written does not conflict with the intent that Mr Hill has suggested is there any urgency to passing this this ordinance I mean a nice clean you know starting to

1:54:04enforce it on January 1 would have been nice but there's no there's no urgency is there is there there's no urgency there's no legislative need for us to do this quickly I'd like to hear from from Mr Hill and give thoughtful consideration to what he's asking for I

1:54:20know we've also had to input regarding the duplication of sections for instance headlights and other things that are included in this very large vehicle code that we would not like to add to I've read that several times and I it's such a good read it is and I'm sure you know

1:54:38every bit of it but we're really intending not to duplicate what's already included in state law but I think aligned with our values as the El Cerrito Police Department in this city we like to hear from our public so I I am I support whatever this Council recommends based on what your

1:54:58constituents say okay thank you yeah I'm okay I'm willing I'm willing to entertain tabling it but we do have a public speaker on this item we should hear from him first hello good evening um thank you Miss Moore um that was very thoughtful and um I do apologize for the

1:55:29lateness of bringing uh this before you these um these items for consideration um I'm really here just to help and um I think that in reading it I was a little bit concerned about the um the perception that it could be misinterpreted because uh writing disciplines can vary

1:55:53areas where it's appropriate to ride can be and um uh thought of differently between person and person and writers have different levels of abilities so one person who's very skilled at doing uh something it might you know might be nice to see him do this here or there um somebody else

1:56:14who's not it's totally inappropriate for them um but I would like to say that I am a member of the Parks and Recreation Commission I'm also a coach with the El Cerrito High School mountain bike Team a licensed coach for the national Scholastic Cycling Association for four

1:56:30years now and one of the things we preach religiously is safety and safety includes wearing helmets bicycle lights being visible signaling everything that our model police department our bike Patrol unit stresses as well and the team and the police department and the bike Patrol

1:56:54unit has had a really good relationship in the bat in the past we've helped out with their Bike Rodeo several of the officers have actually come to many of our rides as ride leaders which is a wonderful to have them as a role model and have that one-on-one experience with police

1:57:12officers so um I I applaud what this change in the ordinance is trying to do um I would just like to see some of the things that are in the state code reinforced um maybe just in reference because um that's that's what El Cerrito stands for I think and that's what we're trying to

1:57:38do and I know that it can get wordy and the document can get large but as far as trick writing goes um would you I would love to work with Miss Moore um more on this item you all have what I've written in terms of rewriting it so I won't read it and talk about it

1:58:01appropriate places to ride are key there aren't a lot of appropriate places for people to ride in our environment where we are we're fairly dense environment with hills so it's left to the city parks which can get crowded um and we don't have a bike park in the

1:58:24nearest one is in Sacramento so I've been trying to Advocate to for us to build a bike park here in El Cerrito as a way to give cyclists a place to go and also maybe relieve some of the overcrowding in some of the other city parks that we have but nonetheless it is absolutely not

1:58:46appropriate for any trick riding to be happening and where it would cause a dangerous situation be it around crowded pedestrian areas or city streets moment which is should we basically take it off you know drop it from being considered tonight and restudy it would you be are

1:59:11you interested in doing that absolutely okay yes okay thank you that's really all I wanted to say and thank you for your time and your consideration okay thank you okay [Music] that's all I like to do but stable it and as suggested by the chief and agreed to by

1:59:34Mr Hill I think that's great if we can get the greatest bicycle Minds in our community working on getting the best ordinance we can get is that a motion all right I'll second change it to motion the second any comments ready to vote okay all in favor of the motion please say aye aye thank you any

1:59:55opposition motion carries unanimously thank you okay um so with that we will move on on the agenda to item number um seven policy matters and the first one that we'll consider tonight is the fiscal year 2013-14 budget update thank you good evening mayor and Council I'm Lisa

2:00:24malixade the city's Finance director and tonight I'll be providing an update on the city's budget okay okay sorry okay foreign so tonight um we want to just give you some preliminary results of our fiscal year last fiscal year ending um on June 30th which was fiscal year

2:01:09um 12 13. we want to talk a little bit about the current fiscal year general fund and give you an update on our current status of our revenues and expenditures we also want to talk a bit about Reserves also talk about some of the challenges that we still face we're only about five

2:01:26months into the fiscal year but we do have some challenges and we want to make sure that we talk about those and then we also want to just talk a bit about next steps as we move forward with our planning process for uh figure 14 15.

2:01:45okay so this first slide is basically a high level overview of the general fund and this gives you a summary of our revenues and expenditures gives you our actuals the first columns our actuals for last fiscal year just to give you some comparison it also gives you an

2:02:04information on the budget that was adopted for 13. any changes that were approved throughout the years reflected in the amended budget what we projected and where we thought we would end the fiscal year when we adopted the budget for fiscal year 1314 and then actually

2:02:21how we ended the year for fiscal 13.

2:02:25um as you can see there's a lot of numbers up here um but basically we didn't end up um too far out of line but we do want to get into some of the reasons why the budget was slightly off from our projections and look at those in a little more detail okay so this next slide is really sort

2:02:47of a focus on our Revenue variances and sort of our the major revenue streams to the general fund as you can see the largest um discrepancy in variance basically between what we projected and where we ended the fiscal year was in our taxes these are the largest revenue streams to

2:03:06the general funds and all three of the major areas both property sales tax and utility users tax taxes were off significantly just briefly to kind of give you an overview of why we think those were off our property taxes as you're well aware have been changing over the last few

2:03:25years and when the projections were done for 13 we underestimated the impact of those properties that had been reassessed these are the properties that are also referred to as prop 8. so that is the the primary driver of the discrepancy between where we thought we

2:03:42would end the fiscal year and where we actually ended um our sales tax actually was tracking all year and so we really anticipated being in line with the budget but at the end of the year our Board of Equalization made an adjustment and this was in our final June payment which occurred obviously

2:04:01after the adopted budget and this was basically a misallocation by the Board of Equalization for Home Depot sales tax which we share with Richmond so this was a pretty big impact to our sales tax and that's reflected here in this column the other major driver of this was our

2:04:20utility users tax and at this point we're still trying to investigate exactly what happened we're not sure very similar to the sales tax this Revenue stream had been on Trend and tracking as it had in the past so we were somewhat surprised at the end of the fiscal year to have such a large

2:04:39difference between what we anticipated and what we received but we are looking at this and we will continue to update Council as we get more information we hope to have a little bit more information if not the complete answer for you by our mid-year update in February

2:04:56um so just moving on to some of our other revenues um we actually did better in by about 744 000 which helped to offset some of that um some of the loss in our Revenue stream from taxes and probably the largest um area here was in our charges for services and the

2:05:18um sorry this um was primary it was a combination of things it included higher than anticipated facility rentals also plan check fees and some of our child care fees so that was kind of the biggest number there okay so moving on and looking a bit at our expenditures

2:05:40overall our expenditures were pretty much in line we did end up with about sixty six thousand dollars of difference with our expenditures that are ongoing this excludes any one-time expenditures which you can see we did have this year and that was related to the solar

2:05:57project but looking at the comparison of the expenditures that we have on an ongoing basis our personnel and our non-personnel we were right in line so that is reflected in the numbers but you will see our overall number reflects a discrepancy of about 1.2 million dollars

2:06:14that is the one time expenditure of the solar foreign so we want to move forward on to the next fiscal year here so hopefully that has kind of given you an overview of where we were for 13. but we want to use the information from 13 as we look into our current fiscal year and

2:06:41out and based on the information that we have from 13 as well as just four months almost five months at this point of actuals as well as some other information that we've had more updated information since the time we adopted our budget we've actually made some adjustments to

2:06:59our projections okay so the the major area that we're revising projections on the revenue side is related to the taxes and this is really just our property and our sales tax again we want to make sure that with the information we have we've more accurately captured the Prop 8 values

2:07:22and so we have adjusted property taxes as a result of that and we've adjusted those down as well as our sales tax some actually sales tax was better than anticipated but the net of those two is about 228 thousand dollars so we feel like that's a pretty realistic number

2:07:40and we're comfortable with that at this point we haven't revised our utility users tax projections from what was in the adopted budget again we're seeing a very odd Trend we've looked at 10 years of Trends in the utility users tax and we are already tracking well above what we've done so

2:08:00there's definitely something going on and we you know are going to keep a very close eye on this and we'll provide council with an update throughout the the fiscal year you know we're hoping that it will stay on track but again we will really keep you informed and provide an updated

2:08:18projection if anything has changed at mid-year as well as some information about what happened in 13.

2:08:28so on the expenditure side of this fiscal year we have made some adjustments here and it's actually in the form of reducing some of our expenditures the largest driver of this which has continued to be over the last few years is really in our vacancies and that's about three hundred thousand

2:08:46dollars of this and that's as I mentioned this sort of was supposed to be first quarter but it's actually more reflective of five months of information so it's we feel really comfortable that that's a more accurate number than just working off of three months of

2:09:02information we also have are anticipating some Savings in Contract Services that were planning to reduce in the current fiscal year so this provides an update to the first slide that we started with and this actually shows the impact on the general fund of last year's performance how we

2:09:25ended the fiscal year as well as what we've anticipated in the adopted budget versus what we're now projecting the most notable difference here is that you will see our fund balance ending Reserve percent has changed it's gone from eight percent to about six percent

2:09:44so we do want to make sure that we are talking about the reserves and the importance of Reserves and so this brings us sort of to our next slide and the change in the thumb balance which has been unusual for El Cerrito which is really hovered around that 10 and above is really speaks to

2:10:05the importance of continuing to have a strong reserve and this just gives you a quick um policy overview of what the city has adopted we want to maintain a 10 fund balance however the reserve the purpose of the reserve is really to provide some buffer in times when there

2:10:26is an economic downturn revenue shortfalls and things like that so actually that's exactly what the city has done and used the reserves appropriately but with them at six percent we are concerned and we want to make sure that we have a plan to increase them back to the 10 and if

2:10:43possible even increase those so we do want to turn just a little bit of attention to our special funds I've talked about this during budget adoption special funds represent about 30 percent of our budget so it's not insignificant we focus a lot on the general fund but

2:11:03as the revenues to the general fund have declined over the years we've actually relied more and more heavily on our special funds some of the special funds that the city has include gas taxes storm maintenance Integrated Waste Management as well as grants um this year we are using almost close

2:11:22to a million dollars of a FEMA Grant to actually purchase some equipment in the fire department so it's it's important so we've utilized the funds appropriately but we've also used them to the point where they can no longer really sustain the level of expenditures

2:11:39so staff is looking at some different options to keep these funds balanced in the out years and we'll talk much more about those during the budget process for next year as I mentioned in my sort of opening statement it's you know we've balanced the budget but we've made a lot of

2:12:00assumptions we think they're fairly conservative but we do want to make sure that we proceed with caution we've had some fluctuations last year that do concern us and we want to make sure that we stay on top of that in this fiscal year so these you know the budget is

2:12:15balanced at this point as I said um we're assuming that we're going to maintain the vacancies that we have no additional changes in our sales tax and that our utility users tax actually tracks with the projections that we're assuming at this point on the positive we are looking at some

2:12:32other options in the current fiscal year that would help us reduce expenses and be able to put a little bit more aside for reserves and then if well it probably won't help us this year if we actually receive a favorable decision on our RDA lawsuit that could help relieve

2:12:47some of our budget issues going forward and I've talked just briefly about planning for next year's budget but we did want to just highlight sort of the frame rate framework that we'll be using to guide the budget process and this includes the implementation plan for the

2:13:06Strategic plan that was adopted a few months ago we plan to engage the community much more in discussions around the budget and solicit some feedback from them we will definitely be providing a proposed budget that includes addressing any structural fund deficits as well as a plan to increase

2:13:24the reserves and this just provides you with the calendar sort of of our next steps as I mentioned we'll be coming back to Council in February with a mid-year budget update February and April we'll be working on sort of soliciting feedback talking with the community

2:13:43working with staff to develop our budget that reflects the resources that are available aligned with the Strategic plan and in May May through June we plan to present the proposed budget and then hopefully by June have a budget that Council can adopt and with that I will

2:14:01turn it over to any questions questions from the council you want to start Jam you fam do you have any um I just have a couple comments so you were you've been in other cities before you came to us and I think one of the things that's sort of a lot of this is out of our control I

2:14:18mean we we know that we can't deal with the assessors in the property tax many of the Cities from what I understand the Mayors and different people have been trying to make some changes and plead our case if you will um about the the poor situation of property tax and and maybe even though

2:14:38the the marketing conditions are a little bit they're Rising a little bit I don't think that we're going to be we can't rely on getting much more money than what you're already proposing um the sales tax with the loss of OSH is is an issue and and Target being gone

2:14:55and I'm not sure exactly what Safeway is bringing in but again I don't know where how we're going to get more sales tax but the uut thing is the the question I had to pose for you having been in other places um I suppose that maybe part of the explanation for this

2:15:16is is cell phone bundling and we really don't know what's going on there and there's a lot of consolidation in that industry and um do you have any insight into that and and why we're I mean I know that we're tracking a little bit better for the first four or five months of this this

2:15:34fiscal year but um do you have any insight into that it's a little disturbing it seems like that but that's something we don't really have a handle on that you personally but all of us yeah I mean we don't have a solid answer I would actually ask Lori um Travinia to come up we've done just a

2:15:52little bit of research to kind of get some idea of what's going on and talking with some other experts in the fields I don't actually have um sort of any insights I can share from my experience in another city but I can have Lori sort of share with you a few of the things

2:16:07that we've learned since that time about the uut good evening uh mayor and council members Laura Trevino a financial analyst um in some of the research I've been doing um I have just what I've been learning about is that um there is a there are Trends towards bundling which is which is influencing

2:16:29um the amount that people are paying for their you for their telecommunications utilities um prepaid cell phones do do not um uh get charged with a utility user stack so that's actually something that uh that uh people are working on some legislation to change in Washington

2:16:54um and um those are probably the the biggest things also uh internet service is not subject to utility users text under the internet Freedom Act um and there are different definitions that you can have in your ordinance for utility users tax and ours is um prevents us from charging for some

2:17:18things that others might it sounds like one of the things I've been learning about so um it looks like there may be some things that that could be changed either through legislation at the federal level or or through changes to ordinances um if if it looked like that was

2:17:35something worth pursuing but I'm still looking into it right and so the the question I guess maybe even Mr woodwork can address this but um do do is it realistic to will we have to go to the voters if we were to change some of the language in the uut yes um yes if it would result in people who

2:17:58are not paying the tax having to pay the tax um there's there's some room for some items for an argument that um they were always intended to pay the tax and so the city should be allowed to make amendments to clarify um that they are supposed to pay but that would be subject to challenge and

2:18:19so it would be advisable um to put it on the ballot anyway on an item by item basis we could do more research into it but you know the risks would weigh in favor of putting it on the ballot and letting the voters take care of it since there's probably some other cleanup and modernization

2:18:35that could be done anyway so a lot of this um legislation if you will is is it driven at the federal level and um what kind of changes could you make that would actually reap you more income or is that am I putting on the spot by asking that city manager was just there I mean there

2:19:03are some aspects of I'm there are aspects of once service is bundled um and other types of like voice shifting to other technology there's some there's probably some Revenue that's being lost a result of of modernized um technology that even though the the the UT was actually updated I think

2:19:23within the last seven or so 2004 maybe yeah I mean so it seems like it's not that out of date but in reality technology has marched on so there probably is some Revenue that could be captured by um by modernizing the ordinance to capture some things that are not

2:19:40um currently being taxed um but in order and to answer your first part of your question um legislation has largely being driven at the at the federal level on this um on the other hand um and I'm sorry I was checking something else um Miss Trevino may have noted this at the state level there is

2:20:00an effort to um to deal with the prepaid cellular um I think it's dead for the moment but may well be coming back because there's a there's a significant effort to try to handle that yeah I think there was a bill actually last year that was that was um vetoed and and they're trying to

2:20:16bring it back so so that you could tax prepaid cell phone exactly well I can't imagine that this is really a unique situation to El Cerrito I mean no it's not the industry is like you said has changed so rapidly and I mean it used to be that you know you had to I had to pay

2:20:32extra when I had long distance service on my landline and now it's just it's a set price and we all are experiencing that and with the more money grab that's going on from the cities going funneled over to the state I can't imagine that we're unique in having seen

2:20:50major changes like this in uut yeah and I just had that from my other work and on Revenue related issues I mean the other I mean in some ways it's good news I mean it means people are using less energy using less water I mean it's just bad news for the city's coffers and so

2:21:05and but there's there is there is probably Revenue being lost in ways that should be captured and I think it's absolutely worthwhile to to bring in somebody to to sort of take a look at where um where the trend lines are to try to identify where revenues you'd expect

2:21:20Revenue to still be coming in that isn't one of the other things that recently came to our attention is that PG e has stopped charging utility user taxes on um Master metered accounts because essentially that Master metered account is more like a wholesale account where

2:21:40that person is supposed to then resell and collect the taxes so this would be particularly in the case of mobile home parks which we do happen to have one in El Cerrito and in some cases it apart in apartment complexes and so we need to do a little research to find out if there are any of

2:21:56those types of accounts in El Cerrito so so it's the terminology for that Master Master Meter is it could be a two unit duplex it could be or I would think it's more it would be more accounts than it would be more um reselled than that more units than that more than a duplex probably yeah we

2:22:19have a fair amount of apartment buildings yes that's true I think that's all I have for now just to continue to beat the uut I'm not going to call it a horse um what is do we charge a UT on cable yes okay I could and that's another thing I could Envision many people are

2:22:39now switching from cable television to internet users um so it would be interesting when the update comes around again to look at the uut and What proportion of our Revenue comes from the things like power or water and What proportion comes from uh information well one of the things I was looking

2:22:57into is um is people switch away from cable to getting Television over the internet some ordinances are written in such a way that you can charge the uut on things like Hulu or Netflix and others or not and so um we are not getting any any utu from those types of services and

2:23:17I'm not and I'm working on figuring out if it's because we haven't told them they need to collect it or if it's not written in a way that we can if I could add I mean related to this we are looking internally at sort of historical payments and historical Trends from there's a pretty long list

2:23:34surprisingly long list of vendors that pay this so we're looking internally see did something pick up um I mean somebody just not pay somebody fall off our radar screen something happened and then additionally as Elise alluded to um we may but we may bring in and there are

2:23:54experts in this to sort of look at who is paying and say oh well you have whatever it is whether it's satellite TV or something there are these providers out there that are not on your list at all um we're just not sure and we're working on it but again what is odd about it at least in the

2:24:17first third of this fiscal year is the numbers bounced seem to have bounced back and bounced back at the rate we thought we were at in last year so that's why we haven't revised our projections for this year so that's why we're really trying to focus on did something happen at the end of

2:24:32the year and I can't you know stress enough as as Lisa is trying to stress it I mean it's we are gonna we have to watch this month to month to see if the trends continue but we we are literally looked back at every month since 2003.

2:24:50um to try to figure this out but it was really um it was really an unusual way to end the fiscal year and unfortunately it happened in a number of big categories which is something that has never happened before and certainly in my time here Financial Private Investigations

2:25:06continue um on the Home Depot I want to just ask a question about the assumptions for going forward I saw that the Assumption on one of your slides said that um going forward we assume that our Home Depot proportion would remain the same is sort of the assumption that

2:25:24um the revenue that the the Boe is thinking they're going to try to collect from us for a misallocation going back to 2005 that we would come to terms with them that wouldn't require us to pay those those back payments I was just a little confused about what the

2:25:39Assumption going forward is on Home Depot at this point given that we still have some discussions with them to continue yeah I think it this is a very complicated issue and I'm just um coming up to speed on it as well at this point what we've assumed is that we may have to

2:25:59um reconcile basically the misallocation that's occurred over the last several years while Boe has sort of been looking at this issue and deciding how it should be allocated between the cities so we've made some conservative but probably fairly realistic assumptions in the

2:26:17budget that we wouldn't actually start making any of those payments until I believe March at least March so you know if we don't have to pay those um starting in March it's actually a little bit of Revenue that'll come back to us so great thank you and last question on sales tax as

2:26:38well it's good to it it appears that even though we've had these closures we haven't had the major dip in sales tax that maybe we thought might occur with the loss of those big retailers looking forward given that the state law is now changing around internet sales

2:26:53how is there any modeling with regard to all those Amazon boxes that show up on our doorsteps about this time and I don't know what year that comes into effect and I don't know how the allocation will work to the local level so it's sort of a big question mark for

2:27:09me because we don't know anything and have nothing to base it on we work very closely with the tax consultant that's very on top of what's going on in that industry if you will and the trends and they recently spoke at a conference I attended and talked a bit about this

2:27:31um in you know the outlook for sales tax is is pretty stable but it there's not a lot of anticipation that it will grow even with the internet changes so that I mean we don't have a lot of information and I'm just sort of sharing with you what I heard recently and that

2:27:49presentation actually was done by our Tax Consultants so you know we work again really closely every quarter we get updates from our Tax Consultants on both property taxes as well as our sales taxes and it's hard at this point does anyone know what the state was

2:28:07anticipating they would get with this change in law I thought it was billions I don't have the number but it's a lot but the different the thing with with Amazon in particular is that the way things worked out um the sales tax is basically being charged where Amazon's distribution

2:28:25centers are um that's like not to the customer service that's two or that's two or three places in California um but the state's getting its cut um so the local portion of the taxes is going to those places where the distribution centers are the state's getting all of it right exactly it's

2:28:41within the state so yeah oh that's interesting okay thank you [Music] my bad okay yeah uh have other cities neighboring cities also experience the jump in utility users tax the recent the decline decline yeah um you know I'm not positive Maybe loriness you know I I was I listened in on a

2:29:13seminar about this last week and that was the theme is that people are seeing a drop in uut and it's mostly mostly seems to be attributable to changes in the cell phone industry okay uh next question now when Home Depot was built we negotiated an agreement with Richmond

2:29:32why does the Boe feel it necessary to take a negotiated agreement that nobody was complaining about to my knowledge and screw the whole thing up basically so sort of taking the last part of the question or an implied part of the question I I don't know if anybody here

2:29:52is really sure how this came on to the boe's radar um but the at the time prior to Beauty taking notice of it 100 of the sales tax was going to Richmond and Richmond was allocating 30 percent of it to El Cerrito pursuant to the agreement um not to rehash the entire history but

2:30:12the Boe has basically changed its mind several times since 2005 about how the sales tax should be allocated its most recent decision is that um based on where the sales occur at the cash registers 97 of the revenue is attributable to Richmond three percent to El Cerrito so it's Distributing sales

2:30:33taxes it believes it it's supposed to go according to jurisdictional boundaries Richmond has has affirmed that that they will continue to abide by the deal that that was struck at the time um and so they will continue to send you know essential this isn't exactly right

2:30:51but 27 to to El Cerrito um as of the most recent correspondence from Boe and this is this is an ongoing discussion so we really don't know where this is ultimately going to come out but but pursue to their most recent correspondence they view that agreement as sort of a post-allocation agreement I

2:31:15would call it so in the in it there it is actually possible to structure a deal between cities with the Board of Equalization where they will split the money according to the agreement that is not the type of agreement that was negotiated between El Cerrito and

2:31:29Richmond it's sort of an agreement about how the money will be split once Boe has sent it to one of the two cities so as of right now the way we understand the board of equalizations thinking agreement the cities can do whatever they want with the money after the fact

2:31:45but but they're not going to they're not going to recognize that agreement as one that they should should allocate the money according to if I could just to make it more complex and in the law of unintended consequences um that we've learned only recently when we continue to peel the onion on all of

2:32:07this is whenever the boes shifts the sales tax regardless of how we share it after the fact it ripples through the sales tax system so there's County allocation State allocations and then there's a triple flip which we've talked about that was done so part of what's hitting us is every

2:32:25time the allocations change it ripples through and then there's these unintended consequences that sort of the boes not really their thing and what makes it worse I guess is I think it's fair to say that that the Home Depot store sort of considers itself El Cerrito so despite what

2:32:48they've been instructed to do they are collecting and Reporting on their taxes that they are collecting El Cerritos taxes all you know whichever those are the one percent the measure measure a measure are and then the Boe is coming back which is what we heard about for

2:33:062013 and saying no you can't be collecting measure and measure are because the store is not in El Cerrito we just told you it's 97 in Richmond so all these taxes that have been collected need to sort of be uncollected or reallocated or um so it's just every change is sort of

2:33:25we're finding new new impacts um I would just add and we're just our thinking is evolving what city attorneys just refer to is one one possible solution to all this is to just renegotiate all of the Border issues with Richmond and the Boe has expressed a willingness on sales tax issues to

2:33:49then now recognize those agreements and you get a sort of long-term one-time solution that would true up everything so um that's something we're thinking about and how to approach a Boe with that just one follow-up from the boe's perspective do they don't they think they're being

2:34:06nice to us because they used to give 100 to Richmond and now they're giving us three percent but they're being nice to us isn't that right weren't they allocating 100 to Richmond previously you're like originally put it that way but I guess you could say that actually

2:34:22but right now they're actually sending one 100 to El Cerrito they still haven't implemented that's why I said there's sort of this intervening period where they've gone back and forth about how the money should be allocated at some point they made the decision that

2:34:34actually all of it should go to El Cerrito and that's actually until they implement the most recent decision that they made which is on hold right now they actually are the the check comes to El Cerrito and has for several years it's it's quite a mess Oh I thought the

2:34:50agreement was that Richmond would give us 30 percent no the deal is that the money will be well actually agreement does say the agreement assumes that that one sentence yeah the agreement assumes that 100 will go to Richmond but that's not what Boe has been doing got it okay thanks

2:35:09um so I assume all this has been taking place on the staff level with Boe at this point would it make sense for us to contact our representative On The Board of Equalization and ask her to uh weigh in we have discussed that but we don't think we're at that level yet

2:35:31um but it's something we've talked about but her I mean her district is so Broad and who knows how she would rule on this um or get involved in this I mean we're hoping to work it through I think at the the staff I mean the staff seems to be receptive and open-minded

2:35:47um to our conversation so far okay thank you my uh last question was uh clearly there's major variances between the budget we adopted in June and what the current projections are and other entities I'm involved with when that takes place we have a budget modification process and

2:36:09actually adopt this essentially a modified budget we don't do that we typically do that in February and we may be doing that but it wasn't on your timeline there oh well um we anticipate coming back multiple times this year and it may include recommendations for

2:36:31mid-course corrections I guess okay any further questions is are there any public comments on this item I have no requests to speak okay um so this is the presentation and there's no expected action today no okay it's just an update with that we'll move on then to item

2:36:53number eight which is council local and Regional liaison assignment reports which were held over from December the 3rd are there any reports Greg put his hand up first ladies first please okay um so uh the design review board met on December 4th and um they heard a project a public hearing on

2:37:18the ivy condominium which is its name which is actually is located at 938 Kearney and it was just a consideration to construct three condominium units and a five thousand square foot lot in the community commercial zoning District um and that was all they heard that

2:37:37night park and rec commission met on Wednesday December 11th and um I had a very nice presentation from Yvette I don't see her maybe she's left um and they also had a presentation about um the uh garth's new position yeah in operations and environmental services

2:38:04and there was also a discussion about um a letter of support that Gary Allan Hill brought forward um asking the parking Rec commission to support the city's application for the Environmental Solutions for Community grant program which they did do and I also would like to thank Margot

2:38:26takamiya who had served I'm parked on rock for eight years and that was her last meeting so most of you know Margo and then on Wednesday November 20th the jpa Met which is for the sports fields and as you know I've given multiple presentations about the state of their

2:38:49finances and there was a proposal to increase user fees up to anywhere from 10 to 20.

2:38:58percent and upwards apparently there was a little bit of an investigation that went by went through by Doug fielding and ultimately what came down at that meeting was that there was a 10 percent user fee increase that was voted on by the jpa and passed and subsequently that decision will be

2:39:22forwarded to the park and rec department of the city of Berkeley and then forward it onto their Council whether that will be accepted and end up happening um so that was the major issue there this was uh the users came there were probably about 40 to 50 different

2:39:40coaches and children there pleading their case not to have any fees increases and um anyway that that's not the exactly it wasn't as high a fee as what had been originally proposed but nonetheless we did vote for a 10 increase and that was to cover primarily the turf resurf the

2:40:01the replacement of the turf down in the turf field at the Bates field already just one report Planning Commission met I believe on December 4th and their primary agenda item was a San Pablo Avenue um specific plan study session similar to what we had so they spent the

2:40:20majority of their time hearing from the consultants and Melanie and asking a lot of questions and no action was taken various important things have been happening at WIC attack and um I did myself out of order here I'm used to being right in a different order um but I'll go ahead and finish since I

2:40:39started um WIC Tac is finalizing um our purse relationship uh uh because as you may remember we were notified that we could not be uh part of the San Pablo purse system and um so there's an enormous number of steps that it takes to establish your own identity with pers and we seem to

2:41:06keep finding out about more of them all along the way but we're almost done I think from what I've been able to detect and um the other thing that's happening although I can't make an official announcement tonight is that we are in the final process of hiring a a

2:41:23permanent executive director and I should be able at the next meeting to actually tell you who that is but I can't tonight Greg on the WIC attack can you speak to their relationship with San Pablo with regards to financial services and maybe their offices being in the city of San

2:41:46Pablo well we don't really have a resolution of what we're going to do we're temporarily changing but we are at say work in progress I would say Okay um I have five which there are a number of different differing opinions so exactly a lot not not a lot to talk about

2:42:05um I have five items to report on uh the West County Solid Waste uh is continuing to evaluate the future of the jpa as I've reported um there are discussions about um the the future of the jba who will be in it and who will not be in it there's a tremendous push uh by some cities to

2:42:27refine uh the language for leaving the jpa um and the jpa at our last meeting did decide that it was premature to focus on that language the withdrawal language is what the the buzzword is it's premature to focus on that withdrawal language until we know more about

2:42:47um the rates the waste uh characterization and how the future rates will be determined so there is um Push by at least one city to um to have this withdrawal language be handled potentially out of what the other cities are considering out of order and so I will keep you abreast of that

2:43:11but needless to say it's it's getting charged because there is potentially a pot as big as three million dollars that could be divided amongst the cities in the county El Cerrito up until October we would have said oh we have no cut of that three million dollars but it was

2:43:36stated in one of the staff reports that the structure that we've been paying that our residents have been paying for a transfer recycling material processing facility is taking materials from outside of the service area and therefore this fund has some portion of this fund has

2:43:59accumulated as a result of a structure that we're we paid for our waste does not our recyclables does not go through this facility because we have our own structure in in El Cerrito but as part of the agreement from 20 plus years ago an agreement that ends I might add in

2:44:18today's the 17th 14 days um there is some some of the revenue that some of the funds that have accumulated in this three million dollar pot have is attributable to a structure that we paid for so that I'll keep you posted it it's not a tremendous amount of money that is is

2:44:37potentially our share would I think the maximum our share could be is a hundred thousand a little over a hundred thousand dollars but as we learned tonight it'll be a little bit every little bit helps um the West County Mayors Association uh met on November 21st at the urging of

2:44:56several cities we did have a presentation on a uh by evolve evolves an organization that wants to reform Prop 13 the reform that they've proposed is to um change how property is assessed for large commercial properties so not Mom and Pop small stores uh not small small

2:45:23commercial properties but large commercial properties the examples are Chevron and and Walt Disney uh the as part of the discussion we did ask a um for equal I asked for a presentation from those that want to preserve Prop 13 so we did have uh presentations from

2:45:45both sides of this issue and quite a number of speakers quite a number of speakers this this uh topic is uh brings out some passionate uh opinions the tree committee met and is working on how to figure out how to protect our street trees especially in our commercial properties so they are coming

2:46:09up with policies on how private property owners can um solicit tree pruning and mostly how commercial properties along San Pablo Avenue should request for Street tree pruning the green Corridor met this is a organization that is UC Berkeley and the cities along San Pablo Avenue and I-80

2:46:39and I 980 or 880 rather so it's Hayward to San Pablo and they were looking at opportunities for regional implementation of a bike share program and for car charging stations and uh so those are two opportunities that might be implemented on a regional basis and El Cerrito with our Del Norte BART

2:47:05stations are sorry both BART stations Del Norte and Plaza might be good candidates for both of these uh programs and so I was uh glad to represent that opinion there and lastly as part of your uh Contra Costa County appointed person I'm a alternate to the a associate Bay

2:47:29Area government's executive committee and I attended a presentation um first of all the meeting at the meeting Julie Pierce was announced to be the president affirmed it was expected that she would be but she was affirmed but there was a presentation on the Grand Boulevard which is uh San Mateo

2:47:49San Mateo and Santa Clara County's version of San Pablo Avenue it's El Camino Real and their planning document for the Grand Boulevard is quite impressive and some of the things that they're proposing to do to rejuvenate the Grand Boulevard would apply directly to San Pablo Avenue and

2:48:07and I would encourage staff to to get uh the Grand Boulevard presentation and start thinking about our Avenue and I know we do work with the other cities San Pablo Avenue cities like Richmond San Pablo and Hercules but it this was a quite an impressive long-range plan for improving

2:48:29El Camino Real um and additionally there was a long discussion about um cap and trade apparently abag will ABAC and MTC may be be the recipients of quite a lot of money as a result of selling um cap and trade of carbon uh emissions and there was a lot of discussion about

2:48:54the distribution of those potential revenues and who should get it should it be the ports should it be communities that are affected by highways should it be those that are having to absorb a lot of the dense infill development and I'll keep my eye on this um El Cerrito obviously as a

2:49:15result of many reasons our Transit our freeways are infill opportunities might be a good recipient of some of this these funds that would come through uh from abag and I'm assuming that would be done in a awarded in a similar manner that some of the other funds are awarded

2:49:38um so that we would have to put in projects effectively and uh you know compete for these funds but I wanted to make sure that everyone was aware that those funds are out there and we need to start keeping our eyes on it if the cap and trade project is successful I think

2:49:56it was something on the order of 10 billion dollars or more so wow Mark that's a little more than a hundred thousand from the Waste Management Authority just a little that's why that's why I caught my eye so I figured I'd report on it thanks I was at the meeting of the East Bay Economic

2:50:17Development Alliance and it was very interesting I mean there's a presentation from the uh beer company which has a large facility in West Berkeley and has a groundbreaking Academy that they do in conjunction with the public schools to train young people in the Biotech

2:50:35Industry okay so with that we are adjourned until our next regular meeting on January the 7th of next year and see you all then and have uh happy holidays thank you