City Council Meeting March 4, 2014

0:00:19it's not close enough good evening everyone and welcome to the El Cerrito city council meeting uh please uh I guess first I want to announce that we had a closed session and um there were no decisions reached the next I would ask councilmember Lyman to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance yes

0:00:59to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all uh the next item on the agenda is Council and staff Communications okay thank you mayor just a couple items to announce

0:01:29um first of all all the residents should have received in their quarterly newsletter information on many things that are coming up but I wanted to highlight one of them and that is that the city will be seeking Community input on budget priorities beginning on March

0:01:4113th and we'll have several sessions on uh weeknight evenings Saturdays various times to accommodate as many schedules as possible and I just wanted to point this out because this is um we haven't done this in quite a long time I'm not sure when we blasted it it's the first

0:01:57time and we really want to hear from our from our residents about the budget it really helps the council and staff understand what the priorities are in environments where priorities are very important because things that are not priorities can't always fit into the

0:02:12budget I also wanted to mention that the city has its fifth annual entrepreneur training program that will be beginning April 7th and you need to sign up for this and it has to be an RSVP and it's an 11-week program M that provides Group Training to Residents or other or

0:02:31businesses in the city who are interested in getting in sort of sharpening their entrepreneur skills and everything that goes along with with the beginning of business the only other item I wanted to mention oh I do have it here is that uh has to do with the drought which we're all

0:02:45keenly aware of everybody should have received a letter from East Bay mud in case it might not have seen it the the board of East Bay mud is calling on all customers to voluntarily cut water use by 10 so I there are many ways to do this in East Bay mud's website is just chock

0:03:03full of ideas for how you can cut your consumption it is a voluntary request at this point and hopefully that will all it will come to because perhaps the drought will end as soon as possible but I wanted to point out that that request has been made thank you yeah well I I just want to announce a

0:03:24couple of activities that I participated in this weekend the first was the opening day of the baseball season for El Cerrito youth baseball and it was the largest one I've ever seen I believe they had and I might have these numbers a little off 37 teams sound about right

0:03:45of which six were in the youngest category and uh if you were there and saw all of these kids piled into this one small area on Pomona Avenue near the theater you would see that El Cerrito is alive and well and growing it's too truly amazing uh just how many kids there were but the thing I liked

0:04:15best of all about it this year was hearing the work that they've been doing on working on good sportsmanship uh and um they have a a program where they were giving out stickers this is you know to the adults um about uh being a good Sportsman and I understand they have a system for keeping track of

0:04:40and Sportsman's like conduct and then going over it later in meetings so um this is just really um an amazingly positive thing I think and it's a really good uh example to be setting for the students that are participating in the program so I was very excited to see that and then on a

0:05:02lighter note I went to the Oscars at the Cerrito Theater which was full I think of other people doing that and it was a lot of fun and if you ever have nothing else to do during that period of time it's it's it is kind of a fun activity and with that we will move on on our

0:05:23agenda to oral Communications from the public which is an opportunity for members of the public to speak on items that are not on the agenda do we have speakers um yes but no speakers for non-agenda items okay well then we will move on to presentations this is the category we

0:05:43have several of this month and the first one is the American Red Cross Proclamation and um we have a proclamation to approve so shall we do that first and then um I understand there's someone here to receive it if that's correct okay so this is the um uh March is American Red Cross month

0:06:10and so we have a proclamation um and this is about recognizing the nation's everyday Heroes um who are the on the front lines giving blood taking life's sake life-saving classes and providing Financial donations and they're always there and lending a helping hand in the time of need in the

0:06:33past year 3000 volunteers of the American Red Cross Bay Area chapter helped more than 730 families with temporary housing clothing food and emotional support during 433 local disasters and our local chapter trained more than 177 000 people in life-saving CPR first aid

0:06:58water safety and preparedness education and they provided emergency communications counseling financial assistance and a caring presence to more than 8 000 local military families they also provided 28 Bay area hospitals with nearly 75 000 units of red blood cells platelets

0:07:22and plasma to Patient patients in need and a number of other things so it's pretty amazing and we do have the item on our agenda to approve this Proclamation so moved seconded okay is there any discussion and do we have any speaker slips those speakers for this item all in

0:07:46favor please say aye aye aye aye any opposition any abstention motion carries unanimously and with that I'll come down and present it here [Music] the next item on our agenda is a proclamation for Arbor Day and the tree program update and that's going to be presented by Stephen pray

0:08:59and Stephen is our environmental programs manager that's right thank you Mary ableston city council members of the public and City staff uh indeed I'm Stephen pray and I'm the environmental programs manager for the Department of Public Works this position manages the city tree

0:09:22program the city's npdes clean water and integrated Pest Management Programs facilitates the development of sustainable landscapes in El Cerrito and is one of the city's primary points of contact for volunteer efforts involving Landscapes and the environment including the tree committee

0:09:42tonight I'm here to recommend that the city council adopt a proclamation that recognizes Arbor week in El Cerrito March 7th through 14th this coincides with California Arbor week as Jace Sterling Morton the founder of Arbor week said other holidays focus on the past

0:10:04Arbor Day focuses upon the future indeed when we plant trees we are contributing to a better future I am also here to give you a brief update on the city tree program which has been actively Guided by the recommendations of the 2007 El Cerrito urban forestry management plan

0:10:27and I have a little PowerPoint that maybe we could bring the lights down slightly at least so that it's visible in Spring 2003 oh sorry 2013 the city completed a U.S forest Service Cal Fire uh tree inventory Grant of over 10 000 trees about 4 000 vacant tree planting sites

0:10:56and a can of canopy assessment of over 19 000 trees in the hillside Natural Area software acquired with this grant is currently used to track Maintenance and Service requests of City trees as a result of the inventory the city held a public meeting with 80 people in

0:11:12attendance that elucidated the city of else the city of El Cerrito Urban Forest resource analysis part of the grant that tells us that our street trees provide annual benefits of 55.79 per capita in air quality improvements storm water interception CO2 reduction and aesthetic

0:11:33contributions to the Social and economic health of the community based on on estimated expenditures for every one dollar spent on Street trees the residents receive four dollars and 28 cents in benefits maintaining City trees in fall of 2013 the city negotiated a new tree pruning

0:11:58contract that was approved and implemented to address the most critical work identified in the tree inventory and start a grid pruning approach that carries out preventative pruning on every street tree in a pruning Zone this contract was brought to city council for approval in November 2013.

0:12:16staff projects that all City trees City street trees will be serviced in the next four to seven years pending future adopted budgets the tree committee was appointed which is part of the urban forestry management plan to seat a tree committee the tree committee was appointed and has been

0:12:39meeting monthly since uh October 2012.

0:12:49this is a slide of our uh Arbor Day planting in March 2013 the city coordinated an Arbor Day event with the El Cerrito Garden Club and the Portola Middle School 7th grade science class where 12 Native oak trees trees were planted in Cerrito Vista Park as succession plantings to the declining

0:13:11pine trees there foreign from the ground up in fall 2013 City staff in collaboration with the tree committee applied for and was awarded a California Urban Forest Council invest from the ground up Community tree planting Grant to plant 27 Street trees on Avila El Dorado and Carlson streets

0:13:35the tree committee and Public Works staff collaborated with neighbors to plant vacant tree sites on February 15th this year foreign there's also an Outreach to business to the business Community a grant that we receive from the uh invest from the ground up in January 2014 again

0:14:00um this the tree committee and invest from the ground up in uh staff in cooperation with the El Cerrito Chamber of Commerce and the Elsa raido Garden Club developed an online survey which is currently on the city website to determine the overall perceptions of the

0:14:16business Community regarding trees the aforementioned collaborators are producing an informational brochure in response to the survey to be distributed to the El Cerrito business Community the brochure will elaborate on the benefits of Street trees maintenance procedures

0:14:33pruning responsibilities and how to request service among other topics Arbor week 2014 City staff in cooperation with the El Cerrito Garden Club the tree committee and Portola Middle School again are coordinating a tree planting event similar to last year to celebrate the celebrate the future by

0:14:59planting succession trees in acerrito Vista Park future treat programs include work with this uh with the tree committee to complete a revised approved City tree list improve public Outreach efforts plant more trees educate residents regarding selecting planting and

0:15:22maintaining trees and Foster volunteer campaigns for tree planting and irrigation along city streets that's almost verbatim from the urban forestry management plan uh also to continue the street tree grid pruning program to reach every city tree to minimize tree failures and improve

0:15:41the health of the city tree inventory consider becoming a tree City USA consider additional policy changes necessary for the implementation of the urban forestry management plan and continue to build Arbor week activities to involve more young people and assure

0:15:57age diversity in El Cerrito's Urban Forest thank you if there are any questions or comments I can take them at this time foreign Liaisons to the tree committee I do want to thank the tree committee for all of their hard work over the last two years it's really starting to pay off

0:16:22um so I appreciate that and uh having been on the parking rack when the urban Forest plan was developed it's nice to see it being utilized and put into action and implemented in many ways so I want to thank you for your hard work in in guiding the tree committee through

0:16:40their implementation of the urban Forest plan thank you foreign I want to concur with uh Greg and let you know that um I really enjoyed being at those the event where you're doing all that planning and I was amazed at how much work was going into it and um I actually learned a lot one of the

0:17:11things I learned that I thought I would share maybe now is that over watering can be devastating for um plants including trees and when they were planting the trees that you saw the pictures of on um does you can't really tell where it was but I think it was kind of near the

0:17:34Kentucky Fried Chicken right which is on that is on San fabulous so this is sort of next to that but if you look if you just sort of project further back in the distance um they were digging holes for they they dug holes for the trees and there was a pool of water in each of the holes

0:17:53and it was from over watering and maybe you could explain just a moment what that over watering was doing well it was penetrating the ground uh and really saturating the ground it was a leak a water leak at the Kentucky Fried Chicken I was able to intercept and talk to a maintenance person and try

0:18:16to get the water turned off I it's still running slowly but I need to follow up with them I don't think they're really aware I've tried to make them aware on three occasions but they haven't really hasn't been fixed yet so I I just really wanted to bring that up to mention that

0:18:33um the thing that we think of is just a little drip or something may actually be a big problem uh for the plants that we do have uh even in this time of drought or maybe especially in this time of drought we we're wasting a lot of water doing that so we want to be careful and

0:18:52think about repairing any leaks that we know of or any Waters that's left running or anything so that that doesn't happen but this is really an amazing project and I look forward to a lot more projects like that when I first saw the um the Grant I was very surprised that at the timing

0:19:13because it was to plant trees in February and February is just one month ahead of Arbor week and I was hoping really that it would coincide with arbory but instead we'll celebrate we'll have a long time of planting trees we are by the way going to minimize our numbers uh because of

0:19:33the drought in the trees that we plant and we hope to enlist the help of the Portola Middle School 7th grade science class and even watering the trees not just planting them okay great and we do have uh let's see why don't we pass this Proclamation first I I moved the city

0:19:50council Proclamation declaring Arbor week March 7th through March 14th second any discussion all in favor please say aye aye any opposition or abstention motion carries unanimously so I have this Proclamation does is our person it should be go to or what do we do with this it should go to

0:20:13Mr prayan and we have one speaker too okay would the speaker like to speak first it's Mark's Mark Scott hello Mark Scott I'm uh the manager of the Chamber of Commerce and uh I'm here in support of this city program should I say that again I mean the Chamber of Commerce actually here

0:20:48thank you supporting something um uh that being said we do have some concerns uh the business Community about trees and they probably had issues with trees and concerns about trees and the various programs for 40 or more years um so that shouldn't um surprise us that they they have

0:21:19they have concerns some of the concerns are easily met and some will require some work when Stephen came to us and first proposed that and that we partner with them and and uh and we did agree to do that um he actually changed his approach Midstream so that we could do some more

0:21:48education of the business Community um and that we had some input into this survey the business community kind of concerns always are about the open Wells around the trees attract dogs for bad reasons and trash and falling leaves which then get wet and become slip

0:22:17hazards and and those kinds of things we've watched other cities address this by putting cast iron grates or steel grates around trees to keep them from accumulating trash and and dog byproducts if you will and the city's been responsive to our concerns we mailed out uh

0:22:55250 surveys now or Flyers telling the business Community where the surveys can be found we've done an e-blast to 450 businesses and local citizens about about the survey and although we remain concerned about trees and it's funny to me is a health department fees just went

0:23:26up by 75 percent the cities I mean the county is taxing business property including our stationary but the issue that keeps coming to my desk is the trees so it's a hot button issue for us but we're confident that we can work with the cities with the city to um

0:23:53get a tree program that works for us and for them and of course the major issue with trees is businessmen pay thousands of dollars to put out signs and the tree comes and the city comes and plants a tree right in front of that and we think all of those issues can be

0:24:19worked around and we're willing to work with the city to come up with a good program thank you for your comment and shall I give this to you now Stephen or um okay okay the next item item C is the 2014 Library needs assessment update and it's going to be presented by

0:25:25Catherine page good evening good thank you mayor Abelson City Council Members um thank you Karen I'm Kathy Page and it's a pleasure to be here this evening and it's been a real pleasure to come back to El Cerrito and reacquaint myself with the community and your library and uh

0:25:46it's it's been an enjoyable project I'm here tonight to report on the findings and recommendations of the work that I've done as you know I was engaged by the city to update the library space needs assessment that I uh originally that I completed in 2006 to cast a fresh eye on

0:26:10those findings and recommendations and confirm whether or not the amount of space and the types of spaces were still appropriate make recommendations for any changes um I I I think this was a prudent uh decision to do uh the most of the work done for the original study was

0:26:32completed in 2005 so it's been um almost a decade since uh since that work was done and that's a lot of time in the in the library World a lot has changed let me see if I can what have I done there we go okay now I've got it under control um and basically the purpose of this was to

0:27:02provide the city with a new foundation for to continue its planning for a new uh Library facility uh the uh the work that we did what took place basically last fall and last winter and we conducted fresh Community information gathering with a community survey focus groups with everybody from

0:27:30teens to ESL students to parents of young children looked at the demographics afresh and looked at how the library is being used and what those usage patterns were all of this information gathering I looked at within the context of Library service trends and the design facility

0:27:51design trends that are reflecting them um and as to the findings essentially the bottom line is the building is still too small it's about one-third the size of what a modern um responsive Library uh would be expected to have and it's also the facility is quite outdated I mean it's older than

0:28:19many of your residents it's been around a long time and it was never intended to support the kind of technologies that are now part and parcel of Library service um the space out while the the overall square footage that um I'm going to recommend in my update remains about the same as it did in 2006

0:28:42so just over 20 000 square feet um the way that space is allocated and uh the proportion of one part to another part has has changed and I will talk about that in a in just a few minutes in some detail um another thing I would like to point out about the findings is that even

0:29:04though nothing about the facility in terms of open hours or Staffing levels has changed in the last several years public usage has increased it's uh the number of visitors has gone up 20 percent circulation's gone up over a third and I think there are a number of

0:29:21factors for that that are are worth mentioning and partly I want to tip my hat to the staff the staff Library staff has been very creative in how it's using the space uh the the influx of children and families with children has been noted in the library they're coming in and the

0:29:41library has responded with a reinvigorated uh Innovative children's programming service so that the you know the number of children and parents that have come in two years ago for a program was about 2 000 people over the Year this year it's about five thousand so usage is

0:30:05just going up and I think the staff should be acknowledged for that and there are other other reasons to one example would be the proliferation of laptop users people are coming in to find a place to the the library offers free Wi-Fi it's a great service and people need a place to sit so that's

0:30:26another reason more people are coming in but but the with in the current facilities services are are going to hit a wall you just can't keep doing more in a in a building envelope that that's is that small and outdated other findings too that were less positive or just things to really keep

0:30:48in mind are that many students and youth teenagers are not using the library they just walk right past there's simply no space that draws them in there's not enough space to draw them in and while you will find particularly middle schoolers in after school given the number of kids in school in

0:31:14our kids in this town I would expect to see swarms of of Youth after school and we're just not seeing it um one thing that I noted in the information gathering that was uh I think significant is the demand for and the interest in um space for programming for Gatherings

0:31:38for interaction uh for having a a place a Civic place has really grown this was brought up in almost every venue I just brought up um over and over again plus there was quite a bit of interest in space for collaboration place for people to meet group study rooms tutoring all that kind

0:32:03of stuff was quite pronounced now I'm going to talk about what all that means in some detail for the um well in brief detail for the um for the library but before I do that I wanted to just illustrate some of the the service and design trends that um uh I think we'll are reflected in in the

0:32:25needs assessment and its update first of all about collections in 2006 we were recommending what was standard then which is full height shelving for the stacks full height means 90 inches high which is seven and a half feet that means if I reach I can just about touch

0:32:44that top shelf that that approach is gone by the board and now in in um it's more standard to have mid height shelving that's more browsable most normal people can reach the shelves and it spreads out the collection horizontally but it makes it more accessible also there's a trend for face out

0:33:15shelving these are all things that make the collection more attractive and physical physically accessible to um to the people who want to use it computers are still a major a primary service for the library the number of computers at the El Cerrito library now is woefully inadequate there are eight

0:33:39that's way below what would be standard the the the the trend now though is for not simply Banks and banks of laptop I'm sorry desktop computers but a mix of desktops and laptops both machines that people bring in to use their own as well as Library supplied laptops too and that's

0:34:06giving us a lot more flexibility we can actually use seats that are reader seats as computer seats it's sort of more interchangeable and fluid um another trend is and really maybe the Paramount trend is is to provide more space for people seating interaction space that the seating can

0:34:35either can will range from quiet Lounge seating that can also be a place where you can have casual conversations to acoustically separated spaces this is a teen area in a library in Redwood City which has a a glazed partition so that the kids can talk without disturbing

0:34:58anybody but you can see what's going on it's sort of The Best of Both Worlds and then uh playful mobile seating for children this is actually in the Walnut Creek Library so but my point is that uh it used to be that stacks and shelving were the single biggest percentage of your floor space

0:35:20in a library now uh it's actually space for people in all the varieties of seating and arrangements and it and um uh acoustically zoned from quiet to to active I already mentioned that there was a lot of interest in programming and Gathering spaces these can range from

0:35:44multi-purpose rooms that are flexible and can be reconfigured easily to conference and group study tutoring rooms to comfortable areas this is a storytelling space with little seats for the kids but there's a a trend for to provide a variety of spaces for for different

0:36:08kinds of uh programs and events to take place and also there's a a real surge in interest in learning experiences the library not just as a passive place for solo study but a place where people can actually learn share information tutor whether it's with computers or or not actually both is

0:36:36needed and then tied to this um idea of of the need for people space and community space is is the reality that people spend more time at the library too they're they're coming for multiple reasons longer durations and there's a um an interest in having a place where

0:37:01you can take a break it's it's not that unusual to provide a an area where there are either vending machines or some kind of Refreshments that are offered it's often called a cafe when it's not quite that full service but the idea is that people come to the library and they're

0:37:23there for a while so uh that and then having retail stores bookstores uh um these kind of things go sort of go hand in hand with these changes in the ways people are expecting to use their Library more Trends and then I'll talk about my specific recommendation I'm seeing more and more libraries being

0:37:50a part of a larger whole uh either they're co-located on in a facility with say a community center or a school or they're in a campus setting that so there's a destination for several Civic purposes the library is of which the library is one shared use facilities are becoming very

0:38:17common and there's a real public benefit to that and an opportunity for for shared costs and cost savings and then finally um not unexpectedly the the sustainability the efficiency of the operation is is one of the guiding uh uh principles of of design from A to Z making sure that

0:38:47the library can run with minimal staff making sure that we're using the Technologies uh that enable us to run efficiently like self-checkout self-service holes automated Materials Handling all of those things are basically standard now in libraries so what's all that mean for El Cerrito

0:39:15oh my that's not terribly my chart um which is in the the report that I think you have um uh really sums it up and I try to I tried to put everything on uh in one chart and I will for the benefit of the uh the audience here tonight who maybe can't read this I'll just walk us

0:39:40through this what I've done here is I I have a a several um space uh components of the library there's the collections and shelving there's the seating there's the public computers I've what I've done is compare the current um status of the library and what it offers then I have a uh for comparison

0:40:08purposes current best practice for libraries such as El Cerritos and then I have a comparison of these are my update recommendations and then the original recommendations um and by the way these these current best practice um service levels are measurements such as the size of the

0:40:36collection per capita the number of seats per thousand people served number of public computers per per thousand people served and these are not standards no one is forcing anybody to use them however it's it's empirically those of us who are in the business know that if we use

0:40:58these ranges um we are generally going to be able to provide the level of service that's needed for the community and they're tied to population so what I've done in the interests of looking toward the future is use the um the 2030 projected population for El Cerrito which is 25 600.

0:41:23that's not much higher than what we have now it's just 20 it's just under 24 000 so it's modest modest increase but in terms of looking toward the future I decided to we were we're using that as our um our uh rule of thumb uh currently the library has just about

0:41:4636 000 books and AV items that's about one and a half volume per person that's way too few and we heard about that a lot on the uh from the input from the public there's just not enough material on the ground locally to uh to satisfy people uh in 2006 we recommended

0:42:10going up to three volumes per capita but uh given given the change is now uh in in uh in service trends and the way things are going I I think we can bring that down to about uh a little less that says 2.4 volumes per capita it still would mean that the collection would go from

0:42:3436 to 60 000. so it's a significant increase which is needed particularly for children's materials teen materials and materials for adults too I'm recommending this even though there's or even though there's quite a bit of interest in digital material ebooks and

0:42:55the library the county library offers uh over 20 000 now but that that is a somewhat volatile and fluid situation for libraries you cannot really count on number one everybody having an e-reader or number two being able to supply all the titles that people are after so

0:43:18um uh while we're tracking it I think we still need to have a physical collection that's our that our is our mainstay um for seeding currently the library has 86 seats that's what that says there 86 seats or 3.4 seats per thousand people again that's way too low

0:43:43um I'm recommending that we take that up to a little over five seats per capita or 134 seats Plus a little over 50 seats in enclosed rooms like group study conference tutoring and so forth for a total of 190 seats which is essentially doubling the seating capacity

0:44:09um I think every seat will be used maybe not all at the same time but yes Miss page thanks just a question on that so why do you think that we should we should have more seating than the sort of top end of the standard or best practice understanding that that is not

0:44:28a hard and fast rule well actually the the the top end is there is really no top end I I I I said that that for overall seating five to seven plus seats I see some communities that'll have over 10 seats per per capita uh it's really can be Community Driven uh or

0:44:52it's all over the map basically would you say then the interest in seating that you've received in terms of your information collection for this study has indicated that it should okay thank you oh yeah everything from parent child seating so so parents and children can

0:45:08read together to tutoring seats after school work seats more seats for laptop users group study seats um more space for teens just across the board we need more seating for the for programming in right now we do not have a a separate program room all the programs happen

0:45:44right in the middle of the public space I'm recommending that we have a separate acoustically enclosed meeting room that's flexible that can be divided so you could actually have two meetings going on uh separately that you could get to it from the lobby without

0:46:01having to go through the library in 2006 we recommended a hundred seats I'm bumping that up to 125. that would give you it's about a 1500 square foot room which is larger than this one so you could do a lot of your programming there in addition I would I'm suggesting that

0:46:23we have a space within the children's area where the children's librarian can do programming independent of the main meeting room I think you're going to be wanting to do there's going to be so much demand for programs and events that um we we actually need multiple venues within the

0:46:44library uh for the children's space I would suggest that it be designed in a way that it can be used by individual families um when programming is not happening so it can be sort of overflow space or or letting off steam space or whatever but it could be designed so it could be

0:47:06closed off for acoustical reasons but could be opened up too computers I mentioned already there are eight computers now and that's really way below the standard and by that I'm talking about all the different kinds of computers too the internet computers the online catalogs

0:47:31in the children's area computers for educational games computers for uh training events or you know workshops I'm also recommending that instead of Simply Having desktops that we have a mixture of desktops and laptops for Library checkout yes sir can you move this slide to the next page so that

0:47:59people at home can follow along with what you're saying oh surely thank you okay great in fact this is one of the major changes that we're seeing as a sort of a paradigm shift um that that um the prices of laptops are coming down the Wi-Fi is ubiquitous and we want more

0:48:27flexibility rather than having 50 or 60 desktop computers lined up um what would what seems to work well is to have have the library have a core group of laptops that can be checked out for say two-hour use in the library uh and those people can take to whatever

0:48:51seat is available uh and use them there and of course people can bring in their own laptops as well so um the bottom line to all this when you when you apply the standard um uh square footage allocations for shelving seating computers and so forth um the the items that I've mentioned take

0:49:18up about 75 percent of the library uh interior space another 25 percent go to the service desk self-checkout machines um miscellaneous other things um such as a if the the friends have a book sale and that's another thing I'm a bookstore I would recommend that um

0:49:41when you add up all of those all of these elements and apply a what's called a grossing factor to it for like the restrooms and building um uh wall thicknesses and corridors and other things that are mechanical spaces the the total square footage is uh somewhat in excess of 20 000 square feet

0:50:07which is actually slightly less than what we recommended in 2016. but it's still within the ballpark of what I would expect around 0.8 square feet per capita which is well within the range of uh what's typical um a lot of these spaces are um I would call them placeholders that that

0:50:35will you will be able to use as you proceed in your your your process your planning process this work is not a building program that's a much more detailed precise document that calls out every single space and what's in every space this is more a foundation for that

0:50:54building program which will be written later on in your process closer to the time of design um but this this gives you enough um security that you will have the amount of space that you need to use in the way uh is most appropriate it's also flexible in that say for example now we

0:51:19we're calling out a certain number of computers maybe in three or four years when you actually write your program you may want to have slightly more seating slightly fewer computers because the uh things have changed you will you will have enough space to do that uh because

0:51:40each one of those computers essentially represents um space for a person to sit either using a using a machine or um reading or doing whatever they're going to if that makes any sense at all so I've tried to build in the right amount of placeholder space so that you

0:52:01will be covered however you uh whichever however your program uh wherever your program leads you um and I've tried to plan for the future to the extent we can Library service is changing and evolving it has been the entire time I've been doing this work and it will continue to

0:52:25do it but I feel confident that this document will hold you in good Stead I will tell you too that there was so much interest from the public during information gathering so many people came forward and had so many good ideas I felt there was another purpose to my

0:52:44report too which was to capture those ideas and as you can if you've looked at the printed report almost half of it documents that and it's important to have that and hold it in reserve for when you're at that stage when you're doing the programming because a lot of

0:53:01those ideas you'll want to um a lot of them are quite detailed but but there will become a there will come a time when you will need that detail and it will serve a great purpose then so um that I think is the end of my prepared remarks and I'll be glad to answer any questions you have or Greg

0:53:25well thank you very much for this presentation and and welcome back to update your previous document um I was very pleased to see some of the the rankings that you were able to glean from all the public input and therefore thank the public for their input one of

0:53:43the things you did not necessarily touch on tonight um was the convenient access for all residents including good public transportation and plentiful parking I'm just wondering um is there similar factors for because you're proposing almost um with the different seating I think

0:54:03you were proposing almost 250 seats and I was just curious how do we get people to the to those seats the uh as far as parking goes the um while there's no standard it usually is tied back to local um local ordinance but what's typical is that um the parking for the library offer

0:54:28provides between three three to four parking spaces per thousand square feet of building space so this would be um 60 to 60 to 80. yeah and that can be a mixture if if the library is um is designed in tandem with something else or in you know in um combination with others there's

0:54:59sometimes there's shared parking but it's it's quite important to be able to have some dedicated parking for library library visitors as far as public transportation goes it's just clear that you need to have public transportation uh very convenient to the library we were told by the uh the

0:55:24students at the high school that um and by the Educators that we met with that it's critical that public transportation that the buses um let off close to the library not just so the kids can get there but so the parents know that their kids can get home safely

0:55:47you mentioned technology and self-checkout and things like that um with regards to inventory control and and finding uh books within the collection and and accessing accelerating the checkout is there is it are you guys using RFID technology radio frequency identification technology is

0:56:07becoming the industry standard um yes and the County librarian is saying yes great and then in one of the other things that was highlighted in your um in your surveys that you didn't necessarily discuss tonight is the increased service hours I was just wondering if you would speak to that

0:56:25momentarily um the public was very clear that they wanted more more open hours and I I think that um the more open hours you have the more use you will get um it will be difficult just from my previous experience in other venues it will be difficult not to have more open

0:56:53hours because public expectations are going to rise so high with this new facility so that is something to look at and also uh makes it even even more mandatory to make an efficient streamlined operation a goal because the staff are going to be stretched thin and one of the good news one of the

0:57:22pieces of good news is that a larger Library does not necessarily mean a there's not a direct um correlation between increasing the library and increasing the staff if you can design it to be as functional as possible there are certain things that will require more staff for example if your

0:57:49circulation doubles that means twice as many books and media items are going to have to be physically put back on the Shelf we have not figured out how to do that um in an automated way yet with physical collections um but anything to make like the the the workload go go faster like like the the

0:58:13check-in automated uh check-in so that the staff are not having to manually handle every item that comes back uh make uh it's they're called automated Materials Handling m-a-m-a-m-h units um pay for themselves in not very much time um so there are some things that that

0:58:36will really push the staff but that the expectation for service is going to just Skyrocket so um um uh anything you can do to uh support them and uh because you you are probably going to want to open more hours and as a numbers person I did appreciate things that some of the information you

0:59:01put in here about a number of times per year some of the collection is is checked out and such and I do appreciate that you're providing us with industry standards of uh you know seats per thousand square foot per thousand parking per thousand is there a average cost

0:59:22to operate a library per size of a community I mean is is there something that you can give us that we can start thinking what this will cost us um if and when this is rebuilt uh there are there's no average cost it it varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction but I am sure that the city and the

0:59:43county library can the county library can provide some of that basic information on what it costs to run a library in this in this County but I'm not the person to give you that okay great thank you it's available Mark yeah all right thank you very much I think

1:00:01this is a very important next step in our desire to get to a new facility that will do so many things for our community and Way Beyond what our traditional understanding of what a library is or was um I especially appreciate all the public comments that are in your report

1:00:21and some great quotes from members of the public who weighed in here that I think are for example here's one the library should be a hub of sharing I think that's a great way of defining what we want this to be my question is about the number of books and I'm a big fan of a physical book in

1:00:44particular I think for small children I don't want them staring at screens all day but there is a trend uh towards digital as you talked about there's a library in Texas that has no books at all and they have e-readers that they check out to people and they haven't

1:01:02lost a single e-reader I was in Seattle for work and went to a very impressive eight-story library and I checked out every floor of the library and I saw hardly any books in the hole eight-story structure so I'm I'm not convinced that we need to undergo the expense of having

1:01:25quite the volume of books I think certainly for children and for others who um you know may have disabilities that make that hard for them to use an e-reader but what are your thoughts on this well first of all I would say that it's not an either or situation and I think

1:01:43for for the foreseeable future we are going to be we being libraries are going to be expected and are going to need to provide both and we are um as you mentioned there are certain categories of uh patrons of residents who not only need but prefer to have the physical and and that's important and

1:02:10there's nothing to preclude us from uh providing digital content either and the county library is committed to Growing its collection and is doing so and uh uh will continue to do so so the the current 20 000 items available for download from the library is going to

1:02:33expand um the second thing I would say is that on opening day I would be very surprised if you had 60 000 volumes I don't I don't think that that's the intent that's the shelving capacity of the library that's being proposed um it may be that on opening day you

1:02:57have 80 percent of that and then you can watch to see what are the trends what you have is an envelope of space that can be used over time in various ways and it should and it should be a flexible reconfigurable space in any regard so it may be after a couple of years that you

1:03:20decide that you're not going to you're going to provide more seating and a slightly less a smaller physical collection it's something to watch I I cannot pretend that I can tell you definitively what what is going to happen but I I know now that um what we in the Library business are

1:03:41seeing is that live library's ability to provide uh electronic content is is tied up in a lot of uh licensing fights with the publishers and reluctance to um use the traditional model of just selling us the book let us check it out until it wears out that doesn't work

1:04:07anymore for e-content and so it's a much there are a lot of landmines with building your entire collection on electronic content um and I also have to go back to uh there's this there's there's something there's a bit of a backlash going not backlash but there's a kind of a

1:04:30um just as it's sort of analogous to um recorded music and how people are uh young people now are listening to vinyl you know it's like this Resurgence of vinyl there's also this Resurgence of interest and love for the physical book too uh when I meet with parents of young

1:04:52children what I get is you know we don't need a whole bunch of computers for our kids they get that everywhere we want them to be able to hold a book and know that feeling you know and I can't help but think that that's an enduring value that is going to continue

1:05:15so I think for the foreseeable future we're gonna have to provide both and just take it one step at a time I hope that helps thank you yeah um Rebecca thank you um I liked your answer to the last question that really kind of spoke to some of my questions about flexibility

1:05:35and thinking about our library today and the space that it is and how it's used by the Librarians it gives us a bit of comfort that even you know 20 30 years from now when we haven't thought of how the space is going to be desired to be used by the future we can have staff in

1:05:52place who are going to be good judgers and and can and as long as we design something that's flexible or that has some built-in flexibility um we're doing we're doing all that we can a question on you discussed in your report uh the suggestion that the library should be a single story in

1:06:08order to have efficient operations um just out of curiosity when is it appropriate to have that Second Story um and what is what are sort of the losses in staff efficiencies associated with going up that level surely um foreign the library is a public space okay and

1:06:29Open Access so there's a responsibility to ensure that it's safe so that uh we we need to be able to oversee what goes on in the public space so if it's on one floor um as opposed to two floors the staff can oversee what's going on more easily even if there's more lateral square footage

1:07:01once you go to two floors you are you one must have two service points you have to have so you're automatically doubling your um the service desks and one of the goals for um streamlining and making uh maximizing efficiency is to have a single service point so going to two floors means you

1:07:26have to have two service desks and they have to be staffed so that it adds to Staffing um there's another um construction related issue is when when a one-story construction can be designed to be more efficient than multiple stories once you go to two stories you have to have an elevator

1:07:52stairs for exiting as well as public um uh your there are a number of things that happen that basically eat into the efficiency of the building itself so that basically you're buying you could have a so a 20 store sorry a 20 000 square foot one story building and a twenty thousand square foot

1:08:19two-story building you're getting more bang for your book you're you know you're buying more library for your money um so that's another issue but it's mostly the operations uh because you have to oversee what's going on on both floors now there's some ways to mitigate

1:08:36for that you could uh for example try to put just the enclosed controlled access spaces on one floor however in in in Practical reality when you're trying to lay out a library such as this one which is mostly public space you're not going to be able to find say

1:08:59half or even a third of the of the space that works as being closed access on one floor um I don't know if I said that very well but I hope I understand um the other piece to it is that the staff workspace while it's enclosed needs to be on the same floor with uh

1:09:20circulation check-in service desk so it doesn't work as a strategy to take all the staff space and put in on the second floor because the staff will never get up there they're be on the floor so practically speaking it's hard to design an a truly efficient library

1:09:40on two floors having said that I've seen it done but on a larger scale this this facility at twenty twenty one thousand um is essentially a smaller scale library and it it until you get to over 30 30 to 40 000 I I wouldn't go above um another rule of thumb that I've heard

1:10:12in the past which is way sort of other end of the scale is that um um a one-story building shouldn't a one-story Library should not be more than 60 000 square feet then go to two floors but I've seen I've seen a Best Buy re converted which was over eighty thousand to a great Library

1:10:36so these are kind of rules of thumb those are those are great I think for the purposes I was interested in thank you um another question uh with regard to the potential for a cafe or other area where people are eating them it might be a question for staff um our revenues that are generated there

1:10:54I don't know if they're significant question for you I don't know if they're significant in terms of revenues but the question would be whatever they are do you think those would stay in our library in terms of assisting to um to be to be purposed only for El Cerrito would they go to the county into

1:11:11the County's general fund to be used sort of for the whole system I would think um that it would sorry Karen Pincus assistant city manager thank you I would think that it would depend on who staffs it um if the city's if the city staff ran that program and was able to to do that

1:11:28then it would be our responsibility I don't know if that works is that correct I know Walnut Creek has a cafe that yeah we could actually have that person maybe you could come up and speak to that sorry um uh and you could see what I'm getting at I'm getting at building square

1:11:49footage if there are revenues associated with those square feet like cafes or meeting spaces to a certain extent I'm not sure how much those actually generate would those revenues then help offset potentially greater enhanced programming at the library or would they

1:12:01go to the county-wide system hi I'm Kathy Sanford I'm the interim County librarian so yes they would stay with with El Cerrito they would not go to the county uh that's one of the primary reasons that people do build cafes is to is to repurpose that money to generate

1:12:17new Revenue so they could repurpose for the library yeah and again that's going to depend on your vendor relationship you know whatever all that is okay so then the question for you Catherine do you happen to know what those tend to be if they're of any uh if they're of

1:12:31significance the revenues yes generally no okay I I would say I would not count the count on this as a new Revenue source for the city oh no for the library for Library operations that sort of um generally they're they're break even at best it's an amenity uh and um

1:12:55the good news is that libraries all over this country have uh come up with some pretty creative ways to staff and operate um services like this in Alameda County Castro Valley has is working with one of the County Services to have youth at risk run the library I'm sorry not the

1:13:20library that is wonderful San Jose Public Library has uh that was the picture I showed has essentially vending machines high-end vending machines in all of theirs that serves the purpose so it can you know they're coffee carts there are all kinds of mobile things uh

1:13:43[Music] and there's there's a lot of uh documentation of what's happened to San Leandro has a cafe um but they a lot of it uh um you want to keep it simple you want to keep it uh easy to um uh for turnover uh I I would say um go into it cautiously and prudently

1:14:15you know um that's about all I'm going to say about that thank you thank you for responding to that and the only last question I have is uh you mentioned um for Catherine you mentioned uh co-location with other Civic uses are you aware of other types of co-locations

1:14:32like are there co-locations of libraries of this type with um offices or residents above my my local library uh is on the second floor above a grocery store with some condos attached to the building on the second floor interesting yeah um I've seen it with in combination with

1:14:56retail with uh residential uh there's a youth recreation center uh in Palo Alto that's going to be co-located with a branch library um uh community centers schools of course that can be challenging but it can be done um there there are any number of of uh approaches and um

1:15:26there also that has been documented too great thank you okay I just had a couple questions Catherine I had similar questions to my colleagues um benassini Lyman and Friedman had but I had a couple other comments and then that was first of all I was wondering where the 20 percent increase came with

1:15:49attendance and also circulation but I think what you captured is what we're seeing in child care in a lot of our other services it's really youth um you know which is a really good thing and I I also agree that having books for children is a Paramount importance

1:16:08compared to using digital formats um there was a comment in here that of course you met with the high school only 12 of 3 300 High School students came to that session but they also have a library at the high school which sounds like it's they do participate in we had a presentation

1:16:29probably about a year ago that a Portola the middle school that's being built is going to be quite dramatically up to date and I assume it'll have a fairly significant Library too which will probably help the youth in that aspect um so it was just a an interesting thing

1:16:49that you know you're seeing what we're seeing in our child care programs and everything else that there's a lot more young families in El Cerrito I also had another question and when you talk just now about the cafe and different looks at libraries I think when you were here

1:17:04in 2006 I was on Council and I think Fruitvale was pretty new then and that's in actually in the middle of a housing complex with uh retail too and I went and looked at it and the library itself was from my recollection was quite small but it was very interesting how they put

1:17:21that library in that whole complex there right which was right at the BART station of course yeah um and then I had another question about you capture it again um the diversity of El Cerrito and one of the things that we see and many things that we're doing including some

1:17:38of our building projects is that we have a very visible vocal Asian community and I wondered uh if in Contra Costa County not not counting San Francisco but in other areas in say the East Bay if there are many Library collections that have a large Asian print or media of one sort

1:18:01or another in their libraries currently well I I um the ones that are most known to me besides San Francisco's Chinatown branch and and the whole collection is uh Oakland Public Library has the Asian Library uh in uh downtown and that's a that's a regional resource

1:18:23um Contra Costa do you have any specialty Asian okay so so you've already you've already started a um a collection uh that and and I think one of the recommendations I made too in the more detailed write-up is to expand the um International languages collection

1:18:46not just uh Asian languages but uh it was quite remarkable the the diversity the cultural diversity and uh um uh one of the challenges is going to be determining just how many languages the library supports um because each you know each one needs to be refreshed and um uh

1:19:09given critical mass so that it doesn't become stale and that was that was one of the the messages we received from the adult school students the ESL students who are all English language Learners and about two-thirds of them I think we're are using use the library we're familiar

1:19:31with what it had and just said couldn't it be bigger and I know the Librarians have been trying to refresh that as they have been refreshing the whole collection but it basically needs more space and more attention all right thank you that's all the questions I had

1:19:51okay I guess I'll cover a few things that I think haven't been covered very much or um and I'll start out with what I've seen in my own particularly my youngest daughter who just graduated from college when she was small I took her to the library a lot and it was very uh Hands-On picture

1:20:14oriented you know this is when she was a preschooler and you know she as time went on she you know developed um an ability to use you know the higher level children's things but then when she got to Middle School all of a sudden it nothing was um what she would call up to date or

1:20:37current or so there became this problem of currency um and it it sort of seems to me looking back on that period in her life that um the iPad the uh you know the tablet format the ability to get data and and books um you know and information really um is is really somewhat solved by the use

1:21:08of Technology you know because you can't really in a um a relatively small place like El Cerrito um get all of the books that would cover that are current because maybe they haven't even been um written in a in a full book format I just spoke speaking to a friend of mine

1:21:29who took her seven years to write a book that she just finished um you know and things like this so by it just seems to me that there is a very big place for what I'll call technology and I and and the um the iPad approach to to reading and that for the older students the ones I'm thinking primarily

1:21:56middle school high school and um Beyond that's where they can really get their knowledge now when my daughter went to college she hardly used books at all everything pretty much not everything but a lot was online and it was because they were really into currency

1:22:13of the information so um I'm I'm wondering if maybe the lack of participation in the library system that I saw when my daughter approached those ages can be solved by having the library offer those kinds of solutions do you have a thought on that um I would say

1:22:41absolutely that if we can offer a greater um array of technology that appeals to kids to to Youth and and gets them where they want to go they will use it we need to have um we need to have a foundation for providing that though and I think the the current facility just just can't do

1:23:10it um I think we also need to have a physical space that kids react to re respond to and they know it's theirs too I think you know independent of the the bells and whistles of all the computers the having a space that the kids know is theirs where they can go in

1:23:35uh and and be welcome and be comfortable um is is just Baseline it has it has to be once you have that then you can do a lot with it you can have a video gaming nights I mean when we mentioned that to the the class at the high school they just went nuts they loved it I mean to have a um to have a a

1:24:09an interactive uh social gaming opportunity at the library was um they just sparkled but also to have laptops that they can use have places where they can work together have Smart Boards in the the conference rooms give them a give them a base a a place to collaborate and and they'll come and

1:24:38they'll use it thank you that that reminds me of I earlier in the year I was back in Washington DC and I visited a um uh in what was considered to be an innovative organization that just all it has is a bunch of tables um oh that's really in chairs it's kind of all it really and kitchens

1:25:06um for food and when if you if you join this uh organization then you would have your own little mini business inside of it and the whole point of it I think was that people could collaborate so maybe one day you would collaborate with one person another day to

1:25:25collaborate with another person well how I translate that to say the teenager is if you just had a inside the Library a room the teenager the teenager room I'll call it and then you kind of put all the teenagers in there close the door and it was their space and then they could collaborate with

1:25:48each other learn from each other because I think that's a great way to do that and so do you see the library that we might have having such a space it could I've I've put in what I'm sort of generically calling a a learning space or a computer learning space that could be whatever

1:26:09you want it to be it's it's quite uh common now to see a portion of the library's computers set aside in a way so that for what what we're calling content creation so and often it's kids who get together make a movie there's a green screen there's a whatever the what

1:26:30this Kathy probably knows better than I do what would be in it but uh content creation is is uh something that's very attractive to kids it doesn't take a lot of space it takes some specialty equipment and some effort uh of course the the new trendy thing is maker spaces

1:26:50um I resisted calling out a maker space in the library because by the time you build it I'm not sure that's still going to be what what is wanted but it's the same idea to have a place where uh and it does not necessarily just kids adults like to do this too but a place where uh you can

1:27:09actually create and I think that's what you're talking about right it's it's a place where where they can um learn and grow I mean I think of it as a learning and growing experience um within and use really what they're really seeking is information and learning from that information so

1:27:31that that lot that Library space is a is a um information space and and um enables these the students to reach really reach their potential absolutely um as opposed to um situation where you know they have a book list they can only get three of the books on the book list and I mean that's

1:27:54the way it was when I was a teenager I remember I spent a lot of time in the library and there were always these list of books I was supposed to get and I could only get part of them and then you know I just go back and repetitively try to get the books and over time I maybe

1:28:10could but you know it was a pretty frustrating experience not to be able to get it now we can actually get it immediately via technology um and um not only can one person get it the whole group could get it maybe you know it's not a a limited you know you're not

1:28:30limited to the one physical book or two physical books everyone can access the material and I think that um the way I understand at least from the the high school library where I've talked a lot to the librarian there they have licenses I guess is the word to access materials in those ways and I

1:28:51would assume that our and I think it I've already heard it does that our public library has that same kind of arrangement for certain things and the school district is has already said that they're interested in collaborating with the library too so I I think there's a

1:29:09lot of potential for some collaborative Services there to just amplify what is available online I have another question on a different topic so you you mentioned the bus um and there needed to be a bus that went by the library so that people knew that their children could get home

1:29:31well that actually uh doesn't enable their children to get home because if a bus went by the library every hour which was your example um I think you need to come by every at least once an hour that was what was stated okay buses run on bus routes and you know the

1:29:53bus routes don't go by every house in our city they go by very few houses in our city as a matter of fact and so the reality the reality of it is that very few students would be able to get home on a bus that if there was a bus that went by once an hour um and so I think it would be important

1:30:15to realize that that really isn't a solution for that and I think that the parents already know that um I I think you're referring to some of the input that we got from one of our focus groups and so I'm glad you set the record straight yeah the um and um then I had another question that I

1:30:36couldn't quite figure out what from from what I read and that is I know that the makeup of the students in the schools in our city is not primary the students in our school the schools in our city are primarily from other cities because this is a school district

1:30:54Unified School District it's not a city school district so the uh the report kept referring a lot to and so everyone lived in El Cerrito and I couldn't quite figure out did you separate out only residents of El Cerrito or how did you handle the fact that most students

1:31:18are from other cities well I um uh I spoke with the city about that and uh uh asked if if I should do that uh and um the um the answer that we settled on was to basically consider students that are in El Cerrito during the day going to the schools here should be considered part of the service

1:31:44population okay so I did not differentiate between okay some of the stuff makes it look like it's resonance personally I think the choice that you made is the right choice because I uh this is you know this is a school district not this this is our population and just just the way you

1:32:05said it okay good follow-up so you mean you only include the public schools student population or the public and private school population that's go to school in our city well I believe the way I said it was the library serves El Cerritos 30 32 30 uh 23 000 residents and students

1:32:26enrolled in public schools yeah it says public schools in here located in El Cerrito thank you I think those are my questions does any council member want to go back are there any members of the pub did you have something Karen or did I was gonna that's what I was trying to do

1:32:50um are there any members of the public who would like to speak yes we have two speakers okay and the first is Tom panis followed by Al Miller foreign members of the council and City staff my name is Tom Patterson I live at [address removed] in El Cerrito I'd like to thank Kathy Page for the

1:33:21great job she's done putting together the space needs assessment update it's quite comprehensive and instructive I'd also like to thank our library people we've got Kathy Sanford our interim County librarian Liz rulin and other members of our team who contributed greatly to this and of

1:33:40course our assistant city manager Karen Pincus had a big part in this as well as we go forward I think we need to think beyond the needs that are identified in the report we should be looking to make our library a gathering spot for our community and for West County

1:33:54I'm not suggesting a big expensive Gathering Spot I'm thinking about a library that draws in people because it's sensitive to our community and because it nurtures and supports the values that we share in elsewhere we consider ourselves to be ecologically sensitive and

1:34:08environmentally aware we have our recycling program we have our Urban Greening plan and we have much more what better way for a library to complement our community's efforts in this area than to be the home of a seed library and a tool ending Library both of these match the ethos of our

1:34:23community to a T and are not difficult or expensive to implement each would be a perfect match for our library and our community census statistics reveal a lot about our community they tell us we have a very large Asian Community they also tell us we have the largest percentage of Single

1:34:39Sex House Single Sex households in the county so why shouldn't El Cerrito be the actual home for the county libraries Asian collection how about the County Library's LGBT collection there's really no meth in the County library system for defining the home for a particular collection other than the

1:34:55desire of an individual Community to host it let's make a commitment to do that one other place where we need to make a commitment is in servicing our high school students I know that we're trying to keep costs under control but I'm concerned that the space allocated is insufficient

1:35:10these students are underserved today so it's not surprising that they are underrepresented at the library today that this won't be any different in the future unless we do something more for them as Tina Seeley wrote in a recent book about Innovation the biggest failures of

1:35:26our lives are not failures of execution their failures of imagination I'd hate to see that happen here let's set up the library to embrace our community and make it a richer place from day one one week we can do this as we're looking Beyond is by looking Beyond classic Library needs

1:35:41for some simple inexpensive Concepts and services that leave the library into the fabric of our community what kind of a future we're going to have in El Cerrito it's our job to Define it thank you for your time this evening oh and I'd also like to thank Brian Godby who will be speaking later

1:35:56for the work he's done to get us to this point next speaker is Al Miller Ableton council members of City staff Janet I'd just like to comment that all of those baseball kids and parents that you saw are also new library parents and kids and that group is growing and

1:36:24that's a great sign I'd also like to acknowledge Kathy's extent of our Outreach as all of you know when you're trying to get issues discussed no matter how hard you try you never get where you want to get but I think she did an excellent job in not only the types of groups that she

1:36:45contacted but the number she was able to attract to the conduct I don't have any specific comments on the needs assessment just wanted to share some general thoughts that the needs assessment brought to my mind one of them is the incredible change in technology from 2005 to 2006 when we

1:37:06first got into this and where we are now and I think we're still on this part of the curve for the next 10 20 years also the consistent things that came through the in the comments the people of El Cerrito want their Library to be not necessarily a community center

1:37:26but a center of community activities they want this reflected through with programmings of all age groups through a facility that welcomes and encourages and facilitates community activities both of these issues indicate a need for a new library that reflects the city's environmental values

1:37:52is flexible in design that meets the current needs and it can be efficiently and economically modified to meet the emerging needs it reminds me of the herds we heard there are no knowns and known unknowns and unknown unknowns well kind of the future Library falls into

1:38:11some of those categories and hopefully our design process of people who do it will be qualified and flexible enough to give us a facility that we can support in a way to do it the other thing that has come clear in the meetings that I went to Kathy had is that not only is there a high

1:38:36expectation for a new library but a high expectation for a library that will be open reasonable hours every day and that if we're going to ask people to support the building of a new library we need a method that will include the operation of that Library across the days and

1:38:55hours that the people will expect anyway I just like you to know that the new library committee is working to energize our citizens in support of these goals and if your plans to build us into the library so thank you okay thank you is that that's all the speakers okay thank you okay the next

1:39:17um so the idea the per the uh uh action here is simply to receive the presentation this time and okay um I would also like to make sure that we thank um Kathy and for for the excellent job well done on this report that that uh you you prepared for our city and for

1:39:42all of the people that you worked with and also for the library staff that is here today and um I look forward to to one day uh seeing us open a new library I hope to come to opening day yes thank you thank you okay uh with that we'll move on we're now all the way up

1:40:06to the adoption of the consent calendar item number five there are two items the minutes and um a proclamation for women's History Month I move adoption of consent calendar items 5A and 5B second okay um all in favor please say aye aye any objections or abstentions motion carries

1:40:28unanimously there are uh no public hearings and we now get to item number seven policy matters and this is a present 7A is a presentation of survey results related to the reauthorization of the major R sales tax thank you oh I'll start um I mostly want to introduce Brian

1:40:57Godby of Godby research who I think most of the council are familiar with he was most recently here last early middle of last year to talk about uh the library among other Capital needs I I just wanted to give a little uh introduction um and reminder for the city council

1:41:20that the voters of El Cerrito approved measure are in November 2010 and the measure is set to sunset in early 2018.

1:41:32um it so it would beg the question why are we here in 2014 discussing this and it is actually related to the library that if you recall when we did our survey and the library was identified as being something that was really favorably thought of by the residents of

1:41:50El Cerrito we also looked at based on the likely turnout of Elections between now and the next presidential election because of the likely strong turnout and the the likely necessary two-thirds vote required for any special tax we have essentially held November 2016

1:42:16as a likely time for a library measure having said that it would likely not be prudent in 2000 November 2016 to place two measures on the ballot if at that time we were thinking about an extension or a change to the measure having said that the other reason why we're here is as we

1:42:36reported in December and as we're going to talk about at our next council meeting the city is still struggling from a budgetary perspective we've talked about the need to dip into reserves this fiscal year we've talked about how we've already made some Cuts in public works particularly in

1:42:52maintenance and Staffing we have we have vacancies related to code enforcement and we've been carrying a vacancy rate around 10 percent in the city we expect things to be just as tight or even tighter next year due to the loss of some one-time revenues we use to help this fiscal year that are

1:43:13still related to the dissolution of Redevelopment and as you know we're we're currently beginning a lawsuit with the state our second lawsuit that may or may not impact those one-time monies so in terms of tonight we had staff has engaged Godby research to look at measure R and look how what

1:43:39our strategy might be if we were to go forward in November having said that what we would like from the council is if in addition to any comments or questions you may have if there is general direction or general consensus that you would like us to do something around an extension in

1:43:59November it would be helpful to hear that tonight however I want to be clear that we are not looking for direction and we don't actually want it although we're you're welcome to comment on your personal feelings it's too early to decide and we're not ready to recommend

1:44:13should we increase the rate or what should the sun should we have a sunset or what should the term be we if the council desires we will come back later in the year with those specific recommendations and additionally as was shown in on the consent calendar and at

1:44:30a recent prior meeting we would still need special legislation which is going to be a few months before we know how that goes from Sacramento if we were to increase the rate so again we don't need that specific of Direction tonight so with that I would like to turn it

1:44:46over to Brian to go over the results of his survey and then he and any other staff that might you might like to hear from will be happy to take any comments or questions thank you Scott Madam mayor members of the council I'm happy to be here to present the results of the survey that

1:45:03Scott described briefly it is I think good news for uh for the city and uh interesting for your consideration jumping into the presentation uh the purpose again was to look at the overall satisfaction with the survey with city services and financial management that's

1:45:26become something new that we're doing but it's actually not uh brand new we've been doing it for several years for other clients so we added it into this survey here because it helps us understand the climate and you'll see a little bit more about that for a renewal

1:45:39of this kind of measure to assess the specific voter support for Renewal to look at various rates that it might be renewed at to prioritize projects and programs that we would continue to use the proceeds for to look at both supporting and opposing arguments and

1:45:59then of course there's a variety of demographic information not in the presentation this evening but it's literally hundreds of pages I've got actually about 600 of them on my iPad very cross tabs around anymore that's really great in terms of the methodology this was a

1:46:21telephone survey as it has been in the past the universe was the likely November 2014 voters in the city of El Cerrito we were in the field in early February from the first to the ninth the interview was about 18 and a half minutes long on average we completed 400

1:46:38interviews and that gives us an air rate of plus or minus 4.8 percent jumping into the findings the first question uh was that climate section that we talked about uh and by climate I'm not talking about the weather in this case I'm talking about what's the fiscal

1:46:57climate and the um perception of the city's um performance this first question asked about the overall job the city is doing to provide services and we should ask people is that favorable or unfavorable then we drill down the next step is that very or somewhat on either side of the

1:47:16equation so you can aggregate the data into favorable unfavorable or you can look at it as it is in this pie chart for analytical purposes and to compare with other cities and government agencies that have gone forward with renewal measures we like to aggregate

1:47:34the data and so we look and see there's 85 percent favorable versus only eight percent unfavorable on this and we create a ratio and that's a 10.2 to 1 ratio that's great for this particular situation we've been successful passing um a uh a new measure uh in another jurisdiction where we were

1:47:58at 1.921 so that's a fifth of where you are essentially so you're in very good position the second question was their opinion on the job you're doing to manage public funds taxpayer dollars we look at this the same way favorable unfavorable it's 66 percent favorable in aggregate versus

1:48:2217 percent unfavorable that's a 4.021 ratio that 2 is very good we have been successful as low as 0.921 so actually a negative ratio but right around one to one what's known here though and was not the case in the previous one as there are 17 of the voters who don't have an opinion they

1:48:49don't follow your budget avidly um and while these are likely voters these are the people that would show up in November and cast ballots on this kind of renewal measure uh it's important that they understand your fiscal practices and your your sound fiscal management because if we

1:49:07don't explain that to them somebody else might so that's an important caveat in that particular chart it's positive but there is maybe best way to think of it as an opportunity to communicate with those people the next question sort of switches gears and we read them at an actual ballot

1:49:27measure which you see is the renewal that we have um in the text on the right hand side of the box and we ask people would you vote yes or no on that measure and then we drill down the next step is that definitely or probably on either side of the equation uh what we find here when we look at the

1:49:45aggregate yes no which is how we analyze the feasibility of this kind of renewal measure we see that we're at 73 yes versus 20 now now all they know is what's in that white box the text on the right hand side of the slide that's much like what they might know if they just

1:50:02looked the ballot and voted yes or no so it's a good analogy that's a great place to be we haven't given them a whole lot of information and they are very very supportive the next slide shows a variety of questions which do give them more information uh and these are ways we might spend the

1:50:24money we asked all of these items in a random order so there's no it's called position bias we asked read the item of which you see summarized here the wording is a little bit longer in some cases and then we said would you be more or less likely to support the measure based

1:50:40on knowing that we then drilled down another step and said is that much more likely or somewhat more likely when we're done with all the interviewing we assign numeric values to each of those responses so that a much more likely is a two which you see at the bottom of the slide somewhat more

1:50:55likely is a one a no effect is a zero what's not represented on this particular chart is the somewhat less likely which is a minus one or the much less likely which is a minus two so what happens here is everybody were to say much more likely we'd see twos conversely if everybody were to say much

1:51:15less likely we'd see minus twos what this gives us is a very nuanced way of comparing these items vis-a-vis each other without looking at six different percentages for each one of the items which becomes very difficult and when we do that we create the rankings here and then we create the

1:51:33tiers that you see in the chart tiers are defined by a 0.2 difference from the high to low and that's roughly speaking a statistically significant difference when you're outside of that so that's why there's a difference between tier one and tier two in the top tier the most important

1:51:51things to spend the money on we have maintained the current level of firefighters and police officers at 1.29 and while it's a very nuanced way of looking at these things it's also somewhat abstract so I'll tell you that was at least 84 some more likely to support the measure so a tremendous

1:52:09number in in support of the measure given that particular use of the funds maintain fire protection and Emergency Medical Services at virtually the same level at 1.24 statistically there's no difference maintain rapid 911 emergency response times in third position and then

1:52:26maintain neighborhood police patrols at one point one one uh the 1.11 equates to 78 percent at least somewhat more likely to support the measures so you can see given the survey's margin there were only six percent difference from the high to low and tier one uh and since

1:52:43the air rate applies to both sides of the equation uh they're not statistically different they are all at the same level then we have tier two which ranges from the one up 1.07 maintained crime prevention and investigation resources all the way down to maintain city parks

1:53:03paths and play fields at 0.88 those are all very positive as well in terms of percentages they are a high of 78 percent at least some are more likely down to 69 percent at least somewhat more likely it's a little broader range in there uh but uh still well over the

1:53:20simple majority necessary for a renewal of this kind of measure measure the final uh group includes increased Library hours maintain improve Open Spaces maintain pedestrian and bike paths and maintain Swim Center facilities all of those are well in a third tier and still positive and above

1:53:4062 percent at least some more likely so 12 points higher than the simple majority necessary to pass this kind of measure maybe the most important takeaway here is everything's positive everything is very positive and there's lots to work with maybe that's because uh there's a

1:53:58lot of good things that the city is doing that the voters want to maintain uh but it's good to see a long list and lots of things we have a lot of cities that you know the first time around if they get a 62 on this kind of question they're happy you're well above that for

1:54:17this kind of renewal Mr goodbye did you explain the split samples and the different colors already I'm sorry if I'm this one no I did not um the split samples are for two different purposes one is to look at things that might be similar and we're just trying to test

1:54:32differences in wordings and the other reason to do it is we're trying to maximize the number of questions we can get into the survey so what a split sample does then in either of those cases is it randomly selects half of the respondents and they get one of the

1:54:49splits and then the other half randomly obviously gets the other split so if you count those up you'll see that they're even a number of blue bars and green bars thank you so moving to the next slide which again represents a long list of questions and there are some split samples in here as

1:55:13well for the same purposes but these we characterized as statements that the supporters of the measure or of the renewal might make and as a result it doesn't make sense to people on the phone that they might be less likely to support the measure based on a supporting statement uh it just it

1:55:34confuses them while it is certainly possible uh in the real world it doesn't necessarily work on the phone so what that means is that we have dropped off the less likely side of the equation here so these scores are still important and very useful for a nuanced ranking of

1:55:53the various items here and they are associated with specific percentages which I'll reference some of you can't compare these scores Apples to Apples with the previous page because the scale is different so that's just an important methodological note when at the top of

1:56:10this list we again have summaries of these items because it wouldn't fit if we had all the full text this measure would give El Cerrito local control over local funds for local needs and the part that isn't in the summary here is and cannot be taken by the state

1:56:27that in the past has been a number one argument here it is almost always the number one argument across the state of California regardless of whether we were talking about cities school districts or other agencies that might be looking at Revenue measures uh that 1.2 equates to 72 percent at

1:56:48least somewhat more likely to support the measure uh so that is a a great place to be as well moving down to the bottom of tier one we have maintained excellent uh quality of life and character of the community uh and that point are 1.0 equates to 65 so all of these in tier one are above 65 percent

1:57:09they include the two that I've mentioned already as well as maintaining uh rapid 911 response times for police needed to maintain current levels of Public Safety City Services for children uh and teens are critical uh property crimes have increased in El Cerrito and this would

1:57:26help solve that problem there would be independent citizens oversight and mandatory Audits and that's an important accountability measure all of these things and I won't read all of them because it's a long list are really at the same level of importance within a

1:57:42statistical framework and that again means there's a lot of good things to work with for explaining the reason for this renewal now looking at the other side of the equation as I mentioned we do talk about the opposition statements and this is the same methodology as we just

1:58:01described we don't put a minus sign in front of the numbers to make it seem bad we could do that but it would be artificial so the higher that the number is the more impact it has against the measure so at the top of this list none other there are no rules to direct the

1:58:19spending of sales tax dollars that's true for every General Revenue measure uh that cities put on the ballot in the state so well it's not incorrect it's not quite in context that 0.88 equates to 56 56 percent at least somewhat more likely to oppose the measure so that's

1:58:41why that last one I read on the previous slide independent citizens oversight mandatory audits those accountability measures help people feel good about a general tax which by definition there are no rules to spend to direct the spending next on the negative side was the sales

1:58:59tax in El Cerrito will be 10 and a half percent among the highest in the State uh that is virtually at the same level at 0.85 um voters uh are being asked to approve property taxes for schools which as you know there's a bond measure now on the ballot for June but not for November when this

1:59:18might appear administrator and public employee salaries are out of control at 0.72 and then finally in the top tier the city broke its promise to fully fund the police department at 0.7 that equates to about 50 percent at least somewhat more likely to support to

1:59:32oppose the measure sorry then we have a second here which are all below the simple majority necessary to defeat measure encouraging at this point in the survey we've talked about the question itself we've talked about what we might spend the money on we've talked about the reasons for

1:59:50supporting it and we've talked about the reasons for opposing it and we haven't been shy about those either and people have been giving us responses somewhat in a vacuum for each one of those things we don't say think about all the 10 other items you were asked

2:00:05and then tell us what we do next though is we then come back to the initial ballot test and do say okay you got to think about everything you've heard just like what happened in an actual campaign word on the ballot and so this shows you what happens in that situation the bad

2:00:23news is it goes down 2.4 percent to 70.8 71 in round numbers statistically that's meaningless the same level as it was before it does suggest that some of the negatives do have an impact but it also suggests that the positives have an impact and it's important that should

2:00:45the council decide to put this on the ballot there will need to be an independent campaign effort of some sort after the next question that we asked looked at different durations and you can see those here obviously we're looking for a 51 threshold which is sort of a little hard to see on the

2:01:11left hand side but it's just about a third of the way up the burgundy area there that's the level that we need to be at to be successful and you can see all of these durations or sunsets we are successful and even at the ongoing or in perpetuity we are well above the 51

2:01:30threshold necessary to pass the measure as you might expect as that duration gets shorter 12 years nine years and then five years we get higher and higher levels of sport that's fairly common um this kind of research voters are looking for their level of accountability which

2:01:53means they get to vote on it and and so they they're telling us shorter is better but I think that while ongoing is doable 12 years might be a more comfortable time frame at least in terms of a risk assessment that we might could you what how many years did you say the 12th

2:02:14no I think you could do ongoing but I think there's a much higher risk level associated with that and I think 12 might be a comfortable yeah place to be a more acceptable risk the final two questions then uh came back to the the overall measure again and this first one is instead of a half

2:02:38cent uh increase it's a quarter Cent and you can see here we're actually up 74 and then moving on quickly to the next one uh if it were no increase at all just a renewal we beat 80 and I think the bottom line here is that the city has options and we're not proposing or

2:02:57recommending any particular uh tax rate right now as Scott said but there are there are options to consider and that's a great place to be in terms of our summary most of this we've just talked about but there is a very strong base of support for general sales tax renewal

2:03:18and we think that the city should consider putting a measure on the ballot or preparing to put a measure on the ballot in November of 14 you won't actually do that until later in late June or July the survey suggests that as I said in an in perpetuity measure may be possible although the

2:03:3612-year Sunset might be a more acceptable risk level the survey results indicate that support for a variety of services including maintaining firefighters and police officers maintaining fire protection and Emergency Medical Services maintaining 9-1-1 response times maintaining

2:03:53neighborhood patrols containing crime prevention and investigation maintaining after-school programs for children and teens and maintaining library programs for children adults and families are all important components of what you might spend the money on so again we think that the city should

2:04:12begin the steps to place a general measure on the ballot or at least give direction to continue doing the work associated with that and that might that work includes a community outreach effort to explain the service needs of the city and then of course we need to

2:04:28be prepared to head off concerns about accountability as I mentioned um and explain what uh resident service needs and priorities includes the presentation for this evening I'm certainly happy to answer any questions are there any questions comments from the council yeah I'll go

2:04:45ahead and start um so I think back in 2008 when we put the street measure on at the time we were maybe among the highest the the state um and since then we kind of set a trend where I think a lot of other cities have gone up commensurately as we have um but there's also some cities that are

2:05:12Beyond us now uh some at 10 I think particularly in Southern California there's several um so I don't think this is outlandish in any way I think it's it's become a trend and as you so aptly stated because this money stays in El Cerrito um or any City for that matter that it's

2:05:33it's can be very popular with our residents because I think people understand what's happening at the state level and how it affects the cities um and just I I don't have any necessary questions for you but I think if we piggybacked a little bit on what we listened to last week about the brutal

2:05:52facts there are a lot of you know brutal facts um you know we have problems with our you know loss of Redevelopment that's obvious in the tax increment since I was on Council last time which I don't know if it's four years five years or six years but you know we've lost anywhere

2:06:09from three to five uh three to four million dollars probably in just our property tax and what's going on with how our property taxes lagging behind what our current market you know our Market is at you know we're not getting recessed upward and there are many reasons for that

2:06:27and then we have the obvious problems with the true up and sales tax base and you know we have increasing costs uh pension and um in our medical cost increases for employees which you know is affecting all of us in all of our lives and you know we've we've had so many

2:06:46issues with our budget and we're balancing our budget right now on on something like 19 vacancies or 19 positions that were stopped and I think we still have idle on 9 10 or 11 vacancies that we probably won't fill because of um you know funding issues and we've at least been very successful in

2:07:09our city that our residents get what problems are here and we've been very successful in passing our measures so I mean I I think that this is something that we really have to ultimately consider and I certainly don't have too many other negative things to say about it because

2:07:28I think our I think your polling has showed that you know our residents really understand this and just want to thank you once again for taking so much time and and with the 400 people that you interviewed and I think the the writing may be on the wall somewhat

2:07:47thank you for the presentation just a few questions um did any of the questions when you were kind of informing the the survey takers uh discussed that the vote would occur in 2014 but the extension would occur in 2018 uh no uh we the way we've dealt with that in the past

2:08:07um and and perhaps uh your City attorney can address this too is it doesn't go in the ballot question it goes in the detailed full text of the measure and you have to be very specific about when it's going to start and when it you know was vis-a-vis the current measure some

2:08:25cities choose to end this Earl the earlier measure earlier other cities elect to put them sequentially you just I think have to be clear on that in the details but not in the ballot summary because it's not all of the law in that 75 words it's just a summary and I again would let your City

2:08:47attorney speak as an attorney as opposed to a pollster yeah it's it's extremely difficult in 75 Words which is what we're limited to to explain um everything else that you want to explain and then also the mechanics of how there's an existing ordinance that needs to be repealed and that a new

2:09:04ordinance would be adopted and that it would go into effect Community but so this the the bottom line is the the total set of documents related to The Measure will explain fully what's going to happen and what will happen is that the existing tax it will in a sense will

2:09:20essentially be replaced with a new one that will go into effect April 1st assuming that the voters approve it thank you that's what I was wondering wondering it seemed to me like that might be an opposing argument that we're discussing something that hasn't happened yet and I was thinking it might

2:09:33be a potential item to pull but it sounds like it's not you don't see that the argument about the start date is is an issue what's the potential or negative is if they overlap because then people say it's double taxation as long as we are careful to make sure that that doesn't happen then

2:09:53it's not an issue it just it hasn't been anywhere that we've done this and Scott touched on this at the beginning of the discussion of not having two votes in 2016 for two local measures is it your experience that those are often unsuccessful or is there any I you

2:10:10didn't pull people on that I think but is there any sort of not rules of thumb but what's sort of the theories in your field about that um it's not that they're not successful because you can go back to the school district in 2012 in November where they passed parcel tax and a bond measure in

2:10:28the same election um but school districts have different rules and different levels of support so it's easier for them to get a two-thirds for a parcel tax than it is for any city which is why there are almost no City two-thirds measures the bond measure is also 55 so really most of their effort

2:10:49goes into the winning the parcel tax and then the bond measure is a 55 and does pretty well um in your situation the we have to for a library Bond measure get to that two-thirds level and it is very difficult to do that we think you can do that in the November election which is

2:11:09the largest turnout the rule of thumb given what that would be that if you're going to try two measures in the same year you do the harder measure first which would mean you do the two-thirds measure which would be the library Bond measure in the primary in 2012 but I

2:11:26don't think that works I mean the reason we're talking about November of 2000 I'm sorry I said 12 I mean right in November about of 16 is we want the biggest turnout for the library bond that we can get and we don't want to have something right before it in June because that

2:11:43turns that methodology do the hardest one first upside down and that makes it difficult to win the second one okay thank you and we we don't have an oversight or audit committee now for measure r it passed without that in 2010 but it's not do is it your impression

2:12:00that that was an important part of the wording of the questions I think it's uh at least to have an independent audits which you do of course and we can talk about those that's an important accountability measure that offsets that concern that it's an independent it's a

2:12:16general tax but we actually do I mean we have we have to account for it separately and it the financial we we selected the financial Advisory Board as the group that reviews it is the oversight committee thank you uh those are all my questions thanks okay Greg um all right my question I guess would

2:12:37be or would be to reiterate what we've said which is that the best way to support the library initiative is to actually tackle this one in November of 2014. that's right and and that's why we're discussing it now multiple years before this one sun sets um that's really the base basic result

2:12:59of my I'm what I'm hearing and that's what I want to emphasize thank you Mark um just to follow up on that so this is an easier sell than the library is kind of what you're implying and so we need the higher turnout election of November 2016 with the presidential

2:13:18election for the library right yeah okay great my other question is you've pulled our community on many occasions as well as similar communities were there any surprises in the results uh no surprises I expected it to be really good I mean maybe it's a little higher than really good uh but I'm not

2:13:37given our experience in El Cerrito I wouldn't say that that surprised me um I think uh no it's pretty much what we expected and part of this is a renewal so that's part of the reason that the numbers are so solid right thank you thank you I don't know if I have any

2:13:54questions I did study this really carefully and because you've presented before so many times um I you know you know I could use that going into reading this even and I appreciate all the work that you've done for us once again and I just want to thank you for for doing a really good

2:14:13job and um so I don't really have any questions thank you do we have any public speakers I have speaker slips okay um so I believe that there is no action here other than to receive it or is there well I guess I would ask again without getting into specifics is it the council's desire that we go

2:14:37and formulate a recommendation with plans on similar to what we've done in the past are we to assume that we should plan on putting something on the ballot in November and then exactly what that is we'll determine later in the calendar year so we need to know whether we should go

2:14:54spend time and effort on moving forward because November is actually not that far away so um yes is there a consensus to to go for an extension are you looking for us to make a formal emotion or just to sort of either way and whatever I sorry um I I don't it doesn't necessarily have

2:15:16to be a formal motion but um I will say that that um to respond to a new law that went into effect this year um that some of you have probably already received some briefing about that it would be helpful to have you um clearly State for the record that this is the direction that you want and

2:15:35so motion would be an easy way to to provide that direction I move we direct staff to based upon survey results to prepare for the possibility of uh initiative on the ballot in November of 2014.

2:15:54great second okay motion um by I think speaking of new laws motion by Mark Friedman seconded by Greg Lyman now we need to hear from the public is there any public are you okay this I can still there still isn't huh no okay um so I guess we're ready to vote okay

2:16:18good comment please sorry about that just a bit just a one moment of discussion and then I'm happy to vote along with my colleagues um I just wanted to convey to Scott and the council members I haven't gotten a chance to talk with Scott about it yet I've received just a couple of comments

2:16:31from folks I've been speaking to about this and I think that the findings are correct that there's great support in our community and it really indicates a lot of trust and a lot of understanding of what the city's been been doing sort of the comments I've received just have

2:16:44to do with the sales tax in general and I think the the sentiment of the comment was how the sales tax is the as a regressive tax and the types of impacts it has on different income groups and my reaction to that is just that as we're going forward with we just have so many

2:17:02Ambitions for the future in terms of what we need what we want to do for the community and along with many many budget realities and it's my hope that as we move through the year and consider all of these things that we start to look at um I mean I think that we're going to need

2:17:18different revenue streams for many different types of things that we start to look at the imposition of the revenue streams and who we're getting the revenue from you know and we can segment that in any way that our staff comes up with to creatively segment that and that might

2:17:34be residents visitors it might be what we perceive to be higher income households or lower income households what I'm thinking of with regard to that is what councilmember Bridges mentioned earlier which is that we have many Market Market properties in the city

2:17:50that are at very high Market values but are paying very low property taxes because of their assessment and I'm just trying to think of of our all of all of all of our revenue streams where are we getting the money um who's bearing the cost of these taxes who's receiving the services and I think

2:18:06this goes along really well with the budget presentations we're doing with the community that we're kind of informing the community and we're informing ourselves of where we are today and we're but we're going to get revenue from different places and I just want to really be cognizant and

2:18:22thoughtful as we're coming up with new ways to fund these vital Services um that that we think about who who's paying the tax and that's my that was my discussion item thank you any other comments okay ready to vote yes okay all in favor please say aye any uh opposition in the abstention

2:18:41motion carries unanimously with that we'll move on to item 7B which is to amend the El Cerrito Municipal Code 11.64 which is on bicycles and um so we will start out with a presentation by our student police chief good evening Mary Ableton our esteem Council and

2:19:05Community I'm Sylvia Moyer your police chief and I am standing before you uh reflecting the open nature of the police department our city and our community because I'm presenting a circle back on a presentation that I did in the winter of 2013 regarding our bicycle ordinance now to refresh your

2:19:29memory I came before this Council and discussed some changes to our bicycle ordinance at the last minute one of our community members saw this on the agenda and he came and and spoke regarding one component of the ordinance so we I think very thoughtfully decided to suspend a

2:19:49decision until that Community member and I could meet and have a face-to-face conversation and some dialogue about one component of the ordinance and what I'm going to present to you this evening is the outcome of that meeting and the very respectful conversation that we had

2:20:08so what I present to you this evening is that uh in no in Winter of 2013 I presented regarding writing on sidewalks and what I'm proposing this evening is that no person shall ride or operate a bicycle on any sidewalk in the city except peace officers who determine in

2:20:28good faith that riding or operating a bicycle on the sidewalk is necessary to perform official duties and juveniles as specifically permitted in the ordinance the second part that was really I think the the most important part is trick riding we had a long conversation about

2:20:46trick riding where I proposed some initial language well through this engagement with the Community member I came up with a revised ordinance that he agreed with the content and it says this trick writing no person writing or operating a bicycle moped coaster roller

2:21:04skate sled skateboard toy vehicle or motorcycle shall perform any or attempt acrobatic or stunt writing wherein such action creates a dangerous situation to the writer pedestrians or Motor Vehicles upon any right-of-way space land property or facilities owned or

2:21:23controlled by the city of El Cerrito the foregoing prohibition shall not apply to city parks open space Greenways and areas designed specifically to accommodate cycling and riding activities such as designated skate parks bike parks and cross-country mountain bike trails unless such venues

2:21:41are being used for special events that prohibit trick riding because a large Gathering of pedestrians or vehicular traffic is present thus creating a dangerous situation that was what we came up with that met the intent and fulfilled the community need so I stand before you without

2:21:58reading all of the Amendments suggesting that we adopt this uh well-crafted revised ordinance to provide safety to the psychic cycling public and motoring and pedestrian public in El Cerrito that concludes my presentation I'm open to any questions that you have

2:22:19I moved to introduced by Title Wave any further reading and approve in an ordinance amending specific sections and repealing other sections contained within the El Cerrito Municipal Code chapter 11.64 bicycles second okay there's a motion by Greg Lyman seconded

2:22:35by Mark Friedman any comments from are there any public comments I have no requests no public comments then I ask if we ready to vote okay all in favor please say aye aye any opposition in the abstention motion carries unanimously thank you and um I just want to thank the chief for going

2:23:00the extra mile to make sure we got something that pretty much everyone can support so thank you thank you very much okay the next item on our agenda is item number eight council local in Regional liaison assignment reports are there any no no I just have a couple Economic

2:23:22Development Committee met on February 20th um they are kind of ramping up they don't have a chair or a vice chair yet they're very excited that they're larger that they can have more new members they started talking about uh new goals um uh and that's what I gleaned from

2:23:38from staying for just a couple minutes there and at parks and rec they began their agenda uh on doing their annual report or doing their annual goals yeah nope okay uh then we will move to adjournment and um we're going to be adjourning tonight in memory of John

2:24:01conestro who is a former building official for the city of El Cerrito he was the city's building official from December of 61 through March of 68 and he passed away suddenly at the age of 86 on February the 13th of this year at his home in Castro Valley he was a resident

2:24:21of El Cerrito for many years and with his wife Patricia Dale raised all four of his children here in El Cerrito he also served on the city's design review board and Planning Commission enacted as the city's chair as the commission's chair in the mid to late 70s Mr conestro visited the city in

2:24:42December and reminisced with Mr Cullen who is currently providing building official services to the city about his days with the city and its continued attachment to the city and that was just in last December after serving as El Cerrito's building inspector and later

2:25:01as building official in the 60s Mr conestro served as building official for the city of Hayward from which he retired he Illustrated leadership and dedication within his own profession by serving as president of the International Conference of building officials board of directors member and

2:25:21chair of the California Architects board member and chair of the California building standards Mission and served on several several Federal commissions he was also a court appointed mediator a published author and a much sought after expert witness in code related cases

2:25:43John was a true Giant in the fields of code regulation so I'd ask that you join with me in a moment of silence as we adjourn this meeting thank you thank you very much meeting is adjourned