City Council Meeting April 22, 2014

0:00:30and welcome to the El Cerrito city council meeting we will start out by I'll start out by announcing that um or actually let's start with the Pledge of Allegiance led by mayor Pro Tem benesini please take a moment of silence or join me I pledge allegiance to the flag of

0:00:50the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all now time for Council and staff Communications and I'm going to start out with a report from the closed session and I'd just like to announce

0:01:16that the council uh met and gave direction to staff no decisions were reached are there any staff and or I mean any Council Communications I have two the first is that the Environmental Quality committee um on Thursday the 17th had their very successful showing of Chasing Ice mayor

0:01:41Abelson and myself attended along with many of our staff and it was a sellout performance about the glaciers that are being watched by camera and videotaped for over three years period of time in both Greenland Iceland Alaska and also Montana um they are going to have the

0:02:04Environmental Quality committee will have another event to celebrate Earth month and week and this actually will be on May 1st it's titled the drought resilient home um some of the presentations that are going to happen at 6 30 here in City Hall will be a residential water

0:02:23conservation and drought tolerant Gardens presented by East Bay mud's water conservation representative and at 7 30 the same evening laundry to garden Gray Water so if you want to know the kinds of things that you can help in this drought challenge State these are

0:02:41two really interesting events and this next one will be Thursday May 1st 6 30 to 8 30 here in City Hall it's all hip I've got uh one met like all of you that live in El Cerrito I've been getting mail regarding Doctors Medical Center the hospital that provides over

0:03:05two-thirds of our emergency beds and so it is a special election one that you need to mail in so I want to make sure that everyone realizes that they do need to mail their ballot in in order to get their vote heard the Doctors Medical Center that is in our county

0:03:26has I think 20 roughly 20 emergency beds and the only other Hospital in the area Kaiser only has 10. so if Doctor's Medical was to close we would have a dire shortage of emergency beds uh in in West County so I just would like to make sure that you all know my opinion and hopefully you will

0:03:48mail your ballots in okay thank you I would just like to announce that um at 4 30 today we did a groundbreaking for the Iolani Gardens project which is a an affordable housing project that will be located behind Marshall's department store and um it's a very exciting project with 57

0:04:12units of affordable housing and I think it will be a great asset to our community when completed next year um in addition I want to mention that Earth Day is on Saturday in El Cerrito today is the official Earth Day I believe and in El Cerrito we celebrate it with work parties on this year April

0:04:3826th and if you don't already have a work site but would like to help then just come to the community center at 9 00 a.m and we will find a place that you will enjoy working at and I'd like to thank all of the people who've already volunteered to work for Earth Day every

0:04:58one of you makes a difference so with that we'll move on to see if there are any staff Communications or announcements yes I have um one exciting one with tonight's meeting and they're off thereafter we'll be now um webcasting the meetings on the iPad to be accessible from the iPad these and

0:05:18the archive meetings going forward it's a new feature for us we upgraded our encoder that's right are we wrapping up any iPads tonight I feel like it's a picture thank you um and if somebody wanted to do that how would would they do it by going to our website in the usual yeah which is the

0:05:43only thing to click on click on the same link that you would when you're looking at it through the web okay thank you the next item on the agenda then is oral Communications from the public on items that are not on the agenda if you want to speak on an item on the consent

0:06:01calendar this is also the time that you would be speaking and we have um several speakers the first is Al Miller good evening mayor Abelson city council and staff genocide is an issue that too many of we the people of the world seem to think is a thing of the past

0:06:24and while the Armenian Genocide featured in your Proclamation did take place 99 years ago there are still people who deny that it ever happened so I wanted to thank you for the proclamation you're considering and urging you to approve it and I hope it will serve as a reminder to all of us

0:06:44that genocide is still a problem facing our world and that we all should feel morally obligated to do what we can to fight it and end it once and for all it might be a small step but it's an important step because it helps bring it to everybody's attention so thank you

0:07:02thank you next speaker is Peter Raonic good evening council members staff in public I'm Peter varnich chair of the financial Advisory board or Fab as you know one of our duties is to annually review the city's comprehensive Financial policies and investment policy

0:07:24making recommendations for changes in refinements as appropriate as a result of the 2013 review Fabs made several recommendations that you'll be seeing tonight I'd like to speak in particular about one that will strengthen that's aimed to strengthen the management of

0:07:41the city's liquidity position um specifically we recommend adding a requirement to the comprehensive Financial policy that requires the city to have as a goal to achieve a minimum cash balance equal to 15 days of authorized operating expenses in order to meet anticipated City obligations

0:08:00without Reliance on borrowed funds as part of our review We researched other cities and found that actively managing our liquidity position was a best practice many cities have cash that exceeds 30 days of anticipated operating expenses however Fab believes that 15 days or one

0:08:19pay period is um is the right a step in the right direction for managing liquidity please note that this policy requirement is stated as a goal this is consistent with other requirements in the policy that are stated as goals such as maintaining a general fund operating

0:08:38reserve of 15 percent with a minimum of 10 percent we acknowledge that the reserve goal is not always met especially in weaker economic conditions but as a goal it's a sound operating principle the proposed liquidity provision would serve in a similar capacity as a

0:08:55guardrail for maintaining City solvency furthermore it's a another goal of the city to achieve a triple a credit rating from the major rating agencies this year the city was downgraded a notch to a plus from s p while Fab doesn't have those details of what drove

0:09:10the rating it's reasonable to assume that volatility in the city's cash position would factor in thus requirement for managing liquidity also supports the goal of maintaining our credit rating liquidity is obviously an important role in the overall Financial condition of

0:09:31the city in past years independent audit has commented on the city's periodic deficit spending in this year's kaffir the auditor noted that as of June 30th 2013 unrestricted cash balance represented only five days of general fund expenditures while they note that the city

0:09:48supplements cash flow with tax anticipation notes borrowed funds they also note that continued deficit spending reduces the likelihood that the city will be able to continue as a going concern a Fab believes that the proposed liquidity requirement is the correct

0:10:02option to begin addressing these concerns through the policy so in conclusion we understand the immediate challenges of meeting this liquidity goal but we would like to reaffirm our position on this policy matter and we we understand it's a difficult thing to implement and we would hope

0:10:20that the council considers a directing staff towards developing an implementation plan to meet the skull in time thank you thank you Tom panis good evening mayor Abelson members of council and City staff my name is Tom panis and I live at [address removed] in El Cerrito

0:10:56this evening I'm very happy to announce the opening of the El Cerrito seed Library you'll be located in the lobby of the recycling center our seed Library will be a completely free system which people are encouraged to take what they need some seed libraries Focus not only on

0:11:10giving out seeds but on having people propagate them and return seeds to the library returning descendancies is not a major part of our vision for the seed Library people are certainly welcome to do so but our primary goal is to make it easy for people to go California natives as

0:11:24well as grains vegetables and herbs this evening each of you is receiving one of three kinds of seeds milkweed today's scarcity of which has greatly reduced monarch butterfly populations wheat of which thousands of bushels were once harvested annually in Rancho San

0:11:40Pablo Italian beans which had nitrogen in the soil and our summer special treats in your folder some terrific background on seed libraries in the form of an information sheet published by The Round Valley seed Library up in kovalo also in your folder is a sheet on

0:11:56milkweed a vital part of the life cycle of the monarch butterfly all the seeds you're receiving were lovingly propagated in El Cerrito in particular the Italian beans were tenderly cultivated for many years by area native Louis Nicoli a walking information Bank on El Cerrito who was

0:12:12born here in 1913 and who we lost not too long ago the official opening of the seed Library will be at Earth the Earth Day lunch this Saturday at the community center later that afternoon we would move the seed library to its permanent home at the recycling center

0:12:26this idea is moving forward because of the act of support of the El Cerrito community garden Network and its very capable director Robin Mitchell I'd be extraordinarily remiss if I fail to thank Garth Schultz Garth couldn't have been happier and more welcoming welcoming when we first asked him about

0:12:42it I should note that several seed companies have kindly made very very generous donations of seeds to our fledgling seed Library I'm also extremely grateful that in El Cerrito we have very far-sighted elected officials and City staff who envisioned and built a place that has room for

0:12:59small important community-based sustainability initiatives such as to swim thank you for your time this evening thank you very much two more speakers one the next is Robin Mitchell the very same Robin Mitchell that was just mentioned I believe yes so um I'm Robin Mitchell I'm at live at [address removed]

0:13:23Street and I am talking also about the seed Library I don't have much to add I just want to thank the city and Garth for being so welcoming to us and I also want to recognize that it was actually Tom's idea he's giving the garden Network all the credit but he's the one

0:13:39that wanted to do it and came to us so he just deserves a lot of credit for that and we're also going to try to um make sure that all the local school Gardens know about it so that if the teachers need seed that they'll have whatever seat they need thank you very much thank you thank you

0:13:55and I believe you'll be at Earth Day we're going to have the the library is basically a card catalog for drawer card catalog full of seeds we're going to have that at the lunch celebration at Earth Day at the community center and then we're going to take it up to the

0:14:12recycling center after that thank you yep and Bobby Griggs thank you good evening mayor Abelson and city council I thank you for this opportunity this evening to speak about the Armenian Genocide Proclamation we have a beautifully diverse community I work at the high school where we also

0:14:47have a beautiful diversity in our high school right now we have over 40 countries represented some of which are Armenian sometimes I wish the UN could come in and take a picture there will be a qriket game on the computer and from my perspective from the back of the room at my desk I see

0:15:08Yemen Germany Pakistan India Brazil Nepal Korea and so many more countries all with their backs to me all involved in the cricket game it's a beautiful thing and I'm so fortunate to be able to see this the beautiful thing is they don't really know how beautiful they're being they're

0:15:31just being themselves it is in this Spirit and the spirit of my idol Sundar shoddy that I ask you to recognize and give validation to the nearly one and a half million Armenians who were murdered in the first genocide of the 20th century after witnessing the barbaric tactics of

0:15:53the Ottomans against the Armenian people Hitler's gears started working and said of their Slaughter after all who will remember the Armenians that was his statement before beginning his annihilation of the Jews again I want to thank you for this opportunity to remember and commemorate

0:16:16this beautiful culture these beautiful people on what will be April 24th their 99th anniversary of the genocide it speaks willowville Cerrito and speaks well of the empathy in our community thank you very much thank you and that concludes the oral Communications from the public

0:16:42we will now go on to presentations and the first one is on the solar Champion award presentation foreign thank you Mary Abelson and members of the council and City staff and my name is Mac Farrell I'm the global warming organizer for environment California's research and policy Center

0:17:19um we're a Statewide Environmental Research and policy group we have about 70 000 members across the state and over the past decade we've been a leading voice on advancing clean energy policies all across California and I'm honored tonight to be here on Earth Day to

0:17:38present the city of El Cerrito with the 2014 solar Champion award one of a handful that we are Distributing throughout the state and an environment California designates the solar Champion Awards to cities that have made groundbreaking and Innovative efforts to

0:17:53promote local solar power and things like streamlining permitting procedures installing solar on municipal buildings and creating training programs and offering incentives for folks to go solar and then basically here in El Cerrito by minimizing fees and really

0:18:10streamlining the process of Permitting a new solar energy system and local governments can can follow your lead to remove barriers for folks to go solar and in this city a solar permit actually costs about a hundred dollars which is one of the lowest fees in the entire

0:18:25State and the entire permit process takes less than just five days in addition businesses and homeowners can actually call the city for free advice about going solar pretty much anytime thanks to a partnership with the non-profit the community Energy Services Corporation and on top of reforming the

0:18:43city's permitting processes the city of El Cerrito has actually gone ahead and installed solar power on several municipal buildings including the community center and the public safety building your fire station and my personal favorite the recycling station um so basically any way you look at it

0:19:00the city of El Cerrito is definitely setting a great example by investing in solar power to bring about clean air local green jobs and a brighter future for all of us um so thank you so much for leading the way and very pleased to present you with this award which I

0:19:13believe I'll leave over here [Applause] oh you stupid on behalf of the council I would like to say thank you very much for this award it means a lot to our city to be recognized for doing the work that I think we all love to do are there any other council members who'd like to make

0:20:08a comment nope okay um with that we will proudly display this plaque um on our in inside of one of our facilities have we picked out which one we prefer um not yet not yet okay that will happen uh the next item on the agenda is the water shortage update presented by Andy Katz is he here I

0:20:38haven't actually he's not here yet we'll come back to that later um when he arrives or is there anyone here from East Bay mud now okay we'll come back uh the next item is the citizens oversight Street oversight committee annual report to the city council and residents of El Cerrito

0:21:02my name is Tom Miller I'm chair of the oversight committee I live at [address removed] here in El Cerrito I believe you have uh in written form our annual report which was about two months late because there was some scheduling problem with the Auditors but we held a special meeting

0:21:26on April the 3rd and uh the committee voted by a vote of three to two find that everything was in order and complied with measure a that's the end of my presentation as a the chair of the committee I have asked the city clerk if it would be permissible for me to speak as a

0:22:00member of the public as long as I'm standing here and I was told that it would not be objectionable so I would like to make a statement the last time I spoke to the city council was back in 2007 when the measure a was being proposed and I spoke in favor of it after I spoke

0:22:27I remember that the now mayor commenting to the effect that everybody seemed to be in favor of this measure I continue to vigorously support measure a and attended every Public Presentation advocating its Passage after measuring past I thought that I should volunteer

0:22:56uh to serve on the oversight committee and was duly appointed I've been on that committee ever since there was no problem until our September 2013 meeting when we became aware that a hundred thousand dollars a measure a money had been diverted to non-street projects

0:23:28in August of 2012 13 months had passed and we had no nothing about it since that time it has become apparent that measure a is badly flawed if viewed from the perspective of the voter flaw number one there's no Sunset Clause even though this was a measure to address a specific

0:23:56limited matter and nothing else floor number two the ballot language which is what the voters look at when they vote concert is contradicted by the underlying enabling ordinance floor number three is a ballot language clearly states that an oversight committee shall oversee

0:24:27related matters instead of that what we have now is not an oversight committee it's a hindsight committee and we don't get to look at anything until after it is a done deal although there may be no question but that all that has been done is entirely legal there's a very large

0:24:52question as to whether this is what the voters voted for and does transparency really prevail in our city government thank you for your attention thank you are there any other speakers on this we have one speaker Lynn Kessler good evening good evening mayor council

0:25:21members and staff thank you for listening to me tonight I was one of the no's with that voted with Thomas Miller on the oversight committee for the street improvements um basically um this was a difficult thing for me to do because I don't really like adversarial

0:25:38things but I felt like I needed to voice my objection to the transfer of the funds uh the way from the way the ballot was written I did go on to in July of 2008 I did go on a website after you appointed me on the oversight committee this is my seventh year and one of the items on the website

0:26:05Contra Costa city of El Cerrito website are there assurances that the funds will be spent responsibly the answer is money from measure a will be placed in a restricted fund that can only be used for streets measure a also includes tough physical accountability Provisions

0:26:23such as annual independent Financial Audits and citizens oversight to ensure taxpayer dollars are spent as promised and for this reason I had to vote no uh one of the two no's on on this approval of the measure a for 2013. I do want to tell you how much I admire and

0:26:43appreciate all the time you spend on the city council and I've been a resident of El Cerrito for over 40 years and it's a good city thank you very much there any other speakers weather speakers lips thank you um are there any comments from the council cool no okay thank you

0:27:06um I'll ask I think later whether or not uh director Cass has arrived I haven't noticed that though okay uh with that we'll move on to the adoption of the consent calendar and um I would like to um remove the item on the Armenian Genocide which is item number H from the consent

0:27:31calendar for purposes of presenting the certificate assuming it passes there are any other items that the council members would like to remove I move adoption of consent calendars consisting of items 5A through 5G and I will second that with two comments item five b ordinance

0:27:51establishing the measure a swim center parcel tax rates for this coming fiscal year 2014 2015 it Remains the Same as it has been since um 2005 roughly we have not changed it in in nine years and item 5D which is East Bay affordable housing week Proclamation as mayor Abelson pointed out we we did

0:28:15go to a groundbreaking for affordable housing here in El Cerrito and there are 23 events for affordable East Bay affordable housing week and the proclamation does not indicate that it is those events are listed on our website so I just wanted to make sure that the public was aware that they they

0:28:33can find out where there's 23 list listed events are by by going to our website so I will second the motion 5A through 5G all in favor please say aye aye aye any option opposition extension motion carries unanimously with that I would like to present the um uh Proclamation

0:28:54there is one technicality of reading the the title of the ordinance into the record may I read the title of the ordinance uh this is for item 5B an ordinance of the city of El Cerrito setting reduced tax rates for fiscal year 2014-15 only for the special tax imposed pursuant to

0:29:14chapter 4.56 of the else Freedom Municipal Code this is in regard to the Swim Center tax rates that councilmember Lyman discussed thank you and would you please I I know it seems um excessive but could you re-vote the motion having read the title okay so the most could you repeat the motion

0:29:36yeah I I move item five no five b you can do that 5B alone it the motion was 5A through five for G but you we can do it either way correct how do you want it if you could just the same motion is fine with the title having been read okay I would I move the adoption of consent calendar consisting

0:29:56of items five a through 5G and note that the full title of 5B the ordinance established and measure a swim center parcel tax rates for fiscal year was red I will uh second the amended motion is there any discussion all in favor please say aye aye aye any um motion carried unanimously and the

0:30:21motion was by council member Friedman seconded by council member Lyman thank you and would you like us to make a motion on the on H yes um so that you can then present the proclamation yes I will move item five H Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day Proclamation second the

0:30:40motion any discussion I just like to make the comment that I I appreciate this comment so we're made by the audience on this item and um I think it represents not only what happened in the Armenian Genocide but all the genocides that have happened and I hope that there will be no more

0:31:03and um thank you for bringing this to our attention um and um with that are there any other comments okay all in favor please say aye aye aye any opposition and abstention motion carries unanimously and the motion was made by councilmember Lyman seconded council member uh mayor Pro Tem benesini

0:31:31okay and with that we'll present foreign it's good for Monsters I listening shot notes and stuff all right Window phone call comes in puts it to sleep covers okay um at this point we're gonna go back to item 4B which is the water shortage update because uh director Katz who I

0:32:52actually don't see there he is has arrived welcome okay hi good evening mayor Abelson and members of the city council I'm Andy Katz I'm your representative on the East Bay mud board of directors and I'm here to update you on our water supply this is a a very unique year for East Bay mud

0:33:24in the East Bay we we have a very uh serious shortage of water both affecting us and Statewide and this will be an opportunity for me to be able to present to you on the current state of our a water supply and our drought year response so thank you very much I've prepared a

0:33:44presentation for you and uh and I'm pleased to tell you about what is been doing on your behalf uh to ensure that we have reliable water supply that reflects our environmental values so uh this is a very serious issue we normally keep a lot of our uh water storage and

0:34:05snowpack except where's the snow this has been something that we noticed very early on that our drought purchase our rain precipitation was very slow so this was in a typical year you can see the middle bar there is the average and in the upper is the wettest year on average

0:34:24with the dotted line and the lowest line there is the driest of record and so uh where where we are is if you follow those three different lines that's where we could end up at the top is a 10 exceedance that means nine out of ten years or wetter excuse me a dryer and

0:34:44then the bottom line in the red that's nine out of ten years or wetter and then the green is the median so it's shaping up to be a dry year and we knew this in as early as February and started to move forward on these uh initiatives to ensure that our customers would be able

0:35:02to conserve and what we know as of today is that it's going to be a dry year and today we declared our water supply deficiency so we expect to have an assuming median water water rainfall for the rest of the year 415 000 acre feet it's rained about half of what we normally would expect we expect

0:35:25normally about twice as much rain as what's happened in the mccollumi Watershed east of here in the Foothills and unfortunately it's only rained far far less than we would normally expect so uh when we hit around 450 000 an acre feet that's when we start to get

0:35:43concerned when our end of September storage gets to about 450 000 acre feet that's when we know based on our customers water usage that we're going to have a shortfall we're going to have a problem and we need to be making special efforts to be reaching out to our customers and also looking to secure

0:36:00potential supplemental Supply previously that supplemental Supply was not an option for East Bay mud we only had two options all right not do anything at all and not not be a prudent Water Agency that's not espe mud that's not us or we would ask to varying degrees of our customers to conserve and

0:36:22perhaps even ask for mandatory rationing and in the past this our board has imposed mandatory rationing and I'll have a future slide that looks at where we've been historically you can see here our water gross Water Production over different points in time what I find very interesting and

0:36:44remarkable about uh our our communities water consumption is that in the green line you can see that in the years before the 2008 drought we had much higher water use overall especially in those summer months we were using about 20 percent more than we are now and our

0:37:03our customers really responded during the drought we really responded and said we're not just conserving during the drought and responding to that emergency into 2008 people really stuck with it and you can see in the the blue line that's what we call our new normal

0:37:17people's people really dropped uh their water use and followed our recommendations and our requests to our our customers to use uh at the time we had asked for a 20 reduction overall and people had our customers had responded with a 19 reduction as of early earlier

0:37:37this year we were still having an average of 17 percent below that 2008 level and I think that's remarkable in our community that we we we're not unlike the drought of the 70s we're not dependent on a crisis mentality we're not dependent on that we have a structural conservation happening in our

0:37:55community and that's excellent that's what we want to do every day I know El Cerrito Prides itself on having a sustainability today is Earth Day and I I was pleased to see electric vehicle charging stations in your parking lot and I know that many of you have worked

0:38:10on on projects within the city to express your commitment that your zero waste center is amazing and has on-site water reuse so in all of those ways that each of our cities like El Cerrito demonstrates its commitment to sustainability our customers are doing that every day and I think this this

0:38:29chart helps show that and that contrasts with our history look at that severe drop in the or the drought of the 70s that that's a crisis that's everybody responding During a severe crisis we you we did not have toilets that that were efficient we did not have other

0:38:46appliances that that were efficient and all that has changed we have appliances that East Baymont has been providing incentives for we're now focusing on lawns and getting uh customers to change Lawns for drought resistant plants and offering generous incentives to make that kind of change

0:39:05over we also provide other uh other uh customer Outreach to help customers understand what's going on with leaks and how to repair and identify leaks so you can see that our ups and downs are much less severe and that that we're still we the some of the engineers call

0:39:24it recovery but uh we're we're still at a far far lower level than previous to the last drought so some of our dryer actions we are requesting 10 percent voluntary water reduction by all customers compared to their 2013 use we understand that super conscientious conservers have already

0:39:45been doing all they can and we listen to customers from our experience in the last drought and what we're saying this year it's listed on the top of every bill that's super super conscientious conservers need only check for leaks and we are pledging as a board that we will

0:40:01not be penalizing any reduced water use for for future kinds of actions in the in the rare event that we would look at mandatory rationing in the future we will not be using water usage during this period to uh to to be a factor in potential rationing so we we've recognized as a board that

0:40:21we we will not be penalizing customers for their conservation and we will be uh honoring and applauding our customers but still ask that they check for leaks because that can happen to even the most conscient anxious conserver we've audited our own facilities instead

0:40:36of voluntary reduction goal of 20 percent that each of our facilities we're stepping up or offering a free advice free devices and technical assistance we're Staffing up our customer service line 1-866-40 EBMUD and that line is available for customers to call during

0:40:55business hours and we'll send free kits free tablets that can help customers put in their toilets and identify leaks and other access to information around water conservation incentives uh and so that's all a part of our uh water conservation Outreach and this is the first year that

0:41:14we're going to draw up to 16 000 acre feet from the Sacramento River at Freeport uh this is a a project that's long in the making and of those of you that have been in the East Bay uh many years know that this this is a history where there were legendary uh Wars over

0:41:33over the water rights that East the East Bay has held on the American river and uh there was a pretty drawn out Fright with with Sacramento and it ended up with a sharing of the the the Watershed and uh working with the environmental Community to cite the the intake

0:41:51facility uh lower down on the Sacramento River where it wouldn't impact fish the fish testing that was recently done confirmed that the delta or the smelt that flowed down to the Delta flow right past the fish screens and that the intake does not impact fish negatively

0:42:07at that intake point point I to me personally I still believe that it's important to conserve water and not to over rely on this new supplemental Supply we have we know that every drop of water that doesn't get taken in by this facility is water that flows to the

0:42:24Delta where it's needed to be able to care for that the estuary so you can see over here uh does this thing point the center button here let's there we go so this is this is our drinking water reservoir party that's named after the former Governor that started East Bay mud and this is

0:42:45the mccollumi river we are about 100 miles east of Home Stockton is around here Lodi is here and this is Amador County this is Calaveras County Alpine County is up here so this is our drinking water reservoir party that's where we store our drinking water and this is Comanche Reservoir this is

0:43:09where we store the water supply for releases down the Lower mokolami River where we have a hatchery that releases steel steelhead and salmon so uh what we've built here is a pipeline that goes from the Sacramento River at Freeport right here over uh to an to a new Pipeline and a

0:43:33new intake and conveys water from uh from this point here across and then down to our mccullume aqueducts where they then cross the Delta back home so that new project is a very significant piece of infrastructure it costs one billion dollars and we shared that cost 50 50 with Sacramento County

0:43:54and this is the first year that we've ever used it it's it's not something that we would just use uh for for no reason at all because it does cost a significant amount of energy to be able to turn it on to to use it it requires pumping of water both into the into the facility through

0:44:15the pipeline and then additional energy to treat it it's it's not gravity fed unlike uh our mccollumi aqueducts this is all downhill right here here the water has to be pumped out pumped through and requires a slightly additional energy to treat it because it's not quite the same kind of water as

0:44:34our very pristine mccullomy Supply so um there's so those drawbacks to over relying on Freeport and it's important that we still conserve water but it's nice to have notice that we're not in we're not in mandatory rationing this year despite that it's the second driest

0:44:52year on record so uh the the this investment is is benefiting our community uh but it's not an excuse to uh keep the showers too long so we have these conservation tools and services free water saving devices we fully encourage uh your uh any opportunity for this when the city is

0:45:11communicating with your residents to also help refer your residents to uh to these services that East Bay mud offers you can access any of this information on our website ebmud.com and or also call our customer service line 866-40 edmud and uh they'll get any of

0:45:32this free information free free devices that efficient waterers we offer similar kinds of devices for restaurants and small businesses we have conservation education for the schools and the these These are the captain Hydro is is definitely a hit in the schools and uh other other kinds of

0:45:53Outreach we are looking at how to best communicate with uh renters who don't pay their water bill directly and how how we can best communicate with them uh fix a link week was a big deal you can see here that leaks are up to 14 of a of of household water use on average and so we've responded with

0:46:16uh providing more information about these leaks look how many gallons a day and dollar savings uh all these different kinds of leaks can cause so leaks are no laughing matter in fact leak is a four-letter word and we've had this campaign going on for some time so

0:46:34we we know that for the customers that are have definitely responded we we applaud that and we know that plumbing wears out now and then and we encourage the city because your your facilities can uh can cause very major leaks on the irrigation facilities so to think about

0:46:52how to maintain your facilities in a way where there's a clear contact for somebody to reach East Bay mud maintains a leak notification line so if somebody calls us we we will turn around that leak complaint and turn it right around to the customer so if we know the person

0:47:09at our customer service line if we know who at the city to call who can get a leak fixed or or a broken sprinkler valve so if somebody at the city if somebody finds finds a city sprinkler valve that's uh that's leaking or or is exploding sometimes these things can be

0:47:27uh 10 gallons a minute and and very very fast leaks that when that person calls East Bay mud's line we'll we'll know who who to call at the city right away and help get that fixed as soon as they know so you never sometimes residents call us first Sometimes they call the city first

0:47:44it's important that we both know who who to call on either end and that's why our contact center is there to help all of our customers and we're also available for presentations like these to community groups with that uh thank you for having this present and I'm happy to

0:48:03take your questions Craig yeah I've got two I think you've mentioned them but I want to make sure that people are that give you an opportunity to repeat yourself um one is about the rebates for converting Lawns from grass to drought tolerant Lawns um I've heard that it it's a pretty

0:48:27impressive number that homeowners can can get back so I just wanted to find out if you had any additional details you wanted to provide that might give incentive for people to swap their lawns out we no longer have a Mac a minimum size of the yard we used to only Reserve

0:48:43that program for large yards but now that program is open to yards of any size I think that's a particular interest for our community because yards in El Cerrito are not like the yards over the hill there there is very high conservation excuse me high water use

0:48:58from households that have extraordinarily large yards that are typically not found in in El Cerrito but still customers in El Cerrito deserve to benefit from that program and what's what's important is that a customer who wants to benefit from this program should I will take a look at the

0:49:15guidelines before embarking on the project the the to be able to access the rebate the plans have to be reviewed by East Bay mud staff before and then surveyed after so it's important to get that plan looked at and approved before claiming the rebate that's important to

0:49:34be able to access but it is it is a a very beneficial rebate many customers find that they can get anywhere from 200 to 500 dollars I've even in in our small yard community so that's I think a big benefit to be able to put towards these drought resistant plants and the second

0:49:53one is the one you touched on I think you you've got it on the top of every bill you said when the last conservation uh occurred and and we had to do reductions those are those of us in small yards and small communities and and already conscious about conserving water

0:50:13felt that we were penalized and sounds like uh there's been a policy shift at the board of directors and I just wanted to give you an opportunity to reaffirm that change in policy um and that and and reaffirm what you're putting on the top of every Bill thank you that that is correct we uh we were

0:50:31caught by a surprise but the 2008 drought there's uh a law that you're familiar with as a city council proposition 218 requires a very strict timeline for providing notice and comment on on any kind of rate increase and you may be familiar with that from your sewer rate increases and East Bay

0:50:50mud was caught in a very difficult position with very little time to spare to be able to have a price signal to customers in time to make a difference for that Year's drought we did not have time to deliberate and we ended up uh with a with a system that was uh that had some

0:51:07problems with it we have made a very clear shift that we will not be penalizing customers for their conservation this year and and we're making it very clear at the top of every bill so we we're very clear that super conscientious conservers need only check for leaks and that water use during this

0:51:27period will not affect any policies during mandatory rationing uh we but I should I should say when I when I State this that we're in a very severe dry year right now Statewide and we are not going to mandatory rationing so the the cases when we would go to mandatory

0:51:44rationing would be multiple consecutive dry years and that that's an order that has not occurred since that the 70s so we we are heading into extraordinary times because of climate change we're seeing dry years uh become much more frequent we're seeing water you water

0:52:04rainfall become much more variable and uh that that means that it's it's still quite possible that we could end up in that severe estate I truly hope that we don't because we are in a much more resilient uh place with our prudent water supply management and our access

0:52:20to supplemental Supply our customers that are doing a good job compared to the rest of the state frankly I would fear for the rest of the state in that kind of situation so I hope that we'll be able to focus on growing structural conservation and encouraging our

0:52:35customers to partner with our community that way thank you Mark okay um I'd just like to make a um a comment about uh what we're doing on Earth Day as it relates to the retirement of yards we're actually doing a demonstration project uh at Baxter Creek at San Pablo

0:52:58Avenue which is um just behind the grocery store at McDonald and San Pablo Avenue I don't know how to explain that any better the location is that pretty good okay that uh anyway uh the staff will be doing the retire there's some grass there and it is being retired

0:53:18and um it's it should occur at 9 00 a.m on Saturday this coming Saturday morning April 26th if anybody is interested in learning how to do that using cardboard uh as I understand it so um we are we're doing something in that regard to enable people to do that as

0:53:39well as a number of other projects mainly educational in the upcoming month I think um so and if people are interested in learning about what they are the best way to get information about that I believe I don't know if I see any recycling people staff here but I believe the best

0:54:00way is to look on our website or to look on our environmental services website for information about those activities and I would like to thank you for coming and sharing with us and so the easiest way if somebody wants to check to see if they have a leak it's probably not by

0:54:20going and looking at the item in your yard or wherever it's by um contacting East Bay mud via your website or that phone number that you gave us which maybe you could repeat one more time sure that all the instructions and resources are available on our website and by

0:54:41calling a customer service representative at 866-40 EBMUD or www.edmud.com and they can tell people how to access their meter look and see if their meter is running and also to how to use use some of the materials we have or food coloring in the toilets so I have another question when I look at

0:55:04my water bill I can't tell if I'm good at conserving or not by just looking at the bill is there a way we could tell is there a number on that bill that will they use as a guideline we're piloting two very exciting initiatives that we don't have ready to roll out this year

0:55:21but but they are going to be available in years to come uh we are looking at home water reports that I will tell you how your water use compares to your neighbors and we found that that that encouragement from your neighbors actually reduces water consumption by

0:55:37five to six percent we did a controlled study and found that even despite all of that the trends that are happening with water use in globally that we can we can identify at least a five percent water use reduction just from having that access to what's happening in your

0:55:53neighborhood very exciting we'll be rolling that out more in the near future and uh second financing uh some of what you mentioned around changing your uh out landscape in your yards many customers are looking at gray water or rooftop catchment and I've met some of

0:56:09these Investments may be expensive and maybe harder for for some households to be able to invest Justin right away we're looking at on-bill financing where East Bay mud would Advance the co the capital cost and people would be able to experience those savings on their water

0:56:24bill without having to actually front the money themselves so that that helps leverage East Bay mud's prudent Financial uh management we borrow somewhere between one and a half and two percent uh we can leverage our AAA Bond rating with with our customers that uh

0:56:41through on Bill savings and so uh would the person pay that back through their bill on a that's the program that we're exploring right now we have a pilot program going this year and I hope that we can launch that later next year okay and him what period of time would it be repaid over

0:56:57uh those are still program design guidelines that we're looking at right now um so it would be very uh glad to work with any of you on that if you have ideas about how we could structure this or partner with you on similar initiatives okay thank you um is there anything else on this item

0:57:14uh thank you very much for coming and sharing and um it uh I know there are a lot of people interested in the topic thank you and I'm also accessible for anybody here who's watching the presentation if you would like to follow up you can reach me at by email at a k-a-t-z at ebmud.com I

0:57:36would be glad to talk with you further great thank you very much for coming okay um let's see so now we are believe at item number six on the agenda which is public hearings so the first one is on is the disposition development and Loan agreement with Eden Housing

0:57:56Incorporated for City housing property located at 10848 and 10860 San Pablo Avenue is there a staff report ah good evening mayor Abelson council members I'm Hildy mile the city's housing program manager and what is before you this evening as you've mentioned are the terms under

0:58:21which city council may consider approval to convey the tradeway property next door at 10848 San Pablo Avenue to Eden Housing a non-profit developer and provide them with a permanent loan to develop a 63-unit affordable senior housing project the city's negotiating team which

0:58:42includes myself Karen tiedemann from Goldfarb and Littman and Debbie Kern from Kaiser Marston as economic consultant have reached mutual agreement with Eden on the terms and proposed structure and we're presenting that to you tonight I would also like to acknowledge staff

0:59:02from Eden Housing who's here tonight and who would be happy to answer any questions that you might have for them Linda mandolini president of Eden Housing and Woody carp project manager so we've been working on this project staff with Eden for some time and Eden's project has already received

0:59:23its sequa certification and planning approvals from the Planning Commission in December and it's design review approvals from the drb in January obviously Eden would need the land as well as the financing in order to construct this project and tonight we're looking at the

0:59:41financing terms and the proposed structure to convey the land and to convert the existing City pre-development Loan into a permanent loan a few key points I'd like to highlight the former Redevelopment agency of the city acquired the site with housing set aside funds and the existing

1:00:00pre-development loan is a commitment of the city's housing fund and the undispersed portion of that loan is an obligation of the successor agency so no City General funds have been obligated or are proposed to be used in this transaction because of the use of the housing

1:00:20set-aside funds and acquiring the property there are state laws that apply to this site and compel us to use it as affordable housing or that govern the use of any proceeds that would be realized from this position of the site um in structuring this transaction that

1:00:39what's in the ddla the disposition and development loan agreement staff considered several goals including the desire to see the construction of the project proceed as quickly as possible in the project to get its financing as quickly as possible and the desire to

1:00:53ensure that the property is managed well over the long term as high quality affordable housing for seniors the structure and the terms that are in the proposed ddla have staff's recommendation as the best possible balance between those City goals and assuring the Project's timely completion

1:01:13and successful operation over the long term so I'd like to cover a few points that were not covered in the staff report and then I'll turn it over for the public hearing and any questions and comments from council members um in terms of there are proposed affordability restrictions in the

1:01:35regulatory agreement which is a 55-year term for those affordability restrictions and that's the duration that's required under Redevelopment law in this site is still subject to those laws it's also typical housing affordable housing practice and layers well with

1:01:53the other sources of financing that are proposed for the project the nine percent low income housing tax credits also have a 55-year term and the county cdbg and home funds which flow to them through HUD also have a 55-year term um the um in terms of looking at a sale of the

1:02:16land versus a ground lease or some other structure a ground lease is one option for providing the city additional control over the property but the ground lease transactions are also somewhat more complicated in the affordable housing Finance world and can cause some time

1:02:33lags in the development process as investors and lenders try to get comfortable with that term the city can achieve similar control over the property as that provided with the ground lease through the regulatory agreement which provides the city with oversight of and management of the property or

1:02:51oversight of the management of the property to ensure that it's well maintained and managed well over the long term um the sales price of one dollar which is a nominal value reflects uh the affordability restrictions that will be in place on this project with those

1:03:10affordability restrictions and those restricted rents there is not really any value in the land that's the reason why public subsidy is necessary to make affordable housing happen make these projects work what staff is proposing that we are most concerned with here is

1:03:28that the project provide high quality affordable housing over the long term and be well managed um I'll say one more thing about tenant selection and then I'll turn it over the ddla does require that Eden submit for City review and approval the management agreement which includes

1:03:48procedures and written guidelines for the screening and selection of tenants and that will happen prior to the close of permanent financing so we'll we'll get a chance to look at it well in advance of the project actually being constructed or rented up Eden has committed to proactively

1:04:07marketing the project in El Cerrito as well as other areas of the East Bay as they are in fact required to do under their fair and affirmative marketing standards that come along with their state and federal funding staff at this time is not proposing any preferences for El Cerrito residents due

1:04:24to fair housing concerns and we feel that marketing the project will will have an effective be able to address sort of the community desire to be part of this project and with that I will conclude my report and turn it over to you um so before I open the public hearing

1:04:46are there any questions from the council no okay so at this time I will open the public hearing and call for speakers from the public are there any speakers Tom panna's please foreign members of the council and City staff my name is Tom panis and I live at [address removed]

1:05:27Fairmount in El Cerrito I enthusiastically support the Eden Housing Development up for your review this evening this project helps us read immediate schools for density and affordable housing its location of trans-rich corridor is exactly where it should be we get a medical clinic we get

1:05:43world-class historic interpretation as you know I had serious mcgiving misgivings about the original project but Eden Housing has listened carefully to our community and has worked diligently with the city staff to make significant changes to the proposed project

1:05:58we now have a project that serves our community in so many ways I would like to underline the efforts and thank our staff the efforts of and thank our staff Eden Housing and its Architects the Planning Commission design view board and the Japanese American citizens

1:06:14league for their devoted efforts on this project this project is right for El Cerrito in every way and will be a credit to our community I'm excited about this project and request that you approve the materials that you have in front of you this evening thank you for

1:06:28your time thank you are there additional speakers Linda mandolini thank you Madame members of the council my name is Linda mandolini I'm the president of Eden Housing and I just want to say thank you to all of you for your continued support for affordable housing for tonight uh for recognizing

1:06:48affordable housing week which we are a very big proponent of and for helping us work through this development we are really proud of where we're at with this development I want to thank the Historic Society Tom panis and all of the community who came out to help us really

1:07:02work on the interpretive design because we think it really makes a big difference and I want to say a very special thank you to Hildy she really did amazing work with us and really helped us get to a place where we think we have a super just really super development and we can't wait to

1:07:17actually start this is a really important step in moving us forward to accumulate financing and getting us ready for tax credit financing um I was thinking uh when Hildy was talking about us being monitored by the city I think we're right next door and so I think we'll be the most monitored

1:07:33affordable housing development in the community because of our actual location so I want to just say thank you to all of you we can answer any specific questions you might have but we're very excited about moving forward with this development thank you um I have no additional reconditional

1:07:49speakers okay um is there a motion to close the public hearing so moved second okay motion by benassini seconded by Lyman all in favor please say aye aye any objections any abstentions motion cares unanimously with that we'll move on into any discussion from the

1:08:09council okay yeah I um I want to thank Eden for working with the public community on the um as Mr panis suggested uh on the uh interpretive the audition of the interpretive Center information um as you know many many years ago I I did raise the concern that that had been

1:08:34uh dealt with through your out your Outreach to the community so I want to thank you for that I also want to emphasize a few things about this this deal the funds are from tax increment Revenue that are in a segregated for a segregated purpose so as as miss my old stated

1:08:57um these basically Redevelopment agency funds that are not eligible for any other use the the property we we are selling the property for a dollar the property represents the city's investment in a 26 and a half million dollar project so our our we're putting up just over 10

1:09:17percent of this project and and part of that of that sale is to make this project more attractive to private financiers for those of us that the mayor and I attended a meeting earlier in Union Bank is putting up 18 million dollars towards a project in town they're investing

1:09:41their their money um in our projects so so our our land is just our portion of trying to get good quality uh senior housing in our city private investor investors are incentivized by the tax credits the nine percent tax credits and in order to be competitive and win those and those are

1:10:04highly competitive I went to a conference just last week where I was told that the all the nine percent uh tax credits for this year have been given out and that essentially we're now in hopefully queued up and well positioned for the next tranche of nine percent tax credits but in order to be

1:10:21competitive we need to be able to to say that the land is is not encumbered is no longer encumbered by us and that's why a sale is very critical um and finally as um was stated but I want to over emphasize it this project is very it's Transit oriented development it's uh

1:10:44High Mobility for along San Pablo Avenue and the project is consistent with our upcoming San Pablo Avenue specific plan so that it is consistent with the future of of El Cerrito as as we've been talking about it for the last two years so um I'm delighted that you have worked

1:11:06with the community to get a project that looks like it's going forward exactly delivering what we're looking for and hopefully it's going to be competitive so we can break ground on it soon yes I see you crossing your fingers so I I want to thank everyone for their efforts

1:11:20in this uh staff uh LD miles is worked tirelessly on this for many years Karen Tiedeman sitting behind her hiding is has helped put a very strong package together um you can't see it but I've tabbed all the attachments I actually read most of the attachments and it and it is a very

1:11:39strong uh doc document so I want to thank everyone for their contribution thank you okay Mark could I make one thank you mayor just a couple other comments just to Echo some of the comments that councilmember Lyman made already in looking through the documents that have been put together for this

1:11:57very important point in the project in terms of getting all of our terms in order I was looking to make sure that we had a really quality project obviously we've done so much planning work so much SQL work with all of our various Community groups and that was that was

1:12:11clear to me that that work had been done also looking to make sure the city's Financial interests and the asset that we've held this asset for several years now we want to make sure our asset is going to be treated in the way that we envisioned it to be treated as and I was

1:12:24very happy and pleased to see in the document that um the protections for the city were anything to go wrong in terms of Eden's Financial standing or the management to go south for some reason there's protections throughout the document for these things and also the the loan of

1:12:41the 350 000 loan that we've given a partial installment for there are Provisions for that to be paid back over the 55-year term so in my mind the staff has done an excellent job in making sure all of our interests are being well protected while still giving working with Eden to make sure that

1:12:58everything that they need to get all of the additional monies they need to start the project sooner are in place so I applaud the effort as well I don't have anything else to add except for the thanks staff for the four pages of emails that they corresponded with me

1:13:13on the on the proposal thank you thank you all right mayor I did have one other thing that I wanted to highlight our our agreement requires that 30 of the units are approximately half are at 50 percent of the area median income and 32 of the units are at 60 percent of the

1:13:33area median income however in order to be competitive for our nine percent tax credits the project is actually committing to do seven units at 30 percent of the area of median income 16 at 45 percent of the area medium income and 39 at 50 percent so these truly will be affordable thank you thank

1:13:59you and I would like to um add my appreciation to the comments made uh thanking staff for the work that they have done in working with the community particularly the Historical Society in Tom pannus who probably is out there but I don't know where he's he hiding somewhere back row okay that's

1:14:20where people usually hide and I'd also like to thank uh Eden Housing for working with our city to try to create a project that works for our city and I know that you went to some extra effort to do that and we appreciate that and I think that we've all got a better project for that so

1:14:41thank you thank you all for making that happen this is a project right next door to City Hall it's a very important location to our city so we certainly would like to see something that we will all enjoy being a neighbor to over the years and I think it really provides a

1:15:03bonus by providing the medical offices outpatient medical offices that can be used by seniors in our community providing a resource that's much needed that we really don't have now in that same way so it's we've got kind of a double bonus there and uh thank you very

1:15:24much I'll let you do it now though if you if you want to stop arm wrestling resolution I move a resolution to the city council of the city of El Cerrito as housing successor to the El Cerrito Redevelopment agency formerly or the city authorizing execution of a disposition development

1:15:49and Loan agreement with the Eden Housing Incorporated and make making findings and approvals pursuant to the California community redevelopment law in connection with the Redevelopment of that certain property located at 10848 and 10860 San Pablo Avenue in the city of El

1:16:08Cerrito Redevelopment project area second okay any um further discussion okay hearing none all in favor please say aye aye aye any opposition any abstention motion carries unanimously motioned by Greg Lyman seconded by Mark Friedman with that we will move on to item Six B

1:16:31which is the master fee schedule and um there will be a public hearing sort of Staff presentation I believe from Lori Trevino thank you good evening Mary elberson and council members I'm Larry Trevino senior financial analyst I'm here for the annual update of the

1:16:52master fee schedule which includes all of the city's user fees charges and business license tax rates adjustments to fees and charges for services are intended to cover the changes in the city's cost for providing those costs and services and so the proposed Master Fee schedule is

1:17:11reflecting a recommended four percent increase in most fees which represents what we believe will be the city's increased cost of providing those services this adjustment reflects primarily increases in Personnel costs particularly for medical and retirement benefits

1:17:29some of the proposed fees have been adjusted by amounts other than the four percent General adjustment or have been held constant with the current level and variations from that four percent adjustment may be because of market conditions that call for some sort of a

1:17:45competitive pricing changes in Staffing or a re-evaluation that's been done of the cost of doing a service um some of the specific changes in fees and some new fees have been detailed in the staff report that you received and I'm happy to answer any questions about

1:18:03those specifics if you have any questions also in the master fee schedule is the update for the business license tax for fiscal year 1415 those rates are increasing by about two percent which is calculated based on the CPI which is specified in the municipal code

1:18:27um the revenues that are generated from the various fees charges and taxes in the fee schedule will reflect um will be reflected in the proposed budget that you'll be considering later this spring and all of the fees should you approve them this evening would become effective on July 1st which is

1:18:47the first day of the fiscal year including development fees which require a 60-day waiting period before they can be implemented so if you have any specific questions about any the report or the fee schedule itself I'm happy to answer them are there any questions from Council

1:19:07before we open the public hearing yes I just have sorry I just have one question thank you Mr Vino is it I was just looking forward to looking through the report to confirm I think that all of the cost adjustments that are not new fees all of the sort of existing fees

1:19:21that have uh that the cost adjustment is being applied to all are four percent except for fees and Recreation is that does that sound correct and the recreation fees are the ones that are much more subject to um Market pressures to either go down or go up in order to be consistent with

1:19:38other what other cities or Recreation offering entities are doing I try to see if there's any that are not four percent uh in other departments yeah I think you're right I didn't find any so I just wanted to confirm that the the explanation you gave having to do with

1:19:54Market pressures largely is applying to the recreation department yeah and that's that's just because other programs are if they're not raising their fees then it doesn't make a lot of sense to do that I think you're right except for um Recreation I think they're all four

1:20:08percent or there are some where they were set to the maximum by state law which was a reduction from what was reflected in the prior there's I can I sort of went through and looked at that issue and I marked how how that went and on page 13 and almost at the bottom there's 150

1:20:30dollar fee looks like it was Zero before it's for tree planting or did it not exist Street treat planning didn't exist that's a news um and let me see if I found any others the return check fee had accidentally been set at more than 25 dollars which is the state maximum so that actually

1:20:54went down we were not charging more than 25.

1:21:01this is what you just said or the Public Works plan review there's a series in there where it was 20 percent or no next excuse me that's not right it went from thirty two dollar a minimum the minimum changed on page 32.

1:21:20from oh that was in planning yes yeah uh in the planning section there were some reviews um or in the in the building section excuse me that would be on page 32 yeah I think that's right on page 32 um we set the minimum um at a higher rate we had not been adjusting the minimum

1:21:48for several years so in most cases it's much higher than the minimum anyway I believe but we did make it reflect what the at the actual time that it takes for staff to do any sort of review thank you are there questions yeah I've I have one that um in the section two which is police there is a

1:22:14Alcohol Beverage Control one day license and it's 43 dollars but what I my question really is in Recreation we have alcohol beverage service at 174 or 160 depending on what facility you're in does that does the fee in Recreation include the Alcohol Beverage Control license or do they have

1:22:39to do both I do not know the answer to that question it does not include and so they would have to do a supplemental payment for the license is that correct sounds like it yes and then um I was uh one of one of the questions I asked of Staff earlier today had to do

1:23:00with rain water catchments and of course uh East Bay mud director president Katz was talking about catchments and and I'm delighted to tell everyone that we actually have currently no fee for you to catch rain water from your roof and store it for supplemental uh use in your

1:23:17let's say your your garden however if you were trying to connect that water up to your to your say your house for use in your toilets there would potentially be a gray water fee and and we do have actually a gray water fee um so if you were going to try and use

1:23:37your rain water for toilets which is what they do at the recycling center um The Gray Water fee is um basically done on a four percent of the well sorry four percent increase it would be 160 dollars per hour of consultation um so hopefully they can look at that

1:23:59and since we did it at the recycling center we know how to do it in your house um but I also asked about other climate action plan uh incentives and I was wondering if you would take a moment to talk about your future plans to potentially come up with incentives for

1:24:16climate action uh programs I think I'm going to have to direct that question to someone else I'll have Maria come up great thank you yes there's uh quite a few um items in home weatherization that um are a part of our climate action plan and I think that next year we'll be making it a part

1:24:40and we'll be reviewing making it a part of our work plan to review ways in which we can incentivize those types of um you know either bundle it or you know we'll do something along the lines so it doesn't have a huge impact on on um staff because there's a lot of

1:24:57measures that can be bundled but at the same time we'd want to figure out ways that we can kind of promote those in uh through the fee schedule and it's been a year since we've taken action on the climate action plan I was wondering if you could remind everyone what minimal

1:25:14things they can do that would make a significant change in the CO2 emissions from El Cerrito uh thank you um yeah the one of the 20 of our ghg admissions for the entire city of El Cerrito actually comes from residential natural gas which is basically how we heat our homes and our homes are all

1:25:34fairly old most of them were built before the energy code so there's a lot of things that we can do in terms of insulation in terms of replacing our furnaces of their older furnaces there's a wall insulation basically just the whole package of home weatherization measures

1:25:57there's a really great rebates out there right now really great PG e and um and county-wide programs that provide quite a bit of incentive to do that kind of work so so and and not that we don't want people to wait till next year but we are thinking of implementing pricing

1:26:18policies that would incentivize some of this weatherization uh well we can put it on our work plan sorry thank you if I can just make one small comment and that is we recently did these sorts of measures and when the city came out and inspected um some of the work that was done they

1:26:33did find a couple of small locations that hadn't been completely insulated so in that respect our permit fee was very well spent because they checked the work and the company came back out and just did a couple other insulation blows that they had missed so in many ways the the

1:26:48permit fees are very good Investments yeah good Mark um earlier I talked to the city manager and I was wondering where the figure four percent came from and he explained to me that that includes that the cost of living is increased probably about two percent but our cost of providing

1:27:09Services has increased quite a bit more because we have increased pension costs for employees increased health care costs and in some cases raises for represented classes so I think four percent increases very reasonable given our total picture and I did happen to

1:27:30notice one place where it says is a four percent increase but it's actually a 10 increase photocopies are going from 10 cents a copy to 11 cents a copy rounding would be 10 right 10.4 but at any rate my only question was we have hourly rates for fire department and

1:27:54police department like the police chief is 283 an hour is that if you want her to provide security at a party or something oh she would provide for that there are things where times when the police chief might build their timeout maybe uh cheap more would you like to

1:28:15come up and say what those things might be instance good evening I'm Sylvie Moyer police chief the only instance that this would occur is if someone were to contract with the police department for specific services and that is a fully burdened labor rate it's the industry

1:28:37standard and yeah that's what the fully burdened labor rate would be so it doesn't happen that often I would say close to never sir okay great thanks but if I am having a party and I want you to come clearly you could contract with the city for that yes all right thank you

1:28:55laughs thank you anything else yeah yeah okay so with that I'd like to thank you for your report and uh open the public hearing okay um are there any speaker slips on this item I have no requests to speak okay I moved to close the public hearing mayor second all in favor

1:29:21aye aye any opposition any abstention motion carries unanimously that was motion by benassini seconded by Lyman um and with that we will uh we we just voted on that okay so now then I suppose I moved the resolution okay of the city council the city of El Cerrito

1:29:45adapting revisions to the master fee schedule for fiscal year 2014-15 okay all in favor please say aye aye any opposition or abstention motion carries unanimously motion by Friedman seconded by benicini Bridges excuse me um with that we will move on to the next

1:30:07item on the agenda which takes us to item number seven which is a budget study session and um I believe that will be presented on the screen yes there it is mayor members of the council we're here tonight to continue our efforts to talk about next year's budget

1:30:42um this how we're closing this year in addition to how we're projecting next year to look um to jump right into the presentation is probably the easiest if you look at the first slide and we'll talk about uh briefly the purpose of the study session we want to talk about our challenges

1:31:01we've alluded to them in the last few months when we've come to council and we also want to describe some of our recent Community engagement efforts which was something that we've never undertaken and um related to our budget process we certainly pride ourselves on the amount

1:31:18of Engagement we try to have with our community but specific to the budget we tried to reach out and try to get people more engaged in how we spend our money and we'll talk a little bit about that we want to give you an early look as it were on next fiscal Year's budget before

1:31:37we bring you the budget book and get any feedback that you can provide today and identify the challenges that we face and some of the solutions and as appropriate and as you feel comfortable to get direction or priorities from either individual council members or the council as a

1:31:57group so in terms of where to start we need to talk about how we got here and there are a number of reasons we have talked about over the years numerous times the impact the loss of Redevelopment has had and ironically you just heard about um the Eden Housing proposal

1:32:24it's important to point out that that our contribution to that project came from housing set asized funds from the former elsewhere to Redevelopment agency and I think it's a great example of what Redevelopment could do and it's a great tool that we had that we no longer have

1:32:38but as it relates to the services we provide there was a significant financial impact to the good for all of the services we provided we'll get into that very specifically over the years when the housing market was racing up the first time not this time I think cities generally got accustomed

1:33:00to the significant growth in property tax and sales tax every year to that end many personnel expenses were not going up at that rate since the boom and since particularly for cities how Calpers has looked at how it handles our pension costs what has happened is we've either

1:33:19had no growth or or actually decreased growth particularly in property taxes at the same time when the cost of providing pension and Medical Care particularly benefits to our employees has continued to go up significantly and as we've talked about repeatedly three quarters or more of our costs are

1:33:38related to employees so it's a major driver so when our revenues slow down or decrease we just can't keep up and we'll talk more about that and at our prior meetings we've talked about some trouble we've had with the allocation of expenses and revenues to Home Depot particularly I'm sorry just

1:33:55Revenue sales tax revenues related to Home Depot and we're working with the Board of Equalization and ultimately the city of Richmond to straighten that all out and we anticipate that happening next fiscal year we talked about the utility user tax and we had this unpredicted shortfall at the

1:34:11end of last fiscal year that really hurt our beginning balance and our reserves which will show will illustrate a little bit later on the positive side we are on target to what we have brought you and what we proposed this year so it is our is our hope that that was a one-time blip but we are

1:34:31spending time trying to figure out what happened and to identify if there are particular payers who maybe didn't pay and uh we're we're still working on that and closing the gap on how we might solve solve what is a little bit of a mystery for us we have at times relied on one-time

1:34:49funds and what I'm most specifically referring to is funds from the municipal Services Corporation that have been used to backfill Economic Development activities because of Redevelopment the loss of Redevelopment those one-time funds essentially will be used up this

1:35:06fiscal year and won't be available next fiscal year so there is a ripple effect of what we've tried to do with spend down funds that were specifically earmarked for economic development Redevelopment activities to offset the loss of the agency but essentially those

1:35:22costs are going away however as we've talked about the cities in the process of filing its second lawsuit against the state to try to recapture some of that and uh like only it'll take more time to tell whether we're successful or not we've had increases in our insurance

1:35:39costs our risk pool is similar I think to pers in some ways everyone is getting more fiscally conservative and rebates we grew accustomed to just don't are not coming anymore so our insurance costs have gone up by almost three hundred thousand dollars which is equivalent to roughly

1:35:57one percent of our Reserves we've talked repeatedly about benefit costs and we started to talk and um recently about our special funds which have been utilized in a way to try to maintain services and less so on some of the things that those funds are specifically earmarked for all of the

1:36:19costs are reasonable and legal and legitimate but the focus has been on maintaining our core services and not on maybe doing some of them some of um the more specialized things those funds could be doing so we need to we will be focusing more on making sure those funds

1:36:36are balanced stay within their mission and hopefully be able to find um general fund or other help for some of the other Public Works Services where the general fund used to contribute and we'll we'll be more specific about that shortly um I've talked about Redevelopment this

1:36:57is a very complicated slide but the point we want to make is the first group of numbers related to revenues what that shows if you look at fiscal year 910 prior to the dissolution of the Redevelopment agency the agency covered roughly or in Revenue provided 1.2 million dollars in Revenue

1:37:17to the general fund to offset the costs associated with the projects happening in the project area primarily along San Pablo Avenue as the agency wound down you can see annually those numbers shrinking to 508 653 757 and then if you look down at the grants at the bottom

1:37:36408 so we were essentially whole 598 this year if you go down to the expense side the similar 1.2 million dollars was essentially the money that would have been received by the general fund each year had we still had the Redevelopment agency so what we're trying to show you

1:37:53is sort of the cumulative effect on revenues and expenses and we have at this point essentially used up whatever restricted reserves we had um primarily through the municipal Service Corporation and on the amount of almost three million dollars and so what that does is it creates an

1:38:12annual shortfall um of about eight hundred thousand dollars this year so again it is it is incredibly material and and it really hit the city of Elsewhere you know hard and so we want to again just reiterate that point on the next two slides I wanted to talk a little bit about and I know these are

1:38:33unusual in that we took the totals out where because we wanted to only make a couple points here um and they're a little more reflective on the second slide but over the past four five years as we've budgeted we have tried to place an emphasis on our core services and as is shown in our

1:38:52Outreach to the community has shown in our surveys generally speaking uh police and fire are believed to be sort of our first priority core services and then you work through Public Works and other thing and support services and other things in terms of how we spend our money over

1:39:10this same period the vast majority if not most of the money uh additional Revenue that we made available went to police in the biggest chunk then fire um and public works on the other hand the number went down and if you switch to the next slide because we tend to focus

1:39:31on the general fund if you look at Public Works and we talked about this at a previous council meeting roughly six hundred thousand dollars in general fund money is no longer going to Public Works how does that manifest itself we have I believe three and a half vacancies in public works that

1:39:48relates that goes to our ability to trim trees maintain Parks maintain play Fields maintain open space and um it's starting you know we're doing our best and we're being very creative to keep our standards up but it's it's very much straining Public Works which also

1:40:05affects our ability to maintain our aging infrastructure our clubhouses the community center some of our facilities but again in the general fund you can see the emphasis has been placed on police and fire particularly when most other departments have stayed roughly

1:40:24flat or have had minimal minimal increases so again that's that's not good or bad it's just is what it is additionally what we want to be sensitive to and it when budgets are tight and and frankly this hasn't been the case in El Cerrito because I think uh both the community and the council

1:40:41value our Recreation programs so highly but in terms of how it affects the general fund and how it affects City operations I think that it's really important to make the point of what a great job as the slide started the recreation department has done if you look at the

1:41:00light blue light blue lines on the chart they're essentially the recreation expenses that since 2008 have largely been flat while at the same time you look at the revenue growth growth from 2008 to 2014 that's not just that has that is a small amount due to fee

1:41:18increases it is a lot more to do with increasing the offerings increasing the creativity increasing the programs and the demand for our programs is continues to be incredibly high and there was an emphasis placed by the council back then that certain programs really needed to

1:41:37cover their own costs and in most cases the rec department programs cover themselves the only two that don't fully cover the costs are the swim center and the senior center and we could spend more time on that if you'd like but um I think the bigger point is when we talk

1:41:58about cutting budgets or cutting programs should we get to that point if you eliminated the recreation department in its entirety which is roughly four million dollars of expenses you would net 400 000 in savings so I think it's important to point out that the Department's done an amazingly good

1:42:16job in sort of fending for itself and and that's really been done through through um I think exceptional programming um and and I think our residents have really responded responded to that I also wanted to point out and talk about measure R um because obviously we we passed a

1:42:40measure to help us in in these times and again I'm I'm trying to just point out what the numbers say I'm not trying to make a value judgment on police or fire particularly but I think it's important to show that if you look at the amount below the sort of middle pink line that

1:42:58pink line has stayed roughly constant since measure R was passed and the dark green line is the amount we spend on Public Safety which is defined here as police and fire that light green bar at the top is essentially The increased revenue for uh that we that we received from measure R

1:43:19which tracks almost exact to the increases we've had in in public safety so in terms of some of the commitments we made in measure our I think this city although we are not um fully staffed as we might like we have placed maybe I think police and fire our first priority in terms of how

1:43:39we spend our spend our dollars so I think I think it's just important to reiterate that particularly if we are going to be talking about measure R in the in the future um this is our was already brought up and initially in public comment um and it's been brought up at the last

1:43:57two meetings we have uh dipped into our Reserves we've gone through those reasons to some degree as to why but as you can see here the red line is our Reserve goal and the blue is where we where we have been and where we are um I think as I'll get to later we think

1:44:16it's absolutely essential to move those blue bars back up the question is how how quickly how much can we afford and what are we willing to sacrifice or trade off the balance of money in the bank versus the services we provide um but we do we do believe we do concur

1:44:34with the financial Advisory Board and do believe that it needs to be an emphasis so that was trying to give you some history and some perspective of how we got here but now we want to spend some time looking forward and and the first thing I want to do is turn it over to

1:44:52Karen our assistant city manager to talk a little bit about what we're trying to do and why we tried to do these Community additional Community engagement this year thanks Scott yes I'm Karen Pinkus assistant city manager and um this was a really wonderful um I don't know if I'd call it a project

1:45:11I think it's more of an ongoing Community engagement process that we began this year making a really concerted effort toward engaging the community in the budget process and not just to gain feedback on the various items that we and the challenges that we're facing but also to help the

1:45:28community learn a little bit about the budget process sometimes it's a bit of a mystery um and try to you know allow the community to understand and engage but also continue the momentum that we worked on with the Strategic plan that we started and adopted last

1:45:43year so during the month of March we held four meetings at locations throughout the city and you can see the pictures there with the goal of kind of going to the residence instead of having the residents come here to City Hall which is what Normal public meetings

1:45:55tend to be we held meetings as you can see in the pictures at Harding Elementary at Arlington Clubhouse the senior center and at Canyon Trail um we had 37 very enthusiastic residents come to these meetings including two of our younger residents and yes two of our

1:46:12resident canines as you can see one of them there who were very well behaved um these meetings consisted of a presentation from staff that gave an overview of how the city budget Works what our financial challenges have been what how we've addressed them so far

1:46:26including some of the measures that we've taken over the past few years and then what challenges we face this fiscal year and then following that presentation we had some activities that the residents could participate in to help provide the feedback that we were

1:46:40seeking so the first activity as you can see is to ask the participants to prioritize the budget resource to prioritize budget resources according to the goals that were outlined in the Strategic plan so we did this using a budget of 500 we asked the participants to allocate the

1:46:57money among those goals the idea was to gain some input on what goals were most important to the participants as well as to demonstrate the Dilemma that the city constantly faces which is we have a finite amount of money for very many very important but competing interests

1:47:14so we gave the participants city of El Cerrito dollars and that's an example there um and the form that is also shown that could be completed along with comment cards so that people could kind of give us a picture of where they would prioritize we chose the amount of 500

1:47:29because it's kind of an easy amount to work with and that also prevented us from having to print million dollar bills um the participants took the exercise very seriously and generated some excellent conversation and feedback I should note that two of the participants

1:47:44in this activity were those two children that I mentioned earlier so that was really great to have those kids learn about the budget at such a young age and who knows maybe we'll have two future local government budget experts someday um so as you can see by this chart

1:47:59um which is actually not surprising um the goal of ensuring The public's health and safety was the highest priority among the participants that was followed by deepening a sense of place and Community identity and financial sustainability many participants felt that these goals

1:48:14were interrelated for example if you focus on sense of place then perhaps Public Safety might naturally follow that if you have a particularly among the commercial corridors or Community identity people are gathering together in their neighborhoods and so Public

1:48:29Safety might generally be enhanced automatically they also understood that prioritizing didn't necessarily mean that other goals weren't important but they did understand and express some of the same frustrations that we face which is again you have a finite amount of money and so

1:48:46allocating to one goal meant that you weren't allocating to another goal so one what was interesting about um this feedback was that the residents really did understand this dilemma and one resident comment sticks out in my head which is well maybe it's you know

1:49:02that you know to demonstrate that the goals are important but not necessarily something we can concentrate on one of the comments that sticks out was well maybe this year the city can't necessarily deliver exemplary Services maybe this year we concentrate on delivering good services so it was a

1:49:21really interesting discussion and and we um are gathering all of this data that we will be um using uh to move forward with the proposed budget so following that budget activity we then opened the floor to the room to do a brainstorming with the participants to take ideas or

1:49:36suggestions and a lot of those comments and ideas focused on strengthening the community including the services and events that promote neighborhoods families volunteers embracing technology to make city services efficient and convenient focusing on economic development especially along the Avenue

1:49:54that would help achieve multiple strategies including Financial sustainability and financial sustainability in itself was important to improve the position the city's position I would like to announce that um for anyone who wasn't able to attend the meetings but would still like to

1:50:09provide feedback the city has a new online Forum that just went live last week it's called open El Cerrito and anyone can provide input we've partnered with a company called Peak democracy open El Cerrito is an online Forum where participants can provide feedback and

1:50:24engage not only City staff but each other on topics of Interest so the first topic is the same presentation that we provided to the residents at the community meetings and includes the same 500 budget activity where a participant can allocate a budget to the various

1:50:41goals of the Strategic plan by priority and it can be done anywhere it can be used on your computer on your smartphone on your tablet the topic went live five days ago so far 90 people have access to open El Cerrito and we have 15 people who've submitted their 500 budgets so

1:50:56we're going to continue to promote the online Forum we'll be keeping the budget Topic open while staff develops the proposed budget so residents can go to the city's website at www.el.cerido.org click on the link on the front page that says open El Cerrito and we'd like to continue to hear

1:51:15feedback from the residents all of that data and all of the comments and suggestions like I said will be used in the proposed budget process moving forward particularly the prioritization of the Strategic plan goals so with that I'd like to throw it back to the city manager

1:51:34so to move along we want to address our some of our current our major current challenges one of them is we planned for a certain number of vacancies in the police department um as you'll see we will likely be talking about vacancies there again next fiscal year we are concerned about the

1:51:55impact related to Recruitment and Retention and some form of that may be related to imp to compensation currently as the as the economy has changed they are most cities that we're familiar with including the big ones are actively recruiting police officers and we I think pride ourselves on

1:52:20getting the best police officers we can and but however recruiting and retaining has seems to become a greater challenge than it's been and it's it's always been somewhat of a challenge in El Cerrito but it may have as much to do with cities our size and again as we've

1:52:39talked about it numerous times we try to pay all of our employees including police sort of the middle of of the market and if if the bigger cities who are paying at the top of the market are all actively recruiting it is likely that we have a compensation issue that

1:52:55we're struggling with and we don't want to become which is common in in certain industries a training ground where young officers come train and then move on and so I think over over the next few years we really need to focus on working with the police department

1:53:13on ways to ensure that we can still effectively recruit and retain police officers in the chief can talk a lot more about that but again I'm it's not specifically just an El Cerrito problem it's a I think it's more of a small to mid-sized Department problem um but it's one that you'll see that

1:53:33manifests itself in how we put our budget together I've already alluded to the six hundred thousand dollars in the general fund we that used to go to public works we need to find a way over the next few years to turn that number back around if we're going to maintain our our parks and play

1:53:51fields and facilities in open space properly um and also when we talk about Recreation and their ability to raise revenue the facilities need to be rentable and that's something we need to consider um and and we are thinking about that uh as we've done in the past few years

1:54:10we will likely be using significant number of vacancies again um to balance the budget and there's been no there's no way around that and we're that where we're seeing that the most as I already mentioned is police but also uh public works again out in the parks in the fields and and

1:54:28fortunately this spring we've gotten a real big volunteer effort from El Cerrito Youth Baseball which has made a really big difference on some of our baseball fields and Parks um where we're sort of bottlenecking because we haven't failed a code enforcement position and we we do have a

1:54:44uh a steady stream of Code Enforcement issues we need to deal with and just general responsiveness we have less people to do the work that was uh formally that would the head count formerly approved by the city council so it just generally becomes more difficult

1:54:59to provide that exemplary level of service we want to all provide um I won't talk about Redevelopment again we are anticipating a significant increase in our Calpers pension rates next the fiscal year after the next one again based on some of their Actuarial assumptions and their

1:55:20sort of strategies to how to manage their own their own funds and I'll talk more in a minute about Reserves so what does it look like for next year and I realize once we went to print with this that there's this has a significant shock value which wasn't necessarily the

1:55:36the point but what we tried to show um this year is what is the Baseline this assumes all position if if all positions were filled on July 1st and we were at our approved head count how would our budget look next year and obviously it doesn't look good um and so if if we did all that and did

1:56:00nothing else based on our first round of projections for next year um we would obviously eat our reserves down and essentially through our reserves um and even be upside down we are not suggesting we're going to do that but I think it was important for you to see

1:56:15that the vacancies have a it's important that we value the vacancies because those were positions that were previously approved by the council and and there is an impact so if you go to the next slide what we're essentially saying is we need to identify 1.7 million dollars in

1:56:34balancing measures to just to break even as you recall though we budgeted one and a half million dollars in vacancies this year we anticipate hitting that Target and maybe exceeding it by just by a little bit so even though we're saying there's a 1.7 million dollar shortfall all things

1:56:52being equal if we don't fill any of the positions uh will make a significant dent in that um so uh that's that's sort of a little bit of the big picture if we are going to maintain our five percent Reserve we need to add another 103 thousand dollars to it just to stay

1:57:12even the way the math works out and if we really wanted to push from five percent back to ten percent in one year we would need another million and a half dollars plus or minus to do that it's for um rounding purposes that you can assume it's 300 000 plus or minus per per one

1:57:33percent um in order to balance the budget and move reserves back up to ten percent which is the council goal so how are we going to do this um we're going into this uh with essentially everything on the table uh that we will need to maintain as and these are the things we're considering

1:57:52as we put our budget together that we will need to maintain or increase the number of vacancies we currently have that for the first time we may need to consider reducing the number of staff that we currently have um and we know that the council nor do I nor do the staff take that lightly and

1:58:09we hope that that's a last resort and and somehow we don't ultimately get there but I think it's something that we we have to at least consider um I think a big emphasis that you will see is that employees need to contribute more to the benefit costs we've been

1:58:24talking about the benefit costs for years and um as a city we've we've moved that moved the benefit uh costs paid by the employees up a bit in the last few years but it's going to need to go a bit higher uh and maybe even significantly higher over the next few years

1:58:42other things that we we are mulling over as staff is a reduction in office hours or open hours that obviously has a big effect on our customer service but it's more and more it's common that cities are closed um either close entirely or closed to the public on every Friday we're not

1:59:05suggesting that yet because we really want to evaluate whether that would be a good thing or not and how much money we'd actually save but it's something that cities have done furlough days are always an option although not one we're crazy about and then obviously there's service

1:59:21reductions we just we do less um and we've we've identified some savings for that we think we've been really uh strong and every year trying to be more efficient and more efficient and and we are taking on two or three areas um to try to be more info more even more

1:59:40efficient than we've been in looking at purchasing and other things and the way we do things with some Committees of departments working together we are not anticipating any significant reorganizations like we had last year we're still giving those a time to work

1:59:54out and so far we think we're really happy with the moves we made last year um and then there's sort of um every year you talk about well what can we can reduce everything else a little bit um as we've said before we are 80 people of the remainder um a significant portion of that is man

2:00:13there's mandated Services there's contracted services that we have to provide we have to dispatch police and fire we that there's a cost to that we have animal control um there's a list of that we have to have fuel for vehicles so when you get right down to it there's probably less

2:00:29than five percent significantly less than five percent there's truly variable expenses we've also talked about how successful we've been as a city by allowing our employees to be very active in in their associations we don't do a whole lot of traveling it's largely in

2:00:45the state it's not always but um we don't have an exorbitant travel and training budget but that travel and training I think has led to millions of dollars of of Grants and outside funding because we're well known and well thought of and we're in the loop and um

2:01:01I think that would be um it would be short-sighted to sort of for the amount of savings you would get it could potentially have a long-term uh negative effect to be more specific this is just a first cut and well how could we how could we balance the budget um we've talked about current vacancies

2:01:23this is a first cut at potentially the vacancies that we would carry forward next year we have identified 574 thousand dollars in additional pension contributions that assumes um everyone in the city participates we readily acknowledge that some groups or some labor groups have current contracts

2:01:46expiring and they're subject to negotiation we have other groups that are in contract who would not necessarily be obligated to go along but we think it's important on our current financial situation that we will be asking everyone to participate regardless of their contractual situation

2:02:04I mentioned increased purchasing efficiencies we've launched sort of an internal initiative to find out to see if based on how we spend money can we squeeze out at least 50 000 or more based on changing the way we purchase maybe centralize more things where members of U.S communities is there a

2:02:22way we can do more tag on orders with big cities so that's something that all the Departments are working on together we think we can do a little bit better we've alluded to a possible reduction in Personnel this is largely a placeholder it could potentially be a Target based

2:02:41on how the other areas go we've talked about police police this number could assume an additional sworn officer additional non-sworn position or position and a half based on where current vacancies are um again that's not something we're at all happy about but when you're looking at

2:03:05what's vacant and what's not that's something we need to take and take into account and then you overlay the goals and priorities of everything we do it's something we need to factor in we've identified some service reductions some of those are limiting classes maybe a little bit of

2:03:25time that we offer certain programs some services to the public we would reduce it's largely around the margins at this point to go beyond that you're getting into do we want to reduce the hours the senior centers open or close the pool significant numbers of time to and

2:03:44that's something we talk about when we do the budget but you really then talking about big chunks of service which we hope to avoid but it's something we want to discuss the City attorney has come to the table and said you know he's willing to help this is largely would assume that both

2:04:01the City attorney and assistant City attorney would be in El Cerrito less that's either at we think it's really valuable that one or the other participate in all our staff meetings and have office hours here um and are at every city council meeting and some Planning Commission meetings

2:04:17but that number could be reduced it's not unprecedented not have the City Attorney at all at all meetings all Council meetings even um again it's it's just one of many things and then we think there's a few potential fees that were not in the master fee schedule that are small that

2:04:35we can look at and additionally um particularly as it relates to the senior center they want to Endeavor to raise more of more money to cover their costs it's it's a very modest goal but at least it's it would be a start so when you put it all back together um on the next chart

2:04:57what you see is we need to balance with somewhere between 1.1 1.8 million and 3.2 million depending on where we set where we want to end next year with our uh where you want our reserves to be at the end of next year I would also point out that when we think about reserves ideally you want

2:05:20one-time money to be placed in the bank for reserves it's not while we're trying to put our reserves back at some point you reach certain targets you don't need to keep putting money in you certainly could but we need to give thought to what pools of money we're using to put

2:05:36in reserves what the impacts are um when when I'm sure the financial Advisory Board looks at other cities we have looked at many other cities around here there are clearly a significant number of cities that have significant reserves there's no question about it

2:05:53in my understanding of how they largely got those reserves was growth was they built a lot more homes they took one-time money largely developer money put in the bank because as we try to do and in almost every case we do you don't want to use one-time money for

2:06:10operations so while these cities many of them have had significant staff reductions they've done it with 40 Reserves and because their policy one-time money it sits in the bank and it's not it's generally not used for operations it's not one size fits all but I think it's

2:06:27important to point out that for infill cities we have seen a theme where the reserves are lower because you just don't have that one-time money um to save so that's sort of my a little bit of a caveat about it and going on to specifically talk about reserves we our goal is 10 with a target

2:06:48of 15. it's it's tough to talk about 15 when you're at five um and reserves can be used for fiscal emergency and I think arguably the Great Recession is that um we you you heard earlier the recommendation from the financial Advisory Board I think it's safe to say

2:07:06that stay off myself the finance director Concur and and and we would love to get to that position as soon as possible um the challenge is obviously it's twofold we how much money do we have in the bank and how much money do we need to essentially cover our cash and they're

2:07:25not the same questions and in order for us to get back to 10 percent we need to have to to comply with that policy we need to have essentially uh one and a half million or five percent set aside that we're not going to use for anything including cash and one of

2:07:45the problems over time with our cash flow and again not to harp on the Redevelopment agency but the Redevelopment agency allowed for I believe another five million or so of pooled cash and when we do bonding and we build buildings and we do things we have a lot of pooled cash you saw in the

2:08:03quarterly investment report on the consent calendar how little pooled cash we have and so as much as we don't love to do short-term borrowing it is incredibly common for cities to do short-term borrowing for cash flow and and we foresee having to do that um and and it's actually a good use of

2:08:23money because it's very low interest and do that in the future um but it but it will be some time before we can set aside money that's not used that that's just off limits for for most things um we're working on that and um we don't know we haven't yet put together an exact Five-Year Plan so to

2:08:44speak of getting reserves back um but we we believe consistent with the policy that we have that the budget we bring back next year needs to not only balance but at least have one one percent if not more in putting the reserves back so our minimally our Target would be six percent at the end

2:09:02of next fiscal year and then seven percent eight percent nine and um depending on how things go if we're able to either get one time revenues through development or should the council should we decide should the council decide to put something to do with extending measure

2:09:22on the ballot and increase it there would be new Revenue next fiscal year that is not included in any budget scenario that could be also be set aside to make that number go up quicker and so that's something that just sort of set aside so with that another thing that we plan on

2:09:42doing assuming there's no major objection we did a few years ago was to do a two-year budget and the reasons we want to do that is we want to force ourselves and we think this helps to look beyond the current fiscal year although we've done multi-year planning and 10-year plans we really think that

2:10:01we have to have a greater emphasis on not the fiscal year we've been living in this sort of crisis mode of looking at the next six months the next but we want to think we need to be always be looking 18 months to two years out and this will help us to do that um we think it allows us to avoid some

2:10:21of the July hiccups that we've had um it also gives us more time to focus on plans and programs consistent with our strategic plan and most many of the obviously the services we provide but all the a lot of the projects we undertake oh take more than one fiscal year so we we think

2:10:39um doing a budget for um two years is will be a benefit there's some administrative savings to not do a big book every year but um which is also A Plus at least certainly on the staff side from a council perspective there's no loss of budget oversight we would only

2:10:57be asking you to appropriate one fiscal year as you always do consistent with a municipal code we will still come regularly to council to talk about the budget and do regular budget updates and budget amendments and next year you would get a budget update and be asked to

2:11:14appropriate for the following fiscal year it also allows us to essentially look at next year in more depth with or without any changes to measure art so that's something we're going to be we're planning to come forward with so what we have planned next is we are the

2:11:36finance director and I are going to be sitting down with the major labor groups tomorrow that's police fire and SEIU to go over this presentation and take questions and make sure that we're transparent and they understand our situation and we want to make ourselves personally

2:11:51available to do that we are going to be doing a study session on our Capital Improvement plan in early May here we will be meeting and negotiating with the bargaining units almost immediately um probably through May likely into June um with some of them we anticipate

2:12:10coming to the council now June as of the consent calendar June 2nd to avoid a meeting on Election Day and we assume budget discussions on the 17th and 24th and hopefully budget adoption on the 17th or 24th or we can also go with a uh if we have to we can schedule special

2:12:30meetings as long as they're before the 30th so uh with that I couldn't resist the having fun yet column comment um but uh really what we're looking for is questions feedback comments um as we've done in the past I did debate trying to force you to prioritize and rank things and answer questions but

2:12:51ultimately at this point we decided we our preference would be to just get any comments or feedback either as individuals or groups that you think would be helpful for us as we as we flush out the budget in the coming four to six weeks thank you and in addition to Karen and I and Lisa

2:13:14our finance director here I think all of the department heads are here if you have specific questions okay so I thought we'd start out with questions from the council then we'll take public comment and then discussion by the council so are there any questions from the

2:13:32council at this time um I'll go ahead and start so um one of the questions I had is if we were well I want to thank you for the presentation and the brutal facts that we knew were probably coming um this year and next year even worse but um I wanted to also thank Fab for

2:13:51their comments and the um two-week expenditures that they kind of recommend would be somewhere in the vicinity of a million dollars yeah about 1.1 million dollars okay um and then I had a couple comments about uh police and that is this can kind of go towards the back end

2:14:11of this but I I think all as you said all cities are having problems recruiting police officers and I I think when you talk about shifts in overtime I think our our police force is probably doing more of that than any other group right now and I know in my field when you work a lot of overtime

2:14:31there's a lot of fatigue and burnout and all those things happen so one of the things I wanted to ask the chief is if there was anything new on the horizon that we could look at because I mean the salary issues are going to be a problem for us with these tough fiscal

2:14:47times but if there's anything else we can look at to perhaps um save the police force that we have and their morale and their workload with the increasing amounts of overtime that they're they're probably putting in that we see each time we have a budget update

2:15:08well good evening again I'm Sylvia Moyer your police chief and in terms of anything new I don't know of anything revolutionary or new that could help solve the problem for us I know in the police department we are delaying some initiatives and we are trying to be really smart as we are

2:15:28being responsive to the community and we are examining differential police response and some other evidence-based strategies that may lighten the load on employees but at the same time not diminish service to a point where else are Eaton's feel it significantly so I

2:15:45don't have a really bright answer for you about how we can fix it except that we are made up of incredibly committed talented men and women who are committed to the city in extraordinary ways and we're trying to be smart about deployment and how we staff and how we require employees to

2:16:07stay over I think that's kind of a response to your question so one of the things that we discussed a little bit and this might be one of our exemplary Services is that when a resident calls most of the time they get a police officer her at their door or whatever

2:16:24and and maybe there's a lot of things that um we need to change not your culture but our City's culture so that maybe we can I don't know that it would be cost savings but it would personally be it might be a little bit of a Personnel savings for the wear and tear

2:16:42in our officers and maybe it would make our staffing go a little further I don't know if that's a reasonable expectation that our residents would necessarily like to see happen but when we're talking about potential balancing measures and things that we need to look

2:16:59at I don't know how the other council members or you or the staff feels about that council member Bridges you bring up a great point because several years ago we came before this Council and we converted some positions really thoughtfully some positions to give us

2:17:16expanded job duties we created csos community service officers and we've spoken I've spoken before this Council many times about the value of a community service officer that that those employees and we have one right now one full-time she is a professional staff she's not a sworn police officer

2:17:35so the cost is reduced the legislative mandates for training and prerequisites for employment are very very different the reason that we did that was seeing this day coming and looking at our future and looking at the demands of policing while also examining efficiencies we said what can we do

2:17:56differently and that's why we created csos now the unfortunate reality is in the proposal is that two of our part-time CSO positions are being considered for um for remaining vacant so that's a challenge so we continually examine at every level of the organization how we

2:18:16can provide great service with reduced Staffing and CSO is a really good option for us we only have one right now but that is an option there are other things we're examining that includes online reporting although a lot of the data that we see and what we hear from

2:18:35other agencies is that the supervisory and the human management of such a program is still significant so we want to be thoughtful and smart about how we roll out any of those initiatives could you describe that a little bit more the online reporting there's an option

2:18:55one of our sergeants did a great study on online reporting it would open up a mechanism for our community for some types of reports for instance a theft one of the the more minor thefts so larceny they could report it online that means that it would honor their time

2:19:14their privacy but we would still accurately capture the data for theft in our city in this example would not require a sworn officer or another human being to go out and investigate but we would capture the data the citizen would be honored because they would be able to

2:19:32report it and it would still give us data that we could follow up on so there would be a reduced human element however there's a supervisory element that would have to ensure that everything was done on that online report and a records element for ensuring that all of the

2:19:51components were captured accurately so there's a slight reduction although not significant we may get to the point where we would offer that to our community we're not really ready at this point to examine if it's best for our city but it's really robust in some

2:20:06other cities thank you um I didn't have any other questions for you I don't know if the other council members did on that particular topic if she wants to go to okay are you finished with your questions uh no okay go ahead um I just had a couple other things and

2:20:24that is you know I'm glad that we did the community outreach you don't have to stand there because I'm not going to ask you any more questions but you can if you want um I just I think that was a good process that I mean I'm sorry that we only had 30 odds some people there but

2:20:40um I I think it illustrates what the heartache you know that we go through anyway I also thought it was kind of interesting that um that public facilities was not a real priority to them and certainly with our Public Works situation and our deferred maintenance and our parks and our

2:21:00buildings in the community center and I mean it's true that when we have facilities that are no longer longer rentable um that that's going to have fiscal impacts too maybe not as big as some of these other items here but it was just I thought rather astute observation that

2:21:17they didn't see that as a priority and it happens to be that that's sort of where we've been putting our cuts to and then I had a question for staff and that was about um we talked about some cities are actually closed every Friday all day and I was wondering what not that you have to tell

2:21:37me right now but if we could figure out the potential savings that that might reap because um I don't think anyone really likes to have layoffs or we I think it's obvious that we're probably going to maintain our vacancies right now but I wondered what potential savings we might realize

2:21:55from an all-day Friday closure that might keep some of our staff and and then the other thing about possible balancing options is that you know many of us actually pay a little bit more than what some of our staff pays for contributions towards you know Health Care

2:22:14retirement and what have you and that is sort of a big ticket item but you know sadly I have to listen to um the mayor of San Jose every morning when I ride to work on KCBS and I mean the things he talks about are some of the same things we're talking about that you

2:22:31know with the loss of Redevelopment and particularly for us here in the in El Cerrito we've had such a big hit on our property tax that you know this isn't going to get better probably for two more budget cycles and I think that's really obvious and we don't have a lot

2:22:47of control over what's going on with the property tax that's that's strictly through the Assessors office and it's really been one of the biggest hits we've had so it's it's a it's a huge problem so I think some of the bigger ticket items are the things we probably need to look

2:23:04at um that are in the possible balancing options but I also would like to find out about Friday and maybe more furlough days um and I think that's all I had for right now thank you mayor just a couple questions on the presentation thank you Mr Hannon on the slide that you noted was your

2:23:26shock slide with all of the red numbers um did that take into account the calipers rate increase that's coming in FY I think it's fy16 so that's not on this chart is that correct okay um the other item I wanted to ask about on the slides I wasn't sure about was on

2:23:46the possible balancing options one of the items noted was additional police vacancies 277 thousand dollars does that take into account extra spending for overtime or is that not uh I don't not in that no that's not in that number okay and then the other item I want to ask

2:24:06about was you mentioned um one-time revenues having to do with new development were you thinking what were you thinking of when you mentioned that well um this I mean we've talked about um as part of developing the sample Avenue specific plan that if there are new development projects and as the

2:24:25demand to be in l-stroke grows which we think it is um there's typically fees associated with one-time fees associated with new development projects because we haven't had any um since I'm in the village of town center was the last one when they came to town they had Park and in Luffy's and

2:24:45development fees so if we have more projects it's still very early in the recovery but if there are more projects it's a goal for the Community Development Department to make sure that we're getting the proper fees associated with new development that's money that we we want to get away from

2:25:03putting in sort of the operating budget and set that aside for you know sort of what we're talking about with this separate pool of money that we even talked about in I think in December we started having conversation about total reserves but then restricted reserves and unrestricted reserves so

2:25:19that that's our hope but um but I think that's over time right and and typically to implement those sorts of fees they would almost have a specific purpose like you were saying with the village at Town Center they would pay a park in Luffy so that would go directly towards

2:25:34expanding usage of parks or something along those lines so those fees would be directed to something specific they could but I mean I don't know I'm not sure could they also be put into the bank for yes for any use in the future not having to do with benefiting the

2:25:50residents or new businesses it really depends on the type of fee some of them are as you suggest fees for particular types of impacts related to new development and the revenue from those is restricted to mitigating those impacts and so go to things like expanding or increasing Parks so that

2:26:07the ratio remains right for the new population other types of fees that are collected from new development are are potentially general fund revenue and could be put aside into reserves great thank you those are all my questions um again Mr Hannon thank you very much for

2:26:25your presentation today and and I I'm going to uh a lot of my questions already been asked so I'm going to focus on uh the potential balancing measures that you preside presented on I think slide 19 and the possible balancing options which you priced out um at uh 2.8 million

2:26:43um there isn't a direct correlation of one to one so for example you have not necessarily priced furlough days that council member Bridges has suggested we might want to consider so I was wondering if if the for example reductions in work hours or open hours and the furlough days were things that

2:27:02you could potentially add to the mix on possible balancing options if there was some way do you need some direction from us to potentially add um to add dollars to the to directly linked to those potential balancing measures on the previous slide um Because unless unless you've got that

2:27:23possible reduction in Personnel is to cover a catch-all for for example uh reducing Staffing through layoffs or reorganization uh reducing reduction in work hours open hours and furlough days if that possible reduction in Personnel is a catch-all for all those categories

2:27:45uh but I was just curious what's a furlough day save the city for example yes it could be and um it could be in there and if the council thinks that um on that list I mean we would certainly be looking at furlough days and we've priced it I don't have an exact number because it would depend on

2:28:02who right which facilities um uh but that is something we can look at in terms of reduction in service hours I mean that is essentially a reduction in Personnel to some degree because it depends if we close on Friday to the public so we can catch up then there's really no savings

2:28:24it's it's really a a productivity we're trying to get through work we just couldn't get through um during the week but then the public can't come on Friday so there's there's a potential offset to that if we close on Friday and there's a corresponding reduction in hours that is a cut in

2:28:41um that's essentially a Personnel reduction that is that is a payroll I mean that is a pay reduction that is a corresponding pay reduction so um I think we will ultimately look at all of that so while this slide is up I I did it if I think my math is correct um the to get to a six percent

2:29:02um balance fund that you suggested for this year this number would need to be about a 2.13 million so they're they're clearly this is a a great alternative for trying to achieve the 10 percent but there but it would be it wouldn't need to be this large if we were trying to

2:29:22get to a lesser percent of of uh Reserve balance correct um and then uh shoot I had another question I just just slipped out of my mind um okay um I appreciate the Fabs recommendations and I'm wondering what is the estimated total cost where pain and interest in

2:29:49fees on the short-term borrowing we've been compelled to use I mean we could obviously get it I don't know if you know it off the top of our hands from oh that's all yeah less than 30.

2:30:22great um my other question regards um first I want to say that I think our employees work really hard and they're not paid exorbitantly at all and it's uh this main to say the least that it looks like several of these options are going to require greater Sacrifice from

2:30:44our dedicated staff members in all departments so um you know that's not a pleasant thought for any of us and I think the city manager appropriately expressed the disappointment that we have to consider such measures at this particular time for the reasons I think he clearly laid

2:31:05out I know when I worked for Alameda County they took several holidays and turned them into floating holidays in order to save money on time and a half or holiday pay is that something we could take a look at also yeah and we could I I think that's something we can look at oh yeah

2:31:28uh other than that I think most of my questions have all my questions have been already asked and answered and I think it's very clear and sobering presentation and thank staff and city manager for all the work Greg yeah so I didn't remember my question um if we did go to a two-year budget

2:31:47would that be able to address future Calpers changes like the one you highlighted expected in fiscal year 16.

2:31:55yes we would certainly address the FY 16 increase and we would we would still do projections Beyond two years but we would really focus on um full complete two-year budgets and not just sort of macro 10-year projection okay thank you um I have a question about um

2:32:15new development actually and there is a project I think we can say it is going in at the plaza well we're close Okay well assuming it goes in I'll put it that way um there isn't there additional Revenue that will come from property tax there yes I don't know the exact number but

2:32:35it's backing into it it's it's probably between 100 and 200 000 in property tax I mean it's a wide range because I I don't have an exact calculation okay but that's the ballpark yeah okay so I don't know if that's included here but no no okay not until well there's multiple reassessments that

2:32:57happen on projects like that and we we are not gonna until it's a certainty we're not going to put any new Revenue in well it wouldn't be realized this this coming fiscal year right it would be 15 16 or um depend on if there's any changing hands and then I think when

2:33:13um construction starts and then as they start to um certificate of occupancy I think there are multiple steps when it starts getting assessed up and then as it's fake as it's filled so when the project is totally complete and that's as far as it's going you know

2:33:30that's all the changing everything's been done is that when you get the one or two thousand dollars it's probably a year beyond that I mean it's probably a look you would have a supplemental assessment and then we're just wondering about the dollars not the timing

2:33:45yes I mean then the the the one or two hundred thousand is after all of those things the full amount yes would be after it's occupied so it's very helpful but it's not gonna no it's not going to help me make a dent here not next year um and um if we got an if we got it say

2:34:05the project that we might hope to get at Del Norte does that do anymore or is it about the same level no it's it's a it's a bigger project it's a denser project um I I mean I think between the two projects you're looking at almost four hundred thousand dollars in property tax

2:34:21that's a that's a significant number and that's those types of projects certainly help the bottom line of the city we're probably talking three to five years before we would see see that money materialize so what if one of the um vacant properties like I don't know pick

2:34:42anything but let's not assume a grocery use um say say that um um Orchard Supply Hardware that site so let's say that that got retentided with um a retail use then um what would be the increase there it just depends on it depends on what it is if um I don't know I don't mean to be flip

2:35:10but if I mean if it's a Mercedes dealership it's probably about a million dollars a year let's not assume that it's um uh you know typical if it's a if it's a health club it's probably minimal I was thinking more of a retail use again it depends on on how high value it

2:35:28is some some retail uses even at the plaza don't generate much sales tax I mean I've I've sort of made the analogy in the past that you have to sell a whole lot of candles at Pier One to make one Accord I mean so it's it I mean there's such a huge variation and when you look at El

2:35:46Cerrito sales tax breaks down we have a few relatively large ones and then it falls off so what happens to the property let's just stay with that same location uh Orchard Supply Hardware or at least where it was when that property becomes vacant what happens with property tax

2:36:05is it still collected yes I mean there is still on that specific property there's still an underlying lease that's being paid to the owners so yes and it changes hands it will get reassessed and it's it's in the process of potentially Changing Hands it could get reassessed

2:36:22up based on when it was last reassessed and what's the new value and then it could get reassessed again depending on what the next use is so you know there is a potential significant upside okay but we can't count our chickens before they hatch on that one I understand that okay I think

2:36:40my um questions have been answered and so I think we're out of the question for the council phase and I'd like to move into public comment please are there any slips we have no speakers no no speaker slips okay so comments from the council you want to start Rebecca oh sure I'd be

2:37:01happy to start thank you it's actually really hard to start and we want to have these budget presentations um so what I've been thinking all along obviously we have we have quite a problem ahead of us so the easy part first definitely a two-year budget I'm highly supportive of a two-year budget

2:37:17um I think it will I think it does help staff in a lot of ways um because you don't have to produce two budget books and go through the whole process of writing every little thing down and checking everything um more than once a year so I'm very supportive of that and it also gives us

2:37:32a great way to look specifically at what we're actually thinking is happening down the road rather than sort of the snapshots we've been doing what I'd like to see as we go through this process is some is the background of all the scenarios that you all are working on so

2:37:48we have a lot of moving Parts um not only for next year's budget but as we look towards our Five-Year Plan of getting our reserves back up I'd like to see scenarios that deal with um in the increases in revenues that we are anticipating you know at a very conservative level from new development

2:38:05from our exploration of extending or increasing measure R I'd also like to look at all of the expected cost increases we know about we talked about Calpers um and and the scenarios in terms of how our negotiations with our employees may go so I'll be very interested in terms

2:38:23of the next presentation to see what you all are thinking just for next year but then also how we get back up to the 10 percent Reserve at least in the next five years I'm also very supportive of of increasing our reserves from five percent to at least six percent if not

2:38:38higher and the way I um think about these things is when we look at our problems how much of our problems in terms of budget our acute problems versus chronic problems so when I think of a chronic problem in terms of budgeting that's a structural deficit and that points directly to our to the

2:38:56loss of Redevelopment that's something that we know at least in the foreseeable future is not coming back so those are revenues that we're not going to necessarily see again and I'd like to look at what are what is our response to this sort of a structural deficit is we

2:39:11have to make a structural change and I'm not sure what that is um I I we have these balancing options on the table which are definitely all um ways to get at a structural deficit um but I'd like to see all of the department heads as I'm sure you're doing in thinking about making these

2:39:30reductions how are we making the reductions while considering and thinking about how to keep our employees motivated and keep our morale up and to continue to deliver the types of service that employees are proud to deliver and that residents are then proud to proud to be in a city

2:39:46where we deliver those types of services I don't I haven't come up with the number that I think is right in terms of six percent what what is the reserve that we're looking at um I would look for a number that's above six percent only because the longer we wait to bring

2:40:03this up the longer we're sort of not dealing with the The Five-Year problem of getting back up to ten percent um and I think that I I just to reiterate what I think many of us have been saying already we're all aware that um our employees have been thinking have

2:40:20been making sacrifices in terms of doing uh doing more and providing more service with lower staff levels and we're now going to be talking about making further sacrifices um that will actually impact your your your your personal finances so we're all very um so sober when we take these sorts of

2:40:40measures and I look forward to talking more about this in the next couple of weeks to hear about the scenarios that are on the table and how we can best get to the point of reducing our um our budget down to me down to a level that's within our means in a way that

2:40:57impacts people uh impacts our employees and impacts our residents who depend on our services in the at least at least a way possible thank you I don't have anything further to add to that except for I'd like to see a scenario where we have um a re-upping measure R

2:41:16um at its current status and maybe a slight increase status and see what that um differential is the other thing is as I said before I'd like to see what I guess it's a double-edged sword and we already know that about um if we go for more furlough days or closure on Friday it's going to Impact

2:41:37Services but it is something that I'd sort of like to see penciled out to see how that looks um and I'm okay with uh going for six percent and and a one or two percent um over the next five years so we can get back to ten I think it's been a really very difficult for decision for

2:41:57us to dip into the reserves and get where we are today and I think that we all realize that the reason that decision was made is because we are in a crisis this is almost like an earthquake for us um with loss of Redevelopment and the to me the big the big deal is the property

2:42:17tax problem I mean since I was on Council 2004 to eight with loss of Redevelopment and the combined hit with poverty tax I think our budget has gotten like a four or five million dollar hit from when I was on Council last time and that's just for a city this size that's just

2:42:35you know devastating so um but I don't have anything further to add okay Greg yeah mayor before we go on I'd actually like the City attorney to opine on how we are supposed to aggregate directions uh to staff because my concern is that we're each going to say one thing and everybody else sort of

2:42:55maybe support it but if we don't vocalize our support that it's not considered clear Direction so I I know you and I spoke on this matter and I was going to take this opportunity I promised you I would take this opportunity to have you uh brief us on this opportunity

2:43:10um I know this has come up a couple times before and some of you depending on what information you're receiving from the league and other sources or what meetings your attentive probably heard some of it um there is a change in state law that went into effect this year

2:43:25um that that was not entirely clear but seemed to suggest that that it would be um useful well some things were clear some things suggested that greater clarity about the giving of Direction um to staff um should be part of city council practice so um I mean I think in this case unless

2:43:50the council members are giving contradictory Direction I think that if at the end you could just make a motion to direct staff to come back with the information that that the individual council members had requested that should be sufficient as long as the motion is approved if there are any

2:44:12conflicts then we'd need to resolve those that seem clear enough it does and and I don't believe any of my comments will conflict with those that have been said before me but so I hope to stay within that that uh advice um first I want to I recognize many of the employees in the audience and I want

2:44:30to thank you all for coming out and and showing such an interest in this item in in the future of El Cerrito and the services that we want uh you to help provide us um I want to thank staff for for actually putting the brutal facts on paper or maybe you guys are following

2:44:47through on your uh commitment to start recognizing the brutal facts and and taking uh information head on and and addressing problems now as opposed to kicking them down the road so I appreciate the presentation the the information that you've given us and the way you've provided it to us

2:45:09um to that end I've got a number of bullets here um that I you know stop relying on special funds I mean that's that's something that I understand you guys are working towards and I certainly uh support that stop relying on one time uh funds for operations that's something

2:45:26that uh you've put in your presentation that I definitely support um work with our employees to increase their contributions uh both in potentially health care I think councilmember Bridges mentioned that for me it's the retirement fund um do our best to continue the Public Safety Services

2:45:51that we we have so I understand vacancies are on the table but at the same time there are scenarios that uh council member uh benicini is asked calling for that potentially some of those scenarios have us finding ways to increase our Public Safety so that we don't have the Reliance on overtime that

2:46:12council member Bridges is concerned about increase our reserves and and the number that uh that we're using for this current fiscal year is six percent seven percent the year after but also moved towards and it was the second third bullet in our summary of the Fab's recommendations and it was uh

2:46:32uh Peter vernick's sorry for mispronouncing your name but uh Peter's testimony that we moved towards 1.1 million in cash reserves I definitely would like to see that incorporated where possible um I think that we should have multiple scenarios and those scenarios like

2:46:52councilmember Bridges requested should consider the different funding resources revenues that measure our renewal of measure R could could provide us well the scenarios should also incorporate any future Calpers cost increases that we anticipate and finally those scenarios should also address some

2:47:12of the risk that's involved with losing our Redevelopment lawsuit and a change in the interpretation of how the Home Depot taxes are split so those may be you know unlikely occurrences but we should definitely have scenarios that that inform us on what our potential

2:47:33exposures are and finally I do support going to a two-year budget because not only the efficiencies potentially in in doing two-year budgets but also the the ability to um or to require staff to actually focus on a multiple year budget that I do that at my current uh governmental organization

2:47:57we do a two-year and it uh I will tell you it forces us to really sharpen our pencils um because we are having to produce a two-year budget so um I don't believe any of my advice conflicted anything that anyone else has said before me so um I will be delighted to make a motion

2:48:15later once we've heard everyone says that uh moves the individual comments forward mark unfortunately we can't build our way out of this problem either with residential housing or commercial development we know there's a lot of challenges to Commercial and Retail development with a

2:48:36lot of landowners who are sitting on property that they're unwilling to put into the market at a price that businesses want to pay so we're really in a very tight corner and I think that the good news is that everything's on the table transparent and clear and I

2:48:59think this presentation makes it clear to our citizens and to our staff exactly where we're at and what the options are to me that's the best we're going to be able to do right now is to have that continued openness and transparency so that our citizens know that

2:49:19they may not be able to expect the same level of service that they've grown accustomed to and that our staff knows that there's no secret funds hidden anywhere that it's all here in the open for the for everyone to see so uh the as we go through the rest of the budget

2:49:40process I think we need to maintain that same level of openness and strong communication with our employees so that they have the feeling that they have the ability if they have some better ideas or suggestions that the city manager and staff are going to take those suggestions very seriously from

2:50:01the front lines of the work that you all do every day uh so I'm glad that we have a clear picture I'm not glad that the clear picture is not a pretty picture but I agree with my colleagues in terms of a two-year budget is certainly uh the way to go and that uh in terms of building their reserves it's

2:50:26The Prudent course that's been outlined for many years but it's also a painful course because any increase in our reserves is going to mean a cut in services and or wages and benefits for employees through either furloughs greater pension contribution greater Health Care

2:50:45contribution so those are hard trade-offs to make and I'm that's pretty much all okay it's hard to be last when talking let's say something new um that I I would say that I I agree with what's been said so far I want to start out though by thanking staff because I think we do really have an

2:51:12exemplary staff and I appreciate it and I think that everyone in the city appreciates the work that all of our departments do so that makes us a really painful time because um we can't continue to do things as as we are at least not at the moment um doesn't mean in the future we

2:51:36couldn't you know revert back to um a more robust City in terms of the um various factors like number of employees and and um so forth but right now is is perhaps the most difficult time I think we've had since I've been on our city council and um so it's it's it really is quite painful

2:52:02because I think that the things that we are doing are things that we know our residents want us to be doing the services we are providing our residents have said that they do want these services and um it all we also have prioritized for example Public Safety and our residents

2:52:24have said that's what they want prioritize so you know it just kind of goes down the line those things are matching however the thing that isn't matching is our income from as it's impacted by various factors over which we don't have control and that's one of the things that really bothers me is

2:52:45that we we have this lack of control um but I have a question if the about the if we add one percent to reserves then does that mean on let's see on the um is that included this on the I guess yeah that's that okay so the so that adds 1.56 million right now yeah that is what I'm looking at that's

2:53:25over 10 years each one so it would be only a hundred and three thousand plus change to balance if we wanted to each year add one percent to the reserves that's going to cost us a hundred and three thousand no how am I reading three 300 about 320 000 a year is what I calculated so it's

2:53:47it's one-fifth of the 1.6 million that the the one million five hundred and sixty six thousand that's five percent the when what the one million 566 000 that's five percent so if you divide that by five you get approximately 300 000 per so each one percent of our of

2:54:09our each one percent Reserve is about three hundred thousand so what's the 103.

2:54:13that's all we need to get to five percent oh that's to get okay so that's to get so so it would be you would add the um you'd have to add those two numbers together right six percent we would have to get to about 450 000 to put reserves so the number again was for both for

2:54:33about for both would be like 400 420 000 something like that each or at least the first year right so that would be for that one year to get us from where we are just under five percent to six percent on top of um no that's it right so then okay the um so I'm not going to say I guess I agree

2:54:57with what's been said because I think we all know what was just said so I won't say that again um I um I I have some thought question or maybe more questions about closure on Friday we're closed one day a a every other week we're closed on Friday but that hasn't that's not a furlough that's

2:55:29just reorganizing when our hours are spent or our work hours are spent but when you talk about being closed on Friday are you thinking one day a week two days I mean one one day yeah one day a week or one day every other week extra what are you thinking when you mentioned

2:55:48well we would we would close every Friday we would potentially close every Friday but what then what happened with our um current schedule of being closed already one Friday we would be we'd be closed we wouldn't be open any Friday no but well I guess what would happen to the other four days

2:56:10is my question nothing potentially I mean there are a lot of different scenarios but but if if the goal was to save money you would essentially close Friday and it would depend on what you did that Friday whether people are working or not working I mean sort of the

2:56:29extreme is the building's locked don't come in you're not working that would be a reduction in your hours worked for the year which is essentially effectively your your compensation would roll with the number of hours you're working so I guess I'm asked I'm asking slightly

2:56:47different question so if what we could all what we could one of the thing variations that we could there's a lot of variations but one of the variations is that we could have this schedule where we work differing hours between I think Monday Wednesday or the same

2:57:00Tuesday Thursday are the same but not they're not the same as you know not all four days are the same they could revert to all being all the same and then all Fridays were closed we could we could if we could yes we could change the hours and to whatever we essentially want them to be if the

2:57:22goal is to not cut hours but just close on a Friday I guess I'm not entirely sure I'm just wondering which way you were thinking were you thinking of leaving Monday through Thursday alone yes okay and then just closing in essence one day the fir the furlough is one day out of ten

2:57:41is that right there's no there's I'm not sure there's no furlough I'm we're not talking about everywhere for furlough a furlough is different I mean we we would I mean if and again it's something we're just putting on the table if if a decision was made to close every Friday

2:57:58it wouldn't be a fir it would be a reduction in hours worked just without a going up on the other side I mean it wouldn't be it wouldn't isn't deferral a reduction in hours worked it could be but you typically wouldn't do I mean I guess you could say the state of California does it but I mean we

2:58:17typically you I guess in theory we could have 26 furlough days for an employee but I think that would be uncommon you would you would you would essentially say this the proportion amount of hours less hours you're working on that Friday would be a reduction in hours everybody

2:58:39here has an hourly rate and the rate would be time the number of hours you work so it would be effectively be a reduction in Pay I don't think we would furlough because we're changing a level of service so the furlough would typically be a one-time or a cup few times event as

2:58:57opposed to we are making a decision that sales closed on Fridays it would be it would just be reduction in hours worked I hear what you're saying I'm not sure it I understand it as it relates to what I was asking but um San Pablo is now closed on Fridays altogether as I understand it

2:59:17um that's but maybe what maybe I don't understand quite what they're doing and doing that I haven't certainly asked but um the um that's what I was wondering is if we did we would we would be doing something that would look like that but I'm not aware that they do this thing

2:59:35with the other four days or a variation I think we don't we don't know what we would do yet we're just saying that a scenario is Less hours worked okay and that's a way to save money one way to do that is I think I think maybe there are a number of cities around here

2:59:52that are closed on Fridays I was even in Walnut Creek City Hall in the police office closed on Friday um but we can also be open I'm not suggesting that we do that but another variation would be to with the same setup that we have now furlough on part of the hours on Tuesday Thursday I

3:00:16think it is where we they work more hours right mayor I think one of the things that maybe you're looking for is that if we were to go to a four nine hour days right now we over a time period we work nine days our staff Works nine days and in that nine day period they get 80

3:00:38hours if we went to closed every Friday they would be working eight days and it's very difficult to get to 80 hours without working eight ten hour days but we could conceivably you know counterbalance some of the hours that are lost on the the Fridays that are worked by increasing hours on the within

3:01:01the eight days so our varying my point is actually that that's a variable correct and but staff needs to get some direction as to to what very variation you want them to cost estimate well I I'm just wanting them to as they come up with very you know I'm just wanting

3:01:19actually what I'm really wanting is that they recognize in in whatever is done with that that it is is more of a variable isn't isn't just one way or anything I think that was what might be like this you would like multiple scenarios right yeah yeah um and um the um I I think one thing that I would

3:01:41add to what's already been said is that I think uh if we have vacancies we have to look even harder than we've been then you've been looking and I think you've already been looking real hard uh at whether or not we fill those vacancies or if in fact we need to at that point

3:01:59consider um if anyone is to be rehired that it isn't necessarily for the same exact job description you know it might be a different type of function that that person performs within either within the same department or you know maybe even in a different department

3:02:22um and um beyond that I think I think what I would add is that I think it's just a very difficult time and I would ask everyone here really to participating participate in working together recognizing that it's not that anyone wants to do this it's that we have to

3:02:50come up with a balanced budget and it is a very difficult thing to do this year so with that I will end my comment and you can make your motion Greg certainly um looking at this the City attorney said I'm making a motion that staff is directed per the individual comments of

3:03:12this evening something to that effect I think that's sufficient okay okay so motion by uh Greg Lyman seconded by Rebecca benacini all in favor please say aye aye the opposition are abstention motion carries unanimously and with that we will move on on the agenda

3:03:36and the next item on the agenda is council local and Regional liaison assignments reports I have two um the first is that the HRC the human relations commission met on April 2nd they essentially reviewed their Martin Luther King budget from this past January worked on some proclamations

3:03:58that they're going to bring forward to council which is something they do on an annual basis and um I also had um a meeting last week with the eqc they re-elected mark my Mark minor as their chair and um Mr Gowdy as their Vice chair they reported out that 10 attendees went to

3:04:25the Earth hour walk that they hosted as I reported up earlier they did have a sellout performance of Chasing Ice at the Cerrito theater and again just as a reminder there'll be a free workshop on May 1st Thursday from 6 30 to 8 30 Evening here in City Hall which will be a drought resilient home

3:04:55and East Bay mud not the gentleman not the board member that was here tonight but there's Specialists on water conservation will be there and also there will be a representative from the gray water Action Group who will be giving a presentation on laundry to Garden

3:05:14and that's all I have thank you gray water is so subversive um okay because I wanted to give my comments down which are on two meetings that I attended uh since we last met one was the Contra Costa mayor's conference where I attended the meeting along with council member Lyman who can add

3:05:34anything I missed um we received a presentation from Randy iwasaki who's the executive director of the Contra Costa Transportation Authority very entertaining about Innovation and transportation everything from the nuts and bolts of the ICM improvements on the I-80 onto discussions about the hyper

3:05:53train that was proposed by Elon Musk and um drone packaging from Amazon and smart cars that drive you places and talk to one another so he kind of ran the gamut of all types of Innovations and transportation um how to move people and things on a limited space while our population and

3:06:13our things grow I also wanted to mention that during that same meeting he also discussed that CCTA is considering putting the measure J um the measure J sales tax on the 2016 ballot which would potentially increase the measure J sales tax and extend it we also heard presentations from Senator

3:06:39Mark desaleigne during which he noted that he had proposed a library bond in the state senate which would be of great interest to us if it actually passed out of the legislature I also wanted to mention that there was a representative from the Contra Costa Community College

3:06:55District noting that on June during the June 3rd election we will see uh measure e which is a measure to support the Contra Costa colleges and their facilities improvements I also wanted to make a couple of notes about the a bag General Assembly meeting that councilmember Lyman and I also attended

3:07:18it was you know it's an all-day conference very lots of inspiring stories and lots of information so I'll just note the ones that were of interest to me in particular um there was discussions or these were ideas I thought that we could potentially note to staff and they could

3:07:34consider or completely disregard just kidding seeing if you're awake one was open government there are many cities that have open government websites where they put all of their data on those websites so that citizens if they really wanted to get into the nitty-gritty could go in and see the

3:07:50data and also manipulate it to come up with other ways to inform residents about City information we heard a I also went to a presentation on economic development where the focus was less on attracting companies to your city or attracting development and more on

3:08:06cultivating the people in your city so rather than trying to get an employer to come to your city which is also a great goal another goal could be to make sure that the residents that you have have great employment opportunities and are well employed and ways of doing that

3:08:21would include we do have small business training programs that sorts of thing those sorts of things but also helping residents network with one another connect with one another and expand their own sort of employability and ability to attain the highest salary and most fulfilling

3:08:39career that they're able to so that was very interesting we also heard a presentation from that included a member from sfmaid which is a non-profit group dedicated to supporting Manufacturing in San Francisco in all manufacturing including garment there were garment factories

3:08:56that do short run sample orders you know very small garment factories food food manufacturers who do jams or other small runs that they would place at specialty stores like Whole Foods or natural grocery stores so that was very interesting she also connected to high

3:09:13schools by placing helping students connect what they're learning in school to the manufacturing types of jobs they might not be as as aware of so I thought that was another great presentation and two ideas for beautifying cities that were of of Interest were painting

3:09:30utility boxes something that a art group in Oakland did also tiling garbage cans which is um when you tile the garbage cans I guess they're very resistant to Graffiti which is another they had great pictures of sort of beautification campaigns for the streets um so that's a summary of that and and

3:09:48yeah if you if you have an opportunity to go next year definitely try to attend Mark no so I have uh two uh reports one the design review board met on April 2nd and um they too reorganized um and the uh Maggie is now the chair and Kristoff is now the vice chair Aggie Leahy and I

3:10:16can't remember Kristoff's last name um Laverne I think yeah um and they uh their major item of the night was uh to discuss the Creekside uh design so I did not stay for that so I can't give you any details of that of that because it may come before us at some point in the future don't know but it

3:10:41might I also attended the a bag Springs general assembly and in addition to the presentations that uh councilmember benestini is is highlighting um there was an extended discussion about housing um and I so I followed the housing track on the day and and uh there is

3:11:03the CEO of uh trulio was there and talked about the fact that we have significant housing a a structural housing problem uh in the Bay Area that we have basically suppressed Housing Development um for so long that we now have on affordable housing as a result of a

3:11:27short supply and then in the afternoon I went to the affordable housing presentation and lo and behold they said essentially the same thing but their focus obviously was on trying how to figure out how to increase the affordable housing Supply and there was differing opinions there

3:11:44one opinion is that you just need to increase all housing such that there's enough housing that market forces will dictate that some of it's affordable and we are many years from achieving that that objective the a lot of the affordability discussion I raised during our earlier

3:12:07discussion um the some of the notables are that the nine percent tax credit funding opportunities are are rare and our projects are not we'll we need to do what we can to make them competitive which came out in my testimony earlier on the Eden housing project and that concludes my report

3:12:32mark I still know the later it gets the later it gets the knower it gets okay um I think I haven't said this yet but I sometimes I think that we're saying the same thing over and over again um I uh was not at the mayor's conference because I attended the league

3:12:52of California City policy committee meetings and um so in thinking about what happened there that is most noteworthy I think the most important thing at least that I thought I heard there was about the massage parlors um and um the concern about the current the

3:13:15current law regarding the operation of massage parlors is not really working well because there are a lot of cities that are getting increasing numbers of illicit massage parlors uh and the numbers are really bad um and so as I go up and down the Avenue I keep you know wondering

3:13:38about all I can do because we don't do anything to enforce it right now I guess but um which is probably the problem with the law having the way it's written and what I thought I saw when I went up um see the legislature about it uh at a hearing on it um earlier is that I think the legislature

3:14:03particularly the assembly actually heard what was being said by the league and the police Chiefs and um so hopefully they will actually make a change and that change will make a difference because um what's happening now is human trafficking and prostitution so um anyway hopefully that will work

3:14:30and I went to the uh I just went to the groundbreaking today as I mentioned earlier and with that I'll end my comments because I feel like I'm going around in a circle saying the same thing over and over again um that maybe it's just that it's been it was another meeting okay so our next

3:14:48meeting or uh let's see so we're I'm adjourning this meeting and our next meeting will be held on Tuesday May the 6th here at City Hall and thank you all for coming and thank you for staying hmm