City Council Meeting May 20, 2014

0:00:00going good evening everyone good evening we're getting started everybody thank you yeah thank you all for coming tonight this is the meeting of the El Cerrito City Council in case you are in the wrong place the first item on our agenda is the Pledge of Allegiance led by council

0:00:34member Greg Lyman please join me and if you may either join us in the pledge or a moment of silence at your choice of America and to the Republic of which it stands one nation under God next item on the agenda is Council and staff Communications are there any Council Communications

0:01:09uh thank you mayor I'll just mention one I attended the youth Service Bureau 30th anniversary dinner a couple of nights ago and I just wanted to make note of the organization that has locations in Richmond and Concord and they provide wraparound services to at-risk Youth and

0:01:24it was a wonderful celebration attended by Congressman George Miller as well as other dignitaries so congratulations to the West Contra Costa County Youth Service Bureau and I'll pass this around in case anybody would like to take a look thank you okay uh Greg mark and I don't have

0:01:41anything are there any staff Communications thing none we will move on on our agenda to the next item which is oral Communications from the public on items not on the agenda if members of the public would like to speak on items that are on the consent calendar this would also be the time to

0:02:01do that and we have one speaker at this time Ralph boniello thank you foreign good evening I wanted to come tonight to report on the recent Hillside Festival that we had in the hillside Natural Area and declare that the hillside Festival was a success it was very well attended

0:02:25and there were a lot of enthusiastic people there um I'm a member of friends of five Creeks who was one of the co-sponsors of the festival and we've wanted to give you guys a copy of a flyer that we handed out at the festival that gives you an idea of some of the wildflowers that

0:02:41exist in the hillside Natural Area I'm not sure if you knew this but there are over 150 different Native species in in wildflowers in the hillside Natural Area and uh we look forward to working with the city to help Steward these Wildflower populations that ex that exists

0:03:01um I also want to say that we appreciate the city mowing the central Meadow in Hillside Natural Area before the festival we use that Meadow as a um it was a meadow that's been overrun by French broom and the City by the city mowing it we were able to get in there

0:03:16and start pulling out the Friendship room stumps which is a project we will continue into the future um so the last thing I just wanted to say is that even though there's been a lot of talk about drought and and uh lack of rain in California this year it's actually turned out to be a good

0:03:36year for wildflowers in our area and we're not sure why but we've had sort of a mass Bloom of wildflowers in the hillside Natural Area and uh I just want to say it's essential that these wildflowers many of which are annual and requires that they're seeds set every

0:03:51year it's essential that these wildflowers are allowed to set seed before mowing occurs in in the hillside Natural Area so that their populations can be sustainably maintained into the future thank you thank you and that was our only speaker I have one additional

0:04:07mother speaker okay Al Miller good evening mayor Abelson council members and staff I'm here to support your support of measure h on the consent calendar and I think the residents of El Cerrito especially those of us with grandchildren or children in our schools or about to be in our

0:04:30schools no matter what level have almost a special obligation to support measure H I say that because all of our schools every one of the schools in El Cerrito have been rebuilt or torn down and built anew uh in the school of bonding program that is started I don't even know how many

0:04:53years ago Castro school is in the process of being reborn as a brand new middle school after that Fairmont will get torn down and rebuilt as a brand new Elementary School most of the school district now has been built out the problem being is that when we started this campaign it was kind of

0:05:16like an all for one one for all because we recognized our schools were unsafe that they needed to be upgraded to primarily the new earthquake standards now as we've gotten past the 50 percent up to the 70 up near the 80 percent of the schools have been rebuilt I'm very concerned that too many of us

0:05:39will say [ __ ] all my schools are done why should I spend more money to have their schools redone but their schools are our schools if they voted yes in the early stages to provide the bonds that build our schools so I think that we all have a moral obligation if not just a good conscious

0:05:57obligation to support measure H so we can make sure that all of the kids in all of the cities and all of the uh areas of the district have their schools rebuilt and brought up to the same safety standards we enjoy for our children thank you thank you include thank you on items not on the agenda

0:06:22okay with that we will move on to item number four we have two presentations the first one is the annual Cinder shoddy Garden Awards good evening my name is Bonnie Smith and I represent the El Cerrito Garden Club I want to thank you to the mayor and the city council for having us today years

0:06:52ago Sundar shoddy provided a gift of five hundred dollars to the El Cerrito Garden Club asking that it be used for beautifying El Cerrito we decided to have a garden contest to encourage attractive Gardens the gardens must be visible from the street the first contest was in 1996 and the

0:07:12club has continued to support this worthy project at first only Beauty and design were the criteria but that has changed now we want to see drought tolerant plantings all on removed California Natives and environmentally friendly for Birds pollinators and all living things

0:07:34on last few years we have had a first second and third place winner but this year all Gardens were honored equally since they are so each unique each Garden will receive a cash prize of one hundred dollars a certificate of award and a Year's membership In the Garden Club

0:07:53here are the winners 75-55 Everett by neilani and Anne Heath Delaney this Garden was also featured in bringing back the native's garden tour this drought tolerant Garden is filled with California Natives and yet has an amazing display of color even the hellstrip that's the area between the

0:08:16sidewalk and the street not heaven and has been turned into a pleasant environment with plants and trees I would like to bring up nalani and add Heath Delaney foreign next at 509 Clayton by Peter J Saco we celebrate El Cerrito's Japanese Heritage with a space that honors peace and

0:09:08Tranquility Mr Seiko lovingly placed every stone and plant and the garden reflects his many years as a professional landscape Gardener be sure to know the notice the beautiful stone walkway and his decorative fences Mr Seiko [Applause] thank you very much at 2000 carquinas by Todd Saunders and

0:09:57Michael potasniak Ivy was the in every inch of the garden when their home was purchased in 2007. now it is a mix of native south of Africans succulents and cacti we and this is a quote we tried to fill our garden with both butterfly and bird attracting plants unquote as you

0:10:18walk and take a closer look through the drought tolerant Garden reveals one delightful plant after another saving water can be beautiful notice also the new signs in the gardens they were made by Design assigned in Albany and designed by Tanya Edgar our chairperson for Sundar shoddy I'd like

0:10:38to bring up Todd Michael's not here tonight hmm [Applause] I want to give a special thanks out to our judges Sylvia Falcone varalis Marion Kent Joanna Perlman Linder Linda raxaul excuse me Virginia summer Landry Wild win and our chairperson Tanya and David Edgar who is also a photographer tonight

0:11:23congratulations to our winners and to all whose Gardens were nominated thanks to all of you for making El Cerrito even more beautiful [Music] thank you thank you thank you [Applause] I think we're all very fortunate uh as a city to have such a wonderful activity

0:11:47and to each year see the winners and be afforded the opportunity to go around and look at the different Gardens that are represented and there is a um a board upon the uh over here on to my right that um shows those Gardens I believe is that correct thank you thank you for your work uh the

0:12:14next item on the agenda is the utility is a presentation on the utility users tax [Music] hmm is this one oh good evening mayor and council members I'm Laura Trevino a senior financial analyst in the finance department the City attorney Sky Woodruff and I are here this evening to make a presentation

0:13:09regarding the city's utility users tax as you'll recall during the major Bud budget discussions we had said we would come back to the council with some more information about various Revenue issues that had come up we are going to go through the various services that are subject to the uut in

0:13:31the ordinance what some of the revenue Trends are how the UT is calculated and collected some of the factors that we've identified that affect the revenue some of the current issues and some developments that have happened and then give you some details about each of the

0:13:45revenues and some of the things that the city council could do to address some of the declines in Revenue as well as some of the fluctuations so um the services that are subject to the utility users you users tax include electricity and gas natural gas um and as well as electricity and

0:14:08natural gas that are supplied by non-utilities which are um uh It generally people can that could be either you get your own solar panel or you um you can get your power through someone other than PG e for example water telephone both landlines and cellular and video services

0:14:31um these are um this is a comparison of Revenue Trends over the last uh seven fiscal years with an estimate for the current year and this is really just to show you sort of what the trends are um we are seeing declines in revenues from Energy service providers and

0:14:50telephone service providers and slight increases from video providers and obviously the water um the UT on the water um Services were not instituted until 2008 and so that's a little bit deceptive to to look at as a trend because it isn't necessarily correlating with the use of

0:15:14water for those first few years so Lori and I are going to be switching back and forth as we go along um this this slide is basically just intended to sort of give you an overview of how the uut functions the UT is actually a tax on a service user it is eight percent regardless of the type of

0:15:34service and it's generally calculated based on what the customer pays customer pays that to the service provider who collects it and remits it to the city and provides a city with notice of any service user who's not paying the UT for the non-utility service users

0:15:51um that Laurie mentioned they are required to submit the UT directly to the city themselves um so just a few details about how the calculation is done uh oftentimes taxable and non-taxable services are bundled um you're probably familiar with this in the telephone internet and video

0:16:12context in those circumstances if the taxable and non-taxable items are aggregated into a single charge then the entire charge is taxable but if the charge is non-taxable um then it's disaggregated from the bundle and not taxed um so that's that that sort of gives you

0:16:34some idea of where even if somebody's paying a certain amount for a service the tax might not actually be on the entirety of the service so when we um talk about one of the things that the council asked about at the Media budget was was what are some of the things that

0:16:49are affecting the revenue um some of them are just Market forces people are are on the energy side um and somewhat in water using less they're buying more energy efficient appliances they're installing solar on their own houses they're removing um water heavy landscaping and replacing

0:17:09it with drought tolerant Landscaping offsetting that though is that in general um the cost of all those Services is going up so the fees charged or hires which offsets reductions in use also many of the service providers are bundling services and since and that

0:17:30does have an effect on Revenue because of the um the the way that the UT is structured as we just discussed and then people are users sometimes change between taxable and non-taxable Services if you have a landlocked line but you switch to using all prepaid phone cards

0:17:47for all of your long distance that basically means that you're not going to be paying uut on the phone on long distance calls anymore there's probably some issues going on with service providers not applying the tax properly not collecting it or misidentifying service user locations

0:18:03and we'll come back to that one and then there are some changes in the legal and legislative environment that we want that we'll just talk to you about a little bit that have effects on Revenue so um let's see uh so for for electricity um the tax applies on basically what people

0:18:29pay and there's there are many components that go into the cost of what service user actually pays um it doesn't apply to electricity resold within the city um and for people who have residential solar what PG e collects is actually the difference between um their consumption and what they

0:18:46generate themselves and then there are a number of people who are exempt because of What's called the California alternate rates for energy program which is for low-income and seniors so that also affects the revenue that the city sees if I may can I have a question about that second

0:19:01bullet um what what's an example of electricity resold within the city is that would that apply to community Choice aggregation or is this applied to um for example solar panels that are generating electricity that get sold to PG e it definitely does not apply to

0:19:23community Choice aggregation ccas are still subject too that's not reselling that is selling um so that so if if there were any movement towards CCNA that would not that those charges would still be subject to the eut um I think Lori has some additional well my understanding from my conversations

0:19:40with with PG e is is that there are wholesalers in and they typically are apartment complexes or companies or sometimes local governments that um that will buy electricity from PG e and then sell it and this is just to ensure that it's not taxed twice so you the the wholesaler doesn't pay the tax

0:20:02they're supposed to charge collect the tax and then remit it um this does not specifically is not specifically meant to talk about solar panels but we'll talk about that in a moment okay thank you right so um again there are multiple components that go into what gets Char what the

0:20:24charges are for gas but the tax generally applies to the the composite of those charges um it doesn't apply um again to gas which is delivered through a pipeline but then resold within the city so the same idea of avoiding double taxation when there's one provide one purchaser who then

0:20:41resells it within the city and again they're The CARE program also applies to Natural Gas um so this is um this was one of the confusing Parts it sort of relates to your question it's about wholesalers there are non-utilities that supply energy in El Cerrito people sometimes will buy from

0:21:05another power source um and but they still have to pay something to PG e for being connected to the grid um the uut ordinance was originally written such that um if you had a solar panel you were supposed to pay the uut on the value of any energy that you generated from your

0:21:28solar panels for self-use um and but that um that uut um was ex solar panel generated power was Exempted from uuts by the state in last fall so at this point although the our ordinance was intended to apply to solar panels for that portion where that was being generated and put back on the

0:21:51grid um it's currently exempt through 2020.

0:21:57and I did talk with PG e about wholesalers in El Cerrito and it turns out there is only one um and they appear to be exempt so they wouldn't tell me who it was but um it didn't seem to have any effect on um what they were collecting in El Cerrito so as um Mr Woodruff said you know utility

0:22:24rates are increasing um even though use is is decreasing um we had noted earlier this year that PG need has stopped it collecting and remitting taxes tax from wholesalers which is consistent with our ordinance and and they're applying that now consistently to all jurisdictions

0:22:43um the thing that we did find out since the mid-year review was that PG e has identified has gone through a process of identifying service location addresses that were not consistent with billing addresses and they have removed 88 customers that were previously

0:22:58considered El Cerrito Service locations and put them in another jurisdiction um and they they did adjust our UT Revenue going back for three years for those 88 addresses I don't think it was a a huge number and I'll show you where that you can see that hit on a on a graph

0:23:22we are receiving um uut from some non-utilities um I it but it's not clear if we're getting all of them and one thing I also wanted to note was that PG e let me know that the puc approved a new program recently called a climate dividend where um where their customers will be receiving a rebate and

0:23:44that will be counted against the amounts collected and therefore it will reduce our UT slightly this graph is um to show what the PG e charges in El Cerrito have been this is for calendar years 2006 through 2013 and it Compares what they've charged in El Cerrito for gas and electricity

0:24:14versus what they've remitted to us in uut as you can see the remittances generally track with the what they've collected these amounts do include what they've collected from customers who are exempt from the uut so it's not exactly going to be eight percent it's actually closer to seven

0:24:36percent but it does generally track and you can see I've I've highlighted three points where the line diverges from the collections and those are the years where they made adjustments for service locations and um and that mostly hit during 2012. foreign we thought it would be helpful just for

0:25:05you to see what usage is in El Cerrito and break it apart by electricity and natural gas rates obviously affect this weather affects this some things are more price sensitive than others um gas natural gas I think tends to be more price sensitive and so you can see that there's a real

0:25:26very a big variation there and there's probably a weather effect as well so this shows this graph shows just the uut that it was collected and remitted from PG e between fiscal year 2006-7 and what we're estimating for 1314 you can see that there does seem to be a a

0:25:51gradual decline um it seems reasonable to assume that might continue given that there are going to be these climate dividends that PG e will be deducting from accrediting back to its customers foreign put together the same graph but added in all of the service providers other than

0:26:15uh PG e just for comparison and you can see that they do contribute a small amount a relatively small amount compared to PG e which are which is our largest utility provider in El Cerrito all right so moving on to talk a little bit about water again as with water as

0:26:37with electricity and gas there there are multiple components to the delivery and the UT applies to charges for all of those all the Water Service in the city is provided by East Bay mud and the the collection of the uut on that did not begin until 2008 and so as Ms Trevino

0:26:54said there's it's harder to to depict a trend line because the the amount of Revenue derived from that has been a little bit sporadic in the first few years as they were just getting up and running but it is the case that East Bay mud's rates are increasing and so even

0:27:09with um drops in usage due to efficiencies and and conservation efforts the revenue has been rising over the last couple of years we just don't know whether or not that's actually going to be a trend um just for some context this is the um a graph of water usage in El Cerrito both

0:27:28for total gallons in a year as well as gallons per household and you can see that there have been some pretty good conservation efforts and declines in water usage both on a total lineup per household basis and these are the revenues again with the caveat that this doesn't necessarily

0:27:48correlate to rates or usage in those particular years foreign well telephone the tax on Telephone service is a little more complicated but I'm going to try and make it as simple as possible um so um the ordinance has a definition of telephone Communications um that the tax applies to and that

0:28:11um includes basically telephone calls as we understand them through a public switch regardless of the origin and endpoint and it includes mobile wired and voice over IP but there are a number of exceptions to that that actually complicate the amount of Revenue that's

0:28:26derived from this tax the taxes applied on the service address not the billing address and that there's some federal law that deals with that as well which also complicates how the how the revenue is calculated that the tax actually applies to um and the tax can't be imposed on

0:28:43communication services that are exempt from or not subject to the federal excise tax that is written into the ordinance it has a long history to it and it's very consistent across cities prior to 2006 basically at a certain point in time the telephone companies

0:29:01came to the cities and said we'd like to have uniformity in which Services the tax applies to and cities agreed to use the federal excise tax as sort of a consistent marker of which Services it would apply to so basically if a telephone service was exempt from the

0:29:19federal excise tax it would also be that it'd also be exempt from local uut but if it was subject to the federal excise tax the local tax would also apply so um that included long distance and bundled service were subject to the tax but there was a dispute about whether or

0:29:39not under the underlying federal statute under the federal excise tax itself those Services should actually be taxed the IRS kept saying they were until a series of Appellate Court decisions in 2005 went against it and at which point the IRS said well we're not going to

0:29:56apply the federal excise tax to those anymore and so as a result cities all across California stopped having their tax applied to this subset of long distance and bundled services that were exempt from that that suddenly had become exempt from the federal excise tax

0:30:11that's really as much detail as you want to know it's it's really kind of ridiculously complicated but the upshot is every city in California took a hit on Revenue as a result of that and because of um amendments to the state constitution as a result of prop 218

0:30:27um most cities had would have to go back to the polls to ask the voters to amend the ordinance in order to be able to fix this issue many of them have um but El Cerrito is not among them um and it's unfortunate in some ways that if the if the federal excise tax

0:30:43had just been repealed that would have actually been very helpful because the ordinance does say that if it's ever repealed then the rate then the what's subject to the tax reverts back to a point in time at which actually these same services that are now exempt would

0:30:59actually have the local tax apply to them so I I don't want to I figure that's enough detail but because the upshot is basically there's a loss of Revenue as a result of things that were entirely out of the city's control and the only way that we can really fix it

0:31:11is to go back to the voters and get them to amend the UT itself so moving on to talk us home about video services at sort of under the whole rubric of telecommunications the tax applies to all charges by a local video service supplier for a whole a whole grouping of services that that are

0:31:36subject that they charge for the tax applies to all of them um and it's collected and remitted by the video service provider billing agents and resellers but it's imposed on the service user whether it's an individual or a bulk purchaser like oftentimes apartment buildings have one account

0:31:53with Comcast for cable service but the tax only falls on the amount that on the single charge that the apartment building pays before we go on uh when you say video that means TV it does mean TV except for satellite video service which is specifically Exempted from local

0:32:12taxation by the 1996 Telecommunications Act thank you yes um so there are some Services though that are that are supposed to also some and that actually is a perfect segue because there are some other services that aren't subject to the uut satellite delivered video is on them internet

0:32:30service is on them because of the internet Tax Freedom Act um charges that are imposed by an ISP are not subject to taxation but as many of you have likely found some goods and service some digital goods and services that aren't part of the service themselves are subject to sales tax

0:32:51um but they're they're they're not treated as subject to uut uh private communication services that aren't publicly switched are not subject to the UT and prepaid cellular phones and are also not subject to it so we wanted to um show you the telephone and video related

0:33:16uut together because we thought it was um helpful to see sort of how they are related to each other oftentimes because of bundling it's actually quite hard to break them apart um you'll see that there has been a slight increase in uut revenue from video Services a decrease in landline decrease

0:33:38in cellular and then I have a small amount which I've categorized as other which tends to appear to be um long distance services that people have that's separate from their from their local provider and as well as voice over internet such as Vonage and that's adding a very small amount at

0:33:58this point foreign and those Trends seem to be pretty consistent with what we're hearing about in these different Industries customers are eliminating their landlines um the voiceover the over internet is taxed but only if um someone's paying for it um some people are using just a cell phone

0:34:24rather than having a cell phone and a landline cellular phone services are changing really dramatically as people go to flat rate plans and a lot more prepaid plans and um one issue that we've been hearing about lately is that's some of the major telephone companies have been talking

0:34:43about abandoning the public switch Network and going to use Broadband only and that would eliminate a huge amount of taxable revenue for um for cities in California the video the trends that we're seeing with the video Services although we are seeing a slight increase

0:35:09in the UT I'm I'm not so sure that that isn't just a reporting issue that's related to bundling the only video providers that appear to be collecting uut in El Cerrito are Comcast and at T and we're not getting any revenue from other video service providers which

0:35:24could potentially be subject to it um according to the language that's there the ATT include your reverse on some of the terms that you use in our terms I'm not totally familiar with um but I know the names of the services for example ATT I'm sorry I didn't hear the

0:35:46beginning of your question is it all a TNT video um it's their video service so they said I don't know what it's called okay U-verse thank you so it would be it would be the Comcast cable and the ATT U-verse so but it's not all components of U-verse the universe has

0:36:05at least three components uh internet um phone the internet component is not taxable that's right but the phone and the video is and okay yeah and you said satellites were covered but the ordinance says that they're covered but but in talking with um with Mr Woodruff um it is they are

0:36:31specifically exempt under the Telecommunications Act 2009 2000 the 1996 Telecommunications Act specifically Exempted satellite video service from local taxation that includes audition yeah exactly that that sorry that's dish and um DirecTV and any other player in

0:36:50that same Market thank you and what are examples of video providers other than Comcast and at T well they really are the um the streaming services like Netflix or Hulu or Amazon Prime where um they and and if you go to their websites they will sometimes refer to charging utility

0:37:14users taxes in some communities so I know that some have been subjected to it in other locations and we we may be able to make that application here yeah we need to I mean later on in the presentation there are some some comments about um over overall um potentially going to the voters with an

0:37:36overhaul of the Telecommunications components of the UT in which case it might be possible to to make sure that those services are are made taxable then there would then be some administrative issues in getting them to actually collect and remit the tax but as Ms Trevino said in other

0:37:54communities particularly outside of California there are there are local utility taxes applied to those services so it's that's I think um I think as you mentioned like if you look there's certain on their FAQ for Netflix they say well why is my bill more than the flat rate and the answer

0:38:09is local utility tax so it's not it's not that it's exempt it's just that it's not common in California under most cities uuts and it's too soon to tell what the potential merger of a t and DirecTV what impact if any of that will have on how they collect their tax I didn't hear

0:38:28about that before we put the packet together so no I don't know so um this slide is just a repeat of the one earlier to show you the trends is again as you can see while we do have we are seeing declines in uut from the energy and telephone services they are being made up for somewhat with the

0:38:51video and Water Services um but as Mr Woodruff just said we're going to talk about some of the challenges that we see that you may want to address so we've actually touched on both of these a little bit um some of the two they're two well two of the issues that are significant in

0:39:14terms of legal impacts on the amount of Revenue that the city has seen is is the issue with the federal excise tax that I will not repeat because I'm sure you don't want to hear it um but but at one point here that's on the slide that's worth repeating is that again this is something that that

0:39:28affected a significant number of cities in California you're not alone and they're very slow to to fix it for obvious reasons that going to the polls is a big undertaking um the other is the internet Tax Freedom Act which basically um exempts uh the internet service itself

0:39:48from local taxation it hasn't it was approved with an expiration date but but as is noted here it's likely to make be made permanent in November of this year um there are some ways though to fix it to some degree we won't be able to tax internet service but we can deal with

0:40:07some of the Telecommunications issues by doing um an amendment to the uut that a number of cities have done I believe somewhat close by um uh I know Hayward has as well as um Hercules Hercules also has and basically it it makes uh it taxes telecommunications regardless of the

0:40:28technology that's used and a lot of times it is done with a reduction in rate but but because the service is being broadened that's actually net revenue positive for the jurisdiction Additionally the California cities with regard to making permanent the internet

0:40:47Tax Freedom Act is trying to get an exclu A limited exclusion built in for voter approved ordinances that apply to all telecommunications networks so basically um it might be the case that that if the internet Tax Freedom Act is approved but a local ordinance allows for taxation of

0:41:04telecommunication services and it is voter approved that that would still apply um as we mentioned another legal limit on the revenue is that satellite video Services exempt from taxation um so there's also an issue with prepaid cellular particularly um uh um well

0:41:30so basically it's prepaid cellular but it's also um long like phone cards phone cards are are actually subject to taxation but there's a real problem with collecting it so the legislature attempt to deal with these issues last year but the governor vetoed the bill there's a new

0:41:49bill under consideration for this session it's basically uncertain what's going to happen with that um and then there's also an issue with um an exemption for distributed generation um there is and this is the we touched on this earlier this is uh the the exemption that went into place last year

0:42:11in 2013 um for imposing uut on basically renewable energy sources um so basically residential solar is the real impact there um and it's true that it is the case that many of those people were not paying uut prior to the adoption of that bill simply because they were unaware

0:42:30and very few cities attempt to collect it but at this point even if we wanted to make an effort to raise revenue by making sure the tax was fully collected we'd be we're precluded from doing that until 2020.

0:42:44um you know there are a lot of different tools here that are available to the city if we wanted to try to make sure that we were fully collecting it um the ordinance allows for the issuance of administrative rulings and um interpretations that would be provided

0:42:59to the service providers to direct them to collect things that they might not be collecting we could require better identification of unbundled billing we can do an audit of multiple service issues you know rather than read this whole list I'm just going to say that there

0:43:21are a number of administrative steps that could be taken um to try to generate greater Revenue but um it's basically like the the the efficiency of the eut is that the service providers are the most knowledgeable about the services and they are the ones who take most

0:43:37responsibility for ensuring collection which reduces the amount of effort that this city and every city has to take to collect it any of these efforts is going to going to require a significant amount of staff time to do although I think that we we mentioned during the mid-year

0:43:52budget and would and ours and is still on the table to do an audit of some of the services um but Ms Trevino may have some additional thoughts about that hmm so um we did look into some of the various consulting firms that do audits of utility user tax revenues

0:44:14um some of the things that they're able to do they can identifying and help us correct errors made by the service providers on how they are applying the tax who they're applying it to we they can help us identify service providers who are supposed to be collecting it and

0:44:28are not and also the non-utility service providers and wholesalers who should be collecting and paying the UT we have found that most of the firms have a pretty high upfront cost so we didn't think it was necessarily the best use of of funds up front but we have

0:44:51been looking into some Consultants who do this kind of work basically for a percentage of of what they're able to recoup for the city so that's one one way we may be able to go um yeah basically we're just looking at ways to some alternatives for how we can do this at a low cost low upfront cost

0:45:15and additionally as I as I alluded to there there it it would be possible to examine the ordinance and find whether or not um under the existing language or within a proper administrative determination there are services that aren't being taxed that could be um then there's just going to be an

0:45:32Enforcement issue and also working with the affected utilities to make sure that it's taxed so we need to do sort of a cost benefit analysis about whether the revenue to be obtained is worth the additional administrative effort and then there is also the ability to make

0:45:46some amendments to the uut itself through voter approval to for example as we mentioned with the Telecommunications components to broaden the base by making it technology neutral and potentially even lowering the rate slightly but still having it be net revenue positive

0:46:03for the city that's it and we're available for questions are there any questions from the council yeah if you could go back one slide please sure that one yes please so thank you for your presentation tonight it was very informative um but what I'm left with is sort of

0:46:25looking at this slide is lots of little little things no big low-hanging fruit and Mr Woodruff just mentioned about cost-benefit analysis so I'm just curious is there a lot of dollars sitting out there or because this does look like a lot of administrative and and time-consuming work that isn't

0:46:51we don't know what we would gain in return I think that was part of the the challenge when when we were talking to the various Consultants it just seemed like it it was hard to know whether it was going to be worthwhile or not because it is such a time-consuming

0:47:07process um the um I mean my gut is that there there may be some providers who aren't charging it that should be we can go back three years um but actually combing through and figuring out if every utility is applying it exactly correctly is hard to imagine that turning out much can you

0:47:32can you go forward in one slide so that this one yep so why I am actually familiar with Consultants that work on percentage of savings or percentage of new Revenue in this case um and uh curious if we because the way they work is they don't get paid if they don't find new revenue and they get paid

0:47:53twenty percent thirty percent of the new Revenue maybe it's higher for the first year lower second third fourth year until it tapers out um you sounds like you've had conversations with those types of consultants and they're eager or interested or not interested in working for us I've had

0:48:12two proposals from folks who don't do this on a percentage uh um and one who has claimed a lot of interest who does this on a percentage and has not been very responsive since the last time I spoke with him so I'm not sure what's going on there there aren't very many firms that do

0:48:31this for uuts because I think it's a more labor intensive and complex area in a black box exactly that's the thing is there aren't that many in part because knowledge of the internal workings and building procedures of the of the utilities is is a rather limited

0:48:48knowledge base somewhat Arcane I think follow-up previous slide please do we know other neighboring cities that have taken some of these approaches and what their results have been oh that's a good question um I do know that Berkeley did an audit not that long ago I don't know how much

0:49:15success they had um everybody I mean all the Consultants that I did talk to all say that they are able to identify and and find more Revenue but you know they're not they're not making any promises thank you yeah so I have a question about um going to the voters so if you were to consider I

0:49:37guess this is probably directed to you um if we were to go to the voters it seems like it's a very complicated issue will there be other things that end up getting Exempted that it's not really not going to be that much further ahead because maybe they're going to be doing

0:49:56this switch telephone networks or something else and and they'll just be exempting exempting exempting even more and we won't have any real dollar benefit from it well I think you've actually hit on um on a really interesting issue uh that's sort of in the background of all this

0:50:14which is that between consolidation of services like atnt buying Dish Network and um lobbying efforts by the utilities to shape federal law um and state law there it and basically just technol technological shift it's we are we would to some degree be chasing um basic changes in the market and

0:50:39changes in the regulatory environment um and I and we could probably you know certainly if we if there was a desire to pursue a measure before we really did anything in detail we would certainly undertake some analysis of whether or not um if there are going to be shifts in

0:50:57for example the telephone Market away from switch switch networks to basically doing everything over broadband like is there a way that we can still treat that as a taxable telephone service so can we um and for example what we what I talked about in terms of the broadening of the

0:51:13cert of the the definition of the service to make it technology neutral are we is the tax going to apply to that even if that shift is made by the industry we'd want to be able to answer those questions before we we move too much farther down that road um what I would say about it though is

0:51:28it's very one other aspect about it being complicated is that though the cities that have taken this approach have actually been very successful the voters seem to understand on some level that what's what's being asked to them and they also understand from their own behavior the way that the

0:51:44market is Shifting so they do understand when they're presented with a measure that says will you trade a lower rate for having more things be taxed the answer is is pretty uniformly yes so they sort of do understand on a basic user level thank you for the presentation

0:52:05okay um and do we have any speaker slips I don't okay thank you very much for the presentation um and um we'll move on then to the next item before we actually move on to the next item I want to mention I failed to mention that there was a close session and that Council gave direction

0:52:31to staff on a um on anticipated litigation I moved for adoption of the consent calendar consisting of items 5A through five I um I would I would actually like to pull 5 F I understand that the officer is here okay I would like to pull item 5i I'd reframe the motion consisting of

0:53:01consent calendar items five a b c d e G and H second okay all in X is me uh motion by council member um Friedman seconded by council member Lyman all in favor please say aye aye any opposition abstention motion carries unanimously with that we'll go to item number F which is the proclamation

0:53:28recognizing officer Bailey fepke song who I understand is here good evening mayor Abelson Council and our city manager Mr Hannon one of the great Pleasures that I have as your police chief is highlighting and recognizing great work by our cops so this is Bailey Feb Cason he has been an

0:53:56officer for eight years he currently serves as the SRO at the Portola Middle School the interesting thing about this is that Bailey not only Bailey that goes on not only went in and started uh establishing relationships as in our sorrow but when we were hosting

0:54:14throughout the city cops and coffee at local coffee shops to connect with our community Bailey said well I want to do that at the school so he hosted cookies and milk with a cop at the school so he took he took an approach that we are using in the Greater Community applied

0:54:32it to the school and had an overwhelming response from the kids this is just one example of the kind of community outreach and police work that officer that Cason does on a regular basis he is an Explorer advisor and a lead Explorer advisor he has because of his commitment

0:54:51to explorers he has increased the Explorer post he and his other advisors to over 11 explorers and these are young men and women who want to be exposed to not only law enforcement but into public service so he has not only been in an advisor but he's increased the post and

0:55:09through his leadership and his teaming with his cohorts they have the Explorers have competed and they have won several Awards in Statewide competitions now Bailey of course first and foremost is always in his heart a patrol officer so he's tactically sound he's part of our

0:55:28mobile field force and he is very disciplined in the way that he performs police work so I could say a whole bunch of things I will leave it to the mayor to read the proclamation if she so desires but it is one of the great Pleasures that I have is to serve beside

0:55:44and serve with men of tremendous character and work ethic and true community service like Bailey thebkson so I will turn it over to him I know he is he desires to speak before you and I'm very proud to present the Exchange Club officer of the year Bailey theft case on

0:56:05[Applause] I want to say I'm thank you thank you very honored um but I couldn't have done it without the members of my El Cerrito family and uh thank you once again and I hope I see everybody there on the 28th thank you I I will not repeat the attributes that are uh Chief Moyer so aptly

0:56:27described however I will say that I personally plan on intending and I would encourage other council members to attend the El Cerrito exchange club meeting on May 28th where he will receive the award and I want to say that I appreciate very much the service that you're providing

0:56:51our community and to the students in particular at Portola Middle School thank you [Applause] I actually have the awards but we're going to say I'll let him touch it now but then I'll keep it foreign [Applause] thank you and I would also like to thank the other

0:58:10officers who came uh to be present for the award thank you and thanks for all the great work you do I want to move the motion now right okay well you want to wait until we do the other one okay and they do them together yeah I move uh 5f the Pres Proclamation for officer

0:58:36Bailey Pepco second emotion okay any discussion all in the motion was made by uh council member uh mark Friedman seconded by mayor Pro Tim Rebecca benassini all in favor please say aye aye aye in the opposition in the abstention motion carries unanimously but that will move on to item number I

0:59:03um the agenda which is the uh June 2014 city council meeting schedule I I realized that we're rescheduling the meeting because you have a very important dissertation to observe out of state for one of your children and I'm that's great um but I think it's it'd be really hard

0:59:24for me to do two nights in a row on the 23rd and 24th so I'm um would like the council to take into consideration keeping our meeting on June 17th and then the placeholder for whichever day you want the following week should we need it to finish passing the budget

0:59:43potentially so you're wanting to so have our regular scheduled meeting on the 17th and not meet two nights in a row on the 23rd and 24th I think um Pro tem benacini could probably handle our meeting um in your absence so I'd just like the council to consider that so so is your

1:00:03motion to have meetings on June 2nd June 9th June 17th and June 24th and June 30th the last two if necessary that's correct I'll second that motion hmm okay so there has been a motion uh by council member Bridges seconded by council member Lyman to alter the motion

1:00:25being proposed to add back in June 17th and and do what else instead of 20 eliminate the 23rd the 23rd and then meet on 24th and 30 if needed maybe okay all in favor please say aye aye aye any opposition or abstention motion carries unanimously thank you foreign

1:00:53with that we will move on to item number six on the agenda which is public hearings item number a is to confirm the diagram and Levy the assessment for fiscal year 2014-15 Landscape and Lighting assessment District number 1988-1 and um I'm announcing the public hearing and

1:01:20now we will have a staff presentation by Lori Trevino back again um before you this evening um is a resolution to cons to consider setting the annual Landscape and Lighting District assessments for fiscal year 2014-2015. in order to impose the annual assessment for the Landscape and

1:01:46Lighting District the city council has to annually authorize an engineer's report that identifies the cost uses and benefits of to those Parcels within the assessment District um you authorize such a report on April 1st the engineer of record prepared that report which we received prior to

1:02:06um the city council meeting on May 6th where you schedule this public hearing in order for the assessments to be imposed the city council must accept the engineers report and conduct a public hearing regarding their imposition so the purpose of this public hearing is to

1:02:23confirm the diagram and the assessment that appear in this in the engineering report Engineers report you also can receive protests um but there is no provision for a majority protest at this point and I'm not aware of any protests that were received prior to the meeting I did not receive any

1:02:44um staff is estimating that the current rate of assessment will generate 771 thousand dollars in revenue for the assessment District which will be included in the revenues for the city's annual budget for next fiscal year to the extent that the expenditures that

1:03:01are eligible for funding by the district exceeding the amount that's received we are in the process of identifying some other funding sources and reductions and expenditures to try to keep this budget in balance if you have any um questions I'm happy to answer them

1:03:18any questions Greg this amount is the same amount it's been for some extended period of time more or less within a thousand dollars or so correct yeah that that that's about right yeah so we have an increased our Revenue through this uh through this means in some time and and

1:03:35that's because um and unless there's a significant change in a development pattern um there's very little um change from one parcel to the next from year to year on a parcel yes great thank you okay and um so now what we will open if we're ready we will open the

1:03:57public hearing uh and ask if there's any public testimony and I have no request to speak okay then is there a motion to close the public hearing so moved back in okay there's a motion by council member Lyman seconded by council member um Friedman all in favor of closing the

1:04:17public hearing please say aye aye aye any opposition abstentions motion cares unanimously um have there been any uh written Communications from the public no I've not received any okay are we ready for a motion I'll make a motion uh resolution of the city council City Council of the city of

1:04:42El Cerrito confirming the diagram and levying the assessment for fiscal year 2014-15 for the Landscape and Lighting assessment District number 1988-1 second okay um I think we're ready to vote so there's a motion by council member Lyman seconded by council member

1:05:03Friedman all in favor please say aye aye any opposition are abstentions motion cares unanimously thank you with that we will move on to item number six B which is the fiscal year 2014-15 storm drain annual report and method of collection of collecting storm drain

1:05:27fees and Lori Trevino is once again before us um okay and so under this item you are considering a resolution that would approve the fiscal year 2014-2015 storm drain annual report and direct that the fees be collected on the property tax rolls in June of 1993 the

1:05:46city council adopted ordinance 93-4 which provided for imposing and collecting storm drain fees and set the fee at 58 dollars for a single family residential property and other amounts for other types of properties the ordinance also provided that they the the fees would be collected on the

1:06:04property tax roll based on an amount specified in an annual report um you did receive a copy of that report um with your with this agenda bill in order to collect the fees the city must annually conduct a public hearing that considers the method of collecting the storm drain fees it is not for

1:06:26consideration of the amount of the fees which were already set by ordinance only for the method of collecting fees and if and if they're not collected on the property tax roll then they have to be collected through a utility which is a much more costly process to administer

1:06:44um the annual fee will continue to be assessed at 58 dollars for a single family residents um and the rate would be expected to generate about 698 thousand dollars in Revenue um the last Debt Service payment on the storm drain bonds that were issued in 1983 were paid during this current

1:07:04fiscal year and therefore any proceeds in coming fiscal years will be used to fund storm drain improvements maintenance and related activities that are will be reflected in the upcoming annual budget and if you have any questions I'm happy to answer them are there any questions

1:07:19from the council yeah okay um hearing none we will open the public hearing are there any um requests to speak from the public I have no request to speak mayor okay then is there a motion to close the public hearing so maid second okay uh motion by Lyman seconded by Friedman uh all to close the

1:07:40public hearing all in favor please say aye aye any opposition or abstentions motion carries unanimously um have there been any written Communications I've received none okay is there a motion on the resolution before before we go I just want to thank staff for their technical report it

1:08:02continues to be a high level and take into consideration such things as properties that drain into Richmond and therefore their their properties are serviced by Richmond but they're in El Cerrito do not pay this tax so I just want to make sure that people know that

1:08:19there actually is a lot of consideration that goes into this report so I just wanted to thank staff and and our consultants for continuing to do good work okay is there a motion yeah I'm happy to move a resolution of the city council of the city of El Cerrito adopting the

1:08:35fiscal year 1415 storm drain annual report and directing the storm drain fees for fiscal year 1415 be collected through the property tax rolls back up okay motion by benicini seconded by Bridges all in favor please say aye aye any opposition or abstentions motion

1:08:56carries unanimously thank you with that we will get on to the reason why probably most people reasons that most people have come the first one is item 7A which is smoking pollution protection ordinance study session so as I understand it this is a study session where there will be information

1:09:20presented but we will not be making a final vote correct and I think we're ready for the presentation all right see thank you very much your honor and city council my name is Karen Pincus I'm the assistant city manager and tonight I'm here to provide a presentation to

1:09:42the city council and to the community on a proposed smoking pollution protection ordinance this presentation is a result of about 10 months now worth of work on Research Community input and discussion on this topic staff has previously presented this issue to the park and rec

1:09:59commission as well as the Environmental Quality committee and they both Express support of a proposed ordinance we then sought feedback from the public including an online survey and we held a community meeting in February and we also worked with the Contra Costa County

1:10:14tobacco prevention project Who provided a great deal of technical assistance we also worked with save the bay and the California Apartment Association who also provided very valuable information so I don't know if she's in the room but I want to give special recognition to

1:10:30Suzanne erla who has our community outreach specialist to um I don't know if she's in here she's probably watching at her desk um who has provided a great deal of assistance with this project I want to introduce Denise Dennis who is in the audience from the Contra Costa County

1:10:46tobacco prevention project and an El Cerrito resident um Allison Chan of save the bay and Teresa Carr of California apartment associate California Apartment Association who have been again very very helpful and I do want to give one big shout out to she's not here tonight

1:11:02but Amel Al kahali who was our El Cerrito High EC Stars intern last year who actually did a a very significant portion of research on this topic and it actually provided the foundation of the presentation you'll see tonight so she is a shiny example of how our internship

1:11:21program has been successful and brought real policy to the city so let's get started so we're here tonight um in part because the Strategic plan that was adopted in 2013 last year that was adopted by the community in the city council is our roadmap for the future

1:11:39tonight we're focusing on goal e which is ensuring The public's health and safety um one of the strategies for exploring um for ensuring public health and safety was in fact a smoking ordinance and I can also testify that in previous years this has been a discussion particularly among

1:12:01tenants who will call and ask if there are any additional smoking protections and as we'll get to in a minute um uh it's it's pretty common for cities in California to be regulating smoking so why smoking pollution protection Again part of the Strategic plan was to

1:12:19discuss Public Health but also because we as a city are a bit behind the curve because many cities in California it's very common to regulate smoking um there have been many findings that cities have made that have prompted cities to enact these regulations and

1:12:34those include the risk to Public Health which is seems to be the most obvious first and foremost the idea would be to try to encourage people not to smoke because of the many health risks to the person who is doing the smoking but also the greater Public Health protection as

1:12:48far as second-hand smoke numerous Studies have suggested and certainly are recognized by the state and federal government of the dangers of second-hand smoke and that it's designated as a public health hazard another issue that we found in our research and feedback

1:13:02from residents particularly from the park and rec commission was what is now being called third hand smoke which is essentially the residue that lingers after someone has smoked if you've ever been in a rental car or a hotel room or an apartment where smoking you can tell

1:13:16that someone has smoked there it's in the carpet it's in the curtains um so there's you know growing evidence and studies that that show that that is also dangerous um and so there are numerous again scientific studies that outline the health hazards that the city council

1:13:30could consider as findings for regulating smoking with respect to Public Health a financial drain uh cigarettes and cigarette products are expensive and for smokers it becomes a significant portion of their income and it's worth noting that the tobacco industry tends to Target low-income

1:13:46populations who can least afford it um environmental risks smoking pollution doesn't just mean secondhand smoke or even third hand smoke it means the actual pollution left and litter by people tossing cigarette butts or cigarette butts that make their way into the landfills and into our drains most

1:14:03cigarette filters don't biodegrade and they pose a real environmental threat um it can get into our storm drain system it impacts the bay but it's also a financial impact to the city we're responsible for complying with the regional storm water permits and we can

1:14:18be penalized if we are not in compliance so I'll get actually get into more detail on that in just a moment and of course smoking is a fire hazard a significant amount of fires are caused by cigarettes not just in buildings but also wildfires and as you know we work

1:14:32very hard in El Cerrito to try to prevent wildfires and building fires in our Hills and so regulating cigarettes can provide an assist in this area so this slide shows our trash generation map and this is from our public works department again as we know we're subject to the regional Municipal

1:14:49stormwater permit and we must reduce trash that goes into our waterways with requirement to eliminate trash from the waterways from our stormwater system by 2022. so this map shows that the highest level of trash generated um is in this commercial area this is all

1:15:06along San Pablo Avenue the um the key indicates that the red um the red portions here are where this most significant and you can't really see it it's cut up right at the bottom of the map there's actually a hot what we've designated as a hot spot at Cerrito Creek so

1:15:23um the uh the ugly picture at the bottom shows a bag of cigarette butts that were collected from San Pablo Avenue on Earth day which is part of the reported 4 300 total cigarette butts collected on that day so we see a direct correlation between cigarettes and cigarette litter

1:15:39and the amount of trash that we generate in our commercial areas so that adds to the environmental risk as well as City risking non-compliance with our permits which could result in funds so all of these items are proposed to be mitigated through a smoke smoking

1:15:53pollution protection ordinance pollution refers not just to air pollution of second-hand smoke but the litter generated by smoking as well in such an ordinance the council could choose to restrict smoking within the city limits and particularly in these listed categories parks recreation areas and

1:16:09open space indoor public spaces multi-unit family housing commercial zones and outdoor public spaces and businesses that sell tobacco products most of the ordinances that exist in our area do regulate in most or all of these categories so it's worth noting there are currently

1:16:27California state regulations state law that do regulate in some of these categories um for example in government buildings currently smoking is prohibited within 20 feet of any operable door or window in Park and Recreation areas it's prohibited within 25 feet of tot lots

1:16:45and playgrounds in multi-family housing and indoor common areas which someone is working so if a maintenance worker is on site or a manager is on site any place of employment indoor areas smoking is banned and landlords are right now required to inform tenants about the

1:17:02areas on site where smoking is prohibited tobacco sales there is some state law that regulates at a very minimum level the city can choose to be more restrictive our report card this has gotten a lot of attention by the public um and I know by the council in recent

1:17:21years the American Lung Association provides a report card of all municipalities in California and we completely failed um as you can see the three categories that the American Lung Association scores on outdoor smoking restrictions requirements for non-smoking units and

1:17:38multi-unit housing and local licensing and sales restriction for retailers of all F's um we're not alone 61 percent of municipalities last year received F grades but it's worth noting that of all the only 18 cities and counties in California that received a Graves we are

1:17:55completely surrounded by a bunch of them Contra Costas County Richmond Kensington Albany Berkeley so we're like a failing middle of the donut hole there so I should also note that it's not we just don't want to get a good grade although that's nice we want to get good

1:18:13grades in everything we do um but we're including this information because as a staff we looked at a lot of the ordinances we looked at what a lot of other cities were doing and this criteria actually is a very good rubric for what we can decide our options are

1:18:28as far as what goes into our ordinance and sort of using these categories as a guide we will cover a lot of the various issues that we that the city council could decide to restrict or prohibit um so we do feel like the um those three categories are what we could consider

1:18:46and hopefully up our grades next next time so the next few slides outline the categories in detail and they list several options that the city council can consider within each category so we'll start with parks recreation Recreation areas and open space the options from top to bottom there are the

1:19:05most restrictive at the top all Recreation areas 100 smoke-free no if ands or butts but that was meant to be um anyway um and then the second would be uh smoking could be restricted in parks there could be Recreation areas or um or designated smoking areas I'm sorry that

1:19:23are permitted within certain Parks or the least restrictive that smoking is prohibited in some parks but not all so you could do various levels of restriction commercial areas is sort of a subcategory to public spaces we've called them out because again the trash

1:19:39generation issue that I referenced in an earlier slide but also we noted um in particular the cities of San Rafael and the cities of Walnut Creek who have prohibited smoking in their major commercial areas and in their downtown areas is we've looked at those as models

1:19:55the considerations that the city council could include in commercial areas would be is listed there sidewalks in the commercial areas shopping centers we received a significant amount of complaints about smoking at El Cerrito Plaza Transit stops which would be any

1:20:12bus stop or Transit stop within the city we can't regulate Bart's property unfortunately but maybe we can encourage them to do so but certainly within the city and along the Avenue and then service areas where people congregate or they stand in line such as an ATM or

1:20:28taxi stands multi-family housing this is where the most options in the considerations seem to exist and and from in our research we I'm not sure I found two ordinances that were exactly alike because there are many different ways that this could be considered on the options side the

1:20:47restrictive again at the top that goes down to the bottom so you could ban outright 100 in every unit current and any new construction um most recently Walnut Creek did just that ban outright any new construction and then current units could be grandfathered in you could then require

1:21:04excuse me um different lease options for those units that kind that turn over um or you could just again designate new construction you could do a partial ban and require that multi-unit housing multi-family housing has designated smoking areas or units that need to be

1:21:24so designated um and or you could um the least restrictive would be to ban in common areas shared space patios balconies carports or any sort of common area different considerations within multi-family housing um are those items that the city council you could choose to provide specific

1:21:45direction to staff to include in a draft ordinance senior and affordable well the number of units I'll start the top number of units um there you know various ordinances provided various options two or more three or more four or more we do have a significant number of duplexes in the

1:22:02city so this could impact that segregation of units you could require that for those units that if you were to go with a lesser restrictive option of a partial ban in multi-unit housing you would you could require segregation of buildings or units that are that are

1:22:19designated smoking require signage you could even require a percentage um senior and affordable housing um it could be considered it would be considered part of this ordinance in multi-family housing unless you wanted to specifically exempt it but I do know that there are some regulations that

1:22:36with respect to funding as well at the state and federal level but we would assume that um this that senior in affordable housing would be included hotels and motels um the city council could require some ordinances that I saw required a specific percentage of non-smoking and

1:22:54smoking rooms or a ratio that would be required and then medical marijuana which could potentially be controversial I know we would assume that smoking medical marijuana would be included in this ordinance unless the city council decided to specifically exempt it in our

1:23:11research we found that I believe only Berkeley and Richmond in our area exempt the smoking of medical marijuana in their smoking ordinances Richmond's does say um my notes so long as the smoke is not detectable or an annoyance to other tenants so that is a consideration for the city

1:23:29council the category of reducing tobacco sales it's a third category recognized by the American Lung Association and the various items that are listed are meant to try to restrict availability of tobacco particularly to children as you can see the licensing could

1:23:48require all retailers to obtain a special license it could also restrict locations such as near Parks or schools it could restrict sales within pharmacies although I should note that CVS for example has several locations in El Cerrito they've actually self-regulated and prohibiting tobacco

1:24:06sampling within the city limits um the book of tonight's presentation actually considers the first two categories that a public space and multi-family housing we would recommend that this would be a separate ordinance actually that we could consider following um the first two categories we believe

1:24:25that reducing tobacco sales would actually be appropriate as a business regulation that would go in title six of our Municipal Code whereas the rest of tonight's presentation discussing public space and multi-family housing would fit within title eight health and safety so

1:24:43we do recommend that we separate those two out for it's just easier to regulate so this slide goes over um the County's ordinance and again Denise is here should you have specific questions on what the county did we've looked at this as a bit of a model um as you can see many of the previous

1:25:03items are covered um it prohibits smoking indoor indoor buildings open to the public outdoor dining at bars and restaurants public Trails public parks and service areas including the lines bus stops trans stops public events and their Medical Campus and Clinics so

1:25:22they're essentially their public spaces both private and public and then in multi-unit housing it's 100 percent of two or more units all indoor outdoor common areas balconies patios it does include medical marijuana and that disclosure of where smoking is permitted

1:25:41if permitted is required um so this shows um other count um other uh cities within Contra Costa County in our neighboring Alameda County the cities that provide these various types of protections again we by no means would be out of the ordinary should the council direct staff to prepare such an

1:26:03ordinance and as you can see um the um the list of 100 smoke-free housing is is that's actually a larger list than when we started this PowerPoint last year so e-cigarettes this is a bit of a new phenomenon and it's increasing in popularity and actually cities are also

1:26:23increasingly including them as part of the prohibitions on smoking in all of the same ways that tobacco or other smoking is prohibited someone says do exempt instruments that are prescribed by a doctor in order to help them quit smoking um there aren't a lot of studies that

1:26:40are available now on e-cigarettes um but they are certainly starting to occur the FDA has issued an advisory that they could be harmful and they have proposed regulating e-cigarettes in the same way that they regulate all other tobacco there are concerns that the effects of

1:27:00e-cigarettes both to the user and to anyone within the vicinity that may inhale second-hand Vapors I suppose um the concern is that there the effects are largely unknown and particularly there is a propensity for these companies to Market to minors because they have a lot of flavors and they're

1:27:19very colorful so that is something I just wanted to call that out separately because that is becoming a growing uh trend is that cities are including Richmond in fact did amend their smoking ordinance to include e-cigarettes the county includes e-cigarettes Walnut Creek includes

1:27:35e-cigarettes so I do want to go over just um briefly uh results of some of the community feedback this is from our online survey that was held on our website 158 respondents as of last week 93 percent of the respondents reported a live work or owned property in El Cerrito as you

1:27:54can see um you know a huge majority does support regulations to protect the public there was a wide range of comments however and it is worth noting that um more than a few of the people who were not sure that answered not sure um identified themselves in the comments

1:28:15as non-smokers but they were opposed to such an ordinance or too restrictive of an ordinance because they were concerned about government over regulation or overreach of city government so I just wanted to make sure that that um concern was heard this is a little

1:28:30bit hard to read for those in the audience but the um the large amount of the um the dark blue there is the completely prohibited smoking in all of these various categories including outdoor dining areas city parks and playgrounds indoor common areas bus stops and the

1:28:52Ohlone Greenway those seem to be in the hillside Natural Area sorry those seem to be the most popular um I think it's cut off at the bottom but that um oh no that's not cut up for the bomb public sidewalks would be the the least but still a significant majority Karen

1:29:09can I ask was that Bart were those ordered such that the top were the areas where respondents wanted to see the most restrictive level of correct regulation okay thank you yeah the dark blue is completely prohibiting smoking in all those areas and then the lighter shade

1:29:24of blue is limiting and then um the lightest blue is no change so the survey indicated the respondents had the most support for more regulation of outdoor dining areas and Retail spaces thank you and then similarly what is the opinion regarding the following statements as

1:29:41they relate to El Cerrito um significant majority feeling that secondhand smoke is a problem that cigarettes are dangerous because they cause wildfires cigarettes are a litter problem um there was a little bit less strength in whether or not they're dangerous because they can cause house fires and

1:29:59third hand smoke and that the city should regulate businesses that sell tobacco but still a majority of agree or strongly agree we held a community meeting on February 27th participants it was a really great discussion for the um for there was probably about I think 12 of us that

1:30:20were there it was a small group but it was a very um very interesting discussion um participants absolutely agreed that regulation was necessary in fact went so far as to suggest that El Cerrito tried to be the first city in the nation to just completely ban smoking within its

1:30:36city limits up to you of course um but it was a it was definitely a bit of a consensus there um litter in commercial areas again as we designated was also recognized as a problem and that regulations should try to deter litter as um in addition to just the use or sale

1:30:55of tobacco again important for stormwater runoff again save the bay made a really heavy pitch for this type of ordinance to try to prevent pollution entering the bay and then culture change um it was recognized by the group and I believe it's recognized among staff that

1:31:12enforcement may not end up being perfect this will be largely a complaint-driven type of ordinance but it's more along the lines according to the community that the message would be that El Cerrito seeks to protect its citizens because public health is important so

1:31:27that was certainly the consensus among people at the meeting so next steps um again I've I've given kind of a basic outline of the results of our research and the various options that the city council could consider so you would can have that discussion tonight and hopefully provide us

1:31:48Direction on what you what is important to you what you feel should be included in an ordinance um and then the city staff would take that feedback and then we would actually go and draft the actual language using many of these ordinances as well as some of the information provided by the

1:32:07organizations that we've worked with as input we will be continuing our Outreach we have actually I'm sorry that I did not place this date on there we will be having another community meeting on June 5th here at City Hall we did do specific targeted Outreach to landlords

1:32:26and tenants and business groups for this meeting they were specifically sent a mailing and invited because they would be the ones most impacted by this ordinance so once we have the draft ordinance language we would then again be able to post that and um have a

1:32:44we could additionally we were um looking to do yet another online Forum on the draft language and then we could do city council uh the city council could consider in the summertime probably July or August depending upon how the draft language is is received and if the city

1:33:01council is so inclined so this list just shows the various options discussion that I went over in the previous presentation that you could discuss the level of restriction within El Cerrito those are the categories listed in the other considerations that you may want to include and at that

1:33:18point that concludes my presentation I'm available for questions again my technical team has available for questions and I do know that we have several public speakers who would like to provide feedback as well so thank you very much okay why don't we start out

1:33:34with questions from the council are there any questions yes okay uh thank you very much for a very comprehensive presentation and all the work that you and City staff with help from the folks you mentioned my question is what is the current fine for throwing cigarette butts on the street

1:33:56that is a good question I would have I can look that up okay one of the reasons I ask is that our police officers have a lot of important things to do and I'm sharing the priorities of protecting the public safety this may not be their highest priority but if the

1:34:21fine is high enough maybe we could hire someone maybe not necessarily A sworn officer who would Patrol San Pablo and other commercial areas in order to give fines to people for throwing cigarette bets on the street and that the fine could pay for that person to do that and

1:34:40would also send a very strong message that our city will no longer tolerate this form of pollution yes and there are some ordinances that we have seen that do actually intend to to deter with those High types of fines so thank you well I'm going to build right on that

1:35:00I've got several questions on enforcement I mean my concern is that if it's not enforced then is it going to be effective I did see in the Walnut Creek ordinance under penalties and enforcement they're they're doing a hundred dollar fine but they also introduced this concept of a

1:35:18private enforcer um do does are you guys exploring the concept of private enforcer and do you know enough about it to explain it to the public yes and I actually might um ask our City attorney for an assist in this um that is also outlined in a couple of other ordinances notably Richmond it

1:35:37allows a member of the public to be able to report um such a thing or be able to enforce you could you could actually say to someone you need to put that out it's against the law one of the actual um interesting things that Walnut Creek did was they actually have set up a no

1:35:54smoking hotline so that anyone can call 24 hours a day and leave a message reporting a violation that code enforcement could then pick up that message and respond within 24 hours enforcement could be tricky in that if you see someone smoking unless someone sees you actually smoking and of course

1:36:11someone please car rides down the street you know anyway I mean we get that um it's meant we know that it will be complaint driven and actually Denise I don't know if you have any um uh thoughts on this as far as Contra Costa's uh uh experience with enforcement

1:36:29um but that you know having availability treating it as a code important as along the lines of code enforcement and allowing that sort of self-enforcement so that language would is certainly something that we've considered so along the lines of is it is it feasible if I see a

1:36:48regular smoker in my neighborhood littering butts in the curb or on their own front lawn what what would the expectation be of me wanting to reduce the pollution or have them in come into compliance potentially with with the smoking ordinance um I'm actually thinking of San Rafael

1:37:10um I'm not sure exactly how Walnut Creek I'd have to I'm so many ordinances I'm probably mixing them up I believe it's San Rafael that they um if you were to report for example if you were to call me and say I saw my neighbor doing this we could send a letter saying this was

1:37:27reported your this is a warning do you know that this is an ordinance then that you're not allowed to do that and then we could follow up with um violation in the same way that we do with other code enforcement so under the um under the ordinance that you're considering as a single property single

1:37:48home owner would I be able to smoke in my backyard we are not proposing any restrictions on single-family homes that could be considered by the city council of course but none of the ordinances that we have seen and researched include single-family homes you you addressed Bart and said we don't

1:38:06have jurisdiction over the BART property I assume that's because they're a higher form of legislation if we were to ban smoking say on San Pablo Avenue what about people driving in their cars this would I believe this would not include driving cars this would be on

1:38:22the street and in the commercial the sidewalks the public areas but people on the street having spent two hours along with council member Bridges picking up cigarette butts there was a large number of them that was clearly flicked out of a moving vehicle so what how effective

1:38:38can we be if we're not considering smoking in cars granted you can't do it on the Highway 123 but there is portions of San Pablo Avenue that aren't state owned I guess their their City owned so technically even in that car they should not be smoking so how I'm going back to the enforcement at some

1:38:59point enforcement becomes infeasible and I I'm just curious what you if it was if it's not enforced it's the broken window policy it's not enforced then it it the effectiveness erodes and and we don't necessarily end five years we don't have a policy that's effective so I'm just curious I'm not

1:39:19aware of any ordinances that ban smoking in the cars I know that there's been some consideration of state law with children in the vehicle um but as far as the litter from the cars that could be called out specifically as far as litter although it should be noted that it right now is

1:39:37illegal to toss anything out of your car um as we say Chief would you like to uh comment sure I'll just address that specifically California vehicle code section 2311 prescribes that you cannot throw a lit cigarette out of a vehicle in California and we enforce that

1:39:53throughout the city great thank you um if marijuana is ask a related question um I thought it was also some sort of a problem to throw litter out of a window yes and I would certainly assume that a cigarette butt even if it's unlit would be litter so would that be covered in

1:40:17that way it is covered under the California vehicle code a lit cigarette is obviously a fire hazard so it presents an increased safety risk so we enforce that very vigorously but we could also and we could enforce all cigarette butts being thrown out thank you if if marijuana is included in

1:40:38the smoking ordinance and and not Exempted like in Richmond in in Berkeley are there other um THC delivery methods that are as effective as smoking or I mean are we are we preventing somebody from getting their medical uh marijuana as a result of of banning it or is there other ways

1:41:00for them to get their uh their their prescription with the caveat that I'm not an expert on this topic um anecdotally I can say I know that uh there are there are alternative methods for uh THC delivery including pills liquids and edible items and dispensaries do offer these as far as I

1:41:24know and so the main you know I actually uh send an email with the same question to council member vanessini um earlier the main effect that I'm aware of is that smoking and inhaling does affect the person quicker than an edible um so that is the main difference

1:41:44however that again those dispensaries do make those available and prescriptions do make those available so were we to prohibit smoking in multi-family units there would be other methods for a person to be able to consume medical marijuana can landlords currently prohibit smoking

1:42:04on their rental properties yes entirely on their parental Pub so yes we landlords could self-regulate themselves and have you know smoke-free environments in multi-family housing and again Teresa is here from the California Apartment Association she could also speak to that but yes there are actually

1:42:22many landlords and I believe um it's a it's actually recommended by the Association that and they have a white paper that they've um that they've produced that they recommend this to their members as well as a sample and model lease addendums and Lease agreements that they provide to their

1:42:41members to give to their tenants um Walnut Creek was touted as a place that had a hundred percent smoke-free multi multi-unit housing however on in their own ordinance they maybe they maybe what they enacted is slightly different than what we were provided they do allow for

1:43:02common areas of all multi-unit resignation resonances are prohibited however that a person with legal control over a common area May designate a portion of the unenclosed area of the common area as a designated smoking area if it meets all of the following criteria and it's a

1:43:22through G it's pretty prescriptive um so so was that 100 percent uh listing for Walnut Creek was that associated with their enclosed space or they're all the all aspects of multi-family uh apartment space it's enclosed areas only thank you sorry there's there's nine exceptions to

1:43:50the unenclosed characters hi Denise Dennis with the tobacco prevention project I believe that it refers to um they can designate an outdoor area as a smoking area but they are prescriptive about where it can be located correct nine nine different things right they

1:44:07can't have an indoor out area that is correct smoking so the prohibition the 100 prohibition is on and cl enclosed or enclosed spaces indoor spaces yes great thank you I just wanted to be accurate on that um and then what with regards to [Music] um what level of of

1:44:33prohibition that you that you're going for how how are you seeking input from us tonight uh actually it would be the level of restriction that you wouldn't like to go for what we what I what I would like direction from the council would be what is your thoughts on how

1:44:51restrictive you would like to be we will draft a language accordingly so I I don't I mean I've I'm assuming again that we looked at a lot of the different models that I outlined um but you know in the end this is completely up to the discretion of the city council what you would like to

1:45:08include well so looking at the Walnut Creek version well I guess I'll save my comments for after public comment so yeah this is just questions right now so um thank you just a couple more questions uh why are pharmacies typically called out in terms of um retail outlets that where smoking

1:45:28products would be banned for sale as opposed to grocery stores or other locations any idea I was gonna say I'm that's a good question um that is a really good question um there has been an effort across uh the country to actually ban them in pharmacies because pharmacies are a

1:45:47place where people go for healthy products so it it didn't it wasn't consistent with the mission of go to grocery stores and there are some well I do have information later that I'm going to share with you about grocery stores but you can you can actually prohibit the sale of tobacco

1:46:07products anywhere okay in the city if you'd like thank you and is there do you or are you aware of tobacco sampling that is that does take place in the city I'm not aware of that but I am also not aware that we've done any actual um site visits because we don't know all

1:46:24the locations is that correct we have a fair amount I mean we have a pretty good idea um a lot of um the liquor stores along the Avenue again CVS has sort of Exempted itself through their National policy gas stations and grocery stores not a lot but um and convenience store

1:46:43was like 7-Eleven exactly okay great and probably like less than 20 to my account okay um and in locations where cities have banned smoking in indoor areas of multi-family buildings which would affect people who are currently living in a you know their their situation that

1:47:01they that where they're living would change after this ordinance goes into effect do they typically have a phase-in period or how how do they roll it out Yes actually Theresa would you mind addressing this um because actually I um uh Teresa has a lot of experience and and how this has

1:47:18rolled out with some of her members my name is Teresa Carr and I work for the California apartment association yes there is a phase-in um period uh to make that transition and of course we probably we probably always ask for more time than a lot of cities want to

1:47:36um to do that for multi-housing and it all has to do with leases and uh you know they're all staggered and they're all over the place and it's just to allow them to transition and most and most of those that have transitioned have done it I I don't know how successful it is in 90

1:47:55days which is what Walnut Creek wanted to do it ended up being 120 days I don't know how truly successful that is other cities have allowed 12 months and um and a lot of the complexes have transitioned a lot sooner than 12 months it just doesn't put them under the gun as much and I can

1:48:18tell you that Walnut Creek's uh complaint line was pretty jammed up for a while because uh because of that and so um but but yes great thank you and maybe this question is for Denise could answer I'm not sure uh what was the thinking on the part of the county on not Banning on

1:48:41only Banning um smoking within new multi-family complexes as opposed to existing the ordinance uh the actually the Board of Supervisors made that decision six years ago now so it hasn't been Revisited since then we do get complaints from all over the county in our office we get complaints all from

1:49:00all over the county from residents who are really held hostage in their Apartments because of drifting smoke but the board just has not Revisited the it as a policy issue thank you that's it for me for now um so I had a question for the City attorney so this also is uh smacks of

1:49:21the enforcement issues and I talked to Mr Hannon about it so what happens if you know you actually took a video of with your phone of somebody who was smoking in in an appropriate place um could you submit that to this code enforcer person and Levy your um fine

1:49:43that way yeah I mean I think that um um if somebody submitted it would be no different from submitting any other evidence of an existing code code violation on the code enforcement officer would take that into account the city has multiple code enforcement paths

1:50:01um all of which have appellate procedures and the person who's the subject of the code enforcement action would have an opportunity to rebut that evidence and call it into question and ultimately could attempt to go to court to get it overturned in which case you know the the evidence

1:50:18would be subjected to a higher level of review than was typically applied to an administrative setting but um certainly people could take that video you know I think whether or not people I I have some I've had a long discussion recently with some friends about not a smoking issue but a similar

1:50:34issue of of violations of of a Prohibition in a public space and whether or not to take videos and I just sort of so it's just fresh in my mind that in a practical level it sort of turned out that lots of people were uncomfortable actually doing that because they didn't want to incur the

1:50:50Potential Threat of a confrontation with the person who would be the subject of the video right thank you and then can I ask a question about the tobacco retailer licensing I know it's going to be a separate consideration if we that would be staff's recommendation would be a

1:51:09separate recommend a separate ordinance and and I you said I thought I read it somewhere too that we had less than 20 businesses that potentially sell products right now there's no licensing is that right no separate licensing correct so is the licensing a one-time

1:51:24deal it would be along the lines of a business license I believe that other yeah I believe that other cities do require every year that it would be a fee um levied in the same way that business licenses are that would allow um the fees would cover enforcement compliance checks things of that nature

1:51:44and along with that it it talks about sales to minors I mean you write a lot of that information in there because I think that's also another key to getting people to smoke less is it's another way to to regulate particularly schools and I don't know I I suppose the the ends in

1:52:02the vapors that are are also sold in similar places so um because the Journal of adolescent Health said that over 2 million uh kids teenagers had tried in the past year um vaping in both ends and it's unfortunate because of course they're being marketed as nicotine for they're

1:52:26actually nicotine pods right and it just sort of is ironic um so and then we would do that under our separate so that that's good I didn't have any other questions though thank you thank you I had um a question that's a little question in just a little comment it's

1:52:44not exactly a comment but the I was up in Sacramento and spent the night a couple of nights last week and I um had to sign something when I checked in that said it was a smoke-free hotel and if in fact I smoked I would have to pay a fee is have you did you run across that anywhere I don't even

1:53:10know if that was something done by the city which would have been Sacramento in that case or if it's something done by the hotel or Hotel chain um in the in the in the some of the ordinances that I've seen that require that percentage I've not seen that particular provision but I have

1:53:27experienced that exact same thing I believe that that is a um a part of the hotel um Corporation the private Corporation requiring that um but again I mean if that were if you were to consider Banning smoking in all hotels and motels I mean that could be part of the consideration but I believe

1:53:46that on on the part of the hotel that would be one of the ways that they could they could enforce that among the um on the tenant as it were because you would a tenant because again the landlord the hotel would be responsible for enforcing whatever the law is but that they

1:54:06wouldn't be held responsible if the tenant is the one breaking the law not the landlord I think what this implied implied is if that there was any if they detected it via a sense of smell for example that they would then charge this fee and the money from that fee would be used to

1:54:24clean the room yes um so so that you've seen that elsewhere I've certainly seen that with private hotels yes but you think it might be private I think it might be private um but I again the city could certainly decide to regulate in some form or fashion hotels but it's become very I

1:54:45don't I don't know if the word is trendy um to have non-smoking hotels most major corporations have moved that way already and um okay that gets us through our questions do we have any uh comments from the public yes we have 12 speakers okay and I thought I would call them three in a row

1:55:08okay that sounds great so our first three speakers are Ralph boniello Tara Wagner and Edna Chamberlain Ralph paniello El Cerrito resident and a member of friends of five Creeks who I'm speaking for this evening uh our organization's main interests here are the reduction in fire risks or

1:55:36the fire risks that are presented by cigarette butts in our parks and open spaces and also the litter that that flows into our creeks and Bays due to the waste from cigarette butts so when considering these potential regular regulations it's important to recognize that our streets and storm

1:55:55drains are effectively extensions of our Creeks an extension of the bay itself when we're fortunate enough to get rain it flows across our properties and our streets and into our storm drains and into our Creeks along the way it picks up any litter it can carry

1:56:11thanks to the coastal commission and the California Coastal commission and the thousands of volunteers Who come out every year on Coastal cleanup day we know that the number one litter item is cigarette butts and it has been for many years these cigarette butts like it have been

1:56:29mentioned contain an acetate filter that is non-biodegradable and not only is it non-biodegradable but EPA studies show that these kinds of plastic wastes are hyperaccumulators of toxins such as pcbs and polycyclomatic aromatic poly polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons

1:56:48and while you have that thought in your mind I'll remind you that a hot spot here in El Cerrito is right at Cerrito Creek the number one hot spot so these kinds of litter getting into our creeks and into the bay are a real problem cigarette butts aren't the kind of thing

1:57:03you would feed your family but many birds fish and marine mammals do that very thing when they mistake these toxic tea bags for legitimate food cigarette consumers and producers have had ample opportunity to change their products or change their behavior but suddenly have

1:57:21refused to so we highly recommend that you pass an ordinance that that results in the reduction of this kind of cigarette waste thank you next speaker Tara Wagner followed by Edna Chamberlain and Corrine Gustafson Tara Tara Wagner and I'm an educator and I live in a multi-unit house in El

1:57:48Cerrito and I'm kind of concerned um I'm one of the people that are held hostage in their homes and I have a 10 year old who's sitting here these are the butts he's just collected Under the Stairs around our Windows underneath where our windows are the driveway this

1:58:05is just from one week okay and I am concerned about the environment but I'm concerned about him he has sleep apnea he's already had surgeries because of breathing we've been there for about seven years um when we first moved there there were smokers maybe one to three smokers in an

1:58:24eight unit but as cities passed laws we saw El Cerrito become a safe haven for smokers and we saw our our building now has about seven or eight smokers because there's multiple people living in the units so we're being exposed at a much larger rate and amount when it was very hot out

1:58:46I couldn't open any of my windows I mean that I'm not exaggerating I called I think I talked to Karen I talked to Liz Williams I talked to Denise and I just this was just last week that I found out that you were talking about legislation so we got Flyers we went to El Cerrito Plaza we

1:59:04handed them out we talked to friends um Family anybody we can talk to um you know I've had a neighbor say well I'm smoking inside my house so I can do whatever I want her window is two feet away from my bedroom window she blows it out her window comes right into our bedroom

1:59:22comes right into where he's sleeping on the patio we have a neighbor on the other side who goes out and he opens his door and he he goes out there and lights up my door's open he shuts his door so it doesn't go into his house and it comes right into my living room

1:59:37so I have no control and who I'm concerned about as a low-income people who right now we can't move because rents were paying 16.50 rents are like two to three thousand dollars for the same space we have so we're stuck there when we talk to our landlord about it you know what he said El

1:59:54Cerrito doesn't have any laws that's why I don't have one and that's really what he told my husband Albany has some laws so I enforce them there yes the state under the state he can but you're cons this is this is like assuming that you know all landlords care unfortunately I don't know what the

2:00:16percentage would be I don't want to make a you know an accusation but that's not the case um so I don't know if there's anything else I could really let you know other than my personal experience um even if we have our windows closed we're still sharing error so like sometimes it

2:00:34depends who's renting downstairs if smokers are there that it's on a month a month uh lease so if smokers move in it comes in through the vents the fan and I have to try to shut the bathroom and put the vent on the fan on so that's what we're dealing with okay thank you

2:00:55Edna Chamberlain followed by Corrine Gustafson hello I live less than a block behind the city hall I live it on Schmidt Lane at The Village at Town Center What attracted me to this property was a Safety and Security B the building structure in that it has good insulation

2:01:28it's built near the BART tracks so it has a very low noise level see it's very clean d new and improved appliances very nice amenities and E very quiet Neighbors however I had no idea that it was a non -sm smoke-free housing unit the majorities of residents have to lay towels down outside of their

2:02:02front door because we have smokers in our building we have four buildings a b c and d we have gone to property manager and asked them could they take all of the smokers and put them in one building so we could be free of the smoke but we were told that it is a smoking environment

2:02:26the emergency exit door in the hallway is now being closed to keep the smoke from filtering down the hallway so if there's an emergency and the unit catches on fire we will have to go and push the door open we have to be subjected to inhaling the smoke day and night all night I breathe

2:02:48this despite closing our vents it exists in my closets in my furniture that I work so hard to buy and why should we have to close our vents I dread going to my home now as I will see a film of smoke floating in my living room as I open up the door and the bedroom

2:03:16so I'm asking the city council to consider the tenants at this property please because we deserve a healthy environment Korean Gustafson followed by Liz Williams yes my name is Corrine Gustafson and I am concerned about a couple of things one is also as someone spoke to

2:03:42addressing those for low-income people but in contrast to that speaker I'm concerned because if you are wealthy enough to own your own home you can do what you wish but we have my notes tonight were from a Consortium of people in my neighborhood many are elderly and will be moving to

2:03:59multi-unit places and they will not have the options that people who are wealthy enough to keep their own homes that's one concern the other is the overreaching of government I have a sister who has coped and lives in multi-unit housing their landlord had them take votes

2:04:17she voted in favor of leaving smokers she is not having a major problem with them in her unit but they also have more than one building and each building or each Wing could have their own vote so it depends more on what the people in the building situation want than just passing blanket

2:04:35rules so I'm concerned about overreaching laws with some of those um pieces and also one of the smokers said I have never seen anyone given a ticket for littering I would like to see those enforced because the smokers who do not litter are concerned that others are

2:04:54giving them a problem and I've heard them talk about enforcing I don't know how you do that for sure my smoke concerns are much more with fireplaces each fireplace when it's burning is far worse than any individual smoker you can't sue who it is that's doing it

2:05:09because it's at night often when you're smelling it if you report it they say we'll check next time they do it you might not be there that evening I think it's a very poor enforcement policy I'd like to see a rule that would convert it to gas someone delivered new garbage cans in my

2:05:24neighborhood and the truck polluted with blue layers of smoke that came in our windows for about 15 minutes while it was idling and putting out new garbage cans I think there are a lot of things that we can do if we're concerned about children with asthma and other things

2:05:37then make blanket rules over many many buildings in our city we need to have more options I think thank you thank you Liz Williams followed by Laura porpora good evening mayor Abelson and council members my name is Liz Williams and I'm with Americans for non-smokers rights

2:05:56we're a non-profit Public Health Group in Berkeley on behalf of our members here in El Cerrito I encourage you to expand the city's smoke-free air protections you have a really great opportunity to improve Public Health in the community by prohibiting smoking and

2:06:08venues where people remain exposed to secondhand smoke we also encourage you to to not allow the use of e-cigarettes and other electronic smoking devices in places that are required to be smoke-free El Cerrito would be in very good company by having smoke-free outdoor public

2:06:23places where people work and gather such as outdoor dining areas shopping centers and Parks and Recreation areas numerous communities throughout California have already adopted similar laws including more than 140 that have smokery outdoor dining and 160 that have smoke-free

2:06:39parks another important area for Action like we just heard from several residents is that health and safety issues posed by drifting smoke inside of multi-unit housing a non-smoking ordinance for all units of multi-unit housing is a powerful way to have a broad public

2:06:53health impact on people by reducing exposure in a location where many people especially children and the elderly and people with health issues spend a great deal of their time and can suffer from continuous exposure the various cities that prohibit smoking in all units of multi-unit housing

2:07:09include Berkeley Richmond Walnut Creek Alameda and Union City this issue really is not about being against people who smoke but it's about being against smoking in ways that harm other people and where there's appropriate locations for doing so all units in all buildings

2:07:24should be smoke-free ideally in order to most effectively protect People's Health finally communities around the country are choosing to not allow the use of e-cigarettes and other electronic smoking devices in smoking smoke-free environments so that workers and patrons

2:07:38are not exposed to the aerosol that these devices emit I encourage you to follow the lead of more than 100 170 communities and three states that don't allow e-cigarette use inside of smokery spaces which includes Richmond Los Angeles and San Francisco these laws do

2:07:53not ban the products but simply require people not to use them in the same space where people cannot smoke I really appreciate your consideration of expanding smoke free protections and your desire to make elsewhere healthier and more vibrant place to live work and

2:08:07play thank you Laura purpura followed by Allison Chan good evening thank you for taking the time to hear me this is a very serious issue that I've been dealing with for a long time and I'm smiling because it couldn't have come up this meeting at a better time today my 10 year old son's best friend

2:08:30came over to play at our apartment and they wanted to go outside but there were people smoking in the courtyard so we couldn't do that so then they went out on our patio and the tenants above us were smoking marijuana so they had to come in and we had to close the doors

2:08:46then they wanted to play out in the front hallway and our neighbor came out and started smoking cigarettes so I was locked in our apartment all of us were two 10 year old boys so that was not only a risk to our health but also to my sanity um and uh you know I think that one of the

2:09:06some of the things that Drew us to El Cerrito were um the greenway and um just the steps that the city has taken to make this a green City the recycling center we go for books all the time me and my kids um I see no reason why the city of El Cerrito can't place a a no smoking

2:09:27ordinance it would make enforcement a cinch and if you're looking for the low-hanging fruit That's Where It's At in my opinion not only will it protect our health it will set a role model for our children there has been some comments about overreaching government and blanket laws but the

2:09:47cigarette smoke that enters my apartment building every day and every night seeps in like a blanket and it overreaches into my lungs and my children's bodies every single day so for me it's no question and I plead to the council to create an ordinance that will protect

2:10:06our community and give us the right to Fresh Air thank you thank you Allison Chan followed by Mary Jaco Dean hi good evening my name is Allison Chan I'm here on behalf of save the bay representing our 50 000 members and supporters throughout the region and hundreds here in El Cerrito thank you

2:10:30for your time tonight and thank you for considering comprehensive smoking restrictions in El Cerrito there's been a lot of uh compelling testimony information about the public health side and I want to talk a little bit about the environmental side cigarette butts

2:10:45pose a serious threat to Bay water quality and Wildlife and save the bay is focused on helping cities to pass and enforce outdoor smoking ordinances to address this issue we estimate that over 3 billion cigarette butts are littered in the Bay Area each year I've checked

2:11:00that calculation several times and it's pretty close every time and far too many of them are flowing into our storm drains and creeks and then of course eventually out into the bay cigarette butts are toxic plastic trash that's the phrase that we use to describe them because that's exactly

2:11:18what they are many people don't know that the filters plastic and doesn't biodegrade and a recent lab study found that a single cigarette butt and a liter of water is toxic enough to kill half of the fish living in that water that's a lab study it's it's not out in the open

2:11:34but you can imagine if you extrapolate that into the into the environment and given the magnitude of the litter problem here in El Cerrito staff have identified cigarette butts as one of the most common types of litter they find in Cerrito Creek so that hot spot that that

2:11:51was shown in the presentation staff are required to to detail what kind of trash is actually impacting that area and cigarette butts have been listed as as one of the major problems not surprisingly um so to address the threat that cigarette butts pose to the Bay we urge

2:12:09you to enact smoke-free commercial zones among other restrictions um but this particular approach um is is something we recommend um because it will help to address one of the major sources of trash in in the areas most affected by trash as shown in that map um

2:12:32smoked free zones will make enforcement a bit more straightforward at least in those areas and will help to keep a major source of trash out of the areas that not only are affected by it but now the city is required to demonstrate that they're actually addressing those red

2:12:47and yellow areas and cleaning them cleaning them up effectively to reach a requirement of zero trash impairment in our Creeks by 2022 so it's a big requirement to achieve um finally we encourage you to include language prohibiting smokers from disposing of cigarette butts in areas

2:13:06um where smoking is prohibited further strengthening litter protections and sorry and I left out of course um smoking restrictions in parks and open space I took a look at the city map and saw that there are several areas where uh Creeks were recently highlighted or sorry excuse me

2:13:21daylighted over the last 10 years or so and those are in your city parks in several of your city parks so it makes sense to restrict smoking there as well to protect those Creeks um so it was mentioned earlier cigarette butts are the number one item picked up on Coastal cleanup day every year but

2:13:37all trash in the bay is preventable including cigarette butts and these restrictions uh before you tonight and the ones that I just discussed would be a strong step in the right direction so I thank you for your time and and urge you to move forward with this Mary Jacqueline

2:13:54by Denise Dennis hello I'm Mary jacadine and tonight I'm representing the Contra Costa tobacco prevention Coalition and the Coalition is a group of 35 organizations and individuals that come together to lessen the impact of tobacco in our communities I'd like to thank city council as

2:14:16everyone else has for considering secondhand smoke protections tobacco retailer licensing and density restrictions secondhand smoke protection save lives and they do this by limiting the number of toxins that are in the air but they also encourage people to quit smoking

2:14:34tobacco retailer licensing and density limits have been very effective in other communities in reducing youth access to tobacco and Denise has all sorts of great data on that that she could probably provide at some point I work for the center for human development

2:14:49which is a non-profit organization and most of what I do is smoking prevention work so I'm working with high school students and I'd like to address why these policies are so important in protecting youth from a deadly habit the tobacco industry is doing an excellent

2:15:05job in enticing young people to use its products you can buy this pack of two Swisher Sweets in tropical Fusion flavor for a mere 99 cents 99 Cents won't buy you a candy bar right these things are really popular now and the other product that's been mentioned that is threatening the progress we've

2:15:24made in bringing smoking rates down is the e-cigarette or vape pen or this is an ehuka these things have been collectively referred to as ends electronic nicotine delivery devices but I just want to note that they can or some of them can also be used to vaporize marijuana or THC oil

2:15:45and young people find them to be a great stealthy way to consume marijuana in public um these products are very colorful they're appealing to young people they come in fruit and Candy flavors but they're not candy researchers at the FDA and UCSF have identified carcinogens and toxic

2:16:04chemicals in e-cigarette vapor yet under current law somebody could walk into this room sit down next to you and start puffing away on their e-device and I'd like you to imagine for a minute that you're sitting here with your small child if that e-cigarette is really

2:16:21colorful has a lighted tip and smells like candy your kids are going to take notice teenagers have certainly taken notice the high school students I work with this year were almost all referred to my program because of e-cigarette use or use of e-hook on these related products

2:16:40my students believe the ads about these products that say they only produce harmless water vapor we know that's not true yet when I asked the students if these products should be used or allowed to be used in public nearly every one of them said no and the reason they gave

2:16:58was this they said it's a bad example for younger kids and if teenagers can come up with this then we as adults have to be cognizant of this very important reason to um have tobacco control and tobacco alternative restrictions thank you very much thank you Denise Dennis

2:17:22good evening honorable mayor and City Council Members my name is Denise Dennis and I work with contra costa Health Services tobacco prevention project I'm also a resident of El Cerrito City staff are really to be commended on the work that they've done to present

2:17:35the various policy options to you this evening including the County's second-hand smoke protections ordinance and other tobacco control laws I will for a moment address the enforcement and compliance issues that are of concern with these kinds of ordinances the

2:17:52County's ordinance is primarily complaint driven and it really rests on signage and education in the six years that we've had the ordinance actually eight years that we've had the ordinance at the county we have not written one citation compliance has been through writing

2:18:10business owners putting up signage at parks putting up signage Transportation stops bus shelters merely letting the community know that this is a smoke-free area in terms of multi-unit housing if we get a complaint from somebody about one of our multi-unit housing

2:18:28smoke-free Provisions you write them a warning letter we tell them what the fine could be if they don't come into compliance and to date everybody has come into compliance given you know that Progressive system that we have of morning letters so we have not involved

2:18:43law enforcement we have not you know had to engage enforcement in citations I would also like to add some information about the tobacco store environment which council member Bridges actually spoke a little bit to and the potential that tobacco retailer licensing has to create a healthy

2:19:06Community as part of a Statewide healthy stores for Healthy Communities campaign the tobacco prevention Coalition and our Community Partners conducted a survey among a representative sample of retailers in the county who sell tobacco products and the results were released

2:19:21in March these results showed that 7 and 10 to stores that sell tobacco products are have exterior advertising for unhealthy products such as tobacco alcohol and sugary drinks nearly 50 percent of these stores sell electronic cigarettes or e Hookah and over 80 percent of stores near schools and

2:19:43Contra Costa self-flavored non-cigarette tobacco products like the ones that Mary jockadine actually spoke about and these products come in youth friendly flavors like watermelon and tropical blast flavors tobacco retailer licensing is a proven strategy for decreasing illegal tobacco sales to

2:20:02Youth and can also function to regulate the sale of electronic nicotine devices restrict the location of tobacco retailers near youth sensitive areas and track compliance with other laws such as storefront signage and drug paraphernalia laws tobacco retailer licensing is different from state

2:20:21tobacco control laws and that it hurt it holds the owner responsible for compliance with the laws and um also um suspends the owner's license to be able to sell these products if they don't if if they violate the laws in their stores contra cost is illegal sales rate of

2:20:41cigarettes to minors went from 37 percent to 7 percent within six months of implementing in its ordinance within the unincorporated County I'm happy to answer any questions that you may have about the County's Tobacco Control ordinances or implementation of these

2:20:56laws and I'll leave the survey results from the retail campaign with you and I also do have another sample of an e-cigarette that looks just like any other cigarette you might see in the community Tom panis followed by Nick arzio good evening mayor Abelson members of

2:21:25the council and City staff my name is Tom panis and I live at [address removed] El Cerrito I'd like to thank the staff for the excellent job they've done working on the smoking ordinance and for the extensive Outreach they've done to the community I'd like to thank our subject matter experts here

2:21:40tonight and I'd like to thank the other members of the community for coming out and voicing their concerns we need a strong smoking pollution ordinance smoking pollution protection ordinance there are a lot of options in front of us some things are important to me are

2:21:54all Recreation areas should be 100 smoke free smoking should be prohibited in all commercial areas we need reasonable multi-family multi-family units smoke pollution control e-cigarettes should be treated exactly the same as pollution from conventional tobacco products

2:22:12in El Cerrito we should restrict the sale of e-cigarettes and conventional tobacco products um regarding as I said I'm in favor of prohibiting smoking in all commercial areas I don't know if anyone knows I'd be very curious to know how those communicate how those restrictions are

2:22:30effectively communicated um so I'd like to thank you for your time this evening and I hope we can make great progress on this smoking horns Nick garzio hi I'm Nick arzio I live at [address removed] I'd like to say that um since I adopted a place uh the the theater block of San

2:23:00Pablo Avenue about six months ago I pick up about one to two hundred cigarette butts once a week they keep coming back and forth and I remembered uh council member Friedman about a year ago mentioning that there were in the neighborhood of 2 000 cigarette butts picked up at last year's

2:23:16Earth Day event and it was announced today that 4 300 were picked up this year so the problem of cigarette butt litter seems to be ever present and I really like council member Friedman's idea of increasing the fines for a little uh for littering cigarette butts

2:23:36and the idea of a non-sworn officer enforcing this perhaps in plain clothes uh living on San Pablo Avenue I can say that there's plenty of opportunity for enforcement I see people flick their cigarette butts um every day but for fear of conflict I I don't say anything

2:23:53to them so I really appreciate your ideas and keep up the good work thank you my final hello again uh I'd like to add my support to all of the comments that have been before and add another concern uh my area of pickup goes from Eureka down past the Zion Presbyterian Church

2:24:26just south of Lincoln on Ashbury side and the high school side I live right across from the high school while the volume of trash is mainly the 7-Eleven food and candy wrappers the item winner by far is the cigarette butts they have two hot spots in my adopted area one of them is on the corner of

2:24:55Eureka and Pomona and the other one is not Eureka uh yeah Eureka and Pomona and the other is Lincoln and Ashbury and the reason those are hot spots is from the adult employees of West County unified school districts who work at El Cerrito High School and go to those corners

2:25:16for their smoke breaks because this campus is smoke free campus smoke-free is regulated and controlled very effectively so as you'd consider developing a strong smoking prevention ordinance for the city please consider the approach of within so many hundred yards of a public school or

2:25:41whatever is an appropriate distance that you can uh I talked to one of the employees as I was picking the butts up and she was dropping them and I said you know I live where I was stationed in Japan for three years when I was in the Navy and the smokers in Japan carry these little

2:26:02ashtrays with them and you know they flick them open put in their ashes and walk away with them they're made so they can put them in their pocket they can put them in their purse and even men carry purses in Japan in those days and she said well I have my ashtray it's

2:26:17right there in my car unfortunately I don't think she got the message but anyway please consider the ramifications of smoking around the schools not only for because that's where a lot of kids are but also that get rid of a lot of butts there too thank you thank you and I guess that concludes are

2:26:37there any more speakers come on up sir and then if that if you don't mind after you speak if you wouldn't mind filling out a slip I apologize I didn't know you had to sign up to talk you don't you get to speak anyway anyway I'm an apartment manager here in the El Cerrito area I

2:26:54manage 26 units just right around the corner here I've been there 28 years when I first moved in we had started out we had a you know a few people smoke smoke but a few complaints as the apartments turned over William employed our own non-smoking in the building I don't know if it's

2:27:14legal or not but it works uh now we're down to one person in the 26th unit that smokes we had two but one the one that the other one has now throat cancer and she's not smoking anymore at all so I think there should be a ban on the smoking in the multi in the apartments

2:27:35and also there's three how I get this done I asked three questions in my first interview are you employed you have good credit and do you smoke I had it real quick normally we ask somebody a question like that they're going to say yes yes and that's I'll say yes and not say well I'm sorry but this

2:28:00is a non-smoking building a non-smoking uh complex I don't get any problems they said well okay nobody's ever fought me on it so I just don't know what else I can say right now but I don't have any problems I feel for these people over that were saying that they have smoke in this and that and

2:28:24that and uh but I'm a very strict manager like I said I've been there 28 years the owners love me because I've been there that long I was a bartender for 40 years and lived smoked and I quit in 1987 myself and we had you know secondhand smoke on The Wire all those years I was so happy when they

2:28:48said no more smoking in bars they seem to control that pretty good but I think you should pass something the only problem is like this one gentleman was saying it's going to be very difficult to enforce where people they're going to say oh yeah you know and they're just going to go

2:29:07ahead and do it anyway they're going to throw their cigarette butts it's like everything I I'm not taking up trash on the BART Trail for Christ's sake of the back of our unit right there by the motor vehicle department and I'm out in front you know I don't find any

2:29:21cigarette butts because there's nobody around who smokes thank you and so that is there anyone else who wants to speak okay then that concludes uh public comment uh Mark yeah I am so happy to see this day come um it is embarrassing that we had an f and not because of that letter grade but

2:29:47because it means that we're not doing everything we can to protect the health of our citizens I'm very moved by the Elk Point in compelling testimony we've heard tonight and really appreciate the last speaker also and and I used to be an apartment building manager very small apartment

2:30:05building many years ago and if there are any smokers there it's not a good thing for the apartment owner it causes a lot of damage and it is a health hazard and a fire hazard so I don't think that restricting it in multi-family units is going to be a hazard or something that

2:30:28should be seen as not welcomed by most apartment building owners and managers because their job will be easier if they do not have the hazard of smoking going on within units where they can observe it can't police it the woman who I think had to leave because her son had to go to school her

2:30:50testimony and the cigarette butts that were collected by her son and it's shocking but all too familiar to see that um I had The Misfortune to live with the tobacco addict for 19 years my mother and she started smoking at the age of 10 and smoked until she died and suffered

2:31:14from diabetes arthritis heart disease none of which were made any better by her smoking and I'm convinced if she hadn't smoked when I was in the womb and I was a young child I'd be a lot smarter than I am today um so my preference is to go from an F to an A plus and the advantage we have

2:31:36that we've waited this long to do it is we can learn from all of our uh neighboring cities and get the best practices into our ordinance I like the Walnut Creek ordinance I like the County's ordinance um I understand the reason to separate into two ordinances but I would like to vote

2:31:57on those together I don't want to see a lag so we can deal with this issue in a very aggressive and forthright Health oriented way as soon as possible I want to reiterate reiterate that I think we need to be very aggressive in enforcement particularly the environmental hazards that were pointed

2:32:24out very well by three or four of our speakers we pride ourselves in being the greenest city we can and being a sustainable City and allowing this form of pollution to be so rampant in our city is counter to what our values are that we've stated as Council and public and in polling many

2:32:48times so what a great opportunity we have here to really set a model into find creative ways to enforce what I hope is a very strict smoking ordinance that will take us from trailing far behind our neighbors to being hand in hand with them and maybe even showing the way on some new innovative

2:33:12ways of moving forward and making it clear that El Cerrito is a city that values the health of our citizens to the max moment that we will demonstrate that through this work that we will hopefully cling conclude soon I want to thank everyone for coming tonight also especially Ms gustas

2:33:32Gustafson it's hard to be a speaker that's speaking out against so so many and I and I think you're correct fireplaces and diesel trucks are tremendous environmental issues that still are being tackled by entities larger than us the air board um I also want to recognize one of the

2:33:51things that you mentioned which is enforcing littering which is in very very important and enforcement obviously is something that I've been talking about I know a lot of smokers um like Mark uh I know people who have been smoking large parts of their lives and my opinions aren't targeted at

2:34:08individuals because individual smokers they still have choices to make and and they can choose to stop like the landlord who spoke earlier my opinions are for the larger community and the environment that can't speak for itself we regulate guns noise backyard animals

2:34:27so to to all of those to protect our community to to read our society of nuisances and to make sure that we have the type of environment that we want and to me second hand and third hand smoke is no different of a threat or a nuisance that needs to be or harmful

2:34:45substance that needs to be regulated So to that end I would I would uh I like councilmember Friedman before me I support a separate ordinance for the sales uh issues we did receive a comment that suggested that we raised that we could raise the the age to 21 and i

2:35:03would support that I would also support fewer locations we heard something about density issues which I'm not certain I quite understand but certainly we should be regulating the locations that are are providing cigarette sales I think for multi-family housing it

2:35:24should be zero and I think we should be stronger than Walnut Creek I don't think that there should be any close outside areas that are subject to nine different um things that they have to check off um that that allow for out so outdoor uh smoking in multi-housing areas so I

2:35:44would say that that it should be none I mean they should have to leave the property to smoke um and obviously a far enough distance I think 30 feet I just saw something about the science saying that 25 feet is uh is still sensitive or detectable um for with regards to multi-family

2:36:03housing uh we had a landlord talk about phasing it out I do think that we should have a phase out period that for existing units and that that should be one year because that within one year most leases should roll over um so I I am supporting that um I support the concept of the private

2:36:25enforcer that Walnut Creek is is proposing in Theirs to allow individuals to uh to go through the process of trying to enforce uh this these things um the more enforces we have the more likely we will have uh littering enforcement as well as uh the smoking and ban enforcement

2:36:48council member Friedman asked about this and I support fines that are adequate to fund an enforcement officer if we are going to do this we do need to at least for some period of time provide enough enforcement that people and with all just respect to Miss Denise education

2:37:05and signage are very important so whether the fines are going to signage in education are going to uh an individual that's providing enforcement under clothes like nastarzio's Mr urzio supported um I think enforcement and education and getting the information out is important

2:37:25with all with the understanding that uh smoking marijuana is a faster delivery mechanism I think marijuana and E-cigarettes should be included in our ban we've heard testimony about commercial zones which would be essentially uh portions of San Pablo Avenue Fairmont uh

2:37:46Stockton um I think all of our commercial zones should be covered as a result of their pollution generation map that we saw earlier without a doubt our youngest athletes should not be exposed to second-hand smoke and therefore our public spaces Park open spaces should be 100

2:38:10smoke-free so where's that leave um if I understand what we've talked about tonight private open space backyards private Lots would still be open for people to smoke um and if I understood correctly and people can override me if this is not what we intended at the moment and and

2:38:37Mr Miller pointed this out our discussion tonight would allow for smoking on sidewalks that are in non-commercial areas and uh as Mr Miller has pointed out that would allow for areas such as within a certain distance of the school to be a a place for smoking to occur or if your

2:39:00apartment complex abuts the the edge of the commercial Zone you could walk out of the commercial Zone and into a residential Zone and smoke on the cigarette smoke on the sidewalk in a residential Zone and I'm not certain that that's what we intend um so I'm open for uh input on that topic

2:39:22but I would like to to itemize all of those things and say that that would be and I still don't quite understand the City attorney Woodruff if we need to in order to make this go forward we need to make some sort of motion or if it's if other people have to repeat what I say in order for us to

2:39:44get some sort of concurrence from the council I can sort of address that I thought this is a study session and there will be public comment and I appear there will be public comment sessions or session and that uh then it would come back to the council my understanding from a conversation

2:40:12with the city attorney is that guidance from the council has to be made to made has to be certainly a majority of the council before staff will act on it um it doesn't necessarily need to well let me let me try to unpack that um it is a study session tonight but the staff has

2:40:32requested Direction about how to draft the ordinance that will come back for further public comment and action by the council staff is seeking direction as to the level of Regulation that the council would like in specific subject matter areas without it being a binding vote of the

2:40:50council because it's not in the form of an ordinance it would be helpful for the for the council members to indicate their level of um the level of Regulation that they would like for each of the topic areas so that the staff can walk away with a clear understanding of what direction

2:41:08the council has given tonight so for example if every one of you said I agree with councilmember Lyman that would be sufficient I think we could walk out of here assuming that that uh assistant assistant city manager agrees that she has clear Direction on that from that that would be fine but

2:41:25that isn't necessarily what has to happen but to the extent that council members disagree with um or have a different view on the level of regulation in one of these subject matter areas it would be appropriate to express that so that we have a clear record that we can move forward with

2:41:38which is what this recent law that keeps coming up it requires and to that point I'm happy um the list is again before you as far as the options discussion that um of the direction I'm seeking on those various categories including any additional ones you want to consider so I'm happy and I

2:41:56have been taking notes of your comments so far and I'm happy to sort of wrap up at the end as to my understanding of your direction and you can um let me know if I've captured that accurately when we continue on Miranda thank you and I too want to thank everyone for

2:42:13coming tonight and providing your input um like many on the council we've all had personal experiences with secondhand smoke and maybe firsthand smoke in some cases I lived at the Schmidt Street Apartments too with a young child and experience the same sorts of struggles

2:42:26living there for two years with Neighbors being able to smoke and and having to just Shield yourself from it as best as best you could so I'm very sympathetic to that view um with regard to the level of restrictions in El Cerrito I want to be very clear that I support all of the

2:42:41Restriction levels that council member Lyman detailed earlier I just want to call out a couple other areas of study or consideration I want to see staff think about as they're drafting this ordinance with regard to the enforcement that was mentioned in thinking about how some of

2:42:58the restrictions that we're speaking about would be enforced I could foresee maybe how cell phones or texting has been enforced there are special time periods where the police take a special interest in enforcing those particular behaviors and I'd like to hear from the

2:43:13police whether or not that would be feasible or if that's something that um you know these sorts of activities are much more dispersed than maybe texting on San Pablo Avenue so I'd like to hear about whether or not that that is a feasible way to enforce restrictions

2:43:28particularly around littering and smoking in areas like the plaza or commercial areas um with regard to the restrictions on Parks and open space I just wanted to highlight that there are so many areas of our Open Spaces that are you know High where there's a high fire danger so

2:43:47that's another reason we have for being really strict with restrictions in those areas I too agree that um the multi-family housing that's the when I'm thinking about how we're trying to protect protect the public from secondhand smoke or third-hand smoke I'm thinking of areas where you're for where

2:44:06you have no Escape where you have no alternate location where you can be and clearly housing is one of those um one of those locations so I'm definitely supportive of a full ban on smoking multi-family housing B and I would Define multi-family housing as two units or

2:44:22more um with the phase in as appropriately noted equal to most leases which are which are 12 months um I also agree with the did you want to comment on the 12 months yeah I forgot um or earlier if the leases expire so that the landlords could bring the law into effect at their own at their

2:44:43discretion if a lease is up okay that seems like a fair sort of um a detail I also agree that e-cigarettes and medical marijuana should be should be regulated particularly because if we're just speaking about toxicity well there are folks who still will need to get their

2:45:02prescription filled in one way or another we want them to fill that prescription without impacting others by exhaling toxic smoke and I'd like to see I'm interested to hear how the public session goes that's scheduled for June particularly around tobacco sales regulations I'll be

2:45:21curious to hear whether or not any of our Outlets provide any input or come to speak to you I'd like to know a little bit more on on sort of this the steps of how that ordinance might work would we first require licenses um and sort of begin to understand what is being sold and whether or not those

2:45:42locations are complying with state law I'd like to hear a little bit more about what about what the problem is we we um Denise was able to cite statistics on the um level of underage sales that were that were taking place in the county and how um new tobacco sales regulations brought

2:46:00that rate down I'm I don't feel like I have a full understanding of what the problem of the scale of the problem is in the city um with regard to Tobacco sales and how regulations would get at that problem so I'd like to understand more about that um but all of the other uh restriction

2:46:15levels that have been discussed by councilmember Lyman and council member Friedman before him I agree with just ask a question what's your status on on residential sidewalks non-uh so not uh non-commercials so with regard to the you actually didn't mention commercial either right you're

2:46:38right I do agree with that we should look at restrictions on Commercial and and begin a smoking ban and um restriction level on Commercial areas um with regard to the the item that was brought up by by Mr Miller um I'd like to see again a little bit of information about whether or not those

2:46:55our hot spots were listed and I don't it wasn't totally clear from the map to what extent that maybe we can pull it up again I think um the issue that Mr Miller brought up is one around the high school and I wasn't totally clear whether or not it the same time type of issue was

2:47:13occurring around the middle school so I guess I want to take another look at that I was I hadn't formed a I hadn't formed Direction on that one yet for those that can't see this colored properly it's a medium uh trash generation location all trash so that should be noted

2:47:38um we just we found a direct correlation between what was collected particularly among the along the Avenue which was why we had discussed commercial space The Avenue in particular as far as non or as far as residential sidewalks public spaces you know that would be a consideration

2:47:58of the council absolutely yeah I think I I think I I would like to reserve judgment on this particular issue on residential streets just I don't feel like I have enough information on at this point and I'll be looking forward to the next public meeting and potentially corresponding with Karen

2:48:13about what other cities have done and what sort of the level of problem is in our city thank you from what's already been said but I just think it's um kind of interesting decades after this surgeon general's report on Tobacco that so many of these products are not even indicating that you know

2:48:38there's nicotine in them some of them did that not not most of them and you know if you really think that this is not a nicotine containing item venture capitalist for plume and a couple of the other companies that are marketing these things couldn't get enough money because there's so many

2:48:57companies VCS that won't give devices that they've actually gone over to Japan Japanese International tobacco company and also Reynolds American has Now supported you know um they're marketing these e-cigarettes so it's you know to me that's just appalling and although we

2:49:21we can say that you all have a right to smoke we also have a right to clean air and you know these apartment dwellers it's sad you know that they're putting up of him so um besides the speakers that came tonight I had nine personal emails all in support of one of the strongest

2:49:44ordinances we can possibly pass and i would support I wish you'd go back and put your little options slide back up there but for me it would be chuck chuck including e-cigarettes including medical marijuana I too agree with council member um Friedman to go ahead and incorporate

2:50:04the tobacco sales regulations as soon as possible and I do think we should look at the sidewalks whether it be pure residential or not and I also think that we should consider there was a certain um perimeter set around schools and if you're allowed to smoke directly across

2:50:27the street from the high school on Ashbury and Lincoln and around the corner from the dance area on Eureka it's got to be I don't know what that is a thousand yards I mean and there's School Employees that are doing this I mean I think we need to actually draft

2:50:42something very strict about that particularly about schools and I think you know we need to look at the sidewalks whether not just commercial commercial but also the residential because it's kind of like you said you go out one one commercial building you go around and before you know it you're

2:51:00on you know Kearney Street and you're smoking in somebody else's you know area in front of their house so I don't know if we have if you have information about sidewalks just in general but that was something that I would sort of be interested in and um and then changing

2:51:18uh the proximity to schools um and um living fairly significant fines I think is also important for our enforcement that's all I have okay um so I'd like to add some things first of all I want to start out by saying that what mostly I agree with is what council member Friedman said about

2:51:44wanting to be an A-Plus City I think that's perhaps the most important thing I also want to say that I have a cousin who's not here today because she died from emphysema caused by cigarette smoking her husband died a year and a half later from cancer caused by cigarette smoking and my favorite

2:52:04uncle died from throat cancer caused by cigarette smoking so um I know that it can't you know it can be a real problem and although I've never myself been a smoker my parents were and I sometimes attribute the asthma that I have today to that um and um but I the main thing I want to

2:52:27project is that we we want to be an environmentally um um appropriate we want to be an environmental City and part of being an environmental city is being a clean City so one of the places I just want to start out by talking is for those of us who are pedestrians

2:52:49more than others and who actually use the sidewalks all over town to get from point A to point B uh it isn't just commercial sidewalks that matter actually you're more stuck on a residential sidewalk because they're narrow and you can't get around the smoker and you can't get through and

2:53:10you're just sort of Trapped and that can be all over town likewise if you live near a school what if you're the house one house over outside of the smoking Zone do you know what you're doing to that house the people who live in that house by putting it in front of their

2:53:27house um and um I I live in a neighborhood that's near a number of schools and I do see that happening uh I I know where all the kids hang out from the high schools uh in my neighborhood I actually happen to live near Albany High and um you know I have to go through this

2:53:47huge thing of smoke if I happen to come home that way because that's where the kids have somehow they've got some agreement somehow with the school it's the kids though it's not the Personnel it's the kids they're not allowed you know they're not allowed to smoke on

2:54:02campus so they come and smoke in my residential area and anyone who has to go through that way which includes not only the residents but a lot of students who go to that particular school they have to go through that cloud of smoke in order to get to school so I would

2:54:21hope that we would look at all sidewalks because um that's um let people travel on you know everyone's uses a sidewalk at one point or another another thing I'm wondering about though is rather than saying the lady on oh she's she and I think she's not still here because she took

2:54:41her 10 year old son home Mr Wagner's here she's still here um like that um it isn't that you should have to close in my opinion it's not that you should have to close up everything and close yourself in a cocoon so that you don't get the smoke because you'll still get

2:55:00it anyway it seems to me that we ought to have an uh rules that say that it's the person who's smoking that needs to close it up so maybe and I don't even know if this is possible but if it were that they don't have their windows open when they're smoking you know at least

2:55:19restrict it to their space not to everyone else's space and I think that it gets in the ventilation system it does but even in single family houses the one place that would help that some and I think it gets out anyway to a certain extent but the worst part is when they

2:55:39um when they have everything open and the person who doesn't want it can't you know is is trapped that can be true in a in a multi-family situation too I know my son was living in the Uptown which is this really um cool place in in Oakland and I remember when I would go to visit him

2:56:01you know you you know you couldn't escape it and um and it was also a pretty new place so anyway I think that's a really important thing um and um one of the things I'm wondering about in all of this um I won't detail all of those details that have already been detailed but is

2:56:23what do we do about the smokers and um I sympathize with the smokers because I'm I saw my parents as they attempted to see smoke and I didn't think my mother would ever stop because she would go out in the backyard and smoke but then she'd come in and you know he could still tell she had been

2:56:44doing it she thought she was hiding it but the um I'm wondering if we could through our rec department or wherever is appropriate provide classes uh trainings for people to help them or support groups whatever it takes I'm no expert on that but if we could help to

2:57:02provide solutions for those people too because I would personally like to be in a position of offering them if they're willing to take it the support that they would need to get off of that very addictive stuff because I know that it is addictive and I would like to add

2:57:19that to what we do I'm not sure it's part of this ordinance maybe it would be another thing it is certainly something that we could consider regardless of this ordinance frankly um yeah I want to follow up there's some excellent suggestions I think that there are models for smoking cessation and for

2:57:39tobacco education that begins at a young age some of those are in place in our County and region others we can learn from other communities I think if we take a commitment to declare that El Cerrito is a community that values itself and recognizes tobacco uses one

2:58:01of the major hazards to our citizens Health that we could probably get some grants from some foundations and government grants to really tackle this in a creative Innovative and aggressive way and I know our city staff has done a terrific job in getting grants for our

2:58:19environmental efforts and I think we should look at this as a real opportunity to be a leader thank you so to kind of um because I'm trying to I mean I do want to make a statement that I think that the medical marijuana and E-cigarettes should be covered in what

2:58:37we're considering um and I am concerned about tobacco sales regulations also so I think that um pretty well rounds it out I don't know if we need to actually do you want to vote um or or do you want us have you gotten enough is there enough information what I'd suggest is if the assistant city

2:58:59manager can summarize the the comments that she's received it sounds like there's a fair amount of consistency but just to read them back and make sure that and if I if you just hear from all the council members that they're supportive of that there's consist that

2:59:11there is consistency about the direction being given that would be helpful sure actually pretty simple from what I seem to be able to have uh um gotten from these notes um it seemed to be a consensus that the level of restriction within El Cerrito should be as high as possible

2:59:30um Park's open space would be 100 smoke-free or your desire would be that they'd be 100 smoke-free including also commercial areas that would be commercial areas I do have several notes that all of the council members would like me also to consider sidewalks which

2:59:47are of course public right-of-way including in non-commercial areas so I will do research on that I'm not aware of any that have any but we could be Pioneers perhaps but I will definitely look into that and work to provide language multi-family housing I'm hearing a

3:00:03consensus for 100 smoke-free um all new current and allowing a 12-month um uh maximum for transition earlier if possible um I'm hearing that you want to include medical marijuana and E-cigarettes as um prohibited in the same way tobacco is and that you would like me to bring back

3:00:27a tobacco sales regulation ordinance I do just want to note that we did tend to concentrate on those other categories and not this so there is more information that I'm happy to provide to you um within but the draft ordinance based on your feedback would be similar to

3:00:45what other cities have done and what's recommended by the American Lung Association there's a lot of very standard language that we can provide as a draft so um if that is the consensus of the council did I say anything or miss anything um just a couple comments so if whatever

3:01:07when you said um regarding about the lease and the multi-family drawings maybe we could have language like within 12 months or when the lease is whichever is less okay and then a comment more about a little more distancing with the schools oh yes I'm sorry thank you

3:01:27um uh perimeter a larger perimeter around the schools significant fines for enforcement I also have all of you commenting on as well as um considering funds that could be adequate to fund things like perhaps an enforcement officer signage education I did hear one council member just

3:01:51um bring uh raise the issue of Rage raising the um the age of smoking um I don't know if that is something that all of you not smoking purchasing I'm sorry purchasing um if I could raise the age of smoking it'd be a hundred purchasing of smoking um I am only aware that New York City

3:02:13has recently done that um I do not know that anything else is in California and we could check to make sure there aren't any conflicts with state law um and that is the consensus of the council I can I can explore that as well backing up to sidewalks she did not hear 100 of

3:02:30us say move the distance from schools oh okay I said it shouldn't be on sidewalks at all sidewalks at all okay that that I can consider um if as an option perhaps if it would be inclusive of sidewalks then you wouldn't necessarily need a perimeter and if I may I raised the question and

3:02:49didn't extend any opinion at all and I would like to similar to benicini and bridges explore what's what's been done and the reason I raised is that I like council member or mayor Abelson have been on sidewalks behind people that are going the same Pace as I they're smoking

3:03:09I'm not and I don't have a choice about the the direction I'm going or the the way the wind is blowing so I certainly would uh like to explore making sure that we um a plus is council member Friedman said that we are considering all of our public ways travel ways

3:03:29okay I have a can I ask a question about the sidewalk thing the worst area I have ever seen personally in our city is at bus stops perhaps that's because I use them um but the um and you're really trapped because you're going to miss your bus if you escape you know you don't really

3:03:50have an escape but could we have a uh we haven't talked much about finding but do we have the ability to um Levy a fine that's higher for some areas than others um I was going to say it defer to the attorney on that I think we might need to do a little bit of research about it

3:04:15just I mean I I don't know it's difficult to answer in the abstract and I'm not aware of any places that have done that so we just need to look into it there there are also some overarching state law limits on how high fines can go so we just need to also be mindful of

3:04:33that um just back to what Mr Miller raised which I think is not just a problem around schools it's a problem around a lot of employers so I think we need to put some thought not necessarily uh in the ordinance but working with employers and you know the school district should be

3:04:56providing ashtrays and sending somebody out to police that and make sure people are using those ashtrays and you know it could be a problem around some of the other large employees including retailers car dealers Etc go Petco I believe I have quite a bit of direction

3:05:22[Laughter] so I you know unless the City attorney believes they should take an additional action just just if you could in if all of you could indicate that you agree with the summary of the direction given as reported back by the assistant city manager well stated yes yes

3:05:40yes I agree absolutely thank you very much I appreciate it and I would like to thank all of the members of the public who came and gave of their time and provide provided their input and stayed so late to do it thank you very much um with that I want to go back to what

3:05:59an item on the agenda I just noticed that the chair of the human relations commission is here and um I so I wanted to go back and if we could do that if people don't mind present the two proclamations that have that were um brought from that group yeah okay and

3:06:22and I'll mention what they are they were on the consent calendar and the first one is the Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month um and so this is a proclamation recognizing and honoring that um and uh whereas the earliest Asian Americans immigrated

3:06:45to the United States in the 1800s and many Asian laborers contributed to the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad during the night excuse me during the 1860s in the development of California's agriculture industry to this day and um and I won't go on and read all of

3:07:05the other but where they've also contributed a lot to the history of this very City and we've I think we've heard about that over a period of time so I think this is especially significant in that way and then the other one is um a proclamation um honoring Jewish American Heritage uh in

3:07:28it whereas for thousands of years the Jewish people have sustained their identity and traditions persevering in the face of prosecution through generations of enslavement in years of wandering through forced segregation and the horrors of the Holocaust maybe other people have uh family

3:07:48members that they've never met because of that I know that I do that they have made their maintained their Holy Covenant and lived according to the Torah um and both of these I think represent um a couple of different ethnic identities but there are many others too

3:08:08and so I I would look at this as just a sample of ethnic identities and every uh ethnic identity has a tradition of Pride and I hope that we will continue in at this Council over the year to honor different ones and um and I've and I and that our human relations commission

3:08:33would help us do that by bringing those to our attention so I would like to give these to Gabriel Quinto who is the chair of the relations Commission since I didn't see that you were here earlier thanks for hanging around [Applause] yeah I was wondering usually he doesn't

3:09:05listen yeah exactly go ahead I don't want to run you down oops okay we are almost done um so the next item on the agenda uh 7B is the city council Wall of Fame nomination subcommittee recommendation with the council a council member like to present that was on that committee it

3:09:48was on the side right yes um so as you all know we received an application for from Mr stormo to induct Tom panis to this year's wall of fame um according to resolution 2008-77 that was passed the application is complete all the criteria are met um just as a little summary hopefully

3:10:14I'll try to be brief here as you know Mr panis um has presented many items that have come before us in the past um and he's uh and recognized by the Historical Society of the city of Richmond and received an award from an outside agency which is one of the criteria he's also worked on

3:10:40The Chiang Mai home and produced a 130 130 page document that made it eligible for consideration for the national register of historic places oh is he gone already yeah he never leaves I was like where is he no it is not it is not close oh okay he's too he's too embarrassed

3:11:17okay yeah um we have to sit here while he comes I'll never miss the minute of his city council meeting I know shall I start over what should I do but should I do okay okay we don't want to extend too late um he's also done a lot of study on different areas of El Cerrito which I

3:11:34didn't even know we had a very large Little Italy um of course we all know about Rancho San Pablo and the Castro family of course the Japanese Nursery Community but he's also um although he's not he's been a park and rec commission he's in the Historical Society of course but he's

3:11:51also worked on the library group the new library group The Flower Growers um he's given talks and written on the farms and dairies the railroad Sunset View Cemetery um he's actually working on a translation right now um from Japanese to English on the topaz internment camp which you may or may not

3:12:12know about which I didn't know about and he's also worked he still didn't come in he still he's also worked on the uh the Sundar Sundar shoddy display uh the Christmas display that many of our council members and residents also work on including Mr Miller out there

3:12:32um so I think the subcommittee both of Rebecca um benassini mayor Pro tem and I feel that the criteria met and she might want to add some comments only if you were here but since he's not here I'll just Echo that he more than meant the criteria he's recommendation second okay are we

3:12:58ready to vote okay um all that was motioned by uh Friedman seconded by Lyman all in favor please say aye aye in the opposition abstention motion cares unanimously I just have one other [Applause] and just one other comment the induction will happen probably in July or August

3:13:21will calendar it but I don't know the date yet any better show up for that yeah I think he's probably the youngest person to ever put on the wall of fame right oh Al's much younger oh yeah hahaha okay um [Laughter] okay so now we'll move on to council local and Regional liaison assignments

3:13:47Greg sure I've got uh three things I'll be uh brief with regards to our Waste Management our recycle more Regional Waste Management I did uh bring on an item advocating that we move forward some of the decisions about future membership and moving forward some of our goals and

3:14:11unfortunately um that it fell on deaf ears and so we are still waiting as a group for Richmond to take action uh with regards to their post-collection agreement and potentially in that in the taking of that action which was at one point calendared for tonight but I don't we I don't know if it

3:14:32remained on the calendar that hopefully Richmond would make a decision about whether they're remaining in the joint Powers agreement um so that's that was the discussion um at the last meeting um if there was discussion that if Richmond did not take action and make

3:14:51action and make a decision to stay in the jpa that there would be at some point in the future a um I don't know Accenture is not the right word but some sort of uh Public Communication to the ratepayers about how much money Richmond is costing the ratepayers of uh of Richmond and West

3:15:14Contra Costa County not El Cerrito I might add because we negotiated our our agreement separately from the other four cities that are in the and the county that's in the jpa um but they're they're costing about between 50 000 and 70 000 a month um I want to report that uh I can't

3:15:36remember if about wicktech did we have a chance to report on the WIC attack that was the April meeting where the mobility uh discussion came up going on actually it's still going on that one okay and then last but not least I I went to the ABAC executive board meeting uh last

3:15:55Thursday and um one of the things that they've done is they're they're actually starting the one Bay Area plan that came out last summer is supposed to be revised every four years so it came out in 2013 so it's due out in 2017 and they've actually staff is actually already

3:16:13starting to take you know figure out what they could do better the next time they uh do one Bay Area um and a bag in that same session took positions on a certain legislation that affects our region and I will work with the city clerk to try and get uh their position on those uh legislation

3:16:35distributed to you guys through our packets thank you it's one update I attended the economic development committee meeting last week and they're continuing to work on their action plan for the year but some of the items that they were interested in working on are trying to get intern

3:16:53intern labor for some of the surveys and data collection efforts that they're interested in doing and they're speaking with other members of commissions and committees including arts and culture and design review board and other related committees to try to figure out

3:17:08if there are events they could be hosting or areas of inquiry that they can they can do together so they're continuing to do a lot of brainstorming on the action plan that they have they recognize it'll be for this year as well as next year which is because of the

3:17:20time frames they're looking at and that's it okay so with that we will adjourn this meeting until uh the next date which is not it's going to be on Monday June the 2nd uh that rather than the regularly scheduled June 3rd date because uh this Chambers will be used as a voting

3:17:40location for the election and that will enable the um the voters who live in this immediate area sounding surrounding City Hall to vote in person and not just by mail apparently last time they had to vote by mail because there wasn't a voting location so we're changing our meeting day to accommodate

3:18:08them thank you one and all for coming