City Council Meeting October 21, 2014

0:00:15doesn't sound like it i don't definitely good evening everyone this is the meeting of the el cerrito city council thank you all for coming and for listening and watching um we're going to start out with the pledge of allegiance or moment of silence and this will be led by

0:00:33mayor pro tem rebecca abensini thank you please join me or take a moment of silence of america to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you next we'll go to council and staff communications are there any council

0:00:58communications yeah i had the pleasure of going to the rotary clubs fundraiser for the library which we're going to be hearing more about the library in a few minutes on sunday up at mira vista it was a great event really great attendance and i don't know how much was raised but tom

0:01:16would probably tell us how much dom oh okay but uh if the attendance was any indication it was great and everybody was enthusiastic and it was a really great event karen pinkos was there scott hannon was there a lot of other people so i've got a few things one is on

0:01:37thursday the ninth i did attend the del norte bart open house for their station improvement and what they have proposed for the station is pretty eye-opening and and forward thinking and uh although it's not all funded they are very excited about what they're planning at to do at del norte uh and

0:02:03what i found really appreciative is the staff i was talking to felt our staff was very informed and very helpful in a lot of the suggestions we've been making about circulation and changes to the station so i want to thank our staff for continuing to communicate with bart and keep them

0:02:21going in the right direction we do have a reminder of the el cerrito free folk festival i announced this two weeks ago this is this saturday october 25th noon to 10 p.m at the el cerrito high school and it's free did i say free already let me emphasize free music kids programs jams workshops for

0:02:46music lovers and finally um tuesday november 4th is election day and i'm encouraging everyone to go vote uh please please vote we've got a couple of good campaigns out there for you to be expressing your opinion on including measure r so i'm hoping that you will vote thank you

0:03:09i had one more thanks okay go ahead yeah this thursday we'll be launching the first meeting of the sustainability circle in el cerrito and there are spots available for businesses both profit and nonprofit that would like to participate and maria sanders from our staff has

0:03:28done a great job of working with a firm called true market solutions which has done these sustainability circles and other communities very successfully so it's a chance to help businesses in our community learn how to be more energy efficient and sustainable and learn from each other as

0:03:48a cohort together so it's a great program and any business folks or if you know any business folks who don't yet know about it or haven't signed up please let them know okay thank you mayor just one from me i wanted to note that the parks and recreation commission and the

0:04:05environmental quality committee will be having a joint session tomorrow night where they will have a study session on the urban greening plan so that's tomorrow at 7 pm and it'll help they'll be going over the whole plan with both bodies in attendance so it should be

0:04:17very interesting thank you and i had one maybe last announcement and that is the el cerrito historical society this thursday which is the 23rd is going to have a presentation from east bay mud its title of the presentation its name was mud east bay mud and the history of east bay

0:04:38water the speaker will be someone from east bay municipal um district called named charlotte sullivan and she's going to trace the history of water resources in the east bay and that's free at the arlington clubhouse up on the arlington this thursday two more days at seven o'clock

0:04:57thank you are there any staff communications i have a very short one i um i would also encourage everyone to vote on election day and if you haven't received your voter information pamphlet please call the county elections office you should have received it now on your

0:05:13sample ballot their number is 925-335-7800 and if you're voting by mail remember to sign the envelope on the back sometimes people forget and as stated in the voter pamphlet the cost of mailing in your ballot is 70 cents alternatively you on election day you can drop it off at any polling place in

0:05:34the county and we'll have the city hall will be a polling place as well so you can drop it in the ball in the ballot box on that day if you'd like thank you okay thank you um we'll now move on to oral communications from the public this is for items that are not on the agenda if you want to

0:05:54speak on an item that is on the agenda you can do so at that time are there any speakers flips we have three speaker slips the first is al miller followed by gary hill and tom panis good evening mayor abelson council members and staff i wanted to take this opportunity

0:06:14following on council members lyman's suggestion to remind the people of el cerrito that they are part of the stage sanitary district and for the first time in almost 20 years the stage sanitary district has a contested election that is on your ballot we have four candidates running for

0:06:33three seats so you can vote for three people the other thing i'd like to mention is a follow-on to council member friedman's comments about the rotary's sip and saver fundraiser at mira vista country club as president of the el cerrito library foundation i want to

0:06:51publicly thank the rotary club of el cerrito for including us in this effort they let us be a co-sponsor so we could help sell the tickets and generate attendance and they've made us their principal beneficiary of their funds usually they have a major and then several minor

0:07:14beneficiaries on it and we appreciate it for two reasons one any of the funds that they contribute will go directly to the support uh the new library project and uh more importantly than that it gave us an opportunity to meet and greet and mingle with a lot of people that we

0:07:33hadn't been able to reach in talking to about the new library and how they can all help us make this happen is sooner so thank you very much rotary and thank you thank you gary hill good evening my name is gary hill i reside on the parks and recreation commission i also

0:07:58chair the el cerrito open space campaign which has been fundraising to raise money to help acquire the eight acres of open space known as the madera hillside so i'm here tonight to give you an update on how that's going at the end of the year our campaign will will end and the

0:08:17land will officially be turned over to the city so recently we had the music for madeira fundraiser which the council had a gift basket there for a silent auction item as well as numerous others i think we might have had upwards of 10 and so the the event itself the music which was local

0:08:41musicians and the silent auction items were really successful in terms of fundraising and it was also a really fun community event and my hats go off to dave weinstein and vicki nolan the organizers of that event that event raised nearly four thousand dollars for the campaign

0:09:00and our current totals for the fundraising campaign is we we have over 214 donations we have 214 donations totaling 61 800 we have two months to go and so we're hoping um with the end of the year tax season and the giving season coming up that people will join our citizens and

0:09:27community that businesses that have donated thus far to help us to reach our goal which we set at a hundred thousand dollars all the money that we raise whether we meet our goal or not will go towards the land acquisition uh i personally have been really it's been a really amazing journey and

0:09:46um a lot of people have really given a lot of their time and energy to a great cause the eight acres um of open space will effectively connect the southern and northern portions of the hillside uh into a mile long swath of green space and um and in urban areas such as this it's

0:10:06invaluable um opportunities for recreation and where we don't otherwise have that that sort of amenity currently we do have a challenge grant going on um the chris and marty connor will um allow donors to double the impact of their contributions the connor family

0:10:29will match dollar for dollar every donation up to five thousand dollars between now and the end november 15th so if you're thinking about giving to the campaign or interested in open space please do so you there is uh information on the city's website and also the el cerrito trail

0:10:52tracker's website thank you thank you okay so tom pandas good evening mayor abelson members of the council and city staff my name is tom panis i live at [address removed] el cerrito i note that on the consent calendar this evening is an amendment to the franchise agreement the east bay

0:11:19sanitary company i certainly favor that but i'd just like to take this opportunity to thank east space sanitary for being such a terrific partner with our city and i'd also just like to note that would be hard to find a more civic minded or business person in town than its president mark fagoni

0:11:34this weekend we had a or this week we had a sort of near miss with a herbicide application on the illoni greenway while i was why i was checking my email at nine on saturday morning sunday morning i don't know but there was a message from one of our community heroes

0:11:48howdy howdy goody saying that a bart contractor had posted a notice about a herbicide application along the only greenway from central avenue to hill street um what followed after that was a very thoughtful and informed discussion about what was going on and if we needed to try and take some

0:12:08action and it was decided to do that so a number of city employees i believe including garth stephen pray bill driscoll suzanne we're all bothered on a saturday morning and i know there's no more council people got emails i'll just cut the story short here and say that it does that it's as if

0:12:26everybody was trained for such a thing to happen action was taken um the pesticide the herbicide application was delayed so we can study it more carefully which is what our integrated pest management plan would indicate and i'd just like to thank the city and the

0:12:40staff for doing that and apologize to everyone who i bothered thank you thank you said it or is there another one yes no other species no other speakers okay anyone else from the public want to make a come a comment on something that's not on the agenda okay not seeing any we will move on on

0:13:04our agenda the next item is presentation on the library strategic plan update can be presented by liz ruland who is the senior community library manager with the el cerrito library thank you good evening good evening mayor abelson members of the council and city staff it's great to be here

0:13:28i also want to thank the rotary club of el cerrito for the event on sunday from library staff it was just a real boost to see uh see so many library supporters in one place it was really nice so i'm here tonight to give an update on the contra costa county library

0:13:44strategic plan we don't have a projector i understand so uh i will you'll see some of the little pie slices are a little teeny tiny so i will read the the names on some of those um very small pie slices uh so first um just a little history our last strategic plan was in 2006 and we reached most of

0:14:09the goals of that plan so last year we library staff realized it was um well time to to create a new strategic plan so in order to achieve that we wanted to first start with an extensive needs assessment we really wanted to know from our communities how they view the library what they want

0:14:30from the library in the future in achieving this needs assessment we took a three-prong approach the first of which was a survey admittedly primarily of library users but we did receive over 4 000 survey responses county-wide for our county-wide results we found

0:14:53that in answer to the question what is the library doing well people felt happy with library staff library programs and our collections for what could we be doing better people mentioned facilities the first answer almost a majority of people mentioned the facilities the collections um

0:15:17even though collections came up in the answer for what we were doing well people feel that they are too small and finally library hours people would like to see more open hours more open days in our locations that are not open seven days a week um the el cerrito survey results echoed the

0:15:36county-wide results we had 205 respondents who identified themselves as el cerrito library users 147 of them are residents and they also mentioned simply hours facilities and the collection as um as uh top priorities for them in library service throughout the county we did 278 key

0:16:03informant interviews these were one-on-one conversations between library staff and community leaders and i had the distinct privilege in el cerrito to meet with um over a dozen community leaders including mayor abelson councilmember lyman and many city staff i'd like to just name

0:16:23the city staff because i really appreciate the time that you all gave me um scott hannon karen pinkos chief moyer suzanne ayla and janet bilbus all gave me a lot of their time and i learned a lot from them i really appreciate it so the questions echoed the questions in

0:16:45the survey but we were able to have again more in-depth conversations so in answer to the question what is the library doing well again people people mention programming collection and staff and an answer to what the library could be doing better promotion was a major major response

0:17:04from community leaders the library needs to promote itself and its services better more programming and improved facilities the key informant interviews for el cerrito again mirrored these responses people feel a strong need for a new library more programming to teens was mentioned

0:17:29by multiple people and more programming in general better promotion of the library and increased partnerships with the schools as well as more services to small businesses throughout the county we had 28 town halls the town hall here in el cerrito was one of the largest with 60 people

0:17:51attending it was really great people had really lively discussions it was a lot of fun again similar questions what does the library do well and these um people in these discussions people uh were a little bit more far-ranging in their answers um [Music] in in a good way people had really

0:18:12interesting things to say so for example and i'm sorry i'm reading my own tiny type in my print out here um people um feel the library is very good at giving free equitable access to all we're a community gathering place and a knowledge resource center for what the library could do better

0:18:33people responded again promotion open hours facility programming and collections we had more specific answers from el cerrito people want literacy at all levels again this is this is babies through seniors and we of course see all kinds of people in the library it's

0:18:54such a fun place to work because we're serving really all segments of the community so from baby toddler story time up through seniors promotion of personal development and civic engagement then people responded to the question what could the library do better more open hours

0:19:14more space would allow more technology in a larger collection so again the idea of a larger facility and people would like to see the library be a beautiful exciting and accessible community center finally what does the library what's the library's most important contribution

0:19:33today again the idea of free free access equitable access for everybody free programming and a meeting place that's safe and comfortable so the library staff in charge of crafting the new strategic plan came together and we really wanted to start with a vision we

0:19:52didn't want to just jump into goals we wanted a vision to work from first so our vision states the contra costa county library is the pulse of our community working together we spark imagination fuel potential and connect people with ideas and each other and from this vision

0:20:12we were then able to create our goals and we have the goals of the strategic plan the intention is for the strategic plan to guide us for the next three years but then each community library was charged with coming up with a priority for each goal for the first year and

0:20:27then in the second year of the plan we will come up with new priorities for each goal so for the el cerrito library for the our the first gold county wide i'm sorry is that the library ensures easy equitable access to library services for all contra costa county residents

0:20:44um implied within this goal and one of the objectives under it is serving the underserved better and el cerrito staff library staff got together and we decided that for our first year we were actually going to define teens as our underserved population because sadly

0:21:03at the el cerrito library teens have been an underserved population in years past and we need to address that age group we serve children well and we serve adults well but not not teens so we are working towards that this year we've already implemented a homework

0:21:21help program a teen advisory group which works with library staff to advise us and how to improve our services to teens and we have a um we have a really robust teen volunteer program we get lots and lots of students from el cerrito high every week you know some working on their service

0:21:41hours sort of 20 and done but some who work with us on an ongoing basis and we have a great relationship with them and they really give a lot to the library we will be working more closely with the high school and the middle schools in the city to find out what

0:21:58uh what they want from library service so that's that's one of the things we'll be doing this year goal two the library champions personal and community engagement in literacy and reading to enrich lives [Music] and the el cerrito library's priority this year is to develop more active

0:22:16partnerships with local elementary schools in support of their student students love of reading and learning and we have been doing a good job of children's programming over the years but we want a stronger partnership with the schools and with the after-school programs

0:22:33the initiatives we started already this year is sort of shaping our children's programs for pre-k through elementary school to be in line with the the steam curriculum so a little bit more enriching than um kind of the standard juggler magician kind of thing even

0:22:56though those are fun too um but a little bit more educational so we have been working along those lines and i want at this point to thank the friends [Music] for many many years probably for many decades the friends have been really the chief source of support for library programs we just we could

0:23:19not do it without them it wouldn't be the same place without the friends so we library staff owes tremendous debt to the friends um so goal three for the county is that the library delivers a consistent high quality and inviting experience at all points of contact and that can mean many things

0:23:40customer service has always been a top priority for the contra costa library and something at which we excel within this goal this year el cerrito staff is looking towards continuing to improve the experience within the library building we have now we're all looking

0:23:58forward to a new library building but that is years out and we have many many library patrons using using our services every day we're open and they deserve comfort and of course safety but they deserve comfort and an inviting environment right now today so how can

0:24:16we achieve that [Music] first i want to thank city staff who've been a tremendous help garth schultz bill driscoll and jose jaramillo and their crews do a great job they're incredibly responsive and they've done a lot over the last two years to improve the library building we

0:24:34also will be spending some county library money on a redecorated children's area and some new fixtures in the library um final oh oops sorry finally goal four uh is to improve our uh promotion of our library services and um suzanne erla has helped us in that and we are continuing to

0:24:58learn in this area and open to any new ideas from community members for how best to reach the el cerrito community in addition to what i've outlined so far we also are taking other uh other steps to serve the community so for example with el cerrito's deep commitment to

0:25:17sustainability we have started the second seed lending library in the city and the first seed lending library in um in the contra costa county library system and it's tremendously successful so far people are coming in every day and the seeds are just flying out the

0:25:33door and um at this point um i thank you very much for your time there any questions um go ahead oh go ahead are you oh thank you thank you thank you liz that was a wonderful presentation um just a couple of questions so the discussion about the desire for increased programming and the

0:25:55desire for a larger space are those are those sort of inseparable or do you obviously you have some objectives here that will increase programming within the current facility could you kind of just tell us how those work together and how much you can do in the current space

0:26:12certainly um they they're not inseparable um we do a lot in the space we have um we we are able to do so um not you know not to the extent we'd like a dedicated meeting room um would be obviously optimal better sound separation would be optimal um but we are where we are right now and so

0:26:40increased programming primarily means uh more programs better attuned to the community that's why you know that's why we did the needs assessment and the and the strategic plan so that we we are really on the right track versus taking more of a i call it a sort of

0:26:56throw the spaghetti against the wall approach you know we want to actually reach out to the community before we plan our programming so that we know or at least have a much better sense that we're giving people what they want and then within the building we have we

0:27:12just we do our best you know we move tables and chairs and and publicize ahead of time and let people know and we're gonna um you know we have a sign at the entrance when we have a children's program letting adults who might be wanting more quiet time that this is maybe not the best time in the

0:27:30library um and we just sort of do our best to balance with what we have right um i've just been to so many reading programs at the library for children and they're just spilling out into the shelf space um so i'm so i totally appreciate the the programming that does go in the library

0:27:48but a bigger space would be great um with regard to outreach one thing that came to mind while you were mentioning the desire for more outreach or more targeted outreach are just the the mailing list that many of the schools have like our preschool has a mailing

0:28:02list that the administrator of the school handles where occasionally they'll send out um kind of goings-on in the community that parents of preschoolers might be interested in i can imagine that all of the schools and large preschools in the city would similarly have some sort of a

0:28:19list so you could consider and i don't know if you've done this already um assembling a contact list of school administrators so that's just a suggestion i guess great thank you you're welcome thank you so much anybody else i'm glad you thank you excellent presentation i'm glad you mentioned

0:28:36sustainability is the library going to be able to participate in this sustainability circle have you heard about it um just tonight all right well we'll make sure maria sanders gets you some money yes we will try thank you very much yeah we will do our best anything else from the council

0:28:58great okay well thank you very much thank you appreciate the opportunity doing we really appreciate all the work that you're doing for the community and um we look forward to great things from both you and the community and we looked at even greater library great yes

0:29:17thank you thank you okay so with that we will move on to the clean water program update good evening mayor abelson members residents of el cerrito and city staff my name is stephen pray i am the environmental programs manager for the city of el cerrito department of public

0:29:49works and i'm here tonight to update you on the city's clean water program which i manage um great there it is yeah thank you i want to be mindful of time here you all can see that right you have good okay great that's helpful i can kind of see it um so there's been a lot going on with the

0:30:16clean water program i'm just going to give you a brief overview and kind of a long distance view of it as most of you know the federal clean water act was amended in 1987 to include discharge requirements for runoff from ms-4s or municipal separate storm water systems into the receiving waters of the

0:30:37united states as part of the national pollution discharge elimination system also known as niptis or npdes el cerritos is one of 76 agencies around the san francisco bay that were issued and are regulated by a permit called the municipal regional permit or mrp the mrp requires specific measures to

0:31:04eliminate water pollution including restrictions on pesticides pcbs trash litter and oh let's see i need to push this button let's see okay thank you for your patience we can't i can't see this slide now i can see it yeah thank you um specific provisions for the mrp uh

0:31:35there's 16 or more that you can review there our municipal operations are regulated as far as the kinds of pollutants that are discharged from our corporation yards and other city facilities there's new development and redevelopment that would include rain gardens and

0:31:58c3 development that captures the storm water and sinks it into the ground before it's it enters the ms4 industrial and commercial site controls visits by the west county we have inspectors who go out as part of c4 who go out and inspect the various businesses to be certain that they're in

0:32:19compliance with the discharge permit illicit discharge detection and elimination such as construction sites and various other car washing and anything that's not storm water related in other words rain into the drain is uh considered a a pollutant so there's quite a bit of work by city

0:32:48staff and and others let's see that's the west county wastewater district that is under contract to monitor and inspect the businesses in el cerrito we have public public information and outreach that we are required to do we do a lot of that through the county-wide

0:33:11program we do some of it here through the city with funding for kids for the bay who has a program at fairmont school and in years past has had a program at uh at uh the harding school and they uh help educate the kids as you know we have booths at the various uh either the

0:33:35fourth of july or or earth day celebrations trying to raise people's awareness of the clean water program but the county has a lot of outreach efforts there there's water quality monitoring that's done on the county level pesticides toxicity control which is done both at

0:33:54the city level and the county level and number 10 which is the big one and we're going to get a little bit deeper into that one and that's trash load reduction mercury controls pcbs controls copper controls pbdes legacy pesticides and selenium exempted and conditionally exempt

0:34:18discharges and then finally the wonderful annual report that we submit every year in september i want to just dig down a little bit into provision 10 which is the trash load reduction provision provision c10 requires that the mrp provision c10 requires permittees to

0:34:40reduce trash loads from their storm drains 40 by 2014 70 by 2017 and 100 by 2022 the city of el cerrito and other municipalities submitted long-term trash management plans in february of this year designed to meet the requirements uh by these due dates maps of el cerritos

0:35:05full trash capture units and treated drained drainage areas were created to assist in assigning the trash management areas to prioritize and treat the highest generation areas first so just real quickly a full trash capture unit is a basket that sits inside the a

0:35:25drain inlet on the street and collects the the litter and leaf litter and stuff before it gets into the into the sewer system um a trash management area is you can see this map we have um low the the green color on the map is low trash generating uh the yellow is medium trash generating

0:35:51reddish is high generation and pink is very high we have we're [Music] we've strategized to kind of categorize these management areas so that we have a a different strategy for each area you'll notice for example a lot of the yellow areas are parks and schools well

0:36:19those will require a different strategy than say the commercial area the commercial area we're using a lot of the full trash capture units which are designated in blue and that gets us a great amount of credit you'll notice that most of the high trash generating areas are along the san

0:36:37pablo avenue corridor which is where where the majority of our trash capture units have been installed a big pink area in that bottom right hand corner that the southern part of the city the uh el cerrito plaza is a large paved area with very little impervious surface trash

0:37:00blows across that and enters the storm drain that's an area that we need to prioritize so this plan that we submitted in february this year the long-term trash uh reduction trash load reduction plan uh our key strategies our trash management strategies were and are the single-use carryout bag

0:37:23ordinance public education and outreach programs on land litter cleanups creek cleanups full trash capture devices improved trash bin and container management such as the uh 206 8 2008 installation of the numerous trash receptacles down up and down san pablo avenue that was a big

0:37:52improvement in our trash bin and container management bio retention facilities on city street such as the the two rain gardens that we have new development c3 compliance including the the windrush school and city hall and the public safety building and enhanced street sweeping

0:38:14some of those we've gotten to more uh rigorously than others but the results that's our strategy and the results of implementing these remember we had to reduce our trash load reduction by 40 percent by july first twenty fourteen we made forty six percent according to

0:38:38the calculation uh tools that were given us by basma and these are very conservative estimates we really tried to err on the side of caution and not over inflate the the trash load reduction be very conservative with it you'll see that the single use bag ordinance gave us 5.4 reduction

0:39:00uh food ware ordinance 4.1 public education 1.4 percent our full trash capture devices bought us a huge percentage with 18 percent uh realized 18 percent trash captured and and trash load reduced the other seven other 17 percent that's responsible for that that that reduction are the cleanups and

0:39:28the trash bin management now i can't say enough about the city of el cerrito citizens groups the eqc and the green teams and various others i'm thinking of a young man sean o'connor and others who are really vigilant in their volunteer efforts to remove litter from

0:39:48the street and it's not something that the city really manages in a particularly um aggressive way but we're very fortunate to have these and to have the cooperation of these citizens in that they respond with you know measured trash that was picked up and collected from the street on any

0:40:10given event the eqc for example agreed to to do a land on land trash pickup every um every quarter and this has been a really significant contributor to um to our trash load reduction so i see that i'm i'm rambling on a little bit here so i'm going to move on the next slide and we're

0:40:39headed for the final stretch here so just in brief summary we did reduce the the trash load reduction by 46 percent but by 2017 we need to reduce it by 70 percent well what is that how we're going to do that we're going to maintain our existing full trash capture units that's kind of

0:41:02a given we need to evaluate the effectiveness of our current management strategies one key going back to that map is to verify the trash generation rates that were assigned to us by basma they have a tool based on population and census data and other things real estate information uh

0:41:27land use that assigns the trash generation rate and there's a a verification protocol that's been employed by the city where we go out and this is a protocol that was developed by keep america beautiful where we go out and assign a trash generation rate to a particular area so after basma assigned

0:41:47a rate then we went out to verify it well we haven't been able to make it out to every um pink area or or red area on the map some of them may be generating less trash than we think so that's the real key is for us to assess and verify trash generation rates we want to continue our education and

0:42:06outreach to school-aged children we want to outreach to schools who shopping centers bart and caltrans these are four groups that excuse me that we don't have direct uh management well we can influence them they contribute to our overall trash load but we don't have

0:42:30any authority to tell them what to do but we want to outreach to them and and we're doing that in the county-wide level we're reaching out to the west contra costa unified school district to see how they can try to reduce their loads there's work with caltrans and

0:42:47bart also to reduce the litter that's generated there a lot of litter blows off of those those properties into the city and into our storm drains we want to continue with the online cleanups this is another group of volunteers the past slide that was a group of school-aged children from

0:43:07fairmont school from 2013 this uh photo is a group of um of residents and stu uh students who contribute on a regular basis you'll see the champion there with a green shirt dave weinstein who is uh really instrumental in these uh quarterly pickups um the online cleanups can't say enough

0:43:32good about those and how effective they are enhance street sweeping and outreach to residents what does that mean you ever see the street sweeper go down the middle of the street and the cars are parked on both sides what good is that i know it's you know kind of a hot button issue to

0:43:51put up signs and all that but there are other ways we could approach um resident participation with outreach like postcards reminding people uh even a website just easy reminders about what what day your street is swept hoping that people will move their streets

0:44:10they're sorry they're cars off the street so the the street sweeper can make the pass where the cars are which is where the majority of the trash it's is sitting waiting to go down the drain when it rains we may install more covered trash and recycling containers at the

0:44:28parks and public facilities install more full trash capture devices rain gardens and 3c development these are all options that will need to be considered if we are to realize this 100 trash load reduction by 2022.

0:44:47finally this uh municipal municipal regional permit 1.0 expires [Music] this year and it is anticipated that a new one will be issued july 1st 2015.

0:45:04the changes that are expected although it's still really um there's a lot of questions about what what the changes will be will come along with this is identifying our pcb loads uh that are seems like the most the pcbs are at buildings in buildings that were built

0:45:30or had installations before 1980 and there's a quite a bit of work we're going to need to do identifying if any pcbs are entering the storm drain system increase increased scrutiny on pcbs mercury and trash litter loads there will be an emphasis on green infrastructure planning and

0:45:52implementation to break the connection between a parking lot for example an impervious surface running off into a storm drain or a creek also increased focus on c3 compliance with new development that concludes a brief update on the storm water program with the city of el

0:46:21cerrito i'm open for questions if you have any mark thank you very much steven excellent presentation council member lyman and i and subsequent earth days have been in charge of the cigarette but pickup crew on san pablo you didn't specifically address that and

0:46:40i'm interested in what we can do to try and cut down on that and i'm also very interested to know how many uh ordinances tickets i'm sorry tickets we give out for littering in the average year and if that's a possibility that we could step up enforcement of littering as a important

0:47:00way of reducing the trash good questions and i can't speak to the uh enforcement point uh others may be able to at this time i'm not authorized to enforce any of those the littering i heard interesting just briefly uh a interesting interview with uh a memorial candidate for oakland who's

0:47:31who uh is also a council member and who picks up in oakland pits picks up litter every every week and uh just how the comment was how they pick up the this stuff that's dumped larger than cigarette butts and as soon as they pick it up it's there again and there's no incentive for

0:47:50people to uh there's no enforcement there's no incentive for enforcing and so the discussion was could they in fact have a reward for uh for reporting uh an increase for reporting uh illegal dumping and then an increased fine the cigarette butts i i will say this

0:48:11that the i know i've heard a lot of conversation about the um and present seen some scientific presentation on the toxicity level of cigarette butts in water and and how it affects aquatic organisms but the full trash capture devices do do capture them the the size of the

0:48:29screen is five millimeters thank you yes stephen thank you very much for your presentation um can you speak to i know it's estimated and it's using formulas and such but what is the volume or weight or however they're measuring uh the waste or the the the litter that's going to the bag how

0:48:55what's its what's its magnitude and what does 46 percent represent and to get to seventy percent the additional twenty four percent what what does that represent some agencies are recording volume and some are recording weight where there are advantages and disadvantages to each

0:49:18uh there are accuracy problems with both a plastic bag weighs nothing but and it really doesn't take up any space but its presence in the in the water in the in a natural environment is is uh obviously uh has an effect there are the figures i'll need to get back with

0:49:41you on that i i don't have any off the top of my head i don't know that really a comprehensive study has been done i could see what basma has done in so far as measure estimating the trash load in the bay is that what you're interested in is the current trash load yeah mostly i'm interested in

0:49:57what metric we're using and how we are report recording reporting measuring our success we're measuring it in gallons okay and of course what is not measured are those things that don't enter the storm drain system so that you know a a shopping cart or a couch or

0:50:21a big pillow or something like that that's really doesn't really go there uh it's unless it goes directly into a creek so we're measuring in gallons and i i would still need to do some calculations to tell you how many gallons we've saved in that 46 percent but i think that's fairly readily

0:50:42available great thank you uh just a just a quick question i'm sure you're going to do this already but when you just mentioned street sweeping i thought about the sample of new specific plan that we just passed and the various changes that are envisioned for the

0:50:55avenue and i'm assuming that as we go forward with our planning to get to 70 then the integration will take place in terms of the design of the avenue and the bulb outs and the ability for the street sweepers to maneuver around those facilities in fact those were some of the comments

0:51:12that were made before the adoption of the san pablo avenue specific plan regarding the configuration to provide ease for street sweeping mechanical street sweeping there are definite challenges on fairmont fairmount for example with the bulb outs there there are real

0:51:30challenges getting to some of the litter because the the mechanized street sweeper can't get in there so that's it it needs to be done by hand a lot of that okay thank you i had a couple questions i had one also about street sweeping so i know in my neighborhood when the street sweeper

0:51:49comes by and i think i know that because i saw it somewhere i don't know if it was on the city website so do we currently have that posted anywhere now for residents we do don't we where is it at it's posted on the city website on the city website it's reinforced

0:52:05with the city city-wide newsletter karen do you have other yeah and we have uh put it in the recreation guide from time to time as well maybe we're sought too we'll make sure that it's we can also make sure that it's more visible i mean we're always looking to make sure that

0:52:20we have more visible links so we can do that too i think the vast majority of people probably would be willing to move their cars just voluntarily at least maybe every other time or so if they knew because nobody really wants stuff around their curb anyway and you know sometimes little things fall

0:52:36out of your recycling i try to go and pick mine up but not everyone does that so that's good but i knew it was posted somewhere i just didn't remember where i saw it um so regarding the mrp provision requirements where where would you say the herbicide herbicides that were going

0:52:51to be um placed on the ohlone greenway with bart recently where would that fall in does that fall under number 14 or is it 0 yes it does fall under 9 under c9 i happen to know a little bit about that because that was a herbicide that uh that the without getting too much into that um

0:53:14there's a very low toxicity herbicide the contractor said that they needed to apply an herbicide because we were emphatically asking them to do something about the weeds hand pulling would have been great well they can only do an herbicide so they said what herbicide would be

0:53:32effective or would be acceptable and i said i did research recommended a the lowest toxicity broad leaf selective herbicide that's commercially available what does broadleaf selective mean that means that you can spray it on grass and the grass lives but the dandelion next to it doesn't

0:53:58in fact it so that's what makes it a a broadleaf selective herbicide unlike glyphosate for example which is a non-selective herbicide it kills anything with that that's photosynthetic well not anything but a lot of things that are photosynthetic the uh broadly selective makes the distinction without

0:54:20getting too much into it i don't believe that in fact i'm certain that the iron chelate which is the active ingredient in the um the selective broadleaf herbicide that was recommended is not on the pesticides of concern list in the mrp the pesticides of concern in the mrp are

0:54:44pyrethroids which are used for ant control generally around buildings pyrethroids diazinone fiprenol which is used a lot of people use fiprenal to control fleas on their domestic animals there are a few others but none of them really none of them are the the typical

0:55:09landscape pesticides that are employed and people associate with pesticide poisoning or rather that are people are alarmed about it's the it's these specific pyrethroids now they're finding new traces of of um chemical compounds in the legacy pesticides as they call them but

0:55:32these are more of the synthetic type so the iron key light broad leaf are basically allowed then or allowed but there there is no restriction no restrictions no okay and um i just had a curiosity about um illicit discharge and elimination that's that could be like somebody washing their car

0:56:01you wash your car and all the oil from around your wheel wells go down into the storm drain right people aren't really supposed to be doing that that's correct so not too long ago about 10 days ago i walk around a lot in my neighborhood because i always take walks and i saw

0:56:17all this water flowing down the hill from way up there and i was going in the storm drain and i'm like oh my god there must be a ruptured pipe somewhere and here we are in this drought so i followed it up all along the curb and i found that there was a person there that

0:56:30was washing not one car but several cars so about an hour later i came back from the other side after my walk and now there's all these foam and soap suds and all this stuff all along the curb and i thought you know we really i mean yes we do have to educate people

0:56:45but i'm like well i don't i didn't even know for sure what to do about that i just thought i didn't want to have a confrontation so i just sort of citizens arrest well you know it's as long as tom because he got everybody out from the city now if they were could wash

0:57:03their cars in the bar you know i in a pervious surface it's okay to wash your car on a landscape surface where the water will percolate into the earth it's in the impervious surface and the paved surface is where the water that storm the oil and the soap enters the ms4

0:57:18that's a problem yeah all right um let's see oh and then i had another comment about trash in the plaza and probably you know everywhere where there's a lot of take out food i guess you might say so one day i was over at the plaza and sometimes when i park in the plaza i walk across the street tube

0:57:38pete's because there's not a lot of parking over there which is a good thing right yeah we're all naughty and so um i noticed you know there's a bus stop just outside of pete's and they're all these coffee cups lined up all along the behind the bus stop where people probably go and buy coffee and

0:57:55they wait for the bus and they can't take it on the bus or they don't or they finish the coffee and all these cups are there but i didn't really see where if there was a trash can there and i thought well i guess that's sort of our responsibility versus pizza i don't

0:58:07really know or maybe the trash can was down closer to the cleaners or the car wash i don't know but there wasn't one like right by the bus stop there was a whole bunch of garbage there and i'm sure if there was a trash container there people would certainly use it

0:58:21but i don't know garth can correct me if i'm if i speak if if i make a mistake here but my understanding is that the ac transit is i think there's a requirement for them to have a trash receptacle at each stop or at least each covered stop and it's theirs their

0:58:42responsibility to to keep it clean we have numerous 74 i don't remember how many trash containers on on san pablo avenue that we uh keep on a regular basis i wonder if a comment to pete's would be helpful there too i'm seeing as that's the source for the litter

0:59:04it's great to place some responsibility with the source well pete's or other other businesses that may be the source of litter i don't mean to pick on pete's yeah no no i understand that i'm saying just that was an example i noticed i'm like wow look at all the cups sitting there

0:59:19just like why aren't they right in their trash can there people would probably use them so um well maybe we could have staff put a little pressure on ac transit too i don't know or um someone could talk to pete's perhaps anyway that was all my questions thanks it was a good presentation

0:59:36thank you is that all i had one a couple one is back to fairmont and the area where you said needs to be done by hand is it is it done by hand right yes okay um and then going back to pete's the source of the trash is pete's not ac transit uh theoretically wouldn't it be better to go after

1:00:04the source and uh if i if i implied that we were going after ac transit i was um i misspoke what i meant was going after the source of the trash so in that case it was a coffee cup from pete's it would be a coffee cup from pete's if it were a wrapper from a fast food place it would be going

1:00:25after the the fast food place yes i agree that source what does that counsel for the uh anyway responsibility in in production of items that and end up in the storm drain okay and i'm not sure that all of the people who are sitting on the benches there in fact are getting on the bus i think

1:00:46that a lot of them are getting their coffee and then going outside because there's no room inside or because they like the weather and consuming that and then they're actually not getting on the bus so it it can very well be that there needs to be more or could be more of a um

1:01:10an amenity outside associated with pete's which would be a good thing and you know that that could be part of it i don't think it's just the bus waited for the bus there many times my comment about ac transit is maybe approaching was because he said at the bus stops they were supposed to be trash

1:01:33cans yeah i don't know if that's true or not but i don't think there is one there that was my comment about ac transit actually at that particular bus stop there is a uh requirement because it's a rapid stop all rapid stops are supposed to have trash cans um what one of the problems though with

1:01:55that is that um they don't get cleaned out you know they don't get re eliminated empty the trash doesn't get eliminated when it gets full so for example on the weekend there's a lot of trash it gets in there and it's always overflowing after the end of the weekend because

1:02:13there's a lot of people that come through there um so we should ask pete's to uh pay for another trash can or two and maybe also to supervise them service the ac transit basket yeah yeah and we might also suggest that that it might be a nice thing to do for their

1:02:33patrons to have some more outside uh seating um yeah because like starbucks has outside tables but they police those tables and bust those tables they don't have the same problem right um but that also might be the plaza because the plaza does a lot to police their own

1:02:55property but the um i also go the other way on the bus from there and the trash receptacle on that side but at the bus stop which is right by the on the plaza site it also has the same problem somewhat not as many probably coffee cups but um it does have stuff too so well thank you

1:03:19very much for the report i think we really appreciate it um and um with that we will move on on our agenda thank you okay the next item on the agenda is item number five which is adoption of the consent calendar items 5a through 5f which are the minutes the contra costa county community awareness

1:03:43emergency response proclamation the amendment of the franchise agreement with east bay sanitary the extension of the street sweeping maintenance agreement with universal west contra costa unified school district memorandum of understanding and this is for the rest of the

1:04:02renovation of castro park athletic field the metropolitan transportation commission's regional major ii project compliance for saint pebble avenue specific plan and complete streets plan additional analysis for implementation i'll move to adopt items five a through

1:04:20f second okay there's been a motion by bridges seconded by friedman all in favor please say aye aye any objections any abstentions motion carries unanimously with that we move on to a public hearing which is item number six which is an extension of the san pablo avenue

1:04:41specific plan development fees on an interim basis as an urgency measure and this we need to follow a process [Applause] and first of all i want to announce that there's a public hearing right now and there will first be a staff presentation good evening mayor city council members

1:05:08my name is melanie mintz and i'm the city's interim community development director back on september 22nd the city council adopted a number of measures to adopt and implement the san pablo avenue specific plan associated with that item in another agenda item the city council adopted

1:05:29resolution 2014 53 amending the master fee schedule to include planning fees specific to the san pablo avenue specific plan which included new processing fees and a planned maintenance fee at that meeting council also requested that we change the proposed maintenance fee

1:05:48from 160 to 200 per residential unit and from 13 cents to 18 cents per square foot for non-residential projects so that was adopted that night but per the government code um a 60-day waiting period um exists for the um implementation or for development fees to become effective

1:06:08and so at that same meeting you also passed a resolution 2014-54 which which allowed us to put those fees immediately into effect for for 30 days for the government code we can extend to that 30 days one more time to a total of 60 days and that's what's before you

1:06:27tonight by extending those interim fees what it enables us to do is be able to begin to take in applications underneath under the specific plan and have those be in effect until the november 24th date at which those 60 days expires and the amended master fee schedule goes into effect so tonight's

1:06:49resolution asks you to extend your last urgency measure by another 30 days to bring us to november 24th if you have any questions please let me know any questions okay i guess we don't have any questions and now we will open the public hearing [Music] are there any uh members of the public

1:07:09who would like to speak do we have any speakers i have my request mayor okay is there anyone in the public who would like to speak on this item okay seeing none um moved close to the public hearing second okay motion by lyman seconded by friedman to close the public hearing

1:07:28all in favor please say aye aye any objections um any abstentions motion carries unanimously so now we will move to consideration of the item i moved the resolution emergency resolution of the city council of the city of el cerrito establishing interim planning fees related to the

1:07:48implementation of the san pablo avenue specific plan second emotion okay there's a motion by friedman seconded by um venezini uh is there any discussion and questions okay all in favor please say aye aye any objections any abstentions motion carries unanimously we are

1:08:11really moving forward here so the next we don't have any policy matters to consider tonight and so the next item is council local and regional liaison assignment reports are there any hi i'm happy to give one for the economic development committee um they met last week and they have are planning

1:08:33a couple of things first is an event in december they're planning um sort of a mixer and a sharing of ideas with the chamber of commerce so they'll do be doing that early december and their ideas they're still in the mode of trying to figure out what what are the

1:08:49priorities they're going to have for their work plan other items that they're working on are con they're individually contacting different businesses particularly landlords who have empty spaces in our city and they're having speakers come in so they've contacted a couple of

1:09:08local developers and brokers and um other other sorts of commercial actors in san pablo i'm sorry in el cerrito along san pablo and other areas of the city and their idea is that they're really kind of gathering information and trying to open up a dialogue where they

1:09:24can be a different body that these different groups can come to to speak about either ways they can the city or the the members of the committee can help them with their business help them to grow their business and they're just kind of trying to figure out exactly what they want to

1:09:40do but these are some of the activities they have planned and then i think their work plan will continue to evolve as um the members come up with different priorities and they also sent out an announcement for interns to uc berkeley planning or uc berkeley policy school

1:09:54and i think the planning school so they're hoping to get an intern to help them with other areas of research thank you thank you i met with the jpa for the sports field on wednesday october 15th last wednesday and um they reaffirmed that we would be charged our fifteen thousand dollars

1:10:15for the fields that we've been paying for yearly through the jpa with the five cities which we've been doing um that's not new and um there was a short discussion apparently there's been a lot of car break-ins down at the the sports fields and our city manager is very nodding his head because i think

1:10:35he spends a fair amount of time down there so they're probably going to put some signage up not to leave valuables visible in your car because it's been happening fairly often and i think it's mostly in the evenings there was a short discussion about their water conservation issue

1:10:53measures and they actually are not their water bills are not high and they have they've been conserving water very well apparently and um they did not schedule another meeting but it'll probably be in february we think okay thank you that's it okay well without the meeting

1:11:13is adjourned until the next regular meeting of the city council which will be held on tuesday november the 18th uh at 7 pm right here in council chambers thank you all for coming you