City Council Meeting November 18, 2014

0:01:55they're like little pets almost foreign good evening everyone welcome to the El Cerrito city council meeting we'll begin with roll call councilmember Friedman president councilmember Bridges here councilmember Lyman here vice mayor benicini here and mayor Abelson here thank you and I um I

0:02:23would ask that people join us in either a pledge of allegiance to the flag or observation of a moment of silence led by councilmember Lyman wait a second okay I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation

0:02:47under God and indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay the next item on the agenda is Council and staff Communications are there any Council Communications I have one um I just wanted to remind all of our residents that will soon be in January interviewing for our boards and

0:03:12commissions we have vacancies on all of our boards and commissions for people who are have been termed out on those committees and commissions it includes almost absolutely every one of our committees arts and culture crime prevention Economic Development human

0:03:30relations and all the other ones some of them have up to five vacancies and we are accepting applications until Wednesday November 13th I'm looking is that right no no sorry sorry wait December 8th Monday at 12 noon we'll be accepting applications until that time

0:03:49and the applications are available on our website thank you mayor I'll just note that East Bay mud has been holding special board of directors meetings to discuss the response to the drought as well as different rate setting potential Alternatives and they've had several in

0:04:07October the next one is November 19th which is tomorrow um yes tomorrow at 6 30 in the Castro Valley Library if you're interested in attending thank you I attended the last board meeting uh about a week and a half ago of the health care District to talk about doctors hospital and it's very still

0:04:29uncertain future and there were a lot of creative ideas and not so creative ideas discussed and basically I think it's safe to say the hospital's still in limbo and awaiting further developments and I'd like to alert the public to the fact that this Thursday November 20th

0:04:51right here at City Hall in I believe it's in Chambers between 6 30 and 7 30 p.m Bart will be meeting with the community to discuss their plans for the greenway Landscape Maintenance we had public comment to this effect not too long ago and it has to deal with the

0:05:11scheduled application of City approved selective broadleaf weed suppressant so if you have thoughts on this or want to learn more about the application nation of this weed suppressant this Thursday November 20th 6 30 to 7 30 right here there any staff Communications

0:05:38announcements okay next we'll move on to item number three which is oral Communications from the public is this mic working okay okay um and um do we have any public speakers who would like to speak on items that are not on the agenda we have one speaker Tom panis and another speaker for the

0:06:01presentations mm-hmm good evening mayor Emerson members of the council and City staff my name is Tom panis and I live at [address removed] in El Cerrito I'm here this evening to give you great news from the October benefit that the Rotary Club of El Cerrito put on for our

0:06:25library Foundation thanks to the hard work of the Rotary Club and the generosity of our fellow citizens the Rotary Club will be donating eleven thousand dollars to the library Foundation this was most the most successful fundraiser put on by rotary since this event was started the rotary club would

0:06:43like to thank all those who bought tickets those who work to support the event and all the fiscal sponsors for their generosity to that I'd like to add the sincere thanks of the El cereal Library foundation and the friends of the Ulster library for all those things plus the

0:06:57dedication of the Rotary Club and those could be a formal presentation of the check at The Rotary meeting on January 15th thank you for your time this evening and then we're ready thank you so we're now ready for the presentations yes okay so we'll move on to item number

0:07:18four and uh the first presentation tonight is the uh El Cerrito Art Association award and um we as I understand it we have both the past and current presidents of the El Cerrito Art Association and if you'd like to come and make a few remarks and the past president is Gene witsky

0:07:49and the current president is Gene shitterman if I said that correctly her name is Gene sichterman and I'm Gene witsky and I'm also the chair of the annual art show that the Art Association was started 38 years ago two women who were members of the Women's Club wanted to have their

0:08:13own club that showed art and they wanted to encourage new inexperienced artists as well as professional experience artists and so uh everything all the activities that we plan and that that we take part in um involve both those inexperienced and experienced artists

0:08:34in El Cerrito we have in local El Cerrito area we have five venues where we hang art shows throughout the year two of those are in the El Cerrito public buildings the library and at the recreation center we have a group of outdoor painters that go every Thursday through to local areas

0:08:58and they paint and we post the calendar so that anybody can can join in so this is not a member only invitation anybody can join in the outdoor painting so they can see on our website that we have the the locations posted and they can join in anytime we have programs once a month and we have

0:09:23nationally known artists come and do demos 10 months a year and the public is welcome to attend guests are invited to come anytime and members of course are there we participate in the 4th of July world one celebration and our artists that like to do craft type items sell their items

0:09:51then at the Fourth of July uh we occasionally have workshops for our members who we invite an artist to come and show us uh demonstrate and and teach us how to do uh different types of artwork and uh once a year we have the art show and we do present a mayor's award and I think mayor Abelson has been

0:10:17there many years she and I have kind of met over the art and she has one of the hard jobs she has to look at the whole show and pick just one in that art show it's called a non-juried show that means that anything you enter we accept and we accept up to 350 pieces we take

0:10:39it in on Thursday afternoon we hang it Thursday evening we have it judged on Friday and we have a reception that usually has about 300 people attend Friday night and the show lasts through Sunday afternoon and then unfortunately we have to take it all down um those are just a few of the things we

0:11:03do are are we have uh almost 200 members um and we always encourage guests and and other artists to join us thank you well thank you and we do have a certificate of appreciation both for the Art Association and also for this year's winner of the El Cerrito Mayors

0:11:26award uh her name is Catherine wolf and I as I understand it she's ill tonight oh she's here oh she is here great so we'd like to present this to you while the mayor is rolling down there's two questions I have for you what's the website that you mentioned and the annual art show is is it always

0:11:50the first weekend of October always the first week in October unless the recreation center says we can't have them all that weekend great thank you can we see it here too oh it's beautiful thank you thank you and I want to let you know that it was very difficult picking a

0:12:20winner because there were a lot of good choices and so this one I really liked because when I looked at this young lady's eyes I I saw a lot of thought there and I really enjoyed that and appreciated it so thank you for for doing it in for your work and we would

0:12:39like to if you want to um we'd like to present you that with this certificate thank you [Applause] and we'd also like to give a certificate of appreciation to the El Cerrito Art Association for the wonderful work that you as an association have done for our community over the years because I know

0:13:08from having seen the show before many times that you always do a great show and so I'd like to present you with this certificate thank you thank you thanks for coming we're really quite fortunate in our city to have so much talent in so many different areas and I think it's nice to

0:13:57have an opportunity to recognize it now and then the next item on our agenda is the El Cerrito tree committee's work plan which is going to be presented by Kathy Flyer Liar I got it right Kathy good evening mayor Abelson members of the council staff and fellow citizens

0:14:26members of the public tonight I'm going to um Kathy Blair I'm the vice chair of the El Cerrito tree committee and I'm going to go over a work plan and some of our accomplishments from the last year and hopefully we can get this going I'm in in the interests of time and the fact

0:14:46that I think you already have a copy of our our plan and and to avoid some redundancy I'm going to zip through some of it and try not to read it word for word um is it supposed to go up here too or there you go there we go okay and I can make it Forward by oops sorry

0:15:08okay so how do I move this if someone would okay that would be a good start yeah I was trying okay there we go okay um the El Cerrito tree committee was set up at the end of 2012 so it's a pretty new committee um it's mandate as is in short to advise the city um

0:15:39on programs policies no to to advise the city um sorry I'm getting blind you did advise the city on programs policies and ordinances to on the really protection and management of the city's trees and to coordinate with the Department of Public with a public works department in

0:16:02uh in achieving those objectives sorry about this this looked different from something I was looking at earlier okay also to promote and Foster Public support for these efforts through through education also as many volunteer activities as we can um as we can muster such as tree

0:16:28planting and actually care for the trees and finally to promote public education awareness about the potential hazards associated with the planting and care of our trees particularly as it relates to Public Safety and the appropriateness of what trees to put where when it comes to

0:16:45sidewalks and utilities this is our committee we have eight people now the chair um John hiddle is stuck in the back there and the man with the blue shirt is our previous chair as I said we have eight people we're looking forward to filling that up because we have lots of

0:17:03things we would like to do I'll start with going over some of the prior Year's accomplishments these were done really before we had a plan um one of the first things we did we really hit the ground running pretty quickly because a couple grant opportunities really fell into our laps

0:17:24and they were from a group called invest from the ground up and it was a grant that was also funded by relief which is a r e l e a f um and the the forest service and Cal Fire the society for our International Society of our Borah culture and there were two Grands and one was the first

0:17:44one was to plant trees and so because the arborist Stephen pray already had some ideas of where and we have a tree inventory in place we knew where there's some opportunities to do that and so the committee got together and we put on a tree planting event um and the other Grant was really more

0:18:04oriented towards fostering support for urban forestry and so we use that uh that Grant to do to First do a uh and to adjust some issues that's that Stephen pray had raised about concerns about San Pablo Street merchants in the care and pruning of trees on San Pablo so we

0:18:26did an online survey and we got over 40 people to uh of the merchants to respond and then we developed a brochure which I think you've all seen if you haven't I have some extra ones here has everybody seen this you probably have in case you haven't foreign which tried to address some of the

0:18:49issues and also provide information about the management we do have in the city and also about some of the um the city codes that relate to trees we participated we actually put on several uh several community events so per so right away we got into the first Arbor Day and we did two Arbor Day

0:19:11events both with the Komatsu Middle School 7th grade science students and they were great and the El Cerrito Garden Club and we planted something I think between 40 and 50 trees at Cerrito Vista Park over those two years primarily to replace some failing Monterey Pines

0:19:30we also held a little Community event with the tree planting that I mentioned from the Grant and we put up a table and food and informational materials for the Neighbors around the trees were planted by the way on Alviso Carlton um Carlson and uh El Dorado streets I

0:19:52believe and so we actually work with the neighbors to to get agreements to water them and they came and spent the day and planted with us too and then we used Earth Day a number of us used Earth Day to actually go out and distribute the brochures to the businesses in person

0:20:10we've been trying to keep up and provide input on other activities and plans going on in El Cerrito we developed some pretty actually pretty extensive comments Steve price was really a lead in that in on the specific plan both of process nature but also Technical and I believe

0:20:30most of those have been accepted into the revision of the plan we'll also continue to try to just keep ourselves up to date on the latest of the latest in urban forestry the latest diseases affecting trees the latest measures different cities are taking to manage

0:20:47their Urban forests and so we attended a number of workshops to that effect about tree failures workshop on really advocacy for tree protection and and all City Planning and then one that really focused both on technical issues and what other cities like San Francisco are doing with their

0:21:07trees and we also actually got on the ground a number of us and help with the University of California sudden Oak death survey in the hillside Natural Area where we didn't find any sudden Oak death by the way so that was the good news these are the goals that we were that we developed once we

0:21:27actually developed the plan and so highest on our list since we did manage to plant some new trees was to make sure that they survive so that's highest on our list and we'd like to really keep keep our eye out on additional funding sources some of which we know will be coming around again and

0:21:46some of which may just present opportunities we didn't know about we also want to keep providing input on new policies and plans that the city is looking at such as its Urban Greening plan continue to educate ourselves and one of our biggest priorities and it has

0:22:03been since the beginning is to to revise and then finalize a new list of approved tree species for for El Cerrito these are the trees that will grow and are appropriate for planting as Street trees um once we've done that we want to take a look at any additional policy or

0:22:25ordinance needs to protect the trees the events the investment we have in this green infrastructure of our trees of high priority but just it'll probably take us a little longer to get around to those or educational workshops for the public because we'd actually like to put

0:22:43some stuff on about how people can can protect their own and manage their own trees and we will continue to try to establish or participate in community events we also hope to become a tree City USA this is a program that's been around for many years you get a nice

0:23:02sign saying you are one but basically it really just demonstrates that your city is committed values its trees and is committed to their long-term protection and we have most of what we need to do that we will continue we have we've developed a couple of educational materials this

0:23:23year and we hope to put more and that includes really expanding information available through the city's website on trees so we'd really like to get moving on that so for specific activities and timelines I may not touch on everything here um but we do have a plan in place for

0:23:50watering the trees we planted this past year for two years at least two years to make sure they establish and we as I said both have some um residents who agreed to do that but then the tree committee itself is going out there and watering these trees so we're we're

0:24:07we're doing that ourselves we'd like to continue to to pursue grants and one of which is the the highway the eemp I can't remember what that stands for but it's basically Highway Transportation grants that allow you to do a variety of things often forestry or Greening related we considered one about

0:24:30a year and a half ago but that didn't work out but there's another one that we hope might come around next year which we just worked our way through and don't qualify for this year but it's the Cal Fire Urban Greening grants they're actually funded through the state Air Board from

0:24:51the carbon the climate change carbon revenues and those grants go up to this year's grants went up to 1.5 million dollars and funded things like acquisition of property to put parks in and plant trees and so if this is feasible for us next year it might be an excellent

0:25:12opportunity to work across several of the city's plans and and committees you know to sort of work in conjunction with the climate plan and also the urban Greening plan to maybe put our heads together and pursue those if if we can figure if we're eligible next year but

0:25:29they were focused on underserved communities and we were I guess too well served um we would like to focus now on The Greening plan um it seems like I I went to meeting the other day and it looks like there's several several potential things that might be in there related to selection

0:25:48of plant pallets and planting that the tree committee discussed and would like to work with the city to on some of those initiatives um and then I also just want to say that the approved tree list we are working very hard on we're starting with principals really

0:26:07looking at the principles that that should apply to whether a tree is the sort of the minimal requirements for a tree to be planted and survive here and then some of the principles for actually deciding whether a tree should be removed or should not um and then ultimately we will come for

0:26:25public input and Council approval and so we're targeting next spring for that to to have a final you know new tree list after we've done that we also want to take a look at policies or ordinances that may be appropriate to make sure the trees we have planted and are caring for

0:26:45are not damaged and are well taken care of that by the way is also one of the final requirements to be a tree City USA is to have a specific tree ordinance which we do not have now so we're thinking maybe full well no I guess for the ordinance we have about the same time now we're thinking

0:27:05possibly into the following year spring of the following year to no 2015. oops sorry that's early next year too we'd like to try to get that in front of the council [Music] um I think oh the other thing I didn't mention for information materials it's on here but we already did it since we

0:27:26wrote this we did this presentation we actually finalized that and that's we did another door hanger for the the cities rolling out it's pruning it's new pruning contract which will go over before to go around the city over cover a grid over the course of a return

0:27:43interval of four to seven years and so I'll just pass this around foreign so we wanted to take advantage of that and actually take some of the information we did for the business the brochure that was targeted to businesses and put some of that into a door hanger

0:28:03for residents and get that out to people so basically we besides telling you not to park your car under under trees that are going to be pruned it also tries to highlight some of the benefits of trees what the city is doing and what you are not supposed to be doing to Street trees

0:28:23um as I said we would like to get around to educational workshops pruning a pruning workshop for people to know how to how to prune their own trees uh is up there on our list and we'd like to get around to that soon um and again I think I mentioned some of these

0:28:40um we I I would definitely like to get to work on a more expansive website since I I developed one for Cal Fire on climate change so I've got lots of materials that I think might be relevant but also I'm very eager to do that think I think that's it um so I'd be happy to take any questions

0:29:02can I ask one thank you very much for the presentation I I know everybody knows that one time or another trees were very controversial in the city and they sometimes still are of course I'm curious as to whether or not any of your activities have particularly garnered

0:29:16interest of residents I know we all just received an email with regard to a resident's concerns about tree removal on her street our residents speaking to you about the policies you're considering or do you find that you're kind of going about your technical work

0:29:30and perhaps when it comes time to adoption we'll hear more from from constituents no we've had we've had people come to a number of our meetings um and you know probably more of the visits have been about from people who would like to certain take trees down which is one of the

0:29:50reasons we want to work help work with the city Arbors to come out with a really consistent and and sensible protocol or policy for when is appropriate and when it's not but then we also have had people come and say why did PG e take down all those trees by the substation we love trees so um so

0:30:10we've had both okay just as I thought thank you what's what areas in the current grid like which neighbors potentially got this type of flyer just recently so that flyer I'm not quite sure it's been finalized this is sort of hot off the oh it's hot so this isn't been

0:30:31released yet okay we're working as we can through Zone one which is the southern portion of the city nobody's received the flyer yet uh we're still catching up actually on Zone one uh due to the Deferred maintenance requirements required pruning on some of the trees around the city the deaths due

0:31:01to drought and the fire fuel reduction in the Hillside and elsewhere great and you are excuse me I'm Stephen pray I'm the City Arborist very much for your report and as the liaison to the tree committee I must say I'm really appreciative of all of the work that this committee has been doing

0:31:29and all of the technical expertise that you've uh are using on behalf of our city thank you thank you to the members of the committee we're eager to roll [Laughter] keep it down okay okay so our next presentation is by the El Cerrito Parks and Recreation Commission workplace and it's about the

0:31:52work plan it's going to be presented by um chair Manish Doshi hello everybody how are you my name is Manish Doshi I'm the chair of the El Cerrito park and rec commission and uh I want to bring you a few things up to date on a few things that uh what the reckon the work plan

0:32:12for the rec commission and what we want to do coming in 20 2014 at the end of 2014 coming into 2015.

0:32:21um so let's see there it is so the park and rec Commission of El Cerrito is established by the illustrator municipal code um there should be a park and rec commission it shall have powers and duties stated below and such others as constantly decide so basically we're an

0:32:40advisory committee to the council we meet once a month or so um and we we give advice and recommendations to the to the Council on many projects in the city the parks the recreation department the hillside Natural Area on the Olney Greenway we worked on on when I first joined the

0:33:02council I mean the commission we worked on the trees and the replanting and and taking down of Blended trees um we also are there to assist in planning Recreation programs for the residents of the city and to promote the public interests of public activities at the

0:33:25parks and recreational offerings through the city's park and rec uh Commission the president of future needs of the park facilities and Landscaping these are some of the goals that we have for 20 at the end of 2014 more so in 2015 now we want to present here some some of the needs

0:33:49um and and some of the things that we've done this past year we've visited all the Commissioners have visited all the sites individually or in groups of all the parks and facilities in the area um we've had meetings and and talks about Huber Park motorcycle Hill the

0:34:07hillside Natural Area we've talked about the community demonstration garden at Fairmont Park the urban greeny sites the different Creeks Trails parks and future potential project sites we've also documented Park conditions and we form recommendations to the city

0:34:26council we'll see as the presentation goes on some of the conditions of the of the current Park facilities and some of the clubhouses in the city um in the pictures that you'll see are have been taken by the Commissioners on some of the things that we we felt that

0:34:40was uh needy for you for all of you to uh to see um the 2014-15 work planning goals and areas of Interest more more active involvement in facilities park creek and Creek and Trail planning and maintenance we want to develop uh try to help develop policies on trail

0:35:00Child Development signage up on the trails receive future presentations on status of the Ohlone Greenway master plan and feature identified and potentially group improvements to the facilities and to the agreement we want to also pursue a comprehensive signage program throughout the city for Parks

0:35:19trails and Fields we feel there's not enough signs uh directing the community to these facilities for public use and we think that with with the Loney Greenway and The Greening plan that are coming on uh that we should really take a look at more signage uh for the for the residents of

0:35:37El Cerrito um we want to help develop the hillside Natural Area master plan um and then review Landscape Maintenance policy including trees and integrated Pest Management plans and a couple of the commissioner members were very integral in that and Bart coming here

0:35:53yeah and and presenting next week of what they're going to do to the as far as spraying and all of that um we also want to uh support special events special events in El Cerrito the lonely Greenway fun day explore new sporting events such as runs walks and cycling events in El Cerrito

0:36:16these kind of events bring more of a community out uh as the the walkathon does and as the the Fourth of July Festival we want to bring more more to the city more of these type of activities to the city not only as a a point of view this is what El Cerrito is about but also possible possible ways

0:36:34for the city of businesses to to potentially gain some Revenue that we all need in the city uh we want to expand future Hillside Festival events the one that happened this past year was very successful and we want to expand on that we feel that um there's an active culture with the

0:36:54residents of El Cerrito we want to promote that and expand that and it's uh with the purchase of the of the Madera tract we have an opportunity to do some great things in El Cerrito and we want to be part of that we want to explore Economic Development and income building

0:37:10opportunities benefiting Park and recreational facilities and we'll talk a little bit more as we get into the presentation about about what we're talking about as far as economic development and income building um the recreation department received division updates by supervisors

0:37:28we you know during our meetings we we asked different divisions to come and give us updates on what's going on in the city um and so we know who also to to call and talk to um if there's issues that pop up uh we review budget updates semi-annually two or three times per

0:37:43year of the of the recreation department um increased Gathering and information Community communication feedback from the community we want to develop a larger Community survey we did a a type of a a survey doing the the hillside event we we did get some input but I think we'd like to get a larger

0:38:06input from the community on what's going on in the city and what they'd like to see from the commission and from the commission to the city council so we want to expand on that um we want us at least so this is a feedback at community events from the community and publicized commission

0:38:21meetings and e-newsletters and other venues I personally as chair of don't feel the message for all the commissions not just the park and rec commission gets out to the residents I think we need to do a better job of the parking recognition to to get the word out and when the

0:38:37meetings are especially in the different user groups and have some more input at our meetings that we currently do um to help the city grow we also want to work on and receive Urban greeting plan and modify the work plan accordingly and advise on it as we do these are some of the pictures of

0:38:58of the current Park facilities um let me go back here I'm sorry okay my apologies I've just uh mixed things up so as you can see from these pictures some of the facilities are our age most facilities were built in the 60s or or later early 80s or latest early 80s the

0:39:26facilities look dated up up on the left we have Fairmont uh the uh where the community garden is you see the barbecue areas the you'll see the the bathroom facilities at I believe that is Castro you'll see the Castro Clubhouse on the bottom left and you see the um

0:39:47the bench area at the on the tennis courts at Harding um all pretty dilapidated um what we currently have um is not energy efficient some of the some of the facilities don't have energy efficient heating we have old furnaces they're way past useful lifetimes they

0:40:07could uh fail any at any moment the most of the facilities have single pane windows um they're not properly weather weatherized uh there's there's a seepage of air and and of heat um there they need to be a little bit more modern water saving appliances needed in most buildings

0:40:28um over a hundred non-centralized manual irrigation controls throughout the city we need to make those a little bit more centralized so we can control the water and the irrigation and so it makes it makes it a lot easier for the staff it's very difficult for them to go out

0:40:43there and work on over a hundred different um manual controls um there's lack of adequate storage space several barbecue picnic tables other amenities should be replaced there's no funded program for replacement of aged equipment replacement of an absolutely necessary is what the city is going by

0:41:02at the moment um Fairmont Park Park along the lonely Greenway long ago stopped being a functional Park if you take a look at the way it looks right now again the upper left it's very difficult for the community to use this park this area um in Central Park if you visited Central

0:41:21Park recently um the the playground equipment is very old and some of it is is well it's not safe anymore and that's something you know we do need to control and work with um these are some of the items where we have maintenance problems and most of the maintenance in the city

0:41:38is deferred just because of costs we have beams at the community center we have cracked sidewalks and pathways on the right top we have most of the clubhouses need new roofs or the roofs have not been updated in a very very long time and you know that they're dangerous at this point the

0:41:59basketball courts on the bottom bottom left at most Parks but this is from Poinsett Park um again very old agent they need some kind of work on them um the community garden I believe this is Madera is that correct the CD Center if you look at the fencing on the back it's again

0:42:21um not where it should be for for a growing cities such as El Cerrito um we are you know we are facing problems uh with the facilities of paint of cleaning the rest some restful restroom smell if you walk in um there's uneven cracked asphalt at poinsettia Huber tasahara and the Senior

0:42:43Center parking lot which is probably not a good place to have uneven asphalt there's problems with sewer drains and laterals often you know they're often broken by by trees growing through them and around them um and they cause backups like we do at you know like what happens in our houses

0:43:00but and a larger venue there you go okay um accessibility issues if you notice uh this is tosahara park on the again on the right top they used to be years ago steps there from the top to the bottom but the steps are so dilapidated the city had to take them off and now

0:43:24there's no pathway it's just overgrown and it's not kept okay um access to the the playground is basically non-existent that's hostahara there's just one entrance and it's very difficult for um for people and the kids to get to um see where are we uh on the on the lower

0:43:47left that's the play structure that one little slide at Central Avenue okay not not not really um a good area up on the upper upper right that's a play structure which doesn't have the current uh soft base and you know there are issues with that as We Know um that all these things need to be

0:44:11replaced on the bottom you'll see the uneven uh bottom left uneven payment um running along most of the parks I'm trying I'm not good at this first do we have a okay um this appropriate amenities Central Central Creekside and Fairmont Parks do not have permanent

0:44:46um outdoor publicly acceptable bathrooms if you notice this is the bathroom Christopher is this bathroom this is essential correct this is Central on the on the left if you look at the the right and the bottom if you look at the right top that's Fairmont again on the bottom is

0:45:02Creekside um it's just it's very difficult when when um kids are out there and and families out there there's no accessible bathrooms for them at Fairmont um school um the user groups use the small field that's there but they can't use the bathrooms because there is no bathroom for them to

0:45:21use the the bathrooms in the clubhouse when they have after school activities nobody can go in there because they're of state laws when the schools are closed there are no bathrooms out there a Fairmont there he goes okay this is the hillside Natural Area it's a

0:45:45great opportunity for us to expand on that but there's limitations cash purchase there's there's very limited or no accessible Trails out there the signage is very limited there's no funded maintenance program outside of fire departments fire abatement activities a

0:46:03little no way to find finding any kind of signage again it's it's not appropriate or very small and I know we're working on it with um children Well Trail records yesterday thank you but shell trackers um and they're they're spending a lot of time and effort in getting

0:46:24um funding from the government to help us with that um the master plan needed for the development of passive recreational opportunities and maintenance upkeeping program is not available right now we need to really look into that okay athletic fields and Landscaping given

0:46:48the high level of use and the drought the city's current landscape Landscaping budget is inadequate to maintain landscape quality these are upper left is Canyon Trail and this is during the drought when the water is turned on it just puddles and and and staff has worked so hard I'm

0:47:09trying to try to fix that it's just it needs a it needs a longer term um a commitment to it on the bottom uh left is that is that Castro it's Central again okay on the bottom left that's Central there's uh just work in areas that nobody can nobody can use on the bottom right

0:47:28is tasahara which the city is going to be doing some work on um starting next week uh but again there is there's no proper entrance or egress from that from that location um fields and con the fields are in constant use in El Cerrito for 10 months out of the years out of the Year

0:47:47currently levels of Maintenance are insufficient to keep all Fields playable at a B grades most of the fields in the city are at a B or C Level and they lead they need a lot of upkeep the two larger groups ecyp the baseball group and elsewhere the football club the soccer

0:48:04group spend a lot of their own funds and parent volunteers to upkeep those fields so that so they're playable for uh the Youth of the city um there may be opportunities to reconfigure fields for a better mix of hours in use but we need to work on that um some of the fields well most of the

0:48:25fields are uneven and can lead to conditions that are not especially let's say tasahara for for example for those of you that have been up there recently the field is in terrible shape the Outfield is up and down the field at at um at Canyon Trail though the city spent

0:48:41a lot of time this summer working on it and it was closed for three months because of the drought there's just very little they can do about it you know with it and it's very uneven and at times unplayable um most of the fields require irrigation upgrade uh upgrades to improve water

0:48:57efficiency and playability Via better integration programs most Fields have old non-centralized irrigation equipment that often fails and we found that this year especially after they fixed the city worked on Canyon Trail two weeks into the reopening we have to close it

0:49:15again because there was issues with uh with puddling for whatever reason um it's just it's what we're doing right now is just patching and spending money and we need to find a way to to get a consistent plan on how to rebuild some of the some of the facilities in in El

0:49:32Cerrito on the fields the renovation of the picnic sites in the city is needed that the picnic sites a lot of the a lot of the residents use that for parties and get-togethers but they're all very very old and and we need to do a better job trying to trying to get things upgraded

0:49:53so they're so the the so the uh the residents can enjoy um the facilities a little bit better and that's good and and that's it on the slideshow on a personal note I just uh well not even the personality the most of the commission members feel that the city is doing an incredible job uh with

0:50:14the resources we have but we need to do better the there are opportunities for the city along as other cities in the area Berkeley um Richmond San Pablo at their current uh currently going through Renovations of their current Fields public use Fields they're using those as revenue streams for

0:50:35recreational programs and other programs and to build better programs in the city we would encourage the city the the the commission I mean I'm sorry the city council and the commission to get together and work together A Little Bit Stronger on what we can do to help

0:50:52Revitalize the city the the city is in a position uh where right now where we're growing there's a lot of kids in elsewhere right now and it's so fun to see them out there but I think we owe it to them to have better facilities for them to plan um with that I'll open up the questions

0:51:15I have one question um well the Central Park has used um primarily by ecyb well I don't know that there's much soccer there but my question about the the field and the park is is 100 of Central Park in El Cerrito it's it's mostly Richmond but we care for the field is isn't that the

0:51:35agreement we have that's correct that's correct um let's talk I stopped using it a couple years ago because the Field's unplayable for soccer right um with with ecyb with the baseball group you have three outfielders right with soccer you have maybe 18 to 20 kids out there and it's just it's

0:51:52such a shape that's very difficult for us to use it right um the same thing with tall Sahara tasahara was a facility that when I when I first started with my daughter we we we had soccer programs on tasahara during the during the soccer season and that's where we first started practicing

0:52:09the The Outfield has just gotten to a point where it's dangerous we can't have kids running around out there without getting injured and one of the reasons we pulled um pulled the use of that field from soccer is because kids were getting hurt you know they would twist ankles and we

0:52:25just didn't want that liability anymore so we you know we're not using it so if there was a way to upgrade it and and make make use of it we could use it you know I think it would be better for baseball as well as the city is going to do they're spending more money on it a

0:52:41little bit more money on it yeah thank you for that sobering presentation um you didn't mention much about we you've been here many of our meetings with regard to the Joint use agreement with the schools and that wasn't in your presentation is that because Rec Park

0:52:56hasn't you've obviously been getting updates from the rec director about how those discussions are going but do you are there any comments you wanted to make about that yeah the joint use agreement um and again this is this is my opinion I think an opinion most of the the

0:53:11commission members we don't think it's in in holy in the benefit of the city of El Cerrito because we think we the residents are not getting the use of the facilities as we were told we would and the enormous costs to the user groups to use let's say Australia to high school the usage fee

0:53:36went up from 38 to 44 dollars an hour and it's a struggle for the user groups uh the youth sports groups in the city of El Cerrito to put together affordable programs and to pay for facilities that are this expensive um so we do use the facilities they're used on a limited basis

0:53:58um and we just don't you know we we haven't heard enough from West Contra Costa um when I was here at the last meeting I think about four months ago we were supposed to get an update uh on whether the fees were supposed to be charged at just opening and closing or

0:54:17they were supposed to be charged throughout the day we haven't heard anything we've sent a couple of emails out got no response and I know there's been a change um in the in the leadership at West Contra Costa um I forgot to facility what was that bill Bill Faye has left he actually left less

0:54:35than two weeks after the meeting here um and so there has been no no discussion and the email that was sent by the the soccer group to Mr Ramsey when we came in here to have that discussion well you all saw Mr Ramsey outside talking on his phone instead of in here listening to what was going on

0:54:57and then he went off and ran for another another position I think it's it's foreign I think we again need to sit down and discuss the usage yes the the residents of El Cerrito have paid to use that facility and many other facilities um our kids go to El Cerrito High School

0:55:17and I think I think West Contra Costa needs to be a little bit more open and generous in their in the usage allowing us to use those facilities so I didn't want we didn't want to put in this presentation because we just didn't think it would go anywhere only for another discussion I appreciate

0:55:34your comments and your frankness and I I think whenever there's a school bond or a partial tax measure El Cerrito in in Kensington are the highest vote in favor so um I think that's something they should factor into working with us to work something out on behalf of our citizens

0:55:53thank you children I agree well and I think your your comments were actually very accurate because when they had when they gave it the last presentation to us we very pointedly asked them some questions about the custodial care and overtime which is what was driving the

0:56:10cost of the soccer fees and it was our the answer they gave us at that time and you we can go and view this because our meetings are on tape they very pointedly said that that was the case that they would remedy that situation situation so they would come in and open and then come back and close

0:56:29and not charge these exorbitant fees to have that custodial person um sit there the whole time and I think that's part of what's been factored in for you and they said that was going to get remedied yeah it did yeah and it has and then we appreciate that I mean

0:56:46everybody's busy um the the custodial staff does not stay there the custodial staff comes in opens and then leaves but I believe this the it's a contract that they have with the controller staff they don't there's not but I don't think they've had time honestly

0:57:01um to look through it or be bothered with it at the moment and again I'm I apologize for being very Frank we appreciate it okay thank you thank you for the work that you do thank you and do you have one more I I do if if and when it starts raining um can you talk about the field closure

0:57:22policy and because that's one of the ways we can protect our yes in the fields because some of the some of the fields you're talking about that are damaged are as a result of adults playing pickup touch football games during muddy rainy conditions um and and you know 180 pound adult

0:57:41coming to a rapid stop on a wet field does a lot of damage so to talk about how we try to protect our yes our assets and and and thank you for that question and I should have touched on that um through City staff uh Chris Jones and and our staff we a couple of years ago

0:58:00we put together a field closure email tray email train um if it rains we check in with with staff City staff and and we we see whether you know whether we should close the fields and and the user groups are pretty proactive on that again I'll I'll come to my situation

0:58:20with with the soccer club if it's raining um I close the fields because we don't have any money to upkeep them and my my populace gets very upset at me it was sunny in the afternoon but yeah it rained like 30 you know rain whatever all night and just because the sunny

0:58:36doesn't mean the fields are playable and the city is very good about communicating that through their websites and sending those that are um on the E chain ee Trail email tree that information and then it's up to us the user groups to send that message out but because of of

0:58:54budget cuts and and low budget and lack of Staff with the city the city can't send somebody out to close fields you know put closed field signs and we we partnered with the city the ecyb and also and the soccer club we partnered with the city the fields are closed the

0:59:10signs are there we'll go out there and put them up if we can't get out there the city does send somebody out there now the city can't police this either because there's just not enough staff out there um Thanksgiving is coming around the corner and for the last 10 years two

0:59:27days before Thanksgiving it always rains and there's always a bunch of turkey bowls I would add Cerrito Vista Park I'm out there with a bunch of my friends but if it's wet we you know we I ask them not to play out there but it's a city park they get out there and then at

0:59:44the end of a two-hour session on a wet field that field is non-playable and what I think most of the residents and most of us need to understand is once the fields are are matted like that and the sun pokes out they dry like that they don't go back flat so there are holes and divots and all

1:00:04sorts of things in there where kids or anybody could hurt themselves and they don't recover as fast so the city's done a great job um the park park and rec uh people have done a great job setting that message out to close the fields and it's getting done and it's actually

1:00:23revived these Parks we're able to actually see that they're not the way they were four years ago five years ago they're actually being shut and we're we're imposing a fine the city has said uh in in their budget that they would find users I'm not sure how many they're

1:00:42fine but for our user groups I know ecyb has a a fine policy the the soccer group has a fine policy the city manager can attest to me sending emails out um incessantly about closing the fields um and I think all of us have to be uh have to learn to manage these situations

1:01:02and as we see them we have to be we have to understand the constraints of the city and all of us have to work together to make sure that they last but it's very difficult um most of the community the adult community does not get that message there's ultimate frisbee out there there

1:01:17is adult soccer that goes out there when they see the closed signs they just take the signs and move them behind and if somebody goes there to tell them I didn't see the signs yeah you just move them and I've seen that happen but you know I I don't know how we could manage

1:01:31that to be honest with you without more information somewhere did that answer your question you did thank you anything else thank you so much for listening to me thank you thank you we do have one speaker okay Dave Weinstein hi I'm uh Dave Weinstein I'm speaking as

1:01:59president of El Cerrito Trail trackers we're really looking forward to working very closely with uh park and rec commission and the whole city on improving the trails we're really happy to see that the trails are getting uh you know really renewed attention um in terms of signage which we think is

1:02:15of you know immense importance of the National Park Service has given uh Trail trackers this time in conjunction with the city a second technical assistance grant and we are just getting underway the National Park Service intends to develop a really comprehensive uh

1:02:30wayfinding system for the parks and that should really help a lot that'll be both the hillside area all the trails throughout Town sidewalk connectors so that should be a really really good thing I'd also like to say that um Trail trackers has done an awful lot

1:02:44of work and I really wanted to make sure that everybody knows about not just so that we get credit but so that it gets used we have essentially analyzed every single Trail in town figured out which ones are passable which ones are not and what needs to be done one to make so

1:02:58impassable one of the trails that was shown in the recent slideshow the tasahara Park Trail we are working with a a would-be eagle scout and hopefully we can swing a national project that will get that one repaired um we have uh work plans on a number of different trails and so we're really

1:03:14hoping uh in the next year especially to get going with park and rec and really get some action and get some of these Trails you know signed get our map out so we can find the trails the map's on the website if you haven't seen it and really get some work done so we can all

1:03:27get around a lot easier on these wonderful Trails thank you thank you okay that's it okay with that um that that ends our presentations and we will move on to item five on our agenda which is adoption of the consent calendar can we pull item 5D please 5D Okay I uh move adoption of the consent

1:03:51calendar consisting of items five a b c e f g and H so go go ahead I get the motion thank you okay so the motion was by Friedman seconded by benassini to to move items a through H except for d all in favor please say I I in the opposition an abstention motion carries

1:04:18unanimously with that we'll go to item five D which is the I-80 Central Avenue operational Improvement project amendment number one it to the Cooperative agreement number 07w02 thank you mayor I don't know if Ivette Ortiz is here I pulled this item High event um I pulled this item just because it's

1:04:40of such importance and it's one of the transportation improvements that I think we've all been watching for a number of years and was brought up multiple times during the San Pablo Avenue specific plan process so I wanted to just give Yvette a quick moment to outline what

1:04:54the improvements are that um are the subject of this Cooperative agreement with uh um CCTA sorry is it CCTA in the city of Richmond yes the city of Richmond could you just describe for us what the improvements are and what kind of um there's a the staff report notes how many minutes

1:05:13Improvement we think we're going to see in terms of the delay reduction at that at those intersections correct the agreement Amendment before you is related to The Phase One improvements for the I-80 Central Avenue interchange Improvement project and the space one improvements are

1:05:30entitled to operational improvements and they consist of um electronic message signs and traffic signals so the goal or the the project will prohibit left turns from westbound Central onto the I-80 westbound on-ramps during the weekend Peak commute times or not commute but

1:05:53weekend peak hours between 11 A.M and 3 P.M which is bound to be the most congested period for Central it's worse than the regular weekday commute period so the project um the electronic message signs will then direct traffic Bound for I-80 West towards San Francisco to instead use the

1:06:16i-580 i-580 ramps in Richmond and um again using electronic message signs and the always stop signs at the two freeway ramps will be removed and replaced with traffic signals um the this operational Improvement is anticipated to reduce the travel time on Westbound Central by about 28 percent

1:06:41between San Pablo Avenue and Ryden road which is about two minutes on the average it will also reduce the eastbound travel time as estimated to reduce the eastbound travel time by about 13 or 30 seconds overall it will reduce the vehicle hours of delay during the weekend peak hours

1:07:02by 34 percent and in result in improved air quality because the idling of cars will be reduced it's a low-cost relatively low cost Improvement and will provide um immediate benefits part of the project involves a before and after study because it is an operational

1:07:22project that relies on motorists complying with message signs the CCTA El Cerrito and city um El Cerrito and Richmond will partner to monitor citations violations and collisions before and after to determine the effectiveness of the project and the idea would be then that it might

1:07:46be expanded to other times of the day it could be um once we determine the impacts Central Avenue and potentially the freeway um 580 Freeway Main Line excellent I'm I'm whenever I look at that 580 ramp that's kind of empty and I compare it with the 80 ramp I just feel

1:08:04like it's a public space that we could be using and could be used for circulation so I'm really excited to see how this implementation goes and with that I'm happy to move the item 5D for approval thank you Yvette second okay motion by benassini seconded by Friedman to move item five D all in

1:08:23favor please say aye aye aye in the opposition in the abstentions motion pairs unanimously um with that we'll move on to item six which is public hearings and um so we have a script for that and um there's going to be two public hearings the Integrated Waste Management

1:08:48fees and the East Bay um sanitary rates and the um that this item on the agenda will in uh involve first the staff will make a present one presentation after which the city council will initiate two separate public hearings the first public hearing involves proposed Integrated Waste

1:09:12Management fees the second public hearing is for East Bay sanitary collection disposal and processing rates the city council will provide an opportunity to hear testimony from the public regarding each item if you wish to speak and have not submitted a speaker slip to the city clerk please do

1:09:32so now remarks are limited to three minutes per person and then after everyone has had an opportunity to speak at each public hearing I will seek a motion to close the public hearing so let's go ahead and start with the staff presentation by Garth Schultz welcome

1:09:52thank you honorable mayor council members members of the public and viewers at home I'm Garth Schultz I'm the manager of the city's operations and environmental services division in the public works department and I oversee the city's recycling collection programs

1:10:07the recycling center the East Bay sanitary collection franchise agreement and our post collection agreement with Republic Services for disposal and processing of garbage and green waste and other materials um can you put the presentation please so the first of the two public hearings

1:10:29will conduct tonights on Integrated Waste Management fees these are fees set by the council to cover the city's recycling operations both the curbside collection programs which are a city owned and operated function city workers City trucks City containers picking up

1:10:45recyclables from residents and businesses here in El Cerrito it also funds the operations of the city's Recycling and environmental Resource Center you can see some of the details about the fees for this coming calendar year we are anticipating an eight percent increase

1:11:03in the amount of revenue generated from Integrated Waste Management fees collected from ratepayers this is specifically uh the the amount of this increases is eight percent partially because of an increase in vehicle maintenance costs resulting from a new agreement and a more appropriate level

1:11:22of maintenance for the city's recycling collection fee uh Vehicles you heard a presentation from me about this about a year ago and again this summer we've continue to be pleased with the level of service provided by Liberty Fleet care which is a subsidiary of East Bay

1:11:39sanitary company to help keep our recycling collection vehicles and other City Vehicles up and in good shape those vehicles are running 40 hours a week every day throughout the community and they they have wear and tear and they need constant attention so of that eight

1:11:54percent over four of it is specifically attributed to gaining Revenue lost my mic to cover the costs of the vehicle maintenance agreement the remaining portion is due to its standard increases for elements such as Staffing and other costs for the East Bay sanitary rates it's two

1:12:18main components and for these the council sets the maximum level that East Bay sanitary May charge one element is for the collection of the blue and the green containers uh collected at the curbside here in El Cerrito blue for garbage green for green waste and the

1:12:34collection rates are stipulated per the franchise agreement with East Bay sanitary it stipulates the specific formula for calculating an annual increase and it identifies the variables that will be considered and for this year that calculation resulted in a 3.5

1:12:52roughly 3.49 increase in the amount of Revenue required to keep the operation running the second component is a newer one that the council first adopted for um in this manner last year for the Post collection prior to last year the city would pass through collect

1:13:12post-collection rates stipulated by recycle more the West County integrative Waste Management Authority the so-called Earth rates those were set by the West County Integrated Waste Management board and then just passed through on East Bay sanitaries rates with the new

1:13:29post-collection agreement with Republic Services that the council adopted last year anticipating the expiration of the prior Earth agreement the council then sets the maximum post-collection rates that East Bay sanitary could directly charge to cover the costs of disposal of

1:13:45garbage and green waste construction and demolition material as well as other types of potential diversion opportunities for this year that's based on a calculated per ton rate of 30 93.40 slightly up from last year due to increases in governmental fees and CPI

1:14:05and over the years I've told this story a number of different times to the council but migration wherein subscribers for Solid Waste Services continue to select smaller and smaller container sizes over the year continues and the trend is really pretty astounding it continues to you see a

1:14:25shift in the blue line which is the 35 gallon cart the more standard size that we used to see here in El Cerrito and in many other communities that is either a standard size or a small size the number of subscribers using that type of can continues to drop the number of

1:14:40subscribers using the 20 gallon so-called mini can the cute little ones you see driving around the city it continues to Skyrocket and it's it's really unlike what we see in most other communities it's such a high portion of our residents utilizing these very small

1:14:57can sizes and things like the 64 gallon container you know really being in very endangered numbers in other communities you know throughout the county and throughout the Bay Area and elsewhere 64 is a standard size 96 is a standard size in terms of the number of gallons that people are

1:15:12putting out for their garbage collection every week and El Cerrito it's really you know continuing to diminish and that's a result of and you can kind of pinpoint exactly when it started to happen in 2009 2010 2011 increases in our curbside collection programs through

1:15:28single stream increases in our diversion from green waste when we brought in food scraps to the collection program we moved the collection for green waste from bi-weekly to every week and we just continue to provide additional diversion opportunities to our community and they

1:15:44continue to react accordingly foreign collection and post-collection rates and Integrated Waste Management fees combined you can see the green column here that's the proposed total monthly cost that rate pairs would see for the various container sizes compared to the

1:16:06prior year based upon both of the proposed rate categories or all three rate categories this evening they're moderate increases for residential it's on the order of about three and a half percent to high threes for the monthly rates that residents pay for commercial it's a

1:16:26little bit more between about five and a five and a half percent increase largely due to the fact that commercial continues to be the largest sector with potential for diverting materials both in terms of the sheer amount that the commercial sector including large

1:16:40multi-family dispose of the amount of cross-contamination between their streams and we just know that there's continued opportunity there from field observations conducted both by East Bay sanitary staff as well as our City municipal staff one point of note in terms of how these

1:16:58rates are calculated they're calculated based on Revenue requirements to keep the operations whole from East Bay sanitaries franchise agreement the way that annualized index that stipulated in the franchise agreement gets applied is to the overall amount of Revenue that

1:17:14they need to run the operation similar for Integrated Waste Management when the budget for the city's recycling programs is presented to the council presents Revenue figures projected for the year and then the post collection agreement is handled the same way so what we end

1:17:30up doing is translating those Revenue requirements to keep the operations whole and functioning into the individual container rates that you saw in the prior slide I I like the story this slide tells which is that the revenue amounts collected year over year from most of

1:17:46these operations have you know they've fluctuated but they've also been relatively stable if you look at East Bay sanitary's collection uh revenues over the last seven years the Top Line in blue um it had a significant dip and it's back up to Prior levels but you haven't

1:18:04seen an overall Grand increase and the amount of Revenue they're collecting for disposal we've seen disposal costs drop as a result of the new post-collection agreement and the expiration of the old Earth agreement last year the city's recycling programs do continue to

1:18:20collect more Revenue to fund additional programs and I mentioned some of the changes to recycling programs we've seen over the course of the last seven or eight years but it's been essentially replacement of everything we do and provide to our residents and our

1:18:34business in the city including the well-renowned recycling center and there have been some changes to the franchise fee that the city receives to the general fund as a result of the rates as well overall what is proposed to you tonight for the Integrated Waste Management fee East Bay

1:18:52Sands collection rates and their post-collection rates is a continuation of what the council has directed and what we've been able to implement here as staff for good diversion programs in the city it's working it's continuing we're continuing to reduce the amount of

1:19:07tons sent to landfill in the city green waste composting recycling figures continue to climb and we have a high level of service ratings from the community overall so that concludes my limit to the presentation if you have questions for me before you do the public hearings I'm happy to take

1:19:24them now okay so are there any questions um let's see this is just looking at the instructions here so the um so the first hearing this is where we break it up as I understand it um the first public hearing will be on the Integrated Waste Management fees are there any comments or questions from the

1:19:47council um I have one couple questions first question I have is about business Outreach um our staff was doing a pretty nice job with that do you are you seeing that we've made some impact on the recycling efforts primarily yes you do when you conduct your visits and your Outreach

1:20:09um my you know 10 to 15 years of experience in the solid waste field working with businesses and multi-family indicates that you you see a change initially but over time the unless there's a strong figure within a business organization an advocate a strong owner a strong manager who really

1:20:28wants to continue those programs they tend to fall off over time a new manager comes in a new owner comes in staff changes over the signs get taken down and so those are applications of Education that need to be repeated again and again in order to maintain high

1:20:42levels of participation so we do see a changes overall when we visit we've got continued work both by East Bay sanitary as a part of their franchise agreement to reach out to businesses and multi-family our own staff do that as well especially in conjunction with

1:20:59Outreach about the single-use bag ordinance and the EPS foam ordinance so we do we do see impacts but there's still more to done there that's it's it's a sector that requires constant attention and in order to keep things from dropping back down we have enough staff to actually do that now or we have

1:21:17we have some uh I you know I think ideally to to have better and better participation we we would see more folks out there um you know one of the other elements that other communities have employed over time is is making that mandatory uh for commercial and multi-family and the

1:21:35state has made it mandatory for commercial and multi-family achieving certain thresholds of disposal but it doesn't stipulate what happens if they don't meet it so that is one opportunity that's out there that would achieve greater levels of diversion from those

1:21:48sectors so our increase this year for the the small 20 gallon will be about under 15 for the year yes um and I think our residents still have the capacity to you have free access to the Hazardous site down in Richmond is that that's correct so every ratepayer residential

1:22:10rate pair in the city does have access to the inner the household hazardous waste Authority facility located on Richmond at 101 Pittsburgh Avenue as well as satellite collection of certain types of hazardous waste at the recycling center including CFLs and Bulbs right

1:22:27and um and I've been down there and they're actually really really helpful um and then our residents also still get on an annual basis they get a free pickup of a larger amount it's actually that that was a there's even more than that so it was expanded when the council

1:22:43extended the franchise agreement with East Bay stand that stipulated some of the terms of the rate changes so now residents in El Cerrito can get one free on-call pickup of trash one free on-call pickup of green waste and I believe it's two free on-call pickups of electronic

1:22:59waste thank you thank you and lastly I think if you're I don't know of a certain age I don't know what the qualifier if it's 60 or 65 that I think they'll come to your house for hazard or hazardous pickup correct through the West County Integrated Waste Management

1:23:16Authority recycle more if you're elderly or disabled and believe it is over 65 for Elder elderly qualification you can request a mobile pickup of all types of hazardous waste from your home you simply call the phone number and if you call the recycling center at

1:23:34510-215-4350 we can provide you with the information I don't have the other number memorized and they'll they'll make arrangements for a pickup from your home for that material yeah I think those are really nice additional benefits that we get so that's all I had

1:23:48thank you thank you thank you just just one um tagging on to what council member Bridges was asking about which is the sort of various goals we have for Waste reduction that are codified not only in our climate action plan but I think we have other documents that note what kind

1:24:05of waste reduction we want for the landfill or is it only I believe it's just the question okay um I are there any Integrated Waste Management Programs that you want to highlight that are sort of working in conjunction towards those goals that maybe we haven't heard about in a while

1:24:20I we talked about the commercial Outreach that I think was part of East Bay sanitary's rate setting last year in multi-family outreach are there any other items you want to talk about there hasn't been any substantial change in the last couple of years since the

1:24:34reopening of the recycling and environmental Resource Center I mean the main elements are the commercial Outreach and multi-family Outreach to continue to encourage them to participate in the recycling programs and sign some up for the Greenways programs and we see the Greenways to

1:24:49composting figures continue to climb a few hundred tons a year which is great other substantial changes just haven't been available yet it's been essentially kind of a reset period since the completion of the post the post-collection agreement in the recycling center there are opportunities

1:25:06on the horizon and they're not really available for prime time yet one of them is a dry waste collection opportunity which is something that was adopted there's rates for it and it's the same rate as garbage in the post-collection agreement that there will be an

1:25:21opportunity to work with East Bay sanitary and Republic Services to specifically Target large generators of waste large multi-family and large commercial who might have a difficulty participating in the three sort system garbage green waste and recycling and need something a

1:25:39bit simpler which just simply dry or wet it hasn't been ready to roll off the ground yet there will be a significant amount of lead time to get there one other key opportunity will be hopefully bringing more hazardous waste collection opportunities directly to the recycling

1:25:55center as a satellite of the Richmond facility collection so those are some of the opportunities on the Horizon as well as just continuing to provide the Outreach to the community about what we do have available we hear daily at the counter at the center and over the phone

1:26:10that folks you know need to know and want to know more about the services that are offered so they can continue to take advantage of them thank you thank you do you have any comments I do I mean questions yeah this this increase of between I think you said three and a

1:26:26half percent for uh residential and up to five and a half percent for commercial is greater than uh the the traditional cost of living increase over the last year and if I heard your testimony correctly it's partly due to the fact that our costs will not necessarily increasing much is being

1:26:45distributed over a smaller quantity of waste because we're doing our job in reducing waste and that's why on a percentage basis it's gone up more than the cost of living that is essentially correct yes it's distributed both over a smaller quantity of waste but also over

1:27:01decreasing can sizes as anyone who's called up to change their can size no you get a a rate savings when you decrease from a 60 to a 35 or a 35 to over 20 and that is that's great for the rate pair but in terms of meeting the bottom line need for Revenue to sustain

1:27:18the operations you're in up it's the same effect as Shifting the rates over a smaller tonnage basis and that's because the cost of putting a driver in a truck and having that truck drive on the street every week is essentially the same regardless of how much waste they

1:27:33pick up right unless we were to decrease waste you know you know simultaneously by 50 city-wide in which case there would be other potential options open to us right for example we could go to picking garbage up every other week since uh most of the the putrids are

1:27:48going into the green waste which is getting picked up every week we could conceivably you know change our services not that I'm proposing that because there are people who have needs to get rid of waste a significant amount of waste every week but that is that's one

1:28:02way we could conceivably uh get a rate savings is by changing our services but as long as we want the services where they are it we are looking at a a greater than uh increase then what would be the cost of living on an individual rate basis yes that's correct absolutely although the

1:28:20overall amount of Revenue covering the services is more in line with the cost of living adjustment correct correct that and that was shown very well in in your last graph thank you thank you okay I think we're now ready to open the public hearing so we'll do that and do

1:28:36we have any speaker slips I have no speaker slips or any member of the public who would like to speak on this item okay seeing none a move that we close the public hearing second okay it's motioned by benassini seconded by Friedman to close the public hearing all

1:28:53in favor please say aye aye aye the opposition or abstention motion carries unanimously and we have closed the public hearing um now we bring it back to the council are there any additional comments from the council no okay then is there a motion I move to adopt a resolution setting

1:29:14rates for the Integrated Waste Management fees as identified in the enacting Clause of the resolution effective January 1st 2015. second okay there's a motion by Friedman seconded by benassini all in favor please say aye aye aye seconded by Bridges oh I'm sorry Bridges sorry somebody down

1:29:35here it was a B on the left side let me start that all over motion by Friedman seconded by Bridges all in favor please say aye aye any opposition in the abstention motion cares unanimously um Now we move on to the other item public hearing two which is um okay public hearing on the East Bay

1:29:59sanitary garbage and green waste collection disposal and processing rates and we will begin this and um are there any comments or questions on this from the council no none okay then it's time to hear from the public I have no speaker slips okay so I think we need to go through the

1:30:24formality I move we closing public here I have to open it first Shucks I know we're trying to be efficient but we open the public hearing and are there any public speakers no speakers okay and are there any speakers who haven't signed up okay uh so now you can do that

1:30:44I moved it close to public hearing second okay motion by Friedman seconded by Bridges all in favor of closing the public hearing say aye aye aye any opposition any abstention motion carries unanimously so now we bring it back to the council are there any additional

1:31:02comments or questions can I just make one comment and that is when you were making your um comment Mr Schultz about the many touches you have to make on the multi-family or the other the commercial types of users um I want to just kind of give a word of encouragement to just keep doing what

1:31:18you're doing because I can remember a time very shortly not not long ago when recycling glass and aluminum wasn't uh conventional and wasn't something that everybody does and it's just amazing how far we've come even even within our own city of our single stream recycling

1:31:35everybody knows what generally what to put in there and there's just astonishment if you don't put cardboard in the right place so the many touches that you're doing I think even though it seems like you have to keep doing it over and over again to the same and

1:31:48potential apartment managers slowly it's sinking in and I think as we do public education with the schools as well this is just many of these things are going to become very rote and you'll will be educating them on even more advanced Recycling and green waste collection

1:32:02efforts in the next 10 years so please do keep doing what you're doing thank you for that and I would like to Echo that and say that members of the community can have an impact in the same way by asking and encouraging that of their multi-family managers or the

1:32:14businesses that they frequent if they don't see it available bringing it up and mentioning it and seeing it saying it would be something they'd like to see thank you for putting that back on us and Mr Schultz before you leave the podium I think this I suspect this is

1:32:27the last item you'll be bringing before this Council Before you depart and I want to thank you for all of your excellent work on not only our Solid Waste and Recycling but all of your excellent work for the city on many topics and and your contributions to recycle more and all of the assistant

1:32:47since you provided recycle more in getting the new contractors selected so I want to take this opportunity to thank you thank you I appreciate it and I've very much enjoyed all my time here thank you yeah [Applause] and I would like to join in and also uh thank you for the for your time spent

1:33:10here I have really enjoyed working with you and I wish you the very best in the future you're going to miss us true thank you okay so um let's see now is there I believe we have not yet voted no or maybe not made the motion yet right right so is there a motion I move

1:33:28to adopt a resolution establishing maximum monthly rates that East Bay sanitary company May charge for services provided by the company as identified in the enacting Clause of the resolution effective January 1st 2015. second okay um there's a motion by benassini

1:33:45seconded by Lyman all in favor please say aye aye any opposition any abstention motion cares unanimously okay so with that we will move on to item seven on the agenda which is a study session to provide policy Direction regarding membership in the Marin clean energy Community Choice aggregation

1:34:08joint Powers agency good evening mayor Abelson and members of the council my name is Maria Sanders and I am an environmental analyst in the Community Development Department uh joining me today is going to be Don Weiss who's the executive officer of marine clean energy which is otherwise

1:34:46known as Marin or MCE or MCE clean energy and MCE is a joint Powers Authority that operates a Regional Community Choice aggregation program they'd be cure electricity and provide related energy programs for all jurisdictions in Marin County unincorporated Napa County the city of

1:35:09Richmond and more recently the cities of San Pablo and Benicia and throughout this presentation we may be referring to Community Choice aggregation as CCA [Applause] so tonight we would like to share with you the results of a membership analysis that was conducted by MCE for the city

1:35:33and to seek policy direction from city council regarding whether or not we should be joining MCE for the benefits of the audience and the council members who are familiar with CCA who are not familiar with CCA and MCE Don will provide a quick primer on how ccas work

1:35:54and the programs and services of MCE as well as the results of the membership analysis and then I'll go into some potential risks and other issues to consider regarding joining MCE and finally we'd like to open it up and get the policy direction from Council regarding the questions that are listed

1:36:15here and I'll be reiterating these questions at the end of the presentation foreign first a little background during the development of the city's climate action plan participation in the CCA emerged as one of the most cost effective ways to significantly reduce greenhouse gas

1:36:35emissions and Don will be going over this a little bit more during her presentation the city council was first introduced to Marine clean energy and the concept of cca's back in October of 2012 when staff from MCE as well as the city of Richmond discussed their

1:36:57expansion in Richmond that gave a presentation on that at that time MC was also beginning to create a policy to govern if they were to expand into other communities so in 2013 the board of directors adopted a new policy that formalized criteria and the process by

1:37:22which new new communities outside of Marin County could seek membership and then leading into Earth hour 2014 City staff received a number of requests from residents of El Cerrito to participate in the World Wildlife funds Earth hour city challenge and that included a grant two cities to

1:37:46investigate participation in a CCA that was a national Grant or it was a national competition and we applied and were awarded that Grant last April and this gave us this funds to start the process meanwhile uh the eqc is also heard hosted several public study sessions on

1:38:09Community Choice aggregation and that it accumulated in a or culminated in the eqc recommending uh that the city council consider invest or request that MCE investigate membership so finally last July city council adopted a resolution requesting that MCE conduct the

1:38:31membership analysis and that you also accepted the World Wildlife Fund Grant so now I'll hand it over to Don to discuss CCA and MCE and the results of the analysis okay thank you very much it's a pleasure to be here this evening and I'm going to run through this briefly I'm happy to

1:38:59answer questions um whenever they come up or at the end and um the first thing I wanted to start with is just giving you an overview of where CCA or Community Choice is available in other states thank you okay it's a this map is giving you a sense of where CCA is already available in other states

1:39:20around the U.S some of these CCA programs have been up and running since the late 90s California enabled Community Choice in 2002 through legislative action and MCE is the first CCA program that got up and running since that legislation was adopted but since our launch there's been a second

1:39:41CCA program Sonoma clean power that launched in May of this year and there will soon be a third CCA launching in the city of Lancaster they expect to begin serving customers in May of next year the way that Community Choice works is that the local government agency becomes

1:39:59the power purchaser for their Community we provide the generation service but the transmission and distribution continues to be provided through the existing incumbent investor-owned utility in our case PG e so we work in partnership with PG e to get the power delivered to you and we serve all sorts

1:40:20of customers residential Municipal commercial and Industrial this gives you a little sense of our history we formed our agency in 2008 we began serving customers in 2010 we currently have a 145 000 customers planned for 2015 and this includes the service that we provide in Marin

1:40:42Richmond and then the service we will be providing in unincorporated Napa County in February and then the enrollment we'll be doing in San Pablo in May of next year I've already seen a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions that is significant and kind of going back to

1:41:00the reason that we formed this organization it was a lot of work it took a lot of time and effort and it was really intended to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and we've seen a lot of success in that area I've also seen some customer savings which has been a nice

1:41:15side benefit in 2014 5.9 million dollars in customer savings for um all of our customers and it's been especially useful for our schools the West Contra Costa Unified School District is saving 64 000 this year alone the city of Richmond is saving uh 36 thousand dollars this year alone and we

1:41:40have similar examples of other Municipal and individual customers as well our board is made up of one representative from each City in town and each County that we serve in our service territory so we currently have 15 members sitting on our board each official is a government official

1:42:01that's designated by their local government this agency is in charge of overseeing rates public power sources power supply contracts and other policies and we also have compliance obligations with the California Public Utilities Commission we have to comply with the renewable

1:42:22portfolio standard and engage in reporting to the California energy commission as well so customers in our service territory have four choices they can continue to get their generation supplied by PG e that product is currently 22 renewable and about 20 percent of the customers in

1:42:44our service territory have chosen to stay with PG e for their generation Supply the default option for customers is this next one shown here which is called light green it's 50 renewable content it comes in at a cost currently that's cheaper than the PG e option I'll show

1:43:02you a cost comparison in a couple of slides and for customers that don't make a choice this is what they receive and then we offer a 100 renewable product called Deep green this one cost one cent more per kilowatt hour so for an average residential customer that's

1:43:17about five dollars a month extra for that product the final product shown here is a new offering that um we're just now taking sign ups for it's called local Soul it's a 100 local solar option and it will be the first project that we're building for local Seoul is at an Old Quarry site

1:43:38in Novato in the northern part of our service territory it will be online in March or April and we are accepting up to 200 customers for that program if we see a lot of interest we'll be expanding it to other facilities in our service territory foreign this gives you a sense of where our

1:43:58power supply comes from you can see that we have geothermal power coming from the Calpine area there we have some landfill waste to energy that's what the little green Flames are indicating there we have a number of those coming from one from Solano County one from Placer County one

1:44:17in the Roseville area the little Sun icons are showing you where we have solar installations being built some of the solar icons in the Central Valley area are fairly large we have a 23 megawatt tracking solar facility that will be up and running by March of next

1:44:34year we have a 30 megawatt solar facility also in the Central Valley and then another 20 megawatt solar facility being built for our customers a little bit of small hydroelectric coming from the tridam area and then you can see some Powers coming from the um the

1:44:52Western Northeast there Washington and Oregon and those are more of our short and medium term contracts that are three to five years in length are long-term contracts 20 25 year contracts are for california-based Renewables because those are the ones we want to keep in

1:45:11our portfolio for the Long Haul our projects create a lot of union labor when they're being built and also in the maintenance of the projects you can see on the top left there is one of the jobs where we're building a lot of solar in Kern County they have about 350 workers

1:45:29on site right now but if you put together all the all the workers all the jobs being created by our current projects under development we're up around 700 right now with a lot of Union work hours that we're keeping track of oh and I forgot to mention that we also

1:45:45have a Wind Facility that we just entered into a contract for that's going to be a 99 megawatt facility coming online for us next year this gives you a sense of some of the local projects that we have in our portfolio or in the process of being built you can see quite a few solar

1:46:02installations that are in the works the centerfel solar installation has been up and running since 2012 but all the other ones that you see here are currently in the process of getting developed and aren't yet online the picture on the bottom left there is showing the

1:46:19installation in San Rafael that that went in in 2012 and um happy to talk about these others but I won't go into too much detail although it's tempting because we're really excited about all these local projects getting built they're all about one megawatt in size

1:46:34um the two exceptions just real briefly are at the Chevron Refinery we have access through a land lease to 60 acres of land and we'll be able to put 12 megawatts of solar at that facility that'll be going up in about 18 months and then the little green flame there

1:46:51is a a landfill gas to energy facility that has been flaring methane for many many years so we're very excited to have that turned into some energy creation instead we have a feed-in tariff that allows anyone in our service territory to sell power to us at a fixed price for

1:47:13a 20-year term and that's where many of these projects are coming from and as we expand into Napa and Benicia I should say we'll expect to see more little Suns and other icons popping up there as well this is a residential cost comparison and there's a lot of numbers here that

1:47:31um basically the bottom line is that the MCE light green product is the lowest cost option and you'll notice here that customers are paying a delivery fee that's the top row the delivery fee is the same no matter which choice you pick and that's because that's the that's a

1:47:51cost that you pay directly to PG e customers still get their bill from PG e and that line item doesn't change the generation line item is where you see the differential there so the PG E Generation rate is shown 46.75 for a month the light green cost is about six dollars less

1:48:11the Deep green cost actually is a little bit less you'll see the local the MCE local Soul program is a pretty significant increase in cost and that really reflects the cost of building a local product but what we're doing with that product is passing through the feed and tariff

1:48:32price that we pay the developer for 20 years so the customer will receive a fixed price not to exceed price of 14.2 cents for 20 years as long as they stay in the program so it's a nice way for customers that live under the trees or rent and aren't able to invest in their

1:48:50own solar to get into a fixed cost situation by signing up for our local Soul program I also want to explain briefly the PG e fees because although those are fees that customers pay to PG e if they start taking power from us those fees are part of the bottom line so we include them

1:49:10here so that customers can really see what the bottom line cost comparison is I can get into those fees if there are questions about them but they are just the simple explanation is that they are for PG need to recover any above market cost of power that they made on the

1:49:27customer's behalf before they depart from PG E Generation service but you can see that after those fees are added in customers are still paying less with light green but they're paying a little more with deep green so that's often a part of the decision for a customer

1:49:44this is just showing you what a customer bill looks like if they are with MCE it really looks the same the only difference is that the um there's a line item for generation and instead of PG New Generation what shows up there at the top is MCE generation it's really

1:50:01hard to see it I apologize but there's a little green circle or green square around that showing the MCE electric generation charges that's what changes there's also a detail page that you can see right here that gives the breakdown just as PG e would give a detailed breakdown of the

1:50:20generation charges we do the same thing this customer happens to be a deep green customer so they pay that one cent per kilowatt hour premium which adds about five dollars to their bill this is a commercial cost comparison it's structured in the same way the difference is that the rates are a

1:50:40little a little upset a little bit different commercial customers are seeing a bit higher savings with us than a residential customers and in some cases the cost of deep green is actually less than PG e we had a one of our cities the city of Sausalito last week voted to switch they had been

1:51:04with PG e they had been sort of a holdout City waiting to make sure the program would would work well before they decided where they wanted their Municipal load to get their power from and last week realized they had been paying quite a bit more with PG e for the last year and a half and decided

1:51:19they were going to go for deep green because it costs less than PG e so that's exciting to see that and we've seen some of our other local government agencies make that choice to help with their greenhouse gas reductions and part of the reason that we're able to offer lower rates that I should say

1:51:37we don't guarantee or promise to always have lower rates there have been times when PG E's rates have been a bit lower ours have been lower for for a little over a year for um for all customers but um we're not for profit agency or local government agency much like the city of

1:51:55El Cerrito we don't have to pay shareholder profits and so any Revenue that comes into the agency is reinvested in Energy Efficiency programs low-income solar rebate programs and keeping rates low for customers and now I'll talk a little bit about some of those programs our Energy

1:52:13Efficiency program is also funded through a 4.1 million dollar allocation from the California Public Utilities Commission we applied for that funding and have statutory authority to receive funds from the California Public Utilities Commission and to run programs

1:52:33that that reach untapped sectors in our community for Energy Efficiency we are currently focusing on the multi-family sector and we have an on-bill repayment program that'll that is available not just to multi-family but also residential and Commercial customers to do deep

1:52:51retrofits in their building and Achieve higher ghg savings and cost savings over time um we also offer we also have a residential and Commercial component to our program which I'm happy to talk more about if there are any questions we also have a rebate program that is in

1:53:12that is set up to create incentives for local installations and drive demand for more jobs for solar installations as well but our board made a decision about a year and a half ago to shift our rebate program to really focus on low-income customers because what we're seeing is that higher income

1:53:34customers that we're probably going to do solar anyway we're taking advantage of these small rebates and getting a little icing on the cake and we thought it'd be better to incentivize installations that may not otherwise happen so we've been working with grid alternatives to help identify care

1:53:49customers and low-income customers that are interested in solar and needed need help Bridging the Gap to get to the dollars needed to make an installation happen and we've seen a lot of success in that program and we're able to offer quite a few rebates particularly in the city of Richmond

1:54:08last year that got some solar on rooftops that we think may not have happened otherwise we also have a pretty generous net energy metering program for so for anyone on the council or in the audience that is currently acting as a net energy metering customer with PG e their their status as a nums

1:54:29customer would Auto automatically transition as an MCE customer and they would con continue to receive the same benefit but would receive a little bit extra we have a couple of nuances with our nems program we allow customers to get paid and get cashed out if they

1:54:47generate more energy than they use we look at how much our customers have accrued in credits at the end of our fiscal year and for anyone over a hundred dollars we email them a check and allow them to to cash that out for customers that are under a hundred dollars those just carry over they never

1:55:05zero out as as they do currently from nem's customers and people that are only served by PG e um we also pay one cent per kilowatt hour extra for folks that generate more than they use because that seems fair since they're deep green customers pay that extra one cent

1:55:23I have a couple of other local programs I'll touch on quickly we have um we've helped install electric vehicle charging stations at some of our Municipal facilities we're working with Tesla on a stationary battery pilot storage program to help some of our commercial customers and and other

1:55:42public entities reduce demand charges during peak hours and we're working with bidgeley and Schneider Electric on demand control programs that help reduce demand during peak hours we also partner with the Marine green Business program and their green Business program and provide some

1:56:01funding to that as well because we have aligned interests um a couple of comments on the membership analysis that we conducted for the city of El Cerrito we found that there would be a net benefit to providing service in El Cerrito and that's really the litmus test that's required by our board to

1:56:24determine whether or not to move forward with membership in a new community we didn't see a dramatic impact budget wise but the good news is that we didn't see a negative impact and that's really the main thing we have to look for the other thing that our board looks for

1:56:42is would we see a greenhouse gas reduction savings because that really is our mission is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions get more Renewables onto the grid and get more Energy Efficiency programs in place and what we found is that there would in fact be an increase

1:56:56in renewable energy consumption of around 16 000 megawatt hours annually which adds up over time and also a 5 million pound annual ghg reduction which again adds up over time and those things are important to our board as well in determining whether the expansion makes

1:57:13sense this gives you a sense of the breakdown of accounts and the annual energy use in each sector these were some of the factors that we looked at in our analysis and I should mention that the assumptions in this analysis were tied you know there's a timing factor that is

1:57:37a part of the analysis we were making the assumption that service would commence in May 2015. and we're also looking at current market costs that's probably the one variable that is subject to the most change when we do this type of analysis because Market costs can change

1:57:56from time to time that's something that is is an important factor and if there were to be a delay in moving forward we would really need to reassess that particularly that piece before determining whether to move forward or not we also made the assumption that we would see a

1:58:15participation rate similar to the other communities that we've enrolled in about a 20 percent opt-out rate 80 participation rate um those are some of the key highlights so um now just to talk briefly um this is my last Slide by the way so I'm almost done here um the membership process so

1:58:38um these are the um the recommended next steps if the council does want to move forward the first reading of the ordinance and the second reading of the ordinance and I should mention that you all will be following closely behind Benicia they just did the first reading of their

1:58:54ordinance about two weeks ago and their final reading was tonight so um I I I'd like to mention also that as as our board has received a lot of requests for for membership from nearby communities we we want to ensure that we're providing more greenhouse gas reductions

1:59:16and and we're getting more Renewables onto the grid but we also want to ensure that we do a very thorough job of um uh working with new communities in a slow diligent and incremental way so that we can do a lot of public Outreach and we did a our Mass enrollment in

1:59:36Richmond we had over 100 meetings that that were held in Richmond the Chambers of Commerce houses of worship homeowners associations schools workshops that we hosted in multiple languages workshops that we jointly hosted with the city and that was really important we also created a community

1:59:57advisory committee that helped us determine where the best places were for us to do Outreach which groups and Community leaders we need to be particularly reaching out to and ensure they were informed and this is important because customers need to be able to make a choice during the enrollment

2:00:14period we are we are not currently taking any membership requests where we we are happy to kind of see El Cerrito through to the end um this year but we will be shifting our Focus uh as of 2015 to the enrollment in the new communities that have just joined and our board will be revisiting

2:00:37any potential expansion to other communities um about a year from now so um that's a little bit about the process and without unhappy to answer any questions are there any questions from Mark um as you have branched out well beyond Marin have you given thought to changing the name to

2:00:58Bay Area clean energy yeah funny you should ask that and I just realized I was supposed to turn it over to Maria but let me go ahead and take that question um when Richmond joined we had a lot of um a lot of discussion about our name and we're actually we had an another uh

2:01:17issue with our name because when we launched the name of our board was Marin Energy Authority the name of our program was Marin clean energy that created a lot of confusion and the pr folks told us that the word Authority isn't a very good word to use when you have a

2:01:32community-based program so um we we thought a lot about what was the right name and because we had been serving the community already for three years there were concerns about completely abandoning the name and that that brand recognition that we'd worked really hard to achieve

2:01:52um would be lost and we'd kind of have to start from scratch so we decided to do instead was to de-emphasize the word and and to really go with the MCE logo you know we see PG e frequently so it's kind of a similar acronym usage and so in all of our Outreach from that time

2:02:13forward you'll see MCE is really the the term that we use we don't try to hide the word Moran if folks ask what it stands for but it's really not the focus of our Outreach because we want the community to own this program and so we often use the word my community my my

2:02:27energy choice and that seems to resonate well with the community one more question how are you financing your Alternative Energy generation projects the solar installations biomass etc etc well we since our launch we have purchased power through Power purchase agreements we do not yet own assets we

2:02:54are in the process of developing the first two projects that we do intend to own and one of these is the um the one at the Richmond Refinery the other one we're actually looking at two locations for the other one but at this time the the power that we're purchasing is really just funded through

2:03:14rate revenue from customers and um and it's not power supply that we yet own thank you yeah nope before you leave Dawn sorry okay we can we're gonna take um questions afterwards okay but it's quite fine I mean we're gonna I just wanted to get through maybe about uh 10 more

2:03:33minutes of presentation on the risk assessments and then we could open it up but if you wanted to continue asking questions and then I can present later proceed okay let's see um so um before uh closing the presentations I'll summarize um the primary risks and benefits of joining uh MCE mce's

2:04:01presentation does a good job of covering the benefits to customers and joining MCE but from a policy perspective I'd like to reiterate a couple mce's low carbon electricity provides its member governments with cost-effective greenhouse gas emissions reductions if El Cerrito were to join

2:04:21we'd expect an immediate ghg reduction benefit of 2500 tons per year with the reductions potentially and supposedly getting larger as we get closer to our 2020 reduction goal and to provide perspective on how large this is I've just recently completed our inventory

2:04:44for 2012 for community-wide ghg emissions and I'm planning on bringing that back to you soon but I'm really happy to report that since 2005 the community has been reducing greenhouse gas emissions by approximately 1.5 percentage points per year and getting power from MCE would provide

2:05:06another 1.7 percent in reductions and that more than doubles our current rate so we'd be going closer to 3.2 percent reductions per year if we joined given that the World Wildlife Fund Grant is funding the bulk of the cost of the membership analysis the city's investment of approximately 3

2:05:31000 to get such large reductions is extremely cost effective um MC's membership was would also provide the city with greater local control over power supply decisions and rate setting though that would be limited to the electricity generation rates the transmission and distribution

2:05:54portion of our bills would still be set by PG e and finally MCE also introduces competition into El Cerrito's energy Marketplace and gives the city as well as its citizens more choice and Energy Services so with the opt-out system any customer can stay with the PG e programs

2:06:15and or they could opt for other types of renewable energy generation uh regarding the risk we've provided several analyzes that were recently completed for the city of Benicia and their process and their findings are on the findings of these assessments are also pertinent to El Cerrito

2:06:36they discuss in detail various legal and financial risks that could should be considered and the Davis so I'll start with the Davis Wright Tremaine letter this discusses the legal risk to the city if it were to become a member in terms of our insulation from any of

2:06:55mce's debts and liabilities and so at this time I'd like the City attorney to elaborate a little bit more on that thanks Maria um as the council is likely aware um the state law that governs the formation of joint Powers authorities provides that when a jpa is formed the agreement

2:07:15can state that the debts liabilities and obligations of the jpa will be separate from those of the member agencies that form the joint Powers Authority at the time that the Marine Energy Authority was created the the agreement did include such a provision so at that first level the debts

2:07:34liabilities and obligations of MCE are separate from those of each of the cities and the counties that are that are members of it but the but there are also questions raised at that time about whether or not there were any limits on that separation of liability of the jpa

2:07:48from the members and there were two potential theories identified one is a carve out in state law that states that when a jpa is formed if there is negligence in the performance of the agreement then the members of the uh of the jpa can nevertheless be um held accountable for a share of any

2:08:10liability that's created as a result of that negligence and the other is um the the derives from the general concept of the alter ego theory that applies in in the corporate setting which holds that under certain circumstances um where whereas normally the corporate

2:08:32setting insulates the individuals in a corporation from liability there are instances in which the courts and and some statutes have recognized that um wrongful acts of the corporation should allow for what's sometimes referred to as piercing of the corporate veil to hold the individual owners of

2:08:50the corporation liable despite that that separation and that's often referred to as the alter ego Theory and there is some basis to believe that that same Theory could be used in the gapa setting to um for somebody who wanted to pursue litigation against um MCE and its members to hold the

2:09:10members liable for um wrongful acts of the the jpa I will say that the that the hurdles for um for successfully alleging an alter ego Theory are fairly high but these are the risks that were identified at the time um regarding this issue of of individual public agency liability for risks and

2:09:34created by the GPA itself so two things were were done to address that as I understand it that first the jpa agreement itself contains an indemnification provision so that MCE agrees to indemnify and defend all of the members so that in the event of a case of an allegation like this they

2:09:56would provide the defense and they would assume as much of the liability as they could and second there was discussion of MCE obtaining a fairly significant amount of insurance to um to provide a source of coverage for those risks and it's my understanding that it has obtained such insurance I

2:10:16don't know the details but it's my understanding that that such a policy is in place so between the two there's a significant reduction in the risks to the city of El Cerrito and the other public agency members of the jpa but as stated on the slide there's potential

2:10:31risk there it hasn't been entirely eliminated but it has been reduced and so yeah have any questions about the legal aspects of this I'm happy to take them as part of the overall questions about uh about this process great how many joint Powers authorities does

2:10:49the city currently participating in okay do we hear the answer the city manager is going to count and and get back to you about that one he's taking his shoes off now okay um thank you um continuing on the risk um the Mr here let's go um the mrw study which is attachment

2:11:21three assess a broad range of marketplace and Regulatory factors that create risk for MCE participants the main underlying question as I I saw it was um in the assessment is how these risks will ultimately affect electricity rates for MCE customers and for those of you who are

2:11:44particularly interested in the key factors that determine why our electricity's rates fluctuate in just in any normal Market there's a really good description of you know starting on page 23 um really interesting stuff on nuclear power plants droughts and and natural

2:12:00gas spikes but it's a good narrative that kind of fills in a lot of information and if I can accurately summarize um like the legal risk the risks regarding MCS electricity rates is greatest if there were a significant type of significant disruption in the electricity Marketplace kind of like

2:12:23what we might have seen and you know during the energy crisis however the assessment concludes that under normal circumstances it's reasonable to assume that on average mte's rates will remain competitive with PG E's and the risk of not being competitive um really declines

2:12:43over time as MCE secures a larger percentage from renewable sources and as the exit fees or PG e exit fees decline mrw's assessment also provides on some useful information regarding other things like mce's organizational competence which they assess as sound and what would happen to service if MCE

2:13:08were to collapse which they say would result in a real service disruptions to customers as there's a process to transition them back into PG e and also they discussed what would happen to the city's utility users tax and the franchise fees which would be calculated

2:13:27the same and still be remitted to the City by PG e so to conclude we'd like to end with these three questions to council should the city continue pursuing membership in MCE and if yes should we join by the end of the year in order to make mce's 2015 procurement cycle and are there any

2:13:54other areas that the city would like us to further investigate um and if the city desires us to bring MCE membership back in order to make the 2015 cycle then the next steps were outlined here under next steps will and you'll note that we'll be doing two Community processes

2:14:15um one that would be driven by by El Cerrito staff and that's prior to any of the public hearings to consider the the CCA ordinance to join MCE this one would happen over the upcoming month and it's meant to solicit Community input on the potential to join MCE um and then um Don already outlined the

2:14:41process that they would go through after uh we joined in terms of educating the community on um and uh on CCA and the rights to opt out so with that I'd like to open it up to questions and thank you for your time I have one more to finish mine I know this slide yeah please leave that one up

2:15:04um so under this scenario we wouldn't have the second reading until January 6 would that still qualify us to be part of the 2015 procurement cycle that was my understanding yes it's cutting it really close it's not what we had hoped for but we can accommodate that thank you

2:15:28Greg I'll let Jan go ahead first oh um so I just wanted to make a clarification point which probably addresses um number two on the policy question and that is um you um Don mentioned that there might be a consideration of the board to alter membership expansion and that was around

2:15:49the corner that would be next fall so we have an annual Retreat that we we hold typically in September of each year and um the most recent Retreat we discussed expansion and um just talked about what plans might be in the future for expansion and our board felt that the expansion that had been

2:16:12done to date in the city of Richmond had been very positive for the agency and had resulted in some progress towards our mission of reduced greenhouse gas emissions Marine Nobles on the grid and lots of other co-benefits frankly and so there was an interest in continuing to

2:16:32consider incremental expansion but we tend to like to you know take things slowly and make sure we're doing a good job with it with each step and so uh we made a decision at The Retreat to really focus in on the enrollment process for the four communities that have requested membership at that time

2:16:54and spend about nine months really doing that well and then revisiting next fall um how if we want to change the parameters that we currently have and have in place for new members to join one of one of the things that was talked about is would we want to kind of focus

2:17:14a little more in the counties that we're already serving rather than sort of just take requests that come in randomly and respond to them would we want to create a little more structure around kind of infilling with the communities we're already serving that was one idea that

2:17:28came up another idea that came up is you know are we as our board grows bigger is there a need to make any changes to the governance structure and to date every time we've added a community they've been given a seat on the board with a weighted vote so the bigger the

2:17:46load and the community the more weight their vote carries we felt that was important in Richmond we've continued that practice with the four communities being enrolling now there's a possibility next fall that that could change depending on what our experience has been in the last year and if we're

2:18:03seeing any Logistics or other types of impact with a with a larger board and then um I had a question about and I asked staff this question on an email and that was um what kind of oversight our own legal counsel has to the actions of the board so does that mean that there's videos that go on at

2:18:25the board are there minutes that that we would read um what kind of consultation with our own council is is possible um and then the second part of that is um the J the jpas indemnified but what kind of price is that or how how much liability do you assume and I guess I

2:18:48have questions about that okay so as far as um oversight we we're subject to the brown act we are officially a local government agency um so all of our meetings are um are open to the public all of our um our board meetings are up into the public they are recorded and they play

2:19:09on local TV late at night some people do watch them um and we have minutes of course that are that are um publishing available to folks and up on our website so there's certainly the ability for if your legal counsel wanted to be engaged in monitoring that activity and reporting to the council

2:19:31that would certainly be perfectly fine we don't have there's there's not a heavy burden right now on the cities that are members and we don't have a lot of um we don't have a lot of oversight that I'm aware of happening from legal councils in other cities but we're very

2:19:49open to that we're very proud of what we do and very transparent and really appreciate it when folks are interested in learning more so um that that's something we're very open to as far as the indemnification question um we what was identified in the um in the legal analysis is very similar

2:20:10to a legal analysis that was conducted in 2009 when we were forming in some of the cities in Maroon were deciding whether to join or not Mill Valley actually conducted the first legal analysis and in drafting our jpa agreement back in 2007 probably the issue that was the most

2:20:27important to all of our cities and towns was making sure that there was a firewall between the debts and liabilities of the jpa and the debts and liabilities of the member agencies at that time this had never been done before it was kind of scary you know for our cities to decide you know whether to

2:20:42be part of this GPA that's going to be buying energy and selling energy and gosh you know what liabilities could come of that so there was a lot of analysis done to ensure that that firewall would be intact and the analysis that was referenced this evening came to

2:21:02similar conclusions that the firewall really is codified in state um in state authorities and is typically is often the way the reason that jpas are formed is to create a firewall but the two areas that needed to we needed to ensure protection for were tort liability and then um board members we

2:21:26needed to make sure that that there couldn't be any tort claims or any claims against board members and so um we got insurance in place before launching before getting the program up and running for tort liability and directors insurance and we've provided that information to

2:21:47the city unfortunately I don't have the the numbers off the top of my head of what the amounts are for coverage but they were certainly amounts that were requested by a board we were able to get those in place without any problem thank you um let's see I had another question was

2:22:06the the hundred meeting Outreach in Richmond typical of what you do that number yeah we we held um we held a lot of meetings in Marin when we were launching and that was over a long time frame um we started exploring the program back in 2004 so but there were a lot of meetings

2:22:27there as well I think that enrichment we made an extra effort it was more of a condensed time frame that we were preparing for enrollment and then doing the enrollment we made an extra effort to do a lot of Outreach in Richmond because the community was so different

2:22:44than the community we'd been serving we wanted to learn about the community make sure that we were communicating effectively in all venues and I think that our our Communications team did a really good job of um of making sure there was enough Outreach and as a result I think the program

2:23:06really received a warm welcome in Richmond it's been a great relationship we've seen a much higher participation rate in Richmond than in in any City in Marin we've also seen a higher participation rate in our deep green program which costs a little more and um

2:23:21I think that's because of the the great um Outreach that our team did we would like to do a similar Outreach in every community that we enroll in um I don't know that 100 meetings will be necessary in all communities I think it depends partly on the size of the

2:23:38community and also what what types of venues are available where a lot of people are gathering you know we go to a lot of fairs and festivals and farmers markets and in some communities you have you know a lot of people show up for a workshop where a lot of people might

2:23:53show up for certain events and you can communicate with a lot of people at one time in other communities there's not as much of a central draw in a handful of events and you really need to go out to a lot of smaller venues but what's important to us is that um that as many folks as we can reach in

2:24:11the community will understand the program be able to talk to their neighbors about it so that when they get a notice in the mail explaining the program they have a little they have a reference point they know what generally what it's about and they feel comfortable calling to ask more if

2:24:27they want to one thing I should mention I apologize I didn't mention before but the way that the enrollment process works it spans a five-month period so if we let's use San Pablo as an example we're going to be doing our Mass enrollment there in the month of May we

2:24:43will begin sending or begin we're already beginning to do workshops and Outreach in that Community we met with the workforce investment board last week in fact but we're doing a lot of Outreach there and will be for the next few months and then in February customers will receive their first

2:25:00enrollment notice that tells them about the program it'll it'll be addressed to the customer that holds the account it'll come in the mail um and it'll explain what the program is it'll tell them how to opt out if they want to continue to get their generation from PG e it'll tell them how to opt up

2:25:17if they want the Deep green program and there are two easy ways to do those things they can pick up the phone and we have a call center open 24 7 during the entire enrollment period we also have a website so folks want to opt out through the website they can do that as well

2:25:33then in March they'll receive their second enrollment notice and then April is the month in April they'll receive their third enrollment notice May is the month of cut over and the cut over occurs on their meter read date for the month so it's different for every

2:25:48customer so we're enrolling a fraction of the customers on each day during the month of May um and then in June they'll receive their fourth notice letting them know that they've been enrolled and how to opt out if they want to do that or how to opt up if they want to do that and

2:26:06then they receive their final notice in July letting them know about the program so the idea is that if they pay attention to the mail before the cut over then they aren't cut over and they stay with PG e if they aren't quite paying attention or they're not sure yet

2:26:20they want to wait and talk to their friends then it might be July that they decide to opt out and and that's fine too if they don't make a decision until August then there is and they are with PG e in August then there is a five dollar administrative fee to opt out but

2:26:39they can opt out at any time at that point or after or any time customers can always opt out but that five dollar administrative fee will start will apply in August when they opt out and then I just had one last question you made reference to a wind Source coming online where is

2:26:57that going to be it's going to be in Kern County thank you thank you for the presentation I have a number of questions and I know one thing you'll learn about us is we like to have not too late meetings and we like to have the public speak before kind of 10 o'clock so I'm going to ask

2:27:12you a bunch of questions and hopefully you can just keep concise answers and I'll ask for clarifications um right now on PG E's website most of us can access real-time data about our usage would that be available or is it now or would it be in the future yes it

2:27:26is available wonderful I really want to understand renewable energy certificates in the various attachments we see the MCE meets its resource obligations with purchases of about 80 percent conventional type of use conventional energy but you're able to achieve the 50

2:27:43Renewable Power rating on the power mix through the renewable energy energy certificates certificates and I really want to understand how those work like how does that you purchase the power from a gas fired power plan and then they buy the certificates yeah you just

2:27:56describe it unfortunately you have found the one error in the mrw report um so good job um but they they I think they're working to correct that but we do not purchase 80 conventional power that's not accurate um we are purchasing um uh Renewables from a range of sources

2:28:16but some of the Renewables that we purchase are from unbundled renewable energy credits and it's about 18 currently that diminishes every year so about a year ago we were at 23 percent unbundled renewable energy credits but that is um that percentage is ratcheting down as

2:28:35we've been able to procure more in-state Renewables at lower costs this Wind Facility purchase actually is going to put us at about 33 percent within the next year and a half but how do the renewable energy certificates work what what are they what are you buying sure so a renewable

2:28:55energy certificate is part of any renewable purchase whether it's in-state and bundled or out of state and unbundled the um the renewable energy certificate ensures that that the that a kilowatt hour of renewable energy has actually been delivered onto the grid and it's tracked

2:29:15through Regis which is a the western region tracking system for renewable energy without a wreck you can't verify that you've that any renewable energy has actually gone on to the grid so that's the reason that Recs are important they are a part of PG E's portfolio and any renewable provider any

2:29:34provider that's delivering in California has to verify the purchase and transfer of Rex in order to comply with the renewable portfolio standard and when we're looking we're comparing power mixes between PG e and MCE the way renewable energy credits are or certificates are

2:29:53being accounted for is Apples to Apples they're all governed the same way they're all governed the same way and the only the only difference really is that we procure we buy more renewable energy than PG e does and a percentage of that voluntary renewable purchase that we make is from

2:30:16unbundled renewable energy from other locations so that's where the difference is but it it is we're using the same system that PG e is for purchasing and accounting for renewable energy wonderful I'm going to stop there for now thank you Greg do you have any questions yeah hopefully they'll be

2:30:35easily answered with short answers also um I think in your presentation you made it very clear that there'll be no change to anybody's bills I mean they'll be an added line but there's no change in the way they would pay the bill no changing their auto pay no changes in their meter

2:30:52or their capacity to read their meter usage no no change right um will you've touched on it a minute ago but switching back and forth I mean so if they decide to opt out during the free period and at some point they say hey wait a minute I do want to be in in dark green they could but two years

2:31:12later a renter changes and they and that property wants to go back to PG e it's administrative with some fees attached to it right the folks can return to PG e at any time forever there is one caveat for customers that that stay with PG e and want to go to MCE PG e limits you if you go back to PG

2:31:38e you have to stay with them for a year before you can choose MCE again okay and is there like a Richmond office for people to go pound on a door and say wait a minute I don't understand what you've done yeah we were maintaining Richmond office hours when we launched

2:31:57and we could potentially do that in other communities as well during the enrollment period but we found that it wasn't really utilized like folks didn't know necessarily when to come we don't typically get a lot of walk-in traffic anyway folks tend to like to they come

2:32:12to our meetings from time to time or they pick up the phone and call us but the city staff in Richmond would sometimes field questions because we were in close collaboration with them but right now our our office is in San Rafael we have about 20 staff people and

2:32:27it works really well for us to be in one location so we can be sharing information and kind of stay up to date on what's Happening great these next questions are all about your generation council member benassini touched on uh the controversy about renewable energy

2:32:41certificates and such um are you having difficulties procuring green energy are you having a difficulty procuring the type of energy that you need to meet your light and deep green portfolio not at all whenever we do a solicitation for power supply we get a 10 about 10 times

2:32:57more bid into us than we can take there's a lot of power out there it's really just a matter of what's the cost of that power and how can we keep our costs competitive you have a tremendous amount of solar power in your portfolio how do you help meet the nighttime

2:33:11demand and the winter you know long short day Demand with all that solar the good news is there's an entity called the California independent system operator or kaiso that manages the grid for the State of California PG e interacts with kaiso just like we do Southern California Edison San Diego

2:33:31Gas and Electric also interfaced with kaiso it's kaiso's job to keep the lights on all the time we sometimes have to pay imbalance fees if we're putting energy onto the Grid at different times than we're using it but that's a financial transaction and so that's

2:33:45that's something we factor in when we're deciding which types of power to put in our portfolio but there's never a problem with the the lights not staying on because we have too much power at certain times of the day and that is the answer I was looking for for my next

2:33:59question which is if there is an interruption in service like a wind farm goes down or a solar farm goes offline do the lights go out and I think you just answered and the answer is no because there's other power that would be used yeah and all providers are required to keep 15 extra power on hand

2:34:16at all times to prevent against an outage of one facility or another across the state and my last question is um I think you touched on again in your presentation incentives for homeowners to install solar all the benefits of and I I know the acronym is nem but all the

2:34:36benefits of of your nem program would potentially promote more about backyard solar and more solar local solar for your that might be available for your local Soul program yes that is the as they've seen we've a lot of success there and this is a question for I don't know

2:34:56if it's for staff or City attorney we're in the process of essentially selecting a a power generator for our residents and it and it's in my mind it's similar to some of the selections we might do on for other utilities like East Bay sanitary for garbage or comcast

2:35:17for cable so I just want to make sure that I've got my analogy correct that this is is similar to other utilities that we're not just being big brother and forcing people to be greener but that that we're utilizing our uh our discretion here in an appropriate manner

2:35:39I'd say yeah it's roughly analogous there are probably some areas in which the analogy is is not exactly apt but yeah I mean this is the same as selecting a space sanitary to be the franchisee for solid waste in the city I mean in this case they actually have the

2:35:55option the ability to opt out and go back to their uh current or previous provider that's correct okay great thank you one one quick question in reading through all the material I did not see any budget or financial statements and I'd really like to see those before we

2:36:15adopt an ordinance at the next meeting and thanks for answering uh telling about the number of Staff members I'd also like to see an organizational chart or this structure of governance which you referenced a little bit happy too and our audited financials are online we also have monthly financials

2:36:35in every board packet but we can get those too great okay I have one final question and then I would what I would like to do is to open it up to the public for comment I'd really like to know what the public has to say and then after that there were some questions that Maria I think you

2:36:52wanted answered the other um so we could maybe then go through those if that's okay with everyone okay so my uh question that I think hasn't been asked is there's the PG e exit fee is that forever or what um the PG e exit fee um is intended to diminish over time

2:37:16but it can stick around for 10 15 or even longer years it's tied to the contracts that PG e has in their portfolio at the time a customer departs so that is um one of the top priorities that we're working on at the California Public Utilities Commission because we

2:37:36think those fees are a little high and based on some assumptions that don't make sense and we think that they should Sunset after one to three years so we're working on that have they been diminishing could I just follow up no they doubled this year okay thank you

2:37:51but we can't I can't imagine them going any higher uh they I should say there's an inverse relationship between the cost of power and the exit fee so when power costs are low the XV is high and we're seeing low costs right now and that's why the fee is high when power costs are

2:38:08high the fee drops to zero unfortunately it doesn't go negative that was put into the plan for some reason but at this time they are other high because we're seeing low costs in the market I think they're talking to a cell phone company so that does Aggregates right

2:38:23okay so uh do we have any uh speaker slips at this point we have seven slips seven slips and if anyone else that hasn't put in a slip would like to speak they can uh start creating that now but meanwhile would you start calling the speakers the first three speakers are

2:38:41David Gray followed by Mark Miner and David Weinstein um they're honorable mayor Abelson City Council Members Staff first off I'd like to I'm David Gray I live at [address removed] here in El Cerrito it's a real pleasure to see the progress that's been made and kudos to Mary

2:39:04Sanders for all the work that she's done in putting this together I am incredibly pleased to see the progress that the city has been making towards uh getting itself into a position to make the decision to go with MCE or not I would encourage the council to vote Yes

2:39:26to adopt uh becoming a a member of MCE my background is that I've been an environmental activist my my latest uh unfortunate it's ended now but I was the of the former chair of the Sierra Club Bay chapter energy committee I'm not speaking on their behalf I'm speaking as an individual but

2:39:52I have seen the authenticity and integrity that MCE brought with dealing with the city of Richmond and working with the city of Richmond to make their decision which was a complex one to go with MCE versus going knit alone I'm very happy to see that we're moving

2:40:19in what I believe is the right direction and I just want to say that you know ccas are the best way for us to quickly and efficiently stop burning fossil fuels that are contributing to climate change and that as as has been pointed out the timing here is is pretty

2:40:38critical um one one thing that has not been mentioned is the the constant attack of the ious against ccas uh basically every election in the state of California you will see the iou's sponsor amendments to the Constitution that try to shoot down ab117 so I would encourage the council

2:41:05to move quickly on this you've been moving very very prudently and I applaud you for that but please go for it thank you excuse me what's an IOU besides I owe you money industrial utility as in PG e yeah that's what I thought that I just wanted to clarify thank you

2:41:27good evening mayor Abelson members of the council staff my name is Mark Miner I reside at [address removed] and I'm chair of the eqc in El Cerrito the eqc has been following the CCA issue probably since MCE started up in 2010.

2:41:44and I wanted to reiterate support for all the benefits that Maria and Don were talking about in terms of helping us to achieve our climate action plan I want to emphasize two things one is progress MCE is you know the benefits that they're providing is not a steady

2:42:04state they've really moved forward a lot just even this year in terms of getting more Renewables in California signing new contracts reducing their reducing their wrecks um and I think that we can look for that same kind of progress in into the future and then two I have been very impressed

2:42:22by all the people at MCE that are really a high quality organization I think that they're a lean organization they're an efficient organization and they're full of bright very motivated people to make this a success and I think that it would be a great Organization for elsewhere to

2:42:36align ourselves with thanks thank you hi I'm Dave Weinstein a member of the eqc which has come out in favor of the city council uh proceeding with uh MCE I'd like to say that Mark got one thing wrong on the uh eqc the Environmental Quality committee we were talking about

2:42:58ccas even before I think Marine clean energy was formed I forgot I forget what a year now the eqc was formed 2007 or some something like that but you know we were talking about this early on and we really saw this kind of thing as being a real game changer to decrease greenhouse

2:43:14gases in the city when the eqc was formed that was what we really wanted to do and so far we haven't really taken a step nearly as important as this so I think it would be a really great thing to go ahead with we even talked for a while about forming our our own CCA we talked about all

2:43:30maybe the county of hormone maybe we'll form one with like Richmond or something like that but here we have one that's in existence it seems it seems to be doing a good job so I think we should go for it thank you very much thank you howdy Gowdy followed by Robin Mitchell

2:43:44and Tom panis hi I'm howdy Gowdy [address removed] also a member of eqc we almost have a quorum um I uh also want to Echo the support for joining uh the CCA with Marin clean energy um I think this is a really important uh strong you know basically the single largest fastest thing we can do to to

2:44:18meet our climate action goals Maria mentioned that we're doing very well um with our greenhouse gas reductions which is great news but this really solidifies our position and be able to meet our 2020 goals and um I think it's an important action to follow through with

2:44:36especially when you know all the benefits that were presented to you exist which is no real additional cost to customers and benefits to those who have solar including the city solar installations which will be a net benefit to the city's budget so um I actually came from another

2:45:03um meeting tonight where one of the other Pioneers were in clean energy being one of the pioneers of CCA but another Pioneer of CCA was speaking and um you know this is a rapidly growing and evolving movement nationally I mean there was leadership here in the Bay

2:45:22Area but it's not just a Bay Area movement and I'm quoting from memory I hope I have this right but he actually said that um you know this movement which started you know 15 years ago is actually representing five percent of the U.S population now and um more than half of that happened in

2:45:44the last year so it is a very exponential growth that's happening and you would be in good company by joining that movement it's really a movement about democracy and choice for power and and the community community being able to represent its values and energy

2:46:00choices so thank you thank you Ms Mitchell followed by Tom panna's so I'm Robin Mitchell um I live at [address removed] and I just wanted to offer my support also for this um Community Choice aggregation decision that you're going to make I think one of the things that's really important about

2:46:29this is that it starts to remove our sort of dependence on the investor-owned utility and puts it the decision about our power choices into the hands of a non-profit and we have a choice in I mean we're on the cities on the board so that you have a say in what goes on I

2:46:49think it's I don't think that we'll ever meet our Greenhouse gold gas reduction goals if if investor owned entities are in charge of our power supply so I think that's one of the most important aspects of this so I hope that you'll vote in favor of it thanks thank you

2:47:15members of the council and City staff my name is Tom Patterson I live at [address removed] in El Cerrito I'd like to thank Maria and Don for an excellent presentation tonight notwithstanding my strong support for Community Choice aggregation at MCA I do

2:47:28have a few questions um I'm a little bit uneasy about the short fuse on this proposal I'm curious if dog might be able to comment on other current members of MCE who sort of jumped into this as quickly as we're proposing to do it um two just curious about what is an

2:47:46unbundled versus a bundled energy purchase three for people who already have solar on their houses I'm curious if there's any change the interconnection of the pgd grid required and four pgd has a very favorable rates for people with electric cars I'm wondering if MCA has that equivalent

2:48:01thank you cord followed by Robert shad I'm going to David McCord I'm currently a co-chair of the Sierra clubs chapter energy committee and I'm at uh [address removed] Apartment one here in El Cerrito and we really will welcome El Cerrito joining MCE to be great

2:48:41and we also like to see a the development of local team energy resources to distributed in the community as as quickly as possible in the so with a member on MCE board and you can push to to encourage Property Owners to install solar I see a great opportunities

2:49:18we've got quite a few a flat roofed apartment buildings okay we've got the the big flat roofs and on our shopping centers and those huge parking lots we can put panels over so we go for it [Music] hello hello good evening excuse me I'm Robert sharp uh 7407 Park Vista I'm also

2:49:55a member of the Environmental Quality committee and I can answer that yes MCE will honor all of PG E's current rate programs including Evie and I do believe they give a solar rate to um correct yep okay um and uh yes it is a quite abrupt and I would encourage the council to vote Yes

2:50:17and I the timeline um is pretty quick but uh the Environmental Quality committee did review this I would say fairly extensively and in the process I personally learned all about power generation uh the procurement uh wrecks and uh it was a very educational experience and I would like to point out

2:50:40that this only allows for the citizens of El Cerrito to have an additional Choice when choosing power currently they're stuck with uh 22 percent I think PG e saying 27 now renewable whereas um that's as good as you get unless you put solar on your house so you can very

2:51:00cost effectively make a choice as an individual to um more than double your renewable resource procurement if not completely procure 100 renewable energy so again I would encourage you to vote Yes and adopt the ordinance and I look forward to your decision thank you thank you

2:51:22are there any more uh speakers who would like to speak on this item there were a few questions that came up I don't know if our presenter was able to capture catch any of them but if you want to answer what you can remember yes I was able to capture those questions so the first

2:51:42question is the timing um you know why why is the timeline um structure the way that it is and how have other communities address the timeline so um or because you know our first presentation here in El Cerrito is in 2012 and I as we heard earlier there was some

2:52:05activity in the spring of 2014 with the the grant that was awarded some of our other communities have gone through the membership study process in a in a faster way I guess the quick way of saying it so unincorporated County of Napa came to us and they were ready to go within about four months you

2:52:27know they requested membership we conducted the study brought it back to them a month later and they were ready to past the ordinance so it was about a four-month period with them with the city of Richmond that was about a year-long process that was our first time going without you know outside of

2:52:46Marin County and then with um San Pablo that the um the study was conducted in the summer and delivered in July and they approved their ordinance the following month so we're actually what we've seen here in El Cerrito is a little bit more of a long time frame than we typically see with other

2:53:06communities and that's okay but it's not a timeline I would characterize as accelerated I think we've we've been talking about CCA here for a couple of years and the the study has been out and available for a couple of months and that's typically what we see with communities after the

2:53:27membership study is out there typically ready to take action so that hopefully that answers the question I'm happy to say more if that's helpful um and I guess I should say one other thing that that is tied to the timeline and that is that um it's in order for us to to be able to

2:53:44offer membership without any cost to the community it's important for us to be able to kind of bundle the activities that we go through um we haven't been very rigid in doing that this year I think that's a lesson learned for us and next year will need to be a lot more rigid with timelines

2:53:59because each time we add a community we have to refile our implementation plan with the cpuc that takes some analysis and Technical Support we have to do a procurement for that load we have to um there's just a whole string of activities that need to happen for each

2:54:15Community our goal at the beginning of the year was to bundle interested communities and do it at one time what we saw instead was some communities like Napa wanted to get it done in May other communities wanted to wait till June and so we're kind of doing doing it

2:54:30piecemeal and it's taking it's a bit more of an administrative burden um so we're kind of at the tail end of that process now and I can't stretch it too much longer without having economic impacts on the procurement process and not being able to buy energy at the cost

2:54:45we had anticipated um and that's all I'll say on the timing in the center questions the next question was related to what's the difference between a bundled wreck and an unbundled wreck and and I I can explain that the a bundled renewable energy certificate is an energy

2:55:02certificate demonstrating renewable energy that's been placed on the grid sold from the same resource that produced that energy at the same point in time so we buy bundled renewable energy from Calpine for example and from we're buying bundled energy from recurrent energy in central California

2:55:25typically bundled energy is bought and sold in state when you're transferring power longer distances from out of state and sometimes in state as well you you can buy renewable energy certificate but it's um it's sold separate from the underlying electrons and a good example of this is

2:55:48the Hood River Farmers Cooperative in Oregon they sell us unbundled renewable energy certificates because they want to use the electrons on site to pump water to water their fruit trees but they don't want to use natural gas for that they'd rather use renewable energy and

2:56:06in order to make it affordable to them they are able to sell these renewable energy credits and use the electrons on site but sell the renewable attributes to us so the Third River cannot say they're using renewable energy can't use that in their reporting their their

2:56:23power supply is considered Brown power because they've sold off the renewable attributes so that's an unbundled renewable energy purchase which is different from a bundled renewable energy purchase so hopefully that explains it it's very common in the industry and all providers including PG

2:56:40e by some unbundled and some bundled Renewable Energy Products that allows for flexibility the next question was on net energy metering does the interconnection process change for an energy metering customer installing solar on their roof the answer is no PG e is responsible for all the

2:56:56transmission and distribution activity and that includes the interconnection of a solar installation so that process does not change for MCE customers and the last question was on the electric vehicle rates which we do offer very similar to PG E's there are some

2:57:12differences between our rates so folks are curious we have a rate calculator that's live on our website you can plug in your usage you can select your your rate plug in your usage and see what the cost difference is is it beneficial under your program yeah in most cases it is there are some

2:57:30customers and we're happy to walk customers through it if they have questions but because there are different time of use classes if a customer is home during the day and using a lot of energy it may not be a good idea for them to choose a time of use rate for example great thank you

2:57:45okay thank you uh they're okay bringing it back then to the council okay Mark yeah I want to thank our presenter and staff Maria Sanders and all the members of the eqc who've put so much time and energy into studying this and the members of the public I'm really

2:58:04excited about this opportunity I think it's a idea whose time has come and what an opportunity to put El Cerrito with Partners who've already paved the way for us rather than having to initiate on our own or with one of our neighbors I think it's a great advantage to us that you've already done

2:58:27so much work and have got a process and system in place that we can easily participate in so in terms of timing I think we should definitely do it so we can participate for 2015 year you know if you have something good to do you should do it as soon as you possibly can

2:58:51the only other areas to investigate or clarify were the ones I brought up on the budget and financial statements just to see those I'm confident that the staff has already checked those out but I'd just like to see them but I think this is a great opportunity and this is the wave of the

2:59:09Futures I think Mr Gray pointed out quite well and I want us to be on the side of the future and helping to make our planet healthier through really creative Innovative projects and processes like these so thank you all for all your good work yeah I'm going to highlight two things

2:59:30that I heard during our public testimony one one is energy democracy and choice in power generation so I'm definitely that hit a chord and the other is cost effective choice for individuals to reduce their carbon footprint with 20 percent or a large percentage of our

2:59:49population as renters they don't have the choice to to install solar energy in their houses and so this gives them again going back to that the choice of their power generation so for those reasons I certainly support this and and I I understand the risks that we're entering

3:00:10into and I'm curious if the city manager has finished using his fingers and toes how many jpas are we in uh we're at eight eight so um although we there is uh significant uh Financial exposure I think for this jpa I don't think that there's a high uh risk in us being dragged through a tort

3:00:36lawsuit or exposed through any liability so the the it's a low risk with a high dollar value but I don't think that risk is one that outweighs the benefits that we're going to get for many many years and with regards to moving quickly uh to do that this year I think uh council member

3:00:57um Ruben said it quite well with this much savings I'm hearing that Richmond is saving almost forty thousand dollars in the school board saving almost sixty thousand dollars a year of with that opportunity uh in front of us to to not take advantage of that and move quickly

3:01:14would be fiscally imprudent thank you very spoken on I'm I always love to hear from the public because it does spark ideas in me and I like to hear what resonates with members of the public who have maybe many of you have seen some of these presentations much longer than we

3:01:33have um my only uh correction or suggestion for the future is I really want to see where in the portion where we talk about next steps that Community input process and there's just a three and a half week time period shown there I think Don mentioned we've we've been this is a

3:01:49particular public inputs Point that's listed there but we've had a lot of public input not only on CCA but on our climate action plan the eqc has been talking about CCA for many years and as far as all the meetings I've attended not not all of them but some of them

3:02:03that we rarely hear a negative word about it and the community input that we've been receiving all along the way has has been extremely positive I almost feel like having this presented to us is like a zero calorie hot fudge sundae or something like there are so few

3:02:19downsides to consider that it almost seems like you know I'm so happy that we've done our due diligence and Maria has done a fantastic job bringing us through this process but I'm wholly supportive of this we're giving our um all of the rate pairs in the city choices I look forward to a very robust

3:02:35input process I uh or sorry Outreach process in order to have potential customers understand what MC is about I reviewed some of your boards on board sessions online on YouTube they're very easy to watch they're very interactive I like the the the tenor of the meetings

3:02:53is very similar to ours very respectful um very organized around getting to decisions and having informed discussions so I think this is a great group for us to align ourselves with and again we're giving our ratepayers choices and I look forward to um seeing seeing what we come up with in

3:03:12terms of a participation rate in an Outreach process so I'm supportive of both of the policy questions that are asked we should pursue membership and we should join by the end of the a year to make the 2015 procurement cycle I'm I may have total consensus with what

3:03:33was already been said but I do think it's true that this is not being fast-tracked in any sort of way I think that um Dave's probably pretty correct that in 2007 when eqc was formed there was talk of CCA then and I think the eqc has really done a phenomenal job on bringing

3:03:54this forward and having Maria work on all the details and the staff reports have been fabulous and I thought Don did a really good presentation um really not only to us but to our residents so I think that anyone who watches this will really have a very clear um reassuring sense of what's what's

3:04:15about to be voted for and I think we should actually move forward I think this is really very very important and um you know I think you'll find working with our community uh being as green as we are it'll be a very different process and a very Dynamic one okay and uh just to bring closure to it

3:04:36I agree with every thing that's been said by my fellow council members here I'm really excited about this and um I think it's especially what really excites me in that's one of the top things is I I had a um somebody come out and do an Energy Efficiency study of my house and they

3:04:58said that solar wasn't financially viable for my house it'd be very expensive and low payback and all that stuff and this is an opportunity to do it anyway and so I'm very excited about that in fact I've already picked deep green and I don't care if it's five dollars

3:05:18extra it's the one I want and so I'm really excited and I want to move forward as quickly as possible and I would like to thank everybody involved the eqc Maria and um I'm sorry I forgot your your name Don okay Don thank you very for a great presentation and all the work you do at

3:05:40your agency which will soon be our agency hopefully and um I with that I think we have provided staff with Direction so we'll bring be bringing it back on um December 16th and then January 6th which I think are those are next to regular meeting dates after the next one

3:06:06okay oh I just I just want to make sure that um I don't it does appear that there's consensus but just for the sake of the record I don't necessarily think that emotion is necessary at this point Marie and I had discussed whether or not it would be beneficial to have one for the

3:06:21record it seems that there's consensus I just want to make sure that there's there none of the council members object to moving forward to pursue membership and and doing it in a time frame that that will get the ordinance in front of you but are there any um so do you want

3:06:34to just move to to agendaize this on those dates no you need to agendas I just wanted to make sure that the record is clear that that any that okay what do we need to do to make you feel that it's clear I forever hold your peace yes that will be adequate okay I think I hear no

3:06:55objections okay um and um so with that I think we are finished with that item uh which is a one a wonderful item and with that we'll move on to um item number eight on our agenda which is council local and Regional liaison assignment reports um on November 13th Thursday

3:07:17um HRC met they're about to have four vacancies as we talked about earlier so if you're interested in joining um the human relations commissions they do have some openings um they basically reviewed their proclamations that will come forward to us in 2015 um talked about

3:07:37um having a film showing called designing Healthy Communities uh talked a little bit about the budget for the MLK event um and essentially that was it I mean okay I do um as your representative to recycle more which is the Integrated Waste Management Group for West County

3:08:01I reported recently that the inter the executive director resigned his resignation was effective on Halloween October 31st that Friday I have been chair of the ad hoc committee looking for an interim executive director and we presented to the board the full board last Thursday

3:08:25are the results of our search for an interim executive director we are pleased to announce that the executive director from central waste management board was selected as as the interim executive director so it's Paul Morrison m-o-r-s-e-n he has over 30 years experience with most of that with solid

3:08:51waste and I we think he will be able to step in and move quickly with getting our agency up and running we've been essentially rudderless since the beginning of September and so I'm delighted to to let you know that that extra burden on me has been hopefully transferred to him starting tomorrow so

3:09:19anything else nope that's it oh we at the recycle more did pass the rates or sorry we had a rate workshop and we will be setting the rates for the other four uh the other four communities other five communities unincorporated plus four cities and we will be establishing the household hazardous

3:09:41waste rates which does affect El Cerrito we pay about eight percent of that and that'll be coming up in December okay and um I have been um quite busy in the uh committees that I am involved in including uh CCTA just returned actually from uh the annual training which is called

3:10:04focus on the future help which was held in Santa Clara for the last um I guess this is the third day and um it was really interesting because it was focused heavily on um sales tax majors and the successes that were had in this last election and and some of the reasons for the

3:10:28successes so I found it really interesting and um I think uh what I if I had to say in a sentence if I can even try it just to narrow it down here it would be that you have to really work hard if you want to win you have to work hard and um one of the interesting things is I

3:10:50noticed that the executive director of their transportation agency was leafleting in my neighbor the Albany part of my neighborhood and in fact handed me a brochure right before the election so they were they had they had all their forces out I actually don't know the

3:11:11details of the measure but I do know that they worked very hard and felt that that was what made the difference this time because last time they didn't quite make it they were short less than a thousand votes out of Alameda County and I also just returned from a training

3:11:31for what was called League leaders I'm going to be the president of the East Bay division of League of California cities and so they had a training for all of the incoming um there's going to be an opening at the top there at the league of cities yes sir well we don't know for sure yeah

3:11:48they're still counting votes oh okay it yes the the person who's the incoming president of the state League um may have lost his uh bid for re-election to the city council which will make him ineligible and we start the Groundswell Abelson for president no they've already voted for

3:12:11who it's going to be oh okay uh last year actually at the league leaders meeting that I went to it that's where it was done they had a state board meeting and and figured out in the uh assuming that in fact he loses the election which won't be known uh for for a few days uh then they

3:12:35figured out who it would be so it was kind of you know it was it's already a done deal but thank you all right and uh with that uh the meeting is adjourned until Tuesday December the 2nd uh which is our uh Changing of the Guard meeting for the election and we'll say

3:12:55goodbye to Rebecca then which will be very sad temporary goodbye Maybe laughs