City Council Meeting January 20, 2015

0:02:51how great we're gonna get started we are going to convene our city council meeting council member jan bridges is out of the country and won't be joining us tonight uh we'll call please councilmember quinto here councilmember lyman here councilmember abelson here

0:03:25mayor friedman here thank you uh council staff communications do we have any all right after the holidays oh yeah i skipped all right my favorite uh councilmember quinto please lead us in the pledge of allegiance or an observation of a moment of silence i pledge allegiance to the flag of the

0:03:55united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay uh oral communications from the public do we have some speakers for items not on the agenda yes we do mayor we have two speakers

0:04:17mike vukolich followed by us isma isma evma thank you and alan miller i'm uh mike bucklich my address is [address removed] apartment number two here in el cerrito i've been a resident there for 40 years and i've been a resident of west contra costa county for 84 years

0:04:48so i'm very familiar with west contra costa county i came here tonight to ask you to wait for two years before you implement the no smoking ordinance excuse me this this is for items that aren't on the agenda oh it's something different i'm sorry go ahead yeah my apologies

0:05:12yeah it's not for eight or seven please go ahead so uh because i think it needs a lot more research and i think it's unconstitutional intuitive for one thing that the fourth amendment and the ninth amendment gives the people power to to not have to abide by the by this uh

0:05:40smoking ordinance i think it's a meat axe approach and i think it's wrong attic smoking addicts can't stop smoking and so we have to figure out some way where they can smoke somewhere because they can't stop and we just have to wait can't wave a magic wand and say

0:06:00we make a law and they can't smoke the way the way that i uh read this the 11 pages of the ordinance the way i read it there's no place well you can smoky smoke in your car it's the only place you can smoke in the car or i guess i guess else root isn't in the freeway i guess if you're in the freeway

0:06:2125 feet away from something you can smoke but otherwise there's no place you can smoke except that if you're rich and you own a house you can smoke in your house but if you're poor and most of the large majority bigger percentage of poor people smoke than rich people

0:06:41if you're poor and live in an apartment you can't smoke and i think that's uh absolutely outrageous that uh something like that uh an ordinance like that is unconstitutional the fourth the ninth amendment says that and i just i don't know the exact words but it says that you can't have

0:07:05s you can't say that somebody you can have a law and these people have to abide by it but these people don't that the rich people can abide by it but the poor people can't you can't have a law like that and also the fourth amendment says that if you when you have a legal

0:07:25product and in which cigarettes are legal product this this there's no thing in the in this ordinance that says you can't buy a cigarette or you can't possess a cigarette you just can't smoke it and so uh that's illegal it might that mean my time's up can have a little more since i

0:07:47interrupted you okay uh that means that so i think we need some time to look we have to this is the strictest two things it's the strictest law of the 25 000 cities and the 3 000 counties in the united states maybe the strictest in the world strictness uh no smoking ordinance of

0:08:08any place so i don't think and then we also have you know i've been in a nursery business growing flowers and i think we have the ugliest landscaping with no flowers so we have the ugliest landscaping outside and this we've got two things okay okay thank you very much i appreciate your

0:08:29comments and do i have two additional slips eve ma followed by al miller good evening i'm eve ma i live at [address removed] in el cerrito and i don't want to repeat what the arson culture commission is going to be saying but i just wanted to remind you that the city council

0:08:53through its arts and cultural commission is sponsoring the premiere of my film a week from tomorrow in the el cerrito theater and i wanted to formally invite each one of you all to attend i know that that's exciting thank you eve you al miller i'm al miller [address removed] here in

0:09:28el cerrito i'm here as president of the el cerrito library foundation last october the rotary club of el cerrito invited the library foundation to partner with them in their annual fundraiser known as the sip and saver and we were very happy to do that tonight i'm here to give thanks to the

0:09:50rotary club of el cerrito for sharing the part of the proceeds of it they presented us with an 11 000 check at their uh meeting last board meeting last story of a luncheon meeting last week now as important as eleven thousand dollars is to any uh non-profit organization just getting started with

0:10:15the lofty a goal of supporting a new library in the city to me equally importance is the fact that an organization with broad representation not only of the individual people living in the community but the business of the community showed confidence in us and trust in us

0:10:37to contribute us the resources that they had i think that shows a lot and it will be very positive in our efforts to continue our fundraising to [Music] be able to provide equipment to the library and endowment of programs in the new library so i just wanted to thank the rotary club of el

0:11:01cerrito for their efforts and allowing us to take part and benefit from them thank you thank you very much no other splits all right now we move on to our presentation by ruth kasdan the chair of the arts and culture commission on their work plan good evening good evening mayor friedman

0:11:24members of the council members of the public thanks for this opportunity i am ruth kazan i'm the chair of the el cerrito arts and culture commission and i'm here tonight to present our 2015 work plan as well as to start it with us an overview of what we've accomplished in

0:11:43the last two years okay the first thing though i'd like to mention is our mission and the these are excerpts from the mission statement in um our master plan and so it is to advise the city council of the needs of artistic of the artistic and cultural committee community to

0:12:06encourage and promote arts programs you can read the rest on your own to provide advice to artists and arts and cultural organizations and to carry out the arts and public places program so that's our basic mission our current um commission i'm the chair chris sturber is vice chair

0:12:30and our other commissioners are deb danziger george gager molly hazen is newly appointed and she is here and we're delighted to have her heidi rand and the mystery person because we still have one vacancy and we're hopeful that it will get filled very soon okay so bragging time for the commission

0:12:55um our major accomplishments for 2013 and 14 are of course the wind sculptures um and i think you're all familiar with them i think you've seen them um all along san pablo avenue and they were funded by the one percent for public art that we have here in el cerrito

0:13:20another major accomplishment which we finished november of 2013 is the commission's master plan its purpose is to shape the vision for arts and culture in the city of el cerrito we consider it to be a dynamic document in other words it's not done over forgotten but rather we will keep

0:13:45revisiting it and enhancing it as the situation warrants what's in that document it states our goals which include increasing access to public art in el cerrito support for the local artistic community promoting excellence in the arts and such as our sculptures beautifying the

0:14:10city of el cerrito the other thing that's in there is it establishes certain criteria and guidelines for public art for the city of el cerrito in addition it discusses various funding sources that we have of course our major funding source is the one percent for

0:14:34public art but we also can get funding from donations and the commission may be c may seek grants or apply for scholarships and so all of that is contained in our master plan okay the last two years we proudly sponsored um an event as part of earth day celebration

0:15:01and what we did we engaged the east bay depot for creative reuse and they came down and they set up some projects for our kids who could make art items and you know arts and crafts items using recycled items and there is a picture from one of those events we have also done

0:15:23film sponsorships and so far we've done a sponsorship of nani of the sundar shoddy film which was that was really a special event and coast modern and i'm jumping ahead of myself but we are sponsoring isma evmas dominoes and i'll mention that again later okay um

0:15:49one of our major functions and accomplishments is the gallery space which is upstairs in the last year we've had a number of different exhibitions and what's really what we think is really interesting about them is that well there is a limitation it has to be wall art we have no place to put any

0:16:15sculpture or anything that's got any big volume but within that we've had photography we've had origami we've had painting various different genres of art and i'm pleased to announce that we just put up a new exhibit today brand spanking spanking new it's called

0:16:35fractal fantasies 2. the artist is lisa yount so when you get a chance please go up and take a look it's it's a pretty good one okay this one is kind of my pride and joy we have we have sponsored free classical concerts in the city performed by the lucas valley chamber

0:16:56orchestra and in the interest of honesty and full disclosure i gotta say that i'm a member of the orchestra so just so everybody knows but the orchestra has come in we did two concerts one in april one in november they were free to anybody who came we did put out a donation can

0:17:19and we collected about 300 each time for the davis david s hunter youth scholarship program and so that was really exciting and i think those are the first free classical concerts in that in el cerrito so we're real proud of that one i am okay yeah we're proud of you too

0:17:43okay the other thing um we traditionally participate in el cerrito arts month and we try to put out a flyer each year um and you'll notice the mondrian style of our flyer you know if it's art it's gonna be art um and some of the events that we had as part of um arts

0:18:10month um we co-sponsored music for madera that was a fundraising event with the environmental quality committee the object was to raise funds for the purchase of the madeira open space district which could be added to the hillside natural area the event raised about 3 800

0:18:35and it had food music dance performance and even a silent auction so we thought it was a very very successful event also in october as part of our arts month uh we sponsored the el cerrito free folk festival and that was at the high school and this was really a pretty good event

0:18:57i don't know if any of you had a chance to attend but it was very eclectic it had performances but it also had workshops and opportunities for community members to actually participate in the music making and learn some music skills and even had activities for kids

0:19:18stories arts and crafts and even a kids open mic so that was also another very very successful date at the high school in addition we have been doing the judging at the annual art show and sale for the el cerrito art association so that's kind of our bragging time and now

0:19:45what we want to do is take a look forward at what we're planning to do in 2015.

0:19:53probably the biggest project on our plate right now is looking at sponsoring an artist in residence program and this would be in conjunction or at and with the assistance of the recycling and environmental resource center commonly known as the recycling center i i have a hard time saying the

0:20:16full name of that one um it's based if the idea is creation of art using recycled materials um the funding for this would come from our one percent for public art right now we have a subcommittee that is investigating some of the issues because there are some very very key

0:20:41issues that have to be worked out before this can go ahead who would own the artist's work would the artist as part of this have to give the city a piece of art could the artist sell the work um where and how would it be displayed possibly a trailer at the recycling

0:21:08center is there to be a stipend for the artist so our subcommittee is working on this and um we are scheduled to have a presentation from them i believe it's in march and then we can go ahead go forward with some of the nitty gritty details on this so we're really excited about that

0:21:31okay going along with that we the commission wants to take a look at other projects that we can foster under the one percent for public art and so we are in process of researching potential sites in the city for such public art um developing priorities for spending funds

0:21:59and also some administrative ideas policies and procedures for you to utilization of funds what do we do with over the transom proposals people come in as do you know say hey i've got an idea for some public arts posture yeah but if we we need to put out a call we need to weigh those

0:22:20proposals against other ones so we need to kind of set and we're working on setting some guidelines for how to treat these uh and what kind of calls for public art we want to put out so that's on our agenda for this year okay music and dance well i'm pleased to

0:22:42tell you that the lucas valley chamber orchestra is coming back again and that will be on may 9th and i'll give you a hint mozart paris symphony will be by the way that's an interesting work we're an interesting orchestra we don't have any conductor so we work with our chamber orchestra so

0:22:58the mozart paris symphony will definitely be on the program but we the commission really wants to enhance the music offerings and so we are going to be looking at sponsoring performances in other genres um folk gospel ethnic choral even some dance and we are tentatively set to talk about

0:23:24what other types of music involvement we can have at our march meeting [Music] was that the last slide okay well actually then i have two more things to say um we i had already mentioned that we have a new show in the gallery and i just wanted to say that one of the other things that the

0:23:47commission is going to be doing this year the last time we put out a call we didn't get too many responses or proposals for art so we are looking at ways to broaden our call for proposals so that we have more proposals to choose from when we make the selections of the art

0:24:09that will be displayed in the gallery and again the last thing that was on my list was to talk about eve's film which um we are sponsoring and the date on that is my gosh i put everything the 28th okay excellent and i just want to say i hope you get a chance to attend as part

0:24:31of the commission um i was one of the two people to view uh you know preview the disk of it so that we could make a decision and it was late and i said oh i don't want to do this i'll just watch 15 minutes and then i'll do 15 tomorrow and 15 next i'll get it done before our

0:24:49meeting and it gripped me and i stayed up till two in the morning till i finished it so yes it really did grip me i think it's it's an excellent one and i think you'll enjoy it anyway um i would like to ask if you have any questions to pose to me i guess not that was such a thorough and

0:25:09comprehensive report we really appreciated all the good work you and your colleagues are doing and suzanne for all of your assistance oh that's the thing i forgot to say we really want to acknowledge suzanne she is just she is our staff liaison and without her i don't think we could have

0:25:27done anything she's the best thank you and thank you mayor freeman council yeah thank you okay i like that roving mic that kind of oprah style too that worked out well that's new okay on to the consent calendar which consists of items a b c and d the minutes planning commission and design

0:25:51review appointments police department mobile data computer purchase and an economic development committee appointment do i have a motion iso move second it's been moved in seconded all in favor please signify by saying aye aye motion carries unanimously uh now we move on to policy matters 7a

0:26:12is tobacco retail regulations study session and you've got a busy night good evening mayor and council members my name is suzanne erla and i am the city's community outreach specialist and i'm here this evening um to talk with you about establishing a tobacco retailer's license in el cerrito

0:26:44and then to receive the council's guidance in some areas so i'm just going to pull up our powerpoint and i'll let margaret introduce herself while i'm doing that good evening mr mayor members of the council margaret cavanaugh and your development services manager

0:27:08[Applause] as you know in 2013 the el cirita city council adopted a strategic plan and one of the goals of the strategic plan is to ensure the public's health and safety one of the strategies identified for achieving that goal is to explore innovative and best practices for promoting public health

0:27:28to that end last year in may the city council held a study session like we're doing tonight regarding smoke pollution protection ordinance and at that study session in addition to directing staff to develop a smoke pollution protection ordinance that has since been adopted

0:27:45council also directed staff to establish a local tobacco retailer's license and that's we're going to talk about tonight and also directed staff to research raising the purchase age to buy tobacco products in el cerrito to 21.

0:28:00as karen pinkus mentioned during the development of the smoke pollution protection ordinance tobacco continues to be a major health crisis um thankfully there are actually things that communities can do towards combating that issue the american lung association actually

0:28:21researches and gives a grade to every community in california and other communities regarding tobacco control and the three categories that the lung association looks at are outdoor smoking restrictions smoke-free multi-unit housing and local licensing and sales restrictions for

0:28:40retailers for the past number of years el cerrito has received an f grade and although we're not alone in receiving that f grade all of our neighboring jurisdictions receive an a grade during the process for the smoke pollution protection ordinance we did community outreach there was a online

0:29:01survey conducted in about i think 144 people participated in the online survey and over half of those people did indicate that they thought the city should do more to regulate businesses that sell tobacco products so with the information that the council understood came

0:29:20the direction that came from council we've been working to create a program that would have these four goals to ensure responsible legal sale of tobacco-related products to prevent initiation of tobacco youth use among youth and young adults to fund a local enforcement program for

0:29:38local compliance monitoring and to close gaps that exist in state and federal law related to emerging products such as e-cigarettes and flavored products that are targeted towards youth let's give you a bit of an overview of the current situation um in el cerrito there are 18 tobacco

0:29:59retailers in the attachments to the agenda bill there are some maps and some of the maps vary with how many retailers they show anywhere from 18 to 21.

0:30:10when we started doing this research we believe there were 21 retailers but we've since learned that both cvs stores due to a new corporate policy no longer sell tobacco and neither does blue moon saloon so the number is 18 but on some maps you might see 19 or 21.

0:30:33the city does have some regulations regarding tobacco sales in our current zoning code and they relate to significant tobacco retailers who derive 50 or more of their gross sales receipts from tobacco product sales the regulations are in place today don't meet the goals that staff has

0:30:54identified for a successful tobacco retailer program so that's one of the reasons why we would like to revise what's in the zoning code staff is proposing to define a tobacco retailer as any retailer who offers tobacco or tobacco-related products for sale staff is also proposing to define

0:31:16significant tobacco retailers as a tobacco retailer who either has 20 or more of the display area of their store devoted to tobacco and tobacco products or and or 50 of gross sales receipts being derived from tobacco products and would uh e-cigarettes come under

0:31:37smoking paraphernalia or okay the way we would define tobacco and tobacco products would be the very inclusive comprehensive definition e-cigarettes other electronic nicotine delivery devices flavored tobacco products would be a very broad definition to close the gaps

0:31:56in state law based on anecdotal information staff believes that there are one or two retailers that may fit this definition of a significant tobacco retailer staff is proposing to create a license that every retailer would be required to obtain and renew annually and there

0:32:19would be a fee associated with that that would be sufficient to cover the full burden of this program so we do expect it to be cost recovery there obviously this type of program would require interdepartmental coordination the city manager's office would oversee implementation

0:32:40and public outreach finance department would collect the fee like they do for our business license and they would also issue the new and renewal licenses similar to a taxi cab or other business types that require an additional license community development would

0:32:58help tobacco retailers during the transition period so that they come into compliance with the new regulations if a use permit is required they would obviously handle that element as well as code enforcement you know complaints about municipal code violations the police department would develop and

0:33:17carry out a decoy program and that would be similar to the decoy program they have to check on sales of alcohol to miners it would be modeled after that program but this would be checking on sale of tobacco products to minors speaking of which staff did do some research regarding the

0:33:37minimum legal sale age for tobacco products and we found out that the state of california present preempts california cities from raising the minimum legal sale age so is not something that we researched further so the reason that we're here tonight is uh both staff and the planning commission

0:34:00have some questions we were hoping to get some guidance from the council so that we could finish developing this ordinance and bring it back to you for your consideration staff would be proposing to prohibit a business type that would allow the sale and consumption of tobacco or

0:34:23tobacco products so that would include cigar lounges hookah lounges vape shops we currently don't have any of those business types in town so prohibiting them would mean that we would not have any in the future um do you want input on these as we go along or you want to wait till the end

0:34:42um it could be your preference i was thinking the end but we could do it as we go it's your choice um let's do it as we go along break it up a little bit it's it's a great presentation uh does anyone anyone have any objection to this proposal well i i'm not sure i

0:35:00understood what the proposal is i mean we've got cigar lounge hookah lounge vape shops we're saying we would prohibit those and the second bullet says we would allow them but call them new significant tobacco retailers so i'm just curious which is it can i clarify that it would

0:35:17be prohibiting both um a business type that would be a cigar lounge hook lounge vape shop and then prohibiting any new significant tobacco retailer from coming in so those would be two different business uses that staff is planning to propose to prohibit so it's colon and then one and then two

0:35:35so there's two different yeah okay thanks so i guess there's no objection let's move along thank you staff is planning to propose some new business standards and that would include prohibiting the sale of flavored tobacco products and as well as the sale of single cigars

0:35:59and small pack cigars closing loopholes in state laws and expanding the definition of what uh is prohibited to be self-service so that you know any smoking paraphernalia or other items also need to be a transaction where a clerk is involved versus the customer reaching

0:36:20something off a shelf prohibiting employees who are not old enough to legally purchase tobacco from being engaged in the transaction to sell tobacco to another customer and expanding again the definition of tobacco to include all tobacco paraphernalia and products and e-cigarettes

0:36:39regarding prohibiting the distribution of samples and coupons and any other elements that came up tonight that the council desired would you like to pause and talk about this yeah i have a com question i guess and that is under the heading of tobacco related products

0:36:58is that going to be defined so that everyone knows that yes yes that would be um the smoke pollution protection ordinance has a very broad and strong definition and we would be mirroring it after that and then would also just be looking at best practices to make sure that any

0:37:19emerging e-cigarettes or other products that come onto the market would be able to be included in that definition so i don't have it before you tonight but it would definitely be spelled out very clearly i was thinking it meant things like um i don't know that i thought of this real

0:37:36example but what occurred to me was like ashtrays so items that don't actually have tobacco prod you know they don't have the the uh tobacco-related product in as part of the unit but it uh houses it somehow or does something you know you use it to uh like it would be a

0:37:59thing to hold your cigarette with maybe would we i was just wondering if we would do that broader so does it include that broader it definitely does include uh rolling paper and other uh paraphernalia that is used for smoking if the council wants to include ashtrays i can make sure that's

0:38:16included i used to play them when i was a kid the flute and i used that paper somehow in conjunction with playing the flute um literally you were only playing this i am very sure of that i have never smoked in my life it wasn't she wasn't inhaling she was i'm trying

0:38:35exhaling oh i used it but i but i did so there are um different uses i think that was what it was but anyway so i i used to use that product in it for some other way so that's why i'm asking the question is that sometimes there can be some um overlap there and so i was wondering how

0:38:59specifically we would be defining and developing this list of uh the the tobacco-related products well i could clarify that the these restrictions would be in place for retailers who have a tobacco retailer license so if the same product is marketed as you know paper

0:39:26to roll your cigarettes in a tobacco store and marketed with a different label in a music shop the music shop is not held to these standards just the tobacco retailers so if the product is marketed you know if the label says that it's to do with smoking and tobacco consumption then there would be

0:39:48a tobacco retailer but if it's the same product and labeled a different way and they don't have any tobacco or tobacco products in their store they wouldn't need to follow these standards i think i just by the way remember in case somebody's curious why how i used

0:40:02it it was to there are these things called pads under the the keys on a flute and i think i use them to clean it so things like that can have multiple uses you'd want to be careful that's my only comment i i have a question um would chewing tobacco would that be part

0:40:24of yes our products including snuff and pipe tobacco i assume yes the exception um for nicotine products would be the nicotine patch and other products that are marketed to help someone quit smoking so all the cessation products are excluded and and when we consider these prohibitions

0:40:51whether it's the previous ones or these what you know saint pablo avenue divides two communities and richmond is getting an a for something and when i look at the table that you provided in our packet it's not particularly robust and nowhere near as robust as what you're proposing tonight

0:41:09so how does how does the the one public commenter said you know why you know how are you going to keep it from these youth from walking across the street and and being exposed to it do they does richmond have a 1000 foot between retailer requirement and they're certainly not

0:41:27going to be prohibiting these products so i'm just curious what's our effectiveness going to be you know in achieving the four mission four bullets that you put on the top page and i definitely think that is something you know to discuss tonight um you are correct councilmember lyman that the

0:41:43city of richmond does not ban flavored tobacco products and the city of richmond doesn't have a buffer between stores as is going to be proposed and we'll see later we we do feel that the proposal after receiving your input and going back to the planning commission

0:42:00you know will meet the goals of the program but we do need to find out what makes sense for el cerrito and and what will be successful here right and maybe engage in deeper discussions with richmond and see if they have plans to amend their ordinance uh the same similar arguments made

0:42:22richmond raised their minimum wage el cerrito has yet to raise minimum wage and so in any of these kind of social benefit endeavors it would be great if we and our neighbors are pretty similar in the way we're approaching it just like we did in the plastic bag and this says it just is targeting

0:42:42tobacco retailers are you talking about significant tobacco retailers as well or they would the significant tobacco retailers would be able to provide these items any tobacco retailer and that would be a question tonight though if the council if there was consensus to treat

0:42:57significant tobacco retailers differently in some way or to treat all tobacco retailers the same as is currently being proposed these standards would apply to any tobacco retailer but that certainly is something that could be adjusted if you wish and is there any community that has

0:43:15banned specific products like flavored tobacco products you know they're an emerging product so it actually is something that um is relatively new for communities to be tackling and i don't know of any communities in the bay area that have taken this step but given that the council's direction

0:43:35for smoke pollution protection was to have a a strong and forward-thinking proposal we went ahead and included it for your future consideration so there's no specific case law or there's no experience with how the regulated community feels about the prohibition of specific products well

0:43:57we're aiming to close the loophole in the state and federal laws that don't address these emerging products um i don't know if you've been able to read it but um a letter was sent to the planning commission and we forwarded to the city council from the i might get the name wrong but the

0:44:13national association of tobacco retailers and they did have some comments regarding flavored tobacco products and there wasn't a need to ban them and that might harm local businesses and that they felt that there wasn't a lot of scientific evidence saying that they were unsafe but we've also seen

0:44:32evidence from studies saying that they are unsafe whether they're safe or unsafe they potentially are more attractive to first-time smokers small-packed cigars are you targeting a quantity there i mean swisher sweets are sold in i think packs of three so it's similar to the flavored tobacco

0:44:54products one way that items are being targeted towards youth is a low price point on the scale of the price of a candy bar you know bright packaging sweet flavors so to have a grape flavored you know tobacco product or to have um little cigars is another product that a

0:45:16lot of youth actually do experiment with so it's it is trying to protect our our youth from having access to these low-cost convenient flavored products that are so so you would be talking about five i mean what what's the definition of small pack um i think it for

0:45:36well the state law defines cigarette packs is under 20. i'd have to look at what the best practices are for small pack cigars and maybe five and staff was considering to include an exception of premium cigars so a single cigar that costs five or more dollars to

0:45:55still be allowed because that's not targeted towards a youth typically that may be more for someone who's purchasing the cigar for a celebration or other reason yep the announcement of a birth who knows um some some premium cigars do come in packs of five rarely are they less than

0:46:15a pack of five so that's why i'm just driving and i think it may be five i don't have those notes in front of me um we'll obviously have more detail for when the planning commission is making a recommendation and when we present this to you but we had some kind of larger

0:46:29big picture questions to ask during the study session so i apologize for not having all the details thank you any other questions or comments all right keep rolling so is there general consensus on these standards or should we my my greatest concern is the is the

0:46:48um the constitutionality or the or the the precedence of picking specific products uh like flavored tobacco or single cigars or or four pack cigars um the the idea of making it less attractive to young purchasers is certainly something that i i support i just i'm

0:47:14concerned that we're treading into new waters and [Music] i want to make sure that we're not setting ourselves up for a fall we'll have more information for you when we bring it back to you on that um i had one comment and that was to the the comment about well if we have a

0:47:32higher standard than a surrounding city [Music] it's almost the argument was almost um we don't excuse me we don't want to be the city with the strongest standard but um the other way to say that is somebody's got to go first and i don't think we want to be the city

0:47:56with the weakest standard either and um i think i would um prefer to live in a city with high standards agreed but i agree with the mayor's comments that as we um as we move forward with this we need to pressure our neighbors to up their game too i noticed some of the

0:48:17passage dates are more than a decade old for some of the other cities so they need to start thinking about what is changing in the uh industry and address the changes exactly yeah thank you very much thank you uh at the planning commission we had some discussions regarding

0:48:38uh if new business standards are enacted such as what we just discussed on the previous slide what would be an appropriate time frame to allow existing businesses to come into compliance and the planning commission i didn't come to a vote but there was some discussion

0:48:51about providing 24 months for existing businesses to come into compliance with all those standards if it was adopted there would be a sooner time frame for a new business that came into town they would have to comply as soon as the effective date but to give a longer period of time for our

0:49:07existing retailers is there any feedback regarding the 24 month period i've got a couple of questions one is was our economic development committee uh consulted were they discussed brought into this at all no but we can definitely go to them before we come back to you and how about the chamber

0:49:26did the chamber get a chance to comment on both the plans and the workshop but also the timing of compliance uh the chamber is on our distribution list so they hopefully are aware that we've been discussing this item for a couple months i haven't made a specific presentation

0:49:45to the uh chamber and i haven't received any official you know comments from from the chamber as an organization but i will be sure to continue to outreach to them i'm comfortable with the two years yeah two years is fine thank you in terms of separation requirements or

0:50:11buffers this is actually where there was a lot of thoughtful discussion both at the planning commission and among staff in terms of what should the buffered distances be in el cerrito particularly looking at tobacco retailers the distance from schools and parks as well as between two tobacco

0:50:30retailers and so in addition to wanting to get some feedback from the council regarding the length the size of the buffer we also wanted to find out if the council thought there should be any distinction between significant tobacco retailers and the tobacco retailers who

0:50:49is a minor part of their their store operation to be selling tobacco so the difference would be you know a head shop or a you know cigarette discount store versus a grocery store or a gas station a store that does sell tobacco products but it's not their primary

0:51:06business purpose um so we have a couple more slides on this topic one of the challenges that came up when we were talking about this previously was wanting to balance the economic development goals and needs of the city and having a strong program that kind of meets the

0:51:28examples of what a successful tobacco control program that would have an impact on protecting the health and safety of our community so with that in mind at this time staff is proposing a thousand foot buffer between stores so any any two tobacco retailers if a new

0:51:49store came in they'd need to be a thousand feet which is about two blocks from any current retailer we would exempt existing retailers from that requirement and to give the city flexibility and to be able to take a closer look on a case-by-case basis one idea that we had would be to allow a

0:52:11new retailer to apply for a conditional use permit for an exception to this particular regulation and i have a map i can show you in just a couple future slides or we can jump there that kind of helps visualize what's what's available in el cerrito if the buffer was a thousand feet

0:52:33staff is also proposing a 500-foot buffer around schools parks and sensitive sites and by that i mean the library and city recreational facilities like the community center and the senior center um excluding the ohlone greenway because of its proximity to the avenue

0:52:50and and that's really our commercial core um and then there's a question of should we exempt all of our existing retailers from this specific clause or only the certain retailers and staff felt that to have a strong tobacco retail program it did make sense to to have a buffer around the schools

0:53:12and parks and places where youth congregate and groups of youth typically may be found in our community to not offer any type of exception for that regulation for any new retailers so i have a couple maps that i'll show you so this first one here the red dots on

0:53:31the map represent an existing store and then the pink circles show a thousand foot buffer around the store so you can see that there is a concentration of retailers along the avenue and you can also see that by creating a thousand foot buffer there really is a disincentive for a new

0:53:54retailer to come in this map here and all these maps are in the council packet as well this map here shows a 500 foot buffer around the sensitive sites so the red dots still represent a retail store and then the light blue areas would be a 500 foot buffer around

0:54:17public or private school a city park the library the community center the senior center and so this is the 500 foot buffer that staff is is proposing and just to compare that the next map shows a thousand foot buffer and we originally looked at a thousand foot buffer um that is used in other

0:54:38communities in california and elsewhere nationally however for el cerrito being a built out community with a lot of schools and a lot of parks it didn't seem to make a lot of sense on this map in pink you can't see it very well but the learning greenway is right there

0:55:00and because of its proximity to the avenue we would exclude the ohlone greenway in the definition of parks so that that wouldn't be an area of exclusion so if we wanted to come back to this slide did the council have feedback on these areas so in in the packet you provided us with a

0:55:23list of a through w of uh retail of tobacco retailers yes and in there there was in legend something og in green oh ohlone greenway i apologize so the ohlone greenway would be within thousand or within 500 feet yeah i can actually flip to that really quickly for

0:55:44you um because the it appears that q and r are the two significant um tobacco retailers yes and and both of them are with well one of them's within 500 feet of a school um [Music] they're both within a thousand feet of the school um they're one is within 500 feet of park

0:56:15um and obviously they're within a thousand feet of existing tobacco retailers um it's q and r the two i'm looking at appear to be the significant tobacco retailers so we would be in essence based on our decisions tonight we would be putting one or both of these out of

0:56:35potentially out of business if if the council did not want to exempt all existing retailers which is quite commonly done when a new regulation comes in to allow existing businesses to continue their operation until they close or change ownership um if the council wanted to take a

0:56:54different direction and wanted to require anyone who's a significant tobacco retailer from one of these buffer standards then the business owner would either need to diversify their product or would need to relocate and there would have to be further discussions of you know

0:57:12would the city assist with that business relocation and what would that type of program mean so we're definitely interested in hearing if there is council interest in that type of thing because we'll need to address that in a fair level of detail if that were to be the direction you wanted to go

0:57:30so going back to your slide with your questions on hand the the first white bullet the first opaque bullet 1000 foot buffer between retailers exempt existing retailers and allow new retailers to apply for relief through a conditional use permit that makes very good sense

0:57:47the 500-foot buffer around schools and parks and other sensitive sites i support that as well with the given that you're excluding the ohlone greenway um and just curious did the staff consider the same flexibility for a conditional use permit for new retailers on this

0:58:07and we certainly could include that one reason why it wasn't being proposed until we heard more feedback from you was wanting to create a strong buffer around parks and schools and so sending the message of you know we do not want a tobacco retailer you know to be located within 500 feet

0:58:28for example you know of a school or park without any exception is a stronger message but we are trying to be flexible and allow that economic development in terms of thinking if any of our existing retailers changed ownership closed for a period of time and another use that was community

0:58:47serving such as a grocery like supermarket or a neighborhood convenience store came in and they were further away from a school but closer to another retailer you know would we want that flexibility there seemed to make a lot more sense in terms of the council's economic

0:59:03development goals but we could we could certainly go either way so at the moment there are um three retailers within 500 feet of a park six retailers within 500 feet of a school um and so we would be saying under this exemption no exemption for new retailers we would

0:59:25be saying those change hands go out of business whatever we lose those as uh storefronts for tobacco we could we could also uh just ask them what the the meaning of no exemption for for new retailers yes so even though even though the gas station may change hands from

0:59:46joe's to jane's jane wouldn't be able to sell tobacco even though joe could [Music] i wanna make sure that's what the this means hi i just wanted to to step in i was looking at the non-conforming section if it's if the use is abandoned for six months that would

1:00:07lose its non-conforming status but if it continues in operation and it is sold i don't believe that the non-conforming status would be lost for that that was just what that's that's the clarification i wanted to say that again yes so under our lessons um if joe's cigarettes were sold to jain

1:00:25cigarettes that's that that use would not have ceased that if they just literally bought the continuous operation out that's not the end of a non-conforming uses ability to function in our city that's just a change of ownership so it's if they stopped for six months

1:00:43that would be they have sunsetted their their use and that would be a time that they would not be allowed to open as a tobacco uh store yeah i have a question on under the 1000 foot buffer where it says allow new retailers to apply for relief through a conditional

1:01:02use permit i don't understand what the reasoning is that would justify the use under conditional use permit i mean what redeeming value is there and that's actually something if we did want to provide that exception in the program is we would have to come up with what would

1:01:24be some findings that the planning commission would be looking at to weigh for example a grocery store if a grocery store comes in and they happen to sell tobacco products and they want to continue to sell the tobacco products how would the planning commission weigh the value of

1:01:40the grocery store to the community into the city compared to uh but isn't it the value of selling cigarettes because a a grocery store sells thousands and thousands of products and they don't have to sell every product i mean store a may sell one sort of set of

1:02:02products and store b may sell an overlapping set of products but not exactly the same in fact i think that's sort of common because for one thing the store sizes aren't the same so it's it's common that that happens so i'm not figuring i'm not comprehending um i mean i'm used to a conditional use

1:02:25permit being about some sort of redeeming feature or something about the product and i can't i'm having trouble connecting that with tobacco let me tackle that one and i'm not saying i agree with this but i think what it means is if there's a attractive business like a safeway or lucky's that

1:02:46we want to bring in and they are adamant that part of their making that store profitable is being able to sell cigarettes like they do in almost all their other stores we might think the value to the community of having that store outweighs the danger of having

1:03:04another tobacco outlet right but it would seem like that's true only if that were significant not not necessarily uh the most significant but a significant portion of their um business and if that's true that it's a significant portion of their business isn't that going against what we're

1:03:28doing this for anyway which is to reduce it did in a previous slide did we prohibit significant new significant tobacco retailers yes so i can see the logic that councilman ravelson is using yeah um so i don't get i i agree with you i don't think we need that flexibility

1:03:52with 18 outlets for cigarettes every cigarette addict is has to walk only a couple of blocks in order to find a place so i don't think we need to have additional retailers come in and plus our neighboring communities have plenty of places to buy tobacco products

1:04:12with the mayor's permission though i would love to have staff consider what the what the what the given our comments tonight get figure out what they what criteria the planning commission might use and we might find the criteria either palatable or unpalatable and help

1:04:31us make a decision so i'm i'm not certain i'm willing to abandon the the the concept but my guess is that it's going to be to make it effective it's going to be such an onerous task on the planning commission that it it won't make sense to put it forward because it'll be too difficult

1:04:50to on on future planning commissions so i but i'd love to know what what ideas come out of this discussion i'm fine with that yeah i i don't i'm having a heart still having a hard time with understanding how i mean why are we even bothering to do this if you know you can just come in

1:05:12with a conditional use permit and overturn the whole thing what it look sort of appears like for new businesses but all their overturning is the buffer between tobacco retailers everything else right everything else would apply the only thing that they would be able to do

1:05:29is be within 500 feet of a gas station and they might be able to provide let's think of bevmo bevmo provides upscale cigars and that's a portion of their business if beva wanted to come in to one of our retailers retail locations they might decide they can't or won't because

1:05:52tobacco is a a significant portion of their of their revenue stream or they're a thousand feet connect within a gas station right yeah so they're providing a completely different product than the gas station and it is part and parcel of what they do um you know their business model so

1:06:12it they don't they don't qualify for significant because they're less than 20 they're less than 50 but they're a tobacco retailer that has a a different tobacco product than all other 18 uh retailers in town so so for me to blanket say we're not going to allow a retailer in because they because they

1:06:36have tobacco as a portion of their business model i just don't see i'd like to make sure it's owners enough so that it's not just another retailer to children but you know there potentially are business models out there that are attracted that would be useful well what if for example somebody had a

1:06:59i see i to me it's i'm just having a hard time understanding how you would come up with such a list of what's important but the what if for example the example was not that they sold the uh premium cigar i'm well i assume what you're saying is a premium cigar i

1:07:16actually don't know but um the but instead they were trying to sell flavored uh tobacco products that were specifically geared towards children right um outline that if we go forward well yeah but if you can apply for relief through a conditional use only for this that's only for the separation

1:07:37that's only for the separation between two tobacco retailers so this is so this conditional use permit is just for the five dollar uh or more expensive category what is it this is a only saying that you could apply it doesn't mean you're going to be granted it and

1:07:53it's probably unlikely you would be granted but if we allow this that this only applies to the thousand-foot buffer between tobacco retailers so for example we have many vacant storefronts in guitar center etc along san pablo if there were to be a business that's a

1:08:13thriving business that would benefit our community in other ways that insist that their customers have to have their cigars or have to have a particular tobacco product or they're not coming in then we have to weigh the pros and cons do we want that space to remain empty

1:08:29for another number of years or do we think that we can allow another tobacco retailer who is subject to all of the other regulations but they are other than the thousand foot buffer the example that staff has in mind when we were talking about this particular provision is the former safeway shopping

1:08:51center with the gas station on the corner the gas station sells cigarettes now so if we had the chance of getting some other grocery store into that empty building we'd like to have the opportunity to have them give us our best presentation as to what they could

1:09:08bring to the city if they wanted to also sell cigarettes so that's exactly what the mayor's point is there's vacant sites that we wouldn't want to preclude our option to consider them okay so here would be the answer to my question which is what i was actually asking for to

1:09:24begin with the answer is we would get a grocery store that we would get the use of it that will serve the community community around with the not with the cigarette products but um in spite basically in spite of the cigarette products it'll sell food milk ex you know things like that

1:09:46so that would be the you know in the conditional use permit fine findings it would be stuff like that right that's correct that's the answer to my question that's correct it literally is in spite of the fact that you're bringing forward a product that we have some concerns about what are you

1:10:03bringing to the city that would make it worth the public benefit what what is the city getting for this trade in spite of this undesirable thing right but they couldn't have such a percentage of their tobacco say related sales that they would go into the significant tobacco

1:10:21retailer category that would not be permitted and could we have some intermediate level that it couldn't go above i don't know what that would be but you know some numb some percent that um we still i think don't want them for example to have the flavored cigarette

1:10:42stuff absolutely i think currently at least by my notes that's a prohibition um anything that seems to um attract children in and of itself the the candy we've seen the grape flavored cigars and i was so things like that would staff's recommendation is still to

1:10:58prohibit that if that does not put us in a precarious legal situation um but we could um the use permit findings are something that we can bring back in the draft ordinance to you to see if we've struck the right balance i i think that we're in agreement that uh you know we're

1:11:15willing to take a look at the language that you come up with and see if it meets the concerns that have been expressed quite well by council member with regard to exempting existing retailers or exempting only non-um significant uh tobacco retailers at a minimum i think we should exempt

1:11:36all existing retailers and i'm struggling over the non-significant tobacco retailers um so i don't know i i don't have a i don't have a strong opinion there and struggle with that one yeah i i also i don't like to put businesses out of business particularly when we have so

1:11:59many vacancies in our uh commercial areas already and we know there's challenges to filling those vacancies so i'm sorry that there are businesses that feel that they have to essentially sell poison in order to make a living and most people who work in significant tobacco retailers are

1:12:19probably making minimum wage are barely above so they're not like a lot of quality jobs there and they don't provide that many jobs but at the same time it's it's not the best president if there's a business that's functioning in our community and contributing somewhat economically to force them out

1:12:38of business and there may be legal battles that could ensue so i'd like to take a look at this when the ordinance comes back and have the city attorney weigh in if there's any [Music] possible consequences if we do adopt this and apply it to any existing retailer

1:13:01any other thoughts and comments on these i think the rest are good to go on this page thank you i i do have a thought though um when i was a young man there were candy stores that sold candy cigarettes are we banning tobacco lookalikes also we be banning candy cigarettes as well the ones that are

1:13:35chewing gum uh so this came up for example at many seas candy stores sell a chocolate cigar because seas does not sell any real tobacco products then they don't need to comply with these business standards so c's candy could still sell a chocolate cigar chocolate's in the shape of a cigar

1:13:57because it doesn't have any tobacco or nicotine so likewise um if there was a retailer that did not have any tobacco or tobacco products but they did have the chewing gum that looks like you know chewing tobacco but they don't sell any other tobacco products they um

1:14:18they would still be allowed to do that but a tobacco retailer would not be able to sell the candy cigar or the candy gum that looks like chewing tobacco because they are a tobacco retailer so so that does allow for non-tobacco retailers to provide those novelty

1:14:40candies as it's currently being proposed so if this wonderful new grocery store came in to replace the vacant safeway site and they sold cigarettes they would not be allowed to sell um candy cigarettes is that what we're saying correct as written that's good okay thank you is is there a consensus

1:15:05that that is the direction right yeah frankly i'd like to see it banned throughout the city because that's one of those things that a gateway drug yeah exactly i used to smoke those funny uh phony ones all the time unfortunately i never took up real cigarettes but

1:15:20it was close thank you i think we've dealt with all the discussion items here on uh correct excellent i'm just going to flip through the slides yeah so we've looked at the three maps oh uh so we've already kind of done our discussion during the presentation were

1:15:39there any other areas that you thought was the verification significant tobacco retailer one just like more of a fine point if we take two years to bring our 18 existing tobacco retailers up to this new ordinance up to the new business standards up to the new business

1:16:04standards not the buffers that's correct um as proposed they would have to apply for a use permit the question i know i will get from those business owners is would you are we going to be charged use permit fees for keeping our current business um the only body that can

1:16:25lessen a fee or waive a fee is the city council so i wouldn't need your answer this evening but would you like them to pay the full use permit application fee staff will still have to do the same amount of work and that's what those fees cover or would you what to strike a deal for the existing

1:16:41uses it's it's 18 of them is not a tremendous number it's not and how much is that fee likely to be 800 and change right now right i i believe so i'd have to reference the the fee sheet but it's 2 800 and 1200 i believe i would think maybe a compromise like say we enact this in february or march

1:17:02give them till the end of the calendar year and then institute the fee that's just an incentive to register quickly yeah thank you yeah yeah i i like that idea that the same concept of you know it's free for the first 12 months it's not free for the second 12 months

1:17:26um yeah they they can choose to drag their heels and pay more is there any public comment on this item yes mayor i have one speaker slip jenna katz please hello council members can you hear me well thank you for a very interesting discussion of this proposed legislation

1:17:53or um business practice i really appreciate the work of your staff and really outlining it so well i'm here representing the american cancer society's cancer action network as a volunteer as well as a former staff at the cancer society i've seen the devastating impact that smoking can have

1:18:11on public health and i commend you for your past actions and your overall plan although you can't raise the tobacco buying age to 21 you you're on your way to upgrading your grade from an f to an a and by the way i come from albany to the south which has an a grade and

1:18:30was involved in some of the legislation that happened in that city so i would just say that you know we have your hill catch up and give the hardest strongest public health support to this that you possibly can don't look to be second teach richmond what they need to do

1:18:49through your actions i just wanted to say that over a hundred communities have done what you're about to do which i hope is to pass a strong and effective tobacco licensing ordinance whether it be a thousand foot buffer or you know the different things that you're figuring out what you are doing

1:19:06is helping you smoking to stay to the minimum here in el cerrito so that should be your number one goal the flavored cigarettes and the e-cigarettes which are also flavored are a cynical way to addict our youth and anything you can do to limit the access to those

1:19:24products um in a way that is going to cover the the proximity of youth whether they be at school or at parks is is a benefit and it's something that the cancer society would support we know that uh one-third of all illegal tobacco sales meaning youth who are buying tobacco

1:19:44illegally do take place within one thousand feet of a school so this is what you do they go off the school campus they go to the nearest store and that's where they attempt to buy cigarettes by having the licensing fee the annual fee that will help the police and the other

1:20:01parts of the enforcement conduct those buys just like they do with alcohol to make to keep their retailers honest because they have a profit motive and if they're not carding and checking the ids of youth then they should be held accountable i also wanted to just say that i have

1:20:19heard of other communities looking at the cap on the number of tobacco licenses that they will allow at any given point in time so i hear you struggling with you know well what about a use permit how many can elsa rito have with the buffers you may want to consider that as something that staff

1:20:38could look into and i would just like to say that we don't support distinguishing between significant and insignificant tobacco in our opinion it's all tobacco so that might be an easier way to look at it than trying to measure with these percentages um so just wanted to share that comment with

1:20:59you and we appreciate your efforts on behalf of the public health of california thank you thank you very much for your comments and nick arzio good evening i'm nick garzio i live at [address removed] i would like to thank the staff for coming up with a very some very

1:21:24thoughtful solutions to a complicated problem and i've seen some some proposals that would increase the burden on small businesses but i also see some other inclusions that would act as sort of a windfall to existing businesses such as the uh the exclusion of new significant tobacco

1:21:45retailer licenses which would sort of give the existing significant tobacco retailers sort of a monopoly amongst themselves however the speaker before me brought up a very good point and that is would it really serve any good purpose towards the proposed goals just to differentiate between

1:22:05significant and regular tobacco retailers because the definition of significant tobacco retailer doesn't include the overall gross sales annually of tobacco and it could be that a supermarket sells 10 times the tobacco that a small mom-and-pop smoke shop sells it could be

1:22:21that far more underage smokers go to a supermarket where their presence would be less suspect than if they walked into a tobacco only store where anybody who comes in ought to be over 18.

1:22:35i think would be easier to monitor uh sales to miners at a tobacco only shop rather than the chaos of a supermarket so i'm not really sure that having any kind of additional restrictions on these kinds of shops would serve the goals that you've stated here so i'd have to agree with the speaker

1:22:55for me for the for those reasons and thank you for your time thank you i think both speakers brought up some good points that i asked staff to factor into your thinking council member lymon yeah and and to that end um there are uh pipe tobacco do end up with names and and flavors i'm

1:23:15i'm reading through the duffy law office letter and and there are products out there that are flavored but they're not necessarily targeted to be flavored for the for the um the quick sale to uh first time they're not they don't have the menthol in them and and trying to you know cool it off

1:23:35and make it more accessible um so i so i certainly would want to make sure that we're considering all those things and um [Music] you know i i do know that some tobacco shops require you to be 18 to enter and so that you know as one of our speakers did say it might actually be a better

1:23:58and easier way to police the the situation so i i would like to hear that uh expand expanded some more in your next presentation um are there any communities that have had success with incentive programs to get existing tobacco retailers to stop selling tobacco products

1:24:25we can certainly research that and i mean the example i don't know how it came to be but cvs's recent corporate decision to stop selling tobacco products i am aware of there are some 7-eleven stores that do not carry tobacco products now it's a minority of their stores but

1:24:44uh there are some communities that have that have that in place and i'm not sure how that came about but we can certainly research that take a look and as i understand cvs's decision which i commend highly it's because they decide decided they were in the health business

1:25:00and to sell a product that is so detrimental to health was contradictory to how they were positioning themselves in the marketplace so uh you know i applaud any for-profit business that sees that promoting health is going to be more profitable than promoting ill health

1:25:19so i want to really thank staff for all the work that you've done uh ms kavanaugh lynch miss ayarla and also ms pinkos have all worked on all the aspects of our tobacco efforts over the last nine months or so and i think we're well on our way to being a shining

1:25:37example for many other communities thanks to all of your work and the support from community folks planning commission etc so thank you yeah i was going to say in terms of promoting businesses that choose not to we already had we have a resolution that we had on the agenda a while back

1:25:58um greg and i maybe were the only ones i think greg was on the council when it was the heels resolution um maybe you weren't around i don't know i wasn't eating active living oh yeah yeah that was anyway that campaign is uh expanding some stuff i heard about it at the recent league

1:26:19but the documentation isn't out yet but it will be shortly but programs like that uh for example i think could promote uh healthy practices that occur in and we could market that to stores i would imagine if we wanted to and and do things to um you know we could have a just not like

1:26:43we have a list of green businesses we could have a list of tobacco-free businesses yeah for example in our city we can put on our website we you know we could do things like that that would um uh you know i i think that's a good suggestion and that is terms of our economic

1:27:04development efforts in general if we promote el cerrito as a extremely health-conscious city and that we're desirous of healthy enterprises like fitness studios yoga studios healthy eating establishments non-tobacco selling establishments it might be a way to build upon

1:27:25momentum from our once we're finished the two tobacco ordinances that certainly put us at the forefront so i think that's a good idea thank you thank you very much next up is item 7b community security camera registration presentation you want my copy [Laughter]

1:28:14this is lieutenant steven bonini for those at home in here that may not have had the pleasure of hearing him present previously [Applause] no steve bonini there you go field operations lieutenant for your police department and uh today i'm here to present a voluntary security camera registration

1:29:03outline uh program uh a quick overview of the program itself security cameras exist in many businesses and residences that we have here in el cerrito there it's not a police department surveillance system it's nothing that the police department runs it is voluntary

1:29:26to opt into the system and it's voluntary or you can opt out at any time the essence of the system is a partnership with our stakeholders within the community and the police department as a whole so we can enhance the investigations that we complete we can increase some of the solvability

1:29:47factors that come with those investigations and our officers will be able to find out where the video cameras are located for businesses and residences in el cerrito there are surrounding agencies and cities that have similar programs there's fremont san jose vallejo

1:30:08sacramento county and perhaps one of the biggest and been around the longest is that of the city of fremont so what they've what they've found is a 20 percent reduction in their burglaries and that's through their own reporting through this voluntary security camera

1:30:26registration the police department in the city would not own any of the cameras we would not be accessing any of the cameras through any type of light live feed the only time we would come in contact with the video footage if there was a criminal investigation that was taking

1:30:42place we find security cameras in homes and businesses when we do a neighborhood canvas during a significant investigation that's where we'll go knock on the door and ask the residents at our home if they've seen or heard anything regarding a recent crime now occasionally we run into something

1:31:02that says i have a security camera they invite us in and we take a look at the footage with them there with the owner of the residence or the owner of the security camera there if there happens to be something on that security camera that's of evidentiary value we then asked the owner if they

1:31:17would be willing to download that onto a thumb drive or a disk something where we could take it back and review it it's akin to taking a statement or a video camera or a surveillance security footage from some place like target or safeway the same exact thing so in getting started with this program

1:31:40we would have to get the residents and businesses to understand what's taking place of course we'd have some neighborhood meetings develop an online format we would try to explain the potential investigative impacts and how our partnerships with the city of the businesses are going to increase

1:32:00those prosecutions for the crimes that we discover in the crimes that were called for and that's what we're looking at is a successful prosecution in a timely manner for some significant crimes that occur here in el cerrito and we'd have to stress or talk about

1:32:13the potential costs to the city and the police department the potential costs are relatively easy as the program is set up we expect the people that are on duty currently working that to become a function of their job duties for their specific day or week some of the neighborhood meetings that

1:32:33we would have would be scheduled over a three to four month period we don't have any system requirements for the security cameras themselves we leave that up to the residents and businesses to decide what camera best fits their need coupled with the affordability factors

1:32:51of the cameras we would talk about the proper positioning of the cameras one thing we don't want to see are the the cameras pointed into a neighbor's window resident something like that what we found in the security camera footage that has best helped us is footage of the front of the house the

1:33:09street this side of the house or a rear entrance exit has proven very effective when we find them to help solve a crime those investigative benefits that we talked about briefly we were able to see the suspects entering or exiting often times there's two different points one

1:33:27where they enter a residence or a vehicle and one where they exit signage obviously helps it's much like lighting when we go do a neighborhood canvas or we do a home security check one of the things we stress is lighting a potential factor could also be cameras

1:33:48something to add to that for that review and then the neighborhood watch crime prevention involvement that's huge and what the city of fremont had found was that their neighborhood watch had increased up to 50 51 different locations within their city when they began really getting out

1:34:08and talking with the neighborhood watch groups about the security cameras about how it can affect an investigation what investigative leads can be applied or can be used by the officers some case examples where video helped for our city was the home invasion where the elderly couple

1:34:31was beaten security cameras in that area we didn't find anything that that was of use if we had known where all the security cameras were in an area that was further apart such as six seven blocks away we go there and hopefully begin to track the suspect vehicle or

1:34:50the suspects themselves we anticipate that there's different locations where suspects stop before they decide on a particular residence or person that they're going to commit a crime against and if we can begin to follow those type of movements it'll help lead to a

1:35:03successful prosecution there was a few several months ago there was an elderly woman that was carjacked and some of the security video footage was from cvs helped immensely when we asked the media for their to run the video and to get us some help and then the residential berkeley that

1:35:23was in burglary that was in the northern part of the city this helped because we were able to see the suspect weren't able to identify him but we were able to see him a few weeks later one of our officers was driving around saw that suspect now we would have never had that link

1:35:38if we didn't have that video footage to take a look at the cost of the city and the pd there would be some costs associated with data entry and that would be if we had decided to do it ourselves so we need to get the information into our computer aided dispatch

1:35:57we would need to take it from a online format where you can get on the police department website fill out a form that has your basic questions address contact name how we can get a hold of you during the day or evening when you may not be home so we can talk about the

1:36:14security cameras and review the footage while the residence is there we have to put into a gis type of format so the officers in the field would know where those cameras were and they could go check them outside of their neighborhood canvas we would anticipate that

1:36:32people on duty community service officer cadet whoever it is that is designated in the end to do this would have an initial learning curve about entering the data and taking it off the form that would be filled out online the the greatest data entry cross probably comes in that initial format

1:36:51where we have to get the computer-aided dispatch alerts into the system so that takes a little bit of minor work by our i.t people and our professional staff but i think it's something that we can we can conquer in a relatively quick time frame and once we develop that learning curve and we

1:37:09will be a part of our daily duties now i anticipate about two and a half hours to create the initial forms and then the follow-up entries would be less than 20 minutes the form itself is already exists and i did it myself to take a look at it and i'm not the most computer literate guy

1:37:28but i was able to get that entry down to about four minutes so it's about that it's about that quick once it gets rolling and once you get used to it and then the the timelines beginning february through april that's when we're looking at having the neighborhood

1:37:43meetings and we do that similar to what we did with a coffee with cops where we would take that into the community in different locations so that they don't have to go very far to hear the information that we're presenting online registration form that was completed and is just waiting to be live

1:38:00the website registration form is completed progress reports to the staff that's important not only to the city council but to our line staff as well and find out if the locations and the alerts that come up in the computer-aided dispatch is able to tell them accurate information they're

1:38:18able to get to the security cameras to review that footage we would also have a media push about the information because we want everyone to understand that it's a security camera and we're asking for help from our residents and our businesses we want to enhance those partnerships

1:38:36that we already have and we want to use what already exists and help us solve a crime so some of the things that we would use or what we currently push with nixle twitter youtube patch and nextdoor we found things to be fairly effective when it comes to getting the word out and

1:38:53relatively quickly that was the last slide if you guys have uh any questions i'll be more than happy to to answer them councilmember abelson um the question i have is somewhat simple i remember a while back we uh set up a system of surveillance for stores that were open i believe after 9

1:39:1800 pm that sold alcohol something like that after a gentleman at the red onion who owned who the store owner was killed and the um the thing i remember among other things about that particular thing was that there had to be a certain clarity in the surveillance in order for it to hold be

1:39:47held to hold up in court and what i was learning about this is would this also need to be or you know because home surveillance systems for example i don't know what the quality is of one versus another but um would they be likely to be usable in quarter does it even matter

1:40:08well i can answer that it'll be fairly drawn out but i'll try to take it step by step many of the security cameras that exist now are done through alarm companies and there's several of them out there that have that the resolution for those cameras far exceeds what was originally in the security

1:40:28camera ordinance or from several years ago so the cameras are going two ways the resolution and the ability to read and enhance those images are increasing while the cost is going down so that that's a benefit to the residents affordability is another factor and although we could we could specify

1:40:47the best possible resolution out there that may not be affordable for the residents or business so any camera is better than no camera the images that that are on there sometimes are not of the greatest quality but sometimes when we see a face or a description or something we can go just

1:41:05with that as far as the information allowed in court that's kind of a case-by-case basis depending on some of the evidentiary codes and what is allowed and what isn't but i would say any video that a person or business could put up that would help us solve a crime is much better than having to take

1:41:25just a witness a script about what the person looked like if we can see it we can then take that information disseminate it to all our officers our surrounding agencies and increase the solubility factors thank you welcome thanks other questions do you have any

1:41:41idea of how many home cameras this would involve i do not i did speak with the sacramento county sheriff's department and they were one of the first to use crimereports.com which were also a part of and they beta tested a security camera registration within that

1:42:01online system and the numbers that they had you're talking about several million people in sacramento county the numbers that they had they thought were extremely low they're right around two to three percent so they were unsure if that was because the message didn't get out they

1:42:16weren't publicizing it correctly or people just weren't that interested but at the time that i was speaking with them november december of last year it had been a fairly new system for them something that was getting underway i mean when you think two or three percent

1:42:31of several million people that gets quite a few cameras through there and with the you talked about signage so that there would be deterrents for for people because they would know that they were on camera um but is there would the list be published so if i had cameras up and i didn't

1:42:51necessarily want to advertise it is the list going to be public to public information that would be an in-house thing similar to a computer database that's limited to the police department we're not going to publish a list this is an investigative tool that helps only during that

1:43:09investigation so we're not going to come knocking your door and say hey we think something happened can we take a look at your security footage what will be part of is a criminal investigation that's taking place in or around the area only so it's nothing that's going to be

1:43:22public dissemination it's going to be police department use only are there any limits on the field of view you you talk about in your presentation that it shouldn't point at your neighbor's house but is there anything that prevents it from say covering the sidewalk and the street

1:43:39so that it picks up vehicles going by in both directions are there any limits on on the you know where people can put their camera and what they can video well if we're talking about a single-family residence and think of it as a square if you're standing looking at the

1:43:59home and you're facing the door to your left is think of it as the number one corner so we would like the camera to get the driveway the sidewalk and the entrance to your residence common one of the common things we see in residential burglaries is somebody going

1:44:15up first knocking on a door and then waiting to see if they get an answer okay if they don't get an answer typically the next thing they do is walk down a side yard so another camera would be at that corner behind the number one corner which would be the number two corner

1:44:30facing that walkway so you could see people coming through the gate so they have to pass two cameras in essence and then the rear entrance is a typical point of entry for the burglaries that we've investigated so if you have a camera that can show the rear entrance you

1:44:44pretty much have your typical suspect that we have found in a residential burglary go to the front go down the side of the house and in the back so if your camera is focused with a 90 to 180 degree angle on those particular locations you will get some some very good footage

1:45:03on the timeline um you we've got two large events that are very good outreaches and once july 4th and there's a national night out and i like the fact that you put it on one of your earlier slides that the crime prevention committee and i assume that you did a presentation to them

1:45:23um but the crime prevention committee could potentially use this to leverage new uh national watch neighborhood watch groups so i'm just curious if if the timeline if there's any benefit to a longer timeline that incorporates between now and say the first tuesday in

1:45:43august so that it becomes uh you know something that does help us get more neighborhood watches and more people involved in our community and potentially gives people an incentive to add cameras that become future crime fighting tools absolutely and if we find in the uh

1:46:04initial presentations that more time is needed we're very flexible and the goal is to get everyone a solid understanding of the program it's security cam related it's not a surveillance related thing more cameras are better neighborhood watch involvement crime prevention

1:46:20council involvement is great we're looking for all of that because those are partnerships that we need to enhance to help strengthen what we're doing in the programs and some of these solvability factors that we have for the crime so absolutely if it takes until august it takes through

1:46:34august if it takes through september we'll we'll keep going but i see a true benefit from the security cameras just knowing where they're at and where we can go and begin to track some of the suspects and some of the people for the crimes that we are investigating and what has taken

1:46:50place thank you any other questions we have several speakers i see yes we do mayor we have i have three slips al miller followed by nick arzio and denise sangster hello again and i haven't moved uh we often hear witnesses uh failing to come forth and assist in investigations for fear of personal

1:47:19safety for themselves or their families or their homes is that a valid fear or what provisions could be made in this to not make people afraid to offer their cameras an assistance of investigations for fear of retaliation thank you go ahead at times it it can be a concern and a

1:47:44significant factor when we're doing some victim witness interviews the nice thing about the video is it doesn't fade with memory the video is the video it's captured we can see it later if for some reason a person is afraid or unwilling or may need more time we can figure that out discuss it with

1:48:05them say you know what we can come back in three or four days and take a look at this when things a little bit more calm down a little bit more comfortable or you can download this and drop it off and we'll take a look at it whatever's going to work with them that's the nice thing about videos it

1:48:19doesn't the memory doesn't fade the images are always the images you know as clear as they can get they're right there so that that's a huge benefit in fact we can see it much much later and it'll still be the same thing as it was that day it occurred thank you

1:48:34nickarzio followed by denise hankster hi am nick arzio a member of the el cerrito crime prevention committee um we the i can't speak on behalf of the entire committee but as a member of the public who's interested in crime prevention i can say that it would be good for

1:49:02the police department to confer with the crime prevention committee on the implementation of this program i think that it can either serve as a crime prevention device or as a criminal investigation device depending on whether or not there is signage that could serve as a deterrent

1:49:19if there's no signage and if if criminals aren't aware that it exists there will be no deterrent it would be more of a criminal investigation tool um i would also sort of like to see some some more attention focused on the position proper positioning of the cameras

1:49:39in addition to not focusing it on into a neighbor's window i think that the council should determine whether or not it's appropriate for a camera to be focused solely on a public street or whether there should be a requirement that at least some portion of the private property be included in the

1:49:54camera's positioning when used in this uh in this program also an an extra emphasis on the volun uh the voluntary nature of the program and maybe some kind of procedure for how the police would contact the private resident to ask them for that footage like maybe during what times of the day

1:50:14how many times they can ask in the manner in which they ask because there may be a concern of a perception of coercion and these are sort of extreme examples but they're things that can somehow sometimes creep up and they know that there would be a great concern about

1:50:29a right to privacy so i think that by putting in these safeguards of being thoughtful about it and maybe even a little bit overly cautious you'd get the most public support for this program thank you thanks for your comments hi denise sangster i think this is a

1:50:51great program i've been burglarized my neighborhood we had nine break-ins on one morning and i had videotape caught the burglar on video watched him go through all the goodies that he had picked up on videotape and then we took pictures of it and stapled it to telephone poles

1:51:09so i think this is a great program other communities are using it some of the things that i've learned from friends that are participating in other cities is the quality of the camera and i know someone asked about the quality of the camera they're all pretty good today the

1:51:23biggest differentiator is bandwidth you really need to set a standard of bandwidth and comcast is working with some cities to provide an extra level of bandwidth at a lower cost if it's included in this type of a program and i would encourage that that be looked at

1:51:40i think the only concern that i have i love this program but the only concern that i have is can somebody come in with a request for public information and get access to this list that's the only thing that worries me and i know that that's happened in other cities

1:51:54i happen to have nine video cameras on my property after somebody tried to get in and kick in my back door so i'm all for it but i just don't want it published in a newspaper or put on a website so that would be my only concern and i think that's a very real possibility

1:52:10thank you for your comments uh lieutenant could you address that issue about the public records act as the public records requests go for something like this i can't speak as to the level that an attorney may we happen to have one aren't we lucky [Music] yeah um we need to look at a little bit

1:52:33more closely this is a developing area um and we haven't been able and so there there is an existing case law that we can point to that answers the question so you know we need to review the exceptions that exist in the public records act and how they apply and what

1:52:47kinds of arguments we'd be able to make for generally applicable exceptions if there isn't one but uh we can certainly uh look at that and and get that back to the council thank you i think we had one last speaker slip come in yes mayor ben dinsa hi my name is ben dinsa i'm a local

1:53:07business owner regarding this program i'm really supported for this program come last 10 plus years i've worked with the ecp we have the cameras his manning session is always helpful and that's all my comments i'll support this program thank you very much thank you

1:53:26okay uh any comments and or a motion all right i'll make comments oh the comments i want to make is that a year and a half ago lieutenant benini and i were up on the arlington on national night out and this subject came up and we had a really lively discussion there were about

1:53:4935 neighbors there and i was really impressed at the time of how much you knew about security cameras and it's clear you've learned even more in the last year and a half i'm very impressed with the thought that's gone into formulating this program and i think it

1:54:04would definitely be a step forward and complement all the other crime prevention and apprehension work that our police force is doing so any other comments i have a question go ahead i was just going to say i i'm very supportive of this work also and um i'm you know when the time comes i'll make a

1:54:26motion if you want unless somebody else wants to i'm very yeah you got it you'll have it um i'm very supportive but i again some of the questions i asked in some of the comments the public comments is there there's no real pro i mean we're having this resolution creates the program but

1:54:45there's no meat to the program there's no camera angles there's no resolution recommendations so is there is there a supplemental document that will be created that goes out to the public that that deals with the public records issues informs them what you know what type of

1:55:01protections they'll have it's voluntary so when they get the handout and it says you know we recommend the camera angles like this and we recommend this level of of data collection you know digital quality and oh by the way we can or can't protect your your name

1:55:22um then they choose at that time they get to choose but that document that's describing what our recommendations are what our abilities are is not available at this time so we're making we're passing a resolution that creates a program but there's no backup documentation at this time is

1:55:42that correct yes it it's coming it it exists and because the the resolutions and the technology is changing rapidly that's probably the most difficult one to pin down we can say one one thing today and next week six or seven cameras immediately past that and that and that

1:55:59part's a living document part right that so that's why i'm i'm i'm okay with the fact that we don't have the the backup document tonight because we do want it to be living this is more of a policy and and not the practical implementation document but i wanted to make sure that

1:56:13that all the comments that were heard tonight are something that you'll take back and put into into work absolutely including the recommendations for camera angles the width the bandwidth locations of the camera for the optimal viewing all that contained in a simple

1:56:31document that either can be downloaded from our website or we can hand to people at the time we're having the discussions some of it's formed and as it's being formed it's changing slightly based on new cameras and things that we're finding out but when when we're ready to

1:56:48roll it out and put it out for the the meetings and everything that that will be an absolute function of the the paperwork that comes out so residents know what it in businesses know what it is is coming how it's going to be formed what the camera angle should look like

1:57:03and uh the best recommendations we don't want to tell anybody what camera they should get but we would like to say when you're when you're going to get a camera think about these this list a through z thank you i do support the program and uh um and i knowing living here the last

1:57:2611 years 12 years and seeing a couple of crimes that have not been solved like down the street from my house at the red onion restaurant and also the gas station by the honda dealership i remember those crimes and and i think now with the new technology if they had those cameras back then we

1:57:50could have helped in catching the criminals so so thank you for this presentation council member okay so i i recognize that what we're doing tonight is passing a resolution uh which i think is a very important document it's been many times that i've seen it's the

1:58:14beginning part that's like phase one of doing something really significant it was how we got really what i would call active in the environmental climate issue it started out with some several resolutions for example which i believe are online even right and this one is also a very uh significant

1:58:41one i think too because i do know that people are concerned about crime and this is giving them a tool and giving the police department a tool for making a real difference and so i'm really excited about this and with that i moved resolution of the city council

1:59:04resolution endorsing a voluntary security camera registration program and i want to thank the police department for developing this thank you i'll second it's been moved in second in it all in favor all right motion carries unanimously thank you very much lieutenant

1:59:23uh now we move on to council local and regional liaison assignment reports okay so i attended the league of california city policy committee meetings i'm on the community services policy committee and the administrative services policy committee and one of the things that we heard about was as i

1:59:53mentioned briefly heels was talking about what they're working on and um we did do a resolution just that's one of the reasons i want to mention resolution is i do consider that a significant tool in our tool chest of a city council and they're doing a new white paper in

2:00:17it's on healthy eating active living and i sort of see it as as it was presented at this meeting it could be another if you think of the cold climate issue being a whole bunch of things not just what we typically think of as the climate but a circle of things that includes

2:00:41uh healthy eating and active living and so what i'm hoping that maybe we might do or think about doing is uh investing ourselves a little more deeply in those issues in that in the upcoming years and i'm particularly thinking about youth sports for example and various other things that i'm not really

2:01:07going to name here now but anyway that was one the most significant thing that happened up there and another thing that happened we had a east bay division uh gathering um one night that included people from the uh newbies academy as people were calling it the new council

2:01:28member and mayor's academy and and gabe was up there and we had a very good attendance at our event and i think there are a lot of really exciting people that just took their first term of office this year in the cities of contra costa and alameda county which is what's in our

2:01:52division so i'm looking forward to working with all the new people and getting to know them better and so that was pretty exciting and that's the main thing i think i've done all right thank you any other reports yes the environmental equality committee met last tuesday and

2:02:16i was there to introduce myself as their liaison and they were taking up several issues including the storm water pollution reduction issues so they're they're trying to figure out how to improve our environment by reducing the amount of trash that's in our storm water runoff

2:02:34which is similar to a presentation we had from stephen pray back in october the financial advisory board met last tuesday as well and they're working on their annual work plan and presentation to the council and they are actively working on revising the purchasing plan for the city um

2:02:56the there have quite a few qualified people to take up and discuss the how um the city makes our purchases and so they're working on that to try and standardize uh that and lastly um last thursday i went to the solid waste the regional solid waste meeting and that was a workshop for the purposes

2:03:18of giving the executive recruiter guidance on what qualities we would like to see in the executive director um so the executive director solicitation process is is about to well it's we've selected the the recruiter the brochure will be hopefully finalized next week and

2:03:41the guidance on salary will be discussed on monday night next monday night the guidance that was recommended by staff was 1 20 to 155 for salary richmond was looking for a lower salary they did not necessarily express all the reasons why they were looking for a lower salary but

2:04:08potentially one of them was that they didn't want to trigger an escalation in in salaries so they were looking for something um where the low end was 105 or 110 our previous executive director was up at 96 with uh um so we so just to give you a context uh and then

2:04:29no i guess lastly on the solid waste committee um i was elected chair so uh starting february 1st so not monday i believe the existing chairs chair on monday but starting february 1st i will be chair of the west county solid waste commission authority congratulations thanks

2:04:54uh i just uh i'm the liaison to human relations committee and yesterday was the annual triumph of the martin luther king junior festivities and a great march and rally at the high school and most of us were there and thank you to assistant city manager pinkos who put in

2:05:14a lot of time organizing and of course to the police and fire department for all of your extra work you put in to make it a success and most of all the pat durham and the human relations commission for all of their leadership with that we are adjourned thank you everyone

2:06:17you