City Council Meeting June 2, 2015

0:00:06welcome to the regular city council meeting el cerrito city council please note that all members are present and council member kinta will you please lead us in a pledge or an observational moment of silence of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god

0:00:32and indivisible with liberty and justice for all uh council staff communications are there any i have a few please go right ahead um i have been at a um a number of um meetings and and activities and i've gotten received a number of different um printed pieces of printed material and i

0:01:01thought what i would do because i really don't have enough to share and they're too many pages and i don't want to kill any trees so i thought i would give these materials to the city clerk and that will be they'll just be displayed out in our lobby upstairs i believe and so i will

0:01:19just say what they are there is a brochure on the east bay economic development there's something on east bay innovation awards and there is um there's also a really interesting article in the yodler the sierra club magazine called a sustainable development success

0:01:48story in el cerrito and so i thought i would give all of those materials to the city clerk right now and that way they can be shared in addition to that i have a presentation which i think actually maybe is being presented tonight but i will have a copy of it i have a copy

0:02:12of it on del norte bart station improvements and that will also be included in that packet so if anyone wants to see a physical piece of paper it will be provided upstairs to look at thank you any others last week i had the pleasure to attend a meeting with councilmember abelson

0:02:38to listen to east bay mud director andy katz speak on our drought and issues that we have have here in our area so uh it we are definitely conserving water and we always have in el cerritos so we're pretty used to this so compared to other areas in the east bay

0:03:03mud district elsarita is doing fine and conserving water thanks thank you very much okay we move on to oral communications for the from the public on items that are not on the agenda on the consent calendar we will be pulling item 5c the loving day proclamation from

0:03:24the consent calendar and we'll take that up right after the human relations commission work plan which is item 4c so do we have some comments yes we have nicholas arzio followed by carla hansen and howdy gowdy i'll be speaking before nick no problem so good evening mayor council members

0:03:52city staff members of the public my name is carla hanson i'm the president of the el cerrito democratic club our club has a membership of over 150 residents of the city of el cerrito and we provide a forum to discuss issue local state and federal issues of importance

0:04:07i come before you this evening to urge you to consider enacting a minimum wage ordinance in the city of el cerrido working households can't survive on the current state and federal minimum wage while struggling to afford the high cost of living in our city and throughout the

0:04:22bay area a higher minimum wage rate benefits households by making them more economically stable makes public safety and health a priority reduces employee turnover in businesses and provides a boost to the local economy our club class a resolution last week in support of a minimum wage ordinance with

0:04:43amounts and annual adjustments no lower than those in the city of richmond's new minimum wage ordinance we would also support a minimum wage ordinance taking effect january 1 of 2016.

0:04:56we urge you to consider taking swift action on this issue that benefits our residents our workers and our local economy thank you for your time and service thank you okay mr arzio followed by howdy gowdy hello everybody i'm nick arzio i'm the executive vice president of the el

0:05:19cerrito democratic club and i'm going to read the language of the resolution that our club has passed last week whereas a person who works full-time in the city of el cerrito should earn enough pay for his earn enough to pay for his or her basic leaving expenses and whereas the cost of

0:05:37living in west contra costa county is significantly higher than the state average and whereas in 2014 richmond became the first city in west contra costa county to pass a municipal minimum wage ordinance to help fill the gap between the california state minimum wage and

0:05:55our higher than average local cost of living therefore be it resolved that the el cerrito democratic club calls on the el cerrito city council to enact by january 1st 2016 a municipal minimum wage with amounts and annual adjustments no lower than those set forth in the city of richmond's

0:06:16minimum wage ordinance thank you thank you very much uh good evening mayor friedman council members my name is howdy gowdy i live at [address removed] i wanted to follow up on this 1715 elm project as i stated two weeks ago to council i hope you will use your power to

0:06:43improve the outcome of this project bad decisions do not go away the implica implications will last for decades and there are serious deficiencies still to resolve about this project the city engineer is on the record acknowledging the threat of flooding and the deficiency of the drainage

0:07:04if you're serious about upholding your aversion to legal liability you'll want to resolve this and otherwise you're opening the city to the situation it experienced in the 1980s with numerous costly settlements regarding storm water flooding and damage there are four downstream storm drain

0:07:23segments that don't meet the 10-year criteria that the city has the channel through the property itself is calculated for a different dimension than the actual dimension of the channel and um there's serious concerns that the observed backing up of water to a height very close to the grade

0:07:45level would not allow the the proposed c3 drainages to flow properly you know there's a unit proposed at grade four lateral feet from a drainage that has shown the ability in a very modest storm to get within one foot one vertical foot of that finish floor and that just

0:08:07seems like no one knowing that is going to want to buy that unit that's you know a questionable thing to ensure a questionable thing to sell and you should really be concerned about endorsing it as a city council as a viable plan for our community so i hope you'll use your power to

0:08:29create a new ordinance to revise the plan development surely the intent of final administrative determination is not to entrench unknown error or mistakes with consequences for public welfare when you know you have when you know that there's an issue and you have the

0:08:45power to correct it you know no building issue permit's been issued yet you know this project can still be improved um so i you know any developer should be grateful to you for helping to remedy this these shortcomings will have implications for the saleability and

0:09:04insurability of their units as well as the quality of life of the residents and neighbors for years to come so i intend to follow up with each of you and i look forward to hearing your your thoughts and ideas um we're all you know creative people i'm sure there's

0:09:20good solutions to this and we shouldn't just you know settle for you know what is considered a fully entitled project you know if it's known to be a problem it needs to be fixed so i can't see the light so i know we have it's it's red okay thanks thank you very much

0:09:45and that's it mr uh gowdy also submitted a speaker card for the bart improvements okay great okay we're going to move on to a very important event which is the retirement of our beloved captain michael reagan and chief sylvia moore is going to make the presentation and there probably

0:10:08won't be a dry eye in the house by the time she's done oh i'll try sir thank you good evening mayor friedman our council our city manager mr hand in our community and the men and women i do you might want to get to clean i got it and the men and women of the el cerrito

0:10:29police department i could tell you i've spoken before this council many times and this is the most meaningful presentation that i will make too because i get to honor this man michael regan who has committed his life to this community and public service i can tell you i'm going to use this

0:10:59office of the chief to speak about him publicly but i don't need this office i don't need this special event to tell him what he has meant to me personally and to encourage him to look back on his career with gratitude with pride michael regan is no doubt the reason that i came to the city of el

0:11:29cerrito it was a chance meeting and i'm speaking about this because i get to it was a chance meeting where he and i were placed in the west point leadership school together i looked across the classroom and i saw this man who has tremendous bearing and tact and commitment he's a true

0:11:51soldier he is a guardian of the people i knew in the first few days of that class that i would be a better public servant and a better person if i connected with him it was over a pot pie and a budweiser i think uh that that he and i connected on the third day of that

0:12:13class and i grew to respect and admire him in a way that i thought i want to work beside him and i eventually did he started in the el cerrito police department in december of 1988 but really that was as a sworn police officer because he really started as an explorer

0:12:31he was one of the first groups of explorers he was assigned to traffic he was a detective he was a corporal which in essence is a field training officer many of the men and women that serve this community today were trained and influenced by michael regan he was a sergeant he was the first motor

0:12:51sergeant who rode a motorcycle which is often a thankless thankless task but he ensured safety to to the driving and the pedestrian public in our community as the first riding motorcycle sergeant he was a commander and a captain he did things that added texture and

0:13:10professionalism to your police department he served not only in our community in the daylight at night time on holidays but typical of a public servant he served he was here away from his family on holidays at nights on weekends he missed endless family events just

0:13:31like all public servants do because he cares about the city of el cerrito he served also with the california peace officers association on their award nomination committee with the california police chiefs association was and still is today an expert on marijuana its

0:13:49effects on young minds its effects on communities and he serves on the law and ledge committee only tell you two significant things about michael regan in terms of long ledge we had a community a pardon me a business in our community that was operating as a gambling front

0:14:11it sold itself as a computer internet access site mike regan was on the committee that passed state law to ban illegal gambling in across the state of california just recently in the past two years and it completely impacted not only communities like ours for these fronts that act as

0:14:32internet access but they are illicit gambling operations he was at the table for that he also has been instrumental in a new legislation that is going to be passed and that is regarding license plates california and i told our city manager california's the only state in the union

0:14:50that gives just a paper plate that has a dealer's name on it well that's a problem it's a problem for illicit activity it's a problem for bridge tolls it's a problem for a whole host of things and he's working with cow chiefs long ledge to pass legislation to give a plate with a

0:15:07distinguishing mark until a permanent license plate is issued but that's all stuff it's all stuff because mike regan has meant more to individuals and more to members of the department members of our community than we could ever say in a short period of time he is a man of extraordinary character

0:15:30of compassion he is here day and night for something bigger than himself he is indispensable we love him we appreciate him and we wish him all the best michael regan we wish him the best news retirement [Applause] so there's only two things that make me cry puppies and mike regan leaving

0:16:23cute puppies and mike regan leaving but there are men and women of the police department that have been touched by him in amazing ways and members of this community that their lives have been altered for the good because of his selfless acts so i appreciate this

0:16:39proclamation from this council i'm not sure mike will want to say anything i want to say he'll want to say something but on behalf of the entire police department thank you for issuing this proclamation to a very well deserving man well why don't we vote on it before we

0:16:55hear from mike do we have a motion i'd like to move a proclamation recognizing it commending captain michael regan second they're competing to see who gets the second it all in favor say aye hi motion carries unanimously and we'll have a few comments after you please captain regan

0:17:15thank you very much for this opportunity to address you this evening usually i'm not a very emotional kind of guy but i want to express to the city of el cerrito our elected officials our city administration my brothers and sisters in the uh police department my brothers and sisters in the fire

0:17:39department all of our city workers in our community my intense gratitude for this opportunity to serve this community it's meant a lot to me so i guess not very eloquently but thank you very much there's one little thing the the chief left out about the story down in l.a

0:18:13whenever i go to um a class a leadership training or or some other type of educational setting i i listen to all of my classmates and i search out the person who is not only intelligent and articulate but is convicted in their thoughts and shares them openly with the class

0:18:37and in my class in our class chief moyer was without a doubt the uh the shining star of the class and i had to meet her and i had to pick her brain and learn from her uh the last five years serving as her second in command has been uh wonderful opportunity so thank you chief

0:19:01thank you bill streeto [Applause] thank you [Music] any uh comments i just wanted to say that i had the distinct pleasure of getting to know you better than any of the other um of our officials on the police or fire department because i was the liaison on council to the crime

0:20:21prevention committee for the four years i was on council first session and your calm demeanor and your great personality was a real pleasure for me to get to know and i really am very grateful to you we had some heated meetings as you might remember and i always felt

0:20:44very protected as i do when you stand here in the back of our room in all of our meetings so i wish you the best and congratulations on your retirement thank you i want to say that i have really appreciated knowing you working with you getting advice from you on any number of different topics

0:21:10and i've always felt that el cerrito was a much better place because you were part of el cerrito and i think to a certain extent you'll always be part of el cerrito and i realized that everybody moves on and this is your time to move on and so i hope that as you move on you

0:21:34have a really good life because you more than you know all of us you deserve to have a good life because you've done so much good here and i want i want to know i want you to know that i really appreciate uh having known you and and worked with you and i consider you a friend and i appreciate

0:21:56it thank you so much mike we've known each other well for the last six seven years and uh your silent presence your [Music] has been very welcome jan said it well we feel safer with you in the room because your eyes are constantly moving you're always thinking about what's up

0:22:21um so 27 years thank you for that dedication to our community and um i know when i don't even know that sylvia was even here yet when you started saying that how much you appreciated her leadership and how much you contributed to her coming to our city so i want to

0:22:44thank you specifically for that thank you captain reagan i personally want to thank you for keeping uh uh i feel safe in this city council and and here every time i i see you you're the strong silent type uh that was always sitting in the back with chief and uh

0:23:04uh and i thank you for that and and thank you for your 27 years of risking your life every day here in our city of el cerrito so thank you so much one of the advantages of being mayor is i get to go last um most of what i was going to say has been said but i just want to add that

0:23:25you are a model of selfless public service of humility intelligence and you're one of the people that i personally consider the heart of our city and it's just been an honor to be serving the public at the same time as you've been serving at least the time i've been on the council

0:23:45and i had the opportunity to have breakfast with you one time at the uh it was martin luther king prayer breakfast right and i was amazed at how many subjects you know in such great depth not just law enforcement but a wide range and you brought all of that sort of renaissance

0:24:05man attitude towards police work in a really refreshing solid steady inspiring way as well as your emotional commitment to human beings and people and seeing the role of a police officer is one who makes our community and our world a better place so thank you so much for the time

0:24:27that you spent making our city better thank you again for the opportunity to serve [Applause] we yeah move on to item 4b which is the committee on aging work plan and that will be presented by shirley cressy the chair of the committee on aging good evening everyone that was that is a

0:25:01tough act so i tried to pause for a little transition but there's only so much you can do good evening ladies and gentlemen council members my name is cheryl cressy together with nola veganis chavez we're going to present the else rated committee on aging our mission statement

0:25:27the committee was formed to document and advise the council about the needs of older and disabled residents is to develop comprehensive plans for implementing programs to address these needs by establishing liaison with other interested groups and utilizing the resources

0:25:48offered by ulceratives older and or disabled adults the formulate presentation at the senior center at committee meetings that are helpful to the well-being of our focused community members to determine its own internal organization election of chairperson regular meeting

0:26:13dates and places and other procedural actions as may be appropriate the background on our committee are the members of the committee are appointed by the city council upon the committee's recommendation the membership is open to end in all adult residents of el cerrito

0:26:35interested members must attend three consecutive monthly meetings before being considered for membership our regular meetings are here at the illustrator city hall council member council chambers at three o'clock every in the afternoon every third wednesday of the

0:26:56month and they are open to the public the chairperson vice chairperson secretary and members at large are elected by committee members annually and served during the year of the executive as the executive committee currently there are at least 15 members including

0:27:19the officers several members of the committee can act as representative to other agencies within the county such as the area agency on aging advisory council the county health committee west county coalition and the askton hazel shirley manor to name a few our goals and our objective to commit on

0:27:50aging deals with the immediate concerns of presidents and supports the improvement of their quality of life when appropriate recommendations for actions are made to the city council the committee with the council support has established specific long-term goals

0:28:12and they are to have affordable housing options for older and disabled residents to have adequate space and facilities for and the provision of qualifying programs and service for seniors and to improve accessible public transportation and paratransit services for persons unable to use the public

0:28:37transit facilities it's also to increase support services to help our frail older adults and their families both within and outside of their home and to continue having a guest speaker presentation to be able to reach this goal the committee has the assistance of the

0:29:04services supervisor namely janet bilbas who attends all of the meeting of the committee and provides it with current information on the status of available programs and facilities together with her we continuously evaluate the services being provided and make suggestions

0:29:26and recommendations pertaining to such services our accomplishment these are just a few i'm going to speak of we have worked with the post office to install a mailbox on a one-way street so seniors would not have to exit their vehicle to drop off their mail we have worked with the ulcerated public

0:29:53works to have a stop ahead sign at intersection where the stop sign is blocked by a tree we also presented guest speakers on a variety of topics including ways to make your house safer to navigate planning for future care of aging loved ones easy to use gadgets for the home

0:30:16scam alerts and elder health issues and these are the few pictures looking from west to east this is on stockton avenue this has the stop sign ahead and this is on the court of stockton and ashbury avenue and on the right side of the stop ahead side is the parking lot

0:30:40of the 7-eleven next is a picture of the mailbox on a one-way street on kearney and fairmont and to be able to see the view better the lip the extended live for dropping off your mail and that is the end of my the conclusion of my presentation thank you for your time

0:31:09thank you so much any questions please i don't have a question but i do have a comment okay i would like to congratulate shirley for her appointment as the alternate representing paratransit consumers in contra costa county on the ccta expenditure plan advisory committee

0:31:34which is looking at the possibility of a sales tax extension or increase thank you thank you for that service and thank you and the fellow members of your committee for your excellent work on behalf of our community and for the seniors within our community thanks for the presentation it

0:31:54was very good may your freedom yes okay next up is the human relations commission work plan presented by georgina edwards the chair and rochelle pardue okimoto the vice chair hi everyone we're really honored to be here to share our work plan lydia is also here also a commissioner

0:32:15on a wave welcome so i think karen our liaison is going to put the presentation up that would be great so i know um several of you have either served on this commission or been the liaison so you're familiar with with our work and and our traditions and this these are all our members we

0:32:43have quite a few new members um this year and each of them is bringing some insights and some ideas and contributions so this work plan will continue evolving as uh each of us serve in in the commission so we've got as i said uh lydia here and of course rochelle we've got macaulay

0:33:03aga mandy glick and marco hunter parisi so our mission is to foster positive human relations and appreciation of the rich diversity of our el cerrito community and we do this in a number of ways including events proclamations you'll hear about a few of them tonight and

0:33:24collaborating with members of the community and other commissions and committees some of the highlights from 2014 include our mlk celebration which that year was actually the 25th anniversary and it's a it's a wonderful event that was brought to the city by pat durham i

0:33:43know many of you know her and uh it's something that we will continue building on also in 2014 we had a number of proclamations including wilderness act 50th anniversary human rights day women's history month asian pacific american month many of those were council member quinto's contributions

0:34:05and then lgbtq month and of course it's already june and and we're proud to um have the uh the flag up uh next to um our city hall i think you've all seen it red for pride month and just a few pictures from maybe some of you haven't i known the council you've been to the mlk um celebration

0:34:28but maybe some of the members of the public haven't yet i really encourage you to go it's a wonderful event a lot of the community comes together and lots of presentations and performances and it's really a beautiful beautiful thing to behold and celebrate together

0:34:46we start off at the dmv and you know have a number of speakers and the high school band plays some songs and uh this year one of our commission members got some in-kind donations and that helped a lot coffee and doughnuts revved us up for the from the nice march which starts off at san pablo you

0:35:07can see some of the youth here and so up we walk and wave along the way to the citizens of el cerrito various community organizations like the japanese american citizens league join us so it's a wonderful representation of our city and its diversity and you see some families here another

0:35:29thing that we do is provide signs and and citizens also make signs with all kinds of wonder wonderful inspirational sayings and then this is actually at the high school auditorium you can see the wonderful attendance by our community then for 2015 like i mentioned we're

0:35:52going to continue building on our martin luther king event and we will build towards that starting in november with some workshops for the community as well as some we plan to approach the schools with some opportunities to talk about leadership to inspire kids

0:36:10we're also going to be reaching out to the high school to see if we can get more involvement from teenagers in el cerrito and then i'm going to hand the baton to rochelle who's going to talk about loving day greetings to the council the mayor and everyone else president at the meeting

0:36:31today loving day loving day fights racial prejudice through education and builds multicultural community can you fast forward a bit of history on living day where does loving come from some people have remarked on how it seems kind of a funny name so it is in honor of

0:37:02mildred and richard loving mildred and richard leving were jailed taken out of their home and basically thrown out of the state of virginia simply because they got married as you can see mildred was an african-american woman and richard was a caucasian man they took their case

0:37:29all the way to the supreme court and they won that case legalized interracial marriage for the entire country in honor of them loving day celebrates not only interracial couples and multi-racial people but it is also a day to celebrate our common humanity the human relations commission took

0:38:02interest in this day because it's not a day that celebrates one specific race or another but it celebrates all races and it celebrates all races coming together as our city state and country becomes more diverse we need to lead in celebrating diversity we need to bring positivity towards race

0:38:29relations in this time which is often full of negativity only love can conquer hate so today we are asking the city council to consider approving a loving day proclamation if approved the human relations commission will promote living day and ideally plan for a celebration in

0:38:59the city of el cerrito thank you very much thank you both for the presentation now we are going to take up the loving day proclamation yes mayor i'd like to move the city council of el cerrito a motion of the city council the city of el cerrito proclaiming uh june

0:39:2012 2015 as loving day in the city of el cerrito and that's next friday been moved and seconded all in favor favor signify by saying aye aye motion carries unanimously and i want to thank the leadership of rochelle and the rest of the human relations commission for bringing this to the attention of

0:39:41the council and the citizens and for the leadership you show all year round the committee and the two of you so i think we're going to do a quick photo up here [Music] thank you so much thank you all three of you all right next up is item 4d which is a presentation on the del norte

0:40:43bart station improvements presented by sadie graham senior planner part planning and development and i see we have our two bart directors who represent our community rebecca saltzman and zachary mallett here and uh please go ahead ms graham that must be an art here so i can use the mouse a little bit

0:41:07if that's okay that's fine so thank you for having me um mayor friedman and council members and um thank you also today i have as you said directors malay and saltzman and then some members of our government and community relations staff and after the presentation if you have any

0:41:26questions we'd be happy to take them and answer them to the best of our ability so i briefly wanted just to talk with you about our station modernization program in general and then i'll get into the details of the station um the del norte station improvements um i revised the

0:41:44the powerpoint a little bit from what you received in the packet just to make some edits so if you notice any changes just let me know so previously in 2008 bart had a station modernization program where we updated the pleasant hill station um the ashby station and powell street

0:42:01station we recently have uh initiated the second round of this station modernization program and we've started doing some conceptual plans for all the stations that you'll see listed here as part of the station modernization what we've been doing for all of the

0:42:17stations is really um looking at the station and uh prioritizing the needs of this station holistically for through 2040.

0:42:27so i'm getting a better understanding of everything that is needed so that's both internal to the bart system and externally and then we're developing conceptual plans and from that then what we're doing is we've advanced three stations three of these conceptual plans

0:42:43into actual modernization projects which are we're currently doing design and engineering for the three stations we've picked are the el cerrito del norte station the palo street station and the 19th street station so this is just to let you know we have a lot going on but we are very excited

0:43:00that el cerrito del norte is one of the stations so i'm going to walk you through a little bit of that project but um just in general these are the high level goals that we've used to sort of prioritize the improvements that we're doing at the stations as you can imagine when we look at the

0:43:15long-term needs at the stations we've come up with you know millions of dollars worth of work and we only have limited funds so we came up with this these goals and actions to help us understand how we would prioritize and this is how we've prioritized the needs at this station

0:43:32and you can you'll see that some of them are incorporating community input and i also wanted to thank um both melanie and yvette and your city staff because this is a process that's been we've been doing for almost two years now and they've actively participated

0:43:47during that whole time and so they've been great partners um so just quickly i'll give you the timeline and then i'll get into the project um we're just getting our 65 construction documents we're planning on having an outreach event in the station on july 8th next month and so hopefully some of

0:44:07you can attend um oh and we will have the that information available online as well we're hoping to go out to bid um next year and enter into construction in april of 2016 and then uh it should be completed and that should be december of 2017. excuse me for the

0:44:24error so that would be when the project is completely closed out and done um you'll see that we have over 20 almost 22 million dollars of funds dedicated to this project 11 million prop 1b bart funds and 9 million are the bart measure j funds that we will be requesting

0:44:45probably in the summer of 2015 and then a lifeline grant so it's a it's a actually um compared to the other two modernizations with the match from the measure j dollars that's available to us we're a lot we're available we're um we have about twice the budget that we do

0:45:00at some of the other program um stations so yay for contra costa county so i'm sure you're all aware of the existing conditions at the del norte station but just to orient you this is san pablo avenue at the top here's the paid area there's the intermodal bus area and then there's

0:45:20the parking structure um really like i mentioned we talked about the we we looked at this project in terms of you know what's the long-term vision and how can we advance this phase one of improvements to start to achieve achieve that but um so the goals really are to improve the

0:45:38passenger experience highlight sustainability improve station access engage with the community and you know maintain options for future development so getting into the actual station the majority of the station improvements are expanding the actual station itself you

0:45:57can see here this is the existing paid area and then you'll see that we're almost doubling the size the size of the paid area el cerrito del norte station because it's the regional sort of intermodal drop-off for all of the bus it really does play a really significant role in our

0:46:16system it has a lot of surges of passengers that all come at the same times of the day and so one of the key things that we wanted to do is um improve the vertical circulation at the stations so this is just a zoom in of that but um i'm going to just walk you through it

0:46:33quickly what we're doing is we're adding two very large new daily use stairs we're maintaining the existing stairs and the existing escalators so that will really increase the capacity for people at those surge times another key point is we're bringing elevators within the paid area

0:46:52i don't know if you're aware but the elevators right now are outside of the paid area they're not ada compliant so they'll be much more safe much more highly visible and compliant for for code reasons we'll have a new station agent group booth bigger fare gates you know the station will just be

0:47:12widened you know brightened decluttered we'll have new bathrooms we also have and i was here last week to um or last night to speak with art commission two opportunities for some new murals at the station which we're very excited about in addition you'll see here one of the

0:47:30key things that we're doing is we'll be re-lamping the entire station and one of the goals as you see in this image down in the bottom is i don't know if you're aware but the station has a bit of a pigeon problem um that was a joke and so uh what we'll be doing is creating a

0:47:46ceiling that has embedded lights in it so because the pigeons they basically roost in the station because of all the edges where they can say stand or sit so what we're trying to do is create a flat surface as we really lamp that station to solve two problems and the re-lamping

0:48:03will all be with led lights so it'll be much more energy efficient this is an elevation right here which shows sort of the the new daily use stairs that we're talking about you can see this is a rendering how the architects have taken the existing rhythm and pattern of

0:48:20the architectural style of the station and are trying to emulate that into the design so it looks like a holistic design and then quickly moving into some of the site improvements this down here this is the um the parking garage right here and this is the existing kiss and ride one of the

0:48:40key moves for this site is that we're we are have been working closely with the city to relocate this kitchen ride to the west side of the station and the goal um and this is a plan that the city of el cerrito has gone forward and we've partnered to um get a grant to do an obagrant to do some

0:49:00improvements to the el cerrito station together but what we've been able to do by relocating the existing kiss and ride to that northern area is you'll remember the existing ohlone greenway was probably about 10 feet through here and by shifting the kiss and ride or excuse me

0:49:20the passenger drop off to the west we're able to take that all that space and dedicate it to the pedestrian and and bicycle area so we're really trying to not only make a safe environment for the bicyclists and the pedestrians but also an environment where people can enjoy themselves slow

0:49:38down for a minute and really sort of enjoy the sense of place so it'll be largely um a plaza but we will have sustainable plantings to deal with the stormwater um and we've been working very closely with the city staff in terms of the the design of this area and how it fits in with their grant

0:49:56so this is something i'm particularly excited about so here's just a rendering of that um of that green space um you can see the dedicated area for the bike lane and then the pass and then the pedestrians and then the view of the station so with that i'm going to just stop and take any

0:50:14questions that you um might have um i just had a question i don't know if it was slide 10 or 11 or maybe further back the the kiss and ride and the the bus area explain that again to me um well the bus area is are these two uh bays right here and we are making some changes and we've

0:50:37been working closely with the buses but largely it stays in the same we're shifting around some of the bays but and then the passenger drop off right now is along the face of the parking garage which is right here it's going to be officially relocated to this area that

0:50:54i'm pointing to um and that's actually right now is being used as a passenger drop-off often time it's sort of informal so we're going to be formalizing that um that use okay yeah are there questions comments i do so is that in that's taking the place of bus space

0:51:15no no no okay and uh the other question i had was i often see the kiss and rides being misused that is to say the disabled one is used by everybody and there's no one doesn't appear to be any enforcement and i'm wondering if something if it could be looked at and set up in a way such that in fact

0:51:41the disabled area could be used by disabled people which in pretty much all stations i'm aware of it's not there's no ability and really what i'm talking about is the curb ramp there's that's the only place it is usually and when everyone else is parking there people who are

0:52:01who need the disabled access can't get it so i don't i'm not really offering a solution i'm just kind of presenting a problem for you no when we spoke about it previously you offered a solution which is to add more than one and or make it not the sort of best spot if i

0:52:19remember correctly and so we'll take that into consideration as we look at it and and try our best and i think you um i mean i think it is a policing issue at some point and so um i don't necessarily have an answer for that but i i understand your concern thank

0:52:37you thank you so so uh it's staying with that theme for a moment the accessibility drop-off point is the letter a between numbers five and six and one of the reasons why it's going to be used by non-handicapped people is because they can roll smoothly up to it from from the 345 area they can roll

0:52:57smoothly up to it one of the things that i um was at that presentation where uh councilmember you asked these questions and at the time um it wasn't my place to to make comments but it is tonight um one of the things that i would recommend that you do is potentially

0:53:14move one through five further to the south and actually put in bulbs that make it unappealing to roll smoothly into the a space and what that does is somebody who's handicapped will have they'll take the time to essentially parallel park into that space to unload

0:53:35safely while those that are able-bodied will not roll into that space and and therefore won't use it so i would recommend that you essentially put up some sort of guard uh to protect that from being in the travel way and make it a special space that is required to be pulled in and out

0:53:54of making it less convenient for the able-bodied passengers because they won't have a desire to to do that extra driving they'll just pull up into position six or seven and the passengers will unload i also wanted to highlight um the changes in the bus bay that was

0:54:13presented at a previous presentation the the bus bays there will be a certain number of bus bays that will be dedicated to unloading is my understanding and there will be a number of bus bays and and those unloading locations will be where bus drivers can can leave their

0:54:30buses for some period of time and they can get to their dedicated uh rest area because for a lot of these bus drivers this is at the end of their almost hour-long uh drive and so they need some amenities and those amenities need to be dedicated to them so there

0:54:48are some changes to the bus bay and one of the changes that i want to highlight because i actually have seen it in europe i've used it in europe is the idea of a board that tells you what um what bay your departing bus will be in and and currently i ride with a number of regular commuters who at

0:55:09five o'clock they're racing to get to their bus and they know which bus stop it's going to be at so they can sprint down the stairs and out through the pay gates and they know exactly where they're going so i would certainly want to make sure that the bus bay display

0:55:30is very accessible to all stairwells and escalators as people are leaving the train station because in some cases they are running to catch their vallejo train of vallejo bus and they're assuming it's all right now they assume it's always at stop j2 or whatever the the code system is

0:55:53in the future since it's going to be constantly moving please make sure that our our riders who are trying to catch their bus because it may be an hour before the next bus goes to their destination that they can quickly and easily identify which one of the bays they need

0:56:08to be headed towards since the bays are constantly changing so i think i actually need to clarify what's in the design because um at one point we were um toying or hopeful of the using this station as an opportunity to do the dynamic bus loading which is what you're referring to with the boards and

0:56:28the bus bay we're not however planning to do that at this station as part of this project okay that's new okay thank you well new since the last presentation which was only about a month and a half ago so um well okay yes okay um but my point is that so we're not

0:56:45doing that we are uh we we are working closely with the different transit agencies to figure out their loading and unloading needs so that we can make sure that they you know have the staging areas that they need and the passenger drop off so we're not doing the dynamic busing we

0:57:00were considering going after a grant application that would have included that but we have since decided not to go after that grant application so it was it's something that i think bart hopes to pilot at some station at some point but we haven't um moved there yet

0:57:15and so i think once we do pilot that in some location there will be many concerns that we'll have to sort of figure out in terms of planning great thank you there are if i could end yeah there are a number of buses that go through there um with great frequency that in fact it's not the final

0:57:33destination and the amount of time that would take to do that kind of unloading would increase the cost of running those lines and perhaps reduce the service the 72s is what i'm talking about so it not all buses have that as an end of the line point right um another suggestion in terms of

0:57:59notification of passengers is it's great when you get on the platform and it says next train to millbrae in three minutes next train to fremont and seven minutes couldn't there be prominent signs down below by the ticket booth or that would give that information so

0:58:20people know how much they have to rush or not or um we as part of bart's standard wayfinding that we're doing systemically we have some real-time signage and i think there is a display board at the station but we'll or two but i think there that we as part of this project will hopefully

0:58:40locate them in more usable locations so that it can serve the needs so definitely yeah their their current location is tucked up against a wall that's not visible for about 40 percent almost 60 percent of the of the approach traditional train station they would be

0:58:56perpendicular to the avenue you know the approach angles and you would see them from far away yeah okay thank you so much and thank you to our director salzman in malay sorry i mispronounced your name earlier and uh we appreciate your leadership and having two bart stations and two directors is a

0:59:16real plus for our community especially the service of both of you and ms graham so thank you we're excited about these upgrades thank you mr mayor i believe there was a public comment sorry i missed that howdy gowdy thank you thank you mayor freeman council members

0:59:39my name is howdy gowdy i wish to thank bart for their efforts on station modernization and i am grateful that el cerrito is receiving some of those early efforts um so i was actually at the um art and culture commission presentation about this last night and so that was

1:00:01talking a little bit more about the art opportunity which is again i wish to praise bart for including that in these these plans they mentioned the the mosaic opportunities which are great um one thing that occurred to me and i i don't know how formalized or set in stone this process

1:00:21is it is already clearly very far along but um the element that encloses the new stairwalls is a large glass facade which might not have come up in these slides but you've probably seen it so it's nice modern lots of glass look i just wanted to make the observation

1:00:42that bart did a very nice job integrating art with a glass on the overpass between the the coliseum station and the new air bart connection a fused glass art is integrated there and i just thought it would be a nice opportunity to perhaps see some glass integrated art

1:01:02into that beautiful facade so that was one comment um the other was on the lighting um it's you know great to see modernization and use of of leds and and less energy use um one observation i've always had at bart stations at the is that the lights seem to be burning quite

1:01:22a bit when they're not required and i would hope that as stations get modernized that the lighting controls are able to adjust to that and turn on and off or dim to an appropriate level to make up just the necessary amount of lighting and not over light these spaces so thank you

1:01:40thank you very much for your excellent suggestions no more speakers we move on to item 40 which is a presentation on citizens streets oversight committee annual report by matt kelly committee member thanks for coming matt thank you mayor friedman and council members i'm happy to be here tonight as

1:02:04chair of the el cerrito citizens street oversight committee to present the annual audit report findings to the council and the and the citizens of el cerrito at our meeting of the oversight committee on april 27th we received a thorough presentation from mays and

1:02:21associates the city's independent auditing firm showing us the fiscal year 2013-2014 funds expended under under measure a the audit uncovered no issues with the expenditures and confirmed that all conditions of the master bond sale agreement were complied with the committee members

1:02:43after question and answer session with the auditor agreed with the findings and unanimous unanimously voted that the expenditures were an appropriate use of funds under the uh the street repair and maintenance expenditure plan and we are hereby reporting our findings to the council

1:03:02and the citizens of el cerrito pursuant to section 2.04.320 c of the municipal code uh so i'd like to thank city staff especially that ortiz for her work staffing the committee as well as legal counsel and the finance department for their help over the last year and i'd also like to

1:03:22thank my fellow committee members marlene keller lynn kessler giama and al miller and that's my presentation thank you very much any questions thank you for a job well done thank you speakers okay great thanks matt okay we now move on to the consent calendar consisting of items 5 a b d e

1:03:49that's it i'll move to adopt items a b d e second been moved in second and all in favor signify by saying aye aye motion carries unanimously did we want to uh is this somebody here to receive the pride day proclamation okay pictures everywhere yeah thank you okay next up we have a couple of public

1:04:46hearings public hearing number one is to confirm the diagram and levy the assessment for fiscal year 2015-16 for the landscape and lighting assessment district we'll start with a staff presentation from lisa milleck today our finance director good evening good evening mayor and council i'm lisa

1:05:09malek cidae the city's finance director the item before you tonight is to consider passing a resolution setting the annual landscape lighting district assessments for fiscal year 1516.

1:05:21in order to impose the annual assessments for the district city council has to annually authorize an engineer's report that outlines that identifies the costs and benefits to those parcels in the assessment district you authorize this report on april seventh the engineer of record which was nbs

1:05:41prepared the report which we which you received prior to the council meeting on may 19th where you scheduled the public hearing staff estimates that the assessments will generate approximately 774 thousand dollars next year and that will be included in the proposed

1:05:582015-16 budget the purpose of the hearing this evening is to confirm the diagram and levy the assessment for fiscal year 1516.

1:06:08thank you very much are there any questions from council at this time no see none i will open the public hearing is there any public testimony i have no speaker slips moving right along i'll move to close the public hearing second moved and seconded all in favor

1:06:26say aye all right motion carries unanimously the public hearing is closed uh have we received any written communication no we did not as of today all right be glad to entertain a motion i would like to make one comment before we move i just want to make sure that everyone

1:06:43knows that the landscape lighting and assessment district does not uh fully fund the cost of operating the parks and trees and street trees and medians that we're currently running in our our budget about a hundred hundred and thirty thousand dollars behind um so the costs of providing the

1:07:04services are greater than the revenue that that this landscape lighting and assessment district uh generates and uh it that obviously prevents us from being able to provide other services and and this is uh just an example of of how uh you know we're we're underfunded and

1:07:22we're constantly trying to do more with less and this is just one one of those examples and i just want to make sure that people uh remember because we've said this before that the landscape lighting and assessment district does not fully pay for all of the services that are

1:07:37required under that uh in our parks medians and such thank you do we have a motion uh with that i will move a motion let's get the right title i'm sure it matters there you go a resolution of the city council of the city of el cerrito confirming the diagram and levying the

1:08:01assessment for fiscal year 2015-16 for the landscape and lighting assessment district number [Music] 1988-1 second moved in second and all in favor say aye aye motion cares unanimously and we move on to the next public hearing which is item 6b to approve the fiscal year 2015-16

1:08:23storm drain report and fees we will have a staff presentation she doesn't even have to sit down please miss malik today okay the second item is to consider resolution that would approve the fiscal year 2015-16 annual report and direct the storm drain fees to be collected on

1:08:41the property tax rolls in june of 1993 city council adopted ordinance 93-4 that imposed and collected storm drain fees and set the fee at 58 dollars per single family residence and other amounts for other types of properties the ordinance also provided that the

1:09:01storm fees would be collected on the property tax rolls as specified in an annual report that annual report was included with the agenda bill for this evening the city must annually conduct a public hearing that considers the method of collecting fees not to consider the actual fees if

1:09:20the fees are not collected on the property tax bills they would have to be collected through utility bills which are considerably more expensive to the city the annual fee will continue to be set at 58 for each single family resident and is expected to generate about seven hundred

1:09:37thousand dollars annually these funds are used uh you might remember last in 2014 we paid off the last of the debt service payments so the funds will be used as they have been last year for improvements maintenance and other activities related to the city storm drain system and they will be

1:09:54included in the fiscal year 1516 budget thank you very much any questions from council no i've got one real quick question is like the street sweeping and some of the the compliance actions that we do are they are they in this particular fund or are they in a in a different

1:10:15fund at this point good evening council members yvette ortiz public works director the street sleeping is currently paid out of the general fund as a part of the services that espace sanitary provides to the city so so it which is part of our stormwater you know compliance is is street

1:10:43sweeping but also some of the other attributes that you that where this fund covers uh keeping our storm drains open and clear over time for our public servant serv public works group to come out and clear drains during storms which account does that go towards so the storm drain fund

1:11:01does include some of that the city recently installed trash capture devices along san pablo avenue to meet our trash reduction requirements as part of the clean water program and the storm drain fund does pay for the maintenance of those devices and in the future could

1:11:19also pay for additional installation of those devices in order to comply with some of the clean water requirements great thank you thank you thanks i've seen no other questions i will now open the public hearing do we have some testimony i have no speaker slips okay

1:11:37do you have a motion so i'll move to close the public hearing second and seconded all in favor say aye aye motion carries unanimously the public hearing is closed uh do we have any written communication i did not receive any be glad to entertain comments or emotions certain uh comment um you know

1:11:56this is another example the um landscape the storm drain fund again relies on about sixty thousand dollars from other uh accounts to to pay for all the services that are necessary to keep our streets clean to be in compliance with our storm water pollution prevention uh requirements um

1:12:16and so it it's you know we continue to incur costs to provide the services to the city that are greater than our revenue and and it's again just another example of where we're struggling uh with the revenue we have to meet all the services that our public is looking for

1:12:38is there a motion sure with that i will move uh the resolution of the city council of city of el cerrito adopting the fiscal year 2015-16 storm drain annual report and directing that storm drain fees for fiscal year 2015-16 be collected through the property tax rolls

1:12:56a second moved in second and all in favor say aye bye motion carries unanimously thank you very much we now move on to item 7a a policy matter which is to consider survey results regarding a future revenue measure for a library facility presented by god be research

1:13:24while brian is that loaded up there brian um yes your honor city council i'm karen pinkes i'm the assistant city manager um as you know the city's strategic plan identifies develop and rehabilitate public facilities as community focal points as a primary goal strategies

1:13:43outlined for this goal include continuing to assess facilities to prioritize and strategize investment and notably the library has been one of the priorities that the community has identified in the past couple of years as always you also know the el cerrito library was built in 1948 and it

1:14:00does not currently meet earthquake safety standards of libraries built today and the library needs assessment update of 2014 revealed that a lack of space and an obsolete physical structure remain the underlying obstacles to meeting el cerrito's residence library

1:14:14services needs the city council authorized a survey in february 2015 that focused on the funding mechanisms and potential language for a ballot measure in 2016 to assist the city in determining the best options for financing a library facility the city commissioned god be research to

1:14:32conduct an independent opinion research study of el cerrito constituents to gauge the feasibility of a bond measure to replace the city's 67 year old library and also to determine what library survey services residents would like to prioritize so tonight brian godbey of god be research is here to

1:14:49present the key findings from the research and is prepared to answer questions and i will turn it over to brian for his presentation thanks for being here brian thank you uh karen mr mayor members of the council happy to be here to go through the data with you uh and we'll

1:15:04just jump right into it as karen said and as you know the purpose of this survey was to look at the feasibility of a library bond measure to replace the 67 year old library the specific objectives were to gauge base support for bond measure to look at the library features and constituent

1:15:22service priorities that the respondent of the residents are interested in to look at a rate which voters will support the bond and you'll see that right away and then of course there's a whole variety of demographic information which could take us days to go through but

1:15:39we've already done that so we won't do that uh the methodology of the survey was different this year for the first time this was a telephone internet hybrid survey what has happened since the last time we did a survey for the city is landlines are being abandoned at a huge pace

1:16:01they're being abandoned particularly by middle-aged voters who used to be these stalwarts and answering their phones uh they're no longer doing that uh they no longer have a landline in a city this size we'd probably see 1500 or 2 000 disconnected landlines through this kind of survey so we've

1:16:21added an internet component and we used a variety of list sources uh largely from the city uh to match with the voter file to so we can email people invitations to take an online survey the universe is still likely voters in this case it was about 12 000 likely

1:16:39registered november 2016 voters in the city of el cerrito we were in the field from march 23rd to march 30th it does actually take longer to do this hybrid survey because we have to do the internet portion first then the the phone portion the average phone survey was 20 minutes

1:16:57long we don't know how long it takes people to do the internet version but we do know that they take them at very strange hours in the morning [Laughter] which they would never have taken a phone survey as a matter of fact if they did if we called at that time you would

1:17:12have got a complaint i guarantee that uh the sample size was 621 that's one of the advantages of doing an online survey we get a lot of a lot more surveys from the online portion because we don't have the incremental costs that we do associated with an interview we're

1:17:31actually reading a survey so that gave us 418 online surveys uh 203 phone surveys which you can see the phone is is becoming weaker and weaker the data is always weighted then by the email availability phone availability segment in the voter file as well as age

1:17:51gender and partisanship that all gives us an error rate of plus or minus 3.77 percent excuse me uh moving into the first question uh this is the library bond measure you see the ballot question on the right-hand side of the slide it approximates what is legal and what

1:18:12would likely be on the ballot uh we've actually formatted it so there's some bullets in there it would just be semicolons uh and one big long run-on sentence is required by law but this is legal and approved by council we read that to them and then we drill down is that are you yes or no and

1:18:32then is that definitely yes or probably yes you can see here we're at 72 percent yes to start with with 39 definitely and 33 probably versus only 18 no uh that's for two-thirds measure that's a great place to start uh and um really quite pleased with that the next set of questions is actually

1:18:58spread over two slides um and you see summaries of each of the items that we actually asked in a random order on the right hand side our left hand side rather of each slide what we do is we read them this item on the phone or they read the item in its entirety on the online version

1:19:16and then the response categories are much more likely somewhat more likely somewhat less likely much less likely when we're done with the data collection we go back and assign numeric values and you see those across the bottom of the chart as well 2 1 0 minus 1 minus 2.

1:19:32we do that to create this rather abstract looking average or mean score as we call it uh not because we're trying to make it more complicated but we're trying to make it more accurate and the reason i say that if you had a much more likely response that was 50 and a somewhat more likely response that

1:19:52is 10 that adds up to 60.

1:19:55and if you did the same thing with another item that was 10 percent much more likely and 50 somewhat more likely that 2 would add up to 60 but those 260 percents are nowhere near the same so this takes that out it even makes it more complicated because it adds the uh

1:20:13the complexity of the intensity of the less likely as well as the more likely which in my example so while this seems abstract it is a much better way to rank these we then put them in descending order and use the tiers you see here to define statistical significance so that about a

1:20:33point two difference from high to low in any tier uh things are basically tied there's some numeric differences and when you're thinking about this and how you might communicate it the numeric differences are fine to use but basically every tier is a group of things that are equally important

1:20:53uh based on that approach then you can see that there's a lot of items in tier one and that's certainly a very positive thing for a library measure at the top of that is a safe energy efficient library that meets earthquake codes and actually the full measure said fire codes as well

1:21:11so that's at the top of the list at 1.3 to equate that to percentages which i just said is a bad idea but i won't use it to compare them uh just to give you a point of reference that's about 79 at least somewhat more likely to support the measure so that's a very large score

1:21:28also in tier one we have update wiring to accommodate computers and technology a library that meets health safe safety and seismic standards different spins first item children's areas space for public access computers and free wi-fi improved access for seniors and disabled

1:21:46uh be an up-to-date functioning 21st century library space for summer reading programs for children homework center space traditional book and up-to-date resource collections adequate heating plumbing and ventilation systems those are all in the top tier and that's a lot

1:22:04and that's quite encouraging the second tier then starts in the bottom of this slide and i won't read through all of these in deference to your time but they're also pretty highly rated at 1.09 it's about 70 percent at least somewhat more likely statistically different from above but it's still a

1:22:24pretty positive group of items and you can see we've got children's area literacy programs and space for computer workstations tier two then moves into the next slide and and now i promise i won't read them all and then at the bottom we have one last one which is really way down the list it's

1:22:47still positive but it's just a piece of information about the um the library doesn't mean national standards um it's still positive but it's pretty far down the list compared to the other ones so the next slide looks much the same although this is statements about the

1:23:08measure so this is sort of why you might want to do this and we use the same methodology although the scale is a little bit different so that means you can't compare these numbers apples to apples with the previous slide but you still can look at them in a relatively nuanced ranking

1:23:28as well as look at the tier groups that we've talked about before so on this chart we have all of the items that are tier one and that is great uh we've got things from the el stereo library was built in 1948 and doesn't meet earthquake standards when school gets out the library is

1:23:49packed with kids none of the money would be used for administrator salaries those are all in the 1.3 range that's in the 80 percent at least somewhat more likely there's a whole variety of other items again in deference to your title read all of them uh but the worst on this list is uh the

1:24:08library doesn't meet standards for books and computers uh then that's 1.2 and that's that's that's still pretty pretty good the next slide is the remainder of the statements these are in tier two there are some communities that would love to have scores this high

1:24:26so there's a lot of support for then these various statements uh are very important to the people in el cerrito after that we then come back to our ballot question a second time to see if the intervening information has had some impact on people and since we started at

1:24:46a great place to begin with at 71.8 uh we're now up to 72.5 not a big jump it's only 0.00.7 percent increase but you know when once you're over 70 percent uh you you rarely don't move up into the 80s so this is a good place to be it's become a little bit stronger

1:25:1073 percent in that we've gone from 39 on the definitely to 42 in round numbers now that's all for the november universe of next year 2016 uh when we looked at the subsets which are november 15 a much smaller universe and june 16 a universe somewhere in between the two

1:25:33you can see where we don't get the level of support whereas previously we had you know in round number 73 and with the air rate we're down to almost 69 percent here we never even we just get to 69 we don't cover the air rate as we we call it uh so if you take the air rate

1:25:51out you would be below this two-thirds majority required to pass these measures so we don't think that the november election this year or the june primary next year but november 16 as i said is a very good opportunity for moving this process forward so i'm happy to answer any questions you

1:26:12might have questions i know we have some public comment also questions at this point yeah um i'll go ahead and start um so it's not really talked about but do you think that there's a perception in el cerrito because you deal with a lot of other cities that the

1:26:32our our citizens our residents have a lot of i guess you might say confidence and us managing our money and managing our um [Music] our our measures and our fiscal accountability um that we kind of pull so high i mean every time you come in here it's like i ever feel like i have a rabbit foot in

1:26:56my pocket um that it's just a really positive thing and i don't know that that necessarily comes up in these conversations but yeah we don't we certainly don't ask open-ended questions that would get into that but i think you could extrapolate from the data over time and this one as

1:27:13well that the people are very supportive of improving their community here and you don't see that uh everywhere in the state so right that i think is very true and did i hear you say that since i assume what you were referring to was uh the polling you did for measure r that there are 2 000 less

1:27:32landlines than then or i didn't really now we know now we know what's going on with you it's happened like that yeah 2013 we had no problems 2014 we were starting to have problems we actually had problems in the mayoral election in san jose san jose is a much larger city as you

1:27:54know there were actually two surveys in the field same time we later found out but even in a city that size it's become a huge problem i'm in the polling business i abandoned my landline a month and a half ago wow what was interesting is the script that they use and i know phone script when i

1:28:15hear it uh to try to convince you to not abandon your landline because it's a revenue source for the phone company yeah but people are getting are going south on them so how do you find that out though i mean is it just how do you find out how did you get that number i mean did you oh

1:28:33here it's an estimate but based on other places where we've tracked the disconnects um because that our phone system when we call a number if it gets that number then you know the response you know this number has been disconnected it automatically hears that and and

1:28:48marks that and you're you're also advising that we would do this in the fall election of 2016 is that correct because of the expected voters turnout with the presidential election it makes a um a difference in november 16 that's going to be the biggest turnout that you're going to get

1:29:06yeah okay that's all thank you i just want to follow up some on this uh abandonment of uh landlines although i must say i keep wondering about that myself seriously and i really you're i'm really irritated when somebody calls me on my landline but the the thing i'm wondering about is

1:29:29the statistics of using the new data basically a new data set as opposed to the old data set and have there been any is there any way of even knowing if the results will be the same or if they will be different because uh if it's people who are doing it in the middle of the night

1:29:51and um i must confess that is a time i really like to do things like that um but maybe they're a different kind of person relative to their voting yeah their actual voting that's a good question uh and the uh first of all survey research is art of what's possible um so the downside is

1:30:12if we weren't using new approaches we have 200 interviews um and the error rates would be much greater the data set itself is the same it's the registered voter file we're not going beyond that we get the additional emails both from our clients the emails that they have as

1:30:32well as what are called enhanced voter file emails which just means we match them with third-party sources which is everything out there that you give emails to but it has to match with the voter file so we're not going beyond the voter file and bringing in people who aren't going

1:30:49to cast ballots then once we've matched it we do our usual algorithm to predict the voter turnout for any given election and we talked about three here and the people have to still be on that list they're still registered to vote it's then stratified based on the number of email addresses that match

1:31:09versus the number of phone numbers that match so we don't have a disproportionate sample that is all people that are taking it online and then we're also stratifying it by age gender partisanship in parts of town so it looks a lot like any sample and and the other validation

1:31:29of it is when you look at the data that we collected in 2013 on the library we were at 69 percent then we're up a little bit that's good the economy has changed since 2013 we've refined the measure a little bit since 2013 so that might account for the variance but really we're we're not very

1:31:50far off of where we were in 2013 uh for el cerrito we recently had one of the first elections that's gone through this process we've been doing this for about a year a year now but it has to roll through the elections and we were within the air rate on the election day so same thing as always

1:32:08that's what we look to be within the air raid so i'm confident that it is uh representative of the population i'm also confident in saying in two to three years we may not be doing any phone calling at all this is going to be all online there'll be a text component

1:32:28uh i don't know how i'm going to get somebody to sit through this many questions and texting but we're going to have to figure that out because that's just the reality so one of the things i i sort of know i guess is that when somebody registers to vote they don't go in and update their

1:32:47information um so um is are there um are there a lot of people that have no information on the database the the voter database that can be used to do this sort of polling or they're the um the voter file right now for november 16 the email portion is about 23 so somebody who just abandons their

1:33:20landline that landline stays on the voter file until such time as they're removed because they move somewhere else and re-register um or or they just leave the city and they finally get purged from the file uh we've got about 75 phone numbers but again a big chunk of those are

1:33:41inactive or disconnected now there's also eight percent that are cell phones this is all for november 16. so as new people move in and housing stock turns over that's when where this gets updated so telephone phone number is a cell phone yes okay by the exchange there's a

1:33:59master list of cell phone exchanges and we have to know that because we can use our predictive dialer to dial a landline which is great it's cheap you've probably recognized it it's uh you pick up the phone and you hear a click the minute you pick up the phone if you're quick

1:34:16and that's the computer switching it to a real person um we can't do that with a cell phone that's illegal we have to hand dial with a real live person so the computer switches a phone number to the screen of the interviewer and they have to dial that number and that's

1:34:33the way we approach cell phones so we have to know what the exchanges are the catch is number portability you can disconnect your landline and go down and say i want my phone number and i want it now on my cell phone um not a lot of people do that because they typically have had a landline and

1:34:52then get a cell phone and then get rid of the landline so they've already got a cell phone number but it does happen in some cases so we're using the predictive dialer to dial those landline what appear to be landline numbers but they can be cell phone numbers thank you thanks

1:35:10to get 418 online responses how many emails are you are you sending out to because you can control the number of phone calls because that's a feedback loop but at what point do you know that you are getting enough emails out there to get enough email responses um well

1:35:30it's a different slightly it's stratified on the back end um the phone approach is stratified on the front end got it and so it's a little bit different sampling it's really what's called a replica sampling approach it's still random and it still gets weighted but in this case and i know that we have

1:35:502300 in round number emails from the voter file i think we had another three thousand that matched with the voter file from what we got with from the city so we sent out over five thousand emails multiple times um four or four times now what happens each time uh is if we get a bunch of

1:36:08what we call soft bounces that's all the out of office replies and all that sort of stuff those get taken out the hard bounces are firewalls blocking and spam protection those get taken out plus anybody who hits the link that says remove me from your list those get taken

1:36:25out and so each subsequent emailing is smaller and smaller and we also of course take out the completes as well and so when you say stratified on the back end you might have actually gotten more responses than 418 418 is just what you're doing 418 is what we actually got

1:36:41it's weighted on the back end or stratified on the back end to make it uh match the actual voter file got it okay um and then um one of the one of the questions one of the statements about the measure was the el cerrito library helps support the economic vitality of the community

1:37:04and and i think you said that all of the statements are here was any did any of the statements maybe that isn't here allude to the fact that property values individual property values go up with a good library in town didn't have a property values question we had a lot of obviously a lot of other

1:37:25items but just uh from memory and scanning through here now we didn't have a property values typically doesn't test that well right because most people are renters are in there disconnected from their property value anyway yeah and uh it's i mean it has positively

1:37:41where we've tested it and we've tested it in numerous places it just winds up in sort of the middle lower section and so you have to ask yourself do you want to test these other things that we were correct that would test well or you know spend the time on that

1:37:55great thank you valuable um a couple of things the last time i heard us throw out a projected figure for this project it was about 25 million you tested it 30 million is that a reflection of where we think it's going to go to bring this project home some of it has to do with time has gone

1:38:21by construction costs are high we haven't done a very specific cost estimate yet and that's something we're going to be working on this year assuming you are comfortable with us going forward and we would be bringing that back in the in the budget to come up with more of a build

1:38:39number but because of the polling we wanted it if we had to we wanted to lean high and then we can go down so we think that would be the sort of highest we would have to go thank you the other question also involves money now i know when you do these type of surveys you're not at this

1:38:59point polling for how much it's going to cost the citizens and where the money's going to come from but at some point we will pull for that i assume or not uh when you're dealing with partial taxes um which we haven't we've dealt with sales taxes uh you have to do that because then that

1:39:22amount of the tax the right tax rate is actually in the ballot question so in school district does the parcel tax that's what they do um bond measures and sales taxes which we obviously have done for the city uh to a lesser extent are the same are sort of the same

1:39:37it just has to cite the rate or the rate for the sales tax and absent and no one can figure out what that means they just can't because what are taxable purchases and how much do you spend here and there and those sorts of things bond measures are a little bit like that

1:39:53the state law requires you to put in the total amount of the bond measure there's a tax rate statement that is in the voter handbook which people can access and figure out what the tax rate will be but what we found of late is in bond measures is that's not that helpful in

1:40:12predicting the outcome um because not that many people dig down to find out that specific rate is the honest truth now we have data that tells us what that might be and we you know there's a political risk associated with any of these calculations and so that that

1:40:30information helps us say what's the risk if people were to dig down into that information but for the most part they don't they just look at the what do i get out of this how much does it cost it's a bond measure and you know it's those 75 words on the ballot that makes

1:40:48their minds thank you let's hear from public we have two speakers liz ruland and tom panis good evening mayor friedman members of the council and city staff i just want to give brief thanks my name is liz and i'm senior community library manager for the el cerrito library and i just want

1:41:16to thank the city for authorizing the study um thank brian godby and um just say simply that the contra costa county library staff is looking very forward to continuing to work with the city on this project thank you very much thank you good evening mayor friedman members of

1:41:41the council and city staff my name is tom panis i live at [address removed] in el cerrito i'd like to thank our city manager scott hanna and our assistant city manager karen pincus for their careful and deliberate management of this process mr godby has been a very important

1:41:55player on this team and like to thank him for the thorough and insightful polling that he always performs for us the polling results look good but there's enormous amount of work that remains to be done between now and november 2016.

1:42:11who knows what unforeseen circumstances will arise i'm ready to do whatever is requested between now and then and i hope that our council is as well thank you for your time this evening thank you very much okay i think that concludes the item thank you very much for the great and

1:42:28comprehensive research as always and it's extremely encouraging for all of us who feel that getting this project done is one of the highest priorities in our city so glad to hear the citizens seem to be in sync so far thank you okay we move on to item 7b council local

1:42:47and regional liaison assignment reports staff direction oh what nothing on item 7a do we need to give any type of staff direction at this time only if you don't want us to go forward uh we'll be we'll remain silent and you can march along go forth and multiply liaison reports

1:43:14i have one please um on may 21st i attended the marin clean energy board meeting on our behalf and uh the most interesting item to report from there is a presentation on energy efficiency and the energy efficiency programs that are ongoing in in the marin area and

1:43:36what i would love to see and i'll try to advocate for is that that be extended to a larger um jurisdictionals to include el cerritos san pablo and richmond so great thank you any others with that we are adjourned thank you all very much you