City Council Meeting November 17, 2015

0:00:10ready we're gonna get started uh we now adjourn or convene the city council meeting please note that all members of the city council are present i'm going to call on mayor pro tem lyman to lead us in either the pledge of allegiance or observation of a moment of

0:00:30silence please join me in a moment of silence i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all all right uh just for those who are here and might

0:00:59want to speak on a couple of items there's two items we're going to remove from the consent calendar just giving you an advance warning those are items 5 b the minimum wage ordinance and 5 5d review of financial policies so we will begin with council staff communications

0:01:21all right moving right along oral communications from the public for items not on the agenda or that are on the consent calendar other than the two that i just referenced thank you mayor there's a number of speakers great um cordell hindler would like to speak to

0:01:40two items general comment and presentation followed by al miller and tom panis mayor friedman members of the city council my name is carl hendler and i'm a member of the park plaza neighborhood association i came to a few months back um and regarding an issue regarding the police down on my

0:02:04street i still have some concerns regarding to that this last last october on the 29th at approximately 10 30 i have not seen an el cerrito police cop uh coming down on south 50th and cutting and out of the laurel park area and i've gotten some complaints uh from my neighborhood association and

0:02:24laurel park they're saying el cerrito police have been coming down on our streets and we don't like that okay so i'm i'm asking um if city staff and the city attorney would like to do some research on on what albany's ordinance uh is stating that um that the police are not supposed

0:02:40to step out of their their zone so they're not in our district so so that's something that's the city attorney should be like do some research on so that's one and number two i'm i'm very i would like to invite all of you to come out to our to our new show for koshikaza

0:02:56civic theater it's called the secret garden that will be this coming friday on the 20th um is that eight o'clock uh i think you might love this show um it's wonderful so so let's see that's number two and number three is um i'm just so gl i'm just so grateful that

0:03:12um that i got an email back from chief moore about it i explained to her my the situation uh that i would appreciate it uh if the police would stay in their their zone because because because i'm getting so many so many phone calls from my neighbors and it's like it's un it's

0:03:27unacceptable so hopefully that the the city attorney will like take my my thoughts into consideration so that's it thank you very much good evening mayor friedman council members staff i just wanted to give you a quick update or report on what i thought was a very

0:03:48successful event saturday morning the el cerrito police department community cleanup day we started up at san pablo avenue when [Music] ohlone greenway and came back through baxter creek past conlon and then ended up down at the parking lots of on del norte i don't know exactly how many but there

0:04:14were eight or ten police officers there and i'd say 20 or 25 people there are representatives from the human relations commission from the public safety commission and the el cerrito branch of the naacp which were the sponsoring organizations with the osrido police department

0:04:33i personally talked with several families as the first public event they had come out for and they all happen to have youngsters from so high so high so it was really nice a lot of mingling between citizens and the police officers which was the primary purpose of the event i

0:04:53believe anyway it was a very successful event so i'd like to thank our police department for supporting the community efforts and events like these thank you thank you very much and tom panis followed by dave weinstein good evening mayor friedman members of the council and city staff my name is

0:05:24tom panis and i live at [address removed] in el cerrito as i think you all know the fred korematsu middle school campus will open to students on march 28th i recently learned that a special dedication ceremony at the school is being planned for january 30th fred koromatsu day

0:05:40among others fred korematsu's daughter karen who was here in the council chambers when we did our fred koromatsu day resolution december of 2010 will be there please mark your calendars for this date i'd also like to say that i considered senior resource day earlier this month

0:05:54to be a huge success i was have to confess i was personally a little skeptical it was a great success i'd like to thank the staff for what they did and hope we keep doing that thank you for your time this evening thank you very much dave weinstein hi i'm dave dave weinstein and i'm

0:06:13speaking in my role tonight as president of trail trackers we recently put on the music for madeira festival in september and as a result of that festival we managed to raise three thousand two hundred and sixty four dollars which we donated to the city of el cerrito for the purpose of

0:06:30hillside maintenance now i have to say the festival i know that uh the mayor was there i was kind enough to come in and make an appearance was wonderful it wasn't the world's best attended festival as a matter of fact it was kind of a bust but nevertheless i think this money is a

0:06:44significant contribution you know i was told that um the madeira open space it costs about four thousand dollars a year to cut cut that grass down and do some of the other improvements so you know this money really helps and um back when we were raising money to buy the open

0:06:57space it was garth schultz who suggested that we raise a little money to maintain it as well and so we've you know not made a commitment in blood but we decided that we're going to keep on trying to raise money to do that i believe that because we didn't have such great attendance at the festival

0:07:12we're probably not going to do it again the music from madeira festival that's not for sure but probably not what we're thinking about doing is folding it into the hillside festival which um really does get pretty good attendance so i'm not sure it might be a little difficult

0:07:24to do but we're thinking about how to do it as a way to have a little bit of music and kind of a central area where you get people together it's easier to harangue them to make some donations because we're trying to figure out the best way to keep on raising money

0:07:36because not only do we want to raise the money to pay to cut the grass and to improve um you know the native plants and that sort of thing but by doing this it really shows the council i think everybody that people in town really care about open space and they're willing to get out and support

0:07:50it so thank you very much and um tom galen who also helped put on the festival is here too it was a heck of a lot of of work putting the festival on but you know even though we didn't get great attendance i'm not really that sorry because you know anybody who was there the music was

0:08:03just so great every band we had man they were good so one reason i want to add music to the hillside festival just to get some of these bands back again so um thank you very much thank you uh mayor pro tem lyman was there also i think we both had a great time so thank

0:08:19you so much that's all for this okay moving right along next up is a presentation on the fiscal year 2014-15 and the 2015-16 budget update our finance director and city treasurer good evening mayor and council i'm lisa alexa dave this city's finance director and this evening i wanted to

0:08:59present the year-end results for last fiscal year which was 2014-15 and then talk a bit about some of the trends we're seeing in the first few months of our current fiscal year 15 and 16 15 16 excuse me so this first slide is a summary of the general fund again you've seen this at

0:09:20every budget presentation but it gives a good snapshot of high level of the general fund overall if you look at the line labeled annual balance shortfall you'll see that we ended the year fiscal year 1415 about 270 thousand dollars to the good included in this i should mention

0:09:39included in this chart is the amended budget which was approved by council with all of the mid-year budget updates in march what we projected at june when we presented the 1516 budget and then how we actually ended the fiscal year and then you finally have a column a

0:09:57variance column that shows you the difference between what council approved in mid-march with the amended budget and then how we ended the fiscal year so again we ended 270 thousand dollars to the good we had in the amended budget had planned to end the year with an

0:10:13ending balance close to uh four and a half percent we actually ended the year closer to five and a half percent so this next slide gets into the details of what's driving those numbers and our first focus is to talk a little bit about the general fund revenues you'll see that property taxes and sales

0:10:34taxes actually did much better than we anticipated and those are the primary drivers of the total taxes that ended the year at about 138 000 to the good we'll talk a little bit more about property taxes and how things are going with 15 and 16. i'm happy to present

0:10:51good news on that front so we'll talk about that in just a second i do want to call your attention to the utility users tax which is something we've talked about a few times with council and if you'll remember at mid-year we came back to council and revised our projections

0:11:05based on the trends we've been seeing and we revise that projection down considerably unfortunately we're seeing a trend that is not one we've seen before and the eut actually came in less than the prior fiscal year what we'd seen was about a two to three percent growth in prior

0:11:22years and so that's when we made our revised projection what we assumed and we ended the year a little bit less so we're gonna again keep an eye on this it's it's not making a lot of sense we're seeing that the utility users um the utility companies are actually

0:11:38raising their rates but it's not translating into a lot of revenue so at mid year we will likely revise this year's projection but i did want to just mention that a little bit in this presentation if you look down at the next category of revenues this is a mixture of different

0:11:56revenues overall we came in about 35 000 to the good we had some ups and downs in some of the revenues but overall to the good in the section called intergovernmental revenues that includes about a hundred and ninety thousand dollars of a one-time revenue we received i think we

0:12:14mentioned it at the budget presentation in june this is about 190 000 from the state of mandated costs that we finally received reimbursement for so that's what's driving that number it's a one-time revenue this slide focuses on the expenses overall we ended the year about six

0:12:36thousand dollars better than the amended budget originally in uh june we had projected that our personnel would be about four hundred thousand dollars to the good unfortunately toward the end of the year we had some overtime expenses and some workers comp premiums that

0:12:53hadn't been fully allocated and so we actually ended the year a little bit with less savings about 200 000 but we still did have 200 000 of savings our non-personnel we had projected actually that it was going to be about seven million dollars by year end we actually lowered that and

0:13:11came at about 600 6.8 million dollars so that was actually an improvement one of the biggest drivers on our non-personnel is related to professional services and with the high number of vacancies that the city has had over the years we've really had to rely on the

0:13:26professional services so that's what you're seeing there that mean that number may start to change i would anticipate it changes a bit as the city staffs up and has a little bit more staff available to provide some of those direct services so just to recap for last year

0:13:46revenues were up expenses were pretty much at the budget the num primary drivers of the revenue being over projections was property and sales tax being better than anticipated the uut revenue was down as i mentioned we also had some lower revenues in parking citations and some of the permit

0:14:06fees that we had anticipated we have personnel savings of about two hundred thousand dollars non-personnel as i just mentioned was over budget but less than we had anticipated and then of course we ended the year at the about five percent so i just want to mention briefly we

0:14:26don't talk too much about our special revenue funds but they are actually doing much better a few years ago we were talking to you about some of the deficits in these funds which have now come into balance so i wanted to just give you an update on where we ended the year and

0:14:42what we had projected and you'll see with the exception of our capital improvement fund we came in either at budget or better so our ending balances are all positive and i want to explain just a bit about the capital improvement fund the nature of that fund is that most of

0:14:58the expenses are reimbursed so we have to spend the money before we we receive the revenue so it's typically a timing issue and so that's why it's normal to see a deficit at the end of the year the other number that's driving that deficit has to do with a disputed

0:15:13redevelopment project and receiving reimbursement from the department of finance so we're continuing to have those discussions and try to get that resolved so i want to turn our attention a little bit to talk about our first quarter the first few months it's very early on into the fiscal year

0:15:34to really have much of an idea of how we're going to end the fiscal year however personnel is one area we can look at it's pretty consistent from month to month so it's a good indicator of where we'll end the year it's also about 75 percent of the expenses to the

0:15:50general fund which is another reason why it makes it a good indicator we expect to be at about 22 percent at this point in the year as you can see most of our funds are tracking at about that rate the exception is our paratransit fund and our believe it is our npdes fund and by year

0:16:10end those will actually have balanced out so it's not could you explain the acronym yes i'm sorry that is our yes i apologize that is our um um it's our pollution it's related to storm water i'm sorry national pollution elimination discharge system thank you thank you and and i i will be uh they're

0:16:32they're changing they're potentially changing as we speak and there's actually a hearing tomorrow to try and at the regional water quality control board with regards to those so these costs may not be going down anytime soon and this has actually been one of our

0:16:48funds that was difficult to bring into balance so it's it's definitely a fun that i guess we'll be continuing to watch and discuss the other thing i want to talk about for 15 and 16 which is a huge driver of what's going to happen in our budget is the real estate trends in el cerrito

0:17:07this first slide it was presented by our tax consultants hdl and this just basically compares the sales prices of houses in el cerrito from 2001 to 2015.

0:17:21you might note in our packet it's really hard to see yeah um i think it's in your present copy of the presentation it's to the right it's right there yep that's it here it's really dark in back here and it's you'll have to see number it's just nothing i can't see anything

0:17:43at this level is it's really dark here thank you better maybe it's lighter than maybe that anyway that will help me i don't know about what it does to anyone else but you need light so if you look at 2008 you'll see that actually the prices of houses in el cerrito declined and we had a negative

0:18:09change that started to change in 2013 as you can see and in 2015 you'll see that we've reached our highest sales price at about 730 thousand dollars which is excellent news this next slide compares el cerrito to the other cities in contra costa county and you'll see we're situated

0:18:34fairly high in the county we are certainly above the contra costa county median and we are somewhere in between i want to say san ramon and um i'm sorry i had it here can't find it thank you clayton so again we're doing really well um you can see the median change is on the

0:18:59higher side so this is all really great news and we're actually seeing the benefit of this in our budget already um this is the the last sort of slide related to this you'll see that we were the second in the county for the growth in the um assessed value which is a good predictor

0:19:20of our revenue so this is all really good news um we haven't had we've seen some improvement in real estate but we're now really feeling the impact of this on our revenue and this is the impact of that revenue this year we're already anticipating our property taxes will come in at close to

0:19:41350 000 more than one was included in the budget are in lieu taxes which are also property tax related we receive it through our property taxes is a hundred and seventy five thousand dollars better these are not numbers that were budgeted so this is additional funds that we'll

0:19:58have by year end we also have in the category of other miscellaneous revenues this about a hundred and ten thousand dollars which is a one-time revenue related to some um building or planning work that's happening we also are anticipating that we'll likely have some additional one-time

0:20:18revenues by the fiscal year by the end of the fiscal year and we'll likely be coming back to council if we have that and recommending that that actually goes to our reserves to increase our reserves and again just to recap on the first quarter general fund revenues are

0:20:37tracking better than we had anticipated personnel expenses are right at the budget where they should be are non-personnel hard to predict but if we look at last year where we were at about the same time we're on track we anticipate as i just mentioned that we'll have some additional one-time

0:20:53funds that we'll recommend are allocated to our reserves and then of course we'll be back in march to provide council with a mid-year update and with that i'll take any questions you might have thank you uh we'll start with council member bridges a couple questions so the

0:21:11regarding the sales tax being stronger that's not just a reflection of measure r is that is that correct it's so it is in part reflection of measure r but we actually amended the budget to reflect that and so the additional over and above is actually just stronger

0:21:26sales in el cerrito yeah so that's actually really good news it's great news the other thing is is that nothing in this budget has anything to do with the payback with home depot right that's not included in this correct any any revenue related to home depot has been removed

0:21:45from the budget as well as any payback to to richmond it's all being done through richmond keeping a hundred percent of the revenues and um regarding um permits and the the decrease in in that fund um when you're talking about there's lower permit revenues is that from

0:22:06major projects or are we talking about small homeowner projects i think these were some major projects that we anticipated happening last year that are actually happening this year so we didn't receive it last year now um just only about 59 of our properties have been reassessed at higher values

0:22:24right now recaptured from 2012-13 that's what these numbers are so there's still a lot to be had right so we anticipate that the rest of those numbers will be reflected next year what our consultants are saying is that next year we should have a pretty significant bump as well and then it'll

0:22:43start to level off because all of those prop 8s will have been reassessed back to where they should be and that should be in this next fiscal year it'll be yeah and 17. okay yep yeah thank you sure thank you i just wanted to make or ask a question so when you say reassessed right which

0:22:59reassessment the prop 8 these are the properties that were reassessed down and those were they've recaptured about six close to 60 percent of those they are anticipating that the assessor will put the rest of them back to where they does that mean uh it's a timing process with the county

0:23:21or that we haven't had a chance to go through the detail to turn them all in what does that no it's the county it's completely dependent on the county yeah we don't unfortunately have any influence on that [Music] will will we lose money over their delay no it's not it's not revenue that we

0:23:40anticipate just as this year we didn't anticipate the additional revenue we're going to receive so we will project some increase next year but what that is at this moment i don't know i guess i was thinking about it slightly differently which is that um the sooner they do the i'll call it

0:23:58paperwork the sooner we get the money right not neces not necessarily i mean they'll they have to do it within a certain time frame in order to make it on that role for that fiscal year the way it'll be on the same tax roll yes okay that's what i wanted next year

0:24:16thank you sure thank you very much um and uh miss ortiz might be able the better person to answer this but part of the reason why the national pollution discharge elimination system cost is higher is it is it anticipating the rainy season and a lot of the work that we're doing in

0:24:33anticipation of the rainy season is that correct so actually we've we've been taking a closer look at that and it should probably it's actually inflated in air the way that our labor distrib the way some personnel has been charged is actually the problem so um we'll be

0:24:50correcting those and those are actually tracking as they should be but at the time of this they had been charged in error so great thank you all right i think that's it any public comment on um mr hindler all right so mayor freeman city council members uh cardell hendler

0:25:14richmond resident um i really enjoyed the presentation um so much and i was like so the questions i had for the for the presenter um when she when she says about personnel um the question i had was um specifically what type of personnel um um is it um what kind of personnel are you

0:25:34referring to like that's that was the one question that came to my mind so that that's for the presenter go ahead that would be for staff costs for the city of el cerrito okay that was the only question i had all right thank you very much so i've seen no other public comment

0:25:54we're going to move on to did you fill out a slip that's okay yeah oh there's another item we're on yeah but i would like to speak on this one may i of course okay yeah i just wanted to clarify excuse me where is oh there she is um so under sales tax it shows that you guys are the that

0:26:21esrido generated 5 million 55 703 last year the previous year it generated 5 361 000 and some change that's a a a loss of 305 530 it's nothing to celebrate is that accurate is that accurate data yeah yeah so that is accurate and the reason for the change actually has to do

0:26:52with what council member bridges was referring to which was related to sales tax related to home depot which we're no longer collecting oh okay um just to explain that we used to have a revenue sharing agreement with richmond since the store is partly in el cerrito

0:27:11partly in richmond and the state franchise tax board basically disallowed that agreement right more or less it's we still have the agreement to share the revenue but it's it had been misallocated for many years and so we are repaying the amount we're sorting that out and basically el

0:27:31cerrito owes richmond so okay and the other question i had was about business license taxes um the difference between those is also kind of large fifty five thousand forty one dollars loss in business or business licenses is that also from home depot or is that just from

0:27:51businesses leaving el cerrito we don't know the exact reason it it's not related to home depot they didn't have a business license in el cerrito but we actually don't know at this moment and we're looking into that okay that's all thank you any further public comment i have no other slip

0:28:09thanks very much for an excellent presentation okay we now move on to the consent calendar which now consists of items 5a the minutes 5c human rights day and month proclamation 5e amendment system classification plan and 5f quarterly cash and investment report do we have a motion i move 5a 5c

0:28:325e and 5f circuit it moved in second and all in favor signify by saying aye aye motion carries unanimously now we'll move to item 5b the ordinance establishing a local minimum wage council member yeah mayor i pull this item so we can consider removing one step increase and reducing

0:28:55the number of increases between now and 2017 which is 13 months from now under our proposed ordinance businesses are scheduled to experience increases in january 2016 july 2016 january 2017.

0:29:09i want to acknowledge a conversation i had with miss lynum and to recognize the concerns of the businesses she represents her clients have financial commitments to repay debts based on business plans that reflect economic assumptions in payroll costs and number of patrons customers

0:29:27their valid concern is that their revenue will decrease as a result of higher prices driving off patrons and their ability to repay the debts threatened by higher payroll costs we discussed the rapid multi-step increase of our proposal uh miss lineman i did and in an effort to understand the

0:29:47issue i inquired if it was the size of of the steps or the number of steps and understandably the response was both posed problems uh because of the cost of print menus and other items as well as the perceived fragile relationship between customers and exceeding each patrons cost-benefit

0:30:05analysis simple question can i cook this quality of taco at home for this price although i'm sympathetic to our restaurants and their very tight margins i remain dedicated to the quick increasing income to quickly increasing income to the lowest earners in our community

0:30:23and i trust that our restaurants entrepreneurs will continue to differentiate themselves with excellent service and outstanding quality food to continue growing their clientele however to accommodate one of their requests which is to reduce the number of increases

0:30:40and to have predictability predictably sized increases for example 1.50 at each step i am willing to consider removing the january 2017 increase this was similar to staff's original proposal this could be done by eliminating that third increase uh that third crease in within a 12-month

0:31:01period the january 2017 increase and either leaving the 2016 value at the proposed 1160 and the january 2018 increase at the proposed 1360 1360 which is what's in our ordinance or we could make the july 2016 increase 12 eliminate the january 2017 increase and make the january 2018 increase 13.50

0:31:30this alternative reduces the number of increases after july 2016 to two and each one of them is a dollar fifty i also wanna recognize that our neighbor berkeley recently met to consider changes to their minimum wage and to better protect the small business owners

0:31:48it's my understanding they're considering a two-track system i believe they directed staff to draft a 15 in 2018 for large employers and 15 in 2020 for small employers i made our proposal 15 in 2019 to avoid a two-tier system a two-track system as several reasons were given to avoid a

0:32:10two-track system however we exist in a region and our decision should be in that context despite the request to pull and introduce these two discussion items reconsidering the size and timing of our increases and potentially uh reduced in introducing a second track

0:32:30i continue to to support the ordinance before us and pull this just for discussion purposes uh question for the city attorney if we change the timetable and the numbers will it require this to be the first reading it will the ordinance will have to be introduced again with the changes and

0:32:50then brought back for adoption at the next at a subsequent meeting uh other questions before we hear public comment public comment please yes mayor we have five speakers cordell hindler followed by jessica lamock and gordon messer oh mayor freeman uh council council members

0:33:16i am cordell handler i'm resident of richmond i didn't make the uh the november third meeting uh the first reading of the ordinance zone so i apologize for that but but i do support this uh this ordinance because we are we are seeing an increase in um in minimum wage uh in our city so i'm

0:33:34thinking this is a good thing so i did my research online i say any because i mean i've seen some of these um these job these these job positions i mean they make more than thirteen dollars an hour i think some of these account executives they made more than fifty thousand dollars um

0:33:52in a year of time so that's all that's just something that i just pull i just pull that out into thin air so so i so i hopefully the city council will will adopt this ordinance with the changes um because i mean i'm i'm happy to see uh minimum wage uh increase so

0:34:10i'm thinking this is a good thing so and then the second uh uh concern i had was um i've because i talked with some of the uh the high schools uh around the area and they're like and and these kids need jobs like you know like when they heard about this minimum wage

0:34:25increases that mean they were all four so so working with some of these high schools around this area that'll like give them give them like a broader perspective of what the uh what kind of jobs they would get um so i hurley i encourage you to to adopt this ordinance and um

0:34:44and that's it so that's it so thank you very much jessica lemak followed by gordon messer and lisa martinez sorry council my name is jessica lynum and i'm here on behalf of the california restaurant association i appreciate the recap from councilman lineman and as my

0:35:07members are really really anxious about this increase and especially being hit two times within one year and they've already been prepared within the 30 some odd days to go to ten dollars um for their for their employees who are minimum wage or their new employees that

0:35:23they may hire now um the the conversation i was i was having is be consistent pick a date and kind of stay with it so if we're going with january that would be fantastic just to do ten dollars and then a dollar fifty from there but if the council wants to do something more than the state level next

0:35:42year we can stay with july and go 10 50 on july 1st of 2016 and then july 2017 12 july 2018 1350 and july 2019 15 dollars so something along the lines to be consistent um i was crunching numbers in true budget form um if an employee if an uh company within el cerrito has 50

0:36:07employees that operate 12 12 hours a day a 50 cent increase within six months would cost the company 55 000 a dollar sixty increase which is what is being proposed currently before any changes would cost the company within six months a hundred and seventy two thousand and eight hundred dollars so

0:36:29there's a lot of um like i was speaking with councilman lyman a lot of details that go into running a business a lot of budget plans within bank loans and a lot of payroll taxes worker comp taxes and a lot of other multi-faceted situations within a business that operates here and

0:36:46we want to continue to have good years so if if you do the dollar 50 increase it is a larger increase of 17 percent within the first year but it does decrease we really don't know exactly what the future holds so it goes 17 15 13 and then 11 so even though the dollar amounts

0:37:05similar of a dollar fifty so not only do businesses know what they're paying out should they have minimum wage employees but the employees also know what a dollar fifty is every year um the percentage overall does decrease so it allows businesses to be able to cope

0:37:20with these changes which is all i'm asking is to find some middle ground and let's do this together and let's do the smart thank you thank you very much gordon messer followed by lisa mayor council people gordon messer i live in berkeley my store is on san pablo in el cerrito i'm a new business

0:37:44owner here i open batteries plus bulbs corner of schmidt and san pablo we opened may 20th my thrust up here is to try and get you to think which i'm sure you have about filling the vacancies on san pablo avenue and how a fifteen dollar an increase in wage is is

0:38:12counter intuitive to try and get those vacancies filled when i drove here tonight i counted nine empty store fronts between the theater and here and um to try and fill those is as i said counter-intuitive to increasing the wage i also wanted to let you guys know some

0:38:34numbers just so you had an idea of what it cost as a small business owner i've got four employees excluding myself to open that business okay we took an existing space we had a build out the build-out cost approximately fifty seven thousand dollars that was for the construction

0:38:55and the lighting okay on top of that the permitting was fifteen thousand dollars okay on top of that the architectural fees to create the drawings and the the specifications to get those permits were twenty eight thousand dollars okay yeah i've got four employees as i mentioned

0:39:22um excluding myself two of them are full-time two of them are part time one of them makes twenty five dollars an hour one makes fifteen one makes thirteen fifty and the other makes twelve okay that and we're open 81 hours a week now i certainly wouldn't choose to be open

0:39:41that long but it's a franchise and i'm required to be open that long my payroll including taxes is uh ten thousand four hundred dollars a month that's one third of my expenses and it is by far and away my highest fixed cost okay i would be happy to share any other

0:40:07numbers regarding the build out the cost of doing business here in el cerrito with you guys i'm not sure if anybody wants to hear any more of that and i see i've got the yellow light on so i'll stop now but i just wanted to give you an idea of how much it costs a small

0:40:21business to operate here and that increase in um the the minimum wage uh is is really going to affect me and and i'm sure it's going to affect many others in this in my position so i thank you for your time and consideration thank you very much lisa martinengo followed by kevin

0:40:43o'neill and jan komarani hello my name is lisa martinengo i live at moser lane in el cerrito i've been el cerrito resident and business license holder since 2009.

0:40:58mine is a home-based business without employees but that doesn't mean i won't be affected by the law that you're considering tonight first i was here two weeks ago at the other session and i have to say i felt a little bit dismayed slightly perturbed by the parade of ministers and

0:41:16reverends and other folks who came up here and said that was a moral issue seriously nobody wants poverty to exist nobody wants to see folks struggling to make ends meet it's not really that is not really the issue the issue is that this particular ordinance as it's being discussed so far

0:41:35applies to only a tiny percentage of the population that happens to work in the city limits and there's been no consideration for making an exception or provision yet for the very small local businesses that are doing their best to stay afloat and provide independent and

0:41:49unique flavor to our town in case you didn't know president obama has proclaimed november as national entrepreneurship month and he said and i quote i call upon all americans to commemorate this month with appropriate programs and activities and to celebrate today

0:42:05november 17th as national entrepreneurs day so what better way to celebrate some of our entrepreneurs than listen to them our town without any entrepreneurs would be a lot more dreary and boring than it needs to be um do you want to walk around and drive around el cerrito and see only the same

0:42:24old chains on the same old nondescript box stores where nobody knows your name um what is the hurry to push this through um do you want to pat yourselves on the back that you're implementing a feel-good strategy well that's not exactly why you know i elected you i would like you to listen

0:42:43more to the wonderful business neighbors who just might have to close up shop or hike up prices for you know a 10 coffee or something just an enormous percentage to meet this requirement i just ask you to slow down and do consider what the berkeley chamber of commerce had publicly

0:43:00suggested and that's to include some exceptions for the very small businesses and to include a built-in date to revisit the plan or compile new data to see that the desired results have occurred or not just just i would just ask to not rush it through might have a

0:43:19slightly more detrimental effect than than you anticipate thank you kevin o'neill followed by ken comeron jen comaroni and nicholas arzio mayor friedman council members by now you all know me um i'd just like to start for the record that our employees make on average 13 an hour and that

0:43:51doesn't include tips so in case you you think i'm an awful person and i don't pay my voice i just want to make that clear okay um and i do hope to see you all come through our doors sometime that would be really nice especially um i'd like to thank greg lyman for being a pretty good

0:44:07regular there and now i'm going to get on with my thing um read recently that mayor friedman at the state of the city address in april noted that the illustrator workforce was down 10 percent from its peak in during or before 2008. i'm assuming that was the city staff

0:44:30that you're referring to that was right 10 down okay that wasn't in april what it wasn't in april oh sorry the the newspaper said it was april 28 2015 you spoke to the um democratic club oh right okay thank you um and that the city had to defer 100 million dollars in needed maintenance to

0:44:51facilities and lacks money to replace the police and fire stations and he pointed out that the cause was vacant retail not producing sales tax and chronic budget constraints looking at our current budget report uh just earlier we know we can note that there are

0:45:09diminished business license fees of 6.5 percent or 55 000 dollars and that suggests something that either businesses are closing or leaving or they're reducing staff because the license is based on employees right or some of them are the majority of those license are based on

0:45:32that the previous fiscal year also saw our more recent fiscal year also saw a drop in business licenses of 170 licenses out of 2604 the year before that's a also a 6.5 percent decrease i wonder how low it will go this year when we find out what the number of licenses is as of

0:45:58july the 2015-2016 fiscal year um now i'm concerned about as you know i'm concerned about the um raising minimum wage because it hits retail and restaurants especially hard um you're also duplicating a state bureaucracy at the small town level and we will need to

0:46:18pay for uh not only your own minimum wage workers but also increasing your own payroll costs with um staff that is already at ten percent then less than it should be so it's an over taxed staff um and then also i examined the cwed's prospective impact study um and noted

0:46:38that it built into its calculations a uh savings of 17 red lights on can you wrap up please i will it's there's not much but um okay basically what it comes down to is they built in a savings of 17.5 percent for uh retention and an efficiency is what they are assuming

0:47:01and i believe that's a false assumption because a person making nine dollars an hour now and fifteen dollars in 2020 is still going to be making minimum wage and is not going to be retained and anybody making twenty dollars now is always looking at their wage based

0:47:14relative to minimum wage and is not going to want to stick around so i think that's a key thing that should be thought about and that if you're removing that from their estimates it would mean that my restaurant excuse me cost is 28 28 it's going to go up and retail is going

0:47:33to go up 12.6 so please thank you very much you said you were going to wrap up about two minutes ago well that was the main part please okay thank you recommendation and um to to make an exception for us small businesses thank you thank you for your comments jen comaroni followed by nicholas arzio

0:47:54and marianna moore thank you for hosting us tonight um so my name is jen camerame and i am co-owner of well-grounded and jenny k in el cerrito i'm concerned in the manner in which this ordinance has been moving forward many business owners still are not aware of

0:48:25what is happening there wasn't a mailing sent out until after my husband came to the september meeting and he was alerted to the meeting because of the california restaurant association not because of anything that the city did to reach out to business owners subsequently two weeks after

0:48:51was when the mailing started and that was in late september were in mid-november i feel that it is being rushed through and i don't understand why we're we are already looking at a minimum wage increase on january 1st the state is moving forward with these doesn't

0:49:18affect my business really that much as far as but i just am concerned mainly with entry level workers to you do have um you guys have put something in there for the first hundred hours to bring somebody up to speed but to bring somebody up to fifteen dollar an hour

0:49:40quality work in a hundred hours i don't think that that is possible with all employees and so it might lead to people getting laid off at a quicker rate because no matter what a business owner has to have the employees have to have the value they have to generate the revenue that's

0:50:01needed to pay for that 15 an hour rate and that's what i wanted to say tonight thank you very much thank you nick arzio hello my name is nicolas arzio i'm the executive vice president of the el cerrito democratic club earlier this year the club passed a resolution asking council to pass a

0:50:31local minimum wage ordinance with dollar amounts and annual increases no lower than those set forth in richmond's minimum wage ordinance and to enact it by january 1st 2016.

0:50:44just to bring an example in emeryville the council enacted a minimum wage and it was implemented in 30 days so it is possible to implement a minimum wage quickly the other thing to take into consideration is i don't believe that anybody in this room is disagreeing that a company like

0:51:08cvs walgreens safeway barnes and noble any of the other large employers we have in el cerrito can't afford to pay their employees enough so that they can eat and have a roof over their head this is an issue of human decency to pay a human being enough that they

0:51:26can survive and amounts under what we proposed we don't believe as a club a person can survive on that amount working full-time in el cerrito so we hope that you will consider that when making your decision tonight thank you thank you very much the last speaker slip i have is marianna

0:51:46moore good evening my name is marianna moore and i'm the director of the insuring opportunity campaign to end poverty in contra costa county um i first i want to start by thanking the city council and staff for and the democratic club and all the other partners in the enormous coalition of

0:52:07people who have been working to bring this to fruition for months it's been a tremendous process and i'm really proud of the care and inclusion of the conversation that happened in the city so i just really want to say thanks um the second thing i want to say is

0:52:21that i have a lot of faith in the resilience of the small businesses and all businesses here in el cerrito i've met and talked with several of them and see the intelligence and passion they bring to their businesses and i also have faith in the data that the uc

0:52:37berkeley labor center and many other researchers have brought to show that the impact is not severe it doesn't create the economic apocalypse there's you know small price increases and we sort of went over all this in great detail the last meeting and the information session but just to

0:52:53remind the council that i think to be fearful of change is human and i know why i want to denigrate or downplay those concerns and i have faith that's going to be okay i really do and i think the data backs it up i think the last thing i want to say is i really encourage the council to

0:53:10stay the course on this i think it's perfectly appropriate in democracy to bring up questions and to have additional conversation and we certainly welcome that i just want to remind you um and sort of have us all honor the tremendous amount of work and deliberation and research that has gone

0:53:26into getting to this ordinance that's before you tonight thank you thank you very much that concludes the public comments uh comments from my colleagues i have a couple comments so the first thing i wanted to know is you know we i unfortunately didn't bring what we did what we what the staff

0:53:46recommended i don't have that with me tonight and i don't know if someone can pull that up somewhere along the way i know that the january 1st 2017 step was omitted on the staff looking at karen i guess um so and the 15 an hour wage was at 20 20.

0:54:12but i don't have that with me so yeah i do okay why did i why did i doubt that has it too okay it was uh the way it was previously proposed to us was january 1st 2016.

0:54:26eleven dollars on july first july first that's i'm sorry july 1st 2016 11 january 1st 2018 so there was a 18-month gap between those two changes yeah thirteen dollars january 1st 2019 14 14. i got it i'm sorry i can't write as fast as it was 11 13 14. you can see

0:54:49that i'm sorry in 2020 okay the second thing is there were some comments made thank you there were some comments made about what recently we went on in berkeley i don't have that information if we're going to make some decisions to change what we've already had the first reading on then i would

0:55:11personally need more information about what's been alluded to up here on the dice so um that's my my second comment about that and um well that's i'll stop there councilmember abelson um [Music] i guess i am concerned that um i'm not sure that there's any new information that's been

0:55:42presented one can always figure out a new variation of how to calculate it but i i don't know i i just i think that the way we did it it works in terms of equal amounts and equal years i don't know how anyone figures out exactly what their [Music] rates are that far out

0:56:11for businesses because things are changing every year so i i guess that i'm not you know that one doesn't look very real to me but the i'm quite happy actually with the way we did it i like the idea that there are no exceptions everything's equal dealing with exceptions i think would be

0:56:38[Music] not the easiest thing in the world to do to implement um so i guess those are my only comments thank you councilmember kingtail i echo uh what uh mayor uh councilmember abelson mentioned and also uh with uh mayor pretend greg lyman so i uh agree with what they what both of

0:57:02them have said and uh i'd like to uh um uh let's vote on this would you like to make a motion i'd like to make a motion to uh um vote on this minimum wage as written is there a second second okay it's been moved in second comments uh i i want to say this is one of the

0:57:27toughest decisions i've made in seven years it it as i said last month um balancing the needs of our business community and making sure that we fill those vacant storefronts is something that's on the forefront of our minds and it's something that we're constantly asked about

0:57:44so so the testimony tonight is is all valid testimony but getting money into the lowest economic earners quickly is still something i strongly believe in and so i will be voting yes other comments well i don't have any other comments to i i feel similarly i mean i do think

0:58:06that um this is somewhat fair um to like was already mentioned the bigger businesses but i do think that it's gradual enough that the smaller businesses can also do well i do think there's some validity in the fact that it will help employees be retained in their in their jobs um

0:58:31i had asked suzanne at the at the last meeting how many of our businesses and we heard tonight that many of our businesses do give fair wages already you know you have one employee that doesn't quite make the mustard as to what we're trying to do here tonight but

0:58:49many of our businesses already do and when i think about what my wages are and what some what this minimum wage proposal is it's you know it's kind of embarrassing in a way but i i understand that this is entry into the workplace for for some people but i do think that

0:59:08with our rents being higher and we we know that that um you know this is this is really quite fair and you know regarding the empty businesses i think that we have an economic development person on staff now that has had a vacancy in our staff for a couple years and we are looking at that there's

0:59:31it's not just about wages it's about um out of town landlords who really are making runs know whether i mean they really don't care they don't live here they don't see the empty um spaces on the avenue which are the most visible to all of us and there's not much we can do to

0:59:51motivate them we've you know most of our staff has gone and talked to them personally and basically they're really not interested it's just basically falling on deaf ears um and you know we have a big space where the old safeway was on moser where there's some conditions there that don't

1:00:09allow anything to move in you know that's a travesty but we're kind of stuck with that right now so i don't necessarily think that that's going to be a deterrent to getting businesses and i do think that you know things are looking up and we're seeing it with our

1:00:24property taxes we do hear really good things about el cerrito so um i'm in favor of moving forward with the ordinances i want to echo the comments of my colleagues and i want to thank the members of our community who have really deliberated over this for about a year

1:00:45that's when it was first mentioned in these chambers the democratic club's been talking about it for close to a year community groups have been talking about it i think staff has done an extremely thorough job of reaching out to the community including business owners and

1:01:02employees to discuss this we had a very robust community forum to community forums the study session that we had of city council and the very thorough debate at our last council meeting so i think that i have to take exception to the thought that this is not a moral issue it is a moral issue

1:01:24raising the minimum wage so that those who live and work in our community can hope to be able to afford to live in our community is a moral issue people who work full-time a lot of those folks this is not a starter job it is their job where they're likely to be for a long

1:01:42time to come and they deserve to make a wage that allows them to have a chance to continue to live here i wish that we operated in an environment where the competition was not such that it puts small businesses at a disadvantage to chain stores certainly the tremendous

1:02:04profits that companies like walmart mcdonald's cvs etc make dwarf what our local businesses are able to make so i think it's incumbent upon us to call out in our community to shop at local businesses as we've talked about and then because the price may be 50 cents

1:02:25cheaper at a chain store does not mean that that enhances the value of the quality of life for everyone in our community so i certainly do feel for small businesses trying to compete with large businesses that are not concerned with treating their employees particularly

1:02:45well and that requires some serious thought and i hope that staff will work with the business community the chamber of commerce to and the economic development committee to address these issues and not just have a lip service when we're doing something that they may consider

1:03:03painful meaning small businesses i think this is a community responsibility and i'm proud of our community for stepping forward and we will not be the last in our county to do this and i think we're setting a reasonable jump in increases that hopefully other communities will be able to emulate and

1:03:21then you cannot make the argument that we will lose businesses to another community if we all have a similar standard for the minimum amount that somebody who works should be able to earn to try to support themselves and their family so i'm very happy that looks like we're moving forward on this

1:03:40and we will be helping to set a new standard and i appreciate everyone who's been tracking this and commenting and trying to make this the best ordinance that it can be and i acknowledge that it is not perfect but i think it is really magnificent step forward for our

1:03:59community so with that i'll ask for a vote all in favor signify by saying aye aye motion carries unanimously thank you very much mayor the other item i pulled was item 5d which is the annual review of financial policies i wanted to make sure that the council we highlighted a few items in here most

1:04:24notably on page five three uh section 3.3 it's a new section and it basically says it's a gold a city to achieve and maintain a minimum cash balance equal to 15 days of authorized operating expenses in order to meet anticipated city obligations without reliance on borrowed funds should the

1:04:47cash balance fall below the minimum due to unanticipated circumstances the minimum cash balance should be restored as soon as practical so i just wanted to to highlight that and then also um under the credit rating i just wanted to point out that the city which is on page six

1:05:09section 8.2 um it's the city's goal to acquire an aaa rating from all three major agencies in order to minimize costs and preserve access to credit so i just wanted to to highlight those two areas they were discussed at length by the financial advisory board and

1:05:31i just wanted to make sure that we were aware of those items but that's a goal not a requirement uh it's a goal to be triple a rated correct would you like to move yes with that i would like to move um an item uh see a resolution of the city council the city of el cerrito approving revisions to the

1:05:54comprehensive financial policy and investment policy and rescinding resolution number 2012-13 moved in seconded all in favor signify by saying aye aye motion carries you know honestly thank you very much we now move on to item number six which is a public hearing on the proposed

1:06:16integrated waste management fees uh i now open the public hearing and it says additional questions from yes there should be there should be a presentation i think there's supposed to be presentation maria sanders it's in that attachment you had the the one with the binder clip on the top

1:06:59yeah i have there's too many purple sheets underneath the duplicates that they're the same the identical there's no but the hard copy of the presentation is inside your binder clip i was looking at the purple suit no problem evening mayor friedman and members of

1:07:15the city council i'm maria sanders and i manage the city's operations and environmental services division and i also manage the city's curbside recycling operations and the city's recycling center and oversee the contracts for garbage and green waste collection disposal and processing with

1:07:35east bay sanitary our franchised waste hauler and republic services which is our post collection processor these solid waste services are funded by three different components on our residential and commercial garbage bills they include an integrated waste management fee which funds all the

1:07:54recycling services provided by the city a per service rate for the collection of garbage and green waste by east bay sanitary and a per ton disposal and processing rate by republic the rates for these three components are based on the annual revenue required to

1:08:14run the operations and to provide these services and every year staff reviews any requested revenue adjustment for accuracy reasonableness and consistency and since we've had a transition of the last year in staff at environmental services we wanted to ensure the consistency in this year's

1:08:34rate setting process so we engaged garth schultz from r3 consulting who has um done this many times for the city to review the raid application according to the established methodologies and our various agreements and uh um he was going to be here today but um tate was taken ill

1:08:54just to kind of answer any questions that might be about nitty gritty rate and studying issues but unfortunately he won't be here tonight um so tonight we are requesting adjustments to only one of these components and that's the 2016 integrated waste management or iwbn fee

1:09:25uh east bay sanitary's rates for both collection and post collection services will remain the same as they were in 2015 so tonight we'll only be holding a public hearing to establish the new iwm fees the iwm fees fund the city's curbside recycling services are our household

1:09:44hazardous waste collection services and all the drop-off services at the recycling center and our dues to the west county integrated waste management authority in the city's adopted 2014-2016 bi-annual budget the iwm fees were projected to increase by about eight percent this year and that was

1:10:11mainly to cover increased costs associated with the maintenance of our vehicle fleet and other processing equipment and also an extra yard worker at the um at the recycling center to help cover uh increased customer use and extra services available at the recycling center

1:10:32however we are also requesting we are requesting an additional one percent um increase in the iwm feed over the eight percent um a total of nine percent in order to uh cover a couple unforeseen costs this year and these include a drop in prices for certain recycling

1:10:51commodities collected at the recycling center such as scrap metal cardboard and motor oil which is bringing in less revenue at the recycling center and then also increased compliance and one-time legal costs and consulting costs associated with implementation of the recycling

1:11:11center's clean water general industrial permit so i'll briefly shift to the other components of the garbage bill the city council also sets the maximum rates for that east bay sanitary can charge for the collection of garbage and green waste as well as the maximum post

1:11:33collection rate for disposal and processing of waste at the landfill by republic and the formulations of these rates are stipulated in our agreements with both these vendors as i mentioned these rates will not be increasing so the 2015 rates will apply uh in 2016. the main point of this slide here

1:11:56is that the revenue requirement for both these operations did go up by by less than 2 percent and due to an over collection of revenue by east bay sanitary in 2014 and this is mostly due to unforeseen an unforeseen increase in roll-off services needed by customers

1:12:16there was about 153 000 in the balancing count account with espace sanitary and per our franchise agreement this balancing account is there to offset the difference between the revenue requirement and actual revenue collected so this overage will be used to offset any increases in both the

1:12:38collection and disposal rates and processing rates so this is what the new rates will look like for the different customers served for the majority of our customers those with the 20 gallon and 30 or the 35 gallon garbage can the monthly bill will go up less than a dollar per month and

1:13:01for all customers the increase in the monthly bills will be between about 2.2 and 2.9 percent and this is uh um closely tracks um the cpi and and the bay area which is about 2.6 to 3 depending on whether you include fuel costs so um one of the great stories behind these numbers is

1:13:28that el cerrito's waste diversion programs are working and i know that you guys are all familiar with this chart we chart it out and cart it out every year and and the story behind this cart on this chart showing that more and more customers are migrating away from the 35 and the 65

1:13:48gallon garbage service to a 20 gallon mini can service and this has happened quite steadily after the city introduced single stream recycling services and weekly organics collection services in 2009 and 2012.

1:14:04and even though this trend is beginning to slow down the migration too many count accounts are growing by about five percent per year at this point and this is indicating that more and more customers are really taking full advantage of our iwm services and here i'd like to highlight some of

1:14:26the emerging trends in our diversion numbers from with the upsurge in the economy waste to landfills is going up throughout the state and also in our region and in 2015 and this column over here is 2015.

1:14:45it um and these are projected numbers based on activity through september el cerritos overall tonnage appears to be going up um a little but um as you can also see that the and from the blue part of the column the amount of trash from el cerrito is not growing it's staying

1:15:03stable and this is probably because um through our post collection agreement more of our construction and demolition waste is being recycled and kept out of the landfill and given the number of developments planned or under construction diverting c d waste will continue to be an

1:15:21important way for us to meet our diversion goals and i'd also like to draw your attention to a small little purple line right here which is basically um this represents a first several tons of processing of dry waste and this is basically a two stream collection process where wet waste and

1:15:45dry waste are being collect are collected separately rather than a three stream process and it's something that we hope to pilot more in multi-family and commercial sectors where the current three-stream uh diversion programs you know the one for garbage recycling and composting

1:16:02isn't working as well and this is perhaps one of our biggest opportunities to take a chunk out of the blue part of the column so in conclusion the total revenue requirements for all three components of el cerrito solid waste programs is a little less than 7.4 million and

1:16:21approximately 70 percent of this funds the collection of dis and disposal and processing of the garbage and green waste and uh um 30 percent of this funds the curbside recycling household hazardous waste and recycling center programs and together these three revenue streams are helping the city

1:16:42maintain a very high level of solid waste and recycling services so thank you for your time and i'd be happy to answer any questions thank you for your presentation questions uh i have one ques well a couple questions the first question i have is um do we have a migration slide for

1:17:01multi-family dwellings and businesses no i no we don't and i can try to work on that with um espace sanitary to see if there is um any data that might be helping us we're kind of diving in a little bit into that data recently but we don't have anything at this point

1:17:21and so um when we're talking about the maintenance fleet and the costs associated with that are trucks getting older and they're in worse shape why we have a new vendor i think that we approved uh that's going to do maintenance contracts for all of our vehicles yeah um

1:17:41[Music] why did the fees what's going on there well there is um that was a um that service agreement was kind of built in over the the um for both years during the biannual report and yes we do have an aging vehicle the bi-annual budget i mean and um the we do have a

1:18:03um an aging vehicle um fleet for for our recycling centers they are doing a lot of work they're out there you know 40 hours a week they're um you know they are on the road um every day um and we did buy them you know um i think about eight years ago or so and so the um you know their their expected

1:18:25life is in the dec about a decade or so so we are getting close to that and um our 10-year um uh plan a financial plan just kind of model in um looking at ways to financing new vehicles but we are at this point right now where we are maintaining those and so every

1:18:46once one of the things that also happens is that there are some mechanical components that we have to um you know more for the body rather than for our um the actual um the safety requirements for the for the fleet that sometimes have to be rebuilt and that has to be um outsourced

1:19:07and then um it's nice that we have extra yard staff i you know i go to the recycling center fairly often and i'm amazed that you know those guys will be back there and they're mostly men i suppose but um so i don't know if you have any women back there but they'll

1:19:21come out you know when people have like clunky old televisions in their trunk they come out and they'll take things out of the you know our residents or you know the people that are dropping off they'll take the thing out of the trunk i mean they're so nice and so helpful it's

1:19:34really a shout out to them right and then could you just explain dry waste because i don't quite understand well instead of um doing what we do in our homes where we're actually recycling um you know separating out by recyclables versus garbage versus composting or organics it's basically

1:19:53just separating it into two streams and one's wet and one's once dry and it's more for you know for places that it's very difficult for them to do like a multi-family large multi-family where it would be very difficult for them to um to do composting or something like that

1:20:12so what it does is that it allows um the then the processor can actually do all the sorting of the dry waste in um and and mine it for recyclables and so that will increase diversion in places where um where recycling is just not being done very well and i actually one more question so some

1:20:35we're getting less money for cardboard and some of the things that were listed why why is that is it are we it's not that we're getting less we're just getting paid less um well we are the recycling's about the same so we are collecting as much um and we are getting

1:20:51paid less and so the reason we're getting paid less is that there you know the chinese market um was doing badly and a lot of that stuff does is used by the chinese companies you know in processing so that that has something to do with that also for motor oil we are

1:21:13now paying a little bit of money to have the motor oil actually process and the reason being whereas before we were making money on it and the reason being is that the gas prices are just are low and so it's not very cost effective for them to be recycling it right now

1:21:27great thank you thanks other questions yeah i do just sort of more educational than anything else the garbage can is how we collect money we don't necessarily charge for composting or or recyclable pickups it's really the garbage can that that drives all of our revenue right and and

1:21:50uh it it's uh the can not the weight of the can is the the bulk of what it so whether you put it out every week or put it out empty or put it out full it's you know somebody's picking it up and somebody's still driving the truck uh to to do that so it's really the can

1:22:07that's driving the revenue right and one of the other things about that is that somebody might be paying for a 20 gallon can but they have a 64 gallon recycling bin and um just as somebody else does as well and so um so uh that's that is you know it's based on their can

1:22:29size and not necessarily their recycling side right right and it's just the point is that all of our revenue is coming in off of this one can and so as we have migration we're seeing we're some of this increase might be due to migration uh yeah and that's yeah that's been modeled

1:22:47in kind of our our 10-year plan to kind of take advan take that migration into account and we're very proud of our world-class recycling center but right now we aren't checking ids so we could have residents from all over the area using that facility is that right

1:23:04yeah and we um have been doing a little bit of analysis on that we've done um some um polling um especially where it comes to some of our more of the hazardous waste materials where we don't require an id we do require an idea on some things um and it's looking like it's about 25 30

1:23:22percent um are not from el cerrito but are they within the recycle more the the west county jurisdictions are they coming from alameda uh some of them are coming from alameda but it's the 25 30 percent is from actually um uh west county okay okay um great thank you very much

1:23:47um one thing i was wondering about is that um i know that we have a high number of multi-family units in el cerrito that's correct right yeah i think about maybe 30 of our housing stock is right which to me is a high number um and um so if we had one model of recycling

1:24:18for the multi-family and one model of recycling for the single family would that make more sense than the way it is now or is do you consider that that's what it is i know that i've had kids who lived in multi-family units in el cerrito over time and mostly there was no recycling at all

1:24:43first of all when i would ask them they said there was no way to recycle in those units and so it seems to be a difficult cumbersome thing to do it whatever way it was at the time we were talking so i'm just wondering if that the separation according to those two

1:25:06larger categories of units would be at all helpful in in the way we categorize this um in terms of categorizing on the in the charts or starting with collection actually not sure if i completely understand your question but if there's no bin out there it's impossible to recycle

1:25:32right and then if you're going to have a bin out there and it's a multi-family unit you know there's two it seems to me at least two ways to do it one is you have a big giant bin if it's a small apartment house and the other is that you have uh a bin for each unit

1:25:51right and and i don't i have no opinion about what's a better way but that's my it kind of depends on the logistics of the multi-family and both of those exist in a multi-family it depends on what kind of enclosures they have and um how how it was originally planned so some

1:26:10do have just individual bins and whenever we you know are looking at a new multi-family complex we basically say it's either going to have an enough room for for recycling and garbage service you know to accommodate the size or um or for the three bin system um and

1:26:29there's a couple of them that actually you know are new and now have a three shoot system so some of them still only have a two-shoot system or a one-shoot system and those are you know if they're you know you know more than several stories high and those are you know a

1:26:43little bit harder for them you know for um logistically for customers or residents to really kind of you know be you know gung-ho recyclers um since um maybe your family members have lived in these apartment complexes um a couple years ago we did do an a pretty

1:27:03comprehensive outreach process and gave new bags to multi-family residents so that they could actually collect inside their homes and then bring it down to the um to you know whatever enclosure they had so um it you know multi-family and a commercial are very difficult um sectors

1:27:25to serve uh just because there's a lot of turnover there's a lot of you know training of staff there's a lot of um you know there's a lot of contamination issues that people you know that people don't take responsibility for so those are um those are kind of you know

1:27:41challenges that we're always looking to overcome and so the dry waste wet waste is one way to help overcome that um and so in certain places that might be more appropriate okay so what then is getting back to my question having a different ways of um in other words

1:28:02having this chart to me corresponds to the way we do things at least that's what i expected to do so if we if we had more than one way of doing it we would maybe let's say there were two ways of doing it one for single family one from multi-family oh right okay we have two charts and then

1:28:21maybe there could be a combined chart or something but that's what i was kind of wondering because when i look at this i can't see if it's and maybe it doesn't mean anything but um that's what i was wondering is if it would if the issue is with the multi-family units or single family

1:28:41um and you're talking about the migration chart right if i if i may not exact well no i think i'm more talking about um are people having more difficulty because maybe it's up in the hills where there's single-family homes and it's really hard to roll the things down to

1:28:59the street because of the hill you know and i don't know the answer to that i'm just thinking it might be the question yeah i if i'm listening correctly councilmember i think one of your questions is is there um is the wet waste dry waste rate scheme going to be an incentive for

1:29:19greater recycling in multifamily or greater waste reduction or waste diversion in multi-family and when will we see how will we see the pricing for the wet and dry system in in future years um i've right now it's in our post collection agreement and so it's basically um

1:29:43that's actually a really good question and i will have to kind of go back into how we start implementing it i think that was your question is that we should have a set one of the we should have a separate system for multi-family and how do we begin to build an incentive and maybe if

1:29:58for example in a particular multi-family unit the landlord pays it and then just includes it in the rent they they're the ones that need to be encouraged to promote recycling and the way that you know there are certain things that you could do or we could do to do that but if in fact maybe

1:30:21it's a different way but we can't tell really from this chart and but those are questions that come to my mind and i know that my kids as they've lived throughout towns and it wasn't all that long ago it was very recent actually some of them i have lots of kids um

1:30:40but they have complained about how hard it is to recycle there or there's no recycling you know those have been their complaints they wanted to recycle and couldn't um without just taking it to the recycling center or to my house in the in the future though if we do go to a wet wet dry system

1:31:03it won't look like they're recycling because they will be putting out the recyclables with other dry garbage and it'll get sorted out at the processing facility so part of this is educating the public to make sure that they understand that you actually are recycling by putting your

1:31:21recyclables into the dry chute as long as you keep your wet stuff in the wet chute it makes it easier for the processors to process it so so it it unfortunately won't look like they're recycling because they'll be throwing it out with other things that they consider garbage like tennis shoes

1:31:39there may not be a shoot there are a number of um single family or i mean a lot of times my kids live on the first floor and so there's so there's not going to be a shoot there you know they're going to have to deal with it right it'll look less like recycling in the in the future right but

1:31:57anyway those are issues that i've observed uh that i would just bring to your attention and maybe you can find wonderful ways to use that information thank you okay i'd like to uh see if there's any public testimony we have um cordell hindler oh so mayor freeman city council members i

1:32:24am cradle handler i'm a resident rich and i've been up here more times than anybody else so i do enjoy the presentation but um and i kind of kind of echo what councilmember bridget is saying um i've been down to the recycling center on a on a regular basis and i'm like

1:32:39hmm i'm thinking this is like i don't know it's going it's going in increase um um the the expenditures i'm thinking it's a good it's a good presentation so i hope you all support this and uh we can move forward so that's it all right thanks i think we're going to make you

1:32:59an honorary el srito resident i'm on the borderline of richmond i'm on the board close enough for government work i move that we close the public hearing second it's been moved in second to close the public hearing all in favor say aye all right public hearing is closed now we will

1:33:16consider a motion i will move a resolution of the city council the city of el cerrito fixing and setting the integrated waste management fees effective january 1st 2016.

1:33:28second moved in second and all in favor say aye aye motion cares unanimously now we have another resolution regarding the you ready yep i move a resolution on the city council of the city of el cerrito reaffirming the calculation of and continuing in effect the maximum

1:33:47allowable rates for the collection of garbage and green waste effective january 1st 2015 it says 15 so i want to make sure correct they're working the rates the the previous determination that the rate methodology had been satisfied was 2015 and you are affirming that those rates

1:34:09will continue for 2016. right because they're not rate i'm looking out there we know we're not changing them so that's so they are still the effect of january 1st we're reaffirming right no change in our maximum allowable collection of garbage and green waste effective rates

1:34:26second moved in second and all in favor signify by saying aye aye motion cares unanimously thank you very much now we have any council local and regional liaison assignment reports ladies first i have one i just went to the drb last week and they had a hearing um with a

1:34:50applicant brought back to them from creekside on their windows window frames and they had a very lively discussion for about an hour and a half about window panes anyway they passed the project and moved all right and last week the waste management authority met to set the

1:35:13post-collection rates for other jurisdictions so i participated in that in that meeting great i just came directly from a conference i attended called the self-help counties conference focus on the future and uh we had a number of presentations there but i'm i'm not really this is

1:35:39actually not an ab 1234 ish issue but i'm saying this because it's i think of interest and of concern actually and that is information that was presented showing the that the funding for transportation from the state in particular in federal sources is just not um keeping pace

1:36:11and um it's of real concern because there are a lot of uh needs being expressed currently by cities and uh the in the county and um there's no one what that means is this the the state's not going to want to pay for it as is right now and neither is the federal government

1:36:35so i'm just bringing that to your attention because that only leaves us you might say and by us i mean not just the city of el cerrito in this case but also the transportation authority would be the other place so it but it is of concern because um as we know from our own local

1:36:57streets and roads things wear out and bridges wear out and you know all kinds of things wear out so it's it's of a lot of concern really so i just wanted to bring that thank you to your attention uh i'd like to note that uh council member quinto and i had the honor of

1:37:14being at the 30th anniversary celebration of citizens for east shore park and our very own former mayor norman leforce was one of the honorees that was a very uh great event over at the berkeley marina and then i think i'd like to join the meeting in honor of those who've lost their lives

1:37:35to terrorist violence in lebanon iraq and france in recent days thank you we're adjourned you