City Council Meeting December 15, 2015

0:00:00i'm going to convene the city council meeting of el cerrito for december tuesday december 15th let the records show that all five council members are present mayor pro tem abelson would you like to lead us in a moment of silence or the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the

0:00:21united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all all right that brings us to item two council staff communications uh no none from staff any from the council i actually have a couple

0:00:45i want to mr miller reminded everyone last meeting about the shoddy holiday display and i wanted to take this opportunity to remind everybody that it did go up this last saturday and it will be up through the evening of december 26th uh the location is at the intersection of sea

0:01:03view and mosher and it runs from 5 p.m at night to 10 p.m at night so i would like to provide that with you and that's all i have to report um that will bring us to item three oral uh communications from the public i understand there's at least two speakers yes we have uh al miller followed by

0:01:24cordell hindler good evening mayor lyman councilman staff i will leave most of my prepared comments on the shoddy display out because of your reminder but i did want to include uh my encouragement for everybody uh to go up and see it i mean this is a once a year opportunity

0:01:49and those that are planning to go up uh tomorrow night through saturday please check the website to see the information about the musical performances that will be held for example uh various church choirs will be performing at the site on december 15th 17th and

0:02:1520th and the handball musicians will be ringing their hand bills on december 19th and 23rd these performances will start at 7 pm and there's more information about each group and what their purpose and reasons are on the website www dot shoddy dis holiday display dot com

0:02:41and shoddy holiday display is all one word also on the website you can see other information about the site itself or the display itself and ways that you can help in the ongoing maintenance and support of it and one way that you can do it in the not too distant future is show up sunday

0:03:01morning december 27th about nine o'clock ten o'clock ten o'clock ten o'clock and help us take it down and return it to its uh shipping containers thank you very much have you been here before no once so this is sort of like a different change so mayor lyman uh council members uh city

0:03:27staff i am cordell hendler i'm with the park plaza neighborhood association i came to you once before last month and regarding the issue that i've uh that i've been receiving from one of my neighbors about el cerrito's police presence on in our area and we've had

0:03:42complaints i i and one of my neighbors told me she said is the el cerrito police always been coming down on our block i said i was like yes they think it's uh i mean they think they're in richmond i don't say because according to jurisdiction it says because i did my little research

0:03:57online albany has a similar ordinance that's stating that albany police is not supposed to step out of their boundaries so so because we are in the uh we i'm on the south end of of richmond between richmond point richmond and the richmond annex associations and and we've had

0:04:14some concerns regarding uh their presence and i was like uh-uh i'm not going to keep letting my tax dollars go to waste so that's one issue i've had and then the second issue is um let me see oh i wanted to invite everyone to come to see the secret garden this coming weekend um it is a

0:04:29wonderful performance i i think i saw the reviews and it's going to be a wonderful performance so that's number two and number three i would appreciate it if the if the council would ask the city attorney to look into it and um do some research on what albany's ordinance uh in regarding

0:04:46the uh president albany police stepping out of their boundaries so that's all i have to my comments great thank you any other speakers we'll move on to item four a presentation by ms rueland uh with regards to the el cerrito library good evening mayor lyman members of the

0:05:12council and city staff tonight i'm very pleased and proud to introduce our two new librarians we have two new librarians at the el streeter library we're now fully staffed happy to say they'll be speaking about programming and then i'll come back and say a couple

0:05:26words about the current facility and library gogo first is davia schmidt our youth services librarian and then sherry lockus our adult services librarian hello thank you my name is davia and i'm here to discuss the youth programming at the el cerrito library we have one of our most popular programs

0:05:52which is the family story time and we have it every monday from 12 30 p.m and every thursday at 10 15 a.m and on average we see about 65 to 75 children and their caregivers participating in that program which is great we also have saturday's educational programs

0:06:13one example of this is our science story time saturday which is the second saturday of every month and um at 11 and this program is meant to foster a love of science and learning in the library and is part of our stem which is the science technology engineering and math

0:06:32programming and additionally we will be having special programs from outside organizations in the next few months we'll be having sing a story opera from the san francisco opera guild and family storytelling to promote the bay area storytelling festival which is

0:06:51coming up i'm in the spring um and as other special programs are scheduled we'll continue to make efforts to promote these events throughout the city thank you very much great thank you hello again my name is sheri and i'm the adult services librarian at el cerrito

0:07:11library just wanted to give you a quick overview about adult programming and what we're doing with adults in the library so we're continuing with some of our successful programs including the esl group which meets once a week it's very important for our diverse our

0:07:25diverse community we are also continuing with our one-on-one computer tutoring for adults it's very popular it's always filled every week and then of course we do a monthly book club at the library as well which you're welcome to attend if you'd like so as we continue to revamp our adult

0:07:44programming ideas some of the things that we're wanting to do more in the future include our monthly music events and we've had a few so far including inviting a theremin player to the library we've also had a folk band recently and those have been very popular for all ages

0:08:00as davia mentioned we're doing this story time opera next month as well so if anybody is sort of secretly a member of some sort of barbershop quartet or a rock band feel free to contact the library we'd love to hook you up with doing a program with us so um we are also hoping to do

0:08:19once a month programs for adults including things like um author talks or art lectures or film series or all sorts of things that that we want to put together for adults to really make the library fun and relevant to the community and some of the things that we have

0:08:38recently done include we had local author patti enrado invited to the library and she did a um a reading from one of her books her her recent book a village in the fields and she did a q a which was pretty popular we also plan to do a three-part lecture series uh we've invited docents from the

0:08:58asian art museum and they're coming in january february and march and i think that's going to be really popular with our community as well so some of the other just general topic ideas we hope to explore more at the library include things like nature and hiking events

0:09:14adult art programs partnering with local businesses and possibly film series we also are focusing on our teen group as well we have a teen advisory group that meets once a month and they help advise the library with how to make the library more relevant to teens and what we can do to encourage

0:09:36them to participate more and they are also meeting monthly to do stem programming as well at the library thank you all right thank you um so uh unfortunately the timing didn't quite work out i don't have any visuals but i did want to thank city staff we've had a variety of

0:09:59um i can't quite call it a remodel but some refreshing in the children's area of the current facility we are of course looking forward to a safe and modern library in el cerrito but in the meantime we're still continuing of course to serve uh many many children and um of course adults uh

0:10:18in our current facility and so we had recently a paint job and city staff just last week installed a carpet in the children's area and we're continuing to just try to make the current facility as welcoming as we can in the meantime so thanks again to um to public works staff for all of their

0:10:38help in in continuing to maintain that facility and even doing the odd little improvement here and there um i uh i did want to announce tonight that the library go go machine at the del norte bart station will be being removed at the end of this week library staff just found out about a

0:11:01week ago for those of you who aren't familiar with the machine it's essentially a book vending machine you use your library card and you can check materials out we are lease with the bart stations was up this year and it gave us the opportunity to reevaluate the machines

0:11:19they are about seven years old and were in fact uh not necessarily designed to be outside for as many years as they have been at the bart stations we also did extensive repairs on them this year and even after the repairs they just continued to break down this was an interesting project the

0:11:39contra costa county library was the first in the nation to have these machines but they were grant funded the purchase of the machines but they have many hundreds if not thousands of moving parts and they just break down and become unviable at a certain point so um that will be removed and you know

0:11:59of course library staff will continue to look into other ways to expand out library service outside of the library walls so thank you very much thank you any questions all right go ahead i have a question i i know that there's another approach a new relic i mean at least in to my knowledge

0:12:19way of um lending out books they aren't it's not the traditional one but it's there are a number in my neighborhood i i believe i see a member of our audience who has one and that's where people uh have a little box on in their yard that has some books in it that people leave there voluntarily

0:12:41and then other people can come and take them and read them and they can put their own books if they so choose it's all voluntary have you thought about uh doing things to expand that kind of a program we have thought about it um we're discussing it at the contra costa

0:12:59county library in fact i um our library commissioner is here tonight um and uh at a library commission meeting some months ago i gave a presentation on the little free libraries that's the that's the sort of um international organization that that started and continues to um

0:13:19not distribute but facilitate the placement of these libraries throughout the world um they are heavily concentrated in el srito in fact i'm not quite sure how many but there are very many in el cerrito um so we're looking into possible partnerships with the individuals who own those at least in

0:13:37terms of you know getting library information out into them it's sort of in the infant stages and i i don't know exactly how that planning is going to go but that that is something that we're discussing as a way of possibly um expanding out services or at least at

0:13:54least if not traditional library services than at least getting books out into people's hands thank you thank you thank you to you and your new staff for coming tonight thank you thanks um with that we'll move on to item five we have one item on consent calendar 5a

0:14:15scheduling of a special city council meeting for monday december 21st at uh 7 p.m it's been moved can i get a second i've got a move by friedman seconded by bridges all those in favor please say aye aye that concludes item five we'll move on to item six a public hearing on the

0:14:36urban greening plan um to which i will announce the public hearing we'll have a step staff presentation by miss mintz uh questions from council and then uh i guess i will now open the public hearing at that point we'll collect public testimony and then we'll proceed from there sounds

0:14:55good maybe we can probably do the lights high as the mayor said my name is melanie mintz and i'm the city's proud to be the city's community development director good evening mayor and council members the presentation before you tonight which i have to turn um is intended to provide a quick overview

0:15:30of the purpose and scope and an orientation to the plan its purpose and scope um the planning process which has occurred over the last two and a half years the vision framework that emerged as a part of this process and a quick overview to the plans goals objectives

0:15:45policies and programs that were identified after council questions and public input staff recommends that council adopt a resolution approving the initial study mitigated negative declaration that was prepared for this plan and adopting the city's first city-wide

0:16:03urban greening plan what is urban greening it's kind of a a new term i think it's been used a little bit more internationally and proposition 84 really brought it to the um to california the plan builds on the city's commitment to urban sustainability it's funded through the proposition 84

0:16:24grant and it aims to identify projects policies and strategies that create an interconnected network of green spaces accommodate infill growth and improve the quality of life and environment for both existing and future el cerrito residents our plan aims to increase the

0:16:40environmental benefits of public infrastructure parks and natural areas while addressing the community's need for diverse multi-use public spaces that support and grow community and especially help to make a greener place for people to recreate and live in urban

0:16:52environments an important feature of proposition 84 is that the grants were only actually awarded to communities that could identify and demonstrate adequate density particularly this was because this program was aimed to support the state's climate action goals which call for increased infill

0:17:11along transit corridors so it was really our dense neighborhoods that qualified us for this grant yet we were able to take a citywide approach but i think this concept of making infill and urban living greener and um is an important feature what the urban greening plan is not is

0:17:29it is not a parks and recreation master plan and it's not a comprehensive urban sustainability plan we aimed especially in the public outreach to take a very broad approach to urban livability and sustainability and of course in talking about this it overlaps quite

0:17:43a bit with parks and recreation and so there's information that's provided i think it informs but it definitely was not a complete analysis of the city's parks and recreation needs similarly while it helps to create a greener el cerrito it's not a comprehensive

0:17:57sustainability plan it really is focused on the green spaces and green policies that make our public spaces better the urban greening plan builds upon other city initiatives developed to create a more compact complete higher density community it's directly related to and helps

0:18:13implement and was developed in response to the climate action plan sustainable commun sustainable communities goals the strategic plans goals related to continuing to create an environmentally focused destination and of course the san pablo avenue specific plan

0:18:27it also is directly related to and overlaps and complements the active transportation plan still under consideration and the adopted alone greenway master plan in fact much of the public engagement for this plan was held in tandem with meetings about the active transportation

0:18:42plan and the specific plan and i think this was a really nice way both for the public to get to learn about all of these plans and for their input regardless of which it touched to be integrated and throughout the plan you'll see reference to different plans and

0:18:56policies and we tried to especially in response to community input who really wanted all of our existing policies in one place that they could easily find so you can see that in appendix d which is a nice resource the planning process was pretty involved um over the past two two and a half

0:19:12years it involved some joint community workshops early on again with the specific plan the active transportation plan and this one they were well attended um at the first workshops we really tried to define the vision opportunities and needs of urban greening um start to

0:19:29devet some preliminary concepts and recommendations we also convened task force comprised of a number of stakeholder groups and individuals as you can see on this list parks and recreation commission environmental quality committee committee on aging tree committee trail

0:19:47trekkers the community garden network and friends of five creeks were all involved and we met with them over nine times during this process from the beginning when we were developing the consultant scope we involved them in selecting the consultant mig and they helped overall discuss the plan

0:20:02structure and framework i should mention also that parks and recreation commission and environmental and the eqc were involved in encouraging us to apply for the grant in the first place and we did a we started with a needs assessment and community survey and i was impressed and we worked hard

0:20:21to get a lot of response to this partly so that early on we could get people engaged in the process we received 848 responses to an online and paper survey that was assessing the values and benefits that urban greece green spaces can provide and i believe um the clerk

0:20:36may have given you an additional um handout and that was just as i was re-reviewing the plan i think that we forgot to include in the appendix and i will integrate the results of the quantitative components of the survey you did get the open-ended responses in the in the plan

0:20:55you can also see on i believe on page five of your appendix of the community engagement survey how well distributed the responses were it was really throughout town and that was a special effort we did a early workshops to actually reach out to people from different neighborhoods west

0:21:10el cerrito the hills everywhere so that we made sure that underrepresented groups and geographically um that it was geographically dispersed we then conducted an extensive activity analysis to really look at what activities were already being supported that were

0:21:29identified as important to elsa readings so we looked at all our parks and public spaces some of our and our schools and other places where really people could get these different activities met council member bridges pointed out that i um we need to add organized tennis to

0:21:45arlington park but we were really trying to get look at what what are we already providing and in which facilities are there may be certain activities that could be supported that aren't currently being supported the next step was to look at connectivity which is a um

0:22:01in recreation planning one of the things that's changing is rather than level of service for example so many basketball courts for but for so many people another way to look at this is proximity from an active living standpoint there's an idea that if you've only got 20 minutes to go shoot

0:22:16some hoops those the basketball courts need to be nearby you might have more time to go get to an organized baseball game so it's looking at different quarter mile 10th of a mile in terms of a healthy living what really supports someone to get out and play with their

0:22:28toddler for example so i'm going to click through these quickly but you can see they were looking based on the different standards that exist so exercise and fitness the dark is within a quarter mile the orange is within a half so you can see we're pretty well covered

0:22:43uh nature views and scenery and of course you could get into specifically what did we define and we did with the task group a lot but this we were talking basically can you see something green um play active playgrounds um strolling streets was one that we talked about and it's one that came up

0:22:58in the survey a lot some people don't think of san pablo avenue and stockton and fairmont as throwing streets but we think they could be we'd heard from people that really going to fourth street and going to places like that was something they really enjoyed doing

0:23:10and this is combining them all one of the things that this showed and that our consultants who of course do this for many cities was that we're really well covered and it wasn't too much of a surprise i think we think of ourselves as park rich so while there's probably some gaps to

0:23:22address it was really still the nuance of then what are the qualities that people are not getting another feature of urban greening which i think i mentioned in a previous meeting is we don't have in an infill city we don't or most places don't have the money or the space

0:23:35to go add lots of acreage so it's really beginning to look at what are the strategic things that you can do with acquisition sometimes or other ways to actually keep enhancing and providing additional green spaces and active places for people so also with the community we really

0:23:52looked at where are all of our opportunities sometimes it were cul-de-sacs are there places to add trails what are all those resources that exist out there and people see as utilizing sometimes these were private property you know at the top of fairmont the the

0:24:05cemetery property and others that people do see as opportunities an important undertaking during this project was really we did a lot of internal staff communication with different departments we had an internal staff workshop to discuss priorities concerns in policy

0:24:21direction and then we've had ongoing communication with the various departments and staff involved in open space programming and maintenance to make sure that we could really identify the types of issues and constraints that they were encountered as well as um develop a common understanding of and

0:24:38being able to share with the community what we were hearing from the community through all of this a unique el cerrito specific urban greening framework um emerged um it consists of these overarching goals which i will go through supported um by i think it's eleven one two three

0:24:59four five six seven eight nine ten eleven um objectives within those objectives was where we were then able to delve into the programs and projects that would support um reaching these goals goals include for el cerrito environmental sustainability so improving air and water quality and

0:25:19protecting natural resources environmental stewardship really supporting volunteer efforts making sure that we both worked with our volunteers and created opportunities community identity was an important one that people talked about enhancing our active living and active

0:25:38transportation realm um economic vitality um was important and as i mentioned before you can see in the survey results and elsewhere that there was a strong desire and planning commission talked about this as well for open space active and passive amenities and commercial activities to be strongly

0:25:54linked so you could go get a cup of coffee and watch a kid play or take a hike and get a snack afterwards and really looking at how could you do that kind of maybe with you know parking once or not driving much and importantly urban livability which is i think where it all gets woven

0:26:09together the objectives that we identified are these 11 which would accomplish the six goals within each of them we looked at the policies and programs that either do exist or could exist and we looked at those that do exist and were the key strength of el cerrito um

0:26:29there were some that exist but maybe could be improved and this was something we used in the climate action plan as well to talk about like yeah it exists but is it robust and then there's national best practice which are really things that we might not be doing but that other communities

0:26:42are beginning to look at so each of the objectives is supported by this type of analysis the 11 objectives with their associated maps and seeing how you'll see how all these objectives weave together so improving trails and paths continued to be and i think has

0:26:57really emerged over the last few years is something very important to our community and something they're willing to invest in i'm greening our gateways and that's really links to both our community identity as well as kind of economic development and really creating a distinct sense of

0:27:13place i'm strengthening the alone greenway of course it touches you know goes across the whole city and it continues to be a priority enhancing existing parks and this came up of course a lot and you'll see in the survey that really wanting to maintain and fully utilize

0:27:30our existing assets is important i'm creating active commercial quarters as i've mentioned a couple times looking at our higher density neighborhoods this is both in direct support of the state's planning priorities as well as our specific plan but making sure that our higher density neighborhoods

0:27:48that are maybe less likely to have their own backyard have adequate green resources hillside natural area seems to have also gained some people in our one of our workshops talked about that several years ago they felt that nobody knew about it and now it was the most important one in our

0:28:08community charettes that we did um so this one generated a lot of talk what is next um it's a big place and there's a lot of different priorities enhancing creeks this one's obviously also received a lot of dialogue in our community and we thought that continuing

0:28:21to focus it it came up through the public engagement that continuing to focus on it um really continuing to identify what can be done to to further the health of our watershed and important creek segments was important green streets which can mean many things it can mean green infrastructure it can

0:28:39mean multimodal streets it can mean more urban forestry and vibrant schoolyards as you know this comes up all the time how to better connect our schools to our neighborhoods as a resource as something that feels more like a part of our neighborhoods but also as a place where

0:28:55school children can also learn in a natural environment so how to green our school yards and make them more porous and safe and urban agriculture this one um it's talked about a lot in a lot of urban greening plants some of those places have a history of agriculture like san

0:29:12leandro richmond is focusing on it more as a productive means and here it really came up is both making sure that we were permissive of food gardening in potentially in street strips but also in front yards it also emerged to you know to further support the fairmont community garden

0:29:32which has started and we were looking at other opportunities but that mostly resulted in policies in a couple projects lastly these aren't really geographically based they're everywhere across town but sustainable landscape and maintenance is continually talked about

0:29:45and important to people as is volunteerism so that's how that all overlaps together and then out of that we also out of the community engagement process we came up with 14 physical projects the ones in yellow that you'll see are ones that we actually focused in further

0:30:07and developed some cost estimates and preliminary concepts just as a pilot to show the types the variety of types of projects blue to green connections was a compelling idea from the beginning which was really um what are the things that we can do that better link the regional assets of

0:30:23wildcat and east bay regional parks to the bay trail how could people feel like they could interact in el cerrito and move around and really pull those two places together and that would have of course wildlife benefits and mobile multimodal benefits um improvements to existing parks

0:30:39included a couple projects on the ohlone greenway at portaletta schmidt and gladys the blake fairmont park was seen as a place to both enhance the play structure there were many people who said that there weren't enough play structures in the flatter areas of town

0:30:54the community garden solidified that concept and looked at accessibility and other issues of that open space i'm improving central park and making it both a greener gateway as well as a more multi-functional place while real and sustainable maintenance while still

0:31:10emphasizing its importance as a baseball um diamond creek side park continued to be a place that we could keep on both providing both environmental and community and play benefits the hillside natural area looking at the multi-use functions the fire prevention as well as native habitat

0:31:30possibilities i'm el cerrito plaza it was continuously emerged you can see in the state in the survey people are always looking forward to that becoming a greener kind of place that feels more like a center a center a public plaza conlon avenue and key expanding the

0:31:47baxter creek gateway project san pablo avenue and cutting looking at how we can continue to as future development occurs soften those edges and make a nice green gateway there avalon san pablo was an opportunity to look at also with future development how we could make that a

0:32:04more positively designed pocket park and the portland middle school is continually talked about when we did our fourth of july outreach it was the one talked about the most so we didn't take that one further in here due to you know the need to engage in a more robust process with the school in the

0:32:19city but wanting to make sure that the urban greening opportunities were a part of the future of that site finally ashbury avenue was an opportunity to show where we could remove turf that is currently um it takes a lot of water takes a lot of mowing and it could be replaced with a

0:32:36different landscape that was less resource using and provided other benefits and then lower fairmont avenue was the 14th project which really was looking at the repurposing of a street right away and furthering the idea of developing a downtown plaza in some configuration where the current off

0:32:53the grid is operating once a week a plant palette was actually it was required by the state that we developed one and it was actually the subject of a lot of public comment choosing gets very personal trees and plants tree committee was very involved in reviewing this and i think feels happy

0:33:11um if anyone's here but with having a consolidated document nevertheless within the document we still do say it's not definitive and that as the tree committee updates master tree lists etc that that's the definitive document and finally we did do an initial study

0:33:27mitigated negative declaration to make us be able to move forward and implement um as many projects as possible the way that the approach that we took is similar to the active transportation plan where wherein if there were projects that we had enough information about

0:33:44that could be handled in the mitigated negative declaration through the mitigation specified we did and if further information was needed this uh the document helps identify what that information is so it also furthers those projects so everything i believe that that is

0:34:02all i have councilmember rabelson would you like to lead us off with questions yes um first of all i'd like to thank you for doing this uh whole big presentation it's been was really interesting looking through all of the different charts and sections and so forth i really

0:34:24appreciate the opportunity i did have a couple of questions about what what is the meaning of what kind of and maybe it's because i happen to live on an edge of town and so i know that i'm surrounded by more than just el cerritos so if for example you live on the edge of town and i happen to live

0:34:46technically exactly on the edge of town the in some cases i might be closer to a park facility in another jurisdiction than in el cerrito but we only counted ours right or we counted the ones and the other ones because it looked to me like from what i could tell

0:35:08around my house it showed that there were no park facilities when in fact they're half a block away i'd have to look at the specifics but we went back and forth in terms of richmond and regional and albany i think that those maps show that even if we didn't include them that there was good

0:35:24coverage so i think if you look at the purpose of the maps but we did talk about that and i think we tried to capture um obvious playgrounds and facilities in adjacent cities so if you're talking about the um the analysis the mapping analysis looking to me like it showed that there

0:35:41wasn't were not good park facilities in my neighborhood yeah i'd have to look at that specifically i forget what page that specific one was on but um the um so you were trying to look at facilities in other cities right then yeah i mean i think from a holistic perspective we were because it was it

0:36:00was accident and that could in that um activity it was really like you said about access and availability that's that's what i would think um but then likewise i got to thinking about early on actually in my looking at this the school district because i have been involved in

0:36:18helping to improve park facilities at on school property and i know that there's a rule about the source of the money that created a lot of the structures that i think are even now in place in the school district and it was i think i can't remember what it's called but the um

0:36:38the funding source which was a um tax measure passed by the voters said that after school hours that the public had to be entitled was entitled to use them and i'm not sure that they allow it but it is entire you know it is in the measure i do know that and um the um so it would seem to for for

0:37:01example the one near my house harding school um there's a structure the structures there and they were created using that money as seed money so that would mean that those facilities ought to be available in fact the school district has put up some fences that make that very

0:37:22difficult so it would seem to me that one of the things that could be included here would be the possibility of working with the school district and improving access to existing facilities i believe the recreation director is here if he wants to speak more to it but

0:37:39i think that we're in constant communication with the school district you know they obviously have school-aged children and when they're there they're going to have certain rules about keeping it closed campus but we're in constant communication about what that

0:37:51joint use means and you've of course had joint meetings so the urban greening plan does speak many times to the need to keep perpetuating that and defining that in a way that's mutually satisfying actually was not so much joint used as it is um required openness to the public

0:38:09from that yes so that is i guess i think of it a little bit um [Music] different except that we could use this as an opportunity to create more facilities for students after school if if we were interested in doing that there are policies in here that that i mean again this this um the policy and

0:38:36program document tried to highlight those types of things so that it could be continue to be a part of our work program to try to solve those but i think that those ideas came up strong from the public as well um likewise i had a question about the statement there was a lack of

0:38:51uh you mentioned there's a lack in the in the flats of access to um our lack of parks i think you said but when i think in my head i can think of a number of facilities that in fact are in the flats i can name them right now central park harding park fairmont park

0:39:16um yeah i mean it came up you can see in the survey park yeah so i think especially with fairmont park people were very interested and chris could probably speak to this as well um in in in that playground being upgraded in the way that some others have so i think it was

0:39:33something that there's um i don't think we ended up doing and we may have looked at some um analysis but the ones that you mentioned are important and again continuing to support the higher density neighborhood so it was seen as a priority it wasn't as you can see nothing showed up as a

0:39:50major gap so when we did do the analysis while there's some perception it matters how you count the greenway it matters what your what age group you're looking at but we didn't see that there were major gaps but we did um we did hear that again and again and wanted to

0:40:04be able to respond to it and it's everybody's um another thing i mentioned then i'll stop talking is um there is a uh dog park on the south end of town it is in albany but uh and it's closed for the winter right now but it's at albany memorial park yeah there is a um

0:40:25a dog park i know because people are always walking their dogs by my house to get there and the dogs in my house are always barking at the dogs on their way to the dog park but the um but there is there is access to facilities so i think that uh in some ways it's what's important is

0:40:43whether or not you have access not what where it's located i think and we tried to so that mig did do an analysis that was trying to make sure that sidewalks connected people that there were good crosswalks so i think that overall the town is well covered depending exactly where you live you

0:40:57probably feel you know if you're right across from park or within a block of one you feel one way and if you're seven ten blocks so i think the nice thing in a small city is i think as a goal making sure that people feel that they're that it's accessible and that the one

0:41:11last question that i really will be quiet the um other question i had was um i saw some mention in the reports of uh meeting with people with disabilities and i was wondering if there were any was an analysis done that would be of interest that would talk about

0:41:32of the facilities that we have how many of them are actually accessible to people with say in wheelchairs or who are blind who don't draw you know or people you know people who can't drive because of their disability that sort of thing yeah i think that would be an

0:41:47interesting analysis to do and that came up in those groups and this has happened at various times when i've had that focus group a lot of what came up was making sure that our sidewalks are are passable everywhere making sure the trees and buckled sidewalks we do an analysis to actually

0:42:04we did not delve into an analysis um although i believe in enhancing existing parks as if what you're talking about we could easily add something that said you know do you know again there's a whole sundry list of a lot of things in here but as i'm thinking about it we could

0:42:20easily add something that um as another goal which was to do an assessment we mostly what we heard from people in that group and i've heard this um before that it's again clear ways to get there the ohlone greenway is an incredibly rich asset um but that type of thing is

0:42:36noted and we can look at adding that to work plans and and the goals okay thank you bridges any questions um i i think i had a list of about 25 questions that i sent to staff earlier today and most of those were answered but um this is a pretty comprehensive document i have to say and

0:42:58um i think it's good that we had so many stakeholders that are like our commissioners and along with the city staff but also the the task force that um you know is inclusive of pam austin and ralph um howdy who's here tonight and mark and gary mark marny and robin and david and i think that you

0:43:17know a lot of them have so much interest in bikes the hillside natura you know they're they're real community people that are kind of really into this and i think that's pretty exciting um i also thought there was a lot of creativity it's just sort of a comment

0:43:35not really a question that you know the streets strips for gardening i think that's that's sort of a unique thing that i wouldn't have necessarily thought of um and you know having campers i asked melanie a question about them having campers learned to meet their community service

0:43:57agenda that they have to do for schools a lot of times i know my skill kids had to you know have so many community hours both in grade school and high school it's a way for them to do it maybe by working on the trails or whatever and i asked melanie some some questions about

0:44:11that and maybe the city attorney and some of our staff and um have takeover jobs that and then also the the mobile pop-up areas i thought that was sort of a unique idea and i asked melanie questions about having water and electrical and grease traps and things like that if we were

0:44:36going to have different kinds of areas if you've ever been to san francisco and gone to the corner in hayes valley underneath the freeway that is now down they have that proxy area which is a pretty cool spot but it's all out of you know portable containers from ships and

0:44:51they have movies at night through the summer and they have a little beer garden there it's actually pretty cool so you know we could do that little a little area next to the police department there where we store store vehicles we could have a little pop-up area there you guys could go there for

0:45:05lunch can't have beer though um so i just thought it was really comprehensive really good i didn't i had all my questions answered i found a couple of ears um and then the other question i wanted to ask was about the 14 focus areas so basically what i understand is those are areas

0:45:25that were kind of chosen and this is maybe if there was a funding source and there's some pretty big price tags on some of these items that were in those 14 focus areas this is more like a planning document for if some magical amount of money appears in the city and

0:45:47we could use this as a tool to prioritize what's going to get fixed or what areas that we feel as our city residents and the focus group and um and the work people the people who worked on this document we kind of guide us into where that money should be spent um

0:46:10and that's sort of the purpose of the focus of the 14 areas is that correct um yeah that's partially um correct so the um there are some funding sources that come up for example the uh nine hundred thousand dollars that we received to do the rain gardens on the ohlone greenway

0:46:30at fairmont that was an urban greening grant and it was looking for projects that could demonstrate urban greening it wouldn't have been it couldn't go to playground it couldn't even go to new playgrounds and unless any rehabilitation right so there's sometimes what this does is this

0:46:43when we see that right funding source and know that it's a priority this helps identify we've done the community outreach yeah we're ready and it really we've heard from grantors that they love when this work has been done prior right of course there's still design work

0:46:58then it also does contribute in the project areas i do know that the parks and recreation commission is trying to figure out how to spend its last portion of measure ww so it does provide from all this community outreach here's here's some places it doesn't say you have to

0:47:13exclusively do this first there's not a connection between the two but it is a community engagement process of course there's others the cities have done so it gives it gives a wider it gives them an additional tool for the dialogue it gives a wider group of projects that there has been

0:47:28consensus so for example even when the community garden was being created we how did we know that's what people wanted now we know you know yes that is a project that we could support and fund so that was a part of the of the purpose of it it's not meant to be exclusive and

0:47:40as i mentioned before it doesn't compare it to other parks and recreation needs like we like we mentioned you know rehabbing a playfield you know it does mention that flat spot so but it does say if there are flat spots available figuring out a way to do active play is

0:47:55important um so it tried to kind of create both criteria and then the 14 focus projects what we tried to look at is if all 14 of these were implemented not only them there could be others but what would that look like in 20 years as we add the residents that would be

0:48:08moving in as a part of the specific plan we have our resident and it started that's what we were trying to picture if we were going to do this over the next 25 years what would that feel like would we feel and i think when you look at the history section which was created with the historic society

0:48:20and tom it's fun to look at the various times in el cerrito's history that we really did martial our resources and now we see those in their assets and we love them but what's the next generation look like and um i think this would need to be complemented you know by a

0:48:35maintenance um you know maintenance funding and um a parks and recreation uh facilities master plan but but this was this was like you said it was a different type of that it was adding to that does that help we're kind of lucky i mean i have friends that you know have

0:48:49lived in the east bay and then they move over to the other side of the hill for schools or whatever the reason might be or maybe whether whatever you want to say and a lot of times they'll say there's no parks you know in a lot of the places over there so we're rather lucky to have this um

0:49:06foundation of parks it's it's rather unique yeah so this was the same city and this was looking at as it goes forward what other small adjustments or additions can we make to that yeah okay and different types right we hadn't thought about urban greening 15 20 years

0:49:21ago right so i've got a couple of quick questions of the 848 survey responses there's 27 pages in one of the appendices of of comments and uh those 27 pages are have several sources but the most um plentiful source is the surveys and i noticed that some of the comments it

0:49:49looked like you parsed the surveys into different comment areas so i just wanted to find out you know what the process was for uh segregating one person's uh comments into different sections of the of this appendix um the 27 pages in appendix i think it's b is it community engagement certainly you

0:50:15could speak to the you know how you would take a survey response and potentially parse it into into various areas so one a neglected to thank emily alter who's uh was with the city for a while who really helped mig and emily who did a lot of uh a lot of the lion's

0:50:33share of the hard work on this plan um you know if it said more bikes at el cerrito plaza we did she didn't i think we could look she didn't include that ten times she probably could have said how many people said the same thing the raw data is available if anybody wants to um

0:50:50um take a look at it but that's generally and i think it says so in the beginning of this um that she tried to look at where it was very similar and then you can see it's grouped and where do you group it you could have also put it somewhere else as well i find it

0:51:02riveting reading i don't know if you do but i did find it riveting reading yes um it's fun to just hear i i like the open-ended i think it's really interesting it's very textured what do people care about what are they thinking about what did they take the time

0:51:15to talk about so again the data if anybody does but i think mostly she it was really transcribing and categorizing more than it was i don't think it was it was categorizing is mostly what she tried to do just so that we could remember this was done early on in the

0:51:30process so we wanted to be able to do that also to see what it was pointing towards what was something that was said again and again and and yes i did read through many of these pages and and things like getting vehicles off sidewalks that speaks to making the side the current sidewalks

0:51:45available to pedestrians as opposed to parking and it's not i know that's what i was able to interpret that to that to mean that and i'm just curious how we go forward with that type of comment there's many comments um many about safety along the ohlone greenway uh many

0:52:05comments that weren't necessarily specific to the greening plan i'm just curious how uh the city plans to use some of the comments that were collected during this process well i think that brings up an interesting point and it's part of why i talked about the um the ongoing internal

0:52:20communication that we did inter-departmental because it happens a lot i'm sure you as council members but i know if i go to a public meeting or do this community engagement process you learn so much that sometimes not directly related to the specific thing you're doing and how do you

0:52:33institutionalize that um so um i think there's a lot of ways but those it's even within urban greening itself there's a lot of those how do you make sure that it keeps getting to everybody who might be doing something at that time but those that aren't um i think

0:52:50these things um i mean it's a good question and i can think of it and i could probably have somebody do this but you know we can always pull it out encourage every you know it's not that long to read right once you read it that stuff starts if it's something that you're hearing also

0:53:02in your own interactions or you're experiencing it starts to get instant reinforced in your own brain but that idea of how do you institutionalize this all this knowledge partly i think it's through this it's why we did consolidate it and provide it um it's why we again consolidated the

0:53:16policies because you know maybe not everybody's picking up the maloney greenway master plan again or the general plan which a lot of the stuff still really is emerging from even though it needs to be updated it's it's nuanced um so i think that some of those you know

0:53:31public works was very engaged in this process so i think you know many of many of what you see that came up in here it falls in either community you can see in the program areas where we say whether whose responsibility it is to carry it forward community development public works

0:53:45recreation so i think similarly as we're doing that this is also a resource so that people think about it in their other program areas but they were um engaged and i can bring it up and just you know in our internal meetings you know just that comment that how do that

0:53:59ongoing problem of how do we keep transmitting and integrating this information and just for for those that are at home that may not have uh picked this up and read it things like more community weekend events that that certainly is not specific to the urban greening plan and then under

0:54:14miscellaneous you know clean public areas no litters on sidewalks parking strips trails there's lots of requests for additional trash cans more bathrooms more lights better restrooms clean restrooms so you know beautiful just the simple concept of beautification

0:54:34to show the date of this by the busby property which of course we completed um so i just wanted to highlight that this is really uh interesting reading and it does provide us an insight into many issues in el cerrito not just the urban greening plan i did focus on the secret document and i

0:55:00appreciate that and there are the four pilot projects that you alluded to and highlighted in yellow the hillside natural area fairmount park lower fairmont avenue and blue and green of the 14.

0:55:15for the other 10 would there need to be an additional environmental review at some point a note to file a letter of some sort what is the i thought the urban uh the the checklist and the mitigate netdeck was quite good actually thank you for the for the mitigations and again for those

0:55:35that haven't focused on it there's even a mitigation uh i think it's has two um as two on page 42 about the community garden soils evaluations to make sure that people that are using our community gardens are not being poisoned by uh by improper soil so this actually is a fairly

0:55:58thorough document but i wanted to find out from you what your thoughts were on how this document the sql document would be used for the 10 that are not the part the pilot projects and the four that are the pilot projects i would uh have to look in here again so

0:56:14one the mmrp helps us a lot because the mitigation monitoring reporting program um because a lot of those we don't have a lot of standard conditions of approval so those provide that as you said i was going to use the community garden as an example this helped define it where we could where we

0:56:31knew enough about what the type of project that was coming was that we could help it move further as you know not until we have designed for some for the lonely greenway master plan we did a neg deck also and so it's helped us implement the projects it referred to of

0:56:47course you'll have to get your jarpa if you do surface water work so this does capture so on a case-by-case basis we always have to look at a project and look at whether it was in sky you could jump in here if you need to um we always have to look at each project and determine is it a minor

0:57:03improvement to an existing facility right so are we rehabbing a field it's cadx right so we always have to look at a project and determine does it have a potential is it categorically excludes does it have a potential to in fact the environment and if it does is it handled

0:57:17by these mitigations and was it evaluated so it's on a case by case this uh our sql consultant was great and she really tried to look at of everything she could know so if it's a type of trail project um so until we know more about the project obviously to do a plan at the

0:57:32hillside narrative area nothing to do some of the plant restoration nothing to do a major staging area we'd have to look at um you know to create to do trail maintenance nothing to build new trails depending right so looking at for example since we have the erosion

0:57:49control since we have certain things here does that help does that clear it so it's really on a case-by-case basis and then it's a note to file any other questions seeing none i will open the public hearing and call for public testimony we have one request to speak mayor lyman howdy gowdy

0:58:12scouty welcome good evening mayor lyman council members my name is howdy gary i live at [address removed] um so i've been involved with the urban greening plan for you know this two and a half years whatever the total time was i was um one of the members of the task force and also on the eqc we

0:58:42hosted meetings with the public regarding the urban greening plan more than once so i really appreciate the opportunity to participate in this process i think as husband already pointed out it was a very robust public outreach process with great surveying and public meetings and

0:59:02a lot of opportunity for people like me to participate both as you know just a general resident but also getting more deeply involved with you know committees or or special groups to provide that input so i think it was a really um you know good model for developing this kind of

0:59:25planning and input and as it's also been said it's it's a very comprehensive plan it's broad it includes a lot of things and you know i think it frankly when you read it it's like somewhat overwhelming you know there's so many different places to go with it but i i still think it's it's a really

0:59:46good documentation of you know potential areas to go and maybe not all of them are going to happen right away but it's it's a great resource for reflecting on what is important to the community and what what can be done to further these goals and i guess you know mostly i want to you know

1:00:09obviously speak in support of the plan and i i also just want to reiterate which i think is not a surprise to anyone that um you know just because we adopt this plan you know we're not done obviously it's um it's the implementation phase for something like this is is really

1:00:28critical and and so i think it's important as um as has been said to you know internalize this and really you know apply it to all the decisions that they come up along the way and make sure we're sort of keeping consistent with this vision and referring back to it for

1:00:50possibilities of how to move forward so that's all i thanks for your time all right thank you any other speakers uh seeing none i'd love to have a motion to close public hearing so moved second it's been moved by friedman seconded by abelson all in favor please say aye aye

1:01:09with the record show at past 5-0 um any additional questions or comments from council yes please yeah i want to echo the uh sentiments of my colleagues and mr gowdy i think it is a very impressive plan and i appreciate the fact that there's a list of potential funding sources

1:01:32identified because i think as mr gowdy pointed out that's where the real vision comes to fruition is when we actually fund projects and move them forward and integrate them into our our city so i hope in days to come that not only will we have identified funding sources

1:01:53but price tags and then move along towards grant applications and whatever else we do need to do to implement what to me is a very well thought-out and well-presented plan and i thank you and the consultants and the city staff and especially all the public who participated

1:02:15any other comments thoughts i'll add some special thanks to to you staff and and to mig in lexington for the comprehensive good work that was done and presented to us tonight i really appreciate the incorporation of both the planning commission and the tree committee's

1:02:34comments and responding to them and having them incorporated into this document so that we're dealing with one uh final document um and uh echo both mr gowdy and and uh council member friedman's comments we really need to focus on implementation going forward and not

1:02:51lose sight that this is a plan that that is sort of the beginning of uh implementation not at the end of the process with that i'd love to have a motion i'll make one i move to adopt a resolution approving the initial study slash mitigated negative declaration in

1:03:14mitigation monitoring and reporting program and adopting the urban greening plan including addendum one and addendum two second been moved by elson seconded by bridges all those in favor please say aye aye let the records show that it passed unanimously 5-0 thank you

1:03:34[Applause] that brings us to item 6b which is another public hearing for this evening this is a public hearing on the regulation of medical marijuana cultivation and delivery and i see that we will be having a presentation from mr moss and mr keith there we go good evening mayor lyman council members

1:04:16i'm sean moss senior planner and together with captain paul keith we're going to give you a short presentation about legislative changes related to the regulation of medical marijuana cultivation and deliveries so just to give you some background medical marijuana was legalized in the

1:04:39state of california in 1996 by proposition 215.

1:04:44it wasn't until 2003 when the state legislature further defined the the scope of of that proposition under sb 420 which among other things established possession limits for medical marijuana and also recognized the rights of patients to cultivate medical marijuana

1:05:03collectively so after the passage of sb 420 or sb420 really led to the establishment of medical marijuana dispensaries throughout the state and it was at that time that local jurisdictions decided how to regulate it in their various jurisdictions so there's been some recent legislation

1:05:28there there are three bills that were passed by the legislature together they're called the medical marijuana regulation and safety act the first is ab226 which created the bureau of medical marijuana regulation and that established a dual licensing system for medical marijuana businesses

1:05:49whereby a state license is required as well as a local license and for your enjoyment people have ironically pointed out that the acronym for that agency is bummer the next piece of legislation is ab243 which established a licensing system for medical marijuana cultivation under the

1:06:16department of food and agriculture and that's also a dual system whereby the establishments would require a license from the department of food and agriculture as well as a local license and then a b 643 regulated regulates medical marijuana physician recommendations

1:06:36similar to prescriptions but they're usually done in the form of recommendations when dealing with medical marijuana so the relevance of all this to el cerrito is that ab 243 gives the department of food and agriculture the sole licensing authority for medical marijuana cultivation in any

1:06:56jurisdiction that does not regulate or ban cultivation prior to march 1st 2016.

1:07:05and also ab226 established basic documentation requirements for medical marijuana deliveries and it also allows the department of consumer affairs to grant business permits for deliveries in any jurisdiction that does not specifically ban that practice um so our current uh el cerrito

1:07:30regulations are um that chapter 6.80 of the municipal code prohibits medical marijuana dispensaries throughout the city that was adopted in 2006.

1:07:43cultivation and delivery of medical marijuana are not addressed in the municipal code currently the san pablo avenue specific plan does contain one agricultural land use called nurseries and that is allowed conditionally in most of the commercial areas along san

1:08:02pablo avenue it's unclear at this time whether any specific medical marijuana cultivation proposal would fall under the definition of nursery it likely would have to be evaluated you know at the time that it was proposed but as you'll see later on staff is proposing a strategy to address

1:08:23that so existing conditions are that dispensaries medical marijuana dispensaries are currently allowed in the cities of richmond and berkeley the city of albany prohibits both dispensaries and cultivation of medical marijuana the closest dispensary to el cerritos

1:08:42just across the city limits at pacific east mall staff in doing research based on the the best uh information that we could find available identified 25 dispensaries which were listed as providing deliveries to el cerrito currently um and then also you know that we are

1:09:03aware that some level of small scale personal cultivation by patients is currently occurring so regarding cultivation there are no there are currently no approved licensed cultivation commercial cultivation sites in el cerrito um because just because of el cerrito's

1:09:25development patterns we lack large tracts of land where you know traditional large-scale agriculture would would be appropriate um so we're we're likely talking um when we talk about cultivation we're likely talking about indoor cultivation that seems to be the um you know what the

1:09:44type of cultivation that would be most suited to el cerrito um so as i said the the council must enact uh an ordinance that is the the second reading by january 29th 2016 in order to have regulations in place by the march 1 2016 deadline and retain local control

1:10:08of marijuana cultivation regarding deliveries um we don't really have a lot of good information uh about the current volume of deliveries um but staff does expect that the current number is small um just based on the fact that we we haven't received any complaints or calls for service or any

1:10:31other information to indicate that it's happening on a large scale basis deliveries are currently are are performed by dispensaries that are licensed in other jurisdictions since el torito doesn't have any licensed medical marijuana dispensaries and as i said ab226 establishes very

1:10:53basic documentation requirements for deliveries but it is just that it um the the requirements are what type of documentation needs to be kept by both the dispensary and the patient um in order to to verify that the that the delivery is is legal under the legislation there are no operational

1:11:13requirements contained in the legislation so with that i'm going to turn over to captain keith thanks so because lawful commercial cultivation and delivery operations are relatively new law enforcement environment we used a criminology theory called routine theory to examine the elements

1:11:35of what these businesses might add to el cerrito were they allowed so routine theory has three factors one you consider the likely offender so this would be a person that is motivated to commit the crime and has the means to commit a crime it also has a factor that would be a

1:11:52suitable or attractive target for crime so in this case it would be the marijuana cultivation site or the delivery service it also considers the absence of a capable garden as another factor that would be necessary for the crime to occur so capable guardian could be a

1:12:08police officer it could be an alert business employee so either a security guard or a manager or employee that's on the lookout for crime and has a deterring effect it could also be a component of technology so perhaps somebody's using a surveillance system that acts as a

1:12:24deterrent to the crime because the criminal sees that as a guardian for the business so when we use that as just a lens or a framework to look at both commercial cultivation and dispensary some of the things that we considered is that as a new enterprise commercial cultivation site could be a

1:12:41target for property crime like burglary and it may benefit from additional local regulations for example we have a video camera ordinance and something like commercial cultivation if we're allowed in town that might be something that would logically fall under the purview of our

1:12:59video camera ordinance that might be a requirement that we placed on it another thing to consider when we think about commercial cultivation is that it might be a business it's not really consistent with the goals of the san pablo uh specific plan so it's really an industrial usage for

1:13:14what's really a dense commercial corridor i mean that's not really from police side but something i thought of so when we look at delivery services these are really a unique target for offenders in preparation for this i did just a quick web search on robbery marijuana delivery in california

1:13:36and there were three recent incidents in the last three months one in san francisco one in monterey and one in altadena california which is in southern california where delivery services were either summoned to a location as a ruse and then robbed at gunpoint or they were followed and then robbed

1:13:51during the course of their delivery sequence so it is certainly a industry that represents an attractive target for crime it's also a cash intensive industry and the product is conducive to resale on the criminal market because the value of medicinal marijuana is really equal to

1:14:11the value that it could be sold on the street there's really no loss in selling a stolen product for somebody who's dealing with marijuana the other thing to consider on delivery services that deliveries will operate primarily in residential areas so these are people going to people's houses so

1:14:27when the violent crime occurs there's a good chance that it's going to occur at the point of delivery as opposed to the point of packaging so the crime would likely occur in a residential zone as opposed to a commercial zone it's also disallowed other delivery services based on the pre-purchase

1:14:41component if i'm ordering a package from ups then that's a product that's already been paid for and this pack has been delivered whereas um this is something where a large amount of cash could accumulate during the course of delivery routes especially if there's multiple

1:14:53deliveries that are included so this may be an area that would benefit from additional local regulations perhaps limiting the number of deliveries that could be made during a delivery outing limiting the amount of product would be carried at one time so we're not having

1:15:1110 pounds of marijuana traveling through town and being a a ripe target for criminal activity perhaps it's limited to a certain volume of a product so there's some other things that we thought were worth consideration so what staff is proposing tonight is that the council take two actions

1:15:33um the first is to introduce an ordinance that would amend chapter 6.80 and would prohibit all cultivation and deliveries throughout the city and that would preserve the city's future ability to regulate these activities and then the second action is to adopt a

1:15:50resolution uh that con and the reason for this is because one of the pieces of legislation specifically mentions land use regulations and because chapter 6.80 is not in the zoning ordinance title 19 we thought out of an abundance of caution that we would also propose a resolution

1:16:10which confirms that the zoning ordinance operates under the principles of permissive zoning and therefore since medical marijuana cultivation is not specifically listed as an allowed land use um that is it is therefore a prohibited land use and um just a little framework for both

1:16:33of those actions so both of the proposed actions will allow the city to maintain local control over regulation of uh both cultivation and deliveries of medical marijuana and neither of these actions preclude this the council from regulating either of those activities

1:16:49differently in the future um if you should choose so to do so at a later date um so that concludes our presentation um and we're happy to answer any questions uh councilmember friedman would you like to start us off yeah thank you thank you both very much for a very comprehensive

1:17:05presentation and i think this is an issue that will become more and more prominent in days to come and i appreciate the city being on top of the regulation of or the mandates from the recent laws that were passed i think those laws were long overdue and i appreciate that we have a

1:17:27chance to talk about this my major question is there will be at least one legalization measure on the ballot next november when i think most of us know of the one that's well funded by sean parker of facebook and napster fame and fortune how will if that passes how will that impact

1:17:51decisions we're making now is it yet to be determined or i think it's it's a little bit difficult to speculate without knowing exactly what that legislation is going to contain um but i think it is worth noting that this ordinance as proposed um would prohibit uh marijuana cultivation

1:18:14and deliveries whether they were medicinal or otherwise um so you know that could be preempted by future legislation um but at this time that's that's what the the proposed ordinance would prohibit uh last question thank you um the other question is i don't think

1:18:32you touched on it but it's something to think about is the environmental impact of marijuana growing and i know both in terms of energy usage water usage pesticide etc could be pretty severe is that your understanding yeah absolutely we were just talking before the meeting about water usage

1:18:56associated with marijuana is typically very high and electricity usage is also high relative to other industries just because of the the growth cycle and the types of lights that are used for indoor growing and as mr moss said the ulcerative is not really conducive to an outdoor

1:19:12growing space so likely a commercial cultivation were to occur would be inside a commercial or industrial building thank you well you already answered all my questions and and they made it onto the slides that was really good but um my questions were mostly about does it

1:19:31stretch our resources to have to deal with some of these um businesses if they if if this proposal didn't go through and that i when i was on council in 2006 and we uh enacted the the first marijuana um or denied the medical um marijuana dispensaries the chief at the time

1:19:54basically said what you just said that you know it it is an issue for a small city like el cerrito because it has dispensaries have something that people want but they're also all cash operations from what i understand i think you did say that tonight too so that's something that is always in the

1:20:13back of my mind but we didn't deal with the um deliveries and so are deliveries made do you know if they're made in person like do you have to answer the door when a delivery is made or are they i assume it's not fedex and left on the porch but i don't we didn't really talk about that then

1:20:31because it didn't really exist do you know the answer to that right how deliveries are made i don't know specifically off the top of my head um i could go back and look at the legislation i know that there are like i said there are documentation requirements so i i would think i mean

1:20:49at a minimum that a best practice then of having that documentation would be to make sure that the person that placed the order was receiving the order i don't know if it's that's a specific requirement of the legislation or not yeah um so anyway and then you included

1:21:04the crime statistics that you sent me in the email about you know what's been knocked over in recent in the state and you know that there actually were two people killed um at sites i think we did have a bust of a hydroptic house not not too many years ago in el cerrito

1:21:24um i don't know maybe it was on the border i don't even know if it actually was in l street it was a house that i think the fire department might have actually been involved and called over there um but if you grow if you're a grow house are you really a commercial site then or

1:21:40would it be assume that you're just growing in a in a grow house for your own use well so currently there's really two different types of marijuana cultivation that occur in the city there's the illegal kind like you're talking about this where an entire house has been converted for marijuana

1:21:56production and there's foil over the windows to hide it from the neighbors and a lot of times these sites bypass the electrical panels so that they're directly wired into pg e so they're not paying for the electricity they use and sometimes these sites will be a

1:22:10completely illegal operation where they're they're not growing for a marijuana collective they're just growing for a black market resale and sometimes there is a collective growing component of it where just for example we've gone to sites where they've had different doctors

1:22:24recommendations up for different patient names throughout the house it still doesn't forgive the fact that they're you know stealing electricity off the grid and not properly paying for the utilities and certainly that isn't what the landlord thought was going on at the

1:22:38house and then the other types of marijuana cultivation we have going on are um are specific to patients that uh have a doctor's recommendation and they're growing under the compassionate use act and so uh typically when we come across those is because a neighbor has called

1:22:55us to report it and wants to make sure that it is a legal operation a lot of times it's because the the neighbor has detected the odor of marijuana from the grow so so many times we get those as a nuisance call and we go there and make sure that the person has a doctor's recommendation

1:23:09and then we leave it at that typically yeah and we we assumedly have deliveries taking place now i assume i mean we don't know but if they're advertising that they'll deliver here then i imagine at least some customers are taking advantage of that yeah okay and i will say that uh

1:23:26the we get about one to two grow houses a year uh that pop up so it's a somewhat infrequent event but i'd say that probably at least once a year we're going to a house that's been converted to uh basically an illegal commercial marijuana grow it's very seldom that we have in our

1:23:43commercial districts but they do sometimes pop up when someone's subleasing a commercial property thank you and thank you for all the answers today i just want to add as well in in addition to the the legal aspect of a grow house our land use regulations would also prohibit that if someone had

1:24:02converted an entire house to a commercial use right so i'm just staying with that last line of questions quickly this this ordinance does not prohibit personal growth of of marijuana for medical use so the the ordinance as written would would prohibit all cultivation of of

1:24:26marijuana so so in captain keith's exp example where the neighbor smells a plant that is a nuisance it now would be illegal uh yes under under the revised chapter 6.80 okay and then for the 25 businesses that currently offer delivery to el cerrito they offer it legally at this time

1:24:58um that's that's kind of a gray area i mean our right there's going to be a licensing process in the future but right now that is kind of a gray area and and will presumably they that future would be illegal by our local control law will they be notified that they no

1:25:17longer can offer that service to el cerrito so as part of the the licensing that's set up under the state legislation in order for deliveries to occur in a jurisdiction both the dispensary would have to have a license from the department of consumer affairs and the department of consumer

1:25:38affairs will not grant a license unless the local jurisdiction permits deliveries so but in this case we know these 25 are out there are we going to send them a postcard or a letter just letting them know about our are assuming our law passes our ordinance passes that

1:25:55that they would not should not advertise it um i think we we could uh do enforcement at this time and then um you know whenever the state system took effect that would just add additional enforcement as well right thank you that concludes mike isn't part of ab266

1:26:14that's what it does it's telling you where you can deliver is that what it does yes yeah so part of the license they have we'll say what jurisdictions they're able to deliver in so but that doesn't stop themselves that doesn't stop them from advertising that they i mean just because it's not

1:26:33legal for them to deliver to el cerrito doesn't mean that they won't advertise it and then potentially you know uh have our residents complicit in an illegal act of i was agreeing with i think it's good to proactively reach out to them especially in this kind of limbo period between the

1:26:48passage of the laws and full implementation so yeah i like your point uh that concludes my questions uh with that i will open the public hearing and call for public testimony i understand we have three speakers [Applause] we have howdy gowdy followed by tom panis and cordell

1:27:16hindler uh good evening council i'm howdy gowdy i live at [address removed] um so i don't actually have that much interest in the topic but i i'm coming at this more from just a i guess process standpoint i i my background is basically what i read in the packet for tonight and that's

1:27:39what inspired me to put in a speaker slip i actually found the presentation very informative and answered a few of my questions but um i guess what stood out to me was um you know there's sort of the three pieces that are being considered and the first two are really

1:27:56maintaining the status quo and local control which i think sounds like a prudent thing for us to do especially you know there's the timing uh aspects to them so it's it's the third piece that was the delivery regulation that kind of stood out for me because the timing aspect wasn't there

1:28:17it sounded like it was legal to date and there hadn't been problems i guess maybe it's a little grayer than i thought but apparently you know deliveries are legal now maybe going on now and we don't have a lot of information about it whether it's creating problems or not but there don't

1:28:36seem to be reported problems so just from a process standpoint i don't really i'm not casting an opinion one way or another whether we should have deliveries but it seemed like a distinct piece of the regulation that maybe deserved more time and background and vetting than the other piece and it

1:28:54didn't seem to be necessary to attack it under the same timeline um so like i said i don't i'm not really advocating one way or another i just think from a process standpoint that it doesn't feel like a decision that should be taken this quickly without you know

1:29:11researching who's going to be impacted what what are the um you know really um the the implications of it and i understand yeah perhaps there could be you know crime issues that are associated with the delivery activity but from from what i understand it sounds like the delivery

1:29:33activity would become more regulated with el cerrito doing nothing than it is currently right now so um so we're really talking about adding a prohibition that doesn't exist right now that you know isn't just promoting the status quo as as the other two measures are so it just feels

1:29:54distinct and i think it maybe deserves a separate attention um because you know obviously there probably are good regulatory things to add to that um topic i mean the you know there were there were several suggestions made but um i guess i'm just questioning whether

1:30:17else rito should you know embark on a prohibition of that sort of um without more sound background on information about what that is because it just at first glance when you're talking about you know medical marijuana and um you know the original intent of the compassionate care act or whatever it

1:30:41was called um i could imagine that home deliveries could be important to someone who's relatively home bound so anyway that's all i had to comment thanks next speaker please tom panas followed by cordell hindler good evening mayor friedman members of the council and city staff my name is

1:31:09tom panis and i live at [address removed] in el cerrito i'd like to thank the staff for identifying this issue regarding medical marijuana and bringing it to the council in a timely manner i feel it's very important that the city of el salvador be able to control its

1:31:21own destiny on medical marijuana to do so we need to take action now therefore i urge the council to approve in a timely manner an ordinance and resolution relating to maricoana as proposed by the staff tonight thank you for your time this evening and our third speaker cornell

1:31:42mayor lyman uh city council members my name is carl henlon i'm a resident of richmond i do want to thank the staff for this um this this wonderful um proposal here and i'm like i'm against marijuana um for my purpose so hopefully the city council will approve this and um that's it

1:32:04thank you any other speakers seeing none i'll entertain a motion to close i still move second it's moved by bridges seconded by ableton all those in favor please say aye aye aye aye let it show that it passed unanimously 5-0 any additional questions or deliberations by the council

1:32:21mr friedman yeah i've been giving this topic some thought in recent days because i talked to some people who are in the medical marijuana dispensary business and um i don't believe in prohibition i think that marijuana should be legalized i it's been 43 years since i've

1:32:46taken marijuana in any form other than maybe contact high at a music concert from time to time that was not voluntary well being at the concert was voluntary the second hand smoke was not um so i don't think it's that there's no outcry in our community for making it

1:33:06easier to obtain marijuana i think in berkeley oakland richmond when they started all of their dispensaries there was an outcry in the community for on all my years in city government nobody has ever come up to me and say you know we don't have enough access to marijuana and el

1:33:25cerrito so i think that if we do allow any form of marijuana dispensary in our town we need to do it very thoughtfully and that's why i think this presentation was excellent to give us a taste of some of the complications and ramifications of allowing marijuana distribution

1:33:48medical marijuana distribution in our city so i'm i'm grateful that we're able to deliberate and i support these ordinances in order to move the discussion forward in the future in a deliberate way to make sure that we work in concert with our fine police department before we take any steps that

1:34:11will have consequences from days to come so philosophically i'm definitely not opposed to medical marijuana dispensaries and delivery in the future but i think we're just not ready for that in our town and there is no public sentiment in favor of it but once we

1:34:32take this action we may hear from some people who have been getting deliveries and say hey i can no longer get a delivery here i need it because i have glaucoma or cancer or some condition that requires it and they may be homebound as was mentioned so i think i'm open in the future to learning more

1:34:51about this and seeing if there's a place for it in our town but i think we're definitely taking a prudent step by approving this tonight councilmember quinto i agree with the council member friedman and for many years i have volunteered at uh at shantae in san francisco where um

1:35:13uh people were very ill and uh um had six months to live and uh um so i've been to a hospice where um pot was given and and it did help it helped with all the pain that they were going through um so i agree with mayor friedman and i uh definitely would like to make sure that

1:35:40uh these ordinances go through to make sure that in the future when this goes on the ballot that we can finally uh have the laws in place to make sure that marijuana is legalized it's my opinion and i'm going to support this measure tonight as well because of two major issues one it maintains our

1:36:09local control so that in the future we can uh regulate this to best uh serve our residents um as uh council member friedman said we we think we're doing the right thing for our residents now and hopefully we'll have the ability to make those changes in the future as a result of the actions

1:36:25we're taking tonight also with regards to our land use along san pablo avenue to see windless buildings go up and have them with razor wire around them it doesn't seem like the highest and best use of the commercial property along our san pablo avenue so you know for

1:36:44those for those main reasons i you know we want to see retail and employment centers along saint paul avenue and not you know commercial growth centers that potentially do nothing but become eyesores so for those main reasons i'm i'm certainly going to support this

1:37:02and and we'll go from there i will echo uh as my questions did uh mr gowdy's comments about the delivery and and uh council member freedom in your comments about the fact that we may be back here before we know it uh reevaluating the delivery uh issue and and personal cultivation but it for for the

1:37:23moment i feel that we are making the correct decision to best utilize the resources of the city uh going forward with no other deliberation i think there's we have two actions to consider tonight one is uh the first reading of an ordinance and the second is a resolution

1:37:41uh confirming uh the cultivation is prohibited in our city i'll make motions okay first one is to introduce by title and waive any further reading of an ordinance amending chapter 6.80 of the el cerrito municipal code uh entitled medical marijuana dispensaries regarding the cultivation

1:38:06of marijuana do you want me to do one at a time yes please i think that's second so we've had an ordinance we've waived the first reading it's been moved by ableton seconded by friedman all those in favor please say aye aye abstentions abs abstentions or opposition seeing

1:38:24none let the record show it pass unanimously 5-0 adopt secondly to adopt a resolution confirming that the el cerrito zoning ordinance operates under the principles of permissive zoning and that marijuana cultivation is prohibited second a move by abelson seconded by bridges all those

1:38:43in favor please uh indicate by saying aye aye let the record show that past unanimously 5-0 thank you for your work on this matter uh with that that we will move on to item 7a 7a is a policy matter where we are considering the west contra costa integrated waste management authority

1:39:03disbursement of reserve funds to member cities and i see ms sanders coming forward good evening good evening mayor lyman members of council i'm maria sanders and i'm the manager for the operations and environmental services division and tonight we're asking you to receive

1:39:24two resolutions adopted by the west county integrated waste management authority approving disbursement of a portion of their reserve funds to member cities and to adopt a resolution authorizing the receipt of el cerrito's share of these funds which is uh 527 thousand dollars and to authorize the

1:39:44city manager to enter into an indemnification excuse me indemnification agreement um with the authority so el cerrito is a member of the authority uh where we're represented by mayor lyman and as a member of the authority we were party to an agreement from 1994 through

1:40:052013 to construct and operate the integrated resource recovery facility which is also known as the earth at 101 pittsburgh avenue in richmond and this was built in order to recover and process recyclable material in west county the facility was financed by bonds that were

1:40:25paid for through an earth rate that was on rate payers garbage bills in the authority jurisdiction the agreement also included a revenue sharing between the authority and the operator which was which is republic services for the resell of recyclable material and as a

1:40:46result the authority accumulated reserve funds of about 6.65 million dollars and as discussed in the report these funds come from three different pots and they are more or less allocated to the member agencies based on each member's contribution to the recycling and solid waste streams in

1:41:07the jurisdiction the irf agreement expired in 2013 2014 and after doing their due diligence the authority board determined it was appropriate to disperse a portion of these funds to member cities while retaining a portion of these funds also for authority programs

1:41:30and as part of the due diligence and as a condition for disbursement the authority has asked each member agency to receive the resolution their resolutions and findings approving the disbursement to take action authorizing the city uh to receive these funds and authorizing

1:41:49the city manager to enter into an indemnification agreement with the authority and um that pretty much concludes my presentation but before closing and taking questions i'd also like to acknowledge mayor lymon who represented el cerrito very well as as this item was being

1:42:07considered at the on the at the board level with at the um on the authority and that concludes my presentation thank you any questions of staff seeing none any public speakers on the item no request to speak bring it back for comments and resolution [Music] uh i'll uh

1:42:31make a motion but with that i want to echo the comments of gratitude towards mayor lyman because i've sit and sat in several meetings with you mayor and know how much time that you've spent on this and you really brought it home in favor of the city with what i think will be

1:42:47a great result so thank you in advance and with that i move a resolution of the city council of the city of el cerrito receiving resolutions from the west contra costa integrated waste management authority regarding disbursement of reserve funds authorizing receipt of funds from the

1:43:04authority in the amount of five hundred and twenty seven thousand one hundred and twenty four dollars and authorizing the city manager to execute an indemnification agreement and any other associated agreements subject to city attorney approval as to form with the authority a second

1:43:21motion by friedman seconded by quinto before i call the vote i want to just sort of let everyone know that this this was a long decision it started back in march and it was uh well discussed by all uh cities that are involved as you can see from the resolutions it was not

1:43:45unanimous uh at the uh at the the board so um just as you go forward uh we need to be cognizant of that the other thing i want to point out is that our share of the ooa and and pram which has its own acronym for a balancing account was much larger than the 527 that's

1:44:09being dispersed this evening we are currently leaving that difference it's about 150 thousand dollars in with the agency as our share of the agency's operating expenses going forward so i just wanted to highlight those points for you with that i will call the motion

1:44:31by all those in favor please indicate by saying aye aye but the record show it passed unanimously we have a second resume yeah i'd like to move the indemnification agreement by in between west contra costa integrated waste management authority in the city of el

1:44:46cerrito sure uh motioned by friedman second by bridges all those in favor please say aye aye but the records show it passed unanimously the follow-up question i think this is the time to ask the question so this amount of money uh which is over five hundred thousand dollars

1:45:05um where does that money go if we we really do we will now actually receive it it's some time i can tell you as as chair of the authority it it does take some time for disbursement to physically occur um but we could assume that we would receive funds in january okay that

1:45:27actually was not my question but thank you my question was in for example um whose money is this really is it the rate payers or is it the cities does it go into the general fund it will go into the bank it will go into general fund reserves uh of the city itself

1:45:50okay and it can be used for whatever purpose this um council decides correct pursuant to the resolution you just passed thank you and thank you mayor lyman you're all welcome and you're all welcome yes just leave it at that um with that we'll move on to policy matter

1:46:13item 7b uh annual city council regional and local appointments any questions requests for changes thoughts and i do want to i actually have a comment uh about this is just sort of a story to to illuminate here so as one of the items that is being discussed at our uh waste management

1:46:43authority is the process by which uh members and alternates are appointed and so it actually becomes important for us to [Music] you know make a make a decide whether this is an appointment by the mayor or an appointment by resolution so i i don't remember what we normally do and

1:47:03so i'm not certain if if we have a a process uh that's that that we do we do we move resolution on this or is this theme it doesn't we don't require a resolution you can just approve your recommendations for the appointments and the reason why that's important is in other cities the

1:47:22they are uh the appointments are made by uh by resolution of the entire city council and therefore uh they have less flexibility to accommodate for example um if myself and and council member friedman were not available to go to the waste authority uh in january uh and we wanted someone else

1:47:45to go it is in other councils it's a laborious process to potentially find that third alternative and so i just wanted to sort of highlight that by having it be a mayoral proclamation essentially we can work on our alternate you know figure out how to to get alternates to alternates much more

1:48:06readily so i just wanted to point that out you think they're not allowed to vote um they the thought at the time was they weren't even allowed to sit on the diocese so yeah but we would certainly want with this it being a mayoral decision a mayoral appointment we would

1:48:28obviously be able to be more nimble in allowing for our representation at these regional bodies so i want to thank you all for volunteering to continue to represent us both regionally and within the city and thank you all for that moving on to item eight which is council

1:48:48assignment and liaison reports looking for any i see none from bridges none from freeman none from quinto okay i have uh i've at least one to report actually two um i on our behalf i attended the contra costa mayor's uh conference where we re-elected bob simmons

1:49:11to represent us on the from walnut creek to represent us on the east bay regional park district and we also elected what was formerly alternative ross to a full position and i was trying to figure out what position he he was up for election but i apologize i did not find that when i was

1:49:33searching but i more importantly i wanted to alert everyone here that they have they are calling for nominations and i believe they're due at the end the middle of next week uh for the board uh for the contra costa mayor's uh board and so i encourage anyone who's interested to let me know

1:49:54and we'll go through the nomination process if you're interested in serving on the mayor's board um also on your behalf i've represented us at the west contra costa integrated waste management authority and there we started a protracted process of discussing the future of the joint powers authority

1:50:16uh going forward what without the as pointed out in the last item we do have we for 20 years we had a joint powers agreement in place for the purposes of recovering the funds associated with the structure we helped build that structure obviously is paid off and

1:50:35is not the basis for our joint powers agreement so we are going through the process of trying to decide what is the authority's uh responsibilities going forward and revamping the the agreement uh simplifying it to some degree because we don't have all the financial

1:50:50obligations that we have and that's going to take probably the next six months to to resolve and and probably we won't have a new agreement for this council to consider for another year but i wanted to let you know that we did start that process with that uh move on to item 9 and

1:51:11adjourn our regular city council meeting of december 15 2015 and there is a typo our next council meeting is tuesday january 5th 2016.

1:51:23um so we will be meeting again in the new year well actually our next meeting is especially oh yeah actually do we that was part of the consent calendar is that what we're adjourning to at this time um yes it's a regularly scheduled meeting day however i was going to

1:51:41request that you start earlier so it would be outside your regular meeting time which makes it a special meeting the monday's meeting is also a special meeting are we adjourning to monday's meeting or monday yes so we are actually adjourning tonight to our special

1:51:56meeting which will be 7 p.m on december 20 monday december 21st here in chambers yes that'll be it seven and then the one on our the one on the fifth you're going to ask us to start at six six if it's if you would yeah yes interview interviews is correct okay so uh again i'm calling for us to

1:52:21adjourn to the special meeting of monday december 21st 7 p.m here in council chambers moved moved by abelson seconded by friedman all those in favor say aye aye aye let us show that it passed unanimously [Applause]